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diff --git a/8076-h/8076-h.htm b/8076-h/8076-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eaa1891 --- /dev/null +++ b/8076-h/8076-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,32785 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> + <head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> +<title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The History of David Grieve, by Mrs. Humphry Ward. +</title> +<style type="text/css"> + p {margin-top:.75em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.75em;text-indent:2%;} + +.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} + +.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;} + + h1,h2,h3 {margin-top:15%;text-align:center;clear:both;} + + hr.full {width:100%;margin:5% auto 5% auto;border:4px double gray;} + + table {margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:none;text-align:left;} + + body{margin-left:2%;margin-right:2%;background:#fdfdfd;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;} + +a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} + + link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} + +a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;} + +a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} + +.poem {margin-left:25%;text-indent:0%;} +</style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The History of David Grieve, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The History of David Grieve + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Posting Date: March 18, 2011 [EBook #8076] +Release Date: May, 2005 +[This file was first posted on June 12, 2003] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Franks, Robert Prince; HTML version created by Chuck Greif. + + + + + +</pre> + +<hr class="full" /> + +<h1>THE HISTORY<br /><br /> +OF<br /><br /> +DAVID GRIEVE</h1> + +<p class="cb">BY<br /><br /> +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD</p> + +<p class="cb">AUTHOR OF 'ROBERT ELSMERE,' ETC.<br /> +TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF MY MOTHER</p> + +<h3><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h3> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> + +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_I_CHILDHOOD">BOOK I<br /> +CHILDHOOD</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-1">CHAPTER I, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II-1">II, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III-1">III, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV-1">IV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V-1">V, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI-1">VI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII-1">VII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-1">VIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX-1">IX, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X-1">X, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI-1">XI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_II_YOUTH">BOOK II<br /> +YOUTH</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-2">CHAPTER I, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II-2">II, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III-2">III, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV-2">IV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V-2">V, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI-2">VI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII-2">VII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-2">VIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX-2">IX, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X-2">X</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_III_STORM_AND_STRESS">BOOK III<br /> +STORM AND STRESS</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-3">CHAPTER I, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II-3">II, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III-3">III, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV-3">IV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V-3">V, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI-3">VI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII-3">VII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-3">VIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX-3">IX, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X-3">X, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI-3">XI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII-3">XII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII-3">XIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV-3">XIV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV-3">XV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI-3">XVI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_IV_MATURITY">BOOK IV<br /> +MATURITY</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I-4">CHAPTER I, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II-4">II, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III-4">III, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV-4">IV, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V-4">V, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI-4">VI, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII-4">VII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-4">VIII, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX-4">IX, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X-4">X, </a> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI-4">XI</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<h2><a name="BOOK_I_CHILDHOOD" id="BOOK_I_CHILDHOOD"></a>BOOK I<br /><br /> +CHILDHOOD</h2> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-1" id="CHAPTER_I-1"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<p>'Tak your hat, Louie! Yo're allus leavin summat behind yer.'</p> + +<p>'David, yo go for 't,' said the child addressed to a boy by her +side, nodding her head insolently towards the speaker, a tall and +bony woman, who stood on the steps the children had just descended, +holding out a battered hat.</p> + +<p>'Yo're a careless thing, Louie,' said the boy, but he went back and +took the hat.</p> + +<p>'Mak her tie it,' said the woman, showing an antiquated pair of +strings. 'If she loses it she needna coom cryin for anudder. She'd +lose her yead if it wor loose.'</p> + +<p>Then she turned and went back into the house. It was a smallish +house of grey stone, three windows above, two and a door below. +Dashes of white on the stone gave, as it were, eyebrows to the +windows, and over the door there was a meagre trellised porch, up +which grew some now leafless roses and honeysuckles. To the left of +the door a scanty bit of garden was squeezed in between the hill, +against which the house was set edgeways, and the rest of the flat +space, occupied by the uneven farmyard, the cart-shed and stable, +the cow-houses and duck-pond. This garden contained two shabby +apple trees, as yet hardly touched by the spring; some currant and +gooseberry bushes, already fairly green; and a clump or two of +scattered daffodils and wallflowers. The hedge round it was broken +through in various places, and it had a casual neglected air.</p> + +<p>The children went their way through the yard. In front of them a +flock of some forty sheep and lambs pushed along, guarded by two +black short-haired collies. The boy, brandishing a long stick, +opened a gate deplorably in want of mending, and the sheep crowded +through, keenly looked after by the dogs, who waited meanwhile on +their flanks with heads up, ears cocked, and that air of +self-restrained energy which often makes a sheep-dog more human +than his master. The field beyond led to a little larch plantation, +where a few primroses showed among the tufts of long, rich grass, +and the drifts of last year's leaves. Here the flock scattered a +little, but David and the dogs were after them in a twinkling, and +the plantation gate was soon closed on the last bleating mother. +Then there was nothing more for the boy to do than to go up to the +top of the green rising ground on which the farm stood and see if +the gate leading to the moor was safely shut. For the sheep he had +been driving were not meant for the open moorland. Their feeding +grounds lay in the stone-walled fields round the homestead, and had +they strayed on to the mountain beyond, which was reserved for a +hardier Scotch breed, David would have been answerable. So he +strode, whistling, up the hill to have a look at that top gate, +while Louie sauntered down to the stream which ran round the lower +pastures to wait for him.</p> + +<p>The top gate was fast, but David climbed the wall and stood there a +while, hands in his pockets, legs apart, whistling and looking.</p> + +<p>'They can't see t' Downfall from Stockport to-day,' he was saying +to himself; 'it's coomin ower like mad.'</p> + +<p>Some distance away in front of him, beyond the undulating heather +ground at his feet, rose a magnificent curving front of moor, the +steep sides of it crowned with black edges and cliffs of grit, the +outline of the south-western end sweeping finely up on the right to +a purple peak, the king of all the moorland round. No such colour +as clothed that bronzed and reddish wall of rock, heather, and +bilberry is known to Westmoreland, hardly to Scotland; it seems to +be the peculiar property of that lonely and inaccessible district +which marks the mountainous centre of mid-England—the district of +Kinder Scout and the High Peak. Before the boy's ranging eye spread +the whole western rampart of the Peak—to the right, the highest +point, of Kinder Low, to the left, 'edge' behind 'edge,' till the +central rocky mass sank and faded towards the north into milder +forms of green and undulating hills. In the very centre of the +great curve a white and surging mass of water cleft the mountain +from top to bottom, falling straight over the edge, here some two +thousand feet above the sea, and roaring downward along an almost +precipitous bed into the stream—the Kinder—which swept round the +hill on which the boy was standing, and through the valley behind +him. In ordinary times the 'Downfall,' as the natives call it, only +makes itself visible on the mountain-side as a black ravine of +tossed and tumbled rocks. But there had been a late snowfall on the +high plateau beyond, followed by heavy rain, and the swollen stream +was to-day worthy of its grand setting of cliff and moor. On such +occasions it becomes a landmark for all the country round, for the +cotton-spinning centres of New Mills and Stockport, as well as for +the grey and scattered farms which climb the long backs of moorland +lying between the Peak and the Cheshire border.</p> + +<p>To-day, also, after the snow and rains of early April, the air was +clear again. The sun was shining; a cold, dry wind was blowing; +there were sounds of spring in the air, and signs of it on the +thorns and larches. Far away on the boundary wall of the farmland a +cuckoo was sitting, his long tail swinging behind him, his +monotonous note filling the valley; and overhead a couple of +peewits chased each other in the pale, windy blue.</p> + +<p>The keen air, the sun after the rain, sent life and exhilaration +through the boy's young limbs. He leapt from the wall, and raced +back down the field, his dogs streaming behind him, the sheep, with +their newly dropped lambs, shrinking timidly to either side as he +passed. He made for a corner in the wall, vaulted it on to the +moor, crossed a rough dam built in the stream for sheep-washing +purposes, jumped in and out of the two grey-walled sheep-pens +beyond, and then made leisurely for a spot in the brook—not the +Downfall stream, but the Red Brook, one of its westerly +affluents—where he had left a miniature water-wheel at work the +day before. Before him and around him spread the brown bosom of +Kinder Scout; the cultivated land was left behind; here on all +sides, as far as the eye could see, was the wild home of heather +and plashing water, of grouse and peewit, of cloud and breeze.</p> + +<p>The little wheel, shaped from a block of firwood, was turning +merrily under a jet of water carefully conducted to it from a +neighbouring fall. David went down on hands and knees to examine +it. He made some little alteration in the primitive machinery of +it, his fingers touching it lightly and neatly, and then, delighted +with the success of it, he called Louie to come and look.</p> + +<p>Louie was sitting a few yards further up the stream, crooning to +herself as she swung to and fro, and snatching every now and then +at some tufts of primroses growing near her, which she wrenched +away with a hasty, wasteful hand, careless, apparently, whether +they reached her lap or merely strewed the turf about her with +their torn blossoms. When David called her she gathered up the +flowers anyhow in her apron, and dawdled towards him, leaving a +trail of them behind her. As she reached him, however, she was +struck by a book sticking out of his pocket, and, stooping over +him, with a sudden hawk-like gesture, as he sprawled head +downwards, she tried to get hold of it.</p> + +<p>But he felt her movement. 'Let goo!' he said imperiously, and, +throwing himself round, while one foot slipped into the water, he +caught her hand, with its thin predatory fingers, and pulled the +book away.</p> + +<p>'Yo just leave my books alone, Louie. Yo do 'em a mischeef whaniver +yo can—an I'll not have it.'</p> + +<p>He turned his handsome, regular face, crimsoned by his position and +splashed by the water, towards her with an indignant air. She +laughed, and sat herself down again on the grass, looking a very +imp of provocation.</p> + +<p>'They're stupid,' she said, shortly. 'They mak yo a stupid gonner +ony ways.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! do they?' he retorted, angrily. 'Bit I'll be even wi yo. I'll +tell yo noa moor stories out of 'em, not if yo ast iver so.'</p> + +<p>The girl's mouth curled contemptuously, and she began to gather her +primroses into a bunch with an air of the utmost serenity. She was +a thin, agile, lightly made creature, apparently about eleven. Her +piercing black eyes, when they lifted, seemed to overweight the +face, whereof the other features were at present small and pinched. +The mouth had a trick of remaining slightly open, showing a line of +small pearly teeth; the chin was a little sharp and shrewish. As +for the hair, it promised to be splendid; at present it was an +unkempt, tangled mass, which Hannah Grieve, the children's aunt, +for her own credit's sake at chapel, or in the public street, made +occasional violent attempts to reduce to order—to very little +purpose, so strong and stubborn was the curl of it. The whole +figure was out of keeping with the English moorside, with the +sheep, and the primroses.</p> + +<p>But so indeed was that of the boy, whose dark colouring was more +vivacious and pronounced than his sister's, because the red of his +cheek and lip was deeper, while his features, though larger than +hers, were more finely regular, and his eyes had the same piercing +blackness, the same all-examining keenness, as hers. The yellowish +tones of his worn fustian suit and a red Tam-o'-Shanter cap +completed the general effect of brilliancy and, as it were, +<i>foreignness</i>.</p> + +<p>Having finished his inspection of his water-mill, he scrambled +across to the other side of the stream so as to be well out of his +sister's way, and, taking out the volume which was stretching his +pocket, he began to read it. It was a brown calf-bound book, much +worn, and on its title-page it bore the title of 'The Wars of +Jerusalem,' of Flavius Josephus, translated by S. Calmet, and a +date somewhere in the middle of the eighteenth century. To this +antique fare the boy settled himself down. The two collies lay +couched beside him; a stone-chat perched on one or other of the +great blocks which lay scattered over the heath gave out his +clinking note; while every now and then the loud peevish cluck of +the grouse came from the distant sides of the Scout.</p> + +<p>Titus was now making his final assault on the Temple. The Zealots +were gathered in the innermost court, frantically beseeching Heaven +for a sign; the walls, the outer approaches of the Sanctuary were +choked with the dying and the dead. David sat absorbed, elbows on +knees, his face framed in his hands. Suddenly the descent of +something cold and clammy on his bent neck roused him with a most +unpleasant shock.</p> + +<p>Quick as lightning he faced round, snatching at his assailant; but +Louie was off, scudding among the bilberry hillocks with peals of +laughter, while the slimy moss she had just gathered from the edges +of the brook sent cold creeping streams into the recesses of +David's neck and shoulders. He shook himself free of the mess as +best he could, and rushed after her. For a long time he chased her +in vain, then her foot tripped, and he came up with her just as she +rolled into the heather, gathered up like a hedgehog against +attack, her old hat held down over her ears and face. David fell +upon her and chastised her; but his fisticuffs probably looked more +formidable than they felt, for Louie laughed provokingly all the +time, and when he stopped out of breath she said exultantly, as she +sprang up, holding her skirts round her ready for another flight, +'It's greened aw yur neck and yur collar—luvely! Doan't yo be +nassty for nothink next time!'</p> + +<p>And off she ran.</p> + +<p>'If yo meddle wi me ony moor,' he shouted after her fiercely, 'yo +see what I'll do!'</p> + +<p>But in reality the male was helpless, as usual. He went ruefully +down to the brook, and loosening his shirt and coat tried to clean +his neck and hair. Then, extremely sticky and uncomfortable, he +went back to his seat and his book, his wrathful eyes taking +careful note meanwhile of Louie's whereabouts. And thenceforward he +read, as it were, on guard, looking up every other minute.</p> + +<p>Louie established herself some way up the further slope, in a steep +stony nook, under two black boulders, which protected her rear in +case of reprisals from David. Time passed away. David, on the other +side of the brook, revelling in the joys of battle, and all the +more alive to them perhaps because of the watch kept on Louie by +one section of his brain, was conscious of no length in the +minutes. But Louie's mood gradually became one of extreme flatness. +All her resources were for the moment at an end. She could think of +no fresh torment for David; besides, she knew that she was +observed. She had destroyed all the scanty store of primroses along +the brook; gathered rushes, begun to plait them, and thrown them +away; she had found a grouse's nest among the dead fern, and, +contrary to the most solemn injunctions of uncle and keeper, +enforced by the direst threats, had purloined and broken an egg; +and still dinner-time delayed. Perhaps, too, the cold blighting +wind, which soon made her look blue and pinched, tamed her +insensibly. At any rate, she got up after about an hour, and coolly +walked across to David.</p> + +<p>He looked up at her with a quick frown. But she sat down, and, +clasping her hands round her knees, while the primroses she had +stuck in her hat dangled over her defiant eyes, she looked at him +with a grinning composure.</p> + +<p>'Yo can read out if yo want to,' she remarked.</p> + +<p>'Yo doan't deserve nowt, an I shan't,' said David, shortly.</p> + +<p>'Then I'll tell Aunt Hannah about how yo let t' lambs stray lasst +evenin, and about yor readin at neet.'</p> + +<p>'Yo may tell her aw t' tallydiddles yo can think on,' was the +unpromising reply.</p> + +<p>Louie threw all the scorn possible into her forced smile, and then, +dropping full-length into the heather, she began to sing at the top +of a shrill, unpleasing voice, mainly, of course, for the sake of +harrying anyone in her neighbourhood who might wish to read.</p> + +<p>'Stop that squealing!' David commanded, peremptorily. Whereupon +Louie sang louder than before.</p> + +<p>David looked round in a fury, but his fury was, apparently, +instantly damped by the inward conviction, born of long experience, +that he could do nothing to help himself. He sprang up, and thrust +his book into his pocket.</p> + +<p>'Nobory ull mak owt o' yo till yo get a bastin twice a day, wi an +odd lick extra for Sundays,' he remarked to her with grim emphasis +when he had reached what seemed to him a safe distance. Then he +turned and strode up the face of the hill, the dogs at his heels. +Louie turned on her elbow, and threw such small stones as she could +discover among the heather after him, but they fell harmlessly +about him, and did not answer their purpose of provoking him to +turn round again.</p> + +<p>She observed that he was going up to the old smithy on the side of +Kinder Low, and in a few minutes she got up and sauntered lazily +after him.</p> + +<p>'T' owd smithy' had been the enchanted ground of David's childhood. +It was a ruined building standing deep in heather, half-way up the +mountain-side, and ringed by scattered blocks and tabular slabs of +grit. Here in times far remote—beyond the memory of even the +oldest inhabitant—the millstones of the district, which gave their +name to the 'millstone grit' formation of the Peak, were fashioned. +High up on the dark moorside stood what remained of the primitive +workshop. The fire-marked stones of the hearth were plainly +visible; deep in the heather near lay the broken jambs of the +window; a stone doorway with its lintel was still standing; and on +the slope beneath it, hardly to be distinguished now from the great +primaeval blocks out of which they had sprung and to which they +were fast returning, reposed two or three huge millstones. Perhaps +they bordered some ancient track, climbed by the millers of the +past when they came to this remote spot to give their orders; but, +if so, the track had long since sunk out of sight in the heather, +and no visible link remained to connect the history of this high +and lonely place with that of those teeming valleys hidden to west +and north among the moors, the dwellers wherein must once have +known it well. From the old threshold the eye commanded a +wilderness of moors, rising wave-like one after another, from the +green swell just below whereon stood Reuben Grieve's farm, to the +far-distant Alderley Edge. In the hollows between, dim tall +chimneys veiled in mist and smoke showed the places of the cotton +towns—of Hayfield, New Mills, Staleybridge, Stockport; while in +the far northwest, any gazer to whom the country-side spoke +familiarly might, in any ordinary clearness of weather, look for +and find the eternal smoke-cloud of Manchester.</p> + +<p>So the deserted smithy stood as it were spectator for ever of that +younger, busier England which wanted it no more. Human life +notwithstanding had left on it some very recent traces. On the +lintel of the ruined door two names were scratched deep into the +whitish under-grain of the black weather-beaten grit. The upper one +ran: 'David Suveret Grieve, Sept. 15, 1863;' the lower, 'Louise +Stephanie Grieve, Sept. 15, 1863.' They were written in bold +round-hand, and could be read at a considerable distance. During +the nine months they had been there, many a rustic passer-by had +been stopped by them, especially by the oddity of the name +<i>Suveret</i>, which tormented the Derbyshire mouth.</p> + +<p>In a corner of the walls stood something more puzzling still—a +large iron pan, filled to the brim with water, and firmly bedded on +a foundation of earth and stones. So still in general was the +shining sheltered round, that the branches of the mountain ash +which leant against the crumbling wall, the tufts of hard fern +growing among the stones, the clouds which sailed overhead, were +all delicately mirrored in it. That pan was David Grieve's dearest +possession, and those reflections, so magical, and so alive, had +contrived for him many a half-hour of almost breathless pleasure. +He had carried it off from the refuse-yard of a foundry in +the valley, where he had a friend in one of the apprentices. +The farm donkey and himself had dragged it thither on a certain +never-to-be-forgotten day, when Uncle Reuben had been on the other +side of the mountain at a shepherds' meeting in the Woodlands, +while Aunt Hannah was safely up to her elbows in the washtub. Boy's +back and donkey's back had nearly broken under the task, but there +the pan stood at last, the delight of David's heart. In a crevice +of the wall beside it, hidden jealously from the passer-by, lay the +other half of that perpetual entertainment it provided—a store of +tiny boats fashioned by David, and another friend, the lame +minister of the 'Christian Brethren' congregation at Clough End, +the small factory town just below Kinder, who was a sea-captain's +son, and with a knife and a bit of deal could fashion you any craft +you pleased. These boats David only brought out on rare occasions, +very seldom admitting Louie to the show. But when he pleased they +became fleets, and sailed for new continents. Here were the ships +of Captain Cook, there the ships of Columbus. On one side of the +pan lay the Spanish main, on the other the islands of the South +Seas. A certain tattered copy of the 'Royal Magazine,' with +pictures, which lay in Uncle Reuben's cupboard at home, provided +all that for David was to be known of these names and places. But +fancy played pilot and led the way; she conjured up storms and +islands and adventures; and as he hung over his pan high on the +Derbyshire moor, the boy, like Sidney of old, 'sailed the seas where +there was never sand'—the vast and viewless oceans of romance.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-1" id="CHAPTER_II-1"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<p>Once safe in the smithy, David recovered his temper. If Louie +followed him, which was probable, he would know better how to deal +with her here, with a wall at his back and a definite area to +defend, than he did in the treacherous openness of the heath. +However, just as he was settling himself down, with a sigh of +relief, between the pan and the wall, he caught sight of something +through one of the gaps of the old ruin which made him fling down +his book and run to the doorway. There, putting his fingers to his +mouth, he blew a shrill whistle along the side of the Scout. A bent +figure on a distant path stopped at the sound. It was an old man, +with a plaid hanging from his shoulders. He raised the stick he +held, and shook it in recognition of David's signal. Then resuming +his bowed walk, he came slowly on, followed by an old hound, whose +gait seemed as feeble as his master's.</p> + +<p>David leant against the doorway waiting. Louie, meanwhile, was +lounging in the heather just below him, having very soon caught him +up.</p> + +<p>'What d'yo want 'im for?' she asked contemptuously, as the +new-comer approached: 'he'd owt to be in th' sylum. Aunt Hannah says +he's gone that silly, he owt to be took up.'</p> + +<p>'Well, he woan't be, then,' retorted David. 'Theer's nobory about as +ull lay a finger on 'im. He doan't do her no harm, nor yo noather. +Women foak and gells allus want to be wooryin soomthin.'</p> + +<p>'Aunt Hannah says he lost his wits wi fuddlin,' repeated Louie +shrilly, striking straighter still for what she knew to be one of +David's tenderest points—his friendship for 'owd 'Lias Dawson,' the +queer dreamer, who, fifteen years before, had been the schoolmaster +of Frimley Moor End, and in local esteem 't' cliverest mon abeawt +t'Peak.'</p> + +<p>David with difficulty controlled a hot inclination to fall upon his +sister once more. Instead, however, he affected not to hear her, +and shouted a loud 'Good mornin' to the old man, who was toiling up +the knoll on which the smithy stood.</p> + +<p>'Lias responded feebly, panting hard the while. He sank down on a +stone outside the smithy, and for a while had neither breath nor +voice. Then he began to look about him; his heaving chest subsided, +and there was a rekindling of the strange blue eyes. He wore a high +white stock and neckcloth; his plaid hung round his emaciated +shoulders with a certain antique dignity; his rusty wideawake +covered hair still abundant and even curly, but snow-white; the +face, with its white eyebrows, was long, thin, and full of an +ascetic delicacy.</p> + +<p>'Wal, Davy, my lad,' the old man said at last, with a sort of +pompous mildness; 'I winna blame yo for 't, but yo interrupted me +sadly wi yur whistlin. I ha been occupied this day wi business o' +<i>graat</i> importance. His Majesty King Charles has been wi me +since seven o'clock this mornin. And for th' fust time I ha been +gettin reet to th' <i>bottom</i> o' things wi him. I ha been +<i>probin</i> him, Davy—probin him. He couldno riddle through wi +lees; I kept him to 't, as yo mun keep a horse to a jump—straight +an tight. I had it aw out about Strafford, an t'Five Members, an +thoose dirty dealins wi th' Irish devils! Yo should ha yerd it, +Davy—yo should, I'll uphowd yo!'</p> + +<p>And placing his stick between his knees, the old man leant his +hands upon it, with a meditative and judicial air. The boy stood +looking down at him, a broad smile lighting up the dark and vivid +face. Old 'Lias supplied him with a perpetual 'spectacle' which +never palled.</p> + +<p>'Coe him back, 'Lias, he's soomwheer about. Yo need nobbut coe him, +an he'll coom.'</p> + +<p>'Lias looked fatuously pleased. He lifted his head and affected to +scan the path along which he had just travelled.</p> + +<p>'Aye, I daur say he's not far.—Yor Majesty!'</p> + +<p>And 'Lias laid his head on one side and listened. In a few seconds +a cunning smile stole over his lips.</p> + +<p>'Wal, Davy, yo're in luck. He's noan so onwillin, we'st ha him here +in a twinklin. Yo may coe him mony things, but yo conno coe him +proud. Noa, as I've fund him, Charles Stuart has no soart o' pride +about him. Aye, theer yo are! Sir, your Majesty's obleeged an +humble servant!'</p> + +<p>And, raising his hand to his hat, the old man took it off and swept +it round with a courtly deliberation. Then replacing it, he sat +with his face raised, as though to one standing near, his whole +attitude full of a careful and pompous dignity.</p> + +<p>'Now then, yor Majesty,' said 'Lias grimly,' I'st ha to put that +question to yo, yance moor, yo wor noan so well pleased wi this +mornin. But yo shouldno be soa tender, mon! Th' truth can +do yo <i>noa</i> harm, wheer yo are, an I'm nobbut askin for +<i>informashun's</i> sake. Soa out wi it; I'st not use it agen yo. +<i>That—wee—bit—o'—damned—paper,</i>—man, what sent poor +Strafford to his eend—yo mind it?—aye, <i>'at yo do!</i> Well, +now'—and the old man's tone grew gently seductive—<i>'explain +yursel.</i> We'n had <i>their</i> tale,' and he pointed away to +some imaginary accusers. 'But yo mun trust an Englishman's sense o' +fair play. Say your say. We 'st gie yo a varra patient hearin.'</p> + +<p>And with chin thrown up, and his half-blurred eyes blinking under +their white lashes, 'Lias waited with a bland imperativeness for the +answer.</p> + +<p>'Eh?' said 'Lias at last, frowning and hollowing his hand to his +ear.</p> + +<p>He listened another few seconds, then he dropped his hand sharply.</p> + +<p>'What's 'at yo're sayin?' he asked hastily; ''at yo couldno help it, +not <i>whativer</i>—that i' truth yo had nothin to do wi't, no +moor than mysel—that yo wor <i>forcit</i> to it—willy-nilly—by +them devils o' Parliament foak—by Mr. Pym and his loike, wi whom, +if God-amighty ha' not reckoned since, theer's no moor justice i' +His Kingdom than yo found i' yours?'</p> + +<p>The words came out with a rush, tumbling over one another till they +suddenly broke off in a loud key of indignant scorn. Then 'Lias +fell silent a moment, and slowly shook his head over the inveterate +shuffling of the House of Stuart.</p> + +<p>''Twinna do, man—'twinna do,' he said at last, with an air of +fine reproof. 'He wor your <i>friend</i>, wor that poor sinner +Strafford—your awn familiar friend, as t' Psalm says. I'm not +takin up a brief for him, t' Lord knows! He wor but meetin his +deserts, to <i>my</i> thinkin, when his yed went loupin. But yo put +a black mark agen <i>yore</i> name when yo signed that bit paper +for your awn skin's sake. Naw, naw, man, yo should ha lost your awn +yed a bit sooner fust. Eh, it wor base—it wor cooardly!'</p> + +<p>'Lias's voice dropped, and he fell muttering to himself +indistinctly. David, bending over him, could not make out whether +it was Charles or his interlocutor speaking, and began to be afraid +that the old man's performance was over before it had well begun. +But on the contrary, 'Lias emerged with fresh energy from the gulf +of inarticulate argument in which his poor wits seemed to have lost +themselves awhile.</p> + +<p>'But I'm no blamin yo awthegither,' he cried, raising himself, with +a protesting wave of the hand. 'Theer's naw mak o' mischief i' this +world, but t' <i>women</i> are at t' bottom o't. Whar's that proud +foo of a wife o' yourn? Send her here, man; send her here! 'Lias +Dawson ull mak her hear reason! Now, Davy!'</p> + +<p>And the old man drew the lad to him with one hand, while he raised +a finger softly with the other.</p> + +<p>'Just study her, Davy, my lad,' he said in an undertone, which +swelled louder as his excitement grew, 'theer she stan's, by t' side +o' t' King. She's a gay good-lookin female, that I'll confess to, +but study her; look at her curls, Davy, an her paint, an her +nakedness. For shame, madam! Goo hide that neck o' yourn, goo hide +it, I say! An her faldaddles, an her jewles, an her ribbons. Is +that a woman—a French hizzy like that—to get a King out o' +trooble, wha's awready lost aw t' wits he wor born wi?'</p> + +<p>And with sparkling eyes and outstretched arm 'Lias pointed sternly +into vacancy. Thrilled with involuntary awe the boy and girl looked +round them. For, in spite of herself, Louie had come closer, little +by little, and was now sitting cross-legged in front of 'Lias. Then +Louie's shrill voice broke in—</p> + +<p>'Tell us what she's got on!' And the girl leant eagerly forward, +her magnificent eyes kindling into interest.</p> + +<p>'What she's got on, my lassie? Eh, but I'm feart your yead, too, is +fu' o' gauds!—Wal, it's but nateral to females. She's aw in white +satin, my lassie,—an in her brown hair theer's pearls, an a blue +ribbon just howdin down t' little luve-locks on her forehead—an on +her saft neck theer's pearls again—not soa white, by a thoosand +mile, as her white skin—an t' lace fa's ower her proud shoothers, +an down her luvely arms—an she looks at me wi her angry eyes—Eh, +but she's a queen!' cried 'Lias, in a sudden outburst of +admiration. 'She hath been a persecutor o' th' saints—a varra +Jeezebel—the Lord hath put her to shame—but she's moor +sperrit—moor o't' blood o' kingship i' her little finger, nor +Charles theer in aw his body!'</p> + +<p>And by a strange and crazy reversal of feeling, the old man sat in +a kind of ecstasy, enamoured of his own creation, looking into thin +air. As for Louie, during the description of the Queen's dress she +had drunk in every word with a greedy attention, her changing eyes +fixed on the speaker's face. When he stopped, however, she drew a +long breath.</p> + +<p>'It's aw lees!' she said scornfully.</p> + +<p>'Howd your tongue, Louie!' cried David, angrily.</p> + +<p>But 'Lias took no notice. He was talking again very fast, but +incoherently. Hampden, Pym, Fairfax, Falkland—the great names +clattered past every now and then, like horsemen, through a maze of +words, but with no perceptible order or purpose. The phrases +concerning them came to nothing; and though there were apparently +many voices speaking, nothing intelligible could be made out.</p> + +<p>When next the mists cleared a little from the old visionary's +brain, David gathered that Cromwell was close by, defending himself +with difficulty, apparently, like Charles, against 'Lias's +assaults. In his youth and middle age—until, in fact, an event of +some pathos and mystery had broken his life across, and cut him off +from his profession—'Lias had been a zealous teacher and a +voracious reader; and through the dreams of fifteen years the +didactic faculty had persisted and grown amazingly. He played +schoolmaster now to all the heroes of history. Whether it were +Elizabeth wrangling with Mary Stuart, or Cromwell marshalling his +Ironsides, or Buckingham falling under the assassin's dagger at +'Lias's feet, or Napoleon walking restlessly up and down the deck +of the 'Bellerophon,' 'Lias rated them every one. He was lord of a +shadow world, wherein he walked with kings and queens, warriors and +poets, putting them one and all superbly to rights. Yet so subtle +were the old man's wits, and so bright his fancy, even in +derangement, that he preserved through it all a considerable +measure of dramatic fitness. He gave his puppets a certain freedom; +he let them state their case; and threw almost as much ingenuity +into the pleading of it as into the refuting of it. Of late, since +he had made friends with Davy Grieve, he had contracted a curious +habit of weaving the boy into his visions.</p> + +<p>'Davy, what's your opinion o' that?' or, 'Davy, my lad, did yo iver +hear sich clit-clat i' your life?' or again, 'Davy, yo'll not be +misled, surely, by sich a piece o' speshul-pleadin as that?'</p> + +<p>So the appeals would run, and the boy, at first bewildered, and +even irritated by them, as by something which threw hindrances in +the way of the only dramatic entertainment the High Peak was likely +to afford him, had learnt at last to join in them with relish. Many +meetings with 'Lias on the moorside, which the old seer made alive +for both of them—the plundering of 'Lias's books, whence he had +drawn the brown 'Josephus' in his pocket—these had done more +than anything else to stock the boy's head with its present +strange jumble of knowledge and ideas. <i>Knowledge</i>, indeed, it +scarcely was, but rather the materials for a certain kind of +excitement.</p> + +<p>'Wal, Davy, did yo hear that?' said 'Lias, presently, looking round +on the boy with a doubtful countenance, after Cromwell had given an +unctuous and highly Biblical account of the slaughter at Drogheda +and its reasons.</p> + +<p>'How mony did he say he killed at that place?' asked the boy +sharply.</p> + +<p>'Thoosands,' said Dawson, solemnly. 'Theer was naw mercy asked nor +gi'en. And those wha escaped knockin on t' yead were aw sold as +slaves—every mon jock o' them!'</p> + +<p>A strong light of anger showed itself in David's face.</p> + +<p>'Then he wor a cantin murderer! Yo mun tell him so! If I'd my way, +he'd hang for 't!'</p> + +<p>'Eh, laddie, they were nowt but rebels an Papists,' said the old +man, complacently.</p> + +<p>'Don't yo becall Papists!' cried David, fiercely, facing round upon +him. 'My mither wor a Papist.'</p> + +<p>A curious change of expression appeared on 'Lias's face. He put his +hand behind his ear that he might hear better, turned a pair of +cunning eyes on David, while his lips pressed themselves together.</p> + +<p>'Your mither wor a Papist? an your feyther wor Sandy Grieve. Ay, +ay—I've yeerd tell strange things o' Sandy Grieve's wife,' he said +slowly.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Louie, who had been lying full length on her back in the +sun, with her hat over her face, apparently asleep, sat bolt +upright.</p> + +<p>'Tell us what about her,' she said imperiously.</p> + +<p>'Noa—noa,' said the old man, shaking his head, while a sort of +film seemed to gather over the eyes, and the face and features +relaxed—fell, as it were, into their natural expression of weak +senility, which so long as he was under the stress of his favourite +illusions was hardly apparent. 'But it's true—it's varra true—I've +yeerd tell strange things about Sandy Grieve's wife.'</p> + +<p>And still aimlessly shaking his head, he sat staring at the +opposite side of the ravine, the lower jaw dropping a little.</p> + +<p>'He knows nowt about it,' said David, roughly, the light of a +sombre, half-reluctant curiosity, which had arisen in his look, +dying down.</p> + +<p>He threw himself on the grass by the dogs, and began teasing and +playing with them. Meanwhile Louie sat studying 'Lias with a +frowning hostility, making faces at him now and then by way of +amusement. To disappoint the impetuous will embodied in that small +frame was to commit an offence of the first order.</p> + +<p>But one might as well make faces at a stone post as at old 'Lias +when his wandering fit was on him. When the entertainment palled, +Louie got up with a yawn, meaning to lounge back to the farm and +investigate the nearness of dinner. But, as she turned, something +caught her attention. It was the gleam of a pool, far away beyond +the Downfall, on a projecting spur of the moor.</p> + +<p>'What d' yo coe that bit watter?' she asked David, suddenly +pointing to it.</p> + +<p>David rolled himself round on his face, and took a look at the +bluish patch on the heather.</p> + +<p>'It hasna got naw name,' he said, at a venture.</p> + +<p>'Then yo're a stoopid, for it has,' replied Louie, triumphantly. +'It's t' <i>Mermaid</i> Pool. Theer wor a Manchester mon at Wigsons' +last week, telling aw maks o' tales. Theer's a mermaid lives +in 't—a woman, I tell tha, wi' a fish's tail—it's in a book, +an he read it out, soa <i>theer</i>—an on Easter Eve neet she cooms +out, and walks about t' Scout, combin her hair—an if onybody sees +her an wishes for soomthin, they get it, sartin sure; an—'</p> + +<p>'Mermaids is just faddle an nonsense,' interrupted David, tersely.</p> + +<p>'Oh, is they? Then I spose books is faddle. Most on 'em are—t' +kind of books yo like—I'll uphowd yo!'</p> + +<p>'Oh, is they?' said David, mimicking her. 'Wal, I like 'em, yo see, +aw t' same. I tell yo, mermaids is nonsense, cos I <i>know</i> they +are. Theer was yan at Hayfield Fair, an the fellys they nearly +smashed t' booth down, cos they said it wor a cheat. Theer was just +a gell, an they'd stuffed her into a fish's skin and sewed 'er up; +an when yo went close yo could see t' stuffin runnin out of her. An +theer was a man as held 'er up by a wire roun her waist, an waggled +her i' t' watter. But t' foak as had paid sixpence to coom in, they +just took an tore down t' place, an they'd 'a dookt t' man an t' +gell boath, if th' coonstable hadn't coom. Naw, mermaids is faddle,' +he repeated contemptuously.</p> + +<p>'Faddle?' repeated 'Lias, interrogatively.</p> + +<p>The children started. They has supposed 'Lias was of doting and +talking gibberish for the rest of the morning. But his tone was +brisk and as David looked up he caught a queer flickering +brightness in the old man's eye, which showed him that 'Lias was +once more capable of furnishing amusement or information.</p> + +<p>'What do they coe that bit watter, 'Lias?' he inquired, pointing to +it.</p> + +<p>'That bit watter?' repeated 'Lias, eyeing it. A sort of vague +trouble came into his face, and his wrinkled hands lying on his +stick began to twitch nervously.</p> + +<p>'Aye—theer's a Manchester man been cramming Wigsons wi tales—says +he gets 'em out of a book—'bout a woman 'at walks t' Scout Easter +Eve neet,—an a lot o' ninny-hommer's talk. Yo niver heer now about +it—did yo, 'Lias?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, yo did, Mr. Dawson—now, didn't yo?' said Louis, +persuasively, enraged that David would never accept information +from her, while she was always expected to take it from him.</p> + +<p>'A woman—'at walks t' Scout,' said 'Lias, uncertainly, flushing as +he spoke.</p> + +<p>Then, looking tremulously from his companions to the pool, he said, +angrily raising his stick and shaking it at David, 'Davy, yo're +takin advantage—Davy, yo're doin what yo owt not. If my Margret +were here, she'd let yo know!'</p> + +<p>The words rose into a cry of quavering passion. The children stared +at him in amazement. But as Davy, aggrieved, was defending himself, +the old man laid a violent hand on his arm and silenced him. His +eyes, which were black and keen still in the blanched face, were +riveted on the gleaming pool. His features worked as though under +the stress of some possessing force; a shiver ran through the +emaciated limbs.</p> + +<p>'Oh! yo want to know abeawt Jenny Crum's pool, do yo?' he said at +last in a low agitated voice. 'Nobbut look, my lad!—nobbut look! +—an see for yoursen.'</p> + +<p>He paused, his chest heaving, his eye fixed. Then, suddenly, he +broke out in a flood of passionate speech, still gripping David.</p> + +<p>'<i>Passon Maine! Passon Maine!</i>—ha yo got her, th' owd woman? +Aye, aye—sure enough—'at's she—as yo're aw drivin afore +yo—hoontit like a wild beeast—wi her grey hair streamin, and her +hands tied—Ah!'—and the old man gave a wild cry, which startled +both the children to their feet. 'Conno yo hear her?—eh, but it's +enough to tear a body's heart out to hear an owd woman scream like +that!'</p> + +<p>He stopped, trembling, and listened, his hand hollowed to his ear. +Louie looked at her brother and laughed nervously; but her little +hard face had paled. David laid hold of her to keep her quiet, and +shook himself free of 'Lias. But 'Lias took no notice of them now +at all, his changed seer's gaze saw nothing but the distance and +the pool.</p> + +<p>'Are yo quite <i>sure</i> it wor her, Passon?' he went on, +appealingly. 'She's nobbut owd, an it's a far cry fro her bit +cottage to owd Needham's Farm. An th' chilt might ha deed, and t' +cattle might ha strayed, and t' geyats might ha opened o' +theirsels! Yo'll not dare to speak agen <i>that</i>. They <i>might</i>? +Ay, ay, we aw know t' devil's strong; but she's eighty-one year +coom Christmas—an an—. Doan't, <i>doan't</i> let t' childer see, +nor t' yoong gells! If yo let em see sich seets they'll breed +yo wolves, not babes! Ah!'</p> + +<p>And again 'Lias gave the same cry, and stood half risen, his hands +on his staff, looking.</p> + +<p>'What is it, 'Lias?' said David, eagerly; 'what is 't yo see?'</p> + +<p>'Theer's my grandfeyther,' said 'Lias, almost in a whisper, 'an owd +Needham an his two brithers, an yoong Jack Needham's woife—her as +losst her babby—an yoong lads an lasses fro Clough End, childer +awmost, and t' coonstable, an Passon Maine—Ay—ay—yo've doon it! +Yo've doon it! She'll mak naw moor mischeef neets—she's gay quiet +now! T' watter's got her fasst enough!'</p> + +<p>And, drawing himself up to his full height, the old man pointed a +quivering finger at the pool.</p> + +<p>'Ay, it's got her—an your stones are tied fasst! Passon Maine says +she's safe—that yo'll see her naw moor—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">While holly sticks be green,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">While stone on Kinder Scoot be seen.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But <i>I</i> tell yo, Passon Maine <i>lees!</i> I tell yo t' witch ull +<i>walk</i>—t' witch ull <i>walk!</i>'</p> + +<p>For several seconds 'Lias stood straining forward—out of +himself—a tragic and impressive figure. Then, in a moment, from +that distance his weird gift had been re-peopling, something else +rose towards him—some hideous memory, as it seemed, of personal +anguish, personal fear. The exalted seer's look vanished, the +tension within gave way, the old man shrank together. He fell back +heavily on the stone, hiding his face in his hands, and muttering +to himself.</p> + +<p>The children looked at each other oddly. Then David, half afraid, +touched him.</p> + +<p>'What's t' matter, 'Lias? Are yo bad?'</p> + +<p>The old man did not move. They caught some disjointed words, +—'cold—ay, t' neet's cold, varra cold!'</p> + +<p>''Lias!' shouted David.</p> + +<p>'Lias looked up startled, and shook his head feebly.</p> + +<p>'Are yo bad, 'Lias?'</p> + +<p>'Ay!' said the old schoolmaster, in the voice of one speaking +through a dream—'ay, varra bad, varra cold—I mun—lig me down—a +bit.'</p> + +<p>And he rose feebly. David instinctively caught hold of him, and led +him to a corner close by in the ruined walls, where the heather and +bilberry grew thick up to the stones. 'Lias sank down, his head fell +against the wall, and a light and restless sleep seemed to take +possession of him.</p> + +<p>David stood studying him, his hands in his pockets. Never in all +his experience of him had 'Lias gone through such a performance as +this. What on earth did it mean? There was more in it than +appeared, clearly. He would tell Margaret, 'Lias's old wife, who +kept him and tended him like the apple of her eye. And he would +find out about the pool, anyway. <i>Jenny Crum's pool?</i> What on +earth did that mean? The name had never reached his ears before. Of +course Uncle Reuben would know. The boy eyed it curiously, the +details of 'Lias's grim vision returning upon him. The wild +circling moor seemed suddenly to have gained a mysterious interest.</p> + +<p>'Didn't I tell yo he wor gone silly?' said Louie, triumphantly, at +his elbow.</p> + +<p>'He's not gone that silly, onyways, but he can freeten little +gells,' remarked David, dryly, instinctively putting out an arm, +meanwhile, to prevent her disturbing the poor sleeper.</p> + +<p>'I worn't freetened,' insisted Louie; '<i>yo</i> were! He may skrike +aw day if he likes—for aw I care. He'll be runnin into hedges +by dayleet soon. Owd churn-yed!'</p> + +<p>'Howd your clatterin tongue!' said David, angrily, pushing her out +of the doorway. She lifted a loose sod of heather, which lay just +outside, flung it at him, and then took to her heels, and made for +the farm and dinner, with the speed of a wild goat.</p> + +<p>David brushed his clothes, took a stroll with the dogs, and +recovered his temper as best he might. When he came back, pricked +by the state of his appetite, to see whether 'Lias had recovered +enough sanity to get home, he found the old man sitting up, looking +strangely white and exhausted, and fumbling, in a dazed way, for +the tobacco to which he always resorted at moments of nervous +fatigue. His good wife Margaret never sent him out without mended +clothes, spotless linen, and a paper of tobacco in his pocket. He +sat chewing it awhile in silence; David's remarks to him met with +only incoherent answers, and at last the schoolmaster got up and +with the help of his stick tottered off along the path by which he +had come. David's eyes followed the bent figure uneasily; nor did +he turn homeward till it disappeared over the brow.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-1" id="CHAPTER_III-1"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<p>Anyone opening the door of Needham Farm kitchen that night at eight +would have found the inmates at supper—a meagre supper, which +should, according to the rule of the house, have been eaten in +complete silence. Hannah Grieve, the children's aunt, and mistress +of the farm, thought it an offence to talk at meals. She had not +been so brought up.</p> + +<p>But Louie this evening was in a state of nerves. The afternoon had +seen one of those periodical struggles between her and Hannah, +which did so much to keep life at Needham Farm from stagnating into +anything like comfort. The two combatants, however, must have taken +a certain joy in them, since they recurred with so much regularity. +Hannah had won, of course, as the grim self-importance of her +bearing amply showed. Louie had been forced to patch the +house-linen as usual, mainly by the temporary confiscation of her +Sunday hat, the one piece of decent clothing she possessed, and to +which she clung with a feverish attachment—generally, indeed, +sleeping with it beside her pillow. But, though she was beaten, she +was still seething with rebellion. Her eyes were red, but her +shaggy head was thrown back defiantly, and there was hysterical +battle in the expression of her sharply-tilted nose and chin.</p> + +<p>'Mind yorsel,' cried Hannah angrily, as the child put down her +plate of porridge with a bang which made the housewife tremble for +her crockery.</p> + +<p>'What's t' matter wi yo, Louie?' said Uncle Reuben, looking at her +with some discomfort. He had just finished the delivery of a long +grace, into which he had thrown much unction, and Louie's manners +made but an ill-fitting Amen.</p> + +<p>'It's nasty!' said the child passionately. 'It's allus +porridge—porridge—porridge—porridge—an I hate it—an it's +bitter—an it's a shame! I wish I wor at Wigson's—'at I do!'</p> + +<p>Davy glanced up at his sister under his eyebrows. Hannah scanned +her niece all over with a slow, observant scrutiny, as though she +were a dangerous animal that must be watched. Otherwise Louie might +have spoken to the wall for all the effect she produced. Reuben, +however, was more vulnerable.</p> + +<p>'What d' yo want to be at Wigson's for?' he asked. 'Yo should +be content wi your state o' life, Louie. It's a sin to be +discontented—I've tellt yo so many times.'</p> + +<p>'They've got scones and rhubarb jam for tea!' cried the child, +tumbling the news out as though she were bursting with it. 'Mrs. +Wigson, she's allus makin em nice things. She's kind, she is—she's +nice—she wouldn't make em eat stuff like this—she'd give it to +the pigs—'at she would!'</p> + +<p>And all the time it was pitiful to see how the child was gobbling +up her unpalatable food, evidently from the instinctive fear, nasty +as it was, that it would be taken from her as a punishment for her +behaviour.</p> + +<p>'Now, Louie, yo're a silly gell,' began Reuben, expostulating; but +Hannah interposed.</p> + +<p>'I wudn't advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to go wastin your breath on +sich a minx. If I were yo, I'd keep it fur my awn eating.'</p> + +<p>And she calmly put another slice of cold bacon on his plate, as +though reminding him of his proper business. Reuben fell silent and +munched his bacon, though he could not forbear studying his niece +every now and then uncomfortably. He was a tall, large-boned man, +with weakish eyes, sandy whiskers and beard, grown in a fringe +round his long face, and a generally clumsy and disjointed air. The +tremulous, uncertain movements of his hand as he stretched it out +for one article of food after another seemed to express the man's +character.</p> + +<p>Louie went on gulping down her porridge. Her plate was just empty +when Hannah caught a movement of Reuben's fork. He was in the act +of furtively transferring to Louie a portion of bacon. But he could +not restrain himself from looking at Hannah as he held out the +morsel. Hannah's answering look was too much for him. The bacon +went into his mouth.</p> + +<p>Supper over, Louie went out to sit on the steps, and Hannah +contemptuously forbore to make her come in and help clear away. Out +in the air, the child slowly quieted down. It was a clear, frosty +April night, promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew on +the girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against her will +almost, her spirits came back. She swept Aunt Hannah out of her +mind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When would +they have their stupid prayers and let her get upstairs?</p> + +<p>David meanwhile hung about the kitchen. He would have liked to ask +Uncle Reuben about the pool and 'Lias's story, but Hannah was +bustling about, and he never mentioned 'Lias in her hearing. To do +so would have been like handing over something weak, for which he +had a tenderness, to be worried.</p> + +<p>But he rummaged out an old paper-covered guide to the Peak, which +he remembered to have been left at the farm one summer's day by a +passing tourist, who paid Hannah handsomely for some bread and +cheese. Turning to the part which concerned Clough End, Hayfield, +and the Scout, he found:—</p> + +<p>'In speaking of the Mermaiden's Pool, it may be remarked that the +natives of several little hamlets surrounding Kinder Scout have +long had a tradition that there is a beautiful woman—an English +Hamadryad—lives in the side of the Scout; that she comes to bathe +every day in the Mermaid's Well, and that the man who has the good +luck to behold her bathing will become immortal and never die.'</p> + +<p>David shut the book and fell pondering, like many another wiser +mortal before him, on the discrepancies of evidence. What was a +Hamadryad? and why no mention of Easter Eve? and what had it all to +do with the witch and Parson Maine and 'Lias's excitement?</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the thump made by the big family Bible as Hannah +deposited it on the table warned both him and the truant outside +that prayer-time had come. Louie came in noisily when she was +called, and both children lounged unwillingly into their appointed +seats.</p> + +<p>Nothing but the impatience and indifference of childhood, however, +could have grudged Reuben Grieve the half-hour which followed. +During that one half-hour in the day, the mild, effaced man, whose +absent-minded ways and complete lack of business faculty were the +perpetual torment of his wife, was master of his house. While he +was rolling out the psalm, expounding the chapter, or 'wrestling' +in prayer, he was a personality and an influence even for the wife +who, in spite of a dumb congruity of habit, regarded him generally +as incompetent and in the way. Reuben's religious sense was strong +and deep, but some very natural and pathetically human instincts +entered also into his constant pleasure in this daily function. +Hannah, with her strong and harsh features settled into repose, +with her large hands, reddened by the day's work, lying idle in her +lap, sat opposite to him in silence; for once she listened to him, +whereas all day he had listened to her; and the moment made a daily +oasis in the life of a man who, in his own dull, peasant way, knew +that he was a failure, and knew also that no one was so well aware +of it as his wife.</p> + +<p>With David and Louie the absorbing interest was generally to see +whether the prayer would be over before the eight-day clock struck +nine, or whether the loud whirr which preceded that event would be +suddenly and deafeningly let loose upon Uncle Reuben in the middle +of his peroration, as sometimes happened when the speaker forgot +himself. To-night that catastrophe was just avoided by a somewhat +obvious hurry through the Lord's Prayer. When they rose from their +knees Hannah put away the Bible, the boy and girl raced each other +upstairs, and the elders were left alone.</p> + +<p>An hour passed away. Reuben was dozing peacefully in the +chimney-corner; Aunt Hannah had just finished putting a patch +on a pair of Reuben's trousers, was folding up her work and +preparing to rouse her slumbering companion, when a sound +overhead caught her ear.</p> + +<p>'What's that chilt at now?' she exclaimed angrily, getting up and +listening. 'She'd owt ta been in bed long ago. Soomthin mischeevous, +I'll be bound. And lighting a dip beside her, she went upstairs +with a treacherously quiet step. There was a sound of an opening +door, and then Reuben downstairs was startled out of his snooze by +a sudden gamut of angry cries, a scurrying of feet, and Hannah +scolding loudly—</p> + +<p>'Coom downstairs wi yo!—coom down an show your uncle what a figure +o' foon yo'n been makkin o' yorsel! I'st teach yo to burn three +candles down awbut to nothink 'at yo may bedizen yorsel in this +way. Coom along wi yo.'</p> + +<p>There was a scuffle on the stairs, and then Hannah burst open the +door, dragging in an extraordinary figure indeed. Struggling and +crying in her aunt's grip was Louie. White trailing folds swept +behind her; a white garment underneath, apparently her nightgown, +was festooned with an old red-and-blue striped sash of some foreign +make. Round her neck hung a necklace of that gold filigree work +which spreads from Genoa all along the Riviera; her magnificent +hair hung in masses over her shoulders, crowned by the primroses of +the morning, which had been hurriedly twisted into a wreath by a +bit of red ribbon rummaged out of some drawer of odds-and-ends; +and her thin brown arms and hands appeared under the white +cloak—nothing but a sheet—which was being now trodden underfoot +in the child's passionate efforts to get away from her aunt. Ten +minutes before she had been a happy queen flaunting over her attic +floor in a dream of joy before a broken, propped-up looking-glass +under the splendid illumination of three dips, long since secreted +for purposes of the kind. Now she was a bedraggled, tear-stained +Fury, with a fierce humiliation and a boundless hatred glaring out +of the eyes, which in Aunt Hannah's opinion were so big as to be +'right down oogly.' Poor Louie!</p> + +<p>Uncle Reuben, startled from his snooze by this apparition, looked +at it with a sleepy bewilderment, and fumbled for his spectacles. +'Ay, yo'd better luke at her close,' said Hannah, grimly, giving +her niece a violent shake as she spoke; 'I wor set yo should just +see her fur yance at her antics. Yo say soomtimes I'm hard on her. +Well, I'd ask ony pusson aloive if they'd put up wi this soart o' +thing—dressin up like a bad hizzy that waaks t' streets, wi +three candles—<i>three</i>, I tell yo, Reuben—flarin away, and the +curtains close to, an nothink but the Lord's mussy keepin 'em from +catchin. An she peacockin an gallivantin away enough to mak a cat +laugh!'</p> + +<p>And Aunt Hannah in her enraged scorn even undertook a grotesque and +mincing imitation of the peacocking aforesaid. 'Let goo!' muttered +Louie between her shut teeth, and with a wild strength she at last +flung off her aunt and sprang for the door. But Hannah was too +quick for her and put her back against it. 'No—yo'll not goo till +your ooncle there's gien yo a word. He <i>shan't</i> say I'm hard +on yo for nothink, yo good-for-nowt little powsement—he shall see +yo as yo are!'</p> + +<p>And with the bitterness of a smouldering grievance, expressed in +every feature, Hannah looked peremptorily at her husband. He, poor +man, was much perplexed. The hour of devotion was past, and outside +it he was not accustomed to be placed in important situations.</p> + +<p>'Louie—didn't yo know yo wor a bad gell to stay up and burn t' +candles, an fret your aunt?' he said with a feeble solemnity, his +look fixed on the huddled white figure against the mahogany press.</p> + +<p>Louie stood with eyes resolutely cast down, and a forced smile, +tremulous, but insolent to a degree, slowly lifting up the corners +of her mouth as Uncle Reuben addressed her. The tears were still +running off her face, but she meant her smile to convey the +indomitable scorn for her tormentors which not even Aunt Hannah +could shake out of her.</p> + +<p>Hannah Grieve was exasperated by the child's expression.</p> + +<p>'Yo little sloot!' she said, seizing her by the arm again, and +losing her temper for good and all, 'yo've got your mither's bad +blude in yo—an it ull coom out, happen what may!'</p> + +<p>'Hannah!' exclaimed Reuben, 'Hannah—mind yoursel.'</p> + +<p>'My mither's <i>dead</i>,' said the child, slowly raising her dark, +burning eyes. 'My mither worn't bad; an if yo say she wor, yo're a +<i>beast</i> for sayin it! I wish it wor yo wor dead, an my mither +wor here instead o' yo!'</p> + +<p>To convey the concentrated rage of this speech is impossible. It +seemed to Hannah that the child had the evil eye. Even she quailed +under it.</p> + +<p>'Go 'long wi yo,' she said grimly, in a white heat, while she +opened the door—'an the less yo coom into <i>my</i> way for t' +future, the better.'</p> + +<p>She pushed the child out and shut the door.</p> + +<p>'Yo <i>are</i> hard on her, Hannah!' exclaimed Reuben, in his +perplexity—pricked, too, as usual in his conscience.</p> + +<p>The repetition of this parrot-cry, as it seemed to her, maddened +his wife.</p> + +<p>'She's a wanton's brat,' she said violently; 'an she's got t' +wanton's blood.'</p> + +<p>Reuben was silent. He was afraid of his wife in these moods. Hannah +began, with trembling hands, to pick up the contents of her +work-basket, which had been overturned in the scuffle.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Louie rushed upstairs, stumbling over and tearing her +finery, the convulsive sobs beginning again as soon as the tension +of her aunt's hated presence was removed.</p> + +<p>At the top she ran against something in the dark. It was David, who +had been hanging over the stairs, listening. But she flung past +him.</p> + +<p>'What's t' matter, Louie?' he asked in a loud whisper through the +door she shut in his face; 'what's th' owd crosspatch been slangin +about?'</p> + +<p>But he got no answer, and he was afraid of being caught by Aunt +Hannah if he forced his way in. So he went back to his own room, +and closed, without latching, his door. He had had an inch of dip +to go to bed with, and had spent that on reading. His book was a +battered copy of 'Anson's Voyages,' which also came from 'Lias's +store, and he had been straining his eyes over it with enchantment. +Then had come the sudden noise upstairs and down, and his candle +and his pleasure had gone out together. The heavy footsteps of his +uncle and aunt ascending warned him to keep quiet. They turned into +their room, and locked their door as their habit was. David +noiselessly opened his window and looked out.</p> + +<p>A clear moonlight reigned outside. He could distinguish the rounded +shapes, the occasional movements of the sheep in their pen to the +right of the farmyard. The trees in the field threw long shadows +down the white slope; to his left was the cart-shed with its black +caverns and recesses, and the branches of the apple-trees against +the luminous sky. Owls were calling in the woods below; sometimes a +bell round the neck of one of the sheep tinkled a little, and the +river made a distant background of sound.</p> + +<p>The boy's heart grew heavy. After the noises in the Grieves' room +ceased he listened for something which he knew must be in the air, +and caught it—the sound of a child's long, smothered sobs. On most +nights they would not have made much impression on him. Louie's +ways with her brother were no more engaging than with the rest of +the world; and she was not a creature who invited consolation from +anybody. David, too, with his power of escape at any time into a +world of books and dreams or simply into the wild shepherd life of +the moors, was often inclined to a vague irritation with Louie's +state of perpetual revolt. The food was nasty, their clothes were +ugly and scanty, Aunt Hannah was as hard as nails—at the same time +Louie was enough to put anybody's back up. What did she get by it? +—that was his feeling; though, perhaps, he never shaped it. He had +never felt much pity for her. She had a way of putting herself out +of court, and he was, of course, too young to see her life or his +own as a whole. What their relationship might mean to him was still +vague—to be decided by the future. Whatever softness there was in +the boy was at this moment called out by other people—by old 'Lias +and his wife; by Mr. Ancrum, the lame minister at Clough End; by +the dogs; hardly ever by Louie. He had grown used, moreover, to her +perpetual explosions, and took them generally with a boy's natural +callousness.</p> + +<p>But to-night her woes affected him as they had never done before. +The sound of her sobbing, as he stood listening, gradually roused +in him an unbearable restlessness. An unaccountable depression +stole upon him—the reaction, perhaps, from a good deal of mental +exertion and excitement in the day. A sort of sick distaste awoke +in him for most of the incidents of existence—for Aunt Hannah, for +Uncle Reuben's incomprehensible prayers, for the thought of the +long Puritanical Sunday just coming. And, in addition, the low +vibrations of that distant sobbing stirred in him again, by +association, certain memories which were like a clutch of physical +pain, and which the healthy young animal instinctively and +passionately avoided whenever it could. But to-night, in the dark +and in solitude, there were no distractions, and as the boy put his +head down on his arms, rolling it from side to side as though to +shake them off, the same old images pursued him—the lodging-house +room, and the curtainless iron bed in which he slept with his +father: reminiscences of some long, inexplicable anguish through +which that father had passed; then of his death, and his own lonely +crying. He seemed still to <i>feel</i> the strange sheets in that +bed upstairs, where a compassionate fellow-lodger had put him the +night after his father died; he sat up again bewildered in the cold +dawn, filled with a home-sickness too benumbing for words. He +resented these memories, tried to banish them; but the nature on +which they were impressed was deep and rich, and, once shaken, +vibrated long. The boy trembled through and through. The more he +was ordinarily shed abroad, diffused in the life of sensation and +boundless mental curiosity, the blacker were these rare moments of +self-consciousness, when all the world seemed pain, an iron vice +which pinched and tortured him.</p> + +<p>At last he went to his door, pulled it gently open, and with bare +feet went across to Louie's room, which he entered with infinite +caution. The moonlight was streaming in on the poor gauds, which +lay wildly scattered over the floor. David looked at them with +amazement. Amongst them he saw something glittering. He picked it +up, saw it was a gold necklace which had been his mother's, and +carefully put it on the little toilet table.</p> + +<p>Then he walked on to the bed. Louie was lying with her face turned +away from him. A certain pause in the sobbing as he came near told +him that she knew he was there. But it began again directly, being +indeed a physical relief which the child could not deny herself. He +stood beside her awkwardly. He could think of nothing to say. But +timidly he stretched out his hand and laid the back of it against +her wet cheek. He half expected she would shake it off, but she did +not. It made him feel less lonely that she let it stay; the impulse +to comfort had somehow brought himself comfort. He stood there, +feeling very cold, thinking a whirlwind of thoughts about old +'Lias, about the sheep, about Titus and Jerusalem, and about +Louie's extraordinary proceedings—till suddenly it struck him that +Louie was not crying any more. He bent over her. The sobs had +changed into the long breaths of sleep, and, gently drawing away +his hand, he crept off to bed.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-1" id="CHAPTER_IV-1"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<p>It was Sunday afternoon, still cold, nipping, and sunny. Reuben +Grieve sat at the door of the farmhouse, his pipe in his hand, a +'good book' on his knee. Beyond the wall which bounded the farmyard +he could hear occasional voices. The children were sitting there, +he supposed. It gave him a sensation of pleasure once to hear a +shrill laugh, which he knew was Louie's. For all this morning, +through the long services in the 'Christian Brethren' chapel at +Clough End, and on the walk home, he had been once more pricked in +his conscience. Hannah and Louie were not on speaking terms. At +meals the aunt assigned the child her coarse food without a word, +and on the way to chapel and back there had been a stony silence +between them. It was evident, even to his dull mind, that the girl +was white and thin, and that between her wild temper and mischief +and the mirth of other children there was a great difference. +Moreover, certain passages in the chapel prayers that morning +had come home sharply to a mind whereof the only definite gift +was a true religious sensitiveness. The text of the sermon +especially—'Whoso loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how +shall he love God, whom he hath not seen?'—vibrated like an +accusing voice within him. As he sat in the doorway, with the sun +stealing in upon him, the clock ticking loudly at his back, and the +hens scratching round the steps, he began to think with much +discomfort about his dead brother and his brother's children.</p> + +<p>As to his memories of the past, they may perhaps be transformed +here into a short family history, with some details added which +had no place in Reuben's mind. Twenty years before this present +date Needham—once Needham's—Farm had been held by Reuben's +father, a certain James Grieve. He had originally been a kind of +farm-labourer on the Berwickshire border, who, driven southwards in +search of work by the stress of the bad years which followed the +great war, had wandered on, taking a job of work here and another +there, and tramping many a score of weary miles between, till at +last in this remote Derbyshire valley he had found a final +anchorage. Needham Farm was then occupied by a young couple of +the name of Pierson, beginning life under fairly prosperous +circumstances. James Grieve took service with them, and they valued +his strong sinews and stern Calvinistic probity as they deserved. +But he had hardly been two years on the farm when his young +employer, dozing one winter evening on the shafts of his cart +coming back from Glossop market, fell off, was run over, and +killed. The widow, a young thing, nearly lost her senses with +grief, and James, a man of dour exterior and few words, set himself +to keep things going on the farm till she was able to look life in +the face again. Her sister came to be with her, and there, was a +child born, which died. She was left better provided for than most +women of her class, and she had expectations from her parents. +After the child's death, when the widow began to go about again, +and James still managed all the work of the farm, the neighbours +naturally fell talking. James took no notice, and he was not a man +to meddle with, either in a public-house or elsewhere. But +presently a crop of suitors for the widow began to appear, and it +became necessary also to settle the destiny of the farm. No one +outside ever knew how it came about, for Jenny Pierson, who was a +soft, prettyish creature, had given no particular sign; but one +Sunday morning the banns of James Grieve, bachelor, and Jenny +Pierson, widow, were suddenly given out in the Presbyterian chapel +at Clough End, to the mingled astonishment and disgust of the +neighbourhood.</p> + +<p>Years passed away. James held his own for a time with any farmer of +the neighbourhood. But, by the irony of fate, the prosperity which +his industry and tenacity deserved was filched from him little by +little by the ill-health of his wife. She bore him two sons, Reuben +and Alexander, and then she sank into a hopeless, fretful invalid, +tormented by the internal ailment of which she ultimately died. But +the small farmer who employs little or no labour is lost without an +active wife. If he has to pay for the milking of his cows, the +making of his butter, the cooking of his food, and the nursing of +his children, his little margin of profit is soon eaten away; and +with the disappearance of this margin, existence becomes a blind +struggle. Even James Grieve, the man of iron will and indomitable +industry, was beaten at last in the unequal contest. The life at +the farm became bitter and tragic. Jenny grew more helpless and +more peevish year by year; James was not exactly unkind to her, but +he could not but revenge upon her in some degree that ruin of his +silent ambitions which her sickliness had brought upon him.</p> + +<p>The two sons grew up in the most depressing atmosphere conceivable. +Reuben, who was to have the farm, developed a shy and hopeless +taciturnity under the pressure of the family chagrin and +privations, and found his only relief in the emotions and +excitements of Methodism. Sandy seemed at first more fortunate. +An opening was found for him at Sheffield, where he was apprenticed +to a rope-maker, a cousin of his mother's. This man died before +Sandy was more than halfway through his time, and the youth went +through a period of hardship and hand-to-mouth living which ended +at last in the usual tramp to London. Here, after a period of +semi-starvation, he found it impossible to get work at his own +trade, and finally drifted into carpentering and cabinet-making. +The beginnings of this new line of life were incredibly difficult, +owing to the jealousy of his fellow-workmen, who had properly +served their time to the trade, and did not see why an interloper +from another trade, without qualifications, should be allowed to +take the bread out of their mouths.</p> + +<p>One of Sandy's first successes was in what was called a +'shop-meeting,' a gathering of all the employés of the firm he +worked for, before whom the North-countryman pleaded to be allowed +to earn his bread. The tall, finely grown, famished-looking lad +spoke with a natural eloquence, and here and there with a +Biblical force of phrase—the inheritance of his Scotch blood and +training—which astonished and melted most of his hearers. He was +afterwards let alone, and even taught by the men about him, in +return for 'drinks,' which swallowed up sometimes as much as a +third of his wages.</p> + +<p>After two or three years he was fully master of his trade, an +admirable workman, and a keen politician to boot. All this time he +had spent his evenings in self-education, buying books with every +spare penny, and turning specially to science and mathematics. His +abilities presently drew the attention of the heads of the +Shoreditch firm for which he worked, and when the post of a foreman +in a West-end shop, in which they were largely interested, fell +vacant, it was their influence which put Sandy Grieve into the +well-paid and coveted post. He could hardly believe his own good +fortune. The letter in which he announced it to his father reached +the farm just as the last phase of his mother's long martyrdom was +developing. The pair, already old—James with work and anxiety, his +wife with sickness—read it together. They shut it up without a +word. Its tone of jubilant hope seemed to have nothing to do with +them, or seemed rather to make their own narrowing prospects look +more narrow, and the approach of the King of Terrors more black and +relentless, than before. Jenny lay back on her poor bed, with the +tears of a dumb self-pity running down her cheeks, and James's only +answer to it was conveyed in a brief summons to Sandy to come and +see his mother before the end. The prosperous son, broadened out of +knowledge almost by good feeding and good clothes, arrived. He +brought money, which was accepted without much thanks; but his +mother treated him almost as a stranger, and the dour James, while +not unwilling to draw out his account of himself, would look him up +and down from under his bushy grey eyebrows, and often interpose +with some sarcasm on his 'foine' ways of speaking, or his +'gen'leman's cloos.' Sandy was ill at ease. He was really anxious +to help, and his heart was touched by his mother's state; but +perhaps there was a strain of self-importance in his manner, a +half-conscious inclination to thank God that his life was not to be +as theirs, which came out in spite of him, and dug a gulf between +him and them. Only his brother Reuben, dull, pious, affectionate +Reuben, took to him, and showed that patient and wondering +admiration of the younger's cleverness, which probably Sandy had +reckoned on as his right from his parents also.</p> + +<p>On the last evening of his stay—he had luckily been able to make +his coming coincide with an Easter three days' holiday—he was +sitting beside his mother in the dusk, thinking, with a relief +which every now and then roused in him a pang of shame, that in +fourteen or fifteen more hours he should be back in London, in the +world which made much of him and knew what a smart fellow he was, +when his mother opened her eyes—so wide and blue they looked in +her pinched, death-stricken face—and looked at him full.</p> + +<p>'Sandy!'</p> + +<p>'Yes, mother!' he said, startled—for he had been sunk in his own +thoughts—and laying his hand on hers.</p> + +<p>'You should get a wife, Sandy.'</p> + +<p>'Well, some day, mother, I suppose I shall,' he said, with a change +of expression which the twilight concealed.</p> + +<p>She was silent a minute, then she began again, slow and feebly, but +with a strange clearness of articulation.</p> + +<p>'If she's sick, Sandy, <i>doan't grudge it her.</i> Women 'ud die +fasster iv they could.'</p> + +<p>The whole story of the slow consuming bitterness of years spoke +through those fixed and filmy eyes. Her son gave a sudden +irrepressible sob. There was a faint lightening in the little +wrinkled face, and the lips made a movement. He kissed her, and in +that last moment of consciousness the mother almost forgave him his +good clothes and his superior airs.</p> + +<p>Poor Sandy! Looking to his after story, it seems strange that any +one should ever have felt him unbearably prosperous. About six +months after his mother's death he married a milliner's assistant, +whom he met first in the pit of a theatre, and whom he was already +courting when his mother gave him the advice recorded. She was +French, from the neighbourhood of Arles, and of course a Catholic. +She had come to London originally as lady's-maid to a Russian +family settled at Nice. Shortly after their arrival, her master +shot his young wife for a supposed intrigue, and then put an end to +himself. Naturally the whole establishment was scattered, and the +pretty Louise Suveret found herself alone, with a few pounds, in +London. Thanks to the kind offices of the book-keeper in the hotel +where they had been staying, she had been introduced to a milliner +of repute in the Bond Street region, and the results of a trial +given her, in which her natural Frenchwoman's gift and her acquired +skill came out triumphant, led to her being permanently engaged. +Thenceforward her good spirits—which had been temporarily +depressed, not so much by her mistress's tragic ending as by her +own unexpected discomfort—reappeared in all their native +exuberance, and she proceeded to enjoy London. She defended herself +first against the friendly book-keeper, who became troublesome, and +had to be treated with the most decided ingratitude. Then she +gradually built herself up a store of clothes of the utmost +elegance, which were the hopeless envy of the other girls employed +at Madame Catherine's. And, finally, she looked about for +serviceable acquaintances.</p> + +<p>One night, in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre, while 'The Lady of +Lyons' was going on, Sandy Grieve found himself next to a dazzling +creature, with fine black eyes, the smooth olive skin of the South, +white teeth, and small dimpled hands, hardly spoilt at all by her +trade. She had with her a plain girl-companion, and her manner, +though conscious and provocative, had that haughtiness, that +implied readiness to take offence, which is the <i>grisette's</i> +substitute for breeding. She was, however, affable to Sandy, whose +broad shoulders and handsome, well-to-do air attracted her +attention. She allowed him to get her a programme, to beguile her +into conversation, and, finally, to offer her a cup of coffee. +Afterwards he escorted the two to the door of their lodging, in one +of the streets off Theobald's Road, and walked home in a state of +excitement which astonished him.</p> + +<p>This happened immediately before his visit to the farm and his +mother's death. During the six months after that event Sandy knew +the 'joy of eventful living.' He was establishing his own business +position, and he was courting Louise Suveret with alternations of +despair and flattered passion, which stirred the now burly, +full-blooded North-countryman to his depths. She let him escort her +to her work in the morning and take her home in the evening, and +she allowed him to give her as many presents of gloves, ribbons, +bonbons—for which last she had a childish passion—and the like, +as he pleased. But when he pressed her to marry him she generally +laughed at him. She was, in reality, observing her world, +calculating her chances, and she had several other strings to her +bow, as Sandy shrewdly suspected, though she never allowed his +jealousy any information to feed upon. It was simply owing to the +failure of the most promising of these other strings—a failure +which roused in Louise one of those white heats of passion +which made the chief flaw in her organisation, viewed as a +pleasure-procuring machine—that Sandy found his opportunity. In a +moment of mortal chagrin and outraged vanity she consented to marry +him, and three weeks afterwards he was the blissful owner of the +black eyes, the small hands, the quick tongue, and the seductive +<i>chiffons</i> he had so long admired more or less at a distance.</p> + +<p>Their marriage lasted six years. At first Louise found some +pleasure in arranging the little house Sandy had taken for her +in a new suburb, and in making, wearing, and altering the +additional gowns which their joint earnings—for she still worked +intermittently at her trade—allowed her to enjoy. After the first +infatuation was a little cooled, Sandy discovered in her a paganism +so unblushing that his own Scotch and Puritan instincts reacted in +a sort of superstitious fear. It seemed impossible that God +Almighty should long allow Himself to be flouted as Louise flouted +Him. He found also that the sense of truth was almost non-existent +in her, and her vanity, her greed of dress and admiration, was so +consuming, so frenzied, that his only hope of a peaceful life—as +he quickly realised—lay in ministering to it. Her will soon got +the upper hand, and he sank into the patient servant of her +pleasures, snatching feverishly at all she gave him in return with +the instinct of a man who, having sold his soul, is determined at +least to get the last farthing he can of the price.</p> + +<p>They had two children in four years—David Suveret and Louise +Stephanie. Louise resented the advent of the second so intensely +that poor Sandy become conscious, before the child appeared, of a +fatal and appalling change in her relation to him. She had been +proud of her first-born—an unusually handsome and precocious +child—and had taken pleasure in dressing it and parading it before +the eyes of the other mothers in their terrace, all of whom she +passionately despised. But Louie nearly died of neglect, and the +two years that followed her birth were black indeed for Sandy. His +wife, he knew, had begun to hate him; in business his energies +failed him, and his employers cooled towards him as he grew visibly +less pushing and inventive. The little household got deeper and +deeper into debt, and towards the end of the time Louise would +sometimes spend the whole day away from home without a word of +explanation. So great was his nervous terror—strong, broad fellow +that he was—of that pent-up fury in her, which a touch might have +unloosed, that he never questioned her. At last the inevitable end +came. He got home one summer evening to find the house empty and +ransacked, the children—little things of five and two—sitting +crying in the desolate kitchen, and a crowd of loud-voiced, +indignant neighbours round the door. To look for her would have +been absurd. Louise was much too clever to disappear and leave +traces behind. Besides, he had no wish to find her. The hereditary +self in him accepted his disaster as representing the natural +retribution which the canny Divine vengeance keeps in store for +those who take to themselves wives of the daughters of Heth. And +there was the sense, too, of emerging from something unclean, of +recovering his manhood.</p> + +<p>He took his two children and went to lodgings in a decent street +near the Gray's Inn Road. There for a year things went fairly well +with him. His boy and girl, whom he paid a neighbour to look after +during the day, made something to come home to. As he helped the +boy, who was already at school, with his lesson for the next day, +or fed Louie, perched on his knee, with the bits from his plate +demanded by her covetous eyes and open mouth, he got back, little +by little, his self-respect. He returned, too, in the evenings to +some of his old pursuits, joined a Radical club near, and some +science lectures. He was aged and much more silent than of yore, +but not unhappy; his employers, too, feeling that their man had +somehow recovered himself, and hearing something of his history, +were sorry for him, and showed it.</p> + +<p>Then one autumn evening a constable knocked at his door, and, +coming in upon the astonished group of father and children, +produced from his pocket a soaked and tattered letter, and showing +Sandy the address, asked if it was for him. Sandy, on seeing it, +stood up, put down Louie, who, half undressed, had been having a +ride on his knee, and asked his visitor to come out on to the +landing. There he read the letter under the gas-lamp, and put it +deliberately into his pocket.</p> + +<p>'Where is she?' he asked.</p> + +<p>'In Lambeth mortuary,' said the man briefly—'picked up two hours +ago. Nothing else found on her but this.'</p> + +<p>Half an hour afterwards Sandy stood by a slab in the mortuary, and, +drawing back a sheet which covered the burden on it, stood face to +face with his dead wife. The black brows were drawn, the small +hands clenched. What struck Sandy with peculiar horror was that one +delicate wrist was broken, having probably struck something in +falling. She—who in life had rebelled so hotly against the least +shadow of physical pain! Thanks to the bandage which had been +passed round it, the face was not much altered. She could not have +been long in the water. Probably about the time when he was walking +home from work, she—He felt himself suffocating—the bare +whitewashed walls grew dim and wavering.</p> + +<p>The letter found upon her was the strangest appeal to his pity. Her +seducer had apparently left her; she was in dire straits, and there +was, it seemed, no one but Sandy in all London on whose compassion +she could throw herself. She asked him, callously, for money to +take her back to some Nice relations. They need only know what she +chose to tell them, as she calmly pointed out, and, once in Nice, +she could make a living. She would like to see her children, she +said, before she left, but she supposed he would have to settle +that. How had she got his address? From his place of business +probably, in some roundabout way.</p> + +<p>Then what had happened? Had she been seized with a sudden +persuasion that he would not answer, that it was all useless +trouble; and in one of those accesses of blind rage by which her +clear, sharp brain-life was at all times apt to be disturbed, had +she rushed out to end it all at once and for ever? It made him +forgive her that she <i>could</i> have destroyed herself—could +have faced that awful plunge—that icy water—that death-struggle +for breath. He gauged the misery she must have gone through by what +he knew of her sensuous love for comfort, for <i>bien-ętre</i>. He +saw her again as she had been that night at the theatre when they +first met,—the little crisp black curls on the temples, the +dazzling eyes, the artificial pearls round the neck, the slight +traces of powder and rouge on brow and cheek, which made her all +the more attractive and tempting to his man's eye—the pretty foot, +which he first noticed as she stepped from the threshold of the +theatre into the street. Nature had made all that, to bring her +work to this grim bed at last!</p> + +<p>He himself died eighteen months afterwards. His acquaintances never +dreamt of connecting his death with his wife's, and the connection, +if it existed, would have been difficult to trace. Still, if little +David could have put his experiences at this time into words, they +might have thrown some light on an event which was certainly a +surprise to the small world which took an interest in Sandy Grieve.</p> + +<p>There was a certain sound which remained all through his life +firmly fixed in David's memory, and which he never thought of +without a sense of desolation, a shiver of sick dismay, such as +belonged to no other association whatever. It was the sound of a +long sigh, brought up, as it seemed, from the very depths of being, +and often, often repeated. The thought of it brought with it a +vision of a small bare room at night, with two iron bedsteads, one +for Louie, one for himself and his father; a bit of smouldering +fire in a tiny grate, and beside it a man's figure bowed over the +warmth, thrown out dark against the distempered wall, and sitting +on there hour after hour; of a child, wakened intermittently by the +light, and tormented by the recurrent sound, till it had once more +burrowed into the bed-clothes deep enough to shut out everything +but sleep. All these memories belonged to the time immediately +following on Louise's suicide. Probably, during the interval +between his wife's death and his own, Sandy suffered severely from +the effects of strong nervous shock, coupled with a certain growth +of religious melancholy, the conditions for which are rarely +wanting in the true Calvinist blood. Owing to the privations and +exposure of his early manhood, too, it is possible that he was +never in reality the strong man he looked. At any rate, his fight +for his life when it came was a singularly weak one. The second +winter after Louise's death was bitterly cold; he was overworked, +and often without sleep. One bleak east-wind day struck home. He +took to his bed with a chill, which turned to peritonitis; the +system showed no power of resistance, and he died.</p> + +<p>On the day but one before he died, when the mortal pain was gone, +but death was absolutely certain, he sent post-haste for his +brother Reuben. Reuben he believed was married to a decent woman, +and to Reuben he meant to commend his children.</p> + +<p>Reuben arrived, looking more bewildered and stupid than ever, pure +countryman that he was, in this London which he had never seen. +Sandy looked at him with a deep inward dissatisfaction. But what +could he do? His marriage had cut him off from his old friends, and +since its wreck he had had no energy wherewith to make new ones.</p> + +<p>'I've never seen your wife, Reuben,' he said, when they had talked +awhile.</p> + +<p>Reuben was silent a minute, apparently collecting his thoughts.</p> + +<p>'Naw,' he said at last; 'naw. She sent yo her luve, and she hopes iv +it's the Lord's will to tak yo, that it ull foind yo prepared.'</p> + +<p>He said it like a lesson. A sort of nervous tremor and shrinking +overspread Sandy's face. He had suffered so much through religion +during the last few months, that in this final moment of humanity +the soul had taken refuge in numbness—apathy. Let God decide. He +could think it out no more; and in this utter feebleness his terror +of hell—the ineradicable deposit of childhood and inheritance—had +passed away. He gathered his forces for the few human and practical +things which remained to him to do.</p> + +<p>'Did she get on comfortable with father?' he asked, fixing Reuben +with his eyes, which had the penetration of death.</p> + +<p>Reuben looked discomposed, and cleared his throat once or twice.</p> + +<p>'Wal, it warn't what yo may call just coomfortable atween 'em. Naw, +I'll not say it wor.'</p> + +<p>'What was wrong?' demanded Sandy.</p> + +<p>Reuben fidgeted.</p> + +<p>'Wal,' he said at last, throwing up his head in desperation, 'I +spose a woman likes her house to hersel when she's fust married. He +wor childish like, an mighty trooblesome times. An she's allus +stirrin, and rootin, is Hannah. Udder foak mus look aloive too.'</p> + +<p>The conflict in Reuben's mind between his innate truthfulness and +his desire to excuse his wife was curious to see. Sandy had a +vision of his father sitting in his dotage by his own hearth, and +ministered to by a daughter-in-law who grudged him his years and +his infirmities, as he had grudged his wife all the troublesome +incidents of her long decay. But it only affected him now as it +bore upon what was still living in him, the one feeling which still +survived amid the wreck made by circumstance and disease.</p> + +<p>'Will she be kind to <i>them?</i>' he said sharply, which a motion +of the head towards the children, first towards David, who sat +drooping on his father's bed, where for some ten or twelve hours +now he had remained glued, refusing to touch either breakfast or +dinner, and then towards Louie, who was on the floor by the fire, +with her rag dolls, which she was dressing up with smiles and +chatter in a strange variety of finery. 'If not, she shan't have +'em. There's time yet.'</p> + +<p>But the grey hue was already on his cheek, his feet were already +cold. The nurse in the far corner of the room, looking up as he +spoke, gave him mentally 'an hour or two.'</p> + +<p>Reuben flushed and sat bolt upright, his gnarled and wrinkled hands +trembling on his knees.</p> + +<p>'She <i>shall</i> be kind to 'em,' he said with energy. 'Gie 'em to +us, Sandy. Yo wouldna send your childer to strangers?'</p> + +<p>The clannish instinct in Sandy responded. Besides, in spite of his +last assertion, he knew very well there was nothing else to be +done.</p> + +<p>'There's money,' he said slowly. 'She'll not need to stint them of +anything. This is a poor place,' for at the word 'money' he noticed +that Reuben's eyes travelled with an awakening shrewdness over the +barely furnished room; 'but it was the debts first, and then I had +to put by for the children. None of the shop-folk or the fellows +at the club ever came here. We lived as we liked. There's an +insurance, and there's some savings, and there's some commission +money owing from the firm, and there's a bit investment Mr. Gurney +(naming the head partner) helped me into last year. There's +altogether about six hundred pound. You'll get the interest of it +for the children; it'll go into Gurneys', and they'll give five per +cent. for it. Mr. Gurney's been very kind. He came here yesterday, +and he's got it all. You go to him.'</p> + +<p>He stopped for weakness. Reuben's eyes were round. Six hundred +pounds! Who'd have thought it of Sandy?—after that bad lot of a +wife, and he not thirty!</p> + +<p>'An what d' yo want Davy to be, Sandy?'</p> + +<p>'You must settle,' said the father, with a long sigh. 'Depends on +him what he turns to. If he wants to farm, he can learn with you, +and put in his money when he sees an opening. For the bit farms in +our part there'd be enough. But I'm feeart'(the old Derbyshire word +slipped out unawares)'he'll not stay in the country. He's too +sharp, and you mustn't force him. If you see he's not the farming +sort, when he's thirteen or fourteen or so, take Mr. Gurney's +advice, and bind him to a trade. Mr. Gurney'll pay the premiums for +him and he can have the balance of the money—for I've left him to +manage it all, for himself and Louie too—when he's fit to set up +for himself.—You and Hannah'll deal honest wi 'em?'</p> + +<p>The question was unexpected, and as he put it with a startling +energy the dying man raised himself on his elbow, and looked +sharply at his brother.</p> + +<p>'D' yo think I'd cheat yo, or your childer, Sandy?' cried Reuben, +flushing and pricked to the heart.</p> + +<p>Sandy sank back again, his sudden qualm appeased. 'No,' he said, his +thoughts returning painfully to his son. 'I'm feeart he'll not stay +wi you. He's cleverer than I ever was, and I was the cleverest of +us all.'</p> + +<p>The words had in them a whole epic of human fate. Under the prick +of them Reuben found a tongue, not now for his wife, but for +himself.</p> + +<p>'It's not cliverness as ull help yo now, Sandy, wi your Maaker! and +yo feeace t' feeace wi 'un!' he cried. 'It's nowt but satisfacshun +by t' blood o' Jesus!'</p> + +<p>Sandy made no answer, unless, indeed, the poor heart within made +its last cry of agony to heaven at the words. The sinews of the +spiritual as well as the physical man were all spent and useless.</p> + +<p>'Davy,' he called presently. The child, who had been sitting +motionless during this talk watching his father, slid along the bed +with alacrity, and tucking his little legs and feet well away from +Sandy's long frame, put his head down on the pillow. His father +turned his eyes to him, and with a solemn, lingering gaze took in +the childish face, the thick, tumbled hair, the expression, so +piteous, yet so intelligent. Then he put up his own large hand, and +took both the boy's into its cold and feeble grasp. His eyelids +fell, and the breathing changed. The nurse hurriedly rose, lifted +up Louie from her toys, and put her on the bed beside him. The +child, disturbed in her play and frightened by she knew not what, +set up a sudden cry. A tremor seemed to pass through the shut lids +at the sound, a slight compression of pain appeared in the grey +lips. It was Sandy Grieve's last sign of life.</p> + +<p>Reuben Grieve remembered well the letter he had written to his +wife, with infinite difficulty, from beside his brother's dead +body. He told her that he was bringing the children back with him. +The poor bairns had got nobody in the world to look to but their +uncle and aunt. And they would not cost Hannah a penny. For Mr. +Gurney would pay thirty pounds a year for their keep and bringing +up.</p> + +<p>With what care and labour his clumsy fingers had penned that last +sentence so that Hannah might read it plain!</p> + +<p>Afterwards he brought the children home. As he drove his light cart +up the rough and lonely road to Needham Farm, Louie cried with the +cold and the dark, and Davy, with his hands tucked between his +knees, grew ever more and more silent, his restless little head +turning perpetually from side to side, as though he were trying to +discover something of the strange, new world to which he had been +brought, through the gloom of the February evening.</p> + +<p>Then at the sound of wheels outside in the lane, the back door of +the farm was opened, and a dark figure stood on the threshold.</p> + +<p>'Yo're late,' Reuben heard. It was Hannah's piercing voice that +spoke. 'Bring 'em into t'back kitchen, an let 'em take their shoes off +afore they coom ony further.'</p> + +<p>By which Reuben knew that it had been scrubbing-day, and that her +flagstones were more in Hannah's mind than the guests he had +brought her. He obeyed, and then the barefooted trio entered the +front kitchen together. Hannah came forward and looked at the +children—at David white and blinking—at the four-year-old Louie, +bundled up in an old shawl, which dragged on the ground behind her, +and staring wildly round her at the old low-roofed kitchen with the +terror of the trapped bird.</p> + +<p>'Hannah, they're varra cold,' said Reuben—'ha yo got summat hot?'</p> + +<p>'Theer'll be supper bime-by,' Hannah replied with decision. 'I've +naw time scrubbin-days to be foolin about wi things out o' hours. +I've nobbut just got straight and cleaned mysel. They can sit +down and warm theirsels. I conno say they feature ony of <i>yor</i> +belongins, Reuben.' And she went to put Louie on the settle by the +fire. But as the tall woman in black approached her, the child hit +out madly with her small fists and burst into a loud howl of +crying.</p> + +<p>'Get away, nasty woman! <i>Nasty</i> woman—ugly woman! Take me +away—I want my daddy,—I want my daddy.' And she threw herself +kicking on the floor, while, to Hannah's exasperation, a piece of +crumbling bun she had been holding tight in her sticky little hand +escaped and littered all the new-washed stones.</p> + +<p>'Tak yor niece oop, Reuben, an mak her behave'—the mistress of the +house commanded angrily. 'She'll want a stick takken to her, soon, +<i>I</i> can see.'</p> + +<p>Reuben obeyed so far as he could, but Louie's shrieks only ceased +when, by the combined efforts of husband and wife, she had been put +to bed, so exhausted with rage, excitement, and the journey, that +sleep mercifully took possession of her just after she had +performed the crowning feat of knocking the tea and bread and +butter Reuben brought her out of her uncle's hand and all over the +room.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, David sat perfectly still in a chair against the wall, +beside the old clock, and stared about him; at the hams and bunches +of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling; at the chiffonnier, with +its red baize doors under a brass trellis-work; at the high wooden +settle, the framed funeral cards, and the two or three coloured +prints, now brown with age, which Reuben had hung up twenty years +before, to celebrate his marriage. Hannah was propitiated by the +boy's silence, and as she got supper ready she once or twice +noticed his fine black eyes and his curly hair.</p> + +<p>'Yo can coom an get yor supper,' she said to him, more graciously +than she had spoken yet. 'It's a mussy yo doant goo skrikin like +your sister.'</p> + +<p>'Thank you, ma'am,' said the little fellow, with a townsman's +politeness, hardly understanding, however, a word of her +north-country dialect—' I'm not hungry.—You've got a picture of +General Washington there, ma'am;' and, raising a small hand +trembling with nervousness and fatigue, he pointed to one of the +prints opposite.</p> + +<p>'Wal, I niver,' said Hannah, with a stare of astonishment. 'Yo're a +quare lot—the two o' yer.'</p> + +<p>One thing more Reuben remembered with some vividness in connection +with the children's arrival. When they were both at last +asleep—Louie in an unused room at the back, on an old wooden +bedstead, which stood solitary in a wilderness of bare boards; +David in a sort of cupboard off the landing, which got most of its +light and air from a wooden trellis-work, overlooking the +staircase—Hannah said abruptly to her husband, as they two were +going to bed, 'When ull Mr. Gurney pay that money?'</p> + +<p>'Twice a year—so his clerk towd me—Christmas an Midsummer. Praps +we shan't want to use it aw, Hannah; praps we might save soom on it +for t' childer. Their keep, iv yo feed em on parritch, is nobbut a +fleabite, an they'n got a good stock o' cloos, Sandy's nurse towd +me.'</p> + +<p>He looked anxiously at Hannah. In his inmost heart there was a +passionate wish to do his duty to Sandy's orphans, fighting with a +dread of his wife, which was the fruit of long habit and +constitutional weakness.</p> + +<p>Hannah faced round upon him. It was Reuben's misfortune that +dignity was at all times impossible to him. Now, as he sat in his +shirt-sleeves and stocking-feet, flushed with the exertion of +pulling off his heavy boots, the light of the tallow candle falling +on his weak eyes with their red rims, on his large open mouth with +the conspicuous gap in its front teeth, and his stubby hair, he was +more than usually grotesque. 'As slamp an wobbly as an owd +corn-boggart,' so his neighbours described him when they wished to +be disrespectful, and the simile fitted very closely with the +dishevelled, disjointed appearance which was at all times +characteristic of him, Sundays or weekdays. No one studying the +pair, especially at such a moment as this—the <i>malaise</i> of +the husband—the wife towering above him, her grey hair hanging +loose round her black brows and sallow face instinct with a rugged +and indomitable energy—could have doubted in whose hands lay the +government of Needham Farm.</p> + +<p>'I'll thank yo not to talk nonsense, Reuben Grieve,' said his wife +sharply. 'D'yo think they're <i>my</i> flesh an blood, thoose +childer? An who'll ha to do for 'em but me, I should loike to know? +Who'll ha to put up wi their messin an their dirt but <i>me</i>? +Twenty year ha yo an I been married, Reuben, an niver till +this neet did I ha to goo down on my knees an sweep oop after +scrubbin-day! Iv I'm to be moidered wi em, I'll be paid for 't. +Soa I let yo know—it's little enough.'</p> + +<p>And Hannah took her payment. As he sat in the sun, looking back on +the last seven years, with a slow and dreaming mind, Reuben +recognised, using his own phrases for the matter, that the +children's thirty pounds had been the pivot of Hannah's existence. +He was but a small sheep farmer, with very scanty capital. By dint +of hard work and painful thrift, the childless pair had earned a +sufficient living in the past—nay, even put by a bit, if the +truth of Hannah's savings-bank deposits were known. But every +fluctuation in their small profits tried them sorely—tried +Hannah especially, whose temper was of the brooding and grasping +order. The <i>certainty</i> of Mr. Gurney's cheques made them very +soon the most cheerful facts in the farm life. On two days in the +year—the 20th of June and the 20th of December—Reuben might be +sure of finding his wife in a good temper, and he had long shrewdly +suspected, without inquiring, that Hannah's savings-bank book, +since the children came, had been very pleasant reading to her.</p> + +<p>Reuben fidgeted uncomfortably as he thought of those savings. +Certainly the children had not cost what was paid for them. He +began to be oddly exercised this Sunday morning on the subject of +the porridge Louie hated so much. Was it his fault or Hannah's if +the frugal living which had been the rule for all the remoter farms +of the Peak—nay, for the whole north country—in his father's +time, and had been made doubly binding, as it were, on the dwellers +in Needham Farm by James Grieve's Scotch blood and habits, had +survived under their roof, while all about them a more luxurious +standard of food and comfort was beginning to obtain among their +neighbours? Where could you find a finer set of men than the +Berwickshire hinds, of whom his father came, and who were reared on +'parritch' from year's end to year's end?</p> + +<p>And yet, all the same, Reuben's memory was full this morning of +disturbing pictures of a little London child, full of town +daintiness and accustomed to the spoiling of an indulgent father, +crying herself into fits over the new unpalatable food, refusing it +day after day, till the sharp, wilful face had grown pale and +pinched with famine, and caring no more apparently for her aunt's +beatings than she did for the clumsy advances by which her uncle +would sometimes try to propitiate her. There had been a great deal +of beating—whenever Reuben thought of it he had a superstitious +way of putting Sandy out of his mind as much as possible. Many +times he had gone far away from the house to avoid the sound of the +blows and shrieks he was powerless to stop.</p> + +<p>Well, but what harm had come of it all? Louie was a strong lass +now, if she were a bit thin and overgrown. David was as fine a boy +as anyone need wish to see.</p> + +<p><i>David?</i></p> + +<p>Reuben got up from his seat at the farm door, took his pipe out of +his pocket, and went to hang over the garden-gate, that he might +unravel some very worrying thoughts at a greater distance from +Hannah.</p> + +<p>The day before he had been overtaken coming out of Clough End by Mr. +Ancrum, the lame minister. He and Grieve liked one another. If +there had been intrigues raised against the minister within the +'Christian Brethren' congregation, Reuben Grieve had taken no part +in them.</p> + +<p>After some general conversation, Mr. Ancrum suddenly said, 'Will you +let me have a word with you, Mr. Grieve, about your nephew +David—if you'll not think me intruding?'</p> + +<p>'Say on, sir—say on,' said Reuben hastily, but with an inward +shrinking.</p> + +<p>'Well, Mr. Grieve, you've got a remarkable boy there—a curious and +remarkable boy. What are you going to do with him?'</p> + +<p>'Do wi him?—me, sir? Wal, I doan't know as I've iver thowt mich +about it,' said Reuben, but with an agitation of manner that struck +his interrogator. 'He be varra useful to me on t' farm, Mr. Ancrum. +Soom toimes i' t' year theer's a lot doin, yo knaw, sir, even on a +bit place like ours, and he ha gitten a good schoolin, he ha.'</p> + +<p>The apologetic incoherence of the little speech was curious. Mr. +Ancrum did not exactly know how to take his man.</p> + +<p>'I dare say he's useful. But he's not going to be the ordinary +labourer, Mr. Grieve—he's made of quite different stuff, and, if I +may say so, it will pay you very well to recognise it in good time. +That boy will read books now which hardly any grown man of his +class—about here, at any rate—would be able to read. Aye, and +talk about them, too, in a way to astonish you!'</p> + +<p>'Yes, I know 'at he's oncommon cliver wi his books, is Davy,' +Reuben admitted.</p> + +<p>'Oh! it's not only that. But he's got an unusual brain and a +wonderful memory. And it would be a thousand pities if he were to +make nothing of them. You say he's useful, but—excuse me, Mr. +Grieve—he seems to me to spend three parts of his time in loafing +and desultory reading. He wants more teaching—he wants steady +training. Why don't you send him to Manchester,' said the minister +boldly, 'and apprentice him? It costs money, no doubt.'</p> + +<p>And he looked interrogatively at Reuben. Reuben, however, said +nothing. They were toiling up the steep road from Clough End to the +high farms under the Scout, a road which tried the minister's +infirm limb severely; otherwise he would have taken more notice of +his companion's awkward flush and evident discomposure.</p> + +<p>'But it would pay you in the long run,' he said, when they stopped +to take breath; 'it would be a capital investment if the boy lives, +I promise you that, Mr. Grieve. And he could carry on his education +there, too, a bit—what with evening classes and lectures, and the +different libraries he could get the use of. It's wonderful how all +the facilities for working-class education have grown in Manchester +during the last few years.'</p> + +<p>'Aye, sir—I spose they have—I spose they have,' said Reuben, +uncomfortably, and then seemed incapable of carrying on the +conversation any further. Mr. Ancrum talked, but nothing more was +to be got out of the farmer. At last the minister turned back, +saying, as he shook hands, 'Well, let me know if I can be of any +use. I have a good many friends in Manchester. I tell you that's a +boy to be proud of, Mr. Grieve, a boy of promise, if ever there was +one. But he wants taking the right way. He's got plenty of mixed +stuff in him, bad and good. I should feel it anxious work, the next +few years, if he were my boy.'</p> + +<p>Now it was really this talk which was fermenting in Reuben, and +which, together with the 'rumpus' between Hannah and Louie, had led +to his singularly disturbed state of conscience this Sunday +morning. As he stood, miserably pulling at his pipe, the whole +prospect of sloping field, and steep distant moor, gradually +vanished from his eyes, and, instead, he saw the same London room +which David's memory held so tenaciously—he saw Sandy raising +himself from his deathbed with that look of sudden distrust—'Now, +you'll deal honest wi 'em, Reuben?'</p> + +<p>Reuben groaned in spirit. 'A boy to be proud of' indeed. It seemed +to him, now that he was perforce made to think about it, that he +had never been easy in his mind since Sandy's orphans came to the +house. On the one hand, his wife had had her way—how was he to +prevent it? On the other, his religious sense had kept pricking and +tormenting—like the gadfly that it was.</p> + +<p>Who, in the name of fortune, was to ask Hannah for money to send +the boy to Manchester and apprentice him? And who was going to +write to Mr. Gurney about it without her leave? Once upset the +system of things on which those two half-yearly cheques depended, +how many more of them would be forthcoming? And how was Hannah +going to put up with the loss of them? It made Reuben shiver to +think of it.</p> + +<p>Shouts from the lane behind. Reuben suddenly raised himself and +made for the gate at the corner of the farmyard. He came out upon +the children, who had been to Sunday school at Clough End since +dinner, and were now in consequence in a state of restless animal +spirits. Louie was swinging violently on the gate which barred the +path on to the moor. David was shying stones at a rook's nest +opposite, the clatter of the outraged colony to which it belonged +sounding as music in his ears.</p> + +<p>They stared when they saw Reuben cross the road, sit down on a +stone beside David, and take out his pipe. David ceased throwing, +and Louie, crossing her feet and steadying herself as she sat on +the topmost bar of the gate by a grip on either side, leant hard on +her hands and watched her uncle in silence. When caught unawares by +their elders, these two had always something of the air of captives +defending themselves in an alien country.</p> + +<p>'Wal, Davy, did tha have Mr. Ancrum in school?' began Reuben, +affecting a brisk manner, oddly unlike him.</p> + +<p>'Naw. It wor Brother Winterbotham from Halifax, or soom sich name.'</p> + +<p>'Wor he edifyin, Davy?'</p> + +<p>'He wor—he wor—a leather-yed,' said David, with sudden energy, +and, taking up a stone again, he flung it at a tree trunk opposite, +with a certain vindictiveness as though Brother Winterbotham were +sitting there.</p> + +<p>'Now, yo're not speakin as yo owt, Davy,' said Reuben reprovingly, +as he puffed away at his pipe and felt the pleasantness of the +spring sunshine which streamed down into the lane through the still +bare but budding branches of the sycamores.</p> + +<p>'He <i>wor</i> a leather-yed,' David repeated with emphasis. 'He +said it wor Alexander fought t' battle o' Marathon.'</p> + +<p>Reuben was silent for a while. When tests of this kind were going, +he could but lie low. However, David's answer, after a bit, +suggested an opening to him.</p> + +<p>'Yo've a rare deal o' book-larnin for a farmin lad, Davy. If yo wor +at a trade now, or a mill-hand, or summat o' that soart, yo'd ha +noan so mich time for readin as yo ha now.'</p> + +<p>The boy looked at him askance, with his keen black eyes. His uncle +puzzled him.</p> + +<p>'Wal, I'm not a mill-hand, onyways,' he said, shortly, 'an I doan't +mean to be.'</p> + +<p>'Noa, yo're too lazy,' said Louie shrilly, from the top of the +gate. 'Theer's heaps o' boys no bigger nor yo, arns their ten +shillins a week.'</p> + +<p>'They're welcome,' said David laconically, throwing another stone +at the water to keep his hand in. For some years now the boy had +cherished a hatred of the mill-life on which Clough End and the +other small towns and villages in the neighbourhood existed. The +thought of the long monotonous hours at the mules or the looms was +odious to the lad whose joys lay in free moorland wanderings with +the sheep, in endless reading, in talks with 'Lias Dawson.</p> + +<p>'Wal, now, I'm real glad to heer yo say sich things, Davy, lad,' +said Reuben, with a curious flutter of manner. 'I'm real glad. So yo +take to the farmin, Davy? Wal, it's nateral. All yor forbears—all +on em leastways, nobbut yor feyther—got their livin off t' land. +It cooms nateral to a Grieve.'</p> + +<p>The boy made no answer—did not commit himself in any way. He went +on absently throwing stones.</p> + +<p>'Why doan't he larn a trade?' demanded Louie. 'Theer's Harry Wigson, +he's gone to Manchester to be prenticed. He doan't goo loafin round +aw day.'</p> + +<p>Her sharp wits disconcerted Reuben. He looked anxiously at David. +The boy coloured furiously, and cast an angry glance at his sister.</p> + +<p>'Theer's money wanted for prenticin,' he said shortly.</p> + +<p>Reuben felt a stab. Neither of the children knew that they +possessed a penny. A blunt word of Hannah's first of all, about +'not gien 'em ony high noshuns o' theirsels,' aided on Reuben's +side by the natural secretiveness of the peasant in money affairs, +had effectually concealed all knowledge of their own share in the +family finances from the orphans.</p> + +<p>He reached out a soil-stained hand, shaking already with incipient +age, and laid it on David's sleeve.</p> + +<p>'Art tha hankerin after a trade, lad?' he said hastily, nay, +harshly.</p> + +<p>David looked at his uncle astonished. A hundred thoughts flew +through the boy's mind. Then he raised his head and caught sight of +the great peak of Kinder Low in the distance, beyond the green +swells of meadowland,—the heathery slopes running up into its +rocky breast,—the black patch on the brown, to the left, which +marked the site of the smithy.</p> + +<p>'No,' he said decidedly. 'No; I can't say as I am. I like t' farmin +well enough.'</p> + +<p>And then, boy-like, hating to be talked to about himself, he shook +himself free of his uncle and walked away. Reuben fell to his pipe +again with a beaming countenance.</p> + +<p>'Louie, my gell,' he said.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said the child, not moving.</p> + +<p>'Coom yo heer, Louie.'</p> + +<p>She unwillingly got down and came up to him. Reuben put down his +pipe, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket. Out of it, with +difficulty, he produced a sixpence.</p> + +<p>'Art tha partial to goodies, Louie?' he said, dropping his voice +almost to a whisper, and holding up the coin before her.</p> + +<p>Louie nodded, her eyes glistening at the magnitude of the coin. +Uncle Reuben might be counted on for a certain number of pennies +during the year, but silver was unheard of.</p> + +<p>'Tak it then, child, an welcome. If yo have a sweet tooth—an it's +t' way wi moast gells—I conno see as it can be onythin else but +Providence as gave it yo. So get yorsel soom bull's-eyes, Louie, +an—an'—he looked a little conscious as he slipped the coin into +her eager hand—'doan't let on ti your aunt! She'd think mebbe I +wor spoilin your teeth, or summat,—an, Louie—'</p> + +<p>Was Uncle Reuben gone mad? For the first time in her life, as it +seemed to Louie, he was looking at what she had on, nay, was even +taking up her dress between his finger and thumb.</p> + +<p>'Is thissen your Sunday frock, chilt?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said the girl, flushing scarlet, 'bean't it a dishclout?'</p> + +<p>And she stood looking down at it with passionate scorn. It was a +worn and patched garment of brown alpaca, made out of an ancient +gown of Hannah's.</p> + +<p>'Wal, I'm naw judge i' these matters,' said Reuben, dubiously, +drawing out his spectacles. 'It's got naw holes 'at I can see, but +it's not varra smart, perhaps. Satan's varra active wi gells on +this pint o' dress—yo mun tak noatice o' that, Louie—but—listen +heer—'</p> + +<p>And he drew her nearer to him by her skirt, looking cautiously up +and down the lane and across to the farm.</p> + +<p>'If I get a good price for t' wool this year—an theer's a new +merchant coomin round, yan moor o' t' buyin soart nor owd Croker, +soa they say, I'st save yo five shillin for a frock, chilt. Yo can +goo an buy it, an I'st mak it straight wi yor aunt. But I mun get a +good price, yo know, or your aunt ull be fearfu' bad to manage.'</p> + +<p>And he gazed up at her as though appealing to her common sense in +the matter, and to her understanding of both his and her situation. +Louie's cheeks were red, her eyes did not meet his. They looked +away, down towards Clough End.</p> + +<p>'Theer's a blue cotton at Hinton's,' she said, hurriedly—'a +light-blue cotton. They want sixpence farthin,—but Annie Wigson +says yo could bate 'em a bit. But what's t' use?' she added, with a +sudden savage darkening of her bright look—'she'd tak it away.'</p> + +<p>The tone gave Reuben a shock. But he did not rebuke it. For the +first time he and Louie were conspirators in the same plot.</p> + +<p>'No, no, I'd see to 'at. But how ud yo get it made?' He was +beginning to feel a childish interest in his scheme.</p> + +<p>'Me an Annie Wigson ud mak it oop fast enough. Theer are things I +can do for her; she'd not want no payin, an she's fearfu' good at +dressmakin. She wor prenticed two years afore she took ill.'</p> + +<p>'Gie me a kiss then, my gell; doan't yo gie naw trooble, an we'st +see. But I mun get a good price, yo know.'</p> + +<p>And rising, Reuben bent towards his niece. She rose on tiptoe, and +just touched his rough cheek. There was no natural childish +effusiveness in the action. For the seven years since she left her +father, Louie had quite unlearnt kissing.</p> + +<p>Reuben proceeded up the lane to the gate leading to the moor. He +was in the highest spirits. What a mercy he had not bothered Hannah +with Mr. Ancrum's remarks! Why, the boy wouldn't go to a trade, not +if he were sent!</p> + +<p>At the gate he ran against David, who came hastily out of the +farmyard to intercept him.</p> + +<p>'Uncle Reuben, what do they coe that bit watter up theer?' and he +pointed up the lane towards the main ridge of the Peak. 'Yo +know—that bit pool on t' way to th' Downfall?'</p> + +<p>The farmer stopped bewildered.</p> + +<p>'That bit watter? What they coe that bit watter? Why, they coe it +t' Witch's Pool, or used to i' my yoong days. An for varra good +reason too. They drownded an owd witch theer i' my grand-feyther's +time—I've heerd my grandmither tell th' tale on't scores o' times. +An theer's aw mak o' tales about it, or used to be. I hannot yeerd +mony words about it o' late years. Who's been talkin to yo, Davy?'</p> + +<p>Louie came running up and listened.</p> + +<p>'I doan't know,' said the boy,—'what soart o' tales?'</p> + +<p>'Why, they'd use to say th' witch walked, on soom neets i' th' +year—Easter Eve, most pertickerlerly—an foak wor feeart to goo +onywhere near it on those neets. But doan't yo goo listenin to +tales, Davy,' said Reuben, with a paternal effusion most rare with +him, and born of his recent proceedings; 'yo'll only freeten yorsel +o' neets for nothin.'</p> + +<p>'What are witches?' demanded Louie, scornfully. 'I doan't bleeve in +'em.'</p> + +<p>Reuben frowned a little.</p> + +<p>'Theer wor witches yance, my gell, becos it's in th' Bible, an +whativer's in th' Bible's <i>true</i>,' and the farmer brought his +hand down on the top bar of the gate. 'I'm no gien ony judgment +about 'em nowadays. Theer wor aw mak o' queer things said +about Jenny Crum an Needham Farm i' th' owd days. I've heerd +my grandmither say it worn't worth a Christian man's while to +live in Needham Farm when Jenny Crum wor about. She meddled wi +everythin—wi his lambs, an his coos, an his childer. I niver seed +nothin mysel, so I doan't say nowt—not o' my awn knowledge. But I +doan't soomhow bleeve as it's th' Awmighty's will to freeten a +Christian coontry wi witches, <i>i' th' present dispensation</i>. +An murderin's a graat sin, wheder it's witches or oother foak.'</p> + +<p>'In t' books they doan't coe it t' Witch's Pool at aw,' said Louie, +obstinately. 'They coe it t' <i>Mermaid's</i> Pool.'</p> + +<p>'An anoother book coes it a "Hammer-dry-ad,"' said David, +mockingly, 'soa theer yo are.'</p> + +<p>'Aye, soom faddlin kind of a name they gie it—I know—those +Manchester chaps, as cooms trespassin ower t' Scout wheer they +aren't wanted. To hear ony yan o' <i>them</i> talk, yo'd think +theer wor only three fellows like 'im cam ower i' three ships, an +two were drownded. T'aint ov ony account what they an their books +coe it.'</p> + +<p>And Reuben, as he leant against the gate, blew his smoke +contemptuously in the air. It was not often that Reuben Grieve +allowed himself, or was allowed by his world, to use airs of +superiority towards any other human being whatever. But in the case +of the Manchester clerks and warehousemen, who came tramping over +the grouse moors which Reuben rented for his sheep, and were always +being turned back by keepers or himself—and in their case +only—did he exercise, once in a while, the commonest privilege of +humanity.</p> + +<p>'Did yo iver know onybody 'at went up on Easter Eve?' asked David.</p> + +<p>Both children hung on the answer.</p> + +<p>Reuben scratched his head. The tales of Jenny Crum, once well known +to him, had sunk deep into the waves of memory of late years, and +his slow mind had some difficulty in recovering them. But at last +he said with the sudden brightening of recollection:</p> + +<p>'Aye—of <i>coorse!</i>—I knew theer wor soom one. Yo know 'im, +Davy, owd 'Lias o' Frimley Moor? He wor allus a foo'hardy sort o' +creetur. But if he wor short o' wits when he gan up, he wor mich +shorter when he cam down. That wor a rum skit!—now I think on 't. +Sich a seet he wor! He came by here six o'clock i' th' mornin. I +found him hangin ower t' yard gate theer, as white an slamp as a +puddin cloth oop on eend; an I browt him in, an was for gien him +soom tay. An yor aunt, she gien him a warld o' good advice about +his gooins on. But bless yo, he didn't tak in a word o' 't. An for +th' tay, he'd naw sooner swallowed it than he runs out, as quick as +leetnin, an browt it aw up. He wor fairly clemmed wi' t' cold,—'at +he wor. I put in th' horse, an I took him down to t' Frimley +carrier, an we packed him i' soom rugs an straw, an soa he got +home. But they put him out o' t' school, an he wor months in his +bed. An they do tell me, as nobory can mak owt o' 'Lias Dawson +these mony years, i' th' matter o' brains. Eh, but yo shudno meddle +wi Satan.'</p> + +<p>'What d'yo think he saw?' asked David, eagerly, his black eyes all +aglow.</p> + +<p>'He saw t' woman wi t' fish's tail—'at's what he saw,' said Louie, +shrilly.</p> + +<p>Reuben took no notice. He was sunk in silent reverie poking at his +pipe. In spite of his confidence in the Almighty's increased +goodwill towards the present dispensation, he was not prepared to +say for certain what 'Lias Dawson did or didn't see.</p> + +<p>'Nobory should goo an meddle wi Satan,' he repeated slowly after an +interval; and then opening the yard gate he went off on his usual +Sunday walk over the moors to have a look at his more distant +sheep.</p> + +<p>Davy stood intently looking after him; so did Louie. She had +clasped her hands behind her head, her eyes were wide, her look and +attitude all eagerness. She was putting two and two together—her +uncle's promise and the mermaid story as the Manchester man had +delivered it. You had but to see her and wish, and, according to +the Manchester man and his book, you got your wish. The child's +hatred of sermons and ministers had not touched her capacity for +belief of this sort in the least. She believed feverishly, and was +enraged with David for setting up a rival creed, and with her uncle +for endorsing it.</p> + +<p>David turned and walked towards the farmyard. Louie followed him, +and tapped him peremptorily on the arm. 'I'm gooin up theer Easter +Eve—Saturday week'—and she pointed over her shoulder to the +Scout.</p> + +<p>'Gells conno be out neets,' said David firmly; 'if I goo I can tell +yo.'</p> + +<p>'Yo'll not goo without me—I'd tell Aunt Hannah!'</p> + +<p>'Yo've naw moor sense nor rotten sticks!' said David, angrily. +'Yo'll get your death, an Aunt Hannah 'll be stick stock mad wi +boath on us. If I goo she'll niver find out.'</p> + +<p>Louie hesitated a moment. To provoke Aunt Hannah too much might, +indeed, endanger the blue frock. But daring and curiosity +triumphed.</p> + +<p>'I doan't care!' she said, tossing her head; 'I'm gooin.'</p> + +<p>David slammed the yard gate, and, hiding himself in a corner of the +cowhouse, fell into moody meditations. It took all the tragic and +mysterious edge off an adventure he had set his heart on that Louie +should insist on going too. But there was no help for it. Next day +they planned it together.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-1" id="CHAPTER_V-1"></a>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<p>'Reuben, ha yo seen t' childer?' inquired Aunt Hannah, poking her +head round the door, so as to be heard by her husband, who was +sitting outside cobbling at a bit of broken harness.</p> + +<p>'Noa; niver seed un since dinner.'</p> + +<p>'They went down to Clough End, two o'clock about, for t' bread, an +I've yerd nothin ov em since. Coom in to your tay, Reuben! I'll +keep nothin waitin for them! They may goo empty if they conno keep +time!'</p> + +<p>Reuben went in. An hour later the husband and wife came out +together, and stood looking down the steep road leading to the +town.</p> + +<p>'Just cast your eye on aw them stockins waitin to be mended,' said +Hannah, angrily, turning back to the kitchen, and pointing to a +chair piled with various garments. 'That's why she doon it, I spose. +I'll be even wi her! It's a poor soart of a supper she'll get this +neet, or he noather. An her stomach aw she cares for!'</p> + +<p>Reuben wandered down into the road, strolled up and down for nearly +an hour, while the sun set and the light waned, went as far as the +corner by Wigson's farm, asked a passer-by, saw and heard nothing, +and came back, shaking his head in answer to his wife's shrill +interrogations.</p> + +<p>'Wal, if I doan't gie Louie a good smackin,' ejaculated Hannah, +exasperated; and she was just going back into the house when an +exclamation from Reuben stopped her; instead, she ran out to him, +holding on her cap against the east wind.</p> + +<p>'Look theer,' he said, pointing; 'what iver is them two up to?'</p> + +<p>For suddenly he had noticed outside the gate leading into the field +a basket lying on the ground against the wall. The two peered at it +with amazement, for it was their own basket, and in it reposed the +loaves David had been told to bring back from Clough End, while on +the top lay a couple of cotton reels and a card of mending which +Louie had been instructed to buy for her aunt.</p> + +<p>After a moment Reuben looked up, his face working.</p> + +<p>'I'm thinkin, Hannah, they'n roon away!'</p> + +<p>It seemed to him as he spoke that such a possibility had been +always in his mind. And during the past week there had been much +bad blood between aunt and niece. Twice had the child gone to bed +supperless, and yesterday, for some impertinence, Hannah had given +her a blow, the marks of which on her cheek Reuben had watched +guiltily all day. At night he had dreamed of Sandy. Since Mr. +Ancrum had set him thinking, and so stirred his conscience in +various indirect and unforeseen ways, Sandy had been a terror to +him; the dead man had gained a mysterious hold on the living.</p> + +<p>'Roon away!' repeated Hannah scornfully; 'whar ud they roon to? +They're just at soom o' their divilments, 'at's what they are. An if +yo doan't tak a stick to boath on them when they coom back, <i>I +will</i>, soa theer, Reuben Grieve. Yo niver had no sperrit wi +'em—niver—and that's yan reason why they've grown up soa ramjam +full o' wickedness.'</p> + +<p>It relieved her to abuse her husband. Reuben said nothing, but hung +over the wall, straining his eyes into the gathering darkness. The +wooded sides of the great moor which enclosed the valley to the +north were fading into dimness, and to the east, above the ridge of +Kinder Low, a young moon was rising. The black steep wall of the +Scout was swiftly taking to itself that majesty which all mountains +win from the approach of night. Involuntarily, Reuben held his +breath, listening, hungering for the sound of children's voices on +the still air. Nothing—but a few intermittent bird notes and the +eternal hurry of water from the moorland to the plain.</p> + +<p>There was a step on the road, and a man passed whistling.</p> + +<p>'Jim Wigson!' shouted Hannah, 'is that yo, Jim?'</p> + +<p>The man opened the yard gate, and came through to them. Jim was the +eldest son of the neighbouring farmer, whose girls were Louie's +only companions. He was a full-blooded swaggering youth, with whom +David was generally on bad terms. David despised him for an oaf who +could neither read nor write, and hated him for a bully.</p> + +<p>He grinned when Hannah asked him questions about the truants.</p> + +<p>'Why, they're gone to Edale, th' yoong rascots, I'll uphowd yo! +There's a parcel o' gipsies there tellin fortunes, an lots o' foak +ha gone ower there to-day. You may mak your mind up they've gone to +Edale. That Louie's a limb, she is. She's got spunk enough to waak +to Lunnon if she'd a mind. Oh, they'll be back here soon enough, +trust 'em.'</p> + +<p>I shut <i>my</i> door at nine o'clock,' said Hannah, grimly. 'Them +as cooms after that, may sleep as they can.'</p> + +<p>'Well, that'll be sharp wark for th' eyes if they're gone to Edale,' +said Jim, with a laugh. 'Its a good step fro here to Edale.'</p> + +<p>'Aye, an soom o' 't bad ground,' said Reuben uneasily—'vara bad +ground.'</p> + +<p>'Aye, it's not good walkin, neets. If they conno see their way when +they get to the top o' t' Downfall, they'll stay theer till it gets +mornin, if they've ony sort o' gumption. But, bless yo, it bean't +gooin to be a dark neet, '—and he pointed to the moon. 'They'll be +here afore yoo goo to bed. An if yo want onybody to help yo gie +Davy a bastin, just coo me, Mr. Grieve. Good neet to yo.'</p> + +<p>Reuben fidgeted restlessly all the evening. Towards nine he went +out on the pretext of seeing to a cow that had lately calved and +was in a weakly state. He gave the animal her food and clean +litter, doing everything more clumsily than usual. Then he went +into the stable and groped about for a lantern that stood in the +corner.</p> + +<p>He found it, slipped through the farmyard into the lane, and then +lit it out of sight of the house.</p> + +<p>'It's bad ground top o' t' Downfall,' he said to himself, +apologetically, as he guiltily opened the gate on to the +moor—'varra bad ground.'</p> + +<p>Hanna shut her door that night neither at nine nor at ten. For by +the latter hour the master of the house was still absent, and +nowhere to be found, in spite of repeated calls from the door and +up the lane. Hannah guessed where he had gone without much +difficulty; but her guess only raised her wrath to a white heat. +Troublesome brats Sandy's children had always been—Louie more +especially—but they had never perpetrated any such overt act of +rebellion as this before, and the dour, tyrannical woman was filled +with a kind of silent frenzy as she thought of her husband going +out to welcome the wanderers.</p> + +<p>'It's a quare kind o' fatted calf they'll get when <i>I</i> lay +hands on 'em,' she thought to herself as she stood at the front +door, in the cold darkness, listening.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile David and Louie, high up on the side of Kinder Scout, +were speculating with a fearful joy as to what might be happening +at the farm. The manner of their escape had cost them much thought. +Should they slip out of the front door instead of going to bed? But +the woodwork of the farm was old and creaking, and the bolts and +bars heavy. They were generally secured before supper by Hannah +herself, and, though they might be surreptitiously oiled, the +children despaired—considering how close the kitchen was to the +front door—of getting out without rousing Hannah's sharp ears. +Other projects, in which windows and ropes played a part, were +discussed. David held strongly that he alone could have managed any +one of them, but he declined flatly to attempt them with a 'gell.' +In the same way he alone could have made his way up the Scout and +over the river in the dark. But who'd try it with a 'gell'?</p> + +<p>The boy's natural conviction of the uselessness of 'gells' was +never more disagreeably expressed than on this occasion. But he +could not shake Louie off. She pinched him when he enraged her +beyond bounds, but she never wavered in her determination to go +too.</p> + +<p>Finally they decided to brave Aunt Hannah and take the +consequences. They meant to be out all night in hiding, and in the +morning they would come back and take their beatings. David +comfortably reflected that Uncle Reuben couldn't do him much harm, +and, though Louie could hardly flatter herself so far, her tone, +also, in the matter was philosophical.</p> + +<p>'Theer's soom bits o' owd books i' th' top-attic,' she said to +David; 'I'll leave 'em in t' stable, an when we coom home, I'll tie +'em on my back—under my dress—an she may leather away till +Christmas.'</p> + +<p>So on their return from Clough End with the bread—about five +o'clock—they slipped into the field, crouching under the wall, so +as to escape Hannah's observation, deposited their basket by the +gate, took up a bundle and tin box which David had hidden that +morning under the hedge, and, creeping back again into the road, +passed noiselessly through the gate on to the moor, just as Aunt +Hannah was lifting the kettle off the fire for tea.</p> + +<p>Then came a wild and leaping flight over the hill, down to the main +Kinder stream, across it, and up the face of the Scout—up, and up, +with smothered laughter, and tumbles and scratches at every step, +and a glee of revolt and adventure swelling every vein.</p> + +<p>It was then a somewhat stormy afternoon, with alternate gusts of +wind and gleams of sun playing on the black boulders, the red-brown +slopes of the mountain. The air was really cold and cutting, +promising a frosty night. But the children took no notice of it. +Up, and on, through the elastic carpet of heather and bilberry, and +across bogs which showed like veins of vivid green on the dark +surface of the moor; under circling peewits, who fled before them, +crying with plaintive shrillness to each other, as though in +protest; and past grouse-nests, whence the startled mothers soared +precipitately with angry duckings, each leaving behind her a loose +gathering of eggs lying wide and open on the heather, those newly +laid gleaming a brighter red beside their fellows. The tin box and +its contents rattled under David's arm as he leapt and straddled +across the bogs, choosing always the widest jump and the stiffest +bit of climb, out of sheer wantonness of life and energy. Louie's +thin figure, in its skimp cotton dress and red crossover, her long +legs in their blue worsted stockings, seemed to fly over the moor, +winged, as it were, by an ecstasy of freedom. If one could but be +in two places at once—on the Scout—and peeping from some safe +corner at Aunt Hannah's wrath!</p> + +<p>Presently they came to the shoulder whereon—gleaming under the +level light—lay the Mermaid's Pool. David had sufficiently +verified the fact that the tarn did indeed bear this name in the +modern guide-book parlance of the district. Young men and women, +out on a holiday from the big towns near, and carrying little red +or green 'guides,' spoke of the 'Mermaid's Pool' with the accent of +romantic interest. But the boy had also discovered that no +native-born farmer or shepherd about had ever heard of the name, or +would have a word to say to it. And for the first time he had +stumbled full into the deep deposit of witch-lore and belief still +surviving in the Kinder Scout district, as in all the remoter +moorland of the North. Especially had he won the confidence of a +certain 'owd Matt,' a shepherd from a farm high on Mardale Moor; +and the tales 'owd Matt' had told him—of mysterious hares coursed +at night by angry farmers enraged by the 'bedivilment' of their +stock, shot at with silver slugs, and identified next morning with +some dreaded hag or other lying groaning and wounded in her bed—of +calves' hearts burnt at midnight with awful ceremonies, while the +baffled witch outside flung herself in rage and agony against the +close-barred doors and windows—of spells and wise men—these +things had sent chills of pleasing horror through the boy's frame. +They were altogether new to him, in this vivid personal guise at +least, and mixed up with all the familiar names and places of the +district; for his childish life had been singularly solitary, +giving to books the part which half a century ago would have been +taken by tradition; and, moreover, the witch-belief in general had +now little foothold among the younger generation of the Scout, and +was only spoken of with reserve and discretion among the older men.</p> + +<p>But the stories once heard had struck deep into the lad's quick and +pondering mind. Jenny Crum seemed to have been the latest of all +the great witches of Kinder Scout. The memory of her as a real and +awful personage was still fresh in the mind of many a grey-haired +farmer; the history of her death was well known; and most of the +local inhabitants, even the boys and girls, turned out, when you +came to inquire, to be familiar with the later legends of the Pool, +and, as David presently discovered, with one or more tales—for the +stories were discrepant—of 'Lias Dawson's meeting with the witch, +now fifteen years ago.</p> + +<p>'<i>What</i> had 'Lias seen? What would they see?' His flesh crept +deliciously.</p> + +<p>'Wal, owd Mermaid!' shouted Louie, defiantly, as soon as she had +got her breath again. 'Are yo coomin out to-night? Yo'll ha coompany +if yo do.'</p> + +<p>David smiled contemptuously and did not condescend to argue.</p> + +<p>'Are yo coomin on?' he said, shouldering his box and bundle again. +'They'st be up after us if we doan't look out.'</p> + +<p>And on they went, climbing a steep boulder-strewn slope above the +pool till they came to the 'edge' itself, a tossed and broken +battlement of stone, running along the top of the Scout. Here the +great black slabs of grit were lying fantastically piled upon each +other at every angle and in every possible combination. The path +which leads from the Hayfield side across the desolate tableland of +the Scout to the Snake Inn on the eastern side of the ridge, ran +among them, and many a wayfarer, benighted or mist-bound on the +moor, had taken refuge before now in their caverns and recesses, +waiting for the light, and dreading to find himself on the cliffs +of the Downfall.</p> + +<p>But David pushed on past many hiding-places well known to him, till +the two reached the point where the mountain face sweeps backward +in the curve of which the Downfall makes the centre. At the outward +edge of the curve a great buttress of ragged and jutting rocks +descends perpendicularly towards the valley, like a ruined +staircase with displaced and gigantic steps.</p> + +<p>Down this David began to make his way, and Louie jumped, and slid, +and swung after him, as lithe and sure-footed as a cat. Presently +David stopped. 'This ull do,' he said, surveying the place with a +critical eye.</p> + +<p>They had just slid down a sloping chimney of rock, and were now +standing on a flat block, over which hung another like a penthouse +roof. On the side of the Downfall there was a projecting stone, on +which David stepped out to look about him.</p> + +<p>Holding on to a rock above for precaution's sake, he reconnoitred +their position. To his left was the black and semicircular cliff, +down the centre of which the Downfall stream, now tamed and thinned +by the dry spring winds, was trickling. The course of the stream +was marked by a vivid orange colour, produced, apparently, in the +grit by the action of water; and about halfway down the fall a mass +of rock had recently slipped, leaving a bright scar, through which +one saw, as it were, the inner mass of the Peak, the rectangular +blocks, now thick, now thin, as of some Cyclopean masonry, +wherewith the earth-forces had built it up in days before a single +alp had yet risen on the face of Europe. Below the boy's feet a +precipice, which his projecting stone overhung, fell to the bed of +the stream. On this side at least they were abundantly protected.</p> + +<p>On the moorside the steep broken ground of the hill came up to the +rocky line they had been descending, and offered no difficulty to +any sure-footed person. But no path ran anywhere near them, and +from the path up above they were screened by the grit 'edge' +already spoken of. Moreover, their penthouse, or half-gable, had +towards the Downfall a tolerably wide opening; but towards the moor +and the north there was but a narrow hole, which David soon saw +could be stopped by a stone. When he crept back into their +hiding-place, it pleased him extremely.</p> + +<p>'They'll niver find us, if they look till next week!' he exclaimed +exultantly, and, slipping off the heavy bundle strapped on his +back, he undid its contents. Two old woollen rugs appeared—one a +blanket, the other a horse-rug—and wrapped up in the middle of +them a jagged piece of tarpaulin, a hammer, some wooden pegs, and +two or three pieces of tallow dip. Louie, sitting cross-legged in +the other corner, with her chin in her hands, looked on with her +usual detached and critical air. David had not allowed her much of +a voice in the preparations, and she felt an instinctive aversion +towards other people's ingenuities. All she had contributed was +something to while away the time, in the shape of a bag of +bull's-eyes, bought with some of the sixpence Uncle Reuben had +given her.</p> + +<p>Having laid out his stores, David went to work. Getting out on the +projecting stone again, he laid the bit of tarpaulin along the +sloping edge of the rock which roofed them, pegged it down into +crevices at either end, and laid a stone to hold it in the middle. +Then he slipped back again, and, behold, there was a curtain +between them and the Downfall, which, as the dusk was fast +advancing, made the little den inside almost completely dark.</p> + +<p>'What's t' good o' that?' inquired Louie, scornfully, more than +half inclined to put out a mischievous hand and pull it down again.</p> + +<p>'Doan't worrit, an yo'll see,' returned David, and Louie's +curiosity got the better of her malice.</p> + +<p>Stooping down beside her, he looked through the hole which opened +to the moor. His eye travelled down the hillside to the path far +below, just visible in the twilight to a practised eye, to the +river, to the pasture-fields on the hill beyond, and to the smoke, +rising above the tops of some unseen trees, which marked the site +of the farmhouse. No one in sight. The boy crawled out, and +searched the moor till he found a large flattish stone, which he +brought and placed against the opening, ready to be drawn quite +across it from inside.</p> + +<p>Then he slipped back again, and in the glimmer of light which +remained groped for his tin box. Louie stooped over and eagerly +watched him open it. Out came a bottle of milk, some large slices +of bread, some oatcake, and some cheese. In the corner, recklessly +near the cheese, lurked a grease-bespattered lantern and a box of +matches. David had borrowed the lantern that afternoon from a +Clough End friend under the most solemn vows of secrecy, and he +drew it out now with a deliberate and special relish. When he had +driven a peg into a cranny of the rock, trimmed half a dip +carefully, lighted it, put it into the lantern, and hung the +lantern on the peg, he fell back on his heels to study the effect, +with a beaming countenance, filled all through with the essentially +human joy of contrivance.</p> + +<p>'Now, then, d'yo see what that tarpaulin's for?' he inquired +triumphantly of Louie.</p> + +<p>But Louie's mouth was conveniently occupied with a bull's-eye, and +she only sucked it the more vigorously in answer.</p> + +<p>'Why, yo little silly, if it worn't for that we couldno ha no leet. +They'd see us from t' fields even, as soon as it's real dark.'</p> + +<p>'Doan't bleeve it,' said Louie, laconically, in a voice much +muffled by bull's-eyes.</p> + +<p>'Wal, yo needn't; I'm gooin to have my tea.'</p> + +<p>And David, diving into the tin, brought out a hunch of bread and a +knob of cheese. The voracity with which he fell on them, soon, with +him also, stopped up the channels of speech. Louie, alarmed perhaps +by the rapidity with which the mouthfuls disappeared, slid up on +her heels and claimed her share. Never was there a more savoury +meal than that! Their little den with its curtain felt warm for the +moment after the keen air of the moor; the lantern light seemed to +shut them in from the world, gave them the sense of settlers +carving a home out of the desert, and milk which had been filched +from Aunt Hannah lay like nectar in the mouth.</p> + +<p>After their meal both children crept out on to the moor to see what +might be going on in the world outside. Darkness was fast +advancing. A rising wind swept through the dead bracken, whirled +round the great grit boulders, and sent a shiver through Louie's +thin body.</p> + +<p>'It's cowd,' she said pettishly; 'I'm gooin back.'</p> + +<p>'Did yo spose it wor gooin to be warm, yo little silly? That's why +I browt t' rugs, of course. Gells never think o' nothin. It's +parishin cowd here, neets—fit to tie yo up in knots wi th' +rheumatics, like Jim Spedding, if yo doan't mind yorsel. It wor +only laying out a neet on Frimley Moor—poachin, I guess—'at +twisted Jim that way.'</p> + +<p>Louie's countenance fell. Jim Spedding was a little crooked +greengrocer in Clough End, of whom she had a horror. The biting +hostile wind, which obliged her to hold her hat on against it with +both hands, the black moor at their feet, the grey sweep of sky, +the pale cloudy moon, the darkness which was fast enveloping +them—blotting out the distant waves of hill, and fusing the great +blocks of grit above them into one threatening mass—all these +became suddenly hateful to her. She went back into their den, +wrapped herself up in one of the tattered rugs, and crept sulkily +into a corner. The lantern gleamed on the child's huddled form, the +frowning brow, the great vixenish eyes. She had half a mind to run +home, in spite of Aunt Hannah. Hours to wait! and she loathed +waiting.</p> + +<p>But gradually, as the rug warmed her, the passion for adventure and +mystery—the vision of the mermaid—the hope of the blue +cotton—reasserted themselves, and the little sharp face relaxed. +She began to amuse herself with hunting the spiders and beetles +which ran across the rocky roof above her head, or crept in and out +of the crevices of stone, wondering, no doubt, at this unbidden and +tormenting daylight. She caught one or two small blackbeetles in a +dirty rag of a handkerchief—for she would not touch them if she +could help it—and then it delighted her to push aside the curtain, +stretch her hand out into the void darkness, and let them fall into +the gulf below. Even if they could fly, she reflected, it must 'gie +'em a good start.'</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, David had charged up the hill, filled with a sudden +curiosity to see what the top of the Scout might look like by +night. He made his way through the battlement of grit, found the +little path behind, gleaming white in the moonlight, because of the +quartz sheddings which wind and weather are forever teasing out of +the grit, and which drift into the open spaces; and at last, guided +by the sound and the gleam of water, he made out the top of the +Downfall, climbed a high peat bank, and the illimitable plateau of +the Scout lay wide and vast before him.</p> + +<p>Here, on the mountain-top, there seemed to be more daylight left +than on its rocky sides, and the moon among the parting clouds +shone intermittently over the primeval waste. The top of the Peak +is, so to speak, a vast black glacier, whereof the crevasses are +great fissures, ebon-black in colour, sometimes ten feet deep, and +with ten feet more of black water at the bottom. For miles on +either side the ground is seamed and torn with these crevasses, now +shallower, now deeper, succeeding each other at intervals of a yard +or two, and it is they which make the crossing of the Peak in the +dark or in mist a matter of danger sometimes even for the native. +David, high on his bank, from which the black overhanging eaves +curled inwards beneath his feet to a sullen depth of water, could +see against the moonlit sky the posts which marked the track from +the Downfall to the Snake Inn on the Glossop Road. Miss that +track—a matter of some fifteen minutes' walk for the sturdy farmer +who knows it well—and you find yourself lost in a region which has +no features and no landmarks, where the earth lays snares for you +and the mists betray you, and where even in bright sunshine there +reigns an eternal and indescribable melancholy. The strangeness and +wildness of the scene entered the boy's consciousness, and brought +with them a kind of exaltation. He stood gazing; that inner life of +his, of which Louie, his constant companion, knew as good as +nothing, asserting itself.</p> + +<p>For the real companions of his heart were not Louie or the boys +with whom he had joked and sparred at school; they were ideas, +images, sounds, imaginations, caught from books or from the talk of +old 'Lias and Mr. Ancrum. He had but to stand still a moment, as it +were, to listen, and the voices and sights of another world came +out before him like players on to a stage. Spaces of shining water, +crossed by ships with decks manned by heroes for whom the blue +distance was for ever revealing new lands to conquer, new +adventures to affront; the plumed Indian in his forest divining the +track of his enemy from a displaced leaf or twig; the Zealots of +Jehovah urging a last frenzied defence of Jehovah's Sanctuary +against the Roman host; and now, last of all, the gloom and flames, +the infernal palaces, the towering fiends, the grandiose and +lumbering war of 'Paradise Lost': these things, together with the +names and suggestions of 'Lias's talk—that whole crew of shining, +fighting, haranguing men and women whom the old dreamer was for +ever bringing into weird action on the moorside—lived in the boy's +mind, and in any pause of silence, as we have said, emerged and +took possession.</p> + +<p>It was only that morning, in an old meal-chest which had belonged +to his grandfather, James Grieve, he had discovered the old +calf-bound copy of 'Paradise Lost,' which was now in one of his +pockets, balanced by 'Anson's Voyages' in the other. All the +morning he had been lying hidden in a corner of the sheepfold +devouring it, the rolling verse imprinting itself on the boy's +plastic memory by a sort of enchantment—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The seat of desolation, void of light,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Save what the glimmering of these livid flames</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Casts pale and dreadful.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He chanted the words aloud, flinging them out in an ecstasy +of pleasure. Before him, as it seemed, there stretched that very +plain 'forlorn and wild,' with its black fissures and its +impenetrable horizons; the fitful moonlight stood for the +glimmering of the Tartarean flames; the remembered words and the +actual sights played into and fused with each other, till in the +cold and darkness the boy thrilled all through with that mingling +of joy and terror which is only possible to the creature of fine +gifts and high imagination.</p> + +<p>Jenny Crum, too! A few more hours and he might see her face to +face—as 'Lias had seen her. He quaked a little at the thought, but +he would not have flinched for the world. <i>He</i> was not going +to lose his wits, as 'Lias did; and as for Louie, if she were +frightened it would do her good to be afraid of something.</p> + +<p>Hark! He turned, stooped, put his hand to his ear.</p> + +<p>The sound he heard had startled him, turned him pale. But he soon +recovered himself. It was the sound of heavy boots on stones, and +it was brought to him by the wind, as it seemed, from far below. +Some one was coming after them—perhaps more than one. He thought +he heard a voice.</p> + +<p>He leapt fissure after fissure like a young roe, fled to the top of +the Downfall and looked over. Did the light show through the +tarpaulin? Alack!—there must be a rent somewhere—for he saw a dim +glow-worm light beyond the cliff, on the dark rib of the mountain. +It was invisible from below, but any roving eye from the top would +be caught by it in an instant. In a second he had raced along the +edge, dived in and out of the blocks, guiding his way by a sort of +bat's instinct, till he reached the rocky stairway, which he +descended at imminent risk of his neck.</p> + +<p>'Put your hand ower t'leet, Louie, till I move t'stone!'</p> + +<p>The light disappeared, David crept in, and the two children +crouched together in a glow of excitement.</p> + +<p>'Is't Uncle Reuben?' whispered Louie, pressing her face against the +side of the rocks, and trying to look through the chink between it +and the covering stone.</p> + +<p>'Aye—wi a lantern. But there's talkin—theer's someone else. Jim +Wigson, mebbe.'</p> + +<p>'If it's Jim Wigson,' said Louie, between her small, shut teeth, +'I'll bite him!'</p> + +<p>'Cos yo're a gell! Gells and cats bite—they can't do nowt else!'</p> + +<p>Whereupon Louie pinched him, and David, giving an involuntary kick +as he felt the nip, went into first a fit of smothered laughter, +and then seized her arm in a tight grip.</p> + +<p>'Keep quiet, conno yo? Now they're coomin, an I bleeve they're +coomin this way!'</p> + +<p>But after another minute's waiting, he was quite unable to obey his +own injunction and he crept out on the stone overlooking the +precipice to look.</p> + +<p>'Coom back! They'll see yo.' cried Louie, in a shrill whisper; and +she caught him by the ankle.</p> + +<p>David gave a kick. 'Let goo; if yo do 'at I shall fall an be kilt!'</p> + +<p>She held her breath. Presently, with an exclamation, he knelt down +and looked over the edge of the great sloping block which served +them for roof.</p> + +<p>'Wal, I niver! Theer's nobory but Uncle Reuben, an he's talkin to +hissel. Wal, this is a rum skit!'</p> + +<p>And he stayed outside watching, in spite of Louie's angry commands +to him to come back into the den. David had no fears of being +discovered by Uncle Reuben. If it had been Jim Wigson it would have +been different.</p> + +<p>Presently, on the path some sixty feet above them, but hidden from +them by the mass of tumbled rocks through which they had descended, +they heard someone puffing and blowing, a stick striking and +slipping on the stones, and weird rays of light stole down the +mountain-side, and in and out of the vast blocks with which it was +overstrewn.</p> + +<p>'He's stopt up theer,' said David, creeping in under the gable, 'an +I mun hear what he's sayin. I'm gooin up nearer. If yo coom we'll +be caught.'</p> + +<p>'Yo stoopid!' cried Louie. But he had crawled up the narrow chimney +they had come down by in a moment, and she was left alone. Her +spirit failed her a little. She daren't climb after him in the +dark.</p> + +<p>David clambered in and out, the fierce wind that beat the side of +the mountain masking whatever sounds he may have made, till he +found himself directly under the place where Reuben Grieve sat, +slowly recovering his breath.</p> + +<p><i>'O Lord! O Lord!</i> They're aw reet, Sandy—they're aw reet!'</p> + +<p>The boy crouched down sharply under an overhanging stone, arrested +by the name—Sandy—his father's name.</p> + +<p>Once or twice since he came to Kinder he had heard it on Uncle +Reuben's lips, once or twice from neighbours who had known James +Grieve's sons in their youth. But Sandy had left the farm early and +was little remembered, and the true story of Sandy's life was +unknown in the valley, though there were many rumours. What the +close and timid Reuben heard from Mr. Gurney, the head of Sandy's +firm, after Sandy's death, he told to no one but Hannah. The +children knew generally, from what Hannah often let fall when she +was in a temper, that their mother was a disgrace to them, but they +knew no more, and, with the natural instinct of forlorn creatures +on the defensive, studiously avoided the subject within the walls +of Needham Farm. They might question old 'Lias; they would suffer +many things rather than question their uncle and aunt.</p> + +<p>But David especially had had many secret thoughts he could not put +away, of late, about his parents. And to hear his father's name +dropped like this into the night moved the lad strangely. He lay +close, listening with all his ears, expecting passionately, he knew +not what.</p> + +<p>But nothing came—or the wind carried it away. When he was rested, +Reuben got up and began to move about with the lantern, apparently +throwing its light from side to side.</p> + +<p>'David! Louie!'</p> + +<p>The hoarse, weak voice, strained to its utmost pitch, died away on +the night wind, and a weird echo came back from the cliffs of the +Downfall.</p> + +<p>There was no menace in the cry—rather a piteous entreaty. The +truant below had a strange momentary impulse to answer—to disclose +himself. But it was soon past, and instead, he crept well out of +reach of the rays which flashed over the precipitous ground about +him. As he did so he noticed the Mermaid's Pool, gleaming in a pale +ray of moonlight, some two hundred feet below. A sudden alarm +seized him, lest Reuben should be caught by it, put two and two +together and understand.</p> + +<p>But Reuben was absorbed in a discomfort, half moral, half +superstitious, and nothing else reached the slow brain—which was +besides preoccupied by Jim Wigson's suggestion. After a bit he +picked up his stick and went on again. David, eagerly watching, +tracked him along the path which follows the ridge, and saw the +light pause once more close to the Downfall.</p> + +<p>So far as the boy could see, his uncle made a long stay at a point +beyond the stream, the bed of which was just discernible, as a sort +of paler streak on the darkness.</p> + +<p>'Why, that's about whar th' Edale path cooms in,' thought David, +wondering. 'What ud he think we'd be doin theer?'</p> + +<p>Faint sounds came to him in a lull of the wind, as though Reuben +were shouting again—shouting many times. Then the light went +wavering on, defining in its course the curved ridge of the further +moor, till at last it made a long circuit downwards, disappearing +for a minute somewhere in the dark bosom of Kinder Low, about +midway between earth and sky. David guessed that Uncle Reuben must +be searching the smithy. Then it descended rapidly, till finally it +vanished behind the hill far below, which was just distinguishable +in the cloudy moonshine. Uncle Reuben had gone home.</p> + +<p>David drew a long breath. But that patient quest in the dark—the +tone of the farmer's call—that mysterious word <i>Sandy</i>, had +touched the boy, made him restless. His mood grew a little flat, +even a little remorseful. The joy of their great adventure ebbed a +little.</p> + +<p>However, he climbed down again to Louie, and found a dark elfish +figure standing outside their den, and dancing with excitement.</p> + +<p>'Wouldn't yo like to ketch us—wouldn't yo?—wouldn't yo?' +screeched the child, beside herself. She too had been watching, had +seen the light vanish.</p> + +<p>'Yo'll have t' parish up after yo if yo doan't howd your tongue,' +said David roughly.</p> + +<p>And creeping into their den he relit the lantern. Then he pulled +out a watch, borrowed from the same friend who had provided the +lantern. Past nine. Two hours and more before they need think of +starting downwards for the Pool.</p> + +<p>Louie condescended to come in again, and the stone was drawn close. +But how fierce the wind had grown, and how nipping was the air! +David shivered, and looked about for the rugs. He wrapt Louie in +the horse-rug, which was heaviest, and tucked the blanket round +himself.</p> + +<p>'Howd that tight round yo,' he commanded, struck with an uneasy +sense of responsibility, as he happened to notice how starved she +looked, 'an goo to sleep if yo want to. I'll wake yo—I'm gooin to +read.'</p> + +<p>Louie rolled the rug round her chrysalis-like, and then, disdaining +the rest of David's advice, sat bolt upright against the rock, her +wide-open eyes staring defiantly at all within their ken.</p> + +<p>The minutes went by. David sat close up against the lantern, +bitterly cold, but reading voraciously. At last, however, a sharper +gust than usual made him look up and turn restive. Louie still sat +in the opposite corner as stiffly as before, but over the great +staring eyes the lids had just fallen, sorely against their owner's +will; the head was dropping against the rock; the child was fast +asleep. It occurred to David she looked odd; the face seemed so +grey and white. He instinctively took his own blanket and put it +over her. The silence and helplessness of her sleep seemed to +appeal to him, to change his mood towards her, for the action was +brotherly and tender. Then he pushed the stone aside and crept out +on to the moor.</p> + +<p>There he stood for a while, with his hands in his pockets, marking +time to warm himself. How the wind bit to be sure!—and it would be +colder still by dawn.</p> + +<p>The pool showed dimly beneath him, and the gruesome hour was +stealing on them fast. His heart beat quick. The weirdness and +loneliness of the night came home to him more than they had done +yet. The old woman dragged to her death, the hooting crowd, the +inexorable parson, the struggle in the water, the last gurgling +cry—the vision rose before him on the dark with an ever ghastlier +plainness than a while ago on the mountain-top. <i>How</i> had 'Lias +seen her that the sight had changed him so? Did she come to him +with her drowned face and floating grey hair—grip him with her +cold hands? David, beginning to thrill in good earnest, obstinately +filled in the picture with all the horrible detail he could think +of, so as to harden himself. Only now he wished with all his heart +that Louie were safe at home.</p> + +<p>An idea occurred to him. He smiled at it, turned it over, gradually +resolved upon it. She would lead him a life afterward, but what +matter?—let her!</p> + +<p>From the far depths of the unseen valley a sound struck upwards, +piercing through the noises of river and wind. It was the clock of +Clough End church, tolling eleven.</p> + +<p>Well, one could not stand perishing there another hour. He stooped +down and crawled in beside Louie. She was sleeping heavily, the +added warmth of David's blanket conducing thereto. He hung over +her, watching her breathing with a merry look, which gradually +became a broad grin. It was a real shame—she would be just mad +when she woke up. But mermaids were all stuff, and Jenny Crum would +'skeer' her to death. Just in proportion as the adventure became +more awesome and more real did the boy's better self awake. He grew +soft for his sister, while, as he proudly imagined, iron for +himself.</p> + +<p>He crept in under the blanket carefully so as not to disturb her. +He was too tired and excited to read. He would think the hour out. +So he lay staring at the opposite wall of rock, at its crevices, +and creeping ants, at the odd lights and shadows thrown by the +lantern, straining his eyes every now and then, that he might be +the more sure how wide awake they were.</p> + +<p>Louie stretched herself. What was the matter? Where was she? What +was that smell? She leant forward on her elbow. The lantern was +just going out, and smelt intolerably. A cold grey light was in the +little den. What? Where?</p> + +<p>A loud wail broke the morning silence, and David, sleeping +profoundly, his open mouth just showing above the horse-rug, was +roused by a shower of blows from Louie's fists. He stirred +uneasily, tried to escape them by plunging deeper into the folds, +but they pursued him vindictively.</p> + +<p>'Give ower!' he said at last, striking back at random, and then +sitting up he rubbed his eyes. There was Louie sitting opposite to +him, crying great tears of rage and pain, now rocking her ankle as +if it hurt her, and now dealing cuffs at him.</p> + +<p>He hastily pulled out his watch. Half-past four o'clock!</p> + +<p>'Yo great gonner, yo!' sobbed Louie, her eyes blazing at him +through her tears. 'Yo good-for-nowt, yo muffin-yed, yo donkey!' And +so on through all the words of reviling known to the Derbyshire +child. David looked extremely sheepish under them.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly he put his head down on his knees and shook with +laughter. The absurdity of it all—of their preparations, of his +own terrors, of the disturbance they had made, all to end in this +flat and futile over-sleeping, seized upon him so that he could not +control himself. He laughed till he cried, while Louie hit and +abused him and cried too. But her crying had a different note, and +at last he looked up at her, sobered.</p> + +<p>'Howd your tongue!—an doan't keep bully-raggin like 'at! What's t' +matter wi yo?'</p> + +<p>For answer, she rolled over on the rock and lay on her face, +howling with pain. David sprang up and bent over her.</p> + +<p>'What <i>iver's</i> t' matter wi yo, Louie?'</p> + +<p>But she kept him off like a wild cat, and he could make nothing of +her till her passion had spent itself and she was quiet again, from +sheer exhaustion.</p> + +<p>Then David, who had been standing near, shivering, with his hands +in his pockets, tried again.</p> + +<p>'Now, Louie, do coom home,' he said appealingly. 'I can find yo a +place in t' stable ull be warmer nor this. You be parished if yo +stay here.' For, ignorant as he was, her looks began to frighten +him.</p> + +<p>Louie would have liked never to speak to him again. The thought of +the blue cotton and of her own lost chance seemed to be burning a +hole in her. But the stress of his miserable look drew her eyes +open whether she would or no, and when she saw him her self-pity +overcame her.</p> + +<p>'I conno walk,' she said, with a sudden loud sob. 'It's my leg.'</p> + +<p>'What's wrong wi't?' said David, inspecting it anxiously. 'It's got +th' cowd in't, that's what it is; it's th' rheumatics, I speck. Yak +howd on me, I'll help yo down.'</p> + +<p>And with much coaxing on his part and many cries and outbursts on +hers he got her up at last, and out of the den. He had tied his tin +box across his back, and Louie, with the rugs wrapped about her, +clung, limping, and with teeth chattering, on to his arm. The child +was in the first throes of a sharp attack of rheumatism, and half +her joints were painful.</p> + +<p>That was a humiliating descent! A cold grey morning was breaking +over the moor; the chimneys of the distant cotton-towns rose out of +mists, under a sky streaked with windy cloud. The Mermaid's Pool, +as they passed it, looked chill and mocking; and the world +altogether felt so raw and lonely that David welcomed the first +sheep they came across with a leap of the heart, and positively +hungered for a first sight of the farm. How he got Louie—in whose +cheeks the fever-spots were rising—over the river he never quite +remembered. But at last he had dragged her up the hill, through the +fields close to the house, where the lambs were huddling in the +nipping dawn beside their mothers, and into the farmyard.</p> + +<p>The house rose before them grey and frowning. The lower windows +were shuttered; in the upper ones the blinds were pulled closely +down; not a sign of life anywhere. Yes; the dogs had heard them! +Such a barking as began! Jock, in his kennel by the front door, +nearly burst his chain in his joyful efforts to get at them; while +Tib, jumping the half-door of the out-house in the back yard, where +he had been curled up in a heap of bracken, leapt about them and +barked like mad.</p> + +<p>Louie sank down crying and deathly pale on a stone by the stable +door.</p> + +<p>'They'll hear that fast enoof,' said David, looking anxiously up at +the shut windows.</p> + +<p>But the dogs went on barking, and nothing happened. Ten minutes of +chilly waiting passed away.</p> + +<p>'Tak him away, <i>do!</i>' she cried, as Tib jumped up at her. 'No, +I woan't!—I woan't!'</p> + +<p>The last words rose to a shriek, as David tried to persuade her to +go into the stable, and let him make her a bed in the straw. He +stood looking at her in despair. They had always supposed they +would be locked out; but surely the sleepers inside must hear the +dogs. He turned and stared at the house, hungering for some sign of +life in it. Uncle Reuben would hear them—Uncle Reuben would let +them in!</p> + +<p>But the blinds of the top room never budged. Louie, with her head +against the stable-door, and her eyes shut, went on convulsively +sobbing, while Tibby sniffed about her for sympathy. And the bitter +wind coming from the Scout whistled through the yard and seemed to +cut the shivering child like a knife.</p> + +<p>'I'll mak a clunter agen th' window wi some gravel,' said David at +last, in desperation. And he picked up a handful and threw it, +first cautiously, then recklessly. Yes!—at last a hand moved the +blind—a hand the children knew well, and a face appeared to one +side of it. Hannah Grieve had never looked so forbidding as at that +moment. The boy caught one glance of a countenance pale with wrath +and sleeplessness; of eyes that seemed to blaze at them through the +window; then the blind fell. He waited breathlessly for minute +after minute. Not a sound.</p> + +<p>Furiously he stooped for more gravel, and flung it again and again. +For an age, as it seemed to him, no more notice was taken. At last, +there was an agitation in the blind, as though more than one person +was behind it. It was Hannah who lifted it again; but David thought +he caught a motion of her arm as though she were holding some one +else back. The lad pointed excitedly to Louie.</p> + +<p>'She's took bad!' he shouted. 'Uncle Reuben!—Uncle Reuben!—coom +down an see for yorsel. If yo let her in, yo can keep me out as +long as yo like!'</p> + +<p>Hannah looked at him, and at the figure huddled against the +stable-door—looked deliberately, and then, as deliberately, pulled +the blind down lower than before, and not a sign of Reuben +anywhere.</p> + +<p>A crimson flame sprang to David's cheek. He rushed at the door, and +while with one hand he banged away at the old knocker, he thumped +with the other, kicking lustily the while at the panels, till +Louie, almost forgetting her pains in the fierce excitement of the +moment, thought he would kick them in. In the intervals of his +blows, David could hear voices inside in angry debate.</p> + +<p>'Uncle Reuben!' he shouted, stopping the noise for a moment, 'Uncle +Reuben, Louie's turned sick! She's clemmed wi t' cold. If yo doan't +open th' door, I'll go across to Wigson's, and tell 'em as Louie's +parishin, an yo're bein th' death on her.'</p> + +<p>The bolt shot back, and there stood Reuben, his red hair sticking +up wildly from his head, his frame shaking with unusual excitement.</p> + +<p>'What are yo makin that roompus for, Davy?' began Reuben, with +would-be severity. 'Ha done wi yo, or I'll have to tak a stick to +yo.'</p> + +<p>But the boy stood akimbo on the steps, and the old farmer shrank +before him, as David's black eye travelled past him to a gaunt +figure on the stairs.</p> + +<p>'Yo'll tak noa stick to me, Uncle Reuben. I'll not put up wi it, +and yo know it. I'm goin to bring Louie in. We've bin on t' moor by +t' Pool lookin for th' owd witch, an we both on us fell asleep, an +Louie's took the rheumatics.—Soa theer.—Stan out o' t' way.'</p> + +<p>And running back to Louie, who cried out as he lifted her up, he +half carried, half dragged her in.</p> + +<p>'Why, she's like death,' cried Reuben. 'Hannah! summat hot—at +woonst.'</p> + +<p>But Hannah did not move. She stood at the foot of the stairs, +barring the way, the chill morning light falling on her threatening +attitude, her grey dishevelled hair and all the squalid disarray of +her dress.</p> + +<p>'Them as doos like beggar's brats,' she said grimly, 'may fare like +'em. <i>I</i>'ll do nowt for 'em.'</p> + +<p>The lad came up to her, his look all daring and resolution—his +sister on his arm. But as he met the woman's expression, his lips +trembled, he suddenly broke down.</p> + +<p>'Now, look here,' he cried, with a sob in his throat. 'I know we're +beggar's brats. I know yo hate th' seet on us. But I wor t' worst. +I'm t' biggest. Tak Louie in, and bully-rag me as mich as yo like. +Louie—<i>Louie</i>!' and he hung over her in a frenzy, 'wake up, +Louie!'</p> + +<p>But the child was insensible. Fatigue, the excitement of the +struggle, the anguish of movement had done their work—she lay like +a log upon his arm.</p> + +<p>'She's fainted,' said Hannah, recognising the fact with a sort of +fierce reluctance. 'Tak her up, an doan't stan blatherin theer.'</p> + +<p>And she moved out of the way.</p> + +<p>The boy gathered up the thin figure, and, stumbling over the +tattered rugs, carried her up by a superhuman effort.</p> + +<p>Reuben leant against the passage wall, staring at his wife.</p> + +<p>'Yo're a hard woman, Hannah—a hard woman,' he said to her under +his breath, in a low, shaken voice. 'An yo coed 'em beggar's +brats—oh Lord—Lord!'</p> + +<p>'Howd your tongue, an blow up t' fire,' was all the reply she +vouchsafed him, and Reuben obeyed.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile upstairs Louie had been laid on her bed. Consciousness +had come back, and she was moaning.</p> + +<p>David stood beside her in utter despair. He thought she was going +to die, and he had done it. At last he sank down beside her, and +flinging an arm round her, he laid his hot cheek to her icy one.</p> + +<p>'Louie, doan't—doan't—I'll tak yo away from here, Louie, when I +can. I'll tak care on yo, Louie. Doan't, Louie,—doan't!'</p> + +<p>His whole being seemed rent asunder by sympathy and remorse. Uncle +Reuben, coming up with some hot gruel, found him sitting on the bed +beside his sister, on whom he had heaped all the clothing he could +find, the tears running down his cheeks.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-1" id="CHAPTER_VI-1"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<p>From that night forward, David looked upon the farm and all his +life there with other eyes.</p> + +<p>Up till now, in spite of the perennial pressure of Hannah's +tyrannies, which, however, weighed much less upon him than upon +Louie, he had been—as he had let Reuben see—happy enough. The +open-air life, the animals, his books, out of all of them he +managed to extract a very fair daily sum of enjoyment. And he had +been content enough with his daily tasks—herding the sheep, doing +the rough work of the stable and cow-house, running Aunt Hannah's +errands with the donkey-cart to Clough End, helping in the +haymaking and the sheep-shearing, or the driving of stock to and +from the various markets Reuben frequented. All these things he had +done with a curious placidity, a detachment and yet readiness of +mind, as one who lends himself, without reluctance, to a life not +his own. It was this temper mainly, helped, no doubt, by his +unusual tastes and his share of foreign blood and looks, which had +set him apart from the other lads of his own class in the +neighbourhood. He had few friends of his own age, yet he was not +unpopular, except, perhaps, with an overbearing animal like Jim +Wigson, who instinctively looked upon other people's brains as an +offence to his own muscular pretensions.</p> + +<p>But his Easter Eve struggle with Hannah closed, as it were, a +childhood, which, though hard and loveless, had been full of +compensations and ignorant of its own worst wants. It woke in him +the bitterness of the orphan dependant, who feels himself a burden +and loathes his dependence. That utter lack of the commonest +natural affection, in which he and Louie had been brought up—for +Reuben's timorous advances had done but little to redress the +balance—had not troubled him much, till suddenly it was writ so +monstrous large in Hannah's refusal to take pity on the fainting +and agonised Louie. Thenceforward every morsel of food he took at +her hands seemed to go against him. They were paupers, and Aunt +Hannah hated them. The fact had been always there, but it had never +meant anything substantial to him till now. Now, at last, that +complete dearth of love, in which he had lived since his father +died, began to react in revolt and discontent.</p> + +<p>The crisis may have been long preparing, those words of his uncle +as to his future, as well as the incident of their locking out, may +have had something to say to it. Anyway, a new reflective temper +set in. The young immature creature became self-conscious, began to +feel the ferments of growth. The ambition and the restlessness his +father had foreseen, with dying eyes, began to stir.</p> + +<p>Reuben's qualms returned upon him. On the 15th of May, he and David +went to Woodhead, some sixteen or seventeen miles off, to receive +the young stock from the Yorkshire breeders, which were to be +grazed on the farm during the summer. In general, David had taken +the liveliest interest in the animals, in the number and quality of +them, in the tariff to be paid for them, and the long road there +and back had been cheered for the farmer by the lad's chatter, and +by the athletic antics he was always playing with any handy gate or +tree which crossed their path.</p> + +<p>'Them heifers ull want a deal o' grass puttin into 'em afoor +they'll be wuth onybody's buyin, Davy,' said Reuben, inspecting his +mixed herd with a critical eye from a roadside bank, as they +climbed the first hill on their return journey.</p> + +<p>'Aye, they're a poor lot,' returned David, shortly, and walked on +as far in front of his uncle as might be, with his head in the air +and his moody look fixed on the distance.</p> + +<p>'T' Wigsons ull be late gettin whoam,' began Reuben again, with an +uneasy look at the boy. 'Owd Wigson wor that full up wi yell when I +last seed him they'll ha a job to get him started straight this +neet.'</p> + +<p>To this remark David had nothing at all to say, though in general +he had a keen neighbourly relish for the misdeeds of the Wigsons. +Reuben did not know what to make of him. However, a mile further on +he made another attempt:</p> + +<p>'Lord, how those Yorkshire breeders did talk! Yo'd ha thowt they'd +throw their jaws off the hinges. An a lot o' gimcrack notions as +iver wor—wi their new foods, an their pills an strengthening +mixtures—messin wi cows as though they wor humans. Why conno they +leave God Awmighty alone? He can bring a calvin cow through beawt +ony o' their meddlin, I'll uphowd yo!'</p> + +<p>But still not a word from the lad in front. Reuben might as well +have talked to the wall beside him. He had grown used to the boy's +companionship, and the obstinate silence which David still +preserved from hour to hour as they drove their stock homewards +made a sensible impression on him.</p> + +<p>Inside the house there was a constant, though in general a silent, +struggle going on between the boy and Hannah on the subject of +Louie. Louie, after the escapade of Easter Eve, was visited with a +sharp attack of inflammatory rheumatism, only just stopping +short of rheumatic fever. Hannah got a doctor, and tended her +sufficiently while the worst lasted, partly because she was, after +all, no monster, but only a commonly sordid and hard-natured woman, +and partly because for a day or two Louie's state set her +pondering, perforce, what might be the effect on Mr. Gurney's +remittances if the child incontinently died. This thought +undoubtedly quickened whatever natural instincts might be left in +Hannah Grieve; and the child had her doctor, and the doctor's +orders were more or less followed.</p> + +<p>But when she came downstairs again—a lanky, ghostly creature, much +grown, her fierce black eyes more noticeable than ever in her +pinched face—Hannah's appetite for 'snipin'—to use the expressive +Derbyshire word—returned upon her. The child was almost bullied +into her bed again—or would have been if David had not found ways +of preventing it. He realised for the first time that, as the young +and active male of the household, he was extremely necessary to +Hannah's convenience, and now whenever Hannah ill-treated Louie her +convenience suffered. David disappeared. Her errands were undone, +the wood uncut, and coals and water had to be carried as they best +could. As to reprisals, with a strong boy of fourteen, grown very +nearly to a man's height, Hannah found herself a good deal at a +loss. 'Bully-raggin' he took no more account of than of a shower of +rain; blows she instinctively felt it would have been dangerous to +attempt; and as to deprivation of food, the lad seemed to thrive on +hunger, and never whistled so loudly as when, according to Hannah's +calculations, he must have been as 'keen-bitten as a hawk.' For the +first time in her life Hannah was to some extent tamed. When there +was business about she generally felt it expedient to let Louie +alone.</p> + +<p>But this sturdy protection was more really a matter of roused pride +and irritation on David's part than of brotherly love. It was the +tragedy of Louie Grieve's fate—whether as child or woman—that she +was not made to be loved. Whether <i>she</i> could love, her story +will show; but to love her when you were close to her was always +hard. How different the days would have been for the moody lad, who +had at last learnt to champion her, if their common isolation and +dependence had but brought out in her towards him anything +clinging—anything confidential, any true spirit of comradeship! On +the contrary, while she was still ill in bed, and almost absolutely +dependent on what he might choose to do for her, she gibed and +flouted him past bearing, mainly, no doubt, for the sake of +breaking the tedium of her confinement a little. And when she was +about again, and he was defending her weakness from Aunt Hannah, it +seemed to him that she viewed his proceedings rather with a +malicious than a grateful eye. It amused and excited her to see him +stand up to Hannah, but he got little reward from her for his +pains.</p> + +<p>She was, as it were, always watching him with a sort of secret +discontent. He did not suit her—was not congenial to her. +Especially was she exasperated now more than ever by his bookish +tastes. Possibly she was doubly jealous of his books; at any rate, +unless he had been constantly on his guard, she would have hidden +them, or done them a mischief whenever she could, in her teasing, +magpie way.</p> + +<p>One morning, in the grey summer dawn, Louie had just wakened, and +was staring sleepily at the door, when, all of a sudden, it +opened—very quietly, as though pushed by some one anxious not to +make a noise—and Reuben's head looked round it. Louie, amazed, +woke up in earnest, and Reuben came stealthily in. He had his hat +and stick under his arm, and one hand held his boots, while he +stepped noiselessly in his stocking feet across the room to where +Louie lay—'Louie, are yo awake?'</p> + +<p>The child stared up at him, seeing mostly his stubble of red hair, +which came like a grotesque halo between her and the wall. Then she +nodded.</p> + +<p>'Doan't let yor aunt hear nothin, Louie. She thinks I'm gone out to +th' calves. But, Louie, that merchant I towd yo on came yesterday, +an he wor a hard un, he wor—as tough as nails, a sight worse nor +owd Croker to deal wi, ony day in th' week. I could mak nowt on +him—an he gan me sich a poor price. I darn't tak a penny on 't +from your aunt—noa, I darn't, Louie,—not if it wor iver so. +She'll be reet down mad when she knaws—an I'm real sorry about +that bit dress o' yourn, Louie.'</p> + +<p>He stood looking down at her, his spectacles falling forward on his +nose, the corners of his mouth drooping—a big ungainly culprit.</p> + +<p>For a second or two the child was quite still, nothing but the +black eyes and tossed masses of hair showing above the sheet. Then +the eyes blinked suddenly, and flinging out her hand at him with a +passionate gesture, as though to push him away, she turned on her +face and drew the bedclothes over her head.</p> + +<p>'Louie!' he said—'Louie!'</p> + +<p>But she made no sign, and, at last, with a grotesquely concerned +face, he went out of the room and downstairs, hanging his head.</p> + +<p>Out of doors, he found David already at work in the cowhouse, but +as surly and uncommunicative as before when he was spoken to. That +the lad had turned 'agen his wark,' and was on his way to hate the +farm and all it contained, was plain even to Reuben. Why was he so +glum and silent—why didn't he speak up? Perhaps he would, Reuben's +conscience replied, if it were conveyed to him that he possessed a +substantial portion of six hundred pounds!</p> + +<p>The boy knew that his uncle watched him—anxiously, as one watches +something explosive and incalculable—and felt a sort of contempt +for himself that nothing practical came of his own revolt and +discontent. But he was torn with indecision. How to leave +Louie—what to do with himself without a farthing in the +world—whom to go to for advice? He thought often of Mr. Ancrum, +but a fierce distaste for chapels and ministers had been growing on +him, and he had gradually seen less and less of the man who had +been the kind comrade and teacher of his early childhood. His only +real companions during this year of moody adolescence were his +books. From the forgotten deposit in the old meal-ark upstairs, +which had yielded 'Paradise Lost,' he drew other treasures by +degrees. He found there, in all, some tattered leaves—three or +four books altogether—of Pope's 'Iliad,' about half of Foxe's +'Martyrs'—the rest having been used apparently by the casual +nurses, who came to tend Reuben's poor mother in her last days, +to light the fire—a complete copy of Locke 'On the Human +Understanding,' and various volumes of old Calvinist sermons, which +he read, partly because his reading appetite was insatiable, partly +from a half-contemptuous desire to find out what it might be that +Uncle Reuben was always troubling his head about.</p> + +<p>As to 'Lias Dawson, David saw nothing of him for many long weeks +after the scene which had led to the adventure of the Pool. He +heard only that 'Lias was 'bad,' and mostly in his bed, and feeling +a little guilty, he hardly knew why, the lad kept away from his old +friend.</p> + +<p>Summer and the early autumn passed away. October brought a spell of +wintry weather; and one day, as he was bringing the sheep home, he +met old Margaret, 'Lias's wife. She stopped and accosted him.</p> + +<p>'Why doan't yo coom and see 'Lias sometimes, Davy, my lad? Yo might +leeten him up a bit, an' he wants it, t' Lord knows. He's been +fearfu' bad in his sperrits this summer.'</p> + +<p>The lad stammered out some sheepish excuses, and soon made his way +over to Frimley Moor. But the visits were not so much pleasure as +usual. 'Lias was very feeble, and David had a constant temptation to +struggle with. He understood that to excite 'Lias, to throw him +again into the frenzy which had begotten the vision of the Pool, +would be a cruel act. But all the same he found it more and more +difficult to restrain himself, to keep back the questions which +burnt on his tongue.</p> + +<p>As for 'Lias, his half-shut eye would brighten whenever David +showed himself at the door, and he would point to a wooden stool on +the other side of the fire.</p> + +<p>'Sit tha down, lad. Margret, gie him soom tay,' or 'Margret, yo'll +just find him a bit oatcake.'</p> + +<p>And then the two would fall upon their books together, and the +conversation would glide imperceptibly into one of those scenes of +half-dramatic impersonation, for which David's relish was still +unimpaired.</p> + +<p>But the old man was growing much weaker; his inventions had less +felicity, less range than of old; and the watchful Margaret, at her +loom in the corner, kept an eye on any signs of an undue +excitement, and turned out David or any other visitor, neck and +crop, without scruple, as soon as it seemed to her that her +crippled seer was doing himself a mischief. Poor soul! she had +lived in this tumult of 'Lias's fancies year after year, till the +solid world often turned about her. And she, all the while, so +simple, so sane—the ordinary good woman, with the ordinary woman's +hunger for the common blessings of life—a little love, a little +chat, a little prosaic well-being! She had had two sons—they were +gone. She had been the proud wife 'o' t' cliverest mon atwixt +Sheffield an Manchester,' as Frimley and the adjacent villages had +once expressed it, when every mother that respected herself sent +her children to 'Lias Dawson's school. And the mysterious chances +of a summer night had sent home upon her hands a poor incapable, +ruined in mind and body, who was to live henceforward upon her +charity, wandering amid the chaotic wreck and debris of his former +self.</p> + +<p>Well, she took up her burden!</p> + +<p>The straggling village on Frimley Moor was mainly inhabited by a +colony of silk hand-loom weavers—the descendants of French +prisoners in the great war, and employed for the most part by a +firm at Leck. Very dainty work was done at Frimley, and very +beautiful stuffs made. The craft went from father to son. All +Margaret's belongings had been weavers; but 'Lias, in the pride of +his schoolmaster's position, would never allow his wife to use the +trade of her youth. When he became dependent on her, Margaret +bought a disused loom from a cousin, had it mended and repaired, +and set to work. Her fingers had not forgotten their old cunning; +and when she was paid for her first 'cut,' she hurried home to +'Lias with a reviving joy in her crushed heart. Thenceforward, she +lived at her loom; she became a skilled and favoured worker, and +the work grew dear to her—first, because 'Lias lived on it, and, +next, because the bright roses and ribbon-patterns she wove into +her costly stuffs were a perpetual cheer to her. The moors might +frown outside, the snow might drift against the cottage walls: +Margaret had always something gay under her fingers, and threw her +shuttle with the more zest the darker and colder grew the +Derbyshire world without.</p> + +<p>Naturally the result of this long concentration of effort had been +to make the poor soul, for whom each day was lived and fought, the +apple of Margaret's eye. So long as that bent, white form sat +beside her fire, Margaret was happy. Her heart sank with every +fresh sign of age and weakness, revived with every brighter hour. +He still lorded it over her often, as he had done in the days of +their prosperity, and whenever this old mood came back upon him, +Margaret could have cried for pleasure.</p> + +<p>The natural correlative of such devotion was a drying up of +interest in all the world beside. Margaret had the selfishness of +the angelic woman—everything was judged as it affected her idol. +So at first she took no individual interest in David—he cheered up +'Lias—she had no other thought about him.</p> + +<p>On a certain November day David was sitting opposite to 'Lias. The +fire burnt between them, and on the fire was a griddle, whereon +Margaret had just deposited some oatcakes for tea. The old man was +sitting drooped in his chair, his chin on his breast, his black +eyes staring beyond David at the wall. David was seized with +curiosity—what was he thinking about?—what did he see? There was +a mystery, a weirdness about the figure, about that hungry gaze, +which tormented him. His temptation returned upon him irresistibly.</p> + +<p>'Lias,' he said, bending forward, his dark cheek flushing with +excitement, 'Louie and I went up, Easter Eve, to t' Pool, but we +went to sleep an saw nowt. What was't yo saw, 'Lias? Did yo see her +for sure?'</p> + +<p>The old man raised his head frowning, and looked at the boy. But +the frown was merely nervous, he had heard nothing. On the other +hand, Margaret, whom David had supposed to be in the back kitchen, +but who was in reality a few steps behind him, mending something +which had gone wrong in her loom, ran forward suddenly to the fire, +and bending over her griddle somehow promptly threw down the tongs, +making a clatter and commotion, in the midst of which the cakes +caught, and old 'Lias moved from the fender, saying fretfully,</p> + +<p>'Yo're that orkard wi things, Margret, yo're like a dog dancin.'</p> + +<p>But in the bustle Margaret had managed to say to David, 'Howd your +tongue, noddle-yed, will yo?'</p> + +<p>And so unexpected was the lightning from her usually mild blue eyes +that David sat dumbfounded, and presently sulkily got up to go. +Margaret followed him out and down the bit of garden.</p> + +<p>And at the gate, when they were well out of hearing of 'Lias, she +fell on the boy with a torrent of words, gripping him the while +with her long thin hand, so that only violence could have released +him. Her eyes flamed at him under the brown woollen shawl she wore +pinned under her chin; the little emaciated creature became a fury. +What did he come there for, 'moiderin 'Lias wi his divilments'? If +he ever said a word of such things again, she'd lock the door on +him, and he might go to Jenny Crum for his tea. Not a bite or a sup +should he ever have in her house again.</p> + +<p>'I meant no harm,' said the boy doggedly. 'It wor he towd me about +t' witch—it wor he as put it into our yeds—Louie an me.'</p> + +<p>Margaret exclaimed. So it was he that got 'Lias talking about the +Pool in the spring! Some one had been 'cankin wi him about things +they didn't owt'—that she knew—'and she might ha thowt it wor' +Davy. For that one day's 'worritin ov him' she had had him on her +hands for weeks—off his sleep, and off his feed, and like a +blighted thing. 'Aye, it's aw play to yo,' she said, trembling all +through in her passion, as she held the boy—'it's aw play to yo +and your minx of a sister. An if it means deein to the old man +hissel, <i>yo</i> don't care! "Margaret," says the doctor to me +last week, "if you can keep his mind quiet he may hang on a bit. +But you munna let him excite hissel about owt—he mun tak things +varra easy. He's like a wilted leaf—nobbut t'least thing will +bring it down. He's worn varra thin like, heart an lungs, and aw t' +rest of him." An d' yo think I'st sit still an see yo <i>murder</i> +him—the poor lamb—afore my eyes—me as ha got nowt else but him +i' t' wide warld? No—yo yoong varlet—goo an ast soom one else +about Jenny Crum if yo 're just set on meddlin wi divil's wark—but +yo'll no trouble my 'Lias.'</p> + +<p>She took her hands off him, and the boy was going away in a +half-sullen silence, when she caught him again.</p> + +<p>'Who towd yo about 'Lias an t' Pool, nobbut 'Lias hissel?'</p> + +<p>'Uncle Reuben towd me summat.'</p> + +<p>'Aye, Reuben Grieve—he put him in t' carrier's cart, an behaved +moor like a Christian nor his wife—I allus mind that o' Reuben +Grieve, when foak coe him a foo. Wal, I'st tell yo, Davy, an if +iver yo want to say a word about Jenny Crum in our house +afterwards, yo mun ha a gritstone whar your heart owt to be—that's +aw.'</p> + +<p>And she leant over the wall of the little garden, twisting her +apron in her old, tremulous hands, and choking down the tears which +had begun to rise. Then, looking straight before her, and in a low, +plaintive voice, which seemed to float on hidden depths of grief, +she told her story.</p> + +<p>It appeared that 'Lias had been 'queer' a good while before the +adventure of the Pool. But, according to his wife, 'he wor that +cliver on his good days, foak could mak shift wi him on his bad +days;' the school still prospered, and money was still plentiful. +Then, all of a sudden, the moorland villages round were overtaken +by an epidemic of spirit-rapping and table-turning. 'It wor sperrits +here, sperrits there, sperrits everywhere—t' warld wor gradely +swarmin wi 'em,' said Margaret bitterly. It was all started, +apparently, by a worthless 'felly' from Castleton, who had a great +reputation as a medium, and would come over on summer evenings to +conduct seances at Frimley and the places near. 'Lias, already in an +excitable, overworked state, was bitten by the new mania, and could +think of nothing else.</p> + +<p>One night he and the Castleton medium fell talking about Jenny +Crum, the witch of Kinder Scout, and her Easter Eve performances. +The medium bet 'Lias a handsome sum that he would not dare face +her. 'Lias, piqued and wrathful, and 'wi moor yell on board nor he +could reetly stan,' took the bet. Margaret heard nothing of it. He +announced on Easter Eve that he was going to a brother in Edale for +the Sunday, and gave her the slip. She saw no more of him till the +carrier brought home to her, on the Sunday morning, a starved and +pallid object—'gone clean silly, an hutched thegither like an owd +man o' seventy—he bein fifty-six by his reet years.' With woe and +terror she helped him to his bed, and in that bed he stayed for +more than a year, while everything went from them—school and +savings, and all the joys of life.</p> + +<p>'An yo'll be wantin to know, like t' rest o' 'em, what he saw!' +cried Margaret angrily, facing round upon the boy, whose face was, +indeed, one question.' "Margaret, did he tell tha what t' witch +said to un?"—every blatherin idiot i' th' parish asked me that, wi +his mouth open, till I cud ha stopped my ears an run wheniver I +seed a livin creetur. What do I keer?—what doos it matter to me +what he saw? I doan't bleeve he saw owt, if yo ast <i>me</i>. He +wor skeert wi his own thinkins, an th' cowd gripped him i' th' +in'ards, an twisted him as yo may twist a withe of hay—Aye! it wor +a <i>cruel</i> neet. When I opened t' door i' t' early mornin, t' +garden wor aw black—th' ice on t' reservoir wor inches thick. Mony +a year afterwards t' foak round here ud talk o' that for an April +frost. An my poor 'Lias—lost on that fearfu Scout—sleepin out +wi'out a rag to cover him, an skeert soomhow—t'Lord or t'Devil +knows how! And then foak ud have me mak a good tale out o' +it—soomthin to gie 'em a ticklin down their backbane—soomthin to +pass an evenin—<i>Lord!'</i></p> + +<p>The wife's voice paused abruptly on this word of imprecation, or +appeal, as though her own passion choked her. David stood beside +her awkwardly, his eyes fixed on the gravel, wherewith one foot was +playing. There was no more sullenness in his expression.</p> + +<p>Margaret's hand still played restlessly with the handkerchief. Her +eyes were far away, her mind absorbed by the story of her own fate. +Round the moorside, on which the cottage was built, there bent a +circling edge of wood, now aflame with all the colour of late +autumn. Against its deep reds and browns, Margaret's small profile +was thrown out—the profile already of the old woman, with the +meeting nose and chin, the hollow cheek, the maze of wrinkles round +the eyes. Into that face, worn by the labour and the grief of the +poor—into that bending figure, with the peasant shawl folded round +the head and shoulders—there had passed all the tragic dignity +which belongs to the simple and heartfelt things of human life, to +the pain of helpless affection, to the yearning of irremediable +loss.</p> + +<p>The boy beside her was too young to feel this. But he felt more, +perhaps, than any other lad of the moorside could have felt. There +was, at all times, a natural responsiveness in him of a strange +kind, vibrating rather to pain than joy. He stood by her, +embarrassed, yet drawn to her—waiting, too, as it seemed to him, +for something more that must be coming.</p> + +<p>'An then,' said Margaret at last, turning to him, and speaking more +quietly, but still in a kind of tense way, 'then, when 'Lias wor +took bad, yo know, Davy, I had my boys. Did yo ever hear tell o' +what came to 'em, Davy?'</p> + +<p>The boy shook his head.</p> + +<p>'Ah!' she said, catching her breath painfully, 'they're moast +forgotten, is my boys. 'Lias had been seven weeks i' his bed, an I +wor noan so mich cast down—i' those days I had a sperrit more 'n +most. I thowt th' boys ud keer for us—we'd gien em a good bringin +up, an they wor boath on 'em larnin trades i' Manchester. Yan +evenin—it wor that hot we had aw t' doors an windows open—theer +came a man runnin up fro t' railway. An my boys were kilt, +Davy—boath on 'em—i' Duley Moor Tunnel. They wor coomin to spend +Sunday wi us, an it wor an excursion train—I niver knew t' reets +on 't!'</p> + +<p>She paused and gently wiped away her tears. Her passion had all +ebbed.</p> + +<p>'An I thowt if I cud ha got 'em home an buried 'em, Davy, I could +ha borne it better. But they wor aw crushed, an cut about, an +riddlet to bits—they wudna let me ha em. And so we kep it fro +'Lias. Soomtimes I think he knows t' boys are dead—an then +soomtimes he frets 'at they doan't coom an see him. Fourteen year +ago! An I goo on tellin him they'll coom soon. An last week, when I +towd him it, I thowt to mysel it wor just th' naked truth!'</p> + +<p>David leant over the gate, pulling at some withered hollyhocks +beside it. But when, after a minute of choking silence, Margaret +caught his look, she saw, though he tried to hide it, that his +black eyes were swimming. Her full heart melted altogether.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Davy, I meant naw offence!' she said, catching him by the arm +again. 'Yo're a good lad, an yo're allus a welcome seet to that poor +creetur. But yo'll not say owt to trouble him again, laddie—will +yo? If he'd yeerd yo just now—but, by t' Lord's blessin, he did +na—he'd ha worked himsel up fearfu'! I'd ha had naw sleep wi him +for neets—like it wor i' th' spring. Yo munna—yo munna! He's all +I ha—his livin 's my livin, Davy—an when he's took away—why, +I'll mak shift soomhow to dee too!'</p> + +<p>She let him go, and, with a long sigh, she lifted her trembling +hands to her head, put her frilled cap straight and her shawl. She +was just moving away, when something of a different sort struck her +sensitive soul, and she turned again. She lived for 'Lias, but she +lived for her religion too, and it seemed to her she had been +sinning in her piteous talk.</p> + +<p>'Dinna think, Davy,' she said hurriedly, 'as I'm complainin o' th' +Lord's judgments. They're aw mercies, if we did but know. An He +tempers th' wind—He sends us help when we're droppin for sorrow. +It worn't for nothin He made us all o' a piece. Theer's good foak +i' th' warld—aye, theer is! An what's moor, theer's soom o' th' +best mak o' foak gooin about dressed i' th' worst mak o' clothes. +Yo'll find it out when yo want 'em.'</p> + +<p>And with a clearing face, as of one who takes up a burden again and +adjusts it anew more easily, she walked back to the house.</p> + +<p>David went down the lane homewards, whistling hard. But once, as he +climbed a stile and sat dangling his legs a moment on the top, he +felt his eyes wet again. He dashed his hand impatiently across +them. At this stage of youth he was constantly falling out with and +resenting his own faculty of pity, of emotion. The attitude of mind +had in it a sort of secret half-conscious terror of what feeling +might do with him did he but give it head. He did not want to +feel—feeling only hurt and stabbed—he wanted to enjoy, to take +in, to discover—to fling the wild energies of mind and body into +some action worthy of them. And because he had no knowledge to show +him how, and a wavering will, he suffered and deteriorated.</p> + +<p>The Dawsons, indeed, became his close friends. In Margaret there +had sprung up a motherly affection for the handsome lonely lad; and +he was grateful. He took her 'cuts' down to the Clough End office +for her; when the snow was deep on the Scout, and Reuben and David +and the dogs were out after their sheep night and day, the boy +still found time to shovel the snow from Margaret's roof and cut a +passage for her to the road. The hours he spent this winter by her +kitchen fire, chatting with 'Lias, or eating havercakes, or helping +Margaret with some household work, supplied him for the first time +with something of what his youth was, in truth, thirsting for—the +common kindliness of natural affection.</p> + +<p>But certainly, to most observers, he seemed to deteriorate. Mr. +Ancrum could make nothing of him. David held the minister at +arm's-length, and meanwhile rumours reached him that 'Reuben +Grieve's nevvy' was beginning to be much seen in the public-houses; +he had ceased entirely to go to chapel or Sunday school; and the +local gossips, starting perhaps from a natural prejudice against +the sons of unknown and probably disreputable mothers, prophesied +freely that the tall, queer-looking lad would go to the bad.</p> + +<p>All this troubled Mr. Ancrum sincerely. Even in the midst of some +rising troubles of his own he found the energy to buttonhole Reuben +again, and torment him afresh on the subject of a trade for the +lad.</p> + +<p>Reuben, flushed and tremulous, went straight from the minister to +his wife—with the impetus of Mr. Ancrum's shove, as it were, fresh +upon him. Sitting opposite to her in the back kitchen, while she +peeled her potatoes with a fierce competence and energy which made +his heart sick within him, Reuben told her, with incoherent +repetitions of every phrase, that in his opinion the time had come +when Mr. Gurney should be written to, and some of Sandy's savings +applied to the starting of Sandy's son in the world.</p> + +<p>There was an ominous silence. Hannah's knife flashed, and the +potato-peelings fell with a rapidity which fairly paralysed Reuben. +In his nervousness, he let fall the name of Mr. Ancrum. Then Hannah +broke out. '<i>Some</i> foo',' she knew, had been meddling, and she +might have guessed that fool was Mr. Ancrum. Instead of defending +her own position, she fell upon Reuben and his supporter with a +rhetoric whereof the moral flavour was positively astounding. +Standing with the potato-bowl on one hip and a hand holding the +knife on the other, she delivered her views as to David's laziness, +temper, and general good-for-nothingness. If Reuben chose to incur +the risks of throwing such a young lout into town-wickedness, with +no one to look after him, let him; she'd be glad enough to be shut +on him. But, as to writing to Mr. Gurney and that sort of talk, she +wasn't going to bandy words—not she; but nobody had ever meddled +with Hannah Grieve's affairs yet and found they had done well for +themselves.</p> + +<p>'An I wouldna advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to begin now—no, I +wouldna. I gie yo fair noatice. Soa theer's not enough for t' lad +to do, Mr. Ancrum, he thinks? Perhaps he'll tak th' place an try? +I'd not gie him as mich wage as ud fill his stomach i' th' +week—noa, I'd not, not if yo wor to ask <i>me</i>—a bletherin +windy chap as iver I saw. I'd as soon hear a bird-clapper preach as +him—theer'd be more sense an less noise! An they're findin it out +down theer—we'st see th' back on him soon.'</p> + +<p>And to Reuben, looking across the little scullery at his wife, at +the harsh face shaken with the rage which these new and intolerable +attempts of her husband to dislodge the yoke of years excited in +her, it was as though like Christian and Hopeful he were trying to +get back into the Way, and found that the floods had risen over it.</p> + +<p>When he was out of her sight, he fell into a boundless perplexity. +Perhaps she was right, after all. Mr. Ancrum was a meddler and he +an ass. When next he saw David, he spoke to the boy harshly, and +demanded to know where he went loafing every afternoon. Then, as +the days went on, he discovered that Hannah meant to visit his +insubordination upon him in various unpleasant ways. There were +certain little creature comforts, making but small show on the +surface of a life of general abstinence and frugality, but which, +in the course of years, had grown very important to Reuben, and +which Hannah had never denied him. They were now withdrawn. In her +present state of temper with her better half, Hannah could not be +'fashed' with providing them. And no one could force her to brew him +his toddy at night, or put his slippers to warm, or keep his meals +hot and tasty for him, if some emergency among the animals made him +late for his usual hours—certainly not the weak and stammering +Reuben. He was at her mercy, and he chafed indescribably under her +unaccustomed neglect.</p> + +<p>As for Mr. Ancrum, his own affairs, poor soul, soon became so +absorbing that he had no thoughts left for David. There were +dissensions growing between him and the 'Christian Brethren.' He +spoke often at the Sunday meetings—too often, by a great deal, for +the other shining lights of the congregation. But his much speaking +seemed to come rather of restlessness than of a fall 'experience,' +so torn, subtle, and difficult were the things he said. Grave +doubts of his doctrine were rising among some of the 'Brethren'; a +mean intrigue against him was just starting among others, and he +himself was tempest-tossed, not knowing from week to week whether +to go or stay.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, as the winter went on, he soon perceived that Reuben +Grieve's formidable wife was added to the ranks of his enemies. She +came to chapel, because for a Christian Brother or Sister to go +anywhere else would have been a confession of weakness in the face +of other critical and observant communities—such, for instance, as +the Calvinistic Methodists, or the Particular Baptists—not to be +thought of for a moment. But when he passed her, he got no greeting +from her; she drew her skirts aside, and her stony eye looked +beyond him, as though there were nothing on the road. And the +sharp-tongued things she said of him came round to him one by one. +Reuben, too, avoided the minister, who, a year or two before, had +brought fountains of refreshing to his soul, and in the business of +the chapel, of which he was still an elder, showed himself more +inarticulate and confused than ever. While David, who had won a +corner in Mr. Ancrum's heart since the days of their first +acquaintance at Sunday-school—David fled him altogether, and would +have none of his counsel or his friendship. The alienation of the +Grieves made another and a bitter drop in the minister's rising cup +of failure.</p> + +<p>So the little web of motives and cross-motives, for the most part +of the commonest earthiest hue, yet shot every here and there by a +thread or two of heavenlier stuff, went spinning itself the winter +through round the unknowing children. The reports which had reached +Mr. Ancrum were true enough. David was, in his measure, +endeavouring to 'see life.' On a good many winter evenings the lad, +now nearly fifteen, and shooting up fast to man's stature, might +have been seen among the topers at the 'Crooked Cow,' nay, even +lending an excited ear to the Secularist speakers, who did their +best to keep things lively at a certain low public kept by one +Jerry Timmins, a Radical wag, who had often measured himself both +in the meeting-houses and in the streets against the local +preachers, and, according to his own following, with no small +success. There was a covered skittle-ground attached to this house +in which, to the horrid scandal of church and chapel, Sunday dances +were sometimes held. A certain fastidious pride, and no doubt a +certain conscience towards Reuben, kept David from experimenting in +these performances, which were made as demonstratively offensive to +the pious as they well could be without attracting the attention of +the police.</p> + +<p>But at the disputations between Timmins and a succession of +religious enthusiasts, ministers and others, which took place on +the same spot during the winter and spring, David was frequently +present.</p> + +<p>Neither here, however, nor at the 'Crooked Cow' did the company +feel the moody growing youth to be one of themselves. He would sit +with his pint before him, silent, his great black eyes roving round +the persons present. His tongue was sharp on occasion, and his +fists ready, so that after various attempts to make a butt of him +he was generally let alone. He got what he wanted—he learnt to +know what smoking and drinking might be like, and the jokes of the +taproom. And all by the help of a few shillings dealt out to him +this winter for the first time by Reuben, who gave them to him with +a queer deprecating look and an injunction to keep the matter +secret from Hannah. As to the use the lad made of them, Reuben was +as ignorant as he was of all other practical affairs outside his +own few acres.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-1" id="CHAPTER_VII-1"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<p>Spring came round again and the warm days of June. At Easter time +David had made no further attempts to meet with Jenny Crum on her +midnight wanderings. The whole tendency of his winter's mental +growth, as well perhaps of the matters brutally raised and crudely +sifted in Jerry Timmins's parlour, had been towards a harder and +more sceptical habit of mind. For the moment the supernatural had +no thrill in it for an intelligence full of contradictions. So the +poor witch, if indeed she 'walked,' revisited her place of pain +unobserved of mortal eye.</p> + +<p>About the middle of June David and his uncle went, as usual, to +Kettlewell and Masholme, in Yorkshire, for the purpose of bringing +home from thence some of that hardier breed of sheep which was +required for the moorland, a Scotch breed brought down yearly to +the Yorkshire markets by the Lowland farmers beyond the border. +This expedition was an annual matter, and most of the farmers in +the Kinder Valley and thereabouts joined in it. They went together +by train to Masholme, made their purchases, and then drove their +sheep over the moors home, filling the wide ferny stretches and the +rough upland road with a patriarchal wealth of flocks, and putting +up at night at the village inns, while their charges strayed at +will over the hills. These yearly journeys had always been in +former years a joy to David. The wild freedom of the walk, the +change of scene which every mile and every village brought with it, +the resistance of the moorland wind, the spring of the moorland +turf, every little incident of the road, whether of hardship or of +rough excess, added fuel to the flame of youth, and went to build +up the growing creature.</p> + +<p>This year, however, that troubling of the waters which was going on +in the boy was especially active during the Masholme expedition. He +kept to himself and his animals, and showed such a gruff +unneighbourly aspect to the rest of the world that the other +drivers first teased and then persecuted him. He fought one or two +pitched battles on the way home, showed himself a more respectable +antagonist, on the whole, than his assailants had bargained for, +and was thenceforward contemptuously sent to Coventry. 'Yoong man,' +said an old farmer to him once reprovingly, after one of these +"rumpuses," '<i>yor</i> temper woan't mouldy wi keepin.' Reuben +coming by at the moment threw an unhappy glance at the lad, whose +bruised face and torn clothes showed he had been fighting. To the +uncle's mind there was a wanton, nay, a ruffianly look about him, +which was wholly new. Instead of rebuking the culprit, Reuben +slouched away and put as much road as possible between himself and +Davy.</p> + +<p>One evening, after a long day on the moors, the party came, late in +the afternoon, to the Yorkshire village of Haworth. To David it was +a village like any other. He was already mortally tired of the +whole business—of the endless hills, the company, the bleak grey +weather. While the rest of the party were mopping brows and +draining ale-pots in the farmers' public, he was employing himself +in aimlessly kicking a stone about one of the streets, when he was +accosted by a woman of the shopkeeping class, a decent elderly +woman, who had come out for a mouthful of air, with a child +dragging after her.</p> + +<p>'Yoong mester, yo've coom fro a distance, hannot yo?'</p> + +<p>The woman's tone struck the boy pleasantly as though it had been a +phrase of cheerful music. There was a motherliness in it—a +something, for which, perhaps all unknown to himself, his secret +heart was thirsting.</p> + +<p>'Fro Masholme,' he said, looking at her full, so that she could see +all the dark, richly coloured face she had had a curiosity to see; +then he added abruptly, 'We're bound Kinder way wi t' sheep—reet +t'other side o' t' Scout.'</p> + +<p>The woman nodded. 'Aye, I know a good mony o' your Kinder foak. +They've coom by here a mony year passt. But I doan't know as I've +seen yo afoor. Yo're nobbut a yoong 'un. Eh, but we get sich a +sight of strangers here now, the yan fairly drives the tother out +of a body's mind.'</p> + +<p>'Doos foak coom for t' summer?' asked David, lifting his eyebrows a +little, and looking round on the bleak and straggling village.</p> + +<p>'Noa, they coom to see the church. Lor' bless ye!' said the good +woman, following his eyes towards the edifice and breaking into a +laugh, ''taint becos the church is onything much to look at. 'Taint +nowt out o' t' common that I knows on. Noa—but they coom along +o't' monument, an' Miss Bronte—Mrs. Nicholls, as should be, poor +thing—rayder.'</p> + +<p>There was no light of understanding in David's face, but his +penetrating eyes, the size and beauty of which she could not help +observing, seemed to invite her to go on.</p> + +<p>'You niver heerd on our Miss Bronte?' said the woman, mildly. +'Well, I spose not. She was just a bit quiet body. Nobbody +hereabouts saw mich in her. But she wrote bukes—tales, yo +know—tales about t' foak roun here; an they do say, them as has +read 'em, 'at they're terr'ble good. Mr. Watson, at t' Post Office, +he's read 'em, and he's allus promised to lend 'em me. But soomhow +I doan't get th' time. An in gineral I've naw moor use for a book +nor a coo has for clogs. But she's terr'ble famous, is Miss Bronte, +now—an her sisters too, pore young women. Yo should see t' +visitors' book in th' church. Aw t' grand foak as iver wor. They +cooms fro Lunnon a purpose, soom ov 'em, an they just takes a look +roun t' place, an writes their names, an goos away. Would yo like +to see th' church?' said the good-natured creature—looking at the +tall lad beside her with an admiring scrutiny such as every woman +knows she may apply to any male. 'I'm goin that way, an it's my +brother 'at has th' keys.'</p> + +<p>David accompanied her with an alacrity which would have astonished +his usual travelling companions, and they mounted the straggling +village street together towards the church. As they neared it the +woman stopped and, shading her eyes against the sunlight, pointed +up to it and the parsonage.</p> + +<p>'Noa, it's not a beauty, isn't our church. They do say our parson +ud like to have it pulled clean down an a new one built. Onyways, +they're goin to clear th' Brontes' pew away, an sich a rumpus as +soom o' t' Bradford papers have bin makin, and a gradely few o' t' +people here too! I doan't know t' reets on 't missel, but I'st be +sorry when yo conno see ony moor where Miss Charlotte an Miss Emily +used to sit o' Sundays—An theer's th' owd house. Yo used to be +'lowed to see Miss Charlotte's room, where she did her writin, but +they tell me yo can't be let in now. Seems strange, doan't it, 'at +onybody should be real fond o' that place? When yo go by it i' +winter, soomtimes, it lukes that lonesome, with t' churchyard +coomin up close roun it, it's enoof to gie a body th' shivers. But +I do bleeve, Miss Charlotte she could ha kissed ivery stone in 't; +an they do say, when she came back fro furrin parts, she'd sit an +cry for joy, she wor that partial to Haworth. It's a place yo do +get to favour soomhow,' said the good woman, apologetically, as +though feeling that no stranger could justly be expected to +sympathise with the excesses of local patriotism.</p> + +<p>Did th' oother sisters write books?' demanded David, his eyes +wandering over the bare stone house towards which the passionate +heart of Charlotte Bronte had yearned so often from the land of +exile.</p> + +<p>'Bless yo, yes. An theer's mony foak 'at think Miss Emily wor a +deol cliverer even nor Miss Charlotte. Not but what yo get a bad +noshun o' Yorkshire folk fro Miss Emily's bukes—soa I'm towd. Bit +there's rough doins on t' moors soomtimes, I'll uphowd yo! An Miss +Emily had eyes like gimlets—they seed reet through a body. Deary +me,' she cried, the fountain of gossip opening more and more, 'to +think I should ha known 'em in pinafores, Mr. Patrick an aw!'</p> + +<p>And under the stress of what was really a wonder at the small +beginnings of fame—a wonder which much repetition of her story had +only developed in her—she poured out upon her companion the +history of the Brontes; of that awful winter in which three of that +weird band—Emily, Patrick, Anne—fell away from Charlotte's side, +met the death which belonged to each, and left Charlotte alone to +reap the harvest of their common life through a few burning years; +of the publication of the books; how the men of the Mechanics' +Institute (the roof of which she pointed out to him) went crazy +over 'Shirley'; how everybody about 'thowt Miss Bronte had bin +puttin ov 'em into prent,' and didn't know whether to be pleased or +pique; how, as the noise made by 'Jane Eyre' and 'Shirley' grew, a +wave of excitement passed through the whole countryside, and people +came from Halifax, and Bradford, and Huddersfield—aye, an Lunnon +soomtoimes '—to Haworth church on a Sunday, to see the quiet body +at her prayers who had made all the stir; how Mr. Nicholls, the +curate, bided his time and pressed his wooing; how he won her as +Rachel was won; and how love did but open the gate of death, and +the fiery little creature—exhausted by such an energy of living as +had possessed her from her cradle—sank and died on the threshold +of her new life. All this Charlotte Bronte's townswoman told simply +and garrulously, but she told it well because she had felt and +seen.</p> + +<p>'She wor so sma' and nesh; nowt but a midge. Theer was no lasst in +her. Aye, when I heerd the bell tolling for Miss Charlotte that +Saturday mornin,' said the speaker, shaking her head as she moved +away towards the church, 'I cud ha sat down an cried my eyes out. +But if she'd ha seen me she'd ha nobbut said, "Martha, get your +house straight, an doan't fret for me!" She had sich a sperrit, had +Miss Charlotte. Well, now, after aw, I needn't go for t' keys, for +th' church door's open. It's Bradford early closin day, yo see, an +I dessay soom Bradford foak's goin over.'</p> + +<p>So she marched him in, and there indeed was a crowd in the little +ugly church, congregated especially at the east end, where the +Brontes' pew still stood awaiting demolition at the hands of a +reforming vicar. As David and his guide came up they found a young +weaver in a black coat, with a sallow oblong face, black hair, high +collars, and a general look of Lord Byron, haranguing those about +him on the iniquity of removing the pews, in a passionate +undertone, which occasionally rose high above the key prescribed by +decorum. It was a half-baked eloquence, sadly liable to bathos, +divided, indeed, between sentences ringing with the great words +'genius' and 'fame,' and others devoted to an indignant +contemplation of the hassocks in the old pews, 'the touching and +well-worn implements of prayer,' to quote his handsome description +of them, which a meddlesome parson was about to 'hurl away,' out of +mere hatred for intellect and contempt of the popular voice.</p> + +<p>But, half-baked or no, David rose to it greedily. After a few +moments' listening, he pressed up closer to the speaker, his broad +shoulders already making themselves felt in a crowd, his eyes +beginning to glow with the dissenter's hatred of parsons. In the +full tide of discourse, however, the orator was arrested by an +indignant sexton, who, coming quickly up the church, laid hold upon +him.</p> + +<p>'No speechmakin in the church, if you <i>please</i>, sir. Move on +if yo're goin to th' vestry, sir, for I'll have to shut up +directly.'</p> + +<p>The young man stared haughtily at his assailant, and the men and +boys near closed up, expecting a row. But the voice of authority +within its own gates is strong, and the champion of outraged genius +collapsed. The whole flock broke up and meekly followed the sexton, +who strode on before them to the vestry.</p> + +<p>'William's a rare way wi un,' said his companion to David, +following her brother's triumph with looks of admiration. 'I thowt +that un wud ha bin harder to shift.'</p> + +<p>David, however, turned upon her with a frown. '<i>'Tis</i> a black +shame,' he said; 'why conno they let t' owd pew bide?'</p> + +<p>'Ah, weel,' said the woman with a sigh, 'as I said afore, I'st be +reet sorry when Miss Charlotte's seat's gone. But yo conno ha +brawlin i' church. William's reet enough there.'</p> + +<p>And beginning to be alarmed lest she should be raising up fresh +trouble for William in the person of this strange, foreign-looking +lad, with his eyes like 'live birds,' she hurried him on to the +vestry, where the visitors' books were being displayed. Here the +Byronic young man was attempting to pick a fresh quarrel with the +sexton, by way of recovering himself with his party. But he took +little by it; the sexton was a tough customer. When the local +press was shaken in his face, the vicar's hireling, a canny, +weather-beaten Yorkshireman, merely replied with a twist of the +mouth,</p> + +<p>'Aye, aye, th' newspapers talk—there'd be soombody goin hoongry if +they didn't;' or—' Them 'at has to eat th' egg knaws best whether +it is addled or no—to my thinkin,' and so on through a string of +similar aphorisms which finally demolished his antagonist.</p> + +<p>David meanwhile was burning to be in the fray. He thought of some +fine Miltonic sayings to hurl at the sexton, but for the life of +him he could not get them out. In the presence of that indifferent, +sharp-faced crowd of townspeople his throat grew hot and dry +whenever he thought of speaking.</p> + +<p>While the Bradford party struggled out of the church, David, having +somehow got parted from the woman who had brought him in, lingered +behind, before that plain tablet on the wall, whereat the crowd +which had just gone out had been worshipping.</p> + +<p>EMILY, aged 29.</p> + +<p>ANNE, aged 27.</p> + +<p>CHARLOTTE, in the 39th year of her age.</p> + +<p>The church had grown suddenly quite still. The sexton was outside, +engaged in turning back a group of Americans, on the plea that +visiting hours were over for the day. Through the wide-open door +the fading yellow light streamed in, and with it a cool wind which +chased little eddies of dust about the pavement. In the dusk the +three names—black on the white—stood out with a stern and yet +piteous distinctness. The boy stood there feeling the silence—the +tomb near by—the wonder and pathos of fame, and all that thrill of +undefined emotion to which youth yields itself so hungrily.</p> + +<p>The sexton startled him by tapping him on the shoulder. 'Time to go +home, yoong man. My sister she told me to say good neet to yer, and +she wishes yo good luck wi your journey. Where are yo puttin up?'</p> + +<p>'At the "Brown Bess,"' murmured the boy ungraciously, and hurried +out. But the good man, unconscious of repulse and kindly disposed +towards his sister's waif, stuck to him, and, as they walked down +the churchyard together, the difference between the manners of +official and those of private life proved to be so melting to the +temper that even David's began to yield. And a little incident of +the walk mollified him completely. As they turned a corner they +came upon a bit of waste land, and there in the centre of an +admiring company was the sexton's enemy, mounted on a bit of wall, +and dealing out their deserts in fine style to those meddling +parsons and their underlings who despised genius and took no heed +of the relics of the mighty dead. The sexton stopped to listen when +they were nearly out of range, and was fairly carried away by the +'go' of the orator.</p> + +<p>'Doan't he do it nateral!' he said with enthusiasm to David, after +a passage specially and unflatteringly devoted to himself. 'Lor' +bless yo, it don't hurt me. But I do loike a bit o' good speakin, +'at I do. If fine worrds wor penny loaves, that yoong gen'leman ud +get a livin aisy! An as for th' owd pew, I cud go skrikin about th' +streets mysel, if it ud do a ha'porth o' good.'</p> + +<p>David's brow cleared, and, by the time they had gone a hundred +yards further, instead of fighting the good man, he asked a favour +of him.</p> + +<p>'D'yo think as theer's onybody in Haworth as would lend me a seet +o' yan o' Miss Bronte's tales for an hour?' he said, reddening +furiously, as they stopped at the sexton's gate.</p> + +<p>'Why to be sure, mon,' said the sexton cheerily, pleased with the +little opening for intelligent patronage. 'Coom your ways in, and +we'll see if we can't oblige yo. I've got a tidy lot o' books in my +parlour, an I can give yo "Shirley," I know.'</p> + +<p>David went into the stone-built cottage with his guide, and was +shown in the little musty front room a bookcase full of books which +made his eyes gleam with desire. The half-curbed joy and eagerness +he showed so touched the sexton that, after inquiring as to the +lad's belongings, and remembering that in his time he had enjoyed +many a pipe and 'glass o' yell' with 'owd Reuben Grieve' at the +'Brown Bess,' the worthy man actually lent him indefinitely three +precious volumes—'Shirley,' 'Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography,' +and 'Nicholas Nickleby.'</p> + +<p>David ran off hugging them, and thenceforward he bore patiently +enough with the days of driving and tramping which remained, for +the sake of the long evenings when in some lonely corner of moor +and wood he lay full length on the grass revelling in one or other +of his new possessions. He had a voracious way of tearing out the +heart of a book first of all, and then beginning it again with a +different and a tamer curiosity, lingering, tasting, and digesting. +By the time he and Reuben reached home he had rushed through all +three books, and his mind was full of them.</p> + +<p>'Shirley' and 'Nicholas Nickleby' were the first novels of modern +life he had ever laid hands on, and before he had finished them he +felt them in his veins like new wine. The real world had been to +him for months something sickeningly narrow and empty, from which +at times he had escaped with passion into a distant dream-life of +poetry and history. Now the walls of this real world were suddenly +pushed back as it were on all sides, and there was an inrush of +crowd, excitement, and delight. Human beings like those he heard of +or talked with every day—factory hands and mill-owners, parsons, +squires, lads and lasses—the Yorkes, and Robert Moore, Squeers, +Smike, Kate Nickleby and Newman Noggs, came by, looked him in the +eyes, made him take sides, compare himself with them, join in their +fights and hatreds, pity and exult with them. Here was something +more disturbing, personal, and stimulating than that mere +imaginative relief he had been getting out of 'Paradise Lost,' or +the scenes of the 'Jewish Wars'!</p> + +<p>By a natural transition the mental tumult thus roused led to a more +intense self-consciousness than any he had yet known. In measuring +himself with the world of 'Shirley' or of Dickens, he began to +realise the problem of his own life with a singular keenness and +clearness. Then—last of all—the record of Franklin's life,—of +the steady rise of the ill-treated printer's devil to knowledge and +power—filled him with an urging and concentrating ambition, and +set his thoughts, endowed with a new heat and nimbleness, to the +practical unravelling of a practical case.</p> + +<p>They reached home again early on a May day. As he and Reuben, +driving their new sheep, mounted the last edge of the moor which +separated them from home, the Kinder Valley lay before them, +sparkling in a double radiance of morning and of spring. David +lingered a minute or two behind his uncle. What a glory of light +and freshness in the air—what soaring larks—what dipping +swallows! And the scents from the dew-steeped heather—and the +murmur of the blue and glancing stream!</p> + +<p>The boy's heart went out to the valley—and in the same instant he +put it from him. An indescribable energy and exultation took +possession of him. The tide of will for which he had been waiting +all these months had risen; and for the first time he felt swelling +within him the power to break with habit, to cut his way.</p> + +<p>But what first step to take? Whom to consult? Suddenly he +remembered Mr. Ancrum, first with shame, then with hope. Had he +thrown away his friend? Rumour said that things were getting worse +and worse at chapel, and that Mr. Ancrum was going to Manchester at +once.</p> + +<p>He ran down the slopes of heather towards home as though he would +catch and question Mr. Ancrum there and then. And Louie? Patience! +He would settle everything. Meanwhile, he was regretfully persuaded +that if you had asked Miss Bronte what could be done with a +creature like Louie she would have had a notion or two.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-1" id="CHAPTER_VIII-1"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<p>'Reach me that book, Louie,' said David peremptorily; 'it ull be +worse for yo if yo don't.'</p> + +<p>The brother and sister were in the smithy. Louie was squatting on +the ground with her hands behind her, her lips sharply shut as +though nothing should drag a word out of them, and her eyes blazing +defiance at David, who had her by the shoulder, and looked to the +full as fierce as she looked provoking.</p> + +<p>'Find it!' was all she said. He had been absent for a few minutes +after a sheep that had got into difficulties in the Red Brook, and +when he returned, his volume of Rollin's 'Ancient History'—'Lias's +latest loan—which he had imprudently forgotten to take with him, +had disappeared.</p> + +<p>David gave her an angry shake, on which she toppled over among the +fallen stones with an exasperating limpness, and lay there +laughing.</p> + +<p>'Oh, very well,' said David, suddenly recovering himself; 'yo keep +yor secret. I'st keep mine, that's aw.'</p> + +<p>Louie lay quiet a minute or two, laughing artificially at +intervals, while David searched the corners of the smithy, turning +every now and then to give a stealthy look at his sister.</p> + +<p>The bait took. Louie stopped laughing, sat up, put herself +straight, and looked about her.</p> + +<p>'Yo hain't got a secret,' she said coolly; 'I'm not to be took in wi +snuff that way.'</p> + +<p>'Very well,' said David indifferently, 'then I haven't.'</p> + +<p>And sitting down near the pan, he took out one of the little boats +from the hole near, and began to trim its keel here and there with +his knife. The occupation seemed to be absorbing.</p> + +<p>Louie sat for a while, sucking at a lump of sugar she had swept +that morning into the <i>omnium gatherum</i> of her pocket. At last +she took up a little stone and threw it across at David.</p> + +<p>'What's yor silly old secret about, then?'</p> + +<p>'Where's my book, then?' replied David, holding up the boat and +looking with one eye shut along the keel.</p> + +<p>'Iv I gie it yer, an yor secret ain't wo'th it, I'll put soom o' +that watter down yor neckhole,' said Louie, nodding towards the +place.</p> + +<p>'If yo don't happen to find yorsel in th' pan fust,' remarked David +unmoved.</p> + +<p>Louie sucked at her sugar a little longer, with her hands round her +knees. She had thrown off her hat, and the May sun struck full on +her hair, on the glossy brilliance of it, and the natural curls +round the temples which disguised a high and narrow brow. She no +longer wore her hair loose. In passionate emulation of Annie +Wigson, she had it plaited behind, and had begged an end of blue +ribbon of Mrs. Wigson to tie it with, so that the beautiful arch of +the head showed more plainly than before, while the black eyes and +brows seemed to have gained in splendour and effectiveness, from +their simpler and severer setting. One could see, too, the length +of the small neck and of the thin falling shoulders. It was a face +now which made many a stranger in the Clough End streets stop and +look backward after meeting it. Not so much because of its beauty, +for it was still too thin and starved-looking for beauty, as +because of a singular daring and brilliance, a sense of wild and +yet conscious power it left behind it. The child had grown a great +piece in the last year, so that her knees were hardly decently +covered by the last year's cotton frock she wore, and her brown +sticks of arms were far beyond her sleeves. David had looked at her +once or twice lately with a new kind of scrutiny. He decided that +she was a 'rum-looking' creature, not the least like anybody else's +sister, and on the whole his raw impression was that she was plain.</p> + +<p>'How'll I know yo'll not cheat?' she said at last, getting up and +surveying him with her arms akimbo.</p> + +<p>'Can't tell, I'm sure,' was all David vouchsafed. 'Yo mum find out.'</p> + +<p>Louie studied him threateningly.</p> + +<p>'Weel, I'd be even wi yo soomhow,' was her final conclusion; and +disappearing through the ruined doorway, she ran down the slope to +where one of the great mill-stones lay hidden in the heather, and +diving into its central hole, produced the book, keenly watched the +while by David, who took mental note of the hiding-place.</p> + +<p>'Naw then,' she said, walking up to him with her hands behind her +and the book in them, 'tell me yor secret.'</p> + +<p>David first forcibly abstracted the book and made believe to box +her ears, then went back to his seat and his boat.</p> + +<p>'Go on, can't yo!' exclaimed Louie, after a minute, stamping at +him.</p> + +<p>David laid down his boat deliberately.</p> + +<p>'Well, yo won't like it,' he said; 'I know that. But—I'm off to +Manchester, that's aw—as soon as I can goo; as soon as iver I can +hear of onything. An I'm gooin if I don't hear of onything. I'm +gooin onyways; I'm tired o' this. So now yo know.'</p> + +<p>Louie stared at him.</p> + +<p>'Yo ain't!' she said, passionately, as though she were choking.</p> + +<p>David instinctively put up his hands to keep her off. He thought +she would have fallen upon him there and then and beaten him for +his 'secret.'</p> + +<p>But, instead, she flung away out of the smithy, and David was left +alone and in amazement. Then he got up and went to look, stirred +with the sudden fear that she might have run off to the farm with +the news of what he had been saying, which would have precipitated +matters unpleasantly.</p> + +<p>No one was to be seen from outside, either on the moor path or in +the fields beyond, and she could not possibly have got out of sight +so soon. So he searched among the heather and the bilberry +hummocks, till he caught sight of a bit of print cotton in a hollow +just below the quaint stone shooting-hut, built some sixty years +ago on the side of the Scout for the convenience of sportsmen. +David stalked the cotton, and found her lying prone and with her +hat, as usual, firmly held down over her ears. At sight of her +something told him very plainly he had been a brute to tell her his +news so. There was a strong moral shock which for the moment +transformed him.</p> + +<p>He went and lifted her up in spite of her struggles. Her face was +crimson with tears, but she hit out at him wildly to prevent his +seeing them. 'Now, Louie, look here,' he said, holding her hands, 'I +didna mean to tell yo short and sharp like that, but yo do put a +body's back up so, there's no bearin it. Don't take on, Louie. I'll +coom back when I've found soomthin, an take yo away, too, niver +fear. Theer's lots o' things gells can do in Manchester—tailorin, +or machinin, or dress-makin, or soomthin like that. But yo must get +a bit older, an I must find a place for us to live in, so theer's +naw use fratchin, like a spiteful hen. Yo must bide and I must +bide. But I'll coom back for yo, I swear I will, an we'll get shut +on Aunt Hannah, an live in a little place by ourselves, as merry as +larks.'</p> + +<p>He looked at her appealingly. Her head was turned sullenly away +from him, her thin chest still heaved with sobs. But when he +stopped speaking she jerked round upon him.</p> + +<p>'Leave me behint, an I'll murder her!'</p> + +<p>The child's look was demoniacal. 'No, yo won't,' said David, +laughing. 'I' th' fust place, Aunt Hannah could settle a midge like +yo wi yan finger. I' th' second, hangin isn't a coomfortable way o' +deein. Yo wait till I coom for yo, an when we'st ha got reet away, +an can just laugh in her face if she riles us,—<i>that</i>'ll +spite her mich moor nor murderin.'</p> + +<p>The black eyes gleamed uncannily for a moment and the sobbing +ceased. But the gleam passed away, and the child sat staring at the +moorland distance, seeing nothing. There was such an unconscious +animal pain in the attitude, the pain of the creature that feels +itself alone and deserted, that David watched her in a puzzled +silence. Louie was always mysterious, whether in her rages or her +griefs, but he had never seen her sob quite like this before. He +felt a sort of strangeness in her fixed gaze, and with a certain +timidity he put out his arm and laid it round her shoulder. Still +she did not move. Then he slid up closer in the heather, and kissed +her. His heart, which had seemed all frostbound for months, melted, +and that hunger for love—home-love, mother-love—which was, +perhaps, at the very bottom of his moody complex youth, found a +voice.</p> + +<p>'Louie, couldn't yo be nice to me soomtimes—couldn't yo just take +an interest, like, yo know—as if yo cared a bit—couldn't yo? +Other gells do. I'm a brute to yo, I know, often, but yo keep aggin +an teasin, an theer's niver a bit o' peace. Look here, Loo, yo give +up, an I'st give up. Theer's nobbut us two—nawbody else cares a +ha'porth about the yan or the tother—coom along! yo give up, an +I'st give up.'</p> + +<p>He looked at her anxiously. There was a new manliness in his tone, +answering to his growing manliness of stature. Two slow tears +rolled down her cheeks, but she said nothing. She couldn't for the +life of her. She blinked, furiously fighting with her tears, and at +last she put up an impatient hand which left a long brown streak +across her miserable little face.</p> + +<p>'Yo havn't got no trade,' she said. 'Yo'll be clemmed.' David +withdrew his arm, and gulped down his rebuff. 'No, I sha'n't,' he +said. 'Now you just listen here.' And he described how, the day +before, he had been to see Mr. Ancrum, to consult him about leaving +Kinder, and what had come of it.</p> + +<p>He had been just in time. Mr. Ancrum, worn, ill, and harassed to +death, had been cheered a little during his last days at Clough End +by the appearance of David, very red and monosyllabic, on his +doorstep. The lad's return, as he soon perceived, was due simply to +the stress of his own affairs, and not to any knowledge of or +sympathy with the minister's miseries. But, none the less, there +was a certain balm in it for Mr. Ancrum, and they had sat long +discussing matters. Yes, the minister was going—would look out at +Manchester for an opening for David, in the bookselling trade by +preference, and would write at once. But Davy must not leave a +quarrel behind him. He must, if possible, get his uncle's consent, +which Mr. Ancrum thought would be given.</p> + +<p>'I'm willing to lend you a hand, Davy,' he had said, 'for you're on +the way to no trade but loafing as you are now; but square it with +Grieve. You can, if you don't shirk the trouble of it.'</p> + +<p>Whereupon Davy had made a wry face and said nothing. But to Louie +he expressed himself plainly enough.</p> + +<p>'I'll not say owt to oather on 'em,' he said, pointing to the +chimneys of the farm, 'till the day I bid 'em good-bye. Uncle +Reuben, mebbe, ud be for givin me somethin to start wi, an Aunt +Hannah ud be for cloutin tin him over the head for thinkin of it. +No, I'll not be beholden to yan o' them. I've got a shillin or two +for my fare, an I'll keep mysel.'</p> + +<p>'What wages ull yo get?' inquired Louie sharply.</p> + +<p>'Nothin very fat, that's sure,' laughed David. 'If Mr. Ancrum can do +as he says, an find me a place in a book-shop, they'll, mebbe, gie +me six shillin to begin wi.'</p> + +<p>'An what ull yo do wi 'at?'</p> + +<p>'Live on't,' replied David briefly.</p> + +<p>'Yo conno, I tell yo! Yo'll ha food an firin, cloos, an lodgin to +pay out o't. Yo conno do 't—soa theer.'</p> + +<p>Louie looked him up and down defiantly. David was oddly struck with +the practical knowledge her remark showed. How did such a wild imp +know anything about the cost of lodging and firing?</p> + +<p>'I tell yo I'll live on't,' he replied with energy; 'I'll get a room +for half a crown—two shillin, p'r'aps—an I'll live on sixpence a +day, see if I don't.'</p> + +<p>'See if yo do!' retorted Louie, 'clemm on it more like.'</p> + +<p>'That's all yo know about it, miss,' said David, in a tone, +however, of high good humour; and, stretching one of his hands down +a little further into his trousers pocket, he drew out a +paper-covered book, so that just the top of it appeared. 'Yo're +allus naggin about books. Well; I tell yo, I've got an idea out o' +thissen ull be worth shillins a week to me. It's about Benjamin +Franklin. Never yo mind who Benjamin Franklin wor; but he wor a +varra cute soart of a felly; an when he wor yoong, an had nobbut a +few shillins a week, he made shift to save soom o' them shillins, +becos he found he could do without eatin <i>flesh meat</i>, an that +wi bread an meal an green stuff, a mon could do very well, an save +soom brass every week. When I go to Manchester,' continued David +emphatically, 'I shall niver touch meat. I shall buy a bag o' +oatmeal like Grandfeyther Grieve lived on, boil it for mysel, wi a +sup o' milk, perhaps, an soom salt or treacle to gi it a taste. An +I'll buy apples an pears an oranges cheap soomwhere, an store 'em. +Yo mun ha a deal o' fruit when yo doan't ha meat. Fourpence!' cried +Davy, his enthusiasm rising, 'I'll live on <i>thruppence</i> a day, +as sure as yo're sittin theer! Seven thruppences is one an nine; +lodgin, two shillin—three an nine. Two an three left over, for +cloos, firin, an pocket money. Why, I'll be rich before yo can look +roun! An then, o' coorse, they'll not keep me long on six shillings +a week. In the book-trade I'll soon be wuth ten, an moor!'</p> + +<p>And, springing up, he began to dance a sort of cut and shuffle +before her out of sheer spirits. Louie surveyed him with a flushed +and sparkling face. The nimbleness of David's wits had never come +home to her till now.</p> + +<p>'What ull I earn when I coom?' she demanded abruptly.</p> + +<p>David stopped his cut and shuffle, and took critical stock of his +sister for a moment.</p> + +<p>'Now, look here, Louie, yo're goin to stop where yo are, a good bit +yet,' he replied decidedly. 'Yo'll have to wait two year or so—moor +'n one, onyways,' he went on hastily, warned by her start and +fierce expression. 'Yo know, they can ha th' law on yo,' and he +jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the farm. 'Boys is all +reet, but gells can't do nothink till they're sixteen. They mun +stay wi th' foak as browt 'em up, an if they run away afore their +sixteenth birthday—they gets put in prison.'</p> + +<p>David poured out his legal fictions hastily, three parts convinced +of them at any rate, and watched eagerly for their effect on Louie.</p> + +<p>She tossed her head scornfully. 'Doan't b'lieve it. Yo're jest +tellin lees to get shut o' me. Nex summer if yo doan't send for me, +I'll run away, whativer yo may say. So yo know.'</p> + +<p>'Yo're a tormentin thing!' exclaimed David, exasperated, and began +savagely to kick stones down the hill. Then, recovering himself, he +came and sat down beside her again.</p> + +<p>'I doan't want to get shut on yo, Louie. But yo won't understand +nothin.'</p> + +<p>He stopped, and began to bite at a stalk of heather, by way of +helping himself. His mind was full of vague and yet urgent thoughts +as to what became of girls in large towns with no one to look after +them, things he had heard said at the public-house, things he had +read. He had never dreamt of leaving Louie to Aunt Hannah's tender +mercies. Of course he must take her away when he could. She was his +charge, his belonging. But all the same she was a 'limb'; in his +opinion she always would be a 'limb.' How could he be sure of her +getting work, and who on earth was to look after her when he was +away?</p> + +<p>Suddenly Louie broke in on his perplexities.</p> + +<p>'I'll go tailorin,' she cried triumphantly. 'Now I know—it wor t' +Wigsons' cousin Em'ly went to Manchester; an she earned nine +shillin a week—nine shillin I tell yo, an found her own thread. +Yo'll be takin ten shillin, yo say, nex year? an I'll be takin +nine. That's nineteen shillin fur th' two on us. <i>Isn't</i> it +nineteen shillin?' she said peremptorily, seizing his arm with her +long fingers.</p> + +<p>'Well, I dessay it is,' said David, reluctantly. 'An precious tired +yo'll be o' settin stitchin mornin, noon, an neet. Like to see yo +do't.'</p> + +<p>'I'd do it fur nine shillin,' she said doggedly, and sat looking +straight before her, with wide glittering eyes. She understood from +David's talk that, what with meal, apples, and greenstuff, your +'eatin' need cost you nothing. There would be shillings and +shillings to buy things with. The child who never had a copper but +what Uncle Reuben gave her, who passed her whole existence in +greedily coveting the unattainable and in chafing under the rule of +an iron and miserly thrift, felt suddenly intoxicated by this +golden prospect of illimitable 'buying.' And what could possibly +prevent its coming true? Any fool—such as 'Wigson's Em'ly'—could +earn nine shillings a week at tailoring; and to make money at your +stomach's expense seemed suddenly to put you in possession of a +bank on which the largest drawings were possible. It all looked so +ingenious, so feasible, so wholly within the grip of that +indomitable will the child felt tense within her.</p> + +<p>So the two sat gazing out over the moorland. It was the first +summer day, fresh and timid yet, as though the world and the sun +were still ill-acquainted. Down below, over the sparkling brook, an +old thorn was quivering in the warm breeze, its bright thin green +shining against the brown heather. The larches alone had as yet any +richness of leaf, but the sycamore-buds glittered in the sun, and +the hedges in the lower valley made wavy green lines delightful to +the eye. A warm soft air laden with moist scents of earth and plant +bathed the whole mountain-side, and played with Louie's hair. +Nature wooed them with her best, and neither had a thought or a +look for her.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Louie sprang up.</p> + +<p>'Theer's Aunt Hannah shoutin. I mun goo an get t' coos.'</p> + +<p>David ran down the hill with her.</p> + +<p>'What'll yo do if I tell?' she inquired maliciously at the bottom.</p> + +<p>'If yo do I shall cut at yance, an yo'll ha all the longer time to +be by yoursen.'</p> + +<p>A darkness fell over the girl's hard shining gaze. She turned +abruptly, then, when she had gone a few steps, turned and came back +to where David stood whistling and calling for the dogs. She caught +him suddenly from behind round the neck. Naturally he thought she +was up to some mischief, and struggled away from her with an angry +exclamation. But she held him tight and thrust something hard and +sweet against his lips. Involuntarily his mouth opened and admitted +an enticing cake of butter-scotch. She rammed it in with her wiry +little hand so that he almost choked, and then with a shrill laugh +she turned and fled, leaping down the heather between the boulders, +across the brook, over the wall, and out of sight.</p> + +<p>David was left behind, sucking. The sweetness he was conscious of +was not all in the mouth. Never that he could remember had Louie +shown him any such mark of favour.</p> + +<p>Next day David was sent down with the donkey-cart to Clough End to +bring up some weekly stores for the family, Hannah specially +charging him to call at the post-office and inquire for letters. He +started about nine o'clock, and the twelve o'clock dinner passed by +without his reappearance.</p> + +<p>When she had finished her supply of meat and suet-pudding, after a +meal during which no one of the three persons at table had uttered +a word, Louie abruptly pushed her plate back again towards Hannah.</p> + +<p>'David!' was all she said.</p> + +<p>'Mind your manners, miss,' said Hannah, angrily. 'Them as cooms +late gets nowt.' And, getting up, she cleared the table and put the +food away with even greater rapidity than usual. The kitchen was no +sooner quite clear than the donkey-cart was heard outside, and +David appeared, crimsoned with heat, and panting from the long tug +uphill, through which he had just dragged the donkey.</p> + +<p>He carried a letter, which he put down on the table. Then he looked +round the kitchen.</p> + +<p>'Aunt's put t' dinner away,' said Louie, shortly, ''cos yo came +late.'</p> + +<p>David's expression changed. 'Then nex time she wants owt, she can +fetch it fro Clough End hersel,' he said violently, and went out.</p> + +<p>Hannah came forward and laid eager hands on the letter, which was +from London, addressed in a clerk's hand.</p> + +<p>'Louie!' she called imperatively, 'tak un out soom +bread-an-drippin.'</p> + +<p>Louie put some on a plate, and went out with it to the cowhouse, +where David sat on a stool, occupying himself in cutting the pages +of a number of the <i>Vegetarian News,</i> lent him in Clough End, +with trembling hands, while a fierce red spot burnt in either +cheek.</p> + +<p>'Tak it away!' he said, almost knocking the plate out of Louie's +hands; 'it chokes me to eat a crumb o' hers.'</p> + +<p>As Louie was bearing the plate back through the yard, Uncle Reuben +came by.' What's—what's 'at?' he said, peering shortsightedly at +what she held. Every month of late Reuben's back had seemed to grow +rounder, his sight less, and his wits of less practical use.</p> + +<p>'Summat for David,' said Louie, shortly, ''cos Aunt Hannah woan't +gie him no dinner. But he woan't ha it.'</p> + +<p>Reuben's sudden look of trouble was unmistakable. 'Whar is he?'</p> + +<p>'I' th' coo-house.'</p> + +<p>Reuben went his way, and found the dinnerless boy deep, or +apparently deep, in recipes for vegetable soups.</p> + +<p>'What made yo late, Davy?' he asked him, as he stood over him.</p> + +<p>David had more than half a mind not to answer, but at last he +jerked out fiercely, 'Waitin for th' second post, fust; then t' +donkey fell down half a mile out o' t' town, an th' things were +spilt. There was nobody about, an' I had a job to get 'un up at a'.'</p> + +<p>Reuben nervously thrust his hands far into his coat-pockets.</p> + +<p>'Coom wi me, Davy, an I'st mak yor aunt gie yer yor dinner.'</p> + +<p>'I wouldn't eat a morsel if she went down on her bended knees to +me,' the lad broke out, and, springing up, he strode sombrely +through the yard and into the fields.</p> + +<p>Reuben went slowly back into the house. Hannah was in the +parlour—so he saw through the half-opened door. He went into the +room, which smelt musty and close from disuse. Hannah was standing +over the open drawer of an old-fashioned corner cupboard, carefully +scanning a letter and enclosure before she locked them up.</p> + +<p>'Is 't Mr. Gurney's money?' Reuben said to her, in a queer voice.</p> + +<p>She was startled, not having heard him come in, but she put what +she held into the drawer all the more deliberately, and turned the +key.</p> + +<p>'Ay, 't is.'</p> + +<p>Reuben sat himself down on one of the hard chairs beside the table +in the middle of the room. The light streaming through the shutters +Hannah had just opened streamed in on his grizzling head and face +working with emotion.</p> + +<p>'It's stolen money,' he said hoarsely. 'Yo're stealin it fro Davy.'</p> + +<p>Hannah smiled grimly, and withdrew the key.</p> + +<p>'I'm paying missel an yo, Reuben Grieve, for t' keep o' two +wuthless brats as cost moor nor they pays,' she said, with an +accent which somehow sent a shiver through Reuben. '<i>I</i> don't +keep udder foaks' childer fur nothin.'</p> + +<p>'Yo've had moor nor they cost for seven year,' said Reuben, with +the same thick tense utterance. 'Yo should let Davy ha it, an gie +him a trade.'</p> + +<p>Hannah walked up to the door and shut it.</p> + +<p>'I should, should I? An who'll pay for Louie—for your luvely limb +of a niece? It 'ud tak about that,' and she pointed grimly to the +drawer, 'to coover what she wastes an spiles i' t' yeer.'</p> + +<p>'Yo get her work, Hannah. Her bit and sup cost yo most nothin. I +cud wark a bit moor—soa cud yo. Yo're hurtin me i' mi conscience, +Hannah—yo're coomin atwixt me an th' Lord!'</p> + +<p>He brought a shaking hand down on the damask table-cloth among the +wool mats and the chapel hymn-books which adorned it. His long, +loose frame had drawn itself up with a certain dignity.</p> + +<p>'Ha done wi your cantin!' said Hannah under her breath, laying her +two hands on the table, and stooping down so as to face him with +more effect. The phrase startled Reuben with a kind of horror. +Whatever words might have passed between them, never yet that he +could remember had his wife allowed herself a sneer at his +religion. It seemed to him suddenly as though he and she were going +fast downhill—slipping to perdition, because of Sandy's six +hundred pounds.</p> + +<p>But she cowed him—she always did. She stayed a moment in the same +bent and threatening position, coercing him with angry eyes. Then +she straightened herself, and moved away.</p> + +<p>'Let t' lad tak hisself off if he wants to,' she said, an iron +resolution in her voice. 'I told yo so afore—I woan't cry for 'im. +But as long as Louie's here, an I ha to keep her, I'll want that +money, an every penny on't. If it bean't paid, she may go too!'</p> + +<p>'Yo'd not turn her out, Hannah?' cried Reuben, instinctively +putting out an arm to feel that the door was closed.</p> + +<p>'<i>She</i>'d not want for a livin,' replied Hannah, with a bitter +sneer; 'she's her mither's child.'</p> + +<p>Reuben rose slowly, shaking all over. He opened the door with +difficulty, groped his way out of the front passage, then went +heavily through the yard and into the fields. There he wandered by +himself for a couple of hours, altogether forgetting some newly +dropped lambs to which he had been anxiously attending. For months +past, ever since his conscience had been roused on the subject of +his brother's children, the dull, incapable man had been slowly +reconceiving the woman with whom he had lived some five-and-twenty +years, and of late the process had been attended with a kind of +agony. The Hannah Martin he had married had been a hard body +indeed, but respectable, upright, with the same moral instincts as +himself. She had kept the farm together—he knew that; he could not +have lived without her, and in all practical respects she had been +a good and industrious wife. He had coveted her industry and her +strong will; and, having got the use of them, he had learnt to put +up with her contempt for him, and to fit his softer nature to hers. +Yet it seemed to him that there had always been certain conditions +implied in this subjection of his, and that she was breaking them. +He could not have been fetching and carrying all these years for a +woman who could go on wilfully appropriating money that did not +belong to her,—who could even speak with callous indifference of +the prospect of turning out her niece to a life of sin.</p> + +<p>He thought of Sandy's money with loathing. It was like the cursed +stuff that Achan had brought into the camp—an evil leaven +fermenting in their common life, and raising monstrous growths.</p> + +<p>Reuben Grieve did not demand much of himself; a richer and more +spiritual nature would have thought his ideals lamentably poor. +But, such as they were, the past year had proved that he could not +fall below them without a dumb anguish, without a sense of shutting +himself out from grace. He felt himself—by his fear of his +wife—made a partner in Hannah's covetousness, in Hannah's cruelty +towards Sandy's children. Already, it seemed to him, the face of +Christ was darkened, the fountain of grace dried up. All those +appalling texts of judgment and reprobation he had listened to so +often in chapel, protected against them by that warm inward +certainty of 'election,' seemed to be now pressing against a bared +and jeopardised soul.</p> + +<p>But if he wrote to Mr. Gurney, Hannah would never forgive him till +her dying day; and the thought of making her his enemy for good put +him in a cold sweat.</p> + +<p>After much pacing of the upper meadows he came heavily down at last +to see to his lambs. Davy was just jumping the wall on to his +uncle's land, having apparently come down the Frimley path. When he +saw his uncle he thrust his hands into his pockets, began to +whistle, and came on with a devil-may-care swing of the figure. +They met in a gateway between two fields.</p> + +<p>'Whar yo been, Davy?' asked Reuben, looking at him askance, and +holding the gate so as to keep him.</p> + +<p>'To Dawson's,' said the boy, sharply.</p> + +<p>Reuben's face brightened. Then the lad's empty stomach must have +been filled; for he knew that 'Dawsons' were kind to him. He +ventured to look at him more directly, and, as he did so, something +in the attitude of the proud handsome stripling reminded him of +Sandy—Sandy, in the days of his youth, coming down to show his +prosperous self at the farm. He put his large soil-stained hand on +David's shoulder.</p> + +<p>'Goo yor ways in, Davy. I'll see yo ha your reets.'</p> + +<p>David opened his eyes at him, astounded. There is nothing more +startling in human relations than the strong emotion of weak +people.</p> + +<p>Reuben would have liked to say something else, but his lips opened +and shut in vain. The boy, too, was hopelessly embarrassed. At +last, Reuben let the gate fall and walked off, with downcast head, +to where, in the sheep-pen, he had a few hours before bound an +orphan lamb to a refractory foster-mother. The foster-mother's +resistance had broken down, she was lying patiently and gently +while the thin long-legged creature sucked; when it was frightened +away by Reuben's approach she trotted bleating after it. In his +disturbed state of feeling the parallel, or rather the contrast, +between the dumb animal and the woman struck home.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-1" id="CHAPTER_IX-1"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<p>But the crisis which had looked so near delayed!</p> + +<p>Poor Reuben! The morning after his sudden show of spirit to David +he felt himself, to his own miserable surprise, no more courageous +than he had been before it. Yet the impression made had gone too +deep to end in nothingness. He contracted a habit of getting by +himself in the fields and puzzling his brain with figures—an +occupation so unfamiliar and exhausting that it wore him a good +deal; and Hannah, when he came in at night, would wonder, with a +start, whether he were beginning 'to break up.' But it possessed +him more and more. Hannah would not give up the money, but David +must have his rights. How could it be done? For the first time +Reuben fell to calculation over his money matters, which he did not +ask Hannah to revise. But meanwhile he lived in a state of +perpetual inward excitement which did not escape his wife. She +could get no clue to it, however, and became all the more +forbidding in the household the more she was invaded by this wholly +novel sense of difficulty in managing her husband.</p> + +<p>Yet she was not without a sense that if she could but contrive to +alter her ways with the children it would be well for her. Mr. +Gurney's cheque was safely put away in the Clough End bank, and +clearly her best policy would have been to make things tolerable +for the two persons on whose proceedings—if they did but know it! +—the arrival of future cheques in some measure depended. But +Hannah had not the cleverness which makes the successful hypocrite. +And for some time past there had been a strange unmanageable change +in her feelings towards Sandy's orphans. Since Reuben had made her +conscious that she was robbing them, she had gone nearer to an +active hatred than ever before. And, indeed, hatred in such a case +is the most natural outcome; for it is little else than the soul's +perverse attempt to justify to itself its own evil desire.</p> + +<p>David, however, when once his rage over Hannah's latest offence had +cooled, behaved to his aunt much as he had done before it. He was +made placable by his secret hopes, and touched by Reuben's +advances—though of these last he took no practical account +whatever; and he must wait for his letter. So he went back +ungraciously to his daily tasks. Meanwhile he and Louie, on the +strength of the great <i>coup</i> in prospect, were better friends +than they had ever been, and his consideration for her went up as +he noticed that, when she pleased, the reckless creature could keep +a secret 'as close as wax.'</p> + +<p>The weeks, however, passed away, and still no letter came for +David. The shepherds' meetings—first at Clough End for the +Cheshire side of the Scout, and then at the 'Snake Inn' for the +Sheffield side—when the strayed sheep of the year were restored to +their owners, came and went in due course; sheep-washing and +sheep-shearing were over; the summer was halfway through; and still +no word from Mr. Ancrum.</p> + +<p>David, full of annoyance and disappointment, was seething with +fresh plans—he and Louie spent hours discussing them at the +smithy—when suddenly an experience overtook him, which for the +moment effaced all his nascent ambitions, and entirely did away +with Louie's new respect for him.</p> + +<p>It was on this wise.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ancrum had left Clough End towards the end of June. The +congregation to which he ministered, and to which Reuben Grieve +belonged, represented one of those curious and independent +developments of the religious spirit which are to be found +scattered through the teeming towns and districts of northern +England. They had no connection with any recognised religious +community, but the members of it had belonged to many—to the +Church, the Baptists, the Independents, the Methodists. They were +mostly mill-hands or small tradesmen, penetrated on the one side +with the fervour, the yearnings, the strong formless poetry of +English evangelical faith, and repelled on the other by various +features in the different sects from which they came—by the +hierarchical strictness of the Wesleyan organisation, or the +looseness of the Congregationalists, or the coldness of the Church. +They had come together to seek the Lord in some way more intimate, +more moving, more effectual than any they had yet found; and in +this pathetic search for the 'rainbow gold' of faith they were +perpetually brought up against the old stumbling-blocks of the +unregenerate man,—the smallest egotisms, and the meanest vanities. +Mr. Ancrum, for instance, had come to the Clough End 'Brethren' +full of an indescribable missionary zeal. He had laboured for them +night and day, taxing his sickly frame far beyond its powers. But +the most sordid conspiracy imaginable, led by two or three of the +prominent members who thought he did not allow them enough share in +the evening meetings, had finally overthrown him, and he had gone +back to Manchester a bitterer and a sadder man.</p> + +<p>After he left there was an interregnum, during which one or two of +the elder 'Brethren' taught Sunday school and led the Sunday +services. But at last, in August, it became known in Clough End +that a new minister for the 'Christian Brethren' had come down, and +public curiosity in the Dissenting circles was keen about him. +After a few weeks there began to be a buzz in the little town on +the subject of Mr. Dyson. The 'Christian Brethren' meeting-room, a +long low upper chamber formerly occupied by half a dozen +hand-looms, was crowded on Sundays, morning and evening, not only +by the Brethren, but by migrants from other denominations, and the +Sunday school, which was held in a little rickety garret off the +main room, also received a large increase of members. It was +rumoured that Mr. Dyson was specially successful with boys, and +that there was an 'awakening' among some of the lowest and roughest +of the Clough End lads.</p> + +<p>'He ha sich a way wi un,' said a much-stirred mother to Reuben +Grieve, meeting him one day in the street, 'he do seem to melt your +varra marrow.'</p> + +<p>Reuben went to hear the new man, was much moved, and came home +talking about him with a stammering unction, and many furtive looks +at David. He had tried to remonstrate several times on the lad's +desertion of chapel and Sunday school, but to no purpose. There was +something in David's half contemptuous, half obstinate silence on +these occasions which for a man like Reuben made argument +impossible. To his morbid inner sense the boy seemed to have +entered irrevocably on the broad path which leadeth to destruction. +Perhaps in another year he would be drinking and thieving. With a +curious fatalism Reuben felt that for the present, and till he had +made some tangible amends to Sandy and the Unseen Powers for +Hannah's sin, he himself could do nothing. His hands were unclean. +But some tremulous passing hopes he allowed himself to build on +this new prophet.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, David heard the town-talk, and took small account of it. +He supposed he should see the new-comer at Jerry's in time. Then if +folk spoke true there would be a shindy worth joining in. +Meanwhile, the pressure of his own affairs made the excitement of +the neighbourhood seem to him one more of those storms in the +Dissenting tea-cup, of which, boy as he was, he had known a good +many already.</p> + +<p>One September evening he was walking down to Clough End, bound to +the reading-room. He had quite ceased to attend the 'Crooked Cow.' +His pennies were precious to him now, and he saved them jealously, +wondering scornfully sometimes how he could ever have demeaned +himself so far as to find excitement in the liquor or the company +of the 'Cow.' Half-way down to the town, as he was passing the +foundry, whence he had drawn the pan which had for so long made the +smithy enchanted ground to him, the big slouching appprentice who +had been his quondam friend and ally there, came out of the foundry +yard just in front of him. David quickened up a little.</p> + +<p>'Tom, whar are yo goin?'</p> + +<p>The other looked round at him uneasily.</p> + +<p>'Niver yo mind.'</p> + +<p>The youth's uncouth clothes were carefully brushed, and his fat +face, which wore an incongruous expression of anxiety and +dejection, shone with washing. David studied him a moment in +silence, then he said abruptly—</p> + +<p>'Yo're goin prayer-meetin, that's what yo are.'</p> + +<p>'An if I am, it's noa consarn o' yourn. Yo're yan o' +th'unregenerate; an I'll ask yo, Davy, if happen yo're goin town +way, not to talk ony o' your carnal talk to me. I'se got hindrances +enough, t' Lord knows.'</p> + +<p>And the lad went his way, morosely hanging his head, and stepping +more rapidly as though to get rid of his companion.</p> + +<p>'Well, I niver!' exclaimed David, in his astonishment. 'What's +wrong wi yo, Tom? Yo've got no more spunk nor a moultin hen. What's +getten hold o' yo?''</p> + +<p>Tom hesitated a moment. '<i>Th' Lord!</i>' he burst out at last, +looking at Davy with that sudden unconscious dignity which strong +feeling can bestow for the moment on the meanest of mortals. 'He's +a harryin' me! I haven't slep this three neets for shoutin an +cryin! It's th' conviction o' <i>sin</i>, Davy. Th' devil seems a +howdin me, an I conno pull away, not whativer. T' new minister +says, 'Dunnot yo pull. Let Jesus do't all.' He's strang, He is. +'Yo're nobbut a worm.' But I've naw <i>assurance</i>, Davy, theer's +whar it is—I've naw assurance!' he repeated, forgetting in his +pain the unregenerate mind of his companion.</p> + +<p>David walked on beside him wondering. When he had last seen Tom he +was lounging in a half-drunken condition outside the door of the +'Crooked Cow,' cracking tipsy jokes with the passers-by.</p> + +<p>'Where is the prayer-meetin?' he inquired presently.</p> + +<p>'In owd Simes's shed—an it's late too—I mun hurry.'</p> + +<p>'Why, theer'll be plenty o' room in old Simes's shed. It's a fearfu +big place.'</p> + +<p>'An lasst time theer was na stannin ground for a corn-boggart; an I +wudna miss ony o' Mr. Dyson's prayin, not for nothin. Good neet to +yo, Davy.'</p> + +<p>And Tom broke into a run; David, however, kept up with him.</p> + +<p>'P'raps I'll coom too,' he said, with a kind of bravado, when they +had passed the bridge and the Kinder printing works, and Clough End +was in sight.</p> + +<p>Tom said nothing till they had breasted a hill, at the top of which +he paused panting, and confronted David.</p> + +<p>'Noo yo'll not mak a rumpus, Davy,' he said, mistrustfully.</p> + +<p>'An if do, can't a hundred or two o' yo kick me out?' asked David, +mockingly. 'I'll mak no rumpus. P'raps yor Mr. Dyson'll convert +me.'</p> + +<p>And he walked on laughing.</p> + +<p>Tom looked darkly at him; then, as he recovered his wind, his +countenance suddenly cleared. Satan laid a new snare for him—poor +Tom!—and into his tortured heart there fell a poisonous drop of +spiritual pride. Public reprobation applied to a certain order of +offences makes a very marketable kind of fame, as the author of +<i>Manfred</i> knew very well. David in his small obscure way was +supplying another illustration of the principle. For the past year +he had been something of a personage in Clough End—having always +his wits, his book-learning, his looks, and his singular parentage +to start from.</p> + +<p>Tom—the shambling butt of his comrades—began to like the notion +of going into prayer-meeting with David Grieve in tow; and even +that bitter and very real cloud of spiritual misery lifted a +little.</p> + +<p>So they marched in together, Tom in front, with his head much +higher than before; and till the minister began there were many +curious glances thrown at David. It was a prayer-meeting for boys +only, and the place was crammed with them, of all ages up to +eighteen.</p> + +<p>It was a carpenter's workshop. Tools and timber had been as far as +possible pushed to the side, and at the end a rough platform of +loose planks had been laid across some logs so as to raise the +preacher a little.</p> + +<p>Soon there was a stir, and Mr. Dyson appeared. He was tall and +loosely built, with the stoop from the neck and the sallow skin +which the position of the cotton-spinner at work and the close +fluffy atmosphere in which he lives tend to develop. Up to six +months ago, he had been a mill-hand and a Wesleyan class-leader. +Now, in consequence partly of some inward crisis, partly of revolt +against an 'unspiritual' superintendent, he had thrown up mill and +Methodism together, and come to live on the doles of the Christian +Brethren at Clough End. He had been preaching on the moors already +during the day, and was tired out; but the pallor of the harsh face +only made the bright, commanding eye more noticeable. It ran over +the room, took note first of the numbers, then of individuals, +marked who had been there before, who was a new-comer. The audience +fell into order and quiet before it as though a general had taken +command.</p> + +<p>He put his hands on his hips and began to speak without any +preface, somewhat to the boys' surprise, who had expected a prayer. +The voice, as generally happens with a successful revivalist +preacher, was of fine quality, and rich in good South Lancashire +intonations, and his manner was simplicity itself.</p> + +<p>'Suppose we put off our prayer a little bit,' he said, in a +colloquial tone, his fixed look studying the crowded benches all +the while. 'Perhaps we'll have more to pray about by-and-by.... +Well, now, I haven't been long in Clough End, to be sure, but I +think I've been long enough to get some notion of how you boys here +live—whether you work on the land, or whether you work in the +mills or in shops—I've been watching you a bit, perhaps you didn't +think it; and what I'm going to do to-night is to take your lives +to pieces—take them to pieces, an look close into them, as you've +seen them do at the mill, perhaps, with a machine that wants +cleaning. I want to find out what's wrong wi them, what they're +good for, whose work they do—<i>God's or the devil's</i> ... First +let me take the mill-hands. Perhaps I know most about their life, +for I went to work in a cotton-mill when I was eight years old, and +I only left it six months ago. I have seen men and women saved in +that mill, so that their whole life afterwards was a kind of +ecstasy: I have seen others lost there, so that they became true +children of the devil, and made those about them as vile and +wretched as themselves. I have seen men grow rich there, and I have +seen men die there; so if there is anything I know in this world it +is how factory workers spend their time—at least, I think I know. +But judge for yourselves—shout to me if I'm wrong. Isn't it +somehow like this?'</p> + +<p>And he fell into a description of the mill-hand's working day. It +was done with knowledge, sometimes with humour, and through it all +ran a curious undercurrent of half-ironical passion. The audience +enjoyed it, took the points, broke in now and then with comments as +the speaker touched on such burning matters as the tyranny of +overlookers, the temper of masters, the rubs between the different +classes of 'hands,' the behaviour of 'minders' to the 'piecers' +employed by them, and so on. The sermon at one time was more like a +dialogue between preacher and congregation. David found himself +joining in it involuntarily once or twice, so stimulating was the +whole atmosphere, and Mr. Dyson's eye was caught perforce by the +tall dark fellow with the defiant carriage of the head who sat next +to Tom Mullins, and whom he did not remember to have seen before.</p> + +<p>But suddenly the preacher stopped, and the room fell dead silent, +startled by the darkening of his look. 'Ay,' he said, with stern +sharpness. 'Ay, that's how you live—them's the things you spend +your time and your minds on. You laugh, and I laugh—not a bad sort +of life, you think—a good deal of pleasure, after all, to be got +out of it. If a man must work he might do worse. <i>O you poor +souls!</i>'</p> + +<p>The speaker stopped, as though mastering himself. His face worked +with emotion; his last words had been almost a cry of pain. After +the easy give and take of the opening, this change was electrical. +David felt his hand tremble on his knee.</p> + +<p>'Answer me this!' cried the preacher, his nervous cotton-spinner's +hand outstretched. 'Is there any soul here among you factory lads +who, when he wakes in the morning, <i>ever thinks of saying a +prayer?</i> Not one of you, I'll be bound! What with shovelling on +one's clothes, and gulping down one's breakfast, and walking half a +mile to the mill, who's got time to think about prayers? God must +wait. He's always there above, you think, sitting in glory. He can +listen any time. Well, as you stand at your work—all those hours! +—is there ever a moment <i>then</i> for putting up a word in +Jesus' ear—Jesus, Who died for sinners? Why, no, how should there +be indeed? If you don't keep a sharp eye on your work the overlooker +'ull know the reason why in double-quick time!... But there comes +a break, perhaps, for one reason or another. Does the Lord get it? +What a thing to ask, to be sure! Why, there are other spinners +close by, waiting for rovings, or leaving off for "baggin," and a +bit of talk and a bad word or two are a deal more fun, and come +easier than praying. Half-past five o'clock at last—knocking-off +time. Then you begin to think of amusing yourselves. There's +loafing about the streets, which never comes amiss, and there's +smoking and the public for you bigger ones, and there's betting on +Manchester races, and there's a bout of swearing every now and then +to keep up your spirits, and there are other thoughts, and perhaps +actions, for some of you, of which the less said in any decent +Christian gathering the better! And so bedtime comes round again; +still not a moment to think of God in—of the Judgment which has +come a day closer—of your sins which have grown a day heavier—of +your soul which has sunk a day further from heaven, a day nearer to +hell? Not one. You are dead tired, and mill-work begins so early. +Tumble in—God can wait. He has waited fourteen, or eighteen, or +twenty years already!</p> + +<p>'But you're not all factory hands here. I see a good many lads +I know come from the country—from the farms up Kinder or Edale +way. Well, I don't know so much about your ways as I do about +mills; but I know some, and I can guess some. <i>You</i> are not shut +up all day with the roar of the machines in your ears, and the +cotton-fluff choking your lungs. You have to live harder, perhaps. +You've less chances of getting on in the world; but I declare to +you, if you're bad and godless—as some of you are—I think there's +a precious sight less excuse for you than there is for the +mill-hands!'</p> + +<p>And with a startling vehemence, greater by far than he had shown in +the case of the mill-workers, he threw himself on the vices and the +callousness of the field-labourers. For were they not, day by day, +and hour by hour, face to face with the Almighty in His marvellous +world—with the rising of His sun, with the flash of His lightning, +with His clouds which dropped fatness, and with the heavens which +declare His glory? Nothing between them and the Most High, if they +would open their dull eyes and see! And more than that. Not a bit +of their life,' but had been dear to the Lord Jesus—but He had +spoken of it, taught from it, made it sacred. The shepherd herding +the sheep—how could he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the Good +Shepherd? The sower scattering the seed—how could he, of all men, +forget and blaspheme the Heavenly Sower? Oh, the crookedness of +sin! Oh, the hardness of men's hearts!</p> + +<p>The secret of the denunciations which followed lay hidden deep in +the speaker's personal history. They were the utterances of a man +who had stood for years at the 'mules,' catching, when he could, +through the coarse panes of factory glass, the dim blue outlines of +distant moors. <i>Here</i> were noise, crowd, coarse jesting, mean +tyrannies, uncongenial company—everything which a nervous, +excitable nature, tuned to poetry in the English way through +religion, most loathed; <i>there</i> was beauty, peace, leisure for +thought, for holiness, for emotion.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the mind of David Grieve rose once or twice in angry +protest. It was not fair—it was unjust—and why did Mr. Dyson +always seem to be looking at him?—flinging at him all these +scathing words about farming people's sins and follies? He was +shaken and excited. Oratory, of any sort, never failed to stir him +extraordinarily. Once even he would have jumped up to speak, but +Tom Mullins's watchful hand closed on his arm. Davy shook it off +angrily, but was perforce reminded of his promise. And Mr. Dyson +was swift in all things. The pitiless sentences dropped; the +speaker, exhausted, wiped his brow and pondered a moment; and the +lads from the farms about, most of whom David knew by sight, were +left staring at the floor, some inclined to laugh by reaction, +others crimson and miserable.</p> + +<p>Well; so God was everywhere forgotten—in the fields and in +the mill. The greedy, vicious hours went by, and God still +waited—waited. Would he wait for ever?</p> + +<p>'<i>Nay!</i>'</p> + +<p>The intense, low-spoken word sent a shiver through the room. The +revivalist passion had been mounting rapidly amongst the listeners, +and the revivalist sense divined what was coming. To his dying day +David, at least, never forgot the picture of a sinner's death +agony, a sinner's doom, which followed. As to the first, it was +very quiet and colloquial. The preacher dwelt on the tortured body, +the choking breath, the failing sight, the talk of relations and +friends round the bed.</p> + +<p>'Ay, poor fellow, he'll not lasst mich longer; t' doctor's gien +him up—and a good thing too, for his sufferins are terr'ble to +see.'</p> + +<p>'And your poor dying ears will catch what they say. Then will your +fear come upon you as a storm, and your calamity as a whirlwind. +Such a fear!</p> + +<p>'Once, my lads—long ago—I saw a poor girl caught by her hair in +one of the roving machines in the mill I used to work at. Three +minutes afterwards they tore away her body from the iron teeth +which had destroyed her. But I, a lad of twelve, had seen her face +just as the thing caught her, and if I live to be a hundred I shall +never forget that face—that horrible, horrible fear convulsing it.</p> + +<p>'But that fear, my boys, was as <i>nothing</i> to the sinner's fear +at death! Only a few more hours—a few more minutes, perhaps—and +then <i>judgment</i>! All the pleasant loafing and lounging, all +the eating and drinking, the betting and swearing, the warm sun, +the kind light, the indulgent parents and friends left behind; +nothing for ever and ever but the torments which belong to sin, and +which even the living God can no more spare you and me if we die in +sin than the mill-engine, once set going, can spare the poor +creature that meddles with it.</p> + +<p>'Well; but perhaps in that awful last hour you try to pray—to call +on the Saviour. But, alas! alas! prayer and faith have to be +learnt, like cotton-spinning. Let no man count on learning that +lesson for the asking. While your body has been enjoying itself in +sin, your soul has been dying—dying; and when at the last you bid +it rise and go to the Father, you will find it just as helpless as +your poor paralysed limbs. It cannot rise, it has no strength; it +cannot go, for it knows not the way. No hope; no hope. Down it +sinks, and the black waters of hell close upon it for ever!'</p> + +<p>Then followed a sort of vision of the lost—delivered in short +abrupt sentences—the form of the speaker drawn rigidly up +meanwhile to its full height, the long arm outstretched. The +utterance had very little of the lurid materialism, the grotesque +horror of the ordinary ranter's hell. But it stole upon the +imagination little by little, and possessed it at last with an +all-pervading terror. Into it, to begin with, had gone the whole +life-blood and passion of an agonised soul. The man speaking had +himself graven the terrors of it on his inmost nature through many +a week of demoniacal possession. But since that original experience +of fire which gave it birth, there had come to its elaboration a +strange artistic instinct. Day after day the preacher had repeated +it to hushed congregations, and with every repetition, almost, +there had come a greater sharpening of the light and shade, a +keener sense of what would tell and move. He had given it on the +moors that afternoon, but he gave it better to-night, for on the +wild walk across the plateau of the Peak some fresh illustrations, +drawn from its black and fissured solitude, had suggested +themselves, and he worked them out as he went, with a kind of joy, +watching their effect. Yet the man was, in his way, a saint, and +altogether sincere—so subtle a thing is the life of the spirit.</p> + +<p>In the middle, Tom Mullins, David's apprentice-friend, suddenly +broke out into loud groans, rocking himself to and fro on the form. +A little later, a small fair-haired boy of twelve sprang up from +the form where he had been sitting trembling, and rushed into the +space between the benches and the preacher, quite unconscious of +what he was doing.</p> + +<p>'Sir!' he said; 'oh, sir!—please—I didn't want to say them bad +words this mornin; I didn't, sir; it wor t' big uns made me; they +said they'd duck me—an it do hurt that bad. Oh, sir, please!'</p> + +<p>And the little fellow stood wringing his hands, the tears coursing +down his cheeks.</p> + +<p>The minister stopped, frowning, and looked at him. Then a smile +broke on the set face, he stepped up to the lad, threw his arm +round him, and drew him up to his side fronting the room.</p> + +<p>'My boy,' he said, looking down at him tenderly, 'you and I, thank +God, are still in the land of the <i>living</i>; there is still +time to-night—this very minute—to be saved! Ay, saved, for ever +and ever, by the blood of the Lamb. Look away from yourselves—away +from sin—away from hell—to the blessed Lord, that suffered and +died and rose again; just for what? For this only—that He might, +with His own pierced hands, draw every soul here to-night, and +every soul in the wide world that will but hear His voice, out of +the clutches of the devil, and out of the pains of hell, and gather +it close and safe into His everlasting arms!'</p> + +<p>There was a great sob from the whole room. Rough lads from the +upland farms, shop-boys, mill-hands, strained forward, listening, +thirsting, responding to every word.</p> + +<p><i>Redemption—Salvation—</i> the deliverance of the soul from +itself—thither all religion comes at last, whether for the ranter +or the philosopher. To the enriching of that conception, to the +gradual hewing it out in historical shape, have gone the noblest +poetry, the purest passion, the intensest spiritual vision of the +highest races, since the human mind began to work. And the +historical shape may crumble; but the need will last and the +travail will go on; for man's quest of redemption is but the +eternal yielding of the clay in the hands of the potter, the +eternal answer of the creature to the urging indwelling Creator.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-1" id="CHAPTER_X-1"></a>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<p>Half an hour later, after the stormy praying and singing which had +succeeded Mr. Dyson's address, David found himself tramping up the +rough and lonely road leading to the high Kinder valley. The lights +of Clough End had disappeared; against the night sky the dark woody +side of Mardale Moor was still visible; beneath it sang the river; +a few stars were to be seen; and every now and then the windows of +a farm shone out to guide the wayfarer. But David stumbled on, +noticing nothing. At the foot of the steep hill leading to the farm +he stopped a moment, and leant over the gate. The little lad's cry +was in his ears.</p> + +<p>Presently he leapt the gate impatiently, and ran up whistling. +Supper was over, but Hannah ungraciously brought him out some cold +bacon and bread. Louie hung about him while he ate, studying him +with quick furtive eyes.</p> + +<p>'Whar yo bin?' she said abruptly, when Hannah had gone to the back +kitchen for a moment. Reuben was dozing by the fire over the local +paper.</p> + +<p>'Nowhere as concerns yo,' said David, shortly. He finished his +supper and went and sat on the steps. The dogs came and put their +noses on his knees. He pulled absently at their coats, looking +straight before him at the dark point of Kinder Low.</p> + +<p>'Whar yo bin?' said Louie's voice again in his ear. She had +squatted down on the step behind him.</p> + +<p>'Be off wi yer,' said David, angrily, getting up in order to escape +her.</p> + +<p>But she pursued him across the farmyard.</p> + +<p>'Have yo got a letter?'</p> + +<p>'No, I haven't.'</p> + +<p>'Did yo ask at t' post-office?'</p> + +<p>'No, I didn't.'</p> + +<p>'An why didn't yo?'</p> + +<p>'Because I didn't want—soa there—get away.' And he stalked off. +Louie, left behind, chewed the cud of reflection in the darkness.</p> + +<p>Presently, to his great disgust, as he was sitting under a wall of +one of the pasture-fields, hidden, as he conceived, from all the +world by the night, he heard the rustle of a dress, the click of a +stone, and there was Louie dangling her legs above him, having +attacked him in the rear.</p> + +<p>'Uncle Reuben's talkin 'is stuff about Mr. Dyson. I seed 'im gooin +passt Wigsons' this afternoon. He's nowt—he's common, he is.'</p> + +<p>The thin scornful voice out of the dark grated on him intolerably. +He bent forward and shut his ears tight with both his hands. To +judge from the muffled sounds he heard, Louie went on talking for a +while; but at last there had been silence for so long, that he took +his hands away, thinking she must have gone.</p> + +<p>'Yo've been at t' prayer-meetin, I tell yo, an yo're a great stupid +muffin-yed, soa theer.'</p> + +<p>And a peremptory little kick on his shoulder from a substantial +shoe gave the words point.</p> + +<p>He sprang up in a rage, ran down the hill, jumped over a wall or +two, and got rid of her. But he seemed to hear her elfish laugh for +some time after. As for himself, he could not analyse what had come +over him. But not even the attraction of an unopened parcel of +books he had carried home that afternoon from Clough End—a loan +from a young stationer he had lately made acquaintance with—could +draw him back to the farm. He sat on and on in the dark. And when +at last, roused by the distant sounds of shutting up the house, he +slunk in and up to bed, he tossed about for a long time, and woke +up often in the night. The tyrannous power of another man's faith +was upon him. He could not get Mr. Dyson out of his head. How on +earth could anybody be so <i>certain</i>? It was monstrous that any +one should be. It was canting stuff.</p> + +<p>Still, next day, hearing by chance that the new-comer was going to +preach at a hamlet the other side of Clough End, he went, found a +large mixed meeting mostly of mill-hands, and the tide of +Revivalism rolling high. This time Mr. Dyson picked him out at +once—the face and head indeed were easily remembered. After the +sermon, when the congregation were filing out, leaving behind those +more particularly distressed in mind to be dealt with more +intimately in a small prayer-meeting by Mr. Dyson and a +prayer-leader, the minister suddenly stepped aside from a group of +people he was talking with, and touched David on the arm as he was +making for the door.</p> + +<p>'Won't you stay?' he said peremptorily. 'Don't trifle with the Lord.'</p> + +<p>And his feverish divining eyes seemed to look the boy through and +through. David flushed, and pushed past him with some inarticulate +answer. When he found himself in the open air he was half angry, +half shaken with emotion. And afterwards a curious instinct, the +sullen instinct of the wild creature shrinking from a possible +captor, made him keep himself as much as possible out of Mr. +Dyson's way. At the prayer-meetings and addresses, which followed +each other during the next fortnight in quick succession, David was +almost always present; but he stood at the back, and as soon as the +general function was over he fled. The preacher's strong will was +piqued. He began to covet the boy's submission disproportionately, +and laid schemes for meeting with him. But David evaded them all.</p> + +<p>Other persons, however, succeeded better. Whenever the revivalist +fever attacks a community, it excites in a certain number of +individuals, especially women, an indescribable zeal for +proselytising. The signs of 'conviction' in any hitherto +unregenerate soul are marked at once, and the 'saved' make a prey +of it, showing a marvellous cunning and persistence in its pursuit.</p> + +<p>One day a woman, the wife of a Clough End shoemaker, slightly known +to David, met him on the moors.</p> + +<p>'Will yo coom to-night?' she said, nodding to him. 'Theer'll be +prayin' at our house—about half a dozen.'</p> + +<p>Then, as the boy stopped, amazed and hesitating, she fixed him with +her shining ecstatic eyes.</p> + +<p>'Awake, thou that sleepest,' she said under her breath, 'and Christ +shall give thee light.'</p> + +<p>She had been carrying a bundle to a distant farm. A child was in +her arms, and she looked dragged and worn. But all the way down the +moor as she came towards him David had heard her singing hymns.</p> + +<p>He hung his head and passed on. But in the evening he went, found +three or four other boys his own age or older, the woman, and her +husband. The woman sang some of the most passionate Methodist +hymns; the husband, a young shoemaker, already half dead of asthma +and bronchitis, told his 'experiences' in a voice broken by +incessant coughing; one of the boys, a rough specimen, known to +David as a van-boy from some calico-printing works in the +neighbourhood, prayed aloud, breaking down into sobs in the middle; +and David, at first obstinately silent, found himself joining +before the end in the groans and 'Amens,' by force of a contagious +excitement he half despised but could not withstand.</p> + +<p>The little prayer-meeting, however, broke up somewhat in confusion. +There was not much real difference of opinion at this time in +Clough End, which was, on the whole, a strongly religious town. +Even the Churchmanship of it was decidedly evangelical, ready at +any moment to make common cause with Dissent against Ritualism, if +such a calamity should ever threaten the little community, and very +ready to join, more or less furtively, in the excitements of +Dissenting revivals. Jerry Timmins and his set represented the only +serious blot on what the pious Clough Endian might reasonably +regard as a fair picture. But this set contained some sharp +fellows—provided outlet for a considerable amount of energy of a +raw and roving sort, and, no doubt, did more to maintain the mental +equilibrium of the small factory-town than any enthusiast on the +other side would for a moment have allowed. The excitement which +followed in the train of a man like Mr. Dyson roused, of course, an +answering hubbub among the Timminsites. The whole of Jerry's circle +was stirred up, in fact, like a hive of wasps; their ribaldry grew +with what it fed on; and every day some new and exquisite method of +harrying the devout occurred to the more ingenious among them.</p> + +<p>David had hitherto escaped notice. But on this evening, while +he and his half-dozen companions were still on their knees, +they were first disturbed by loud drummings on the shoemaker's +door, which opened directly into the little room where they +were congregated; and then, when they emerged into the street, +they found a mock prayer-meeting going on outside, with all the +usual 'manifestations' of revivalist fervour—sighs, groans, +shouts, and the rest of it—in full flow. At the sight of David +Grieve there were first stares and then shrieks of laughter.</p> + +<p>'I say, Davy,' cried a drunken young weaver, sidling up to him on +his knees and embracing him from behind, 'my heart's real touched. +Gie me yor coat, Davy; it's better nor mine, Davy; and I'm yor +Christian brother, Davy.'</p> + +<p>The emotion of this appeal drew uproarious merriment from the knot +of Secularists. David, in a frenzy, kicked out, so that his +assailant dropped him with a howl. The weaver's friends closed upon +the 'Ranters,' who had to fight their way through. It was not till +they had gained the outskirts of the town that the shower of stones +ceased, and that they could pause to take stock of their losses. +Then it appeared that, though all were bruised, torn, and furious, +some were inclined to take a mystical joy in persecution, and to +find compensation in certain plain and definite predictions as to +the eternal fate in store for 'Jerry Timmins's divils.' David, on +the other hand, was much more inclined to vent his wrath on his own +side than on the Timminsites.</p> + +<p>'Why can't yo keep what yo're doin to yorsels?' he called out +fiercely to the knot of panting boys, as he faced round upon them +at the gate leading to the Kinder road. 'Yo're a parcel o' +fools—always chatterin and clatterin.'</p> + +<p>The others defended themselves warmly. 'Them Timmins lot' were +always spying about. They daren't attack the large meetings, but +they had a diabolical way of scenting out the small ones. The +meetings at the shoemaker's had been undisturbed for some few +nights, then a Timminsite passing by had heard hymns, probably +listened at the keyhole, and of course informed the main body of +the enemy.</p> + +<p>'They're like them nassty earwigs,' said one boy in disgust, +'they'll wriggle in onywheres.'</p> + +<p>'Howd yor noise!' said David, peremptorily. 'If yo wanted to keep +out o' their way, yo could do't fasst enough.'</p> + +<p>'How!' they inquired, with equal curtness.</p> + +<p>'Yo needn't meet in th' town at aw. Theer's plenty o' places up on +t' moor,' and he waved his hand towards the hills behind him, lying +clear in the autumn moonlight.' Theer's th' owd smithy—who'd find +yo there?'</p> + +<p>The mention of the smithy was received as an inspiration. There is +a great deal of pure romantic temper roused by these revivalistic +outbreaks in provincial England. The idea of the moors and the old +ruin as setting for a secret prayer-meeting struck the group of +excited lads as singularly attractive. They parted cheerfully upon +it, in spite of their bruises.</p> + +<p>David, however, walked home fuming. The self-abandonment of the +revival had been all along wellnigh intolerable to him—and now, +that he should have allowed the Timminsites to know anything about +his prayers! He very nearly broke off from it altogether in his +proud disgust.</p> + +<p>However he did ultimately nothing of the sort. As soon as he grew +cool again, he was as much tormented as before by what was at +bottom more an intellectual curiosity than a moral anguish. There +was <i>some</i> moral awakening in it; he had some real qualms +about sin, some real aspirations after holiness, and, so far, the +self-consciousness which had first stirred at Haworth was deepened +and fertilised. But the thirst for emotion and sensation was the +main force at work. He could not make out what these religious +people meant by their 'experiences,' and for the first time he +wanted to make out. So when it was proposed to him to meet at the +smithy on a certain Saturday evening, he agreed.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Louie was sitting up in bed every night, with her hands +round her sharp knees, and her black brows knit over David's +follies. It seemed to her he no longer cared 'a haporth' about +getting a letter from Mr. Ancrum, about going to Manchester, about +all those entrancing anti-meat schemes which were to lead so easily +to a paradise of free 'buying' for both of them. Whenever she tried +to call him back to these things he shook her off impatiently, and +their new-born congeniality to each other had been all swamped in +this craze for 'shoutin hollerin' people she despised with all her +heart. When she flew out at him, he just avoided her. Indeed, he +avoided her now at all times, whether she flew out or not. There +was an invincible heathenism about Louie, which made her the +natural enemy of any 'awakened' person.</p> + +<p>The relation of the elders in the farm to the new development +in David was a curious one. Hannah viewed it with a secret +satisfaction. Christians have less time than other people—such, +at least, had been her experience with Reuben—to spend in +thirsting for the goods of this world. The more David went to +prayer-meetings, the less likely was he to make inadmissible +demands on what belonged to him. As for poor Reuben, he seemed to +have got his wish; while he and Hannah had been doing their best to +drive Sandy's son to perdition through a downward course of +'loafing,' God had sent Mr. Dyson to put Davy back on the right +road. But he was ill at ease; he watched the excitement, which all +the lad's prickly reticence could not hide from those about him, +with strange and variable feelings. As a Christian, he should have +rejoiced; instead, the uncle and nephew shunned each other more +than ever, and shunned especially all talk of the revival. Perhaps +the whole situation—the influence of the new man, of the local +talk, of the quickened spiritual life around him, did but aggravate +the inner strain in Reuben. Perhaps his wife's satisfaction, which +his sharpened conscience perceived and understood, troubled him +intolerably. At any rate, his silence and disquiet grew, and his +only pleasure lay, more than ever, in those solitary cogitations we +have already spoken of.</p> + +<p>The 15th of October approached—as it happened, the Friday before +the smithy prayer-meeting. On that day of the year, according to +ancient and invariable custom, the Yorkshire stock—steers, +heifers, young horses—which are transferred to the Derbyshire +farms on the 15th of May, are driven back to their Yorkshire +owners, with all the fatness of Derbyshire pastures showing on +their sleek sides. Breeders and farmers meet again at Woodhead, +just within the Yorkshire border. The animals are handed over to +their owners, paid for at so much a head, and any preventible +damage or loss occurring among them is reckoned against the farmer +returning them, according to certain local rules.</p> + +<p>As the middle of the month came nearer, Reuben began to talk +despondently to Hannah of his probable gains from his Yorkshire +'boarders.' It had been a cold wet summer; he was 'feart' the +owners would think he might have taken more care of some of the +animals, especially of the young horses, and he mentioned certain +ailments springing from damp and exposure for which he might be +held responsible. Hannah grew irritated and anxious. The receipts +from this source were the largest they could reckon upon in the +year. But the fields on which the Yorkshire animals pastured were +at some distance from the house; this department of the farm +business was always left wholly to Reuben; and, with much grumbling +and scolding, she took his word for it as to the probable lowness +of the sum he should bring back.</p> + +<p>David, meanwhile, was sometimes a good deal puzzled by Reuben's +behaviour. It seemed to him that his uncle told some queer tales at +home about their summer stock. And when Reuben announced his +intention of going by himself to Woodhead, and leaving David at +home, the boy was still more astonished.</p> + +<p>However, he was glad enough to be spared the tramp with a set of +people whose ways and talk were more and more uncongenial to him; +and after his uncle's departure he lay for hours hidden from Louie +among the heather, sometimes arguing out imaginary arguments with +Mr. Dyson, sometimes going through passing thrills of emotion and +fear. What was meant, he wanted to know, by '<i>the sense of +pardon'?</i> Person after person at the prayer-meetings he had been +frequenting had spoken of attaining it with ecstasy, or of being +still shut out from it with anguish. But how, after all, did it +differ from pardoning yourself? You had only, it seemed to him, to +think very hard that you were pardoned, and the feeling came. +How could anybody tell it was more than that? David racked his +brain endlessly over the same subject. Who could be sure that +'experience' was not all moonshine? But he was as yet much too +touched and shaken by what he had been going through to draw any +trenchant conclusions. He asked the question, however, and therein +lay the great difference between him and the true stuff of +Methodism.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, in his excitement, he, for the first time, ceased to go +to the Dawsons' as usual. To begin with, they dropped out of a mind +which was preoccupied with one of the first strong emotions of +adolescence. Then, some one told him casually that 'Lias was more +ailing than usual, and that Margaret was in much trouble. He was +pricked with remorse, but just because Margaret would be sure to +question him, a raw shyness came in and held him back from the +effort of going.</p> + +<p>On the Saturday evening David, having ingeniously given Louie the +slip, sped across the fields to the smithy. It was past five +o'clock, and the light was fading. But the waning gold of the +sunset as he jumped the wall on to the moor made the whole autumnal +earth about him, and the whole side of the Scout, one splendour. +Such browns and pinks among the withering ling; such gleaming +greens among the bilberry leaf; such reds among the turning ferns; +such fiery touches on the mountain ashes overhanging the Red Brook! +The western light struck in great shafts into the bosom of the +Scout; and over its grand encompassing mass hung some hovering +clouds just kindling into rosy flame. As the boy walked along he +saw and thrilled to the beauty which lay spread about him. His mood +was simple, and sweeter than usual. He felt a passionate need of +expression, of emotion. There was a true disquiet, a genuine +disgust with self at the bottom of him, and God seemed more than +imaginatively near. Perhaps, on this day of his youth, of all days, +he was closest to the Kingdom of Heaven.</p> + +<p>At the smithy he found about a dozen persons, mostly youths, just +come out from the two or three mills which give employment to +Clough End, and one rather older than the rest, a favourite +prayer-leader in Sunday meetings. At first, everything felt +strange; the boys eyed one another; even David as he stepped in +among them had a momentary reaction, and was more conscious of the +presence of a red-haired fellow there with whom he had fought a +mighty fight on the Huddersfield expedition, than of any spiritual +needs.</p> + +<p>However, the prayer-leader knew his work. He was slow and pompous; +his tone with the Almighty might easily have roused a hostile sense +of humour; but Dissent in its active and emotional forms kills the +sense of humour; and, besides, there was a real, ungainly power in +the man. Every phrase of his opening prayer was hackneyed; every +gesture uncouth. But his heart was in it, and religious conviction +is the most infectious thing in the world. He warmed, and his +congregation warmed with him. The wild scene, too, did its +part—the world of darkening moors spread out before them; the +mountain wall behind them; the October wind sighing round the +ruined walls; the lonely unaccustomed sounds of birds and water. +When he ceased, boy after boy broke out into more or less +incoherent praying. Soon in the dusk they could no longer see each +other's faces; and then it was still easier to break through +reserve.</p> + +<p>At last David found himself speaking. What he said was at first +almost inaudible, for he was kneeling between the wall and the pan +which had been his childish joy, with his face and arms crushed +against the stones. But when he began the boys about pricked up +their ears, and David was conscious suddenly of a deepened silence. +There were warm tears on his hidden cheeks; but it pleased him +keenly they should listen so, and he prayed more audibly and +freely. Then, when his voice dropped at last, the prayer-leader +gave out the familiar hymn, 'Come, O thou Traveller unknown:'—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Come, O thou Traveller unknown,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Whom still I hold, but cannot see!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">My company before is gone,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And I am left alone with Thee;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With Thee all night I mean to stay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And wrestle till the break of day.</span><br /><br /> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wilt thou not yet to me reveal</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thy new unutterable name?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To know it now resolved I am.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wrestling, I will not let thee go,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Till I thy name, thy nature know.</span><br /><br /> + +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">* * *</span><br /><br /> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Tis Love! 'tis Love—thou lovest me!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I hear thy whisper in my heart;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The morning breaks, the shadows flee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Pure universal Love thou art;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To me, to all, thy mercies move,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thy nature and thy name is Love.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Again and again the lines rose on the autumn air; each time the +hymn came to an end it was started afresh, the sound of it +spreading far and wide into the purple breast of Kinder Scout. At +last the painful sobbing of poor Tom Mullins almost drowned the +singing. The prayer-leader, himself much moved, bent over and +seized him by the arm.</p> + +<p>'Look to Jesus, Tom. Lay hold on the Saviour. Don't think of your +sins; they're done away i' th' blood o' the Lamb. Howd Him fast. +Say, "I believe," and the Lord ull deliver yo.'</p> + +<p>With a cry, the great hulking lad sprang to his feet, and clasped +his arms above his head—</p> + +<p>'I do believe—I will believe. Help me, Lord Jesus. Oh, I'm saved! +I'm saved!' And he remained standing in an ecstasy, looking to the +sky above the Scout, where the red sunset glow still lingered.</p> + +<p>'Hallelujah! hallelujah! Thanks be to God!' cried the +prayer-leader, and the smithy resounded in the growing darkness +with similar shouts. David was almost choking with excitement. He +would have given worlds to spring to Tom Mullins's side and +proclaim the same faith. But the inmost heart of him, his real +self, seemed to him at this testing moment something dead and cold. +No heavenly voice spoke to <i>him</i>, David Grieve. A genuine pang +of religious despair seized him. He looked out over the moor +through a gap in the stones. There was a dim path below; the fancy +struck him that Christ, the 'Traveller unknown,' was passing along +it. He had already stretched out His hand of blessing to Tom +Mullins.</p> + +<p>'To me! to me, too!' David cried under his breath, carried away by +the haunting imagination, and straining his eyes into the dusk. Had +the night opened to his sight there and then in a vision of glory, +he would have been no whit surprised.</p> + +<p>Hark!—what was that sound?</p> + +<p>A weird scream rose on the wind. The startled congregation in the +smithy scrambled to their feet. Another scream, nearer apparently +than the first, and then a loud wailing, broken every few seconds +by a strange slight laugh, of which the distance seemed quite +indefinite. Was it close by, or beyond the Red Brook?</p> + +<p>The prayer-leader turned white, the boys stood huddled round him in +every attitude of terror. Again the scream, and the little ghostly +laugh! Looking at each other wildly, the whole congregation broke +from the smithy down the hill. But the leader stopped himself.</p> + +<p>'It's mebbe soom one in trouble,' he said manfully, every limb +trembling. 'We mun go and see, my lads.' And he rushed off in the +direction whence the first sound had seemed to come—towards the +Red Brook—half a dozen of the bolder spirits following. The rest +stood cowering on the slope under the smithy. David meanwhile had +climbed the ruined wall, and stood with head strained forward, his +eyes sweeping the moor. But every outline was sinking fast into the +gulf of the night; only a few indistinct masses—a cluster of +gorse-bushes, a clump of mountain ash—still showed here and there.</p> + +<p>The leader made for one of these darker patches on the +mountain-side, led on always by the recurrent screams. He reached +it; it was a patch of juniper overhanging the Red Brook—when +suddenly from behind it there shot up a white thing, taller than +the tallest man, with nodding head and outspread arms, and such +laughter—so faint, so shrill, so evil, breaking midway into a +hoarse angry yell.</p> + +<p>'<i>Jenny Crum! Jenny Crum!</i>' cried the whole band with one +voice, and, wheeling round, they ran down the Scout, joined by the +contingent from the smithy, some of them falling headlong among the +heather in their agony of flight, others ruthlessly knocking over +those in front of them who seemed to be in their way. In a few +seconds, as it seemed, the whole Scout was left to itself and the +night. Footsteps, voices, all were gone—save for one long peal of +most human, but still elfish, mirth, which came from the Red Brook.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-1" id="CHAPTER_XI-1"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<p>A dark figure sprang down from the wall of the smithy, leapt along +the heather, and plunged into the bushes along the brook. A cry in +another key was heard.</p> + +<p>David emerged, dragging something behind him.</p> + +<p>'Yo limb, yo! How dare yo, yo little beast? Yo impident little +toad!' And in a perfect frenzy of rage he shook what she held. But +Louie—for naturally it was Louie—wrenched herself away, and stood +confronting him, panting, but exultant.</p> + +<p>'I freetened 'em! just didn't I? Cantin humbugs! "<i>Jenny Crum! +Jenny Crum!</i>"' And, mimicking the voice of the leader, she broke +again into an hysterical shout of laughter.</p> + +<p>David, beside himself, hit out and struck her. It was a heavy blow +which knocked her down, and for a moment seemed to stun her. Then +she recovered her senses, and flew at him in a mad passion, weeping +wildly with the smart and excitement.</p> + +<p>He held her off, ashamed of himself, till she flung away, shrieking +out—</p> + +<p>'Go and say its prayers, do—good little boy—poor little babby. +Ugh, yo coward! hittin gells, that's all yo're good for.'</p> + +<p>And she ran off so fast that all sight of her was lost in a few +seconds. Only two or three loud sobs seemed to come back from the +dark hollow below. As for the boy, he stopped a second to +disentangle his feet from the mop and the tattered sheet wherewith +Louie had worked her transformation scene. Then he dashed up the +hill again, past the smithy, and into a track leading out on to the +high road between Castleton and Clough End. He did not care where +he went. Five minutes ago he had been almost in heaven; now he was +in hell. He hated Louie, he hated the boys who had cut and run, he +loathed himself. No!—religion was not for such as he. No more +canting—no more praying—away with it! He seemed to shake all the +emotion of the last few weeks from him with scorn and haste, as he +ran on, his strong young limbs battling with the wind.</p> + +<p>Presently he emerged on the high road. To the left, a hundred yards +away, were the lights of a wayside inn; a farm waggon and a pair of +horses standing with drooped and patient heads were drawn up on the +cobbles in front of it. David felt in his pockets. There was +eighteenpence in them, the remains of half-a-crown a strange +gentleman had given him in Clough End the week before for stopping +a runaway horse. In he stalked.</p> + +<p>'Two penn'orth of gin—hot!' he commanded.</p> + +<p>The girl serving the bar brought it and stared at him curiously. +The glaring paraffin lamp above his head threw the frowning brows +and wild eyes, the crimson cheeks, heaving chest, and tumbled hair, +into strong light and shade. 'That's a quare un!' she thought, but +she found him handsome all the same, and, retreating behind the +beer-taps, she eyed him surreptitiously. She was a raw country +lass, not yet stript of all her natural shyness, or she would have +begun to 'chaff' him.</p> + +<p>'Another!' said David, pushing forward his glass. This time he +looked at her. His reckless gaze travelled over her coarse and +comely face, her full figure, her bare arms. He drank the glass she +gave him, and yet another. She began to feel half afraid of him, +and moved away. The hot stimulant ran through his veins. Suddenly +he felt his head whirling from the effects of it, but that horrible +clutch of despair was no longer on him. He raised himself defiantly +and turned to go, staggering along the floor. He was near the +entrance when an inner door opened, and the carter, who had been +gossiping in a room behind with the landlord, emerged. He started +with astonishment when he saw David.</p> + +<p>'Hullo, Davy, what are yo after?'</p> + +<p>David turned, nearly losing his balance as he did so, and clutching +at the bar for support. He found himself confronted with Jim +Wigson—his old enemy—who had been to Castleton with a load of hay +and some calves, and was on his way back to Kinder again. When he +saw who it was clinging to the bar counter, Jim first stared and +then burst into a hoarse roar of laughter.</p> + +<p>'Coom here! coom here!' he shouted to the party in the back +parlour. 'Here's a rum start! I do declare this beats cock-fighting! +—this do. Damn my eyes iv it doosn't! Look at that yoong limb. Why +they towd me down at Clough End this mornin he'd been took "serious" +—took wi a prayin turn—they did. Look at un! It ull tak 'im till +to-morrow mornin to know his yed from his heels. He! he! he! Yo're +a deep un, Davy—yo are. But yo'll get a bastin when Hannah sees +yo—prayin or no prayin.'</p> + +<p>And Jim went off into another guffaw, pointing his whip the while +at Davy. Some persons from the parlour crowded in, enjoying the +fun. David did not see them. He reached out his hand for the glass +he had just emptied, and steadying himself by a mighty effort, +flung it swift and straight in Jim Wigson's face. There was a crash +of fragments, a line of blood appeared on the young carter's chin, +and a chorus of wrath and alarm rose from the group behind him. +With a furious oath Jim placed a hand on the bar, vaulted it, and +fell upon the lad. David defended himself blindly, but he was dazed +with drink, and his blows and kicks rained aimlessly on Wigson's +iron frame. In a second or two Jim had tripped him up, and stood +over him, his face ablaze with vengeance and conquest.</p> + +<p>'Yo yoong varmint—yo cantin yoong hypocrite! I'll teach yo to show +imperence to your betters. Yo bin allus badly i' want o' soombody +to tak yo down a peg or two. Now I'll show yo. I'll not fight yo, +but I'll flog yo—<i>flog yo</i>—d' yo hear?'</p> + +<p>And raising his carter's whip he brought it down on the boy's back +and legs. David tried desperately to rise—in vain—Jim had him by +the collar; and four or five times more the heavy whip came down, +avenging with each lash many a slumbering grudge in the victor's +soul.</p> + +<p>Then Jim felt his arm firmly caught. 'Now, Mister Wigson,' cried the +landlord—a little man, but a wiry—'yo'll not get me into trooble. +Let th' yoong ripstitch go. Yo've gien him a taste he'll not forget +in a week o' Sundays. Let him go.'</p> + +<p>Jim, with more oaths, struggled to get free, but the landlord had +quelled many rows in his time, and his wrists were worthy of his +calling. Meanwhile his wife helped up the boy. David was no sooner +on his feet than he made another mad rush for Wigson, and it needed +the combined efforts of landlord, landlady, and servant-girl to +part the two again. Then the landlord, seizing David from behind by +'the scuft of the neck,' ran him out to the door in a twinkling.</p> + +<p>'Go 'long wi yo! An if yo coom raisin th' divil here again, see iv I +don't gie yo a souse on th' yed mysel.' And he shoved his charge +out adroitly and locked the door.</p> + +<p>David staggered across the road as though still under the impetus +given by the landlord's shove.</p> + +<p>The servant-girl took advantage of the loud cross-fire of talk +which immediately rose at the bar round Jim Wigson to run to a +corner window and lift the blind. The boy was sitting on a heap of +stones for mending the road, looking at the inn. Other passers-by +had come in, attracted by the row, and the girl slipped out +unperceived, opened the side door, and ran across the road. It had +begun to rain, and the drops splashed in her face.</p> + +<p>David was sitting leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the lighted +windows of the house opposite. The rays which came from them showed +her that his nose and forehead were bleeding, and that the blood +was dripping unheeded on the boy's clothes. He was utterly +powerless, and trembling all over, but his look 'gave her a turn.'</p> + +<p>'Now, luke here,' she said, bending down to him. 'Yo jes go whoam. +Wigson, he'll be out direckly, an he'll do yo a hurt iv he finds +yo. Coom, I'll put yo i' the way for Kinder.'</p> + +<p>And before he could gather his will to resist, she had dragged him +up with her strong countrywoman's arms and was leading him along +the road to the entrance of the lane he had come by.</p> + +<p>'Lor, yo <i>are</i> bleedin,' she said compassionately; 'he shud ha +thowt as how yo wor nobbut a lad—an it wor he begun aggin fust. +He's a big bully is Wigson.' And impulsively raising her apron she +applied it to the blood, David quite passive all the while. The +great clumsy lass nearly kissed him for pity.</p> + +<p>'Now then,' she said at last, turning him into the lane, 'yo know +your way, an I mun goo, or they'll be raisin the parish arter me. +Gude neet to yo, an keep out o' Wigson's seet. Rest yursel a bit +theer—agen th' wall.'</p> + +<p>And leaving him leaning against the wall, she reluctantly departed, +stopping to look back at him two or three times in spite of the +rain, till the angle of the wall hid him from view.</p> + +<p>The rain poured down and the wind whistled through the rough lane. +David presently slipped down upon a rock jutting from the wall, and +a fevered, intermittent sleep seized him—the result of the spirits +he had been drinking. His will could oppose no resistance; he slept +on hour after hour, sheltered a little by an angle of the wall, but +still soaked by rain and buffeted by the wind.</p> + +<p>When he awoke he staggered suddenly to his feet. The smart of his +back and legs recalled him, after a few moments of bewilderment, to +a mental torture he had scarcely yet had time to feel. He—David +Grieve—had been beaten—thrashed like a dog—by Jim Wigson! The +remembered fact brought with it a degradation of mind and body—a +complete unstringing of the moral fibres, which made even revenge +seem an impossible output of energy. A nature of this sort, with +such capacities and ambitions, carries about with it a sense of +supremacy, a natural, indispensable self-conceit which acts as the +sheath to the bud, and is the condition of healthy development. +Break it down and you bruise and jeopardise the flower of life.</p> + +<p>Jim Wigson!—the coarse, ignorant lout with whom he had been, more +or less, at feud since his first day in Kinder, whom he had +despised with all the strength of his young vanity. By to-morrow +all Kinder would know, and all Kinder would laugh. 'What! yo +whopped Reuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim? Wal, an a good thing, too! +A lick now an again ud do <i>him</i> noa harm—a cantankerous yoong +rascot—pert an proud, like t' passon's pig, I say.' David could +hear the talk to be as though it were actually beside him. It burnt +into his ear.</p> + +<p>He groped his way through the lane and on to the moor—trembling +with physical exhaustion, the morbid frenzy within him choking his +breath, the storm beating in his face. What was that black mass to +his right?—the smithy? A hard sob rose in his throat. Oh, he had +been so near to an ideal world of sweetness, purity, holiness! Was +it a year ago?</p> + +<p>With great difficulty he found the crossing-place in the brook, and +then the gap in the wall which led him into the farm fields. When +he was still a couple of fields off the house he heard the dogs +beginning. But he heard them as though in a dream.</p> + +<p>At last he stood at the door and fumbled for the handle. Locked! +Why, what time could it be? He tried to remember what time he had +left home, but failed. At last he knocked, and just as he did so he +perceived through a chink of the kitchen shutter a light on the +scrubbed deal table inside, and Hannah's figure beside it. At +the sound of the knocker Hannah rose, put away her work with +deliberation, snuffed the candle, and then moved with it to the +door of the kitchen. The boy watched her with a quickly beating +heart and whirling brain. She opened the door.</p> + +<p>'Whar yo bin?' she demanded sternly. 'I'd like to know what business +yo have to coom in this time o' neet, an your uncle fro whoam. +Yo've bin in mischief, I'll be bound. Theer's Louie coom back wi a +black eye, an jes because she woan't say nowt about it, I know as +it's yo are at t' bottom o' 't. I'm reg'lar sick o' sich doins in a +decent house. Whar yo bin, I say?'</p> + +<p>And this time she held the candle up so as to see him. She had been +sitting fuming by herself, and was in one of her blackest tempers. +David's misdemeanour was like food to a hungry instinct.</p> + +<p>'I went to prayer-meetin,' the lad said thickly. It seemed to him +as though the words came all in the wrong order.</p> + +<p>Hannah bent forward and gave a sudden cry.</p> + +<p>'Why, yo bin fightin! Yo're all ower blood! Yo bin fightin, +and I'll bet a thousand pund yo draw'd in Louie too. And +<i>sperrits</i>! Why, yo <i>smell</i> o' sperrits! Yo're jes <i>reekin</i> +wi 'em! Wal, upon my word!'—and Hannah drew herself back, +flinging every slow word in his face like a blow. 'Yo feature +your mither, yo do, boath on you, pretty close. I allus said it ud +coom out i' yo too. Prayer-meetin! Yo yoong hypocrite! Gang your +ways! Yo may sleep i' th' stable; it's good enough liggin for yo +this neet.'</p> + +<p>And before he had taken in her words she had slammed the door in +his face, and locked it. He made a feeble rush for it in vain. +Hannah marched back into the kitchen, listening instinctively first +to him left outside, and then for any sound there might be from +upstairs. In a minute or two she heard uneven steps going away; but +there was no movement in the room overhead. Louie was sleeping +heavily. As for Hannah, she sat down again with a fierce decision +of gesture, which seemed to vibrate through the kitchen and all it +held. Who could find fault with her? It would be a lesson to him. +It was not a cold night, and there was straw in the stable—a deal +better lying than such a boy deserved. As she thought of his +'religious' turn she shrugged her shoulders with a bitter scorn.</p> + +<p>The night wore on in the high Kinder valley. The stormy wind and +rain beat in great waves of sound and flood against the breast of +the mountain; the Kinder stream and the Red Brook danced under the +heavy drops. The grouse lay close and silent in the sheltering +heather; even the owls in the lower woods made no sound. Still, the +night was not perfectly dark, for towards midnight a watery moon +rose, and showed itself at intervals between the pelting showers.</p> + +<p>In the Dawsons' little cottage on Frimley Moor there were still +lights showing when that pale moon appeared. Margaret was watching +late. She and another woman sat by the fire talking under their +breaths. A kettle was beside her with a long spout, which sent the +steam far into the room, keeping the air of it moist and warm for +the poor bronchitic old man who lay close-curtained from the +draughts on the wooden bed in the corner.</p> + +<p>The kettle sang, the fire crackled, and the wind shook the windows +and doors. But suddenly, through the other sounds, Margaret was +aware of an intermittent knocking—a low, hesitating sound, as of +some one outside afraid, and yet eager, to make himself heard.</p> + +<p>She started up, and her companion—a homely neighbour, one of those +persons whose goodness had, perhaps, helped to shape poor +Margaret's philosophy of life—looked round with a scared +expression.</p> + +<p>'Whoiver can it be, this time o' neet?' said Margaret—and she +looked at the old clock—'why, it's close on middle-neet!'</p> + +<p>She hesitated a moment, then she went to the door, and bent her +mouth to the chink—</p> + +<p>'Who are yo? What d' yo want?' she asked, in a distinct but low +voice, so as not to disturb 'Lias.</p> + +<p>No answer for a minute. Then her ear caught some words from +outside. With an exclamation she unlocked the door and threw it +open.</p> + +<p>'Davy! Davy!' she cried, almost forgetting her patient.</p> + +<p>The boy clung to the lintel without a word.</p> + +<p>'Coom your ways in!' she said peremptorily, catching him by the +sleeve. 'We conno ha no draughts on th' owd man.'</p> + +<p>And she drew him into the light, and shut the door. Then as the +shaded candle and firelight fell on the tall lad, wavering now to +this side, now to that, as though unable to support himself, his +clothes dripping on the flags, his face deadly white, save for the +smears of blood upon it, the two women fell back in terror.</p> + +<p>'Will yo gie me shelter?' said the boy, hoarsely; 'I bin lying hours +i' th' wet. Aunt Hannah turned me out.'</p> + +<p>Margaret came close to him and looked him all over.</p> + +<p>'What for did she turn yo out, Davy?'</p> + +<p>'I wor late. I'd been fightin Jim Wigson, an she smelt me o' drink.'</p> + +<p>And suddenly the lad sank down on a stool near, and laid his head +in his hands, as though he could hold it up no longer. Margaret's +blanched old face melted all in a minute.</p> + +<p>'Howd 'un up quick!' she said to her companion, still in a whisper. +'He hanno got a dry thread on—and luke at that cut on his +yed—why, he'll be laid up for weeks, maybe, for this. Get his +cloos off, an we'll put him on my bed then.'</p> + +<p>And between them they dragged him up, and Margaret began to strip +off his jacket. As they held him—David surrendering himself +passively—the curtain of the bed was drawn back, and 'Lias, +raising himself on an elbow, looked out into the room. As he caught +sight of the group of the boy and the two women, arrested in their +task by the movement of the curtain, the old man's face expressed, +first a weak and agitated bewilderment, and then in an instant it +cleared.</p> + +<p>His dream wove the sight into itself, and 'Lias knew all about it. +His thin long features, with the white hair hanging about them, +took an indulgent amused look.</p> + +<p>'<i>Bony</i>—eh, Bony, is that <i>yo</i>, man? Eh, but yo're cold +an pinched, loike! A gude glass o' English grog ud not come amiss +to yo. An your coat, an your boots—what is 't drippin? <i>Snaw?</i> +Yo make a man's backbane freeze t' see yo. An there's hot wark +behind yo, too. Moscow might ha warmed yo, I'm thinkin, an—'</p> + +<p>But the weak husky voice gave way, and 'Lias fell back, still +holding the curtain, though, in his emaciated hand, and straining +his dim eyes on David. Margaret, with tears, ran to him, tried to +quiet him and to shut out the light from him again. But he pushed +her irritably aside.</p> + +<p>'No, Margaret,—doan't intrude. What d' yo know about it? Yo know +nowt, Margaret. When did yo iver heer o' the Moscow campaign? Let +me be, woan't yo?'</p> + +<p>But perceiving that he would not be quieted, she turned him on his +pillows, so that he could see the boy at his ease.</p> + +<p>'He's bin out i' th' wet, 'Lias dear, has Davy,' she said; 'and it's +nobbut a clashy night. We mun gie him summat hot, and a place to +sleep in.'</p> + +<p>But the old man did not listen to her. He lay looking at David, his +pale blue eyes weirdly visible in his haggard face, muttering to +himself. He was still tramping in the snow with the French army.</p> + +<p>Then, suddenly, for the first time, he seemed troubled. He stared +up at the pale miserable boy who stood looking at him with +trembling lips. His own face began to work painfully, his dream +struggled with recognition.</p> + +<p>Margaret drew David quickly away. She hurried him into the further +corner of the cottage, where he was out of sight of the bed. There +she quickly stripped him of his wet garments, as any mother might +have done, found an old flannel shirt of 'Lias's for him, and, +wrapping him close in a blanket, she made him lie down on her own +bed, he being now much too weak to realise what was done with him. +Then she got an empty bottle, filled it from the kettle, and put it +to his feet; and finally she brought a bowlful of warm water and a +bit of towel, and, sitting down by him, she washed the blood and +dirt away from his face and hand, and smoothed down the tangled +black hair. She, too, noticed the smell of spirits, and shook her +head over it; but her motherliness grew with every act of service, +and when she had made him warm and comfortable, and he was dropping +into the dead sleep of exhaustion, she drew her old hand tenderly +across his brow.</p> + +<p>'He do feature yan o' my own lads so as he lies theer,' she said +tremulously to her friend at the fire, as though explaining +herself. 'When they'd coom home late fro wark, I'd use to hull 'em +up so mony a time. Ay, I'd been woonderin what had coom to th' boy. +I thowt he'd been goin wrang soomhow, or he'd ha coom aw these +weeks to see 'Lias an me. It's a poor sort o' family he's got. That +Hannah Grieve's a hard un, I'll uphowd yo. Theer's a deal o' her +fault in 't, yo may mak sure.'</p> + +<p>Then she went to give 'Lias some brandy—he lived on little else +now. He dropped asleep again, and, coming back to the hearth, she +consented to lie down before it while her friend watched. Her +failing frame was worn out with nursing and want of rest, and she +was soon asleep.</p> + +<p>When Davy awoke the room was full of a chill daylight. As he moved +he felt himself stiff all over. The sensation brought back memory, +and the boy's whole being seemed to shrink together. He burrowed +first under his coverings out of the light, then suddenly he sat up +in bed, in the shadow of the little staircase—or rather +ladder—which led to the upper story, and looked about him.</p> + +<p>The good woman who had shared Margaret's watch was gone back to her +own home and children. Margaret had made up the fire, tidied the +room, and, at 'Lias's request, drawn up the blinds. She had just +given him some beef-tea and brandy, sponged his face, and lifted +him on his pillows. There seemed to be a revival of life in the old +man, death was for the moment driven back; and Margaret hung over +him in an ecstasy, the two crooning together. David could see her +thin bent figure—the sharpened delicacy of the emaciated face set +in the rusty black net cap which was tied under the chin, and fell +in soft frills on the still brown and silky hair. He saw her +weaver's hand folded round 'Lias's, and he could hear 'Lias +speaking in a weak thread of a voice, but still sanely and +rationally. It gave him a start to catch some of the words—he had +been so long accustomed to the visionary 'Lias.</p> + +<p>'Have yo rested, Margaret?'</p> + +<p>'Ay, dear love, three hours an moor. Betsy James wor here; she saw +yo wanted for nowt. She's a gude creetur, ain't she, 'Lias?'</p> + +<p>'Ay, but noan so good as my Margaret,' said the old man, looking at +her wistfully.' But yo'll wear yorsel down, Margaret; 'yo've had no +rest for neets. Yo're allus toilin' and moilin', an I'm no worth +it, Margaret.'</p> + +<p>The tears gushed to the wife's eyes. It was only with the nearness +of death that 'Lias seemed to have found out his debt to her. To +both, her lifelong service had been the natural offering of the +lower to the higher; she had not been used to gratitude, and she +could not bear it.</p> + +<p>'Dear heart! dear love!' David heard her say; and then there came +to his half-reluctant ear caresses such as a mother gives her +child. He laid his head on his knees, trying to shut them out. He +wished with a passionate and bitter regret that he had not been so +many weeks without coming near these two people; and now 'Lias was +going fast, and after to-day he would see them both no more—for +ever?</p> + +<p>Margaret heard him moving, and nodded back to him over her +shoulder.</p> + +<p>'Yo've slept well, Davy,—better nor I thowt yo would. Your cloos +are by yo—atwixt yo an t'stairs.'</p> + +<p>And there he found them, dry and brushed. He dressed hastily and +came forward to the fire. 'Lias recognised him feebly, Margaret +watching anxiously to see whether his fancies would take him again. +In this tension of death and parting his visions had become almost +more than she could bear. But 'Lias lay quiet.</p> + +<p>'Davy wor caught i' th' rain, and I gave him a bed,' she explained +again, and the old man nodded without a word.</p> + +<p>Then as she prepared him a bowl of oatmeal she stood by the fire +giving the boy motherly advice. He must go back home, of course, +and never mind Hannah; there would come a time when he would get +his chance like other people; and he mustn't drink, for, 'i' th' +first place, drink wor a sad waste o' good wits,' and David's were +'better'n most;' and in the second, 'it wor a sin agen the Lord.'</p> + +<p>David sat with his head drooped in his hand apparently listening. +In reality, her gentle babble passed over him almost unheeded. He +was aching in mind and body; his strong youth, indeed, had but just +saved him from complete physical collapse; for he had lain an +indefinite time on the soaking moor, till misery and despair had +driven him to Margaret's door. But his moral equilibrium was +beginning to return, in virtue of a certain resolution, the one +thing which now stood between him and the black gulf of the night. +He ate his porridge and then he got up.</p> + +<p>'I mun goo, Margaret.'</p> + +<p>He would fain have thanked her, but the words choked in his throat.</p> + +<p>'Ay, soa yo mun, Davy,' said the little body briskly. 'If theer's an +onpleasant thing to do it's best doon quickly—yo mun go back and +do your duty. Coom and see us when yo're passin again. An say +good-bye to 'Lias. He's that wick this mornin—ain't yo, 'Lias?'</p> + +<p>And with a tender cheerfulness she ran across to 'Lias and told him +Davy was going.</p> + +<p>'Good-bye, Davy, my lad, good-bye,' murmured the old man, as he +felt the boy's strong fingers touching his. 'Have yo been readin +owt, Davy, since we saw yo? It's a long time, Davy.'</p> + +<p>'No, nowt of ony account,' said David, looking away.</p> + +<p>'Ay, but yo mun keep it up. Coom when yo like; I've not mony books, +but yo know yo can have 'em aw. I want noan o' them now, do I, +Marg'ret? But I want for nowt—nowt. Dyin 's long, but it's +varra—varra peaceful. Margaret!'</p> + +<p>And withdrawing his hand from Davy, 'Lias laid it in his wife's with +a long, long sigh. David left them so. He stole out unperceived by +either of them.</p> + +<p>When he got outside he stood for a moment under the sheltering +sycamores and laid his cheek against the door. The action contained +all he could not say.</p> + +<p>Then he sped along towards the farm. The sun was rising through the +autumn mists, striking on the gold of the chestnuts, the red of the +cherry trees. There were spaces of intense blue among the rolling +clouds, and between the storm past and the storm to come the whole +moorland world was lavishly, garishly bright.</p> + +<p>He paused at the top of the pasture-fields to look at the farm. +Smoke was already rising from the chimney. Then Aunt Hannah was up, +and he must mind himself. He crept on under walls, till he got to +the back of the farmyard. Then he slipped in, ran into the stable, +and got an old coat of his left there the day before. There was a +copy of a Methodist paper lying near it. He took it up and tore it +across with passion. But his rage was not so much with the paper. +It was his own worthless, unstable, miserable self he would have +rent if he could. The wreck of ideal hopes, the defacement of that +fair image of itself which every healthy youth bears about with it, +could not have been more pitifully expressed.</p> + +<p>Then he looked round to see if there was anything else that he +could honestly take. Yes—an ash stick he had cut himself a week or +two ago. Nothing else—and there was Tibby moving and beginning to +bark in the cowhouse.</p> + +<p>He ran across the road, and from a safe shelter in the fields on +the farther side he again looked back to the farm. There was +Louie's room, the blind still down. He thought of his blow of the +night before—of his promises to her. Aye, she would fret over his +going—he knew that—in her own wild way. She would think he had +been a beast to her. So he had—so he had! There surged up in his +mind inarticulate phrases of remorse, of self-excuse, as though he +were talking to her.</p> + +<p>Some day he would come back and claim her. But when? His +buoyant self-dependence was all gone. It had nothing to do with +his present departure. That came simply from the fact that it was +<i>impossible</i> for him to go on living in Kinder any longer—he +did not stop to analyse the whys and wherefores.</p> + +<p>But suddenly a nervous horror of seeing anyone he knew, now that +the morning was advancing, startled him from his hiding-place. He +ran up towards the Scout again, so as to make a long circuit round +the Wigsons' farm. As he distinguished the walls of it a shiver of +passion ran through the young body. Then he struck off straight +across the moors towards Glossop.</p> + +<p>One moment he stood on the top of Mardale Moor. On one side of him +was the Kinder valley, Needham Farm still showing among its trees; +the white cataract of the Downfall cleaving the dark wall of the +Scout, and calling to the runaway in that voice of storm he knew so +well; the Mermaid's Pool gleaming like an eye in the moorland. On +the other side were hollow after hollow, town beyond town, each +with its cap of morning smoke. There was New Mills, there was +Stockport, there in the far distance was Manchester.</p> + +<p>The boy stood a moment poised between the two worlds, his ash-stick +in his hand, the old coat wound round his arm. Then at a bound he +cleared a low stone wall beside him and ran down the Glossop road.</p> + +<p>Twelve hours later Reuben Grieve climbed the long hill to the farm. +His wrinkled face was happier than it had been for months, and his +thoughts were so pleasantly occupied that he entirely failed to +perceive, for instance, the behaviour of an acquaintance, who +stopped and started as he met him at the entrance of the Kinder +lane, made as though he would have spoken, and, thinking better of +it, walked on. Reuben—the mendacious Reuben—had done very well +with his summer stock—very well indeed. And part of his earnings +was now safely housed in the hands of an old chapel friend, to whom +he had confided them under pledge of secrecy. But he took a +curious, excited pleasure in the thought of the 'poor mouth' he was +going to make to Hannah. He was growing reckless in his passion for +restitution—always provided, however, that he was not called upon +to brave his wife openly. A few more such irregular savings, and, +if an opening turned up for David, he could pay the money and pack +off the lad before Hannah could look round. He could never do it +under her opposition, but he thought he could do it and take the +consequences—he <i>thought</i> he could.</p> + +<p>He opened his own gate. There on the house doorstep stood Hannah, +whiter and grimmer than ever.</p> + +<p>'Reuben Grieve,' she said quickly, 'your nevvy's run away. An if yo +doan't coom and keep your good-for-nothin niece in her place, and +make udder foak keep a civil tongue i' their head to your wife, +I'll leave your house this neet, as sure as I wor born a Martin!'</p> + +<p>Reuben stumbled into the house. There was a wild rush downstairs, +and Louie fell upon him, David's blow showing ghastly plain in her +white quivering face.</p> + +<p>'Whar's Davy?' she said. 'Yo've got him!—he's hid soomwhere—yo +know whar he is! I'll not stay here if yo conno find him! It wor +<i>her</i> fault'—and she threw out a shaking hand towards her +aunt—'she druv him out last neet—an Dawsons took him in—an +iverybody's cryin shame on her! And if yo doan't mak her find +him—she knows where he is—I'll not stay in this hole!—I'll kill +her!—I'll burn th' house!—I'll—'</p> + +<p>The child stopped—panting, choked—beside herself.</p> + +<p>Hannah made a threatening step, but at her gesture Reuben sprang +up, and seizing her by both wrists he looked at her from a height, +as a judge looks. Never had those dull eyes met her so before.</p> + +<p>'Woman!' he cried fiercely. 'Woman! what ha yo doon wi Sandy's son?'</p> + +<h2><a name="BOOK_II_YOUTH" id="BOOK_II_YOUTH"></a>BOOK II<br /><br /> +YOUTH</h2> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-2" id="CHAPTER_I-2"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<p>A tall youth carrying a parcel of books under his arm was hurrying +along Market Place, Manchester. Beside him were covered flower +stalls bordering the pavement, in front of him the domed mass of +the Manchester Exchange, and on all sides he had to push his way +through a crowd of talking, chaffering, hurrying humanity. +Presently he stopped at the door of a restaurant bearing the +idyllic and altogether remarkable name—there it was in gilt +letters over the door—of the 'Fruit and Flowers Parlour.' On the +side post of the door a bill of fare was posted, which the young +man looked up and down with careful eyes. It contained a strange +medley of items in all tongues—</p> + +<p class="c"> +'Marrow pie<br /> +<i>Haricots ŕ la Lune de Miel</i><br /> +<i>Vol-au-Vent ŕ la bonne Santo:</i><br /> +Tomato fritters<br /> +Cheese 'Ticements<br /> +<i>Salad saladorum</i>' +</p> + +<p>And at the bottom of the <i>menu</i> was printed in bold red +characters,</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'No meat, no disease. <i>Ergo</i>, no meat, no sin.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fellow-citizens, leave your carnal foods,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and try a more excellent way.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I. E. Push the door and walk in.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Fruit and Flowers Parlour</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">invites everybody and overcharges nobody.'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The youth did not trouble, however, to read the notice. He knew it +and the 'Parlour' behind it by heart. But he moved away, pondering +the <i>menu</i> with a smile.</p> + +<p>In his amused abstraction—at the root of which lay the appetite of +eighteen—he suddenly ran into a passer-by, who stumbled against a +shop window with an exclamation of pain. The youth's attention was +attracted and he stopped awkwardly.</p> + +<p>'People of your height, young man, should look before them,' said +the victim, rubbing what seemed to be a deformed leg, while his +lips paled a little.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Ancrum,' cried the other, amazed.</p> + +<p>'Davy!'</p> + +<p>The two looked at each other. Then Mr. Ancrum gripped the lad's +arm.</p> + +<p>'Help me along, Davy. It's only a bruise. It'll go off. Where are +you going?'</p> + +<p>'Up Piccadilly way with a parcel,' said Davy, looking askance at +his companion's nether man. 'Did I knock your bad leg, sir?'</p> + +<p>'Oh no, nothing—never mind. Well now, Davy, this is +queer—decidedly queer. Four years!—and we run against each other +in Market Street at last. Tell me the truth, Davy—have you long +ago given me up as a man who could make promises to a lad in +difficulties and forget 'em as soon as he was out of sight? Say it +out, my boy.'</p> + +<p>David flushed and looked down at his companion with some +embarrassment. Their old relation of minister and pupil had left a +deep mark behind it. Moreover, in the presence of that face of Mr. +Ancrum's, a long, thin, slightly twisted face, with the stamp +somehow of a tragic sincerity on the eyes and mouth, it was +difficult to think as slightingly of his old friend as he had done +for a good while past, apparently with excellent reason.</p> + +<p>'I supposed there was something the matter,' he blurted out at +last.</p> + +<p>'Well, never mind, Davy,' said the other, smiling sadly. 'We can't +talk here in this din. But now I've got you, I keep you. Where are +you?'</p> + +<p>'I'm in Half Street, sir—Purcell's, the bookseller.'</p> + +<p>'Don't know him. I never go into a shop. I have no money. Are you +apprentice there?'</p> + +<p>'Well, there was no binding. I'm assistant. I do a lot of business +one way and another, buying and selling both.'</p> + +<p>'How long have you been in Manchester?'</p> + +<p>'Four years, sir.'</p> + +<p>The minister looked amazed.</p> + +<p>'And I have been here, off and on, for the last three. How have we +missed each other all that time? I made inquiries at Clough End, +when—ah, well, no matter; but it was too late. You had decamped, +no one could tell me anything.'</p> + +<p>David walked on beside his companion, silent and awkward. The +explanation seemed a lame one. Mr. Ancrum had left Clough End in +May, promising to look out for a place for the lad at once, and to +let him know. Six whole months elapsed between that promise and +David's own departure. Yes, it was lame; but it was so long ago, +and so many things had happened since, that it did not signify. +Only he did not somehow feel much effusion in meeting his old +friend and playfellow again.</p> + +<p>'Getting on, Davy?' said Ancrum presently, looking the lad up and +down.</p> + +<p>David made a movement of the shoulders which the minister noticed. +It was both more free and more graceful than ordinary English +gesture. It reawakened in Ancrum at once that impression of +something alien and unusual which both David and his sister had +often produced in him while they were still children.</p> + +<p>'I don't know,' said the boy slowly; and then, after a hesitation +or two, fell silent.</p> + +<p>'Well, look here,' said Ancrum, stopping short; 'this won't do for +talk, as I said before; but I must know all about you, and I must +tell you what I can about myself. I lodge in Mortimer Road, you +know, up Fallowfield way. You can get there by tram in twenty +minutes; when will you come and see me? To-night?'</p> + +<p>The lad thought a moment.</p> + +<p>'Would Wednesday night do, sir? I—I believe I'm going to the music +to-night.'</p> + +<p>'What, to the "Elijah," in the Free Trade Hall? Appoint me a place +to meet—we'll go together—and you shall come home to supper with +me afterwards.'</p> + +<p>David flushed and looked straight before him.</p> + +<p>'I promised to take two young ladies,' he said, after a moment, +abruptly.</p> + +<p>'Oh!' said Mr. Ancrum, laughing. 'I apologise. Well, Wednesday +night, then.—Don't you forget, Davy—half-past seven? Done. +<i>Fourteen</i>, Mortimer Road. Good-bye.'</p> + +<p>And the minister turned and retraced his steps towards Market +Place. He walked slowly, like one much preoccupied, and might have +run into fresh risks but for the instinctive perception of most +passers-by that he was not a person to be hustled. Suddenly he +laughed out—thinking of David and his 'young ladies,' and +comparing the lad's admission with his former attitude towards +'gells.' Well, time had but wrought its natural work. What +a brilliant noticeable creature altogether—how unlike the +ordinary run of north-country lads! But that he had been from the +beginning—the strain of some nimbler blood had always shown +itself.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, David made his way up Piccadilly—did some humourist +divert himself, in days gone by, with dropping a shower of London +names on Manchester streets?—and deposited his parcel. Then the +great clock of the Exchange struck twelve, and the Cathedral +followed close upon it, the sounds swaying and vibrating above the +crowds hurrying through Market Street. It was a damp October day. +Above, the sky was hidden by a dark canopy of cloud and smoke; the +Cathedral on its hill rose iron-black above the black streets and +river; black mud encrusted all the streets, and bespattered those +that walked in them. Nothing more dreary than the smoke-grimed +buildings on either hand, than the hideous railway station across +the bridge, or the mud-sprinkled hoardings covered with flaring +advertisements, which led up to the bridge, could be well imagined. +Manchester was at its darkest and grimmest.</p> + +<p>But as David Grieve walked back along Market Street his heart +danced within him. Neither mud nor darkness, neither the squalor of +the streets, nor the penetrating damp of the air, affected him at +all. The crowd, the rush of life about him, the gas in the shops, +the wares on which it shone, the endless faces passing him, the +sense of hurry, of business, of quick living—he saw and felt +nothing else; and to these his youth was all atune.</p> + +<p>Arrived in Market Place again he made his way with alacrity to the +'Parlour.' For it was dinner time; he had a free half-hour, and +nine times out of ten he spent it at the 'Parlour.'</p> + +<p>He walked in, put his hat on its accustomed peg, took his seat at a +table near the door, and looked round for some one. The low +widespreading room was well filled, mostly with clerks and shopmen; +the gas was lit because of the darkness outside, and showed off the +gay panels on the walls filled with fruit and flower subjects, for +which Adrian O'Connor Lomax, commonly called 'Daddy,' the owner of +the restaurant, had given a commission to some students at the +Mechanics' Institute, and whereof he was inordinately proud. At the +end of the room near the counter was a table occupied by about half +a dozen young men, all laughing and talking noisily, and beside +them shouting, gesticulating, making dashes, now for one, now for +another—was a figure, which David at once set himself to watch, +his chin balanced on his hand, his eyes dancing. It was the thin +tall figure of an oldish man in a long frock-coat, which opened in +front over a gaily flowered silk waistcoat. On the bald crown of +his head he wore a black skull cap, below which certain grotesque +and scanty tails of fair hair, carefully brushed, fell to his +shoulders. His face was long and sharply pointed, and the surface +of it bronzed and wrinkled by long exposure, out of all likeness to +human skin. The eyes were weirdly prominent and blue; the gestures +had the deliberate extravagance of an actor; and the whole man +recalled a wizard of pantomime.</p> + +<p>David had hardly time to amuse himself with the 'chaffing' of +Daddy, which was going on, and which went on habitually at the +Parlour from morning till night, when Daddy perceived a new-comer.</p> + +<p>He turned round sharp upon his heels, surveyed the room with the +frown of a general.</p> + +<p>'Ah!' he said with a theatrical air, as he made out the lad at the +further table. 'Gentlemen, I let you off for the present,' and +waving his hand to them with an indulgent self-importance, which +provoked a roar of laughter, he turned and walked down the +restaurant, with a quick swaying gait, to where David sat.</p> + +<p>David made room for him in a smiling silence. Lomax sat down, and +the two looked at each other.</p> + +<p>'Davy,' said Daddy severely, 'why weren't you here yesterday?'</p> + +<p>'When did you begin opening on Sundays, Daddy?' said the youth, +attacking a portion of marrow pie, which had just been laid before +him, his gay curious eyes still wandering over Daddy's costume, +which was to-day completed by a large dahlia in the buttonhole, as +grotesque as the rest.</p> + +<p>'Ah bedad, but I'm losing my memory entirely;—and you know it, you +varmint. Well then, it was Saturday you weren't here.'</p> + +<p>'You're about right there. I was let off early, and got a walk out +Ramsbottom way with a fellow. I hadn't stretched my legs for two +months, and—I'll confess to you, Daddy—that when we got down from +the moor, I was—overtaken—as the pious people say—by a mutton +chop.'</p> + +<p>The lad looked up at him laughing. Daddy surveyed him with chagrin.</p> + +<p>'I knew you were a worthless lukewarm sort of a creature. +Flesh-eating's as bad as drink for them that have got it in 'em. +It'll come out. Well, go your ways! <i>You'll</i> never be Prime +Minister.'</p> + +<p>'Don't distress yourself, Daddy. As long as marrow pies are good, I +shall eat 'em—you may count on that. What's that cheese affair +down there?' and he pointed towards the last item but one in the +bill of fare. Instead of answering, the old man turned on his seat, +and called to one of the waitresses near. In a second David had a +'Cheese 'Ticement' before him, at which he peered curiously. Daddy +watched him, not without some signs of nervousness.</p> + +<p>'Daddy,' said David, calmly looking up, 'when I last saw this +article it was called "Welsh rabbit."'</p> + +<p>'Davy, you've no soul for fine distinctions,' said the other +hastily. 'Change the subject. How have my <i>dear</i> brother-in-law +and you been hitting it off lately?'</p> + +<p>David went on with his ''Ticement,' the corners of his mouth +twitching, for a minute or so, then he raised his head and slowly +shook it, looking Daddy in the face.</p> + +<p>'We shall bear up when we say good-bye, Daddy, and I don't think +that crisis is far off. It would have come long ago, only I do +happen to know a provoking deal more about books than any assistant +he ever had before. Last week I picked him up a copy of "Bells and +Pomegranates" for one and nine, and he sold it next day for two +pound sixteen. There's business for you, Daddy. That put off our +breach at least a fortnight, but unless I discover a first folio of +Shakespeare for sixpence between now and then, I don't see what's +to postpone the agony after that—and if I did I should probably +speculate in it myself. No, Daddy, it's coming to the point, as the +tiger said when he reached the last joint of the cow's tail. And +it's your fault.'</p> + +<p>'My fault, Davy,' said Lomax, half tremulous, half delighted, +drawing a chair close up to the table that he might lose nothing of +the youth's confidences. 'What d'ye mean by that, ye spalpeen?'</p> + +<p>'Well, wasn't it you took me to the Hall of Science, Daddy, and +couldn't keep a quiet tongue in your head about it afterwards? +Wasn't it you lent me the "Secularist," which got me into the worst +rumpus of the season? Oh, Daddy, you're a bad un!'</p> + +<p>And the handsome lad leant back in his chair, stretching his long +legs and studying Daddy with twinkling eyes. As for Lomax, he +received the onslaught with a curious mixture of expressions, in +which a certain malicious pleasure, crossed by an uneasy sense of +responsibility, was the most prominent. He sat drumming on the +table, his straggling beard falling forward on to his chest, his +mouth pursing itself up. At last he threw back his head with +energy.</p> + +<p>'I'll not excuse myself, Davy; you're well out of it. You'll be a +great man yet—always provided you can manage yourself in the +matter of flesh meat. It was to come one way or the other—you +couldn't put up much longer with such a puke-stocking as my +precious brother-in-law. (That's one of the great points of +Shakespeare, Davy, my lad—perhaps you haven't noticed it—you get +such a ruck of bad names out of him for the asking! Puke-stocking +is good—real good. If it wasn't made for a sanctimonious +hypocrite of a Baptist like Purcell it ought to have been.) +And "Spanish-pouch" too! Oh, I love "Spanish-pouch"! When I've +called a man "Spanish-pouch", I'm the better for it, Davy—the +bile's relieved.'</p> + +<p>'Thank you, Daddy; I'll remember the receipt. I say, were you ever +in Purcell's shop?'</p> + +<p>'Purcell's shop? Why, of course I was, you varmint! Wasn't it there +I met my Isabella, his sister? Ah, the poor thing! He led her a +life; and when I was his assistant I took sides with her—that was +the beginning of it all. At first we hadn't got on so badly—I had +a pious fit on myself in those days—but one day at tea, I had been +making free—taking Isabella's part. There had been a neighbour +there, and the laugh had been against him. Well, after tea, we +marched back to the shop, and says he to me, as black as thunder, +"I'm quite willing, Lomax, to be your Christian brother in here: +when we're in society I'd have you remember it's different. You +should know your place."</p> + +<p>'"Oh, should I?" says I. (Isabella had been squeezing my hand under +the table and I didn't care what I said.) "Well, you'd better find +some one as will, and be d—d to your Christian brotherhood." And +I took my cap up and marched out, leaving him struck a pillar of +salt with surprise, and that mad!—for we were in the middle of +issuing the New Year's catalogue, and he'd left most of it to me. +And three weeks after—'</p> + +<p>Daddy rose quivering with excitement, put his thumbs into his +waistcoat pocket, and bent over the back of his chair towards +David. As he stood there, on tiptoe, the flaps of the long coat +falling back from him like wings, his skull-cap slightly awry, two +red spots on either wrinkled cheek, and every feature of the sharp +brown face alive with the joy of his long-past vengeance, he was +like some strange perching bird.</p> + +<p>'—Three weeks after, Davy, I married my Isabella under his +puritanical nose, at the chapel across the way; and the bit of +spite in it—bedad!—it was like mustard to beef. (Pish! what am I +about!) And I set up shop almost next door to the chapel, and took +the trade out of his mouth, and enjoyed myself finely for six +months. At the end of that time he gave out that the neighbourhood +was too "low" for him, and he moved up town. And though I've been +half over the world since, I've never ceased to keep an eye on him. +I've had a finger in more pies of his than he thinks for!'</p> + +<p>And Daddy drew himself up, pressing his hands against his sides, +his long frame swelling out, as it seemed, with sudden passion. +David watched him with a look half sympathetic, half satirical.</p> + +<p>'I don't see that he did you much harm, Daddy.'</p> + +<p>'Harm!' said the little man, irascibly. 'Harm! I must say you're +uncommon slow at gripping a situation, Davy. I'd my wife's score to +settle, too, I tell you, as well as my own. He'd sat on his poor +easy-going sister till she hadn't a feature left. I knew he had. +He's made up of all the mean vices—and at the same time, if you +were to hear him at a prayer meeting, you'd think that since Enoch +went up to heaven the wrong way, the world didn't happen to have +been blessed with another saint to match Tom Purcell.' And, stirred +by his own eloquence, Daddy looked down frowning on the youth +before him.</p> + +<p>'What made you give up the book-trade, Daddy?' asked David, with a +smile.</p> + +<p>It was like the pricking of a bladder. Daddy collapsed in a moment. +Sitting down again, he began to arrange his coat elaborately over +his knees, as though to gain time.</p> + +<p>'David, you're an inquisitive varmint,' he said at last, looking up +askance at his companion.' Some one's been telling you tales, +by the look of you. Look here—if Tom Purcell's a blathering +hypocrite, that is not the same thing precisely as saying that +Adrian O'Connor Lomax is a perfect specimen of the domestic +virtues. Never you mind, my boy, what made me give up bookselling. +I've chucked so many things overboard since, that it's hardly worth +inquiring. Try any trade you like and Daddy'll be able to give you +some advice in it—that's the only thing that concerns you. Well +now, tell me—' and he turned round and put his elbows on the +table, leaning over to David—'When are you coming away, and what +are your prospects?'</p> + +<p>'I told you about a fortnight would see it out, Daddy. And there's +a little shop in—But it's no good, Daddy. You can't keep secrets.'</p> + +<p>The old man turned purple, drew himself up, and looked fiercely at +David from behind his spectacles. But in a second his mood changed +and he stretched his hand slowly out across the table.</p> + +<p>'On the honour of a Lomax,' he said solemnly.</p> + +<p>There was a real dignity about the absurd action which melted +David. He shook the hand and repeated him. Leaning over he +whispered some information in Daddy's ear, Daddy beamed. And in the +midst of the superfluity of nods and winks that followed David +called for his bill.</p> + +<p>The action recalled Daddy to his own affairs, and he looked on +complacently while David paid.</p> + +<p>''Pon my word, Davy, I can hardly yet believe in my own genius. +Where else, my boy, in this cotton-spinning hole, would you find a +dinner like that for sixpence? Am I a benefactor to the species, +sir, or am I not?'</p> + +<p>'Looks like it, Daddy, by the help of Miss Dora.'</p> + +<p>'Aye, aye,' said the old man testily,—'I'll not deny that Dora's +useful to the business. But the <i>inspiration</i>, Davy, 's all +mine. You want genius, my boy, to make a tomfool of yourself like +this,' and he looked himself proudly up and down. 'Twenty customers +a week come here for nothing in the world but to see what new rigs +Daddy may be up to. The invention—the happy ideas, man, I throw +into one day of this place would stock twenty ordinary businesses.'</p> + +<p>'All the same, Daddy, I've tasted Welsh rabbit before,' said David +drily, putting on his hat.</p> + +<p>'I scorn your remark, sir. It argues a poorly furnished mind. Show +me anything new in this used-up world, eh? but for the name and the +dishing up—Well, good-bye, Davy, and good luck to you!'</p> + +<p>David made his way across Hanging Ditch to a little row of houses +bearing the baldly appropriate name of Half Street. It ran along +the eastern side of the Cathedral close. First came the houses, +small, irregular, with old beams and projections here and there, +then a paved footway, then the railings round the close. In full +view of the windows of the street rose the sixteenth-century +church which plays as best it can the part of Cathedral to +Manchester. Round it stretched a black and desolate space paved +with tombstones. Not a blade of grass broke the melancholy of those +begrimed and time-worn slabs. The rain lay among them in pools, +squalid buildings overlooked them, and the church, with its +manifest inadequacy to a fine site and a great city, did but little +towards overcoming the mean and harsh impression made—on such a +day especially—by its surroundings.</p> + +<p>David opened the door of a shop about halfway up the row. A bell +rang sharply, and as he shut the outer door behind him, another at +the back of the shop opened hastily, and a young girl came in.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Grieve, father's gone out to Eccles to see some books a +gentleman wants him to buy. If Mr. Stephens comes, you're to tell +him father's found him two or three more out of the list he sent. +You know where all his books are put together, if he wants to see +them, father says.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, thank you, Miss Purcell, I do. No other message?'</p> + +<p>'No.' The speaker lingered. 'What time do we start for the music +to-night? But you'll be down to tea?'</p> + +<p>'Certainly, if you and Miss Dora don't want it to yourselves.' The +speaker smiled. He was leaning on the counter, while the girl stood +behind it.</p> + +<p>'Oh dear, no!' said Miss Purcell with a half-pettish gesture. 'I +don't know what to talk to Dora about now. She thinks of nothing +but St. Damian's and her work. It's worse than father. And, of +course, I know she hasn't much opinion of <i>me</i>. Indeed, she's +always telling me so—well, not exactly—but she lets me guess fast +enough.'</p> + +<p>The speaker put up two small hands to straighten some of the +elaborate curls and twists with which her pretty head was crowned. +There was a little consciousness in the action. The thought of her +cousin had evidently brought with it the thought of some of those +things of which the stern Dora disapproved.</p> + +<p>David looked at the brown hair and the slim fingers as he was meant +to look at them. Yet in his smiling good humour there was not a +trace of bashfulness or diffidence. He was perfectly at his ease, +with something of a proud self-reliant consciousness in every +movement; nothing in his manner could have reminded a spectator of +the traditional apprentice making timid love to his master's +daughter.</p> + +<p>'I've seen you stand up to her though,' he said laughing. 'It's like +all pious people. Doesn't it strike you as odd that they should +never be content with being pious for themselves?'</p> + +<p>He looked at her with bright sarcastic eyes.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I know what you mean!' she said with an instant change of +tone; 'I didn't mean anything of the sort. I think it's shocking of +you to go to that place on Sundays—so there, Mr. Grieve.'</p> + +<p>She threw herself back defiantly against the books which walled the +shop, her arms folded before her. The attitude showed the long +throat, the rounded bust, and the slender waist compressed with +some evident rigour into a close-fitting brown dress. That Miss +Purcell thought a great deal of the fashion of her hair, the style +of her bodices, and the size of her waist was clear; that she was +conscious of thinking about them to good purpose was also plain. +But on the whole the impression of artificiality, of something +over-studied and over-done which the first sight of her generally +awakened, was soon, as a rule, lost in another more attractive—in +one of light, tripping youth, perfectly satisfied with itself and +with the world.</p> + +<p>'I don't think you know much about the place,' he said quietly, +still smiling.</p> + +<p>She flushed, her foolish little sense of natural superiority to +'the assistant' outraged again, as it had been outraged already a +hundred times since she and David Grieve had met.</p> + +<p>'I know quite as much as anybody need know—any respectable +person—' she maintained angrily. 'It's a low, disgraceful +place—and they talk wicked nonsense. Everyone says so. It doesn't +matter a bit where Uncle Lomax goes—he's mad—but it is a shame he +should lead other people astray.'</p> + +<p>She was much pleased with her own harangue, and stood there +frowning on him, her sharp little chin in the air, one foot beating +the ground.</p> + +<p>'Well, yes, really,' said David in a reflective tone; 'one would +think Miss Dora had her hands full at home, without—'</p> + +<p>He looked up, significantly, smiling. Lucy Purcell was enraged +with him—with his hypocritical sympathy as to her uncle's +misdoings—his avoidance of his own crime.</p> + +<p>'It's not uncle at all, it's you!' she cried, with more logic than +appeared. 'I tell you, Mr. Grieve, father won't stand it.'</p> + +<p>The young man drew himself up from the counter.</p> + +<p>'No,' he said with great equanimity, 'I suppose not.'</p> + +<p>And taking up a parcel of books from the counter he turned away. +Lucy, flurried and pouting, called after him.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Grieve!'</p> + +<p>'Yes.'</p> + +<p>'I—I didn't mean it. I <i>hope</i> you won't go. I know father's +hard. He's hard enough with me.'</p> + +<p>And she raised her hands to her flushed face. David was terribly +afraid she was going to cry. Several times since the orphan girl of +seventeen had arrived from school three months before to take her +place in her father's house, had she been on the point of confiding +her domestic woes to David Grieve. But though under the terms of +his agreement with her father, which included one meal in the back +parlour, the assistant and she were often thrown together, he had +till now instinctively held her aloof. His extraordinary good looks +and masterful energetic ways had made an impression on her +schoolgirl mind from the beginning. But for him she had no +magnetism whatever. The little self-conceited creature knew it, or +partially knew it, and smarted under it.</p> + +<p>Now, he was just beginning an awkward sentence, when there was a +sound at the outer door. With another look at him, half shy, half +appealing, Lucy fled. Conscious of a distinct feeling of relief, +David went to attend to the customer.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-2" id="CHAPTER_II-2"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<p>The customer was soon content and went out again into the rain. +David mounted a winding iron stair which connected the downstairs +shop with an upper room in which a large proportion of the books +were stored. It was a long, low, rambling place made by throwing +together all the little bits of rooms on the first floor of the old +house. One corner of it had a special attraction for David. It was +the corner where, ranged partly on the floor, partly on the shelves +which ran under the windows, lay the collection of books that +Purcell had been making for his customer, Mr. Stephens.</p> + +<p>Out of that collection Purcell's assistant had extracted a very +varied entertainment. In the first place it had amused him to watch +the laborious pains and anxiety with which his pious employer had +gathered together the very sceptical works of which Mr. Stephens +was in want, showing a knowledge of contents, and editions, and +out-of-the-way profanities, under the stimulus of a paying +customer, which drew many a sudden laugh from David when he was +left to think of it in private.</p> + +<p>In the next place the books themselves had been a perpetual feast +to him for weeks, enjoyed all the more keenly because of the +secrecy in which it had to be devoured. The little gathering +represented with fair completeness the chief books of the French +'philosophers,' both in the original French, and in those English +translations of which so plentiful a crop made its appearance +during the fifty years before and after 1800. There, for instance, +lay the seventy volumes of Voltaire. Close by was an imperfect copy +of the Encyclopaedia, which Mr. Stephens was getting cheap; on the +other side a motley gathering of Diderot and Rousseau; while +Holbach's 'System of Nature,' and Helvetius 'On the Mind,' held +their rightful place among the rest.</p> + +<p>Through these books, then, which had now been on the premises for +some time—Mr. Stephens being a person of uncertain domicile, and +unable as yet to find them a home—David had been freely ranging. +Whenever Purcell was out of the way and customers were slack, he +invariably found his way to this spot in the upper room. There, +with his elbows on the top of the bookcase which ran under the +window, and a book in front of him—or generally two, the original +French and a translation—he had read Voltaire's tales, a great +deal of the Encyclopaedia, a certain amount of Diderot, for whom he +cherished a passionate admiration, and a much smaller smattering of +Rousseau. At the present moment he was grappling with the +'Dictionnaire Philosophique,' and the 'Systčme de la Nature,' +fortified in both cases by English versions.</p> + +<p>The gloom of the afternoon deepened, and the increasing rain had +thinned the streets so much that during a couple of hours David had +but three summonses from below to attend to. For the rest of the +time he was buried in the second volume of the 'Dictionnaire +Philosophique,' now skipping freely, now chewing and digesting, his +eyes fixed vacantly on the darkening church outside. Above all, the +article on <i>Contradictions</i> had absorbed and delighted him. +There are few tones in themselves so fascinating to the nascent +literary sense as this mock humility tone of Voltaire's. And in +David's case all that passionate sense of a broken bubble and a +scattered dream, which had haunted him so long after he left +Kinder, had entered into and helped toward his infatuation with +his new masters. They brought him an indescribable sense of +freedom—omniscience almost.</p> + +<p>For instance:—</p> + +<p>'We must carefully distinguish in all writings, and especially in +the sacred books, between real and apparent contradictions. +Venturous critics have supposed a contradiction existed in that +passage of Scripture which narrates how Moses changed all the +waters of Egypt into blood, and how immediately afterwards the +magicians of Pharaoh did the same thing, the book of Exodus +allowing no interval at all between the miracle of Moses and the +magical operation of the enchanters. Certainly it seems at first +sight impossible that these magicians should change into blood what +was already blood; but this difficulty may be avoided by supposing +that Moses had allowed the waters to reassume their proper nature, +in order to give time to Pharaoh to recover himself. This +supposition is all the more plausible, seeing that the text, if it +does not favour it expressly, is not opposed to it.</p> + +<p>'The same sceptics ask how when all the horses had been killed by +the hail in the sixth plague Pharaoh could pursue the Jews with +cavalry. But this contradiction is not even apparent, because the +hail, which killed all the horses in the fields, could not fall +upon those which were in the stables.'</p> + +<p>And so on through a long series of paragraphs, leading at last to +matters specially dear to the wit of Voltaire, the contradictions +between St. Luke and St. Matthew—in the story of the census of +Quirinus, of the Magi, of the massacre of the Innocents, and what +not—and culminating in this innocent conclusion:—</p> + +<p>'After all it is enough that God should have deigned to reveal to us +the principal mysteries of the faith, and that He should have +instituted a Church in the course of time to explain them. All +these contradictions, so often and so bitterly brought up against +the Gospels, are amply noticed by the wisest commentators; far from +harming each other, one explains another; they lend each other a +mutual support, both in the concordance and in the harmony of the +four Gospels.'</p> + +<p>David threw back his head with a laugh which came from the very +depths of him. Then, suddenly, he was conscious of the church +standing sombrely without, spectator as it seemed of his thoughts +and of his mirth. Instantly his youth met the challenge by a rise +of passionate scorn! What! a hundred years since Voltaire, and +mankind still went on believing in all these follies and fables, in +the ten plagues, in Balaam's ass, in the walls of Jericho, in +miraculous births, and Magi, and prophetic stars!—in everything +that the mockery of the eighteenth century had slain a thousand +times over. Ah, well!—Voltaire knew as well as anybody that +superstition is perennial, insatiable—a disease and weakness of +the human mind which seems to be inherent and ineradicable. And +there rose in the boy's memory lines he had opened upon that +morning in a small Elizabethan folio he had been cataloguing with +much pains as a rarity—lines which had stuck in his mind—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vast superstition! glorious style of weakness,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sprung from the deep disquiet of man's passion</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To dissolution and despair of Nature!—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He flung them out at the dark mass of building opposite, as though +he were his namesake flinging at Goliath. Only a few months before +that great church had changed masters—had passed from the hands of +an aristocratic and inaccessible bishop of the old school into +those of a man rich in all modern ideas and capacities, full of +energy and enthusiasm, a scholar and administrator both. And +<i>he</i> believed all those absurdities, David wanted to know? +Impossible! No honest man could, thought the lad defiantly, with +the rising colour of crude and vehement feeling, when his attention +had been once challenged, and he had developed mind enough to know +what the challenge meant.</p> + +<p>Except, perhaps, Uncle Reuben and Dora Lomax, and people like that. +He stood thinking and staring out of window, one idea leading to +another. The thought of Reuben brought with it a certain softening +of mood—the softening of memory and old association. Yes, he would +like to see Uncle Reuben again—explain to him, perhaps, that old +story—so old, so distant!—of his running away. Well, he +<i>would</i> see him again, as soon as he got a place of his own, +which couldn't be long now, whether Purcell gave him the sack or +not. Instinctively, he felt for that inner pocket, which held his +purse and his savings-bank book. Yes, he was near freedom now, +whatever happened!</p> + +<p>Then it occurred to him that it was unlucky he should have stumbled +across Mr. Ancrum just at this particular juncture. The minister, +of course, had friends at Clough End still. And he, David, didn't +want Louie down upon him just yet—not just yet—for a month or +two.</p> + +<p>Then the smile which had begun to play about the mouth suddenly +broadened into a merry triumph. When Louie knew all about him and +his contrivances these last four years, wouldn't she be mad! If she +were to appear at this moment, he could tell her that she wore a +pink dress at the 'wake' last week,—when she was at chapel last, +—what young men were supposed to be courting her since the summer, +and a number of other interesting particulars—</p> + +<p>'Mr. Grieve! Tea!'</p> + +<p>His face changed. Reluctantly shutting his book and putting it into +its place, he took his way to the staircase.</p> + +<p>As David opened the swing door leading to the Purcells' parlour at +the back of the shop he heard Miss Purcell saying in a mournful +voice, 'It's no good, Dora; not a haporth of good. Father won't let +me. I might as well have gone to prison as come home.'</p> + +<p>The assistant emerged into the bright gaslight of the little room +as she spoke. There was another girl sitting beside Lucy, who got +up with a shy manner and shook hands with him.</p> + +<p>'Will you take your tea, Mr. Grieve?' said Lucy, with a pettish +sigh, handing it to him, and then throwing herself vehemently back +in her hostess's chair, behind the tea tray. She let her hands hang +over the arms of it—the picture of discontent. The gaslight showed +her the possessor of bright brown eyes, under fine brows slenderly +but clearly marked, of a pink and white skin slightly freckled, of +a small nose quite passable, but no ways remarkable, of a dainty +little chin, and a thin-lipped mouth, slightly raised at one +corner, and opening readily over some irregular but very white +teeth. Except for the eyes and eyebrows the features could claim +nothing much in the way of beauty. Yet at this moment of +seventeen—thanks to her clear colours, her small thinness, and the +beautiful hair so richly piled about her delicate head—Lucy +Purcell was undeniably a pretty girl, and since her arrival in +Manchester she had been much more blissfully certain of the fact +than she had ever succeeded in being while she was still under the +repressive roof of Miss Pym's boarding-school for young ladies, +Pestalozzi House, Blackburn.</p> + +<p>David sat down, perceiving that something had gone very wrong, but +not caring to inquire into it. His whole interest in the Purcell +household was, in fact, dying out. He would not be concerned with +it much longer.</p> + +<p>So that, instead of investigating Miss Purcell's griefs, he asked +her cousin whether it had not come on to rain. The girl opposite +replied in a quiet, musical voice. She was plainly dressed in a +black hat and jacket; but the hat had a little bunch of cowslips to +light it up, and the jacket was of an ordinary fashionable cut. +There was nothing particularly noticeable about the face at first +sight, except its soft fairness and the gentle steadfastness of the +eyes. The movements were timid, the speech often hesitating. Yet +the impression which, on a first meeting, this timidity was apt to +leave on a spectator was very seldom a lasting one. David's idea of +Miss Lomax, for instance, had radically changed during the three +months since he had made acquaintance with her.</p> + +<p>Rain, it appeared, <i>had</i> begun, and there must be umbrellas +and waterproofs for the evening's excursion. As the two others were +settling at what time David Grieve and Lucy should call for Dora in +Market Place, Lucy woke up from a dream, and broke in upon them.</p> + +<p>'And, Dora, you know, I <i>could</i> have worn that dress with the +narrow ribbons I showed you last week. It's all there—upstairs—in +the cupboard—not a crease in it!'</p> + +<p>Dora could not help laughing, and the laugh sent a charming light +into her grey, veiled eyes. The tone was so inexpressibly doleful, +the manner so childish. David smiled too, and his eyes and Dora's +met in a sort of friendly understanding—the first time, perhaps, +they had so met. Then they both turned themselves to the task of +consolation. The assistant inquired what was the matter.</p> + +<p>'I wanted her to go with me to the dance at the Mechanics' +Institute next week,' said Dora. 'Mrs. Alderman Head would have +taken us both. It's very nice and respectable. I didn't think uncle +would mind. But Lucy's sure he will.'</p> + +<p>'Sure! Of course I'm sure,' said Lucy sharply. 'I've heard him talk +about dancing in a way to make anybody sick. If he only knew all +the dancing we had at Pestalozzi House!'</p> + +<p>'Does he think all dancing wrong?' inquired David.</p> + +<p>'Yes—unless it's David dancing before the Ark, or some such +nonsense,' replied Lucy, with the same petulant gloom.</p> + +<p>David laughed out. Then he fell into a brown study, one hand +playing with his tea-cup, an irrepressable smile still curving +about his mouth. Dora, observing him across the table, could not +but remember other assistants of Uncle Purcell whom she has seen +sitting in that same place, and the airs which Miss Purcell in her +rare holidays had given herself towards those earlier young men. +And now, this young man, whenever Purcell himself was out of the +way, was master of the place. Anyone could see that, so long as he +was there, Lucy was sensitively conscious of him in all that she +said or did.</p> + +<p>She did not long endure his half-mocking silence now.</p> + +<p>'You see, Dora,' she began again, with an angry glance towards +him, 'father's worse than ever just now. He's been so aggravated.'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said Dora timidly. She perfectly understood what was meant, +but she shrank from pursuing the subject. But David looked up.</p> + +<p>'I should be very sorry, I'm sure, Miss Purcell, to get in your way +at all, or cause you any unpleasantness, if that's what you mean. I +don't think you'll be annoyed with me long.'</p> + +<p>He spoke with a boyish exaggerated dignity. It became him, however, +for his fine and subtle physique somehow supported and endorsed it.</p> + +<p>Both girls started. Lucy looked suddenly as miserable as she had +before looked angry. But in her confused state of feeling she +renewed her attack.</p> + +<p>'I don't understand anything about it,' she said, with plaintive +incoherence. 'Only I can't <i>think</i> why people should always be +making disturbances. Dora! Doesn't <i>everybody</i> you know think +it wicked to go to the Hall of Science?'</p> + +<p>She drew herself up peremptorily. David resumed the half smiling, +half meditative attitude which had provoked her before. Dora looked +from one to the other, a pure bright color rising in her cheek.</p> + +<p>'I don't know anything about that,' she said in a low voice. 'I +don't think that would matter, Lucy. But, oh, I do wish father +wouldn't go—and Mr. Grieve wouldn't go.'</p> + +<p>Her voice and hand shook. Lucy looked triumphantly at David. +Instinctively she realised that, especially of late, David had come +to feel more respectfully towards Dora than she had ever succeeded +in making him feel towards herself. In the beginning of their +acquaintance he had often launched into argument with Dora about +religious matters, especially about the Ritualistic practices in +which she delighted. The lad, overflowing with his Voltaire and +d'Holbach, had not been able to forbear, and had apparently taken a +mischievous pleasure in shocking a bigot—as he had originally +conceived Lucy Purcell's cousin to be. The discussion, indeed, had +not gone very far. The girl's horror and his own sense of his +position and its difficulties had checked them in the germ. +Moreover, as has been said, his conception of Dora had gradually +changed on further acquaintance. As for her, she had now for a long +time avoided arguing with him, which made her outburst on the +present occasion the more noticeable.</p> + +<p>He looked up quickly.</p> + +<p>'Miss Lomax, how do you suppose one makes up one's mind—either +about religion or anything else? Isn't it by hearing both sides?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, no—no!' she said, shrinking. 'Religion isn't like anything +else. It's by—by growing up into it—by thinking about it—and +doing what the Church tells you. You come to <i>know</i> it's true.'</p> + +<p>That the Magi and Balaam's ass are true! What folly! But somehow +even his youthful ardour could not say it, so full of pure and +tremulous pain was the gaze fixed upon him. And, indeed, he had no +time for any answer, for she had just spoken when the bell of the +outer door sounded, and a step came rapidly through the shop.</p> + +<p>'Father!' said Lucy, lifting the lid of the teapot in a great +hurry. 'Oh, I wonder if the tea's good enough.'</p> + +<p>She was stirring it anxiously with a spoon, when Purcell entered, a +tall heavily built man, with black hair, a look of command, and a +step which shook the little back room as he descended into it. He +touched Dora's hand with a pompous politeness, and then subsided +into his chair opposite Lucy, complaining about the weather, and +demanding tea, which his daughter gave him with a timid haste, +looking to see whether he were satisfied as he raised the first +spoonful to his lips.</p> + +<p>'Anything worth buying?' said David to his employer. He was leaning +back in his chair, with his arm round the back of another. Again +Dora was reminded by contrast of some of the nervous lads she had +seen in that room before, scarcely daring to eat their tea under +Purcell's eye, flying to cut him bread, or pass him the sugar.</p> + +<p>'No,' said Purcell curtly.</p> + +<p>'And a great price, I suppose?'</p> + +<p>Purcell looked up. Apparently the ease of the young man's tone and +attitude put the finishing stroke to an inward process already far +advanced.</p> + +<p>'The price, I conceive, is <i>my</i> business,' he said, in his +most overbearing manner. 'When you have to pay, it will be yours.'</p> + +<p>David flushed, without, however, changing his position, and Lucy +made a sudden commotion among the teacups.</p> + +<p>'Father,' she said, with a hurried agitation which hardly allowed +her to pick up the cup she had thrown over, 'Dora and I want to +speak to you. You mustn't talk business at tea. Oh, I <i>know</i> +you won't let me go; but I <i>should</i> like it, and Dora's come +to ask. I shouldn't want a new dress, and it will be <i>most</i> +respectable, everyone says; and I <i>did</i> learn dancing at +school, though you didn't know it. Miss Georgina said it was stuff +and nonsense, and I must—'</p> + +<p>'What <i>is</i> she talking about?' said Purcell to Dora, with an +angry glance at Lucy.</p> + +<p>'I want to take her to a dance,' said Dora quietly, 'if you would +let her come. There's one at the Mechanics' Institute next week, +given by the Unicorn benefit society. Mrs. Alderman Head said I +might go with her, and Lucy too if you'll let her come. I've got a +ticket.'</p> + +<p>'I'm much obliged to Mrs. Alderman Head,' said Purcell +sarcastically. 'Lucy knows very well what I think of an unchristian +and immodest amusement. Other people must decide according to their +conscience, <i>I</i> judge nobody.'</p> + +<p>At this point David got up, and disappeared into the shop.</p> + +<p>'Oh yes, you do judge, uncle,' cried Dora, roused at last, and +colouring. 'You're always judging. You call everything unchristian +you don't like, whether its dancing, or—or—early celebration, or +organ music, or altar-cloths. But you can't be always right—nobody +can.'</p> + +<p>Purcell surveyed her with a grim composure.</p> + +<p>'If you suppose I make any pretence to be infallible, you are quite +mistaken,' he said, with slow solemnity—no one in disclaiming +Papistry could have been more the Pope—'I leave that to your +priests at St. Damian's, Dora. But there <i>is</i> an infallible +guide, both for you and for me, and that's the Holy Scriptures. If +you can show me any place where the <i>Bible</i> approves of +promiscuous dancing between young Christian men and women, or of a +woman exposing her person for admiration's sake, or of such vain +and idle talking as is produced by these entertainments, I will let +Lucy go. But you can't. "Whose adorning let it not be—"'</p> + +<p>And he quoted the Petrine admonition with a harsh triumphant +emphasis on every syllable, looking hard all the time at Dora, who +had risen, and stood confronting him in a tremor of impatience and +disagreement.</p> + +<p>'Father Russell—' she began quickly, then changed her form of +expression—'Mr. Russell says you can't settle things by just +quoting a text. The Bible has to be explained, he says.'</p> + +<p>Purcell's eyes flamed. He launched into a sarcastic harangue, +delivered in a strong thick voice, on the subject of 'Sacerdotalism,' +'priestly arrogance,' 'lying traditions,' 'making the command of +God of no effect,' and so forth. While his sermon rolled along, +Dora stood nervously tying her bonnet strings, or buttoning her +gloves. Her heart was full of a passionate scorn. Beside the +bookseller's muscular figure and pugnacious head she saw with +her mind's eye the spare forms and careworn faces of the young +priests at St. Damian's. Outraged by this loud-voiced assurance, +she called to mind the gentleness, the suavity, the delicate +consideration for women which obtained among her friends.</p> + +<p>'There's not a pin to choose,' Purcell wound up, brutally, 'between +you and that young infidel in there,' and he jerked his thumb +towards the shop. 'It all comes of pride. He's bursting with his own +wisdom,—you will have the "Church" and won't have the Bible. +What's the Church!—a pack of sinners, and a million sinners are no +better than one.'</p> + +<p>'Good-bye, Lucy,' said Dora, stooping to kiss her cousin, and not +trusting herself to speak. 'Call for me at the quarter.'</p> + +<p>Lucy hardly noticed her kiss, she sat with her elbows on the table, +holding her little chin disconsolately, something very like tears +in her eyes. In the first place, she was reflecting dolefully that +it was all true—she was never to have any amusement like other +girls—never to have any good of her life; she might as well be a +nun at once. In the second, she was certain her father meant to +send young Grieve away, and the prospect drew a still darker pall +over a prospect dark enough in all conscience before.</p> + +<p>Purcell opened the door for Dora more punctiliously than usual, and +came back to the hearthrug still inflated as it were with his own +eloquence. Meanwhile Lucy was washing up the tea things. The little +servant had brought her a bowl of water and an apron, and Lucy was +going gingerly through an operation she detested. Why shouldn't +Mary Ann do it? What was the good of going to school and coming +back with Claribel's songs and Blumenthal's <i>Deux Anges</i> lying +on the top of your box,—with a social education, moreover, so +advanced that the dancing—mistress had invariably made you waltz +alone round the room for the edification and instruction of the +assembled company,—if all you had to do at home was to dust and +wash up, and die with envy of girls with reprobate fathers? As she +pondered the question, Lucy began to handle the cups with a more +and more unfriendly energy.</p> + +<p>'You'll break some of that china, Lucy!' said Purcell, at last +disturbed in his thoughts. 'What's the matter with you?'</p> + +<p>'Nothing!' said Lucy, taking, however, a saucer from the line as +she spoke so viciously that the rest of them slipped with a clatter +and only just escaped destruction.</p> + +<p>'Mind what you're about,' cried Purcell angrily, fearing for the +household stuff that had been in the establishment so much longer +and was so much more at home there than Lucy.</p> + +<p>'I know what it is,' he said, looking at her severely, while his +great black presence seemed to fill the little room. 'You've lost +your temper because I refused to let you go to the dance.'</p> + +<p>Lucy was silent for a moment, trying to contain herself; then she +broke out like a child, throwing down her apron, and feeling for +her handkerchief.</p> + +<p>'It's <i>too</i> bad—it's <i>too</i> bad—I'd rather be Mary +Ann—<i>she's</i> got friends, and evenings out—and—and parties +sometimes; and I see nobody, and go nowhere. What did you have me +home for at all?'</p> + +<p>And she sat down and dried her eyes piteously. She was in real +distress, but she liked a scene, and Purcell knew her peculiarities. +He surveyed her with a sort of sombre indulgence.</p> + +<p>'You're a vain child of this world, Lucy. If I didn't keep a +look-out on you, you'd soon go rejoicing down the broad way. What +do you mean about amusements? There's the missionary tea to-morrow +night, and the magic-lantern at the schools on Saturday.'</p> + +<p>Lucy gave a little hysterical laugh.</p> + +<p>'Well,' said Purcell loudly, 'there'll be plenty of young people +there. What have you got to say against them?'</p> + +<p>'A set of <i>frights</i> and <i>gawks</i>,' said Lucy, sitting bolt +upright in a state of flat mutiny, and crushing her handkerchief on +her knee between a pair of trembling hands. 'The way they do their +hair, and the way they tie their ties, and the way they put a chair +for you—it's enough to make one faint. At the Christmas treat +there was one young man asked me to trim his shirt-cuffs for him +with scissors he took out of his pocket. I told him <i>I</i> +wasn't his nurse, and people who weren't dressed ought to stay at +home. You should have seen how he and his sister glared at me +afterwards. I don't care! None of the chapel people like me—I know +they don't, and I don't want them to, and I wouldn't <i>marry</i> +one of them.'</p> + +<p>The gesture of Lucy's curly head was superb.</p> + +<p>'It seems to me,' said Purcell sarcastically, 'that what you mostly +learnt at Blackburn was envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. As +to marrying, child, the less you think of it for the present the +better, till you get more sense.'</p> + +<p>But the eyes which studied her were not unkindly. Purcell liked +this slim red and white creature who belonged to him, whose +education had cost him hard money which it gave him pleasure to +reckon up, and who promised now to provide him with a fresh field +for the management and the coarse moral experiment which he loved. +She would be restive at first, but he would soon break her in. The +idea that under her folly and childishness she might possibly +inherit some of his own tenacity never occurred to him.</p> + +<p>'I can't imagine,' said Lucy inconsequently, with eyes once more +swimming, 'why you can't let me do what Dora does! She's <i>much</i> +better than I am. She's a saint, she is. She's always going to +church; she's always doing things for poor people; she never thinks +about herself, or whether she's pretty, or—Why shouldn't I dance +if she does?'</p> + +<p>Purcell laughed.</p> + +<p>'Aye!' he said grimly, 'that's the Papistical way all over. So many +services, so much fasting, so much money, so much knocking under to +your priest, so much "church work"—and who cares a brass farthing +what you do with the rest of your time? Do as I tell you, and dance +away! But I tell you, Christianity wants <i>a new heart</i>!'</p> + +<p>And the bookseller looked at his daughter with a frowning severity. +Conversation of this kind was his recreation, his accomplishment, +so to speak. He had been conducting a difficult negotiation all day +of the diamond-cut-diamond order, and was tired out and disgusted +by the amount of knowledge of books which even a gentleman may +possess. But here was compensation. A warm hearthrug, an unwilling +listener, and this sense of an incomparable soundness of view,—he +wanted nothing more to revive him, unless, indeed, it were a larger +audience.</p> + +<p>As for Lucy, as she looked up at her father, even her childish +intelligence rose to a sense of absurdity. As if Dora hadn't a new +heart; as if Dora thought it was enough to go to church and give +sixpences in the offertory!</p> + +<p>But her father overawed her. She had been left motherless at ten +years old, and brought up since away from home, except for +holidays. At the bottom of her she was quite conscious that she +knew nothing at all about this big contemptuous person, who ordered +her about and preached to her, and never let himself be kissed and +played with and coaxed as other girls' fathers did.</p> + +<p>So she went on with her washing up in a crushed silence, very sorry +for herself in a vague passionate way, the corners of her mouth +drooping. Purcell too fell into a reverie, the lower jaw pushed +forward, one hand playing with the watch-chain which adorned his +black suit.</p> + +<p>'Did you give Grieve that message?' he asked at last.</p> + +<p>Lucy, still sulky, nodded in reply.</p> + +<p>'What time did he come in from dinner?'</p> + +<p>'On the stroke of the half-hour,' said Lucy quickly. 'I think he +keeps time better than anybody you ever had, father.'</p> + +<p>'Insolent young whelp!' said Purcell in a slow, deliberate voice. +'He was at that place again yesterday.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, I know he was,' said Lucy, with evident agitation. 'I told him +he ought to have been ashamed.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, you talked to him, did you? What business had you to do that, +I wonder? Well, what did he say?'</p> + +<p>'He said—well, I don't know what he said. He don't seem to think +it matters to anybody where he goes on Sunday!'</p> + +<p>'Oh, indeed—don't he? I'll show him some cause to doubt the truth +of that proposition,' said Purcell ponderously; 'or I'll know the +reason why.'</p> + +<p>Lucy looked unhappy, and said nothing for a minute or two. Then she +began insistently, 'Well, <i>does</i> it matter to you?'</p> + +<p>This deplorable question—viewed from the standpoint of a Baptist +elder—passed unnoticed, for with the last words the shop-bell +rang, and Purcell went off, transformed on the instant into the +sharp, attentive tradesman.</p> + +<p>Lucy sat wiping her cups mechanically for a little while. Then, +when they were all done, and Mary Ann had been loftily commanded to +put them away, she slipped upstairs to her own room, a little attic +at the top of the house. Here she went to a deal press, which had +been her mother's, opened it, and took out a dress which hung in a +compartment by itself, enveloped in a holland wrapper, lest +Manchester smuts should harm it. She undid the wrapper, and laid it +on the bed. It was an embroidered white muslin, adorned with lace +and full knots of narrow pink ribbon.</p> + +<p>'What a trouble I had to get the ribbon just that width,' she +thought to herself ruefully, 'and everybody said it was so uncommon. +I might as well give it Dora. I don't believe I shall ever wear it. +I don't know what'll become of me. I don't get any chances.'</p> + +<p>And shaking her head mournfully from side to side, she sat on +beside the dress, in the light of her solitary candle, her hands +clasped round her knee, the picture of girlish despair, so far as +anything so daintily gowned, and shoed, and curled, could achieve +it. She was thinking drearily of some people who were coming to +supper, one of her father's brother elders at the chapel, Mr. +Baruch Barton, and his daughter. Mr. Barton had a specialty for the +prophet Zephaniah, and had been several times shocked because Lucy +could not help him out with his quotations from that source. His +daughter, a little pinched asthmatic creature, in a dress whereof +every gore and seam was an affront to the art of dressmaking, was +certainly thirty, probably more. And between thirty and the +Psalmist's limit of existence, there is the very smallest +appreciable difference, in the opinion of seventeen. What +<i>could</i> she have to say to Emmy Barton? Lucy asked herself. +She began yawning from sheer dulness, as she thought of her. If it +were only time to go to bed!</p> + +<p>Suddenly she heard a sound of raised voices in the upper shop on +the floor below. What could it be? She started up. 'Mr. Grieve and +father quarrelling!' She knew it must come to that!</p> + +<p>She crept down the stairs with every precaution possible till she +came to the door behind which the loud talk which had startled her +was going on. Here she listened with all her ears, but at first to +very little purpose. David was speaking, but so rapidly, and +apparently so near to the other end of the room, that she could +hear nothing. Then her father broke in, and by dint of straining +very hard, she caught most of what he said before the whole +colloquy came abruptly to an end. She heard Purcell's heavy tread +descending the little iron spiral staircase leading from the lower +shop to the upper. She heard David moving about, as though he were +gathering up books and papers, and then, with a loud childish sob +which burst from her unawares, she ran upstairs again to her own +room.</p> + +<p>'Oh, he's going, he's going!' she cried under her breath, as she +stood before the glass winking to keep the tears back, and biting +her handkerchief hard between her little white teeth. 'Oh, what +shall I do? what shall I do? It'll be always the same; just when +anyone <i>might</i> like me, it all stops. And he won't care one +little, little bit. He'll never think of me again. Oh, I do think +somebody might care about me—might be sorry for me!'</p> + +<p>And she locked her hands tight before her, and stared at the glass, +while the tears forced their way. But all the time she was noticing +how prettily she stood, how slim she was. And though she smarted, +she would not for the world have been without her smart, her +excitement, her foolish secret, which, for sheer lack of something +to do and think about, had suddenly grown to such magnitude in her +eyes. It was hard to cherish a hopeless passion for a handsome +youth, without a halfpenny, who despised you, but it was infinitely +better than to have nothing in your mind but Emmy Barton and the +prophet Zephaniah. Nay, as she washed her hands and smoothed her +dress and hair with trembling fingers, she became quite friendly +with her pain—in a sense, even proud of it, and jealous for +it. It was a sign of mature life—of something more than mere +school-girlishness. Like the lover in the Elizabethan sonnet, 'She +had been vexed, if vexed she had not been!'</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-2" id="CHAPTER_III-2"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<p>'Come in, David,' said Mr. Ancrum, opening the door of his little +sitting-room in Mortimer Street. 'You're rather late, but I don't +wonder. Such a wind! I could hardly stand against it myself. But, +then, I'm an atomy. What, no top-coat in such weather! What do you +mean by that, sir? You're wet through. There, dry yourself.'</p> + +<p>David, with a grin at Mr. Ancrum's unnecessary concern for him, +deposited himself in the carpet chair which formed the minister's +only lounge, and held out his legs and arms to the blaze. He was +wet indeed, and bespattered with the blackest mud in the three +kingdoms. But the battle with wind and rain had so brought into +play all the physical force of him, had so brightened eye and +cheek, and tossed the black hair into such a fine confusion, that, +as he sat there bending over the glow of the fire, the crippled man +opposite, sickly with long confinement and over-thinking, could not +take his eyes from him. The storm with all its freshness, youth +with all its reckless joy in itself, seemed to have come in with +the lad and transformed the little dingy room.</p> + +<p>'What do you wear trash like that for in a temperature like this?' +said the minister, touching his guest's thin and much-worn coat. +'Don't you know, David, that your health is money? Suppose you get +lung trouble, who's to look after you?'</p> + +<p>'It don't do me no harm, sir. I can't get into my last year's coat, +and I couldn't afford a new one this winter.'</p> + +<p>'What wages do you earn?' asked Ancrum. His manner was a curious +mixture of melancholy gentleness and of that terse sharpness in +practical things which the south country resents and the north +country takes for granted.</p> + +<p>'Eighteen shillings a week, since last November, sir.'</p> + +<p>'That ought to be enough for a top-coat, you rascal, with only +yourself to feed,' said Mr. Ancrum, stretching himself in his hard +armchair, so as to let his lame leg with its heavy boot rest +comfortably on the fender. David had noticed at first sight of him +that his old playfellow had grown to look much older than in the +Clough End days. His hair was nearly white, and lay in a large +smooth wave across the broad brow. And in that brow there were deep +furrows, and many a new and premature line in the hollow cheeks. +Something withering and blighting seemed to have passed over the +whole man since those Sunday school lessons in the Christian +Brethren's upper room, which David still remembered so well. But +the eyes with their irresistible intensity and force were the same. +In them the minister's youth—he was not yet thirty-five—still +spoke, as from a last stronghold in a failing realm. They had a +strange look too, the look as of a secret life, not for the +passer-by.</p> + +<p>David smiled at Ancrum's last remark, and for a moment or two +looked into the fire without speaking.</p> + +<p>'Well, if I'd bought clothes or anything else this winter, I should +be in a precious worse hole than I am,' he said reflectively.</p> + +<p>'Hole? What's wrong, Davy?'</p> + +<p>'My master gave me the sack Monday.'</p> + +<p>'Humph!' said Ancrum, surveying him. 'Well, you don't look much cast +down about it, I must say.'</p> + +<p>'Well, you see, I'd laid my plans,' said the young man, an +irrepressible gaiety and audacity in every feature. 'It isn't as +though I were taken by surprise.'</p> + +<p>'Plans for a new place, I suppose?'</p> + +<p>'No; I have done with that. I am going to set up for myself. I know +the trade, and I've got some money.'</p> + +<p>'How old are you, Davy?'</p> + +<p>'Just upon twenty,' said the lad, quietly.</p> + +<p>The minister pursed up his lips and whistled a little.</p> + +<p>'Well, that's bold,' he said. 'Somehow I like it, though by all the +laws of prudence I ought to jump down your throat for announcing +such a thing. But how did you get your money? and what have you +been doing these four years? Come, I'm an old friend,—though I +dare say you don't think me much of a fellow. Out with it! Pay me +anyway for all those ships I made you long ago.'</p> + +<p>And he held out his blanched hand, little more now than skin and +bone. David put his own into it awkwardly enough. At this period of +his life he was not demonstrative.</p> + +<p>The story he had to tell was, to Ancrum's thinking, a remarkable +one. He had come into Manchester on an October evening with five +shillings and threepence in his pocket. From a point on the +south-western border of the city he took a 'bus for Deansgate and +Victoria Street. As he was sitting on the top, feeding his eyes on +the lights and the crowd of the streets, but wholly ignorant where +to go and what first step to take, he fell into talk with a decent +working-man and his wife sitting beside him. The result of the talk +was that they offered him shelter at fourpence a night. He +dismounted with them at Blackfriars Bridge, and they made their way +across the river to a street in Salford, where he lodged with them +for a week. During that week he lived on oatmeal and an occasional +baked potato, paying his hostess eighteenpence additional for the +use of her fire, and the right to sit in her kitchen when he was +not tramping about in search of work. By the end of the week he had +found a post as errand-boy at a large cheap bookseller's and +stationer's in Deansgate, at eight shillings a week, his good +looks, manner, and education evidently helping him largely, as Mr. +Ancrum could perceive through the boy's very matter-of-fact account +of himself. He then made an agreement for bed, use of fire, and +kitchen, with his new friends at four shillings a week, and by the +end of six months he was receiving a wage of fourteen shillings as +salesman and had saved close on five pounds.</p> + +<p>'Well, now, come, how did you manage that, Davy?' said Mr. Ancrum, +interrupting. 'Don't run on in that fashion. Details are the only +interesting things in life, and details I'll have. You must have +found it a precious tight fit to save that five pounds.'</p> + +<p>Whereupon David, his eye kindling, ran out Benjamin Franklin and +the 'Vegetarian News,' his constant friends from the first day of +his acquaintance with the famous autobiography till now, in spite +of such occasional lapses into carnal feeding as he had confessed +to Daddy. In a few minutes Ancrum found himself buried in 'details' +as to 'flesh-forming' and 'bone-forming' foods, as to nitrogen and +albumen, as to the saving qualities of fruit, and Heaven knows what +besides. Long before the enthusiast had spent his breath or his +details, the minister cried 'Enough!'</p> + +<p>'Young materialist,' he said growling, 'what do you mean at your age +by thinking so much about your body?'</p> + +<p>'It wasn't my body, sir,' said David, simply, 'it was just business. +If I had got ill, I couldn't have worked; if I had lived like other +chaps, I couldn't have saved. So I had to know something about it, +and it wasn't bad fun. After a bit I got the people I lodged with +to eat a lot of the things I eat—and that was cheaper for me of +course. The odd thing about vegetarianism is that you come not to +care a rap what you eat. Your taste goes somehow. So long as you're +nourished and can do your work, that's all you want.'</p> + +<p>The minister sat studying his visitor a minute or two in silence, +though the eyes under the care-worn brow were bright and restless. +Any defiance of the miserable body was in itself delightful to a +man who had all but slain himself many times over in the soul's +service. He, too, had been living on a crust for months, denying +himself first this, then that ingredient of what should have been +an invalid's diet. But it had been for cause—for the poor—for +self-mortification. There was something just a little jarring to +the ascetic in this contact with a self-denial of the purely +rationalistic type, so easy—so cheerful—put forward without the +smallest suspicion of merit, as a mere business measure.</p> + +<p>David resumed his story. By the end of another six months it +appeared that he had grown tired of his original shop, with its +vast masses of school stationery and cheap new books. As might have +been expected from his childish antecedents, he had been soon laid +hold of by the old bookstalls, had read at them on his way from +work, had spent on them all that he could persuade himself to spare +from his hoard, and in a year from the time he entered Manchester, +thanks to wits, reading, and chance friendships, was already a +budding bibliophile. Slates and primers became suddenly odious to a +person aware of the existence of Aldines and Elzevirs, and bitten +with the passion, then just let loose on the book-buying world, for +first editions of the famous books of the century. Whenever that +sum in the savings bank should have reached a certain height, he +would become a second-hand bookseller with a stall. Till then he +must save more and learn his trade. So at the end of his first year +he left his employers, and by the help of excellent recommendations +from them got the post of assistant in Purcell's shop in Half +Street, at a rise of two shillings, afterwards converted into four +shillings a week.</p> + +<p>'And I've been there three years—very near,' said David, +straightening himself with a little nervous gesture peculiar to +him. 'If you'd been anywhere about, sir, you'd have wondered how I +could have stayed so long. But I wanted to learn the trade and I've +learnt it—no thanks to old Purcell.'</p> + +<p>'What was wrong with him?'</p> + +<p>'Mostly brains!' said the lad, with a scornful but not unattractive +conceit. 'He was a hard master to live with—that don't matter. But +he is a fool! I don't mean to say he don't know a lot about some +things—but he thinks he knows everything—and he don't. And he'll +not let anyone tell him—not he! Once, if you'll believe it, he got +the Aldine Virgil of 1501, for twenty-five shillings—came from a +gentleman out Eccles way—a fellow selling his father's library and +didn't know bad from good,—real fine tall copy,—binding poor, +—but a <i>stunner</i> take it altogether—worth twenty pounds to +Quaritch or Ellis, any day. Well, all I could do, he let a man have +it for five shillings profit next day, just to spite me, I believe, +because I told him it was a good thing. Then he got sick about +that, I believe, though he never let out, and the next time he +found anything that looked good,—giminy!—but he put it on. Now +you know, sir'—Mr. Ancrum smiled at the confidential eagerness of +the expert—'you know, sir, it's not many of those Venice or +Florence Dantes that are worth anything. If you get the first +edition of Landino's 'Commentary,' or the other man's, Imola's, +isn't it—'</p> + +<p>The minister lifted his eyebrows—the Italian came out pat, and, so +far as he knew, right—</p> + +<p>'Well, of course, <i>they're</i> worth money—always fetch +their price. But the later editions are no good at all—nobody but a +gentleman-collector, very green, you know, sir'—the twinkle in the +boy's eye showed how much his subject was setting him at his +ease—'would be bothered with them. Well, if he didn't get hold of +an edition of 1540 or so—worth about eight shillings, and dear at +that—and send it up to one of the London men as a good thing. He +makes me pack it and send it and <i>register</i> it—you might have +thought it was the Mazarin Bible, bar size. And then, of course, +next day, down comes the book again flying, double quick. I kept +out of his way, post-time! But I'd have given something to see the +letter he got.'</p> + +<p>And David, rising, put his hands in his pockets, and stood before +the fire chuckling with irrepressible amusement.</p> + +<p>'Well, then you know there's the first editions of Rousseau—not a +bit rare, as rare goes—lucky if you get thirty shillings for the +"Contrat Social," or the "Nouvelle Heloise," even good copies—'</p> + +<p>Again the host's eyebrows lifted. The French names ran remarkably; +there was not the least boggling over them. But he said nothing, +and David rattled on, describing, with a gusto which never failed, +one of Purcell's book-selling enormities after another. It was +evident that he despised his master with a passionate contempt. It +was evident also that Purcell had shown a mean and unreasoning +jealousy of his assistant. The English tradesman inherits a +domineering tradition towards his subordinates, and in Purcell's +case, as we know, the instincts of an egotistical piety had +reinforced those of the employer. Yet Mr. Ancrum felt some sympathy +with Purcell.</p> + +<p>'Well, Davy,' he said at last, 'so you were too 'cute for your man, +that's plain. But I don't suppose he put it on that ground when he +gave you the sack?'</p> + +<p>And he looked up, with a little dry smile.</p> + +<p>'No!' cried David, abruptly. 'No! not he. If you go and ask +<i>him</i> he'll tell you he sent me off because I would go to the +Secularist meetings at the Hall of Science, and air myself as an +atheist; that's his way of putting it. And it was doing him harm +with his religious customers! As if I was going to let him dictate +where I went on Sundays!'</p> + +<p>'Of course not,' said Ancrum, with a twist of his oddly shaped +mouth. 'Even the very youngest of us might sometimes be the better +for advice; but, hang it, let's be free—free to "make fools of +ourselves," as a wise man hath it. Well, Davy, no offence,' for his +guest had flushed suddenly. 'So you go to the Hall of Science? Did +you hear Holyoake and Bradlaugh there the other night? You like +that kind of thing?'</p> + +<p>'I like to hear it,' said the lad, stoutly, meeting his old +teacher's look, half nervously, half defiantly. 'It's a great deal +more lively than what you hear at most churches, sir. And why +shouldn't one hear everything?'</p> + +<p>This was not precisely the tone which the same culprit had adopted +towards Dora Lomax. The Voltairean suddenly felt himself to be +making excuses—shabby excuses—in the presence of somebody +connected, however distantly, with <i>l'infame</i>. He drew himself +up with an angry shake of his whole powerful frame.</p> + +<p>'Oh, why not?' said Ancrum, with a shrug, 'if life's long +enough'—and he absently lifted and let fall a book which lay on +the table beside him; it was Newman's 'Dream of Gerontius'—'if +life's long enough, and—happy enough! Well, so you've been +learning French, I can hear. Teaching yourself?'</p> + +<p>'No; there's an old Frenchman, old Barbier—do you know him, sir? +He gives lessons at a shilling an hour. Very few people go to him +now; they want younger men. And there's lot's of them about. But +old Barbier knows more about books than any of them, I'll be bound.'</p> + +<p>'Has he introduced you to French novels? I never read any; but +they're bad, of course—must be. In all those things I'm a +Britisher and believe what the Britishers say.'</p> + +<p>'We're just at the end of "Manon Lescaut,"' said David, doggedly. +'And partly with him, partly by myself, I've read a bit of +Rousseau—and a good lot of Diderot,—and Voltaire.'</p> + +<p>David threw an emphasis into the last name, which was meant to +atone to himself for the cowardice of a few minutes before. The old +boyish feeling towards Mr. Ancrum, which had revived in him when he +entered the room, had gradually disappeared again. He bore the +minister no real grudge for having forgotten him, but he wished it +to be clearly understood that the last fragments of the Christian +Brethren yoke had dropped from his neck.</p> + +<p>'Ah! don't know anything about them,' said Ancrum, slowly; 'but +then, as you know, I'm a very ignorant person. Well, now, was it +Voltaire took you to the secularists, or the secularists to +Voltaire?'</p> + +<p>David laughed, but did not give a reply immediately.</p> + +<p>'Well, never mind,' said the minister, 'All Christians are fools, of +course—that's understood.—Is that all you have been learning +these four years?'</p> + +<p>'I work at Latin every morning,' said David, very red, and on his +dignity. 'I've begun Greek, and I go to the science classes, +mathematics and chemistry, at the Mechanics' Institute.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Ancrum's face softened.</p> + +<p>'Why, I'll be bound you have to go to work pretty early, Davy?'</p> + +<p>'Seven o'clock, sir, I take the shutters down. But I get an hour +and a half first, and three hours in the evening. This winter I've +got through the "Aeneid," and Horace's "Epistles" and "Ars +Poetica." Do you remember, sir?'—and the lad's voice grew sharp +once more, tightening as it were under the pressure of eagerness +and ambition from beneath—'do you remember that Scaliger read the +"Iliad" in twenty days, and was a finished Greek scholar in two +years? Why can't one do that now?'</p> + +<p>'Why shouldn't you?' said Mr. Ancrum, looking up at him. 'Who helps +you in your Greek?'</p> + +<p>'No one; I get translations.'</p> + +<p>'Well, now, look here, Davy. I'm an ignorant person, as I told you, +but I learnt some Latin and Greek at Manchester New College. Come +to me in the evenings, and I'll help you with your Greek, unless +you've got beyond me. Where are you?'</p> + +<p>The budding Scaliger reported himself. He had read the 'Anabasis,' +some Herodotus, three plays of Euripides, and was now making some +desperate efforts on Aeschylus and Sophocles. Any Plato? David made +a face. He had read two or three dialogues in English; didn't want +to go on, didn't care about him. Ah! Ancrum supposed not.</p> + +<p>'Twelve hours' shop,' said the minister reflecting, 'more or less, +—two hours' work before shop,—three hours or so after shop; +that's what you may call driving it hard. You couldn't do it, +Richard Ancrum,' and he shook his head with a whimsical melancholy. +'But you were always a poor starveling. Youth that <i>is</i> +youth's tough. Don't tell me, sir,' and he looked up sharply, 'that +you don't amuse yourself. I wouldn't believe it. There never was a +man built like you yet that didn't amuse himself.'</p> + +<p>David smiled, but said nothing.</p> + +<p>'Billiards?'</p> + +<p>'No, sir.'</p> + +<p>'Betting?'</p> + +<p>'No, sir. They cost money.'</p> + +<p>'Niggardly dog! Drink?—no, I'll answer that for myself.'</p> + +<p>The minister dropped his catechism, and sat nursing his lame leg +and thinking. Suddenly he broke out with, 'How many young women are +you in love with, David?'</p> + +<p>David showed his white teeth.</p> + +<p>'I only know two, sir. One's my master's daughter—she's rather a +pretty girl, I think—'</p> + +<p>'That'll do. You're not in love with her. Who's the other?'</p> + +<p>'The other's Mr. Lomax's daughter,—Lomax of the Parlour, that +queer restaurant, sir, in Market Place. She—well, I don't know how +to describe her. She's not good-looking—at least, I don't think +so,' he added dubiously. 'She's very High Church, and fasts all +Lent. I think she does Church embroidery.'</p> + +<p>'And doesn't think any the better of you for attending the Hall of +Science? Sensible girl! Still, when people mean to fall in love, +they don't think twice of that sort of thing. I make a note of +Lomax's daughter. Ah! enter supper. David, if you let any 'ism +stand between you and that veal pie, I despair of your future.'</p> + +<p>David, however, in the course of the meal, showed himself as +superior to narrowness of view in the matter of food-stuffs as in +other matters. The meal went merrily. Mr. Ancrum dropped his +half-sarcastic tone, and food, warmth, and talk loosened the lad's +fibres, and made him more and more human, handsome, and attractive. +Soon his old friend knew all that he wanted to know,—the sum David +had saved—thirty pounds in the savings-bank—the sort of stock he +meant to set up, the shop he had taken—with a stall, of course—no +beginner need hope to prosper without a stall. Customers must be +delicately angled for at a safe distance—show yourself too much, +and, like trout, they flashed away. See everything, force nothing. +Let a book be turned over for nineteen days, the chances were that +on the twentieth you would turn over the price. As to expecting the +class of cheap customers to commit themselves by walking into a +shop, it was simple madness. Of course, when you were 'established,' +that was another matter.</p> + +<p>By the help of a certain wealthy Unitarian, one Mr. Doyle, with +whom he had made friends in Purcell's shop, and whom he had boldly +asked for the use of his name as a reference, the lad had taken—so +it appeared—a small house in Potter Street, a narrow but +frequented street in the neighbourhood of Deansgate and all the +great banks and insurance offices in King Street. His shop took up +the ground floor. The two floors above were let, and the tenants +would remain. But into the attics and the parlour kitchen behind +the shop, he meant, ultimately, when he could afford it, to put +himself and his sister. He could only get the house on a yearly +tenancy, as it and the others near it were old, and would probably +be rebuilt before long. But meanwhile the rent was all the lower +because of the insecurity of tenure.</p> + +<p>At the mention of the boy's sister, Ancrum looked up with a start.</p> + +<p>'Ah, to be sure! What became of that poor child after you left? The +Clough End friends who wrote to me of your disappearance had more +pity for her, Davy, than they had for you.'</p> + +<p>A sudden repulsion and reserve darkened the black eyes opposite.</p> + +<p>'There was no helping it,' he said with hasty defiance. There was a +moment's silence. Then a wish to explain himself rose in David.</p> + +<p>'I couldn't have stayed, sir,' he said, with a curious +half-reproachful accent. 'I told you about how it was before you +left. And there were other things. I should have cut my own throat +or some one else's if it had gone on. But I haven't forgotten +Louie. You remember Tom Mullins at the foundry. He's written me +every month. I paid him for it. I know all about Louie, and they +don't know anything about me. They think I'm in America.'</p> + +<p>His eyes lit again with the joy of contrivance.</p> + +<p>'Is that kind, Davy?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, sir—' and for the first time the minister heard in the boy's +voice the tone of a man's judgment. 'I couldn't have Louie on me +just yet. I was going to ask you, sir, not to tell the people at +Clough End you've seen me. It would make it very hard. You know +what Louie is—and she's all right. She's learnt a trade.'</p> + +<p>'What trade?'</p> + +<p>'Silk-weaving—from Margaret Dawson.'</p> + +<p>'Poor soul—poor saint! There'd be more things than her trade to be +learnt from Margaret Dawson if anyone had a mind to learn them. +What of 'Lias?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, he died, sir, a week after I left.' The lad's voice dropped. +Then he added slowly, looking away, 'Tom said he was very quiet—he +didn't suffer much—not at the end.'</p> + +<p>'Aye, the clouds lift at sunset,' said Mr. Ancrum in an altered +tone; 'the air clears before the night!'</p> + +<p>His head fell forward on his breast, and he sat drumming on the +table. They had finished supper, the little, bustling landlady had +cleared away, and Davy was thinking of going. Suddenly the minister +sprang up and stood before the fire, looking down at his guest.</p> + +<p>'Davy, do you want to know why I didn't write to you? I was ill +first—very ill; then—<i>I was in hell!</i>'</p> + +<p>David started. Into the thin, crooked face, with the seeking eyes, +there had flashed an expression—sinister, indescribable, a sort of +dumb rage. It changed the man altogether.</p> + +<p>'I was in hell!' he repeated slowly. 'I know no more about it. Other +people may tell you, perhaps, if you come across them—I can't. +There were days at Clough End—always a certain number in the +year—when this earth slipped away from me, and the fiends came +about me, but this was months. They say I was overdone in the +cotton famine years ago just before I came to Clough End. I got +pneumonia after I left you that May—it doesn't matter. When I knew +there was a sun again, I wrote to ask about you. You had left +Kinder and gone—no one knew where.'</p> + +<p>David sat nervously silent, not knowing what to say, his mind +gradually filling with the sense of something tragic, irreparable. +Mr. Ancrum, too, stood straight before him, as though turned to +stone. A t last David got up and approached him. Had Ancrum been +looking he must have been touched by the change in the lad's +expression. The hard self-reliant force of the face had melted into +feeling.</p> + +<p>'Are you better now, sir? I knew you must have been ill,' he +stammered.</p> + +<p>Ancrum started as though just wakened.</p> + +<p>'Ill? Yes, I was pretty bad,' he said briskly, and in his most +ordinary tone, though with a long breath.' But I'm as fit as +anything now. Good night, Davy, good night. Come a walk with me +some day? Sunday afternoon? Done. Here, write me your new address.'</p> + +<p>The tall form and curly black head disappeared, the little +lodging-house room, with its round rosewood table, its horsehair +sofa, its chiffonnier, and its prints of 'Sport at Balmoral' and +'The Mother's Kiss,' had resumed the dingy formality of every day.</p> + +<p>The minister sank into his seat and held his hands out over the +blaze. He was in pain. All life was to him more or less a struggle +with physical ill. But it was not so primarily that he conceived +it. The physical ill was nothing except as representing a +philosophical necessity.</p> + +<p>That lad, with all his raw certainties—of himself, his knowledge, +his Voltaire—the poor minister felt once or twice a piteous +envy of him, as he sat on through the night hours. Life was +ill-apportioned. The poor, the lonely, the feeble—it is they who +want certainty, want hope most. And because they are lonely and +feeble, because their brain tissues are diseased, and their life +from no fault of their own unnatural, nature who has made them +dooms them to despair and doubt. Is there any 'soul,' any +'personality' for the man who is afflicted and weakened with +intermittent melancholia? Where is his identity, where his +responsibility? And if there is none for him, how does the accident +of health bestow them on his neighbour?</p> + +<p>Questions of this sort had beset Richard Ancrum for years. On the +little book-table to his right lay papers of Huxley's, of +Clifford's, and several worn volumes of mental pathology. The +brooding intellect was for ever raising the same problem, the same +spectre world of universal doubt, in which God, conscience, faith, +were words without a meaning.</p> + +<p>But side by side with the restlessness of the intellect there had +always gone the imperious and prevailing claim of temperament. +Beside Huxley and Clifford, lay Newman's 'Sermons' and 'Apologia,' +and a little High Church manual of self-examination. And on the +wall above the book-table hung a memorandum-slate on which were a +number of addresses and dates—the addresses of some forty boys +whom the minister taught on Sunday in one of the Unitarian Sunday +schools of Manchester, and visited in the week. The care and +training of street arabs had been his passion when he was still a +student at Manchester New College. Then had come his moment of +utterance—a thirst for preaching, for religious influence; though +he could not bring himself to accept any particular shibboleth or +take any kind of orders. He found something congenial for a time to +a deep though struggling faith in the leadership of the Christian +Brethren. Now, however, something had broken in him; he could +preach no more. But he could go back to his old school; he could +teach his boys on Sundays and week days; he could take them out +country walks in spite of his lame limb; he could deny himself even +the commonest necessaries of life for their sake; he could watch +over each of them with a fervour, a moral intensity which wore him +out. In this, in some insignificant journalism for a religious +paper, and in thinking, he spent his life.</p> + +<p>There had been a dark page in his history. He had hardly left +Manchester New College when he married suddenly a girl of some +beauty, but with an undeveloped sensuous temperament. They were to +live on a crust and give themselves to the service of man. His own +dream was still fresh when she deserted him in the company of one +of his oldest friends. He followed them, found them both in black +depths of remorse, and took her back. But the strain of living +together proved too much. She implored him to let her go and earn +her living apart. She had been a teacher, and she proposed to +return to her profession. He saw her established in Glasgow in the +house of some good people who knew her history, and who got her a +post in a small school. Then he returned to Manchester and threw +himself with reckless ardour into the work of feeding the hungry, +and nursing the dying, in the cotton famine. He emerged a broken +man, physically and morally, liable thenceforward to recurrent +crises of melancholia; but they were not frequent or severe enough +to prevent his working. He was at the time entirely preoccupied +with certain religious questions, and thankfully accepted the call +to the little congregation at Clough End.</p> + +<p>Since then he had visited his wife twice every year. He was +extremely poor. His family, who had destined him for the +Presbyterian ministry, were estranged from him; hardly anyone in +Manchester knew him intimately; only in one house, far away in the +Scotch lowlands, were there two people, who deeply loved and +thoroughly understood him. There he went when his dark hours came +upon him; and thence, after the terrible illness which overtook him +on his leaving Clough End, he emerged again, shattered but +indomitable, to take up the battle of life as he understood it.</p> + +<p>He was not an able nor a literary man. His mind was a strange +medley, and his mental sight far from clear. Of late the study of +Newman had been a revelation to him. But he did not cease for that +to read the books of scientific psychology which tortured him—the +books which seemed to make of mind a function of matter, and man +the slave of an immoral nature.</p> + +<p>The only persistent and original gift in him—yet after all it is +the gift which for ever divides the sheep from the goats—was that +of a 'hunger and thirst after righteousness.'</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-2" id="CHAPTER_IV-2"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<p>It was towards noon on a November day, and Dora Lomax sat working +at her embroidery frame in the little sitting-room overlooking +Market Place. The pale wintry sun touched her bent head, her deftly +moving hand, and that device of the risen Christ circled in golden +flame on which she was at work. The room in which she sat was old +and low; the ceiling bulged here and there, the floor had +unexpected slopes and declivities. The furniture was of the +cheapest, the commonest odds and ends of a broker's shop, for the +most part. There was the usual horsehair suite, the usual cheap +sideboard, and dingy druggeting of a large geometrical pattern. But +amid these uninviting articles there were a few things which gave +the room individuality—some old prints of places abroad, of +different shapes and sizes, which partly disguised the blue and +chocolate paper on the walls; some bits of foreign carving, Swiss +and Italian; some eggs and shells and stuffed birds, some of these +last from the Vosges, some from the Alps; a cageful of canaries, +singing their best against the noise of Manchester; and, lastly, an +old bookcase full of miscellaneous volumes, mostly large and +worthless 'sets' of old magazines and encyclopaedias, which +represented the relics of Daddy's bookselling days.</p> + +<p>The room smelt strongly of cooking, a mingled odour of boiling +greens and frying onions and stored apples which never deserted it, +and produced a constant slight sense of nausea in Dora, who, like +most persons of sedentary occupation, was in matters of eating and +digestion somewhat sensitive and delicate. From below, too, there +seemed to spread upwards a general sense of bustle and disquiet. +Doors banged, knives and plates rattled perpetually, the great +swing-door into the street was for ever opening and shutting, each +time shaking the old, frail house with its roughly built additions +through and through, and there was a distant skurry of voices that +never paused. The restaurant indeed was in full work, and Daddy's +voice could be heard at intervals, shouting and chattering. Dora +had been at work since half-past seven, marketing, giving orders, +making up accounts, writing bills of fare, and otherwise organising +the work of the day. Now she had left the work for an hour or two +to her father and the stout Lancashire cook with her various +handmaidens. Daddy's irritable pride liked to get her out of the +way and make a lady of her as much as she would allow, and in her +secret heart she often felt that her embroidery, for which she was +well paid as a skilled and inventive hand, furnished a securer +basis for their lives than this restaurant, which, in spite of its +apparent success, was a frequent source of dread and discomfort to +her. The money obligation it involved filled her sometimes with a +kind of panic. She knew her father so well!</p> + +<p>Now, as she sat absorbed in her work, sewing her heart into it, for +every stitch in it delighted not only her skilled artistic sense +but her religious feeling, little waves of anxious thought swept +across her one after another. She was a person of timid and +brooding temperament, and her father's eccentricities and past +history provided her with much just cause for worry. But to-day she +was not thinking much of him.</p> + +<p>Again and again there came between her and her silks a face, a face +of careless pride and power, framed in strong waves of black hair. +It had once repelled her quite as much as it attracted her. But at +any rate, ever since she had first seen it, it had taken a place +apart in her mind, as though in the yielding stuff of memory and +feeling one impression out of the thousands of every day had, +without warning, yet irrevocably, stamped itself deeper than the +rest. The owner of it—David Grieve—filled her now, as always, +with invincible antagonisms and dissents. But still the thought of +him had in some gradual way become of late part of her habitual +consciousness, associated always, and on the whole painfully +associated, with the thought of Lucy Purcell.</p> + +<p>For Lucy was such a little goose! To think of the way in which she +had behaved towards young Grieve in the fortnight succeeding his +notice to quit, before he finally left Purcell's service, made Dora +hot all over. How could Lucy demean herself so? and show such +tempers and airs towards a man who clearly did not think anything +at all about her? And now she had flung herself upon Dora, +imploring her cousin to help her, and threatening desperate things +unless she and David were still enabled to meet. And meanwhile +Purcell had flatly forbidden any communication between his +household and the young reprobate he had turned out, whose +threatened prosperity made at this moment the angry preoccupation +of his life.</p> + +<p>What was Dora to do? Was she to aid and abet Lucy, against her +father's will, in pursuing David Grieve? And if in spite of all +appearances the little self-willed creature succeeded, and Dora +were the means of her marrying David, how would Dora's conscience +stand? Here was a young man who believed in nothing, and openly +said so, who took part in those terrible atheistical meetings and +discussions, which, as Father Russell had solemnly said, were like +a plague-centre in Manchester, drawing in and corrupting soul after +soul. And Dora was to help in throwing her young cousin, while she +was still almost a child with no 'Church principles' to aid and +protect her, into the hands of this enemy of the Lord and His +Church?</p> + +<p>Then, when it came to this point, Dora would be troubled and drawn +away by memories of young Grieve's talk and ways, of his dashes +into Market Place to see Daddy since he had set up for himself, of +his bold plans for the future which delighted Daddy and took her +breath away; of the flash of his black eyes; the triumphant energy +of his youth; and those indications in him, too, which had so +startled her of late since they—she and he—had dropped the futile +sparrings in which their acquaintance began, of an inner softness, +a sensitive magnetic something—indescribable.</p> + +<p>Dora's needle paused in mid-air. Then her hand dropped on her lap. +A slight but charming smile—born of youth, sympathy, involuntary +admiration—dawned on her face. She sat so for a minute or two lost +in reminiscence.</p> + +<p>The clock outside struck twelve. Dora with a start felt along the +edge of her frame under her work and brought out a book. It was a +little black, worn manual of prayers for various times and +occasions compiled by a High Church dignitary. For Dora it had a +talismanic virtue. She turned now to one of the 'Prayers for +Noonday,' made the sign of the cross, and slipped on to her knees +for an instant. Then she rose happily and went back to her work. It +was such acts as this that made the thread on which her life of +mystical emotion was strung.</p> + +<p>But her father was a Secularist of a pronounced type, and her +mother had been a rigid Baptist, old-fashioned and sincere, filled +with a genuine horror of Papistry and all its ways.</p> + +<p>Adrian O'Connor Lomax, to give Daddy his whole magnificent name, +was the son of a reed-maker, of Irish extraction, at Hyde, and was +brought up at first to follow his father's trade—that of making +the wire 'reed,' or frame, into which the threads of the warp are +fastened before weaving. But such patient drudgery, often +continued, as it was in those days, for twelve and fourteen hours +out of the twenty-four, was gall and wormwood to a temperament like +Daddy's. He developed a taste for reading, fell in with Byron's +poems, and caught the fever of them; then branched out into +politics just at the time of the first Reform Bill, when all over +Lancashire the memory of Peterloo was still burning, and when men +like Henry Hunt and Samuel Bamford were the political heroes of +every weaver's cottage. He developed a taste for itinerant +lecturing and preaching, and presently left his family and tramped +to Manchester.</p> + +<p>Here after many vicissitudes—including an enthusiastic and on the +whole creditable participation, as an itinerant lecturer, in the +movement for the founding of Mechanics' Institutes, then spreading +all over the north—Daddy, to his ill-fortune, came across his +future brother-in-law, the bookseller Purcell. At the moment Daddy +was in a new and unaccustomed phase of piety. After a period of +revolutionary spouting, in which Byron, Tom Paine, and the various +publications of Richard Carlile had formed his chief scriptures, a +certain Baptist preacher laid hold of the Irishman's mercurial +sense. Daddy was awakened and converted, burnt his Byron and his +Tom Paine in his three-pair back with every circumstance of insult +and contumely, and looked about for an employer worthy of one of +the elect. Purcell at the time had a shop in one of the main +streets connecting Manchester and Salford; he was already an elder +at the chapel Daddy frequented; the two made acquaintance and Lomax +became Purcell's assistant. At the moment the trade offered to him +attracted Daddy vastly. He had considerable pretensions to +literature; was a Shakespearian, a debater, and a haunter of a +certain literary symposium, held for a long time at one of the old +Manchester inns, and attended by most of the small wits and poets +of a then small and homely town. The gathering had nothing saintly +about it; free drinking went often hand in hand with free thought; +Daddy's infant zeal was shocked, but Daddy's instincts were +invincible, and he went.</p> + +<p>The result of the bookselling experiment has been already told by +Daddy himself. It was, of course, inevitable. Purcell was then a +young man, but in his dealings with Daddy he showed precisely the +same cast-iron self-importance, the same slowness of brain coupled +with the same assumptions of an unbounded and righteous authority, +the same unregenerate greediness in small matters of gain and loss +which now in his later life had made him odious to David Grieve. +Moreover, Daddy, by a happy instinct, had at once made common cause +with Purcell's downtrodden sister, going on even, as his passionate +sense of opposition developed, to make love to the poor humble +thing mainly for the sake of annoying the brother. The crisis came; +the irritated tyrant brought down a heavy hand, and Daddy and +Isabella disappeared together from the establishment in Chapel +Street.</p> + +<p>By the time Daddy had set up as the husband of Purcell's sister in +a little shop precisely opposite to that of his former employer, he +had again thrown over all pretensions to sanctity, was, on the +contrary, convinced afresh that all religion was one vast perennial +imposture, dominated, we may suppose, in this as in most other +matters, by the demon of hatred which now possessed him towards his +brother-in-law. His wife, poor soul, was beginning to feel herself +tied for good to the tail of a comet destined to some mad career or +other, and quite uncontrollable by any efforts of hers. Lomax had +married her for the most unpromising reasons in the world, and he +soon tired of her, and of the trade, which required a sustained +effort, which he was incapable of giving. As long as Purcell +remained opposite, indeed, hate and rivalry kept him up to the +mark. He was an attractive figure at that time, with his long fair +hair and his glancing greenish eyes; and his queer discursive talk +attracted many a customer, whom he would have been quite competent +to keep had his character been of the same profitable stuff as his +ability.</p> + +<p>But when Purcell vanished across the river into Manchester, the +zest of Daddy's bookselling enterprise departed also. He began to +neglect his shop, was off here and there lecturing and debating, +and when he came back again it was plain to the wife their scanty +money had been squandered on other excesses than those of talk. At +last the business fell to ruins, and debts pressed. Then suddenly +Daddy was persuaded by a French commercial traveller to take up his +old trade of reed-making, and go and seek employment across the +Channel, where reed-makers were said to be in demand.</p> + +<p>In ecstasy at the idea of travel thus presented to him, Daddy +devoured what books about France he could get hold of, and tried to +teach himself French. Then one morning, without a word to his wife, +he stole downstairs and out of the shop, and was far on the road to +London before his flight was discovered. His poor wife shed some +tears, but he had ceased to care for her she believed, largely +because she had brought him no children, and his habits had begun +to threaten to lead her with unpleasant rapidity to the workhouse. +So she took comfort, and with the help of some friends set up a +little stationery and fancy business, which just kept her alive.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Lomax found no work in Picardy, whither he had first +gone, and ultimately wandered across France to Alsace, in search of +bread, a prey to all possible hardships and privations. But nothing +daunted him. The glow of adventure and romance was on every +landscape. Cathedrals, forests, the wide river-plains of central +France, with their lights and distances,—all things on this new +earth and under these new heavens 'haunted him like a passion.' He +travelled in perpetual delight, making love no doubt here and there +to some passing Mignon, and starving with the gayest of hearts.</p> + +<p>At Mulhausen he found work, and being ill and utterly destitute, +submitted to it for a while. But as soon as he had got back his +health and saved some money, he set out again, walking this time, +staff in hand, over the whole Rhine country and into the +Netherlands. There in the low Dutch plains he fell ill again, and +the beauty of the Rhineland was no longer there to stand like a +spell between him and the pains of poverty. He seemed to come to +himself, after a dream in which the world and all its forms had +passed him by 'apparelled in celestial light.' And the process of +self-finding was attended by some at least of those salutary pangs +which eternally belong to it. He suddenly took a resolution, crept +on board a coal smack going from a Dutch port to Grimsby, toiled +across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and appeared one evening, worn +to a shadow, in his wife's little shop in Salford.</p> + +<p>He was received as foolish women in whom there is no ineradicable +taint of cruelty or hate will always receive the prodigal who +returns. And when Daddy had been fed and clothed, he turned out for +a time to be so amiable, so grateful a Daddy, such good company, as +he sat in the chair by his wife's fire and told stories of his +travels to her and anybody else who might drop in, that not only +the wife but the neighbourhood was appeased. His old friends came +back to him, he began to receive overtures to write in some of the +humbler papers, to lecture on his adventures in the Yorkshire and +Lancashire towns. Daddy expanded, harangued, grew daily in good +looks and charm under his wife's eyes.</p> + +<p>At last one day the papers came in with news of Louis Philippe's +overthrow. Daddy grew restless, and began to study the foreign news +with avidity. Revolution spread, and what with democracy abroad and +Chartism at home, there was more stimulus in the air than such +brains as Daddy's could rightly stand. One May day he walked into +the street, looked hesitatingly up and down it, shading his eyes +against the sun. Then with a shake of his long hair, as of one +throwing off a weight, he drew his hat from under his arm, put it +on, felt in his pockets, and set off at a run, head downwards, +while poor Isabella Lomax was sweeping her kitchen. During the next +few days he was heard of, rumour said, now here, now there, but one +might as well have attempted to catch and hold the Pied Piper.</p> + +<p>He was away for rather more than twenty months. Then one day, as +before, a lean, emaciated, sun-browned figure came slowly up the +Salford street, looking for a familiar door. It was Daddy. He went +into the shop, which was empty, stared, with a countenance in which +relief and repulsion were oddly mingled, at the boxes of +stationery, at the dusty counter with its string and glass cases, +when suddenly the inside door, which was standing ajar, was pushed +stealthily inwards, and a child stood in the doorway. It was a +tottering baby of a year old, holding in one fat hand a crust of +bread which it had been sucking. When it saw the stranger it looked +at him gravely for a second. Then without a trace of fear or +shyness it came forward, holding up its crust appealingly, its rosy +chin and lips still covered with bread-crumbs.</p> + +<p>Daddy stared at the apparition, which seemed to him the merest +witchcraft. For it was <i>himself</i>, dwarfed to babyhood and +pinafores. His eyes, his prominent brow, his colour, his trick of +holding the head—they were all there, absurdly there.</p> + +<p>He gave a cry, which was answered by another cry from behind. His +wife stood in the door. The stout, foolish Isabella was white to +the lips. Even she felt the awe, the poetry of the moment.</p> + +<p>'Aye,' she said, trembling. 'Aye! it's yourn. It was born seven +months after yo left us.'</p> + +<p>Daddy, without greeting his wife, threw himself down by the babe, +and burst into tears. He had come back in a still darker mood than +on his first return, his egotistical belief in himself more rudely +shaken than ever by the attempts, the failures, the miseries of the +last eighteen months. For one illuminating moment he saw that he +was a poor fool, and that his youth was squandered and gone. But in +its stead, there—dropped suddenly beside him by the forgiving +gods—stood this new youth sprung from his, and all his own, this +child—Dora.</p> + +<p>He took to her with a passion which the trembling Isabella thought +a great deal too excessive to last. But though the natural Daddy +very soon reappeared, with all the aggravating peculiarities which +belonged to him, the passion did last, and the truant strayed no +more. He set up a small printing business with the help of some old +customers—it was always characteristic of the man that, be his +failings what they might, he never lacked friends—and with +lecturing and writing, and Isabella's shop, they struggled on +somehow. Isabella's life was hard enough. Daddy was only good when +he was happy; and at other times he dipped recklessly into vices +which would have been the ruin of them all had they been +persistent. But by some kind fate he always emerged, and more and +more, as years went on, owing to Dora. He drank, but not +hopelessly; he gambled, but not past salvation; and there was +generally, as we have said, some friend at hand to pick the poor +besmirched featherbrain out of the mire.</p> + +<p>Dora grew up not unhappily. There were shifts and privations to put +up with; there were stormy days when life seemed a hurricane of +words and tears. But there were bright spaces in between, when +Daddy had good resolutions, or a little more money than usual; and +with every year the daughter instinctively knew that her spell over +her father strengthened. She was on the whole a serious child, with +fair pale hair, much given to straying in long loose ends about her +prominent brow and round cheeks. Yet at the Baptist school, whither +she was sent, she was certainly popular. She had a passion for the +little ones; and her grey-blue eyes, over which in general the +fringed lids drooped too much, had a charming trick of sudden +smiles, when the soft soul behind looked for an instant clearly and +blithely out. At home she was a little round-shouldered drudge in +her mother's service. At chapel she sat very patiently and happily +under a droning minister, and when the inert and despondent +Isabella would have let most of her religious duties drop, in the +face of many troubles and a scoffing husband, the child of fourteen +gently and persistently held her to them.</p> + +<p>At last, however, when Dora was seventeen, Isabella died of cancer, +and Daddy, who had been much shaken and terrified by her sufferings +in her last illness, fell for a while into an irritable melancholy, +from which not even Dora could divert him. It was then that he +seemed for the first time to cross the line which had hitherto +divided him from ruin. The drinking at the White Horse, where the +literary circle met of which Lomax had been so long an ornament, +had been of late going from bad to worse. The households of the +wits concerned were up in arms; neighbourhood and police began to +assert themselves. One night the trembling Dora waited hour after +hour for her father. About midnight he staggered in, maddened with +drink and fresh from a skirmish with the police. Finding her there +waiting for him, pale and silent, he did what he had never done +before under any stress of trouble—struck and swore at her. Dora +sank down with a groan, and in another minute Lomax was dashing his +head against the wall, vowing that he would beat his brains out. In +the hours that followed, Dora's young soul was stretched as it were +on a rack, from which it rose, not weakened, but with new powers +and a loftier stature. All her girlish levities and illusions +seemed to drop away from her. She saw her mission, and took her +squalid Oedipus in charge.</p> + +<p>Next morning she went to some of her father's friends, unknown to +Daddy, and came back with a light in her blanched face, bearing the +offer of some work on a Radical paper at Leicester. Daddy, now +broken and miserable, submitted, and off they went.</p> + +<p>At Leicester the change of moral and physical climate produced for +a while a wonderful effect. Daddy found himself marvellously at +ease among the Secularist and Radical stockingers of the town, and +soon became well known to them as a being half butt, half oracle. +Dora set herself to learn dressmaking, and did her best to like the +new place and the new people. It was at Leicester, a place seething +with social experiment in its small provincial way, with +secularism, Owenism, anti-vaccination, and much else, that Lomax +fell a victim to one 'ism the more—to vegetarianism. It was there +that, during an editorial absence, and in the first fervour of +conversion, Daddy so belaboured a carnivorous world in the columns +of the 'Penny Banner' for which he worked, and so grotesquely and +persistently reduced all the problems of the time to terms of +nitrogen and albumen, that curt dismissal came upon him, and for a +time Dora saw nothing but her precarious earnings between them and +starvation. It was then also that, by virtue of that queer charm he +could always exercise when he pleased, he laid hold on a young +Radical manufacturer and got out of him a loan of 200 pounds for +the establishment of a vegetarian restaurant wherein Leicester was +to be taught how to feed.</p> + +<p>But Leicester, alas! remained unregenerate. In the midst of Daddy's +preparations a commercial traveller, well known both to Manchester +and Leicester, repeated to him one day a remark of Purcell's, to +the effect that since Daddy's migration Manchester had been well +rid of a vagabond, and he, Purcell, of a family disgrace. Daddy, +bursting with fatuous rage, and possessed besides of the wildest +dreams of fortune on the strength of his 200 pounds, straightway +made up his mind to return to Manchester, 'pull Purcell's nose,' and +plant himself and his prosperity that was to be in the bookseller's +eyes. He broke in upon Dora at her work, and poured into her +astonished ears a stream of talk, marked by a mad inventiveness, +partly in the matter of vegetarian receipts, still more in that of +Purcell's future discomforts. When Daddy was once launched into a +subject that suited him, he was inexhaustible. His phrases flowed +for ever; of words he was always sure. Like a certain French talker, +'his sentences were like cats: he showered them into air and they +found their feet without trouble.'</p> + +<p>Dora sat through it, bewildered and miserable. Go back to +Manchester where they had been so unhappy, where the White Horse +and its crew were waiting for her father, simply to get into debt +and incur final ruin for the sake of a mad fancy she humoured but +could not believe in, and a still madder thirst for personal +vengeance on a man who was more than a match for anything Daddy +could do! She was in despair.</p> + +<p>But Daddy was obdurate, brutal in his determination to have his +way; and when she angered him with her remonstrances, he turned +upon her with an irritable—</p> + +<p>'I know what it is—damn it! It's that Puseyite gang you've taken up +with—you think of nothing but them. As if you couldn't find antics +and petticoats and priests in Manchester—they're everywhere—like +weeds. Wherever there's a dunghill of human credulity they swarm.'</p> + +<p>Dora looked proudly at her father, as though disdaining to reply, +gentle creature that she was; then she bent again over her work, +and a couple of tears fell on the seam she was sewing.</p> + +<p>Aye, it was true enough. In leaving Leicester, after these two +years, she was leaving what to her had been a spiritual birthplace, +—tearing asunder a new and tender growth of the soul.</p> + +<p>This was how it had come about.</p> + +<p>On her first arrival in Leicester, in a <i>milieu</i>, that is to +say, where at the time 'Gavroche,' as M. Renan calls him—the +street philosopher who is no less certain and no more rational than +the street preacher—reigned supreme, where her Secularist father +and his associates, hot-headed and early representatives of a phase +of thought which has since then found much abler, though hardly +less virulent, expression in such a paper, say, as the 'National +Reformer,' were for ever rending and trampling on all the current +religious images and ideas, Dora shrank into herself more and more. +She had always been a Baptist because her mother was. But in her +deep reaction against her father's associates, the chapel which she +frequented did not now satisfy her. She hungered for she knew not +what, certain fastidious artistic instincts awakening the while in +unexpected ways.</p> + +<p>Then one Easter Eve, as she came back from an errand into the +outskirts of the town, she passed a little iron church standing in +a very poor neighbourhood, where, as she knew, a 'Puseyite' curate +in charge officiated, and where a good many disturbances which had +excited the populace had taken place. She went in. The curate, a +long, gaunt figure, of a familiar monkish type, was conducting +'vespers' for the benefit of some twenty hearers, mostly women in +black. The little church was half decorated for Easter, though the +altar had still its Lenten bareness. Something in the ordering of +the place, in its colours, its scents, in the voice of the priest, +in the short address he delivered after the service, dwelling in a +tone of intimate emotion, the tone of the pastor to the souls he +guides and knows, on the preparation needful for the Easter +Eucharist, struck home to Dora. Next day she was present at the +Easter festival. Never had religion spoken so touchingly to her +before as through these hymns, these flowers, this incense, this +Eucharistic ceremonial wherein—being the midday celebration—the +congregation were merely hushed spectators of the most pathetic and +impressive act in the religious symbolism of mankind. In the dark +corner where she had hidden herself, Dora felt the throes of some +new birth within her. In six weeks from that time she had been +admitted, after instruction, to the Anglican communion.</p> + +<p>Thenceforward another existence began for this child of English +Dissent, in whom, however, some old Celtic leaven seems to have +always kept up a vague unrest, till the way of mystery and poetry +was found.</p> + +<p>Daddy—the infidel Daddy—stormed a good deal, and lamented himself +still more, when these facts became known to him. Dora had become a +superstitious, priest-ridden dolt, of no good to him or anyone else +any more. What, indeed, was to become of him? Natural affection +cannot stand against the priest. A daughter cannot love her father +and go to confession. Down with the abomination—<i>écrasez +l'infame!</i></p> + +<p>Dora smiled sadly and went her way. Against her sweet silent +tenacity Daddy measured himself in vain. She would be a good +daughter to him, but she would be a good churchwoman first. He +began to perceive in her that germ of detachment from things +earthly and human which all ceremonialism produces, and in a sudden +terror gave way and opposed her no more. Afterwards, in a curious +way, he came even to relish the change in her. The friends it +brought her, the dainty ordering of the little flower-decked +oratory she made for herself in one corner of her bare attic room, +the sweet sobriety and refinement which her new loves and +aspirations and self-denials brought with them into the house, +touched the poetical instincts which were always dormant in the +queer old fellow, and besides flattered some strong and secret +ambitions which he cherished for his daughter. It appeared to him +to have raised her socially, to have made a lady of her—this +joining the Church. Well, the women must have some religious bag or +other to run their heads into, and the Church bag perhaps was the +most seemly.</p> + +<p>On the day of their return to Manchester, Daddy, sitting with +crossed arms and legs in a corner of the railway carriage, might +have sat for a fairy-book illustration of Rumpelstiltzchen. His old +peaked hat, which he had himself brought from the Tyrol, fell +forward over his frowning brow, his cloak was caught fiercely about +him, and, as the quickly-passing mill-towns began to give notice of +Manchester as soon as the Derbyshire vales were left behind, his +glittering eyes disclosed an inward fever—a fever of contrivance +and of hate. He was determined to succeed, and equally determined +to make his success Purcell's annoyance.</p> + +<p>Dora sat opposite, with her bird-cage on her knee, looking sad +weary. She had left behind, perhaps for ever, the dear friends who +had opened to her the way of holiness, and guided her first steps. +Her eyes filled with tears of gratitude and emotion as she thought +of them.</p> + +<p>Two things only were pleasant to remember. One was that the Church +embroidery she had begun in her young zeal at Leicester, using her +odds and ends of time, to supplement the needs of a struggling +church depending entirely on voluntary contributions, was now +probably to become her trade. For she had shown remarkable aptitude +for it; and she carried introductions to a large church-furniture +shop in Manchester which would almost certainly employ her.</p> + +<p>The other was the fact that somewhere in Manchester she had a +girl-cousin—Lucy Purcell—who must be about sixteen. Purcell had +married after his migration to Half Street; his wife proved to be +delicate and died in a few years; this little girl was all that was +left to him. Dora had only seen her once or twice in her life. The +enmity between Lomax and Purcell of course kept the families apart, +and, after her mother's early death, Purcell sent his daughter to a +boarding-school and so washed his hands of the trouble of her +bringing up. But in spite of these barriers Dora well remembered a +slim, long-armed schoolgirl, much dressed and becurled, who once in +a by-street of Salford had run after her and, looking round +carefully to see that no one was near, had thrust an eager face +into hers and kissed her suddenly. 'Dora,—is your mother better? I +wish I could come and see you. Oh, it's horrid of people to +quarrel! But I mustn't stay,—some one'll see, and I should just +catch it! Good-bye, Dora!' and so another kiss, very hasty and +frightened, but very welcome to the cheek it touched.</p> + +<p>As they neared Manchester, Dora, in her loneliness of soul, thought +very tenderly of Lucy—wondered how she had grown up, whether she +was pretty and many other things. She had certainly been a pretty +child. Of course they must know each other and be friends. Dora +could not let her father's feud come between her and her only +relation. Purcell might keep them apart; but she would show him she +meant no harm; and she would bring her father round—she would and +must.</p> + +<p>Two years had gone by. Of Daddy's two objects in leaving Leicester, +one had so far succeeded better than any rational being would have +foreseen.</p> + +<p>On the first morning after their arrival he went out, giving Dora +the slip lest she might cramp him inconveniently in his decision; +and came back radiant, having taken a deserted seed-shop in Market +Place, which had a long, irregular addition at the back, formerly a +warehouse, providentially suited, so Daddy declared, to the +purposes of a restaurant. The rent he had promised to give seemed +to Dora a crime, considering their resources. The thought of it, +the terror of the servants he was engaging, the knowledge of the +ridicule and blame with which their old friends regarded her +father's proceedings, these things kept the girl awake night after +night.</p> + +<p>But he would hear no remonstrances, putting all she had to say +aside with an arrogant boastfulness, which never failed.</p> + +<p>In they went. Dora set her teeth and did her best, keeping as +jealous a watch on the purse-strings as she could, and furnishing +their three rooms above the shop for as few shillings as might be, +while Daddy was painting and decorating, composing <i>menus</i>, +and ransacking recipes with the fever of an artist, now writing +letters to the Manchester papers, or lecturing to audiences in the +Mechanics' Institute and the different working men's clubs, and now +plastering the shop-front with grotesque labels, or posing at his +own doorway and buttonholing the passers-by in the Tyrolese +brigand's costume which was his favourite garb.</p> + +<p>The thing took. There is a certain mixture of prophet and +mountebank which can be generally counted upon to hit the popular +fancy, and Daddy attained to it. Moreover, the moment was +favourable. After the terrible strain of the cotton-famine and the +horrors of the cholera, Manchester was prosperous again. Trade was +brisk, and the passage of the new Reform Bill had given a fresh +outlet and impulse to the artisan mind which did but answer to the +social and intellectual advance made by the working classes since +'32. The huge town was growing fast, was seething with life, +with ambitions, with all the passions and ingenuities that +belong to gain and money-making and the race for success. It +was pre-eminently a city of young men of all nationalities, +three-fourths constantly engaged in the <i>chasse</i> for money, +according to their degrees—here for shillings, there for +sovereigns, there for thousands. In such a <i>milieu</i> any man +has a chance who offers to deal afresh on new terms with those +daily needs which both goad and fetter the struggling multitude at +every step. Vegetarianism had, in fact, been spreading in +Manchester; one or two prominent workmen's papers were preaching +it; and just before Daddy's advent there had been a great dinner in +a public hall, where the speedy advent of a regenerate and +frugivorous mankind, with length of days in its right hand, and a +captivating abundance of small moneys in its waistcoat pocket, had +been freely and ardently prophesied.</p> + +<p>So Daddy for once seized the moment, and succeeded like the veriest +Philistine. On the opening day the restaurant was crowded from +morning till night. Dora, with her two cooks in the suffocating +kitchen behind, had to send out the pair of panting, perspiring +kitchen-boys again and again for fresh supplies; while Daddy, at +his wits' end for waiters, after haranguing a group of customers on +the philosophy of living, amid a tumult of mock cheers and +laughter, would rush in exasperated to Dora, to say that +<i>never</i> again would he trust her niggardly ways—she would be +the ruin of him with her economies.</p> + +<p>When at night the doors were shut at last on the noise and the +crowd, and Daddy sat, with his full cash-box open on his knee, +while the solitary gaslight that remained threw a fantastic and +colossal shadow of him over the rough floor of the restaurant, Dora +came up to him dropping with fatigue. He looked at her, his gaunt +face working, and burst into tears.</p> + +<p>'Dora, we never had any money before, not when—when—your mother +was alive.'</p> + +<p>And she knew that by a strange reaction there had come suddenly +upon him the memory of those ghastly months when she and he through +the long hours of every day had been forced—baffled and +helpless—to watch her mother's torture, and when the sordid +struggle for daily bread was at its worst, robbing death of all its +dignity, and pity of all its power to help.</p> + +<p>Do what she would, she could hardly get him to give up the money +and go to bed. He was utterly unstrung, and his triumph for the +moment lay bitter in the mouth.</p> + +<p>It was now two years since that opening day. During that time the +Parlour had become a centre after its sort—a scandal to some and a +delight to others. The native youth got his porridge, and apple +pie, and baked potato there; but the place was also largely haunted +by the foreign clerks of Manchester. There was, for instance, a +company of young Frenchmen who lunched there habitually, and in +whose society the delighted Daddy caught echoes from that +unprejudiced life of Paris or Lyons, which had amazed and +enlightened his youth. The place assumed a stamp and character. To +Daddy the development of his own popularity, which was like the +emergence of a new gift, soon became a passion. He deliberately +'ran' his own eccentricities as part of the business. Hence his +dress, his menus, his advertisements, and all the various antics +which half regaled, half scandalised the neighbourhood. Dora +marvelled and winced, and by dint of an habitual tolerance retained +the power of stopping some occasional enormity.</p> + +<p>As to finances, they were not making their fortune; far from it; +but to Dora's amazement, considering her own inexperience and her +father's flightiness, they had paid their way and something more. +She was no born woman of business, as any professional accountant +examining her books might have discovered. But she had a passionate +determination to defraud no one, and somehow, through much toil her +conscience did the work. Meanwhile every month it astonished her +freshly that they two should be succeeding! Success was so little +in the tradition of their tattered and variegated lives. Could it +last? At the bottom of her mind lay a constant presentiment of new +change, founded no doubt on her knowledge of her father.</p> + +<p>But outwardly there was little to justify it. The craving for drink +seemed to have left him altogether—a not uncommon effect of this +particular change of diet. And his hatred of Purcell, though in +itself it had proved quite unmanageable by all her arts, had done +nobody much harm. In a society dependent on law and police there +are difficulties in the way of a man's dealing primitively with his +enemy. There had been one or two awkward meetings between the two +in the open street; and at the Parlour, among his special +intimates, Daddy had elaborated a Purcell myth of a Pecksniffian +character which his invention perpetually enriched. On the whole, +however, it was in his liking for young Grieve, originally a casual +customer at the restaurant, that Dora saw the chief effects of the +feud. He had taken the lad up eagerly as soon as he had discovered +both his connection with Purcell and his daring rebellious temper; +had backed him up in all his quarrels with his master; had taken +him to the Hall of Science, and introduced him to the speakers +there; and had generally paraded him as a secularist convert, +snatched from the very jaws of the Baptist.</p> + +<p>And now!—now that David was in open opposition, attracting +Purcell's customers, taking Purcell's water, Daddy was in a tumult +of delight: wheeling off old books of his own, such as 'The Journal +of Theology' and the 'British Controversialist,' to fill up David's +stall, running down whenever business was slack to see how the lad +was getting on; and meanwhile advertising him with his usual +extravagance among the frequenters of the Parlour.</p> + +<p>All through, however, or rather since Miss Purcell had returned +from school, Dora and her little cousin Lucy had been allowed to +meet. Lomax saw his daughter depart on her visits to Half Street, +in silence; Purcell, when he first recognised her, hardly spoke to +her. Dora believed, what was in fact the truth, that each regarded +her as a means of keeping an eye on the other. She conveyed +information from the hostile camp—therefore she was let alone.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-2" id="CHAPTER_V-2"></a>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<p>'Why—Lucy!'</p> + +<p>Dora was still bending over her work when a well-known tap at the +door startled her meditations.</p> + +<p>Lucy put her head in, and, finding Dora alone, came in with a look +of relief. Settling herself in a chair opposite Dora, she took off +her hat, smoothed the coils of hair to which it had been pinned, +unbuttoned the smart little jacket of pilot cloth, and threw back +the silk handkerchief inside; and all with a feverish haste and +irritation as though everything she touched vexed her.</p> + +<p>'What's the matter, Lucy?' said Dora, after a little pause. At the +moment of Lucy's entrance she had been absorbed in a measurement.</p> + +<p>'Nothing!' said Lucy quickly. 'Dora, you've got your hair loose!'</p> + +<p>Dora put up her hand patiently. She was accustomed to be put to +rights. It was characteristic at once of her dreaminess and her +powers of self-discipline that she was fairly orderly, though she +had great difficulty in being so. Without a constant struggle, she +would have had loose plaits and hanging strings about her always. +Lucy's trimness was a perpetual marvel to her. It was like the +contrast between the soft indeterminate lines of her charming face +and Lucy's small, sharply cut features.</p> + +<p>Lucy, still restless, began tormenting the feather in her hat.</p> + +<p>'When are you going to finish that, Dora?' she asked, nodding +towards the frame.</p> + +<p>'Oh it won't be very long now,' said Dora, putting her head on one +side that she might take a general survey, at once loving and +critical, of her work.</p> + +<p>'You oughtn't to sit so close at it,' said Lucy decidedly; 'you'll +spoil your complexion.'</p> + +<p>'I've none to spoil.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, yes, you have, Dora—that's so silly of you. You aren't sallow +a bit. It's pretty to be pale like that. Lots of people say so—not +quite so pale as you are sometimes, perhaps—but I know why +<i>that</i> is,' said Lucy, with a half-malicious emphasis.</p> + +<p>A slight pink rose in Dora's cheeks, but she bent over her frame +and said nothing.</p> + +<p>'Does your clergyman <i>tell</i> you to fast in Lent, Dora—who +tells you?'</p> + +<p>'The Church!' replied Dora, scandalised and looking up with bright +eyes. 'I wish you understood things a little more, Lucy.'</p> + +<p>'I can't,' said Lucy, with a pettish sigh, 'and I don't care +twopence!'</p> + +<p>She threw herself back in her rickety chair. Her arm dropped over +the side, and she lay staring at the ceiling. Dora went on with her +work in silence for a minute, and then looked up to see a tear +dropping from Lucy's cheek on to the horsehair covering of the +chair.</p> + +<p>'Lucy, what <i>is</i> the matter?—I knew there was something +wrong!'</p> + +<p>Lucy sat up and groped energetically for her handkerchief.</p> + +<p>'You wouldn't care,' she said, her lips quivering—'nobody cares!'</p> + +<p>And, sinking down again, she hid her face and fairly burst out +sobbing. Dora, in alarm, pushed aside her frame and tried to caress +and console her. But Lucy held her off, and in a second or two was +angrily drying her eyes.</p> + +<p>'Oh, you can't do any good, Dora—not the least good. It's +father—you know well enough what it is—I shall never get on with +father if I live to be a hundred!'</p> + +<p>'Well, you haven't had long to try in,' said Dora, smiling.</p> + +<p>'Quite long enough to know,' replied Lucy, drearily. 'I know I shall +have a horrid life—I must. Nobody can help it. Do you know we've +got another shopman, Dora?'</p> + +<p>The tone of childish scorn she threw into the question was +inimitable. Dora with difficulty kept from laughing.</p> + +<p>'Well, what's he like?' '<i>Like?</i> He's like—like nothing,' +said Lucy, whose vocabulary was not extensive. 'He's fat and +ugly—wears spectacles. Father says he's a treasure—to me—and +then when they're in the shop I hear him going on at him like +anything for being a stupid. And I have to give the creature tea +when father's away, to clear up after him as though he were a +school-child. And father gets in a regular passion if I ask him +about the dance and there's a missionary tea next week, and he's +made me take a table—and he wants me to teach in Sunday +School—and the minister's wife has been talking to him about my +dress—and—and—No, I <i>can't</i> stand it, Dora—I can't and I +won't!'</p> + +<p>And Lucy, gulping down fresh tears, sat intensely upright, and +looked frowningly at Dora as though defying her to take the matter +lightly.</p> + +<p>Dora was perplexed. Deep in her dove-like soul lay the fiercest +views about Dissent—that rent in the seamless vesture of Christ, +as she had learnt to consider it. Her mother had been a Baptist +till her death, she herself till she was grown up. But now she +had all the zeal—nay, even the rancour—of the convert. It +was one of her inmost griefs that her own change had not come +earlier—before her mother's death. Then perhaps her mother, her +poor—poor—mother, might have changed with her. It went against +her to urge Lucy to make herself a good Baptist.</p> + +<p>'It's no wonder Uncle Tom wants you to do what he likes,' she said +slowly. 'But if you don't take the chapel, Lucy—if you want +something different, perhaps—'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I don't want any <i>church</i>, thank you.' cried Lucy, up in +arms. 'I don't want <i>anybody</i> ordering me about. Why can't I go +my own way a bit, and amuse myself as I please? It is <i>too</i>, +too bad!'</p> + +<p>Dora did not know what more to say. She went on with her work, +thinking about it all. Suddenly Lucy astonished her by a question +in another voice.</p> + +<p>'Have you seen Mr. Grieve's shop, Dora?'</p> + +<p>Dora looked up.</p> + +<p>'No. Father's been there a good many times. He says it's capital +for a beginning and he's sure to get on fast. There's one or two +very good sort of customers been coming lately. There's the Earl of +Driffield, I think it is—don't you remember, Lucy, it was he gave +that lecture with the magic lantern at the Institute you and I went +to last summer. He's a queer sort of gentleman. Well, he's been +coming several times and giving orders. And there's some of the +college gentlemen; oh, and a lot of others. They all seem to think +he's so clever, father says—'</p> + +<p>'I know the Earl of Driffield quite well,' said Lucy loftily, 'He +used to be always coming to our place, and I've tied up his books +for him sometimes. I don't see what's good of being an earl—not to +go about like that. And father says he's got a grand place near +Stalybridge too. Well, if <i>he's</i> gone to Mr. Grieve, father'll +be just mad.' Lucy pursed up her small mouth with energy. Dora +evaded the subject.</p> + +<p>'He says when he's quite settled,' she resumed presently, 'we're to +go and have supper with him for a house-warming.'</p> + +<p>Lucy looked ready to cry again.</p> + +<p>'He couldn't ask me—of course he couldn't,' she said, +indistinctly. 'Dora—Dora!'</p> + +<p>'Well? Oh, don't mix up my silks, Lucy; I shall never get them +right again.'</p> + +<p>Lucy reluctantly put them down.</p> + +<p>'Do you think, Dora, Mr. Grieve cares anything at all about me?' +she said at last, hurrying out the words, and looking Dora in the +face, very red and bold.</p> + +<p>Dora laughed outright.</p> + +<p>'I knew you were going to ask that!' she said. 'Perhaps I've been +asking myself!'</p> + +<p>Lucy said nothing, but the tears dropped again down her cheeks and +on to her small quivering hands—all the woman awake in her.</p> + +<p>Dora pushed her frame away, and put her arm round her cousin, quite +at a loss what to say for the best.</p> + +<p>Another woman would have told Lucy plumply that she was a little +fool; that in the first place young Grieve had never shown any +signs of making love to her at all; and that, in the second, if he +had, her father would never let her marry him without a struggle +which nobody could suppose Lucy capable of waging with a man like +Purcell. It was all a silly fancy, the whim of a green girl, which +would make her miserable for nothing. Mrs. Alderman Head, for +instance, Dora's chaperon for the Institute dance, the sensible, +sharp-tongued wife of a wholesale stationer in Market Street, would +certainly have taken this view of the matter, and communicated it +to Lucy with no more demur than if you had asked her, say, for her +opinion on the proper season for bottling gooseberries. But Dora, +whose inmost being was one tremulous surge of feeling and emotion, +could not approach any matter of love and marriage without a +thrill, without a sense of tragedy almost. Besides, like Lucy, she +was very young still—just twenty—and youth answers to youth.</p> + +<p>'You know Uncle Tom wouldn't like it a bit, Lucy,' she began in her +perplexity.</p> + +<p>'I don't care!' cried Lucy, passionately. 'Girls can't marry to +please their fathers. I should have to wait, I suppose. I would get +my own way somehow. But what's the good of talking about it, Dora? +I'm sick of thinking about it—sick of everything. He'll marry +somebody else—I know he will—and I shall break my heart, or—'</p> + +<p>'Marry somebody else, too,' suggested Dora slyly.</p> + +<p>Lucy drew herself angrily away, and had to be soothed into +forgiving her cousin. The child had, in fact, thought and worried +herself by now into such a sincere belief in her own passion, that +there was nothing for it but to take it seriously. Dora yielded +herself to Lucy's tears and her own tenderness. She sat pondering.</p> + +<p>Then, suddenly, she said something very different from what Lucy +expected her to say.</p> + +<p>'Oh! if I could get him to go and talk to Father Russell! He's so +wonderful with young men.'</p> + +<p>Her hand dropped on to her knee; she looked away from Lucy out of +the window, her sweet face one longing.</p> + +<p>Lucy was startled, and somewhat annoyed. In her disgust with her +father and her anxiety to attract David's notice, she had so +entirely forgotten his religious delinquencies, that it seemed +fussy and intrusive on Dora's part to make so much of them. She +instinctively resented, too, what sounded to her like a tone of +proprietary interest. It was not Dora that was his friend—it was +she!</p> + +<p>'I don't see what you have to do with his opinions, Dora,' she said +stiffly; 'he isn't rude to you now as he used to be. Young men are +always wild a bit at first.'</p> + +<p>And she tossed her head with all the worldly wisdom of seventeen.</p> + +<p>Dora sighed and was silent. She fell to her work again, while Lucy +wandered restlessly about the room. Presently the child stopped +short.</p> + +<p>'Oh! look here, Dora—'</p> + +<p>'Yes.'</p> + +<p>'Do come round with me and look at some spring patterns I've got. +You might just as well. I know you've been slaving your eyes out, +and it's a nice day.'</p> + +<p>Dora hesitated, but finally consented. She had been at work for +many hours in hot rooms, and meant to work a good many more yet +before night. A break would revive her, and there was ample time +before the three o'clock dinner which she and her father took +together after the midday rush of the restaurant was over. So she +put on her things.</p> + +<p>On their way Dora looked into the kitchen. Everything was in full +work. A stout, red-faced woman was distributing and superintending. +On the long charcoal stove which Daddy under old Barbier's advice +had just put up, on the hot plates near, and the glowing range in +the background, innumerable pans were simmering and steaming. Here +was a table covered with stewed fruits; there another laden with +round vegetable pies just out of the oven—while a heap of tomatoes +on a third lent their scarlet to the busy picture. Some rays of +wintry sun had slipped in through the high windows, and were +contending with the steam of the pies and the smoke from the +cooking. And in front of all on an upturned box sat a pair of +Lancashire lasses, peeling apples at lightning speed, yet not so +fast but they could laugh and chat the while, their bright eyes +wandering perpetually through the open serving hatches which ran +along one side of the room, to the restaurant stretching beyond, +with its rows of well-filled tables and its passing waitresses in +their white caps and aprons.</p> + +<p>Dora slipped in among them in her soft deprecating way, smiling at +this one and that till she came to the stout cook. There she +stopped and asked something. Lucy, standing at the door, saw the +huge woman draw a corner of her apron across her eyes.</p> + +<p>'What did you want, Dora?' she inquired as her cousin rejoined her.</p> + +<p>'It's her poor boy. He's in the Infirmary and very bad. I'm sure +they think he's dying. I wanted to send her there this morning and +do her work, but she wouldn't go. There's no more news—but we +mustn't be long.'</p> + +<p>She walked on, evidently thinking with a tender absorption of the +mother and son, while Lucy was conscious of her usual impatience +with all this endless concern for unknown people, which stood so +much in the way of Dora's giving her full mind to her cousin's +affairs.</p> + +<p>Yet, as she knew well, Sarah, the stout cook, had been the chief +prop of the Parlour ever since it opened. No other servant had +stayed long with Daddy. He was too fantastic and exacting a master. +She had stayed—for Dora's sake—and, from bearing with him, had +learnt to manage him. When she came she brought with her a sickly, +overgrown lad, the only son of her widowhood, to act as +kitchen-boy. He did his poor best for a while, his mother in truth +getting through most of his work as well as her own, while Dora, +who had the weakness for doctoring inherent in all good, women, +stuffed him with cod-liver oil and 'strengthening mixtures.' Then +symptoms of acute hip-disease showed themselves, and the lad was +admitted to the big Infirmary in Piccadilly. There he had lain for +some six or eight weeks now, toiling no more, fretting no more, +living on his mother's and Dora's visits, and quietly loosening one +life-tendril after another. During all this time Dora had thought +of him, prayed for him, taught him—the wasted, piteous creature.</p> + +<p>When they arrived at Half Street, they let themselves in by the +side-door, and Lucy hurried her cousin into the parlour that there +might be no meeting with her father, with whom she was on decidedly +uncomfortable terms.</p> + +<p>The table in the parlour was strewn with patterns from several +London shops. To send for them, examine them, and imagine what they +would look like when made up was now Lucy's chief occupation. To +which might be added a little strumming on the piano, a little +visiting—not much, for she hated most of her father's friends, and +was at present too closely taken up with self-pity and speculations +as to what David Grieve might be doing to make new ones—and a +great deal of ordering about of Mary Ann.</p> + +<p>Dora sat down, and Lucy pounced on one pattern after another, +folding them between her fingers and explaining eagerly how this or +that would look if it were cut so, or trimmed so. 'Oh, Dora, +look—this pink gingham with white spots! Don't you think it's a +love? And, you know, pink always suits me, except when it's a +blue-pink. But you don't call that a blue-pink, do you? And yet it +isn't salmon, certainly—it's something between. It <i>ought</i> to +suit me, but I declare—' and suddenly, to Dora's dismay, the +child flung down the patterns she held with a passionate +vehemence—'I declare nothing seems to suit me now! Dora!'—in +a tone of despair—'<i>Dora!</i> don't you think I'm going off? My +complexion's all dull, and—and—why I might be thirty!' and +running over to the glass, draped in green cut-paper, which adorned +the mantelpiece, Lucy stood before it examining herself in an +agony. And, indeed, there was a change. A touch of some withering +blight seemed to have swept across the whole dainty face, and taken +the dewy freshness from the eyes. There was fever in it—the fever +of fret and mutiny and of a starved self-love.</p> + +<p>Dora looked at her cousin with less patience than usual—perhaps +because of the inevitable contrast between Lucy's posings and the +true heartaches of the world.</p> + +<p>'Lucy, what nonsense! You're just a bit worried, and you make such +a lot of it. Why can't you be patient?'</p> + +<p>'Because I can't!' said Lucy, sombrely, dropping into a chair, and +letting her arm fall over the back. 'It's all very well, Dora. You +aren't in love with a man whom you never see, and whom your father +has a spite on! And you won't do anything to help me—you won't +move a finger. And, of <i>course,</i> you might!'</p> + +<p>'What could I do, Lucy?' cried Dora, exasperated. 'I can't go and +ask young Grieve to marry you. I do wish you'd try and put him out +of your head, that I do. You're too young, and he's got his +business to think about. And while Uncle Tom's like this, I can't +be always putting myself forward to help you meet him. It would be +just the way to make him think something bad—to make him +suspect—'</p> + +<p>'Well, and why shouldn't he suspect?' said Lucy, obstinately, her +little mouth set and hard; 'it's all rubbish about girls leaving it +all to the men. If a girl doesn't show she cares about a man, how's +he to know—and when she don't meet him—and when her father keeps +her shut up—<i>shameful!'</i></p> + +<p>She flung the word out through her small, shut teeth, the brows +meeting over her flashing eyes.</p> + +<p>'Oh! it's shameful, is it—eh, Miss Purcell?' said a harsh, +mimicking voice coming from the dark passage leading into the shop.</p> + +<p>Lucy sprang up in terror. There on the steps stood her father, +bigger, blacker, more formidable than he had ever been in the eyes +of the two startled girls. All unknown to them, the two doors which +parted them from the shop had been slightly ajar, and Purcell, +catching their voices as they came in, and already on the watch for +his daughter, had maintained a treacherous quiet behind them. Now +he was entirely in his element. He surveyed them both with a dark, +contemptuous triumph. What fools women were to be sure!</p> + +<p>As he descended the two steps into the parlour the floor shook +under his heavy tread. Dora had instinctively thrown her arm round +Lucy, who had begun to cry hysterically. She herself was very pale, +but after the first start she looked her uncle in the face.</p> + +<p>'Is it you that's been teaching Lucy these <i>beautiful</i> +sentiments?' said Purcell, with ironical emphasis, stopping a yard +from them and pointing at Dora, 'and do you get 'em from St. +Damian's?'</p> + +<p>Dora threw up her head, and flushed. 'I get nothing from St. +Damian's that I'm ashamed of,' she said in a proud voice, 'and I've +done nothing with Lucy that I'm ashamed of.'</p> + +<p>'No, I suppose not,' said Purcell dryly; 'the devil don't deal much +in shame. It's a losing article.'</p> + +<p>Then he looked at Lucy, and his expression suddenly changed. The +flame beneath leapt to sight. He caught her arm, dragged her out of +Dora's hold, and shook her as one might shake a kitten.</p> + +<p>'Who were you talking of just now?' he said to her, holding her by +both shoulders, his eyes blazing down upon her.</p> + +<p>Lucy was much too frightened to speak. She stood staring back at +him, her breast heaving violently.</p> + +<p>Dora came forward in indignation.</p> + +<p>'You'll get nothing out of her if you treat her like that,' she +said, with spirit, 'nor out of me either.'</p> + +<p>Purcell recovered himself with difficulty. He let Lucy go, and +walking up to the mantelpiece stood there, leaning his arm upon it, +and looking at the girls from under his hand.</p> + +<p>'What do I want to get out of you?' he said, with scorn. 'As if I +didn't know already everything that's in your silly minds! I +guessed already, and now that you have been so obliging as to let +your secrets out under my very nose—I <i>know!</i> That chit +there'—he pointed to Lucy—all his gestures had a certain +theatrical force and exaggeration, springing, perhaps, from his +habit of lay preaching—'imagines she going to marry the young +infidel I gave the sack to a while ago. Now don't she? Are you +going to say no to that?'</p> + +<p>His loud challenge pushed Dora to extremities, and it was all left +to her. Lucy was sobbing on the sofa.</p> + +<p>'I don't know what she imagines,' said Dora, slowly, seeking in +vain for words; the whole situation was so ridiculous. 'Are you +going to prevent her falling in love with the man she chooses?'</p> + +<p>'<i>Certainly!</i>' said Purcell, with mocking emphasis. +'Certainly—since she chooses wrong. The only concern of the godly +in these matters is to see that their children are not yoked with +unbelievers. Whenever I see that young reprobate in the street now, +I smell <i>the pit</i>. And it'll not be long before the Lord +tumbles him into it; there's an end comes to such devil's fry as +that. Oh, they may prosper and thrive, they may revile the children +of the Lord, they may lift up the hoof against the poor Christian, +but the time comes—<i>the time comes.</i>'</p> + +<p>His solemnity, at once unctuous and full of vicious meaning, only +irritated Dora. But Lucy raised herself from the sofa, and looked +suddenly round at her father. Her eyes were streaming, her hair in +disorder, but there was a suspicion and intelligence in her look +which seemed to give her back self-control. She watched eagerly for +what her father might say or do next.</p> + +<p>As soon as he saw her sitting up he walked over to her and took her +again by the shoulder.</p> + +<p>'Now look here,' he said to her, holding her tight, 'let's finish +with this. That young man's the Lord's enemy—he's my enemy—and +I'll teach him a lesson before I've done. But that's neither here +nor there. You understand this. If you ever walk out of this door +with him, you'll not walk back into it, with him or without him. +I'd have done with you, and <i>my money</i>'ld have done with you. +But there'—and Purcell gave a little scornful laugh, and let her +go with a push—'<i>he</i> don't care twopence about you—I'll say +that for him.'</p> + +<p>Lucy flushed fiercely, and getting up began mechanically to smooth +her hair before the glass, with wild tremulous movements, will and +defiance settling on her lip, as she looked at herself and at the +reflection of her father.</p> + +<p>'And as for you, Miss Lomax,' said Purcell deliberately, standing +opposite Dora, 'you've been aiding and abetting somehow—I don't +care how. I don't complain. There was nothing better to be expected +of a girl with your parentage and bringing up, and a Puseyite into +the bargain. But I warn you you'll go meddling here once too often +before you've done. If you'll take my advice you'll let other +people's business alone, and <i>mind your own</i>. Them that have +got Adrian Lomax on their hands needn't go poaching on their +neighbours for something to do.'</p> + +<p>He spoke with a slow, vindictive emphasis, and Dora shrank and +quivered as though he had struck her. Then by a great effort—the +effort of one who had not gone through a close and tender training +of the soul for nothing—she put from her both her anger and her +fear.</p> + +<p>'You're cruel to father,' she said, her voice fluttering; 'you might +be thinking sometimes how straight he's kept since he took the +Parlour. And I don't believe young Grieve means any harm to you or +anybody—and I'm sure I don't.'</p> + +<p>A sob rose in her throat. Anybody less crassly armoured in +self-love than Purcell must have been touched. As for him, he +turned on his heel.</p> + +<p>'I'll protect myself, thank you,' he said dryly;' and I'll judge +for myself. You can do as you like, and Lucy too, so long as she +takes the consequences. Do you understand, Lucy?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said Lucy, facing round upon him, all tremulous passion and +rebellion, but she could not meet his fixed, tyrannical eye. Her +own wavered and sank. Purcell enjoyed the spectacle of her for a +second or two, smiled, and went.</p> + +<p>As soon as he was gone, Lucy dragged her cousin to the stairs, and +never let her go till Dora was safe in her room and the door +bolted.</p> + +<p>Dora implored to be released. How could she stay in her uncle's +house after such a scene? and she must get home quickly anyway, as +Lucy knew.</p> + +<p>Lucy took no notice at all of what she was saying.</p> + +<p>'Look here.' she said, breaking into the middle of Dora's appeal, +and speaking in an excited whisper—'he's going to do him a +mischief. I'm certain he is. That's how he looks when he's going to +pay some one out. Now, what's he going to do? I'll know +somehow—trust me!'</p> + +<p>She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her arms behind her, +supporting her, her little feet beating each other restlessly—a +hot, vindictive anger speaking from every feature, every movement. +The pretty chit of seventeen seemed to have disappeared. Here was +every promise of a wilful and obstinate woman, with more of her +father's stuff in her than anyone could have yet surmised.</p> + +<p>A pang rose in Dora. She rose impulsively, and throwing herself +down by Lucy, drew the ruffled, palpitating creature into her arms.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Lucy, isn't it only because you're angry and vexed, and +because you want to fight Uncle Purcell? Oh, don't go on just for +that! When we're—we're Christians, we mustn't want our own way—we +must give it up—<i>we must give it up.</i>' Her voice sank in a +burst of tears, and she drooped her head on Lucy's, kissing her +cousin's brown hair.</p> + +<p>Lucy extricated herself with a movement of impatience.</p> + +<p>'When one <i>loves</i> anybody,' she said, sitting very upright and +twisting her fingers together, 'one must stick to him!'</p> + +<p>Dora started at the word 'love.' It seemed to her a profanation. +She dried her eyes, and got up to go without another word.</p> + +<p>'Well, Dora,' said Lucy, frowning, 'and so you'll do nothing for +me—<i>nothing</i>?'</p> + +<p>Dora stood a moment in a troubled silence. Then she turned, and +took gentle hold of her cousin.</p> + +<p>'If I get a chance, Lucy, I'll try and find out whether he's +thinking of marrying at all. And if he isn't—and I'm sure he +isn't—will you give it all up, and try and live comfortable with +Uncle Purcell, and think of something else?'</p> + +<p>Her eyes had a tender, nay a passionate entreaty in them.</p> + +<p>'No!' said Lucy with energy; 'but I'll very likely drown myself in +the river some fine night.'</p> + +<p>Dora still held her, standing above her, and looking down at her, +trying hard to read her true mind. Lucy bore it defiantly for a +minute; then suddenly two large tears rose. A quiver passed over +Dora's face; she kissed her cousin quickly, and went towards the +door.</p> + +<p>'And I'll find out what father's going to do, or my name isn't what +it is!' said the girl behind her, in a shrill, shaking voice, as +she closed the door.</p> + +<p> +<br /> +</p> + +<p>Dora ran back to Market Place, filled with a presentiment that she +was late, though the hand of the Cathedral clock was still far from +three.</p> + +<p>At the side door stood a woman with a shawl over her head, looking +distractedly up the street.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Miss Dora! Miss Dora! they've sent. He's gooin—gooin quick. +An' he keeps wearyin' for "mither an' Miss Dora."'</p> + +<p>The powerful scarred face had the tremulous helplessness of grief. +Dora took her by the arm.</p> + +<p>'Let us run, Sarah—at once. Oh, never mind the work!'</p> + +<p>The two women hurried through the crowded Saturday streets. But +halfway up Market Street Sarah stopped short, looking round her in +an agony.</p> + +<p>'Theer's his feyther, Miss Dora. Oh, he wor a bad 'un to me, but he +had allus a soft spot for t' lad. I'd be reet glad to send worrud. +He wor theer in the ward, they tell't me, last week.'</p> + +<p>Three years before she had separated from her husband, a sawyer, by +mutual consent. He was younger than she, and he had been grossly +unfaithful to her; she came of a good country stock and her +daleswoman's self-respect could put up with him no longer. But she +had once been passionately in love with him, and, as she said, he +had been on the whole kind to the boy.</p> + +<p>'Where is he?' said Dora.</p> + +<p>'At Mr. Whitelaw's yard, Edgell Street, Great Ancoats.'</p> + +<p>They had just entered the broad Infirmary Square. Dora, looking +round her in perplexity, suddenly saw coming towards them the tall +figure of David Grieve. The leap of the heart of which she was +conscious through all her preoccupation startled her. But she went +up to him without a moment's hesitation. David, swinging along as +though Manchester belonged to him, found himself arrested and, +looking down, saw Dora's pale and agitated face.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Grieve, will you help me?'</p> + +<p>She drew him to the side and explained as quickly as she could. +Sarah stood by, and threw in directions.</p> + +<p>'He'll be to be found at Mr. Whitelaw's yard—Edgell Street—an' +whoever goos mun just say to him, "Sarah says to tha—Wilt tha +coom, or wilt tha not coom?—t' lad's deein."'</p> + +<p>She threw out the words with a sombre simplicity and force, then, +her whole frame quivering with impatience, she crossed the road to +the Infirmary without waiting for Dora.</p> + +<p>'Can you send some one?' said Dora.</p> + +<p>'I will go myself at once. I'll find the man if he's there, and +bring him. You leave it to me.'</p> + +<p>He turned without more ado, broke into a run, and disappeared round +the corner of Oldham Street.</p> + +<p>Dora crossed to the Infirmary, her mind strangely divided for a +moment between the solemn image of what was coming, and the +vibrating memory of something just past.</p> + +<p>But, once in the great ward, pity and death possessed her wholly. +He knew them, the poor lad—made, as it seemed, two tremulous +movements,—once, when his mother's uncontrollable crying passed +into his failing ear—once when Dora's kiss was laid upon his +hollow temple. Then again he lay unconscious, drawing gently to the +end.</p> + +<p>Dora knelt beside him praying, his mother on the other side, and +the time passed. Then there were sounds about the bed, and looking +up, Dora saw two figures approaching. In front was a middle-aged +man, with a stupid, drink-stained face. He came awkwardly and +unsteadily up to the bedside, almost stumbling over his wife, and +laying his hand on the back of a chair to support himself. He +brought with him an overpowering smell of beer, and Dora thought as +she looked at him that he had only a very vague idea of what was +going on. His wife took no notice of him whatever.</p> + +<p>Behind at some little distance, his hat in his hand, stood David +Grieve. Why did he stay? Dora could not get him out of her mind. +Even in her praying she still saw the dark, handsome head and lithe +figure thrown out against the whiteness of the hospital walls.</p> + +<p>There was a slight movement in the bed, and the nurse, standing +beside the boy, looked up and made a quick sign to the mother. What +she and Dora saw was only a gesture as of one settling for sleep. +Without struggle and without fear, the little lad who had never +lived enough to know the cost of dying, went the way of all flesh.</p> + +<p>'They die so easily, this sort,' said the nurse to Dora, as she +tenderly closed the patient eyes; 'it's like a plant that's never +rooted.'</p> + +<p> +<br /> +</p> + +<p>A few minutes later Dora was blindly descending the long stairs. +The mother was still beside her dead, making arrangements for the +burial. The father, sobered and conscious, had already slouched +away. But at the foot of the stairs Dora, looking round, saw that +David was just behind her.</p> + +<p>He came out with her.</p> + +<p>'He was drunk when I found him,' he explained, 'he had been drinking +in the dinner hour. I had him by the arm all the way, and thought I +had best bring him straight in. And then—I had never seen anyone +die,' he said simply, a curious light in his black eyes.</p> + +<p>Dora, still choked with tears, could not speak. With shaking hands +she searched for a bit of veil she had with her to hide her eyes +and cheeks. But she could not find it.</p> + +<p>'Don't go down Market Street,' he said, after a shy look at her. +'Come this way, there isn't such a crowd.'</p> + +<p>And turning down Mosley Street, all the way he guided her through +some side streets where there were fewer people to stare. Such +forethought, such gentleness in him were quite new to her. She +gradually recovered herself, feeling all the while this young +sympathetic presence at her side—dreading lest it should desert +her.</p> + +<p>He meanwhile was still under the tremor and awe of the new +experience. So this was dying! He remembered 'Lias holding +Margaret's hand. <i>'Deein's long—but it's varra, varra peaceful.'</i> +Not always, surely! There must be vigorous, tenacious souls +that went out with tempests and agonies; and he was conscious of a +pang of fear, feeling himself so young and strong.</p> + +<p>Presently he led her into St. Ann's Square, and then they shook +hands. He hurried off to his business, and she remained standing a +moment on the pavement outside the church which makes one side of +the square. An impulse seized her—she turned and went into the +church instead of going home.</p> + +<p>There, in one of the old oak pews where the little tarnished plates +still set forth the names of their eighteenth-century owners, she +fell on her knees and wrestled with herself and God.</p> + +<p>She was very simple, very ignorant, but religion, as religion can, +had dignified and refined all the elements of character. She said +to herself in an agony—that he <i>must</i> love her—that she had +loved him in truth all along. And then a great remorse came upon +her—the spiritual glory she had just passed through closed round +her again. What! she could see the heaven opened—the Good Shepherd +stoop to take his own—and then come away to feel nothing but this +selfish, passionate craving? Oh, she was ashamed, she loathed +herself!</p> + +<p><i>Lucy!</i>—Lucy had no claim! should have no claim! He did not +care for her.</p> + +<p>Then again the pale dead face would flash upon her with its +submissive look,—so much gratitude for so little, and such a +tender ease in dying! And she possessed by all these bad and +jealous feelings, these angry desires, fresh from such a presence!</p> + +<p><i>'Oh! Lamb of God—Lamb of God—that takest away the sins of the +world!'</i></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-2" id="CHAPTER_VI-2"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<p>And David, meanwhile, was thinking of nothing in the world but the +fortunes of a little shop, about twelve feet square, and of the +stall outside that shop. The situation—for a hero—is certainly +one of the flattest conceivable. Nevertheless it has to be faced. +If, however, one were to say that he had marked none of Lucy +Purcell's advances, that would be to deny him eyes as well as +susceptibilities. He had, indeed, said to himself in a lordly way +that Lucy Purcell was a regular little flirt, and was beginning +those ways early. But a certain rough young modesty, joined with a +sense of humour at his own expense, prevented him from making any +more of it, and he was no sooner in his own den watching for +customers than Lucy vanished from his mind altogether. He thought +much more of Purcell himself, with much vengeful chuckling and +speculation.</p> + +<p>As for Dora, he had certainly begun to regard her as a friend. She +had sense and experience, in spite of her Ritualism, whereas Lucy +in his eyes had neither. So that to run into the Parlour, after +each new day was over, and discuss with Daddy and her the ups and +downs, the fresh chances and prospects of his infant business, was +pleasant enough. Daddy and he met on the common ground of wishing +to make the world uncomfortable for Purcell; while Dora supplied +the admiring uncritical wonder, in which, like a warm environment, +an eager temperament expands, and feels itself under the stimulus +more inventive and more capable than before.</p> + +<p>But marrying! The lad's careless good-humoured laugh under Ancrum's +probings was evidence enough of how the land lay. Probably at the +bottom of him, if he had examined, there lay the instinctive +assumption that Dora was one of the girls who are not likely to +marry. Men want them for sisters, daughters, friends—and then go +and fall in love with some minx that has a way with her.</p> + +<p>Besides, who could be bothered with 'gells,' when there was a stall +to be set out and a career to be made? With that stall, indeed, +David was truly in love. How he fingered and meddled with it! +—setting out the cheap reprints it contained so as to show their +frontispieces, and strewing among them, in an artful disorder, a +few rare local pamphlets, on which he kept a careful watch, either +from the door or from inside. Behind these, again, within the +glass, was a precious shelf, containing in the middle of it about a +dozen volumes of a kind dear to a collector's eye—thin volumes in +shabby boards, then just beginning to be sought after—the first +editions of nineteenth-century poets. For months past David had +been hoarding up a few in a corner of his little lodging, and on +his opening day they decoyed him in at least five inquiring souls, +all of whom stayed to talk a bit. There was a 'Queen Mab;' and a +'Lyrical Ballads;' an 'Endymion;' a few Landors thrown in, and a +'Bride of Abydos'—this last not of much account, for its author +had the indiscretion, from the collector's point of view, to be +famous from the beginning, and so to flood the world with large +editions.</p> + +<p>Round and about these dainty morsels were built in with +solid rubbish, with Daddy's 'Journals of Theology,' 'British +Controversialist,' and the rest. In one top corner lurked a few +battered and cut-down Elzevirs, of no value save to the sentiment +of the window, while a good many spaces were filled up with some +new and attractive editions of standard books just out of +copyright, contributed, these last, by the enterprising traveller +of a popular firm, from whom David had them on commission.</p> + +<p>Inside, the shop was of the roughest: a plank or two on a couple of +trestles served for a counter, and two deal shelves, put up by +David, ran along the wall behind. The counter held a few French +scientific books, very fresh, and 'in the movement,' the result of +certain inquiries put by old Barbier to a school friend of his, now +professor at the Sorbonne—meant to catch the 'college people;' +while on the other side lay some local histories of neighbouring +towns and districts, a sort of commodity always in demand in a +great expanding city, where new men have risen rapidly and families +are in the making. For these local books the lad had developed an +astonishing <i>flair</i>. He had the geographical and also the +social instincts which the pursuit of them demands.</p> + +<p>On his first day David netted in all a profit of seventeen +shillings and twopence, and at night he curled himself up on a +mattress in the little back kitchen, with an old rug for covering +and a bit of fire, and slept the sleep of liberty.</p> + +<p>In a few days more several of the old-established book-buyers of +the town, a more numerous body, perhaps, in Manchester than in +other northern centres, had found him out; a certain portly and +wealthy lady, connected with one of the old calico-printing +families, a person of character, who made a hobby of Lancashire +Nonconformity, had walked into the shop, and given the boyish owner +of it much good advice and a few orders; the Earl of Driffield had +looked in, and, caught by the lures of the stall, customers had +come from the most unlikely quarters, desiring the most +heterogeneous wares. The handsome, intelligent young fellow, with +his out-of-the-way strains of knowledge, with his frank +self-conceit and his equally frank ignorance, caught the fancy of +those who stayed to talk with him. A certain number of persons had +been already taken with him in Purcell's shop, and were now vastly +amused by the lad's daring and the ambitious range of his first +stock.</p> + +<p>As for Lord Driffield, on the first occasion when he had dropped in +he had sat for an hour at least, talking and smoking cigarettes +across David's primitive counter.</p> + +<p>This remarkable person, of whom Lucy thought so little, was well +known, and had been well known, for a good many years, to the +booksellers of Manchester and Liverpool. As soon as the autumn +shooting season began, Purcell, for instance, remembered Lord +Driffield, and began to put certain books aside for him. He +possessed one of the famous libraries of England, and he not only +owned but read. Scholars all over Europe took toll both of his +books and his brains. He lived to collect and to be consulted. +There was almost nothing he did not know, except how to make a book +for himself. He was so learned that he had, so to speak, worked +through to an extreme modesty. His friends, however, found nothing +in life so misleading as Lord Driffield's diffidence.</p> + +<p>At the same time Providence had laid upon him a vast family estate, +and an aristocratic wife, married in his extreme youth to please +his father. Lady Driffield had the ideas of her caste, and when +they came to their great house near Stalybridge, in the autumn, she +insisted on a succession of proper guests, who would shoot the +grouse in a proper manner, and amuse her in the evenings. For, as +she had no children, life was often monotonous, and when she was +bored she had a stately way of making herself disagreeable to Lord +Driffield. He therefore did his best to content her. He received +her guests, dined with them in the evenings, and despatched them to +the moors in the morning. But between those two functions he was +his own master; and on the sloppy November afternoons he might +as often as not be seen trailing about Manchester or Liverpool, +carrying his slouching shoulders and fair spectacled face +into every bookseller's shop, good, bad, and indifferent, or +giving lectures, mostly of a geographical kind, at popular +institutions—an occupation in which he was not particularly +effective.</p> + +<p>David had served him, once or twice, in Half Street, and had sent a +special notice of his start and his intentions to Benet's Park, the +Driffields' 'place.' Lord Driffield's first visit left him +quivering with excitement, for the earl had a way of behaving as +though everybody else were not only his social, but his +intellectual equal—even a lad of twenty, with his business to +learn. He would sit pleasantly smoking and asking questions—a +benevolent, shabby person, eager to be informed. Then, when David +had fallen into the trap, and was holding forth—proud, it might +be, of certain bits of knowledge which no one else in Manchester +possessed—Lord Driffield would throw in a gentle comment, and then +another and another, till the trickle became a stream, and the +young man would fall blankly listening, his mouth opening wider and +wider. When it was over, and the earl, with his draggled umbrella, +his disappeared, David sat, crouched on his wooden stool, consumed +with hot ambition and wonder. How could a man know so much—and an +earl, who didn't want it? For a few hours, at any rate, his +self-conceit was dashed. He realised dimly what it might be to know +as the scholar knows. And that night, when he had shut the +shutters, he vowed to himself, as he gathered his books about him, +that five hours was enough sleep for a strong man; that +<i>learn</i> he must and should, and that some day or other he +would hold his own, even with Lord Driffield.</p> + +<p>How he loved his evenings—the paraffin lamp glaring beside him, +the crackling of the coal in his own fire, the book on his knee! +Ancrum had kept his promise, and was helping him with his Greek; +but his teaching hardly kept pace with the boy's enthusiasm +and capacity. The <i>voracity</i> with which he worked at his +Thucydides and Homer left the lame minister staring and sighing. +The sound of the lines, the roll of the <i>oi</i>'s and <i>ou</i>'s +was in David's ear all day, and to learn a dozen irregular verbs in +the interval between two customers was like the gulping of a +dainty.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, as he collected his English poets he read them. And +here was a whole new world. For in his occupation with the +Encyclopaedists he had cared little for poetry. The reaction +against his Methodist fit had lasted long, had developed a certain +contempt for sentiment, a certain love for all sharp, dry, +calculable things, and for the tone of <i>irony</i> in particular. +But in such a nature such a phase was sure to pass, and it was +passing. Burns, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson—now he was making +acquaintance piecemeal with them all, as the precious volumes +turned up, which he was soon able to place with a precision which +tore them too soon out of his hands. The Voltairean temper in him +was melting, was passing into something warmer, subtler, and more +restless.</p> + +<p>But he was not conscious of it. He was as secular, as cocksure, as +irritating as ever, when Ancrum probed him on the subject of the +Hall of Science or the various Secularist publications which he +supported.</p> + +<p>'Do you call yourself an atheist now, David?' said Ancrum one day, +in that cheerful, half-ironic tone which the young bookseller +resented.</p> + +<p>'I don't call myself anything,' said David, stoutly. 'I'm all for +this world; we can't know anything about another. At least, that's +my opinion, sir—no offence to you.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, dear me, no offence! There have been a <i>few</i> +philosophers, you know, Davy, since Voltaire. There's a person +called Kant; I don't know anything about him, but they tell me he +made out a very pretty case, on the practical side anyway, for a +God and immortality. And in England, too, there have been two or +three persons of consequence, you remember, like Coleridge and John +Henry Newman, who have thought it worth while to believe a little. +But you don't care about that?'</p> + +<p>The lad stood silent a moment, his colour rising, his fine lip +curling. Then he burst out:</p> + +<p>'What's the good of thinking about things by the wrong end? There's +such a lot to read!'</p> + +<p>And with a great stretch of all his young frame he fell back on the +catalogue he was looking through, while Ancrum went on turning over +a copy of 'The Reasoner,' a vigorous Secularist paper of the day, +which he had found on the counter, and which had suggested his +question.</p> + +<p><i>Knowledge—success:</i> it was for these that David burned, and +he laid rapid hands upon them. He had a splendid physique, and at +this moment of his youth he strained it to the utmost. He grudged +the time for sleep and meals, and on Saturday afternoons, the +early-closing day of Manchester, he would go out to country sales, +or lay plans for seeing the few considerable libraries—Lord +Driffield's among them—which the neighbouring districts possessed. +On Sunday he read from morning till night, and once or twice his +assistant John, hammering outside for admittance in the winter +dark, wakened the master of the shop from the rickety chair where +he had fallen asleep over his books in the small hours of the +morning.</p> + +<p>His assistant! It may well be asked what a youth of twenty, setting +up on thirty pounds capital in a small shop, wanted with an +assistant before he had any business to speak of. The story is a +curious one.</p> + +<p>Some time in the previous summer Daddy had opened a smoking and +debating room at the Parlour, by way of keeping his <i>clientele</i> +together and giving a special character to the place. He had +merely boarded off a bit of the original seed warehouse, put in +some rough tables and chairs, and a few newspapers. But by a +conjunction of circumstances the place had taken a Secularist +character, and the weekly debates which Daddy inaugurated were, +for a time at least, well attended. Secularism, like all other +forms of mental energy, had lately been active in Manchester; +there had been public discussions between Mr. Holyoake and +Mr. Bradlaugh as to whether Secularism were necessarily atheistic +or no. Some of the old newspapers of the movement, dating from +Chartist days, had recently taken a new lease of life; and +combined with the protest against theology was a good deal of +co-operative and republican enthusiasm. Lomax, who had been a +Secularist and an Owenite for twenty years, and who was a +republican to boot, threw himself into the <i>melee</i>, and the +Parlour debates during the whole of the autumn and winter of '69-70 +were full of life, and brought out a good many young speakers, +David Grieve among them. Indeed, David was for a time the leader of +the place, so ready was his gift, so confident and effective his +personality.</p> + +<p>On one occasion in October he was holding forth on 'Science—the +true Providence of Life.' The place was crowded. A well-known +Independent had been got hold of to answer the young Voltairean, +and David was already excited, for his audience was plying him with +interruptions, and taxing to the utmost a natural debating power.</p> + +<p>In the midst of it a printer's devil from the restaurant outside, a +stout, stupid-looking lad, found his way in, and stood at the door +listening. The fine classical head of the speaker, the beautiful +voice, the gestures so free and flowing, the fire and fervour of +the whole performance—these things left him gaping.</p> + +<p>'Who's that?' he ventured to inquire of a man near him, a calico +salesman, well known in the Salford Conservative Association, who +had come to support the Independent speaker.</p> + +<p>The man laughed.</p> + +<p>'That's young Grieve, assistant to old Purcell, Half Street. He +talks a d—d lot of stuff—blasphemous stuff, too; but if +somebody'd take and teach him and send him into Parliament, some +day he'd make 'em skip, I warrant yo. I never heard onybody frame +better for public speaking, and I've heard a lot.'</p> + +<p>The printer's devil stayed and stared through the debate. Then, +afterwards, he began to haunt the paths of this young Satan, crept +up to him in the news-room, skulked about him in the restaurant. At +last David took notice of him, and they made friends.</p> + +<p>'Have you got anybody belonging to you?' he asked him shortly.</p> + +<p>'No,' said the boy. 'Father died last spring; mother was took with +pleurisy in November—'</p> + +<p>But the words stuck in his throat, and he coughed over them.</p> + +<p>'All right,' said David; 'come for a walk Sunday afternoon?'</p> + +<p>So a pretty constant companionship sprang up between them. John +Dalby came of a decent stock, and was still, as it were, under the +painful and stupefying surprise of those bereavements which had +left him an orphan. His blue eyes looked bewilderment at the world; +he was bullied by the compositors he worked under. Sometimes he had +violent fits of animal spirits, but in general he was dull and +silent, and no one could have guessed that he often read poetry and +cried himself to sleep in the garret where he lodged. Physically he +was a great, overgrown creature, not, in truth, much younger than +David. But while David was already the man, John was altogether in +the tadpole-stage—a being of large, ungainly frame, at war with +his own hands and feet, his small eyes lost in his pink, spreading +cheeks, his speech shy and scanty. Yet, such as he was, David found +a use for him. Temperaments of the fermenting, expansive sort want +a listener at the moment of early maturity, and almost any +two-legged thing with the listener's gift will do. David worked off +much steam on the Saturday or Sunday afternoons, when the two would +push out into the country, walking some twenty miles or so for the +sheer joy of movement. While the one talked and declaimed, +ploughing his violent way through the soil of his young thought, +the other, fat and silent, puffed alongside, and each in his own +way was happy.</p> + +<p>Just about the time David was dismissed by Purcell, John's +apprenticeship came to an end. When he heard of the renting of the +shop in Potter Street, he promptly demanded to come as assistant.</p> + +<p>'Don't be a fool!' said David, turning upon him; 'what should I want +with an assistant in that bit of a place? And I couldn't pay you, +besides, man.'</p> + +<p>'Don't mind that,' said John, stoutly. 'I'd like to learn the trade. +Perhaps you'll set up a printing business by-and-by. Lots of +booksellers do. Then I'll be handy.'</p> + +<p>'And how the deuce are you going to live?' cried David, somewhat +exasperated by these unpractical proposals. 'You're not exactly a +grasshopper;' and his eye, half angry, half laughing, ran over +John's plump person.</p> + +<p>To which John replied, undisturbed, that he had got four pounds +still of the little hoard his mother had left him, and, judging by +what David had told him of his first months in Manchester, he could +make that last for living a good while. When he had learnt +something of the business with David, he would move on—trust him.</p> + +<p>Whereupon David told him flatly that <i>he</i> wasn't going to help +him waste his money, and sent him about his business.</p> + +<p>On the very day, however, that David opened, he was busy in the +shop, when he saw John outside at the stall, groaning under a +bundle.</p> + +<p>'It's Mr. Lomax ha sent you this,' said the lad, calmly, 'and I'm to +put it up, and tell him how your stock looks.'</p> + +<p>The bundle contained Daddy's contributions to young Grieve's +window, which at the moment were very welcome; and David in his +gratitude instructed the messenger to take back a cordial message. +The only notice John took was to lift up two deal shelves that were +leaning against the wall of the shop, and to ask where they were to +go.</p> + +<p>And, say what David would, he stuck, and would not be got rid of. +With the Lancashire accent he had also the Lancashire persistence, +and David after a while gave in, consented that he should stay for +some weeks, at any rate, and then set to work to teach him, in a +very impatient and intermittent way. For watching and bargaining at +the stall, at any rate, for fetching and carrying, and for all that +appertains to the carrying and packing of parcels, John presently +developed a surprising energy. David's wits were thereby freed for +the higher matters of his trade, while John was beast of burden. +The young master could work up his catalogues, study his famous +collections, make his own bibliographical notes, or run off here +and there by 'bus or train in quest of books for a customer; he +could swallow down his Greek verbs or puzzle out his French for +Barbier in the intervals of business; the humbler matters of the +shop prospered none the less.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile both lads were vegetarians and teetotalers; both lived as +near as might be on sixpence a day; and an increasing portion of +the Manchester world—of that world, at any rate, which buys +books—began, as the weeks rolled on, to take interest in the pair +and their venture.</p> + +<p>Christmas came, and David made up his accounts. He had turned over +the whole of his capital in six weeks, had lived and paid his rent, +and was very nearly ten pounds to the good. On the evening when he +made this out he sat jubilantly over the fire, thinking of Louie. +Certainly it would be soon time for him to send for Louie at this +rate. Yet there were <i>pros</i> and <i>cons</i>. He would have to +look after her when she did come, and there would be an end of his +first freedom. And what would she find to do?</p> + +<p>Silk-weaving had been decaying year by year in Manchester, and for +hand-loom weaving, at any rate, there was no opening at all.</p> + +<p>No matter! With his prosperity there came a quickening of the sense +of kinship, which would not let him rest. For the first time for +many years he thought often of his father. Who and what had his +mother been? Why had Uncle Reuben never spoken of his parents, save +that one tormented word in the dark? Why, his father could not have +been thirty when he died! Some day he would make Uncle Reuben tell +all the story—he would know, too, where his father was buried.</p> + +<p>And meanwhile, in a few more weeks, he would write to Kinder. He +would be good to Louie—he decidedly meant that she should have a +good time. Perhaps she had grown out of her tricks by now. Tom said +she was thought to be uncommon handsome. David made a little face +as he remembered that. She would be all the more difficult to +manage.</p> + +<p>Yet all the time David Grieve's prosperity was the most insecure +growth imaginable.</p> + +<p>One evening Lucy rushed in late to see Dora.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Dora! Dora! Put down your work at once and listen to me.' Dora +looked up in amazement, to see Lucy's little face all crimson with +excitement and resolution.</p> + +<p>'Dora, I've found it all out: he's going to buy the house over Mr. +Grieve's head, and turn him into the street, just as he's got +nicely settled. Oh! he's done it before, I can tell you. There was +a man higher up Half Street he served just the same. He's got the +money, and he's got the spite. Well now, Dora, it's no good +staring. Has Mr. Grieve been up here lately?'</p> + +<p>'No; not lately,' said Dora, with an involuntary sigh. 'Father's +been to see him. He says he's that busy he can't come out. But, +Lucy, how do you know all this?'</p> + +<p>Whereupon, at first, Lucy wouldn't tell; but being at bottom +intensely proud of her own cleverness at last confessed. She had +been for long convinced that her father meant mischief to young +Grieve, and had been on the watch. A little listening at doors +here, and a little prying into papers there, had presently given +her the clue. In a private drawer, unlocked by chance, she had +found a solicitor's letter containing the full description of No. +15 Potter Street, and of some other old houses in the same street, +soon to be sold and rebuilt. The description contained notes of +price and date in her father's hand. That very evening the +solicitor in question had come to see her father. She had been +sent upstairs, but had managed to listen all the same. The +purchase—whatever it was—was to be concluded 'shortly.' There had +been much legal talk, and her father had seemed in a particularly +good temper when Mr. Vance went away.</p> + +<p>'Well now, look here,' said Lucy, frowning and biting her lips; 'I +shall just go right on and see him. I thought I might have found +him here. But there's no time to lose.'</p> + +<p>Dora had bent over her frame again, and her face was hidden.</p> + +<p>'Why, it's quite late,' she said, slowly; 'the shop will be shut up +long ago.'</p> + +<p>'I don't care—I don't care a bit,' cried Lucy. 'One can't think +about what's proper. I'm just going straight away.'</p> + +<p>And she got up feverishly, and put on her hat again.</p> + +<p>'Why can't you tell father and send him? He's downstairs in the +reading-room,' said Dora.</p> + +<p>'I'll go myself, Dora, thank you,' said Lucy, with an obstinate +toss of her head, as she stood before the old mirror over the +mantelpiece. 'I dare say you think I'm a very bold girl. It don't +matter.'</p> + +<p>Then for a minute she became absorbed in putting one side of her +hair straight. Dora, from behind, sat looking at her, needle in +hand. The gaslight fell on her pale, disturbed face, showed for an +instant a sort of convulsion pass across it which Lucy did not see. +Then she drew her hand along her eyes, with a low, quivering +breath, and went back to her work.</p> + +<p>As Lucy opened the door, however, a movement of anxiety, of +conscience, rose in Dora.</p> + +<p>'Lucy, shall I go with you?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, no,' said Lucy, impatiently. 'I know what's what, thank you, +Dora. I'll take care of myself. Perhaps I'll come back and tell you +what he says.'</p> + +<p>And she closed the door behind her. Dora did not move from her +work; but her hand trembled so that she made several false stitches +and had to undo them.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Lucy sped along across Market Street and through St. +Ann's Square. Her blood was up, and she could have done anything, +braved anybody, to defeat her father and win a smile from David +Grieve. Yet, as she entered Potter Street, she began to quake a +little. The street was narrow and dark. On one side the older +houses had been long ago pulled down and replaced by tall +warehouses, which at night were a black and towering mass, without +a light anywhere. The few shops opposite closed early, for in the +office quarter of Manchester there is very little doing after +office hours, when the tide of life ebbs outwards.</p> + +<p>Lucy looked for No. 15, her heart beating fast. There was a light +in the first floor, but the shop-front was altogether dark. She +crossed the street, and, lifting a shaking hand, rang the bell of +the very narrow side door.</p> + +<p>Instantly there were sounds inside—a step—and David stood on the +threshold.</p> + +<p>He stared in amazement at his unwonted visitor.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Mr. Grieve—please—I've got something to tell you. Oh, no, I +won't come in—we can stand here, please, out of the wind. But +father's going to buy this place over your head, and I thought I'd +better come and tell you. He'll be pretty mad if he thinks I've let +out; but I don't care.'</p> + +<p>She was leaning against the wall of the passage, and David could +just see the defiance and agitation on her face by the light of the +gas-lamp outside.</p> + +<p>He himself gave a low whistle.</p> + +<p>'Well, that's rather strong, isn't it, Miss Purcell?'</p> + +<p>'It's mean—it's abominable,' she cried. 'I vowed I'd stop it. But I +don't know what he'll do to me—kill me, most likely.'</p> + +<p>'Nobody shall do anything to you,' said David, decidedly. 'You're a +brick. But look here—can you tell me anything more?'</p> + +<p>She commanded herself with great difficulty, and told all she knew. +David leant against the wall beside her, twisting a meditative lip. +The situation was ominous, certainly. He had always known that his +tenure was precarious, but from various indications he had supposed +that it would be some years yet before his side of the street was +much meddled with. That old fox! He must go and see Mr. Ancrum.</p> + +<p>A passion of hate and energy rose within him. Somehow or other he +would pull through.</p> + +<p>When Lucy had finished the tale of her eavesdroppings, the young +fellow shook himself and stood erect.</p> + +<p>'Well, I <i>am</i> obliged to you, Miss Purcell. And now I'll just +go straight off and talk to somebody that I think'll help me. But +I'll see you to Market Street first.'</p> + +<p>'Oh!—somebody will see us!' she cried in a fever, 'and tell father.'</p> + +<p>'Not they; I'll keep a look out.'</p> + +<p>Then suddenly, as they walked along together, a great shyness fell +upon them both. Why had she done this thing, and run the risk of +her father's wrath? As David walked beside her, he felt for an +instant, through all his gratitude, as though some one had thrown +a lasso round him, and the cord were tightening. He could not +have explained the feeling, but it made him curt and restive, +absorbed, apparently, in his own thoughts. Meanwhile Lucy's heart +swelled and swelled. She <i>did</i> think he would have taken her news +differently—have made more of it and her. She wished she had never +come—she wished she had brought Dora. The familiar consciousness +of failure, of insignificance, returned, and the hot tears rose in +her eyes.</p> + +<p>At Market Street she stopped him hurriedly.</p> + +<p>'Don't come any farther. I can get home.'</p> + +<p>David, meanwhile, was saying to himself that he was a churlish +brute; but for the life of him he could not get out any pretty +speeches worthy of the occasion.</p> + +<p>'I'm sure I take it most kind of you, Miss Purcell. There's nothing +could have saved me if you hadn't told. And I don't know whether I +can get out of it now. But if ever I can do anything for you, you +know—'</p> + +<p>'Oh, never mind!—never mind!' she said, incoherently, stabbed by +his constraint. 'Good night.'</p> + +<p>And she ran away into the darkness, choked by the sorest tears she +had ever shed.</p> + +<p>David, meanwhile, went on his way to Ancrum, scourging himself. If +ever there was an ungrateful cur, it was he! Why could he find +nothing nice to say to that girl in return for all her pluck? Of +course she would get into trouble. Coming to see him at that time +of night, too! Why, it was splendid!</p> + +<p>Yet, all the same, he knew perfectly well that if she had been +there beside him again, he would have been just as tongue-tied as +before.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-2" id="CHAPTER_VII-2"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<p>On the following night David walked into the Parlour about eight +o'clock, hung up his hat with the air of an emperor, and looked +round for Daddy.</p> + +<p>'Look here, Daddy! I've got something to say to you, but not down +here: you'll be letting out my private affairs, and I can't stand +that.'</p> + +<p>'Well, come upstairs then, you varmint! You're a poor sort of +fellow, always suspecting your friends. Come up—come up with you! +I'll humour you!'</p> + +<p>And Daddy, bursting with curiosity, led the way upstairs to Dora's +sitting-room. Dora was moving about amid a mass of silks, which lay +carefully spread out on the table, shade melting into shade, +awaiting their transference to a new silk case she had been busy +upon.</p> + +<p>As the door opened she look up, and when she saw David her face +flushed all over.</p> + +<p>Daddy pushed the lad in.</p> + +<p>'Dora, he's got some news. Out with it, sir!'</p> + +<p>And he stood opposite the young fellow, on tiptoe, quivering with +impatience.</p> + +<p>David put both hands in his pockets, and looked out upon them, +radiant.</p> + +<p>'I think,' he said slowly, 'I've scotched old Purcell this time. But +perhaps you don't know what he's been after?'</p> + +<p>'Lucy was in here last night,' said Dora, hesitating; 'she told me +about it.'</p> + +<p>'Lucy!' cried Daddy, exasperated. 'What have you been making secrets +about? I'll have no secrets from me in this house, Dora. Why, when +Lucy tells you something important, is it all hidden up from me? +Nasty close ways!'</p> + +<p>And he looked at her threateningly.</p> + +<p>Nothing piqued the old Bohemian so much as the constant assumption +of the people about him that he was a grown-up baby, of no +discretion at all. That the assumption was true made no difference +whatever to the irritating quality of it.</p> + +<p>Dora dropped her head a little, but said nothing. David interposed:</p> + +<p>'Well, now <i>I'll</i> tell you all about it.'</p> + +<p>His tone was triumph itself, and he plunged into his story. He +described what Purcell had meant to do, and how nearly he had done +it. In a month, if the bookseller had had his way, his young rival +would have been in the street, with all his connection to make over +again. At the moment there was not another corner to be had, within +David's means, anywhere near the centre of the town. It would have +meant a completely fresh beginning, and temporary ruin.</p> + +<p>But he had gone to Ancrum. And Ancrum and he had bethought them of +the rich Unitarian gentleman who had been David's sponsor when he +signed his agreement.</p> + +<p>There and then, at nine o'clock at night, Ancrum had gone off to +Higher Broughton, where the good man lived, and laid the case +before him. Mr. Doyle had taken the night to think it over, and the +following morning he had paid a visit to his lawyer.</p> + +<p>'He and his wife thought it a burning shame, he told Mr. Ancrum; +and, besides, he's been buying up house property in Manchester for +some time past, only we couldn't know that—that was just luck. He +looked upon it as a good chance both for him and for me. He told +his lawyer it must be all settled in three hours, and he didn't +mind the price. The lawyer found out that Purcell was haggling, +went in to win, put the cash down, and here in my pocket I've got +the fresh agreement between me and Mr. Doyle—three months' notice +on either side, and no likelihood of my being turned out, if I want +to stay, for the next three or four years. Hurrah!'</p> + +<p>And the lad, quite beside himself with jubilation, raised the blue +cap he held in his hand, and flung it round his head. Dora stood +and looked at him, leaning lightly against the table, her arms +behind her. His triumph carried her away; her lips parted in a +joyous smile; her whole soft, rounded figure trembled with +animation and sympathy.</p> + +<p>As for Daddy, he could not contain himself. He ran to the top of +the stairs, and sent a kitchen-boy flying for a bottle of +champagne.</p> + +<p>'Drink, you varmint, drink!' he said, when the liquor came, 'or I'll +be the death of you! Hold your tongue, Dora! Do you think a man can +put up with temperance drinks when his enemy's smitten hip and +thigh? Oh, you jewel, David, but you'll bring him low, lad—you'll +bring him low before you've done—promise me that. I shall see him +a beggar yet, lad, shan't I? Oh, nectar!'</p> + +<p>And Daddy poured down his champagne, apostrophising it and David's +vengeance together.</p> + +<p>Dora looked distressed.</p> + +<p>'Father—Lucy! How can you say such things?'</p> + +<p>'Lucy—eh?—Lucy? She won't be a beggar. She'll marry; she's got a +bit of good looks of her own. But, David, my lad, what was it you +were saying? How was it you got wind of this precious business?'</p> + +<p>David hesitated.</p> + +<p>'Well, it was Miss Purcell told me,' he said. 'She came to see me at +my place last evening.'</p> + +<p>He drew himself together with a little nervous dignity, as though +foreseeing that Daddy would make remarks.</p> + +<p>'Miss Purcell!—what, Lucy?—<i>Lucy? Upon</i> my word, Davy! Why, +her father'll wring her neck when he finds it out. And she came to +warn you?'</p> + +<p>Daddy stood a moment taking in the situation, then, with a queer +grin, he walked up to David and poked him in the ribs.</p> + +<p>'So there were passages—eh, young man—when you were up there?'</p> + +<p>The young fellow straightened himself, with a look of annoyance.</p> + +<p>'Nothing of the sort, Daddy; there were no passages. But Miss +Lucy's done me a real friendly act, and I'd do the same for her any +day.'</p> + +<p>Dora had sat down to her silks again. As David spoke she bent +closely over them, as though the lamp-light puzzled her usually +quick perception of shade and quality.</p> + +<p>As for Daddy, he eyed the lad doubtfully.</p> + +<p>'She's got a pretty waist and a brown eye, Davy, and she's +seventeen.'</p> + +<p>'She may be for me,' said David, throwing his head back and +speaking with a certain emphasis and animation. 'But she's a little +brick to have given me notice of this thing.'</p> + +<p>The warmth of these last words produced more effect on Daddy than +his previous denials.</p> + +<p>'Dora,' he said, looking round—'Dora, do you believe the varmint? +All the same, you know, he'll be for marrying soon. Look at him!' +and he pointed a thin theatrical finger at David from across the +room.' When I was his make I was in love with half the girls in the +place. Blue eyes here—brown eyes there—nothing came amiss to me.'</p> + +<p>'Marrying!' said David, with an impatient shrug of the shoulders, +but flushing all over. 'You might wait, I think, till I've got +enough to keep one on, let alone two. If you talk such stuff, +Daddy, I'll not tell you my secrets when there are any to tell.'</p> + +<p>He tried to laugh it off; but Dora's grey eye, glancing timidly +round at him, saw that he was in some discomfort. There was a +bright colour in <i>her</i> cheek too, and her hand touched her +silks uncertainly.</p> + +<p>'Thank you for nothing, sir,' said Daddy, unabashed. 'Trust an +old hound like me for scenting out what he wants. But, go along +with you! I'm disappointed in you. The young men nowadays have +got no <i>blood</i>! They're made of sawdust and brown paper. The +world was our orange, and we sucked it. Bedad, we did! But +<i>you</i>—cold-blooded cubs—go to the devil, I tell you, and +read your Byron!'</p> + +<p>And, striking an attitude which was a boisterous reminiscence of +Macready, the old wanderer flung out the lines:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Death hath but little left him to destroy.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ah! happy years! Once more, who would not be a boy?'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>David laughed out. Daddy turned petulantly away, and looked out of +window. The night was dreary, dark, and wet.</p> + +<p>'Dora!'</p> + +<p>'Yes, father.'</p> + +<p>'Manchester's a damned dull hole. I'm about tired of it.'</p> + +<p>Dora started, and her colour disappeared in an instant. She got up +and went to the window.</p> + +<p>'Father, you know they'll be waiting for you downstairs,' she said, +putting her hand on his shoulder. 'They always say they can't get on +without you on debating nights.'</p> + +<p>'Stuff and nonsense!' said Daddy, throwing off the hand. But he +looked mollified. The new reading-room was at present his pet +hobby; his interest in the restaurant proper had dropped a good +deal of late, or so Dora's anxiety persuaded her.</p> + +<p>'It's quite true,' said David. 'Go and start 'em, Daddy, and I'll +come down soon and cut in. I feel as if I could speak the roof off +to-night, and I don't care a hang about what! But first I've got +something to say to Miss Dora. I want to ask her a favour.'</p> + +<p>He came forward smiling. She gave him a startled look, but her +eyes—poor Dora!—could not light on him now without taking a new +brightness. How well his triumph sat on him! How crisply and +handsomely his black hair curled above his open brow!</p> + +<p>'More secrets,' growled Daddy.</p> + +<p>'Nothing of any interest, Daddy. Miss Dora can tell you all about +it, if she cares. Now go along! Start 'em on the Bishop of +Peterborough and the Secularists. I've got a lot to say about that.'</p> + +<p>He pushed Daddy laughingly to the door, and came back again to +where Dora was once more grappling with her silks. Her expression +had changed again. Oh! she had so many things to open to him, if +only she could find the courage.</p> + +<p>He sat down and looked at a bit of her embroidery, which lay +uncovered beside her on the frame.</p> + +<p>'I say, that is fine work!' he said, wondering. 'I hope you get well +paid for it, Miss Dora. You ought. Well, now, I do want to ask your +advice. This business of the house has set me thinking about a lot +of things.'</p> + +<p>He lay back in his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and threw +one leg over the other. He was in such a state of nervous +excitement, Dora could see, that he could hardly keep himself +still.</p> + +<p>'Did I ever tell you about my sister? No, I know I haven't. I've +kept it dark. But now I'm settled I want to have her to live with +me. There's no one but us two, except the old uncle and aunt that +brought us up. I must stick to her—and I mean to. But she's not +like other girls. She's a queer one.'</p> + +<p>He stopped, frowning a little as the recollections of Louie rushed +across him, seeking for words in which to draw her. And directly he +paused, Dora, who had dropped her silks again in her sudden +astonishment, burst into questions. How old was his sister? Was she +in Manchester? Had she a trade? Her soul was full of a warm, +unexpected joy, her manner was eager—receptive. He took up his +parable and told the story of his childhood and Louie's at the +farm. His black eye kindled as he looked past Dora into the +past—into the bosom of the Scout. Owing partly to an imaginative +gift, partly to his reading habit, when he was stimulated—when he +was, as it were, talking at large, trying to present a subject as a +whole, to make a picture of it—he rose into ways of speech quite +different from those of his class, and different from his own +dialect of every day. This latent capacity for fine expression was +mostly drawn out at this time by his attempts at public speaking. +But to-night, in his excitement, it showed in his talk, and Dora +was bewildered. Oh, how clever he was! He talked like a book—just +like a book. She pushed her chair back from the silks, and sat +absorbed in the pleasure of listening, environed too by the happy +thought that he was making a friend of her, giving her—plain, +insignificant, humble Dora Lomax—his confidence.</p> + +<p>As for him, the more he talked the more he enjoyed talking. Never +since he came to Manchester had he fallen into such a moment of +unburdenment, of intimacy, or something like it, with any human +being. He had talked to Ancrum and to John. But that was quite +different. No man confides in a woman as he confides in a man. The +touch of difference of sex gives charm and edge, even when, as was +the case here, the man has no thrill whatever in his veins, and no +thought of love-making in his head.</p> + +<p>'You must have been very fond of your sister,' Dora said at last, +tremulously. 'You two all alone—and no mother.'</p> + +<p>Somehow the soft sentiment in her words and tone struck him +suddenly as incongruous. His expression changed.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I don't know,' he said, with a sort of laugh, not a very +bright one. 'Don't you imagine I was a pattern brother; I was a +brute to her lots of times. And Louie—ah, well, you'll see for +yourself what she's like; she's a queer customer sometimes. And now +I'll tell you what I wanted to ask you, Miss Dora. You see, if +Louie comes it won't do for her to have no employment, after she's +had a trade all day; and she won't take to mine—she can't abide +books.'</p> + +<p>And he explained to her his perplexities—the ebbing of the silk +trade from Manchester, and so on. He might hire a loom, but Louie +would get no work. All trades have their special channels, and keep +to them.</p> + +<p>So it had occurred to him, if Louie was willing, would Dora take +her as an apprentice, and teach her the church work? He would be +quite ready to pay for the teaching; that would be only fair.</p> + +<p>'Teach her my work!' cried Dora, instinctively drawing back. 'Oh, I +don't think I could.'</p> + +<p>He coloured, and misunderstood her. In a great labour-hive like +Lancashire, with its large and small industries, the native ear is +very familiar with the jealous tone of the skilled worker, +threatened with competition in a narrow trade.</p> + +<p>'I didn't mean any offence,' he said, with a little stiffness. 'I +don't want to take the bread out of anybody's mouth. If there isn't +work to be had, you've only to say so, Miss Dora.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I didn't mean that,' she cried, wounded in her turn. 'There's +plenty of work. At the shop last week they didn't know what to do +for hands. If she was clever at it, she'd get lots of work. But—'</p> + +<p>She laid her hand on her frame lovingly, not knowing how to explain +herself, her gentle brows knitting in the effort of thought.</p> + +<p>Her work was so much more to her than ordinary work paid for in +ordinary coin. Into these gorgeous altar-cloths, or these delicate +wrappings for chalice and paten, she stitched her heart. To work at +them was prayer. Jesus, and His Mother, and the Saints; it was with +them she communed as her stitches flowed. She sat in a mystic, a +heavenly world. And the silence and solitude of her work made one +of its chief charms. And now to be asked to share it with a strange +girl, who could not love it as she did, who would take it as hard +business—never to be alone any more with her little black book and +her prayers!</p> + +<p>And then she looked up, and met a young man's half-offended look, +and a shy, proud eye, in which the nascent friendship of five +minutes before seemed to be sinking out of sight.</p> + +<p>'Oh yes, I will,' she cried. 'Of course I will. It just sounded a +bit strange to me at first. I've been so used to be alone always.'</p> + +<p>But he demurred now—wished stiffly to take back his proposal. He +did not want to put upon her, and perhaps, after all, Louie would +have her own notions.</p> + +<p>But she could not bear it, and as he retreated she pressed forward. +Of course there was work. And it would be very good for her, it +would stir her up to take a pupil; it was just her old-maidish +ways—it had startled her a bit at first.</p> + +<p>And then, her reserve giving ay more and more as her emotion grew, +she confessed herself at last completely.</p> + +<p>'You see, it's not just <i>work</i> to me, and it's not the money, +though I'm glad enough for that; but it's for the church; and I'd +live on a crust, and do it for nothing, if I could!'</p> + +<p>She looked up at him—that ardent dream-life of hers leaping to the +eyes, transforming the pale face.</p> + +<p>David sat silent and embarrassed. He did not know what to say—how +to deal with this turn in the conversation.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I know you think I'm just foolish,' she said, sadly, taking up +her needle. 'You always did; but I'll take your sister—indeed I +will.'</p> + +<p>'Perhaps you'll turn her your way of thinking,' said David, with a +little awkward laugh, looking round for his hat. 'But Louie isn't an +easy one to drive.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, you can't drive people!' cried Dora, flushing; 'you can't, and +you oughtn't. But if Father Russell talked to her she might like +him—and the church. Oh, Mr. Grieve, won't you go one Sunday and +hear him—won't you—instead of—'</p> + +<p>She did not finish her sentence, but David finished it for her: +'Instead of going to the Hall of Science? Well, but you know, Miss +Dora, I being what I am, I get more good out of a lecture at the +Hall of Science than I should out of Father Russell. I should be +quarrelling with him all the time, and wanting to answer him.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, you couldn't,' said Dora eagerly, 'he's so good, and he's a +learned man—I'm sure he is. Mr. Foss, the curate, told me they +think he'll be a bishop some day.'</p> + +<p>'All the better for him,' said David, unmoved. 'It don't make any +difference to me. No, Miss Dora, don't you fret yourself about me. +Books are my priests.'</p> + +<p>He stood over her, his hands on his sides, smiling.</p> + +<p>'Oh, no!' cried Dora, involuntarily. 'You mustn't say that. Books +can't bring us to God.'</p> + +<p>'No more can priests,' he said, with a sudden flash of his dark +eyes, a sudden dryness of his tone. 'If there is a God to bring us +to—prove me that first, Miss Dora. But it's a shame to say these +things to you—that it is—and I've been worrying you a deal too +much about my stupid affairs. Good night. We'll talk about Father +Russell again another time.'</p> + +<p>He ran downstairs. Dora went back to her frame, then pushed it away +again, ran eagerly to the window, and pulled the blind aside. Down +below in the lighted street, now emptying fast, she saw the tall +figure emerge, saw it run down the street, and across St. Mary's +Gate. She watched it till it disappeared; then she put her hands +over her face, and leant against the window-frame weeping. Oh, what +a sudden descent from a moment of pure joy! How had the jarring +note come? They had been put wrong with each other; and perhaps, +after all, he would be no more to her now than before. And she had +seemed to make such a leap forward—to come so near to him.</p> + +<p>'Oh! I'll just be good to his sister,' she said to herself +drearily, with an ache at her heart that was agony.</p> + +<p>Then she thought of him as he had sat there beside her; and +suddenly in her pure thought there rose a vision of herself in his +arms, her head against his broad shoulder, her hand stealing round +his neck. She moved from the window and threw herself down in the +darkest corner of the room, wrestling desperately with what seemed +to her a sinful imagination. She ought not to think of him at all; +she loathed herself. Father Russell would tell her she was wicked. +He had no faith—he was a hardened unbeliever—and she could not +make herself think of that at all—could not stop herself from +wanting—<i>wanting</i> him for her own, whatever happened.</p> + +<p>And it was so foolish too, as well as bad; for he hadn't an idea of +falling in love with anybody—anyone could see that. And she who +was not pretty, and not a bit clever—it was so likely he would +take a fancy to her! Why, in a few years he would be a big man, he +would have made a fortune, and then he could take his pick.</p> + +<p>'Oh! and Lucy—Lucy would <i>hate</i> me.'</p> + +<p>But the thought of Lucy, instead of checking her, brought with it +again a wild gust of jealousy. It was fiercer than before, the +craving behind it stronger. She sat up, forcing back her tears, her +whole frame tense and rigid. Whatever happened he would +<i>never</i> marry Lucy! And who could wish it? Lucy was just a +little, vain, selfish thing, and when she found David Grieve +wouldn't have her, she would soon forget him. The surging longing +within refused, proudly refused, to curb itself—for Lucy's sake.</p> + +<p>Then the bell of St. Ann's slowly began to strike ten o'clock. It +brought home to her by association one of the evening hymns in the +little black book she was frequently accustomed to croon to herself +at night as she put away her work:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O God who canst not change nor fail,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Guiding the hours as they roll by,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Brightening with beams the morning pale,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And burning in the mid-day sky!</span><br /><br /> + +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Quench thou the fires of hate and strife,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wasting fever of the heart;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From perils guard our feeble life,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And to our souls thy peace impart.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The words flowed in upon her, but they brought no comfort, only a +fresh sense of struggle and effort. Her Christian peace was gone. +She felt herself wicked, faithless, miserable.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, in the stormy night outside, David was running and +leaping through the streets, flourishing his stick from side to +side in cut and thrust with an imaginary enemy whenever the main +thoroughfares were left behind, and he found himself in some dark +region of warehouses, where his steps echoed, and he was king alike +of roadway and of pavement.</p> + +<p>The wind, a stormy north-easter, had risen since the afternoon. +David fought with it, rejoiced in it. After the little hot +sitting-room, the stinging freshness, the rough challenge of the +gusts, were delicious to him. He was overflowing with spirits, with +health, with exultation.</p> + +<p>As he thought of Purcell he could hardly keep himself from shouting +aloud. If he could only be there to see when Purcell learnt how he +had been foiled! And trust Daddy to spread a story which would +certainly do Purcell no good! No, in that direction he felt that he +was probably safe from attack for a long time to come. Success +beckoned to him; his enemy was under foot; his will and his gifts +had the world before them.</p> + +<p>Father Russell indeed! Let Dora Lomax set him on. His young throat +filled with contemptuous laughter. As a bookseller, <i>he</i> knew +what the clergy read, what they had to say for themselves. How much +longer could it go on, this solemn folly of Christian superstition? +'Just give us a good Education Bill, and we shall see!'</p> + +<p>Then, as he fell thinking of his talk with Dora and Lomax, he +wished impatiently that he had been even plainer with Daddy about +Lucy Purcell. With regard to her he felt himself caught in a +tangled mesh of obligation. He must, somehow, return her the +service she had done him. And then all the world would think he was +making up to her and wanted to marry her. Meanwhile—in the midst +of real gratitude, a strong desire to stand between her and her +father, and much eager casting about for some means of paying her +back—his inner mind was in reality pitilessly critical towards +her. Her overdone primness and neatness, her fashionable frocks, of +which she was so conscious, her horror of things and people that +were not 'nice,' her contented ignorance and silly chattering +ways—all these points of manner and habit were scored against her +in his memory. She had become less congenial to him rather than +more since he knew her first. All the same, she was a little brick, +and he would have liked one minute to kiss her for her pluck, make +her some lordly present, and the next—never to see her again!</p> + +<p>In reality his mind at this moment was filling with romantic images +and ideals totally remote from anything suggested by his own +everyday life. A few weeks before, old Barbier, his French master, +had for the first time lent him some novels of George Sand's. David +had carried them off, had been enchanted to find that he could now +read them with ease and rapidity, and had plunged straightway into +the new world thus opened to him with indescribable zest and +passion. His Greek had been neglected, his science laid aside. +Night after night he had been living with Valentine, with Consuelo, +with Caroline in 'Le Marquis de Villemer.' His poetical reading of +the winter had prepared the way for what was practically his first +introduction to the modern literature of passion. The stimulating +novelty and foreignness of it was stirring all his blood. George +Sand's problems, her situations, her treatment of the great +questions of sex, her social and religious enthusiasms—these +things were for the moment a new gospel to this provincial +self-taught lad, as they had been forty years before to the youth +of 1830. Under the vitalising touch of them the man was fast +developing out of the boy; the currents of the nature were +setting in fresh directions. And in such a mood, and with such +preoccupations, how was one to bear patiently with foolish, +friendly fingers, or with uncomfortable thoughts of your own, +pointing you to <i>Lucy Purcell?</i> With the great marriage-night +scene from 'Valentine' thrilling in your mind, how was it possible +to think of the prim self-conceit, the pettish temper and mincing +airs of that little person in Half Street without irritation?</p> + +<p>No, no! <i>The unknown, the unforeseen!</i> The young man plunged +through the rising storm, and through the sleety rain, which had +begun to beat upon him, with face and eyes uplifted to the night. +It was as though he searched the darkness for some form which, even +as he looked, began to take vague and luminous shape there.</p> + +<p>Next morning Daddy, in his exultation, behaved himself with some +grossness towards his enemy. About eleven o'clock he became +restless, and began patrolling Market Place, passing every now and +then up the steps into the narrow passage of Half Street, and so +round by the Cathedral and home. He had no definite purpose, but +'have a squint at Tom,' under the circumstances, he must, some way +or other.</p> + +<p>And, sure enough, as he was coming back through Half Street on one +of his rounds, and was within a few yards of Purcell's window, the +bookseller came out with his face set in Daddy's direction. +Purcell, whose countenance, so far as Daddy could see at first +sight, was at its blackest and sourest, and whose eyes were on the +ground, did not at once perceive his adversary, and came stern on.</p> + +<p>The moment was irresistible. Laying his thumbs in his waistcoat +pocket, and standing so as to bar his brother-in-law's path, Daddy +launched a few unctuous words in his smoothest voice.</p> + +<p>'Tom, me boy, thou hast imagined a device which thou wast not able +to perform. But the Lord, Tom, hath made thee turn thy back. And +they of thy own household, Tom, have lifted up the heel against +thee.'</p> + +<p>Purcell, strong, dark-browed fellow that he was, wavered and +blenched for a moment under the surprise of this audacious attack. +Then with an oath he put out his hand, seized Daddy's thin +shoulder, flung him violently round, and passed him.</p> + +<p>'Speak to me again in the street, you scoundrel, and I'll give you +in charge!' he threw behind him, as he strode on just in time to +avoid a flight of street-arabs, who had seen the scuffle from a +distance and were bearing down eagerly upon him.</p> + +<p>Daddy went home in the highest spirits, stepping jauntily along +like a man who has fulfilled a mission. But when he came to boast +himself to Dora, he found to his chagrin that he had only earned a +scolding. Dora flushed up, her soft eyes all aflame.</p> + +<p>'You've done nothing but mischief, father,' said Dora, bitterly. +'How <i>could</i> you say such things? You might have left Uncle +Tom to find out for himself about Lucy. He'll be mad enough without +your stirring him up. Now he'll forbid her to come here, or see me +at all. I don't know what'll become of that child; and whatever +possessed you to go aggravating him worse and worse I can't think.'</p> + +<p>Daddy blinked under this, but soon recovered himself. No one, he +vowed, could be expected to put up for ever with Purcell's mean +tricks. He had held his tongue for twenty-one years, and now he had +paid back one <i>little</i> text in exchange for the hundreds +wherewith Purcell had been wont to break his bones for him in past +days. As for Dora, she hadn't the spirit of a fly.</p> + +<p>'Well, I dare say I am afraid,' said Dora, despondently. 'I saw +Uncle Tom yesterday, too, and he gave me a look made me feel cold +down my back. I don't like anybody to hate us like that, father. +Who knows—'</p> + +<p>A tremor ran through her. She gave her father a piteous, childish +look. She had the timidity, the lack of self-confidence which seems +to cling through life to those who have been at a disadvantage with +the world in their childhood and youth. The anger of a man like +Purcell terrified her, lay like a nightmare on a sensitive and +introspective nature.</p> + +<p>'Pish!' said Daddy, contemptuously; 'I should like to know what harm +he can do us, now that I've turned so d—d respectable. Though it +is a bit hard on a man to have to keep so in order to spite his +brother-in-law.'</p> + +<p>Dora laughed and sighed. She came up to her father's chair, put his +hair straight, re-tied his tie, and then kissed him on the cheek.</p> + +<p>'Father, you're not getting tired of the Parlour?' she said, +unsteadily. He evaded her downward look, and tried to shake her +off.</p> + +<p>'Don't I slave for you from morning till night, you thankless chit, +you? And don't you begrudge me all the little amusements which turn +the tradesman into the man and sweeten the pill of bondage—eh, you +poor-souled thing?'</p> + +<p>Her eyes, however, drew his after them, whether he would or no, and +they surveyed each other—he uneasily hostile; she sad. She slowly +shook her head, and he perfectly understood what was in her mind, +though she did not speak. He <i>had</i> been extremely slack at +business lately; the month's accounts made up that morning had been +unusually disappointing; and twice during the last ten days Dora +had sat up till midnight to let her father in, and had tried with +all the energy of a sinking heart to persuade herself that it was +accident, and that he was only excited, and not drunk.</p> + +<p>Now, as she stood looking at him, suddenly all the horror of those +long-past days came back upon her, thrown up against the peace of +the last few years. She locked her hands round his neck with a +vehement pathetic gesture.</p> + +<p>'Father, be good to me! don't let bad people take you away from +me—don't, father—you're all I have—all I ever shall have.'</p> + +<p>Daddy's green eyes wavered again uncomfortably.</p> + +<p>'Stuff!' he said, irritably. 'You'll get a husband directly, and +think no more of me than other girls do when the marrying fit takes +'em. What are you grinning at now, I should like to know?'</p> + +<p>For she was smiling—a light tremulous smile which puzzled him.</p> + +<p>'At you, father. You'll have to keep me whether you like it or no. +For I'm not a marrying sort.'</p> + +<p>She looked at him with a curious defiance, her lip twitching.</p> + +<p>'Oh, we know all about that!' said Daddy, impatiently, adding in a +mincing voice, '"I will not love; if I do hang me; i' faith I will +not." No, my pretty dear, not till the "wimpled, whining, purblind, +wayward boy" comes this road—oh, no, not till next time! Quite so.'</p> + +<p>She let him rail, and said nothing. She sat down to her work; he +faced round upon her suddenly, and said, frowning:</p> + +<p>'What do you mean by it, eh? You're as good-looking as anybody!'</p> + +<p>'Well, I want you to think it, father,' she said, affectionately, +raising her eyes to his. A mother must have seen the shrinking +sadness beneath the smile. What Daddy saw was simply a rounded +girlish face, with soft cheeks and lips which seemed to him made +for kissing; nothing to set the Thames on fire, perhaps, but why +should she run herself down? It annoyed him, touched his vanity.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I dare say!' he said to her, roughly, with an affected +brutality. 'But you'll be precious disappointed if some one else +doesn't think so too. Don't tell me!'</p> + +<p>She bent over her frame without speaking. But her heart filled with +bitterness, and a kind of revolt against her life.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile her conscience accused her about Lucy. Lucy must have got +herself into trouble at home, that she was sure of. And it was +unlike her to keep it to herself—not to come and complain.</p> + +<p>Some days—a week—passed. But Dora dared not venture herself into +her uncle's house after Daddy's escapade, and she was, besides, +much pressed with her work. A whole set of altar furniture for a +new church at Blackburn had to be finished by a given day.</p> + +<p>The affairs of the Parlour troubled her, and she got up long before +it was light to keep the books in order and to plan for the day. +Daddy had no head for figures, and he seemed to her to be growing +careless about expenses. Her timid, over-anxious mind conjured up +the vision of a slowly rising tide of debt, and it haunted her all +day. When she went to her frame she was already tired out, and yet +there she sat over it hour after hour.</p> + +<p>Daddy was blind. But Sarah, the stout cook, who worshipped her, +knew well enough that she was growing thin and white.</p> + +<p>'If yo doan't draw in yo'll jest do yoursel a mischief,' she said +to her, angrily. 'Yo're nowt but a midge onyways, and a body 'll +soon be able to see through yo.'</p> + +<p>'I shall be all right, Sarah,' Dora would say.</p> + +<p>'Aye, we'st aw on us be aw reet in our coffins,' returned the irate +Sarah. Then, melting into affection, 'Neaw, honey, be raysonable, +an' I'st just run round t' corner, an' cook you up a bit o' meat +for your supper. Yo git no strength eawt i' them messin things yo +eat. Theer's nowt but wind in em.'</p> + +<p>But not even the heterodox diet with which, every now and then, +Dora for peace' sake allowed herself to be fed, behind Daddy's +back, put any colour into her cheeks. She went heavily in these +days, and the singularly young and childish look which she had kept +till now went into gradual eclipse.</p> + +<p>David Grieve dropped in once or twice during the week to laugh and +gossip about Purcell with Daddy. Thanks to Daddy's tongue, the +bookseller's plot against his boy rival was already known to a +large circle of persons, and was likely to cost him customers.</p> + +<p>Whenever she heard the young full voice below or on the stairs, +Dora would, as it were, draw herself together—stand on her +defence. Sometimes she asked him eagerly about his sister. Had he +written? No; he thought he would still wait a week or two. Ah, +well, he must let her know.</p> + +<p>And, on the whole, she was glad when he went, glad to get to bed +and sleep. Being no sentimental heroine, she was prosaically +thankful that she kept her sleep. Otherwise she must have fallen +ill, and the accounts would have gone wrong.</p> + +<p>At last one evening came a pencil note from Lucy, in these terms:</p> + +<p>'You may come and see me, father says. I've been ill.—LUCY.'</p> + +<p>In a panic Dora put on her things and ran. Mary Ann, the little +hunted maid, let her in, looking more hunted and scared than usual. +Miss Lucy was better, she said, but she had been 'terr'ble bad.' +No, she didn't know what it was took her. They'd got a nurse for +her two nights, and she, Mary Ann, had been run off her legs.</p> + +<p>'Why didn't you send for me?' cried Dora, and hurried up to the +attic. Purcell did not appear.</p> + +<p>Lucy was waiting for her, looking out eagerly from a bank of +pillows.</p> + +<p>Dora could not restrain an exclamation which was almost a cry. She +could not have believed that anyone could have changed so in ten +days. Evidently the acute stage—whatever had been the illness—was +past. There was already a look of convalescence in the white face, +with its black-rimmed eyes and peeling lips. But the loss of flesh +was extraordinary for so short a time. The small face was so +thinned and blanched that the tangled masses of golden-brown hair +in which it was framed seemed ridiculously out of proportion to it; +the hand playing with some grapes on the counterpane was of a +ghostly lightness.</p> + +<p>Dora was shocked almost beyond speaking. She stood holding Lucy's +hand, and Lucy looked up at her, evidently enjoying her +consternation, for a smile danced in her hollow eyes.</p> + +<p>'Lucy, <i>why</i> didn't you send for me?'</p> + +<p>'Because I was so feverish at first. I was all light-headed, and +didn't know where I was; and then I was so weak I didn't care about +anything,' said Lucy, in a small thread of a voice.</p> + +<p>'What was it?'</p> + +<p>'Congestion of the lungs,' said the girl, with pride. 'They just +stopped it, or you'd be laying me out now, Dora. Dr. Alford told +father I was dreadful run-down or I'd never have taken it. I'm to +go to Hastings. Father's got a cousin there that lets lodgings.'</p> + +<p>'But how did you get so ill, Lucy?'</p> + +<p>Lucy was silent a bit. Then she said:</p> + +<p>'Sit down close here. My voice is so bad still.'</p> + +<p>Dora sat close to her pillow, and bent over, stroking her hands +with emotion. The fright of her entrance was still upon her.</p> + +<p>'Well, you know,' she said in a hoarse whisper, 'father found out +about me and Mr. Grieve—I don't know how, but it was one morning. +I was sitting in here, and he came in all white, with his eyes +glaring. I thought he was going to kill me, and I was that +frightened, I watched my chance, and ran out of the door and along +into Mill Gate as fast as I could to get away from him; and then I +thought I saw him coming after me, and I ran on across the bridge +and up Chapel Street a long, long way. I was in a terrible fright, +and mad with him besides. I declared to myself I'd never come back +here. Well, it was pouring with rain, and I got wet through. Then I +didn't know where to go, and what do you think I did? I just got +into the Broughton tram, and rode up and down all day! I had a +shilling or two in my pocket, and I waited and dodged a bit at +either end, so the conductor shouldn't find out. And that was what +did it—sitting in my wet things all day. I didn't think anything +about dinner, I was that mad. But when it got dark, I thought of +that girl—you know her, too—Minnie Park, that lives with her +brother and sells fents, up Cannon Gate. And somehow I dragged up +there—I thought I'd ask her to take me in. And what happened I +don't rightly know. I suppose I was took with a faint before I +could explain anything, for I was shivering and pretty bad when I +got there. Anyway, she put me in a cab and brought me home; and I +don't remember anything about it, for I was queer in the head very +soon after they got me to bed. Oh, I <i>was</i> bad! It was just a +squeak, '—said Lucy, her voice dropping from exhaustion; but her +eyes glittered in her pinched face with a curious triumph, +difficult to decipher.</p> + +<p>Dora kissed her tenderly, and entreated her not to talk; she was +sure it was bad for her. But Lucy, as usual, would not be managed. +She held herself quite still, gathering breath and strength; then +she began again:</p> + +<p>'If I'd died, perhaps <i>he'd</i> have been sorry. You know who I +mean. It was all along of him. And father 'll never forgive +me—never. He looks quite different altogether somehow. Dora! +you're not to tell him anything till I've got right away. I +think—I think—I <i>hate</i> him!'</p> + +<p>And suddenly her beautiful brown eyes opened wide and fierce.</p> + +<p>Dora hung over her, a strange, mingled passion in her look. 'You +poor little thing!' she said slowly, with a deep emphasis, +answering not the unreal Lucy of those last words, but the real +one, so pitifully evident beneath.</p> + +<p>'But look here, Dora; when I'm gone away, you <i>may</i> tell him, +you <i>must</i> tell him, Dora,' said the child, imperiously. 'I'd +not have him see me now for anything. I made Mary Ann put all the +glasses away. I don't want to remember what a fright I am. But at +Hastings I'll soon get well; and—and remember, Dora, you +<i>are</i> to tell him. I'd like him to know I nearly caught my +death that day, and that it was all along of him!'</p> + +<p>She laid her hands across each other on the sheet with a curious +sigh of satisfaction, and was quiet for a little, while Dora held +her hand. But it was not long before the stillness broke up in +sudden agitation. A tremor ran through her, and she caught Dora's +fingers. In her weakness she could not control herself, and her +inmost trouble escaped her.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Dora, he wasn't kind to me, not a bit—when I went to tell him +that night. Oh! I cried when I came home. I <i>did</i> think he'd +have taken it different.'</p> + +<p>'What did he say?' asked Dora, quietly. Her face was turned away +from Lucy, but she still held her hand.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I don't know!' said Lucy, moving her head restlessly from side +to side and gulping down a sob. 'I believe he was just sorry it was +<i>me</i> he'd got to thank. Oh, I don't know!—I don't know!—very +likely he didn't mean it.'</p> + +<p>She waited a minute, then she began again:</p> + +<p>'Oh of course you think I'm silly; and that I'd have much more +chance if I turned proud, and pretended I didn't care. I know some +girls <i>say</i> they'd never let a man know they cared for him +first. I don't believe in 'em! But I don't care. I can't help it. +It's my way. But, Dora, look here!'</p> + +<p>The tears gathered thick in her eyes. Dora, bending anxiously over +her, was startled by the change of expression in her. From what +depths of new emotion had the silly Lucy caught the sweetness which +trembled for a moment through every line of her little trivial +face?</p> + +<p>'You know, Dora, it was all nonsense at the beginning. I just +wanted some one to amuse myself with and pay me attentions. But it +isn't nonsense now. And I don't want him all for myself. Friday +night I thought I was going to die. I don't care whether the doctor +did or not; <i>I</i> did. And I prayed a good deal. It was queer +praying, I dare say. I was very light-headed, but I thanked God I +loved him, though—though—he didn't care about me; and I thought +if I did get well, and he were to take a fancy to me, I'd show him +I could be as nice as other girls. I wouldn't want everything for +myself, or spend a lot of money on dress.'</p> + +<p>She broke off for want of breath. This moral experience of hers was +so new and strange to her that she could hardly find words in which +to clothe it.</p> + +<p>Dora had slipped down beside her and buried her face in the bed. +When Lucy stopped, she still knelt there in a quivering silence. +But Lucy could not bear her to be silent—she must have sympathy.</p> + +<p>'Aren't you glad, Dora?' she said presently, when she had gathered +strength again. 'I thought you'd be glad. You've always wanted me to +turn religious. And—and—perhaps, when I get well and come back, +I'll go with you to St. Damian's, Dora. I don't know what it is. I +suppose it's caring about somebody—and being ill—makes one feel +like this.'</p> + +<p>And, drawing herself from Dora's hold, she turned on her side, put +both her thin hands under her cheek, and lay staring at the window +with a look which had a certain dreariness in it.</p> + +<p>Dora at last raised herself. Lucy could not see her face. There was +in it a sweet and solemn resolution—a new light and calm.</p> + +<p>'Dear Lucy,' she said, tremulously, laying her cheek against her +cousin's shoulder, 'God speaks to us when we are unhappy—that was +what you felt. He makes everything a voice to call unto Himself.'</p> + +<p>Lucy did not answer at once. Then suddenly she turned, and said +eagerly:</p> + +<p>'Dora, did you ever ask him—did you ever find out—whether he was +thinking about getting married? You said you would.'</p> + +<p>'He isn't, Lucy. He was vexed with father for speaking about it. I +think he feels he must make his way first. His business takes him +up altogether.'</p> + +<p>Lucy gave an irritable sigh, closed her eyes, and would talk no +more. Dora stayed with her, and nursed her through the evening. +When at last the nurse arrived who was to take charge of her +through the night, Lucy pulled Dora down to her and said, in a +hoarse, excitable whisper:</p> + +<p>'<i>Mind</i> you tell him—that I nearly died—that father'll +never be the same to me again—and it was all for him! You needn't +say <i>I</i> said so.'</p> + +<p>Late that night Dora stood long at her attic-window in the roof +looking out at the April night. From a great bank of clouds to the +east the moon was just appearing, sending her light along the windy +streamers which, issuing from the main mass, spread like wide open +fingers across the inner heaven. Opposite there was an old timbered +house, one of the few relics of an earlier Manchester, which still, +in the very centre of the modern city, thrusts out its broad eaves +and overhanging stories beyond the line of the street. Above and +behind it, roof beyond roof, to the western limit of sight, rose +block after block of warehouses, vast black masses, symbols of the +great town, its labours and its wealth; far to the right, closing +the street, the cathedral cut the moonlit sky; and close at hand +was an old inn, with a wide archway, under which a huge dog lay +sleeping.</p> + +<p>Town and sky, the upper clouds and stars, the familiar streets and +buildings below—to-night they were all changed for Dora, and it +was another being that looked at them. In all intense cases of +religious experience the soul lies open to 'voices'—to impressions +which have for it the most vivid and, so to speak, physical +reality. Jeanne d'Arc's visions were but an extreme instance of +what humbler souls have known in their degree in all ages. The +heavenly voices speak, and the ear actually hears. So it was with +Dora. It seemed to her that she had been walking in a feverish +loneliness through the valley of the shadow of death; that one like +unto the Son of Man had drawn her thence with warning and rebuke, +and she was now at His feet, clothed and in her right mind. Words +were in her ear, repeated again and again—peremptory words which +stabbed and healed at once: <i>'Daughter, thou shalt not covet. I +have refused thee this gift. If it be My will to give it to +another, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me.'</i></p> + +<p>As she sank upon her knees, she thought of the confession she would +make on Sunday—of the mysterious sanctity and sweetness of the +single life—of the vocation of sacrifice laid upon her. There rose +in her a kind of ecstasy of renunciation. Her love—already so +hopeless, so starved!—was there simply that she might offer it +up—burn it through and through with the fires of the spirit.</p> + +<p>Lucy should never know, and David should never know. Unconsciously, +sweet soul, there was a curious element of spiritual arrogance +mingled with this absolute surrender of the one passionate human +desire her life was ever to wrestle with. The baptised member of +Christ's body could not pursue the love of David Grieve, could not +marry him as he was now, without risk and sin. But Lucy—the child +of schism, to whom the mysteries of Church fellowship and +sacramental grace were unknown—for her, in her present exaltation, +Dora felt no further scruples. Lucy's love was clearly 'sent' to +her; it was right, whether it were ultimately happy or no, because +of the religious effect it had already had upon her.</p> + +<p>The human happiness Dora dared no longer grasp at for herself she +yearned now to pour lavishly, quickly, into Lucy's hands. Only +so—such is our mingled life!—could she altogether still, +violently and by force, a sort of upward surge of the soul +which terrified her now and then. A mystical casuistry, bred +in her naturally simple nature by the subtle influences of a +long-descended Christianity, combined in her with a piteous human +instinct. When she rose from her knees she was certain that she +would never win and marry David Grieve; she was equally certain +that she would do all in her power to help little Lucy to win and +marry him.</p> + +<p>So, like them of old, she pressed the spikes into her flesh, and +found a numbing consolation in the pain.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-2" id="CHAPTER_VIII-2"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<p>Some ten days more elapsed before Lucy was pronounced fit to travel +south. During this time Dora saw her frequently, and the bond +between the two girls grew much closer than before. On the one +hand, Lucy yielded herself more than she had ever done yet to +Dora's example and persuasion, promised to go to church and see at +least what it was like when she got to Hastings, and let Dora +provide her with some of her favourite High Church devotional +books. On the other, it was understood between them that Dora would +look after Lucy's interests, and keep her informed how the land lay +while she was in the south, and Lucy, with the blindness of +self-love, trusted herself to her cousin without a suspicion or a +qualm.</p> + +<p>While she was tending Lucy, Dora never saw Purcell but twice, when +she passed him in the little dark entry leading to the private part +of the house, and on those occasions he did not, so far as she +could perceive, make any answer whatever to her salutation. He was +changed, she thought. He had always been a morose-looking man, with +an iron jaw; but now there was a fixed venom and disquiet, as well +as a new look of age, in the sallow face, which made it doubly +unpleasing. She would have been sorry for his loneliness and his +disappointment in Lucy but for the remembrance of his mean plot +against David Grieve, and for a certain other little fact. A +middle-aged woman, in a dowdy brown-stuff dress and black mantle, +had begun to haunt the house. She sat with Purcell sometimes in the +parlour downstairs, and sometimes he accompanied her out of doors. +Mary Ann reported that she was a widow, a Mrs. Whymper, who +belonged to the same chapel that Purcell did, and who was supposed +by those who knew to have been making up to him for some time.</p> + +<p>'And perhaps she'll get him after all,' said the little ugly maid, +with a grin. 'Catch me staying then, Miss Dora! It's bad enough as +it is.'</p> + +<p>On one occasion Dora came across the widow, waiting in the little +sitting-room. She was an angular person, with a greyish-brown +complexion, a prominent mouth and teeth, and a generally snappish, +alert look. After a few commonplaces, in which Mrs. Whymper was +clearly condescending, she launched into a denunciation of Lucy's +ill behaviour to her father, which at last roused Dora to defence. +She waxed bold, and pointed out that Lucy might have been managed +if her father had been a little more patient with her, had allowed +her a few ordinary amusements, and had not insisted in forcing her +at once, fresh from school, into ways and practices she did not +naturally like, while she had never been trained to them by force +of habit.</p> + +<p>'Hoity toity, Miss!' said the widow, bridling, 'young people are +very uppish nowadays. They never seem to remember there is such a +thing as the fifth commandment. In <i>my</i> young days what a +father said was law, and no questions asked; and I've seen many a +Lancashire man take a stick to his gell for less provocation than +this gell's given her feyther! I wonder at you, Miss Lomax, that I +do, for backing her up. But I'm afraid from what I hear you've been +taking up with a lot of Popish ways.'</p> + +<p>And the woman looked her up and down with an air which plainly said +that she was on her own ground in that parlour, and might say +exactly what she pleased there.</p> + +<p>'If I have, I don't see that it matters to you,' said Dora quietly, +and retreated.</p> + +<p>Yes, certainly, a stepmother looked likely! Lucy in her bedroom +upstairs knew nothing, and Dora decided to tell her nothing till +she was stronger. But this new development made the child's future +more uncertain than ever.</p> + +<p>On the day before her departure for Hastings, Lucy came out for a +short walk, by way of hardening herself for the journey. She walked +round the cathedral and up Victoria Street, and then, tired out +with the exertion, she made her way in to Dora, to rest. Her face +was closely hidden by a thick Shetland veil, for, in addition to +her general pallor and emaciation, her usually clear and brilliant +skin was roughened and blotched here and there by some effect of +her illness; she could not bear to look at herself in the glass, +and shrank from meeting any of her old acquaintances. It was, +indeed, curious to watch the effect of the temporary loss of beauty +upon her; her morbid impatience under it showed at every turn. But +for it, Dora was convinced that she must and would have put herself +in David Grieve's way again before leaving Manchester. As it was, +she was still determined not to let him see her.</p> + +<p>She came in, much exhausted, and threw herself into Daddy's +arm-chair with groans of self-pity. Did Dora think she would ever +be strong again—ever be anything but an ugly fright? It was hard +to have all this come upon you, just through doing a service to +some one who didn't care.</p> + +<p>'Hasn't he heard yet that I've been ill?' she inquired petulantly.</p> + +<p>No; Dora did not think he had. Neither she nor Daddy had seen him. +He must have been extra busy. But she would get Daddy to ask him up +to supper directly, and tell him all about it.</p> + +<p>'And then, perhaps,' she said, looking up with a sweet, intense +look—how little Lucy was able to decipher it!—'perhaps he may +write a letter.'</p> + +<p>Lucy was cheered by this suggestion, and sat looking out of window +for a while, idly watching the passers-by. But she could not let +the one topic that absorbed her mind alone for long, and soon she +was once more questioning Dora in close detail about David Grieve's +sister and all that he had said about her. For, by way of obliging +the child to realise some of the inconvenient burdens and +obligations which were at that moment hanging round the young +bookseller's neck, and making the very idea of matrimony ridiculous +to him, Dora had repeated to her some of his confidences about +himself and Louie. Lucy had not taken them very happily. Everything +that turned up now seemed only to push her further out of sight and +make her more insignificant. She was thirsting, with a woman's +nascent passion and a schoolgirl's vanity, to be the centre and +heroine of the play; and here she was reduced to the smallest and +meanest of parts—a part that caught nobody's eye, do what she +would.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she broke off what she was saying, and called to Dora:</p> + +<p>'<i>Do</i> you see that pair of people, Dora? Come—come at once! +What an extraordinary-looking girl!'</p> + +<p>Dora turned unwillingly, being absorbed in a golden halo which she +had set herself to finish that day; then she dropped her needle, +and pushed her stool back that she might see better. From the +cathedral end of Market Place an elderly grey-haired man and a +young girl were advancing along the pavement towards the Parlour. +As they passed, the flower-sellers at the booths were turning to +look at them, some persons in front of them were turning back, and +a certain number of errand boys and other loungers were keeping +pace with them, observing them. The man leant every now and then on +a thick stick he carried, and looked uncertainly from house to +house. He had a worn, anxious expression, and the helpless +movements of short sight. Whenever he stopped the girl moved on +alone, and he had to hurry after her again to catch her up. She, +meanwhile, was perfectly conscious that she was being stared at, +and stared in return with a haughty composure which seemed to draw +the eyes of the passers-by after it like a magnet. She was very +tall and slender, and her unusual height made her garish dress the +more conspicuous. The small hat perched on her black hair was all +bright scarlet, both the felt and the trimming; under her jacket, +which was purposely thrown back, there was a scarlet bodice, and +there was a broad band of scarlet round the edge of her black +dress.</p> + +<p>Lucy could not take her eyes off her.</p> + +<p>'Did you <i>ever</i> see anybody so handsome, Dora? But what a +fast, horrid creature to dress like that! And just look at her; she +won't wait for the old man, though he's calling to her—she goes on +staring at everybody. They'll have a crowd, presently! Why, they're +coming <i>here!</i>'</p> + +<p>For suddenly the girl stopped outside the doorway below, and +beckoned imperiously to her companion. She said a few sharp words +to him, and the pair upstairs felt the swing-door of the restaurant +open and shut.</p> + +<p>Lucy, forgetting her weakness, ran eagerly to the sitting-room door +and listened.</p> + +<p>There was a sound of raised voices below, and then the door at the +foot of the stairs opened, and Daddy was heard shouting.</p> + +<p>'There—go along upstairs. My daughter, she'll speak to you. And +don't you come back this way—a man can't be feeding Manchester and +taking strangers about, all in the same twinkling of an eye, you +know, not unless he happens to have a few spare bodies handy, which +ain't precisely my case. My daughter 'll tell you what you want to +know, and show you out by the private door. Dora!'</p> + +<p>Dora stood waiting rather nervously at the sitting-room door. The +girl came up first, the old man behind her, bewildered and groping +his way.</p> + +<p>'We're strangers here—we want somebody to show us the way. We've +been to the book-shop in Half Street, and they sent us on here. +They were just brutes to us at that book-shop,' said the girl, with +a vindictive emphasis and an imperious self-possession which fairly +paralysed Lucy and Dora. Lucy's eyes, moreover, were riveted on her +face, on its colour, its fineness of feature, its brilliance and +piercingness of expression. And what was the extraordinary likeness +in it to something familiar?</p> + +<p>'Why!' said Dora, in a little cry, 'aren't you Mr. David Grieve's +sister?'</p> + +<p>For she had traced the likeness before Lucy. 'Oh, it must be!'</p> + +<p>'Well, I am his sister, if you want to know,' said the stranger, +looking astonished in her turn. 'He wrote to me to come up. And I +lent the letter to uncle to read—that's his uncle—and he went and +lost it somehow, fiddling about the fields while I was putting my +things together. And then we couldn't think of the proper address +there was in it—only the name of a man Purcell, in Half Street, +that David said he'd been with for two years. So we went there to +ask; and, <i>my!</i>—weren't they rude to us! There was an ugly +black man there chivied us out in no time—wouldn't tell us +anything. But as I was shutting the door the shopman whispered to +me, "Try the Parlour—Market Place." So we came on here, you see.'</p> + +<p>And she stared about her, at the room, and at the girls, taking in +everything with lightning rapidity—the embroidery frame, Lucy's +veil and fashionably cut jacket, the shabby furniture, the queer +old pictures.</p> + +<p>'Please come in,' said Dora civilly, 'and sit down. If you're +strangers here, I'll just put on my hat and take you round. Mr. +Grieve's a friend of ours. He's in Potter Street. You'll find him +nicely settled by now. This is my cousin, Mr. Purcell's daughter.'</p> + +<p>And she ran upstairs, leaving Lucy to grapple with the new-comers.</p> + +<p>The two girls sat down, and eyed each other. Reuben stood patiently +waiting.</p> + +<p>'Is the man at Half Street your father?' asked the new-comer, +abruptly.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said Lucy, conscious of the strangest mingling of admiration +and dislike, as she met the girl's wonderful eyes.</p> + +<p>'Did he and Davy fall out?'</p> + +<p>'They didn't get on about Sundays,' said Lucy, unwillingly, glad of +the sheltering veil which enabled her to hold her own against this +masterful creature.</p> + +<p>'Is your father strict about chapel and that sort of thing?'</p> + +<p>Lucy nodded. She felt an ungracious wish to say as little as +possible.</p> + +<p>David's sister laughed.</p> + +<p>'Davy was that way once—just for a bit—afore he ran away, +<i>I</i> knew he wouldn't keep it on.'</p> + +<p>Then, with a queer look over her shoulder at her uncle, she +relapsed into silence. Her attention was drawn to Dora's frame, and +she moved up to it, bending over it and lifting the handkerchief +that Dora had thrown across it.</p> + +<p>'You mustn't touch it!' said Lucy, hastily, provoked, she knew not +why, by every movement the girl made. 'It's very particular work.'</p> + +<p>'I'm used to fine things,' said the other, scornfully. 'I'm a +silk-weaver—that's my trade—all the best brocades, drawing-room +trains, that style of thing. If you didn't handle <i>them</i> +carefully, you'd know it. Yes, she's doing it well,' and the +speaker put her head down and examined the work critically. 'But it +must go fearful slow, compared to a loom.'</p> + +<p>'She does it splendidly,' said Lucy, annoyed; 'she's getting quite +famous for it. That's going to a great church up in London, and +she's got more orders than she can take.'</p> + +<p>'Does she get good pay?' asked the girl eagerly.</p> + +<p>'I don't know,' replied Lucy shortly.</p> + +<p>'Because, if there's good pay,' said the other, examining the work +again closely, 'I'd soon learn it—why I'd learn it in a week, you +see! If I stay here I shan't get no more silk-weaving. And of +course I'll stay. I'm just sick of the country. I'd have come up +long ago if I'd known where to find Davy.'</p> + +<p>'I'm ready,' said Dora in a constrained voice beside her.</p> + +<p>Louie Grieve looked up at her.</p> + +<p>'Oh, you needn't look so glum!—I haven't hurt it. I'm used to good +things, stuffs at two guineas a yard, and the like of that. What +money do you take a week?' and she pointed to the frame.</p> + +<p>Something in the tone and manner made the question specially +offensive. Dora pretended not to hear it.</p> + +<p>'Shall we go now?' she said, hurriedly covering her precious work +up from those sacrilegious fingers and putting it away.</p> + +<p>'Lucy, you ought to be going home.'</p> + +<p>'Well, I will directly,' said Lucy. 'Don't you bother about me.'</p> + +<p>They all went downstairs. Lucy put up her veil, and pressed her +face against the window, watching for them. As she saw them cross +Market Street, she was seized with hungry longing. She wanted to be +going with them, to talk to him herself—to let him see what she +had gone through for him. It would be months and months, perhaps, +before they met again. And Dora would see him—his horrid +sister—everyone but she. He would forget all about her, and she +would be dull and wretched at Hastings.</p> + +<p>But as she turned away in her restless pain, she caught sight of +her changed face in the cracked looking-glass over the mantelpiece. +Her white lips tightened. She drew down her veil, and went home.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Dora led the way to Potter Street. Louie took little +notice of any attempts to talk to her. She was wholly engaged in +looking about her and at the shops. Especially was she attracted by +the drapers' windows in St. Ann's Square, pronouncing her opinion +loudly and freely as to their contents.</p> + +<p>Dora fell meditating. Young Grieve would have his work cut out for +him, she thought, if this extraordinary sister were really going to +settle with him. She was very like him—strangely like him. And yet +in the one face there was a quality which was completely lacking in +the other, and which seemed to make all the difference. Dora tried +to explain what she meant to herself, and failed.</p> + +<p>'Here's Potter Street,' she said, as they turned into it. 'And +that's his shop—that one with the stall outside. Oh, there he is!'</p> + +<p>David was in fact standing on his step talking to a customer who +was turning over the books outside.</p> + +<p>Louie looked at him. Then she began to run. Old Grieve too, crimson +all over, and evidently much excited, hurried on. Dora fell behind, +her quick sympathies rising.</p> + +<p>'They won't want me interfering,' she said, turning round.</p> + +<p>'I'll just go back to my work.'</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, in David's little back room, which he had already swept +and garnished—for after his letter of the night before, he had +somehow expected Louie, to rush upon him by the earliest possible +train—the meeting of these long-sundered persons took place.</p> + +<p>David saw Reuben come in with amazement.</p> + +<p>'Why, Uncle Reuben! Well, I'm real glad to see you. I didn't think +you'd have been able to leave the farm. Well, this is my bit of a +place, you see. What do you think of it?'</p> + +<p>And, holding his sister by the hand, the young fellow looked +joyously at his uncle, pride in his new possessions and the +recollection of his destitute childhood rushing upon him together +as he spoke.</p> + +<p>'Aye, it's a fine beginning yo've made, Davy,' said the old man, +cautiously looking round, first at the little room, with its neat +bits of new furniture in Louie's honour, and then through the glass +door at the shop, which was now heavily lined with books. 'Yo wor +allus a cliver lad, Davy. A' think a'll sit down.'</p> + +<p>And Reuben, subsiding into a chair, fell forthwith into an +abstraction, his old knotted hands trembling a little on his knees.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile David was holding Louie at arm's-length to look at her. +He had kissed her heartily when she came in first, and now he was +all pleasure and excitement.</p> + +<p>''Pon my word, Louie, you've grown as high as the roof! I say, +Louie, what's become of that smart pink dress you wore at last +"wake," and of that overlooker, with the moustaches, from New +Mills, you walked about with all day?'</p> + +<p>She stared at him open-mouthed.</p> + +<p>'What do you mean by that?' she said, quickly.</p> + +<p>David laughed out.</p> + +<p>'And who was it gave Jim Wigson a box on the ears last fifth of +November, in the lane just by the Dye-works, eh, Miss Louie?—and +danced with young Redway at the Upper Mill dance, New Year's Day? +—and had words with Mr. James at the office about her last "cut," +a fortnight ago—eh, Louie?'</p> + +<p>'What <i>ever</i> do you mean?' she said, half crossly, her colour +rising. 'You've been spying on me.'</p> + +<p>She hated to be mystified. It made her feel herself in some one +else's power; and the wild creature in her blood grew restive.</p> + +<p>'Why, I've known all about you these four years!' the lad began, +with dancing eyes. Then suddenly his voice changed, and dropped: 'I +say, look at Uncle Reuben!'</p> + +<p>For Reuben sat bent forward, his light blurred eyes looking out +straight before him, with a singular yet blind intentness, as +though, while seeing nothing round about him, they passed beyond +the walls of the little room to some vision of their own.</p> + +<p>'I don't know whatever he came for,' began Louie, as they both +examined him.</p> + +<p>'Uncle Reuben,' said David, going up to him and touching him on the +shoulder, 'you look tired. You'll be wanting some dinner. I'll just +send my man, John Dalby, round the corner for something.'</p> + +<p>And he made a step towards the door, but Reuben raised his hand.</p> + +<p>'Noa, noa, Davy! Shut that door, wiltha?'</p> + +<p>David wondered, and shut it.</p> + +<p>Then Reuben gave a long sigh, and put his hand deep into his coat +pocket, with the quavering, uncertain movement characteristic of +him.</p> + +<p>'Davy, my lad, a've got summat to say to tha.'</p> + +<p>And with many hitches, while the others watched him in +astonishment, he pulled out of his pocket a canvas bag and put it +down on an oak stool in front of him. Then he undid the string of +it with his large awkward fingers, and pushed the stool across to +David.</p> + +<p>'Theer's sixty pund theer, Davy—sixty pund! Yo can keawnt it—it's +aw reet. A've saved it for yo, this four year—four year coom lasst +Michaelmas Day. Hannah nor nobory knew owt abeawt it. But it's +yourn—it's yor share, being t' half o' Mr. Gurney's money. Louie's +share—that wor different; we had a reet to that, she bein a growin +girl, and doin nowt mich for her vittles. Fro the time when yo +should ha had it—whether for wages or for 'prenticin—an yo +<i>could</i> na ha it, because Hannah had set hersen agen it,—a +saved it for tha, owt o' t' summer cattle moastly, without tellin +nobory, so as not to mak words.'</p> + +<p>David, bewildered, had taken the bag into his hand. Louie's eyes +were almost out of her head with curiosity and amazement. '<i>Mr. +Gurney's money!</i>' What did he mean? It was all double-Dutch to +them.</p> + +<p>David, with an effort, controlled himself, being now a man and a +householder. He stood with his back against the shop door, his gaze +fixed on Reuben.</p> + +<p>'Now, Uncle Reuben, I don't understand a bit of what you've been +saying, and Louie don't either. Who's Mr. Gurney? and what's his +money?'</p> + +<p>Unconsciously the young man's voice took a sharp, magisterial note. +Reuben gave another long sigh. He was now leaning on his stick, +staring at the floor.</p> + +<p>'Noa,—a' know yo doan't understan; a've got to tell tha—'at's t' +worst part on 't. An I'm soa bad at tellin. Do yo mind when yor +feyther deed, Davy?' he said suddenly, looking up.</p> + +<p>David nodded,—a red flush of presentiment spread itself over his +face—his whole being hung on Reuben's words.</p> + +<p>'He sent for me afore he deed,' continued Reuben, slowly; 'an he +towd me aw about his affairs. Six hunderd pund he'd got +saved—<i>six-hunderd-pund!</i> Aye, it wor a lot for a yoong mon +like him, and after sich a peck o' troobles! And he towd me Mr. +Gurney ud pay us th' interest for yor bringin-up—th' two on yo; an +whan yo got big, Davy, I wor to tak keawnsel wi Mr. Gurney, an, if +yo chose for t' land, yo were to ha yor money for a farm, when yo +wor big eneuf, an if yo turned agen th' land, yo wor to be +'prenticed to soom trade, an ha yor money when yo wanted it,—Mr. +Gurney bein willin. An I promised him I'd deal honest wi his +childer, an—'</p> + +<p>Reuben paused painfully. He was wrestling with his conscience, and +groping for words about his wife. The brother and sister sat +open-mouthed, pale with excitement, afraid of losing a single +syllable.</p> + +<p>'An takkin it awthegither,' he said, bringing each word out with an +effort, 'I doan't think, by t' Lord's mercy, as I've gone soa mich +astray, though I ha been mich troobled this four year wi thowts o' +Sandy—my brither Sandy—an wi not knowin wheer yo wor gone, Davy. +Bit yo seem coom to an honest trade—an Louie theer ha larnt a +trade too,—an addle't a bit money,—an she's a fine-grown lass—'</p> + +<p>He turned a slow, searching look upon her, as though he were +pleading a cause before some unseen judge.</p> + +<p>'An theer's yor money, Davy. It's aw th' same, a'm thinkin, whether +yo get it fro me or fro Mr. Gurney. An here—'</p> + +<p>He rose, and unbuttoning his inner coat, fumbled in the pocket of +it till he found a letter.</p> + +<p>'An here is a letter for Mr. Gurney. If yo gie me a pen, Davy, I'll +write in to 't yor reet address, an put it in t' post as I goo to +t' station. I took noatice of a box as I coom along. An then—'</p> + +<p>He stood still a moment pondering, one outspread hand on the +letter.</p> + +<p>'An then theer's nowt moor as a can remember,—an your aunt ull be +wearyin; an it's but reet she should know now, at wonst, abeawt t' +money a've saved this four year, an t' letter to Mr. Gurney. Yo +understan—when yor letter came this mornin—t'mon browt it up to +Louie abeawt eight o'clock—she towd me fust out i' th' yard—an I +said to her, 'Doan't you tell yor aunt nowt abeawt it, an we'st meet +at t' station.' An I made soom excuse to Hannah abeawt gooin ower +t' Scout after soom beeasts—an—an—Louie an me coom thegither.'</p> + +<p>He passed his other hand painfully across his brow. The travail of +expression, the moral struggle of the last twenty-four hours, +seemed to have aged him before them.</p> + +<p>David sat looking at him in a stupefied silence. A light was +breaking in upon him, transfiguring, combining, interpreting a +hundred scattered remembrances of his boyhood. But Louie, the +instant her uncle stopped, broke into a siring of questions, shrill +and breathless, her face quite white, her eyes glittering. Reuben +seemed hardly to hear her, and in the middle of them David said +sharply,</p> + +<p>'Stop that, Louie, and let me talk to Uncle Reuben!'</p> + +<p>He drew the letter from under Reuben's fingers, and went on, +steadily looking up into his uncle's face:</p> + +<p>'You'll let me read it, uncle, and I'll get you a pen directly to +put in the address. But first will you tell us about father? You +never did—you nor Aunt Hannah. And about mother, too?'</p> + +<p>He said the last words with difficulty, having all his life been +pricked by a certain instinct about his mother, which had, however, +almost nothing definite to work upon. Reuben thought a minute, then +sat down again patiently.</p> + +<p>'Aye, a'll tell tha. Theer's nobory else can. An tha ought to know, +though it'll mebbe be a shock to tha.'</p> + +<p>And, with his head resting against his stick, he began to tell the +story of his brother and his brother's marriage as he remembered +it.</p> + +<p>First came the account of Sandy's early struggles, as Sandy himself +had described them on that visit which he had paid to the farm in +the first days of his prosperity; then a picture of his ultimate +success in business, as it had appeared to the dull elder brother +dazzled by the younger's 'cliverness.'</p> + +<p>'Aye, he might ha been a great mon; he might ha coom to varra high +things, might Sandy,' said Reuben solemnly, his voice suddenly +rising, 'bit for th' hizzy that ruined him!'</p> + +<p>Both his hearers made an involuntary movement. But Reuben had now +lost all count of them. He was intent on one thing, and capable +only of one thing. They had asked him for his story, and he was +telling it, with an immense effort of mind, recovering the past as +best he could, and feeling some of it over again intensely.</p> + +<p>So when he came to the marriage, he told the story like one +thinking it out to himself, with an appalling plainness of phrase. +It was, of course, impossible for him to <i>explain</i> Sandy's +aberration—there were no resources in him equal to the task. +Louise Suveret became in his account what she had always remained +in his imagination since Sandy's employers told him what was known +of her story—a mere witch and devil, sent for his brother's +perdition. All his resentment against his brother's fate had passed +into his hatred of this creature whom he had never seen. Nay, he +even held up the picture of her hideous death before her children +with a kind of sinister triumph. So let the ungodly and the harlot +perish!</p> + +<p>David stood opposite to the speaker all the while, motionless, save +for an uneasy movement here and there when Reuben's words grew more +scripturally frank than usual. Louie's face was much more positive +than David's in what it said. Reuben and Reuben's vehemence annoyed +and angered her. She frowned at him from under her black brows. It +was evident that he, rather than his story, excited her.</p> + +<p>'An we buried him aw reet an proper,' said Reuben at last, wiping +his brow, damp with this unwonted labour of brain and tongue. 'Mr. +Gurney he would ha it aw done handsome; and we put him in a corner +o' Kensal Green, just as close as might be to whar they'd put her +after th' crowner had sat on her. Yor feyther had left word, an Mr. +Gurney would ha nowt different. But it went agen me—aye, it +<i>did</i>—to leave him wi <i>her</i> after aw!'</p> + +<p>And falling suddenly silent, Reuben sat wrapped in a sombre mist of +memory.</p> + +<p>Then Louie broke out, rolling and unrolling the ribbons of her hat +in hot fingers.</p> + +<p>'I don't believe half on't—I don't see how you could know—nor Mr. +Gurney either.'</p> + +<p>Reuben looked round bewildered. Louie got up noisily, went to the +window and threw it open, as though oppressed by the narrowness of +the room.</p> + +<p>'No, I don't,' she repeated, defiantly—'I don't believe the half +on't. But I'll find out some day.'</p> + +<p>She leaned her elbows on the sill, and, looking out into the +squalid bit of yard, threw a bit of grit that lay on the window at +a cat that sat sleepily blinking on the flags outside.</p> + +<p>Reuben rose heavily.</p> + +<p>'Gie me pen and ink, Davy, an let me go.'</p> + +<p>The young man brought it him without a word. Reuben put in the +address.</p> + +<p>'Ha yo read it, Davy?'</p> + +<p>David started. In his absorption he had forgotten to read it.</p> + +<p>'I wor forced to write it i' the top sheepfold,' Reuben began to +explain apologetically, then stopped suddenly. Several times he had +been on the point of bringing Hannah into the conversation, and had +always refrained. He refrained now. David read it. It was written +in Reuben's most laborious business style, and merely requested +that Mr. Gurney would now communicate with Sandy's son direct on +the subject of his father's money. He had left Needham Farm, and +was old enough to take counsel himself with Mr. Gurney in future as +to what should be done with it.</p> + +<p>Reuben looked over David's shoulder as he read.</p> + +<p>'An Louie?' he said uncertainly, at the end, jerking his thumb +towards her.</p> + +<p>'I'm stayin here,' said Louie peremptorily, still looking out of +window.</p> + +<p>Reuben said nothing. Perhaps a shade of relief lightened his old +face.</p> + +<p>When the letter was handed back to him, he sealed it and put it +into his pocket, buttoning up his coat for departure.</p> + +<p>'Yo wor talkin abeawt dinner, Davy—or summat,' said the old man, +courteously.' Thankee kindly. I want for nowt. I mun get home—I +mun get home.'</p> + +<p>Louie, standing absorbed in her own excited thoughts, could hardly +be disturbed to say good-bye to him. David, still in a dream, led +him through the shop, where Reuben peered about him with a certain +momentary curiosity.</p> + +<p>But at the door he said good-bye in a great hurry and ran down the +steps, evidently impatient to be rid of his nephew.</p> + +<p>David turned and came slowly back through the little piled-up shop, +where John, all eyes and ears, sat on a high stool in the corner, +into the living room.</p> + +<p>As he entered it Louie sprang upon him, and seizing him with both +hands, danced him madly round the little space of vacant boards, +till she tripped her foot over the oak stool, and sank down on a +chair, laughing wildly.</p> + +<p>'How much of that money am I going to have?' she demanded suddenly, +her arms crossed over her breast, her eyes brilliant, her whole +aspect radiant and exulting.</p> + +<p>David was standing over the fire, looking down into it, and made no +answer. He had disengaged himself from her as soon as he could.</p> + +<p>Louie waited a while; then, with a contemptuous lip and a shrug of +the shoulders, she got up.</p> + +<p>'What's the good of worriting about things, I'd like to know? You +won't do 'em no good. Why don't you think about the money? My word, +won't Aunt Hannah be mad! How am I to get my parcels from the +station, and where am I to sleep?'</p> + +<p>'You can go and see the house,' said David, shortly. 'The lodgers +upstairs are out, and there's the key of the attic.'</p> + +<p>He threw it to her, and she ran off. He had meant to take her in +triumphal progress through the little house, and show her all the +changes he had been making for her benefit and his own. But a gulf +had yawned between them. He was relieved to see her go, and when he +was left alone he laid his arms on the low mantelpiece and hid his +face upon them. His mother's story, his father's fate, seemed to be +burning into his heart.</p> + +<p>Reuben hurried home through the bleak March evening. In the train +he could not keep himself still, fidgeting so much that his +neighbours eyed him with suspicion, and gave him a wide berth. As +he started to walk up to Kinder a thin, raw sleet came on. It drove +in his face, chilling him through and through, as he climbed the +lonely road, where the black moorland farms lay all about him, seen +dimly through the white and drifting veil of the storm. But he was +conscious of nothing external. His mind was absorbed by the thought +of his meeting with Hannah, and by the excited feeling that one of +the crises of his timid and patient life was approaching. During +the last four years they had been very poor, in spite of Mr. +Gurney's half-yearly cheque, partly because of the determination +with which he had stuck to his secret saving. Hannah would think +they were going now to be poorer still, but he meant to prove to +her that what with Louie's departure and the restoration of their +whole income to its natural channels, there would not be so much +difference. He conned his figures eagerly, rehearsing what he would +say. For the rest he walked lightly and briskly. The burden of his +brother's children had dropped away from him, and in those strange +inner colloquies of his he could look Sandy in the face again.</p> + +<p>Had Hannah discovered his flight, he wondered? Some one he was +afraid, might have seen him and Louie at the station and told +tales. He was not sure that one of the Wigsons had not been hanging +about the station yard. And that letter of David's to Louie, which +in his clumsy blundering way he had dropped somewhere about the +farm buildings or the house, and had not been able to find again! +It gave him a cold sweat to think that in his absence Hannah might +have come upon it and drawn her own conclusions. As he followed out +this possibility in his mind, his step quickened till it became +almost a run.</p> + +<p>Aye, and Hannah had been ailing of late—there had been often +'summat wrang wi her.' Well, they were both getting into years. +Perhaps now that Louie with her sharp tongue and aggravating ways +was gone, now that there was only him to do for, Hannah would take +things easier.</p> + +<p>He opened the gate into the farmyard and walked up to the house +door with a beating heart. It struck him as strange that the front +blinds were not drawn, for it was nearly dark and the storm beat +against the windows. There was a glimmer of fire in the room, but +he could see nothing clearly. He turned the handle and went into +the passage, making a clatter on purpose. But nothing stirred in +the house, and he pushed open the kitchen door, which stood ajar, +filled with a vague alarm.</p> + +<p>Hannah was sitting in the rocking-chair, by the fire. Beside her +was the table partly spread with tea, which, however, had been +untouched. At Reuben's entrance she turned her head and looked at +him fixedly. In the dim light—a mixture of the dying fire and of +the moonlight from outside—he could not see her plainly, but he +felt that there was something strange, and he ran forward to her.</p> + +<p>'Hannah, are yo bad?—is there owt wrang wi yo?'</p> + +<p>Then his seeking eye made out a crumpled paper in her left hand, +and he knew at once that it must be Davy's letter.</p> + +<p>Before he could speak again she gave him a push backward with her +free hand, and said with an effort:</p> + +<p>'Where's t' gell?'</p> + +<p>'Louie? She's left i' Manchester. A've found Davy, Hannah.'</p> + +<p>There was a pause, after which he said, trembling:</p> + +<p>'Shall I get yo summat, Hannah?'</p> + +<p>A hoarse voice came out of the dark:</p> + +<p>'Ha doon wi yo! Yo ha been leein to me. Yo wor seen at t' station.'</p> + +<p>Reuben sat down.</p> + +<p>'Hannah,' he said, 'yo mun just listen to me.'</p> + +<p>And taking his courage in both hands, he told everything without a +break: how he had been 'feeart' of what Sandy might say to him 'at +th' joodgment,' how he had saved and lied, and how now he had seen +David, had written to Mr. Gurney, and stopped the cheques for good +and all.</p> + +<p>When he came to the letter to Mr. Gurney, Hannah sat suddenly +upright in her chair, grasping one arm of it.</p> + +<p>'It shall mak noa difference to tha, a tell tha,' he cried hastily, +putting up his hand, fearing he knew not what, 'nobbut a few +shillins ony way. I'll work for tha an mak it up.'</p> + +<p>She made a sound which turned him cold with terror—a sound of +baffled weakness, pain, vindictive passion all in one—then she +fell helplessly to one side in her chair, and her grey head dropped +on her shoulder.</p> + +<p>In another moment he was crying madly for help in the road outside. +For long there was no answer—only the distant roar of the Downfall +and the sweep of the wind. Then a labourer, on the path leading to +the Wigsons' farm, heard and ran up.</p> + +<p>An hour later a doctor had been got hold of, and Hannah was lying +upstairs, tended by Mrs. Wigson and Reuben.</p> + +<p>'A paralytic seizure,' said the doctor to Reuben. 'This woman says +she's been failing for some time past. She's lived and worked hard, +Mr. Grieve; <i>you</i> know that. And there's been some shock.'</p> + +<p>Reuben explained incoherently. The doctor did not understand, and +did not care, being a dull man and comparatively new to the place. +He did what he could, said she would recover—oh, yes, she would +recover; but, of course, she could never be the same woman again. +Her working days were done.</p> + +<p>A servant came over from Wigsons' to sit up with Reuben, Mrs. +Wigson being too delicate to undertake it. The girl went to lie +down first for an hour or two in the room across the landing, and +he was left alone in the gaunt room with his wife. Poor quailing +soul! As he sat there in the windy darkness, hour after hour, +open-mouthed and open-eyed, he was steeped in terror—terror of the +future, of its forlornness, of his own feebleness, of death. His +heart clave piteously to the unconscious woman beside him, for he +had nothing else. It seemed to him that the Lord had indeed dealt +hardly with him, thus to strike him down on the day of his great +atonement!</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-2" id="CHAPTER_IX-2"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<p>No news of the catastrophe at Needham Farm reached the brother and +sister in Potter Street. The use of the pen had always been to +Reuben one of the main torments and mysteries of life, and he had +besides all those primitive instincts of silence and concealment +which so often in the peasant nature accompany misfortune. His +brain-power, moreover, was absorbed by his own calamity and by the +changes in the routine of daily life which his wife's state brought +upon him, so that immediately after his great effort of reparation +towards them—an effort which had taxed the whole man physically +and mentally—his brother's children and their affairs passed for a +while strangely and completely from his troubled mind.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, what a transformation he had wrought in their fortunes! +When the shock of his parents' story had subsided in him, and that +other shock of jarring temperaments, which the first hour of +Louie's companionship had brought with it, had been for the time +forgotten again in the stress of plans and practical detail, David +felt to the full the exhilaration of his new prospects. He had +sprung at a leap, as it seemed to him, from the condition of the +boy-adventurer to that of the man of affairs. And as he looked back +upon their childhood and realised that all the time, instead of +being destitute and dependent orphans, they and their money had +really been the mainstay of Hannah and the farm, the lad seemed to +cast from him the long humiliation of years, to rise in stature and +dignity. That old skinflint and hypocrite, Aunt Hannah! With the +usual imperfect sympathy of the young he did not much realise +Reuben's struggle. But he bore his uncle no grudge for these years' +delay. The contrivances and hardships of his Manchester life had +been, after all, enjoyment. Without them and the extravagant +self-reliance they had developed in him his pride and ambition +would have run less high. And at this moment the nerve and savour +of existence came to him from pride and from ambition.</p> + +<p>But first of all he had to get his money. As soon as Mr. Gurney's +answer to Reuben's letter came, David took train for London, made +his way to the great West-End shop which had employed his father, +and saw the partner who had taken charge of Sandy's money for so +long. Mr. Gurney, a shrewd and pompous person, was interested in +seeing Grieve's son, inquired what he was about, ran over the terms +of a letter to himself, which he took out of a drawer, and then, +with a little flourish as to his own deserts in the matter of the +guardianship of the money—a flourish neither unnatural nor +unkindly—handed over to the lad both the letter and a cheque on a +London bank, took his receipt, talked a little, but with a blunted +memory, about the lad's father, gave him a little general business +advice, asked whether his sister was still alive, and bade him good +morning. Both were satisfied, and the young man left the office +with the cheque lying warm in his pocket, looking slowly and +curiously round the shop where his father had earned it, as he +walked away.</p> + +<p>Outside he found himself close to Trafalgar Square, and, striking +down to the river, he went to sit on the Embankment and ponder the +enclosures which Mr. Gurney had given him. First he took out the +cheque, with infinite care, lest the breeze on the Embankment +should blow it out of his hand, and spread it on his knee. +600 pounds! As he stared at each letter and flourish his eyes +widened anew; and when he looked up across the grey and misty river, +the figures still danced before him, and in his exultation he +could have shouted the news to the passers-by. Then, when the +precious paper had been safely stowed away again, he hesitatingly +took out the other—his father's dying memorandum on the subject of +his children, so he had understood Mr. Gurney. It was old and brown; +it had been written with anguish, and it could only be deciphered +with difficulty. There had been no will properly so called. Sandy +had placed more confidence in 'the firm' than in the law, and had +left behind him merely the general indication of his wishes in the +hands of the partner who had specially befriended him. The +provisions of it were as Sandy had described them to Reuben on his +deathbed. Especially did the father insist that there should be +no artificial restriction of age. 'I wanted money most when I was +nineteen, and I could have used it just as well then as I could at +any later time.'</p> + +<p>So he might have been a rich man at least a year earlier. Well, +much as he had loathed Purcell, he was glad, on the whole, that +things were as they were. He had been still a great fool, he +reflected, a year ago.</p> + +<p>Then, as to Louie, the letter ran: 'Let Davy have all the money, and +let him manage for her. I won't divide it; he must judge. He may +want it all, and it may be best for them both he should have it. +He's got a good heart; I know that; he'll not rob his sister. I lay +it on him, now I'm dying, to be patient with her, and look after +her. She's not like other children. But it's not her fault; it was +born in her. Let him see her married to a decent man, and then give +her what's honestly hers. That little lad has nursed me like a +woman since I've been ill. He was always a good lad to me, and I'd +like him to know when he's grown up that his father loved him—'</p> + +<p>But here the poor laboured scrawl came to an end, save for a few +incoherent strokes. David thrust it back into his pocket. His cheek +was red; his eyes burnt; he sat for long, with his elbows on his +knees, staring at the February river. The choking, passionate +impulse to comfort his father he had felt so often as a child was +there again, by association, alive and piteous.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he woke up with a start. There, to either hand, lay the +bridges, with the moving figures atop and the hurrying river below. +And from one of them his mother had leapt when she destroyed +herself. In the trance of thought that followed, it was to him as +though he felt her wild nature, her lawless blood, stirring within +him, and realised, in a fierce, reluctant way, that he was hers as +well as his father's. In a sense, he shared Reuben's hatred; for +he, best of all, knew what she had made his father suffer. Yet the +thought of her drew his restless curiosity after it. Where did she +come from? Who were her kindred? From the south of France, Reuben +thought. The lad's imagination travelled with difficulty and +excitement to the far and alien land whence half his being had +sprung. A few scraps of poetry and history recurred to him—a +single tattered volume of 'Monte Cristo,' which he had lately +bought with an odd lot at a sale—but nothing that suggested to his +fancy anything like the peasant farm in the Mont Ventoux, within +sight of Arles, where Louise Suveret's penurious childhood had been +actually cradled.</p> + +<p>Two o'clock struck from the belfry of St. Paul's, looming there to +his left in the great bend of the river. At the sound he shook off +all his thoughts. Let him see something of London. He had two hours +and a half before his train from Euston. Westminster first—a hasty +glance; then an omnibus to St. Paul's, that he might look down upon +the city and its rush; then north. He had a map with him, and his +quick intelligence told him exactly how to use his time to the best +advantage. Years afterwards he was accustomed to look back on this +hour spent on the top of an omnibus, which was making its difficult +way to the Bank through the crowded afternoon streets, as one of +the strong impressions of his youth. Here was one centre of things: +Westminster represented another; and both stood for knowledge, +wealth, and power. The boy's hot blood rose to the challenge. His +foot was on the ladder, and many men with less chances than he had +risen to the top. At this moment, small Manchester tradesman that +he was, he had the constant presentiment of a wide career.</p> + +<p>That night he let himself into his own door somewhere about nine +o'clock. What had Louie been doing with herself all day? She was to +have her first lesson from Dora Lomax; but she must have been dull +since, unless Dora had befriended her.</p> + +<p>To his astonishment, as he shut the door he heard voices in +the kitchen—Louie and <i>John</i>. John, the shy, woman-hating +creature, who had received the news of Louie's expected advent in a +spirit of mingled irritation and depression—who, after his first +startled look at her as she passed through the shop, seemed to +David to have fled the sight of her whenever it was possible!</p> + +<p>Louie was talking so fast and laughing so much that neither of them +had heard David's latchkey, and in his surprise the brother stood +still a moment in the dark, looking round the kitchen-door, which +stood a little open. Louie was sitting by the fire with some yards +of flowered cotton stuff on her knee, at which she was sewing; John +was opposite to her on the oak stool, crouched over a box of nails, +from which he was laboriously sorting out those of a certain size, +apparently at her bidding, for she gave him sharp directions from +time to time. But his toil was intermittent, for whenever her +sallies were louder or more amusing than usual his hand paused, and +he sat staring at her, his small eyes expanding, a sympathetic grin +stealing over his mouth.</p> + +<p>It seemed to David that she was describing her lover of the winter; +he caught her gesture as she illustrated her performance with Jim +Wigson—the boxing of the amorous lout's ears in the lane by the +Dye-works. Her beautiful curly black hair was combed to-night into +a sort of wild halo round her brow and cheeks, and in this +arrangement counteracted the one fault of the face—a slightly +excessive length from forehead to chin. But the brilliance of the +eyes, the redness of the thin lips over the small and perfect +teeth, the flush on the olive cheek, the slender neck, the +distinction and delicacy of every sweeping line and curve—for the +first time even David realised, as he stood there in the dark, that +his sister was an extraordinary beauty. Strange! Her manner and +voice had neither natural nor acquired refinement; and yet in the +moulding of the head and face there was a dignity and perfection—a +touch, as it were, of the grand style—which marked her out in a +northern crowd and riveted the northern eye. Was it the trace of +another national character, another civilisation, longer descended, +less mixed, more deeply graven than ours?</p> + +<p>But what was that idiot John doing here?—the young master wanted +to know. He coughed loudly and hung up his hat and his stick, to +let them hear that he was there. The pair in the kitchen started. +Louie sprang up, flung down her work, and ran out to him.</p> + +<p>'Well,' said she breathlessly, 'have you got it?'</p> + +<p>'Yes.'</p> + +<p>She gave a little shriek of excitement.</p> + +<p>'Show it then.'</p> + +<p>'There's nothing to show but a cheque. It's all right. Is there +anything for supper?'</p> + +<p>'There's some bread and cheese and cold apple-pie in there,' said +Louie, annoyed with him already; then, turning her head over her +shoulder, 'Mr. Dalby, I'll trouble you to get them out.'</p> + +<p>With awkward alacrity John flew to do her bidding. When the lad had +ransacked the cupboard and placed all the viands it contained on +the table, he looked at David. That young man, with a pucker in his +brow, was standing by the fire with his hands in his pockets, +making short answers to Louie's sharp and numerous questions.</p> + +<p>'That's all I can find,' said John. 'Shall I run for something?'</p> + +<p>'Thanks,' said David, still frowning, and sat him down, 'that 'll +do.'</p> + +<p>Louie made a face at John behind her brother's back. The assistant +slowly flushed a deep red. In this young fellow, with his money +buttoned on his breast, both he and Louie for the first time +realised the master.</p> + +<p>'Well, good night,' he said, hesitating, 'I'm going.'</p> + +<p>David jumped up and went with him into the passage.</p> + +<p>'Look here,' he said abruptly, 'you and I have got some business to +talk to-morrow. I'm not going to keep you slaving here for nothing +now that I can afford to pay you.'</p> + +<p>'Are you going to turn me off?' said the other hastily.</p> + +<p>David laughed. The cloud had all cleared from his brow.</p> + +<p>'Don't be such a precious fool!' he said. 'Now be off—and seven +sharp. I must go at it like ten horses to-morrow.'</p> + +<p>John disappeared into the night, and David went back to his sister. +He found her looking red and excited, and sewing energetically.</p> + +<p>'Look here!' she said, lifting a threatening eye to him as he +entered the room. 'I'm not going to be treated like a baby. If you +don't tell me all about that money, I'll write to Mr. Gurney +myself. It's part of it mine, and <i>I'll know</i>, so there!'</p> + +<p>'I'll tell you everything,' he said quietly, putting a hand into +his coat pocket before he sat down to his supper again. 'There's the +cheque—and there's our father's letter,—what Mr. Gurney gave me. +There was no proper will—this was instead.'</p> + +<p>He pretended to eat, but in reality he watched her anxiously as she +read it. The result was very much what he had expected. She ran +breathlessly through it, then, with a look all flame and fury, she +broke out—</p> + +<p>'Up <i>on</i> my word! So you're going to take it all, and I'm to be +beholden to you for every penny. I'd like to see myself!'</p> + +<p>'Now look here, Louie,' he said, firmly, pushing back his chair +from the table, 'I want to explain things to you. I should like to +tell you all about my business, and what I think of doing, and then +you can judge for yourself. I'll not rob you or anyone.'</p> + +<p>Whereupon with a fierce gesture she caught up her work again, and +he fell into long and earnest talk, setting his mind to the task. +He explained to her that the arrival of this money—this +capital—made just all the difference, that the whole of it would +be infinitely more useful to him than the half, and that he +proposed to employ it both for her benefit and his own. He had +already cleared out the commission agent from the first floor, and +moved down the lodgers—a young foreman and his wife—from the +attics to the first-floor back. That left the two attics for +himself and Louie, and gave him the front first-floor room, the +best room in the house, for an extension of stock.</p> + +<p>'Why don't you turn those people out altogether?' said Louie, +impatiently.' They pay very little, and you'll be wanting that room +soon, very like.'</p> + +<p>'Well, I shall get it soon,' said David bluntly; 'but I can't get it +now. Mrs. Mason's bad; she going to be confined.'</p> + +<p>'Well, I dare say she is!' cried Louie. 'That don't matter; she +isn't confined yet.'</p> + +<p>David looked at her in amazement. Then his face hardened.</p> + +<p>'I'm not going to turn her out, I tell you,' he said, and +immediately returned to his statement. Well, there were all sorts +of ways in which he might employ his money. He might put up a shed +in the back yard, and get a printing-press. He knew of a press and +a very decent fount of type, to be had extremely cheap. John was a +capital workman, and between them they might reprint some of the +scarce local books and pamphlets, which were always sure of a sale. +As to his stock, there were endless possibilities. He knew of a +collection of rare books on early America, which belonged to a +gentleman at Cheadle. He had been negotiating about them for some +time. Now he would close at once; from his knowledge of the market +the speculation was a certain one. He was also inclined to largely +increase his stock of foreign books, especially in the technical +and scientific direction. There was a considerable opening, he +believed, for such books in Manchester; at any rate, he meant to +try for it. And as soon as ever he could he should learn German. +There was a fellow—a German clerk—who haunted the Parlour, who +would teach him in exchange for English lessons.</p> + +<p>So, following a happy instinct, he opened to her all his mind, and +talked to her as though they were partners in a firm. The event +proved that he could have done nothing better. Very early in his +exposition she began to put her wits to his, her irritation +dropped, and he was presently astonished at the intelligence she +showed. Every element almost in the problems discussed was +unfamiliar to her, yet after a while a listener coming in might +have thought that she too had been Purcell's apprentice, so nimbly +had she gathered up the details involved, so quick she was to see +David's points and catch his phrases. If there was no moral +fellowship between them, judging from to-night, there bade fair to +be a comradeship of intelligence.</p> + +<p>'There now,' he said, when he had come to the end of his budget, +'you leave your half of the money to me. Mind, I agree it's your +half, and I'll do the best I can with it. I'll pay you interest on +it for two years, and I'll keep you. Then we'll see. And if you +want to improve yourself a bit, instead of going to work at once, +I'll pay for teachers. And look here, we'll keep good friends over +it.'</p> + +<p>His keen eyes softened to a charming, half-melancholy smile. Louie +took no notice; she was absorbed in meditation; and at the end of +it, she said with a long breath—</p> + +<p>'Well, you may have it, and I'll keep an eye on the accounts. But +you needn't think I'll sit at home "improving" myself: Not I. I'll +do that church-work. That girl gave me a lesson this morning, and +I'm going again to-morrow.'</p> + +<p>David received the news with satisfaction, remarking heartily that +Dora Lomax was a real good sort, and if it weren't for her the +Parlour and Daddy would soon be in a fix. He told the story of the +Parlour, dwelling on Dora's virtues.</p> + +<p>'But she is a crank, though!' said Louie. 'Why, if you make free +with her things a bit, or if you call 'em by the wrong names, +she'll fly at you! How's anybody to know what they're meant for?'</p> + +<p>David laughed, and got up to get some books he was repairing. As he +moved away he looked back a moment.</p> + +<p>'I say, Louie,' he began, hesitating, 'that fellow John's worked for +me like a dozen, and has never taken a farthing from me. Don't you +go and make a fool of him.'</p> + +<p>A flush passed over Louie's face. She lifted her hand and tucked +away some curly ends of long hair that had fallen on her shoulders.</p> + +<p>'He's like one of Aunt Hannah's suet rolies,' she said, after a +minute, with a gleam of her white teeth. 'Seems as if some one had +tied him in a cloth and boiled him that shape.'</p> + +<p>Neither of them cared to go to bed. They sat up talking. David was +mending, sorting, and pricing a number of old books he had bought +for nothing at a country sale. He knew enough of bookbinding to do +the repairing with much skill, showing the same neatness of finger +in it that he had shown years ago in the carving of toy boats and +water-wheels. Louie went on with her work, which proved to be a +curtain for her attic. She meant to have that room nice, and she +had been out buying a few things, whereby David understood—as +indeed Reuben had said—that she had some savings. Moreover, with +regard to certain odd jobs of carpentering, she had already pressed +John into her service, which explained his lingering after hours, +and his eagerness among the nails. As to the furniture David had +bought for her, on which, in the intervals of his busy days, he had +spent some time and trouble, and of which he was secretly proud, +humble and cheap as it was—she took it for granted. He could not +remember that she had said any 'thank you's' since she came.</p> + +<p>Still, youth and comradeship were pleasant. The den in which they +sat was warm with light and fire, and was their own. Louie's +exultation, too, in their change of fortune, which flashed out of +her at every turn, was infectious, and presently his spirits rose +with hers, and the two lost themselves in the excitement of large +schemes and new horizons.</p> + +<p>After a time he found himself comparing notes with her as to that +far-off crisis of his running away.</p> + +<p>'I suppose you heard somehow about Jim Wigson and me?' he asked +her, his pulse quickening after all these years.</p> + +<p>She nodded with a little grin. He had already noticed, by the way, +that she, while still living among the moors, had almost shaken +herself free of the Kinder dialect, whereas it had taken quite a +year of Manchester life to rub off his own Doric.</p> + +<p>'Well, you didn't imagine'—he went on—'I was going to stop after +that? I could put a knife between Jim's ribs now when I think of +it!'</p> + +<p>And, pushing his book away from him, he sat recalling that long +past shame, his face, glowing with vindictive memory, framed in his +hands.</p> + +<p>'I don't see, though, what you sneaked off for like that after all +you'd promised me,' she said with energy.</p> + +<p>'No, it was hard on you,' he admitted. 'But I couldn't think of any +other way out. I was mad with everybody, and just wanted to cut and +run. But before I hit on that notion about Tom'(he had just been +explaining to her in detail, not at all to her satisfaction, his +device for getting regular news of her)'I used to spend half my +time wondering what you'd do. I thought, perhaps, you'd run away +too, and that would have been a kettle of fish.'</p> + +<p>'I did run away,' she said, her wild eyes sparkling—'twice.'</p> + +<p>'Jiminy!' said David with a schoolboy delight, 'let's hear!'</p> + +<p>Whereupon she took up her tale and told him a great deal that was +still quite unknown to him. She told it in her own way with +characteristic blindnesses and hardnesses, but the truth of it was +this. The very day after David's departure she too had run away, in +spite of the fact that Hannah was keeping her in something very +like imprisonment. She supposed that David had gone to Manchester, +and she meant to follow him there. But she had been caught begging +the other side of Glossop by a policeman, who was a native of +Clough End and knew all about her.</p> + +<p>'He made me come along back, but he must have got the mark on his +wrist still where I bit him, I should think,' remarked Miss Louie, +with a satisfaction untouched apparently by the lapse of time.</p> + +<p>The next attempt had been more serious. It was some months +afterwards, and by this time she was in despair about David, and +had made up her passionate mind that she would never see him again. +But she loathed Hannah more and more, and at last, in the middle of +a snowy February, the child determined to find her way over the +Peak into the wild valley of the Woodlands, and so to Ashopton and +Sheffield, in which last town she meant to go to service. But in +the effort to cross the plateau of the Peak she very nearly lost +her life. Long before she came in sight of the Snake Inn, on the +Woodlands side, she sank exhausted in the snow, and, but for some +Frimley shepherds who were out after their sheep, she would have +drawn her last breath in that grim solitude. They carried her down +to Frimley and dropped her at the nearest shelter, which happened +to be Margaret Dawson's cottage.</p> + +<p>Margaret was then in the first smart of her widowhood. 'Lias was +just dead, and she was withering physically and mentally under the +heart-hunger of her loss. The arrival of the pallid, half-conscious +child—David's sister, with David's eyes—for a time distracted and +appeased her. She nursed the poor waif, and sent word to Needham +Farm. Reuben came for the girl, and Margaret, partly out of +compassion, partly out of a sense of her own decaying strength, +bribed her to go back home by the promise of teaching her the +silk-weaving.</p> + +<p>Louie learnt the trade with surprising quickness, and as she shot +up in stature and her fingers gained in cunning and rapidity, +Margaret became more bowed, helpless and 'fond,' until at last +Louie did everything, brought home the weft and warp, set it up, +worked off the 'cuts,' and took them to the warehouse in Clough End +to be paid; while Margaret sat in the chimney corner, pining +inwardly for 'Lias and dropping deeper day by day into the gulf of +age. By this time of course various money arrangements had been +made between them, superintended by Margaret's brother, a weaver in +the same village who found it necessary to keep a very sharp eye on +this girl-apprentice whom Margaret had picked up. Of late Louie had +been paying Margaret rent for the loom, together with a certain +percentage on the weekly earnings, practically for 'goodwill.' And +on this small sum the widow had managed to live and keep her home, +while Louie launched gloriously into new clothes, started a +savings-bank book, and snapped her fingers for good and all at +Hannah, who put up with her, however, in a sour silence because of +Mr. Gurney's cheques.</p> + +<p>'And Margaret can't do <i>anything</i> for herself now?' asked +David. He had followed the story with eagerness. For years the +remembrance had rankled in his mind how during his last months at +Kinder, when 'Lias was dying, and the old pair were more in want +than ever of the small services he had been accustomed to render +them, he had forgotten and neglected his friends because he had +been absorbed in the excitements of 'conversion,' so that when Tom +Mullins had told him in general terms that his sister Louie was +supporting both Margaret and herself, the news had soothed a +remorse.</p> + +<p>'I should just think not!' said Louie in answer to his question. +'She's gone most silly, and she hasn't got the right use of her +legs either.'</p> + +<p>'Poor old thing!' said David softly, falling into a dream. He was +thinking of Margaret in her active, happy days when she used to +bake scones for him, or mend his clothes, or rate him for +'worriting' 'Lias. Then wakening up he drew the book he was binding +towards him again. 'She must have been precious glad to have you to +do for her, Louie,' he said contentedly.</p> + +<p>'Do for her?' Louie opened her eyes. 'As if I could be worrited with +her! I had my work to do, thank you. There was a niece used to come +in and see to her. She used to get in my way dreadful sometimes. +She'd have fits of thinking she could work the loom again, and I'd +have to keep her away—regular <i>frighten</i> her.'</p> + +<p>David started.</p> + +<p>'Who'll work the loom now?' he asked; his look and tone altering to +match hers.</p> + +<p>'I'm sure I don't know,' said Louie, carelessly. 'Very like she'll +not get anyone. The work's been slack a long while.'</p> + +<p>David suddenly drew back from his bookbinding.</p> + +<p>'When did you let her know, Louie—about me?' he asked quickly.</p> + +<p>'Let her know? Who was to let her know? Your letter came eight +o'clock and our train started half-past ten. I'd just time to pitch +my things together and that was about all.'</p> + +<p>'And you never sent, and you haven't written?'</p> + +<p>'You leave me alone,' said the girl, turning instantly sulky under +his tone and look. 'It's nowt to you what I do.'</p> + +<p>'Why!' he said, his voice shaking, 'she'd be waiting and +waiting—and she's got nothing else to depend on.'</p> + +<p>'There's her brother,' said Louie angrily, 'and if he won't take +her, there's the workhouse. They'll take her there fast enough, and +she won't know anything about it.'</p> + +<p>'The <i>workhouse</i>!' cried David, springing up, incensed past +bearing by her callous way. 'Margaret that took you in out of the +snow!—you said it yourself. And you—you'd not lift a finger—not +you—you'd not even give her notice—"chuck her into the +workhouse—that's good enough for her!" It's <i>vile</i>,—that's +what it is!'</p> + +<p>He stood, choked by his own wrath, eyeing her fiercely—a young +thunder god of disdain and condemnation.</p> + +<p>Louie too got up—gathering up her work round her—and gave him +back his look with interest before she flung out of the room.</p> + +<p>'Keep a civil tongue in your head, sir, or I'll let you know,' she +cried. 'I'll not be called over the coals by you nor nobody. I'll do +what I <i>please</i>,—and if you don't like it you can do the +other thing—so there—now you know!'</p> + +<p>And with a nod of the utmost provocation and defiance she banged +the door behind her and went up to bed.</p> + +<p>David flung down the pen with which he had been lettering his books +on the table, and, drawing a chair up to the fire, he sat moodily +staring into the embers. So it was all to begin again—the long +wrangle and jar of their childhood. Why had he broken silence and +taken this burden once more upon his shoulders? He had a moment of +passionate regret. It seemed to him more than he could bear. No +gratitude, no kindness; and this fierce tongue!</p> + +<p>After a while he fetched pen and paper and began to write on his +knee, while his look kindled again. He wrote to Margaret, a letter +of boyish effusion and affection, his own conscience quickened to +passion by Louie's lack of conscience. He had never forgotten her, +he said, and he wished he could see her again. She must write, or +get some one to write for her—and tell him what she was going to +do now that Louie had left her. He had been angry with Louie for +coming away without sending word. But what he wanted to say was +this: if Margaret could get no one to work the loom, he, David, +would pay her brother four shillings a week, for six months +certain, towards her expenses if he would take her in and look +after her. She must ask somebody to write at once and say what was +to be done. If her brother consented to take her, David would send +a post-office order for the first month at once. He was doing well +in his business, and there would be no doubt about the payments.</p> + +<p>He made his proposal with a haste and impulsiveness very unlike the +cool judgment he had so far shown in his business. It never +occurred to him to negotiate with the brother who might be quite +well able to maintain his sister without help. Besides he +remembered him as a hard man of whom both Margaret and 'Lias—soft, +sensitive creatures—were both more or less afraid. No, there +should be no doubt about it—not a day's doubt, if he could help +it! He could help, and he would; and if they asked him more he +would give it. Nearly midnight! But if he ran out to the General +Post Office it would be in time.</p> + +<p>When he had posted it and was walking home, his anger was all gone. +But in its stead was the smart of a baffled instinct—the hunger +for sympathy, for love, for that common everyday life of the +affections which had never been his, while it came so easily to +other people.</p> + +<p>In his chafing distress he felt the curb of something unknown +before; or, rather, what had of late taken the pleasant guise of +kinship and natural affection assumed to-night another and a +sterner aspect, and in this strait of conduct, that sheer +'imperative' which we carry within us made itself for the first +time heard and realised.</p> + +<p>'I have done my duty and must abide by it. I <i>must</i> bear with +her and look after her.'</p> + +<p>Why?</p> + +<p>'Because my father laid it on me?'—</p> + +<p>And because there is a life within our life which urges and presses? +—because we are 'not our own'? But this is an answer which implies +a whole theology. And at this moment of his life David had not a +particle or shred of theology about him. Except, indeed, that, like +Voltaire, he was graciously inclined to think a First Cause +probable.</p> + +<p>Next day this storm blew over, as storms do. Louie came down early +and made the porridge for breakfast. When David appeared she +carried things off with a high hand, and behaved as if nothing had +happened; but anyone accustomed to watch her would have seen a +certain quick nervousness in her black, wild bird's eyes. As for +David, after a period of gruffness and silence, he passed by +degrees into his usual manner. Louie spent the day with Dora, and +he went off to Cheadle to conclude the purchase of that collection +of American books he had described to Louie. But first, on his way, +he walked proudly into Heywood's bank and opened an account there, +receiving the congratulations of an old and talkative cashier, who +already knew the lad and was interested in his prospects, with the +coolness of one who takes good fortune as his right.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon he was busy in the shop—not too busy, however, to +notice John. What ailed the lad? While he was inside, as soon as +the door did but creak in the wind he sprang to open it, but for +the most part he preferred to stand outside watching the stall and +the street. When Louie appeared about five o'clock—for her hours +with Dora were not yet regular—he forthwith became her slave. She +set him to draw up the fire while she got the tea, and then, +without taking any notice of David, she marched John upstairs to +help her hang her curtains, lay her carpet, and nail up the +coloured fashion plates and newspaper prints of royalties or +beauties with which she was adorning the bare walls of the attic.</p> + +<p>When all her additions had been made to David's original stock; +when the little deal dressing-table and glass had been draped in +the cheapest of muslins over the pinkest of calicoes; when the +flowery curtains had been tied back with blue ribbons; when the +china vases on the mantelpiece had been filled with nodding plumes +of dyed grasses, mostly of a rosy red; and a long glass in a +somewhat damaged condition, but still presenting enough surface to +enable Miss Louie to study herself therein from top to toe, had +been propped against the wall; there was and could be nothing in +the neighbourhood of Potter Street, so John reflected, as he +furtively looked about him, to vie with the splendours of Miss +Grieve's apartment. There was about it a sensuousness, a deliberate +quest of luxury and gaiety, which a raw son of poverty could feel +though he could not put it into words. No Manchester girl he had +ever seen would have cared to spend her money in just this way.</p> + +<p>'Now that's real nice, Mr. Dalby, and I'm just obliged to you,' +said Louie, with patronising emphasis, as she looked round upon his +labours. 'I do like to get a man to do things for you—he's got some +strength in him—not like a gell!'</p> + +<p>And she looked down at herself and at the long, thin-fingered hand +against her dress, with affected contempt. John looked at her too, +but turned his head away again quickly.</p> + +<p>'And yet you're pretty strong too, Miss,' he ventured.</p> + +<p>'Well, perhaps I am,' she admitted; 'and a good thing too, when you +come to think of the rough time I had over there'—and she jerked +her head behind her—'ever since Davy ran away from me.'</p> + +<p>'Ran away from you, Miss?'</p> + +<p>She nodded, pressing her lips together with the look of one who +keeps a secret from the highest motives. But she brought two +beautiful plaintive eyes to bear on John, and he at once felt sure +that David's conduct had been totally inexcusable.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly she broke into a laugh. She was sitting on the edge +of the bed, swinging her feet lightly backwards and forwards.</p> + +<p>'Look here!' she said, dropping her voice, and looking round at the +door. 'Do you know a lot about Davy's affairs?—you 're a great +friend of his, aren't you?'</p> + +<p>'I s'pose so,' said the lad, awkwardly.</p> + +<p>'Well, has he been making up to anybody that you know of?'</p> + +<p>John's invisible eyebrows stretched considerably. He was so +astonished that he did not readily find an answer.</p> + +<p>'Why, of course, I mean,' said Louie, impatiently, 'is he <i>in +love</i> with anybody?'</p> + +<p>'Not that I know of, Miss.'</p> + +<p>'Well, then, there's somebody in love with <i>him</i>,' said Louie, +maliciously; 'and some day, Mr. Dalby, if we get a chance, perhaps +I'll tell you all about it.'</p> + +<p>The charming confidential smile she threw him so bewildered the lad +that he hardly knew where he was.</p> + +<p>But an exasperated shout of 'John' from the stairs recalled him, +and he rushed downstairs to help David deal with a cargo of books +just arrived.</p> + +<p>That evening David ran up to the Parlour for half an hour, to have +a talk with Daddy and find out what Dora thought of Louie. He had +sent a message by Louie about Reuben's revelations, and it occurred +to him that since Daddy had not been to look him up since, that +incalculable person might be offended that he had not brought his +great news in person. Besides, he had a very strong curiosity to +know what had happened after all to Lucy Purcell, and whether +anything had been commonly observed of Purcell's demeanour under +the checkmate administered to him. For the past few days he had +been wholly absorbed in his own affairs, and during the previous +week he had seen nothing of either Daddy or Dora, except that at a +casual meeting in the street with Daddy that worthy had described +his attack on Purcell with a gusto worthy of his Irish extraction.</p> + +<p>He found the restaurant just shutting, and Daddy apparently on the +wing for the 'White Horse' parlour, to judge from the relief which +showed in Dora's worn look as she saw her father lay down his hat +and stick again and fall 'chaffing' with David.</p> + +<p>For, with regard to David's change of position, the landlord of the +Parlour was in a very testy frame of mind.</p> + +<p>'Six hundred pounds!' he growled, when the young fellow sitting +cross-legged by the fire had made an end of describing to them both +his journey to London. 'H'm, <i>your</i> fun's over: any fool can do +on six hundred pounds!'</p> + +<p>'Thank you, Daddy,' said the lad, with a sarcastic lip. 'As for you, +I wonder <i>you</i> have the face to talk! Who's coining money +here, I should like to know?'</p> + +<p>Dora looked up with a start. Her father met her look with a certain +hostility and an obstinate shake of his thin shoulders.</p> + +<p>'Davy, me boy, you're that consated by now, you'll not be for +taking advice. But I'll give it you, bedad, to take or to leave! +Never pitch your tent, sir, where you can't strike it when you want +to! But there's where your beastly money comes in. Nobody need look +to you now for any comprehension of the finer sentiments of man.'</p> + +<p>'What do you mean, Daddy?'</p> + +<p>'Never you mind,' said the old vagrant, staring sombrely at the +floor—the spleen in person. 'Only I want my <i>freedom</i>, I tell +you—and a bit of air, sometimes—and by gad I'll have 'em!'</p> + +<p>And throwing back his grey head with a jerk he fixed an angry eye +on Dora. Dora had grown paler, but she said nothing; her fingers +went steadily on with her work; from early morning now till late +night neither they nor she were ever at rest. After a minute's +silence Lomax walked to the door, flung a good-night behind him and +disappeared.</p> + +<p>Dora hastily drew her hand across her eyes, then threaded her +needle as though nothing had happened. But David was perplexed and +sorry. How white and thin she looked, to be sure! That old lunatic +must be worrying her somehow.</p> + +<p>He moved his chair nearer to Dora.</p> + +<p>'Is there anything wrong, Miss Dora?' he asked her, dropping his +voice.</p> + +<p>She looked up with a quick gratitude, his voice and expression +putting a new life into her.</p> + +<p>'Oh! I don't know,' she said, gently and sadly. 'Father's been very +restless these last few weeks. I can't keep him at home. And I'm +not always dull like this. I've done my best to cheer him up. And I +don't think there's much amiss with the Parlour—yet—only the +outgoings are so large every day. I'm always feeart—'</p> + +<p>She paused, and a visible tremor ran through her. David's quick eye +understood the signs of strain and fatigue, and he felt a brotherly +pity for her—a softer, more normal feeling than Louie had ever +called out in him.</p> + +<p>'I say,' he said heartily, 'if there's anything I can do, you'll let +me know, wont you?'</p> + +<p>She smiled at him, and then turned to her work again in a hurry, +afraid of her own eyes and lips, and what they might be saying.</p> + +<p>'Oh! I dare say I fret myself too much,' she said, with the tone of +one determined to be cheered. And, by way of protecting her own +quivering heart, she fell upon the subject of Louie. She showed the +brother some of Louie's first attempts—some of the stitches she +had been learning.</p> + +<p>'She's that quick!' she said, wondering. 'In a few days I'm going to +trust her with that,' and she pointed to a fine old piece of +Venetian embroidery, which had to be largely repaired before it +could be made up into an altar-cloth and presented to St. Damian's +by a rich and devoted member of the congregation.</p> + +<p>'Does she get in your way?' the brother inquired.</p> + +<p>'N-o,' she said in a low voice, paying particular attention to a +complicated stitch. 'She'll get used to me and the work soon. She'll +make a first-rate hand if she's patient a bit. They'll be glad to +take her on at the shop.'</p> + +<p>'But you'll not turn her out? You'll let her work here, alongside +of you?' said the young man eagerly. He had just met Louie, in the +dark, walking up Market Street with a seedy kind of gentleman, who +he had reason to know was a bad lot. John was off his head about +her, and no longer of much use to anybody, and in these few days +other men, as it seemed to him, had begun to hang about. The +difficulties of his guardianship were thickening upon him, and he +clung to Dora's help.</p> + +<p>'No; I'll not turn her out. She may work here if she wants to,' +said Dora, with the same slowness.</p> + +<p>And all the time she was saying to herself passionately that, if +Louie Grieve had not been his sister, she should <i>never</i> have +set foot in that room again! In the two days they had been together +Louie had outraged almost every feeling the other possessed. And +there was a burning dread in Dora's mind that even the secret of +her heart of hearts had been somehow discovered by the girl's +hawk-like sense. But she had promised to help him, and she would.</p> + +<p>'You must let me know what I owe you for teaching her and +introducing her,' said David firmly. 'Yes, you must, Miss Dora. It's +business, and you mustn't make any bones about it. A girl doesn't +learn a trade and get an opening found her for nothing.'</p> + +<p>'Oh no, nonsense!' she said quickly, but with decision equal to his +own. 'I won't take anything. She don't want much teaching; she's so +clever; she sees a thing almost before the words are out of your +mouth. Look here, Mr. Grieve, I want to tell you about Lucy.'</p> + +<p>She looked up at him, flushing. He, too, coloured.</p> + +<p>'Well,' he said; 'that's what I wanted to ask you.'</p> + +<p>She told him the whole story of Lucy's flight from her father, of +her illness and departure, of the probable stepmother.</p> + +<p>'Old brute!' said David between his teeth. 'I say, Miss Dora, can +nothing be done to make him treat her decently?'</p> + +<p>His countenance glowed with indignation and disgust. Dora shook her +head sadly.</p> + +<p>'I don't see what anyone can do; and the worst of it is she'll be +such a long while getting over it. I've had a letter from her this +morning, and she says the Hastings doctor declares she must stay +there a year in the warm and not come home at all, or she'll be +going off in a decline. I know Lucy gets nervous about herself, but +it do seem bad.'</p> + +<p>David sat silent, lost in a medley of feelings, most of them +unpleasant. Now that Lucy Purcell was at the other end of England, +both her service to him and his own curmudgeon behaviour to her +loomed doubly large.</p> + +<p>'I say, will you give me her address?' he said at last. 'I've got a +smart book I've had bound for her. I'd like to send it her.'</p> + +<p>Dora went to the table and wrote it for him. Then he got up to go.</p> + +<p>'Upon my word, you do look tired,' he broke out. 'Can't you go to +bed? It is hard lines.'</p> + +<p>Which last words applied to that whole situation of hers with her +father which he was beginning dimly to discern. In his boyish +admiration and compassion he took both her hands in his. Dora +withdrew them quickly.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I'll pull through!' she said, simply, and he went.</p> + +<p>When she had closed the door after him she stood looking at the +clock with her hands clasped in front of her.</p> + +<p>'How much longer will father be?' she said, sighing. 'Oh, I think I +told him all Lucy wanted me to say; I think I did.'</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-2" id="CHAPTER_X-2"></a>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<p>Three or four months passed away. During that period David had built +up a shed in his back yard and had established a printing-press +there, with a respectable, though not extensive, fount of +type—bought, all of it, secondhand, and a bargain. John and +he spent every available moment there, and during their first +experiments would often sit up half the night working off the +sheets of their earliest productions, in an excitement which took +no count of fatigue. They began with reprinting some scarce local +tracts, with which they did well. Then David diverged into a +Radical pamphlet or two on the subject of the coming Education +Bill, finding authors for them among the leading ministers of the +town; and these timely wares, being freely pushed on the stall, on +the whole paid their expenses, with a little profit to spare—the +labour being reckoned at nothing. And now David was beginning to +cherish the dream of a new history of Manchester, for which among +his own collections he already possessed a great deal of fresh +material. But that would take time and money. He must push his +business a bit further first.</p> + +<p>That business, however, was developing quite as rapidly as the two +pairs of arms could keep pace with it. Almost everything the young +fellow touched succeeded. He had instinct, knowledge, a growing +tact, and an indomitable energy, and these are the qualities which +make, which are in themselves, success. The purchase of the +collection at Cheadle, bearing on the early history of American +states and towns, not only turned out well in itself, but brought +him to the notice of a big man in London, who set the clever and +daring beginner on several large quests both in Lancashire and +Yorkshire by which both profited considerably. In another direction +he was extending his stock of foreign scientific and technical +books, especially such as bore upon the industries of Northern +England. Old Barbier, who took a warmer and warmer interest in his +pupil's progress, kept him constantly advised as to French books +through old friends of his own in Paris, who were glad to do the +exile a kindness.</p> + +<p>'But why not run over to Paris for yourself, form some connections, +and look about you?' suggested Barbier.</p> + +<p>Why not, indeed? The young man's blood, quick with curiosity and +adventure, under all his tradesman's exterior, leapt at the +thought. But prudence restrained him for the present.</p> + +<p>As for German books, he was struggling with the language, and +feeling his way besides through innumerable catalogues. How he +found time for all the miscellaneous acquisitions of these months +it would be difficult to say. But whether in his free times or in +trade-hours he was hardly ever without a book or a catalogue beside +him, save when he was working the printing press; and, although his +youth would every now and then break out against the confinement he +imposed upon it, and drive him either to long tramps over the moors +on days when the spring stirred in the air, or to a spell of +theatre-going, in which Louie greedily shared, yet, on the whole, +his force of purpose was amazing, and the success which it brought +with it could only be regarded as natural and inevitable. He was +beginning to be well known to the old-established men in his own +business, who could not but show at times some natural jealousy of +so quick a rise. The story of his relations to Purcell spread, and +the two were watched with malicious interest at many a book-sale, +when the nonchalant self-reliance and prosperous look of the +younger drove the elder man again and again into futile attempts to +injure and circumvent him. It was noticed that never till now had +Purcell lost his head with a rival.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, the lad had far fewer enemies than might have been +expected. His manner had always been radiantly self-confident; but +there was about him a conspicuous element of quick feeling, of warm +humanity, which grew rather than diminished with his success. He +was frank, too, and did not try to gloss over a mistake or a +failure. Perhaps in his lordly way he felt he could afford himself +a few now and then, he was so much cleverer than his neighbours.</p> + +<p>Upon no one did David's development produce more effect than upon +Mr. Ancrum. The lame, solitary minister, who only got through his +week's self-appointed tasks at a constant expense of bodily +torment, was dazzled and bewildered by the spectacle of so much +vitality spent with such ease and impunity.</p> + +<p>'How many years of Manchester must one give him?' said Ancrum to +himself one night, when he was making his way home from a reading +of the 'Electra' with David. 'That six hundred pounds has quickened +the pace amazingly! Ten years, perhaps. Then London, and anything +you like. Bookselling slips into publishing, and publishing takes a +man into another class, and within reach of a hundred new +possibilities. Some day I shall be bragging of having taught him! +Taught him! He'll be turning the tables on me precious soon. Caught +me out twice to-night, and got through the tough bit of the chorus +much better than I did. How does he do it?—and with that mountain +of other things on his shoulders! There's one speck in the fruit, +however, as far as I can see—Miss Louie!'</p> + +<p>From the first moment of his introduction to her, Ancrum had taken +particular notice of David's handsome sister, who, on her side, had +treated her old minister and teacher with a most thoroughgoing +indifference. He saw that now, after some three months of life +together, the brother and sister had developed separate existences, +which touched in two points only—a common liking for Dora Lomax, +and a common keenness for business.</p> + +<p>Here, in this matter of business, they were really at one. David +kept nothing from her, and consulted her a good deal. She had the +same shrewd head that he had, and as it was her money as well as +his that was in question she was determined to know and to +understand what he was after. Anybody who had come upon the pair on +the nights when they made up their accounts, their dark heads +touching under the lamp, might have gone away moralising on the +charms of fraternal affection.</p> + +<p>And all the while David had once more tacitly given up the attempt +either to love her or to control her. How indeed could he control +her? He was barely two years older, and she had a will of iron. She +made disreputable friends whom he loathed the sight of. But all he +could do was to keep them out of the house. She led John by this +time a dog's life. From the temptress she had become the tease and +tyrant, and the clumsy fellow, consumed with feverish passion, +slaved for her whenever she was near him with hardly the reward of +a kind look or a civil word in a fortnight. David set his teeth and +tried to recover possession of his friend. And as long as they two +were at the press or in the shop together alone, John was often his +old self, and would laugh out in the old way. But no sooner did +Louie appear than he followed her about like an animal, and David +could make no more of him. Whenever any dispute, too, arose between +the brother and sister, he took her part, whatever it might be, +with an acrimony which pushed David's temper hard.</p> + +<p>Yet, on the whole, so Ancrum thought, the brother showed a +wonderful patience. He was evidently haunted by a sense of +responsibility towards his sister, and, at the same time, both +tormented and humiliated by his incompetence to manage or influence +her. It was curious, too, to watch how by antagonism and by the +constant friction of their life together, certain qualities in her +developed certain others in him. Her callousness, for instance, did +but nurture a sensitive humanity in him. She treated the lodgers in +the first pair back with persistent indifference and even +brutality, seeing that Mrs. Mason was a young, helpless creature +approaching every day nearer to a confinement she regarded with +terror, and that a little common kindness from the only other woman +in the house could have softened her lot considerably. But David's +books were stacked about in awkward and inconvenient places waiting +for the Masons' departure, and Louie had no patience with +them—with the wife at any rate. It once or twice occurred to David +that if the husband, a good-looking fellow and a very hard-worked +shopman, had had more hours at home, Louie would have tried her +blandishments upon him.</p> + +<p>He on his side was goaded by Louie's behaviour into an unusual +complaisance and liberality towards his tenants. Louie once +contemptuously told him he would make a capital 'general help.' He +was Mrs. Mason's coal-carrier and errand-boy already.</p> + +<p>In the same way Louie beat and ill-treated a half-starved +collie—one of the short-haired black sort familiar to the shepherd +of the north, and to David himself in his farm days—which would +haunt the shop and kitchen. Whereupon David felt all his heart melt +towards the squalid, unhandsome creature. He fed and cherished it; +it slept on his bed by night and followed him by day, he all the +while protecting it from Louie with a strong hand. And the more +evil was the eye she cast upon the dog, who, according to her, +possessed all the canine vices, the more David loved it, and the +more Tim was fattened and caressed.</p> + +<p>In another direction, too, the same antagonism appeared. The +sister's license of speech and behaviour towards the men who became +her acquaintances provoked in the brother what often seemed to +Ancrum—who, of course, remembered Reuben, and had heard many tales +of old James Grieve, the lad's grandfather—a sort of Puritan +reaction, the reaction of his race and stock against 'lewdness.' +Louie's complete independence, however, and the distance she +preserved between his amusements and hers, left David no other +weapon than sarcasm, which he employed freely. His fine sensitive +mouth took during these weeks a curve half mocking, half bitter, +which changed the whole expression of the face.</p> + +<p>He saw, indeed, with great clearness after a month or so that +Louie's wildness was by no means the wildness of an ignorant +innocent, likely to slip unawares into perdition, and that, while +she had a passionate greed for amusement and pleasure, and a blank +absence of principle, she was still perfectly alive to the risks of +life, and meant somehow both to enjoy herself and to steer herself +through. But this gradual perception—that, in spite of her mode of +killing spare time, she was not immediately likely to take any +fatal false step, as he had imagined in his first dread—did but +increase his inward repulsion.</p> + +<p>A state of feeling which was the more remarkable because he +himself, in Ancrum's eyes, was at the moment in a temper of moral +relaxation and bewilderment! His absorption in George Sand, and +through her in all the other French Romantics whose books he could +either find for himself or borrow from Barbier, was carrying a +ferment of passion and imagination through all his blood. Most +social arrangements, including marriage, seemed to have become open +questions to him. Why, then, this tone towards Louie and her +friends? Was it that, apart from the influence of heredity, the +young fellow's moral perception at this time was not ethical at +all, but aesthetic—a matter of taste, of the presence or absence +of certain ideal and poetic elements in conduct?</p> + +<p>At any rate his friendship for old Barbier drew closer and closer, +and Ancrum, who had begun to feel a lively affection for him, could +see but little of him.</p> + +<p>As to Barbier, it was a significant chance which had thrown +him across David's path. In former days this lively Frenchman +had been a small Paris journalist, whom the <i>coup d'état</i> had +struck down with his betters, and who had escaped to England +with one suit of clothes and eight francs in his pocket. He +reminded himself on landing of a cousin of his mother's settled +as a clerk in Manchester, found his way northwards, and had +now, for some seventeen years, been maintaining himself in the +cotton capital, mainly by teaching, but partly by a number of +small arts—ornamental calligraphy, <i>menu</i>-writing, and the +like—too odd and various for description. He was a fanatic, a Red, +much possessed by political hatreds which gave savour to an +existence otherwise dull and peaceable enough. Religious beliefs +were very scarce with him, but he had a certain literary creed, the +creed of 1830, when he had been a scribbler in the train of Victor +Hugo, which he did his best to put into David.</p> + +<p>He was a formidable-looking person, six feet in height, and broad +in proportion, with bushy white eyebrows, and a mouth made hideous +by two projecting teeth. In speech he hated England and all her +ways, and was for ever yearning towards the misguided and yet +unequalled country which had cast him out. In heart he was +perfectly aware that England is free as not even Republican France +is free; and he was also sufficiently alive to the fact that he had +made himself a very tolerable niche in Manchester, and was +pleasantly regarded there—at least, in certain circles—as an +oracle of French opinion, a commodity which, in a great commercial +centre, may at any time have a cash value. He could, in truth, +have long ago revisited <i>la patrie</i> had he had a mind, for +governments are seldom vindictive in the case of people who can +clearly do them no harm. This, however, was not at all his own +honest view of the matter. In the mirror of the mind he saw himself +perpetually draped in the pathos of exile and the dignity of +persecution, and the phrases by which he was wont to impress this +inward vision on the brutal English sense had become, in the course +of years, an effective and touching habit with him.</p> + +<p>David had been Barbier's pupil in the first instance at one of the +classes of the Mechanics' Institute. Never in Barbier's memory had +any Manchester lad so applied himself to learn French before. And +when the boy's knowledge of the Encyclopaedists came out, and he +one day put the master right in class on some points connected with +Diderot's relations to Rousseau, the ex-journalist gaped with +astonishment, and then went home and read up his facts, half +enraged and half enraptured. David's zeal piqued him, made him a +better Frenchman and a better teacher than he had been for years. +He was a vain man, and David's capacities put him on his mettle.</p> + +<p>Very soon he and the lad had become intimate. He had described to +David the first night of <i>Hernani</i>, when he had been one of +the long-haired band of <i>rapins</i>, who came down in their +scores to the Theatre Francais to defend their chief, Hugo, against +the hisses of the Philistine. The two were making coffee in +Barbier's attic, at the top of a side street off the Oxford Road, +when these memories seized upon the old Romantic. He took up the +empty coffee-pot, and brandished it from side to side as though it +had been the sword of Hernani; the miserable Academy hugging its +Moliere and Racine fled before him; the world was once more +regenerate, and Hugo its high priest. Passages from the different +parts welled to his old lips; he gave the play over again—the +scene between the lover and the husband, where the husband lays +down the strange and sinister penalty to which the lover +submits—the exquisite love-scene in the fifth act—and the cry of +agonised passion with which Dona Sol defends her love against his +executioner. All these things he declaimed, stumping up and down, +till the terrified landlady rose out of her bed to remonstrate, and +got the door locked in her face for her pains, and till the +<i>bourgeois</i> baby in the next room woke up and roared, and so +put an abrupt end to the performance. Old Barbier sat down +swearing, poked the fire furiously, and then, taking out a huge red +handkerchief, wiped his brow with a trembling hand. His stiff white +hair, parted on either temple, bristled like a high <i>loupie</i> +over his round, black eyes, which glowed behind his spectacles. And +meanwhile the handsome boy sat opposite, glad to laugh by way of +reaction, but at bottom stirred by the same emotion, and ready to +share in the same adorations.</p> + +<p>Gradually David learnt his way about this bygone world of Barbier's +recollection. A vivid picture sprang up in him of these strange +leaders of a strange band, these cadaverous poets and artists of +Louis Philippe's early days, beings in love with Lord Byron and +suicide, having Art for God, and Hugo for prophet, talking of +were-wolves, vampires, cathedrals, sunrises, forests, passion and +despair, hatted like brigands, cloaked after Vandyke, curled like +Absalom, making new laws unto themselves in verse as in morals, and +leaving all petty talk of duty or common sense to the Academy and +the nursery.</p> + +<p>George Sand walking the Paris quays in male dress—George Sand at +Fontainebleau roaming the midnight forest with Alfred de Musset, or +wintering with her dying musician among the mountains of Palma; +Gerard de Nerval, wanderer, poet, and suicide; Alfred de Musset +flaming into verse at dead of night amid an answering and +spendthrift blaze of wax candles; Baudelaire's blasphemies and +eccentricities—these characters and incidents Barbier wove into +endless highly coloured tales, to which David listened with +perpetual relish.</p> + +<p>'<i>Mon Dieu</i>! <i>Mon Dieu</i>! What times! What memories!' the +old Frenchman would cry at last, fairly re-transported to the world +of his youth, and, springing up, he would run to the little +cupboard by his bed head, where he kept a score or so of little +paper volumes—volumes which the tradesman David soon discovered, +from a curious study of French catalogues, to have a fast-rising +money value—and out would come Alfred de Musset's 'Nuit de Mai,' +or an outrageous verse from Baudelaire, or an harmonious nothing +from Gautier. David gradually learnt to follow, to understand, to +range all that he heard in a mental setting of his own. The France +of his imagination indeed was a strange land! Everybody in it was +either girding at priests like Voltaire, or dying for love like +George Sand's Stenio.</p> + +<p>But whether the picture was true to life or no, it had a very +strongly marked effect on the person conceiving it. Just as the +speculative complexion of his first youth had been decided by the +chance which brought him into daily contact with the French +eighteenth century—for no self-taught solitary boy of quick and +covetous mind can read Voltaire continuously without bearing the +marks of him henceforward—so in the same way, when he passed, as +France had done before him, from the philosophers to the Romantics, +this constant preoccupation with the French literature of passion +in its romantic and idealist period left deep and lasting results.</p> + +<p>The strongest of these results lay in the realm of moral and social +sense. What struck the lad's raw mind with more and more force as +he gathered his French books about him was the profound gulf which +seemed to divide the average French conception of the relation +between the sexes from the average English one. In the French +novels he read every young man had his mistress; every married +woman her lover. Tragedy frequently arose out of these relations, +but that the relations must and did obtain, as a matter of course, +was assumed. For the delightful heroes and heroines of a whole +range of fiction, from 'Manon Lescaut' down to Murger's 'Vie de +Boheme,' marriage did not apparently exist, even as a matter of +argument. And as to the duties of the married woman, when she +passed on to the canvas, the code was equally simple. The husband +might kill his wife's lover—that was in the game; but the young +man's right to be was as good as his own. '<i>No human being can +control love, and no one is to blame either for feeling it or for +losing it. What alone degrades a woman is falsehood.</i>' So says +the husband in George Sand's 'Jacques' when he is just about to +fling himself down an Alpine precipice that his wife and Octave may +have their way undisturbed. And all the time, what poetry and +passion in the presentation of these things! Beside them the mere +remembrance of English ignorance, prudishness, and conventionality +would set the lad swelling, as he read, with a sense of superior +scorn, and of wild sympathy for a world in which love and not law, +truth and not legal fiction, were masters of human relations.</p> + +<p>Some little time after Reuben's visit to him he one day told +Barbier the fact of his French descent. Barbier declared that he +had always known it, had always realised something in David +distinct from the sluggish huckstering English temper. Why, David's +mother was from the south of France; his own family came from +Carcassonne. No doubt the rich Gascon blood ran in both their +veins. <i>Salut au compatriole!</i></p> + +<p>Thenceforward there was a greater solidarity between the two than +ever. Barbier fell into an incessant gossip of Paris—the Paris of +Louis Philippe—reviving memories and ways of speech which had been +long dead in him, and leaving on David's mind the impression of a +place where life was from morning till night amusement, +exhilaration, and seduction; where, under the bright smokeless sky, +and amid the stateliest streets and public buildings in Europe, men +were always witty and women always attractive.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the course of business during the spring months and the +rise of his trade in foreign books rapidly brought the scheme of a +visit to France, which had been at first a mere dream and fancy, +within the region of practical possibility, and even advantage, for +the young bookseller. Two things he was set on. If he went he was +determined to go under such conditions as would enable him to see +French life—especially French artistic and student life—from the +inside. And he saw with some clearness that he would have to take +his sister with him.</p> + +<p>Against the latter notion Barbier protested vehemently.</p> + +<p>'What do you want to tie yourself to a petticoat for? If you take +the girl you will have to look after her. Paris, my boy, let me +inform you, is not the best place in the world for <i>la jeune +personne;</i> and the Paris <i>rapin</i> may be an amusing scoundrel, +but don't trust him with young women if you can help it. Leave +Mademoiselle Louie at home, and let her mind the shop. Get +Mademoiselle Dora or some one to stay with her, or send her to +Mademoiselle Dora.'</p> + +<p>So said the Frenchman with sharp dictatorial emphasis. What a +preposterous suggestion!</p> + +<p>'I can't stop her coming,' said David, quietly—'if she wants to +come—and she'll be sure to want. Besides, I'll not leave her alone +at home, and she'll not let me send her anywhere—you may be sure +of that.'</p> + +<p>The Frenchman stared and stormed. David fell silent. Louie was what +she was, and it was no use discussing her. At last Barbier, being +after all tolerably well acquainted with the lad's relations to his +sister, came to a sudden end of his rhetoric, and began to think +out something practicable.</p> + +<p>That evening he wrote to a nephew of his living as an artist in the +Quartier Montmartre. Some months before Barbier's vanity had been +flattered by an adroit letter from this young gentleman, written, +if the truth were known, at a moment when a pecuniary situation, +pinched almost beyond endurance, had made it seem worth while to +get his uncle's address out of his widowed mother. Barbier, a +bachelor, and a man of some small savings, perfectly understood why +he had been approached, and had been none the less extraordinarily +glad to hear from the youth. He was a <i>rapin?</i> well and good; +all the great men had been <i>rapins</i> before him. Very likely he +had the <i>rapin's</i> characteristic vices and distractions. All +the world knew what the life meant for nine men out of ten. What +was the use of preaching? Youth was youth. Clearly the old +man—himself irreproachable—would have been disappointed not to +find his nephew a sad dog on personal acquaintance.</p> + +<p>'Tell me, Xavier,' his letter ran, 'how to put a young friend of +mine in the way of seeing something of Paris and Paris life, more +than your fool of a tourist generally sees. He is a bookseller, and +will, of course, mind his trade; but he is a young man of taste and +intelligence besides, and moreover half French. It would be a pity +that he should visit Paris as any <i>sacre</i> British Philistine +does. Advise me where to place him. He would like to see something +of your artist's life. But mind this, young man, he brings a sister +with him as handsome as the devil, and not much easier to manage: +so if you do advise—no tricks—tell me of something <i>convenable</i>.'</p> + +<p>A few days later Barbier appeared in Potter Street just after David +had put up the shutters, announcing that he had a proposal to make.</p> + +<p>David unlocked the shop-door and let him in. Barbier looked round +with some amazement on the small stuffy place, piled to bursting by +now with books of every kind, which only John's herculean efforts +could keep in passable order.</p> + +<p>'Why don't you house yourself better—<i>hein?</i>' said the +Frenchman. 'A business growing like this, and nothing but a den to +handle it in!'</p> + +<p>'I shall be all right when I get my other room,' said David +composedly. 'Couldn't turn out the lodger before. The woman was only +confined last week.'</p> + +<p>And as he spoke the wailing of an infant and a skurrying of feet +were heard upstairs.</p> + +<p>'So it seems,' said Barbier, adjusting his spectacles in +bewilderment. '<i>Jesus!</i> What an affair! What did you permit it +for? Why didn't you turn her out in time?'</p> + +<p>'I would have turned myself out first,' said David. He was +lounging, with his hands in his pockets, against the books; but +though his attitude was nonchalant, his tone had a vibrating +energy.</p> + +<p>'Barbier!'</p> + +<p>'Yes.'</p> + +<p>'What do women suffer for like that?'</p> + +<p>The young man's eyes glowed, and his lips twitched a little, as +though some poignant remembrance were at his heart.</p> + +<p>Barbier looked at him with some curiosity.</p> + +<p>'Ask <i>le bon Dieu</i> and Mother Eve, my friend. It lies between +them,' said the old scoffer, with a shrug.</p> + +<p>David looked away in silence. On his quick mind, greedy of all +human experience, the night of Mrs. Mason's confinement, with its +sounds of anguish penetrating through all the upper rooms of the +thin, ill-built house, had left an ineffaceable impression of awe +and terror. In the morning, when all was safely over, he came down +to the kitchen to find the husband—a man some two or three years +older than himself, and the smart foreman of an ironmongery shop in +Deansgate—crouching over a bit of fire. The man was too much +excited to apologise for his presence in the Grieves' room. David +shyly asked him a question about his wife.</p> + +<p>'Oh, it's all right, the doctor says. There's the nurse with her, +and your sister's got the baby. She'll do; but, oh, my God! it's +awful—<i>it's awful!</i> My poor Liz! Give me a corner here, will +you! I'm all upset like.'</p> + +<p>David had got some food out of the cupboard, made him eat it, and +chatted to him till the man was more himself again. But the crying +of the new-born child overhead, together with the shaken condition +of this clever, self-reliant young fellow, so near his own age, +seemed for the moment to introduce the lad to new and unknown +regions of human feeling.</p> + +<p>While these images were pursuing each other through David's mind, +Barbier was poking among his foreign books, which lay, backs +upwards, on the floor to one side of the counter.</p> + +<p>'Do you sell them—<i>hein?</i>' he said, looking up and pointing +to them with his stick.</p> + +<p>'Yes. Especially the scientific books. These are an order. +So is that batch. Napoleon III. 's "Caesar," isn't it? And +those over there are "on spec." Oh, I could do something if +I knew more! There's a man over at Oldham. One of the biggest +weaving-sheds—cotton velvets—that kind of thing. He's awfully +rich, and he's got a French library; a big one, I believe. He +came in here yesterday. I think I could make something out +of him; but he wants all sorts of rum things—last-century +memoirs, out-of-the-way ones—everything about Montaigne—first +editions—Lord knows what! I say, Barbier, I dare say he'd buy +your books. What'll you let me have them for?'</p> + +<p>'<i>Diantre!</i> Not for your heart's blood, my young man. It's +like your impudence to ask. You could sell more if you knew more, +you think? Well now listen to me.'</p> + +<p>The Frenchman sat down, adjusted his spectacles, and, taking a +letter from his pocket, read it with deliberation.</p> + +<p>It was from the nephew, Xavier Dubois, in answer to his uncle's +inquiries. Nothing, the writer declared, could have been more +opportune. He himself was just off to Belgium, where a friend had +procured him a piece of work on a new Government building. Why +should not his uncle's friends inhabit his rooms during his +absence? He must keep them on, and would find it very convenient, +that being so, that some one should pay the rent. There was his +studio, which was bare, no doubt, but quite habitable, and a little +<i>cabinet de toilette</i>, adjoining, and shut off, containing a +bed and all necessaries. Why should not the sister take the +bedroom, and let the brother camp somehow in the studio? He could +no doubt borrow a bed from some friend before they came, and with a +large screen, which was one of the 'studio properties,' a very +tolerable sleeping room could be improvised, and still leave a good +deal of the studio free. He understood that his uncle's friends +were not looking for luxury. But <i>le stricte necessaire</i> he +could provide.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Englishman and his sister would find themselves at +once in the artists' circle, and might see as much or as little as +they liked of artistic life. He (Dubois) could of course give them +introductions. There was a sculptor, for instance, on the ground +floor, a man of phenomenal genius, <i>joli garcon</i> besides, who +would certainly show himself <i>aimable</i> for anybody introduced +by Dubois; and on the floor above there was a landscape painter, +<i>ancien prix de Rome</i>, and his wife, who would also, no doubt, +make themselves agreeable, and to whom the brother and sister might +go for all necessary information—Dubois would see to that. Sixty +francs a month paid the <i>appartement;</i> a trifle for service if +you desired it—there was, however, no compulsion—to the +<i>concierge</i> would make you comfortable; and as for your food, +the Quartier Montmartre abounded in cheap restaurants, and you +might live as you pleased for one franc a day or twenty. He +suggested that on the whole no better opening was likely to be +found by two young persons of spirit, anxious to see Paris from the +inside.</p> + +<p>'Now then,' said Barbier, taking off his spectacles with an +authoritative click, as he shut up the letter, <i>'decide-toi.</i> +Go!—and look about you for a fortnight. Improve your French; get +to know some of the Paris bookmen; take some commissions out with +you—buy there to the best advantage, and come back twenty per +cent. better informed than when you set out.'</p> + +<p>He smote his hands upon his knees with energy. He had a love of +management and contrivance; and the payment of Eugene's rent for +him during his absence weighed with his frugal mind.</p> + +<p>David stood twisting his mouth in silence a moment, his head thrown +back against the books.</p> + +<p>'Well, I don't see why not,' he said at last, his eyes sparkling.</p> + +<p>'And take notice, my friend,' said Barbier, tapping the open +letter, 'the <i>ancien prix de Rome</i> has a wife. Where wives are +young women can go. Xavier can prepare the way, and, if you play +your cards well, you can get Mademoiselle Louie taken off your +hands while you go about.'</p> + +<p>David nodded. He was sitting astride on the counter, his face +shining with the excitement he was now too much of a man to show +with the old freedom.</p> + +<p>Suddenly there was a sound of wild voices from the inside room.</p> + +<p>'Miss Grieve! Miss Grieve! don't you take that child away. Bring it +back, I say; I'll go to your brother, I will!'</p> + +<p>'That's Mrs. Mason's nurse,' said David, springing off the +counter. 'What's up now?'</p> + +<p>He threw open the door into the kitchen, just as Louie swept into +the room from the other side. She had a white bundle in her arms, +and her face was flushed with a sly triumph. After her ran the +stout woman who was looking after Mrs. Mason, purple with +indignation.</p> + +<p>'Now look yo here, Mr. Grieve,' she cried at sight of David, 'I +can't stand it, and I won't. Am I in charge of Mrs. Mason or am I +not? Here's Miss Grieve, as soon as my back's turned, as soon as +I've laid that blessed baby in its cot as quiet as a lamb—and it's +been howling since three o'clock this morning, as yo know—in she +whips, claws it out of its cradle, and is off wi' it, Lord knows +where. Thank the Lord, Mrs. Mason's asleep! If she weren't, she'd +have a fit. She's feart to death o' Miss Grieve. We noather on us +know what to make on her. She's like a wild thing soomtimes—not a +human creetur at aw—Gie me that chilt, I tell tha!'</p> + +<p>Louie vouchsafed no answer. She sat down composedly before the +fire, and, cradling the still sleeping child on her knee, she bent +over it examining its waxen hands and tiny feet with an eager +curiosity. The nurse, who stood over her trembling with anger, and +only deterred from snatching the child away by the fear of wakening +it, might have been talking to the wall.</p> + +<p>'Now, look here, Louie, what d' you do that for?' said David, +remonstrating; 'why can't you leave the child alone? You'll be +putting Mrs. Mason in a taking, and that'll do her harm.'</p> + +<p>'Nowt o' t' sort,' said Louie composedly,' it 's that woman +there'll wake her with screeching. She's asleep, and the baby's +asleep, and I'm taking care of it. Why can't Mrs. Bury go and look +after Mrs. Mason? She hasn't swept her room this two days, and it's +a sight to see.'</p> + +<p>Pricked in a tender point, Mrs. Bury broke out again into a stream +of protest and invective, only modified by her fear of waking her +patient upstairs, and interrupted by appeals to David. But whenever +she came near to take the baby Louie put her hands over it, and her +wide black eyes shot out intimidating flames before which the +aggressor invariably fell back.</p> + +<p>Attracted by the fight, Barbier had come up to look, and now stood +by the shop-door, riveted by Louie's strange beauty. She wore the +same black and scarlet dress in which she had made her first +appearance in Manchester. She now never wore it out of doors, her +quick eye having at once convinced her that it was not in the +fashion. But the instinct which had originally led her to contrive +it was abundantly justified whenever she still condescended to put +it on, so startling a relief it lent to the curves of her slim +figure, developed during the last two years of growth to all +womanly roundness and softness, and to the dazzling colour of her +dark head and thin face. As she sat by the fire, the white bundle +on her knee, one pointed foot swinging in front of her, now hanging +over the baby, and now turning her bright dangerous look and +compressed lips on Mrs. Bury, she made a peculiar witch-like +impression on Barbier which thrilled his old nerves agreeably. It +was clear, he thought, that the girl wanted a husband and a family +of her own. Otherwise why should she run off with other people's +children? But he would be a bold man who ventured on her!</p> + +<p>David, at last seeing that Louie was in the mood to tear the babe +asunder rather than give it up, with difficulty induced Mrs. Bury +to leave her in possession for half an hour, promising that, as +soon as the mother woke, the child should be given back.</p> + +<p>'If I've had enough of it,' Louie put in, as a saving clause, +luckily just too late to be heard by the nurse, who had sulkily +closed the door behind her, declaring that 'sich an owdacious chit +she never saw in her born days, and niver heerd on one oather.'</p> + +<p>David and Barbier went back into the shop to talk, leaving Louie to +her nursing. As soon as she was alone she laid back the flannel +which lay round the child's head, and examined every inch of its +downy poll and puckered face, her warm breath making the tiny lips +twitch in sleep as it travelled across them. Then she lifted the +little nightgown and looked at the pink feet nestling in their +flannel wrapping. A glow sprang into her cheek; her great eyes +devoured the sleeping creature. Its weakness and helplessness, its +plasticity to anything she might choose to do with it, seemed to +intoxicate her. She looked round her furtively, then bent and laid +a hot covetous kiss on the small clenched hand. The child moved; +had it been a little older it would have wakened; but Louie, +hastily covering it up, began to rock it and sing to it.</p> + +<p>The door into the shop was ajar. As David and Barbier were hanging +together over a map of Paris which David had hunted out of his +stores, Barbier suddenly threw up his head with a queer look.</p> + +<p>'What's that she's singing?' he said quickly.</p> + +<p>He got up hastily, overturning his stool as he did so, and went to +the door to listen.</p> + +<p>'I haven't heard that,' he said, with some agitation, 'since my +father's sister used to sing it me when I was a small lad, up at +Augoumat in the mountains near Puy!'</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sur le pont d'Avignon</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tout le monde y danse en rond;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Les beaux messieurs font comme ça,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Les beaux messieurs font comme ça.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The words were but just distinguishable as Louie sang. They were +clipped and mutilated as by one who no longer understood what they +meant. But the intonation was extraordinarily French, French of the +South, and Barbier could hardly stand still under it.</p> + +<p>'Where did you learn that?' he called to her from the door.</p> + +<p>The girl stopped and looked at him with her bright bird-like +glance. But she made no reply.</p> + +<p>'Did your mother teach it you?' he asked, coming in.</p> + +<p>'I suppose so,' she said indifferently.</p> + +<p>'Can you talk any French—do you remember it?'</p> + +<p>'No.'</p> + +<p>'But you'd soon learn. You haven't got the English mouth, that's +plain. Do you know your brother thinks of taking you to Paris?'</p> + +<p>She started.</p> + +<p>'He don't,' she said laconically.</p> + +<p>'Oh, don't he. Just ask him then?'</p> + +<p>Ten minutes later Louie had been put in possession of the +situation. As David had fully expected, she took no notice whatever +of his suggestion that after all she might not care to come. They +might be rough quarters, he said, and queer people about; and it +would cost a terrible deal more for two than one. Should he not ask +Dora Lomax to take her in for a fortnight? John, of course, would +look after the shop. He spoke under the pressure of a sudden qualm, +knowing it would be no use; but his voice had almost a note of +entreaty in it.</p> + +<p>'When do you want to be starting?' she asked him sharply. 'I'll not +go to Dora's—so you needn't talk o' that. You can take the money +out of what you'll be owing me next month.'</p> + +<p>Her nostrils dilated as the quick breath passed through them. +Barbier was fascinated by the extraordinary animation of the face, +and could not take his eyes off her.</p> + +<p>'Not for a fortnight,' said David reluctantly, answering her +question. 'Barbier's letter says about the tenth of May. There's two +country sales I must go to, and some other things to settle.'</p> + +<p>She nodded.</p> + +<p>'Well, then, I can get some things ready,' she said half to +herself, staring across the baby into the fire.</p> + +<p>When David and Barbier were gone together 'up street,' still +talking over their plans, Louie leapt to her feet and laid the baby +down—carelessly, as though she no longer cared anything at all +about it—in the old-fashioned arm-chair wherein David spent so +many midnight vigils. Then locking her hands behind her, she paced +up and down the narrow room with the springing gait, the impetuous +feverish grace, of some prisoned animal. Paris! Her education was +small, and her ignorance enormous. But in the columns of a 'lady's +paper' she had often bought from the station bookstall at Clough +End she had devoured nothing more eagerly than the Paris letter, +with its luscious descriptions of 'Paris fashions,' whereby even +Lancashire women, even Clough End mill-hands in their Sunday best, +were darkly governed from afar. All sorts of bygone dreams recurred +to her—rich and subtle combinations of silks, satins, laces, furs, +imaginary glories clothing an imaginary Louie Grieve. The +remembrance of them filled her with a greed past description, and +she forthwith conceived Paris as a place all shops, each of them +superior to the best in St. Ann's Square—where one might gloat +before the windows all day.</p> + +<p>She made a spring to the door, and ran upstairs to her own room. +There she began to pull out her dresses and scatter them about the +floor, looking at them with a critical discontented eye.</p> + +<p>Time passed. She was standing absorbed before an old gown, planning +out its renovation, when a howl arose from downstairs. She fled +like a roe deer, and pounced upon the baby just in time to +checkmate Mrs. Bury, who was at her heels.</p> + +<p>Quite regardless of the nurse's exasperation with her, first for +leaving the child alone, half uncovered, in a chilly room, and now +for again withholding it, Louie put the little creature against her +neck, rocking and crooning to it. The sudden warm contact stilled +the baby; it rubbed its head into the soft hollow thus presented to +it, and its hungry lips sought eagerly for their natural food. The +touch of them sent a delicious thrill through Louie; she turned her +head round and kissed the tiny, helpless cheek with a curious +violence; then, tired of Mrs. Bury, and anxious to get back to her +plans, she almost threw the child to her.</p> + +<p>'There—take it! I'll soon get it again when I want to.'</p> + +<p>And she was as good as her word. The period of convalescence was to +poor Mrs. Mason—a sickly, plaintive creature at the best of +times—one long struggle and misery. Louie represented to her a +sort of bird of prey, who was for ever descending on her child and +carrying it off to unknown lairs. For neither mother nor nurse had +Louie the smallest consideration; she despised and tyrannised over +them both. But her hungry fondness for the baby grew with +gratification, and there was no mastering her in the matter. Warm +weather came, and when she reached home after her work, she managed +by one ruse or another to get hold of the child, and on one +occasion she disappeared with it into the street for hours. David +was amazed by the whim, but neither he nor anyone else could +control it. At last, Mrs. Mason was more or less hysterical all day +long, and hardly sane when Louie was within reach. As for the +husband, who managed to be more at home during the days of his +wife's weakness than he had yet been since David's tenancy began, +he complained to David and spoke his mind to Louie once or twice, +and then, suddenly, he ceased to pay any attention to his wife's +wails. With preternatural quickness the wife guessed the reason. A +fresh terror seized her—terror of the girl's hateful beauty. She +dragged herself from her bed, found a room, while Louie was at her +work, and carried off baby and husband, leaving no address. Luckily +for her, the impression of Louie's black eyes proved to have been a +passing intoxication, and the poor mother breathed and lived again.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Louie's excitement and restlessness over the Paris plan +made her more than usually trying to Dora. During this fortnight +she could never be counted on for work, not even when it was a +question of finishing an important commission. She was too full of +her various preparations. Barbier offered her for instance, a daily +French lesson. She grasped in an instant the facilities which even +the merest smattering of French would give her in Paris; every +night she sat up over her phrase book, and every afternoon she cut +her work short to go to Barbier. Her whole life seemed to be one +flame of passionate expectation, though what exactly she expected +it would have been hard to say.</p> + +<p>Poor Dora! She had suffered many things in much patience all these +weeks. Louie's clear, hard mind, her sensuous temperament, her +apparent lack of all maidenly reserve, all girlish softness, made +her incomprehensible to one for whom life was an iridescent web of +ideal aims and obligations. The child of grace was dragged out of +her own austere or delicate thoughts, and made to touch, taste, and +handle what the 'world,' as the Christian understands it, might be +like. Like every other daughter of the people, Dora was familiar +enough with sin and weakness—Daddy alone had made her amply +acquainted with both at one portion or another of his career. But +just this particular temper of Louie's, with its apparent lack both +of passion and of moral sense, was totally new to her, and produced +at times a stifling impression upon her, without her being able to +explain to herself with any clearness what was the matter.</p> + +<p>Yet, in truth, it often seemed as if the lawless creature had been +in some sort touched by Dora, as if daily contact with a being so +gentle and so magnanimous had won even upon her. That confidence, +for instance, which Louie had promised John, at Dora's expense, had +never been made. When it came to the point, some touch of remorse, +of shame, had sealed the girl's mocking lips.</p> + +<p>One little fact in particular had amazed Dora. Louie insisted, for +a caprice, on going with her one night, in Easter week, to St. +Damian's, and thenceforward went often. What attracted her, Dora +puzzled herself to discover. When, however, Louie had been a +diligent spectator, even at early services, for some weeks, Dora +timidly urged that she might be confirmed, and that Father Russell +would take her into his class. Louie laughed immoderately at the +idea, but continued to go to St. Damian's all the same. Dora could +not bear to be near her in church, but however far away she might +place herself, she was more conscious than she liked to be of +Louie's conspicuous figure and hat thrown out against a particular +pillar which the girl affected. The sharp uplifted profile with its +disdainful expression drew her eyes against their will. She was +also constantly aware of the impression Louie made upon the crowd, +of the way in which she was stared at and remarked upon. Whenever +she passed in or out of the church, people turned, and the girl, +expecting it, and totally unabashed, flashed her proud look from +side to side.</p> + +<p>But once in her place, she was not inattentive. The dark chancel +with its flowers and incense, the rich dresses and slow movements +of the priests, the excitement of the processional hymns—these +things caught her and held her. Her look was fixed and eager all +the time. As to the clergy, Dora spoke to Father's Russell's +sister, and some efforts were made to get hold of the new-comer. +But none of them were at all successful. The girl slipped through +everybody's hands. Only in the case of one of the curates, a man +with a powerful, ugly head, and a penetrating personality, did she +show any wavering. Dora fancied that she put herself once or twice +in his way, that something about him attracted her, and that he +might have influenced her. But as soon as the Paris project rose on +the horizon, Louie thought of nothing else. Father Impey and St. +Damian's, like everything else, were forgotten. She never went near +the church from the evening David told her his news to the day they +left Manchester.</p> + +<p>David ran in to say good-bye to Daddy and Dora on the night before +they were to start. Since the Paris journey had been in the air, +Daddy's friendliness for the young fellow had revived. He was not, +after all, content to sit at home upon his six hundred pounds 'like +a hatching hen,' and so far Daddy, whose interest in him had been +for the time largely dashed by his sudden accession to fortune, was +appeased.</p> + +<p>When David appeared Lomax was standing on the rug, with a book +under his arm.</p> + +<p>'Well, good-bye to you, young man, good-bye to you. And here's a +book to take with you that you may read in the train. It will stir +you up a bit, give you an idea or two. Don't you come back too +soon.'</p> + +<p>'Father,' remonstrated Dora, who was standing by, 'who's to look +after his business?'</p> + +<p>'Be quiet, Dora! That book'll show him what can be made even of a +beastly bookseller.'</p> + +<p>David took it from him, looked at the title, and laughed. He knew +it well. It was the 'Life and Errors of John Dunton, Citizen of +London,' the eccentric record of a seventeenth-century dealer in +books, who, like Daddy, had been a character and a vagrant.</p> + +<p>'Och! Don't I know it by heart?' said Daddy, with enthusiasm. 'Many +a time it's sent me off tramping, when my poor Isabella thought +she'd got me tied safe by the heels in the chimney corner. +<i>Though</i> love is strong as death, and every good man loves his +wife as himself, <i>yet</i>—many's the score of times I've said it +off pat to Isabella—<i>yet</i> I cannot think of being confined in +a narrower study than the whole world. "There's a man for you! He +gets rid of one wife and saddles himself with another—sorrow a bit +will he stop at home for either of them!" Finding I am for +travelling, Valeria, to show the height of her love, is as willing +I should see Europe as Eliza was I should see America. 'Och! give +me the book, you divil,' cried Daddy, growing more and more +Hibernian as his passion rose, 'and, bedad, but I'll drive it into +you.'</p> + +<p>And, reaching over, Daddy seized it, and turned over the pages with +a trembling hand. Dora flushed, and the tears rose into her eyes. +She realised perfectly that this performance was levelled at her at +least as much as at David. Daddy's mad irritability had grown of +late with every week.</p> + +<p>'Listen to this, Davy!' cried Daddy, putting up his hand for +silence.' "When I have crossed the Hellespont, where poor Leander +was drowned, Greece, China, and the Holy Land are the other three +countries I'm bound to. And perhaps when my hand is in—"'</p> + +<p>'<i>My hand is in!</i>' repeated Daddy, in an ecstasy. 'What a +jewel of a man!'</p> + +<p>'I may step thence to the Indies, for I am a true lover of travels, +and, when I am once mounted, care not whether I meet the sun at his +rising or going down, provided only I may but ramble.... <i>He</i> +is truly a scholar who is versed in the volume of the Universe, who +doth not so much read of Nature as study Nature herself.'</p> + +<p>'Well said—well said indeed!' cried Daddy, flinging the book down +with a wild gesture which startled them both. 'Was that the man, +Adrian Lomax, to spend the only hours of the only life he was ever +likely to see—his first thought in the morning, and his last +thought at night—in tickling the stomachs of Manchester clerks?'</p> + +<p>His peaked chin and straggling locks fell forward on his breast. He +stared sombrely at the young people before him, in an attitude +which, as usual, was the attitude of an actor.</p> + +<p>David's natural instinct was to jeer. But a glance at Dora +perplexed him. There was some tragedy he did not understand under +this poor comedy.</p> + +<p>'Don't speak back,' said Dora, hurriedly, under her breath, as she +passed him to get her frame. 'It only makes him worse.'</p> + +<p>After a few minutes' broken chat, which Daddy's mood made it +difficult to keep up, David took his departure. Dora followed him +downstairs.</p> + +<p>'You're going to be away a fortnight,' she said, timidly.</p> + +<p>As she spoke, she moved her head backwards and forwards against the +wall, as though it ached, and she could not find a restful spot.</p> + +<p>'Oh, we shall be back by then, never fear!' said David, cheerfully. +He was growing more and more sorry for her.</p> + +<p>'I should like to see foreign parts,' she said wistfully. 'Is there +a beautiful church, a cathedral, in Paris? Oh, there are a great +many in France, I know! I've heard the people at St. Damian's speak +of them. I would like to see the services. But they can't be nicer +than ours.'</p> + +<p>David smiled.</p> + +<p>'I'm afraid I can't tell you much about them, Miss Dora; they +aren't in my line. Good-bye, and keep your heart up.'</p> + +<p>He was going, but he turned back to say quickly—</p> + +<p>'Why don't you let him go off for a bit of a tramp? It might quiet +him.'</p> + +<p>'I would; I would,' she said eagerly; 'but I don't know what would +come of it. We're dreadfully behindhand this month, and if he were +to go away, people would be down on us; they'd think he wanted to +get out of paying.'</p> + +<p>He stayed talking a bit, trying to advise her, and, in the first +place, trying to find out how wrong things were. But she had not +yet come to the point of disclosing her father's secrets. She +parried his questions, showing him all the while, by look and +voice, that she was grateful to him for asking—for caring.</p> + +<p>He went at last, and she locked the door behind him. But when that +was done, she stood still in the dark, wringing her hands in a +silent passion of longing—longing to be with him, outside, in the +night, to hear his voice, to see his handsome looks again. Oh! the +fortnight would be long. So long as he was there, within a stone's +throw, though he did not love her, and she was sad and anxious, yet +Manchester held her treasure, and Manchester streets had glamour, +had charm.</p> + +<p>He walked to Piccadilly, and took a 'bus to Mortimer Street. He +must say good-bye also to Mr. Ancrum, who had been low and ill of +late.</p> + +<p>'So you are off, David?' said Ancrum, rousing himself from what +seemed a melancholy brooding over books that he was in truth not +reading. As David shook hands with him, the small fusty room, the +pale face and crippled form awoke in the lad a sense of +indescribable dreariness. In a flash of recoil and desire his +thought sprang to the journey of the next day—to the May seas—the +foreign land.</p> + +<p>'Well, good luck to you!' said the minister, altering his position +so as to look at his visitor full, and doing it with a slowness +which showed that all movement was an effort.' Look after your +sister, Davy.'</p> + +<p>David had sat down at Ancrum's invitation. He said nothing in +answer to this last remark, and Ancrum could not decipher him in +the darkness visible of the ill-trimmed lamp.</p> + +<p>'She's been on your mind, Davy, hasn't she?' he said, gently, +laying his blanched hand on the young man's knee.</p> + +<p>'Well, perhaps she has,' David admitted, with an odd note in his +voice. 'She's not an easy one to manage.'</p> + +<p>'No. But you've <i>got</i> to manage her, Davy. There's only you +and she together. It's your task. It's set you. And you're young, +indeed, and raw, to have that beautiful self-willed creature on +your hands.'</p> + +<p>'Beautiful? Do you think she's that?' David tried to laugh it off.</p> + +<p>The minister nodded.</p> + +<p>'You'll find it out in Paris even more than you have here. Paris is +a bad place, they say. So's London, for the matter of that. Davy, +before you go, I've got one thing to say to you.'</p> + +<p>'Say away, sir.'</p> + +<p>'You know a great deal, Davy. My wits are nothing to yours. You'll +shoot ahead of all your old friends, my boy, some day. But there's +one thing you know nothing about—absolutely nothing—and you prate +as if you did. Perhaps you must turn Christian before you do. I +don't know. At least, so long as you're not a Christian you won't +know what <i>we</i> mean by it—what the Bible means by it. It's +one little word, Davy—<i>sin</i>.'</p> + +<p>The minister spoke with a deep intensity, as though his whole being +were breathed into what he said. David sat silent and embarrassed, +opposition rising in him to what he thought ministerial assumption.</p> + +<p>'Well, I don't know what you mean,' he said, after a pause. 'One +needn't be very old to find out that a good many people and things +in the world are pretty bad. Only we Secularists explain it +differently from you. We put a good deal of it down to education, +or health, or heredity.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I know—I know!' said the minister hastily, as though +shrinking from the conversation he had himself evoked. 'I'm not fit +to talk about it, Davy. I'm ill, I think! But there were those two +things I wanted to say to you—your sister—and—'</p> + +<p>His voice dropped. He shaded his eyes and looked away from David +into the smouldering coals.</p> + +<p>'No—no,' he resumed almost in a whisper; 'it's the +<i>will</i>—it's the <i>will</i>. It's not anything he says, and +Christ—<i>Christ's</i> the only help.'</p> + +<p>Again there was a silence. David studied his old teacher +attentively, as far as the half-light availed him. The young man +was simply angry with a religion which could torment a soul and +body like this. Ancrum had been 'down' in this way for a long time +now. Was another of his black fits approaching? If so, religion was +largely responsible for them!</p> + +<p>When at last David sighted his own door, he perceived a figure +lounging on the steps.</p> + +<p>'I say,' he said to himself with a groan, 'it's John!'</p> + +<p>'What on earth do you want, John, at this time of night?' he +demanded. But he knew perfectly.</p> + +<p>'Look here!' said the other thickly, 'it's all straight. You're +coming back in a fortnight, and you'll bring her back too!'</p> + +<p>David laughed impatiently.</p> + +<p>'Do you think I shall lose her in Paris or drop her in the Channel?'</p> + +<p>'I don't know,' said Dalby, with a curiously heavy and indistinct +utterance. 'She's very bad to me. She won't ever marry me; I know +that. But when I think I might never see her again I'm fit to go +and hang myself.'</p> + +<p>David began to kick the pebbles in the road.</p> + +<p>'You know what I think about it all,' he said at last, gloomily. +'I've told you before now. She couldn't care for you if she tried. +It isn't a ha'p'orth of good. I don't believe she'll ever care for +anybody. Anyway, she'll marry nobody who can't give her money and +fine clothes. There! You may put that in your pipe and smoke it, +for it's as true as you stand there.'</p> + +<p>John turned round restlessly, laid his hands against the wall, and +his head upon them.</p> + +<p>'Well, it don't matter,' he said slowly, after a pause. 'I'll be +here early. Good night!'</p> + +<p>David stood and looked after him in mingled disgust and pity.</p> + +<p>'I must pack him off,' he said, 'I must.'</p> + +<p>Then he threw back his young shoulders and drew in the warm spring +air with a long breath. Away with care and trouble! Things would +come right—must come right. This weather was summer, and in +forty-eight hours they would be in Paris!</p> + +<h2><a name="BOOK_III_STORM_AND_STRESS" id="BOOK_III_STORM_AND_STRESS"></a>BOOK III<br /><br /> +STORM AND STRESS</h2> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-3" id="CHAPTER_I-3"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<p>The brother and sister left Manchester about midday, and spent the +night in London at a little City hotel much frequented by +Nonconformist ministers, which Ancrum had recommended.</p> + +<p>Then next day! How little those to whom all the widest +opportunities of life come for the asking, can imagine such a zest, +such a freshness of pleasure! David had hesitated long before the +expense of the day service <i>via</i> Calais; they could have gone +by night third class for half the money; or they could have taken +returns by one of the cheaper and longer routes. But the eagerness +to make the most of every hour of time and daylight prevailed; they +were to go by Calais and come back by Dieppe, seeing thereby as +much as possible on the two journeys in addition to the fortnight +in Paris. The mere novelty of going anything but third class was +full of savour; Louie's self-conscious dignity as she settled +herself into her corner on leaving Charing Cross caught David's +eye; he saw himself reflected and laughed.</p> + +<p>It was a glorious day, the firstling of the summer. In the blue +overhead the great clouds rose intensely thunderously white, and +journeyed seaward under a light westerly wind. The railway banks, +the copses were all primroses; every patch of water had in it the +white and azure of the sky; the lambs were lying in the still +scanty shadow of the elms; every garden showed its tulips and +wallflowers, and the air, the sunlight, the vividness of each hue +and line bore with them an intoxicating joy, especially for eyes +still adjusted to the tones and lights of Manchester in winter.</p> + +<p>The breeze carried them merrily over a dancing sea. And once on the +French side they spent their first hour in crossing from one side +of their carriage to the other, pointing and calling incessantly. +For the first time since certain rare moments in their childhood +they were happy together and at one. Mother Earth unrolled for them +a corner of her magic show, and they took it like children at the +play, now shouting, now spell-bound.</p> + +<p>David had George Sand's 'Mauprat' on his knee, but he read nothing +the whole day. Never had he used his eyes so intently, so +passionately. Nothing escaped them, neither the detail of that +strange and beautiful fen from which Amiens rises—a country of +peat and peat-cutters where the green plain is diapered with +innumerable tiny lakes edged with black heaps of turf and daintily +set with scattered trees—nor the delicate charm of the forest +lands about Chautilly. So much thinner and gracefuller these woods +were than English woods! French art and skill were here already in +the wild country. Each tree stood out as though it had been +personally thought for; every plantation was in regular lines; each +woody walk drove straight from point to point, following out a plan +orderly and intricate as a spider's web.</p> + +<p>By this time Louie's fervour of curiosity and attention had very +much abated; she grew tired and cross, and presently fell asleep. +But, with every mile less between them and Paris, David's pulse +beat faster, and his mind became more absorbed in the flying scene. +He hung beside the window, thrilling with enchantment and delight, +drinking in the soft air, the beauty of the evening clouds, the +wonderful greens and silvers and fiery browns of the poplars. His +mind was full of images—the deep lily-sprinkled lake wherein +Stenio, Lelia's poet lover, plunged and died; the grandiose +landscape of Victor Hugo; Rene sitting on the cliff-side, and +looking farewell to the white home of his childhood;—of lines from +'Childe Harold' and from Shelley. His mind was in a ferment of +youth and poetry, and the France he saw was not the workaday France +of peasant and high road and factory, but the creation of poetic +intelligence, of ignorance and fancy.</p> + +<p>Paris came in a flash. He had realised to the full the squalid and +ever-widening zone of London, had frittered away his expectations +almost, in the passing it; but here the great city had hardly +announced itself before they were in the midst of it, shot out into +the noise, and glare, and crowd of the Nord station.</p> + +<p>They had no luggage to wait for, and David, trembling with +excitement so that he could hardly give the necessary orders, +shouldered the bags, got a cab and gave the address. Outside it was +still twilight, but the lamps were lit and the Boulevard into which +they presently turned seemed to brother and sister a blaze of +light. The young green of the trees glittered under the gas like +the trees of a pantomime; the kiosks threw their lights out upon +the moving crowd; shops and cafes were all shining and alive; and +on either hand rose the long line of stately houses, unbroken by +any London or Manchester squalors and inequalities, towering as it +seemed into the skies, and making for the great spectacle of life +beneath them a setting more gay, splendid, and complete than any +Englishman in his own borders can ever see.</p> + +<p>Louie had turned white with pleasure and excitement. All her dreams +of gaiety and magnificence, of which the elements had been gathered +from the illustrated papers and the Manchester theatres, were more +than realised by these Paris gas-lights, these vast houses, these +laughing and strolling crowds.</p> + +<p>'Look at those people having their coffee out of doors,' she cried +to David, 'and that white and gold place behind. Goodness! what they +must spend in gas! And just look at those two girls—look, +quick—there, with the young man in the black moustache—they +<i>are</i> loud, but aren't their dresses just sweet?'</p> + +<p>She craned her neck out of window, exclaiming—now at this, now at +that—till suddenly they passed out of the Boulevard into the +comparative darkness of side ways. Here the height of the houses +produced a somewhat different impression; Louie looked out none the +less keenly, but her chatter ceased.</p> + +<p>At last the cab drew up with a clatter at the side of a +particularly dark and narrow street, ascending somewhat sharply to +the north-west from the point where they stopped.</p> + +<p>'Now for the <i>concierge</i>,' said David, looking round him, +after he had paid the man.</p> + +<p>And conning Barbier's directions in his mind, he turned into the +gateway, and made boldly for a curtained door behind which shone a +light.</p> + +<p>The woman, who came out in answer to his knock, looked him all over +from head to foot, while he explained himself in his best French.</p> + +<p>'<i>Tiens</i>,' she said, indifferently, to a man behind her, 'it's +the people for No. 26—<i>des Anglais</i>—<i>M. Paul te l'a dit</i>. +Hand me the key.'</p> + +<p>The <i>bonhomme</i> addressed—a little, stooping, wizened +creature, with china-blue eyes, showing widely in his withered face +under the light of the paraffin-lamp his wife was holding—reached +a key from a board on the wall and gave it to her.</p> + +<p>The woman again surveyed them both, the young man and the girl, and +seemed to debate with herself whether she should take the trouble +to be civil. Finally she said in an ungracious voice—</p> + +<p>'It's the fourth floor to the right. I must take you up, I suppose.'</p> + +<p>David thanked her, and she preceded them with the light through a +door opposite and up some stone stairs.</p> + +<p>When they had mounted two flights, she turned abruptly on the +landing—</p> + +<p>'You take the <i>appartement</i> from M. Dubois?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said David, enchanted to find that, thanks to old Barbier's +constant lessons, he could both understand and reply with tolerable +ease; 'for a fortnight.'</p> + +<p>'Take care; the landlord will be descending on you; M. Dubois never +pays; he may be turned out any day, and his things sold. Where is +Mademoiselle going to sleep?'</p> + +<p>'But in M. Dubois' <i>appartement</i>,' said David, hoping this +time, in his dismay, that he did <i>not</i> understand; 'he promised +to arrange everything.'</p> + +<p>'He has arranged nothing. Do you wish that I should provide some +things? You can hire some furniture from me. And do you want +service?'</p> + +<p>The woman had a grasping eye. David's frugal instincts took alarm.</p> + +<p>'<i>Merci</i>, Madame! My sister and I do not require much. We +shall wait upon ourselves. If Madame will tell us the name of some +restaurant near—'</p> + +<p>Instead, Madame made an angry sound and thrust the key abruptly +into Louie's hand, David being laden with the bags.</p> + +<p>'There are two more flights,' she said roughly; 'then turn to the +left, and go up the staircase straight in front of you—first door +to the right. You've got eyes; you'll find the way.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Mais, Madame</i>—' cried David, bewildered by these +directions, and trying to detain her.</p> + +<p>But she was already half-way down the flight below them, +throwing back remarks which, to judge from their tone, were +not complimentary.</p> + +<p>There was no help for it. Louie was dropping with fatigue, and +beginning to be much out of temper. David with difficulty assumed a +hopeful air, and up they went again. Leading off the next landing +but one they found a narrow passage, and at the end of it a +ladder-like staircase. At the top of this they came upon a corridor +at right angles, in which the first door bore the welcome figures +'26.'</p> + +<p>'All right,' said David; 'here we are. Now we'll just go in, and +look about us. Then if you'll sit and rest a bit, I'll run down and +see where we can get something to eat.'</p> + +<p>'Be quick, then—do,' said Louie. 'I'm just fit to drop.'</p> + +<p>With a beating heart he put the key into the lock of the door. It +fitted, but he could not turn it. Both he and Louie tried in vain.</p> + +<p>'What a nuisance!' said he at last. 'I must go and fetch up that +woman again. You sit down and wait.'</p> + +<p>As he spoke there was a sound below of quick steps, and of a voice, +a woman's voice, humming a song.</p> + +<p>'Some one coming,' he said to Louie; 'perhaps they understand the +lock.'</p> + +<p>They ran down to the landing below to reconnoitre. There was, of +course, gas on the staircase, and as they hung over the iron +railing they saw mounting towards them a young girl. She wore a +light fawn-coloured dress and a hat covered with Parma violets. +Hearing voices above her, she threw her head back, and stopped a +moment. Louie's eye was caught by her hand and its tiny wrist as it +lay on the balustrade, and by the coils and twists of her fair +hair. David saw no details, only what seemed to him a miracle of +grace and colour, born in an instant, out of the dark—or out of +his own excited fancy?</p> + +<p>She came slowly up the steps, looking at them, at the tall dark +youth and the girl beside him. Then on the top step she paused, +instead of going past them. David took off his hat, but all the +practical questions he had meant to ask deserted him. His French +seemed to have flown.</p> + +<p>'You are strangers, aren't you?' she said, in a clear, high, +somewhat imperious voice. 'What number do you want?'</p> + +<p>Her expression had a certain <i>hauteur</i>, as of one defending +her native ground against intruders. Under the stimulus of it David +found his tongue.</p> + +<p>'We have taken M. Paul Dubois' rooms,' he said. 'We have found his +door, but the key the <i>concierge</i> gave us does not fit it.'</p> + +<p>She laughed, a free, frank laugh, which had a certain wild note in +it.</p> + +<p>'These doors have to be coaxed,' she said; 'they don't like +foreigners. Give it me. This is my way, too.'</p> + +<p>Stepping past them, she preceded them up the narrow stairs, and was +just about to try the key in the lock, when a sudden recollection +seemed to flash upon her.</p> + +<p>'I know!' she said, turning upon them. '<i>Tenez—que je suis bęte!</i> +You are Dubois' English friends. He told me something, and I +had forgotten all about it. You are going to take his rooms?'</p> + +<p>'For a week or two,' said David, irritated a little by the laughing +malice, the sarcastic wonder of her eyes, 'while he is doing some +work in Brussels. It seemed a convenient arrangement, but if we are +not comfortable we shall go elsewhere. If you can open the door for +us we shall be greatly obliged to you, Mademoiselle. But if not I +must go down for the <i>concierge</i>. We have been travelling all +day, and my sister is tired.'</p> + +<p>'Where did you learn such good French?' she said carelessly, at the +same time leaning her weight against the door, and manipulating the +key in such a way that the lock turned, and the door flew open.</p> + +<p>Behind it appeared a large dark space. The light from the gas-jet +in the passage struck into it, but beyond a chair and a tall +screen-like object in the middle of the floor, it seemed to David +to be empty.</p> + +<p>'That's his <i>atelier</i>, of course,' said the unknown; 'and mine +is next to it, at the other end. I suppose he has a cupboard to +sleep in somewhere. Most of us have. But I don't know anything +about Dubois. I don't like him. He is not one of my friends.'</p> + +<p>She spoke in a dry, masculine voice, which contrasted in the +sharpest way with her youth, her dress, her dainty smallness. Then, +all of a sudden, as her eyes travelled over the English pair +standing bewildered on the threshold of Dubois' most uninviting +apartment, she began to laugh again. Evidently the situation seemed +to her extremely odd.</p> + +<p>'Did you ask the people downstairs to get anything ready for you?' +she inquired.</p> + +<p>'No,' said David, hesitating; 'we thought we could manage for +ourselves.'</p> + +<p>'Well—perhaps—after the first,' she said, still laughing. 'But—I +may as well warn you—the Merichat will be very uncivil to you if +you don't manage to pay her for something. Hadn't you better +explore? That thing in the middle is Dubois' easel, of course.'</p> + +<p>David groped his way in, took some matches from his pocket, found a +gas-bracket with some difficulty, and lit up. Then he and Louie +looked round them. They saw a gaunt high room, lit on one side by a +huge studio-window, over which various tattered blinds were drawn; +a floor of bare boards, with a few rags of carpet here and there; +in the middle, a table covered with painter's apparatus of +different kinds; palettes, paints, rags, tin-pots, and, thrown down +amongst them, some stale crusts of bread; a large easel, with a +number of old and dirty canvases piled upon it; two chairs, one of +them without the usual complement of legs; a few etchings and +oil-sketches and fragments of coloured stuffs pinned against the +wall in wild confusion; and, spread out casually behind the easel, +an iron folding-bedstead, without either mattress or bed-clothes. +In the middle of the floor stood a smeared kettle on a spirit-stove, +and a few odds and ends of glass and china were on the mantelpiece, +together with a paraffin-lamp. Every article in the room was thick +in dust.</p> + +<p>When she had, more or less, ascertained these attractive details, +Louie stood still in the middle of M. Dubois' apartment.</p> + +<p>'What did he tell all those lies for?' she said to David fiercely. +For in the very last communication received from him, Dubois had +described himself as having made all necessary preparations '<i>et +pour la toilette et pour le manger.</i>' He had also asked for the +rent in advance, which David with some demur had paid.</p> + +<p>'Here's something,' cried David; and, turning a handle in the wall, +he pulled a flimsy door open and disclosed what seemed a cupboard. +The cupboard, however, contained a bed, some bedding, blankets, and +washing arrangements; and David joyously announced his discoveries. +Louie took no notice of him. She was tired, angry, disgusted. The +illusion of Paris was, for the moment, all gone. She sat herself +down on one of the two chairs, and, taking off her hat, she threw +it from her on to the belittered table with a passionate gesture.</p> + +<p>The French girl had so far stood just outside, leaning against the +doorway, and looking on with unabashed amusement while they made +their inspection. Now, however, as Louie uncovered, the spectator +at the door made a little, quick sound, and then ran forward.</p> + +<p>'<i>Mais, mon Dieu!</i> how handsome you are!' she said with a +whimsical eagerness, stopping short in front of Louie, and driving +her little hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. 'What a head! +—what eyes! Why didn't I see before? You must sit to me—you +<i>must!</i> You will, won't you? I will pay you anything you like! +You sha'n't be dull—somebody shall come and amuse you. +<i>Voyons—monsieur!</i>' she called imperiously.</p> + +<p>David came up. She stood with one hand on the table leaning her +light weight backward, looking at them with all her eyes—the very +embodiment of masterful caprice.</p> + +<p>'Both of them!' she said under her breath, '<i>superbe!</i>' +Monsieur, look here. You and mademoiselle are tired. There is +nothing in these rooms. Dubois is a scamp without a sou. He does no +work, and he gambles on the Bourse. Everything he had he has sold +by degrees. If he has gone to Brussels now to work honestly, it is +for the first time in his life. He lives on the hope of getting +money out of an uncle in England—that I know, for he boasts of it +to everybody. It is just like him to play a practical joke on +strangers. No doubt you have paid him already—<i>n'est-ce pas</i>? +I thought as much. Well, never mind! My rooms are next door. I am +Elise Delaunay. I work in Taranne's <i>atelier</i>. I am an artist, +pure and simple, and I live to please myself and nobody else. But I +have a chair or two, and the woman downstairs looks after me +because I make it worth her while. Come with me. I will give you +some supper, and I will lend you a rug and a pillow for that bed. +Then to-morrow you can decide what to do.'</p> + +<p>David protested, stammering and smiling. But he had flushed a rosy +red, and there was no real resistance in him. He explained the +invitation to Louie, who had been looking helplessly from one to +the other, and she at once accepted it. She understood perfectly +that the French girl admired her; her face relaxed its frown; she +nodded to the stranger with a sort of proud yielding, and then let +herself be taken by the arm and led once more along the corridor.</p> + +<p>Elise Delaunay unlocked her own door.</p> + +<p>'<i>Bien!</i>' she said, putting her head in first, 'Merichat has +earned her money. Now go in—go in!—and see if I don't give you +some supper.'</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-3" id="CHAPTER_II-3"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<p>She pushed them in, and shut the door behind them. They looked +round them in amazement. Here was an <i>atelier</i> precisely +corresponding in size and outlook to Dubois'. But to their +tired eyes the change was one from squalor to fairyland. The +room was not in fact luxurious at all. But there was a Persian +rug or two on the polished floor; there was a wood fire burning +on the hearth, and close to it there was a low sofa or divan +covered with pieces of old stuffs, and flanked by a table whereon +stood a little meal, a roll, some cut ham, part of a flat fruit +tart from the <i>patissier</i> next door, a coffee pot, and a spirit +kettle ready for lighting. There were two easels in the room; +one was laden with sketches and photographs; the other carried +a half-finished picture of a mosque interior in Oran—a rich +splash of colour, making a centre for all the rest. Everywhere +indeed, on the walls, on the floor, or standing on the chairs, +were studies of Algeria, done with an ostentatiously bold and +rapid hand. On the mantelpiece was a small reproduction in terra +cotta of one of Dalou's early statues, a peasant woman in a long +cloak straining her homely baby to her breast—true and passionate. +Books lay about, and in a corner was a piano, open, with a +confusion of tattered music upon it. And everywhere, as it seemed +to Louie, were <i>shoes!</i>—the daintiest and most fantastic shoes +imaginable—Turkish shoes, Pompadour shoes, old shoes and new +shoes, shoes with heels and shoes without, shoes lined with fur, +and shoes blown together, as one might think, out of cardboard +and ribbons. The English girl's eyes fastened upon them at once.</p> + +<p>'Ah, you tink my shoes pretty,' said the hostess, speaking a few words +of English, <i>'c'est mon dada, voyez-vous—ma collection!—Tenez</i>—I +cannot say dat in English, Monsieur; explain to your sister. My shoes +are my passion, next to my foot. I am not pretty, but my foot is +ravishing. Dalou modelled it for his Siren. That turned my head. Sit +down, Mademoiselle—we will find some plates.'</p> + +<p>She pushed Louie into a corner of the divan, and then she went over +to a cupboard standing against the wall, and beckoned to David.</p> + +<p>'Take the plates—and this potted meat. Now for the <i>petit +vin</i> my doctor cousin brought me last week from the family +estate. I have stowed it away somewhere. Ah! here it is. We are +from the Gironde—at least my mother was. My father was +nobody—<i>bourgeois</i> from tip to toe, though he called himself +an artist. It was a <i>mesalliance</i> for her when she married +him. Oh, he led her a life!—she died when I was small, and last +year <i>he</i> died, eleven months ago. I did my best to cry. +<i>Impossible!</i> He had made Maman and me cry too much. And now I +am perfectly alone in the world, and perfectly well-behaved. +Monsieur Prudhomme may talk—I snap my finger at him. You will have +your ideas, of course. No matter! If you eat my salt, you will +hardly be able to speak ill of me.'</p> + +<p>'Mademoiselle!' cried David, inwardly cursing his shyness—a +shyness new to him—and his complete apparent lack of anything to +say, or the means of saying it.</p> + +<p>'Oh, don't protest!—after that journey you can't afford to waste +your breath. Move a little, Monsieur—let me open the other door of +the cupboard—there are some chocolates worth eating on that back +shelf. Do you admire my <i>armoire?</i> It is old Breton—it +belonged to my grandmother, who was from Morbihan. She brought her +linen in it. It is cherry wood, you see, mounted in silver. You may +search Paris for another like it. Look at that flower work on the +panels. It is not <i>banal</i> at all—it has character—there is +real design in it. Now take the chocolates, and these sardine—put +them down over there. As for me, I make the coffee.'</p> + +<p>She ran over to the spirit lamp, and set it going; she measured out +the coffee; then sitting down on the floor, she took the bellows +and blew up the logs.</p> + +<p>'Tell me your name, Monsieur?' she said suddenly, looking round.</p> + +<p>David gave it in full, his own name and Louie's. Then he walked up +to her, making an effort to be at his ease, and said something +about their French descent. His mode of speaking was slow and +bookish—correct, but wanting in life. After this year's devotion +to French books, after all his compositions with Barbier, he had +supposed himself so familiar with French! With the woman from the +<i>loge</i>, indeed, he could have talked at large, had she been +conversational instead of rude. But here, with this little glancing +creature, he felt himself plunged in a perfect quagmire of +ignorance and stupidity. When he spoke of being half French, she +became suddenly grave, and studied him with an intent piercing +look. 'No,' she said slowly, 'no, at bottom you are not French a bit, +you are all English, I feel it. I should fight you—<i>a outrance! +Grive</i>—what a strange name! It's a bird's name. You are not +like it—you do not belong to it. But <i>David</i>!—ah, that is +better. <i>Voyons</i>!'</p> + +<p>She sprang up, ran over to the furthest easel, and, routing about +amongst its disorder of prints and photographs, she hit upon one, +which she held up triumphantly.</p> + +<p>'There, Monsieur!—there is your prototype. That is David—the +young David—scourge of the Philistine. You are bigger and broader. +I would rather fight him than you—but it is like you, all the +same. Take it.'</p> + +<p>And she held out to him a photograph of the Donatello David at +Florence—the divine young hero in his shepherd's hat, fresh from +the slaying of the oppressor.</p> + +<p>He looked at it, red and wondering, then shook his head.</p> + +<p>'What is it? Who made it, Mademoiselle?'</p> + +<p>'Donatello—oh, I never saw it. I was never in Italy, but a friend +gave it me. It is like you, I tell you. But, what use is that? You +are English—yes, you <i>are</i>, in spite of your mother. It is +very well to be called David—you may be Goliath all the time!'</p> + +<p>Her tone had grown hard and dry—insulting almost. Her look sent +him a challenge.</p> + +<p>He stared at her dumbfounded. All the self-confidence with which he +had hitherto governed his own world had deserted him. He was like a +tongue-tied child in her hands.</p> + +<p>She enjoyed her mastery, and his discomfiture. Her look changed and +melted in an instant.</p> + +<p>'I am rude,' she said, 'and you can't answer me back—not yet—for a +day or two. <i>Pardon</i>! Monsieur David—Mademoiselle—will you +come to supper?'</p> + +<p>She put chairs and waved them to their places with the joyous +animation of a child, waiting on them, fetching this and that, with +the quickest, most graceful motions. She had brought from the +<i>armoire</i> some fine white napkins, and now she produced a +glass or two and made her guests provide themselves with the red +wine which neither had ever tasted before, and over which Louie +made an involuntary face. Then she began to chatter and to +eat—both as fast as possible—now laughing at her own English or +at David's French, and now laying down her knife and fork that she +might look at Louie with an intent professional look which +contrasted oddly with the wild freedom of her talk and movements.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she took up a wineglass and held it out to David with a +piteous childish gesture.</p> + +<p>'Fill it, Monsieur, and then drink—drink to my good luck. I wish +for something—with my <i>life</i>—my soul; but there are people +who hate me, who would delight to see me crushed. And it will be +three weeks—three long long weeks, almost—before I know.'</p> + +<p>She was very pale, the tears had sprung to her eyes, and the hand +holding the glass trembled. David flushed and frowned in the vain +desire to understand her.</p> + +<p>'What am I to do?' he said, taking the glass mechanically, but +making no use of it.</p> + +<p>'Drink!—drink to my success. I have two pictures, Monsieur, in the +Salon; you know what that means? the same as your <i>Academie? +Parfaitement!</i> ah! you understand. One is well hung, on the +line; the other has been shamefully treated—but <i>shamefully!</i> +And all the world knows why. I have some enemies on the jury, and +they delight in a mean triumph over me—a triumph which is a +scandal. But I have friends, too—good friends—and in three weeks +the rewards will be voted. You understand? the medals, and the +<i>mentions honorables</i>. As for a medal—no! I am only two years +in the <i>atelier;</i> I am not unreasonable. But a <i>mention!</i>—ah! Monsieur David, if they don't give it me I shall be very +miserable.'</p> + +<p>Her voice had gone through a whole gamut of emotion in this +speech—pride, elation, hope, anger, offended dignity—sinking +finally to the plaintive note of a child asking for consolation.</p> + +<p>And luckily David had followed her. His French novels had brought +him across the Salon and the jury system; and Barbier had told him +tales. His courage rose. He poured the wine into the glass with a +quick, uncertain hand, and raised it to his lips.</p> + +<p>'<i>A la gloire de Mademoiselle!</i>' he cried, tossing it down +with a gesture almost as free and vivid as her own.</p> + +<p>Her eye followed him with excitement, taking in every detail of the +action—the masculine breadth of chest, the beauty of the dark head +and short upper lip.</p> + +<p>'Very good—very good!' she said, clapping her small hands. 'You did +that admirably—you improve—<i>n'est-ce pas, Mademoiselle?</i>'</p> + +<p>But Louie only stared blankly and somewhat haughtily in return. She +was beginning to be tired of her silent <i>role</i>, and of the +sort of subordination it implied. The French girl seemed to divine +it, and her.</p> + +<p>'She does not like me,' she said, with a kind of wonder under her +breath, so that David did not catch the words. 'The other is quite +different.'</p> + +<p>Then, springing up, she searched in the pockets of her jacket for +something—lips pursed, brows knitted, as though the quest were +important.</p> + +<p>'Where are my cigarettes?' she demanded sharply. 'Ah! here they are. +Mademoiselle—Monsieur.'</p> + +<p>Louie laughed rudely, pushing them back without a word. Then she +got up, and began boldly to look about her. The shoes attracted +her, and some Algerian scarves and burnouses that were lying on a +distant chair. She went to turn them over.</p> + +<p>Mademoiselle Delaunay looked after her for a moment—with the same +critical attention as before—then with a shrug she threw herself +into a corner of the divan, drawing about her a bit of old +embroidered stuff which lay there. It was so flung, however, as to +leave one dainty foot in an embroidered silk stocking visible +beyond it. The tone of the stocking was repeated in the bunch of +violets at her neck, and the purples of the flowers told with +charming effect against her white skin and the pale fawn colour of +her dress and hair. David watched her with intoxication. She could +hardly be taller than most children of fourteen, but her +proportions were so small and delicate that her height, whatever it +was, seemed to him the perfect height for a woman. She handled her +cigarette with mannish airs; unless it were some old harridan in a +collier's cottage, he had never seen a woman smoke before, and +certainly he had never guessed it could become her so well. Not +pretty! He was in no mood to dissect the pale irregular face with +its subtleties of line and expression; but, as she sat there +smoking and chatting, she was to him the realisation—the climax of +his dream of Paris. All the lightness and grace of that dream, the +strangeness, the thrill of it seemed to have passed into her.</p> + +<p>'Will you stay in those rooms?' she inquired, slowly blowing away +the curls of smoke in front of her.</p> + +<p>David replied that he could not yet decide. He looked as he +felt—in a difficulty.</p> + +<p>'Oh! <i>you</i> will do well enough there. But your +sister—<i>Tenez</i>! There is a family on the floor below—an +artist and his wife. I have known them take <i>pensionnaires</i>. +They are not the most distinguished persons in the world—<i>mais +enfin</i>!—it is not for long. Your sister might do worse than +board with them.'</p> + +<p>David thanked her eagerly. He would make all inquiries. He had in +his pocket a note of introduction from Dubois to Madame Cervin, and +another, he believed, to the gentleman on the ground floor—to M. +Montjoie, the sculptor.</p> + +<p>'Ah! M. Montjoie!'</p> + +<p>Her brows went up, her grey eyes flashed. As for her tone it was +half amused, half contemptuous. She began to speak, moved +restlessly, then apparently thought better of it.</p> + +<p>'After all,' she said, in a rapid undertone, '<i>qu'est-ce que cela +me fait? Allons.</i> Why did you come here at all, instead of to an +hotel, for so short a time?'</p> + +<p>He explained as well as he was able.</p> + +<p>'You wanted to see something of French life, and French artists or +writers?' she repeated slowly, 'and you come with introductions from +Xavier Dubois! <i>C'est drole, ca.</i> Have you studied art?'</p> + +<p>He laughed.</p> + +<p>'No—except in books.'</p> + +<p>'What books?'</p> + +<p>'Novels—George Sand's.'</p> + +<p>It was her turn to laugh now.</p> + +<p>'You are really too amusing! No, Monsieur, no; you interest me. +I have the best will in the world towards you; but I cannot ask +Consuelos and Teverinos to meet you. <i>Pas possible.</i> I regret—'</p> + +<p>She fell into silence a moment, studying him with a merry look. +Then she broke out again.</p> + +<p>'Are you a connoisseur in pictures, Monsieur?'</p> + +<p>He had reddened already under her <i>persiflage.</i> At this he +grew redder still.</p> + +<p>'I have never seen any, Mademoiselle,' he said, almost piteously; +'except once a little exhibition in Manchester.'</p> + +<p>'Nor sculpture?'</p> + +<p>'No,' he said honestly; 'nor sculpture.'</p> + +<p>It seemed to him he was being held under a microscope, so keen and +pitiless were her laughing eyes. But she left him no time to resent +it.</p> + +<p>'So you are a blank page, Monsieur—virgin soil—and you confess +it. You interest me extremely. I should even like to teach you a +little. I am the most ignorant person in the world. I know nothing +about artists in books. <i>Mais je suis artiste, moi! fille +d'artiste.</i> I could tell you tales—'</p> + +<p>She threw her graceful head back against the cushion behind her, +and smiled again broadly, as though her sense of humour were +irresistibly tickled by the situation.</p> + +<p>Then a whim seized her, and she sat up, grave and eager.</p> + +<p>'I have drawn since I was eight years old,' she said; 'would you +like to hear about it? It is not romantic—not the least in the +world—but it is true.'</p> + +<p>And with what seemed to his foreign ear a marvellous swiftness and +fertility of phrase, she poured out her story. After her mother +died she had been sent at eight years old to board at a farm near +Rouen by her father, who seemed to have regarded his daughter now +as plaything and model, now as an intolerable drag on the freedom +of a vicious career. And at the farm the child's gift declared +itself. She began with copying the illustrations, the saints and +holy families in a breviary belonging to one of the farm servants; +she went on to draw the lambs, the carts, the horses, the farm +buildings, on any piece of white wood she could find littered about +the yard, or any bit of paper saved from a parcel, till at last the +old cure took pity upon her and gave her some chalks and a +drawing-book. At fourteen her father, for a caprice, reclaimed her, +and she found herself alone with him in Paris. To judge from the +hints she threw out, her life during thee next few years had been +of the roughest and wildest, protected only by her indomitable +resolve to learn, to make herself an artist, come what would. 'I +meant to be <i>famous</i>, and I mean it still!' she said, with a +passionate emphasis which made David open his eyes. Her father +refused to believe in her gift, and was far too self-indulgent and +brutal to teach her. But some of his artist friends were kind to +her, and taught her intermittently; by the help of some of them she +got permission, although under age, to copy in the Louvre, and with +hardly any technical knowledge worked there feverishly from morning +to night; and at last Taranne—the great Taranne, from whose +<i>atelier</i> so many considerable artists had gone out to the +conquest of the public—Taranne had seen some of her drawings, +heard her story, and generously taken her as a pupil.</p> + +<p>Then emulation took hold of her—the fierce desire to be first in +all the competitions of the <i>atelier</i>. David had the greatest +difficulty in following her rapid speech, with its slang, its +technical idioms, its extravagance and variety; but he made out +that she had been for a long time deficient in sound training, and +that her rivals at the <i>atelier</i> had again and again beaten +her easily in spite of her gift, because of her weakness in the +grammar of her art.</p> + +<p>'And whenever they beat me I could have killed my conquerors; and +whenever I beat them, I despised my judges and wanted to give the +prize away. It is not my fault. <i>Je suis faite comme ça—voilŕ!</i> I am as vain as a peacock; yet when people admire anything I +do, I think them fools—<i>fools!</i> I am jealous and proud and +absurd—so they all say; yet a word, a look from a real +artist—from one of the great men who <i>know</i>—can break me, +make me cry. <i>Demelez ca, Monsieur, si vous pouvez!</i>'</p> + +<p>She stopped, out of breath. Their eyes were on each other. The +fascination, the absorption expressed in the Englishman's look +startled her. She hurriedly turned away, took up her cigarette +again, and nestled into the cushion. He vainly tried to clothe some +of the quick comments running through his mind in adequate French, +could find nothing but the most commonplace phrases, stammered out +a few, and then blushed afresh. In her pity for him she took up her +story again.</p> + +<p>After her father's sudden death, the shelter, such as it was, of +his name and companionship was withdrawn. What was she to do? It +turned out that she possessed a small <i>rente</i> which had belonged to +her mother, and which her father had never been able to squander. +Two relations from her mother's country near Bordeaux turned up to +claim her, a country doctor and his sister—middle-aged, devout—to +her wild eyes at least, altogether forbidding.</p> + +<p>'They made too much of their self-sacrifice in taking me to live +with them,' she said with her little ringing laugh. 'I said to +them—"My good uncle and aunt, it is too much—no one could have +the right to lay such a burden upon you. Go home and forget me. I +am incorrigible. I am an artist. I mean to live by myself, and work +for myself. I am sure to go to the bad—good morning." They went +home and told the rest of my mother's people that I was insane. But +they could not keep my money from me. It is just enough for me. +Besides, I shall be selling soon,—certainly I shall be selling! I +have had two or three inquiries already about one of the exhibits +in the Salon. Now then—<i>talk</i>, Monsieur David!' and she +emphasised the words by a little frown; 'it is your turn.'</p> + +<p>And gradually by skill and patience she made him talk, made him +give her back some of her confidences. It seemed to amuse her +greatly that he should be a bookseller. She knew no booksellers in +Paris; she could assure him they were all pure <i>bourgeois</i>, +and there was not one of them that could be likened to Donatello's +David. Manchester she had scarcely heard of; she shook her fair +head over it. But when he told her of his French reading, when he +waxed eloquent about Rousseau and George Sand, then her mirth +became uncontrollable.</p> + +<p>'You came to France to talk of Rousseau and George Sand?' she asked +him with dancing eyes—'<i>Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!</i> what do you +take us for?'</p> + +<p>This time his vanity was hurt. He asked her to tell him what she +meant—why she laughed at him.</p> + +<p>'I will do better than that,' she said; 'I will get some friend of +mine to take you to-morrow to "Les Trois Rats."'</p> + +<p>'What is "Les Trois Rats"?' he asked, half wounded and half +mystified.</p> + +<p>'"Les Trois Rats," Monsieur, is an artist's cafe. It is famous, it +is characteristic; if you are in search of local colour you must +certainly go there. When you come back you will have some fresh +ideas, I promise you.'</p> + +<p>He asked if ladies also went there.</p> + +<p>'Some do; I don't. Conventions mean nothing to me, as you perceive, +or I should have a companion here to play propriety. But like you, +perhaps, I am Romantic. I believe in the grand style. I have ideas +as to how men should treat me. I can read Octave Feuillet. I have a +terrible weakness for those <i>cavaliers</i> of his. And garbage +makes me ill. So I avoid the "Trois Rats."'</p> + +<p>She fell silent, resting her little chin on her hand. Then with a +sudden sly smile she bent forward and looked him in the eyes.</p> + +<p>'Are you pious, Monsieur, like all the English? There is some +religion left in your country, isn't there?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, certainly,' he admitted, 'there was a good deal.'</p> + +<p>Then, hesitating, he described his own early reading of Voltaire, +watching its effect upon her, afraid lest here too he should say +something fatuous, behind the time, as he seemed to have been doing +all through.</p> + +<p>'Voltaire!'—she shrugged her little shoulders—'Voltaire to me is +just an old <i>perruque</i>—a prating philanthropical person who talked +about <i>le bon Dieu</i>, and wrote just what every <i>bourgeois</i> can +understand. If he had had his will and swept away the clergy and +the Church, how many fine subjects we artists should have lost!'</p> + +<p>He sat helplessly staring at her. She enjoyed his perplexity a +minute; then she returned to the charge.</p> + +<p>'Well, my credo is very short. Its first article is art—and its +second is art—and its third is art!'</p> + +<p>Her words excited her. The delicate colour flushed into her cheek. +She flung her head back and looked straight before her with +half-shut eyes.</p> + +<p>'Yes—I believe in art—and expression—and colour—and <i>le +vrai</i>. Velazquez is my God, and—and he has too many prophets to +mention! I was devout once for three months—since then I have +never had as much faith of the Church sort as would lie on a +ten-sous piece. But'—with a sudden whimsical change of voice—'I +am as credulous as a Breton fisherman, and as superstitious as a +gipsy! Wait and see. Will you look at my pictures?'</p> + +<p>She sprang up and showed her sketches. She had been a winter in +Algiers, and had there and in Spain taken a passion for the East, +for its colour, its mystery, its suggestions of cruelty and +passion. She chattered away, explaining, laughing, haranguing, and +David followed her submissively from thing to thing, dumb with the +interest and curiosity of this new world and language of the +artist.</p> + +<p>Louie meanwhile, who, after the refreshment of supper, had been +forgetting both her fatigue and the other two in the entertainment +provided her by the shoes and the Oriental dresses, had now found a +little inlaid coffer on a distant table, full of Algerian trinkets, +and was examining them. Suddenly a loud crash was heard from her +neighbourhood.</p> + +<p>Elise Delaunay stood still. Her quick speech, died on her lips. She +made one bound forward to Louie; then, with a cry, she turned +deathly pale, tottered, and would have fallen, but that David ran +to her.</p> + +<p>'The glass is broken,' she said, or rather gasped; 'she has broken +it—that old Venetian glass of Maman's. Oh! my pictures!—my +pictures! How can I undo it? <i>Je suis perdue</i>! Oh go!—go! +—<i>go</i>—both of you! Leave me alone! Why did I ever see you?'</p> + +<p>She was beside herself with rage and terror. She laid hold of +Louie, who stood in sullen awkwardness and dismay, and pushed her +to the door so suddenly and so violently that the stronger, taller +girl yielded without an attempt at resistance. Then holding the +door open, she beckoned imperiously to David, while the tears +streamed down her cheeks.</p> + +<p>'Adieu, Monsieur—say nothing—there is nothing to be said—go!'</p> + +<p>He went out bewildered, and the two in their amazement walked +mechanically to their own door.</p> + +<p>'She is mad!' said Louie, her eyes blazing, when they paused and +looked at each other. 'She must be mad. What did she say?'</p> + +<p>'What happened?' was all he could reply.</p> + +<p>'I threw down that old glass—it wasn't my fault—I didn't see it. +It was standing on the floor against a chair. I moved the chair +back just a trifle, and it fell. A shabby old thing—I could have +paid for another easily. Well, I'm not going there again to be +treated like that.'</p> + +<p>The girl was furious. All that chafed sense of exclusion and +slighted importance which had grown upon her during David's +<i>tete-a-tete</i> with their strange hostess came to violent +expression in her resentment. She opened the door of their room, +saying that whatever he might do she was going to bed and to sleep +somewhere, if it was on the floor.</p> + +<p>David made a melancholy light in the squalid room, and Louie went +about her preparations in angry silence. When she had withdrawn +into the little cupboard-room, saying carelessly that she supposed +he could manage with one of the bags and his great coat, he sat +down on the edge of the bare iron bedstead, and recognised with a +start that he was quivering all over—with fatigue, or excitement? +His chief feeling perhaps was one of utter discomfiture, flatness, +and humiliation.</p> + +<p>He had sat there in the dark without moving for some minutes, when +his ear caught a low uncertain tapping at the door. His heart +leapt. He sprang up and turned the key in an instant.</p> + +<p>There on the landing stood Elise Delaunay, her arms filled with +what looked like a black bearskin rug, her small tremulous face and +tear-wet eyes raised to his.</p> + +<p>'<i>Pardon</i>, Monsieur,' she said hurriedly. 'I told you I was +superstitious—well, now you see. Will you take this rug?—one can +sleep anywhere with it though it is so old. And has your sister +what she wants? Can I do anything for her? No! <i>Alors</i>—I must +talk to you about her in the morning. I have some more things in my +head to say. <i>Pardon!—et bonsoir. '</i></p> + +<p>She pushed the rug into his hands. He was so moved that he let it +drop on the floor unheeding, and as she looked at him, half +audacious, half afraid, she saw a painful struggle, as of some +strange new birth, pass across his dark young face. They stood so a +moment, looking at each other. Then he made a quick step forward +with some inarticulate words. In an instant she was halfway along +the corridor, and, turning back so that her fair hair and smiling +eyes caught the light she held, she said to him with the queenliest +gesture of dismissal:</p> + +<p>'<i>Au revoir</i>, Monsieur David, sleep well.'</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-3" id="CHAPTER_III-3"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<p>David woke early from a restless sleep. He sprang up and dressed. +Never had the May sun shone so brightly; never had life looked more +alluring.</p> + +<p>In the first place he took care to profit by the hints of the night +before. He ran down to make friends with Madame Merichat—a process +which was accomplished without much difficulty, as soon as a franc +or two had passed, and arrangements had been made for the passing +of a few more. She was to take charge of the <i>appartement</i>, +and provide them with their morning coffee and bread. And upon this +her grim countenance cleared. She condescended to spend a quarter +of an hour gossiping with the Englishman, and she promised to stand +as a buffer between him and Dubois' irate landlord.</p> + +<p>'A job of work at Brussels, you say, Monsieur? <i>Bien</i>; I will +tell the <i>proprietaire</i>. He won't believe it—Monsieur Dubois +tells too many lies; but perhaps it will keep him quiet. He will +think of the return—of the money in the pocket. He will bid me +inform him the very moment Monsieur Dubois shows his nose, that he +may descend upon him, and so you will be let alone.'</p> + +<p>He mounted the stairs again, and stood a moment looking along the +passage with a quickening pulse. There was a sound of low singing, +as of one crooning over some occupation. It must be she! Then she +had recovered her trouble of the night before—her strange trouble. +Yet he dimly remembered that in the farm-houses of the Peak also +the breaking of a looking-glass had been held to be unlucky. And, +of course, in interpreting the omen she had thought of her pictures +and the jury.</p> + +<p>How could he see her again? Suddenly it occurred to him that she +had spoken of taking a holiday since the Salon opened. A holiday +which for her meant 'copying in the Louvre.' And where else, pray, +does the tourist naturally go on the first morning of a visit to +Paris?</p> + +<p>The young fellow went back into his room with a radiant face, and +spent some minutes, as Louie had not yet appeared, in elaborating +his toilette. The small cracked glass above the mantelpiece was not +flattering, and David was almost for the first time anxious about +and attentive to what he saw there. Yet, on the whole, he was +pleased with his short serge coat and his new tie. He thought they +gave him something of a student air, and would not disgrace even +<i>her</i> should she deign to be seen in his company. As he laid +his brush down he looked at his own brown hand, and remembered hers +with a kind of wonder—so small and white, the wrist so delicately +rounded.</p> + +<p>When Louie emerged she was not in a good temper. She declared that +she had hardly slept a wink; that the bed was not fit to sleep on; +that the cupboard was alive with mice, and smelt intolerably. David +first endeavoured to appease her with the coffee and rolls which +had just arrived, and then he broached the plan of sending her to +board with the Cervins, which Mademoiselle Delaunay had suggested. +What did she think? It would cost more, perhaps, but he could +afford it. On their way out he would deliver the two notes of +introduction, and no doubt they could settle it directly if she +liked.</p> + +<p>Louie yawned, put up objections, and refused to see anything in a +promising light. Paris was horrid, and the man who had let them the +rooms ought to be 'had up.' As for people who couldn't talk any +English she hated the sight of them.</p> + +<p>The remark from an Englishwoman in France had its humour. But David +did not see that point of it. He flushed hotly, and with difficulty +held an angry tongue. However, he was possessed with an inward +dread—the dread of the idealist who sees his pleasure as a +beautiful whole—lest they should so quarrel as to spoil the visit +and the new experience. Under this curb he controlled himself, and +presently, with more <i>savoir vivre</i> than he was conscious of, +proposed that they should go out and see the shops.</p> + +<p>Louie, at the mere mention of shops, passed into another mood. +After she had spent some time on dressing they sallied forth, David +delivering his notes on the way down. Both noticed that the house +was squalid and ill-kept, but apparently full of inhabitants. David +surmised that they were for the most part struggling persons of +small means and extremely various occupations. There were three +<i>ateliers</i> in the building, the two on their own top floor, +and M. Montjoie's, which was apparently built out at the back on +the ground floor. The first floor was occupied by a dressmaker, the +<i>proprietaires</i> best tenant, according to Madame Merichat. +Above her was a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, with his +wife and two or three children; above them again the Cervins, and a +couple of commercial travellers, and so on.</p> + +<p>The street outside, in its general aspect, suggested the same +small, hard-pressed professional life. It was narrow and dull; it +mounted abruptly towards the hill of Montmartre, with its fort and +cemetery, and, but for the height of the houses, which is in itself +a dignified architectural feature, would have been no more +inspiriting than a street in London.</p> + +<p>A few steps, however, brought them on to the Boulevard Montmartre, +and then, taking the Rue Lafitte, they emerged upon the Boulevard +des Italiens.</p> + +<p>Louie looked round her, to this side and that, paused for a moment, +bewildered as it were by the general movement and gaiety of the +scene. Then a <i>lingerie</i> shop caught her eye, and she made for +it. Soon the last cloud had cleared from the girl's brow. She gave +herself with ecstasy to the shops, to the people. What jewellery, +what dresses, what delicate cobwebs of lace and ribbon, what +miracles of colour in the florists' windows, what suggestions of +wealth and lavishness everywhere! Here in this world of costly +contrivance, of an eager and inventive luxury, Louise Suveret's +daughter felt herself at last at home. She had never set foot in it +before; yet already it was familiar, and she was part of it.</p> + +<p>Yes, she was as well dressed as anybody, she concluded, except +perhaps the ladies in the closed carriages whose dress could only +be guessed at. As for good looks, there did not seem to be much of +<i>them</i> in Paris. She called the Frenchwomen downright plain. +They knew how to put on their clothes; there was style about them, +she did not deny that; but she was prepared to maintain that there +was hardly a decent face among them.</p> + +<p>Such air, and such a sky! The trees were rushing into leaf; summer +dresses were to be seen everywhere; the shops had swung out their +awnings, and the day promised a summer heat still tempered by a +fresh spring breeze. For a time David was content to lounge along, +stopping when his companion did, lost as she was in the enchantment +and novelty of the scene, drinking in Paris as it were at great +gulps, saying to himself they would be at the Opera directly, then +the Theatre-Francais, the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Place de la +Concorde! Every book that had ever passed through his hands +containing illustrations and descriptions of Paris he had read with +avidity. He, too, like Louie, though in a different way, was at +home in these streets, and hardly needed a look at the map he +carried to find his way. Presently, when he could escape from +Louie, he would go and explore to his heart's content, see all that +the tourist sees, and then penetrate further, and judge for himself +as to those sweeping and iconoclastic changes which, for its own +tyrant's purposes, the Empire had been making in the older city. As +he thought of the Emperor and the government his gorge rose within +him. Barbier's talk had insensibly determined all his ideas of the +imperial regime. How much longer would France suffer the villainous +gang who ruled her? He began an inward declamation in the manner of +Hugo, exciting himself as he walked—while all the time it was the +spring of 1870 which was swelling and expanding in the veins and +branches of the plane trees above him—May was hurrying on, and +Worth lay three short months ahead!</p> + +<p>Then suddenly into the midst of his political musings and his +traveller's ardour the mind thrust forward a disturbing image—the +figure of a little fair-haired artist. He looked round impatiently. +Louie's loiterings began to chafe him.</p> + +<p>'Come along, do,' he called to her, waking up to the time; 'we shall +never get there.'</p> + +<p>'Where?' she demanded.</p> + +<p>'Why, to the Louvre.'</p> + +<p>'What's there to see there?'</p> + +<p>'It's a great palace. The Kings of France used to live there once. +Now they've put pictures and statues into it. You must see it, +Louie—everybody does. Come along.'</p> + +<p>'I'll not hurry,' she said perversely.' I don't care <i>that</i> +about silly old pictures.'</p> + +<p>And she went back to her shop-gazing. David felt for a moment +precisely as he had been used to feel in the old days on the Scout, +when he had tried to civilise her on the question of books. And now +as then he had to wrestle with her, using the kind of arguments he +felt might have a chance with her. At last she sulkily gave way, +and let him lead on at a quick pace. In the Rue Saint-Honore, +indeed, she was once more almost unmanageable; but at last they +were safely on the stairs of the Louvre, and David's brow smoothed, +his eye shone again. He mounted the interminable steps with such +gaiety and eagerness that Louie's attention was drawn to him.</p> + +<p>'Whatever do you go that pace for?' she said crossly. 'It's enough +to kill anybody going up this kind of thing!'</p> + +<p>'It isn't as bad as the Downfall,' said David, laughing, 'and I've +seen you get up that fast enough. Come, catch hold of my umbrella +and I'll drag you up.'</p> + +<p>Louie reached the top, out of breath, turned into the first room to +the right, and looked scornfully round her.</p> + +<p>'Well I never!' she ejaculated. 'What's the good of this?'</p> + +<p>Meanwhile David shot on ahead, beckoning to her to follow. She, +however, would take her own pace, and walked sulkily along, looking +at the people who were not numerous enough to please her, and only +regaining a certain degree of serenity when she perceived that here +as elsewhere people turned to stare after her.</p> + +<p>David meanwhile threw wondering glances at the great Veronese, at +Raphael's archangel, at the towering Vandyke, at the 'Virgin of the +Rocks.' But he passed them by quickly. Was she here? Could he find +her in this wilderness of rooms? His spirits wavered between +delicious expectancy and the fear of disappointment. The gallery +seemed to him full of copyists young and old: beardless +<i>rapins</i> laughing and chatting with fresh maidens; old men +sitting crouched on high seats with vast canvases before them; or +women, middle-aged and plain, with knitted shawls round their +shoulders, at work upon the radiant Greuzes and Lancrets; but that +pale golden head—nowhere!</p> + +<p><i>AT LAST</i>!</p> + +<p>He hurried forward, and there, in front of a Velazquez, he found +her, in the company of two young men, who were leaning over the +back of her chair criticising the picture on her easel.</p> + +<p>'Ah, Monsieur David!'</p> + +<p>She took up the brush she held with her teeth for a moment, and +carelessly held him out two fingers of her right hand.</p> + +<p>'Monsieur—make a diversion—tell the truth—these gentlemen here +have been making a fool of me.'</p> + +<p>And throwing herself back with a little laughing, coquettish +gesture, she made room for him to look.</p> + +<p>'Ah, but I forgot; let me present you. M. Alphonse, this is an +Englishman; he is new to Paris, and he is an acquaintance of mine. +You are not to play any joke upon him. M. Lenain, this gentleman +wishes to be made acquainted with art; you will undertake his +education—you will take him to-night to "Les Trois Rats." I +promised for you.'</p> + +<p>She threw a merry look at the elder of her two attendants, who +ceremoniously took off his hat to David and made a polite speech, +in which the word <i>enchante</i> recurred. He was a dark man, with +a short black beard, and full restless eye; some ten years older +apparently than the other, who was a dare-devil boy of twenty.</p> + +<p>'<i>Allons!</i> tell me what you think of my picture, M. David.'</p> + +<p>The three waited for the answer, not without malice. David looked +at it perplexed. It was a copy of the black and white Infanta, with +the pink rosettes, which, like everything else that France +possesses from the hand of Velazquez, is to the French artist of +to-day among the sacred things, the flags and battle-cries of his +art. Its strangeness, its unlikeness to anything of the picture +kind that his untrained provincial eyes had ever lit upon, tied his +tongue. Yet he struggled with himself.</p> + +<p>'Mademoiselle, I cannot explain—I cannot find the words. It seems +to me ugly. The child is not pretty nor the dress. But—'</p> + +<p>He stared at the picture, fascinated—unable to express himself, +and blushing under the shame of his incapacity.</p> + +<p>The other three watched him curiously.</p> + +<p>'Taranne should get hold of him,' the elder artist murmured to his +companion, with an imperceptible nod towards the Englishman. 'The +models lately have been too common. There was a rebellion yesterday +in the <i>atelier de femmes</i>; one and all declared the model was +not worth drawing, and one and all left.'</p> + +<p>'Minxes!' said the other coolly, a twinkle in his wild eye. +'Taranne will have to put his foot down. There are one or two +demons among them; one should make them know their place.'</p> + +<p>Lenain threw back his head and laughed—a great, frank laugh, which +broke up the ordinary discontent of the face agreeably. The +speaker, M. Alphonse Duchatel, had been already turned out of two +<i>ateliers</i> for a series of the most atrocious <i>charges</i> +on record. He was now with Taranne, on trial, the authorities +keeping a vigilant eye on him.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Elise, still leaning back with her eyes on her picture, +was talking fast to David, who hung over her, absorbed. She was +explaining to him some of the Infanta's qualities, pointing to this +and that with her brush, talking a bright, untranslatable artist's +language which dazzled him, filled him with an exciting medley of +new impressions and ideas, while all the time his quick sense +responded with a delightful warmth and eagerness to the personality +beside him—child, prophetess, egotist, all in one—noticing each +characteristic detail, the drooping, melancholy trick of the eyes, +the nervous delicacy of the small hand holding the brush.</p> + +<p>'David—<i>David</i>! I'm tired of this, I tell you! I'm not going +to stay, so I thought I'd come and tell you. Good-bye!'</p> + +<p>He turned abruptly, and saw Louie standing defiantly a few paces +behind him.</p> + +<p>'What do you want, Louie?' he said impatiently, going up to her. It +was no longer the same man, the same voice.</p> + +<p>'I want to go. I hate this!'</p> + +<p>'I'm not ready, and you can't go by yourself. Do you see'—(in an +undertone)—'this is Mademoiselle Delaunay?'</p> + +<p>'That don't matter,' she said sulkily, making no movement. 'If you +ain't going, I am.'</p> + +<p>By this time, however, Elise, as well as the two artists, had +perceived Louie's advent. She got up from her seat with a slight +sarcastic smile, and held out her hand.</p> + +<p>'<i>Bonjour</i>, Mademoiselle! You forgave me for dat I did last +night? I ask your pardon—oh, <i>de tout mon cœur</i>!'</p> + +<p>Even Louie perceived that the tone was enigmatical. She gave an +inward gulp of envy, however, excited by the cut of the French +girl's black and white cotton. Then she dropped Elise's hand, and +moved away.</p> + +<p>'Louie!' cried David, pursuing her in despair; 'now just wait half +an hour, there's a good girl, while I look at a few things, and +then afterwards I'll take you to the street where all the best +shops are, and you can look at them as much as you like.'</p> + +<p>Louie stood irresolute.</p> + +<p>'What is it?' said Elise to him in French. 'Your sister wants to go? +Why, you have only just come!'</p> + +<p>'She finds it dull looking at pictures,' said David, with an angry +brow, controlling himself with difficulty. 'She must have the shops.'</p> + +<p>Elise shrugged her shoulders and, turning her head, said a few +quick words that David did not follow to the two men behind her. +They all laughed. The artists, however, were both much absorbed in +Louie's appearance, and could not apparently take their eyes off +her.</p> + +<p>'Ah!' said Elise, suddenly.</p> + +<p>She had recognised some one at a distance, to whom she nodded. Then +she turned and looked at the English girl, laughed, and caught her +by the wrist.</p> + +<p>'Monsieur David, here are Monsieur and Madame Oervin. Have you +thought of sending your sister to them? If so, I will present you. +Why not? They would amuse her. Madame Cervin would take her to all +the shops, to the races, to the Bois. <i>Que sais-je</i>?</p> + +<p>All the while she was looking from one to the other. David's face +cleared. He thought he saw a way out of this <i>impasse</i>.</p> + +<p>'Louie, come here a moment. I want to speak to you.'</p> + +<p>And he carried her off a few yards, while the Cervins came up and +greeted the group round the Infanta. A powerfully built, thickset +man, in a grey suit, who had been walking with them, fell back as +they joined Elise Delaunay, and began to examine a Pieter de Hooghe +with minuteness.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile David wrestled with his sister. She had much better let +Mademoiselle Delaunay arrange with these people. Then Madame Cervin +could take her about wherever she wanted to go. He would make a +bargain to that effect. As for him, he must and would see +Paris—pictures, churches, public buildings. If the Louvre bored +her, everything would bore her, and it was impossible either that +he should spend his time at her apron-string, flattening his nose +against the shop-windows, or that she should go about alone. He was +not going to have her taken for 'a bad lot,' and treated +accordingly, he told her frankly, with an imperious tightening of +all his young frame. He had discovered some time since that it was +necessary to be plain with Louie.</p> + +<p>She hated to be disposed of on any occasion, except by her own will +and initiative, and she still made difficulties for the sake of +making them, till he grew desperate. Then, when she had pushed his +patience to the very last point, she gave way.</p> + +<p>'You tell her she's to do as I want her,' she said, threateningly. +'I won't stay if she doesn't. And I'll not have her paid too much.'</p> + +<p>David led her back to the rest.</p> + +<p>'My sister consents. Arrange it if you can, Mademoiselle,' he said +imploringly to Elise.</p> + +<p>A series of quick and somewhat noisy colloquies followed, watched +with disapproval by the <i>gardien</i> near, who seemed to be once +or twice on the point of interfering.</p> + +<p>Mademoiselle Delaunay opened the matter to Madame Cervin, a short, +stout woman, with no neck, and a keen, small eye. Money was her +daily and hourly preoccupation, and she could have kissed the hem +of Elise Delaunay's dress in gratitude for these few francs thus +placed in her way. It was some time now since she had lost her last +boarder, and had not been able to obtain another. She took David +aside, and, while her look sparkled with covetousness, explained to +him volubly all that she would do for Louie, and for how much. And +she could talk some English too—certainly she could. Her education +had been <i>excellent</i>, she was thankful to say.</p> + +<p>'<i>Mon Dieu, qu'elle est belle!</i>' she wound up. 'Ah, Monsieur, +you do very right to entrust your sister to me. A young fellow like +you—no!—that is not <i>convenable</i>. But I—I will be a dragon. +Make your mind quite easy. With me all will go well.'</p> + +<p>Louie stood in an impatient silence while she was being thus talked +over, exchanging looks from time to time with the two artists, who +had retired a little behind Mademoiselle Delaunay's easel, and from +that distance were perfectly competent to let the bold-eyed English +girl know what they thought of her charms.</p> + +<p>At last the bargain was concluded, and the Cervins walked away with +Louie in charge. They were to take her to a restaurant, then show +her the Rue Royale and the Rue de la Paix, and, finally—David +making no demur whatever about the expense—there was to be an +afternoon excursion through the Bois to Longchamps, where some of +the May races were being run.</p> + +<p>As they receded, the man in grey, before the Pieter de Hooghe, +looked up, smiled, dropped his eyeglass, and resumed his place +beside Madame Cervin. She made a gesture of introduction, and he +bowed across her to the young stranger.</p> + +<p>For the first time Elise perceived him. A look of annoyance and +disgust crossed her face.</p> + +<p>'Do you see,' she said, turning to Lenain; 'there is that animal, +Montjoie? He did well to keep his distance. What do the Cervins +want with him?'</p> + +<p>The others shrugged their shoulders.</p> + +<p>'They say his Maenad would be magnificent if he could keep sober +enough to finish her,' said Lenain; 'it is his last chance; he will +go under altogether if he fails; he is almost done for already.'</p> + +<p>'And what a gift!' said Alphonse, in a lofty tone of critical +regret. 'He should have been a second Barye. <i>Ah, la vie +Parisienne—la maudite vie Parisienne</i>!'</p> + +<p>Again Lenain exploded.</p> + +<p>'Come and lunch, you idiot,' he said, taking the lad's arm; 'for +whom are you posing?'</p> + +<p>But before they departed, they inquired of David in the politest +way what they could do for him. He was a stranger to Mollie. +Delaunay's acquaintance; they were at his service. Should they take +him somewhere at night? David, in an effusion of gratitude, +suggested 'Les Trois Rats.' He desired greatly to see the artist +world, he said. Alphonse grinned. An appointment was made for eight +o'clock, and the two friends walked off.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-3" id="CHAPTER_IV-3"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<p>David and Elise Delaunay thus found themselves left alone. She +stood a moment irresolutely before her canvas, then sat down again, +and took up her brushes.</p> + +<p>'I cannot thank you enough, Mademoiselle,' the young fellow began +shyly, while the hand which held his stick trembled a little. 'We +could never have arranged that affair for ourselves.'</p> + +<p>She coloured and bent over her canvas.</p> + +<p>'I don't know why I troubled myself,' she said, in a curious +irritable way.' Because you are kind!' he cried, his charming smile +breaking. 'Because you took pity on a pair of strangers, like the +guardian angel that you are!'</p> + +<p>The effect of the foreign language on him leading him to a more set +and literary form of expression than he would have naturally used, +was clearly marked in the little outburst.</p> + +<p>Elise bit her lip, frowned and fidgeted, and presently looked him +straight in the face.</p> + +<p>'Monsieur David, warn your sister that that man with the Cervins +this morning—the man in grey, the sculptor, M. Montjoie—is a +disreputable scoundrel that no decent woman should know.'</p> + +<p>David was taken aback.</p> + +<p>'And Madame Cervin—'</p> + +<p>Elise raised her shoulders.</p> + +<p>'I don't offer a solution,' she said; 'but I have warned you.'</p> + +<p>'Monsieur Cervin has a somewhat strange appearance,' said David, +hesitating.</p> + +<p>And, in fact, while the negotiations had been going on there had +stood beside the talkers a shabby, slouching figure of a man, with +longish grizzled hair and a sleepy eye—a strange, remote creature, +who seemed to take very little notice of what was passing before +him. From various indications, however, in the conversation, David +had gathered that this looker-on must be the former <i>prix de +Rome</i>.</p> + +<p>Elise explained that Monsieur Carvin was the wreck of a genius. In +his youth he had been the chosen pupil of Ingres and Hippolyte +Flandrin, had won the <i>prix de Rome</i>, and after his three +years in the Villa Medicis had come home to take up what was +expected to be a brilliant career. Then for some mysterious reason +he had suddenly gone under, disappeared from sight, and the waves +of Paris had closed over him. When he reappeared he was broken in +health, and married to a retired modiste, upon whose money he was +living. He painted bad pictures intermittently, but spent most of +his time in hanging about his old haunts—the Louvre, the Salon, +the various exhibitions, and the dealers, where he was commonly +regarded by the younger artists who were on speaking terms with him +as a tragic old bore, with a head of his own worth painting, +however if he could be got to sit—for an augur or a chief priest.</p> + +<p>'It was <i>absinthe</i> that did it,' said Elise calmly, taking a +fresh charge into her brush, and working away at the black +trimmings of the Infanta's dress. 'Every day, about four, he +disappears into the Boulevard. Generally, Madame Cervin drives him +like a sheep; but when four o'clock comes she daren't interfere +with him. If she did, he would be unmanageable altogether. So he +takes his two hours or so, and when he comes back there is not much +amiss with him. Sometimes he is excited, and talks quite +brilliantly about the past—sometimes he is nervous and depressed, +starts at a sound, and storms about the noises in the street. Then +she hurries him off to bed, and the next morning he is quite meek +again, and tries to paint. But his hand shakes, and he can't see. +So he gives it up, and calls to her to put on her things. Then they +wander about Paris, till four o'clock comes round again, and he +gives her the slip—always with some elaborate pretence of other. +Oh! she takes it quietly. Other vices might give her more trouble.'</p> + +<p>The tone conveyed the affectation of a complete knowledge of the +world, which saw no reason whatever to be ashamed of itself. The +girl was just twenty, but she had lived for years, first with a +disreputable father, and then in a perpetual <i>camaraderie</i>, +within the field of art, with men of all sorts and kinds. There are +certain feminine blooms which a <i>milieu</i> like this effaces +with deadly rapidity.</p> + +<p>For the first time David was jarred. The idealist in him recoiled. +His conscience, too, was roused about Louie. He had handed her +over, it seemed, to the custody of a drunkard and his wife, who had +immediately thrown her into the company of a man no decent woman +ought to know. And Mademoiselle Delaunay had led him into it. The +guardian angel speech of a few moments before rang in his ears +uncomfortably.</p> + +<p>Moreover, whatever rebellions his young imagination might harbour, +whatever license in his eyes the great passions might claim, he had +maintained for months and years past a practical asceticism, which +had left its mark. The young man who had starved so gaily on +sixpence a day that he might read and learn, had nothing but +impatience and disgust for the glutton and the drunkard. It was a +kind of physical repulsion. And the woman's light indulgent tone +seemed for a moment to divide them.</p> + +<p>Elise looked round. Why this silence in her companion?</p> + +<p>In an instant she divined him. Perhaps her own conscience was not +easy. Why had she meddled in the young Englishman's affairs at all? +For a whim? Out of a mere good-natured wish to rid him of his +troublesome sister; or because his handsome looks, his <i>naivete</i>, +and his eager admiration of herself amused and excited her, and +she did not care to be baulked of them so soon? At any rate, +she found refuge in an outburst of temper.</p> + +<p>'Ah!' she said, after a moment's pause and scrutiny. 'I see! You +think I might have done better for your sister than send her to +lodge with a drunkard—that I need not have taken so much trouble +to give you good advice for that! You repent your little remarks +about guardian angels! You are disappointed in me!—you distrust +me!'</p> + +<p>She turned back to her easel and began to paint with headlong +speed, the small hand flashing to and fro, the quick breath rising +and falling tempestuously.</p> + +<p>He was dismayed—afraid, and he began to make excuses both for +himself and her. It would be all right; he should be close by, and +if there were trouble he could take his sister away.</p> + +<p>She let her brushes fall into her lap with an exclamation.</p> + +<p>'Listen!' she said to him, her eyes blazing—why, he could not for +the life of him understand. 'There will be no trouble. What I told +you means nothing open—or disgusting. Your sister will notice +nothing unless you tell her. But I was candid with you—I always +am. I told you last night that I had no scruples. You thought it +was a woman's exaggeration; it was the literal truth! If a man +drinks, or is vicious, so long as he doesn't hurl the furniture at +my head, or behave himself offensively to me, what does it matter +to me! If he drinks so that he can't paint, and he wants to paint, +well!—then he seems to me another instance of the charming way in +which a kind Providence has arranged this world. I am sorry for +him, <i>tout bonnement</i>! If I could give the poor devil a hand +out of the mud, I would; if not, well, then, no sermons! I take him +as I find him; if he annoys me, I call in the police. But as to +hiding my face and canting, not at all! That is your English +way—it is the way of our <i>bourgeoisie.</i> It is not mine. I +don't belong to the respectables—I would sooner kill myself a +dozen times over. I can't breathe in their company. I know how to +protect myself; none of the men I meet dare to insult me; that is +my idiosyncrasy—everyone has his own. But I have my ideas, and +nobody else matters a fig to me.—So now, Monsieur, if you regret +our forced introduction of last night, let me wish you a good +morning. It will be perfectly easy for your sister to find some +excuse to leave the Cervins. I can give you the addresses of +several cheap hotels where you and she will be extremely +comfortable, and where neither I nor Monsieur Cervin will annoy +you!'</p> + +<p>David stared at her. He had grown very pale. She, too, was white to +the lips. The violence and passion of her speech had exhausted her; +her hands trembled in her lap. A wave of emotion swept through him. +Her words were insolently bitter. Why, then, this impression of +something wounded and young and struggling—at war with itself and +the world, proclaiming loneliness and <i>Sehnsucht</i>, while it +flung anger and reproach?</p> + +<p>He dropped on one knee, hardly knowing what he did. Most of the +students about had left their work for a while; no one was in sight +but a <i>gardien</i>, whose back was turned to them, and a young +man in the remote distance. He picked up a brush she had let fall, +pressed it into her reluctant hand, and laid his forehead against +the hand for an instant.</p> + +<p>'You misunderstand me,' he said, with a broken, breathless +utterance. 'You are quite wrong—quite mistaken. There are not such +thoughts in me as you think. The world matters nothing to me, +either. I am alone, too; I have always been alone. You meant +everything that was heavenly and kind—you must have meant it. I am +a stupid idiot! But I could be your friend—if you would permit it.'</p> + +<p>He spoke with an extraordinary timidity and slowness. He forgot all +his scruples, all pride—everything. As he knelt there, so close to +her delicate slimness, to the curls on her white neck, to the +quivering lips and great, defiant eyes, she seemed to him once more +a being of another clay from himself—beyond any criticism his +audacity could form. He dared hardly touch her, and in his heart +there swelled the first irrevocable wave of young passion. She +raised her hand impetuously and began to paint again. But suddenly +a tear dropped on to her knee. She brushed it away, and her wild +smile broke.</p> + +<p>'Bah!' she said, 'what a scene, what a pair of children! What was it +all about? I vow I haven't an idea. You are an excellent +<i>farceur.</i> Monsieur David! One can see well that you have read +George Sand.'</p> + +<p>He sat down on a little three-legged stool she had brought with +her, and held her box open on his knee. In a minute or two they +were talking as though nothing had happened. She was giving him a +fresh lecture on Velazquez, and he had resumed his role of pupil +and listener. But their eyes avoided each other, and once when, in +taking a tube from the box he held, her fingers brushed against his +hand, she flushed involuntarily and moved her chair a foot further +away.</p> + +<p>'Who is that?' she asked, suddenly looking round the corner of her +canvas. '<i>Mon Dieu!</i> M. Regnault! How does he come here? They +told me he was at Granada.'</p> + +<p>She sat transfixed, a joyous excitement illuminating every feature. +And there, a few yards from them, examining the Rembrandt 'Supper +at Emmaus' with a minute and absorbed attention, was the young man +he had noticed in the distance a few minutes before. As Elise +spoke, the new-comer apparently heard his name, and turned. He put +up his eyeglass, smiled, and took off his hat.</p> + +<p>'Mademoiselle Delaunay! I find you where I left you, at the feet of +the master! Always at work! You are indefatigable. Taranne tells me +great things of you. "Ah," he says, "if the men would work like the +women!" I assure you, he makes us smart for it. May I look? +Good—very good! a great improvement on last year—stronger, more +knowledge in it. That hand wants study—but you will soon put it +right. Ah, Velazquez! That a man should be great, one can bear +that, but so great! It is an offence to the rest of us mortals. But +one cannot realise him out of Madrid. I often sigh for the months I +spent copying in the Museo. There is a repose of soul in copying a +great master—don't you find it? One rests from one's own efforts +awhile—the spirit of the master descends into yours, gently, +profoundly.'</p> + +<p>He stood beside her, smiling kindly, his hat and gloves in his +hands, perfectly dressed, an air of the great world about his look +and bearing which differentiated him wholly from all other persons +whom David had yet seen in Paris. In physique, too, he was totally +unlike the ordinary Parisian type. He was a young athlete, +vigorous, robust, broad-shouldered, tanned by sun and wind. Only +his blue eye—so subtle, melancholy, passionate—revealed the +artist and the thinker.</p> + +<p>Elise was evidently transported by his notice of her. She talked to +him eagerly of his pictures in the Salon, especially of a certain +'Salome,' which, as David presently gathered, was the sensation of +the year. She raved about the qualities of it—the words colour, +poignancy, force recurring in the quick phrases.</p> + +<p>'No one talks of your <i>success</i> now, Monsieur. It is another +word. <i>C'est la gloire elle-męme qui vous parle ŕ l'oreille!</i>'</p> + +<p>As she let fall the most characteristic of all French nouns, a +slight tremor passed across the young man's face. But the look +which succeeded it was one of melancholy; the blue eyes took a +steely hardness.</p> + +<p>'Perhaps a lying spirit, Mademoiselle. And what matter, so long as +everything one does disappoints oneself? What a tyrant is art! +—insatiable, adorable! You know it. We serve our king on our +knees, and he deals us the most miserly gifts.'</p> + +<p>'It is the service itself repays,' she said, eagerly, her chest +heaving.</p> + +<p>'True!—most true! But what a struggle always!—no rest—no +content. And there is no other way. One must seek, grope, +toil—then produce rapidly—in a flash—throw what you have done +behind you—and so on to the next problem, and the next. There is +no end to it—there never can be. But you hardly came here this +morning, I imagine, Mademoiselle, to hear me prate! I wish you good +day and good-bye. I came over for a look at the Salon, but +to-morrow I go back to Spain. I can't breathe now for long away +from my sun and my South! Adieu, Mademoiselle. I am told your +prospects, when the voting comes on, are excellent. May the gods +inspire the jury!'</p> + +<p>He bowed, smiled, and passed on, carrying his lion-head and kingly +presence down the gallery, which had now filled up again, and +where, so David noticed, person after person turned as he came near +with the same flash of recognition and pleasure he had seen upon +Elise's face. A wild jealousy of the young conqueror invaded the +English lad.</p> + +<p>'Who is he?' he asked.</p> + +<p>Elise, womanlike, divined him in a moment. She gave him a sidelong +glance and went back to her painting.</p> + +<p>'That,' she said quietly, 'is Henri Regnault. Ah, you know nothing +of our painters. I can't make you understand. For me he is a young +god—there is a halo round his head. He has grasped his fame—the +fame we poor creatures are all thirsting for. It began last year +with the Prim—General Prim on horseback—oh, magnificent!—a +passion!—an energy! This year it is the "Salome." About— +Gautier—all the world—have lost their heads over it. If +you go to see it at the Salon, you will have to wait your turn. +Crowds go every day for nothing else. Of course there are murmurs. +They say the study of Fortuny has done him harm. Nonsense! People +discuss him because he is becoming a master—no one discusses the +nonentities. <i>They</i> have no enemies. Then he is sculptor, +musician, athlete—well-born besides—all the world is his friend. +But with it all so simple—<i>bon camarade</i> even for poor +scrawlers like me. <i>Je l'adore!</i>'</p> + +<p>'So it seems,' said David.</p> + +<p>The girl smiled over her painting. But after a bit she looked up +with a seriousness, nay, a bitterness, in her siren's face, which +astonished him.</p> + +<p>'It is not amusing to take you in—you are too ignorant. What do +you suppose Henri Regnault matters to me? His world is as far above +mine as Velazquez' art is above my art. But how can a foreigner +understand our shades and grades? Nothing but <i>success</i>, but +<i>la gloire</i>, could ever lift me into his world. Then indeed I +should be everybody's equal, and it would matter to nobody that I +had been a Bohemian and a <i>declassee</i>.</p> + +<p>She gave a little sigh of excitement, and threw her head back to +look at her picture, David watched her.</p> + +<p>'I thought,' he said ironically, 'that a few minutes ago you were +all for Bohemia. I did not suspect these social ambitions.'</p> + +<p>'All women have them—all artists deny them,' she said, recklessly. +'There, explain me as you like, Monsieur David. But don't read my +riddle too soon, or I shall bore you. Allow me to ask you a +question.'</p> + +<p>She laid down her brushes and looked at him with the utmost +gravity. His heart beat—he bent forward.</p> + +<p>'Are you ever hungry, Monsieur David?'</p> + +<p>He sprang up, half enraged, half ashamed.</p> + +<p>'Where can we get some food?'</p> + +<p>'That is my affair,' she said, putting up her brushes. 'Be humble, +Monsieur, and take a lesson in Paris.'</p> + +<p>And out they went together, he beside himself with the delight of +accompanying her, and proudly carrying her box and satchel. How her +little feet slipped in and out of her pretty dress—how, as they +stood on the top of the great flight of stairs leading down into +the court of the Louvre, the wind from outside blew back the curls +from her brow, and ruffled the violets in her hat, the black lace +about her tiny throat. It was an enchantment to follow and to serve +her. She led him through the Tuileries Gardens and the Place de la +Concorde to the Champs-Elysées. The fountains leapt in the sun; the +river blazed between the great white buildings of its banks; to the +left was the gilded dome of the Invalides, and the mass of the +Corps Législatif, while in front of them rose the long ascent to +the Arc de l'Etoile set in vivid green on either hand. Everywhere +was space, glitter, magnificence. The gaiety of Paris entered into +the Englishman, and took possession.</p> + +<p>Presently, as they wandered up the Champs-Elysées, they passed a +great building to the left. Elise stopped and clasped her hands in +front of her with a little nervous, spasmodic gesture.</p> + +<p>'That,' she said, 'is the Salon. My fate lies there. When we have +had some food, I will take you in to see.'</p> + +<p>She led him a little further up the Avenue, then took him aside +through cunningly devised labyrinths of green till they came upon a +little cafe restaurant among the trees, where people sat under an +awning, and the wind drove the spray of a little fountain hither +and thither among the bushes. It was gay, foreign, romantic, unlike +anything David had ever seen in his northern world. He sat down, +with Barbier's stories running in his head. Mademoiselle Delaunay +was George Sand—independent, gifted, on the road to fame like that +great <i>declassee</i> of old; and he was her friend and comrade, a +humble soldier, a camp follower, in the great army of letters.</p> + +<p>Their meal was of the lightest. This descent on the Champs-Elysées +had been a freak on Elise's part, who wished to do nothing so +<i>banal</i> as take her companion to the Palais Royal. But the +restaurant she had chosen, though of a much humbler kind than those +which the rich tourist commonly associates with this part of Paris, +was still a good deal more expensive than she had rashly supposed. +She opened her eyes gravely at the charges; abused herself +extravagantly for a lack of <i>savoir vivre</i>; and both with one +accord declared it was too hot to eat. But upon such eggs and such +green peas as they did allow themselves—a <i>portion</i> of each, +scrupulously shared—David at any rate, in his traveller's ardour, +was prepared to live to the end of the chapter.</p> + +<p>Afterwards, over the coffee and the cigarettes, Elise taking her +part in both, they lingered for one of those hours which make the +glamour of youth. Confidences flowed fast between them. His French +grew suppler and more docile, answered more truly to the +individuality behind it. He told her of his bringing up, of his +wandering with the sheep on the mountains, of his reading among the +heather, of 'Lias and his visions, of Hannah's cruelties and +Louie's tempers—that same idyll of peasant life to which Dora had +listened months before. But how differently told! Each different +listener changes the tale, readjusts the tone. But here also the +tale pleased. Elise, for all her leanings towards new schools in +art, had the Romantic's imagination and the Romantic's relish for +things foreign and unaccustomed. The English boy and his story +seemed to her both charming and original. Her artist's eye followed +the lines of the ruffled black head and noted the red-brown of the +skin. She felt a wish to draw him—a wish which had entirely +vanished in the case of Louie.</p> + +<p>'Your sister has taken a dislike to me,' she said to him once, +coolly. 'And as for me, I am afraid of her. Ah! and she broke my +glass!'</p> + +<p>She shivered, and a look of anxiety and depression invaded her +small face. He guessed that she was thinking of her pictures, and +began timidly to speak to her about them. When they returned to the +world of art, his fluency left him; he felt crushed beneath the +weight of his own ignorance and her accomplishment.</p> + +<p>'Come and see them!' she said, springing up. 'I am tired of my +Infanta. Let her be awhile. Come to the Salon, and I will show you +"Salome." Or are you sick of pictures? What do you want to see? +<i>Ça m'est égal</i>. I can always go back to my work.'</p> + +<p>She spoke with a cavalier lightness which teased and piqued him.</p> + +<p>'I wish to go where you go,' he said flushing, 'to see what you see.'</p> + +<p>She shook her little head.</p> + +<p>'No compliments, Monsieur David. We are serious persons, you and I. +Well, then, for a couple of hours, <i>soyons camarades!</i>'</p> + +<p>Of those hours, which prolonged themselves indefinitely, David's +after remembrance was somewhat crowded and indistinct. He could +never indeed think of Regnault's picture without a shudder, so +poignant was the impression it made upon him under the stimulus of +Elise's nervous and passionate comments. It represented the +daughter of Herodias resting after the dance, with the dish upon +her knee which was to receive the head of the saint. Her mass of +black hair—the first strong impression of the picture—stood out +against the pale background, and framed the smiling sensual face, +broadly and powerfully made, like the rest of the body, and knowing +neither thought nor qualm. The colour was a bewilderment of +scarlets and purples, of yellow and rose-colour, of turtle-greys +and dazzling flesh-tints—bathed the whole of it in the searching +light of the East. The strangeness, the science of it, its +extraordinary brilliance and energy, combined with its total lack +of all emotion, all pity, took indelible hold of the English lad's +untrained provincial sense. He dreamt of it for nights afterwards.</p> + +<p>For the rest—what whirl and confusion! He followed Elise through +suffocating rooms, filled with the liveliest crowd he had ever +seen. She was constantly greeted, surrounded, carried off to look +at this and that. Her friends and acquaintances, indeed, whether +men or women, seemed all to treat her in much the same way. There +was complete, and often noisy, freedom of address and discussion +between them. She called all the men by their surnames, and she was +on half mocking, half caressing terms with the women, who seemed to +David to be generally art students, of all ages and aspects. But +nobody took any liberties with her. She had her place, and that one +of some predominance. Clearly she had already the privileges of an +eccentric, and a certain cool ascendency of temperament. Her little +figure fluttered hither and thither, gathering a train, then +shaking it off again. Sometimes and her friends, finding the heat +intolerable, and wanting space for talk, would overflow into the +great central hall, with its cool palms and statues; and there David +would listen to torrents of French artistic theory, anecdote, and +<i>blague</i>, till his head whirled, and French cleverness—conveyed +to him in what, to the foreigner, is the most exquisite and the +most tantalising of all tongues—seemed to him superhuman.</p> + +<p>As to what he saw, after 'Salome,' he remembered vividly only three +pictures—Elise Delaunay's two—a portrait and a workshop +interior—before which he stood, lost in naive wonder at her +talent; and the head of a woman, with a thin pale face, +reddish-brown hair, and a look of pantherish grace and force, which +he was told was the portrait of an actress at the Odeon who was +making the world stare—Mademoiselle Bernhardt. For the rest he had +the vague, distracting impression of a new world—of nude horrors +and barbarities of all sorts—of things licentious or cruel, which +yet, apparently, were all of as much value in the artist's eye, and +to be discussed with as much calm or eagerness, as their +neighbours. One moment he loathed what he saw, and threw himself +upon his companion, with the half-coherent protests of an English +idealism, of which she scarcely understood a word; the next he lost +himself in some landscape which had torn the very heart out of an +exquisite mood of nature, or in some scene of peasant life—so true +and living that the scents of the fields and the cries of the +animals were once more about him, and he lived his childhood over +again.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the main idea which the experience left with him was one of +a goading and intoxicating <i>freedom</i>. His country lay in the +background of his mind as the symbol of all dull convention and +respectability. He was in the land of intelligence, where nothing +is prejudged, and all experiments are open.</p> + +<p>When they came out, it was to get an ice in the shade, and then to +wander to and fro, watching the passers-by—the young men playing a +strange game with disks under the trees—the nurses and +children—the ladies in the carriages—and talking, with a quick, +perpetual advance towards intimacy, towards emotion. More and more +there grew upon her the charm of a certain rich poetic intelligence +there was in him, stirring beneath his rawness and ignorance, +struggling through the fetters of language; and in response, as the +evening wore on, she threw off her professional airs, and sank the +egotist out of sight. She became simpler, more childish; her +variable, fanciful youth answered to the magnetism of his.</p> + +<p>At last he said to her, as they stood by the Arc de l'Etoile, +looking down towards Paris:</p> + +<p>'The sun is just going down—this day has been the happiest of my +life!'</p> + +<p>The low intensity of the tone startled her. Then she had a movement +of caprice, of superstition.</p> + +<p>'<i>Alors—assez</i>! Monsieur David, stay where you are. Not +another step!—<i>Adieu!</i>'</p> + +<p>Astonished and dismayed, he turned involuntarily. But, in the crowd +of people passing through the Arch, she had slipped from him, and +he had lost her beyond recovery. Moreover, her tone was +peremptory—he dared not pursue and anger her.</p> + +<p>Minutes passed while he stood, spell—and trance-bound, in the +shadow of the Arch. Then, with the long and labouring breath, the +sudden fatigue of one who has leapt in a day from one plane of life +to another—in whom a passionate and continuous heat of feeling has +for the time burnt up the nervous power—he moved on eastwards, +down the Champs-Elysées. The sunset was behind him, and the trees +threw long shadows across his path. Shade and sun spaces alike +seemed to him full of happy crowds. The beautiful city laughed and +murmured round him. Nature and man alike bore witness with his own +rash heart that all is divinely well with the world—let the +cynics and the mourners say what they will. His hour had come, +and without a hesitation or a dread he rushed upon it. Passion +and youth—ignorance and desire—have never met in madder or +more reckless dreams than those which filled the mind of David +Grieve as he wandered blindly home.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-3" id="CHAPTER_V-3"></a>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<p>As David climbed the garret stairs to his room, the thought of +Louie flashed across his mind for the first time since the morning. +He opened the door and looked round. Yes; all her things were gone. +She had taken up her abode with the Cervins.</p> + +<p>A certain anxiety and discomfort seized him; before going out to +the Boulevard to snatch some food in preparation for his evening at +the 'Trois Rats' he descended to the landing below and rang the +Cervins' bell.</p> + +<p>A charwoman, dirty and tired with much cleaning, opened to him.</p> + +<p>No, Madame was not at home. No one was at home, and the dinner was +spoiling. Had they not been seen all day? Certainly. They had come +in about six o'clock <i>avec une jeune personne</i> and M. Montjoie. +She thought it probable that they were all at that moment down +below, in the studio of M. Montjoie.</p> + +<p>David already knew his way thither, and was soon standing outside +the high black door with the pane of glass above it to which Madame +Merichat had originally directed him. While he waited for an answer +to his ring he looked about him. He was in a sort of yard which was +almost entirely filled up by the sculptor's studio, a long +structure lighted at one end as it seemed from the roof, and at the +other by the usual north window. At the end of the yard rose a huge +many-storied building which seemed to be a factory of some sort. +David's Lancashire eye distinguished machinery through the +monotonous windows, and the figures of the operatives; it took note +also of the fact that the rooms were lit up and work still going on +at seven o'clock. All around were the ugly backs of tall houses, +every window flung open to this May heat. The scene was squalid and +<i>triste</i> save for the greenish blue of the evening sky, and +the flight of a few pigeons round the roof of the factory.</p> + +<p>A man in a blouse came at last, and led the way in when David asked +for Madame Cervin. They passed through the inner studio full of a +confusion of clay models and casts to which the dust of months gave +the look and relief of bronze.</p> + +<p>Then the further door opened, and he saw beyond a larger and +emptier room; sculptor's work of different kinds, and in various +stages on either side; casts, and charcoal studies on the walls, +and some dozen people scattered in groups over the floor, all +looking towards an object on which the fading light from the upper +part of the large window at the end was concentrated.</p> + +<p>What was that figure on its pedestal, that white image which lived +and breathed? <i>Louie?</i></p> + +<p>The brother stood amazed beside the door, staring while the man in +the blouse retreated, and the persons in the room were too much +occupied with the spectacle before them to notice the new-comer's +arrival.</p> + +<p>Louie stood upon a low pedestal, which apparently revolved with the +model, for as David entered, Montjoie, the man in the grey suit, +with the square, massive head, who had joined the party in the +Louvre, ran forward and moved it round slightly. She was in Greek +dress, and some yards away from her was the clay study—a maenad +with vine wreath, tambourine, thyrsus, and floating hair—for which +she was posing.</p> + +<p>Even David was dazzled by the image thus thrown out before him. +With her own dress Louie Grieve seemed to have laid aside for the +moment whatever common or provincial elements there might be in her +strange and startling beauty. Clothed in the clinging folds of the +Greek chiton; neck, arms, and feet bare; the rounded forms of the +limbs showing under the soft stuff; the face almost in profile, +leaning to the shoulder, as though the delicate ear were listening +for the steps of the wine god; a wreath of vine leaves round the +black hair which fell in curly masses about her, sharpening and +framing the rosy whiteness of the cheek and neck; one hand lightly +turned back behind her, showing the palm, the other holding a +torch; one foot poised on tiptoe, and the whole body lightly bent +forward, as though for instant motion:—in this dress and this +attitude, worn and sustained with extraordinary intelligence and +audacity, the wild hybrid creature had risen, as it were, for the +first time, to the full capacity of her endowment—had eclipsed and +yet revealed herself.</p> + +<p>The brother stood speechless, looking from the half-completed study +to his sister. How had they made her understand?—where had she got +the dress? And such a dress! To the young fellow, who in his +peasant and tradesman experience had never even seen a woman in the +ordinary low dress of society, it seemed incredible, outrageous. +And to put it on for the purpose of posing as a model in a room +full of strange men—Madame Cervin was the only woman present—his +cheek burnt for his sister; and for the moment indignation and +bewilderment held him paralysed.</p> + +<p>In front of him a little way, but totally unaware of the stranger's +entrance, were two men whispering and laughing together. One held a +piece of paper on a book, and was making a hurried sketch of Louie. +Every now and then he drew the attention of his companion to some +of the points of the model. David caught a careless phrase or two, +and understood just enough of their student's slang to suspect a +good deal worse than was actually said.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Montjoie was standing against an iron pillar, studying +intently every detail of Louie's pose, both hands arched over his +eyes.</p> + +<p>'<i>Peste!</i> did one ever see so many points combined?' he threw back to +a couple of men behind him. 'Too thin—the arms might be better—and +the hands a <i>little</i> common. But for the <i>ensemble—mon Dieu!</i> we +should make Carpeaux's <i>atelier</i> look alive—<i>hein?</i>'</p> + +<p>'Take care!' laughed a man who was leaning against a cast a few +feet away, and smoking vigorously. 'She likes it, she has never done +it before, but she likes it. Suppose Carpeaux gets hold of her. You +may repent showing her, if you want to keep her to yourself.'</p> + +<p>'Ah, that right knee wants throwing forward a trifle,' said +Montjoie in a preoccupied tone, and going up to Louie, he spoke a +few words of bad English.</p> + +<p>'Allow me, mademoiselle—put your hand on me—<i>ainsi</i>—vile I +change dis pretty foot.'</p> + +<p>Louie looked down bewildered, then at the other men about her, with +her great eyes, half exultant, half inquiring. She understood +hardly anything of their French. One of them laughed, and, running +to the clay Maenad, stooped down and touched the knee and ankle, to +show her what was meant. Louie instinctively put her hand on +Montjoie's shoulder to steady herself, and he proceeded to move the +bare sandalled foot.</p> + +<p>One of the men near him made a remark which David caught. He +suddenly strode forward.</p> + +<p>'Sir! Have the goodness to tell me how you wish my sister to stand, +and I will explain to her. She is not your model!'</p> + +<p>The sculptor looked up startled. Everybody stared at the intruder, +at the dark English boy, standing with a threatening eye, and +trembling with anger, beside his sister. Then Madame Cervin, +clasping her little fat hands with an exclamation of dismay, rushed +up to the group, while Louie leapt down from her pedestal and went +to David.</p> + +<p>'What are you interfering for?' she said, pushing Madame Cervin +aside and looking him full in the eyes, her own blazing, her chest +heaving.</p> + +<p>'You are disgracing yourself,' he said to her with the same +intensity, fast and low, under his breath, so as to be heard only +by her. 'How can you expose yourself as a model to these men whom +you never saw before? Let them find their own models; they are a +pack of brutes!'</p> + +<p>But even as he spoke he shrank before the concentrated wrath of her +face.</p> + +<p>'I will make you pay for it!' she said. 'I will teach you to +domineer.'</p> + +<p>Then she turned to Madame Cervin.</p> + +<p>'Come and take it off, please!' she said imperiously. 'It's no good +while he is here.'</p> + +<p>As she crossed the room with her free wild step, her white +draperies floating, Montjoie, who had been standing pulling at his +moustaches, and studying the brother from under his heavy brows, +joined her, and, stooping, said two or three smiling words in her +ear. She looked up, tossed her head and laughed—a laugh half +reckless, half <i>farouche;</i> two or three of the other men +hurried after them, and presently they made a knot in the further +room, Louie calmly waiting for Madame Cervin, and sitting on the +pedestal of a bronze group, her beautiful head and white shoulders +thrown out against the metal. Montjoie's artist friends—of the +kind which haunt a man whose <i>mœurs</i> are gradually bringing +his talent to ruin—stood round her, smoking and talking and +staring at the English girl between whiles. The arrogance with +which she bore their notice excited them, but they could not talk +to her, for she did not understand them. Only Montjoie had a few +words of English. Occasionally Louie bent forward and looked +disdainfully through the door. When would David be done prating?</p> + +<p>For he, in fact, was grappling with Madame Cervin, who was showing +great adroitness. This was what had happened according to her. +Monsieur Montjoie—a man of astonishing talent, an artist +altogether superior—was in trouble about his statue—could not +find a model to suit him—was in despair. It seemed that he had +heard of mademoiselle's beauty from England, in some way, before +she arrived. Then in the studio he had shown her the Greek dress.</p> + +<p>'—There were some words between them—some compliments, +Monsieur, I suppose—and your sister said she would pose for +him. I opposed myself. I knew well that mademoiselle was a +young person <i>tout-ŕ-fait comme il faut</i>, that monsieur her +brother might object to her making herself a model for M. +Montjoie. <i>Mais, mon Dieu!</i>' and the ex-modiste shrugged her +round shoulders—'mademoiselle has a will of her own.'</p> + +<p>Then she hinted that in an hour's acquaintance mademoiselle had +already shown herself extremely difficult to manage—monsieur would +probably understand that. As for her, she had done everything +possible. She had taken mademoiselle upstairs and dressed her with +her own hands—she had been her maid and companion throughout. She +could do no more. Mademoiselle would go her own way.</p> + +<p>'Who were all these men?' David inquired, still hot and frowning.</p> + +<p>Madame Cervin rose on tiptoe and poured a series of voluble +biographies into his ear. According to her everybody present was a +person of distinction; was at any rate an artist, and a man of +talent. But let monsieur decide. If he was dissatisfied, let him +take his sister away. She had been distressed, insulted, by his +behaviour. Mademoiselle's box had been not yet unpacked. Let him +say the word and it should be taken upstairs again.</p> + +<p>And she drew away from him, bridling, striking an attitude of +outraged dignity beside her husband, who had stood behind her in a +slouching abstracted silence during the whole scene—so far as her +dwarf stature and vulgar little moon-face permitted.</p> + +<p>'We are strangers here, Madame,' cried David. 'I asked you to take +care of my sister, and I find her like this, before a crowd of men +neither she nor I have ever seen before!'</p> + +<p>Madame Cervin swept her hand grandiloquently round.</p> + +<p>'Monsieur has his remedy! Let him take his sister.'</p> + +<p>He stood silent in a helpless and obvious perplexity. What, saddle +himself afresh after these intoxicating hours of liberty and +happiness? Fetter and embarrass every moment? Shut himself out from +freedom—from <i>her</i>?</p> + +<p>Besides, already his first instinctive rage was disappearing. In +the confusion of this new world he could no longer tell whether he +was right or ridiculous. Had he been playing the Philistine, +mistaking a mere artistic convention for an outrage? And Louie was +so likely to submit to his admonitions!</p> + +<p>Madame Cervin watched him with a triumphant eye. When he began to +stammer out what was in effect an apology, she improved the +opportunity, threw off her suave manners, and let him understand +with a certain plain brutality that she had taken Louie's measure. +She would do her best to keep the girl in order—it was lucky for +him that he had fallen upon anybody so entirely respectable as +herself and her husband—but she would use her own judgment; and if +monsieur made scenes, she would just turn out her boarder, and +leave him to manage as he could.</p> + +<p>She had the whip-hand, and she knew it. He tried to appease her, +then discovered that he must go, and went with a hanging head.</p> + +<p>Louie took no notice of him nor he of her, as he passed through the +inner studio, but Montjoie came forward to meet the English lad, +bending his great head and shoulders with a half-ironic politeness. +Monsieur Grieve he feared had mistaken the homage rendered by +himself and his friends to his sister's beauty for an act of +disrespect—let him be reassured! Such beauty was its own defence. +No doubt monsieur did not understand artistic usage. He, Montjoie, +made allowance for the fact, otherwise the young man's behaviour +towards himself and his friends would have required explanation.</p> + +<p>The two stood together at the door—David proudly crimson, seeking +in vain for phrases that would not come—Montjoie cool and +malicious, his battered weather-beaten face traversed by little +smiles. Louie was looking on with scornful amusement, and the group +of artists round her could hardly control their mirth.</p> + +<p>He shut the door behind him with the feeling of one who has cut a +ridiculous figure and beaten a mean retreat. Then, as he neared the +bottom of the stairs, he gave himself a great shake, with the +gesture of one violently throwing off a weight. Let those who +thought that he ought to control Louie, and could control her, come +and see for themselves! He had done what he thought was for the +best—his quick inner sense carefully refrained from attaching any +blame whatever to Mademoiselle Delaunay—and now Louie must go her +own gait, and he would go his. He had said his say—and she should +not spoil this hoarded, this long-looked-for pleasure. As he passed +into the street, on his way to the Boulevard for some food, his +walk and bearing had in them a stern and passionate energy.</p> + +<p>He had to hurry back for his appointment with Mademoiselle +Delaunay's friends of the morning. As he turned into the Rue +Chantal he passed a flower-stall aglow with roses from the south +and sweet with narcissus and mignonette. An idea struck him, and he +stopped, a happy smile softening away the still lingering tension +of the face. For a few sous he bought a bunch of yellow-eyed +narcissus and stepped gaily home with them. He had hardly time to +put them in water and to notice that Madame Merichat had made +Dubois' squalid abode look much more habitable than before, when +there was a knock at the door and his two guides stood outside.</p> + +<p>They carried him off at once. David found more of a tongue than he +had been master of in the morning, and the three talked incessantly +as they wound in and out of the streets which cover the face of the +hill of Montmartre, ascending gradually towards the place they were +in search of. David had heard something of the history of the two +from Elise Delaunay. Alphonse was a lad of nineteen brimming over +with wild fun and mischief, and perpetually in disgrace with all +possible authorities; the possessor nevertheless of a certain +delicate and subtle fancy which came out in the impressionist +landscapes—many of them touched with a wild melancholy as +inexplicable probably to himself as to other people—which he +painted in all his spare moments. The tall black-bearded Lenain was +older, had been for years in Taranne's <i>atelier</i>, was an +excellent draughtsman, and was now just beginning seriously upon +the painting of large pictures for exhibition. In his thin long +face there was a pinched and anxious look, as though in the +artist's inmost mind there lay hidden the presentiment of failure.</p> + +<p>They talked freely enough of Elise Delaunay, David alternately +wincing and craving for more. What a clever little devil it was! +She was burning herself away with ambition and work; Taranne +flattered her a good deal; it was absolutely necessary, otherwise +she would be for killing herself two or three times a week. Oh! she +might get her <i>mention</i> at the Salon. The young Solons sitting +in judgment on her thought on the whole she deserved it; two of her +exhibits were not bad; but there was another girl in the +<i>atelier</i>, Mademoiselle Breal, who had more interest in high +places. However, Taranne would do what he could; he had always made +a favourite of the little Elise; and only he could manage her when +she was in one of her impracticable fits.</p> + +<p>Then Alphonse put the Englishman through a catechism, and at the +end of it they both advised him not to trouble his head about +George Sand. That was all dead and done with, and Balzac not much +less. He might be great, Balzac, but who could be at the trouble +of reading him nowadays? Lenain, who was literary, named to him +with enthusiasm Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary' and the brothers +Goncourt. As for Alphonse, who was capable, however, of occasional +excursions into poetry, and could quote Musset and Hugo, the +<i>feuilletons</i> in the 'Gaulois' or the 'Figaro' seemed, on the +whole, to provide him with as much fiction as he desired. He was +emphatically of opinion that the artist wants no books; a little +poetry, perhaps, did no harm; but literature in painting was the +very devil. Then perceiving that between them they had puzzled +their man, Alphonse would have proceeded to 'cram' him in the most +approved style, but that Lenain interposed, and a certain cooling +of the Englishman's bright eye made success look unpromising. +Finally the wild fellow clapped David on the back and assured him +that 'Les Trois Rats' would astonish him. 'Ah! here we are.'</p> + +<p>As he spoke they turned a corner, and a blaze of light burst upon +them, coming from what seemed to be a gap in the street face, a +house whereof the two lower stories were wall—and windowless, +though not in the manner of the ordinary cafe, seeing that the open +parts were raised somewhat above the pavement.</p> + +<p>'The patron saint!' said Alphonse, stopping with a grin and +pointing. Following the finger with his eye David caught a +fantastic sign swinging above him: a thin iron crescent, and +sitting up between its two tips a lean black rat, its sharp nose in +the air, its tail curled round its iron perch, while two other +creatures of the same kind crept about him, the one clinging to the +lower tip of the crescent, the other peering down from the top on +the king-rat in the middle. Below the sign, and heavily framed by +the dark overhanging eave, the room within was clearly visible from +the street. From the background of its black oak walls and +furniture emerged figures, lights, pictures, above all an imposing +<i>cheminee</i> advancing far into the floor, a high, fantastic +structure also of black oak like the panelling of the room, but +overrun with chains of black rats, carved and combined with a wild +<i>diablerie</i>, and lit by numerous lights in branching ironwork. +The dim grotesque shapes of the pictures, the gesticulating, +shouting crowd in front of them, the mediaevalism of the room and +of that strange sign dangling outside: these things took the +English lad's excited fancy and he pressed his way in behind his +companions. He forgot what they had been telling him; his pulse +beat to the old romantic tune; poets, artists, talkers—here he was +to find them.</p> + +<p>David's two companions exchanged greetings on all sides, laughing +and shouting like the rest. With difficulty they found a table in a +remote corner, and, sitting down, ordered coffee.</p> + +<p>'Alphonse! <i>mon cher!</i>'</p> + +<p>A young man sitting at the next table turned round upon them, +slapped Alphonse on the shoulder, and stared hard at David. He had +fine black eyes in a bronzed face, a silky black beard, and long +hair <i>ŕ la lion</i>, that is to say, thrown to one side of the +head in a loose mane-like mass.</p> + +<p>'I have just come from the Salon. Not bad—Regnault? <i>Hein?</i>'</p> + +<p>'<i>Non—il arrivera, celui-lŕ</i>,' said the other calmly.</p> + +<p>'As for the other things from the Villa Medici fellows,' said the +first speaker, throwing his arm round the back of his chair, and +twisting it round so as to front them, 'they make me sick. I should +hardly do my fire the injustice of lighting it with some of them.'</p> + +<p>'All the same,' replied Alphonse stoutly, 'that Campagna scene of D. +'s is well done.'</p> + +<p>'Literature, <i>mon cher</i>! literature!' cried the unknown, 'and +what the deuce do we want with literature in painting?'</p> + +<p>He brought his fist down violently on the table.</p> + +<p>'<i>Connu</i>,' said Alphonse scornfully. 'Don't excite yourself. +But the story in D. 's picture doesn't matter a halfpenny. Who cares +what the figures are doing? It's the brush work and the values I +look to. How did he get all that relief—that brilliance? No +sunshine—no local colour—and the thing glows like a Rembrandt!'</p> + +<p>The boy's mad blue eyes took a curious light, as though some inner +enthusiasm had stirred.</p> + +<p>'<i>Peuh</i>! we all know you, Alphonse. Say what you like, you +want something else in a picture than painting. That'll damn you, +and make your fortune some day, I warn you. Now <i>I</i> have got a +picture on the easel that will make the <i>bourgeois</i> skip.'</p> + +<p>And the speaker passed a large tremulous hand through his waves of +hair, his lip also quivering with the nervousness of a man +overworked and overdone.</p> + +<p>'You'll not send it to the Salon, I imagine,' said another man +beside him, dryly. He was fair, small and clean-shaven, wore +spectacles, and had the look of a clerk or man of business.</p> + +<p>'Yes, I shall,' cried the other violently—his name was +Dumesnil—'I'll fling it at their heads. That's all our school can +do—make a scandal.'</p> + +<p>'Well, that has even been known to make money,' said the other, +fingering his watch-chain with a disagreeable little smile.</p> + +<p>'Money!' shouted Dumesnil, and swinging round to his own table +again he poured out hot denunciations of the money-grabbing +reptiles of to-day who shelter themselves behind the sacred name of +art. Meanwhile the man at whom it was all levelled sipped his +coffee quietly and took no notice.</p> + +<p>'Ah, a song!' cried Alphonse. 'Lenain, <i>vois-tu</i>? It's that +little devil Perinot. He's been painting churches down near +Toulouse, his own country. Saints by the dozen, like this,' and +Alphonse drooped his eyes and crossed his limp hands, taking off +the frescoed mediaeval saint for an instant, as only the Parisian +<i>gamin</i> can do such things. 'You should see him with a <i>cure</i>. +However, the <i>cures</i> don't follow him here, more's the pity. +Ah! <i>trčs bien—trčs bien</i>!'</p> + +<p>These plaudits were called out by some passages on the guitar with +which the singer was prefacing his song. His chair had been mounted +on to a table, so that all the world could see and hear. A hush of +delighted attention penetrated the room; and outside, in the street, +David could see dark forms gathering on the pavement.</p> + +<p>The singer was a young man, undersized and slightly deformed, with +close-cut hair, and a large face, droll, pliant and ugly as a +gutta-percha mask. Before he opened his lips the audience laughed.</p> + +<p>David listened with all his ears, feeling through every fibre the +piquant strangeness of the scene—alive with the foreigner's +curiosity, and with youth's pleasure in mere novelty. And what +clever fellows, what dash, what <i>camaraderie!</i> That old +imaginative drawing towards France and the French was becoming +something eagerly personal, combative almost,—and in the +background of his mind throughout was the vibrating memory of the +day just past—the passionate sense of a new life.</p> + +<p>The song was tumultuously successful. The whole crowded +<i>salle</i>, while it was going on, was one sea of upturned faces, +and it was accompanied at intervals by thunders of applause, given +out by means of sticks, spoons, fists, or anything else that might +come handy. It recounted the adventures of an artist and his model. +As it proceeded, a slow crimson rose into the English lad's cheek, +overspread his forehead and neck. He sat staring at the singer, or +looking round at the absorbed attention and delight of his +companions. By the end of it David, his face propped on his hands, +was trying nervously to decipher the names and devices cut in the +wood of the table on which he leant. His whole being was in a surge +of physical loathing—the revulsion of feeling was bewildering and +complete. So this was what Frenchmen thought of women, what they +could say of them, when the mask was off, and they were at their +ease. The witty brutality, the naked coarseness of the thing +scourged the boy's shrinking sense. Freedom, passion—yes! but +<i>this!</i> In his wild recoil he stood again under the Arc de +Triomphe watching her figure disappear. Ah! pardon! That he should +be listening at all seemed to a conscience, an imagination +quickened by first love, to be an outrage to women, to love, to +her!</p> + +<p><i>Yet</i>—how amusing it was! how irresistible, as the first +shock subsided, was the impression of sparkling verse, of an +astonishing mimetic gift in the singer! Towards the end he had just +made up his mind to go on the first pretext, when he found himself, +to his own disgust, shaking with laughter.</p> + +<p>He recovered himself after a while, resolved to stay it out, and +betrayed nothing. The comments made by his two companions on the +song—consisting mainly of illustrative anecdote—were worthy of +the occasion. David sat, however, without flinching, his black eyes +hardening, laughing at intervals.</p> + +<p>Presently the room rose <i>en bloc</i>, and there was a move +towards the staircase.</p> + +<p>'The manager, M. Edmond, has come,' explained Alphonse; 'they are +going upstairs to the concert-room. They will have a recitation +perhaps,—<i>ombres chinoises,</i>—music. Come and look at the +drawings before we go.'</p> + +<p>And he took his charge round the walls, which were papered with +drawings and sketches, laughing and explaining. The drawings were +done, in the main, according to him, by the artists on the staffs +of two illustrated papers which had their headquarters at the +'Trois Rats.' David was especially seized by the innumerable sheets +of animal sketches—series in which some episode of animal life was +carried through from its beginning to a close, sometimes humorous, +but more often tragic. In a certain number of them there was a free +imagination, an irony, a pity, which linked them together, marked +them as the conceptions of one brain. Alphonse pointed to them as +the work of a clever fellow, lately dead, who had been launched and +supported by the 'Trois Rats' and its frequenters. One series in +particular, representing a robin overcome by the seduction of a +glass of absinthe and passing through all the stages of delirium +tremens, had a grim inventiveness, a fecundity of half humorous, +half pathetic fancy, which held David's eye riveted.</p> + +<p>As for the ballet-girl, she was everywhere, with her sisters, the +model and the <i>grisette</i>. And the artistic ability shown in +the treatment of her had nowhere been hampered by any Philistine +scruple in behalf of decency.</p> + +<p>Upstairs there was the same mixed experience. David found himself +in a corner with his two acquaintances, and four or five others, a +couple of journalists, a musician and a sculptor. The conversation +ranged from art to religion, from religion to style, from style to +women, and all with a perpetual recurrence either to the pictures +and successes of the Salon, or to the <i>liaisons</i> of well-known +artists.</p> + +<p>'Why do none of us fellows in the press pluck up courage and tell +H. what we really think about those Homeric <i>machines</i> of his +which he turns out year after year?' said a journalist, who was +smoking beside him, an older man than the rest of them. 'I have a +hundred things I want to say—but H. is popular—I like him +himself—and I haven't the nerve. But what the devil do we want +with the Greeks—they painted their world—let us paint ours! +Besides, it is an absurdity. I thought as I was looking at H. 's +things this morning of what Preault used to say of Pradier: "<i>Il +partait tous les matins pour la Grčce et arrivait tous les soirs +Rue de Breda.</i>" "Pose your goddesses as you please—they are +<i>grisettes</i> all the same."'</p> + +<p>'All very well for you critics,' growled a man smoking a long pipe +beside him; 'but the artist must live, and the <i>bourgeois</i> will +have subjects. He won't have anything to do with your "notes"—and +"impressions"—and "arrangements." When you present him with the +view, served hot, from your four-pair back—he buttons up his +pockets and abuses you. He wants his stories and his sentiment. And +where the deuce is the sentiment to be got? I should be greatly +obliged to anyone who would point me to a little of the commodity. +The Greeks are already ridiculous,—and as for religion—'</p> + +<p>The speaker threw back his head and laughed silently.</p> + +<p>'Ah! I agree with you,' said the other emphatically; 'the religious +pictures this year are really too bad. Christianity is going too +fast—for the artist.'</p> + +<p>'And the sceptics are becoming bores,' cried the painter; 'they take +themselves too seriously. It is, after all, only another dogmatism. +One should believe in nothing—not even in one's doubts.'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' replied the journalist, knocking out his pipe, with a +sardonic little smile—'strange fact! One may swim in free thought +and remain as <i>banal</i> as a bishop all the time.'</p> + +<p>'I say,' shouted a fair-haired youth opposite, 'who has seen C. 's +Holy Family? Who knows where he got his Madonna?'</p> + +<p>Nobody knew, and the speaker had the felicity of imparting an +entirely fresh scandal to attentive ears. The mixture in the story +of certain brutalities of modern manners with names and things +still touching or sacred for the mass of mankind had the old +Voltairean flavour. But somehow, presented in this form and at this +moment, David no longer found it attractive. He sat nursing his +knee, his dark brows drawn together, studying the story-teller, +whose florid Norman complexion and blue eyes were already seared by +a vicious experience.</p> + +<p>The tale, however, was interrupted and silenced by the first notes +of a piano. The room was now full, and a young actor from the +Gymnase company was about to give a musical sketch. The subject of +it was 'St. Francis and Santa Clara.'</p> + +<p>This performance was perhaps more wittily broad than anything which +had gone before. The audience was excessively amused by it. It was +indeed the triumph of the evening, and nothing could exceed the +grace and point of the little speech in which M. Edmond, the +manager of the cafe, thanked the accomplished singer afterwards.</p> + +<p>While it was going on, David, always with that poignant, shrinking +thought of Elise at his heart, looked round to see if there were +any women present. Yes, there were three. Two were young, +outrageously dressed, with sickly pretty tired faces. The third was +a woman in middle life, with short hair parted at the side, and a +strong, masculine air. Her dress was as nearly as possible that of +a man, and she was smoking vigorously. The rough <i>bonhomie</i> of +her expression and her professional air reminded David once more of +George Sand. An artist, he supposed, or a writer.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, towards the end of the sketch, he became conscious of a +tall figure behind the singer, a man standing with his hat in his +hand, as though he had just come in, and were just going away. His +fine head was thrown back, his look was calm, David thought +disdainful. Bending forward he recognised M. Regnault, the hero of +the morning.</p> + +<p>Regnault had come in unperceived while the dramatic piece was +going on; but it was no sooner over than he was discovered, +and the whole <i>salle</i> rose to do him honour. The generosity, the +extravagance of the ovation offered to the young painter by this +hundred or two of artists and men of letters were very striking to +the foreign eye. David found himself thrilling and applauding with +the rest. The room had passed in an instant from cynicism to +sentiment. A moment ago it had been trampling to mud the tenderest +feeling of the past; it was now eagerly alive with the feeling of +the present.</p> + +<p>The new-comer protested that he had only dropped in, being in the +neighbourhood, and must not stay. He was charming to them all, +asked after this man's picture and that man's statue, talked a +little about the studio he was organising at Tangiers, and then, +shaking hands right and left, made his way through the crowd.</p> + +<p>As he passed David, his quick eye caught the stranger and he +paused.</p> + +<p>'Were you not in the Louvre this morning with Mademoiselle +Delaunay?' he asked, lowering his voice a little; 'you are a +stranger?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, an Englishman,' David stammered, taken by surprise. +Regnault's look swept over the youth's face, kindling in an instant +with the artist's delight in beautiful line and tint.</p> + +<p>'Are you going now?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said David hurriedly. 'It must be late?'</p> + +<p>'Midnight, past. May I walk with you?'</p> + +<p>David, overwhelmed, made some hurried excuses to his two +companions, and found himself pushing his way to the door, an +unnoticed figure in the tumult of Regnault's exit.</p> + +<p>When they got into the street outside, Regnault walked fast +southwards for a minute or so without speaking. Then he stopped +abruptly, with the gesture of one shaking off a weight.</p> + +<p>'Pah! this Paris chokes me.'</p> + +<p>Then, walking on again, he said, half-coherently, and to himself:</p> + +<p>'So vile,—so small,—so foul! And there are such great things in +the world. <i>Beasts!—pigs!</i>—and yet so generous, so struggling, +such a hard fight for it. So gifted,—many of them! What are you +here for?'</p> + +<p>And he turned round suddenly upon his companion. David, touched and +captured he knew not how by the largeness and spell of the man's +presence, conquered his shyness and explained himself as +intelligibly as he could:</p> + +<p>An English bookseller, making his way in trade, yet drawn to France +by love for her literature and her past, and by a blood-tie which +seemed to have in it mystery and pain, for it could hardly be +spoken of—the curious little story took the artist's fancy. +Regnault did his best to draw out more of it, helped the young +fellow with his French, tried to get at his impressions, and +clearly enjoyed the experience to which his seeking artist's sense +had led him.</p> + +<p>'What a night!' he said at last, drawing a full draught of the May +into his great chest. 'Stop and look down those streets in the +moonlight. What surfaces,—what gradations,—what a beauty of +multiplied lines, though it is only a piece of vulgar Haussmann! +Indoors I can't breathe—but out of doors and at night this Paris +of ours,—ah! she is still beautiful—<i>beautiful</i>! Now one has +shaken the dust of that place off, one can feel it. What did you +think of it?—tell me.'</p> + +<p>He stooped and looked into his companion's face. David was tall and +lithe, but Regnault was at least half a head taller and broader in +proportion.</p> + +<p>David walked along for a minute without answering. He too, and even +more keenly than Regnault, was conscious of escape and relief. A +force which had, as it were, taken life and feeling by the throat +had relaxed its grip. He disengaged himself with mingled loathing +and joy. But in his shyness he did not know how to express himself, +fearing, too, to wound the Frenchman. At last he said slowly:</p> + +<p>'I never saw so many clever people together in my life.'</p> + +<p>The words were bald, but Regnault perfectly understood what was +meant by them, as well as by the troubled consciousness of the +black eyes raised to his. He laughed—shortly and bitterly.</p> + +<p>'No, we don't lack brains, we French. All the same I tell you, in +the whole of that room there are about half-a-dozen people,—oh, +not so many!—not nearly so many!—who will ever make a mark, even +for their own generation, who will ever strike anything out of +nature that is worth having—wrestle with her to any purpose. Why? +Because they have every sort of capacity—every sort of +cleverness—and <i>no character</i>!'</p> + +<p>David walked beside him in silence. He thought suddenly of +Regnault's own picture—its strange cruelty and force, its +craftsman's brilliance. And the recollection puzzled him.</p> + +<p>Regnault, however, had spoken with passion, and as though out of +the fulness of some sore and long-familiar pondering.</p> + +<p>'You never saw anything like that in England,' he resumed quickly.</p> + +<p>David hesitated.</p> + +<p>'No, I never did. But I am a provincial, and I have seen nothing at +all. Perhaps in London—'</p> + +<p>'No, you would see nothing like it in London,' said Regnault +decidedly. 'Bah! it is not that you are more virtuous than we are. +Who believes such folly? But your vice is grosser, stupider. Lucky +for you! You don't sacrifice to it the best young brain of the +nation, as we are perpetually doing. Ah, <i>mon Dieu</i>!' he broke +out in a kind of despair, 'this enigma of art!—of the artist! One +flounders and blunders along. I have been floundering and +blundering with the rest,—playing tricks—following this man and +that—till suddenly—a door opens—and one sees the real world +through for the first time!'</p> + +<p>He stood still in his excitement, a smile of the most exquisite +quality and sweetness dawning on his strong young face.</p> + +<p>'And then,' he went on, beginning to walk again, and talking much +more to the night than to his companion, 'one learns that the secret +of life lies in <i>feeling</i>—in the heart, not in the head. And +no more limits than before!—all is still open, divinely open. +Range the whole world—see everything, learn everything—till at +the end of years and years you may perhaps be found worthy to be +called an artist! But let art have her ends, all the while, shining +beyond the means she is toiling through—her ends of beauty or of +power. To spend herself on the mere photography of the vile and the +hideous! what waste—what sacrilege!'</p> + +<p>They had reached the Place de la Concorde, which lay bathed in +moonlight, the silver fountains plashing, the trees in the +Champs-Elysées throwing their sharp yet delicate shadows on the +intense whiteness of the ground, the buildings far away rising +softly into the softest purest blue. Regnault stopped and looked +round him with enchantment. As for David, he had no eyes save for +his companion. His face was full of a quick responsive emotion. +After an experience which had besmirched every ideal and bemocked +every faith, the young Frenchman's talk had carried the lad once +more into the full tide of poetry and romance. 'The secret of life +lies in <i>feeling</i>, in the heart, not the head'—ah, <i>that</i> he +understood! He tried to express his assent, his homage to the +speaker; but neither he nor the artist understood very clearly +what he was saying. Presently Regnault said in another tone:</p> + +<p>'And they are such good fellows, many of them. Starving often—but +nothing to propitiate the <i>bourgeois</i>, nothing to compromise +the "dignity of art." A man will paint to please himself all day, +paint, on a crust, something that won't and can't sell, that the +world in fact would be mad to buy; then in the evening he will put +his canvas to the wall, and paint sleeve-links or china to live. +And so generous to each other: they will give each other all they +have—food, clothes, money, knowledge. That man who gave that +abominable thing about St. Francis—I know him, he has a little +apartment near the Quai St.-Michel, and an invalid mother. He is a +perfect angel to her. I could take off my hat to him whenever I +think of it.'</p> + +<p>His voice dropped again. Regnault was pacing along across the +Place, his arms behind him, David at his side. When he resumed, it +was once more in a tone of despondency.</p> + +<p>'There is an ideal; but so twisted, so corrupted! What is wanted +is not less intelligence but <i>more</i>—more knowledge, more +experience—something beyond this fevering, brutalising Paris, +which is all these men know. They have got the poison of the +Boulevards in their blood, and it dulls their eye and hand. They +want scattering to the wilderness; they want the wave of life to +come and lift them past the mud they are dabbling in, with its +hideous wrecks and <i>debris</i>, out and away to the great sea, to +the infinite beyond of experience and feeling! you, too, feel with +me?—you, too, see it like that? Ah! when one has seen and felt +Italy—the East,—the South—lived heart to heart with a wild +nature, or with the great embodied thought of the past,—lived at +large, among great things, great sights, great emotions, then there +comes purification! There is no other way out—no, none!'</p> + +<p>So for another hour Regnault led the English boy up and down and +along the quays, talking in the frankest openest way to this +acquaintance of a night. It was as though he were wrestling his own +way through his own life-problem. Very often David could hardly +follow. The joys, the passions, the temptations of the artist, +struggling with the life of thought and aspiration, the craving to +know everything, to feel everything, at war with the hunger for a +moral unity and a stainless self-respect—there was all this in his +troubled, discursive talk, and there was besides the magic touch of +genius, youth, and poetry.</p> + +<p>'Well, this is strange!' he said at last, stopping at a point +between the Louvre on the one hand and the Institute on the other, +the moonlit river lying between.—' My friends come to me at Rome +or at Tangiers, and they complain of me, "Regnault, you have grown +morose, no one can get a word out of you"—and they go away +wounded—I have seen it often. And it was always true. For months I +have had no words. I have been in the dark, wrestling with my art +and with this goading, torturing world, which the artist with his +puny forces has somehow to tame and render. Then—the other +day—ah! well, no matter!—but the dark broke, and there was light! +and when I saw your face, your stranger's face, in that crowd +to-night, listening to those things, it drew me. I wanted to say my +say. I don't make excuses. Very likely we shall never meet +again—but for this hour we have been friends. Good night!—good +night! Look,—the dawn is coming!'</p> + +<p>And he pointed to where, behind the towers of Notre-Dame, the first +whiteness of the coming day was rising into the starry blue.</p> + +<p>They shook hands.</p> + +<p>'You go back to England soon?'</p> + +<p>'In a—a—week or two.'</p> + +<p>'Only believe this—we have things better worth seeing than "Les +Trois Rats"—things that represent us better. That is what the +foreigner is always doing; he spends his time in wondering at our +monkey tricks; there is no nation can do them so well as we; and +the great France—the undying France!—disappears in a splutter of +<i>blague</i>!'</p> + +<p>He leant over the parapet, forgetting his companion, his eyes fixed +on the great cathedral, on the slender shaft of the Sainte +Chapelle, on the sky filling with light.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly he turned round, laid a quick hand on his companion's +shoulder.</p> + +<p>'If you ever feel inclined to write to me, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts +will find me. Adieu.'</p> + +<p>And drawing his coat round him in the chilliness of the dawn, he +walked off quickly across the bridge.</p> + +<p>David also hurried away, speeding along the deserted pavements till +again he was in his own dark street. The dawn was growing from its +first moment of mysterious beauty into a grey disillusioning light. +But he felt no reaction. He crept up the squalid stairs to his +room. It was heavy with the scent of the narcissus.</p> + +<p>He took them, and stole along the passage to Elise's door. There +were three steps outside it. He sat down on the lowest, putting his +flowers beside him. There was something awful to him even in this +nearness; he dare not have gone higher.</p> + +<p>He sat there for long—his heart beating, beating. Every part of +his French experience so far, whether by sympathy or recoil, had +helped to bring him to this intoxication of sense and soul. +Regnault had spoken of the 'great things' of life. Had he too come +to understand them—thus?</p> + +<p>At last he left his flowers there, kissing the step on which they +were laid, and which her foot must touch. He could hardly sleep; +the slight fragrance which clung to the old bearskin in which he +wrapt himself helped to keep him restless; it was the faint +heliotrope scent he had noticed in her room.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-3" id="CHAPTER_VI-3"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<p>'He loves me—he does really! Poor boy!'</p> + +<p>The speaker was Elise Delaunay. She was sitting alone on the divan +in her <i>atelier</i>, trying on a pair of old Pompadour shoes, +with large faded rosettes and pink heels, which she had that moment +routed out of a broker's shop in the Rue de Seine, on her way back +from the Luxembourg with David. They made her feet look +enchantingly small, and she was holding back her skirts that she +might get a good look at them.</p> + +<p>Her conviction of David's passion did not for some time lessen her +interest in the shoes, but at last she kicked them off, and flung +herself back on the divan, to think out the situation a little.</p> + +<p>Yes, the English youth's adoration could no longer be ignored. It +had become evident, even to her own acquaintances and comrades in +the various galleries she was now haunting in this bye-time of the +artistic year. Whenever she and he appeared together now, there +were sly looks and smiles.</p> + +<p>The scandal of it did not affect her in the least. She belonged to +Bohemia, so apparently did he. She had been perfectly honest till +now; but she had never let any convention stand in her way. All her +conceptions of the relations between men and women were of an +extremely free kind. Her mother's blood in her accounted both for a +certain coldness and a certain personal refinement which both +divided and protected her from a great many of her acquaintance, +but through her father she had been acquainted for years with the +type of life and <i>menage</i> which prevails among a certain +section of the French artist class, and if the occasion were but +strong enough she had no instincts inherited or acquired which +would stand in the way of the gratification of passion.</p> + +<p>On the contrary, her reasoned opinions so far as she had any +were all in favour of <i>l'union libre</i>—that curious type of +association which held the artist Theodore Rousseau for life to the +woman who passed as his wife, and which obtains to a remarkable +extent, with all those accompaniments of permanence, fidelity, and +mutual service, which are commonly held to belong only to +<i>l'union légale</i>, in one or two strata of French society. She +was capable of sentiment; she had hidden veins of womanish +weakness; but at the same time the little creature's prevailing +temper was one of remarkable coolness and audacity. She judged for +herself; she had read for herself, observed for herself. Such a +temper had hitherto preserved her from adventures; but, upon +occasion, it might as easily land her in one. She was at once a +daughter of art and a daughter of the people, with a cross strain +of gentle breeding and intellectual versatility thrown in, which +made her more interesting and more individual than the rest of her +class.</p> + +<p>'We are a pair of Romantics out of date, you and I,' she had said +once to David, half mocking, half in earnest, and the phrase fitted +the relation and position of the pair very nearly. In spite of the +enormous difference of their habits and training they had at bottom +similar tastes—the same capacity for the excitements of art and +imagination, the same shrinking from the coarse and ugly sides of +the life amid which they moved, the same cravings for novelty and +experience.</p> + +<p>David went no more to the 'Trois Rats,' and when, in obedience to +Lenain's recommendation, he had bought and begun to read a novel of +the Goncourts, he threw it from him in a disgust beyond expression. +<i>Her</i> talk, meanwhile, was in some respects of the freest; she +would discuss subjects impossible to the English girl of the same +class; she asked very few questions as to the people she mixed +with; and he was, by now, perfectly acquainted with her view, that +on the whole marriage was for the <i>bourgeois</i>, and had few +attractions for people who were capable of penetrating deeper into +the rich growths of life. But there was no <i>personal</i> taint or +license in what she said; and she herself could be always happily +divided from her topics. Their Bohemia was canopied with illusions, +but the illusions on the whole were those of poetry.</p> + +<p>Were all David's illusions hers, however? <i>Love!</i> She thought +of it, half laughing, as she lay on the divan. She knew nothing +about it—she was for <i>art</i>. Yet what a brow, what eyes, what +a gait—like a young Achilles!</p> + +<p>She sprang up to look at a sketch of him, dashed off the day +before, which was on the easel. Yes, it was like. There was the +quick ardent air, the southern colour, the clustering black hair, +the young parting of the lips. The invitation of the eyes was +irresistible—she smiled into them—the little pale face flushing.</p> + +<p>But at the same moment her attention was caught by a sketch pinned +against the wall just behind the easel.</p> + +<p>'Ah! my cousin, my good cousin!' she said, with a little mocking +twist of the mouth; 'how strange that you have not been here all +this time—never once! There was something said, I remember, about +a visit to Bordeaux about now. Ah! well—<i>tant mieux</i>—for you +would be rather jealous, my cousin!'</p> + +<p>Then she sat down with her hands on her knees, very serious. How +long since they met? A week. How long till the temporary closing of +the Salon and the voting of the rewards? A fortnight. Well, should +it go on till then? Yes or no? As soon as she knew her fate—or at +any rate if she got her <i>mention</i>—she would go back to work. +She had two subjects in her mind; she would work at home, and +Taranne had promised to come and advise her. Then she would have no +time for handsome English boys. But till then?</p> + +<p>She took an anemone from a bunch David had brought her, and began +to pluck off the petals, alternating 'yes' and 'no.' The last petal +fell to 'yes.'</p> + +<p>'I should have done just the same if it had been "no,"' she said, +laughing. '<i>Allons</i>, he amuses me, and I do him no harm. When +I go back to work he can do his business. He has done none yet. He +will forget me and make some money.'</p> + +<p>She paced up and down the studio thinking again. She was conscious +of some remorse for her part in sending the Englishman's sister to +the Cervins. The matter had never been mentioned again between her +and David; yet she knew instinctively that he was often ill at +ease. The girl was perpetually in Montjoie's studio, and surrounded +in public places by a crew of his friends. Madame Cervin was +constantly in attendance no doubt, but if it came to a struggle she +would have no power with the English girl, whose obstinacy was in +proportion to her ignorance.</p> + +<p>Elise had herself once stopped Madame Cervin on the stairs, and +said some frank things of the sculptor, in order to quiet an +uncomfortable conscience.</p> + +<p>'Ah! you do not like Monsieur Montjoie?' said the other, looking +hard at her.</p> + +<p>Elise coloured, then she recovered herself.</p> + +<p>'All the world knows that Monsieur Montjoie has no scruples, +madame,' she cried angrily. 'You know it yourself. It is a shame. +That girl understands nothing.'</p> + +<p>Madame Cervin laughed.</p> + +<p>'Certainly she understands everything that she pleases, +mademoiselle. But if there is any anxiety, let her brother come and +look after her. He can take her where she wants to go. I should be +glad indeed. I am as tired as a dog. Since she came it is one +<i>tapage</i> from morning till night.'</p> + +<p>And Elise retired, discomfited before those small malicious eyes. +Since David's adoration for the girl artist in No. 27 had become +more or less public property, Madame Cervin, who had seen from the +beginning that Louie was a burden on her brother, had decidedly the +best of the situation.</p> + +<p>'Has she lent Montjoie money?'</p> + +<p>Elise meditated. The little <i>bourgeoise</i> had a curious +weakness for posing as the patron of the various artists in the +house. 'Very possible! and she looks on the Maenad as the only way +of getting it back? She would sell her soul for a napoleon—I +always knew that. <i>Canaille</i>, all of them!'</p> + +<p>And the meditation ended in the impatient conclusion that neither +she nor the brother had any responsibility. After all, any decent +girl, French or English, could soon see for herself what manner of +man was Jules Montjoie! And now for the 'private view' of a certain +artistic club to which she had promised to take her English +acquaintance. All the members of the club were young—of the new +rebellious school of '<i>plein air</i>'—the afternoon promised to +be amusing.</p> + +<p>So the companionship of these two went on, and David passed from +one golden day to another. How she lectured him, the little, vain, +imperious thing; and how meek he was with her, how different from +his Manchester self! The woman's cleverness filled the field. The +man, wholly preoccupied with other things, did not care to produce +himself, and in the first ardour of his new devotion kept all the +self-assertive elements of his own nature in the background, caring +for nothing but to watch her eyes as she talked, to have her voice +in his ears, to keep her happy and content in his company.</p> + +<p>Yet she was not taken in. With other people he must be proud, +argumentative, self-willed—that she was sure of; but her +conviction only made her realise her power over him with the more +pleasure. His naive respect for her own fragmentary knowledge, his +unbounded admiration for her talent, his quick sympathy for all she +did and was, these things, little by little, tended to excite, to +preoccupy her.</p> + +<p>Especially was she bent upon his artistic education. She carried +him hither and thither, to the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Salon, +insisting with a feverish eloquence and invention that he should +worship all that she worshipped—no matter if he did not +understand!—let him worship all the same—till he had learnt his +new alphabet with a smiling docility, and caught her very tricks of +phrase. Especially were they haunters of the sculptures in the +Louvre, where, because of the difficulty of it, she piqued herself +most especially on knowledge, and could convict him most +triumphantly of a barbarian ignorance. Up and down they wandered, +and she gave him eyes, whether for Artemis, or Aphrodite, or +Apollo, or still more for the significant and troubling art of the +Renaissance, French and Italian. She would flit before him, +perching here and there like a bird, and quivering through and +through with a voluble enjoyment.</p> + +<p>Then from these lingerings amid a world charged at every point with +the elements of passion and feeling, they would turn into the open +air, into the May sunshine, which seemed to David's northern eyes +so lavish and inexhaustible, carrying with it inevitably the +kindness of the gods! They would sit out of doors either in the +greenwood paths of the Bois, where he could lie at her feet, and +see nothing but her face and the thick young wood all round them, +or in some corner of the Champs-Elysées, or the sun-beaten Quai de +la Conference, where the hurrying life of the town brushed past +them incessantly, yet without disturbing for a moment their +absorption in or entertainment of each other.</p> + +<p>Yet all through she maintained her mastery of the situation. She +was a riddle to him often, poor boy! One moment she would lend +herself in bewildering unexpected ways to his passion, the next she +would allow him hardly the privileges of the barest acquaintance, +hardly the carrying of her cloak, the touch of her hand. But she +had no qualms. It was but to last another fortnight; the friendship +soothed and beguiled for her these days of excited waiting; and a +woman, when she is an artist and a Romantic, may at least sit, +smoke, and chat with whomsoever she likes, provided it be a time of +holiday, and she is not betraying her art.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the real vulgarity of her nature—its insatiable vanity, +its reckless ambition—was masked from David mainly by the very +jealousy and terror which her artist's life soon produced in him. +He saw no sign of other lovers; she had many acquaintances but no +intimates; and the sketch in her room had been carelessly explained +to him as the portrait of her cousin. But the <i>atelier</i>, and +the rivalries it represented:—after three days with her he had +learnt that what had seemed to him the extravagance, the pose of +her first talk with him, was in truth the earnest, the reality of +her existence. She told him that since she was a tiny child she had +dreamed of <i>fame</i>—dreamed of people turning in the streets +when she passed—of a glory that should lift her above all the +commonplaces of existence, and all the disadvantages of her own +start in life.</p> + +<p>'I am neither beautiful, nor rich, nor well-born; but if I have +talent, what matter? Everyone will be at my feet. And if I have no +talent—<i>grand Dieu!</i>—what is there left for me but to kill +myself?'</p> + +<p>And she would clasp her hands round her knees, and look at him with +fierce, drawn brows, as though defying him to say a single syllable +in favour of any meaner compromise with fate.</p> + +<p>This fever of the artist and the <i>concurrent</i>—in a woman +above all—how it bewildered him! He soon understood enough of it, +however, to be desperately jealous of it, to realise something of +the preliminary bar it placed between any lover and the girl's +heart and life.</p> + +<p>Above all was he jealous of her teachers. Taranne clearly could +beat her down with a word, reduce her to tears with an unfavourable +criticism; then he had but to hold up a finger, to say, +'Mademoiselle, you have worked well this week, your drawing shows +improvement, I have hopes of you,' to bring her to his feet with +delight and gratitude. It was a <i>monstrous</i> power, this power +of the master with his pupil! How could women submit to it?</p> + +<p>Yet his lover's instincts led him safely through many perils. He +was infinitely complaisant towards all her artistic talk, all her +gossip of the <i>atelier</i>. It seemed to him—but then his +apprehension of this strange new world was naturally a somewhat +confused one—that Elise was not normally on terms with any of her +fellow students.</p> + +<p>'If I don't get my <i>mention</i>,' she would say passionately, 'I +tell you again it will be intrigue; it will be those creatures in +the <i>atelier</i> who want to get rid of me—to finish with me. +Ah! I will <i>crush</i> them all yet. And I have been good to them +all—every one—I vow I have—even to that animal of a Breal, who +is always robbing me of my place at the <i>concours</i>, and taking +mean advantages. <i>Miserables!</i>'</p> + +<p>And the tears would stand in her angry eyes; her whole delicate +frame would throb with fierce feeling.</p> + +<p>Gradually he learnt how to deal with these fits, even when they +chilled him with a dread, a conviction he dared not analyse. He +would so soothe and listen to her, so ply her with the praises of +her gift, which came floated to him on the talk of those +acquaintances of hers to whom she had introduced him, that her most +deep-rooted irritations would give way for a time. The woman would +reappear; she would yield to the charm of his admiring eyes, his +stammered flatteries; her whole mood would break up, dissolve into +eager softness, and she would fall into a childish plaintiveness, +saying wild generous things even of her rivals, now there seemed to +be no one under heaven to take their part, and at last, even, +letting her little hand fall into those eager brown ones which lay +in wait for it, letting it linger there—forgotten.</p> + +<p>Especially was she touched in his favour by the way in which +Regnault had singled him out. After he had given her the history of +that midnight walk, he saw clearly that he had risen to a higher +plane in her esteem. She had no heroes exactly; but she had certain +artistic passions, certain romantic fancies, which seemed to touch +deep fibres in her. Her admiration for Regnault was one of these; +but David soon understood that he had no cause whatever to be +jealous of it. It was a matter purely of the mind and the +imagination.</p> + +<p>So the days passed—the hot lengthening days. Sometimes in the long +afternoons they pushed far afield into the neighbourhood of Paris. +The green wooded hills of Sevres and St. Cloud, the blue curves and +reaches of the Seine, the flashing lights and figures, the +pleasures of companionship, self-revelation, independence—the day +was soon lost in these quick impressions, and at night they would +come back in a fragrant moonlight, descending from their train into +the noise and glitter of the streets, only to draw closer +together—for surely on these crowded pavements David might claim +her little arm in his for safety's sake—till at last they stood in +the dark passage between his door and hers, and she would suddenly +pelt him with a flower, spring up her small stairway, and lock her +door behind her, before, in his emotion, he could find his voice or +a farewell. Then he would make his way into his own den, and sit +there in the dark, lost in a thronging host of thoughts and +memories,—feeling life one vibrating delight.</p> + +<p>At last one morning he awoke to the fact that only four days more +remained before the date on which, according to their original +plan, they were to go back to Manchester. He laughed aloud when the +recollection first crossed his mind; then, having a moment to +himself, he sat down and scrawled a few hasty words to John. +Business detained him yet a while—would detain him a few +weeks—let John manage as he pleased, his employer trusted +everything to him—and money was enclosed. Then he wrote another +hurried note to the bank where he had placed his six hundred +pounds. Let them send him twenty pounds at once, in Bank of England +notes. He felt himself a young king as he gave the order—king of +this mean world and of its dross. All his business projects had +vanished from his mind. He could barely have recalled them if he +had tried. During the first days of his acquaintance with Elise he +had spent a few spare hours in turning over the boxes on the quays, +in talks with booksellers in the Rue de Seine or the Rue de Lille, +in preliminary inquiries respecting some commissions he had +undertaken. But now, every hour, every thought were hers. What did +money matter, in the name of Heaven? Yet when his twenty pounds +came, he changed his notes and pocketed his napoleons with a vast +satisfaction. For they meant power, they meant opportunity; every +one should be paid away against so many hours by her side, at her +feet.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile day after day he had reminded himself of Louie, and day +after day he had forgotten her again, absolutely, altogether. Once +or twice he met her on the stairs, started, remembered, and tried +to question her as to what she was doing. But she was still angry +with him for his interference on the day of the pose; and he could +get very little out of her. Let him only leave her alone; she was +not a school-child to be meddled with; that he would find out. As +to Madame Cervin, she was a little fool, and her meanness in money +matters was disgraceful; but she, Louie, could put up with her. One +of these meetings took place on the day of his letters to the bank +and to John. Louie asked him abruptly when he thought of returning. +He flushed deeply, stammered, said he was inclined to stay longer, +but of course she could be sent home. An escort could be found for +her. She stared at him; then suddenly her black eyes sparkled, and +she laughed so that the sound echoed up the dark stairs. David +hotly inquired what she meant; but she ran up still laughing +loudly, and he was left to digest her scornful amusement as best he +could.</p> + +<p>Not long after he found the Cervins' door open as he passed, and in +the passage saw a group of people, mostly men; Montjoie in front, +just lighting a cigar; Louie's black hat in the background. David +hurried past; he loathed the sculptor's battered look, his insolent +eye, his slow ambiguous manner; he still burnt with the anger and +humiliation of his ineffectual descent on the man's domain. But +Madame Cervin, catching sight of him from the back of the party, +pursued him panting and breathless to his own door. Would monsieur +please attend to her; he was so hard to get hold of; never, in +fact, at home! Would he settle her little bill, and give her +more money for current expenses? Mademoiselle Louie required to +be kept amused—<i>mon Dieu!</i>—from morning to night! She had no +objection, provided it were made worth her while. And how much +longer did monsieur think of remaining in Paris?</p> + +<p>David answered recklessly that he did not know, paid her bill for +Louie's board and extras without looking at it, and gave her a +napoleon in hand, wherewith she departed, her covetous eyes aglow, +her mouth full of excited civilities.</p> + +<p>She even hesitated a moment at the door and then came back to +assure him that she was really all discretion with regard to his +sister; no doubt monsieur had heard some unpleasant stories, for +instance, of M. Montjoie; she could understand perfectly, that +coming from such a quarter, they had affected monsieur's mind; but +he would see that she could not make a sudden quarrel with one of +her husband's old friends; Mademoiselle Louie (who was already her +<i>cherie</i>) had taken a fancy to pose for this statue; it was +surely better to indulge her than to rouse her self-will, but she +could assure monsieur that she had looked after her as though it +had been her own daughter.</p> + +<p>David stood impatiently listening. In a few minutes he was to be +with Elise at the corner of the Rue Lafitte. Of course it was all +right!—and if it were not, he could not mend it. The woman was +vulgar and grasping, but what reason was there to think anything +else that was evil of her? Probably she had put up with Louie more +easily than a woman of a higher type would have done. At any rate +she was doing her best, and what more could be asked of him than he +had done? Louie behaved outrageously in Manchester; he could not +help it, either there or here. He had interfered again and again, +and had always been a fool for his pains. Let her choose for +herself. A number of old and long-hidden exasperations seemed now +to emerge whenever he thought of his sister.</p> + +<p>Five minutes later he was in the Rue Lafitte.</p> + +<p>It was Elise's caprice that they should always meet in this way, +out of doors; at the corner of their own street; on the steps of +the Madeleine; beneath the Vendome Column; in front of a particular +bonbon shop; or beside the third tree from the Place de la Concorde +in the northern alley of the Tuileries Gardens. He had been only +once inside her studio since the first evening of their +acquaintance.</p> + +<p>His mind was full of excitement, for the Salon had been closed +since the day before; and the awards of the jury would be +informally known, at least in some cases, by the evening. Elise's +excitement since the critical hours began had been pitiful to see. +As he stood waiting he gave his whole heart to her and her +ambitions, flinging away from him with a passionate impatience +every other interest, every other thought.</p> + +<p>When she came she looked tired and white. 'I can't go to galleries, +and I can't paint,' she said, shortly. 'What shall we do?'</p> + +<p>Her little black hat was drawn forward, but through the dainty veil +he could see the red spot on either cheek. Her hands were pushed +deep into the pockets of her light grey jacket, recalling the +energetic attitude in which she had stood over Louie on the +occasion of their first meeting. He guessed at once that she had +not slept, and that she was beside herself with anxiety. How to +manage her?—how to console her? He felt himself so young and raw; +yet already his passion had awakened in him a hundred new and +delicate perceptions.</p> + +<p>'Look at the weather!' he said to her. 'Come out of town! let us +make for the Gare St. Lazare, and spend the day at St. Germain.'</p> + +<p>She hesitated.</p> + +<p>'Taranne will write to me directly he knows—directly! He might +write any time this evening. No, no!—I can't go! I must be on the +spot.'</p> + +<p>'He can't write <i>before</i> the evening. You said yourself before +seven nothing could be known. We will get back in ample time, I +swear.'</p> + +<p>They were standing in the shade of a shop awning, and he was +looking down at her, eagerly, persuasively. She had a debate with +herself, then with a despairing gesture of the hands, she turned +abruptly—</p> + +<p>'Well then—to the station!'</p> + +<p>When they had started, she lay back in the empty carriage he had +found for her, and shut her eyes. The air was oppressive, for the +day before had been showery, and the heat this morning was a damp +heat which relaxed the whole being. But before the train moved, she +felt a current of coolness, and hastily looking up she saw that +David had possessed himself of the cheap fan which had been lying +on her lap, and was fanning her with his gaze fixed upon her, a +gaze which haunted her as her eyelids fell again.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she fell into an inward perplexity, an inward impatience +on the subject of her companion, and her relation to him. It had +been all very well till yesterday! But now the artistic and +professional situation had become so strained, so intense, she +could hardly give him a thought. His presence there, and its tacit +demands upon her, tried her nerves. Her mind was full of a hundred +<i>miseres d'atelier</i>, of imaginary enemies and intrigues; one +minute she was all hope, the next all fear; and she turned sick +when she thought of Taranne's letter.</p> + +<p>What had she been entangling herself for? she whose whole life and +soul belonged to art and ambition! This comradeship, begun as a +caprice, an adventure, was becoming too serious. It must end!—end +probably to-day, as she had all along determined. Then, as she +framed the thought, she became conscious of a shrinking, a +difficulty, which enraged and frightened her.</p> + +<p>She sat up abruptly and threw back her veil.</p> + +<p>David made a little exclamation as he dropped the fan.</p> + +<p>'Yes!' she said, looking at him with a little frown, 'yes—what did +you say?'</p> + +<p>Then she saw that his whole face was working with emotion.</p> + +<p>'I wish you would have stayed like that,' he said, in a voice which +trembled.</p> + +<p>'Why?'</p> + +<p>'Because—because it was so sweet!'</p> + +<p>She gave a little start, and a sudden red sprang into her cheek.</p> + +<p>His heart leapt. He had never seen her blush for any word of his +before.</p> + +<p>'I prefer the air itself,' she said, bending forward and looking +away from him out of the open window at the villas they were +passing.</p> + +<p>Yet, all the while, as the country houses succeeded each other and +her eyes followed them, she saw not their fragrant, flowery +gardens, but the dark face and tall young form opposite. He was +handsomer even than when she had seen him first—handsomer far than +her portrait of him. Was it the daily commerce with new forms of +art and intelligence which Paris and her companionship had brought +him?—or simply the added care which a man in love instinctively +takes of the little details of his dress and social conduct?—which +had given him this look of greater maturity, greater distinction? +Her heart fluttered a little—then she fell back on the thought of +Taranne's letter.</p> + +<p>They emerged from the station at St. Germain into a fierce blaze of +sun, which burned on the square red mass of the old chateau, and +threw a blinding glare on the white roads.</p> + +<p>'Quick! for the trees!' she said, and they both hurried over the +open space which lay between them and the superb chestnut grove +which borders the famous terrace. Once there all was well, and they +could wander from alley to alley in a green shade, the white +blossom-spikes shining in the sun overhead, and to their right the +blue and purple plain, with the Seine winding and dimpling, the +river polders with their cattle, and far away the dim heights of +Montmartre just emerging behind the great mass of Mont Valerien, +which blocked the way to Paris. Such lights and shades, such spring +leaves, such dancing airs!</p> + +<p>Elise drew a long breath, slipped off her jacket which he made a +joy of carrying, and loosened the black lace at her throat which +fell so prettily over the little pink cotton underneath.</p> + +<p>Then she looked at her companion unsteadily. There was excitement +in this light wind, this summer sun. Her great resolve to 'end it' +began to look less clear to her. Nay, she stood still and smiled up +into his face, a very siren of provocation and wild charm—the wind +blowing a loose lock about her eyes.</p> + +<p>'Is this better than England—than your Manchester?' she asked him +scornfully, and he—traitor!—flinging out of his mind all the +bounties of an English May, all his memories of the whitethorn and +waving fern and foaming streams set in the deep purple breast of +the Scout—vowed to her that nowhere else could there be spring or +beauty or sunshine, but only here in France and at St. Germain.</p> + +<p>At this she smiled and blushed—no woman could have helped the +blush. In truth, his will, steadily bent on one end, while hers was +distracted by half a dozen different impulses, was beginning to +affect her in a troubling, paralysing way. For all her parade of a +mature and cynical enlightenment, she was just twenty; it was such +a May day as never was; and when once she had let herself relax +towards him again, the inward ache of jealous ambition made this +passionate worship beside her, irrelevant as it was, all the more +soothing, all the more luring.</p> + +<p>Still she felt that something must be done to stem the tide, and +again she fell back upon luncheon. They had bought some provisions +on their way to the station in Paris. He might subsist on scenery +and aesthetics if he pleased—as for her, she was a common person +with common needs, and must eat.</p> + +<p>'Oh, not here!' he cried, 'why, this is all in public. Look at the +nursemaids, and the boys playing, and the carriages on the terrace. +Come on a little farther. You remember that open place with the +thorns and the stream?—there we should be in peace.'</p> + +<p>She did not know that she wanted to be in peace; but she gave way.</p> + +<p>So they wandered on past the chestnuts into the tangled depths of +the old forest. A path sunk in brambles and fern took them through +beech wood to the little clearing David had in his mind. A tiny +stream much choked by grass and last year's leaves ran along one +side of it. A fallen log made a seat, and the beech trees spread +their new green fans overhead, or flung them out to right and left +around the little space, and for some distance in front, till the +green sprays and the straight grey stems were lost on all sides in +a brownish pinkish mist which betrayed a girdle of oaks not yet +conquered by the summer.</p> + +<p>She took her seat on the log, and he flung himself beside her. Out +came the stores in his pockets, and once more they made themselves +childishly merry over a scanty meal, which left them still hungry.</p> + +<p>Then for an hour or two they sat lounging and chattering in the +warm shade, while the gentle wind brought them every spring scent, +every twitter of the birds, every swaying murmur of the forest. +David lay on his back against the log, his eyes now plunging into +the forest, now watching the curls of smoke from his pipe mounting +against the background of green, or the moist fleecy clouds which +seemed to be actually tangled in the tree-tops, now fixed as long +as they dared on his companion's face. She was not beautiful? Let +her say it! For she had the softest mouth which drooped like a +child with a grievance when she was silent, and melted into the +subtlest curves when she talked. She had, as a rule, no colour, but +her clear paleness, as contrasted with the waves of her light-gold +hair, seemed to him an exquisite beauty. The eyebrows had an +oriental trick of mounting at the corners, but the effect, taken +with the droop of the mouth, was to give the face in repose a +certain charming look of delicate and plaintive surprise. Above all +it was her smallness which entranced him; her feet and hands, her +tiny waist, the <i>finesse</i> of her dress and movements. All the +women he had ever seen, Lucy and Dora among them, served at this +moment only to make a foil in his mind for this little Parisian +beside him.</p> + +<p>How she talked this afternoon! In her quick reaction towards him +she was after all more the woman than she had ever been. She +chattered of her forlorn childhood, of her mother's woes and her +father's iniquities, using the frankest language about these last; +then of herself and her troubles. He listened and laughed; his look +as she poured herself out to him was in itself a caress. Moreover, +unconsciously to both, their relation had changed somewhat. The +edge of his first ignorance and shyness had rubbed off. He was no +longer a mere slave at her feet. Rather a new and sweet equality +seemed at last after all these days to have arisen between them; a +bond more simple, more natural. Every now and then he caught his +breath under the sense of a coming crisis; meanwhile the May day +was a dream of joy, and life an intoxication.</p> + +<p>But he controlled himself long, being indeed in desperate fear of +breaking the spell which held her to him this heavenly afternoon. +The hours slipped by; the air grew stiller and sultrier. Presently, +just as the sun was sinking into the western wood, a woman, +carrying a bundle and with a couple of children, crossed the glade. +One child was on her arm; the other, whimpering with heat and +fatigue, dragged wearily behind her, a dead weight on its mother's +skirts. The woman looked worn out, and was scolding the crying +child in a thin exasperated voice. When she came to the stream, she +put down her bundle, and finding a seat by the water, she threw +back her cotton bonnet and began to wipe her brow, with long +breaths which were very near to groans. Then the child on her lap +set up a shout of hunger, while the child behind her began to cry +louder than before. The woman hastily raised the baby, unfastened +her dress, and gave it the breast, so stifling its cries; then, +first slapping the other child with angry vehemence, she groped in +the bundle for a piece of sausage roll, and by dint of alternately +shaking the culprit and stuffing the food into its poor open mouth, +succeeded in reducing it to a chewing and sobbing silence. The +mother herself was clearly at the last gasp, and when at length the +children were quiet, as she turned her harshly outlined head so as +to see who the other occupants of the glade might be, her look had +in it the dull hostility of the hunted creature whose powers of +self-defence are almost gone.</p> + +<p>But she could not rest long. After ten minutes, at longest, she +dragged herself up from the grass with another groan, and they all +disappeared into the trees, one of the children crying again—a +pitiable trio.</p> + +<p>Elise had watched the group closely, and the sight seemed in some +unexplained way to chill and irritate the girl.</p> + +<p>'There is one of the drudges that men make,' she said bitterly, +looking after the woman.</p> + +<p>'Men?' he demurred; 'I suspect the husband is a drudge too.'</p> + +<p>'Not he!' she cried. 'At least he has liberty, choice, comrades. He +is not battered out of all pleasure, all individuality, that other +human beings may have their way and be cooked for, and this +wretched human race may last. The woman is always the victim, say +what you like. But for <i>some</i> of us at least there is a way +out!'</p> + +<p>She looked at him defiantly.</p> + +<p>A tremor swept through him under the suddenness of this jarring +note. Then a delicious boldness did away with the tremor. He met +her eyes straight.</p> + +<p>'Yes—<i>love</i> can always find it,' he said under his +breath—'or make it.'</p> + +<p>She wavered an instant, then she made a rally.</p> + +<p>'I know nothing about that,' she said scornfully; 'I was thinking of +art. <i>Art</i> breaks all chains, or accepts none. The woman that +has art is free, and she alone; for she has scaled the men's heaven +and stolen their sacred fire.'</p> + +<p>She clasped her hands tightly on her knee; her face was full of +aggression.</p> + +<p>David sat looking at her, trying to smile, but his heart sank +within him.</p> + +<p>He threw away his pipe, and laid his hand down against the log, not +far from her, trying to smile, but his heart sank within him.</p> + +<p>He threw away his pipe and laid his head down against the log, not +far from her, drawing his hat over his eyes. So they sat in silence +a little while, till he looked up and said, in a bright beseeching +tone:</p> + +<p>'Finish me that scene in <i>Hernani!</i>'</p> + +<p>The day before, after a <i>matinee</i> of <i>Andromaque</i> at the +Theatre-Francais, in a moment of rebellion and reaction against +all things classical, they had both thrown themselves upon +<i>Hernani</i>. She had read it aloud to him in a green corner of +the Bois, having a faculty that way, and bidding him take it as a +French lesson. He took it, of course, as a lesson in nothing but +the art of making wild speeches to the woman one loves.</p> + +<p>But now she demurred.</p> + +<p>'It is not here.'</p> + +<p>He produced it out of his pocket.</p> + +<p>She shrugged her shoulders.</p> + +<p>'I am not in the vein.'</p> + +<p>'You said last week you were not in the vein,' he said, laughing +tremulously, 'and you read me that scene from <i>Ruy Blas</i>, so +that when we went to see Sarah Bernhardt in the evening I was +disappointed!'</p> + +<p>She smiled, not being able to help it, for all flattery was sweet +to her.</p> + +<p>'We must catch our train. I would never speak to you again if we +were late!'</p> + +<p>He held up his watch to her.</p> + +<p>'An hour—it is, at the most, half an hour's walk.'</p> + +<p>'Ah, <i>mon Dieu!</i>' she cried, clasping her hands. 'It is all +over, the vote is given. Perhaps Taranne is writing to me now, at +this moment!'</p> + +<p>'Read—read! and forget it half an hour more.'</p> + +<p>She caught up the book in a frenzy, and began to read, first +carelessly and with unintelligible haste; but before a page was +over, the artist had recaptured her, she had slackened, she had +begun to interpret.</p> + +<p>It was the scene in the third act where Hernani the outlaw, who has +himself bidden his love, Dona Sol, marry her kinsman the old Duke, +rather than link her fortunes to those of a ruined chief of +banditti, comes in upon the marriage he has sanctioned, nay +commanded. The bridegroom's wedding gifts are there on the table. +He and Dona Sol are alone.</p> + +<p>The scene begins with a speech of bitter irony from Hernani. His +friends have been defeated and dispersed. He is alone in the world; +a price is on his head; his lot is more black and hopeless than +before. Yet his heart is bursting within him. He had bidden her, +indeed, but how could she have obeyed! Traitress! false love! false +heart!</p> + +<p>He takes up the jewels one by one.</p> + +<p>'<i>This necklace is brave work,—and the bracelet is rare—though +not so rare as the woman who beneath a brow so pure can bear about +with her a heart so vile! And what in exchange? A little love? +Bah!—a mere trifle!... Great God! that one can betray like +this—and feel no shame—and live!</i>'</p> + +<p>For answer, Dona Sol goes proudly up to the wedding casket and, +with a gesture matching his own, takes out the dagger from its +lowest depth. 'You stop halfway!' she says to him calmly, and he +understands. In an instant he is at her feet, tortured with remorse +and passion, and the magical love scene of the act develops. What +ingenuity of tenderness, yet what truth!</p> + +<p>'She has pardoned me, and loves me! Ah, who will make it possible +that I too, after such words, should love Hernani and forgive him? +Tears!—thou weepest, and again it is my fault! And who will punish +me? for thou wilt but forgive again! Ah, my friends are dead!—and +it is a madman speaks to thee. Forgive! I would fain love—I know +not how. And yet, what deeper love could there be than this? Oh! +Weep not, but die with me! If I had but a world, and could give it +to thee!'</p> + +<p>The voice of the reader quivered. A hand came upon the book and +caught her hand. She looked up and found herself face to face with +David, kneeling beside her. They stared at each other. Then he +said, half choked:</p> + +<p>'I can't bear it any more! I love you with all my heart—oh, you +know—you know I do!'</p> + +<p>She was stupefied for a moment, and then with a sudden gesture she +drew herself away, and pushed him from her.</p> + +<p>'Leave me alone—leave me free—this moment!' she said +passionately.</p> + +<p>'Why do you persecute and pursue me? What right have you? I have +been kind to you, and you lay shares for me. I will have nothing +more to do with you. Let me go home, and let us part.'</p> + +<p>She got up, and with feverish haste tied her veil over her hat. He +had fallen with his arms across the log, and his face hidden upon +them. She paused irresolutely. 'Monsieur David!'</p> + +<p>He made no answer.</p> + +<p>She bent down and touched him.</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>'No, no!—go!' he said thickly. She bit her lip. The breath under +her little lace tippet rose and fell with furious haste. Then she +sat down beside him, and with her hands clasped on her knee began +to please with him in tremulous light tones, as though they were a +pair of children. Why was he so foolish? Why had he tried to spoil +their beautiful afternoon? She must go. The train would not wait +for them. But he must come too. He must. After a little he rose +without a word, gathered up the book and her wrap, and off they set +along the forest path.</p> + +<p>She stole a glance at him. It seemed to her that he walked as if he +did not know where he was or who was beside him. Her heart smote +her. When they were deep in a hazel thicket, she stole out a small +impulsive hand, and slipped it into his, which hung beside him. He +started. Presently she felt a slight pressure, but it relaxed +instantly, and she took back her hand, feeling ashamed of herself, +and aggrieved besides. She shot on in front of him and he followed.</p> + +<p>So they walked through the chestnuts and across the white road to +the station in the red glow of the evening sun. He followed her +into the railway carriage, did her every little service with +perfect gentleness; then when they started he took the opposite +corner, and turning away from her, stared, with eyes that evidently +saw nothing, at the villas beside the line, at the children in the +streets, at the boats on the dazzling river.</p> + +<p>She in her corner tried to be angry, to harden her heart, to +possess herself only with the thought of Taranne's letter. But the +evening was not as the morning. That dark teasing figure at the +other end, outlined against the light of the window, intruded, took +up a share in her reverie she resented but could not prevent nay, +presently absorbed it altogether. Absurd! she had had love made to +her before, and had known how to deal with it. The artist must have +comrades, and the comrades may play false; well, then the artist +must take care of herself.</p> + +<p>She had done no harm; she was not to blame; she had let him know +from the beginning that she only lived for art. What folly, and +what treacherous, inconsiderate folly, it had all been!</p> + +<p>So she lashed herself up. But her look stole incessantly to that +opposite corner, and every now and then she felt her lips trembling +and her eyes growing hot in a way which annoyed her.</p> + +<p>When they reached Paris she said to him imperiously as he helped +her out of the carriage, 'A cab, please!'</p> + +<p>He found one for her, and would have closed the door upon her.</p> + +<p>'No, come in!' she said to him with the same accent.</p> + +<p>His look in return was like a blow to her, there was such an +inarticulate misery in it. But he got in, and they drove on in +silence.</p> + +<p>When they reached the Rue Chantal she sprang out, snatched her key +from the concierge, and ran up the stairs. But when she reached the +point on that top passage where their ways diverged, she stopped +and looked back for him.</p> + +<p>'Come and see my letter,' she said to him, hesitating.</p> + +<p>He stood quite still, his arms hanging beside him, and drew a long +breath that stabbed her.</p> + +<p>'I think not.'</p> + +<p>And he turned away to his own door.</p> + +<p>But she ran back to him and laid her hand on his arm. Her eyes were +full of tears.</p> + +<p>'Please, Monsieur David. We were good friends this morning. Be now +and always my good friend!'</p> + +<p>He shook his head again, but he let himself be led by her. Still +holding him—torn between her quick remorse and her eagerness for +Taranne's letter, she unlocked her door. One dart for the table. +Yes! there it lay. She took it up; then her face blanched suddenly, +and she came piteously up to David, who was standing just inside +the closed door.</p> + +<p>'Wish me luck, Monsieur David, wish me luck, as you did before!'</p> + +<p>But he was silent, and she tore open the letter. '<i>Dieu!—mon +Dieu!</i>'</p> + +<p>It was a sound of ecstasy. Then she flung down the letter, and +running up to David, she caught his arm again with both hands.</p> + +<p>'<i>Triomphe! Triomphe!</i> I have got my <i>mention</i>, and the +picture they skied is to be brought down to the line, and Taranne +says I have done better than any other pupil of his of the same +standing—that I have an extraordinary gift—that I must succeed, +all the world says so—and two other members of the jury send me +their compliments. Ah! Monsieur David'—in a tone of reproach—'be +kind—be nice—congratulate me.'</p> + +<p>And she drew back an arm's-length that she might look at him, her +own face overflowing with exultant colour and life. Then she +approached again, her mood changing.</p> + +<p>'It is too <i>detestable</i> of you to stand there like a statue! +ah! that it is! For I never deceived you, no, never. I said to +you the first night—there is nothing else for me in the world +but art—nothing! Do you hear? This falling in love spoils +everything—<i>everything!</i> Be friends with me. You will be +going back to England soon. Perhaps—perhaps'—her voice +faltered—'I will take a week's more holiday—Taranne says I ought. +But then I must go to work—and we will part friends—always +friends—and respect and understand each other all our lives, +<i>n'est-ce pas!</i>'</p> + +<p>'Oh! let me go!' cried David fiercely, his loud strained voice +startling them both, and flinging her hand away from him, he made +for the door. But impulsively she threw herself against it, +dismayed to find herself so near crying, and shaken with emotion +from head to foot.</p> + +<p>They stood absorbed in each other; she with her hands behind her on +the door, and her hat tumbling back from her masses of loosened +hair. And as she gazed she was fascinated; for there was a grand +look about him in his misery—a look which was strange to her, and +which was in fact the emergence of his rugged and Puritan race. But +whatever it was it seized her, as all aspects of his personal +beauty had done from the beginning. She held out her little white +hands to him appealing.</p> + +<p>'No! no!' he said roughly, trying to put her away,' +<i>never—never</i>—friends! You may kill me—you shan't make a +child of me any more. Oh! my God!' It was a cry of agony. 'A man +can't go about with a girl in this way, if—if she is like you, and +not—' His voice broke—he lost the thread of what he was saying, +and drew his hand across his eyes before he broke out again. +'What—you thought I was just a raw cub, to be played with. Oh, I +am too dull, I suppose, to understand! But I have grown under your +hands anyway. I don't know myself—I should do you or myself a +mischief if this went on, Let me go—and go home to-night!'</p> + +<p>And again he made a threatening step forward. But when he came +close to her he broke down.</p> + +<p>'I would have worked for you so,' he said thickly. 'For your sake I +would have given up my country. I would have made myself French +altogether. It should have been marriage or no marriage as you +pleased. You should have been free to go or stay. Only I would have +laid myself down for you to walk over. I have some money. I would +have settled here. I would have protected you. It is not right for +a woman to be alone—anyone so young and so pretty. I thought you +understood—that you must understand—that your heart was melting +to me. I should have done your work no harm—I should have been +your slave—you know that. That <i>cursed, cursed</i> art!'</p> + +<p>He spoke with a low intense emphasis; then turning away he buried +his face in his hands.</p> + +<p>'David!'</p> + +<p>He looked up startled. She was stepping towards him, a smile of +ineffable charm floating as it were upon her tears.</p> + +<p>'I don't know what is the matter with me!' she said tremulously. +'There is trouble in it, I know.' It is the broken glass coming +true. <i>Mais, Voyons! c'est plus fort que moi!</i> Do you care so +much—would it break your heart—would you let me work—and never, +<i>never</i> get in the way? Would you be content that art should +come first and you second? I can promise you no more than that—not +one little inch! <i>Would</i> you be content? Say!'</p> + +<p>He ran to her with a cry. She let him put his arms round her, and a +shiver of excitement ran through her.</p> + +<p>'What does it mean?' she said breathlessly. 'One is so strong one +moment—and the next—like this! Oh, why did you ever come?'</p> + +<p>Then she burst into tears, hiding her eyes upon his breast.</p> + +<p>'Oh! I have been so much alone! but I have got a heart somewhere +all the same. If you will have it, you must take the consequences.'</p> + +<p>Awed by the mingling of his silence with that painful throbbing +beneath her cheek, she looked up. He stooped—and their young faces +met.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-3" id="CHAPTER_VII-3"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<p>During the three weeks which had ended for David and Elise in this +scene of passion, Louie had been deliberately going her own way, +managing even in this unfamiliar <i>milieu</i> to extract from it +almost all the excitement or amusement it was capable of yielding +her. All the morning she dragged Madame Cervin about the Paris +streets: in the afternoon she would sometimes pose for Montjoie, +and sometimes not; he had to bring her bonbons and theatre tickets +to bribe her, and learn new English wherewith to flatter her. Then +in the evenings she made the Cervins take her to theatres and +various entertainments more or less reputable, for which of course +David paid. It seemed to Madame Cervin, as she sat staring beside +them, that her laughs never fell in with the laughs of other +people. But whether she understood or no, it amused her, and go she +would.</p> + +<p>A looker-on might have found the relations between Madame Cervin +and her boarder puzzling at first sight. In reality they +represented a compromise between considerations of finance and +considerations of morals—as the wife of the <i>ancien prix de +Rome</i> understood these last. For the ex-modiste was by no means +without her virtues or her scruples. She had ugly manners and ideas +on many points, but she had lived a decent life at any rate since +her marriage with a man for whom she had an incomprehensible +affection, heavily as he burdened and exploited her; and though she +took all company pretty much as it came, she had a much keener +sense now than in her youth of the practical advantages of good +behaviour to a woman, and of the general reasonableness of the +<i>bourgeois</i> point of view with regard to marriage and the +family. Her youth had been stormy; her middle age tended to a +certain conservative philosophy of common sense, and to the +development of a rough and ready conscience.</p> + +<p>Especially was she conscious of the difficulties of virtue. When +Elise Delaunay, for instance, was being scandalously handled by the +talkers in her stuffy <i>salon</i>, Madame Cervin sat silent. Not +only had she her own reasons for being grateful to the little +artist, but with the memory of her own long-past adventures behind +her she was capable by now of a secret admiration for an +unprotected and struggling girl who had hitherto held her head +high, worked hard, and avoided lovers.</p> + +<p>So that when the artist's wife undertook the charge of the +good-looking English girl she had done it honestly, up to her +lights, and she had fulfilled it honestly. She had in fact hardly +let Louie Grieve out of her sight since her boarder was handed over +to her.</p> + +<p>These facts, however, represent only one side of the situation. +Madame Cervin was now respectable. She had relinquished years +before the <i>chasse</i> for personal excitement; she had replaced +it by 'the <i>chasse</i> of the five-franc piece.' She loved her +money passionately; but at the same time she loved power, gossip, +and small flatteries. They distracted her, these last, from the +depressing spectacle of her husband's gradual and inevitable decay. +So that her life represented a balance between these various +instincts. For some time past she had gathered about her a train of +small artists, whom she mothered and patronised, and whose wild +talk and pecuniary straits diversified the monotony of her own +childless middle age. Montjoie, whose undoubted talent imposed upon +a woman governed during all her later life by the traditions and +the admirations of the artist world, had some time before +established a hold upon her, partly dependent on a certain +magnetism in the man, partly, as Elise had suspected, upon money +relations. For the grasping little <i>bourgeoise</i> who would +haggle for a morning over half a franc, and keep a lynx-eyed watch +over the woman who came to do the weekly cleaning, lest the +miserable creature should appropriate a crust or a cold potato, had +a weak side for her artist friends who flattered and amused her. +She would lend to them now and then out of her hoards; she had lent +to Montjoie in the winter when, after months of wild dissipation, +he was in dire straits and almost starving.</p> + +<p>But having lent, the thought of her jeopardised money would throw +her into agonies, and she would scheme perpetually to get it back. +Like all the rest of Montjoie's creditors she was hanging on the +Maenad, which promised indeed to be the <i>chef—d'œuvre</i> of an +indisputable talent, could that talent only be kept to work. When +the sculptor—whose curiosity had been originally roused by certain +phrases of Barbier's in his preliminary letters to his nephew, +phrases embellished by Dubois' habitual <i>fanfaronnade</i>—had +first beheld the English girl, he had temporarily thrown up his +work and was lounging about Paris in moody despair, to Madame +Cervin's infinite disgust. But at sight of Louie his artist's zeal +rekindled. Her wild nature, her half-human eye, the traces of Greek +form in the dark features—these things fired and excited him.</p> + +<p>'Get me that girl to sit,' he had said to Madame Cervin, 'and the +Maenad will be sold in six weeks!'</p> + +<p>And Madame Cervin, fully determined on the one hand that Montjoie +should finish his statue and pay his debts, and on the other that +the English girl should come to no harm from a man of notorious +character, had first led up to the sittings, and then superintended +them with the utmost vigilance. She meant no harm—the brother was +a fool for his pains—but Montjoie should have his sitter. So she +sat there, dragon-like, hour after hour, knitting away with her +little fat hands, while Louie posed, and Montjoie worked; and +groups of the sculptor's friends came in and out, providing the +audience which excited the ambition of the man and the vanity of +the girl.</p> + +<p>So the days passed. At last there came a morning when Louie came +out early from the Cervins' door, shut it behind her, and ran up +the ladder-like stairs which led to David's room.</p> + +<p>'David!'</p> + +<p>Her voice was pitched in no amiable key, as she violently shook the +handle of the door. But, call and shake as she might, there was no +answer, and after a while she paused, feeling a certain +bewilderment.</p> + +<p>'It is ridiculous! He can't be out; it isn't half-past eight. It's +just his tiresomeness.'</p> + +<p>And she made another and still more vehement attempt, all to no +purpose. Not a sound was to be heard from the room within. But as +she was again standing irresolute, she heard a footstep behind her +on the narrow stairs, and looking round saw the <i>concierge</i>, +Madame Merichat. The woman's thin and sallow face—the face of a +born pessimist—had a certain sinister flutter in it.</p> + +<p>She held out a letter to the astonished Louie, saying at the same +time with a disagreeable smile:</p> + +<p>'What is the use of knocking the house down when there is no one +there?'</p> + +<p>'Where is he?' cried Louie, not understanding her, and looking at +the letter with stupefaction.</p> + +<p>The woman put it into her hand.</p> + +<p>'No one came back last night,' she said with a shrug. 'Neither +monsieur nor mademoiselle; and this morning I receive orders to +send letters to "Barbizon, pres Fontainebleau."'</p> + +<p>Louie tore open her letter. It was from David, and dated Barbizon. +He would be there, it said, for nearly a month. If she could wait +with Madame Cervin till he himself could take her home, well and +good. But if that were disagreeable to her, let her communicate +with him 'chez Madame Pyat, Barbizon, Fontainebleau,' and he would +write to Dora Lomax at once, and make arrangements for her to lodge +there, till he returned to Manchester. Some one could easily be +found to look after her on the homeward journey if Madame Cervin +took her to the train. Meanwhile he enclosed the money for two +weeks' <i>pension</i> and twenty francs for pocket money.</p> + +<p>No other person was mentioned in the letter, and the writer offered +neither explanation nor excuses.</p> + +<p>Louie crushed the sheet in her hand, with an exclamation, her +cheeks flaming.</p> + +<p>'So they are amusing themselves at Fontainebleau?' inquired Madame +Merichat, who had been leaning against the wall, twisting her apron +and studying the English girl with her hard, malicious eyes. 'Oh! I +don't complain; there was a letter for me too. Monsieur has paid +all. But I regret for mademoiselle—if mademoiselle is surprised.'</p> + +<p>She spoke to deaf ears.</p> + +<p>Louie pushed past her, flew downstairs, and rang the Cervins' bell +violently. Madame Cervin herself opened the door, and the girl +threw herself upon her, dragged her into the <i>salon</i>, and then +said with the look and tone of a fury:</p> + +<p>'Read that!'</p> + +<p>She held out the crumbled letter. Madame Cervin adjusted her +spectacles with shaking hands.</p> + +<p>'But it is in English!' she cried in despair.</p> + +<p>Louie could not have beaten her for not understanding. But, herself +trembling with excitement, she was forced to bring all the French +words she knew to bear, and between them, somehow, piecemeal, +Madame Cervin was brought to a vague understanding of the letter.</p> + +<p>'Gone to Fontainebleau!' she cried, subsiding on to the sofa. 'But +why, with whom?'</p> + +<p>'Why, with that girl, that <i>creature—can't</i> you understand?' +said Louie, pacing up and down.</p> + +<p>'Ah, I will go and find out all about that!' said Madame Cervin, +and hastily exchanging the blue cotton apron and jacket she wore in +the mornings in the privacy of her own apartment for her walking +dress, she whisked out to make inquiries.</p> + +<p>Louie was left behind, striding from end to end of the little +<i>salon</i>, brows knit, every feature and limb tense with excitement. +As the meaning of her discovery grew plainer to her, as she +realised what had happened, and what the bearing of it must be +on herself and her own position, the tumult within her rose and +rose. After that day in the Louvre her native shrewdness had of +course very soon informed her of David's infatuation for the little +artist. And when it became plain, not only to her, but to all Elise +Delaunay's acquaintance, there was much laughter and gossip on the +subject in the Cervins' apartment. It was soon discovered that +Louie had taken a dislike, which, perhaps, from the beginning had +been an intuitive jealousy, to Elise, and had, moreover, no +inconvenient sensitiveness on her brother's account, which need +prevent the discussion of his love affairs in her presence. So the +discussion went freely on, and Louie only regretted that, do what +she would to improve herself in French, she understood so little of +it. But the tone towards Elise among Montjoie's set, especially +from Montjoie himself, was clearly contemptuous and hostile; and +Louie instinctively enjoyed the mud which she felt sure was being +thrown.</p> + +<p>Yet, incredible as it may seem, with all this knowledge on her +part, all this amusement at her brother's expense, all this +blackening of Elise's character, the possibility of such an event +as had actually occurred had never entered the sister's +calculations.</p> + +<p>And the reason lay in the profound impression which one side of his +character had made upon her during the five months they had been +together. A complete stranger to the ferment of the lad's +imagination, she had been a constant and chafed spectator of his +daily life. The strong self-restraint of it had been one of the +main barriers between them. She knew that she was always jarring +upon him, and that he was always blaming her recklessness and +self-indulgence. She hated his Spartan ways—his teetotalism, the +small store he set by any personal comfort or luxury, his powers of +long-continued work, his indifference to the pleasures and +amusements of his age, so far as Manchester could provide them. +They were a reflection upon her, and many a gibe she had flung out +at him about them. But all the same these ways of his had left a +mark upon her; they had rooted a certain conception of him in her +mind. She knew perfectly well that Dora Lomax was in love with him, +and what did he care? 'Not a ha'porth!' She had never seen him turn +his head for any girl; and when he had shown himself sarcastic on +the subject of her companions, she had cast about in vain for +materials wherewith to retort.</p> + +<p>And <i>now</i>! That he should fall in love with this French +girl—that was natural enough; it had amused and pleased her to see +him lose his head and make a fool of himself like other people; but +that he should run away with her after a fortnight, without +apparently a word of marrying her—leaving his sister in the +lurch—</p> + +<p>'<i>Hypocrite</i>!'</p> + +<p>She clenched her hands as she walked. What was really surging in +her was that feeling of <i>ownership</i> with regard to David which +had played so large a part in their childhood, even when she had +teased and plagued him most. She might worry and defy him; but no +sooner did another woman appropriate him, threaten to terminate for +good that hold of his sister upon him which had been so lately +renewed, than she was flooded with jealous rage. David had escaped +her—he was hers no longer—he was Elise Delaunay's! Nothing that +she did could scandalise or make him angry any more. He had sent +her money and washed his hands of her. As to his escorting her back +to England in two or three weeks, that was just a lie! A man who +takes such a plunge does not emerge so soon or so easily. No, she +would have to go back by herself, leaving him to his intrigue. The +very calmness and secretiveness of his letter was an insult. 'Mind +your own business, little girl—go home to work—and be good! +'—that was what it seemed to say to her. She set her teeth over it +in her wild anger and pride.</p> + +<p>At the same moment the outer door opened and Madame Cervin came +bustling back again, bursting with news and indignation.</p> + +<p>Oh, there was no doubt at all about it, they had gone off together! +Madame Merichat had seen them come downstairs about noon the day +before. He was carrying a black bag and a couple of parcels. She +also was laden; and about halfway down the street, Madame Merichat, +watching from her window, had seen them hail a cab, get into it, +and drive away, the cab turning to the right when they reached the +Boulevard.</p> + +<p>Madame Cervin's wrath was loud, and stimulated moreover by personal +alarm. One moment, remembering the scene in Montjoie's studio, she +cried out, like the sister, on the brother's hypocrisy; the next +she reminded her boarder that there was two weeks' <i>pension</i> +owing.</p> + +<p>Louie smiled scornfully, drew out the notes from David's letter and +flung them on the table. Then Madame Cervin softened, and took +occasion to remember that condolence with the sister was at least +as appropriate to the situation as abuse of the brother. She +attempted some consolation, nay, even some caresses, but Louie very +soon shook her off.</p> + +<p>'Don't talk to me! don't kiss me!' she said impatiently.</p> + +<p>And she swept out of the room, went to her own, and locked the +door. Then she threw herself face downwards on her bed, and +remained there for some time hardly moving. But with every minute +that passed, as it seemed, the inward smart grew sharper. She had +been hardly conscious of it, at first, this smart, in her rage and +pride, but it was there.</p> + +<p>At last she could bear it quietly no longer. She sprang up and +looked about her. There, just inside the open press which held her +wardrobe, were some soft white folds of stuff. Her eye gleamed: she +ran to the cupboard and took out the Maenad's dress. During the +last few days she had somewhat tired of the sittings—she had at +any rate been capricious and tiresome about them; and Montjoie, who +was more in earnest about this statue than he had been about any +work for years, was at his wit's end, first to control his own +temper, and next so to lure or drive his strange sitter as to +manage her without offending her.</p> + +<p>But to-day the dress recalled David—promised distraction and +retaliation. She slipped off her tight gingham with hasty fingers, +and in a few seconds she was transformed. The light folds floated +about her as she walked impetuously up and down, studying every +movement in the glass, intoxicated by the polished clearness and +whiteness of her own neck and shoulders, the curves of her own +grace and youth. Many a night, even after a long sitting, had she +locked her door, made the gas flare, and sat absorbed before her +mirror in this guise, throwing herself into one attitude after +another, naively regretting that sculpture took so long, and that +Montjoie could not fix them all. The ecstasy of self-worship in +which the whole process issued was but the fruition of that +childish habit which had wrought with childish things for the same +end—with a couple of rushlights, an old sheet and primroses from +the brook.</p> + +<p>Her black abundant hair was still curled about her head. Well, she +could pull it down in the studio—now for a wrap—and then no +noise! She would slip downstairs so that madame should know nothing +about it. She was tired of that woman always at her elbow. Let her +go marketing and leave other people in peace.</p> + +<p>But before she threw on her wrap she stood still a moment, her +nostril quivering, expanding, one hand on her hip, the other +swinging her Maenad's tambourine. She knew very little of this +sculptor-man—she did not understand him; but he interested, to +some extent overawed, her. He had poured out upon her the coarsest +flatteries, yet she realised that he had not made love to her. +Perhaps Madame Cervin had been in the way. Well, now for a +surprise and a <i>tęte-a-tęte</i>! A dare-devil look—her mother's +look—sprang into her eyes.</p> + +<p>She opened the door, and listened. No one in the little passage, +only a distant sound of rapid talking, which suggested to the girl +that madame was at that moment enjoying the discussion of her +boarder's affairs with monsieur, who was still in bed. She hurried +on a waterproof which covered her almost from top to toe. Then, +holding up her draperies, she stole out, and on to the public +stairs.</p> + +<p>They were deserted, and running down them she turned to the right +at the bottom and soon found herself at the high studio door.</p> + +<p>As she raised her hand to the bell she flushed with passion.</p> + +<p>'I'll let him see whether I'll go home whining to Dora, while he's +amusing himself,' she said under her breath.</p> + +<p>The door was opened to her by Montjoie himself, in his working +blouse, a cigarette in his mouth. His hands and dress were daubed +with clay, and he had the brutal look of a man in the blackest of +tempers. But no sooner did he perceive Louie Grieve's stately +figure in the passage than his expression changed.</p> + +<p>'You—you here! and for a sitting?'</p> + +<p>She nodded, smiling. Her look had an excitement which he perceived +at once. His eye travelled to the white drapery and the beautiful +bare arm emerging from the cloak; then he looked behind her for +Madame Cervin.</p> + +<p>No one—except this Maenad in a waterproof. Montjoie threw away his +cigarette.</p> + +<p>'<i>Entrez, entrez, mademoiselle!</i>' he said, bowing low to her. +'When the heavens are blackest, then they open. I was in a mind to +wring the Maenad's neck three minutes ago. Come and save your +portrait!'</p> + +<p>He led her in through the ante-room into the large outer studio. +There stood the Maenad on her revolving stand, and there was the +raised platform for the model. A heap of clay was to one side, and +water was dripping from the statue on to the floor. The studio +light had a clear evenness; and, after the heat outside, the +coolness of the great bare room was refreshing.</p> + +<p>They stood and looked at the statue together, Louie still in her +cloak. Montjoie pointed out to her that he was at work on the +shoulders and the left arm, and was driven mad by the difficulties +of the pose. '<i>Tonnerre de Dieu!</i> when I heard you knock, I +felt like a murderer; I rushed out to let fly at someone. And there +was my Maenad on the mat!—all by herself, too, without that little +piece of ugliness from upstairs behind her. I little thought this +day—this cursed day—was to turn out so. I thought you were tired +of the poor sculptor—that you had deserted him for good and all. +Ah! <i>déesse—je vous salue</i>!'</p> + +<p>He drew back from her, scanning her from head to foot, a new tone +in his voice, a new boldness in his deep-set eyes—eyes which were +already old. Louie stood instinctively shrinking, yet smiling, +understanding something of what he said, guessing more.</p> + +<p>There was a bull-necked strength about the man, with his dark, +square, weather-beaten head, and black eyebrows, which made her +afraid, in spite of the smooth and deprecating manner in which he +generally spoke to women. But her fear of him was not unpleasant to +her. She liked him; she would have liked above all to quarrel with +him; she felt that he was her match, He stepped forward, touched +her arm, and took a tone of command.</p> + +<p>'Quick, mademoiselle, with that cloak!'</p> + +<p>She mounted the steps, threw off her cloak, and fell into her +attitude without an instant's hesitation. Montjoie, putting his +hands over his eyes to look at her, exclaimed under his breath.</p> + +<p>It was perfectly true that, libertine as he was, he had so far felt +no inclination whatever to make love to the English girl. Nor was +the effect merely the result of Madame Cervin's vigilance. +Personally, for all her extraordinary beauty, his new model left +him cold. Originally he had been a man of the most complex artistic +instincts, the most delicate and varied perceptions. They and his +craftsman's skill were all foundering now in a sea of evil living. +But occasionally they were active still, and they had served him +for the instant detection of that common egotistical paste of which +Louie Grieve was made. He would have liked to chain her to his +model's platform, to make her the slave of his fevered degenerating +art. But she had no thrill for him. While he was working from her +his mind was often running on some little <i>grisette</i> or other, +who had not half Louie Grieve's physical perfection, but who had +charm, provocation, wit—all that makes the natural heritage of the +French woman, of whatever class. At the same time it had been an +irritation and an absurdity to him that, under Madame Cervin's eye, +he had been compelled to treat her with the ceremonies due to +<i>une jeune fille honnete.</i> For he had at once detected the +girl's reckless temper. From what social stratum did she come—she +and the brother? In her, at least, there was some wild blood! When +he sounded Madame Cervin, however, she, with her incurable habit of +vain mendacity, had only put her lodger in a light which Montjoie +felt certain was a false one.</p> + +<p>But this morning! Never had she been so superb, so inspiring! All +the vindictive passion, all the rage with David that was surging +within her, did but give the more daring and decision to her +attitude, and a wilder power to her look. Moreover, the boldness of +her unaccompanied visit to him provoked and challenged him. He +looked at her irresolutely; then with an effort he turned to his +statue and fell to work. The touch of the clay, the reaction from +past despondency prevailed; before half an hour was over he was +more enamoured of his task than he had ever yet been, and more +fiercely bent on success. Insensibly as the time passed, his tone +with her became more and more short, brusque, imperious. Once or +twice he made some rough alteration in the pose, with the +overbearing haste of a man who can hardly bear to leave the work +under his hands even for an instant. When he first assumed this +manner Louie opened her great eyes. Then it seemed to please her. +She felt no regret whatever for the smooth voice; the more +dictatorial he became the better she liked it, and the more +submissive she was.</p> + +<p>This went on for about a couple of hours—an orgie of work on his +side, of excited persistence on hers. Her rival in the clay grew in +life and daring under her eyes, rousing in her, whenever she was +allowed to rest a minute and look, a new intoxication with herself. +They hardly talked. He was too much absorbed in what he was doing; +and she also was either bent upon her task, or choked by wild gusts +of jealous and revengeful thought. Every now and then as she stood +there, in her attitude of eager listening, the wall of the studio +would fade before her eyes, and she would see nothing but a +torturing vision of David at Fontainebleau, wrapt up in 'that +creature,' and only remembering his sister to rejoice that he had +shaken her off. <i>Ah</i>! How could she sufficiently avenge +herself! how could she throw all his canting counsels to the winds +with most emphasis and effect!</p> + +<p>At last a curious thing happened. Was it mere nervous reaction +after such a strain of will and passion, or was it the sudden +emergence of something in the sister which was also common to +the brother—a certain tragic susceptibility, the capacity for +a wild melancholy? For, in an instant, while she was thinking +vaguely of Madame Cervin and her money affairs, <i>despair</i> seized +her—shuddering, measureless despair—rushing in upon her, and +sweeping away everything else before it. She tottered under it, +fighting down the clutch of it as long as she could. It had no +words, it was like a physical agony. All that was clear to her for +one lurid moment was that she would like to kill herself.</p> + +<p>The studio swam before her, and she dropped into the chair behind +her.</p> + +<p>Montjoie gave a protesting cry.</p> + +<p>'Twenty minutes more!—<i>Courage</i>!'</p> + +<p>Then, as she made no answer, he went up to her and put a violent +hand on her shoulder—beside himself.</p> + +<p>'You <i>shall</i> not be tired, I tell you. Look up! look at me!'</p> + +<p>Under the stimulus of his master's tone she slowly recovered +herself—her great black eyes lifted. He gazed into them steadily; +his voice sank.</p> + +<p>'You belong to me,' he said with breathless rapidity. 'Do you +understand? What is the matter with you? What are those tears?'</p> + +<p>A cry of nature broke from her.</p> + +<p>'My brother has left me—with that girl!'</p> + +<p>She breathed out the words into the ears of the man stooping +towards her. His great brow lifted—he gave a little laugh. Then +eagerly, triumphantly, he seized her again by the arms. '<i>A la +bonne heure</i>! Then it is plainer still. You belong to me and I +to you. In that statue we live and die together. Another hour, and +it will be a masterpiece. Come! one more!'</p> + +<p>She drank in his tone of mad excitement as though it were wine, and +it revived her. The strange grip upon her heart relaxed; the +nightmare was dashed aside. Her colour came back, and, pushing him +proudly away from her, she resumed her pose without a word.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-3" id="CHAPTER_VIII-3"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<p>'Do you know, sir, that that good woman has brought in the soup for +the second time? I can see her fidgeting about the table through +the window. If we go on like this, she will depart and leave us to +wait on ourselves. Then see if you get any soup out of <i>me</i>.'</p> + +<p>David, for all answer, put his arm close round the speaker. She +threw herself back against him, smiling into his face. But neither +could see the other, for it was nearly dark, and through the acacia +trees above them the stars glimmered in the warm sky. To their +left, across a small grass-plat, was a tiny thatched house buried +under a great vine which embowered it all from top to base, and +overhung by trees which drooped on to the roof, and swept the +windows with their branches. Through a lower window, opening on to +the gravel path, could be seen a small bare room, with a paper of +coarse brown and blue pattern, brightly illuminated by a paraffin +lamp, which also threw a square of light far out into the garden. +The lamp stood on a table which was spread for a meal, and a stout +woman, in a white cap and blue cotton apron, could be seen moving +beside it.</p> + +<p>'Come in!' said Elise, springing to her feet, and laying a +compelling hand on her companion. 'Get it over! The moon is waiting +for us out there!'</p> + +<p>And she pointed to where, beyond the roofs of the neighbouring +houses, rose the dark fringe of trees which marked the edge of the +forest.</p> + +<p>They went in, hand in hand, and sat opposite each other at the +little rickety table, while the peasant woman from whom they had +taken the house waited upon them. The day before, after looking at +the <i>auberge</i>, and finding it full of artists come down to +look for spring subjects in the forest, they had wandered on +searching for something less public, more poetical. And they had +stumbled upon this tiny overgrown house in its tangled garden. The +woman to whom it belonged had let it for the season, but till the +beginning of her 'let' there was a month; and, after much +persuasion, she had consented to allow the strangers to hire it and +her services as <i>bonne</i>, by the week, for a sum more congruous +with the old and primitive days of Barbizon than with the later +claims of the little place to fashion and fame. As the lovers stood +together in the <i>salon</i>, exclaiming with delight at its bare +floor, its low ceiling, its old bureau, its hard sofa with the +Empire legs, and the dilapidated sphinxes on the arms, the +owner of the house looked them up and down, from the door, with +comprehending eyes. Barbizon had known adventures like this before!</p> + +<p>But she might think what she liked; it mattered nothing to her +lodgers. To 'a pair of romantics out of date,' the queer overgrown +place she owned was perfection, and they took possession of it in a +dream of excitement and joy. From the top loft, still bare and +echoing, where the highly respectable summer tenants were to put up +the cots of their children, to the outside den which served for a +kitchen, whence a wooden ladder led to a recess among the rafters, +occupied by Madame Pyat as a bedroom; from the masses of Virginia +creeper on the thatched roof to the thicket of acacias and roses on +the front grass-plat, and the high flowery wall which shut them off +from the curious eyes of the street, it was all, in the lovers' +feeling, the predestined setting for such an idyll as theirs.</p> + +<p>And if this was so in the hot mornings and afternoons, how much +more in the heavenly evenings and nights, when the forest lay +whispering and murmuring under the moonlight, and they, wandering +together arm in arm under the gaunt and twisted oaks of the Bas +Breau, or among the limestone blocks which strew the heights of +this strange woodland, felt themselves part of the world about +them, dissolved into its quivering harmonious life, shades among +its shadows!</p> + +<p>On this particular evening, after the hurried and homely meal, +David brought Elise's large black hat, and the lace scarf which +had bewitched him at St. Germain—oh, the joy of handling such +things in this familiar, sacrilegious way!—and they strolled +out into the long uneven street beyond their garden wall, on +their way to the forest. The old inn to the left was in a clatter. +Two <i>diligences</i> had just arrived, and the horses were drooping +and panting at the door. A maidservant was lighting guests across +the belittered courtyard with a flaring candle. There was a red +glimpse of the kitchen with its brass and copper pans, and on the +bench outside the gateway sat a silent trio of artists, who had +worked well and dined abundantly, and were now enjoying their last +smoke before the sleep, to which they were already nodding, should +overtake them. The two lovers stepped quickly past, making with all +haste for that leafy mystery beyond cleft by the retreating +whiteness of the Fontainebleau road—into which the village melted +on either side.</p> + +<p>Such moonlight! All the tones of the street, its white and greys, +the reddish brown of the roofs, were to be discerned under it; and +outside in the forest it was a phantasmagoria, an intoxication. The +little paths they were soon threading, paths strewn with limestone +dust, wound like white threads among the rocks and through the +blackness of the firs. They climbed them hand in hand, and soon +they were on a height looking over a great hollow of the forest to +the plain beyond, as it were a vast cup overflowing with moonlight +and melting into a silver sky. The width of the heavens, the dim +immensity of the earth, drove them close together in a delicious +silence. The girl put the warmth of her lover's arm between her and +the overpowering greatness of a too august nature. The man, on the +other hand, rising in this to that higher stature which was truly +his, felt himself carried out into nature on the wave of his own +boundless emotion. That cold Deism he had held so loosely broke +into passion. The humblest phrases of worship, of entreaty, swept +across the brain.</p> + +<p>'Could one ever have guessed,' he asked her, his words stumbling +and broken, 'that such happiness was possible?'</p> + +<p>She shook her head, smiling at him.</p> + +<p>'Yes, certainly!—if one has read poems and novels. Nothing to me +is ever <i>more</i> than I expect,—generally less.'</p> + +<p>Then she broke off hesitating, and hid her face against his breast. +A pang smote him. He cried out in the old commonplaces that he was +not worthy, that she must tire of him, that there was nothing in +him to hold, to satisfy her.</p> + +<p>'And three weeks ago,' she said, interrupting him, 'we had never +heard each other's names. Strange—life is strange! Well, now,' and +she quickly drew herself away from him, and holding him by both +hands lightly swung his arms backwards and forwards, 'this can't +last for ever, you know. In the first place—we shall die.' and +throwing herself back, she pulled against him childishly, a spray +of ivy he had wound round her hat drooping with fantastic shadows +over her face and neck.</p> + +<p>'Do you know what you are like?' he asked her, evading what she had +said, while his eyes devoured her.</p> + +<p>'No!'</p> + +<p>'You are like that picture in the Louvre,—Da Vinci's St. John, +that you say should be a Bacchus.'</p> + +<p>'Which means that you find me a queer,—heathenish,—sort of +creature?' she said, still laughing and swaying. 'So I am. Take +care! Well now, a truce to love-making! I am tired of being meek +and charming—this night excites me. Come and see the oaks in the +Bas Breau.'</p> + +<p>And running down the rocky path before them she led him in and out +through twisted leafy ways, till at last they stood among the +blasted giants of the forest, the oaks of the Bas Breau. In the +emboldening daylight, David, with certain English wood scenes in +his mind, would swear the famous trees of Fontainebleau had neither +size nor age to speak of. But at night they laid their avenging +spell upon him. They stood so finely on the broken ground, each of +them with a kingly space about him; there was so wild a fantasy in +their gnarled and broken limbs; and under the night their scanty +crowns of leaf, from which the sap was yearly ebbing, had so lofty +a remoteness.</p> + +<p>They found a rocky seat in front of a certain leafless monster, +which had been struck by lightning in a winter storm years before, +and rent from top to bottom. The bare trunk with its torn branches +yawning stood out against the rest, a black and melancholy shape, +preaching desolation. But Elise studied it coolly.</p> + +<p>'I know that tree by heart,' she declared. 'Corot, Rousseau, +Diaz—it has served them all. I could draw it with my eyes shut.'</p> + +<p>Then with the mention of drawing she began to twist her fingers +restlessly.</p> + +<p>'I wonder what the <i>concours</i> was to-day,' she said. 'Now that +I am away that Breal girl will carry off everything. There will be +no bearing her—she was never second till I came.'</p> + +<p>David took a very scornful view of this contingency. 'When you +go back you will beat them all again; let them have their few +weeks' respite! You told me yesterday you had forgotten the +<i>atelier</i>.'</p> + +<p>'Did I?' she said with a strange little sigh. 'It wasn't true—I +haven't.'</p> + +<p>With a sudden whim she pulled off his broad hat and threw it down. +Reaching forward she took his head between her hands, and arranged +his black curls about his brow in a way to suit her. Then, still +holding him, she drew back with her head on one side to look at +him. The moon above them, now at its full zenith of brightness, +threw the whole massive face into strong relief, and her own look +melted into delight.</p> + +<p>'There is no model in Paris,' she declared, 'with so fine a head.' +Then with another sigh she dropped her hold, and propping her chin +on her hands, she stared straight before her in silence.</p> + +<p>'Do you imagine you are <i>the first?</i>' she asked him presently, +with a queer abruptness.</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>'You told me so,' he said, at last, his voice quivering; 'don't +deceive me—there is no fun in it—I believe it all!'</p> + +<p>She laughed, and did not answer for a moment. He put out his +covetous arms and would have drawn her to him, but she withdrew +herself.</p> + +<p>'What did I tell you? I don't remember. In the first place there +was a cousin—there is always a cousin!'</p> + +<p>He stared at her, his face flushing, and asked her slowly what she +meant.</p> + +<p>'You have seen his portrait in my room,' she said coolly.</p> + +<p>He racked his brains.</p> + +<p>'Oh! that portrait on the wall,' he burst out at last, in vain +trying for a tone as self-possessed as her own,' that man with a +short beard?'</p> + +<p>She nodded.</p> + +<p>'Oh, he is not bad at all, my cousin. He is the son of that uncle +and aunt I told you of. Only while they were rusting in the +Gironde, he was at Paris learning to be a doctor, and enlarging his +mind by coming to see me every week. When they came up to town to +put in a claim to me, <i>they</i> thought me a lump of wickedness, +as I told you; I made their hair stand on end. But Guillaume knew a +good deal more about me; and <i>he</i> was not scandalised at all; +oh dear, no. He used to come every Saturday and sit in a corner +while I painted—a long lanky creature, rather good looking, but +with spectacles—he has ruined his eyes with reading. Oh, he would +have married me any day, and let his relations shriek as they +please; so don't suppose, Monsieur David, that I have had no +chances of respectability, or that my life began with you!' She +threw him a curious look.</p> + +<p>'Why do you talk about him?' cried David, beside himself. 'What is +your cousin to either of us?'</p> + +<p>'I shall talk of what I like,' she said wilfully, clasping her +hands round her knees with the gesture of an obstinate child.</p> + +<p>David stared away into the black shadow of the oaks, marvelling at +himself? at the strength of that sudden smart within him, that +half-frenzied restlessness and dread which some of her lightest +sayings had the power to awaken in him.</p> + +<p>Then he repented him, and turning, bent his head over the little +hands and kissed them passionately. She did not move or speak. He +came close to her, trying to decipher her face in the moonlight. +For the first time since that night in the studio there was a film +of sudden tears in the wide grey eyes. He caught her in his arms +and demanded why.</p> + +<p>'You quarrel with me and dictate to me,' she cried, wrestling with +herself, choked by some inexplicable emotion, 'when I have given you +everything? when I am alone in the world with you? at your mercy? I +who have been so proud, have held my head so high!'</p> + +<p>He bent over her, pouring into her ear all the words that passion +could find or forge. Her sudden attack upon him, poor fellow, +seemed to him neither unjust nor extravagant. She <i>had</i> given +him everything, and who and what was he that she should have thrown +him so much as a look!</p> + +<p>Gradually her mysterious irritation died away. The gentleness of +the summer night, the serenity of the moonlight, the sea-like +murmur of the forest, these things sank little by little into their +hearts, and in the calm they made, youth and love spoke again, +siren voices, with the old magic. And when at last they loitered +home, they moved in a trance of feeling which wanted no words. The +moon dropped slowly into the western trees; midnight chimes came to +them from the villages which ring the forest; and a playing wind +sprang up about them, cooling the girl's hot cheeks, and freshening +the verdurous ways through which they passed.</p> + +<p>But in the years which came after, whenever David allowed his mind +to dwell for a short shuddering instant on these days at +Fontainebleau, it often occurred to him to wonder whether during +their wild dream he had ever for one hour been truly happy. At the +height of their passion had there been any of that exquisite give +and take between them which may mark the simplest love of the +rudest lovers, but which is in its essence moral, a thing not of +the senses but of the soul? There is nothing else which is vital to +love. Without it passion dies into space like the flaming corona of +the sun. With it, the humblest hearts may 'bear it out even to the +edge of doom.'</p> + +<p>There can be no question that after the storm of feeling, +excitement, pity, which had swept her into his arms, he gained upon +her vagrant fancy for a time day by day. Seen close, his social +simplicity, his delicately tempered youth had the effect of great +refinement. He had in him much of the peasant nature, but so +modified by fine perception and wide-ranging emotion, that what had +been coarseness in his ancestors was in him only a certain rich +savour and fulness of being. His mere sympathetic, sensitive +instinct had developed in him all the essentials of good manners, +and books, poetry, observation had done the rest.</p> + +<p>So that in the little matters of daily contact he touched and +charmed her unexpectedly. He threw no veil whatever over his +tradesman's circumstances, and enjoyed trying to make her +understand what had been the conditions and prospects of his +Manchester life. He had always, indeed, conceived his bookseller's +profession with a certain dignity; and he was secretly proud, with +a natural conceit, of the efforts and ability which had brought him +so rapidly to the front. How oddly the Manchester names and facts +sounded in the forest air! She would sit with her little head on +one side listening; but privately he suspected that she understood +very little of it; that she accepted him and his resources very +much in the vague with the <i>insouciance</i> of Bohemia.</p> + +<p>He himself, however, was by no means without plans for the +future. In the first flush of his triumphant passion he had +won from her the promise of a month alone with him, in or near +Fontainebleau—her own suggestion—after which she was to go back +in earnest to her painting, and he was to return to Manchester and +make arrangements for their future life together. Louie must be +provided for, and after that his ideas about himself were already +tolerably clear. In one of his free intervals, during his first +days in Paris, he had had a long conversation one evening with the +owner of an important bookshop on the Quai St.-Michel. The man +badly wanted an English clerk with English connections. David made +certain of the opening, should he choose to apply for it. And if +not there, then somewhere else. With the consciousness of capital, +experience, and brains, to justify him, he had no fears. Meanwhile, +John should keep on the Manchester shop, and he, David, would go +over two or three times a year to stock-take and make up accounts. +John was as honest as the day, and had already learnt much.</p> + +<p>But although his old self had so far reasserted itself; although +the contriving activity of the brain was all still there, ready to +be brought to bear on this new life when it was wanted; Elise could +never mistake him, or the true character of this crisis of his +youth. The self-surrender of passion had transformed, developed him +to an amazing extent, and it found its natural language. As she +grew deeper and deeper into the boy's heart, and as the cloud of +diffidence which had enwrapped him since he came to Paris gave way, +so that even in this brilliant France he ventured at last to +express his feelings and ideas, the poet and thinker in him grew +before her eyes. She felt a new consideration, a new intellectual +respect for him.</p> + +<p>But above all his tenderness, his womanish consideration and +sweetness amazed her. She had been hotly wooed now and then, but +with no one, not even 'the cousin,' had she ever been on terms of +real intimacy. And for the rest she had lived a rough-and-tumble, +independent life, defending herself first of all against the big +boys of the farm, then against her father, or her comrades in the +<i>atelier</i>, or her Bohemian suitors. The ingenuity of service +David showed in shielding and waiting upon her bewildered her—had, +for a time, a profound effect upon her.</p> + +<p>And yet!—all the while—what jars and terrors from the very +beginning! He seemed often to be groping in the dark with her. +Whole tracts of her thought and experience were mysteries to him, +and grew but little plainer with their new relation. Little as he +knew or would have admitted it, the gulf of nationality yawned deep +between them. And those artistic ambitions of hers—as soon as they +re-emerged on the other side of the first intoxication of +passion—they were as much of a jealousy and a dread to him as +before. His soul was as alive as it had ever been to the threat and +peril of them.</p> + +<p>Their relation itself, too—to her, perhaps, secretly a +guarantee—was to him a perpetual restlessness. <i>L'union +libre</i> as the French artist understands it was not in his social +tradition, whatever might be his literary assimilation of French +ideas. He might passionately adopt and defend it, because it was +her will; none the less was he, at the bottom of his heart, both +ashamed and afraid because of it. From the very beginning he had +let her know that she had only to say the word and he was ready to +marry her instantly. But she put him aside with an impatient wave +of her little hand, a nervous, defiant look in her grey eyes. Yet +one day, when in the little village shop of Barbizon, a woman +standing beside Elise at the counter looked her insolently over +from head to foot, and took no notice of a question addressed to +her on the subject of one of the forest routes, the girl felt and +unexpected pang of resentment and shame.</p> + +<p>One afternoon, in a lonely part of the forest, she strained her +foot by treading on a loose stone among the rocks. Tired with long +rambling and jarred by the shock she sank down, looking white and +ready to cry. Pain generally crushed and demoralized her. She was +capable, indeed, of setting the body at defiance on occasion; but, +as a rule, she had no physical fortitude, and did not pretend to +it.</p> + +<p>David was much perplexed. So far as he knew, they were not near any +of the huts which are dotted over the forest and provide the +tourist with <i>consommations</i> and carved articles. There was no +water wherewith to revive her or to bandage the foot, for +Fontainebleau has no streams. All he could do was to carry her. And +this he did, with the utmost skill, and with a leaping thrill of +tenderness which made itself felt by the little elfish creature in +the clasp of his arms, and in the happy leaning of his dark cheek +to hers, as she held him round the neck.</p> + +<p>'Paul and Virginia!' she said to him, laughing. "<i>He bore her in +his arms!</i>"—all heroes do it—in reality, most women would +break the hero's back. 'Confess <i>I</i> am even lighter than you +thought!'</p> + +<p>'As light as Venus' doves,' he swore to her. 'Bid me carry you to +Paris and see.'</p> + +<p>'Paris!' At the mention of it she fell silent, and the corners of +her mouth drooped into gravity. But he strode happily on, +perceiving nothing.</p> + +<p>Then when they got home, she limping through the village, he put on +the airs of a surgeon, ran across to the grocer, who kept a tiny +<i>pharmacie</i> in one corner of his miscellaneous shop, and +conferred with him to such effect that the injured limb was soon +lotioned and bandaged in a manner which made David inordinately +proud of himself. Once, as he was examining his handiwork, it +occurred to him that it was Mr. Ancrum who had taught him to use +his fingers neatly. <i>Mr. Ancrum!</i> At the thought of his name +the young man felt an inward shrinking, as though from contact with +a cold and alien order of things. How hard to realise, indeed, that +the same world contained Manchester with its factories and chapels, +and this perfumed forest, this little overgrown house!</p> + +<p>Afterwards, as he sat beside her, reading, as quiet as a mouse, so +that she might sleep if the tumble-down Empire sofa did but woo her +that way, she suddenly put up her arm and drew him down to her.</p> + +<p>'Who taught you all this—this tenderness?' she said to him, in a +curious wistful tone, as though her question were the outcome of a +long reverie. 'Was it your mother?'</p> + +<p>David started. He had never spoken to her or to anyone of his +mother, and he could not bring himself to do so now.</p> + +<p>'My mother died when I was five years old,' he said reluctantly. +'Why don't you go to sleep, little restless thing? Is the bandage +right?'</p> + +<p>'Quite. I can imagine,' she said presently in a low tone, letting +him go, 'I can imagine one might grow so dependent on all this +cherishing, so horribly dependent!'</p> + +<p>'Well, and why not?' he said, taking up her hand and kissing it. +'What are we made for, but to be your bondslaves?'</p> + +<p>She drew her hand away, and let it fall beside her with an +impatient sigh. The poor boy looked at her with frightened eyes. +Then some quick instinct came to the rescue, and his expression +changed completely.</p> + +<p>'I have thought it all out,' he began, speaking with a brisk, +business-like air, 'what I shall do at Manchester, and when I get +back here.'</p> + +<p>And he hung over her, chattering and laughing about his plans. What +did she say to a garret and a studio somewhere near the Quai +St.-Michel, in the Quartier Latin, rooms whence they might catch a +glimpse of the Seine and Notre-Dame, where she would be within easy +reach of Taranne's studio, and the Luxembourg, and the Ecole des +Beaux-Arts, and the Louvre rooms where after their day's work they +might meet, shut out the world and let in heaven—a home consecrate +at once to art and love?</p> + +<p>The quick bright words flowed without a check; his eye shone as +though it caught the light of the future. But she lay turned away +from him, silent, till at last she stopped him with a restless +gesture.</p> + +<p>'Don't—don't talk like that! As soon as one dares to reckon on +Him—<i>le bon Dieu</i> strikes—just to let one know one's place. +And don't drive me mad about my art! You saw me try to draw this +morning; you might be quiet about it, I think, <i>par pitié!</i> If +I ever had any talent—which is not likely, or I should have had +some notices of my pictures by this time—it is all dead and done +for.'</p> + +<p>And turning quite away from him, she buried her face in the +cushion.</p> + +<p>'Look here,' he said to her, smiling and stooping, 'shall I tell you +something? I forgot it till now.'</p> + +<p>She shook her head, but he went on:</p> + +<p>You remember this morning while I was waiting for you, I went into +the inn to ask about the way to the Gorges d'Affremont. I had your +painting things with me. I didn't know whether you wanted them or +not, and I laid them down on the table in the <i>cour</i>, while I +went in to speak to madame. Well, when I came out, there were a +couple of artists there, those men who have been here all the time +painting, and they had undone the strap and were looking at the +sketch—you know, that bit of beechwood with the rain coming on. I +rushed at them. But they only grinned, and one of them, the young +man with the fair moustache, sent you his compliments. You must +have, he said, "very remarkable dispositions indeed." Perhaps I +looked as if I knew that before! Whose pupil were you? I told him, +and he said I was to tell you to stick to Taranne. You were one of +the <i>peintres de temperament</i>, and it was they especially who +must learn their grammar, and learn it from the classics; and the +other man, the old bear who never speaks to anybody, nodded and +looked at the sketch again, and said it was "amusing—not bad at +all," and you might make something of it for the next Salon.'</p> + +<p>Cunning David! By this time Elise had her arm round his neck, and +was devouring his face with her keen eyes. Everything was shaken +off—the pain of her foot, melancholy, fatigue—and all the +horizons of the soul were bright again. She had a new idea!—what +if she were to combine his portrait with the beechwood sketch, and +make something large and important of it? He had the head of a +poet—the forest was in its most poetical moment. Why not pose him +at the foot of the great beech to the left, give him a book +dropping from his hand, and call it 'Reverie'?</p> + +<p>For the rest of the day she talked or sketched incessantly. She +would hardly be persuaded to give her bandaged foot the afternoon's +rest, and by eight o'clock next morning they were off to the +forest, she limping along with a stick.</p> + +<p>Two or three days of perfect bliss followed. The picture promised +excellently. Elise was in the most hopeful mood, alert and merry as +a bird. And when they were driven home by hunger, the work still +went on. For they had turned their top attic into a studio, and +here as long as the light lasted she toiled on, wrestling with the +head and the difficulties of the figure. But she was determined to +make it substantially a picture <i>en plein air</i>. Her mind was +full of all the daring conceptions and ideals which were then +emerging in art, as in literature, from the decline of Romanticism. +The passion for light, for truth, was, she declared, penetrating, +and revolutionising the whole artistic world. Delacroix had a +studio to the south; she also would 'bedare the sun.'</p> + +<p>At the end of the third day she threw herself on him in a passion +of gratitude and delight, lifting her soft mouth to be kissed.</p> + +<p>'<i>Embrasse-moi! Embrasse-moi! Blague a part,—je commence a me +sentir artiste!</i>'</p> + +<p>And they wandered about their little garden till past midnight, +hand close in hand. She could talk of nothing but her picture, and +he, feeling himself doubly necessary and delightful to her, +overflowed with happiness and praise.</p> + +<p>But next day things went less well. She was torn, overcome by the +difficulties of her task. Working now in the forest, now at home, +the lights and values had suffered. The general tone had neither an +indoor nor an outdoor truth. She must repaint certain parts, work +only out of doors. Then all the torments of the outdoor painter +began: wind, which put her in a nervous fever, and rain, which, +after the long spell of fine weather, began to come down on them, +and drive them into shelter.</p> + +<p>Soon she was in despair. She had been too ambitious. The landscape +should have been the principal thing, the figure only indicated, a +suggestion in the middle distance. She had carried it too far; it +fought with its surroundings; the picture had no unity, no repose. +Oh, for some advice! How could one pull such a thing through +without help? In three minutes Taranne would tell her what was +wrong.</p> + +<p>In twenty-four hours more she had fretted herself ill. The picture +was there in the corner, turned to the wall; he could only just +prevent her from driving her palette-knife through it. And she +was sitting on the edge of the sofa, silent, a book on her +knee, her hands hanging beside her, and her feverish eyes +wandering—wandering round the room, if only they might escape from +David, might avoid seeing him—or so he believed. Horrible! It was +borne in upon him that in this moment of despair he was little more +to her than the witness, the occasion, of her discomfiture.</p> + +<p>Oh! his heart was sore. But he could do nothing. Caresses, +encouragements, reproaches, were alike useless. For some time she +would make no further attempts at drawing; nor would she be wooed +and comforted. She held him passively at arm's length, and he could +make nothing of her. It was the middle of their third week; still +almost the half left of this month she had promised him. And +already it was clear to him that he and love had lost their first +hold, and that she was consumed with the unspoken wish to go back +to Paris, and the <i>atelier</i>. Ah, no!—<i>no!</i> With a fierce +yet dumb tenacity he held her to her bargain. Those weeks were his; +they represented his only hope for the future; she <i>should</i> +not have them back.</p> + +<p>But he, too, fell into melancholy and silence, and on the afternoon +when this change in him first showed itself she was, for a time, +touched, ashamed. A few pale smiles returned for him, and in the +evening, as he was sitting by the open window, a newspaper on his +knee, staring into vacancy, she came up to him, knelt beside him, +and drew his half-reluctant arm about her. Neither said anything, +but gradually her presence there, on his breast, thrilled through +all his veins, filled his heart to bursting. The paper slid away; +he put both arms about her, and bowed his head on hers. She put up +her small hand, and felt the tears on his cheek. Then a still +stronger repentance woke up in her.</p> + +<p>'<i>Pauvre enfant!</i>' she said, pushing herself away from him, +and tremulously drying his eyes. 'Poor Monsieur David—I make you +very unhappy! But I warned you—oh, I <i>warned</i> you! What evil +star made you fall in love with me?'</p> + +<p>In answer he found such plaintive and passionate things to say to +her that she was fairly melted, and in the end there was an +effusion on both sides, which seemed to bring back their golden +hours. But at bottom, David's sensitive instinct, do what he would +to silence it, told him, in truth, that all was changed. He was no +longer the happy and triumphant lover. He was the beggar, living +upon her alms.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-3" id="CHAPTER_IX-3"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<p>Next morning David went across to the village shop to buy some +daily necessaries, and found a few newspapers lying on the counter. +He bought a <i>Debats</i>, seeing that there was a long critique of +the Salon in it, and hurried home with it to Elise. She tore it +open and rushed through the article, putting him aside that he +might not look over her. Her face blanched as she read, and at the +end she flung the paper from her, and tottering to a chair sat +there motionless, staring straight before her. David, beside +himself with alarm, and finding caresses of no avail, took up the +paper from the floor.</p> + +<p>'Let it alone!' she said to him with a sudden imperious gesture. +'There is a whole paragraph about Breal—her fortune is made. <i>La +voilŕ lancée—arrivée!</i> And of me, not a line, not a mention! +Three or four pupils of Taranne—all beginners—but <i>my</i> +name—nowhere! Ah, but no—it is too much!'</p> + +<p>Her little foot beat the ground, a hurricane was rising within her.</p> + +<p>David tried to laugh the matter off. 'The man who wrote the wretched +thing had been hurried—was an idiot, clearly, and what did one +man's opinion matter, even if it were paid for at so much a column?'</p> + +<p>'<i>Mais, tais-toi, donc!</i>' she cried at last, turning upon him in a +fury. '<i>Can't</i> you see that everything for an artist—especially a +woman—depends on the <i>protections</i> she gets at the beginning? +How can a girl—helpless—without friends—make her way by herself? +Some one must hold out a hand, and for me it seems there is no +one—no one!'</p> + +<p>The outburst seemed to his common sense to imply the most grotesque +oblivion of her success in the Salon, of Taranne's kindness—the +most grotesque sensitiveness to a few casual lines of print. But it +wrung his heart to see her agitation, her pale face, the +handkerchief she was twisting to shreds in her restless hands. He +came to plead with her—his passion lending him eloquence. Let her +but trust herself and her gift. She had the praise of those she +revered to go upon. How should the carelessness of a single critic +affect her? <i>Imbéciles!</i>—they would be all with her, at her +feet, some day. Let her despise them then and now! But his +extravagances only made her impatient.</p> + +<p>'Nonsense!' she said, drawing her hand away from him; 'I am not made +of such superfine stuff—I never pretended to be! Do you think I +should be content to be an unknown genius? <i>Never!</i>—I must +have my fame counted out to me in good current coin, that all the +world may hear and see. It may be vulgar—I don't care! it is so. +<i>Ah, mon Dieu!</i>' and she began to pace the room with wild +steps, 'and it is my fault—my fault! If I were there on the spot, I +should be remembered—they would have to reckon with me—I could +keep my claim in sight. But I have thrown away everything—wasted +everything—<i>everything!</i>'</p> + +<p>He stood with his back to the window, motionless, his hand on +the table, stooping a little forward, looking at her with a +passion of reproach and misery; it only angered her; she lost all +self-control, and in one mad moment she avenged on his poor heart +all the wounds and vexations of her vanity. <i>Why</i> had he ever +persuaded her? <i>Why</i> had he brought her away and hung a fresh +burden on her life which she could never bear? Why had he done her +this irreparable injury—taken all simplicity and directness of aim +from her—weakened her energies at their source? Her only +<i>milieu</i> was art, and he had made her desert it; her only +power was the painter's power, and it was crippled, the fresh +spring of it was gone. It was because she felt on her the weight of +a responsibility, and a claim she was not made for. She was not +made for love—for love at least as he understood it. And he had +her word, and would hold her to it. It was madness for both of +them. It was stifling—killing her!</p> + +<p>Then she sank on a chair, in a passion of desperate tears. +Suddenly, as she sat there, she heard a movement, and looking up +she saw David at the door. He turned upon her for an instant, with +a dignity so tragic, so true, and yet so young, that she was +perforce touched, arrested. She held out a trembling hand, made a +little cry. But he closed the door softly, and was gone. She half +raised herself, then fell back again.</p> + +<p>'If he had beaten me,' she said to herself with a strange smile, 'I +could have loved him. <i>Mais!</i>'</p> + +<p>She was all day alone. When he came back it was already evening; +the stars shone in the June sky, but the sunset light was still in +the street and on the upper windows of the little house. As he +opened the garden gate and shut it behind him, he saw the gleam of +a lamp behind the acacia, and a light figure beside it. He stood a +moment wrestling with himself, for he was wearied out, and felt as +if he could bear no more. Then he moved slowly on.</p> + +<p>Elise was sitting beside the lamp, her head bent over something +dark upon her lap. She had not heard the gate open, and she did not +hear his steps upon the grass. He came closer, and saw, to his +amazement, that she was busy with a coat of his—an old coat, in +the sleeve of which he had torn a great rent the day before, while +he was dragging her and himself through some underwood in the +forest. She—who loathed all womanly arts, who had often boasted to +him that she hardly knew how to use a needle!</p> + +<p>In moving nearer, he brushed against the shrubs, and she heard him. +She turned her head, smiling. In the mingled light she looked like +a little white ghost, she was so pale and her eyes so heavy. When +she saw him, she raised her finger with a childish, aggrieved air, +and put it to her lips, rubbing it softly against them.</p> + +<p>'It does prick so!' she said plaintively.</p> + +<p>He came to sit beside her, his chest heaving.</p> + +<p>'Why do you do that—for me?'</p> + +<p>She shrugged her shoulders and worked on without speaking. +Presently she laid down her needle and surveyed him.</p> + +<p>'Where have you been all day? Have you eaten nothing, poor friend?'</p> + +<p>He tried to remember.</p> + +<p>'I think not; I have been in the forest.'</p> + +<p>A little quiver ran over her face; she pulled at her needle +violently and broke the thread.</p> + +<p>'Finished!' she said, throwing down the coat and springing up. +'Don't tell your tailor who did it! I am for perfection in all +things—<i>abas l'amateur!</i> Come in, it is supper-time past. I +will go and hurry Madame Pyat. <i>Tu dois avoir une faim de +loup</i>.'</p> + +<p>He shook his head, smiling sadly.</p> + +<p>'I tell you, you are hungry, you shall be hungry!' she cried, +suddenly flinging her arm round his neck, and nestling her fair +head against his shoulder. Her voice was half a sob.</p> + +<p>'Oh, so I am!—so I am!' he said, with a wild emphasis, and would +have caught her to him. But she slipped away and ran before him to +the house, turning at the window with the sweetest, frankest +gesture to bid him follow.</p> + +<p>They passed the evening close together, she on a stool leaning +against his knee, he reading aloud Alfred de Musset's <i>Nuit de +Mai</i>. At one moment she was all absorbed in the verse, carried +away by it; great battle-cry that it is! calling the artist from +the miseries of his own petty fate to the lordship of life and +nature as a whole; the next she had snatched the book out of his +hands and was correcting his accent, bidding him speak after her, +put his lips so. Never had she been so charming. It was the coaxing +charm of the softened child that cannot show its penitence enough. +Every now and then she fell to pouting because she could not move +him to gaiety. But in reality his sad and passive gentleness, the +mask of feelings which would otherwise have been altogether beyond +his control, served him with her better than any gaiety could have +done.</p> + +<p><i>Gaiety!</i> it seemed to him his heart was broken.</p> + +<p>At night, after a troubled sleep, he suddenly woke, and sprang up +in an agony. <i>Gone!</i> was she gone already? For that was what +her sweet ways meant. Ah, he had known it all along!</p> + +<p>Where was she? His wild eyes for a second or two saw nothing but +the landscape of his desolate dream. Then gradually the familiar +forms of the room emerged from the gloom, and there—against the +further wall—she lay, so still, so white, so gracious! Her +childish arm, bare to the elbow, was thrown round her head, her +soft waves of hair made a confusion on the pillow. After her long +day of emotion she was sleeping profoundly. Whatever cruel secret +her heart might hold, she was there still, his yet, for a few hours +and days. He was persuaded in his own mind that her penitence had +been the mere fruit of a compromise with herself, their month had +still eight days to run, then—<i>adieu!</i> Art and liberty should +reclaim their own. Meanwhile why torment the poor boy, who must any +way take it hardly?</p> + +<p>He lay there for long, raised upon his arm, his haggard look fixed +on the sleeping form which by-and-by the dawn illuminated. His life +was concentrated in that form, that light breath. He thought with +repulsion and loathing of all that had befallen him before he saw +her—with anguish and terror of those days and nights to come when +he should have lost her. For in the deep stillness of the rising +day there fell on him the strangest certainty of this loss. That +gift of tragic prescience which was in his blood had stirred in +him—he knew his fate. Perhaps the gift itself was but the fruit of +a rare power of self-vision, self-appraisement. He saw and cursed +his own timid and ignorant youth. How could he ever have hoped to +hold a creature of such complex needs and passions? In the pale +dawn he sounded the very depths of self-contempt.</p> + +<p>But when the day was up and Elise was chattering and flitting about +the house as usual without a word of discord or parting, how was it +possible to avoid reaction, the re-birth of hope? She talked of +painting again, and that alone, after these long days of sullen +alienation from her art, was enough to bring the brightness back to +their little <i>menage</i> and to dull that strange second sight of +David's. He helped her to set her palette, to choose a new canvas; +he packed her charcoals, he beguiled some cold meat and bread out +of Madame, and then before the heat they set out together for the +Bas Breau.</p> + +<p>Just as they started he searched his pockets for a knife of hers +which was missing, and thrusting his hand into a breast pocket +which he seldom used, he brought out some papers at which he stared +in bewilderment.</p> + +<p>Then a shock went through him; for there was Mr. Gurney's letter, +the letter in which the cheque for 600 <i>pounds</i> had been enclosed, +and there was also that faded scrap of Sandy's writing which +contained the father's last injunction to his son. As he held the +papers he remembered—what he had forgotten for weeks—that on the +morning of his leaving Manchester he had put them carefully into +this breast pocket, not liking to leave things so interesting to +him behind him, out of his reach. Never had he given a thought to +them since! He looked down at them, half ashamed, and his eye +caught the words:—'<i>I lay it on him now I'm dying to look after +her. She's not like other children; she'll want it. Let him see her +married to a decent man, and give her what's honestly hers. I trust +it to him. That little lad</i>—' and then came the fold of the +sheet.</p> + +<p>'I have found the knife,' cried Elise from the gate. 'Be quick!'</p> + +<p>He pushed the papers back and joined her. The day was already hot, +and they hurried along the burning street into the shade of the +forest. Once in the Bas Breau Elise was not long in finding a +subject, fell upon a promising one indeed almost at once, and was +soon at work. This time there were to be no figures, unless indeed +it might be a dim pair of woodcutters in the middle distance, and +the whole picture was to be an impressionist dream of early summer, +finished entirely out of doors, as rapidly and cleanly as possible. +David lay on the ground under the blasted oak and watched her, as +she sat on her camp-stool, bending forward, looking now up, now +down, using her charcoal in bold energetic strokes, her lip +compressed, her brow knit over some point of composition. The +little figure in its pink cotton was so daintily pretty, so full of +interest and wilful charm, it might well have filled a lover's eye +and chained his thoughts. But David was restless and at times +absent.</p> + +<p>'Tell me what you know of that man Montjoie?' he asked her at last, +abruptly. 'I know you disliked him.'</p> + +<p>She paused, astonished.</p> + +<p>'Why do you ask? Dislike—I <i>detest and despise</i> him. I told +you so.'</p> + +<p>'But what do you know of him?' he persisted.</p> + +<p>'No good!' she said quickly, going back to her work. Then a light +broke upon her, and she turned on her stool, her two hands on her +knees.</p> + +<p>'<i>Tiens!</i>—you are thinking of your sister. You have had news +of her?'</p> + +<p>A conscious half-remorseful look rose into her face.</p> + +<p>'No, I have had no news. I ought to have had a letter. I wrote, you +remember, that first day here. Perhaps Louie has gone home already,' +he said, with constraint. 'Tell me anyway what you know.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, he!—well, there is only one word for him—he is a +<i>brute</i> I' said Elise, drawing vigorously, her colour rising. +'Any woman will tell you that. Oh, he has plenty of talent,—he +might be anything. Carpeaux took him up at one time, got him +commissions. Five or six years ago there was quite a noise about +him for two or three Salons. Then people began to drop him. I +believe he was the most mean, ungrateful animal towards those who +had been kind to him. He drinks besides—he is over head and ears +in debt, always wanting money, borrowing here and there, then +locking his door for weeks, making believe to be out of town—only +going out at night. As for his ways with women'—she shrugged her +shoulders—'Was your sister still sitting to him when we left, or +was it at an end? Hasn't your sister been sitting to him for his +statue?'</p> + +<p>She paused again and studied him with her shrewd, bright eyes.</p> + +<p>He coloured angrily.</p> + +<p>'I believe so—I tried to stop it—it was no use.'</p> + +<p>She laughed out.</p> + +<p>'No—I imagine she does what she wants to do. Well, we all do, +<i>mon ami!</i> After all'—and she shrugged her shoulders again— +'I suppose she can do what I did?'</p> + +<p>''What <i>you</i> did!'</p> + +<p>She went on drawing in sharp deliberate strokes; her breath came +fast.</p> + +<p>'He met me on the stairs one night—it was just after I had taken +the <i>atelier</i>. I knew no one in the house—I was quite defenceless +there. He insulted me—I had a little walking-stick in my hand, +my cousin had given me—I struck him with it across the face twice, +three times—if you look close you will see the mark. You may +imagine he tells fine stories of me when he gets the chance. +<i>Oh! je m'en fiche!</i>'</p> + +<p>The scorn of the last gesture was unmeasured.</p> + +<p>'<i>Canaille!</i>' said David, between his teeth. 'If you had told +me this!'</p> + +<p>Her expression changed and softened.</p> + +<p>'You asked me no questions after that quarrel we had in the Louvre,' +she said, excusing herself. 'You will understand it is not a +reminiscence one is exactly proud of; I did speak to Madame Cervin +once—'</p> + +<p>David said nothing, but sat staring before him into the far vistas +of the wood. It seemed strange that so great a smart and fear as +had possessed him since yesterday, should allow of any lesser smart +within or near it. Yet that scrap of tremulous writing weighed +heavy. <i>Where</i> was Louie; why had she not written? So far he +had turned impatiently away from the thought of her, reiterating +that he had done his best, that she had chosen her own path. Now in +this fragrant quiet of the forest the quick vision of some +irretrievable wreck presented itself to him; he thought of Mr. +Ancrum—of John—and a cold shudder ran through him. In it spoke +the conscience of a lifetime.</p> + +<p>Elise meanwhile laid aside her charcoal, began to dash in some +paint, drew back presently to look at it from a distance, and then, +glancing aside, suddenly threw down her brushes, and ran up to +David.</p> + +<p>She sat down beside him, and with a coaxing, childish gesture, drew +his arm about her.</p> + +<p>'<i>Tu me fais pitie, mon ami!</i>' she said, looking up into his +face. 'Is it your sister? Go and find her—I will wait for you.'</p> + +<p>He turned upon her, his black eyes all passion, his lips struggling +with speech.</p> + +<p>'My place is here,' he said. 'My life is here!'</p> + +<p>Then, as she was silent, not knowing in her agitation what to say, +he broke out:</p> + +<p>'What was in your mind yesterday, Elise? what is there to-day? +There is something—something I <i>will</i> know.'</p> + +<p>She was frightened by his look. Never did fear and grief speak more +plainly from a human face. The great deep within had broken up.</p> + +<p>'I was sorry,' she said, trembling, 'sorry to have hurt you. I +wanted to make up.'</p> + +<p>He flung her hand away from him with an impatient gesture.</p> + +<p>'There was more than that!' he said violently; 'will you be like all +the rest—betray me without a sign?'</p> + +<p>'David!'</p> + +<p>She bit her lip proudly. Then the tears welled up into her grey +eyes, and she looked round at him—hesitated—began and stopped +again—then broke into irrevocable confession.</p> + +<p>'David!—Monsieur David!—how can it go on? <i>Voyons</i>—I said +to myself yesterday—I am torturing him and myself—I cannot make +him happy—it is not in me—not in my destiny. It must end—it +must,—it <i>must</i>, for both our sakes. But then first,—first—'</p> + +<p>'Be quiet!' he said, laying an iron hand on her arm. 'I knew it all.'</p> + +<p>And he turned away from her, covering his face.</p> + +<p>This time she made no attempt to caress him. She clasped her hands +round her knees and remained quite still, gazing—yet seeing +nothing—into the green depths which five minutes before had been +to her a torturing ecstasy of colour and light. The tears which had +been gathering fell, the delicate lip quivered.</p> + +<p>Struck by her silence at last, he looked up—watched her a +moment—then he dragged himself up to her and knelt beside her.</p> + +<p>'Have I made you so miserable?' he said, under his breath.</p> + +<p>'It is—it is—the irreparableness of it all,' she answered, half +sobbing. 'No undoing it ever, and how a woman glides into it, how +lightly, knowing so little!—thinking herself so wise! And if she +has deceived herself, if she is not made for love, if she has given +herself for so little—for an illusion—for a dream that breaks and +must break—how dare the <i>man</i> reproach her, after all?'</p> + +<p>She raised her burning eyes to him. The resentment in them seemed +to be more than individual, it was the resentment of the woman, of +her sex.</p> + +<p>She stabbed him to the heart by what she said—by what she left +unsaid. He took her little cold hand, put it to his lips—tried to +speak.</p> + +<p>'Don't,' she said, drawing it away and hiding her face on her +knees. 'Don't say anything. It is not you, it is God and Nature that +I accuse.'</p> + +<p>Strange, bitter word!—word of revolt! He lay on his face beside +her for many minutes afterwards, tasting the bitterness of it, +revolving those other words she had said—<i>'an illusion—a dream +that breaks—must break.'</i> Then he made a last effort. He came +close to her, laid his arm timidly round her shoulders, bent his +cheek to hers.</p> + +<p>'Elise, listen to me a little. You say the debt is on my side—that +is true—true—a thousand times true! I only ask you, <i>implore</i> you, +to let me pay it. Let it be as you please—on what terms you +please—servant or lover. All I pray for is to pay that debt, +with my life, my heart.'</p> + +<p>She shook her head softly, her face still hidden.</p> + +<p>'When I am with you,' she said, as though the words were wrung out +of her, 'I must be a woman. You agitate me, you divide my mind, and +my force goes. There are both capacities in me, and one destroys +the other. And I want—I <i>want</i> my art!'</p> + +<p>She threw back her head with a superb gesture. But he did not +flinch.</p> + +<p>'You shall have it,' he said passionately, 'have it abundantly. Do +you think I want to keep you for ever loitering here? Do you think +I don't know what ambition and will mean? that I am only fit for +kissing?'</p> + +<p>He stopped almost with a smile, thinking of that harsh struggle to +know and to have, in which his youth had been so far consumed night +and day. Then words rushed upon him again, and he went on with a +growing power and freedom.</p> + +<p>'I never looked at a woman till I saw you!—never had a whim, a +caprice. I have eaten my heart out with the struggle first for +bread, then for knowledge. But when you came across me, then the +world was all made new, and I became a new creature, your creature.'</p> + +<p>He touched her face with a quick, tender hand, laid it against his +breast, and spoke so, bending piteously down to her, within reach +of her quivering mouth, her moist eyes:—</p> + +<p>'Tell me this, Elise—answer me this! How can there be great art, +great knowledge, only from the brain,—without passion, without +experience? You and I have been <i>living</i> what Musset, what +Hugo, what Shakespeare wrote,' and he struck the little volume of +Musset beside him. 'Is not that worth a summer month? not worth the +artist's while? But it is nearly gone. You can't wonder that I +count the moments of it like a miser! I have had a <i>hard</i> +life, and this has transfigured it. Whatever happens now in time or +eternity, this month is to the good—for me and for you, Elise! +—yes, for you, too! But when it is over,—see if I hold you back! +We will work together—climb—wrestle, together. And on what terms +you please,—mind that,—only dictate them. I deny your "illusion," +your "dream that breaks." You <i>have</i> been happy! I dare to +tell you so. But part now,—shirk our common destiny,—and you will +indeed have given all for nothing, while I—'</p> + +<p>His voice sank. She shook her head again, but as she drew herself +gently away she was stabbed by the haggardness of the countenance, +the pleading pathos of the eyes. His gust of speech had shaken her +too—revealed new points in him. She bent forward quickly and laid +her soft lips to his, for one light swift moment.</p> + +<p>'Poor boy!' she murmured, 'poor poet!'</p> + +<p>'Ah, that was enough!' he said, the colour flooding his cheeks.' +That healed—that made all good. Will you hide nothing from me, +Elise—will you promise?'</p> + +<p>'Anything,' she said with a curious accent, 'anything—if you will +but let me paint.'</p> + +<p>He sprang up, and put her things in order for her. They stood +looking at the sketch, neither seeing much of it.</p> + +<p>'I must have some more cobalt,' she said wearily, 'Look, my tube is +nearly done.'</p> + +<p>Yes, that was certain. He must get some more for her. Where could +it be got? No nearer than Fontainebleau, alas! where there was a +shop which provided all the artists of the neighbourhood. He was +eagerly ready to go—it would take him no time.</p> + +<p>'It will take you between two and three hours, sir, in this heat. +But oh, I am so tired, I will just creep into the fern there while +you are away, and go to sleep. Give me that book and that shawl.'</p> + +<p>He made a place for her between the spurs of a great oak-root, +tearing the brambles away. She nestled into it, with a sigh of +satisfaction. 'Divine! Take your food—I want nothing but the air +and sleep. <i>Adieu, adieu!</i>'</p> + +<p>He stood gazing down upon her, his face all tender lingering and +remorse. How white she was, how fragile, how shaken by this storm +of feeling he had forced upon her! How could he leave her?</p> + +<p>But she waved him away impatiently, and he went at last, going +first back to the village to fetch his purse which was not in his +pocket.</p> + +<p>As he came out of their little garden gate, turning again towards +the forest which he must cross in order to get to Fontainebleau, he +became aware of a group of men standing in front of the inn. Two of +them were the landscape artists already slightly known to him, who +saluted him as he came near. The other was a tall fine-looking man, +with longish grizzled hair, a dark commanding eye, the rosette of +the Legion of Honour at his buttonhole, and a general look of +irritable power. He wore a wide straw hat and holland overcoat, and +beside him on the bench lay some artist's paraphernalia.</p> + +<p>All three eyed David as he passed, and he was no sooner a few yards +away than they were looking after him and talking, the new-comer +asking questions, the others replying.</p> + +<p>'Oh, it is she!' said the stranger impatiently, throwing away his +cigar. 'Auguste's description leaves me no doubt of it, and the +woman at the house in the Rue Chantal where I had the caprice to +inquire one day, when she had been three weeks away, told me they +were here. It is annoying. Something might have been made of her. +Now it is finished. A handsome lad all the same!—of a rare type. +<i>Non!—je me suis trompé—en devenant femme, elle n'a pas cesse +d'ętre artiste!</i>'</p> + +<p>The others laughed. Then they all took up their various equipments, +and strolled off smoking to the forest. The man from Paris was +engaged upon a large historical canvas representing an incident +in the life of Diane de Poitiers. The incident had Diane's forest +for a setting, but his trees did not satisfy him, he had come down +to make a few fresh studies on the spot.</p> + +<p>David walked his four miles to Fontainebleau, bought his cobalt, +and set his face homewards about three o'clock. When he was halfway +home, he turned aside into a tangle of young beech wood, parted the +branches, and found a shady corner where he could rest and think. +The sun was very hot, the high road was scorched by it. But it was +not heat or fatigue that had made him pause.</p> + +<p>So far he had walked in a tumult of conflicting ideas, emotions, +terrors, torn now by this memory, now by that—his mind traversed +by one project after another. But now that he was so near to +meeting her again, though he pined for her, he suddenly and +pitifully felt the need for some greater firmness of mind and will. +Let him pause and think! Where <i>was</i> he with her?—what were +his real, tangible hopes and fears? Life and death depended for him +on these days—these few vanishing days. And he was like one of the +last year's leaves before him, whirled helpless and will-less in +the dust-storm of the road!</p> + +<p>He had sat there an unnoticed time when the sound of some heavy +carriage approaching roused him. From his green covert he could see +all that passed, and instinctively he looked up. It was the +Barbizon <i>diligence</i> going in to meet the five o'clock train +at Fontainebleau, a train which in these lengthening days very +often brought guests to the inn. The <i>correspondance</i> had been +only begun during the last week, and to the dwellers at Barbizon +the afternoon <i>diligence</i> had still the interest of novelty. +With the perception of habit David noticed that there was no one +outside; but though the rough blinds were most of them drawn down +he thought he perceived some one inside—a lady. Strange that +anyone should prefer the stifling <i>interieur</i> who could mount +beside the driver with a parasol!</p> + +<p>The omnibus clattered past, and with the renewal of the woodland +silence his mind plunged heavily once more into the agonised +balancing of hope and fear. But in the end he sprang up with a +renewed alertness of eye and step.</p> + +<p><i>Despair?</i> Impossible!—so long as one had one's love still in +one's arms—could still plead one's cause, hand to hand, lip to +lip. He strode homewards—running sometimes—the phrases of a new +and richer eloquence crowding to his lips.</p> + +<p>About a mile from Barbizon, the path to the Bas Breau diverges to +the right. He sped along it, leaping the brambles in his path. Soon +he was on the edge of the great avenue itself, looking across it +for that spot of colour among the green made by her light dress.</p> + +<p>But there was no dress, and as he came up to the tree where he had +left her, he saw to his stupefaction that there was no one +there—nothing, no sign of her but the bracken and brambles he had +beaten down for her some three hours before, and the trodden grass +where her easel had been. Something showed on the ground. He +stooped and noticed the empty cobalt-tube of the morning.</p> + +<p>Of course she had grown tired of waiting and had gone home. But a +great terror seized him. He turned and ran along the path they had +traversed in the morning making for the road; past the inn which +seemed to have been struck to sleep by the sun, past Millet's +studio on the left, to the little overgrown door in the brick wall.</p> + +<p>No one in the garden, no one in the little <i>salon</i>, no one upstairs; +Madame Pyat was away for the day, nursing a daughter-in-law. In all +the house and garden there was not a sound or sign of life but the +cat asleep on the stone step of the kitchen, and the bees humming +in the acacias.</p> + +<p>'Elise!' he called, inside and out, knowing already, poor fellow, +in his wild despair that there could be no answer—that all was +over.</p> + +<p>But there was an answer. Elise was no untaught heroine. She played +her part through. There was her letter, propped up against the gilt +clock on the sham marble <i>cheminee</i>.</p> + +<p>He found it and tore it open.</p> + +<p>'You will curse me, but after a time you will forgive. I +<i>could</i> not go on. Taranne found me in the forest, just half +an hour after you left me. I looked up and saw him coming across +the grass. He did not see me at first, he was looking about for a +subject. I would have escaped, but there was no way. Then at last +he saw me. He did not attack me, he did not persuade me, he only +took for granted it was all over,—my Art! I must know best, of +course; but he was sorry, for I had a gift. Had I seen the notice +of my portrait in the "Temps," or the little mention in the "Figaro"? +Oh, yes, Breal had been very successful, and deserved to be. It +was a brave soul, devoted to art, and art had rewarded her.</p> + +<p>'Then I showed him my sketch, trembling—to stop his talk—every +word he said stabbed me. And he shrugged his shoulders quickly; +then, as though recollecting himself, he put on a civil face all in +a moment, and paid me compliments. To an amateur he is always +civil. I was all white and shaking by this time. He turned to go +away, and then I broke down. I burst into tears—I said I was +coming back to the <i>atelier</i>—what did he mean by taking such +a cruel, such an insolent tone with me? He would not be moved from +his polite manner. He said he was glad to hear it; mademoiselle +would be welcome; but just as though we were complete strangers. +<i>He</i> who has befriended me, and taught me, and scolded me +since I was fourteen! I could not bear it. I caught him by the arm. +I told him he <i>should</i> tell me all he thought. Had I really +talent?—a future?</p> + +<p>'Then he broke out in a torrent—he made me afraid of him—yet I +adored him! He said I had more talent than any other pupil he had +ever had; that I had been his hope and interest for six years; that +he had taught me for nothing—befriended me—worked for me, behind +the scenes, at the Salon; and all because he knew that I must rise, +must win myself a name, that when I had got the necessary technique +I should make one of the poetical impressionist painters, who are +in the movement, who sway the public taste. But I must give +<i>all</i> myself—my days and nights—my thoughts, and brain, and +nerves. Other people might have adventures and paint the better. +Not I,—I was too highly strung—for me it was ruin. <i>"C'est un +maitre sevire—l'Art,</i>" he said, looking like a god. "<i>Avec +celui-lŕ on ne transige pas. Ah! Dieu, je le connais, moi!</i>" I +don't know what he meant; but there has been a tragedy in his life; +all the world knows that.</p> + +<p>'Then suddenly he took another tone, called me <i>pauvre +enfant</i>, and apologised. Why should I be disturbed? I had chosen +for my own happiness, no doubt. What was fame or the high steeps of +art compared even with an <i>amour de jeunesse?</i> He had seen +you, he said,—<i>une tęte superbe—des epaules de lion!</i> I was +a woman; a young handsome lover was worth more to me, naturally, +than the drudgeries of art. A few years hence, when the pulse was +calmer, it might have been all very well. Well! I must forgive him; +he was my old friend. Then he wrung my hand, and left me.</p> + +<p>'Oh, David, David, I must go! I <i>must.</i> My life is imprisoned +here with you—it beats its bars. Why did I ever let you persuade +me—move me? And I should let you do it again. When you are there I +am weak. I am no cruel adventuress, I can't look at you and torture +you. But what I feel for you is not love—no, no, it is not, poor +boy! Who was it said "A love which can be tamed is no love"? But in +three days—a week—mine had grown tame—it had no fears left. I am +older than you, not in years, <i>mais dans l'âme</i>—there is what +parts us.</p> + +<p>'Oh! I must go—and you must not try to find me. I shall be quite +safe, but with people you know nothing about. I shall write to +Madame Pyat for my things. You need have no trouble.</p> + +<p>'Very likely I shall pass you on the way, for if I hurry I can +catch the <i>diligence</i>. But you will not see me. Oh, David, I +put my arms round you! I press my face against you. I ask you to +forgive me, to forget me, to work out your own life as I work out +mine. It will soon be a dream—this little house—these summer +days! I have kissed the chair you sat in last night, the book you +read to me. <i>C'est déjŕ fini! Adieu! adieu!'</i></p> + +<p>He sat for long in a sort of stupor. Then that maddening thought +seized him, stung him into life, that she had actually passed him, +that he had seen her, not knowing. That little indistinct figure in +the <i>interieur</i>, that was she.</p> + +<p>He sprang up, in a blind anguish. Pursuit! the <i>diligence</i> was +slow, the trains doubtful, he might overtake her yet. He dashed +into the street, and into the Fontainebleau road. After he had run +nearly a mile, he plunged into a path which he believed was a short +cut. It led through a young and dense oak wood. He rushed on, +seeing nothing, bruising himself and stumbling. At last a +projecting branch struck him violently on the temple. He staggered, +put up a feeble hand, sank on the grass against a trunk, and +fainted.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-3" id="CHAPTER_X-3"></a>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<p>It was between five and six o'clock in the morning. In the +Tuileries Gardens flowers, grass, and trees were drenched in dew, +the great shadow of the Palace spread grey and cool over terraces +and slopes, while beyond the young sun had already shaken off all +cumbering mists, and was pouring from a cloudless sky over the +river with its barges and swimming-baths, over the bridges and the +quays, and the vast courts and facades of the Louvre. Yet among the +trees the air was still exquisitely fresh, the sun still a friend +to be welcomed. The light morning wind swept the open, deserted +spaces of the Gardens, playing merrily with the dust, the leaves, +the fountains. Meanwhile on all sides the stir of the city was +beginning, mounting slowly and steadily like a swelling tone.</p> + +<p>On a bench under one of the trees in the Champs-Elysées sat a young +man asleep. He had thrown himself against the back of the bench, +his cheek resting on the iron, one hand on his knee. It was David +Grieve; the lad's look showed that his misery was still with him, +even in sleep.</p> + +<p>He was dreaming, letting fall here and there a troubled and +disconnected word. In his dream he was far from Paris—walking +after his sheep among the heathery slopes of the Scout, climbing +towards the grey smithy among the old mill-stones, watching the Red +Brook slide by over its long, shallow steps of orange grit, and the +Downfall oozing and trickling among its tumbled blocks. Who was +that hanging so high above the ravine on that treacherous stone +that rocked with the least touch? Louie—mad girl!—come back. Ah! +too late—the stone rocks, falls; he leaps from block to block, +only to see the light dress disappear into the stony gulf below. He +cries—struggles—wakes.</p> + +<p>He sat up, wrestling with himself, trying to clear his torpid +brain. Where was he? His dream-self was still roaming the Scout; +his outer eye was bewildered by these alleys, these orange-trees, +these statues—that distant arch.</p> + +<p>Then the hideous, undefined cloud that was on him took shape. Elise +had left him. And Louie, too, was gone—he knew not where, save +that it was to ruin. When he had arrived the night before at the +house in the Rue Chantal, Madame Merichat could tell him nothing of +Mademoiselle Delaunay, who had not been heard of. Then he asked, +his voice dying in his throat before the woman's hard and cynical +stare—the stare of one who found the chief savour of life in the +misfortunes of her kind—he asked for his sister and the Cervins. +The Cervins were staying at Sevres with relations, and were +expected home again in a day or two; Mademoiselle Louie?—well, +Mademoiselle Louie was not with them. Had she gone back to +England? <i>Mais non!</i> A trunk of hers was still in the Cervins' +vestibule. Did Madame Merichat know anything about her? the lad +asked, forcing himself to it, his blanched face turned away. Then +the woman shrugged her shoulders and spoke out.</p> + +<p>If he really must know, she thought there was no doubt at all +that where Monsieur Montjoie was, Mademoiselle Louie was too. +Monsieur Montjoie had paid the arrears of his rent to the +<i>proprietaire</i>, somehow or other, and had then made a midnight +flitting of it so as to escape other creditors who were tired of +waiting for his statue to be finished. He had got a furniture van +there at night, and he and the driver and her husband between them +had packed most of the things from the studio, and M. Montjoie had +gone off in the van about one o'clock in the morning. But of course +she did not know his address! she said so half-a-dozen times a day +to the persons who called, and it was as true as gospel. Why, +indeed, should M. Montjoie let her or anyone else know, that he +could help? He had gone into hiding to keep honest people out of +their money—that was what it meant.</p> + +<p>Well, and the same evening Mademoiselle Louie also disappeared. +Madame Cervin had been in a great way, but she and mademoiselle had +already quarrelled violently, and madame declared that she had no +fault in the matter and that no one could be held responsible for +the doings of such a minx. She believed that madame had written to +monsieur. Monsieur had never received it? Ah, well, that was not +surprising! No one could ever read madame's writing, though it made +her temper very bad to tell her so.</p> + +<p>Could he have Madame Cervin's address? Certainly. She wrote it out +for him. As to his old room?—no, he could not go back to it.</p> + +<p>Monsieur Dubois had lately come back, with some money apparently, +for he had paid his <i>loyer</i> just as the landlord was going to +turn him out. But he was not at home.</p> + +<p>Then she looked her questioner up and down, with a cool, inhuman +curiosity working in her small eyes. So M'selle Elise had thrown +him over already? That was sharp work! As for the rest of her news, +her pessimism was interested in observing his demeanour under it. +Certainly he did not seem to take it gaily; but what else did he +expect with his sister?—'<i>Je vous demande</i>!'</p> + +<p>The young man dropped his head and went out, shrinking together +into the darkness. She called her husband to the door, and the two +peered after him into the lamp-lit street, dissecting him, his +mistress, and his sister with knifelike tongues.</p> + +<p>David went away and walked up and down the streets, the quays, the +bridges, hour after hour, feeling no fatigue, till suddenly, just +as the dawn was coming on, he sank heavily on to the seat in the +Champs-Elysées. The slip with Madame Cervin's address on it dropped +unheeded from his relaxing hand. His nervous strength was gone, and +he had to sit and bear his anguish without the relief of frenzied +motion.</p> + +<p>Now, after his hour's sleep, he was somewhat revived, ready to +start again—to search again; but where? whither? <i>Somewhere</i> +in this vast, sun-wrapped Paris was Elise, waking, perhaps, at this +moment and thinking of him with a smile and a tear. He <i>would</i> +find her, come what would; he could not live without her!</p> + +<p>Then into his wild passion of loss and desire there slipped again +that cold, creeping thought of Louie—ruined, body and soul—ruined +in this base and dangerous Paris, while he still carried in his +breast that little scrap of scrawled paper! And why? Because he had +flung her to the wolves without a thought, that he and Elise might +travel to their goal unchecked. '<i>My God</i>!'</p> + +<p>The sense of some one near him made him look up. He saw a girl +stopping near the seat whom in his frenzy he for an instant took +for Louie. There was the same bold, defiant carriage, the same +black hair and eyes. He half rose, with a cry.</p> + +<p>The girl gave a quick, coarse laugh. She had been hurrying across +the Avenue towards the nearest bridge when she saw him; now she +came up to him with a hideous jest. David saw her face full, caught +the ghastly suggestions of it—its vice, its look of mortal illness +wrecking and blurring the cheap prettiness it had once possessed, +and beneath all else the fierceness of the hunted creature. His +whole being rose in repulsion; he waved her away, and she went, +still laughing. But his guilty mind went with her, making of her +infamy the prophecy and foretaste of another's.</p> + +<p>He hurried on again, and again had to rest for faintness' sake, +while the furies returned upon him. It seemed as though every +passer-by were there only to scourge and torture him; or, rather, +out of the moving spectacle of human life which began to flow past +him with constantly increasing fulness, that strange selective +poet-sense of his chose out the figures and incidents which bore +upon his own story and worked into his own drama, passing by the +rest. A group of persons presently attracted him who had just come +apparently from the Rive Gauche, and were making for the Rue +Royale. They consisted of a man, a woman, and a child. The child +was a tiny creature in a preposterous feathered hat as large as +itself. It had just been put down to walk by its father, and was +dragging contentedly at its mother's hand, sucking a crust. The man +had a bag of tools on his shoulder and was clearly an artisan going +to work. His wife's face was turned to him and they were talking +fast, lingering a little in the sunshine like people who had a few +minutes to spare and were enjoying them. The man had the blanched, +unwholesome look of the city workman who lives a sedentary life in +foul air, and was, moreover, undersized and noways attractive, save +perhaps for the keen amused eyes with which he was listening to his +wife's chatter. The great bell of Notre-Dame chimed in the +distance. The man straightened himself at once, adjusted his bag of +tools, and hurried off, nodding to his wife.</p> + +<p>She looked after him a minute, then turned and came slowly along +the alley towards the bench where David sat, idly watching her. The +heat was growing steadily, the child was heavy on her hand, and she +was again clearly on the way to motherhood. The seat invited her, +and she came up to it.</p> + +<p>She sat down, panting, and eyed her neighbour askance, detecting at +once how handsome he was, and how unshorn and haggard. Before he +knew where he was, or how it had begun, they were talking. She had +no shyness of any sort, and, as it seemed to him, a motherly, +half-contemptuous indulgence for his sex, as such, which fitted +oddly with her young looks. Very soon she was asking him the most +direct questions, which he had to parry as best he could. She made +out at once that he was a foreigner and in the book trade, and then +she let him know by a passing expression or two that naturally she +understood why he was lounging there in that plight at that hour in +the morning. He had been keeping gay company, of course, and had +but just emerged from some nocturnal orgie or other. And then she +shrugged her strong shoulders with a light, pitiful air, as though +marvelling once more for the thousandth time over the stupidity of +men who would commit these idiocies, would waste their money and +health in them, say what women would.</p> + +<p>Presently he discovered that she was giving him advice of different +kinds, counselling him above all to find a good wife who would work +and save his wages for him. A decent marriage was in truth an +economy, though young men would never believe it.</p> + +<p>David could only stare at her in return for her counsels. The +difference between his place at that moment in the human comedy and +hers was too great to be explained; it called only for silence or a +stammering commonplace or two. Yet for a few moments the +neighbourhood of her and her child was pleasant to him. She had a +good comely head, which was bare under the sun, a little shawl +crossed upon her ample bust, and a market-basket on her arm. The +child was playing in the fine gravel at her feet, pausing every now +and then to study her mother's eye with a furtive gravity, while +the hat fell back and made a still more fantastic combination than +before with the pensive little face.</p> + +<p>Presently, tired of her play, she came to stand by her mother's +knee, laying her head against it.</p> + +<p>'<i>Mon petit ange! que tu es gentille!</i>' said the mother in a +low, rapid voice, pressing her hand on the child's cheek. Then, +turning back to David, she chattered on about the profit and loss +of married life. All that she said was steeped in prose—in the +prose especially of sous and francs; she talked of rents, of the +price of food, of the state of wages in her husband's trade. Yet +every here and there came an exquisite word, a flash. It seemed +that she had been very ill with her first child. She did not mince +matters much even with this young man, and David gathered that she +had not only been near dying, but that her illness had made a moral +epoch in her life. She was laid by for three months; work was slack +for her husband; her own earnings, for she was a skilled +embroideress working for a great linen-shop in the Rue Vivienne, +were no longer forthcoming. Would her husband put up with it, with +the worries of the baby, and the <i>menage</i>, and the sick wife, +and that sharp pinch of want into the bargain, from which during +two years she had completely protected him?</p> + +<p>'I cried one day,' she said simply; 'I said to him, "You're just +sick of it, ain't you? Well, I'm going to die. Go and shift for +yourself, and take the baby to the <i>Enfants Trouves. Alors—</i>"'</p> + +<p>She paused, her homely face gently lit up from within. 'He is not a +man of words—Jules. He told me to be quiet, called me <i>petite +sotte</i>. "Haven't you slaved for two years?" he said. "Well, +then, lie still, can't you?—<i>faut bien que chacun prenne son +tour!</i>"'</p> + +<p>She broke off, smiling and shaking her head. Then glancing round +upon her companion again, she resumed her motherly sermon. That was +the good of being married; that there was some one to share the bad +times with, as well as the good.</p> + +<p>'But perhaps,' she inquired briskly, 'you don't believe in being +married? You are for <i>l'union libre?</i>'</p> + +<p>She spoke like one touching on a long familiar question—as much a +question indeed of daily life and of her class as those other +matters of wages and food she had been discussing.</p> + +<p>A slow and painful red mounted into the Englishman's cheek.</p> + +<p>'I don't know,' he said stupidly. 'And you?'</p> + +<p>'No, no!' she said emphatically, twice, nodding her head. 'Oh, I was +brought up that way. My father was a Red—an Anarchist—a great man +among them; he died last year. He said that liberty was everything. +It made him mad when any of his friends accepted <i>l'union +légale</i>—for him it was a treason. He never married my mother, +though he was faithful to her all his life. But for me—' she +paused, shaking her head slowly. 'Well, I had an elder sister—that +says everything. <i>Faut pas en parler;</i> it makes melancholy, +and one must keep up one's spirits when one is like this. It is +three years since she died; she was my father's favourite. When +they buried her—she died in the hospital—I sat down and thought a +little. It was abominable what she had suffered, and I said to +myself, "Why?"'</p> + +<p>The child swayed backward against her knee, so absorbed was it in +its thumb and the sky, and would have fallen but that she caught it +with her housewife's hand, being throughout mindful of its +slightest movement.</p> + +<p>'"Why?" I said. She was a good creature—a bit foolish perhaps, +but she would have worked the shoes off her feet to please anybody. +And they had treated her—but like a dog! It bursts one's heart to +think of it, and I said to myself,—<i>le mariage c'est la +justice!</i> it is nothing but that. It is not what the priests +say—oh! not at all. But it strikes me like that—<i>c'est la +justice</i>; it is nothing but that!'</p> + +<p>And she looked at him with the bright fixed eyes of one whose +thoughts are beyond their own expressing. He interrupted her, +wondering at the harsh rapidity of his own voice. 'But if it is the +woman who will be free?—who will have no bond?'</p> + +<p>Her expression changed, became shrewd, inquisitive, personal.</p> + +<p>'Well, then!' she said with a shrug, and paused. 'It is because one +is ignorant, you see, or one is bad—<i>on peut toujours ętre une +coquine!</i> And one forgets—one thinks one can be always young, +and love is all pleasure—and it is not true! one get old—and +there is the child—and one may die of it.'</p> + +<p>She spoke with the utmost simplicity, yet with a certain intensity. +Evidently she had a natural pride in her philosophy of life, as +though in a possession of one's own earning and elaborating. She +had probably expressed it often before in much the same terms, and +with the same verbal hitches and gaps.</p> + +<p>The young fellow beside her rose hastily, and bade her good morning. +She looked mildly surprised at such an abrupt departure, but she +was not offended.</p> + +<p>'Good day, citizen,' she said, nodding to him. 'I disturb you?'</p> + +<p>He muttered something and strode away.</p> + +<p>How much time had that wasted of his irrevocable day that was to +set him on Elise's track once more! The first post had been +delivered by this time. Elise must either return to her studio or +remove her possessions; anyhow, sooner or later the Merichats must +have information. And if they were forbidden to speak, well, then +they must be bribed.</p> + +<p>That made him think of money, and in a sudden panic he turned aside +into a small street and examined his pockets. Nearly four napoleons +left, after allowing for his debt to Madame Pyat, which must be +payed that day. Even in his sick, stunned state of the evening +before, when he was at last staggering on again, after his fall, to +the Fontainebleau station, he had remembered to stop a Barbizon man +whom he came across and give him a pencilled message for the +deserted madame. He had sent her the Tue Chantal address, there +would be a letter from her this morning. And he must put her on the +watch, too—Elise could not escape him long.</p> + +<p>But he must have more money. He looked out for a stationer's shop, +went in and wrote a letter to John, which he posted at the next +post-office.</p> + +<p>It was an incoherent scrawl, telling the lad to change the cheque +he enclosed in Bank of England notes and send them to the Rue +Chantal, care of Madame Merichat. He was not to expect him back +just yet, and was to say to any friend who might inquire that he +was still detained.</p> + +<p>That letter, with the momentary contact it involved with his +Manchester life, brought down upon him again the thought of Louie. +But this time he flung it from him with a fierce impatience. His +brain, indeed, was incapable of dealing with it. Remorse? rescue? +there would be time enough for that by-and-by. Meanwhile—to find +Elise!</p> + +<p>And for a week he spent the energies of every thought and every +moment on this mad pursuit. Of these days of nightmare he could +afterwards remember but a few detached incidents here and there. He +recollected patrols up and down the Rue Chantal; talks with Madame +Merichat; the gleam in her eyes as he slipped his profitless bribes +into her hand; visits to Taranne's <i>atelier</i>, where the +<i>concierge</i> at last grew suspicious and reported the matter +within; and finally an interview with the artist himself, from +which the English youth emerged no nearer to his end than before, +and crushed under the humiliation of the great man's advice. He +could vaguely recall the long pacings of the Louvre; the fixed +scrutiny of face after face; vain chases; ignominious retreats; and +all the wretched stages of that slow descent into a bottomless +despair! At last there was a letter—the long-expected letter to +Madame Merichat, directing the removal of Mademoiselle Delaunay's +possessions from the Rue Chantal. It was written by a certain M. +Pimodan, who did not give his address, but who declared himself +authorised by Mademoiselle Delaunay to remove her effects, and +named a day when he would himself superintend the process and +produce his credentials. David passed the time after the arrival of +this letter in a state of excitement which left him hardly master +of his actions. He had a room at the top of a wretched little hotel +close to the Nord station, but he hardly ate or slept. The noises +of Paris were agony to him night and day; he lived in a perpetual +nausea of mind and body, hardly able at times to distinguish +between the images of the brain and the impressions coming from +without.</p> + +<p>Before the day came, a note was brought to him from the Rue +Chantal. It was from M. Pimodan, and requested an interview.</p> + +<p>'I should be glad to see you on Mademoiselle Delaunay's behalf. +Will you meet me in the Garden of the Luxembourg in front of the +central pavilion, at three o'clock to-morrow?</p> + +<p>'GUSTAVE PIMODAN.'</p> + +<p>Before the hour came David was already pacing up and down the +blazing gravel in front of the Palace. When M. Pimodan came the +Englishman in an instant recognised the cousin—the lanky fellow +with the spectacles, who had injured his eyes by reading.</p> + +<p>As soon as he had established this identification—and the two men +had hardly exchanged half-a-dozen sentences before the flashing +inward argument was complete—a feeling of enmity arose in his +mind, so intense that he could hardly keep himself still, could +hardly bring his attention to bear on what he or his companion was +saying. He had been brought so low that, with anyone else, he must +have broken into appeals and entreaties. With this man—No!</p> + +<p>As for M. Pimodan, the first sight of the young Englishman had +apparently wrought in him also some degree of nervous shock; for +the hand which held his cane fidgeted as he walked. He had the air +of a person, too, who had lately gone through mental struggle; the +red rims of the eyes under their large spectacles might be due +either to chronic weakness or to recent sleeplessness.</p> + +<p>But however these things might be, he took a perfectly mild tone, +in which David's sick and irritable sense instantly detected the +note of various offensive superiorities—the superiority of class +and the superiority of age to begin with. He said in the first +place that he was Mademoiselle Delaunay's relative, and that she +had commissioned him to act for her in this very delicate matter. +She was well aware—had been aware from the first day—that she was +watched, and that M. Grieve was moving heaven and earth to discover +her whereabouts. She did not, however, intend to be discovered; let +him take that for granted. In her view all was over—their relation +was irrevocably at an end. She wished now to devote herself wholly +and entirely to her art, without disturbance or distraction from +any other quarter whatever. Might he, under these circumstances, +give M. Grieve the advice of a man of the world, and counsel him to +regard the matter in the same light?</p> + +<p>David walked blindly on, playing with his watch-chain. In the name +of God whom and what was this fellow talking about? At the end of +ten minutes' discourse on M. Pimodan's part, and of a few rare +monosyllables on his own, he said, straightening his young figure +with a nervous tremor:</p> + +<p>'What you say is perfectly useless—I shall find her.'</p> + +<p>Then a sudden angry light leapt into the cousin's eyes.</p> + +<p>'You will <i>not</i> find her!' he said, drawing a sharp breath. 'It +shows how little you know her, after all—compared with—those +who—No matter! Oh, you can persecute and annoy her! No one doubts +that. You can stand between her and all that she now cares to live +for—her art. But you can do nothing else; and you will not be +allowed to do that long, for she is not alone, as you seem to +think. She will be protected. There are resources, and we shall +employ them!'</p> + +<p>The cousin had gone beyond his commission. David guessed as much. +He did not believe that Elise had set this man on to threaten him. +What a fool! But he merely said with a sarcastic dryness, +endeavouring the while to steady his parched lips and his eyelids +swollen with weariness.</p> + +<p>'<i>A la bonne heure!</i>—employ them. Well, sir, you know, I +believe, where Mademoiselle Delaunay is. I wish to know. You will +not inform me. I therefore pursue my own way, and it is useless for +me to detain you any longer.'</p> + +<p>'Know where she is!' cried the other, a triumphant flash passing +across his sallow student's face; 'I have but just parted from her.'</p> + +<p>But he stopped. As a physician, he was accustomed to notice the +changes of physiognomy. Instinctively he put some feet of distance +between himself and his companion. Was it agony or rage he saw?</p> + +<p>But David recovered himself by a strong effort.</p> + +<p>'Go and tell her, then, that I shall find her,' he said with a +shaking voice. 'I have many things to say to her yet.'</p> + +<p>'Absurd!' cried the other angrily. 'Very well, sir, we know what to +expect. It only remains for us to take measures accordingly.'</p> + +<p>And drawing himself up he walked quickly away, looking back every +now and then to see whether he were followed or no.</p> + +<p>'Supposing I did track him,' thought David vaguely, 'what would he +do? Summon one of the various <i>gardiens</i> in sight?'</p> + +<p>He had, however, no such intention. What could it have ended in but +a street scuffle? Patience! and he would find Elise for himself in +spite of that prater.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he descended the terrace, and threw himself, worn out, +upon the first seat, to collect his thoughts again.</p> + +<p>Oh, this summer beauty:—this festal moment of the great city! +Palace and Garden lay under the full June sun. The clipped trees on +the terraces, statues, alleys, and groves slept in the luminous +dancing air. All the normal stir and movement of the Garden seemed +to have passed to-day into the leaping and intermingling curves of +the fountains; the few figures passing and repassing hardly +disturbed the general impression of heat and solitude.</p> + +<p>For hours David sat there, head down, his eyes on the gravel, his +hands tightly clasped between his knees. When he rose at last it +was to hurry down the Rue de Seine and take the nearest bridge and +street northwards to the Quartier Montmartre. He had been dreaming +too long! and yet so great by now was his confusion of mind that he +was no nearer a fresh plan of operations than when the cousin left +him.</p> + +<p>When he arrived at Madame Merichat's <i>loge</i> it was to find +that no new development had occurred. Elise's possessions were +still untouched; neither she nor M. Pimodan had given any further +sign. The <i>concierge</i>, however, gave him a letter which had +just arrived for him. Seeing that it bore the Manchester postmark, +he thrust it into his pocket unread.</p> + +<p>When he entered the evil-smelling passage of his hotel, a +<i>garcon</i> emerged from the restaurant, dived into the <i>salle +de lecture</i>, and came out with an envelope, which he gave to the +Englishman. It had been left by a messenger five minutes before +monsieur arrived. David took it, a singing in his ears; mounted to +the first landing, where the gas burnt at midday, and read it.</p> + +<p>'Gustave tells me you would not listen to him. Do you want to make +me curse our meeting? Be a man and leave me to myself! While I know +that you are on the watch I shall keep away from Paris—<i>voilŕ, +tout</i>. I shall eat my heart out,—I shall begin to hate you, +—you will have chosen it so. Only understand this: I will +<i>never</i> see you again, for both our sakes, if I can help it. +Believe what I say—believe that what parts us is a fate stronger +than either of us, and go! Oh! you men talk of love—and at bottom +you are all selfish and cruel. Do you want to break me more than I +am already broken? Set me free!—will you kill both my youth and my +art together?'</p> + +<p>He carefully refolded the letter and put it into its envelope. Then +he turned and went downstairs again towards the street. But the +same frowsy waiter who had given him his letter was on the watch +for him. In the morning monsieur had commanded some dinner. Would +he take it now?</p> + +<p>The man's tone was sulky. David understood that he was not +considered a profitable customer of the hotel—that, considering +his queer ways, late hours, and small spendings, they would +probably be glad to be rid of him. With a curious submission and +shrinking he followed the man into the stifling restaurant and sat +down at one of the tables.</p> + +<p>Here some food was brought to him, which he tried to eat. But in +the midst of it he was seized with so great a loathing, that he +suddenly rose, so violently as to upset a plate of bread beside +him, and make a waiter spring forward to save the table itself. He +pushed his way to the glass-door into the street, totally +unconscious of the stir his behaviour was causing among the stout +women in bonnets and the red-faced men with napkins tucked under +their chins who were dining near, fumbled at the handle, and +tottered out.</p> + +<p>'<i>Quel animal!</i>' said the enraged <i>dame du comptoir</i>, +who had noticed the incident. 'Marie!'—this to the sickly girl who +sat near with the books in front of her, 'enter that plate, and +charge it high. To-morrow I shall raise the price of his room. One +must really finish with him. <i>C'est un fou!</i>'</p> + +<p>Meanwhile David, revived somewhat by the air, was already in the +Boulevard, making for Opera and the Rue Royale. It was not yet +seven, the Salon would be still open. The distances seemed to +him interminable—the length of the Rue Royale, the expanse +of the Place de la Concorde, the gay and crowded ways of the +Champs-Elysée. But at last he was mounting the stairs and battling +through the rooms at the top. He looked first at the larger picture +which had gained her <i>mention honorable</i>. It was a study of +factory girls at their work, unequal, impatient, but full of a warm +inventive talent—full of <i>her</i>. He knew its history—the +small difficulties and triumphs of it, the adventures she had gone +through on behalf of it—by heart. That fair-haired girl in the +corner was studied from herself; the tint of the hair, the curve of +the cheek were exact. He strained his eyes to look, searching for +this detail and that. His heart said farewell—that was the last, +the nearest he should ever come to her on this earth! Next year? +Ah, he would give much to see her pictures of next year, with these +new perceptions she had created in him.</p> + +<p>He stood a minute before the other picture, the portrait—a study +from one of her comrades in the <i>atelier</i>—and then he wound +his way again through the thronged and suffocating rooms, and out +into the evening.</p> + +<p>The excessive heat of the last few days was about to end in storm. +A wide tempestuous heaven lay beyond the Arc de Triomphe; the red +light struck down the great avenue and into the faces of those +stepping westwards. The deep shade under the full-leafed trees—how +thinly green they were still against the sky that day when she +vanished from him beside the arch and their love began!—was full +of loungers and of playing children; the carriages passed and +repassed in the light. So it had been, the enchanting never-ending +drama, before this spectator entered—so it would be when he had +departed.</p> + +<p>He turned southwards and found himself presently on the Quai de la +Conference, hanging over the river in a quiet spot where few people +passed.</p> + +<p>His frenzy of will was gone, and his last hope with it. Elise had +conquered. Her letter had brought him face to face with those +realities which, during this week of madness, he had simply refused +to see. He could pit himself against her no longer. When it came to +the point he had not the nerve to enter upon a degrading and +ignoble conflict, in which all that was to be won was her hatred or +her fear. That, indeed, would be the last and worst ruin, for it +would be the ruin, not of happiness or of hope, but of love itself, +and memory.</p> + +<p>He took out her letter and re-read it. Then he searched for some of +the writing materials he had bought when he had written his last +letter to Manchester, and, spreading a sheet on the parapet of the +river wall, he wrote:</p> + +<p>'Be content. I think now—I am sure—that we shall never meet +again. From this moment you will be troubled with me no more. Only +I tell you for the last time that you have done ill—irrevocably +ill. For what you have slain in yourself and me is not love or +happiness, but <i>life</i> itself—the life of life!'</p> + +<p>Foolish, incoherent words, as they seemed to him, but he could find +no better. Confusedly and darkly they expressed the cry, the inmost +conviction of his being. He could come no nearer at any rate to +that desolation at the heart of him.</p> + +<p>But now what next? Manchester?—the resumption and expansion of his +bookseller's life—the renewal of his old friendships—the pursuit +of money and of knowledge?</p> + +<p>No. That is all done. The paralysis of will is complete. He cannot +drive himself home, back to the old paths. The disgust with life +has sunk too deep—the physical and moral collapse of which he is +conscious has gone too far.</p> + +<p><i>'Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of +this death?'</i></p> + +<p>There, deep in the fibre of memory lie these words, and others like +them—the typical words of a religion which is still in some sense +the ineradicable warp of his nature, as it had been for generations +of his forefathers. His individual resources of speech, as it were, +have been overpassed; he falls back upon the inherited, the +traditional resources of his race.</p> + +<p>He looked up. A last gleam was on the Invalides—on the topmost +roof of the Corps Législatif; otherwise the opposite bank was +already grey, the river lay in shade. But the upper air was still +aglow with the wide flame and splendour of the sunset; and beneath, +on the bridges and the water and the buildings, how clear and +gracious was the twilight!</p> + +<p><i>'Who shall deliver me?' 'Deliver thyself!'</i> One instant, and +the intolerable pressure on this shrinking point of consciousness +can be lightened, this hunger for sleep appeased! Nothing else is +possible—no future is even conceivable. His life in flowering has +exhausted and undone itself, so spendthrift has been the process.</p> + +<p>So he took his resolve. Then, already calmed, he hung over the +river, thinking, reviewing the past.</p> + +<p>Six weeks—six weeks only!—yet nothing in his life before matters +or counts by comparison. For this mood of deadly fatigue the +remembrance of all the intellectual joys and conquests of the last +few years has no savour whatever. Strange that the development of +one relation of life—the relation of passion—should have been +able so to absorb and squander the power of living! His fighting, +enduring capacity, compared with that of other men, must be small +indeed. He thinks of himself as a coward and a weakling. But +neither the facts of the present nor the face of the future are +altered thereby.</p> + +<p><i>The relation of sex</i>—in its different phases—as he sees the +world at this moment, there is no other reality. The vile and +hideous phase of it has been present to him from the first moment +of his arrival in these Paris streets. He thinks of the pictures +and songs at the 'Trois Rats' from which in the first delicacy and +flush of passion he had shrunk with so deep a loathing; of the +photographs and engravings in the shops and the books on the +stalls; of some of those pictures he had passed, a few minutes +before, in the Salon; of that girl's face in the Tuileries Gardens. +The animal, the beast in human nature, never has it been so present +to him before; for he has understood and realised it while loathing +it, has been admitted by his own passion to those regions of human +feeling where all that is most foul and all that is most beautiful +are generated alike from the elemental forces of life. And because +he had loved Elise so finely and yet so humanly, with a boy's +freshness and a man's energy, this animalism of the great city had +been to him a perpetual nightmare and horror. His whole heart had +gone into Regnault's cry—into Regnault's protest. For his own +enchanted island had seemed to him often in the days of his wooing +to be but floating on the surface of a ghastly sea, whence emerged +all conceivable shapes of ruin, mockery, terror, and disease. It +was because of the tremulous adoration which filled him from the +beginning that the vice of Paris had struck him in this tragical +way. At another time it might have been indifferent to him, might +even have engulfed him.</p> + +<p>But he!—he had known the best of passion! He laid his head down on +the wall, and lived Barbizon over again—day after day, night after +night. Now for the first time there is a pause in the urging +madness of his despair. All the pulses of his being slacken; he +draws back as it were from his own fate, surveys it as a whole, +separates himself from it. The various scenes of it succeed each +other in memory, set always—incomparably set—in the spring green +of the forest, or under a charmed moonlight, or amid the flowery +detail of a closed garden. Her little figure flashes before +him—he sees her gesture, her smile; he hears his own voice +and hers; recalls the struggle to express, the poverty of words, +the thrill of silence, and that perpetual and exquisite recurrence +to the interpreting images of poetry and art. But no poet had +imagined better, had divined more than they in those earliest +hours had <i>lived</i>! So he had told her, so he insisted now with +a desperate faith.</p> + +<p>But, poor soul! even as he insists, the agony within rises, breaks +up, overwhelms the picture. He lives again through the jars and +frets of those few burning days, the growing mistrust of them, the +sense of jealous terror and insecurity—and then through the +anguish of desertion and loss. He writhes again under the wrenching +apart of their half-fused lives—under this intolerable ache of his +own wound.</p> + +<p><i>This</i> the best of passion! Why his whole soul is still +athirst and ahungered. Not a single craving of it has been +satisfied. What is killing him is the sense of a thwarted gift, a +baffled faculty—the faculty of self-spending, self-surrender. +This, the best?</p> + +<p>Then the mind fell into a whirlwind of half-articulate debate, from +the darkness of which emerged two scenes—fragments—set clear in a +passing light of memory.</p> + +<p>That workman and his wife standing together before the day's +toil—the woman's contented smile as her look clung to the mean +departing figure.</p> + +<p>And far, far back in his boyish life—Margaret sitting beside 'Lias +in the damp autumn dawn, spending on his dying weakness that +exquisite, ineffable passion of tenderness, of pity.</p> + +<p>Ah! from the very beginning he had been in love with loving. He +drew the labouring breath of one who has staked his all for some +long-coveted gain, and lost.</p> + +<p>Well!—Mr. Ancrum may be right—the English Puritan may be +right—'sin' and 'law' may have after all some of those mysterious +meanings his young analysis had impetuously denied them—he and +Elise may have been only dashing themselves against the hard facts +of the world's order, while they seemed to be transcending the +common lot and spurning the common ways. What matter now! A certain +impatient defiance rises in his stricken soul. He has made +shipwreck of this one poor opportunity of life—confessed! now let +the God behind it punish, if God there be. <i>'The rest is silence.'</i> +With Elise in his arms, he had grasped at immortality. Now a +stubborn, everlasting 'Nay' possesses him. There is nothing beyond.</p> + +<p>He gathered up his letter, folded it, and put it into the +breast—pocket of his coat. But in doing so his fingers touched +once more the ragged edges of a bit of frayed paper.</p> + +<p><i>Louie!</i></p> + +<p>Through all these half-sane days and nights he had never once +thought of his sister. She had passed out of his life—she had +played no part even in the nightmares of his dreams.</p> + +<p>But now!—while that intense denial of any reality in the universe +beyond and behind this masque of life and things was still +vibrating through his deepest being, it was as though a hand gently +drew aside a curtain, and there grew clear before him, slowly +effacing from his eyes the whole grandiose spectacle of buildings, +sky, and river, that scene of the past which had worked so potently +both in his childish sense and in Reuben's maturer conscience—the +bare room, the iron bed, the dying man, one child within his arm, +the other a frightened baby beside him.</p> + +<p>It was frightfully clear, clearer than it had ever been in +any normal state of brain, and as his mind lingered on it, +unconsciously shaping, deepening its own creation, the weird +impression grew that the helpless figure amid the bedclothes rose +on its elbow, opened its cavernous eyes, and looked at him face to +face, at the son whose childish heart had beat against his father's +to the last. The boy's tortured soul quailed afresh before the +curse his own remorse called into those eyes.</p> + +<p>He hung over the water pleading with the phantom—defending +himself. Every now and then he found that he was speaking aloud; +then he would look round with a quick, piteous terror to see +whether he had been heard or no, the parched lips beginning to move +again almost before his fear was soothed.</p> + +<p>All his past returned upon him, with its obligations, its fetters +of conscience and kinship, so slowly forged, so often resisted and +forgotten, and yet so strong. The moment marked the first passing +away of the philtre, but it brought no recovery with it.</p> + +<p><i>'My God! my God! I tried, father—I tried. But she is lost, +lost—as I am!'</i></p> + +<p>Then a thought found entrance and developed. He walked up and down +the quay, wrestling it out, returning slowly and with enormous +difficulty, because of his physical state, to some of the normal +estimates and relations of life.</p> + +<p>At last he dragged himself off towards his hotel. He must have some +sleep, or how could these hours that yet remained be lived +through—his scheme carried out?</p> + +<p>On the way he went into a shop still open on the boulevard. When he +came out he thrust his purchase into his pocket, buttoned his coat +over it, and pursued his way northwards with a brisker step.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-3" id="CHAPTER_XI-3"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<p>Two days afterwards David stood at the door of a house in the +outskirts of the Auteuil district of Paris. The street had a +half-finished, miscellaneous air; new buildings of the villa type +were mixed up with old and dingy houses standing in gardens, which +had been evidently overtaken by the advancing stream of Paris, +having once enjoyed a considerable amount of country air and space.</p> + +<p>It was at the garden gate of one of these older houses that David +rang, looking about him the while at the mean irregular street and +the ill-kept side-walks with their heaps of cinders and refuse.</p> + +<p>A powerfully built woman appeared, scowling, in answer to the bell. +At first she flatly refused the new-comer admission. But David was +prepared. He set to work to convince her that he was not a Paris +creditor, and, further, that he was well aware M. Montjoie was not +at home, since he had passed him on the other side of the road, +apparently hurrying to the railway station, only a few minutes +before. He desired simply to see madame. At this the woman's +expression changed somewhat. She showed, however, no immediate +signs of letting him in, being clearly chosen and paid to be a +watch-dog. Then David brusquely put his hand in his pocket. Somehow +he must get this harridan out of the way at once! The same terror +was upon him that had been upon him now for many days and +nights—of losing command of himself, of being no more able to do +what he had to do.</p> + +<p>The creature studied him, put out a greedy palm, developed a smile +still more repellent than her brutality, and let him in.</p> + +<p>He found himself in a small, neglected garden; in front of him, to +the right, a wretched, weather-stained house, bearing every mark of +poverty and dilapidation, while to the left there stretched out +from the house a long glass structure, also in miserable +condition—a sculptor's studio, as he guessed.</p> + +<p>His guide led him to the studio-door. Madame was there a few +minutes ago. As they approached, David stopped.</p> + +<p>'I will knock. You may go back to the house. I am madame's brother.'</p> + +<p>She looked at him once more, reluctant. Then, in the clearer light +of the garden, the likeness of the face to one she already knew +struck her with amazement; she turned and went off, muttering.</p> + +<p>David knocked at the door; there was a movement within, and it was +cautiously opened.</p> + +<p>'<i>Monsieur est sorti.</i>—You!'</p> + +<p>The brother and sister were face to face.</p> + +<p>David closed the door behind him, and Louie retreated slowly, her +hands behind her, her tall figure drawing itself up, her face +setting into a frowning scorn.</p> + +<p>'<i>You!</i>—what are you here for? We have done with each other!'</p> + +<p>For answer David went up to a stove which was feebly burning in the +damp, cheerless place, put down his hat and stick, and bent over +it, stretching out his hands to the warmth. A chair was beside it, +and on the chair some scattered bits of silk and velvet, out of +which Louie was apparently fashioning a hat.</p> + +<p>She stood still, observing him. She was in a loose dress of some +silky Oriental material, and on her black hair she wore a red +close-fitting cap with a fringe of golden coins dropping lightly +and richly round her superb head and face.</p> + +<p>'What is the matter with you?' she asked him grimly, after a +minute's silence.' She has left you—that's plain!'</p> + +<p>The young man involuntarily threw back his head as though he had +been struck, and a vivid colour rushed into his cheek. But he +answered quickly:</p> + +<p>'We need not discuss my affairs. I did not come here to speak of +them. They are beyond mending. I came to see—before I go—whether +there is anything I can do to help you.'</p> + +<p>'Much obliged to you!' she cried, flinging herself down on the edge +of a rough board platform, whereon stood a fresh and vigorous +clay-study, for which she had just been posing, to judge from her +dress. Beyond was the Maenad. And in the distance loomed a great +block of marble, upon which masons had been working that afternoon.</p> + +<p>'I am <i>greatly</i> obliged to you!' she repeated mockingly, +taking the crouching attitude of an animal ready to attack. 'You are +a pattern brother.'</p> + +<p>Her glowing looks expressed the enmity and contempt she was at the +moment too excited to put into words.</p> + +<p>David drew his hand across his eyes with a long breath. How was he +to get through it, this task of his, with this swollen, aching +brain and these trembling limbs? Louie <i>must</i> let him speak; +he bitterly felt his physical impotence to wrestle with her.</p> + +<p>He went up to her slowly and sat down beside her. She drew away +from him with a violent movement. But he laid his hand upon her +knee—a shaking hand which his impatient will tried in vain to +steady.</p> + +<p>'Louie, look at me!' he commanded.</p> + +<p>She did so unwillingly, but the proud repulsion of her lip did not +relax.</p> + +<p>'Well, I dare say you look pretty bad. Whose fault is it? everybody +else but you knew what the creature was worth. Ask anybody!'</p> + +<p>The lad's frame straightened and steadied. He took his hand from +her knee.</p> + +<p>'Say that kind of thing again,' he said calmly, 'and I walk straight +out of that door, and you set eyes on me for the last time. That +would be what you want, I dare say. All I wish to point out is, +that you would be a great fool. I have not come here to-day to waste +words, but to propose something to your advantage—your +money-advantage,' he repeated deliberately, looking round the +dismal building with its ill-mended gaps and rents, and its +complete lack of the properties and appliances to which the +humblest modern artist pretends. 'To judge from what I heard in +Paris, and what I see, money is scarce here.'</p> + +<p>His piteous sudden wish to soften her, to win a kind word from her, +from anyone, had passed away. He was beginning to take command of +her as in the old days.</p> + +<p>'Well, maybe we are hard up,' she admitted slowly. 'People are such +brutes and won't wait, and a sculptor has to pay out for a lot of +things before he can make anything at all. But that statue will put +it all right,' and she pointed behind her to the Maenad. 'It's +me—it's the one you tried to put a stopper on.'</p> + +<p>She looked at him darkly defiant. She was leaning back on one arm, +her foot beating with the trick familiar to her. For reckless and +evil splendour the figure was unsurpassable.</p> + +<p>'When he sells that,' she went on, seeing that he did not answer, +'and he will sell it in a jiffy—it is the best he's ever +done—there'll be heaps of money.'</p> + +<p>David smiled.</p> + +<p>'For a week perhaps. Then, if I understand this business aright—I +have been doing my best, you perceive, to get information, and M. +Montjoie seems to be better known than one supposed to half +Paris—the game will begin again.'</p> + +<p>'Never you mind,' she broke in, breathing quickly. 'Give me my +money—the money that belongs to me—and let me alone.'</p> + +<p>'On one condition,' he said quietly. 'That money, as you remember, +is in my hands and at my disposal.'</p> + +<p>'Ah! I supposed you would try to grab it!' she cried.</p> + +<p>Even he was astonished at her violence—her insolence. The demon in +her had never been so plain, the woman never so effaced. His heart +dropped within him like lead, and his whole being shrank from her.</p> + +<p>'Listen to me!' he said, seizing her strongly by the hand, while a +light of wrath leapt into his changed and bloodshot eyes. 'This man +will desert you; in a year's time he will have tired of you; +what'll you do then?'</p> + +<p>'Manage for myself, thank you! without any canting interference +from you. I have had enough of that.'</p> + +<p>'And fall again,' he said, releasing her, and speaking with a +deliberate intensity; 'fall again—from infamy to infamy!'</p> + +<p>She sprang up.</p> + +<p>'Mind yourself!' she cried.</p> + +<p>Miserable moment! As he looked at her he felt that that weapon of +his old influence with her which, poor as it was, he had relied on +in the last resort all his life, had broken in his hand. His own +act had robbed it of all virtue. That pang of 'irreparableness' +which had smitten Elise smote him now. All was undone—all was +done!</p> + +<p>He buried his face in his hands an instant. When he lifted it +again, she was standing with her arms folded across her chest, +leaning against an iron shaft which supported part of the roof.</p> + +<p>'You had better go!' she said, still in a white heat. 'Why you ever +came I don't know. If you won't give me that money, I shall get it +somehow.'</p> + +<p>Suddenly, as she spoke, everything—the situation, the subject of +their talk, the past—seemed to be wiped out of David's brain. He +stared round him helplessly. Why were they there—what had +happened?</p> + +<p>This blankness lasted a certain number of seconds. Then it passed +away, and he painfully recovered his identity. But the experience +was not new to him—it would recur—let him be quick.</p> + +<p>This time a happier instinct served him. He, too, rose and went up +to her.</p> + +<p>'We are a pair of fools,' he said to her, half bitterly, half +gently; 'we reproach and revile each other, and all the time I am +come to give you not only what is yours, but all—all I have—that +it may stand between you and—and worse ruin.'</p> + +<p>'Ruin!' she said, throwing back her head and catching at the word; +'speak for yourself! If I am Montjoie's mistress, Elise Delaunay +was yours. Don't preach. It won't go down.'</p> + +<p>'I have no intention of preaching—don't alarm yourself,' he +replied quietly, this time controlling himself without difficulty.'</p> + +<p>'I have only this to say. On the day when you become Montjoie's +wife, all our father's money—all the six hundred pounds Mr. Gurney +paid over to me in January, shall be paid to you.'</p> + +<p>She started, caught her breath, tried to brazen it out.</p> + +<p>'What is this idiocy for?' she asked coldly. 'What does marrying +matter to you?'</p> + +<p>He sank down again on the chair by the stove, being, indeed, unable +to stand.</p> + +<p>'Perhaps I can't tell you,' he said, after a pause, shading his +face from her with his hand; 'perhaps I could not make plain to +myself what I feel. But this I know—that this man with whom you +are living here is a man for whom nobody has a good word. I want to +give you a hold over him. But first—stop a moment, '—he dropped +his hand and looked up eagerly, 'will you leave him—leave him at +once? I could arrange that.'</p> + +<p>'Make your mind easy,' she said shortly; 'he suits me—I stay. I +went with him, well, because I was dull—and because I wanted to +make you smart for it, if you're keen to know!—but if you think I +am anxious to go home, to be cried over by Dora and lectured by +you, you're vastly mistaken. I can manage him! I have my hold on +him—he knows very well what I am worth to him.'</p> + +<p>She threw her head back superbly against the iron shaft, putting +one arm round it and resting her hot cheek against it as though for +coolness.</p> + +<p>'Why should we argue?' he said sharply—after a wretched silence. +'I didn't come for that. If you won't leave him I have only this to +say. On the day he marries you, if the evidence of the marriage is +satisfactory to an English lawyer I have discovered in Paris and +whose address I will give you, six hundred pounds will be paid over +to you. It is there now, in the lawyer's hands. If not, I go home, +and the law does not compel me to hand you over one farthing.'</p> + +<p>She was silent, and began to pace up and down.</p> + +<p>'Montjoie despises marriage,' she said presently.</p> + +<p>'Try whether he despises money too,' said David, and could not for +the life of him keep the sarcastic note out of his voice.</p> + +<p>She bit her lip.</p> + +<p>'And when, if it is done, must this precious thing be settled?'</p> + +<p>'If your marriage does not take place within a month, Mr. +O'Kelly—I will leave you his address,' he put his hand into his +pocket—'has orders to return the money—'</p> + +<p>'To whom?' she inquired, struck by his sudden break.</p> + +<p>'To me, of course,' he said slowly. 'Is it perfectly plain? do you +understand? Now, then, listen. I have inquired what the law is—you +will have to be married both at the mairie and by the chaplain at +the British embassy.'</p> + +<p>She stopped suddenly in her walk and confronted him.</p> + +<p>'If I am married at all,' she said abruptly, 'I shall be married as +a Catholic.'</p> + +<p>'A Catholic!' David stared at her. She enjoyed his astonishment.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I have had that in my mind for a long time,' she said +scornfully. 'There is a priest at that church with the steps, you +know, near that cemetery place on the hill, who is very much +interested in me indeed. He speaks English. I used to go to +confession. Madame Cervin told me all about it, and how to do it; I +did it exact! Oh, if I am to be married, that will make it plain +sailing enough. It was awkward—while—'</p> + +<p>She broke off and sat down again beside him, pondering and smiling +as he had seen her do in Manchester, when she had the prospect of a +new dress or some amusement that excited her.</p> + +<p>'How have you been able to think about such things?' he asked her, +marvelling.</p> + +<p>'Think about them! What was the good of that? It's the churches I +like, and the priests. Now there <i>is</i> something to see in the +Paris churches, like the Madeleine—worth a dozen St. Damian's, +—you may tell Dora that. The flowers and the dresses and the +music—they <i>are</i> something like. And the priests—'</p> + +<p>She smiled again, little meditative smiles, as though she were +recalling her experiences.</p> + +<p>'Well, I don't know that there's much about them,' she said at +last; 'they're queer, and they're awfully clever, and they want to +manage you, of course.'</p> + +<p>She stopped, quite unable to express herself any more fully. But it +was evident that the traditional relation of the Catholic priest to +his penitent had been to her a subject of curiosity and +excitement—that she would gladly know more of it.</p> + +<p>David could hardly believe his ears. He sat lost at first in the +pure surprise of it, in the sense of Louie's unlikeness to any +other human creature he had ever seen. Then a gleam of satisfaction +arose. He had heard of the hold on women possessed by the Catholic +Church, and maintained by her marvellous, and on the whole +admirable, system of direction. For himself, he would have no +priests of whatever Church. But his mind harboured none of the +common Protestant rules and shibboleths. In God's name, let the +priests get hold of this sister of his:—if they could—when he—</p> + +<p>'Marry this man, then!' he said to her at last, breaking the silence +abruptly,' and square it with the Church, if you want to.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, indeed!' she said mockingly. 'So you have nothing to say +against my turning Catholic? I should like to see Uncle Reuben's +face.'</p> + +<p>Her voice had the exultant mischief of a child. It was evident that +her spirits were rising, that her mood towards her brother was +becoming more amiable.</p> + +<p>'Nothing,' he said dryly, replying to her question.</p> + +<p>Then he got up and looked for his hat. She watched him askance. +'What are you going for? I could get you some tea. <i>He</i> won't +be in for hours.'</p> + +<p>'I have said what I had to say. These'—taking a paper from his +pocket and laying it down, 'are all the directions, legal and other, +that concern you, as to the marriage. I drew them up this morning, +with Mr. O'Kelly. I have given you his address. You can communicate +with him at any time.'</p> + +<p>'I can write to you, I suppose?'</p> + +<p>'Better write to him,' he said quietly, 'he has instructions. He +seemed to me a good sort.'</p> + +<p>'Where are you going?'</p> + +<p>'Back to Paris, and then—home.'</p> + +<p>She placed herself in his way, so that the sunny light of the late +afternoon, coming mostly from behind her, left her face in shadow.</p> + +<p>'What'll you do without that money?' she asked abruptly.</p> + +<p>He paused, getting together his answer with difficulty.</p> + +<p>'I have the stock, and there is something left of the sixty pounds +Uncle Reuben brought. I shall do.'</p> + +<p>'He'll muddle it all,' she said roughly. 'What's the good?'</p> + +<p>And she folded her arms across her with the recklessness of one +quite ready and eager, if need be, to fight her own battle, with +her own weapons, in her own way.</p> + +<p>'Get Mr. O'Kelly to keep it, if you can persuade him, and draw it +by degrees. I'd have made a trust of it, if it had been enough; but +it isn't. Twenty-four pounds a year: that's all you'd get, if we +tied up the capital.'</p> + +<p>She laughed. Evidently her acquaintance with Montjoie had enlarged +her notions of money, which were precise and acute enough before.</p> + +<p>'He spends that in a supper when he's in cash. I'll be curious to +see whether, all in a lump, it'll be enough to make him marry me. +Still, he is precious hard up: he don't stir out till dark, he's so +afraid of meeting people.'</p> + +<p>'That's my hope,' said David heavily, hardly knowing what he said. +'Good-bye.'</p> + +<p>'Hope!' she re-echoed bitterly. 'What d'you want to tie me to him +for, for good and all?'</p> + +<p>And, turning away from him, she stared, frowning, through the dingy +glass door in to the darkening garden. In her mind there was once +more that strange uprising swell of reaction—of hatred of herself +and life.</p> + +<p>Why, indeed? David could not have answered her question. He only +knew that there was a blind instinct in him driving him to this, as +the best that remained open—the only <i>ainde</i> possible for +what had been so vilely done by himself, by her, and by the man who +had worked out her fall for a mere vicious whim. There was no word +in any mouth, it seemed to him, of his being in love with her.</p> + +<p>There were all sorts of whirling thoughts in his mind—fragments +cast up by the waves of desolate experience he had been passing +through—inarticulate cries of warning, judgment, pain. But he +could put nothing into words.</p> + +<p>'Good-bye, Louie!'</p> + +<p>She turned and stood looking at him.</p> + +<p>'What made you get ill?' she inquired, eyeing him.</p> + +<p>His thirsty heart drank in the change of tone.</p> + +<p>'I don't sleep,' he said hurriedly. 'It's the noise. The Nord +station is never quiet. Well, mind you've got to bring that off. +Keep the papers safe. Good-bye, for a long time'.</p> + +<p>'I can come over when I want?' she said half sullenly.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' he assented, 'but you won't want.'</p> + +<p>He drew her by the hand with a solemn tremulous feeling, and kissed +her on the cheek. He would have liked to give her their father's +dying letter. It was there, in his coat-pocket. But he shrank from +the emotion of it. No, he must go. He had done all he could.</p> + +<p>She opened the door for him, and took him to the garden-gate in +silence.</p> + +<p>'When I'm married,' she said shortly, 'if ever I am—Lord knows! +—you can tell Uncle Reuben and Dora?'</p> + +<p>'Yes. Good-bye.'</p> + +<p>The gate closed behind him. He went away, hurrying towards the +Auteuil station.</p> + +<p>When he landed again in the Paris streets, he stood irresolute.</p> + +<p>'One more look,' he said to himself, 'one more.'</p> + +<p>And he turned down the Rue Chantal. There was the familiar archway, +and the light shining behind the porter's door. Was her room +already stripped and bare, or was the broken glass—poor dumb +prophet!—still there, against the wall?</p> + +<p>He wandered on through the lamp-lit city and the crowded pavements. +Elise—the wraith of her—went with him, hand in hand, ghost with +ghost, amid this multitude of men. Sometimes, breaking from this +dream-companionship, he would wake with terror to the perception of +his true, his utter loneliness. He was not made to be alone, and +the thought that nowhere in this great Paris was there a single +human being to whose friendly eye or hand he might turn him in his +need, swept across him from time to time, contracting the heart. +Dora—Mr. Ancrum—if they knew, they would be sorry.</p> + +<p>Then again indifference and blankness came upon him, and he could +only move feebly on, seeing everything in a blur and mist. After +these long days and nights of sleeplessness, semi-starvation, and +terrible excitement, every nerve was sick, every organ out of gear. +The lights of the Tuileries, the stately pile of the Louvre, under +a gray driving sky.—There would be rain soon—ah, there it came! +the great drops hissing along the pavement. He pushed on to the +river, careless of the storm, soothed, indeed, by the cool dashes +of rain in his face and eyes.</p> + +<p>The Place de la Concorde seemed to him as day, so brilliant +was the glare of its lamps. To the right, the fairyland of the +Champs-Elysées, the trees tossing under the sudden blast; in front, +the black trench of the river. On, on—let him see it all—gather +it all into his accusing heart and brain, and then at a stroke blot +out the inward and the outward vision, and 'cease upon the midnight +with no pain'!</p> + +<p>He walked till he could walk no more; then he sank on a dark seat +on the Quai Saint-Michel, cursing himself. Had he no nerve left for +the last act—was that what this delay, this fooling meant? Coward!</p> + +<p>But not here! not in these streets—this publicity! Back—to this +little noisome room. There lock the door, and make an end!</p> + +<p>On the way northward, at the command of a sudden caprice, he sat +outside a blazing cafe on the Boulevard and ordered absinthe, which +he had never tasted. While he waited he looked round on the painted +women, on the men escorting them, on the loungers with their +newspapers and cigars, the shouting, supercilious waiters. But all +the little odious details of the scene escaped him; he felt only +the touchingness of his human comradeship, the yearning of a common +life, bruised and wounded but still alive within him.</p> + +<p>Then he drank the stuff they gave him, loathed it, paid and +staggered on. When he reached his hotel he crept upstairs, dreading +to meet any of the harsh-faced people who frowned as he passed +them. He had done abject things these last three days to conciliate +them—tipped the waiter, ordered food, not that he might eat it but +that he might pay for it, bowed to the landlady—all to save the +shrinking of his sore and quivering nerves. In vain! It seemed to +him that since that last look from Elise as she nestled into the +fern, there had been no kindness for him in human eyes—save, +perhaps, from that woman with the child.</p> + +<p>As he dragged himself up to his fourth floor, the stimulant he had +taken began to work upon his starved senses. The key was in his +door, he turned it and fell into his room, while the door, with the +key still in it, swung to behind him. Guiding himself by the +furniture, he reached the only chair the room possessed—an +arm-chair of the commonest and cheapest hotel sort, which, because +of the uncertainty of its legs, the <i>femme de chambre</i> had +propped up against the bed. He sat down in it and his head fell +back on the counterpane. There was much to do. He had to write to +John about the sale of his stock and the payment of his debts. He +had to put his father's letter into an envelope for Louie, to send +all the papers and letters he had on him and a last message to Mr. +Ancrum, and then to post these letters, so that nothing private +might fall into the hands of the French police, who would, of +course, open his bag.</p> + +<p>While these thoughts were rising in him, a cloud came over the +brain, bringing with it, as it seemed, the first moment of ease +which had been his during this awful fortnight. Before he yielded +himself to it he thrust his hand into his coat-pocket with a sudden +vague anxiety to feel what was there. But even as he withdrew his +fingers they relaxed; a black object came with them, and fell +unheeded, first on his knee, then on to a coat lying on the floor +between him and the window.</p> + +<p>A quarter of an hour afterwards there was a stir and voices on the +landing outside. Some one knocked at the door of No. 139. No +answer. 'The key is in the door. <i>Ouvrez donc!</i>' cried the +waiter, as he ran downstairs again to the restaurant, which was +still crowded. The visitor opened the door and peeped in. Some +quick words broke from him. He rushed in and up to the bed. But +directly the heavy feverish breathing of the figure in the chair +caught his ear his look of sudden horror relaxed, and he fell back, +looking at the sleeping youth.</p> + +<p>It was a piteous sight he saw! Exhaustion, helplessness, sorrow, +physical injury, and moral defeat, were written in every line of +the poor drawn face and shrunken form. The brow was furrowed, the +breathing hard, the mouth dry and bloodless. Upon the mind of the +new-comer, possessed as it was with the image of what David Grieve +had been two short months before, the effect of the spectacle was +presently overwhelming.</p> + +<p>He fell on his knees beside the sleeper. But as he did so, he +noticed the black thing on the floor, stooped to it, and took it +up. That it should be a loaded revolver seemed to him at that +moment the most natural thing in the world, little used as he +personally was to such possessions. He looked at it carefully, took +out the two cartridges it contained, put them into one pocket and +the revolver into the other.</p> + +<p>Then he laid his arm round the lad's neck.</p> + +<p>'David!'</p> + +<p>The young man woke directly and sat up, shaking with terror and +excitement. He pushed his visitor from him, looking at him with +defiance. Then he slipped his hand inside his coat and sprang up +with a cry.</p> + +<p>'David!—dear boy—dear fellow!'</p> + +<p>The voice penetrated the lad's ear. He caught his visitor and +dragged him forward to the light. It fell on the twisted face and +wet eyes of Mr. Ancrum. So startling was the vision, so poignant +were the associations which it set vibrating, that David stood +staring and trembling, struck dumb.</p> + +<p>'Oh, my poor lad! my poor lad! John wanted me to come yesterday, +and I delayed. I was a selfish wretch. Now I will take you home.'</p> + +<p>David fell again upon his chair, too feeble to speak, too feeble +even to weep, the little remaining colour ebbing from his cheeks. +The minister used all his strength, and laid him on the bed. Then +he rang and made even the callous and haughty madame, who was +presently summoned, listen to and obey him while he sent for brandy +and a doctor, and let the air of the night into the stifling room.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII-3" id="CHAPTER_XII-3"></a>CHAPTER XII</h3> + +<p>In two or three days the English doctor who was attending David +strongly advised Mr. Ancrum to get his charge home. The fierce +strain his youth had sustained acting through the nervous system +had disordered almost every bodily function, and the collapse which +followed Mr. Ancrum's appearance was severe. He would lie in his +bed motionless and speechless, volunteered no confidence, and +showed hardly any rallying power.</p> + +<p>'Get him out of this furnace and that doghole of a room,' said the +doctor. 'He has come to grief here somehow—that's plain. You won't +make anything of him till you move him.'</p> + +<p>When the lad was at last stretched on the deck of a Channel steamer +speeding to the English coast, and the sea breeze had brought a +faint touch of returning colour to his cheek, he asked the question +he had never yet had the physical energy to ask.</p> + +<p>'Why did you come, and how did you find me?'</p> + +<p>Then it appeared that the old cashier at Heywood's bank, who had +taken a friendly interest in the young bookseller since the opening +of his account, had dropped a private word to John in the course of +conversation, which had alarmed that youth not a little. His own +last scrawl from David had puzzled and disquieted him, and he +straightway marched off to Mr. Ancrum to consult. Whereupon the +minister wrote cautiously and affectionately to David asking for +some prompt and full explanation of things for his friends' sake. +The letter was, as we know, never opened, and therefore never +answered. Whereupon John's jealous misery on Louie's account and +Mr. Ancrum's love for David had so worked that the minister had +broken in upon his scanty savings and started for Paris at a few +hours' notice. Once in the Rue Chantal he had come easily on +David's track.</p> + +<p>Naturally he had inquired after Louie as soon as David was in a +condition to be questioned at all. The young man hesitated a +moment, then he said resolutely, 'She is married,' and would say no +more. Mr. Ancrum pressed the matter a little, but his patient +merely shook his head, and the sight of him as he lay there on the +pillow was soon enough to silence the minister.</p> + +<p>On the evening before they left Paris he called for a telegraph +form, wrote a message and paid the reply, but Mr. Ancrum saw +nothing of either. When the reply arrived David crushed it in his +hand with a strange look, half bitterness, half relief, and flung +it behind a piece of furniture standing near.</p> + +<p>Now, on the cool, wind-swept deck, he seemed more inclined to talk +than he had been yet. He asked questions about John and the +Lomaxes—he even inquired after Lucy, as to whom the minister who +had lately improved an acquaintance with Dora and her father, begun +through David, could only answer vaguely that he believed she was +still in the south. But he volunteered nothing about his own +affairs or the cause of the state in which Mr. Ancrum had found +him.</p> + +<p>Every now and then, indeed, as they stood together at the side of +the vessel, David leaning heavily against it, his words would fail +him altogether, and he would be left staring stupidly, the great +black eyes widening, the lower lip falling—over the shifting +brilliance of the sea.</p> + +<p>Ancrum was almost sure too that in the darkness of their last night +in Paris there had been, hour after hour, a sound of hard and +stifled weeping, mingled with the noises from the street and from +the station; and to-day the youth in the face was more quenched +than ever, in spite of the signs of reviving health. There had been +a woman in the case, of course: Louie might have misbehaved +herself; but after all the world is so made that no sister can make +a brother suffer as David had evidently suffered—and then there +was the revolver! About this last, after one or two restless +movements of search, which Mr. Ancrum interpreted, David had never +asked, and the minister, timid man of peace that he was, had resold +it before leaving.</p> + +<p>Well, it was a problem, and it must be left to time. Meanwhile Mr. +Ancrum was certainly astonished that <i>any</i> love affair should +have had such a destructive volcanic power with the lad. For it was +no mere raw and sensuous nature, no idle and morbid brain. One +would have thought that so many different aptitudes and capacities +would have kept each other in check.</p> + +<p>As they neared Manchester, David grew plainly restless and ill at +ease. He looked out sharply for the name of each succeeding town, +half turning afterwards, as though to speak to his companion; but +it was not till they were within ten minutes of the Central Station +that he said—</p> + +<p>'John will want to know about Louie. She is married,—as I told +you,—to a French sculptor. I have handed over to her all my +father's money—that is why I drew it out.'</p> + +<p>Mr. Ancrum edged up closer to him—all ears—waiting for more. But +there was nothing more.</p> + +<p>'And you are satisfied?' he said at last.</p> + +<p>David nodded and looked out of window intently.</p> + +<p>'What is the man's name?'</p> + +<p>David either did not or would not hear, and Mr. Ancrum let him +alone. But the news was startling. So the boy had stripped himself, +and must begin the world again as before! What had that minx been +after?</p> + +<p>Manchester again. David looked out eagerly from the cab, his hand +trembling on his knee, beads of perspiration on his face.</p> + +<p>They turned up the narrow street, and there in the distance to the +right was the stall and the shop, and a figure on the steps. Mr. +Ancrum had sent a card before them, and John was on the watch.</p> + +<p>The instant the cab stopped, and before the driver could dismount, +John had opened the door. Putting his head in he peered at the pair +inside, and at the opposite seat, with his small short-sighted +eyes.</p> + +<p>'Where is she?' he said hoarsely, barring the way.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ancrum looked at his companion. David had shrunk back into the +corner, with a white hangdog look, and said nothing. The minister +interposed.</p> + +<p>'David will tell you all,' he said gently. 'First help me in with +him, and the bags. He is a sick man.'</p> + +<p>With a huge effort John controlled himself, and they got inside. +Then he shut the shop door and put his back against it.</p> + +<p>'Tell me where she is,' he repeated shortly.</p> + +<p>'She is married,' David said in a low voice, but looking up from +the chair on which he had sunk.' By now—she is married. I heard by +telegram last night that all was arranged for to-day.'</p> + +<p>The lad opposite made a sharp, inarticulate sound which startled +the minister's ear. Then clutching the handle of the door, he +resumed sharply—</p> + +<p>'Who has she married?'</p> + +<p>The assumption of the right to question was arrogance +itself—strange in the dumb, retiring creature whom the minister +had hitherto known only as David's slave and shadow!</p> + +<p>'A French sculptor,' said David steadily, but propping his head and +hand against the counter, so as to avoid John's stare—'a man +called Montjoie. I was a brute—I neglected her. She got into his +hands. Then I sent for all my money to bribe him to marry her. And +he has.'</p> + +<p>'You—you <i>blackguard!</i>' cried John.</p> + +<p>David straightened instinctively under the blow, and his eyes met +John's for one fierce moment. Then Mr. Ancrum thought he would have +fainted. The minister took rough hold of John by the shoulders.</p> + +<p>'If you can't stay and hold your tongue,' he said, 'you must go. He +is worn out with the journey, and I shall get him to bed. Here's +some money: suppose you run to the house round the corner, in +Prince's Street; ask if they've got some strong soup, and, if they +have, hurry back with it. Come—look sharp. And—one moment—you've +been sleeping here, I suppose? Well, I shall take your room for a +bit, if that'll suit you. This fellow'll have to be looked after.'</p> + +<p>The little lame creature spoke like one who meant to have his way. +John took the coin, hesitated, and stumbled out.</p> + +<p>For days afterwards there was silence between him and David, except +for business directions. He avoided being in the shop with his +employer, and would stand for hours on the step, ostensibly +watching the stall, but in reality doing no business that he could +help. Whenever Mr. Ancrum caught sight of him he was leaning +against the wall, his hat slouched over his eyes, his hands in his +pockets, utterly inert and listless, more like a log than a human +being. Still he was no less stout, lumpish, and pink-faced than +before. His fate might have all the tragic quality; nature had none +the less inexorably endowed him with the externals of farce.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile David dragged himself from his bed to the shop and set to +work to pick up dropped threads. The customers, who had been +formerly interested in him, discovered his return, and came in to +inquire why he had been so long away, or, in the case of one or +two, whether he had executed certain commissions in Paris. The +explanation of illness, however, circulated from the first moment +by Mr. Ancrum, and perforce adopted—though with an inward rage and +rebellion—by David himself, was amply sufficient to cover his +omissions and inattentions, and to ease his resumption of his old +place. His appearance indeed was still ghastly. The skin of the +face had the tightened, transparent look of weakness; the eyes, +reddened and sunk, showed but little of their old splendour between +the blue circles beneath and the heavy brows above; even the hair +seemed to have lost its boyish curl, and fell in harsh, troublesome +waves over the forehead, whence its owner was perpetually and +impatiently thrusting it back. All the bony structure of the face +had been emphasised at the expense of its young grace and bloom, +and the new indications of moustache and beard did but add to its +striking and painful black and white. And the whole impression of +change was completed by the melancholy aloofness, the shrinking +distrust with which eyes once overflowing with the frankness and +eagerness of one of the most accessible of human souls now looked +out upon the world.</p> + +<p>'Was it fever?' said a young Owens College professor who had taken +a lively interest from the beginning in the clever lad's venture. +'Upon my word! you do look pulled down. Paris may be the first city +in the world—it is an insanitary hole all the same. So you never +found time to inquire after those Moliere editions for me?'</p> + +<p>David racked his brains. What was it he had been asked to do? He +remembered half an hour's talk on one of those early days with a +bookseller on the Quai Voltaire—was it about this commission? He +could not recall.</p> + +<p>'No, sir,' he said, stammering and flushing. 'I believe I did ask +somewhere, but I can't remember.'</p> + +<p>'It's very natural, very natural,' said the professor kindly. +'Never mind. I'll send you the particulars again, and you can keep +your eyes open for me. And, look here, take your business easy for +a while. You'll get on—you're sure to get on—if you only recover +your health.'</p> + +<p>David opened the door for him in silence.</p> + +<p>The reawakening of his old life in him was strange and slow. When +he first found himself back among his books and catalogues, his +ledgers and business memoranda, he was bewildered and impatient. +What did these elaborate notes, with their cabalistic signs and +abbreviations—whether as to the needs of customers, or the +whereabouts of books, or the history of prices—mean or matter? He +was like a man who has lost a sense. Then the pressure of certain +debts which should have been met out of the money in the bank first +put some life into him. He looked into his financial situation and +found it grave, though not desperate. All hope of a large and easy +expansion of business was, of course, gone. The loss of his capital +had reduced him to the daily shifts and small laborious +accumulations with which he had begun. But this factor in his state +was morally of more profit to him at the moment than any other. +With such homely medicines nature and life can often do most for +us.</p> + +<p>Such was Ancrum's belief, and in consequence he showed a very +remarkable wisdom during these early days of David's return.</p> + +<p>'As far as I can judge, there has been a bad shake to the heart in +more senses than one,' had been the dry remark of the Paris doctor; +'and as for nervous system, it's a mercy he's got any left. Take +care of him, but for Heaven's sake don't make an invalid of +him—that would be the finish.'</p> + +<p>So that Ancrum offered no fussy opposition to the resumption of the +young man's daily work, though at first it produced a constant +battle with exhaustion and depression. But never day or night did +the minister forget his charge. He saw that he ate and drank; he +enforced a few common sense remedies for the nervous ills which the +moral convulsion had left behind it, ills which the lad in his +irritable humiliation would fain have hidden even from him; above +all he knew how to say a word which kept Dora and Daddy and other +friends away for a time, and how to stand between David and that +choked and miserable John.</p> + +<p>He had the strength of mind also to press for no confidence and to +expect no thanks. He had little fear of any further attempts at +suicide, though he would have found it difficult perhaps to explain +why. But instinctively he felt that for all practical purposes +David had been mad when he found him, and that he was mad no +longer. He was wretched, and only a fraction of his mind was in +Manchester and in his business—that was plain. But, in however +imperfect a way, he was again master of himself; and the minister +bided his time, putting his ultimate trust in one of the finest +mental and physical constitutions he had ever known.</p> + +<p>In about ten days David took up his hat one afternoon and, for the +first time, ventured into the streets. On his return he was walking +down Potter Street in a storm of wind and rain, when he ran against +some one who was holding an umbrella right in front of her and +battling with the weather. In his recoil he saw that it was Dora.</p> + +<p>Dora too looked up, a sudden radiant pleasure in her face +overflowing her soft eyes and lips.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Mr. Grieve! And are you really better?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' he said briefly. 'May I walk with you a bit?'</p> + +<p>'Oh no!—I don't believe you ought to be out in such weather. I'll +just come the length of the street with you.'</p> + +<p>And she turned and walked with him, chattering fast, and of course, +from the point of view of an omniscience which could not have been +hers, foolishly. Had he liked Paris?—what he saw of it at least +before he had been ill?—and how long had he been ill? Why had he +not let Mr. Ancrum or some one know sooner? And would he tell her +more about Louie? She heard that she was married, but there was so +much she, Dora, wanted to hear.</p> + +<p>To his first scanty answers she paid in truth but small heed, for +the joy of seeing him again was soon effaced by the painful +impression of his altered aspect. The more she looked at him, the +more her heart went out to him; her whole being became an effusion +of pity and tenderness, and her simplest words, maidenly and +self-restrained as she was, were in fact charged with something +electric, ineffable. His suffering, his neighbourhood, her own +sympathy—she was taken up, overwhelmed by these general +impressions. Inferences, details escaped her.</p> + +<p>But as she touched on the matter of Louie, and they were now at his +own steps, he said to her hurriedly—</p> + +<p>'Walk a little further, and I'll tell you. John's in there.'</p> + +<p>She opened her eyes, not understanding, and then demurred a little +on the ground of his health and the rain.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I'm all right,' he said impatiently. 'Look here, will you walk +to Chetham's Library? There'll be a quiet place there, in the +reading room—sure to be—where we can talk.'</p> + +<p>She assented, and very soon they were mounting the black oak stairs +leading to this old corner of Manchester. At the top of the stairs +they saw in the distance, at the end of the passage on to which +open the readers' studies, each with its lining of folios and its +oaken lattice, a librarian, who nodded to David, and took a look at +Dora. Further on they stumbled over a small boy from the charity +school who wished to lionise them over the whole building. But when +he had been routed, they found the beautiful panelled and painted +reading-room quite empty, and took possession of it in peace. David +led the way to an oriel window he had become familiar with in the +off-times of his first years at Manchester, and they seated +themselves there with a low sloping desk between them, looking out +on the wide rain-swept yard outside, the buildings of the +grammar-school, and the black mass of the cathedral.</p> + +<p>Manchester had never been more truly Manchester than on this dark +July afternoon, with its low shapeless clouds, its darkness, wind, +and pelting rain. David, staring out through the lozenge panes at +the familiar gloom beyond, was suddenly carried by repulsion into +the midst of a vision which was an agony—of a spring forest cut by +threadlike paths; of a shadeless sun; of a white city steeped in +charm, in gaiety.</p> + +<p>Dora watched him timidly, new perceptions and alarms dawning in +her.</p> + +<p>'You were going to tell me about Louie,' she said.</p> + +<p>He returned to himself, and abruptly turned with his back to the +window, so that he saw the outer world no more.</p> + +<p>'You heard that she was married?'</p> + +<p>'Yes.'</p> + +<p>'She has married a brute. It was partly my fault. I wanted to be +rid of her; she got in my way. This man was in the same house; I +left her to herself, and partly, I believe, to spite me, she went +off with him. Then at the last when she wouldn't leave him I made +her marry him. I bribed him to marry her. And he did. I had just +enough money to make it worth his while. But he will ill-treat her; +and she won't stay with him. She will go from bad to worse.'</p> + +<p>Dora drew back, with her hand on the desk, staring at him with +incredulous horror.</p> + +<p>'But you were ill?' she stammered.</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>'Never mind my being ill. I wanted you to know, because you were +good to her, and I'm not going to be a hypocrite to you. Nobody +else need know anything but that she's married, which is true. If +I'd looked after her it mightn't have happened—perhaps. But I +didn't look after her—I couldn't.'</p> + +<p>His face, propped in his hands, was hidden from her. She was in a +whirl of excitement and tragic impression—understanding something, +divining more.</p> + +<p>'Louie was always so self-willed,' she said trembling.</p> + +<p>'Aye. That don't make it any better. You remember all I told you +about her before? You know we didn't get on; she wasn't nice to me, +and I didn't suit her, I suppose. But all this year, I don't know +why, she's been on my mind from morning till night; I've always +felt sure, somehow, that she would come to harm; and the worrying +oneself about her—well! it has seemed <i>to grow into one's very +bones</i>. '—He threw out the last words after a pause, in which he +had seemed to search for some phrase wherewith to fit the energy of +his feeling. 'I took her to Paris to keep her out of mischief. I had +much rather have gone alone; but she would not ask you to take her +in, and I couldn't leave her with John. Well, then, she got in my +way—I told you—and I let her go to the dogs. There—it's +done—<i>done!</i>'</p> + +<p>He turned on his seat, one hand drumming the desk, while his eyes +fixed themselves apparently on the portrait of Sir Humphry Chetham +over the carved mantelpiece. His manner was hard and rapid; neither +voice nor expression had any of the simplicity or directness of +remorse.</p> + +<p>Dora remained silent looking at him; her slender hands were pressed +tight against either cheek; the tears rose slowly till they filled +her grey eyes.</p> + +<p>'It is very sad,' she said in a low voice.</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>'Yes—it's sad. So are most things in this world, perhaps. All +natural wants seem just to lead us to misery sooner or later. And +who gave them to us—who put us here—with no choice but just to go +on blundering from one muddle into another?'</p> + +<p>Their eyes met. It was as though he had remembered her religion, +and could not, in his bitterness, refrain from an indirect fling at +it.</p> + +<p>As for her, what he said was strange and repellent to her. But her +forlorn passion, so long trampled on, cried within her; her pure +heart was one prayer, one exquisite throb of pain and pity.</p> + +<p>'Did some one deceive you?' she asked, so low that the words seemed +just breathed into the air.</p> + +<p>'No,—I deceived myself.'</p> + +<p>Then as he looked at her an impulse of confession crossed his mind. +Sympathy, sincerity, womanly sweetness, these things he had always +associated with Dora Lomax. Instinctively he had chosen her for a +friend long ago as soon as their first foolish spars were over.</p> + +<p>But the impulse passed away. He thought of her severity, her +religion, her middle-class canons and judgments, which perhaps were +all the stricter because of Daddy's laxities. What common ground +between her and his passion, between her and Elise? No! if he must +speak—if, in the end, he proved too weak to forbear wholly from +speech—let it be to ears more practised, and more human!</p> + +<p>So he choked back his words, and Dora felt instinctively that he +would tell her no more. Her consciousness of this was a mingled +humiliation and relief; it wounded her to feel that she had so +little command of him; yet she dreaded what he might say. Paris was +a wicked place—so the world reported. Her imagination, sensitive, +Christianised, ascetic, shrank from what he might have done. +Perhaps the woman shrank too. Instead, she threw herself upon the +thought, the bliss, that he was there again beside her, restored, +rescued from the gulf, if gulf there had been.</p> + +<p>He went back to the subject of Louie, and told her as much as a +girl of Dora's kind could be told of what he himself knew of +Louie's husband. In the course of his two days' search for them, +which had included an interview with Madame Cervin, he had become +tolerably well acquainted with Montjoie's public character and +career. Incidentally parts of the story of Louie's behaviour came +in, and for one who knew her as Dora did, her madness and +wilfulness emerged, could be guessed at, little as the brother +intended to excuse himself thereby. How, indeed, should he excuse +himself? Louie's character was a fixed quantity to be reckoned on +by all who had dealings with her. One might as well excuse oneself +for letting a lunatic escape by the pretext of his lunacy. Dora +perfectly understood his tone. Yet in her heart of hearts she +forgave him—for she knew not what!—became his champion. There was +a dry sharpness of self-judgment, a settled conviction of coming +ill in all he said which wrung her heart. And how blanched he was +by that unknown misery! How should she not pity, not forgive? It +was the impotence of her own feeling to express itself that swelled +her throat. And poor Lucy, too—ah! poor Lucy.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, as he was speaking, he noticed his companion more +closely, the shabbiness of the little black hat and jacket, the new +lines round the eyes and mouth.</p> + +<p>'<i>You</i> have not been well,' he said abruptly.' How has your +father been going on?'</p> + +<p>She started and tried to answer quietly. But her nerves had been +shaken by their talk, and by that inward play of emotion which had +gone on out of his sight. Quite unexpectedly she broke down, and +covering her eyes with one hand, began to sob gently.</p> + +<p>'I can't do anything with him now, poor father,' she said, when she +could control herself. 'He won't listen to me at all. The debts are +beginning to be dreadful, and the business is going down fast. I +don't know what we shall do. And it all makes him worse—drives him +to drink.'</p> + +<p>David thought a minute, lifted out of himself for the first time.</p> + +<p>'Shall I come to-night to see him?'</p> + +<p>'Oh do!' she said eagerly; 'come about nine o'clock. I will tell +him—perhaps that will keep him in.'</p> + +<p>Then she went into more details than she had yet done; named the +creditors who were pressing; told how her church-work, though she +worked herself blind night and day, could do but little for them; +how both the restaurant and the reading-room were emptying, and she +could now get no servants to stay, but Sarah, because of her +father's temper.</p> + +<p>It seemed to him as he listened that the story, with its sickened +hope and on-coming fate, was all in some strange way familiar; it +or something like it was to have been expected; for him the strange +and jarring thing now would have been to find a happy person. He +was in that young morbid state when the mind hangs its own cloud +over the universe.</p> + +<p>But Dora got up to go, tying on her veil with shaking hands. She +was so humbly grateful to him that he was sorry for her—that he +could spare a thought from his own griefs for her.</p> + +<p>As they went down the dark stairs together, he asked after Lucy. +She was now staying with some relations at Wakely, a cotton town in +the valley of the Irwell, Dora said; but she would probably go back +to Hastings for the winter. It was now settled that she and her +father could not get on; and the stepmother that was to +be—Purcell, however, was taking his time—as determined not to be +bothered with her.</p> + +<p>David listened with a certain discomfort. 'It was what she did for +me,' he thought, 'that set him against her for good and all. Old +brute!'</p> + +<p>Aloud he said: 'I wrote to her, you know, and sent her that book. +She did write me a queer letter back—it was all dashes and +splashes—about the street-preachings on the beach, and a blind man +who sang hymns. I can't remember why she hated him so particularly!'</p> + +<p>She answered his faint smile. Lucy was a child for both of them. +Then he took her to the door of the Parlour, noticing, as he parted +from her, how dingy and neglected the place looked.</p> + +<p>Afterwards—directly he had left her—the weight of his pain which +had been lightened for an hour descended upon him again, shutting +the doors of the senses, leaving him alone within, face to face +with the little figure which haunted him day and night. During the +days since his return from Paris the faculty of projective +imagination, which had endowed his childhood with a second world, +and peopled it with the incidents and creatures of his books, had +grown to an abnormal strength. Behind the stage on which he was now +painfully gathering together the fragments of his old life, it +created for him another, where, amid scenes richly set and lit with +perpetual summer, he lived with Elise, walked with her, watched +her, lay at her feet, quarrelled with her, forgave her. His drama +did not depend on memory alone, or rather it was memory passing +into creation. Within its bounds he was himself and not himself; +his part was loftier than any he had ever played in reality; his +eloquence was no longer tongue-tied—it flowed and penetrated. His +love might be cruel, but he was on her level, nay, her master; he +could reproach, wrestle with, command her; and at the end evoke the +pardoning flight into each other's arms—confession—rapture.</p> + +<p>Till suddenly, poor fool! a little bolt shot from the bow +of memory—the image of a <i>diligence</i> rattling along a white +road—or of black rain-beaten quays, with their lines of +wavering lamps—or of a hideous upper room with blue rep +furniture where one could neither move nor breathe—would +strike his dream to fragments, and as it fell to ruins within +him, his whole being would become one tumult of inarticulate +cries—delirium—anguish—with which the self at the heart of +all seemed to be wrestling for life.</p> + +<p>It was so to-day after he left Dora. First the vision, the +enchantment—then the agony, the sob of desolation which could +hardly be kept down. He saw nothing in the streets. He walked on +past the Exchange, where an unusual crowd was gathered, elbowing +his way through it mechanically, but not in truth knowing that it +was there.</p> + +<p>When he reached the shop he ran past John, who was reading a +newspaper, up to his room and locked the door.</p> + +<p>About an hour afterwards Mr. Ancrum came in, all excitement, a +batch of papers under his arm.</p> + +<p>'It is going to be war, John! <i>War</i>—I tell you! and such a +war. They'll be beaten, those braggarts, if there's justice in +heaven. The streets are all full; I could hardly get here; +everybody talking of how it will affect Manchester. Time enough to +think about that! What a set of selfish beasts we all are! Where's +David?'</p> + +<p>'Come in an hour ago!' said John sullenly; 'he went upstairs.'</p> + +<p>'Ah, he will have heard—the placards are all over the place.'</p> + +<p>The minister went upstairs and knocked at David's door.</p> + +<p>'David!'</p> + +<p>'All right,' said a voice from inside.</p> + +<p>'David, what do you think of the news?'</p> + +<p>'What news?' after a pause.</p> + +<p>'Why, the war, man! Haven't you seen the evening paper?'</p> + +<p>No answer. The minister stood listening at the door. Then a tender +look dawned in his odd grey face.</p> + +<p>'David, look here, I'll push you the paper under the door. You're +tired, I suppose—done yourself up with your walk?'</p> + +<p>'I'll be down to supper,' said the voice from inside, shortly. +'Will you push in the paper?'</p> + +<p>The minister descended, and sat by himself in the kitchen thinking. +He was a wiser man now than when he had gone out, and not only as +to that reply of the King of Prussia to the French ultimatum on the +subject of the Hohenzollern candidature.</p> + +<p>For he had met Barbier in the street. How to keep the voluble +Frenchman from bombarding David in his shattered state had been one +of Mr. Ancrum's most anxious occupations since his return. It had +been done, but it had been difficult. For to whom did David owe his +first reports of Paris if not to the old comrade who had sent him +there, found him a lodging, and taught him to speak French so as +not to disgrace himself and his country? However, Ancrum had found +means to intercept Barbier's first visit, and had checkmated his +attempts ever since. As a natural result, Barbier was extremely +irritable. Illness—stuff! The lad had been getting into +scrapes—that he would swear.</p> + +<p>On this occasion, when Ancrum stumbled across him, he found +Barbier, at first bubbling over with the war news; torn different +ways; now abusing the Emperor for a cochon and a <i>fou</i>, +prophesying unlimited disaster for France, and sneering at the +ranting crowds on the boulevards; the next moment spouting the same +anti-Prussian madness with which his whole unfortunate country was +at the moment infected. In the midst of his gallop of talk, +however, the old man suddenly stopped, took off his hat, and +running one excited hand through his bristling tufts of grey hair +pointed to Ancrum with the other.</p> + +<p>'<i>Halte lŕ</i>!' he said, 'I know what your young rascal has been +after. I know, and I'll be bound you don't. Trust a lover for +hoodwinking a priest. Come along here.'</p> + +<p>And putting his arm through Ancrum's, he swept him away, repeating, +as they walked, the substance of a letter from his precious nephew, +in which the Barbizon episode as it appeared to the inhabitants of +No. 7 Rue Chantal and to the students of Taranne's <i>atelier de +femmes</i> was related, with every embellishment of witticism and +<i>blague</i> that the imagination of a French <i>rapin</i> could +suggest. Mademoiselle Delaunay was not yet restored, according to +the writer, to the <i>atelier</i> which she adorned. '<i>On criait +au scandale</i>,' mainly because she was such a clever little +animal, and the others envied and hated her. She had removed to a +studio near the Luxembourg, and Taranne was said to be teaching her +privately. Meanwhile Dubois requested his dear uncle to supply him +with information as to <i>l'autre;</i> it would be gratefully +received by an appreciative circle. As for <i>la sœur de +l'autre</i>, the dear uncle no doubt knew that she had migrated +to the studio of Monsieur Montjoie, an artist whose little +affairs in the <i>genre</i> had already, before her advent, attained +a high degree of interest and variety. On a review of all the +circumstances, the dear uncle would perhaps pardon the writer if he +were less disposed than before to accept those estimable views of +the superiority of the English <i>morale</i> to the French, which +had been so ably impressed upon him during his visit to Manchester.</p> + +<p>For after a very short stay at Brussels the nephew had boldly and +suddenly pushed over to England, and had spent a fortnight in +Barbier's lodgings reconnoitering his uncle. As to the uncle, +Xavier had struck him, on closer inspection, as one of the most +dissolute young reprobates he had ever beheld. He had preached to +him like a father, holding up to him the image of his own absent +favourite, David Grieve, as a brilliant illustration of what could +be achieved even in this wicked world by morals and capacity. And +in the intervals he had supplied the creature with money and amused +himself with his <i>gaminerie</i> from morning till night. On their +parting the uncle had with great frankness confessed to the nephew +the general opinion he had formed of his character; all the same +they were now embarked on a tolerably frequent correspondence; and +Dubois' ultimate chance of obtaining his uncle's savings, on the +<i>chasse</i> of which he had come to England, would have seemed to +the cool observer by no means small.</p> + +<p>'But now, look here,' said Barbier, taking off his spectacles to +wipe away the 'merry tear' which dimmed them, after the +recapitulation of Xavier's last letter, 'no more nonsense! I come +and have it out with that young man. I sent him to Paris, and I'll +know what he did there. <i>He's</i> not made of burnt sugar. Of +course he's broken his heart—we all do. Serve him right.'</p> + +<p>'It's easy to laugh,' said Ancrum dryly, 'only these young fellows +have sometimes an uncomfortable way of vindicating their dignity by +shooting themselves.'</p> + +<p>Barbier started and looked interrogative.</p> + +<p>'Now suppose you listen to me,' said the minister.</p> + +<p>And the two men resumed their patrol of Albert Square while Ancrum +described his rescue of David. The story was simply told but +impressive. Barbier whistled, stared, and surrendered. Nay, he went +to the other extreme. He loved the absurd, but he loved the +romantic more. An hour before, David's adventures had been to him a +subject of comic opera. As Ancrum talked, they took on 'the grand +style,' and at the end he could no more have taken liberties with +his old pupil than with the hero of the <i>Nuit de Mai.</i> He +became excited, sympathetic, declamatory, tore open old sores, and +Mr. Ancrum had great difficulty in getting rid of him.</p> + +<p>So now the minister was sitting at home meditating. Through the +atmosphere of mockery with which Dubois had invested the story he +saw the outlines of it with some clearness.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII-3" id="CHAPTER_XIII-3"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h3> + +<p>In the midst of his meditations, however, the minister did not +forget to send John out for David's supper, and when David +appeared, white, haggard, and exhausted, it was to find himself +thought for with a care like a woman's. The lad, being sick and +irritable, showed more resentment than gratitude; pushed away his +food, looking sombrely the while at the dry bread and tea which +formed the minister's invariable evening meal as though to ask when +he was to be allowed his rational freedom again to eat or fast as +he pleased. He scarcely answered Ancrum's remarks about the war, +and finally he got up heavily, saying he was going out.</p> + +<p>'You ought to be in your bed,' said Ancrum, protesting almost for +the first time, 'and it's there you will be—tied by the leg—if you +don't take a decent care of yourself.'</p> + +<p>David took no notice and went. He dragged himself to the German +Athenaeum, of which he had become a member in the first flush of +his inheritance. There were the telegrams from Paris, and an eager +crowd reading and discussing them. As he pushed his way in at last +and read, the whole scene rose before him as though he were +there—the summer boulevards with their trees and kiosks, the +moving crowds, the shouts, the 'Marseillaise'—the blind infectious +madness of it all. And one short fortnight ago, what man in Europe +could have guessed that such a day was already on the knees of the +gods?</p> + +<p>Afterwards, on the way to the Parlour, he talked to Elise about it, +—placing her on the boulevards with the rest, and himself beside +her to guard her from the throng. Hour by hour, this morbid gift of +his, though it tortured him, provided an outlet for passion, saved +him from numbness and despair.</p> + +<p>When he got to Dora's sitting-room he found Daddy sitting there, +smoking sombrely over the empty grate. He had expected a flood of +questions, and had steeled himself to meet them. Nothing of the +sort. The old man took very little notice of him and his travels. +Considering the petulant advice with which Daddy had sent him off, +David was astonished and, in the end, piqued. He recovered the +tongue which he had lost for Ancrum, and was presently discussing +the war like anybody else. Reminiscences of the talk amid which he +had lived during those Paris weeks came back to them; and he +repeated some of them which bore on the present action of Napoleon +III and his ministry, with a touch of returning fluency. He was, in +fact, playing for Daddy's attention.</p> + +<p>Daddy watched him silently with a wild and furtive eye. At last, +looking round to see whether Dora was there, and finding that she +had gone out, he laid a lean long hand on David's knee.</p> + +<p>'That'll do, Davy. Davy, why were you all that time away?'</p> + +<p>The young man drew himself up suddenly, brought back to realities +from this first brief moment of something like forgetfulness. He +tried for his common excuse of illness; but it stuck in his throat.</p> + +<p>'I can't tell you, Daddy,' he said at last, slowly. 'I might tell +you lies, but I won't. It concerns myself alone.'</p> + +<p>Daddy still bent forward, his peaked wizard's face peering at his +companion.</p> + +<p>'You've been in trouble, Davy?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, Daddy. But if you ask me questions I shall go.'</p> + +<p>He spoke with a sudden fierce resolution.</p> + +<p>Daddy paid no attention. He threw himself back in his chair with a +long breath.</p> + +<p>'Bedad, and I knew it, Davy! But sorrow a bit o' pity will you get +out o' me, my boy—sorrow a bit!'</p> + +<p>He lay staring at his companion with a glittering hostile look.</p> + +<p>'By the powers!' he said presently, 'to be a gossoon of twenty again +and throubled about a woman!'</p> + +<p>David sprang up.</p> + +<p>'Well, Daddy, I'll bid you good night! I wanted to hear something +about your own affairs, which don't seem to be flourishing. But +I'll wait till Miss Dora's at home.'</p> + +<p>'Sit down, sit down again!' cried Lomax angrily, catching him by +the arm. 'I'll not meddle with you. Yes, we're in a bad way, a +deuced bad way, if you listen to Dora. If it weren't for her I'd +have walked myself off long ago and let the devil take the +creditors.'</p> + +<p>David sat down and tried to get at the truth. But Daddy turned +restive, and now invited the traveller's talk he had before +repelled. He fell into his own recollections of the Paris streets +in '48, and his vanity enjoyed showing this slip of a fellow that +old Lomax was well acquainted with France and French politics +before he was born.</p> + +<p>Presently Dora came in, saw that her father had been beguiled into +foregoing his usual nocturnal amusements, and looked soft gratitude +at David. But as for him, he had never realised so vividly the +queer aloofness and slipperiness of Daddy's nature, nor the +miserable insecurity of Dora's life. Such men were not meant to +have women depending on them.</p> + +<p>He went downstairs pondering what could be done for the old +vagabond. Drink had indeed made ravages since he had seen him last. +For Dora's sake the young man recalled with eagerness some +statements and suggestions in a French treatise on 'L'Alcoolisme' +he chanced to have been turning over among his foreign scientific +stock. Dora, no doubt, had invoked the parson; he would endeavour +to bring in the doctor. And there was a young one, a frequenter of +the stall in Birmingham Street, not as yet overburdened with +practice, who occurred to him as clever and likely to help.</p> + +<p>Nor did he forget his purpose. The very next morning he got hold of +the young man in question. Out came the French book, which +contained the record of a famous Frenchman's experiments, and the +two hung over it together in David's little back room, till the +doctor's views of booksellers and their probable minds were +somewhat enlarged, and David felt something of the old intellectual +glow which these scientific problems of mind and matter had +awakened in him during the winter. Then he walked his physician off +to Daddy during the dinner hour and boldly introduced him as a +friend. The young doctor, having been forewarned, treated the +situation admirably, took up a jaunty and jesting tone, and, +finally, putting morals entirely aside, invited Daddy to consider +himself as a scientific case, and deal with himself as such for the +benefit of knowledge.</p> + +<p>Daddy was feeling ill and depressed; David struck him as an +'impudent varmint,' and the doctor as little better; but the lad's +solicitude nevertheless flattered the old featherbrain, and in the +end he fell into a burst of grandiloquent and self-excusing +confidence. The doctor played him; prescribed; and when he and +David left together it really seemed as though the old man from +sheer curiosity about and interest in his own symptoms would +probably make an attempt to follow the advice given him.</p> + +<p>Dora came in while the three were still joking and discussing. Her +face clouded as she listened, and when David and the doctor left +she gave them a cool and shrinking good bye which puzzled David.</p> + +<p>Daddy, however, after a little while, mended considerably, +developed an enthusiasm for his self-appointed doctor, and, what +was still better, a strong excitement about his own affairs. When +it came to the stage of a loan for the meeting of the more pressing +liabilities, of fresh and ingenious efforts to attract customers, +and of a certain gleam of returning prosperity, David's concern for +his old friend very much dropped again. His former vivid interest +in the human scene and the actors in it, as such, was not yet +recovered; in these weeks weariness and lassitude overtook each +reviving impulse and faculty in turn.</p> + +<p>He was becoming more and more absorbed, too, by the news from +France. Its first effect upon him was one of irritable repulsion. +Barbier and Hugo had taught him to loathe the Empire; and had not +he and she read <i>Les Chatiments</i> together, and mocked the +Emperor's carriage as it passed them in the streets? The French +telegrams in the English papers, with their accounts of the +vapouring populace, the wild rhetoric in the Chamber, and the +general outburst of <i>fanfaronnade</i>, seemed to make the French +nation one with the Empire in its worst aspects, and, as we can all +remember, set English teeth on edge. David devoured the papers day +by day, and his antagonism grew, partly because, in spite of that +strong gravitation of his mind towards things expansive, emotional, +and rhetorical, the essential paste of him was not French but +English—but mostly because of other and stronger reasons of which +he was hardly conscious. During that fortnight of his agony in +Paris all that sympathetic bond between the great city and himself +which had been the source of so much pleasure and excitement to him +during his early days with Elise had broken down. The glamour of +happiness torn away, he had seen, beneath the Paris of his dream, a +greedy brutal Paris from which his sick senses shrank in fear and +loathing. The grace, the spell, was gone—he was alone and +miserable!—and amid the gaiety, the materialism, the selfish vice +of the place he had moved for days, an alien and an enemy, the love +within him turning to hate.</p> + +<p>So now his mortal pain revenged itself. They would be beaten—this +depraved and enervated people!—and his feverish heart rejoiced. +But Elise? His lips quivered. What did the war matter to her except +so far as its inconveniences were concerned? What had <i>la +patrie</i> any more than <i>l'amour</i> to do with art? He put the +question to her in his wild evening walks. It angered him that as +the weeks swept on, and the great thunderbolts began to +fall—Wissembourg, Forbach, Worth—his imagination would sometimes +show her to him agitated and in tears. No pity for him! why this +sorrow for France? Absurd! let her go paint while the world loved +and fought. In '48, while monarchy and republic were wrestling it +out in the streets of Paris, was not the landscape painter +Chintreuil quietly sketching all the time just outside one of the +gates of the city? There was the artist for you.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the growing excitement of the war, heightened and +poisoned by this reaction of his personality, combined with his +painful efforts to recover his business to make him for a time more +pale and gaunt than ever. Ancrum remonstrated in vain. He would go +his way.</p> + +<p>One evening—it was the day after Worth—he was striding blindly up +the Oxford Road when he ran against a man at the corner of a side +street. It was Barbier, coming out for the last news.</p> + +<p>Barbier started, swore, caught him by the arm, then fell back in +amazement.</p> + +<p>'<i>C'est toi? bon Dieu!</i>'</p> + +<p>David, who had hitherto avoided his old companion with the utmost +ingenuity, began hurriedly to inquire whether he was going to look +at the evening's telegram.</p> + +<p>'Yes—no—what matter? You can tell me. David, my lad, Ancrum told +me you had been ill, but—'</p> + +<p>The old man slipped his arm through that of the youth and looked at +him fixedly. His own face was all furrowed and drawn, the eyes red.</p> + +<p>'<i>Oui; tu es change</i>,' he said at last with a sudden +quivering breath, almost a sob, 'like everything,—like the world!'</p> + +<p>And hanging down his head he drew the lad on, down the little +street, towards his lodging.</p> + +<p>'Come in! I'll ask no questions. Oh, come in! I have the French +papers; for three hours I have been reading them alone. Come in or +I shall go mad!'</p> + +<p>And they discussed the war, the political prospect, and Barbier's +French letters till nearly midnight. All the exile's nationality +had revived, and so lost was he in weeping over France he had +scarcely breath left wherewith to curse the Empire. In the presence +of a grief so true, so poignant, wherein all the man's little +tricks and absurdities had for the moment melted out of sight, +David's own seared and bitter feeling could find no voice. He said +not a word that could jar on his old friend. And Barbier, like a +child, took his sympathy for granted and abused the 'heartless +hypocritical' English press to him with a will.</p> + +<p>The days rushed on. David read the English papers in town, then +walked up late to Barbier's lodgings to read a French batch and +talk. Gravelotte was over, the siege was approaching. In that +strange inner life of his, David with Elise beside him looked on at +the crashing trees in the Bois de Boulogne, at the long lines of +carts laden with household stuff and fugitives from the <i>zone +militaire</i> flocking into Paris, at the soldiers and horses +camping in the Tuileries Gardens, at the distant smoke-clouds amid +the woods of Issy and Meudon, as village after village flamed to +ruins.</p> + +<p>One night—it was a day or two after Sedan—in a corner of the +Constitutionnel, he found a little paragraph:—</p> + +<p>'M. Henri Regnault and M. Clairin, leaving their studio at Tangiers +to the care of the French Consul, have returned to Paris to offer +themselves for military service, from which, as holder of the +<i>prix de Rome</i>, M. Regnault is legally exempt. To praise such +an act would be to insult its authors. France—our bleeding France! +—does but take stern note that her sons are faithful.'</p> + +<p>David threw the paper down, made an excuse to Barbier, and went +out. He could not talk to Barbier, to whom everything must be +explained from the beginning, and his heart was full. He wandered +out towards Fallowfield under a moon which gave beauty and magic +even to these low, begrimed streets, these jarring, incongruous +buildings, thinking of Regnault and that unforgotten night beside +the Seine. The young artist's passage through the Louvre, the +towering of his great head above the crowd in the 'Trois Rats,' and +that outburst under the moonlight—everything, every tone, every +detail, returned upon him.</p> + +<p>'<i>The great France—the undying France—</i>'</p> + +<p>And now for France—ah!—David divined the eagerness, the passion, +with which it had been done. He was nearer to the artist than he +had been two months before—nearer to all great and tragic things. +His recognition of the fact had in it the start of a strange joy.</p> + +<p>So moved was he, and in such complex ways, that as he thought of +Regnault with that realising imagination which was his gift, the +whole set of his feeling towards France and the war wavered and +changed. The animosity, the drop of personal gall in his heart, +disappeared, conjured by Regnault's look, by Regnault's act. The +one heroic figure he had seen in France began now to stand to him +for the nation. He walked home doing penance in his heart, +passionately renewing the old love, the old homage, in this awful +presence of a stricken people at bay.</p> + +<p>And Elise came to him, in the moonlight, leaning upon him, with +soft, approving eyes—</p> + +<p>Ah! where was she—where—in this whirlwind of the national fate? +where was her frail life hidden? was she still in this Paris, so +soon to be 'begirt with armies'?</p> + +<p> +<br /> +</p> + +<p>Four days later Barbier sent a note to Ancrum: 'Come and see me this +afternoon at six o'clock. Say nothing to Grieve.'</p> + +<p>A couple of hours afterwards Ancrum came slowly home to Birmingham +Street, where he was still lodging. David had just put up the +shop-shutters, John had departed, and his employer was about to +retire to supper and his books in the back kitchen.</p> + +<p>Ancrum went in and stood with his back to the fire which John had +just made for the kettle and the minister's tea, when David came in +with an armful of books and shut the door behind him. Ancrum let +him put down his cargo, and then walked up to him.</p> + +<p>'David,' he said, laying his hand with a timid gesture on the +other's shoulder, 'Barbier has had some letters from Paris +to-day—the last he will get probably—and among them a letter from +his nephew.'</p> + +<p>David started, turned sharp round, shaking off the hand.</p> + +<p>'It contains some news which Barbier thinks you ought to know. +Mademoiselle Elise Delaunay has married suddenly—married her +cousin, Mr. Pimodan, a young doctor.'</p> + +<p>The shock blanched every atom of colour from David's face. He tried +wildly to control himself, to brave it out with a desperate 'Why +not?' But speech failed him. He walked over to the mantelpiece and +leant against it. The room swam with him, and the only impression +of which for a moment or two he was conscious was that of the +cheerful singing of the kettle.</p> + +<p>'She would not leave Paris,' said Ancrum in a low voice, standing +beside him. 'People tried to persuade her—nothing would induce her. +Then this young man, who is said to have been in love with her for +years, urged her to marry him—to accept his protection really, in +view of all that might come. Dubois thinks she refused several +times, but anyway two days ago they were married, civilly, with +only the legal witnesses.'</p> + +<p>David moved about the various things on the mantelpiece with +restless fingers. Then he straightened himself.</p> + +<p>'Is that all?' he asked, looking at the minister.</p> + +<p>'All,' said Ancrum, who had, of course, no intention of repeating +any of Dubois' playful embroideries on the facts. 'You will be glad, +won't you, that she should have some one to protect her in such a +strait?'—he added, after a minute's pause, his eyes on the fire.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said the other after a moment. 'Thank you. Won't you have +your tea?'</p> + +<p>Mr. Ancrum swallowed his emotion, and they sat down to table in +silence. David played with some food, took one thing up after +another, laid it down, and at last sprang up and seized his hat.</p> + +<p>'Going out again?' asked the minister, trembling, he knew not why.</p> + +<p>The lad muttered something. Instinctively the little lame fellow, +who was closest to the door, rushed to it and threw himself against +it.</p> + +<p>'David, don't—don't go out alone—let me go with you!'</p> + +<p>'I want to go out alone,' said David, his lips shaking. 'Why do you +interfere with me?'</p> + +<p>'Because—' and the short figure drew itself up, the minister's +voice took a stern deep note, 'because when a man has once +contemplated the sin of self-murder, those about him have no right +to behave as though he were still like other innocent and happy +people!'</p> + +<p>David stood silent a moment, every limb trembling. Then his mouth +set, and he made a step forward, one arm raised.</p> + +<p>'Oh, yes!' cried Ancrum, 'you may fling me out of the way. My +weakness and deformity are no match for you. Do, if you have the +heart! Do you think I don't know that I rescued you from +despair—that I drew you out of the very jaws of death? Do you +think I don't guess that the news I have just given you wither the +heart in your breast? You imagine, I suppose, that because I am +deformed and a Sunday-school teacher, because I think something of +religion, and can't read your French books, I cannot enter into +what a <i>man</i> is and feels. Try me! When you were a little boy +in my class, <i>my</i> life was already crushed in me—my tragedy +was over. I have come close to passion and to sin; I'm not afraid +of yours! You are alive here to-night, David Grieve, because I went +to look for you on the mountains—lost sheep that you were—and +found you, by God's mercy. You never thanked me—I knew you +couldn't. Instead of your thanks I demand your confidence, +here—now. Break down this silence between us. Tell me what you +have done to bring your life to this pass. You have no father—I +speak in his place and I <i>deserve</i> that you should trust and +listen to me!'</p> + +<p>David looked at him with amazement—at the worn misshapen head +thrown haughtily back—at the arms folded across the chest. Then +his pride gave way, and that intolerable smart within could no +longer hide itself. His soul melted within him; tears began to +rain over his cheeks. He tottered to the fire and sat down, +instinctively spreading his hands to the blaze, that word 'father' +echoing in his ears; and by midnight Mr. Ancrum knew all the story, +or as much of it as man could to tell to man.</p> + +<p>From this night of confession and of storm there emerged at least +one result—the beginnings of a true and profitable bond between +David and Ancrum. Hitherto there had been expenditure of interest +and affection on the minister's side, and a certain responsiveness +and friendly susceptibility on David's; but no true understanding +and contact, mind with mind. But in these agitated hours of such +talk as belongs only to the rare crises of life, not only did +Ancrum gain an insight into David's inmost nature, with all its +rich, unripe store of feelings and powers, deeper than any he had +possessed before, but David, breaking through the crusts of +association, getting beyond and beneath the Sunday-school teacher +and minister, came for the first time upon the real man in his +friend, apart from trappings—cast off the old sense of pupilage, +and found a brother instead of a monitor.</p> + +<p>There came a moment when Ancrum, laying his hand on David's knee, +told his own story in a few bare sentences, each of them, as it +were, lightning on a dark background, revealing some few things +with a ghastly plainness, only to let silence and mystery close +again upon the whole. And there came another moment when the little +minister, carried out of himself, fell into incoherent sentences, +full of obscurity, yet often full of beauty, in which for the first +time David came near to the living voice of religion speaking in +its purest, intensest note. Christ was the burden of it all; the +religion of pain, sacrifice, immortality; the religion of chastity +and self-repression.</p> + +<p>'Life goes from test to test, David; it's like any other +business—the more you know the more's put on you. And this test of +the man with the woman—there's no other cuts so deep. Aye, it +parts the sheep from the goats. A man's failed in it—lost his +footing—rolled into hell, before he knows where he is. "On this +stone if a man fall"—I often put those words to it—there's all +meanings in Scripture. Yes, you've stumbled, David—stumbled badly, +but not more. There's mercy in it! You must rise again—you can. +Accept yourself; accept the sin even; bear with yourself and go +forward. That's what the Church says. Nothing can be undone, but +break your pride, do penance, and all can be forgiven.</p> + +<p>'But you don't admit the sin? A man has a right to the satisfaction +of his own instincts. You asked a free consent and got it. What is +law but a convention for miserable people who don't know how to +love? Who was injured?</p> + +<p>'David, that's the question of a fool. Were you and she the first +man and woman in the world that ever loved? That's always the way; +each man imagines the matter is still for his deciding, and he can +no more decide it than he can tamper with the fact that fire burns +or water drowns. All these centuries the human animal has fought +with the human soul. And step by step the soul has registered her +victories. She has won them only by feeling for the law and finding +it—uncovering, bringing into light, the firm rocks beneath her +feet. And on these rocks she rears her landmarks—marriage, the +family, the State, the Church. Neglect them, and you sink into the +quagmire from which the soul of the race has been for generations +struggling to save you. Dispute them! overthrow them—yes, if you +can! You have about as much chance with them as you have with the +other facts and laws amid which you live—physical or chemical or +biological.</p> + +<p>'I speak after the manner of men. If I were to speak after the +manner of a Christian, I should say other things. I should ask how +a man <i>dare</i> pluck from the Lord's hand, for his own wild and +reckless use, a soul and body for which He died; how he, the Lord's +bondsman, <i>dare</i> steal his joy, carrying it off by himself +into the wilderness, like an animal his prey, instead of asking +it at the hands, and under the blessing, of his Master; how he +<i>dare</i>—a man under orders, and member of the Lord's body—forget +the whole in his greed for the one—eternity in his thirst for +the present.'</p> + +<p>'But no matter. Christ is nothing to you, nor Scripture, nor the +Church—'</p> + +<p>The minister broke off abruptly, his lined face working with +emotion and prayer. David said nothing. In this stage of the +conversation—the stage, as it were, of judgment and estimate—he +could take no part. The time for it with him had not yet come. He +had exhausted all his force in the attempt to explain himself—an +attempt which began in fragmentary question and answer, and ended +on his part in the rush of a confidence, an 'Apologia,' +representing, in truth, that first reflex action of the mind upon +experience, whence healing and spiritual growth were ultimately to +issue. But for the moment he could carry the process no farther. He +sat crouched over the flickering fire, saying nothing, letting +Ancrum soliloquise as he pleased. His mind surged to and fro, +indeed, as Ancrum talked between the poles of repulsion and +response. His nature was not as Ancrum's, and every now and then +the quick critical intellect flashed through his misery, detecting +an assumption, probing an hypothesis. But in general his +<i>feeling</i> gave way more and more. That moral sensitiveness in +him which in its special nature was a special inheritance, the +outcome of a long individualist development under the conditions of +English Protestantism, made him from the first the natural prey of +Ancrum's spiritual passion. As soon as a true contact between them +was set up, David began to feel the religious temper and life in +Ancrum draw him like a magnet. Not the forms of the thing, but the +thing itself. In it, or something like it, as he listened, his +heart suspected, for the first time, the only possible refuge from +the agony of passion, the only possible escape from this fever of +desire, jealousy, and love, in which he was consumed.</p> + +<p>At the end he let Ancrum lead him up to bed and give him the +bromide the Paris doctor had prescribed. When Ancrum softly put his +head in, half an hour later, he was heavily asleep. Ancrum's face +gleamed; he stole into the room carrying a rug and a pillow; and +when David woke in the morning it was to see the twisted form of +the little minister stretched still and soldierlike beside him on +the floor.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV-3" id="CHAPTER_XIV-3"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h3> + +<p>From that waking David rose and went about his work another man. As +he moved about in the shop or in the streets, he was conscious of a +gulf between his present self and his self of yesterday, which he +could hardly explain. Simply the whole atmosphere and temperature +of the soul was other, was different. He could have almost supposed +that some process had gone on within him during the unconsciousness +of sleep, of which he was now feeling the results; which had +carried him on, without his knowing it, to a point in the highroad +of life, far removed from that point where he had stood when his +talk with Ancrum began. That world of enervating illusion, that +'kind of ghastly dreaminess, 'as John Sterling called it, in which +since his return he had lived with Elise, was gone, he knew not +how—swept away like a cloud from the brain, a mist from the eyes. +The sense of catastrophe, of things irrevocable and irreparable, +the premature ageing of the whole man, remained-only the fever and +the restlessness were past. Memory, indeed, was not affected. In +some sort the scenes of his French experience would be throughout +his life a permanent element in consciousness; but the persons +concerned in them were dead-creatures of the past. He himself had +been painfully re-born, and Pimodan's wife had no present personal +existence for him. He turned himself deliberately to his old life, +and took up the interests of it again one by one, but, as he soon +discovered, with an insight, a power, a comprehension which had +never yet been his. A moral and spiritual life destined to a rich +development practically began for him with this winter—this awful +winter of the agony of France.</p> + +<p>His thoughts were often occupied now with Louie, but in a saner +way. He could no longer, without morbidness, take on himself the +whole responsibility of her miserable marriage. Human beings after +all are what they make themselves. But the sense of his own share +in it, and the perception of what her future life was likely to be, +made him steadily accept beforehand the claims upon him which she +was sure to press.</p> + +<p>He had written to her early in September, when the siege was +imminent, offering her money to bring her to England, and the +protection of his roof during the rest of the war. And by a still +later post than that which brought the news of Elise's marriage +arrived a scrawl from Louie, written from a country town near +Toulouse, whither she and Montjoie had retreated—apparently the +sculptor's native place.</p> + +<p>The letter was full of complaints—complaints of the war, which was +being mismanaged by a set of rogues and fools who deserved +stringing to the nearest tree; complaints of her husband, who was a +good-for-nothing brute; and complaints of her own health. She was +expecting her confinement in the spring; if she got through +it—which was not likely, considering the way in which she was +treated—she should please herself about staying with such a man. +<i>He</i> should not keep her for a day if she wanted to go. +Meanwhile David might send her any money he could spare. There was +not much of the six hundred left—<i>that</i> she could tell him; +and she could not even screw enough for baby-clothes out of her +husband. Very likely there would not be enough to pay for a nurse +when her time came. Well, then she would be out of it—and a good +job too.</p> + +<p>She wished to be remembered to Dora; and Dora was especially to be +told again that she needn't suppose St. Damian's was a patch on the +real Catholic churches, because it wasn't. She—Louie—had been at +the Midnight Mass in Toulouse Cathedral on Christmas Eve. That was +something like. And down in the crypt they had a 'Bethlehem'—the +sweetest thing you ever saw. There were the shepherds, and the wise +men, and the angels—dolls, of course, but their dresses were +splendid, and the little Jesus was dressed in white satin, +embroidered with gold—<i>old</i> embroidery, tell Dora.</p> + +<p>To this David had replied at once, sending money he could ill +spare, and telling her to keep him informed of her whereabouts.</p> + +<p>But the months passed on, and no more news arrived. He wrote again +<i>via</i> Bordeaux, but with no result, and could only wait +patiently till that eagle's grip, in which all French life was +stifled, should be loosened.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile his relation to another human being, whose life had been +affected by the French episode, passed into a fresh phase. Two days +after the news of Elise's marriage had reached him, he and John had +just shut up the shop, and the young master was hanging over the +counter under the gas, heavily conning a not very satisfactory +business account.</p> + +<p>John came in, took his hat and stick from a corner, and threw David +a gruff 'good night.'</p> + +<p>Something in the tone struck David's sore nerves like a blow. He +turned abruptly—</p> + +<p>'Look here, John! I can't stand this kind of thing much longer. +Hadn't we better part? You've learnt a lot here, and I'll see you +get a good place. You—you rub it in too long!'</p> + +<p>John stood still, his big rough hands beginning to shake, his pink +cheeks turning a painful crimson.</p> + +<p>'You—you never said a word to me!' he flung out at last, +incoherently, resentfully.</p> + +<p>'Said a word to you? What do you mean? I told you the truth, and I +would have told you more, if you hadn't turned against me as though +I had been the devil himself. Do you suppose you are the only +person who came to grief because of that French time? <i>Good God!</i>'</p> + +<p>The last words came out with a low exasperation. The young man +leant against the counter, looking at his assistant with bitter, +indignant eyes.</p> + +<p>John first shrank from them, then his own were drawn to meet them. +Even his slow perceptions, thus challenged, realised something of +the truth. He gave way—as David might have made him give way long +before, if his own misery had not made him painfully avoid any +fresh shock of speech.</p> + +<p>'Well!' said John, slowly, with a mighty effort; 'I'll not lay it +agen you any more. I'll say that. But if you want to get rid of me, +you can. Only you'll be put to 't wi' t' printing.'</p> + +<p>The two young fellows surveyed each other. Then suddenly David +said, pushing him to the door:</p> + +<p>'You're a great ass, John—get out, and good night to you.'</p> + +<p>But next day the atmosphere was cleared, and, with inexpressible +relief on both sides, the two fell back into the old brotherly +relation. Poor John! He kept an old photograph of Louie in a drawer +at his lodging, and, when he came home to bed, would alternately +weep over and denounce it. But, all the same, his interest in +David's printing ventures was growing keener and keener, and +whenever business had been particularly exciting during the day, +the performance with the photograph was curtailed or omitted at +night. Let no scorn, however, be thought, on that account, of the +true passion!—which had thriven on unkindness, and did but yield +to the slow mastery of time.</p> + +<p>The war thundered on. To Manchester, and to the cotton and silk +industries of Lancashire generally, the tragedy of France meant on +the whole a vast boom in trade. So many French rivals crippled—so +much ground set free for English enterprise to capture—and, +meanwhile, high profits for a certain number at least of Manchester +and Macclesfield merchants, and brisk wages for the Lancashire +operatives, especially for the silk-weavers. This, with of course +certain drawbacks and exceptions, was the aspect under which the +war mainly presented itself to Lancashire. Meanwhile, amid these +teeming Manchester streets with their clattering lurries and +overflowing warehouses, there was at least one Englishman who took +the war hardly, in whom the spectacle of its wreck and struggle +roused a feeling which was all moral, human, disinterested.</p> + +<p>What was Regnault doing? David kept a watch on the newspapers, of +which the Free Library offered him an ample store; but there was no +mention of him in the English press that he could discover, and +Barbier, of course, got nothing now from Paris.</p> + +<p>Christmas was over. The last month of the siege, that hideous +January of frost and fire, rushed past, with its alternations of +famine within and futile battle without—Europe looking on appalled +at this starved and shivering Paris, into which the shells were +raining. At last—the 27th!—the capitulation! All was over; the +German was master in Europe, and France lay at the feet of her +conqueror.</p> + +<p>Out to all parts streamed the letters which had been so long +delayed. Barbier and David, walking together one bitter evening +towards Barbier's lodgings, silent, with hanging heads, met the +postman on Barbier's steps, who held out a packet. The Frenchman +took it with a cry; the two rushed upstairs and fell upon the +letters and papers it contained.</p> + +<p>There—while Barbier sat beside him, groaning over the conditions +of peace, over the enthronement of the Emperor-King at Versailles, +within sight of the statue of Louis Quatorze, now cursing '<i>ces +imbéciles du gouvernement!</i>' and now wiping the tears from his +old cheeks with a trembling hand—David read the news of the fight +of Buzenval, and the death of Regnault.</p> + +<p>It seemed to him that he had always foreseen it—that from the very +beginning Regnault's image in his thought had been haloed with a +light of tragedy and storm—a light of death. His eyes devoured the +long memorial article in which a friend of Regnault's had given the +details of his last months of life. Barbier, absorbed in his own +grief, heard not a sound from the corner where his companion sat +crouched beneath the gas.</p> + +<p>Everything—the death and the manner of it—was to him, as it were, +in the natural order—fitting, right, such as might have been +expected. His heart swelled to bursting as he read, but his eyes +were dry.</p> + +<p>This, briefly, was the story which he read.</p> + +<p>Henri Regnault re-entered Paris at the beginning of September. By +the beginning of October he was on active service, stationed now at +Asnieres, now at Colombes. In October or November he became engaged +to a young girl, with whom he had been for long devotedly in +love—ah! David thought of that sudden smile—the 'open door'! +Their passion, cherished under the wings of war, did but give +courage and heroism to both. Yet he loved most humanly! One +night, in an interval of duty, on leaving the house where his +<i>fiancee</i> lived, he found the shells of the bombardment falling +fast in the street outside. He could not make up his mind to +go—might not ruin befall the dear house with its inmates at any +moment? So he wandered up and down outside for hours in the bitter +night, watching, amid the rattle of the shells and the terrified +cries of women and children from the houses on either side. +At last, worn out and frozen with cold, but still unable to +leave the spot, he knocked softly at the door he had left. The +<i>concierge</i> came. 'Let me lie down awhile on your floor. Tell +no one.' Then, appeased by this regained nearness to her, and by +the sense that no danger could strike the one without warning the +other, he wrapped himself in his soldier's cloak and fell asleep.</p> + +<p>In November he painted his last three water-colours—visions of the +East, painted for her, and as flower-bright as possible, 'because +flowers were scarce' in the doomed city.</p> + +<p>December came. Regnault spent Christmas night at the advanced post +of Colombes. His captain wished to make him an officer. 'Thanks, my +captain,' said the young fellow of twenty-three; 'but if you have a +good soldier in me, why exchange him for an indifferent officer? My +example will be of more use to you than my commission.' Meanwhile +the days and nights were passed in Arctic cold. Men were frozen to +death round about him; his painter's hand was frostbitten. 'Oh! I +can speak with authority on cold!' he wrote to his <i>fiancee</i>; +'this morning at least I know what it is to spend the night on the +hard earth exposed to a glacial wind. Enough! <i>Je me rechaufferai +a votre foyer</i>. I love you—I love my country—that sustains. +Adieu!'</p> + +<p>On the 17th, after a few days in Paris spent with her and some old +friends, he was again ordered to the front. On Thursday the fight +at Buzenval began with a brilliant success; in the middle of the +day his <i>fiancee</i> still had news of him, brought by a servant. +Night fell. The battle was hottest in a wood adjoining the park of +Buzenval. Regnault and his painter-comrade Clairin were side by +side. Suddenly the retreat was sounded, and the same instant +Clairin missed his friend. He sought him with frenzy amid the trees +in the darkening wood, called to him, peered into the faces of the +dying—no answer! Ah! he must have been swept backwards by the rush +of the retreat—Clairin will find him again.</p> + +<p>Three days later the lost was found—one among two hundred corpses +of National Guards carted into Pere Lachaise. Clairin, mad with +grief, held his friend in his arms—held, kissed the beautiful +head, now bruised and stained past even <i>her</i> knowing, with +its bullet-wound in the temple.</p> + +<p>On his breast was found a medal with a silver tear hanging from it. +She who had long worn it as a symbol of bereavement, in memory of +dear ones lost to her, had given it to him in her first joy. 'I will +reclaim it,' she had said, smiling, 'the first time you make me +weep!' It was all that was brought back to her—all except a +scrawled paper found in his pocket, containing some hurried and +almost illegible words, written perhaps beside his outpost fire.</p> + +<p>'We have lost many men—we must remake +them—<i>better</i>—<i>stronger</i>. The lesson should profit us. +No more lingering amid facile pleasures! Who dare now live for +himself alone? It has been for too long the custom with us to +believe in nothing but enjoyment and all bad passions. We have +prided ourselves on despising everything good and worthy. No more +of such contempt!'</p> + +<p>Then—so the story ended—four days later, on the very day of the +capitulation of Paris, Regnault was carried to his last rest. A +figure in widow's dress walked behind. And to many standing by, +amid the muffled roll of the drums and the wailing of the music, it +was as though France herself went down to burial with her son.</p> + +<p>David got up gently and went across to Barbier, who was sitting +with his letters and papers before him, staring and stupefied, the +lower jaw falling, in a trance of grief.</p> + +<p>The young man put down the newspaper he had been reading in front +of the old man.</p> + +<p>'Read that some time; it will give you something to be proud of. I +told you I knew him—he was kind to me.'</p> + +<p>Barbier nodded, not understanding, and sought for his spectacles +with shaking fingers. David quietly went out.</p> + +<p>He walked home in a state of exaltation like a man still environed +with the emotion of great poetry or great music. He said very +little about Regnault in the days that followed to Ancrum or +Barbier, even to Dora, with whom every week his friendship was +deepening. But the memory of the dead man, as it slowly shaped +itself in his brooding mind, became with him a permanent and +fruitful element of thought. Very likely the Regnault whom he +revered, whose name was henceforth a sacred thing to him, was only +part as it were of the real Regnault. He saw the French artist with +an Englishman's eyes—interpreted him in English ways—the ways, +moreover, of a consciousness self-taught and provincial, however +gifted and flexible. Only one or two aspects, no doubt, of that +rich, self-tormented nature, reared amid the most complex movements +of European intelligence, were really plain to him. And those +aspects were specially brought home to him by his own mental +condition. No matter. Broadly, essentially, he understood.</p> + +<p>But thenceforward, just as Elise Delaunay had stood to him in the +beginning for French art and life, and that ferment in himself +which answered to them, so now in her place stood Regnault with +those stern words upon his young and dying lips—'We have lost many +men—we must remake them—better! Henceforward let no one dare live +unto himself.' The Englishman took them into his heart, that +ethical fibre in him, which was at last roused and dominant, +vibrating, responding. And as the poignant images of death and +battle faded he saw his hero always as he had seen him last—young, +radiant, vigorous, pointing to the dawn behind Notre-Dame.</p> + +<p>All life looked differently to David this winter. He saw the +Manchester streets and those who lived in them with other +perceptions. His old political debating interests, indeed, were +comparatively slack; but persons—men and women, and their +stories—for these he was instinctively on the watch. His eye +noticed the faces he passed as it had never yet done—divined in +them suffering, or vice, or sickness. All that he saw at this +moment he saw tragically. The doors set open about him were still, +as Keats, himself hurried to his end by an experience of passion, +once expressed it, 'all dark,' and leading to darkness. There were +times when Dora's faith and Ancrum's mysticism drew him +irresistibly; other times when they were almost as repulsive to him +as they had ever been, because they sounded to him like the formula +of people setting out to explain the world 'with a light heart,' as +Ollivier had gone to war.</p> + +<p>But whether or no it could be explained, this world, he could not +now help putting out his hand to meddle with and mend it; his mind +fed on its incidents and conditions. The mill-girls standing on the +Ancoats pavements; the drunken lurryman tottering out from the +public-house to his lurry under the biting sleet of February; the +ragged barefoot boys and girls swarming and festering in the slums; +the young men struggling all about him for subsistence and +success—these for the first time became realities to him, entered +into that pondering of 'whence and whither' to which he had been +always destined, and whereon he was now consciously started.</p> + +<p>And as the months went on, his attention was once more painfully +caught and held by Dora's troubles and Daddy's infirmities. For +Daddy's improvement was short-lived. A bad relapse came in +November; things again went downhill fast; the loan contracted in +the summer had to be met, and under the pressure of it Daddy only +became more helpless and disreputable week by week. And now, when +Doctor Mildmay went to see him, Daddy, crouching over the fire, +pretended to be deaf, and 'soft' besides. Nothing could be got out +of him except certain grim hints that his house was his own till he +was turned out of it. 'Looks pretty bad this time,' said the doctor +to David once as he came out discomfited. 'After all, there's not +much hope when the craving returns on a man of his age, especially +after some years' interval.'</p> + +<p>Daddy would sometimes talk frankly enough to David. At such times +his language took an exasperating Shakespearean turn. He was +abominably fond of posing as Lear or Jaques—as a man much +buffeted, and acquainted with all the ugly secrets of life. Purcell +stood generally for 'the enemy;' and to Purcell his half-mad fancy +attributed most of his misfortunes. It was Purcell who had +undermined his business, taken away his character, and driven him +back to drink. David did not believe much of it, and told him so. +Then, roused to wrath, the young man would speak his mind plainly +as to Dora's sufferings and Dora's future. But to very little +purpose.</p> + +<p>'Aye, you're right—you're right enough,' said the old man to him +on one of these occasions, with a wild, sinister look. 'Cordelia'll +hang for 't. If you want to do her any good, you must turn old Lear +out—send him packing, back to the desert where he was before. +There's elbow-room there!'</p> + +<p>David looked up startled. The thin bronzed face had a restless +flutter in it. Before he could reply Daddy had laid a hand on his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>'Davy, why don't you drink?'</p> + +<p>'What do you mean?' said the young man, flushing.</p> + +<p>'Davy, you've been as close as wax; but Daddy can see a thing or +two when he chooses. Ah, you should drink, my lad. Let people +prate—why shouldn't a man please himself? It's not the beastly +liquor—that's the worst part of it—it's the <i>dreams,</i> my +lad, "the dreams that come." They say ether does the business +cheapest. A teaspoonful—and you can be alternately in Paradise and +the gutter four times a day. But the fools here don't know how to +mix it.'</p> + +<p>As he spoke the door opened, and there stood Dora on the threshold. +She had just come back from a Lenten service; her little worn +prayer-book was in her hand. She stood trembling, looking at them +both—at David's tight, indignant lips—at her father's excitement.</p> + +<p>Daddy's eye fell on her prayer-book, and David, looking up, saw a +quick cloud of distaste, aversion, pass over his weird face.</p> + +<p>She put out some supper, and pressed David to stay. He did so in +the vain hope of keeping Daddy at home. But the old vagrant was too +clever for both of them. When David at last got up to go, Daddy +accompanied him downstairs, and stood in the doorway looking up +Market Place till David had disappeared in the darkness. Then with +a soft and cunning hand he drew the door to behind him, and stood a +moment lifting his face to the rack of moonlit cloud scudding +across the top of the houses opposite. As he did so, he drew a long +breath, with the gesture of one to whom the wild airs of that upper +sky, the rush of its driving wind, were stimulus and delight. Then +he put down his head and stole off to the right, towards the old +White Inn in Hanging Ditch, while Dora was still listening in +misery for his return step upon the stairs.</p> + +<p>A week later Dora, not knowing how the restaurant could be kept +going any longer, and foreseeing utter bankruptcy and ruin as soon +as the shutters should be up, took her courage in both hands, +swallowed all pride, and walked up to Half Street to beg help of +Purcell. After all he was her mother's brother. In spite of that +long feud between him and Daddy, he would surely, for his own +credit's sake, help them to escape a public scandal. For all his +rodomontade, Daddy had never done him any real harm that she could +remember.</p> + +<p>So she opened the shop door in Half Street, quaking at the sound of +the bell she set in motion, and went in.</p> + +<p>Twenty minutes afterwards she came out again, looking from side to +side like a hunted creature, her veil drawn close over her face. +She fled on through Market Place, across Market Street and St. +Ann's Square, and through the tall dark warehouse streets +beyond—drawn blindly towards Potter Street and her only friend.</p> + +<p>David was putting out some books on the stall when he looked up and +saw her. Perceiving that she was weeping and breathless, he asked +her into the back room, while John kept guard in the shop.</p> + +<p>There she leant against the mantelpiece, shaking from head to foot, +and wiping away her tears. He soon gathered that she had been to +Purcell, and that Purcell had dismissed her appeal with every +circumstance of cold and brutal insult. The sooner her father was +in the workhouse or the lunatic asylum, and she in some nunnery or +other, the sooner each would be in their right place. He was a +vagabond, and she a Papist—let them go where they belonged. He was +not going to spend a farthing of his hard-earned money to help +either of them to impose any further on the world. And then he let +fall a word or two which showed her that he had probably been at +the bottom of some merciless pressure lately applied to them by one +or two of their chief creditors. The bookseller's hour was come, +and he was looking on at the hewing of his Agag with the joy of the +righteous. So might the Lord avenge him of all his enemies.</p> + +<p>Dora could hardly give an account of it. The naked revelation of +Purcell's hate, of so hard and vindictive a soul, had worked upon +her like some physical horror. She had often suspected the truth, +but now that it was past doubting, the moral shock was terrible to +this tender mystical creature, whose heart by day and night lived a +hidden life with the Crucified and with His saints. Oh, how could +he, how could anyone, be so cruel? her father getting an old man! +and she, who had never quarrelled with him—who had nursed Lucy! So +she wailed, gradually recovering her poor shaken soul—calming it, +indeed, all the while out of sight, with quick piteous words of +prayer and submission.</p> + +<p>David stood by, pale with rage and sympathy. But what could he do? +He was himself in the midst of a hard struggle, and had neither +money nor credit available. They parted at last, with the +understanding that he was to go and consult Ancrum, and that she +was to go to her friends at St. Damian's.</p> + +<p>Till now poor Dora had carefully refrained from bringing her +private woes into relation with her life in and through St. +Damian's. Within that enchanted circle, she was another being with +another existence. There she had never asked anything for herself, +except the pardon and help of God, before His altar, and through +His priests. Rather she had given—given all that she had—her +time, such as she could spare from Daddy and her work, to the +Sunday-school and the sick; her hard-won savings on her clothes, +and on the extra work, for which she would often sit up night after +night when Daddy believed her asleep, to the poor and to the +services of the Church. There she had a position, almost an +authority of her own—the authority which comes of self-spending. +But now this innocent pride must be humbled. For the sake of her +father, and of those to whom they owed money they could not pay, +she must go and ask—beg instead of giving. All she wanted was +time. Her embroidery work was now better paid than ever. If the +restaurant were closed she could do more of it. In the end she +believed she could pay everybody. But she must have time. Yes, she +would go to Father Vernon that night! He would understand, even if +he could not help her.</p> + +<p>Alas! Next morning David was just going out to dinner, when a +message was brought him from Market Place. He started off thither +at a run, and found a white and gasping Dora wandering restlessly +up and down the upper room; while Sarah, the old Lancashire cook, +very red and very tearful, followed her about trying to administer +consolation. Daddy had disappeared. After coming in about eleven +the night before and going noisily to his room—no doubt for the +purpose of deluding Dora—he must have stolen down again and made +off without being either seen or heard by anybody. Even the +policeman on duty in Market Place had noticed nothing. He had taken +what was practically the only money left them in the world—about +twenty pounds—from Dora's cashbox, and some clothes, packing these +last in a knapsack which still remained to him from the foreign +tramps of years before.</p> + +<p>The efforts made by Dora, David, and Ancrum, whom David called in +to help, to track the fugitive, were quite useless. Daddy had +probably disguised himself, for he had all the tricks of the +adventurer, and could 'make up' in former days so as to deceive +even his own wife.</p> + +<p>Strange outbreak of a secret ineradicable instinct! He had been +Dora's for twenty years. But life with her at Leicester, and during +their first years at Manchester, had thriven too evenly, and in the +end the old wanderer had felt his blood prick within him, and the +mania of his youth revive. His business had grown hateful to him; +it was probably the comparative monotony of success which had first +reawakened the travel-hunger—then restlessness, conflict, leading +to drink, and, finally, escape.</p> + +<p>'He will come back, you know,' said Dora one night, sharply, to +David. 'He served my mother so many times. But he always came back.'</p> + +<p>They were sitting together in the shuttered and dismantled +restaurant. There was to be a sale on the premises on the morrow, +and the lower room had that day been filled with all the 'plant' of +the restaurant, and all or almost all the poor household stuff from +upstairs. It was an odd, ramshackle collection; and poor Dora, who +had been walking round looking at the auction tickets, was +realising with a sinking heart how much debt the sale would still +leave unprovided for. But she had found friends. Father Vernon had +met the creditors for her. There had been a composition, and she +had insisted upon working off to the best of her power whatever sum +might remain after the possession and goodwill had been sold. She +could live on a crust, and she was sure of continuous work both for +the great church-furniture shop in Manchester which had hitherto +employed her and also for the newly established School of Art +Needlework at Kensington. As an embroideress there were few more +delicately trained eyes and defter hands than hers in England.</p> + +<p>When she spoke of her father's coming back, David was seized with +pity. She could not sit down in these days when her work was out of +her hands. Perpetual movement seemed her only relief. The face, +that seemed so featureless but was so expressive, had lost its +sweet, shining look; the mouth had the pucker of pain; and she had +piteous startled ways quite unlike her usual soft serenity.</p> + +<p>'Oh, yes, he will come back—some time,' he said, to comfort her.</p> + +<p>'I don't doubt that—never. But I wonder how he could go like +that—how he had the heart! I did think he cared for me. I wasn't +ever nasty to him—at least, I don't remember. Perhaps he thought I +was. But only we two—and always together—since mother died!'</p> + +<p>She began to tidy some of the lots, to tie some of the bundles of +odds and ends together more securely—talking all the while in a +broken way. She was evidently bewildered and at sea. If she could +have remembered any misconduct of her own, it seemed to David, it +would have been a relief to her. Her faith taught her that love was +all-powerful—but it had availed her nothing!</p> + +<p>The sale came; and the goodwill of the Parlour was sold to a man +who was to make a solid success of what with Daddy had been a +half-crazy experiment.</p> + +<p>Dora went to live in Ancoats, that teeming, squalid quarter which +lies but a stone's-throw from the principal thoroughfares and +buildings of Manchester, and in its varieties of manufacturing life +and population presents types which are all its own. Here are the +cotton operatives who work the small proportion of mills still +remaining within the bounds of Manchester—the spinners, minders, +reelers, reed-makers, and the rest; here are the calico-printers +and dyers, the warehousemen and lurrymen; and here too are the +sellers of 'fents,' and all the other thousand and one small trades +and occupations which live on and by the poor. The quarter has one +broad thoroughfare or lung, which on a sunny day is gay, sightly, +and alive; then to north and south diverge the innumerable low +red-brick streets where the poor live and work; which have none, +however, of the trim uniformity which belongs to the workers' +quarters of the factory towns pure and simple. Manchester in its +worst streets is more squalid, more haphazard, more nakedly poor +even than London. Yet, for all that, Manchester is a city with a +common life, which London is not. The native Lancashire element, +lost as it is beneath many supervening strata, is still there and +powerful; and there are strong well-defined characteristic +interests and occupations which bind the whole together.</p> + +<p>Here Dora settled with a St. Damian's girl friend, a shirt-maker. +They lived over a sweetshop, in two tiny rooms, in a street even +more miscellaneous and half-baked than its neighbours. Outside was +ugliness; inside, unremitting labour. But Dora soon made herself +almost happy. By various tender shifts she had saved out of the +wreck in Market Place Daddy's bits of engravings and foreign +curiosities, his Swiss carvings and shells, his skins and stuffed +birds; very moth-eaten and melancholy these last, but still safe. +There, too, was his chair; it stood beside the fire; he had but to +come back to it. Many a time in the week did she suddenly rise that +she might go to the door and listen; or crane her head out of +window, agitated by a figure, a sound, as her mother had done +before her.</p> + +<p>Then her religious life was free to expand as it had never been +yet. Very soon, in Passion Week, she and her friend had gathered a +prayer-meeting of girls, hands from the mill at the end of the +street. They came for twenty minutes in the dinner-hour, +delicate-faced comely creatures many of them, with their shawls +over their heads: Dora prayed and sang with them, a soft tremulous +passion in every word and gesture. They thought her a saint—began +to tell her their woes and their sins. In the evenings and on +Sunday she lived in the coloured and scented church, with its +plaintive music, its luminous altar, its suggestions both of a +great encompassing church order of undefined antiquity and infinite +future, and of a practical system full of support for individual +weakness and guidance for the individual will. The beauty of the +ceremonial appealed to those instincts in her which found other +expression in her glowing embroideries; and towards the church +order, with its symbols, observances, mysteries, the now solitary +girl felt a more passionate adoration, a more profound humility, +than ever before. Nothing too much could be asked of her. During +Lent, but for the counsels of Father Russell himself, a shrewd man, +well aware that St. Damian's represented the one Anglican oasis in +an incorrigibly moderate Manchester, even her serviceable and +elastic strength would have given way, so hard she was to that poor +'sister the body,' which so many patient ages have gone to perfect +and adjust.</p> + +<p>Half of the romance, the poetry of her life, lay here; the other +half in her constant expectation of her father, and in the visits +of David Grieve. Once a week at least David mounted to the little +room where the two girls sat working; sometimes now, oh joy! he +went to church with her; sometimes he made her come out to Eccles, +or Cheadle, or the Irwell valley for a walk. She used various +maidenly arts and self-restraints to prevent scandal. At home she +never saw him alone, and she now never went to Potter Street. +Still, out of doors they were often alone. There was no +concealment, and the persons who took notice assumed that they were +keeping company and going to be married. When such things were said +to Dora she met them with a sweet and quiet denial, at first +blushing, then with no change at all of look or manner.</p> + +<p>Yet the girl who lived with her knew that the first sound of +David's rap on the door below sent a tremor through the figure +beside her, that the slight hand would go up instinctively to the +coiled hair, straightening and pinning, and that the smiling, +listening, sometimes disputing Dora who talked with David Grieve +was quite different from the dreamy and ascetic Dora who sat beside +her all day.</p> + +<p>Why did David go? As a matter of fact, with every month of this +winter and spring, Dora's friendship became more necessary to him. +All the brotherly feeling he would once so willingly have spent on +Louie, he now spent on Dora. She became in truth a sister to him. +He talked to her as he would have done to Louie had she been like +Dora. No other relationship ever entered his mind; and he believed +that he was perfectly understood and met in the same way.</p> + +<p>Both often spoke of Lucy, towards whom David in this new and graver +temper felt both kindly and gratefully. She, poor child, wrote to +Dora from time to time letters full of complaints of her father and +of his tyranny in keeping her away from Manchester. He indeed +seemed to have taken a morbid dislike to his daughter, and what +company he wanted he got from the widow, whom yet he had never made +up his mind to marry. Lucy chafed and rebelled against the +perpetual obstacles he placed in the way of her returning home, but +he threatened to make her earn her own living if she disobeyed him, +and in the end she always submitted. She poured herself out +bitterly, however, to Dora, and Dora was helplessly sorry for her, +feeling that her idle wandering life with the various aunts and +cousins she boarded with was excessively bad for her—seeing that +Lucy was not of the stuff to fashion new duties or charities for +herself out of new relations—and that the small, vain, and yet +affectionate nature ran an evil chance of ultimate barrenness and +sourness.</p> + +<p>But what could she do? In every letter there was some mention of +David Grieve or request for news about him. About the visit to +Paris Dora had written discreetly, telling only what she knew, and +nothing of what she guessed. In reality, as the winter passed on, +Dora watched him more and more closely, waiting for the time when +that French mystery, whatever it was, should have ceased to +overshadow him, and she might once more scheme for Lucy. He must +marry—that she knew!—whatever he might think. Anyone could see +that, with the returning spring, in spite of her friendship and +Ancrum's, he felt his loneliness almost intolerable. It was clear, +too, as his manhood advanced, that he was naturally drawn to women, +naturally dependent on them. In spite of his great intelligence, to +her so formidable and mysterious, Dora had soon recognised, as +Elise had done, the eager, clinging, confiding temper of his youth. +And beneath the transformation of passion and grief it was still +there—to be felt moving often like a wounded thing.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XV-3" id="CHAPTER_XV-3"></a>CHAPTER XV</h3> + +<p>It was a showery April evening. But as it was also a Saturday, +Manchester took no heed at all of the weather. The streets were +thronged. All the markets were ablaze with light, and full of +buyers. In Market Place, Dora's old home, the covered glass booths +beside the pavement brought the magic of the spring into the very +heart of the black and swarming town, for they were a fragrant show +of daffodils, hyacinths, primroses, and palms. Their lights shone +out into the rainy mist of the air, on the glistening pavements, +and on the faces of the cheerful chattering crowd, to which the +shawled heads so common among the women gave the characteristic +Lancashire touch. Above rose the dark tower of the Exchange; on one +side was the Parlour, still dedicated to the kindly diet of +corn—and fruit-eating men, but repainted, and launched on a fresh +career of success by Daddy's successor; on the other, the gabled +and bulging mass of the old Fishing-tackle House, with a lively +fish and oyster traffic surging in the little alleys on either side +of it.</p> + +<p>Market Street, too, was thronged. In the great cheap shop at the +head of it, aflame with lights from top to base, you could see the +buyers story after story, swarming like bees in a glass hive. +Farther on in the wide space of the Infirmary square, the omnibuses +gathered, and a detachment of redcoats just returned from +rifle-practice on the moors crowded the pavement outside the +hospital, amid an admiring escort of the youth of Manchester, while +their band played lustily.</p> + +<p>But especially in Peter Street, the street of the great public +halls and principal theatres, was Manchester alive and busy. +Nilsson was singing at the 'Royal,' and the rich folk were setting +down there in their broughams and landaus. But in the great Free +Trade Hall there was a performance of 'Judas Maccabeus' given by +the Manchester Philharmonic Society, and the vast place, filled +from end to end with shilling and two-shilling seats, was crowded +with the 'people.' It was a purely local scene, unlike anything of +the same kind in London, or any other capital. The performers on +the platform were well known to Manchester, unknown elsewhere; +Manchester took them at once critically and affectionately, +remembering their past, looking forward to their future; the +Society was one of which the town was proud; the conductor was a +character, and popular; and half the audience at least was composed +of the relations and friends of the chorus. Most people had a +'Susan,' an 'Alice,' or a 'William' making signs to them at +intervals from the orchestra; and when anything went particularly +well, and the applause was loud, the friends of Susan or Alice +beamed with a proprietary pride.</p> + +<p>Looking down upon this friendly cheerful throng sat David Grieve, +high up in the balcony. It had been his wont of late to frequent +these cheap concerts, where as a rule, owing to the greater musical +sensitiveness of the English North as compared with the South, the +music is singularly good. During the past winter, indeed, music +might almost be said to have become part of his life. He had no +true musical gift, but in the paralysis of many of his natural +modes of expression which had overtaken him music supplied a need. +In it he at least, and at this moment, found a voice and an emotion +not too personal or poignant. He lost himself in it, and was +soothed.</p> + +<p>Towards the beginning of the last part he suddenly with a start +recognised Lucy Purcell in the body of the hall. She was sitting +with friends whom he did not know, staring straight before her. He +bent forward and looked at her carefully. In a minute or two he +decided that she was looking tired, cross, and unhappy, and that +she was not attending to the music at all.</p> + +<p>So at last her father had let her come home. As to her looks, to be +daughter to Purcell was to be sure of disagreeable living; and +perhaps her future stepmother had been helping Purcell to annoy +her.</p> + +<p>Poor little thing! David felt a strong wish to speak to her after +the performance. Meanwhile he tried to attract her attention, but +in vain. It seemed to him that she looked right along the bench on +which he sat; but there was no flash in her face; it remained as +tired and frowning as before.</p> + +<p>He ran downstairs before the end of the last chorus, and placed +himself near the door by which he felt sure she would come out. He +was just in time. She and her party also came out early before the +rush. There was a sudden crowd of people in the doorway, and then +he heard a little cry. Lucy stood before him, flushed, pulling at +her glove, and saying something incoherent. But before he could +understand she had turned back to the two women who accompanied her +and spoken to them quickly; the elder replied, with a sour look at +David; the younger laughed behind her muff. Lucy turned away +wilfully, and at that instant the crowd from within, surging +outwards, swept them away from her, and she and David found +themselves together.</p> + +<p>'Come down those steps there to the right,' she said peremptorily. +'They are going the other way.'</p> + +<p>By this time David himself was red. She hurried him into the +street, however, and then he saw that she was breathing hard, and +that her hands were clasped together as though she were trying to +restrain herself.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I am so unhappy!' she burst out, 'so unhappy! And it was all, +you know, to begin with, because of you, Mr. Grieve! But oh! I +forgot you'd been ill—you look so different!'</p> + +<p>She paused suddenly, while over her face there passed an expression +half startled, half shrinking, as of one who speaks familiarly, as +he supposes, to an old friend and finds a stranger. She could not +take her eyes off him. What was this new dignity, this indefinable +change of manner?</p> + +<p>'I am not different,' he said hastily, 'not in the least. So your +father has never forgiven you the kindness you did me? I don't know +what to say, Miss Lucy. I'm both sorry and ashamed.'</p> + +<p>'Forgiven it!—no, nor ever will,' she said shortly, walking on, +and forgetting everything but her woes. 'Oh, do listen! Come up +Oxford Street. I must tell some one, or I shall die! I must see +Dora. Father's forbidden me to go, and I haven't had a moment to +myself yet. She hasn't written to me since she left the Parlour, +and no one'll tell me where she is. And that <i>odious</i> woman! +Oh, she is an abominable wretch! She wants to claim all my +things—all the bits of things that were mother's, and I have +always counted mine. She won't let me take any of them away. And +she's stolen a necklace of mine—yes, Mr. Grieve, <i>stolen</i> it. +I don't care <i>that</i> about it—not in itself; but to have your +things taken out of your drawers without "<i>With</i> your leave" +or "<i>By</i> your leave"!—She's made father worse than ever. I +thought he had found her out, but he is actually going to marry her +in July, and they won't let me live at home unless I make a solemn +promise to "perform my religious duties" and behave properly to the +chapel people. And I never will, not if I starve for it—nasty, +canting, crawling, backbiting things! Then father says I can live +away, and he'll make me an allowance. And what do you think he'll +allow me?'</p> + +<p>She faced round upon him with curving lip and eyes aflame. David +averred truly that he could not guess.</p> + +<p>'Thirty—pounds—a—year!' she said with vicious emphasis. +'There—would you believe it? If you put a dirty little chit of a +nurse-girl on board wages, it would come to more than that. And he +just bought three houses in Millgate, and as rich as anything! Oh, +it's shameful, I call it, <i>shameful!</i>'</p> + +<p>She put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then she quickly withdrew it +again and turned to him, remembering how his first aspect had +surprised her. In the glare of some shops they were passing David +could see her perfectly, and she him. Certainly, in the year which +had elapsed since they had met she had ripened, or rather softened, +into a prettier girl. Whether it was the milder Southern climate in +which she had been living, or the result of physical weakness left +by her attack of illness in the preceding spring, at any rate her +bloom was more delicate, the lines of her small, pronounced face +more finished and melting. As for her, now that she had paused a +moment in her flow of complaint, she was busy puzzling out the +change in him. David became vaguely conscious of it, and tried to +set her off again.</p> + +<p>'But you'd rather live away,' he said, 'when they treat you like +that? You'd rather be independent, I should think? I would!'</p> + +<p>'Oh, catch me living with that woman!' she cried passionately.' +She's no better than a thief, a common thief. I don't care who +hears me. And <i>made up!</i> Oh, its shocking! It seems to me +there's nothing I can talk about at home now—whether it's getting +old—or teeth—or hair—I'm always supposed to be "passing +remarks." And I wouldn't mind if it was my Hastings cousins I had +to live with. But they can't have me any more, and now I'm at +Wakely with the Astons.'</p> + +<p>'The Aston's?' David echoed. Like most people of small training and +intelligence, Lucy instinctively supposed that whatever was +familiar to her was familiar to other people.</p> + +<p>'Oh, don't you know? It's father's sister who married a +mill-overseer at Wakely. And they're very kind to me. Only they're +<i>dreadfully</i> pious too—not like father—I don't mean that. +And, you see—it's Robert!'</p> + +<p>'Who's Robert?' asked David amused by her blush, and admiring the +trim lightness of her figure and walk.</p> + +<p>'Robert's the eldest son. He's a reedmaker. He's got enough to +marry on—at least he thinks so.'</p> + +<p>'And he wants to marry you?'</p> + +<p>She nodded. Then she looked at him, laughing, her naturally bright +eyes sparkling through the tears still wet in them.</p> + +<p>'Father's a Baptist, you know—that's bad enough—but Robert's +a <i>Particular</i> Baptist. I asked him what it meant once when +he was pestering me to marry him. "Well, you see," he said, +"a man must <i>show</i> that his heart's changed—we don't take +in everybody like—we want to be <i>sure</i> they're real <i>converted</i>." +I don't believe it does mean that—father says it doesn't. +Anyway I asked him whether if I married him he'd want me to be +a Particular Baptist too. And he said, very slow and solemn, +that of course he should look for religious fellowship in his +wife, but that he didn't want to hurry me. I laughed till I +cried at the thought of <i>me</i> going to that hideous chapel of +his, dressed like his married sister. But sometimes, I declare, I +think he'll make me do what he wants—he's got a way with him. He +sticks to a thing as tight as wax, and I don't care what becomes of +me sometimes.'</p> + +<p>She pouted despondently, but her quick eye stole to her companion's +face.</p> + +<p>'Oh, no, you won't marry Robert, Miss Lucy,' said David cheerfully. +'You've had a will of your own ever since I've known you. But what +are you at home for now?'</p> + +<p>'Why, I told you—to pack up my things. But I can't find half of +them; she—she's walked off with them. Oh, I'm going off again as +soon as possible—I can't stand it. But I must see Dora. Father +says I shan't visit Papists. But I'll watch my chance. I'll get +there to-morrow—see if I don't! Tell me what she's doing, Mr. +Grieve.'</p> + +<p>David told her all he knew. Lucy's comments were very +characteristic. She was equally hard on Daddy's ill-behaviour and +Dora's religion, with a little self-satisfied hardness that would +have provoked David but for its childish <i>naivete</i>. Many of +the things that she said of Dora, however, showed real feeling, +real affection.</p> + +<p>'She <i>is</i> good,' she wound up at last with a long sigh.</p> + +<p>'Yes, she's the best woman I ever saw,' said David slowly; 'she's +beautiful, she's a saint.'</p> + +<p>Lucy looked up quickly—her dismayed eyes fastened on him—then +they fell again, and her expression became suddenly piteous and +humble.</p> + +<p>'You're still getting on well, aren't you?' she said timidly. 'You +were glad not to be turned out, weren't you?'</p> + +<p>Somehow, for the life of her, she could not at that moment help +reminding him of her claim upon him. He admitted it very readily, +told her broadly how he was doing and what new connections he was +making. It was pleasant to tell her, pleasant to speak to this +changing rose-leaf face with its eager curiosity and attention.</p> + +<p>'And you were ill when you were abroad?—so Dora said. Father, of +course, made unkind remarks—you may be sure of that!—<i>He</i>'ll +set stories about when he doesn't like anybody. I didn't believe a +word.'</p> + +<p>'It don't matter,' said David hotly, but he flushed. His desire to +wring Purcell's neck was getting inconveniently strong.</p> + +<p>'No, not a bit,' she declared. Then she suddenly broke into +laughter. 'Oh, Mr. Grieve, how many assistants do you think father's +had since you left?'</p> + +<p>And she chatted on about these individuals, describing a series of +dolts, their achievements and personalities, with a great deal of +girlish fun. Her companion enjoyed her little humours and egotisms, +enjoyed the walk and her companionship. After the strain of the +day, a day spent either in the toil of a developing business or +under a difficult pressure of thought, this light girl's voice +brought a gay, relaxed note into life. The spring was in the air, +and his youth stirred again in that cavern where grief had buried +it.</p> + +<p>'Oh, <i>dear</i>, I must go home,' she said at last regretfully, +startled by a striking clock. 'Father'll be just mad. Of course, +he'll hear all about my meeting you—I don't care. I'm not going to +be parted from all my friends to please him, particularly now he's +turned me out for good—from Dora and—'</p> + +<p>'From you,' she would have said, but she became suddenly conscious +and her voice failed.</p> + +<p>'No, indeed! And your friends won't forget you, Miss Lucy. You'll +go and see Dora to-morrow?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, if I can give them the slip at home.'</p> + +<p>There was a pause, and then he said—</p> + +<p>'And will you allow me to visit you at Wakely some Sunday? I know +those moors well.'</p> + +<p>She reddened all over with delight. There was something in the +little stiffness of the request which gave it importance.</p> + +<p>'I wish you would; it's not far,' she stammered. 'Aunt Miriam would +be glad to see you.'</p> + +<p>They walked back rapidly along Mosley Street and into Market Place. +There she stopped and shyly asked him to leave her. Almost all the +Saturday-night crowd had disappeared from the streets. It was +really late, and she became suddenly conscious that this walk of +hers might reasonably be regarded at home as a somewhat bold +proceeding.</p> + +<p>'I wish you'd let me see you right home,' he said, detaining her +hand in his.</p> + +<p>'Oh, no, no—I shall catch it enough as it is. Oh, they'll let me +in! Will it be next Sunday, Mr. Grieve?'</p> + +<p>'No, the Sunday after. Can I do anything for you?'</p> + +<p>He came closer to her, seeming to envelope her in his tall, +protecting presence. It was impossible for him to ignore her +girlish flutter, her evident joy in having seen and talked to him +again, in spite of her dread of her father. Nor did he wish to +ignore them. They were unexpectedly sweet to him, and he surprised +himself.</p> + +<p>'Oh no, nothing,—but it's very good of you to say so,' she said +impulsively; '<i>very</i>. Good night again.'</p> + +<p>And instinctively she put out another small hand, which also he +took, so holding her prisoner a moment.</p> + +<p>'Look here,' he said, 'I'll just slip down that side of the Close +and wait till I see you get safe in. Good night; I <i>am</i> glad I +saw you!'</p> + +<p>She ran away in a blind whirl of happiness up the steps into the +passage of Half Street. He slipped down to the left and waited, +looking through the railings across the corner of the Close, his +eyes fixed on that upper window, where he had so often sat, +parleying alternately with the cathedral and Voltaire.</p> + +<p>Lucy rang, the door opened, there were loud sounds within, but she +was admitted; it closed behind her.</p> + +<p>David was soon in his back room, kindling a lamp and a bit of fire +to read by. But when it was done he sat bent forward over the +blaze, till the cathedral clock chimed the small hours, thinking.</p> + +<p>She was so unformed and childish, that poor little thing!—surely a +man could make what he would of her. She would give him affection +and duty; the core of the nature was sound, and her little humours +would bring life into a house.</p> + +<p>He had but to put out his hand—that was plain enough. And why not? +Was any humbler draught to be for ever put aside, because the best +wine had been poured to waste?</p> + +<p>Then the rebellions of an unquenched romance, an untamed heart, +beset him. Surging waves of bitterness and pain, the after-swell of +that tempest in which his youth had so nearly foundered, seemed to +bear him away to seas of desolation.</p> + +<p>After all that had happened, the greed for personal joy he every +now and then detected in himself surprised and angered him by its +strength. The truth was that in whole tracts of his nature he was +still a boy, still young beyond his years, and it was the conflict +in him between youth's hot immaturity and a man's baffling +experience which made the pain of his life.</p> + +<p>He meant to go to Wakely on the next Sunday but one—that he was +certain of—but as to what he was to do and say when he got there +he was perhaps culpably uncertain. But in his weakness and +<i>sehnsucht</i> he dwelt upon the thought of Lucy more and more.</p> + +<p>Then Dora—foolish saint!—came upon the scene.</p> + +<p>Lucy found her way to the street in Ancoats where Dora lived, the +morning after her talk with David, and the two cousins spent an +agitated hour together. Lucy could hardly find time to ask Dora +about her sorrows, so occupied was she in recounting all her own +adventures. She was to go back to Wakely that very afternoon. +Purcell had been absolutely unapproachable since the cousin who had +escorted Lucy to the Free Trade Hall the night before had in her +own defence revealed the secret of that young lady's behaviour. +Pack and go she should! He wouldn't have such a hussy another night +under his roof. Let them do with her as could.</p> + +<p>'I thought he would have beaten me this morning,' Lucy candidly +confessed. There was a red spot on each cheek, and she was +evidently glorying in martyrdom. 'He looked like a devil—a real +devil. Why can't he be fond of me, and let me alone, like other +girls' fathers? I believe he <i>is</i> fond of me somehow, but he +wants to break my spirit—'</p> + +<p>She tossed her head significantly.</p> + +<p>'Lucy, you know you ought to give in when you can,' said the +perplexed Dora, with rebuke in her voice.</p> + +<p>'Oh, nonsense!' said Lucy. 'You can't—it's ridiculous. Well, +he'll quarrel with that woman some day—I'm sure <i>she's</i> his +match—and then maybe he'll want me back. But perhaps he won't +get me.'</p> + +<p>Dora looked up with a curious expression, half smiling, half +wistful. She had already heard all the story of the walk.</p> + +<p>'O Dora!' cried the child, laying down her head on the table +beneath her cousin's eyes, 'Dora, I do believe he's beginning to +care. You see he <i>asked</i> to come to Wakely. I didn't ask him. +Oh, if it all comes to nothing again, I shall break my heart!'</p> + +<p>Dora smoothed the fine brown hair, and said affectionate things, +but vaguely, as if she was not quite certain what to say.</p> + +<p>'He does look quite different, somehow,' continued Lucy. 'Why do you +think he was so long away over there, Dora? Father says nasty +things about it—says he fell into bad company and lost his money.'</p> + +<p>'I don't know how uncle Purcell can know,' said Dora indignantly. +'He's always thinking the worst of people. He was ill, for Mr. +Ancrum told me, and he's the only person that <i>does</i> know. And +anyone can see he isn't strong yet.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, and he is so handsome!' sighed Lucy, 'handsomer than ever. +There isn't a man in Manchester to touch him.'</p> + +<p>Dora laughed out and called her a 'little silly.' But, as privately +in her heart of hearts she was of the same opinion, her reproof had +not much force.</p> + +<p>When Lucy left, Dora put away her work, and, lifting a flushed +face, walked to the window and stood there looking out. A pale +April sun was shining on the brewery opposite, and touched the dark +waters of the canal under the bridge to the left. The roofs of the +squalid houses abutting on the brewery were wet with rain. Through +a gap she could see a laundress's back-yard mainly filled with +drying clothes, but boasting besides a couple of pink flowering +currants just out, and holding their own for a few brief days +against the smuts of Manchester. Here and there a man out of work +lounged, pipe in mouth, at his open door, silently absorbing the +sunshine and the cheerfulness of the moist blue over the +house-tops. There was a new sweetness and tenderness in the spring +air—or were they in Dora's soul?</p> + +<p>She leant her head against the window, and remained there with her +hands clasped before her for some little time—for her, a most +unusual idleness.</p> + +<p>Yes, Lucy was very obstinate. Dora had never thought she would have +the courage to fight her father in this way. And selfish, too. She +had spoken only once of Daddy, and that in a way to make the +daughter wince. But she was so young—such a child!—and would be +ruined if she were left to this casual life, and people who didn't +understand her. A husband to take care of her, and children—they +would be the making of her.</p> + +<p>And he! Dora's eyes filled with tears. All this winter the change +in him, the silent evidences of a shock all the more tragic to her +because of its mystery, had given him a kind of sacredness in her +eyes. She fell thinking, besides, of the times lately he had been +to church with her. Ah, she was glad he had heard that sermon, that +beautiful sermon of Canon Welby's in Passion Week! He had said +nothing about it, but she knew it had been meant for clever, +educated men—men like him. The church, indeed, had been full of +men—her neighbours had told her that several of the gentlemen from +Owens College had been there.</p> + +<p>That evening David knocked at the door below about half-past eight. +Dora got up quickly and went across to her room-fellow, a +dark-faced stooping girl, who took her shirt-maker's slavery +without a murmur, and loved Dora.</p> + +<p>'Would you mind, Mary?' she said timidly. 'I want to speak to Mr. +Grieve.'</p> + +<p>The girl looked up, understood, stopped her machine, and, hastily +gathering some pieces together that wanted buttonholes, went off +into the little inner room and shut the door.</p> + +<p>Dora knelt and with restless hands put the bit of fire together. +She had just thrown a handkerchief over her canaries. On the frame +a piece of her work, a fine altar-cloth gleaming with golds, +purples, and pale pinks, stood uncovered. The deal table, the white +walls on which hung Daddy's old prints, the bare floor with its +strip of carpet, were all spotlessly clean. The tea had been put +away. Daddy's vacant chair stood in its place.</p> + +<p>When David came in he found her sitting pensively on a little +wooden stool by the fire. Generally he gossipped while the two +girls worked busily away—sometimes he read to them. To-night as he +sat down he felt something impending.</p> + +<p>Dora talked of Lucy's visit. They agreed as to the folly and +brutality of Purcell's treatment of her, and laughed together over +the marauding stepmother.</p> + +<p>Then there was a pause. Dora broke it. She was sitting upright on +the stool, looking straight into his face.</p> + +<p>'Will you not be cross if I say something?' she asked, catching her +breath. 'It's not my business.'</p> + +<p>'Say it, please.' But he reddened instantly.</p> + +<p>'Lucy's—Lucy's—got a fancy for you,' she said tremulously, +shrinking from her own words. 'Perhaps it's a shame to say it—oh, +it may be! You haven't told me anything, and she's given me no +leave. But she's had it a long time.'</p> + +<p>'I don't know why you say so,' he replied half sombrely.</p> + +<p>His flush had died away, but his hand shook on his knee.</p> + +<p>'Oh, yes, you do,' she cried; 'you must know. Lucy can't keep even +her own secrets. But she's got such a warm heart! I'm sure she has. +If a man would take her and be kind to her, she'd make him happy.'</p> + +<p>She stopped, looking at him intently.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly she burst out, laying her hand on the arm of his +chair—Daddy's chair:</p> + +<p>'Don't be angry; you've been like a brother to me.'</p> + +<p>He took her hand and pressed it, reassuring her.</p> + +<p>'But how can I make her happy?' he said, with his head on his hand. +'I don't want to be a fool and deny what you say, for the sake of +denying it. But—'</p> + +<p>His voice sank into silence. Then, as she did not speak, he looked +up at her. She was sitting, since he had released her, with her +arms locked behind her, frowning in her intensity of thought, her +last energy of sacrifice.</p> + +<p>'You would make her happy,' she said slowly, 'and she'd be a loving +wife. She's flighty is Lucy, but there's nothing bad in her.'</p> + +<p>Both were silent for another minute, then, by a natural reaction, +both looked at each other and laughed.</p> + +<p>'I'm making rather free with you, I'm bound to admit that,' she +said, with a merry shamefaced expression, which brought out the +youth in her face.</p> + +<p>'Well, give me time, Miss Dora. If—if anything did come of it, I +should have to let Purcell know, and there'd be flat war. You've +thought of that?'</p> + +<p>Certainly, Dora had thought of it. They might have to wait, and +Purcell would probably refuse to give or leave Lucy any money. All +the better, according to David. Nothing would ever induce him to +take a farthing of his ex-master's hoards.</p> + +<p>But here, by a common instinct, they stopped planning, and David +resolutely turned the conversation. When they parted, however, Dora +was secretly eager and hopeful. It was curious how little the +father's rights weighed with so scrupulous a soul. Whether it was +his behaviour to her father which had roused an unconscious +hardness even in her gentle nature, or whether it was the subtle +influence of his Dissent, as compared with the nascent dispositions +she seemed to see in David—anyway, Dora's conscience was silent; +she was entirely absorbed in her own act, and in the prospects of +the other two.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVI-3" id="CHAPTER_XVI-3"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h3> + +<p>When David reached home that night he found a French letter +awaiting him. It was from Louie, still dated from the country town +near Toulouse, and announced the birth of her child—a daughter. +The letter was scrawled apparently from her bed, and contained some +passionate, abusive remarks about her husband, half finished, and +hardly intelligible. She peremptorily called on David to send her +some money at once. Her husband was a sot, and unfaithful to her. +Even now with his first child, he had taken advantage of her being +laid up to make love to other women. All the town cried shame on +him. The priest visited her frequently, and was all on her side.</p> + +<p>Then at the end she wrote a hasty description of the child. Its +eyes were like his, David's, but it would have much handsomer +eyelashes. It was by far the best-looking child in the place, and +because everybody remarked on its likeness to her, she believed +Montjoie had taken a dislike to it. She didn't care, but it made +him look ridiculous. Why didn't he do some work, instead of letting +her and her child live like pigs? He could get some, if his dirty +pride would let him. It wasn't to be supposed, with this disgusting +Commune going on in Paris, and everybody nearly ruined, that anyone +would want statues—they had never even sold the Maenad—but +somebody had wanted him to do a monument, cheap, the other day for +a brother who had been killed in the war; and he wouldn't. He was +too fine. That was like him all over.</p> + +<p>It was as though he could hear her flinging out the reckless +sentences. But he thought there were signs that she was pleased +with the baby—and he suddenly remembered her tyrannous passion for +the Mason child.</p> + +<p>As to the money, he looked carefully into his accounts. For the +last six months he had been gathering every possible saving +together with a view to the History of Manchester, which he and +John had planned to begin printing in the coming autumn. It went +against him sorely to take from such a hoard for the purpose of +helping Jules Montjoie to an idler and easier existence. The fate +of his six hundred pounds burnt deep into a mind which at bottom +was well furnished with all the old Yorkshire and Scotch frugality.</p> + +<p>However, he sent his sister money, and he gave up in thought that +fortnight's walking tour in the Lakes he had planned for his +holiday. He must just stay at home and see to business.</p> + +<p>Then next morning, as it happened, he woke up with a sudden hunger +for the country—a vision before his eyes of the wide bosom of the +Scout, of fresh airs and hurrying waters, of the sheep among the +heather. His night had been restless; the whole of life seemed to +be again in debate—Lucy's figure, Dora's talk, chased and +tormented him. Away to the April moorland! He sprang out of bed +determined to take the first train to Clough End. He had not been +out of Manchester for months, and it was luckily a Saturday. Here +was this letter of Louie's too—he owed the news to Uncle Reuben. +Since Reuben's visit to Manchester, a year before, there had been +no communication between him and them. Six years! How would the +farm—how would Aunt Hannah look? There was a drawing in him this +morning towards the past, towards even the harsh forms and memories +of it, such as often marks a time of emotion and crisis, the moment +before a man takes a half-reluctant step towards a doubtful future.</p> + +<p>But as he journeyed towards the Derbyshire border, he was not in +truth thinking of Dora's counsels or of Lucy Purcell at all. Every +now and then he lost himself in the mere intoxication of the +spring, in the charm of the factory valleys, just flushing into +green, through which the train was speeding. But in general his +attention was held by the book in his hand. His time for reading +had been much curtailed of late by the toils of his business. He +caught covetously at every spare hour.</p> + +<p>The book was Bishop Berkeley's 'Dialogues.'</p> + +<p>With what a medley of thoughts and interests had he been concerned +during the last four or five months! His old tastes and passions +had revived as we have seen, but unequally, with morbid gaps and +exceptions. In these days he had hardly opened a poet or a +novelist. His whole being shrank from them, as though it had been +one wound, and the books which had been to him the passionate +friends of his most golden hours, which had moulded in him, as it +were, the soul wherewith he had loved Elise, looked to him now like +enemies as he passed them quickly by upon the shelves.</p> + +<p>But some of his old studies—German, Greek, science +especially—were the saving of him. Among some foreign books, for +instance, which he had ordered for a customer he came upon a copy +of some scientific essays by Littre. Among them was a survey of the +state of astronomical knowledge written somewhere about 1835, with +all the luminous charm which the great Positivist had at command. +David was captured by it, by the flight of the scientific +imagination through time and space, amid suns, planets and nebulae, +the beginnings and the wrecks of worlds. When he laid it down with +a sigh of pleasure, Ancrum, who was sitting opposite, looked up.</p> + +<p>'You like your book, Davy?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said the other slowly, staring out of the twilight window at +the gloom which passes for sky in Manchester. Then with another +long breath,—'It makes you a new heaven and a new earth!'</p> + +<p>A similar impression, only even richer and more detailed, had been +left upon him by a volume of Huxley's 'Lay Sermons.' The world of +natural fact in its overpowering wealth and mystery was thus given +back to him, as it were, under another aspect than that torturing +intoxicating aspect of art—one that fortified and calmed. All his +scientific curiosities which had been so long laid to sleep +revived. His first returning joy came from a sense of the +inexhaustibleness and infinity of nature.</p> + +<p>But very soon this renewed interest in science began to have the +bearing and to issue in the mental activities which, all unknown to +himself, had been from the beginning in his destiny. He could not +now read it for itself alone. That new ethical and spiritual +susceptibility, into which agony and loss had become slowly +transformed, dominated and absorbed all else. For some time, beside +his scientific books, there lay others from a class not hitherto +very congenial to him, that which contains the great examples in +our day, outside the poets, of the poetical or imaginative +treatment of ethics—Emerson, Carlyle, Ruskin. At an age when most +young minds of intelligence amongst us are first seized by these +English masters, he had been wandering in French paths. 'Sartor +Resartus,' Emerson's 'Essays,' 'The Seven Lamps,' came to him now +with an indescribable freshness and force. Nay, a too great force! +We enjoy the great prophets of literature most when we have not yet +lived enough to realise all they tell us. When David, wandering at +night with Teufels-drockh through heaven and hell, felt at last the +hard sobs rising in his throat, he suddenly put the book and others +akin to it away from him. As with the poets so here. He must turn +to something less eloquent—to paths of thought where truth shone +with a drier and a calmer light.</p> + +<p>But still the same problems! Since his Eden gates had closed +upon him, he had been in the outer desert where man has +wandered from the beginning, threatened with all the familiar +phantoms, illusions, mist-voices of human thought. What +was consciousness—knowledge—law? Was there any law—any +knowledge—any <i>I?</i></p> + +<p>Naturally he had long ceased to find any final sustenance or +pleasure in the Secularist literature, which had once convinced him +so easily. Secularism up to a certain point, it began to seem to +him, was a commonplace; beyond that point, a contradiction. If the +race should ever take the counsel of the Secularists, or of that +larger Positivist thought, of which English secularism is the +popular reflection, the human intellect would be a poorer +instrument with a narrower swing. So much was plain to him. For +nothing can be more certain than that some of the finest powers and +noblest work of the human mind have been developed by the struggle +to know what the Secularist declares is neither knowable nor worth +knowing.</p> + +<p>Yet the histories of philosophy which he began to turn over were in +truth no more fruitful to him than the talk of the <i>Reasoner.</i> +They stimulated his powers of apprehension and analysis; and the +great march of human debate from century to century touched his +imagination. But in these summaries of the philosophical field his +inmost life appropriated nothing. Once by a sort of reaction he +fell upon Hume again, pining for the old intellectual clearness of +impression, though it were a clearness of limit and negation. But +he had hardly begun the 'Treatise' or the 'Essays' before his soul +rose against them, crying for he knew not what, only that it was +for nothing they could give.</p> + +<p>Then by chance a little Life of Berkeley, and upon it an old +edition of the works, fell into his hands. As he was turning over +the leaves, the 'Alciphron' so struck him that he turned to the +first page of the first volume, and evening after evening read the +whole through with a devouring energy that never flagged. When it +was over he was a different being. The mind had crystallised +afresh.</p> + +<p>It was his first serious grapple with the fundamental problems of +knowledge. And, to a nature which had been so tossed and bruised in +the great unregarding tide of things, which had felt itself the +mere chattel of a callous universe, of no account or dignity either +to gods or men, what strange exaltation there was in the general +<i>suggestion</i> of Berkeley's thought! The mind, the source of +all that is; the impressions on the senses, merely the speech of +the Eternal Mind to ours, a Visual Language, whereof man's +understanding is perpetually advancing, which has been indeed +contrived for his education; man, naturally immortal, king of +himself and of the senses, inalienably one—if he would but open +his eyes and see—with all that is Divine, true, eternal: the soul +that had been crushed by grief and self-contempt revived at the +mere touch of these vast possibilities like a trampled plant. Not +that it absorbed them yet, made them its own; but they made a +healing stimulating atmosphere in which it seemed once more +possible for it to grow into a true manhood. The spiritual +hypothesis of things was for the first time presented in such a way +as to take imaginative hold without exciting or harrowing the +feelings; he saw the world reversed, in a pure light of thought, as +Berkeley saw it, and all the horizon of things fell back.</p> + +<p>Now—on this April afternoon—as the neighbourhood of Manchester +was left behind, as the long woodclad valleys and unpolluted +streams began to prophesy of Derbyshire and the Peak, David, his +face pressed against the window, fell into a dream with Berkeley +and with nature. Oh for knowledge! for verification! He began dimly +and passionately to see before him a life devoted to thought—a +life in which science after science should become the docile +instrument of a mind still pressing on and on into the shadowy +realm, till, in Berkeley's language, the darkness part, and it +'recover the lost region of light'!</p> + +<p>But in the very midst of this overwhelming vision he said suddenly +to himself:</p> + +<p>'There is another way—another answer—Dora's way and Ancrum's.'</p> + +<p>Aye, the way of faith, which asks for no length of years in which +to win the goal, which is there at once—in the beat of a +wing—safe on the breast of God! He thought of it as he had seen it +illustrated in his friend and in Dora, with the mixture of +attraction and repulsion which, in this connection, was now more or +less habitual to him. The more he saw of Dora, the more he +wondered—at her goodness and her ignorance. Her positive dislike +to, and alienation from knowledge was amazing. At the first +indication of certain currents of thought he could see her soul +shrivelling and shrinking like a green leaf near flame. As he had +gradually realised, she had with some difficulty forgiven him the +attempt to cure Daddy's drinking through a doctor; that anyone +should think sin could be reached by medicine—it was in effect to +throw doubt on the necessity of God's grace! And she could not bear +that he should give her information from the books he read about +the Bible or early Christianity. His detached, though never +hostile, tone was clearly intolerable to her. She could not and +would not suffer it, would take any means of escaping it.</p> + +<p>Then that Passion-week sermon she had taken him to hear; which had +so moved her, with which she had so sweetly and persistently +assumed his sympathy! The preacher had been a High Church Canon +with a considerable reputation for eloquence. The one o'clock +service had been crowded with business and professional men. David +had never witnessed a more tempting opportunity. But how hollow and +empty the whole result! What foolish sentimental emphasis, what +unreality, what contempt for knowledge, yet what a show of it!—an +elegant worthless jumble of Gibbon, Horace, St. Augustine, Wesley, +Newman and Mill, mixed with the cheap picturesque—with moonlight +on the Campagna, and sunset on Niagara—and leading, by the loosest +rhetoric, to the most confident conclusions. He had the taste of it +in his mouth still. Fresh from the wrestle of mind into which +Berkeley had led him, he fell into a new and young indignation with +sermon and preacher.</p> + +<p>Yet, all the same, if you asked how man could best <i>live</i>, +apart from thinking, how the soul could put its foot on the +brute—where would Dora stand then? What if the true key to life +lay not in knowledge, but in <i>will</i>? What if knowledge in the +true sense was ultimately impossible to man, and if Christianity +not only offered, but could give him the one thing truly +needful—his own will, regenerate?</p> + +<p>But with the first sight of the Clough End streets these high +debates were shaken from the mind.</p> + +<p>He ran up the Kinder road, with its villanous paving of cobbles and +coal dust, its mills to the right, down below in the hollow, +skirting the course of the river, and its rows of workmen's homes +to the left, climbing the hill—in a tremor of excitement. Six +years! Would anyone recognize him? Ah! there was Jerry's 'public,' +an evil-looking weather-stained hole; but another name swung on the +sign; poor Jerry!—was he, too, gone the way of orthodox and +sceptic alike? And here was the Foundry—David could hardly prevent +himself from marching into the yard littered with mysterious odds +and ends of old iron which had been the treasure house of his +childhood. But no Tom—and no familiar face anywhere.</p> + +<p>Yes!—there was the shoemaker's cottage, where the prayer-meeting +had been, and there, on the threshold, looking at the approaching +figure, stood the shoemaker's wife, the strange woman with the +mystical eyes. David greeted her as he came near. She stared at him +from under a bony hand put up against the sun, but did not +apparently recognise him; he, seized with sudden shyness, quickened +his pace, and was soon out of her sight.</p> + +<p>In a minute or two he was at the Dye-works, which mark the limit of +the town, and the opening of the valley road. Every breath now was +delight. The steep wooded hills to the left, the red-brown shoulder +of the Scout in front, were still wrapt in torn and floating shreds +of mist. But the sun was everywhere—above in the slowly triumphing +blue, in the mist itself, and below, on the river and the fields. +The great wood climbing to his left was all embroidered on the +brown with palms and catkins, or broken with patches of greening +larch, which had a faintly luminous relief amid the rest. And the +dash of the river—and the scents of the fields! He leapt the wall +of the lane, and ran down to the water's edge, watching a dipper +among the stones in a passion of pleasure which had no words.</p> + +<p>Then up and on again, through the rough uneven lane, higher and +higher into the breast of the Scout. What if he met Jim Wigson on +the way? What if Aunt Hannah, still unreconciled, turned him from +the door? No matter! Rancour and grief have no hold on mortals +walking in such an April world—in such an exquisite and sunlit +beauty. On! let thought and nature be enough! Why complicate and +cumber life with relations that do but give a foothold to pain, and +offer less than they threaten?</p> + +<p>There is smoke rising from Wigson's, and figures moving in the +yard. Caution!—keep close under the wall. And here at last is +Needham farm, at the top of its own steep pitch, with the sycamore +trees in the lane beside it, the Red Brook sweeping round it to the +right, the rough gate below, the purple Scout mist-wreathed behind. +There are cows lowing in the yard, a horse grazes in the front +field; through the little garden gate a gleam of sun strikes on the +struggling crocuses and daffodils which come up year after year, no +man heeding them; there is a clucking of hens, a hurry of water, a +flood of song from a lark poised above the field. The blue smoke +rises into the misty air; the sun and the spring caress the rugged +lonely place.</p> + +<p>With a beating heart David opened the gate into the field, walked +round the little garden, let himself into the yard, and with a +hasty glance at the windows mounted the steps and knocked.</p> + +<p>No answer. He knocked again. Surely Aunt Hannah must be about +somewhere. Eleven o'clock; how quiet the house was!</p> + +<p>This time there was a clatter of a chair on a flagged floor inside, +and a person with a slow laboured step came and opened.</p> + +<p>It was Reuben. He adjusted his spectacles with difficulty, and +stared at the intruder.</p> + +<p>'Uncle Reuben!—I thought it was such a fine day, I'd just run over +and see the old place, and bring you some news,' said David, +smiling and holding out his hand.</p> + +<p>Reuben took it, stupefied. 'Davy,' he said, trembling. Then with a +sudden movement he whipped the door to behind him, and shut it +close.</p> + +<p>'Whist!' he said, putting his old finger to his lip. 'T' servant's +just settlin her i' t' kitchen. She's noa ready yet—she's been +terr'ble bad th' neet. Coom yo here.' And he descended the steps +with infinite care, and led David to the wood-shed.</p> + +<p>'Is Aunt Hannah ill?' asked David, astonished.</p> + +<p>Reuben leant against the wall of the shed, and took off his +spectacles, as though to wipe them with his old and shaking hands. +Then David saw a sort of convulsion pass across his ungainly face.</p> + +<p>'Aye,' he said, looking down, 'aye, she's broken is Hannah. Yo didna +knaw?'</p> + +<p>'I've heard nothing.'</p> + +<p>Reuben recounted the facts. Since her stroke of last spring, and +the partial recovery which had followed upon it, there had been +little apparent change, except perhaps in the direction of slowly +increasing weakness. She was a wreck, and likely to remain so. +Hardly anybody but Reuben could understand her now, and she rarely +let him out of her sight. He could not get time to attend to the +farm, was obliged to leave things to the hired man, and was in +trouble often about his affairs.</p> + +<p>'Bit yo see, she hasna t' reet use of her speach,' he said, +excusing himself humbly to this handsome city nephew. 'An' she conno +gie ower snipin aw at onst. 'Twudna be human natur'. An't' gell's +worritin' an' I mun tell her what t' missis says.'</p> + +<p>David asked if he might see her, or should he just turn back to the +town? Reuben protested, his hospitality and family feeling aroused, +his poor mind torn with conflicting motives.</p> + +<p>'I believe she'd fratch if she didna see tha,' he said at last. +'A'll just goo ben, and ask.'</p> + +<p>He went in, and David remained in the wood-shed, staring out at the +familiar scene, at Louie's window, at the steps where he and she +had fed the fowls together.</p> + +<p>The door opened again, and Reuben reappeared on the steps, agitated +and beckoning.</p> + +<p>David went in, stepping softly, holding his blue cloth cap in his +hand. In another instant he stood beside the old cushioned seat in +the kitchen, looking down at Hannah.</p> + +<p>This Hannah! this his childhood's enemy! this shawled and shrunken +figure with the white parchment face and lantern cheeks!</p> + +<p>He stooped to her and said something about why he had come. Reuben +listened wondering.</p> + +<p>'Louie's married and got a babby—dosto hear, Hannah? And he—t' +lad—did yo iver see sich a yan for growin?'</p> + +<p>He wished to be mildly jocular. Hannah's face did not move. She had +just touched her nephew with her cold wasted hand. Now she beckoned +to him to sit down at her right. He did so, and then for the first +time he could believe that Hannah, the old Hannah, was there beside +them. For as she slowly studied his dress, the Inverness cape then +as now a favourite garb in Manchester, the hand holding the cap, +refined since she saw it last by commerce with books and pens +rather than hurdles and sheep, the broad shoulders, the dark head, +her eye for the first time met his, full, and a weird thrill went +through him. For that eye—dulled, and wavering—was still Hannah. +The old hate was in it, the old grudge, all that had been at least +for him and Louie the inmost and characteristic soul of their +tyrant. He knew in an instant that she had in her mind the money of +which he and his sister had robbed her, and beyond that the +offences of their childhood, the infamy of their mother. If she +could, she would have hurled them all upon him. As it was, she was +silent, but that brooding eye, like a smouldering spark in her +blanched face, spoke for her.</p> + +<p>Reuben tried to talk. But a weight lay on him and David. The gaunt +head in the coarse white nightcap turned now to one, now to the +other, pursued them phantom-like. Presently he insisted that his +nephew must dine, avoiding Hannah's look. David would much rather +have gone without; but Reuben, affecting joviality, called the +servant, and some food was brought. No attempt was made to include +Hannah in the meal. David supposed that it was now necessary to +feed her.</p> + +<p>Reuben talked disjointedly of the neighbours and his stock, and +asked a few questions, without listening to the answers, about +David's affairs, and Louie's marriage. In Hannah's presence his +poor dull wits were not his own; he could in truth think of nothing +but her.</p> + +<p>After the meal, however, when a draught of ale had put some heart +in him, he got up with an air of resolution.</p> + +<p>'I mun goo and see what that felly's been doin' wi' th' +Huddersfield beeasts,' he said; 'wilta coom wi' me, Davy? Mary!'</p> + +<p>He called the little maid. Hannah suddenly said something +incoherent which David could not understand. Reuben affected not to +hear.</p> + +<p>'Mary, gie your mistress her dinner, like a good gell. An' keep t' +house-door open, soa 'at she can knock wi' t' stick if she wants +owt.'</p> + +<p>He stood before her restless and ashamed, afraid to look at her. +Then he suddenly stooped and kissed her on the forehead. David felt +a lump in his throat. As he took leave of her the spell, as it +were, of Reuben's piteous affection came upon him. He saw nothing +but a dying and emaciated woman, and taking her hand in his, he +said some kind natural words.</p> + +<p>The hand dropped from his like a stone. As he stood at the door +behind Reuben, the servant came forward with a plate of something +which she put down inside the fender. As she did so, she awkwardly +upset the fire-irons, which fell with a crash. Hannah started +upright in her chair, with a rush of half-articulate words, +grasping fiercely for her stick with glaring eyes. The servant, a +wild moorland lass, fled terrified, and at the 'house' door turned +and made a face at David.</p> + +<p>Outside Reuben slowly mastered himself, and woke up to some real +interest in Louie's doings. David told him her story frankly, so +far as it could be separated from his own, and, pressed by Reuben's +questions, even revealed at last the matter of the six hundred +pounds. Reuben could not get over it. Sandy's "six hunderd pund" +which he had earned with the sweat of his brow, all handed over to +that minx Louie, and wasted by her and a rascally French husband in +a few months—it was more than he could bear.</p> + +<p>'Aye, aye, marryin's varra weel,' he said impatiently. 'A grant tha +it's a great sin coomin thegither without marryin. But Sandy's six +hunderd pund! Noa, I conno abide sich wark.'</p> + +<p>And he fell into sombre silence, out of which David could hardly +rouse him. Except that he said once, 'And we that had kep' it so +long. I'd better never ha gien it tha.' And clearly that was the +bitter thought in his mind. The sacrifice that had taxed all his +moral power, and, as he believed, brought physical ruin on Hannah, +had been for nothing, or worse than nothing. Neither he nor David +nor anyone was the better for it.</p> + +<p>'I must go over the shoulder to Frimley,' said David at last. They +had made a half-hearted inspection of the stock in the home fields, +and were now passing through the gate on to the moor. 'I must see +Margaret Dawson again before I take the train back.'</p> + +<p>Reuben looked astonished and shook his head as though he did not +remember anything about Margaret Dawson. He walked on beside his +nephew for a while in silence. The Red Brook was leaping and +dancing beside them, the mountain ashes were just bursting into +leaf, the old smithy was ahead of them on the heathery slope, and +to their left the Downfall, full and white, thundered over its +yellow rocks.</p> + +<p>But they had hardly crossed the Red Brook to mount the peak beyond +when Reuben drew up.</p> + +<p>'Noa'—he said restlessly—'noa. I mun goo back. T' gell's flighty +and theer's aw maks o' mischief i' yoong things.' He stood and held +his nephew by the hand, looking at him long and wistfully. As he +did so a calmer expression stole for an instant into the poor +troubled eyes.</p> + +<p>'Very like a'st not see tha again, Davie. We niver know, Livin's +hard soomtimes—soa's deein, folks say. I'm often freet'nt of +deein'—but I should na be. Theer's noan so mich peace here, and we +<i>knaw</i> that wi' the Lord theer's peace.'</p> + +<p>He gave a long sigh—all his character was in it—so tortured was +it and hesitating.</p> + +<p>They parted, and the young man climbed the hill, looking back often +to watch the bent figure on the lower path. The spell had somehow +vanished from the sunshine, the thrill from the moorland air. Life +was once more cruel, implacable.</p> + +<p>He walked fast to Frimley, and made for the cottage of Margaret's +brother. He remembered its position of old.</p> + +<p>A woman was washing in the 'house' or outer kitchen. She received +him graciously. The weekly money which in one way or another he had +never failed to pay since he first undertook it, had made him well +known to her and her husband. With a temper quite unlike that of +the characteristic northerner, she showed no squeamishness at all +about the matter. If it hadn't been for his help, they would just +have sent Margaret to the workhouse, she said bluntly; for they had +many mouths to feed, and couldn't have burdened themselves with an +extra one. She was quite 'silly' and often troublesome.</p> + +<p>'Is she here?' David asked.</p> + +<p>'Aye, if yo goo ben, yo'll find her,' said the woman, carelessly +pointing to an inner door. 'I conno ha her in here washin days, nor +the children noather.'</p> + +<p>David opened the door pointed out to him. He found himself in a +rough weaving shed almost filled by a large hand-loom, with its +forest of woodwork rising to the ceiling, its rolls of perforated +pattern-paper, its great cylinders below, and many-coloured +shuttles to either hand. But to-day it stood idle, the weaver was +not at work. The room was stuffy but cold, and inexpressibly gloomy +in this silence of the loom.</p> + +<p>Where was Margaret? After a minute's search, there, beyond the +loom, sitting by a fireless grate, was a little figure in a bedgown +and nightcap, poking with a stick amid the embers, and as it seemed +crooning to itself.</p> + +<p>David made his way up to her, inexpressibly moved.</p> + +<p>'Margaret!'</p> + +<p>She did not know him in the least. She had a starved-looking cat on +her lap, which she was huddling against her breast. The face had +fallen away almost to nothing, so small and thin it was. She was +dirty and unkempt. Her still brown hair, once so daintily neat, +straggled out beneath her torn cap; her print bed-gown was pinned +across her, her linsey skirt was in holes; everywhere the same tale +of age neglected and unloved.</p> + +<p>When David first stood before her she drew back with a terrified +look, still clutching the cat tightly. But, as he smiled at her, +with the tears in his eyes, speaking her name tenderly, her +frightened look relaxed, and she remained staring at him with the +shrinking furtive expression of a quite young child.</p> + +<p>He knelt down beside her.</p> + +<p>'Margaret, dear Margaret—don't you know me?'</p> + +<p>She did not answer, but her wrinkled eyes, still blue and vaguely +sweet, wavered under his, and it seemed to him that every now and +then a shiver of cold ran through her old and frail body. He went +on gently, trying to recall her wandering senses. In vain. In the +middle she interrupted him with a piteous lip.</p> + +<p>'They promised me a ribbon for't,' she said, complainingly, in a +hoarse, bronchitic voice, pointing to the animal she held, and to +its lean neck adorned with a collar of plaited string, on which +apparently she had just been busy, to judge from the odds and ends +of string lying about.</p> + +<p>At the same moment David became aware of a couple of children +craning their heads round the corner of the loom to look, a loutish +boy about eleven, and a girl rather younger. At sight of them, +Margaret raised a cry of distress and alarm, with that helpless +indefinable note in the voice which shows that personality, in the +true sense, is no longer there.</p> + +<p>'Go away!' David commanded.</p> + +<p>The children did not stir, but grinned. He made a threatening +movement. Then the boy, as quick as lightning, put his tongue out +at Margaret, and caught hold of his sister, and they clattered off, +their mother in the next room scolding them out into the street +again.</p> + +<p>And this the end of a creature all sacrifice, a life all affection!</p> + +<p>He took her shivering hand in his.</p> + +<p>'Margaret, listen to me. You shall be better looked after. I will +see to that. No one shall be unkind to you any more. If they won't +do it here, my—my—wife shall take care of you!'</p> + +<p>He lifted her hand and kissed it, putting all the pity and bitter +indignation of his heart into the action. Margaret, seeing his +emotion, whimpered too; otherwise she was impassive.</p> + +<p>He left her, went into the next room, and had a long energetic talk +with Margaret's sister-in-law. The woman, half ashamed, half +recalcitrant, in the end promised amendment. What business it was +of his she could not imagine; but the small weekly addition which +he offered to make to Margaret's payments, while it showed him a +greater fool than before, made it impossible to put his meddling +aside. She promised that Margaret should be brought into the warm, +that she should have better clothes, and that the children should +be kept from plaguing her.</p> + +<p>Then he departed, and mounting the moor again, spent an hour or two +wandering among the boggy fissures of the top, or sitting on the +high edges of the heather, looking down over the dark and craggy +splendour of the hill immediately around and beneath him, on and +away through innumerable paling shades of distance to the blue +Welsh border. His speculative fervour was all gone. Reuben, Hannah, +Margaret, these figures of suffering and pain had brought him close +to earth again. The longing for a human hand in his, for a home, +wife, children to spend himself upon, to put at least for a while +between him and this unconquerable 'something which infects the +world,' became in this long afternoon a physical pain not to be +resisted. He thought more and more steadily of Lucy, schooling +himself, idealising her.</p> + +<p>It was the Sunday before Whitsunday. David was standing outside a +trim six-roomed house in the upper part of the little Lancashire +town of Wakely, waiting for Lucy Purcell.</p> + +<p>She came at last, flushed and discomposed, pulling the door hastily +to behind her.</p> + +<p>They walked on a short distance, talking disconnectedly of the +weather, the mud, and the way on to the moor, till she said +suddenly:</p> + +<p>'I wish people wouldn't be so good and so troublesome!'</p> + +<p>'Did Robert wish to keep you at home?' inquired David, laughing.</p> + +<p>'Well, he didn't want me to come out with—anybody but him,' she +said, flushing. 'And it's so bad, because one can't be cross. I +don't know how it is, but they're just the best people here that +ever walked!'</p> + +<p>She looked up at him seriously, an unusual energy in her slight +face.</p> + +<p>'What!—a town of saints?' asked David, mocking. It was so +difficult to take Lucy seriously.</p> + +<p>She tossed her head and insisted.</p> + +<p>Talking very fast, and not very consecutively, she gave him an +account, so far as she was able, of the life lived in this little +town, a typical Lancashire town of the smaller and more homogeneous +kind. All the people worked in two large spinning mills, or in a +few smaller factories representing dependent industries, such as +reed-making. Their work was pleasant to them. Lucy complained, with +the natural resentment of the idle who see their place in the world +jeopardised by the superfluous energy of the workers, that she +could never get the mill girls to say that the mill hours were too +long. The heat tried them, made appetites delicate, and lung +mischief common. But the only thing which really troubled them was +'half-time.' Socially everybody knew everybody. They were +passionately interested in each other's lives and in the town's +affairs. And their religion, of a strong Protestant type expressed +in various forms of Dissent, formed an ideal bond which kept the +little society together, and made an authority which all +acknowledged, an atmosphere in which all moved.</p> + +<p>The picture she drew was, in truth, the picture of one of those +social facts on which perhaps the future of England depends. She +drew it girlishly, quite unconscious of its large bearings, +gossiping about this person and that, with a free expenditure of +very dogmatic opinion on the habits and ways which were not hers. +But, on the whole, the picture emerged, and David had never liked +her talk so well. The little self-centred thing had somehow been +made to wonder and admire; which is much for all of us.</p> + +<p>And she, meanwhile, was instantly sensible that she was in a happy +vein, that she pleased. Her eyes danced under her pretty spring +hat. How proud she was to walk with him—that he had come all this +way to see her! As she shyly glanced him up and down, she would +have liked the village street to be full of gazers, and was almost +loth to leave the public way for the loneliness of the moor. What +other girl in Wakely had the prospect of such a young man to take +her out? Oh! would he ever, ever 'ask her'—would he even come +again?</p> + +<p>At last, after a steep and muddy climb, through uninviting back +ways, they were out upon the moor. An apology for a moor in David's +eyes! For the hills which surround the valley of the Irwell, in +which Wakely lies, are, for the most part, green and rolling +ground, heatherless and cragless. Still, from the top they looked +over a wide and wind-blown scene, the bolder moors of Rochdale +behind them, and in front the long green basin in which the Irwell +rises. Along the valley bottoms lay the mills, with their +surrounding rows of small stone houses. Up on the backs of the +moors crouched the old farms, which have watched the mills come, +and will perhaps see them go; and here and there a grim-looking +colliery marked a fold of the hill. The landscape on a spring day +has a bracing bareness, which is not without exhilaration. The wind +blows freshly, the sun lies broadly on the hills. England, on the +whole at her busiest and best, spreads before you.</p> + +<p>They were still on the top when it occurred to them that they had a +long walk in prospect—for they talked of getting to the source of +the Irwell—and that it was dinner-time. So they sat down under one +of the mortarless stone walls which streak the moors, and David +brought out the meal that was in his pockets. They ate with +laughter and chat. Pigeons passed overhead, going and coming from +an old farm about a hundred yards away; the sky above them had a +lark for voice singing his loudest; and in the next field a peewit +was wheeling and crying. The few trees in sight were struggling +fast into leaf. Nature even in this cold north was gay to-day and +young.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, in the midst of their meal, by a natural caprice and +reaction of the mind, as David sat looking down on slate roofs and +bare winding valley, across the pale, rain-beaten grass of the +moor, all the northern English detail vanished from his eyes. For +one suffocating instant he saw nothing but a great picture gallery, +its dimly storied walls and polished floor receding into the +distance. In front Velazquez' 'Infanta,' and before it a figure +bent over a canvas. Every line and tint stood out. He heard the +light varying voice, caught the complex grace of the woman, the +strenuous effort of the artist.</p> + +<p>Enough! He closed his eyes for one bitter instant; then raised them +again to England and to Lucy.</p> + +<p>There under the wall, while they were still lingering in the sun, +he asked Lucy Purcell to be his wife. And Lucy, hardly believing +her own foolish ears, and in a whirl of bliss and exultation past +expression, nevertheless put on a few maidenly airs and graces, +coquetted a little, would not be kissed all at once, talked of her +father and the war that must be faced, and finally surrendered, +held up her scarlet cheek for her lord's caress, and then sat +speechless, hand in hand with him.</p> + +<p>But Nature had its way. They rambled on, crossing the stone stiles +which link the bare green fields on the side of the moor. When a +stile appeared, Lucy would send him on in front, so that she might +mount decorously, and then descend trembling upon his hand.</p> + +<p>Presently they came to a spot where the path crossed a little +streamlet, and then climbed a few rough steps in a steep bank, and +so across a stile at the top.</p> + +<p>David ran up, leapt the stile, and waited. But he had time to study +the distant course of their walk, as well as the burnt and +lime-strewn grass about him, for no Lucy appeared. He leant over +the wall, and to his amazement saw her sitting on one of the stone +steps below, crying.</p> + +<p>He was beside her in an instant. But he could not loosen the hands +clasped over her eyes.</p> + +<p>'Oh, why did you do it?—why did you do it? I'm not good enough—I +never shall be good enough!'</p> + +<p>For the first time since their formal kiss he put his arms round +her. And as she, at last forced to look up, found herself close to +the face which, in its dark refinement and power, seemed to her +to-day so far, so wildly above her deserts, she saw it all +quivering and changed. Never had little Lucy risen to such a +moment; never again, perhaps, could she so rise. But in that +instant of passionate humility she had dropped healing and life +into a human heart.</p> + +<p>Yet, was it Lucy he kissed?—Lucy he gathered in his arms? Or was +it not rather Love itself?—the love he had sought, had missed, but +must still seek—and seek?</p> + + +<h2><a name="BOOK_IV_MATURITY" id="BOOK_IV_MATURITY"></a>BOOK IV<br /><br /> +MATURITY</h2> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-4" id="CHAPTER_I-4"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<p>'Daddy!' said a little voice.</p> + +<p>The owner of it, a child of four, had pushed open a glass door, and +was craning his curly head through it towards a garden that lay +beyond.</p> + +<p>'Yes, you rascal, what do you want now?'</p> + +<p>'Daddy, come here!'</p> + +<p>The voice had a certain quick stealthiness, through which, however, +a little tremor of apprehension might be detected.</p> + +<p>David Grieve, who was smoking and reading in the garden, came up to +where his small son stood, and surveyed him.</p> + +<p>'Sandy, you've been getting into mischief.'</p> + +<p>The child laid hold of his father, dragged him into the little +hall, and towards the dining-room door. Arrived there, he stopped, +put a finger to his lip, and laid his head plaintively on one side.</p> + +<p>'Zere's an <i>aw</i> ful sight in zere, Daddy.'</p> + +<p>'You monkey, what have you been up to?'</p> + +<p>David opened the door. Sandy first hung back, then, in a sudden +enthusiasm, ran in, and pointed a thumb pink with much sucking at +the still uncleared dinner-table, which David and the child's +mother had left half an hour before.</p> + +<p>'Zere's a pie!' he said, exultantly.</p> + +<p>And a pie there was. First, all the salt-cellars had been upset +into the middle of the table, then the bits of bread left beside +the plates had been crumbled in, then—the joys of wickedness +growing—the mustard-pot had been emptied over the heap, some +bananas had been stuck unsteadily here and there to give it +feature, and finally, in a last orgie of crime, a cruet of vinegar +had been discharged on the whole, and the brown streams were now +meandering across the clean tablecloth.</p> + +<p>'Sandy, you little wretch!' cried his father, 'don't you know that +you have been told again and again not to touch the things on the +table? Hold out your hand!'</p> + +<p>Sandy held out a small paw, whimpered beforehand, but never ceased +all the time to watch his father with eyes which seemed to be +quietly on the watch for experiences.</p> + +<p>David administered two smart pats, then rang the bell for the +housemaid. Sandy stationed himself on the rug opposite his father, +and looked at his reddened hand, considering.</p> + +<p>'I don't seem to mind much, Daddy!' he said at last, looking up.</p> + +<p>'No, sir. Daddy'll have to try and find something that you +<i>will</i> mind.'</p> + +<p>The tone was severe, and David did his best to frown. In reality +his eyes, under the frown, devoured his small son, and he had some +difficulty in restraining himself from kissing the hand he had just +slapped.</p> + +<p>When the housemaid entered, however, she showed a temper which +would clearly have slapped Master Sandy without the smallest +compunction.</p> + +<p>The little fellow stood and listened to her laments and +denunciations with the same grave considering eyes, slipped his +hand inside his father's for protection, watched, like one +enchained, the gradual demolition of the pie, and when it was all +gone, and the tablecloth removed, he gave a long sigh of relief.</p> + +<p>'Say you're sorry, sir, to Jane, for giving her so much extra +trouble,' commanded his father.</p> + +<p>'I'm soddy, Jane,' said the child, nodding to her; 'but it was a +p—<i>wecious</i> pie, wasn't it?'</p> + +<p>The mixture of humour and candour in his baby eye was irresistible. +Even Jane laughed, and David took him up and swung him on to his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>'Come out, young man, into the garden, where I can keep an eye on +you. Oh! by the way, are you all right again?'</p> + +<p>This inquiry was uttered as they reached the garden seat, and David +perched the child on his knee.</p> + +<p>'Yes, I'm <i>bet</i>—ter,' said the child slowly, evidently +unwilling to relinquish the dignity of illness all in a moment.</p> + +<p>'Well, what was the matter with you that you gave poor mammy such a +bad night?'</p> + +<p>The child was silent a moment, pondering how to express himself.</p> + +<p>'I was—I was a little sick outside, and a little <i>feelish</i> +inside'—he wavered on the difficult word. 'Mammy said I had the +wrong dinner yesterday at Aunt Dora's. Zere was plums—<i>lots</i> +o' plums!' said the child, clasping his hands on his knee, and +hunching himself up in a sudden ecstasy.</p> + +<p>'Well, don't go and have the wrong dinner again at Aunt Dora's. I +must tell her to give you nothing but rice pudding.'</p> + +<p>'Zen I shan't go zere any more,' said the child with determination.</p> + +<p>'What, you love plums more than Aunt Dora?'</p> + +<p>'No—o,' said Sandy dubiously, 'but plums is good!'</p> + +<p>And, with a sigh of reminiscence, he threw himself back in his +father's arm, being, in fact, tired after his bad night and the +further excitement of the 'pie.' The thumb slipped into the pink +mouth, and with the other hand the child began dreamily to pull at +one of his fair curls. The attitude meant going to sleep, and David +had, in fact, hardly settled him, and drawn a light overcoat which +lay near over his small legs, before the fringed eyelids sank.</p> + +<p>David held him tenderly, delighting in the weight, the warmth, the +soft even breath of his sleeping son. He managed somehow to relight +his pipe, and then sat on, dreamily content, enjoying the warm +September sunshine, and letting the book he had brought out lie +unopened.</p> + +<p>The garden in which he sat was an oblong piece of ground, with a +central grass plat and some starved and meagre borders on either +hand. The gravel in the paths had blackened, so had the leaves of +the privets and the lilacs, so also had the red-brick walls of the +low homely house closing up the other end of the garden. Seventy +years ago this house had stood pleasantly amid fields on the +northern side of Manchester; its shrubs had been luxuriant, its +roses unstained. Now on every side new houses in oblong gardens had +sprung up, and the hideous smoke plague of Manchester had descended +on the whole district, withering and destroying.</p> + +<p>Yet David had a great affection for his house, and it deserved it. +It had been built in the days when there was more elbow-room in the +world than now. The three sitting-rooms on the ground floor opened +sociably into each other, and were pleasantly spacious, and the one +story of bedrooms above contained, at any rate in the eyes of the +tenants of the house, a surprising amount of accommodation. When +all was said, however, it remained, no doubt, a very modest +dwelling, at a rent of somewhere about ninety pounds a year; but as +David sat contemplating it this afternoon, there rose in him again +the astonishment with which he had first entered upon it, +astonishment that he, David Grieve, should ever have been able to +attain to it.</p> + +<p>'Sandy! come here directly! Where are you, sir?'</p> + +<p>David heard the voice calling in the hall, and raised his own.</p> + +<p>'Lucy! all right!—he's here.'</p> + +<p>The glass door opened, and Lucy came out. She was very smartly +arrayed in a new blue dress which she had donned since dinner; yet +her looks were cross and tired.</p> + +<p>'Oh, David, how stupid! Why isn't the child dressed? Just look what +an object! I sent Lizzie for him ten minutes ago, and she couldn't +find him.'</p> + +<p>'Then Lizzie has even less brains than I supposed,' said David +composedly, 'seeing that she had only to look out of a back window. +What are you going to do with him?'</p> + +<p>'Take him out with me, of course. There are the Watsons of +Fallowfield, they pestered me to bring him, and they're at home +Saturdays. And aren't you coming too?'</p> + +<p>'Madam, you are unreasonable!' said David, smiling, and putting +down his pipe he laid an affectionate hand on his wife's arm. 'I +went careering about the world with you last Saturday and the +Saturday before, and this week end I must take for reading. There +is an Oxford man who has been writing me infuriated letters this +week because I won't let him know whether we will take up his +pamphlet or no. I must get that read, and a good many other things, +before to-morrow night.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I know!' said Lucy, pettishly. 'There's always something in the +way of what I want. Soon I shan't see anything of you at all; it +will be all business, and yet not a penny more to spend! Well, +then, give me Sandy.'</p> + +<p>David hesitated.</p> + +<p>'Do you think you'll take him?' he said, bending over the little +fellow. 'He doesn't look a bit himself to-day. It's those abominable +plums of Dora's!'</p> + +<p>He spoke with fierceness, as though Dora had been the veriest +criminal.</p> + +<p>'Well, but what nonsense!' cried Lucy; 'they don't upset other +children. I can't think what's wrong with him.'</p> + +<p>'He isn't like other children; he's of a finer make,' said David, +laughing at his own folly, but more than half sincere in it all the +same.</p> + +<p>Lucy laughed too, and was appeased. She bent down to look at him, +confessed that he was pale, and that she had better not take him +lest there should be catastrophes.</p> + +<p>'Well, then, I must go alone,' she said, turning away +discontentedly. 'I don't know what's the good of it. Nobody cares to +see me without him or you.'</p> + +<p>The last sentence came out with a sudden energy, and as she looked +back towards him he saw that her cheek was flushed.</p> + +<p>'What, in that new gown?' he said, smiling, and looked her up and +down approvingly.</p> + +<p>Her expression brightened.</p> + +<p>'Do you like it?' she said, more graciously.</p> + +<p>'Very much. You look as young as when I first teased you! Come here +and let me give you a "nip for new."'</p> + +<p>She came docilely. He pretended to pinch the thin wrist she held +out to him, and then, stooping, lightly kissed it.</p> + +<p>'Now go and enjoy yourself,' he said, 'and I'll take care of Sandy. +Don't tire yourself. Take a cab when you want one.'</p> + +<p>She was moving away when a thought struck her.</p> + +<p>'What are you going to say to Lord Driffield?'</p> + +<p>A cloud crossed David's look. 'Well, what am I to say to him? You +don't really want to go, Lucy?'</p> + +<p>In an instant the angry look came back.</p> + +<p>'Oh, very well!' she cried. 'If you're ashamed of me, and don't care +to take me about with you, just say it, that's all!'</p> + +<p>'As if I wanted to go myself!' he remonstrated. 'Why, I should be +bored to death; so would you. I don't believe there would be a +person in the house whom either of us would ever have seen before, +except Lord Driffield. And I can see Lord Driffield, and his books +too, in much more comfortable ways than by going to stay with him.'</p> + +<p>Lucy stood silent a moment, trying to contain herself, then she +broke out:</p> + +<p>'That is just like you!' she said in a low bitter voice; 'you won't +take any chance of getting on. It's always the way. People say to +me that you're so clever—that you're thought so much of in +Manchester, you might be anything you like. And what's the good? +—that's what I think! If you do earn more money you won't let us +live any differently. It's always, can't we do without this? and +can't we do without that? And as to knowing people, you won't take +any trouble at all! Why can't we get on, and make new friends, and +be—be—as good as anybody? other people do. I believe you think I +should disgrace myself—I should put my knife in my mouth, or +something, if you took me to Lord Driffield's. I can behave myself +<i>perfectly</i>, thank you.'</p> + +<p>And Lucy looked at her husband in a perfect storm of temper and +resentment. Her prettiness had lost much of its first bloom; the +cheek-bones, always too high, were now more prominent than in first +youth, and the whole face had a restless thinness which robbed it +of charm, save at certain rare moments of unusual moral or physical +well-being. David, meeting his wife's sparkling eyes, felt a pang +compounded of many mixed compunctions and misgivings.</p> + +<p>'Look here, Lucy!' he said, laying down his pipe, and stretching +out his free hand to her, 'don't say those things. They hurt me, and +you don't mean them. Come and sit down a moment, and let's make up +our minds about Lord Driffield.'</p> + +<p>Unwillingly she let herself be drawn down beside him on the garden +bench. These quarrels and reproaches were becoming a necessity and +a pleasure to her. David felt, with a secret dread, that the habit +of them had been growing upon her.</p> + +<p>'I haven't done so very badly for you, have I?' he said +affectionately, as she sat down, taking her two gloved hands in his +one.</p> + +<p>Lucy vehemently drew them away.</p> + +<p>'Oh, if you mean to say,' she cried, her eyes flaming, 'that I had +no money, and ought just to be thankful for what I can get, just +<i>say it</i>, that's all.'</p> + +<p>This time David flushed.</p> + +<p>'I think, perhaps, you'd better go and pay your calls,' he said, +after a minute; 'we can talk about this letter some other time.'</p> + +<p>Lucy sat silent her chest heaving. As soon as ever in these little +scenes between them he began to show resentment, she began to give +way.</p> + +<p>'I didn't mean that,' she said, uncertainly, in a low voice looking +ready to cry.</p> + +<p>'Well, then, suppose you don't say it,' replied David, after a +pause. 'If you'll try and believe it, Lucy, I don't want to go to +Lord Driffield's simply and solely because I am sure we should +neither of us enjoy it. Lady Driffield is a stuck-up sort of +person, who only cares about her own set and relations. We should +be patronised, we should find it difficult to be ourselves—there +would be no profit for anybody. Lord Driffield would be too busy to +look after us; besides, he has more power anywhere than in his own +house.'</p> + +<p>'No one could patronise you,' said Lucy, firing up again.</p> + +<p>'I don't know,' said David, with a smile and a stretch; 'I'm shy—on +other people's domains. If they'd come here I should know how to +deal with them.'</p> + +<p>Lucy was silent for a while, twisting her mouth discontentedly. +David observed her. Suddenly he held out his hand to her again, +relenting.</p> + +<p>'Do you really want to go so much, Lucy?'</p> + +<p>'Of course I do,' she said, pouting, in a quick injured tone. +'It's—it's a chance, and I want to see what it's like; and I +should hardly have to buy anything new, unless it's a new bonnet, +and I can make that myself.'</p> + +<p>David sat considering.</p> + +<p>'Well!' he said at last, trying to stifle his sigh, 'I don't mind. +I'll write and accept.'</p> + +<p>Lucy's eye gleamed. She edged closer to her husband.</p> + +<p>'You won't mind very much? It's only two nights. Isn't Sandy +cramping your arm?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, we shall get through, I dare say. No—the boy's all right. I +<i>say</i>'—with a groan—'shall I have to get a new dress suit?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, of <i>course</i>,' said Lucy, with indignant eagerness.</p> + +<p>'Well, then, if you don't go off, and let me earn some money, we +shall be in the Bankruptcy Court. Good-bye! I shall take the boy +into the study, and cover him up while I work.'</p> + +<p>Lucy stood before him an instant, then stooped and kissed him on +the forehead. She would have liked to say a penitent word or two, +but there was still something hard and hot in her heart which +prevented her. Yet her husband, as he sat there, seemed to her the +handsomest and most desirable of men.</p> + +<p>David nodded to her kindly, and sat watching her slim straight +figure as she tripped away from him across the garden and +disappeared into the house. Then he bent over Sandy and raised him +in his arms.</p> + +<p>'Don't wake, Sandy!' he said softly, as the little man half opened +his eyes—'Daddy's going to put you to bye in the study.'</p> + +<p>And he carried him in, the child breathing heavily against his +shoulder, and deposited his bundle on an old horsehair sofa in the +corner of his own room, turning the little face away from the +light, and wrapping up the bare legs.</p> + +<p>Then he sat down to his work. The room in which he sat was made for +work. It was walled with plain deal bookcases, which were filled +from floor to ceiling, largely with foreign books, as the paper +covers testified.</p> + +<p>For the rest, anyone looking round would have noticed a spacious +writing-table in the window, a large and battered armchair beside +the fire, a photograph of Lucy over the mantelpiece, oddly flanked +by an engraving of Goethe and the head of the German historian +Ranke, a folding cane chair which was generally used by Lucy +whenever she visited the room, and the horsehair sofa, whereon +Sandy was now sleeping amid a surrounding litter of books and +papers which only just left room for his small person. If there +were other chairs and tables, they were covered deep in literature +of one kind or another, and did not count. The large window looked +on the garden, and the room opened at the back into the +drawing-room, and at one side into the dining-room. On the rug +slept the short-haired black collie, whom David had once protected +from Louie's dislike—old, blind, and decrepit, but still beloved, +especially by Sandy, and still capable of barking a toothless +defiance at the outer world.</p> + +<p>It was a room to charm a student's eyes, especially on this +September afternoon with its veiled and sleepy sun stealing in from +the garden, and David fell into his chair, refilled his pipe, and +stretched out his hand for a batch of manuscript which lay on his +table, with an unconscious sigh of satisfaction.</p> + +<p>The manuscript represented a pamphlet on certain trade questions +by a young Oxford economist. For the firm of Grieve & Co., of +Manchester, had made itself widely known for some five years past +to the intelligence of northern England by its large and increasing +trade in pamphlets of a political, social, or economical kind. They +supplied mechanics' institutes, political associations, and +workmen's clubs; nay, more, they had a system of hawkers of their +own, which bade fair to extend largely. To be taken up by Grieve & +Co. was already an object to young politicians, inventors, or +social reformers, who might wish for one reason or another to bring +their names or their ideas before the working-class of the North. +And Grieve & Co. meant David, sitting smoking and reading in his +armchair.</p> + +<p>He gave the production now in his hands some careful reading for +half an hour or more, then he suddenly threw it down.</p> + +<p>'Stuff and nonsense!' he said to himself. 'The man has got the facts +about those Oldham mills wrong somehow, I'm certain of it. Where's +that letter I had last week?' and, jumping up, he took a bunch of +keys out of his pocket and opened a drawer in his writing-table. +The drawer contained mostly bundles of letters, and to the right +hand a number of loose ones recently received, and not yet sorted +or tied. He looked through these, found what he wanted, and was +about to close the drawer when his attention was caught by a thick +black note-book lying towards the back of it. He took it out, +reminded by it of something he had meant to do, and carried it off +with the Oldham letter to his chair. Once settled there again, he +turned himself to the confutation of his pamphleteer. But not for +long. The black book on his knee exercised a disturbing influence; +his under-mind began to occupy itself with it, and at last the +Oldham letter was hastily put down, and, taking out a pocket pen, +David, with a smile at his own delinquency, opened the black book, +turned over many closely written pages, and settled down to write +another.</p> + +<p>The black book was his journal. He had kept it intermittently since +his marriage, rather as a journal of thought than as a journal of +events, and he had to add to it to-day some criticisms of a recent +book by Renan which had been simmering in his mind for a week or +two. Still it contained a certain number of records of events, and, +taken generally, its entries formed an epitome of everything of +most import—practical, moral, or intellectual—which had entered +into David Grieve's life during the eight years since his marriage.</p> + +<p>For instance:—</p> + +<p>'<i>April</i> 10, 1876.—Our son was born this morning between +three and four o'clock, after more than three years of marriage, +when both of us had begun to despair a little. Now that he is come, +I am decidedly interested in him, but the paternal relation hardly +begins at birth, as the mother's does. The father, who has suffered +nothing, cannot shut his eyes to the physical ugliness and +weakness, the clash of pain and effort, in which the future man +begins; the mother, who has suffered everything, seems by a +special spell of nature to feel nothing after the birth but the +mystery and wonder of the <i>new creature</i>, the life born from her +life—flesh of her flesh—breath of her breath. Else why is +Lucy—who bears pain hardly, and had looked forward much less +eagerly to the child, I think, than I had—so proud and content +just to lie with the hungry creature beside her? while I am half +inclined to say, What! so little for so much?—and to spend so full +an energy in resenting the pains of maternity as an unmeaning blot +on the scheme of things, that I have none left for a more genial +emotion. Altogether, I am disappointed in myself as a father. I +seem to have no imagination, and at present I would rather touch a +loaded torpedo than my son.'</p> + +<p>'<i>April 30</i>.—Lucy wishes to have the child christened at St. +Damian's, and, though it goes against me, I have made no objection. +And if she wishes it I shall go. It is not a question of one's own +personal consistency or sincerity. The new individuality seems to +me to have a claim in the matter, which I have no business to +override because I happen to think in this way or that. My son when +he grows up may be an ardent Christian. Then, if I had failed to +comply with the national religious requirement, and had let him go +unbaptized, because of my own beliefs or non-beliefs, he might, I +think, rightly reproach me: "I was helpless, and you took +advantage."</p> + +<p>'Education is different. The duty of the parent to hand on what is +best and truest in his own mind to the child is clear. Besides, +the child goes on to carry what has been taught him into the +open <i>agora</i> of the world's thought, and may there test its +value as he pleases. But the omission, in a sense irreparable, +of a definite and customary act like baptism from a child's +existence, when hereafter the omission may cause him a pang quite +disproportionate to any likes or dislikes of mine in the matter, +appears to me unjust.</p> + +<p>'I talk as if Lucy were not concerned!—or Dora! In reality I shall +do as Lucy wills. Only they must not misunderstand me for the +future. If my son lives, his father will not hide his heart from +him.</p> + +<p>'I notice for the first time that Lucy is anxious and troubled +about <i>her</i> father. She would like now to be friends, and she +took care that the news of the child's birth should be conveyed to +him at once through a common acquaintance. But he has taken no +notice. In some natures the seeds of affection seem to fall only on +the sand and rock of the heart, where because they have "no depth +of earth they wither away;" while the seeds of hatred find the rich +and good ground, where they spring and grow a hundred-fold.'</p> + +<p>'<i>December</i> 8, 1877.—I have just been watching Sandy on the +rug between the two dogs—Tim, and the most adorable black and tan +<i>dachshund</i> that Lord Driffield has just given me. Sandy had a +bit of biscuit, and was teasing his friends—first thrusting it +under their noses, and then, just as they were preparing to gulp, +drawing it back with a squeal of joy. The child's evident mastery +and sense of humour, the grave puzzled faces of the dogs, delighted +me. Then a whim seized me. I knelt down on the rug, and asked him +to give me some. He held out the biscuit and laid it against my +lips; I saw his eye waver; there was a gleam of mischief—the +biscuit was half snatched away, and I felt absurdly chagrined. But +in an instant the little face melted into the sweetest, keenest +smile, and he almost choked me in his eagerness to thrust the +biscuit down my throat. "Poor Daddy! Daddy <i>so</i> hungry."</p> + +<p>'I recall with difficulty that I once thought him ugly and +unattractive, poor little worm! On the contrary, it is quite clear +that, whatever he may be when he grows up—I don't altogether trust +his nose and mouth—for a child he is a beauty! His great brown +eyes—so dark and noticeable beneath the fair hair in the little +apple-blossom face—let you into the very heart of him. It is by no +means a heart of unmixed goodness. There is a curious aloofness in +his look sometimes, as of some pure intelligence beholding good and +evil with the same even speculative mind. But this strange mood +breaks up so humanly! he has such wiles—such soft wet kisses! such +a little flute of a voice when he wants to coax or propitiate you!'</p> + +<p>'<i>March</i> 1878.—My printing business has been growing very +largely lately. I have now worked out my profit-sharing scheme with +some minuteness, and yesterday the men, John, and I had a +conference. In part, my plan is copied from that of the "Maison +Leclaire," but I have worked a good deal of my own into it. Our +English experience of this form of industrial partnership has been +on the whole unfavourable; but, after a period of lassitude, +experiments are beginning to revive. The great rock ahead lies in +one's relation to the trade unions—one must remember that.</p> + +<p>'To the practised eye the men to-day showed signs of accepting it +with cordiality, but the north-country man is before all things +cautious, and I dare say a stranger would have thought them cool +and suspicious. We meet again next week.</p> + +<p>'I must explain the thing to Lucy—it is her right. She may resent +it vehemently, as she did my refusal, in the autumn, to take +advantage of that London opening. It will, of course, restrict our +income just as it was beginning to expand quickly. I have left +myself adequate superintendence wages, a bonus on these wages +calculated in the same way as that of the men, a fixed percentage +on the capital already employed in the business and a nominal +thirty per cent, of the profits. But I can see plainly that however +the business extends, we—she and I—shall never "make our fortune" +out of it. For beyond the fifty per cent, of the profits to be +employed in bonuses on wages, and the twenty per cent, set aside +for the benefit and pension society, my thirty per cent, must +provide me with what I want for various purposes connected with the +well-being of the workers, and for the widening of our operations +on the publishing side, in a more or less propagandist spirit.</p> + +<p>'My bookselling business proper is, of course, at present outside +the scheme, and I do not see very well how anything of the kind can +be applied to it. This will be a comfort to Lucy; and just now the +trade both in old and foreign books is prosperous and brings me in +large returns. But I cannot disguise from myself that the other +experiment is likely to absorb more and more of my energies +in the future. I have from sixty to eighty men now in the +printing-office—a good set, take them altogether. They have been +gradually learning to understand me and my projects. The story of +what Leclaire was able to do for the lives and characters of his +men is wonderful!</p> + +<p>'My poor little wife! I try to explain these things to her, but she +thinks that I am merely making mad experiments with money, teaching +workmen to be "uppish" and setting employers against me. When in my +turn I do my best to get at what she means by "getting on," I find +it comes to a bigger house, more servants, a carriage, dinner +parties, and, generally, a move to London, bringing with it a +totally new circle of acquaintance who need never know exactly what +she or I rose from. She does not put all this into words, but I +think I have given it accurately.</p> + +<p>'And I should yield a great deal more than I do if I had any +conviction that these things, when got, would make her happy. But +every increase in our scale of living since we began has seemed +rather to make her restless, and fill her with cravings which yet +she can never satisfy. In reality she lives by her affections, as +most women do. One day she wants to lose sight of everyone who knew +her as Purcell's daughter, or me as Purcell's assistant; the next +she is fretting to be reconciled to her father. In the same way, +she thinks I am hard about money; she sees no attraction in the +things which fill me with enthusiasm; but at the same time, if I +were dragged into a life where I was morally starved and +discontented, she would suffer too. No, I must steer through—judge +for her and myself—and make life as pleasant to her in little ways +as it can be made.</p> + +<p>'Ah! the gospel of "getting on"—it fills me with a kind of rage. +There is an essential truth in it, no doubt, and if I had not been +carried away by it at one time, I should have far less power over +circumstances than I now have. But to square the whole of this +mysterious complex life to it—to drop into the grave at last, +having missed, because of it, all that sheds dignity and poetry on +the human lot, all that makes it worth while or sane to hope in a +destiny for man diviner and more lasting than appears—horrible!</p> + +<p>'Yet Lucy may rightly complain of me. I get dreamy—I +procrastinate. And it is unjust to expect that her ideal of social +pleasure should be the same as mine. I ought to—and I will—make +more effort to please her.'</p> + +<p>'<i>July</i> 1878.—I am in Paris again. Yesterday afternoon I +wandered about looking at those wrecks of the Commune which yet +remain. The new Hotel de Ville is rising, but the Tuileries still +stands charred and ruined against the sky, an object lesson for +Belleville. I walked up to the Arc de l'Etoile, and coming back I +strolled into a little leafy open-air restaurant for a cup of +coffee. Suddenly I recognised the place—the fountain—a largo +quicksilver ball—a little wooden pavilion festooned with coloured +lamps. It was as though eight years were wiped away.</p> + +<p>'I could not stay there. But the shock soon subsided. There is +something bewildering, de-personalising, in the difference between +one stage of life and another. In certain moods I feel scarcely a +thread of identity between my present self and myself of eight +years ago.</p> + +<p>'This morning I have seen Louie, after an interval of three years. +Montjoie keeps out of my way, and, as a matter of fact, I have +never set eyes on him since I passed him close to the Auteuil +station in July 1870. From Louie's account, he is now a confirmed +drunkard, and can hardly ever be got to do any serious work. Yet +she brought me a clay study of their little girl which he threw off +in a lucid interval two or three months ago, surely as good as +anybody or anything, astonishingly delicate and true. Just now, +apparently, he has a bad fit on, and but for my allowance to her +she tells me they would be all but destitute. It is remarkable to +see how she has taken possession of this money and with what +shrewdness she manages it. I suspect her of certain small Bourse +speculations—she has all the financial slang on the tip of her +tongue—but if so, they succeed. For she keeps herself and the +child, scornfully allows him so much for his pocket in the week, +and even, as I judge from the consideration she enjoys in the +church she frequents, finds money for her own Catholic purposes.</p> + +<p>'Louie a fervent Catholic and an affectionate mother! The mixture +of old and new in her—the fresh habits of growth imposed on the +original plant—startle me at every turn. Her Catholicism, which +resolves itself, perhaps, into the cult of a particular church and +of two or three admirable and sagacious priests, seems to me one +long intrigue of a comparatively harmless kind. It provides her +with enemies, allies, plots, battles, and surprises. It ministers, +too, to her love of colour and magnificence—a love which implies +an artistic sense, and would have been utilised young if she had +belonged to an artistic family.</p> + +<p>'But just as I am adapting myself to the new Louie the old +reappears! She was talking to me yesterday of her exertions at +Easter for the Easter decorations, and describing to me in +superlatives the final splendour of the results, and the +compliments which had been paid her by one or two of the clergy, +when the name of a lady who seems to have been connected with the +church longer than Louie has, and is evidently her rival in various +matters of pious service and charitable organisation, came to her +lips. Instantly her face flamed, and the denunciation she launched +was quite in the old Clough End and Manchester vein. I was to +understand that this person was a mean, designing, worthless +creature, a hideous object besides, and "made up," and as to her +endeavours to ingratiate herself with Father this and Father that, +the worst motives were hinted at.</p> + +<p>'Another little incident struck me more painfully still. Her +devotion to the little Cecile is astonishing. She is miserable when +the child has a finger-ache, and seems to spend most of her time in +dressing and showing her off. Yet I suspect she is often irritable +and passionate even with Cecile; the child has a shrinking quiet +way with her which is not natural. And to-day, when she was in the +middle of cataloguing Montjoie's enormities, and I was trying to +restrain her, remembering that Cecile was looking at a book on the +other side of the room, she suddenly called to the child +imperiously:</p> + +<p>'"Cecile! come here and tell your uncle what your father is!"</p> + +<p>'And, to my horror, the little creature walked across to us, and, +as though she were saying a lesson, began to <i>debiter</i> a set +speech about her father's crimes and her mother's wrongs, +containing the wildest abuse of her father, and prompted throughout +by the excited and scarlet Louie. I tried to stop it; but Louie +only pushed me away. The child rose to her part, became perfectly +white, declaimed with a shrill fury, indescribably repulsive, and +at the end sank into a chair, hardly able to stand. Then Louie +covered her with kisses, made me get wine for her, and held her +cradled in her arms till it was time for them to go.</p> + +<p>'On the way downstairs, when Cecile was in front of us, I spoke my +mind about this performance in the strongest way. But Louie only +laughed at me. "It shall be quite plain that she is <i>mine</i> and +not his! I don't run away from him; I keep him from dying on the +streets like a dog; but his child and everyone else shall know what +he is."</p> + +<p>'It is a tigress passion. Poor little child!—a thin, brown, +large-eyed creature, with rather old, affected manners, and a small +clinging hand.'</p> + +<p>'<i>July</i> 4 <i>th</i>.—Father Lenoir, Louie's director, has +just been to call upon me; Louie insisted on my going to a festival +service at St. Eulalie this morning, and introduced me to him—an +elderly, courteous, noble-faced priest of a fine type. He was +discreet, of course, and made me feel the enormous difference that +exists between an outsider and a member of the one flock. But I +gathered that the people among whom she is now thrown perfectly +understand Louie. By means of the subtle and powerful discipline of +the Church, a discipline which has absorbed the practical wisdom of +generations, they have established a hold upon her. And they work +on her also through the child. But he gave me to understand that +there had been crises; that the opportunities for and temptations +to dissolute living which beset Montjoie's wife were endless; and +it was a marvel that under such circumstances a being so wild had +yet kept straight.</p> + +<p>'I shook him warmly by the hand at parting, and thanked him from my +heart. He somewhat resented my thanks, I thought. They imported, +perhaps, a personal element into what he regards as a matter of +pure ecclesiastical practice and duty.'</p> + +<p>'<i>December</i> 25 <i>th</i>, 1878.—Lucy is still asleep; the +rest of the house is just stirring. I am in my study looking out on +the snowy garden and the frosted trees, which are as yet fair and +white, though in a few hours the breath of Manchester will have +polluted them.</p> + +<p>'Last night I went with Lucy and Dora to the midnight service at +St. Damian's. It pleased them that I went; and I thought the +service, with its bells, its resonant <i>Adeste fideles</i>, and +its white flowers, singularly beautiful and touching. And yet, in +truth, I was only happy in it because I was so far removed from it; +because the legend of Bethlehem and the mythology of the Trinity +are no longer matters of particular interest or debate with me; +because after a period of three-fourths assent, followed by one +lasting over years of critical analysis and controversial reading, +I have passed of late into a conception of Christianity far more +positive, fruitful, and human than I have yet held. I would fain +believe it the Christianity of the future. But the individual must +beware lest he wrap his personal thinking in phrases too large for +it.</p> + +<p>'Yet, at least, one may say that it is a conception which has been +gaining more and more hold on the minds of those who during the +present century have thought most deeply, and laboured most +disinterestedly in the field of Christian antiquity—who have +sought with most learning and with fewest hindrances from +circumstance to understand Christianity, whether as a history or as +a philosophy.</p> + +<p>'I have read much German during the past year, and of late a book +reviewing the whole course of religious thought in Germany since +Schleiermacher, with a mixture of exhaustive information and +brilliant style most unusual in a German, has absorbed all my spare +hours. Such a movement!—such a wealth of collective labour and +individual genius thrown into it—producing offshoots and echoes +throughout the world, transforming opinion with the slow +inevitableness which belongs to all science, possessing already a +great past and sure of a great future.</p> + +<p>'In the face of it, our orthodox public, the contented ignorance of +our clergy, the solemn assurance of our religious press—what +curious and amazing phenomena! Yet probably the two worlds have +their analogues in every religion; and what the individual has to +learn in these days at once of outward debate and of unifying +social aspiration, is "to dissent no longer with the heat of a +narrow antipathy, but with the quiet of a large sympathy."'</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-4" id="CHAPTER_II-4"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<p>A few days after Lord Driffield's warm invitation to Mr. and Mrs. +David Grieve to spend an October Saturday-to-Monday at Benet's Park +had been accepted, Lucy was sitting in the September dusk putting +some frills into Sandy's Sunday coat, when the door opened and Dora +walked in.</p> + +<p>'You do look done!' said Lucy, as she held up her cheek to her +cousin's salutation. 'What have you been about?'</p> + +<p>'They kept me late at the shop, for a Saturday,' said Dora, with a +sigh of fatigue, 'and since then I've been decorating. It's the +Dedication Festival to-morrow.'</p> + +<p>'Well, the festivals don't do <i>you</i> any good,' said Lucy, +emphatically; 'they always tire you to death. When you do get to +church, I don't believe you can enjoy anything. Why don't you let +other people have a turn now, after all these years? There's Miss +Barham, and Charlotte Corfield, and Mrs. Willan—they'd all do a +great deal more if you didn't do so much. I know that.'</p> + +<p>Lucy's cool bright eye meant, indeed, that she had heard some +remarks made of late with regard to Dora's position at St. Damian's +somewhat unfavourable to her cousin. It was said that she was +jealous of co-operation or interference on the part of new members +of the congregation in the various tasks she had been accustomed +for years past to lay upon herself in connection with the church. +She was universally held to be extraordinarily good; but both in +the large shop, where she was now forewoman, and at St. Damian's, +people were rather afraid of her, and inclined to head oppositions +to her. A certain severity had grown upon her; she was more +self-confident, though it was a self-confidence grounded always on +the authority of the Church; and some parts of the nature which at +twenty had been still soft and plastic were now tending to +rigidity.</p> + +<p>At Lucy's words she flushed a little.</p> + +<p>'How can they know as well as I what has to be done?' she said with +energy. 'The chancel screen is <i>beautiful</i>, Lucy—all yellow +fern and heather. You must go to-morrow, and take Sandy.'</p> + +<p>As she spoke she threw off her waterproof and unloosed the strings +of her black bonnet. Her dark serge dress with its white turn-down +collar and armlets—worn these last for the sake of her embroidery +work—gave her a dedicated conventual look. She was paler than of +old; the eyes, though beautiful and luminous, were no longer young, +and lines were fast deepening in the cheeks and chin, with their +round childish moulding. What had been <i>naivete</i> and tremulous +sweetness at twenty, was now conscious strength and patience. The +countenance had been fashioned—and fashioned nobly—by life; but +the tool had cut deep, and had not spared the first grace of the +woman in developing the saint. The hands especially, the long thin +hands defaced by the labour of years, which met yours in a grasp so +full of purpose and feeling, told a story and symbolised a +character.</p> + +<p>'David won't come,' said Lucy, in answer to Dora's last remark; 'he +hardly ever goes anywhere now unless he hears of some one going to +preach that he thinks he'll like.'</p> + +<p>'No—I know,' said Dora. A shade came over her face. The attitude +of David Grieve towards religion during the last four or five years +represented to her the deep disappointment of certain eager hopes, +perhaps one might almost call them ambitions, of her missionary +youth. The disappointment had brought a certain bitterness with it, +though for long years she had been sister and closest friend to +both David and his wife. And it had made her doubly sensitive with +regard to Lucy, whom she had herself brought over from the Baptist +communion to the Church, and Sandy, who was her godchild.</p> + +<p>After a pause, she hesitatingly brought a small paper book out of +the handbag she carried.</p> + +<p>'I brought you this, Lucy. Father Russell sent it you. He thinks it +the best beginning book you can have. He always gives it in the +parish; and if the mothers will only use it, it makes it so much +easier to teach the children when they come to Sunday school.'</p> + +<p>Lucy took it doubtfully. It was called 'The Mother's Catechism;' +and, opening it, she saw that it contained a series of questions +and answers, as between a mother and a child.</p> + +<p>'I don't think Sandy would understand it,' she said, slowly, as she +turned it over.</p> + +<p>'Oh yes, he would!' said Dora, eagerly. 'Why, he's nearly five, +Lucy. It's really time you began to teach him something—unless you +want him to grow up a little heathen!'</p> + +<p>The last words had a note of indignation. Lucy took no notice. She +was still turning over the book.</p> + +<p>'And I don't think David will like it,' she said, still more slowly +than before.</p> + +<p>Dora flushed.</p> + +<p>'He can't want to keep Sandy from being taught any religion at all! +It wouldn't be fair to you—or to the child. And if he won't do it, +if he isn't certain enough about what he thinks, how can he mind +your doing it?'</p> + +<p>'I don't know,' said Lucy, and paused. 'I sometimes think,' she went +on, with more energy, 'that David will be quite different some day +from what he has been. I'm sure he'll want to teach Sandy.'</p> + +<p>'He's got nothing to teach him!' cried Dora. Then she added in +another voice—a voice of wounded feeling—'If he was to be brought +up an atheist, I don't think David ought to have asked me to be +godmother.'</p> + +<p>'He shan't be brought up an atheist,' exclaimed Lucy startled. +Then, feeling the subject too much for her—for it provoked in her +a mingled train of memories which she had not words enough to +express—she turned back to her work, leaving the book on the table +and the discussion pending.</p> + +<p>'David's dreadfully late,' she said, discontentedly, looking at the +clock.</p> + +<p>'Where is he?'</p> + +<p>'Down in Ancoats, I expect. He told me he had a committee there +to-day after work, about those houses he's going to pull down. He's +got Mr. Buller and Mr. Haycraft—and'—Lucy named some half-dozen +more rich and well-known men—'to help him, and they're going to +pull down one of the worst bits of James Street, David says, and +build up new houses for working people. He's wild about it. Oh, I +know we'll have no money at all left soon!' cried Lucy indignantly, +with a shrug of her small shoulders.</p> + +<p>Dora smiled at what seemed to her a childish petulance.</p> + +<p>'Why, I'm sure you've got everything very nice, Lucy, and all you +want.'</p> + +<p>'No, indeed, I <i>haven't</i> got all I want,' said Lucy, looking +up and frowning; 'I never shall, neither. I want David to be—to +be—like everybody else. He might be a rich man to-morrow if he +wouldn't have such ideas. He doesn't think a bit about me and +Sandy. I told you what would happen when he made that division +between the bookselling and the printing, and took up with +those ideas about the men. I knew he'd come not to care about +the bookselling. And I was <i>perfectly</i> right! There's that +printing-office getting bigger and bigger, and crowds of men +waiting to be taken on, and such a lot of business doing as never +was. And are we a bit the richer? Not a penny—or hardly. It's +sickening to hear the way people talk about him! Why, they say the +last election wouldn't have been nearly so good for the Liberals +all about the North if it hadn't been for the things he's always +publishing and the two papers he started last year. He might be a +member of Parliament any day, and he wouldn't be a member of +Parliament—not he! He told me he didn't care twopence about it. +No, he doesn't care for anything but just taking <i>our</i> money +and giving it to other people—there! You may say what you like, +but it's true.'</p> + +<p>The wilful energy with which Lucy spoke the last words transformed +the small face—brought out the harder lines on it.</p> + +<p>'Well, I never know what it is that <i>you</i> want exactly,' said +Dora. 'I don't think you do yourself.'</p> + +<p>Lucy stitched silently, her thin red lips pressed together. She +knew perfectly well what she wanted, only she was ashamed to +confess it to the religious and ascetic Dora. Her ideal of living +was filled in with images and desires abundantly derived from +Manchester life, where every day she saw people grow rich rapidly, +and rise as a matter of course into that upper region of gentility, +carriages, servants, wines, and grouse-moors, whither, ever since +it had become plain to her that David could, if he chose, easily +place her there, it had been her constant craving to go. Other +people came to be gentlefolks and lord it over the land—why not +they? It made her mad, as she had said to Dora, to see <i>their</i> +money—their very own money—chucked away to other people, and they +getting no good of it, and remaining mere working booksellers and +printers as before.</p> + +<p>'Why don't you go and help him?' said Dora suddenly. 'Perhaps if +you were to go right in and see what he's doing, you wouldn't mind +it so much. You might get to like it. He doesn't want to keep +everything to himself—he wants to share with those that need. If +there were a good many others like that, perhaps there'd be fewer +awful things happening down at Ancoats.'</p> + +<p>A sigh rose to her lips. Her beautiful eyes grew sad.</p> + +<p>'Well, I did try once or twice,' said Lucy, pettishly, 'but I've +always told you that sort of thing isn't in my line. Of course I +understand about giving away, and all that. But he'll hardly let +you give away at all! He says it's pauperising the people. And the +things he wants me to do—I never seem to do 'em right, and I can't +get to care a bit about them.'</p> + +<p>The tone in her voice betrayed a past experience which had been in +some way trying and discouraging to a fine natural vanity.</p> + +<p>Dora did not answer. She played absently with the little book on +the table.</p> + +<p>'Oh! but he's going to let us accept the invitation to Benet's +Park—I didn't tell you that,' said Lucy suddenly, her face +clearing.</p> + +<p>Dora was startled.</p> + +<p>'Why, I thought you told me he wouldn't go?'</p> + +<p>'So I did. But—well, I let out!' said Lucy, colouring.</p> + +<p>He's changed his mind. But I'm rather in a fright, Dora, though I +don't tell him. Think of that big house and all those servants—I'm +more frightened of <i>them</i> than of anybody! I say, <i>do</i> you think +my new dresses'll do? You'll come up and look at them, won't you? +Not that you're much use about dresses.'</p> + +<p>Dora was profoundly interested and somewhat bewildered. That her +little cousin Lucy, Purcell's daughter and Daddy's niece, should be +going to stay as an invited guest in a castle, with an earl and +countess, was very amazing. Was it because the Radicals had got the +upper hand so much at the election? She could not understand it, +but some of her old girlishness, her old interest in small womanish +trifles, came back upon her, and she discussed the details of what +Lucy might expect so eagerly that Lucy was quite delighted with +her.</p> + +<p>In the middle of their talk a step was heard in the hall.</p> + +<p>'Ah, there he is!' said Lucy; 'now we'll ring for supper, and I'll +go and get ready.'</p> + +<p>Dora sat alone for a few minutes, and then David came in.</p> + +<p>'Ah! Dora, this is nice. Lucy says you will stay to supper. We get +so busy, you and I, we see each other much too seldom.'</p> + +<p>He spoke in his most cordial, brotherly tone, and, standing on the +rug with his back to the fire, he looked down upon her with evident +pleasure.</p> + +<p>As for her, though the throb of her young passion had been so soon +and so sternly silenced, it was still happiness to her to be in the +same room with David Grieve, and any unusual kindness from him, or +a long talk with him, would often send her back to her little room +in Ancoats stored with a cheerful warmth of soul which helped her +through many days. For of late years she had been more liable than +of old to fits of fretting—fretting about her father, about her +own sins and other people's, about the little worries of her +Sunday-school class, or the little rubs of church work. The +contact with a nature so large and stimulating, though sometimes +it angered and depressed her through the influence of religious +considerations, was yet on the whole of infinite service to her, of +more service than she knew.</p> + +<p>'Have you forgiven me for upsetting Sandy?' she asked him, with a +smile.</p> + +<p>'I'm on the way to it. I left him just now prancing about Lucy's +bed, and making an abominable noise. She told him to be quiet, +whereupon he indignantly informed her that he was "a dwagon hunting +wats." So I imagine he hasn't had "the wrong dinner" to-day.'</p> + +<p>They both laughed.</p> + +<p>'And you have been in Ancoats?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said David, tossing back his black hair with an animated +gesture, and thrusting his hands into his pockets. 'Yes—we are +getting on. We have got the whole of that worst James Street court +into our hands. We shall begin pulling down directly, and the plans +for the new buildings are almost ready. And we have told all the +old tenants that they shall have a prior claim on the new rooms if +they choose to come back. Some will; for a good many others of +course we shall be too respectable, though I am set on keeping the +plans as simple and the rents as low as possible.'</p> + +<p>Dora sat looking at him with somewhat perplexed eyes.</p> + +<p>Her Christianity had been originally of the older High Church type, +wherein the ideal of personal holiness had not yet been fused with +the ideal of social service. The care of the poor and needy was, of +course, indispensable to the Christian life; but she thought first +and most of bringing them to church, and to the blessing and +efficacy of the sacraments; then of giving them money when they +were sick, and assuring to them the Church's benediction in dying. +The modern fuss about overcrowded houses and insanitary +conditions—the attack on bricks and mortar—the preaching of +temperance, education, thrift—these things often seemed to +Christian people of Dora's type and day, if they spoke their true +minds, to be tinged with atheism and secularism. They were jealous +all the time for something better. They instinctively felt that the +preeminence of certain ideas, most dear to them, was threatened by +this absorption in the detail of the mere human life.</p> + +<p>Something of this it was that passed vaguely through Dora's mind as +she sat listening to David's further talk about his Ancoats scheme; +and at last, influenced, perhaps, by a half-conscious realisation +of her demur—it was only that—he let it drop.</p> + +<p>'What is that book?' he said, his quick eye detecting the little +paper-covered volume on Lucy's table. And, stepping forward, he +took it up.</p> + +<p>Dora unexpectedly found her voice a little husky as she replied, +and had to clear her throat.</p> + +<p>'It is a book I brought for Lucy. Sandy is a baptized Christian, +David. Lucy wants to teach him, so I brought her this little +Catechism, which Father Russell recommends.'</p> + +<p>David turned the book over in silence. He read a passage concerning +the Virgin Mary; another, in which the child asked about the number +and names of the Archangels, gave a detailed answer; another in +which Dissenters were handled with an acrimony which contrasted +with a general tone of sweetness and unction.</p> + +<p>David laid it down on the mantelpiece.</p> + +<p>'No, Dora, I can't have Sandy taught out of this.'</p> + +<p>He spoke with dignity, but with an endeavour to make his tone as +gentle as possible.</p> + +<p>Dora was silent a moment; then she broke out:</p> + +<p>'What will you teach him, then? Is he to be a Christian at all?'</p> + +<p>'In a sense, yes; with all my heart, yes! so far, at least, as his +father has any share in the matter.'</p> + +<p>'And is his mother to have no voice?' Dora went on with growing +bitterness and hurry. 'And as for me—why did you let me be his +godmother? I take it seriously, and I may do nothing.'</p> + +<p>'You may do everything,' he said, sitting down beside her, 'except +teach him extreme matter of this kind, which, because I am what I +am, will make a critic of the child before his time. I am not a +bigot, Dora! I shall not interfere with Lucy; she would not teach +him in this way. She talks to him; and she instinctively feels for +me, and what she says comes softly and vaguely to him. It is +different with things like this, set down in black and white, and +to be learnt by heart. You must remember that half of it seems to +me false history, and some of it false morals.'</p> + +<p>He looked at her anxiously. The jarring note was hateful to him. He +had always taken for granted that Lucy was under Dora's influence +religiously—had perhaps made it an excuse for a gradual withdrawal +of his inmost mind from his wife, which in reality rested on quite +other reasons. But his heart was full of dreams about his son. He +could not let Dora have her way there.</p> + +<p>'Oh, how different it is,' cried Dora, in a low, intense voice, +twining her hands together, 'from what I once thought!'</p> + +<p>'No!' he said, vehemently, 'there is no real difference between you +and me—there never can be; teach Sandy to be good and to love you! +That's what I should like!'</p> + +<p>His eyes were full of emotion, but he smiled. Dora, however, could +not respond. The inner tension was too strong. She turned away, and +began fidgeting with Lucy's workbag.</p> + +<p>Then a small voice and a preparatory turmoil were heard outside.</p> + +<p>'Auntie Dora! Auntie Dora!' cried Sandy, rushing in with a hop, +skip, and a jump, and flourishing a picture-book, 'look at zese +pickers! Dat's a buffalo—most es <i>tror</i> nary animal, the +buffalo!'</p> + +<p>'Come here, rascal!' called his father, and the child ran up to +him. David knelt to look at the picture, but the little fellow +suddenly dropped it and his interest in it, in a way habitual to +him, twined one arm round his father's neck, laid his cheek against +David's, crossed one foot over the other, and, thumb in mouth, +looked Dora up and down with his large, observant eyes.</p> + +<p>Dora, melted, wooed him to come to her. Her adoration of him was +almost on a level with David's. Sandy took a minute to think +whether he should leave his father. Then he climbed her knee, and +patronised her on the subject of buffaloes and giraffes—'I tan't +'splain everything to you, Auntie Dora; you'll now when you're +older'—till Lucy and supper came together. And supper was +brightened both by Lucy's secret content in the prospect of the +Benet's Park visit and by the child's humours. When Dora said good +night to her host, their manner to each other had its usual +fraternal quality. Nevertheless, the woman carried away with her +both resentment and distress.</p> + +<p>About a fortnight later David and Lucy started one fine October +afternoon for Benet's Park. The cab was crowded with Lucy's +luggage, and David, in new clothes to please his wife, felt +himself, as the cab door closed upon them, a trapped and miserable +man.</p> + +<p>What had possessed Lord Driffield to send that unlucky note? For +Lord Driffield himself David had a grateful and real affection. +Ever since that whimsical scholar had first taken kindly notice of +the boy-tradesman, there had been a growing friendship between the +two; and of late years Lord Driffield's interest in David's +development and career had become particularly warm and cordial. He +had himself largely contributed to the subtler sides of that +development, had helped to refine the ambitions and raise the +standards of the growing intellect; his advice, owing to his +lifelong commerce with and large possession of books, had often +been of great practical use to the young man; his library had for +years been at David's service, both for reference and borrowing; +and he had supplied his favourite with customers and introductions +in a large percentage of the University towns both at home and +abroad, a social <i>milieu</i> where Lord Driffield was more at +home and better appreciated than in any other. The small delicately +featured man, whose distinguished face, with its abundant waves of +silky hair—once ruddy, now a goldenish white—presided so oddly +over an incorrigible shabbiness of dress, had become a familiar +figure in David's life. Their friendship, of course, was limited to +a very definite region of thought and relation; but they +corresponded freely, when they were apart, on matters of +literature, bibliography, sometimes of politics; and no sooner was +the Earl at Benet's Park than David had constant calls from him in +his office at the back of the now spacious and important +establishment in Prince's Street.</p> + +<p>But Lord Driffield, as we know, had managed his mind better than +his marriage, and his <i>savoir vivre</i> was no match for his +learning. He bore his spouse and his country-gentleman life +patiently enough in general; but every now and then he fell into +exasperation. His wife flooded him too persistently, perhaps, with +cousins and grandees of the duller sort, whose ideas seemed to him +as raw as their rent-rolls were large—till he rebelled. Then he +would have <i>his</i> friends; selecting them more or less at +random from up and down the ranks of literature and science, till +Lady Driffield raised her eyebrows, invited a certain number of her +own set to keep her in countenance, and made up her mind to endure. +At the end of the ordeal Lord Driffield generally made the rueful +reflection that it had not gone off well. But he felt the better +and digested the better for the self-assertion of it, and it was +periodically renewed.</p> + +<p>David and Lucy Grieve had been asked in some such moment of +domestic annoyance. The Earl had seen 'Grieve's wife' twice, and +hastily remembered that she seemed 'a presentable little person.' +He was constitutionally indifferent to and contemptuous of women. +But he imagined that it would please David to bring his wife; and +he was perhaps tolerably certain, since no one, be he rake or +savant, possesses an historical name and domain without knowing it, +that it would please the bookseller's wife to be invited.</p> + +<p>David suspected a good deal of this, for he knew his man pretty +well. As he sat opposite to Lucy in the railway carriage— +first-class, since she felt it incongruous to go in anything +else—he recalled certain luncheons at Benet's Park, when +he had been doing a bit of work in the library during the family +sojourn. Certainly Lucy did not realise at all how formidable these +aristocratic women could be!</p> + +<p>And his pride—at bottom the workman's pride—was made +uncomfortable by his wife's <i>newness</i>. New hat, new dress, new +gloves! Himself too! It annoyed him that Lady Driffield should be +so plainly informed that great pains had been taken for her. He +felt irritable and out of gear. Being neither self-conscious nor +awkward, he became both for the moment, out of sympathy with Lucy.</p> + +<p>Yet Lucy was supremely happy as they sped along to Stalybridge. +Suppose her father heard of it! She could no doubt insure his +knowing; but it might set his back up still more, make him more mad +than before with her and David. Eight years and more since he had +spoken to her, and the other day, when he had seen her coming in +Deansgate, he had crossed to the other side of the street!—Were +those sleeves of her evening dress quite right? They were not +caught down, she thought, quite in the right place. No doubt there +would be time before dinner to put in a stitch. And she did hope +that pleat from the neck would look all right. It was peculiar, but +Miss Helby had assured her it was much worn. Would there be many +titled people, she wondered, and would all the ladies wear +diamonds? She thought disconsolately of the little black enamelled +locket and the Roman pearls, which were all the adornments she +possessed.</p> + +<p>After a short journey they alighted at their station as the dusk +was beginning.</p> + +<p>'Are you for Benet's Park, m'm?' said the porter to Lucy. 'All +right!—the carriage is just outside.'</p> + +<p>Lucy held herself an inch taller, and waited for David to come back +from the van with their two new portmanteaus.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile she noticed two other groups of people, whose bags and +rugs were being appropriated by a couple of powdered footmen—a +husband and wife, and a tall military-looking man accompanied by +two ladies. The two ladies belonged to the height of fashion—of +that Lucy was certain, as she stole an intimidated glance at the +cut of their tailor-made gowns and the costliness of the fur cloak +which one of them carried. As for the other lady, could she also be +on her way to Benet's Park—with this uncouth figure, this mannish +height and breadth, this complete lack of waist, these large arms +and hands, and the over-ample garments and hat, of green cashmere +slashed with yellow, in which she was marvellously arrayed? Yet she +seemed entirely at her ease, which was more than Lucy was, and her +little dark husband was already talking with the tall ladies.</p> + +<p>David, having captured the luggage, was accosted by one of the +footmen, who then came up to Lucy and took her bag. She and David +followed in his wake, and found themselves mingling with the other +five persons, who were clearly to be their fellow-guests.</p> + +<p>As they stood outside the station door, the elder of the two ladies +turned and ran a scrutinising eye over Lucy and the person in sage +green following her; then she said rapidly to the gentleman with +her:</p> + +<p>'Now, remember Mathilde can't go outside, and I prefer to have her +with me.'</p> + +<p>'Well I suppose there'll be room in the omnibus,' said he, shortly. +'I shall go in the dog-cart and get a smoke. By George! those are +good horses of Driffield's! And they are not the pair I sent him +over from Ireland in the autumn either.'</p> + +<p>He went down the steps, patted and examined the horses, and threw a +word or two to the coachman. Lucy, palpitating with excitement and +alarm, felt a corresponding awe of the person who could venture +such familiarities even with the servants and live-stock of Benet's +Park.</p> + +<p>The servant let down the steps of the smart omnibus with its +impatient steeds. The two tall ladies got in.</p> + +<p>'Mathilde!' called the elder.</p> + +<p>A little maid, dressed in black, and carrying a large dressing-bag, +hurried down the steps before the remaining guests, and was helped +in by the footman. The lady in sage green smiled at her husband—a +sleepy, humorous smile. Then she stepped in, the footman touching +his hat to her as though he knew her.</p> + +<p>'Any maid, m'm?' said the man to Lucy, as she was following.</p> + +<p>'No—oh <i>no!</i>' said Lucy, stumbling in. 'Give me my bag, +please.'</p> + +<p>The man gave it to her, and timidly looking round her she settled +herself in the smallest space and the remotest corner she could.</p> + +<p>When the carriage rolled off, the lady in green looked out of +window for a while at the dark flying fields and woods, over which +the stars were beginning to come out.</p> + +<p>'Are you a stranger in these parts, or do you know Benet's Park +already?' she said presently to Lucy, who was next her, in a +pleasant, nonchalant way.</p> + +<p>'I have never been here before,' said Lucy, dreading somehow the +sound of her own voice; 'but my husband is well acquainted with the +family.'</p> + +<p>She was pleased with her own phrase, and began to recover herself. +The lady said no more, however, but leant back and apparently went +to sleep. The tall ladies presently did the same. Lucy's depression +returned as the silence lasted. She supposed that it was +aristocratic not to talk to people till you had been introduced to +them. She hoped she would be introduced when they reached Benet's +Park. Otherwise it would be awkward staying in the same house.</p> + +<p>Then she fell into a dream, imagining herself with a maid—ordering +her about deliciously—saying to the handsome footman, 'My maid has +my wraps'—and then with the next jolt of the carriage waking up to +the humdrum and unwelcome reality. And David might be as rich as +anybody! Familiar resentments and cravings stirred in her, and her +drive became even less of a pleasure than before. As for David, he +spent the whole of it in lively conversation with the small dark +man, beside the window.</p> + +<p>The carriage paused a moment. Then great gates were swung back and +in they sped, the horses stepping out smartly now that they were +within scent of home. There was a darkness as of thick and lofty +trees, then dim opening stretches of park; lastly a huge house, +mirage-like in the distance, with rows of lighted windows, a +crackling of crisp gravel, the sound of the drag, and a pomp of +opening doors.</p> + +<p>'Shall I take your bag, Madam?' said a magnificent person, bending +towards Lucy, as, clinging to her possession, she followed the lady +in green into the outer hall.</p> + +<p>'Oh no, thank you! at least, shall I find it again?' said the +frightened Lucy, looking in front of her at the vast hall, with its +tall lamps and statues and innumerable doors.</p> + +<p>'It shall be sent upstairs for you, Madam,' said the magnificent +person gravely, and, as Lucy thought, severely.</p> + +<p>She submitted, and looked round for David. Oh, where was he?</p> + +<p>'This is a fine hall, isn't it?' said the lady in green beside her. +'Bad period—but good of its kind. What on earth do they spoil it +for with those shocking modern portraits?'</p> + +<p>Such assurance—combined with such garments—in such a house—it +was nothing short of a miracle!</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-4" id="CHAPTER_III-4"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<p>'Now, Lavinia, do be kind to young Mrs. Grieve. She is evidently as +shy as she can be.'</p> + +<p>So spoke Lord Driffield, with some annoyance in his voice, as he +looked into his wife's room after dressing for dinner.</p> + +<p>'I suppose she can amuse herself like other people,' said Lady +Driffield. She was standing by the fire warming a satin-shoed foot. +'I have told Williams to leave all the houses open to-morrow. And +there's church, and the pictures. The Danbys and the rest of us are +going over to Lady Herbart's for tea.'</p> + +<p>A cloud came over Lord Driffield's face. He made some impatient +exclamation, which was muffled by his white beard and moustache, +and walked back to his own room.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Lucy, in another corridor of the great house, was +standing before a long glass, looking herself up and down in a +tumult of excitement and anxiety.</p> + +<p>She had just passed through a formidable hour! In a great gallery, +with polished floor, and hung with portraits of ancestral +Driffields, the party from the station had found Lady Driffield, +with five or six other people, who seemed to be already staying in +the house. Though the butler had preceded them, no names but those +of Lady Venetia Danby and Miss Danby had been announced; and when +Lady Driffield, a tall effective-looking woman with a cold eye and +an expressionless voice, said a short 'How do you do?' and extended +a few fingers to David and his wife, no names were mentioned, and +Lucy felt a sudden depressing conviction that no names were needed. +To the mistress of the house they were just two nonentities, to +whom she was to give bed and board for two nights to gratify her +husband's whims; whether their insignificant name happened to be +Grieve, or Tompkins, or Johnson, mattered nothing.</p> + +<p>So Lucy had sat down in a subdued state of mind, and was handed tea +by a servant, while the Danbys—Colonel Danby, after his smoke in +the dog-cart, following close on the heels of his wife and +daughter—mixed with the group round the tea-table, and much +chatter, combined with a free use of Christian names, liberal +petting of Lady Driffield's Pomeranian, and an account by Miss +Danby of an accident to herself in the hunting-field, filled up a +half-hour which to one person, at least, had the qualities of a +nightmare. David was talking to the lady in green—to whom, by the +way, Lady Driffield had been distinctly civil. Once he came over to +relieve Lucy from a waterproof which was on her knee, and to get +her some bread and butter. But otherwise no one took any notice of +her, and she fell into a nervous terror lest she should upset her +cup, or drop her teaspoon, or scatter her crumbs on the floor.</p> + +<p>Then at last Lord Driffield, who had been absent on some country +business, which his soul loathed, had come in, and with the +cordiality, nay, affection of his greeting to David, and the +kindness of his notice of herself, little Lucy's spirits had risen +at a bound. She felt instinctively that a protector had arrived, +and even the formidable procession upstairs in the wake of Lady +Driffield, when the moment at last arrived for showing the guests +to their rooms, had passed off safely, Lucy throwing out an +agitated 'Thank you!' when Lady Driffield had even gone so far as +to open a door with her own bediamonded hand, which had Mrs. +Grieve's plebeian appellations written in full upon the card +attached to it.</p> + +<p>And now? Was the dress nice? Would it do? Unluckily, since Lucy's +rise in the social scale which had marked the last few years, the +sureness of her original taste in dress had somewhat deserted her. +Her natural instinct was for trimness and closeness; but of late +her ideals had been somewhat confused by a new and more important +dressmaker with 'aesthetic' notions, who had been recommended to +her by the good-natured and artistic wife of one of the College +professors. Under the guidance of this expert, she had chosen a +'Watteau <i>sacque</i>' from a fashion-plate, not quite daring, +little tradesman's daughter as she felt herself at bottom, to +venture on the undisguised low neck and short sleeves of ordinary +fashionable dress.</p> + +<p>She said fretfully to herself that she could see nothing in this +vast room. More and more candles did she light with a trembling +hand, trusting devoutly that no one would come in and discover her +with such an extravagant illumination. Then she tried each of the +two long glasses of the room in turn. Her courage mounted. It +<i>was</i> pretty. The terra-cotta shade was <i>exquisite,</i> and +<i>no</i> one could tell that the satin was cotton-backed. The +flowing sleeves and the pleat from the shoulder gave her dignity, +she was certain; and she had done her hair beautifully. She wished +David would come in and see! But his room was across a little +landing, which, indeed, seemed to be all their own, for it was shut +off from the passage they had entered from by an outer door. There +was, however, more than one door opening on to the landing, and +Lucy was so much afraid of her surroundings that she preferred to +wait till he came.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile—what a bedroom! Why, it was more gorgeous than any +drawing-room she had ever entered. Every article of furniture was +of old marqueterie, adapted to modern uses, the appointments of the +writing-table were of solid silver—Lucy had eagerly ascertained +the fact by looking at the 'marks'—and as for the <i>towels</i>, +she simply could not have imagined that such things were made! Her +little soul was in a whirl of envy, admiration, pride. What tales +she would have to tell Dora when they got home!</p> + +<p>'Are you ready?' said David, opening the door. 'I believe I hear +people going downstairs.'</p> + +<p>He came in arrayed in the new dress suit which became him as well +as anything else; for he had a natural dignity which absorbed and +surmounted any novelty of circumstance or setting, and was purely a +matter of character, depending upon a mind familiar with large +interests and launched towards ideal aims. He might be silent, +melancholy, impracticable, but never meanly self-conscious. It had +rarely occurred to anyone to pity or condescend to David Grieve.</p> + +<p>Lucy looked at him with uneasy pride. Then she glanced back at her +own reflection in the glass.</p> + +<p>'What do you think of it?' she asked him, eagerly.</p> + +<p>'Magnificent!' said David, with all the sincerity of +ignorance—wishing, moreover, to make his wife pleased with +herself. 'But oughtn't you to have gloves instead of those things?'</p> + +<p>He pointed doubtfully to the mittens on her arms.</p> + +<p>'Oh, David, don't say that!' cried Lucy, in despair. 'Miss Helby +said these were the right things. It's to be like an old picture, +don't you understand? And I haven't got any gloves but those I came +in. Oh, don't be so disagreeable!'</p> + +<p>She looked ready to cry. Poor David hastened to declare that Miss +Helby must be right, and that it was all very nice. Then they blew +out the candles and ventured forth.</p> + +<p>'Lord Driffield says that Canon Aylwin is coming,' said David, +examining some Hollar engravings on the wall of the staircase as +they descended, 'and the Dean of Bradford, who is staying with him. +I shall be glad to see Canon Aylwin.'</p> + +<p>His face took a pleased meditative look. He was thinking of Canon +Aylwin's last volume of essays—of their fine scholarship, their +delicate, unique qualities of style. As for Lucy, it seemed to her +that all the principalities and powers of this world were somehow +arraying themselves against her in that terrible drawing-room they +were so soon to enter. She set her teeth, held up her head, and on +they went.</p> + +<p>Presently they found themselves approaching a glass door, which +opened into the central hall. Beyond it was a crowd of figures and +a buzz of talk, and at the door stood a tall person in black with +white gloves, holding a silver tray, from which he presented David +with a button-hole. Then, with a manner at once suave and +impersonal, he held open the door, and the husband and wife passed +through.</p> + +<p>'Ah, my dear Grieve,' said Lord Driffield, laying his hand on +David's shoulder, 'come here and be introduced to Canon Aylwin. I am +delighted to have caught him for you.'</p> + +<p>So David was swept away to the other side of the room, and Lucy was +left forlorn and stranded. It seemed to her an immense party; there +were at least eight or ten fresh faces beyond those she had seen +already. And just as she was looking for a seat into which she +might slip and hide herself, Lady Venetia Danby, who was standing +near, playing with a huge feather fan and talking to a handsome +young man, turned around by chance and, seeing the figure in the +bright-coloured 'Watteau <i>sacque</i>,' involuntarily put up her +eyeglass to look at it. Instantly Lucy, conscious of the eyeglass, +and looking hurriedly round on the people near, was certain that +the pleat from the shoulder and the mittens were irretrievably +wrong and conspicuous, and that she had betrayed herself at once by +her dress as an ignoramus and an outsider. Worst of all, the lady +in green was in a <i>sacque</i> too!—a shapeless yellow thing of +the most untutored and detestable make. Mittens also! drawn +laboriously over the hands and arms of an Amazon. Lucy glanced at +Miss Danby beside her, then at a beautiful woman in pale pink +across the room—at their slim waists, the careless <i>aplomb</i> +and grace with which the costly stuffs and gleaming jewels were +worn, and the white necks displayed—and sank into a chair +trembling and miserable. That the only person to keep her in +countenance should be that particular person—that they two should +thus fall into a class together, by themselves, cut off from all +the rest—it was too much! Then, by a quick reaction, some of her +natural obstinacy returned upon her. She held herself erect, and +looked steadily round the room.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Edwardes—Mrs. Grieve,' said Lady Driffield's impassive voice, +speaking, as it seemed to Lucy, from a great height, as the tall +figure swept past her to introductions more important.</p> + +<p>A young man bowed to Lucy, looked at her for a moment, then, +pulling his fair moustache, turned away to speak to Miss Danby, +who, in the absence of more stimulating suitors for her smiles, was +graciously pleased to bestow a few of them on Lord Driffield's new +agent.</p> + +<p>'Whom are we waiting for?' said Miss Danby, looking round her, and +slightly glancing at Lucy.</p> + +<p>'Only the Dean, I believe,' said Mr. Edwardes, with a smile. 'I +never knew Dean Manley less than half an hour late in <i>this</i> +house.'</p> + +<p>A cold shiver ran through Lucy. Then they—she and David—had been +all but the last, had all but kept the whole of this portentous +gathering waiting for them.</p> + +<p>In the midst of her new tremor the glass doors were again thrown +open, and in walked the Dean—a short, plain man, with a mirthful +eye, a substantial person, and legs which became his knee-breeches.</p> + +<p>'Thirty-five minutes, Dean!' said the handsome youth, who had been +talking to Lady Venetia, as he held up his watch.</p> + +<p>'It is a remarkable fact, Reggie,' said the Dean, laying his hand +on the lad's shoulder, 'that your watch has gained persistently ever +since I was first acquainted with you. Ah, well, keep it ahead, my +boy. A diplomatist must be egged on somehow.'</p> + +<p>'I thought the one condition of success in that trade was the +patience to do nothing,' said a charming voice. 'Don't interfere +with Reggie's prospects, Dean.'</p> + +<p>'Has he got any?' said the Dean, maliciously. 'My dear Mrs. +Wellesdon, you are a "sight for sair een."'</p> + +<p>And he pressed the new-comer's hand between both his own, surveying +her the while with a fatherly affection and admiration.</p> + +<p>Lucy looked up, a curious envy at her heart. She saw the beautiful +lady in pink, who had come across the room to greet the Dean. +<i>Was</i> she beautiful? Lucy hurriedly asked herself. Perhaps +not, in point of feature, but she held her head so nobly, her +colour was so subtle and lovely, her eye so speaking, and her mouth +so sweet, she carried about with her a preeminence so natural and +human, that beauty was in truth the only word that fitted her. Now, +as the Dean passed on from her to some one else, she glanced down +at the little figure in terra-cotta satin, and, with a kindly +diffident expression, she sat down and began to talk to Lucy. +Marcia Wellesdon was a sorceress, and could win whatever hearts she +pleased. In a few moments she so soothed Lucy's nervousness that +she even beguiled from her some bright and natural talk about the +journey and the house, and Lucy was rapidly beginning to be happy, +when the signal for dinner was given, and a general move began.</p> + +<p>At dinner Mr. Edwardes bestowed his conversation for a decent space +of time—say, during the soup and fish—upon Mrs. Grieve. Lucy, +once more ill at ease, tried eagerly to propitiate him by asking +innumerable questions about the family, and the pictures, and the +estate, it being at once evident that he had an intimate knowledge +of all three. But as the family, the pictures, and the estate were +always with him, so to speak, made, indeed, a burden which his +shoulders had some difficulty in carrying, the attractions of this +vein of talk palled on the young agent—who was himself a scion of +good family, with his own social ambitions—before long. He decided +that Mrs. Grieve was pure middle-class, not at all accustomed to +dine in halls of pride, and much agitated by her surroundings. The +type did not interest him. She seemed to be asking him to help her +out of the mire, and as one does not go into society to be +benevolent but to be amused, by the time the first <i>entree</i> +was well in he had edged his chair round, and was in animated talk +with pretty little Lady Alice Findlay, the daughter of the +hook-nosed Lord-Lieutenant of the county, who was seated at Lady +Driffield's right hand. Lucy noticed the immediate difference in +tone, the easy variety of topic, compared with her own sense of +difficulty, and her heart swelled with bitterness.</p> + +<p>Then, to her horror, she saw that, from inattention and ignorance +of what might be expected, she had allowed the servants to +fill every single wineglass of the four standing at her +right—positively every one. Sherry, claret, hock, champagne—she +was provided with them all. She cast a hurried and guilty eye round +the table. Save for champagne, each lady's glasses stood +immaculately empty, and when Lucy came back to her own collection +she could bear it no longer.</p> + +<p>'Mr. Edwardes!' she said hastily, leaning over towards him.</p> + +<p>The young man turned abruptly. 'Yes,' he said, looking at her in +some surprise.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Mr. Edwardes! can you ask some one to take these wineglasses +away? I didn't want any, and it looks so—so—dreadful!'</p> + +<p>The agent thought that Mrs. Grieve was going to cry. As for +himself, his eye twinkled, and he had great difficulty to restrain +a burst of laughter. He called a footman near, and Lucy was soon +relieved of her fourfold incubus.</p> + +<p>'Oh, but you must save the champagne!' he said, and, bending his +chair backward, he was about to recall the man, Lucy stopped him.</p> + +<p>'Don't—don't, <i>please</i>, Mr. Edwardes!' she said, in an agony.</p> + +<p>He lifted his eyebrows good-humouredly, and desisted. Then he asked +her if he should give her some water, and when that was done the +episode apparently seemed to him closed, for he turned away again, +and looked out for fresh opportunities with Lady Alice. Lucy, +meanwhile, was left feeling herself even more unsuccessful and more +out of place than before, and ready to sink with vexation. And how +well David was getting on! There he was, between Mrs. Shepton and +the beautiful lady in pink, and he and Mrs. Wellesdon were deep in +conversation, his dark head bent gravely towards her, his face +melting every now and then into laughter or crossed by some vivid +light of assent and pleasure. Lucy's look travelled over the table, +the orchids with which it was covered, the lights, the plate, then +to the Vandykes behind the guests, and the great mirrors in +between—came back to the table, and passed from face to face, till +again it rested upon David. The conviction of her husband's +handsome looks and natural adequacy to this or any world, with +which her survey ended, brought with it a strange mixture of +feelings—half pleasure, half bitterness.</p> + +<p>'Are you from this part of the world, may I ask?' said a voice at +her elbow.</p> + +<p>She turned, and saw Colonel Danby, who was tired of devoting +himself to the wife of a neighbouring Master of Hounds—a lady with +white hair and white eyelashes, always apparently on the point of +sleep, even at the liveliest dinner-table—and was now inclined to +see what this little provincial might be made of.</p> + +<p>'Oh, yes! we are from Manchester,' said Lucy, straightening +herself, and preparing to do her best. 'We live in Manchester—at +least, of course, not <i>in</i> Manchester. No one could do that.'</p> + +<p>It was but three years since she had ceased to do it, but new +habits of speech grow apace when it is a matter of social prestige. +She was terribly afraid lest anybody should now think of them as +persons who lived over their shop.</p> + +<p>'Ah!—suppose not,' said Colonel Danby, carelessly. 'Land in +Manchester, they tell me now, is almost as costly as it is in +London.'</p> + +<p>Whereat Lucy went off at score, delighted to make Manchester +important and to produce her own information. She had an aptitude +for business gossip, and she chatted eagerly about the price that +So-and-So had paid for their new warehouses, and the sum which +report said the Corporation was going to spend on a fine new +street.</p> + +<p>'And of course many people don't like it. There's always grumbling +about the rates. But they should have public spirit, shouldn't +they? Are you acquainted with Manchester?' she added, more timidly.</p> + +<p>All this time Colonel Danby had been listening with half an ear, +and was much more assiduously trying to make up his mind whether +the little <i>bourgeoise</i> was pretty at all. She had rather a +fine pair of eyes—he supposed she had made that dress in her own +back parlour.</p> + +<p>'Manchester? I—oh, I have spent a night at the Queen's Hotel now +and then,' said the Colonel, with a yawn. 'What do you do there? Do +you amuse yourself—eh?'</p> + +<p>His smile was not pleasant. He had a florid face, with bad lines +round the eyes and a tyrannous mouth. His physical make had been +magnificent, but reckless living had brought on the penalties of +gout before their time.</p> + +<p>Lucy was intimidated by the mixture of familiarity and patronage in +the tone.</p> + +<p>'Oh, yes,' she said, hurriedly; 'we get all the best companies from +the London theatres, and there are <i>very</i> good concerts.'</p> + +<p>'And that kind of thing amuses you?' said the Colonel, still +examining her with the same cool, fixed glance.</p> + +<p>'I like music very much,' stammered Lucy, and then fell silent.</p> + +<p>'Do you know all these people here?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, dear, no!' she cried, feeling the very question malevolent. 'I +don't know any of them. My husband wishes to lead a very retired +life,' she added, bridling a little, by way of undoing the effect +of her admissions.</p> + +<p>'And <i>you</i> don't wish it?'</p> + +<p>The disagreeable eyes smiled again.</p> + +<p>'Oh! I don't know,' said Lucy.</p> + +<p>Colonel Danby reflected that whatever his companion might be, she +was not amusing.</p> + +<p>'Have you noticed the gentleman opposite?' he inquired, stifling +another yawn.</p> + +<p>Lucy timidly looked across.</p> + +<p>'It is—it is the Dean of Bradford, isn't it?'</p> + +<p>'Yes; it's a comfort, isn't it, when one can know a man by his +clothes! Do you see what his deanship has had for dinner?'</p> + +<p>Lucy ventured another look, and saw that the Dean had in front of +him a plate of biscuits and a glass of water, and that the +condition of his knives and forks showed him to have hitherto +subsisted on this fare alone.</p> + +<p>'Is he so very—so very religious?' she said, wondering.</p> + +<p>'A-saint in gaiters? Well, I don't know. Probably the saint has +dined at one. Do you feel any inclination to be a saint, Mrs. +Grieve?'</p> + +<p>Lucy could neither meet nor parry the banter of his look. She only +blushed.</p> + +<p>'I wouldn't attempt it, if I were you,' he said, laughing. 'Those +pretty brown eyes weren't meant for it.'</p> + +<p>Lucy suddenly felt as though she had been struck, so free and +cavalier was the tone. Her cheek took a deeper crimson, and she +looked helplessly across at David.</p> + +<p>'Little fool!' thought the Colonel. 'But she has certainly some +points.'</p> + +<p>At that moment Lady Driffield gave the signal, and, with a +half-ironical bow to his companion, Colonel Danby rose, picked up +her handkerchief for her, and drew his chair aside to let her pass.</p> + +<p>Presently Lucy was sitting in a corner of the magnificent green +drawing-room, to which Lady Driffield had carelessly led the way. +In her vague humiliation and unhappiness, she craved that some one +should come and talk to her and be kind to her—even Mrs. Shepton, +who had addressed a few pleasant remarks to her on their way from +the dining-room. But Mrs. Shepton was absorbed by Lady Driffield, +who sat down beside her, and took some trouble to talk. 'Then why +not to me?' was Lucy's instinctive thought. For she realised that +she and Mrs. Shepton were socially not far apart. Yet Lady +Driffield had so far addressed about six words to Mrs. David +Grieve, while she was now bending her aristocratic neck to listen +to Mrs. Shepton, who was talking entirely at her ease, with her arm +round the back of a neighbouring chair, and, as it seemed to Lucy, +about politics.</p> + +<p>The rest of the ladies, with the exception of the Master of Hounds' +wife, who sat in a chair by the fire and dozed, were all either old +friends or relations, and they gathered in a group on the Aubusson +rug in front of the fire, chatting merrily about their common +kindred, the visits they had paid, or were to pay, the fate of +their fathers and brothers in the recent election, 'the Duke's' +terrible embarrassments, or 'Sir Alfred's' yachting party to +Norway, of which little Lady Alice gave a sparkling account.</p> + +<p>In her chair on the outskirts of the talkers, Lucy sat painfully +turning over the leaves of a costly collection of autographs, which +lay on the table near her. Sometimes she tried to interest herself +in the splendid room, with its hangings of pale flowered silk, its +glass cases, full of historical relics, miniatures, and precious +things, representing the long and brilliant past of the house of +Driffield, the Sir Joshuas and Romneys, which repeated on the walls +the grace and physical perfection of some of the living women +below. But she had too few associations with anything she saw to +care for it, and, indeed, her mind was too wholly given to her own +vague, but overmastering sense of isolation and defeat. If it were +only bedtime!</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wellesdon glanced at the solitary figure from time to time, +but Lady Alice had her arm round 'Marcia's' waist, and kept close +hold of her favourite cousin. At last, however, Mrs. Wellesdon drew +the young girl with her to the side of Lucy's chair, and, sitting +down by the stranger, they both tried to entertain her, and to show +her some of the things in the room.</p> + +<p>Lucy brightened up at once, and thought them both the most +beautiful and fascinating of human beings. But her good fortune was +soon over, alas! for the gentlemen came in, and the social elements +were once more redistributed. 'Reggie', the young diplomatist, +freshly returned from Berlin, laid hold of his sister Marcia, and +his cousin Lady Alice, and carried them off for a family gossip +into a corner of the room, whence peals of young laughter were soon +to be heard from him and Lady Alice.</p> + +<p>Mr. Edwardes and Colonel Danby passed Mrs. Grieve by, in quest of +metal more attractive; Lord Driffield, the Dean, Canon Aylwin, and +David stood absorbed in conversation; while Lady Driffield +transferred her attentions to Mr. Shepton, and the husband of the +lady by the fire walked up to her, insisting, somewhat crossly, on +waking her. Lucy was once more left alone.</p> + +<p>'Lavinia, haven't we done our duty to this apartment?' cried Lord +Driffield, impatiently; 'it always puts me on stilts. The library is +ten times more comfortable. I propose an adjournment.'</p> + +<p>Lady Driffield shrugged her shoulders, and assented. So the whole +party, Lucy timidly attaching herself to Mrs. Shepton, moved slowly +through a long suite of beautiful rooms, till they reached the +great cedar-fitted library, which was Lord Driffield's paradise. +Here was every book to be desired of the scholar to make him wise, +and every chair to make him comfortable. Lord Driffield went to one +of the bookcases, and took a vellum-bound book, found a passage in +it, and showed it to David Grieve. Canon Aylwin and the Dean +pressed in to look, and they all fell back into the recess of a +great oriel, talking earnestly.</p> + +<p>The others passed on into a conservatory beyond the library, where +was a billard-table, and many nooks for conversation amid the +cunning labyrinths of flowers.</p> + +<p>Lucy sank into a cane chair, close to a towering mass of arum +lilies, and looked back into the library. Nobody in the +conservatory had any thought for her. They were absorbed in each +other, and a merry game of pyramids had been already organised. So +Lucy watched her husband wistfully.</p> + +<p>What a beautiful face was that of Canon Aylwin, with whom he was +talking! She could not take her eyes from its long, thin outlines, +the apostolic white hair, the eager eyes and quivering mouth, +contrasting with the patient courtesy of manner. Yet in her present +soreness and heat, the saintly charm of the old man's figure did +somehow but depress her the more.</p> + +<p>A little after ten it became evident that <i>nothing</i> could keep +the lady with the white eyelashes out of bed any longer, so the +billiard-room party broke up, and, with a few gentlemen in +attendance, the ladies streamed into the hall, and possessed +themselves of bedroom candlesticks. The great house seemed to be +alive with talk and laughter as they strolled upstairs, the girls +making dressing-gown appointments in each other's rooms for a +quarter of an hour later.</p> + +<p>When Lucy reached her own door she stopped awkwardly. Lady +Driffield walked on, talking to Marcia Wellesdon. But Marcia looked +back:</p> + +<p>'Good night, Mrs. Grieve.'</p> + +<p>She returned, and pressed Lucy's hand kindly. 'I am afraid you must +be tired,' she said; 'you look so.'</p> + +<p>Lady Driffield also shook hands, but, with constitutional +<i>gaucherie</i>, she did not second Mrs. Wellesdon's remark; she +stood by silent and stiff.</p> + +<p>'Oh, no, thank you,' said Lucy, hurriedly, 'I am quite well.'</p> + +<p>When she had disappeared, the other two walked on.</p> + +<p>'What a stupid little thing!' said Lady Driffield. 'The husband may +be interesting—Driffield says he is—but I defy anybody to get +anything out of the wife.'</p> + +<p>It occurred to Marcia that nobody had been very anxious to make the +attempt. But she only said aloud:</p> + +<p>'I'm sure she is very shy. What a pity she wears that kind of +dress! She might be quite pretty in something else.'</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Lucy, after shutting the outer door of their little suite +behind her, was overtaken as she opened that leading to her own +room by a sudden gust of wind coming from a back staircase emerging +on to their private passage, which she had not noticed before. The +candle was blown out, and she entered the room in complete +darkness. She groped for the matches, and found the little stand; +but there were none there. She must have used the last in the +making of her great illumination before dinner. After much +hesitation, she at last summoned up courage to ring the bell, +groping her way to it by the help of the light in the passage.</p> + +<p>For a long time no one came. Lucy, standing near her own door, +seemed to hear two sounds—the angry beating of her own heart, and +a murmur of far-off talk and jollity, conveyed to her up the +mysterious staircase, which apparently led to some of the servants' +quarters.</p> + +<p>Fully five minutes passed; then steps were heard approaching, and a +housemaid appeared. Lucy timidly asked for fresh matches. The girl +said 'Yes, ma'am,' in an off-hand way, looked at Lucy with a +somewhat hostile eye, and vanished.</p> + +<p>The minutes passed, but no matches were forthcoming. The whirlpool +of the lower regions, where the fun was growing uproarious, seemed +to have engulfed the messenger. At last Lucy was fain to undress by +the help of a glimmer of light from her door left ajar, and after +many stumbles and fumblings at last crept, tired and wounded, into +bed. This finale seemed to her of a piece with all the rest.</p> + +<p>As she lay there in the dark, incident after incident of her +luckless evening coming back upon her, her heart grew hungry for +David. Nay, her craving for him mounted to jealousy and passion. +After all, though he did get on so much better in grand houses than +she did, though they were all kind to him and despised her, he was +<i>hers</i>, her very own, and no one should take him from her. +Beautiful Mrs. Wellesdon might talk to him and make friends with +him, but he did not belong to any of them, but to <i>her</i>, Lucy. +She pined for the sound of his step—thought of throwing herself +into his arms, and seeking consolation there for the pains of an +habitual self-importance crushed beyond bearing.</p> + +<p>But when that step was actually heard outside, her mind veered +in an instant. She had made him come; he would think she had +disgraced him; he had probably noticed nothing, for a certain +absent-mindedness in society had grown upon him of late years. No, +she would hold her peace.</p> + +<p>So when David, stepping softly and shading his candle, came in, and +called 'Lucy' under his breath to see whether she might be awake, +Lucy pretended to be sound asleep. He waited a minute, and then +went out to change his coat and go down to the smoking-room.</p> + +<p>Poor little Lucy! As she lay there in the dark, the tears +dropping slowly on her embroidered pillow, the issue of all her +mortification was a new and troubled consciousness about her +husband. Why this difference between them? How was it that he +commanded from all who knew him either a warm sympathy or an +involuntary respect, while she—</p> + +<p>She had gathered from some scraps of the talk round him which had +reached her that it was just those sides of his life—those +quixotic ideal sides—which were an offence and annoyance to her +that touched other people's imagination, opened their hearts. And +she had worried and teased him all these years! Not since the +beginning. For, looking back, she could well remember the days when +it was still an intoxication that he should have married her, when +she was at once in awe of him and foolishly, proudly, happy. But +there had come a year when David's profits from his business had +amounted to over 2, 000 pounds, and when, thanks to a large loan +pressed upon him by his Unitarian landlord, Mr. Doyle, he had taken +the new premises in Prince's Street. And from that moment Lucy's +horizon had changed, her ambitions had hardened and narrowed; she +had begun to be impatient with her husband, first, that he could +not make her rich faster, then, after their Tantalus gleam of +wealth, that he would put mysterious and provoking obstacles in +the way of their getting rich at all.</p> + +<p>She meant to keep awake—to wait for him. But she began to think of +Sandy. <i>He</i> would be glad to see his 'mummy' again! In fancy +she pressed his cheek against her own burning one. He and David +were still alive—still hers—it was all right somehow. Consolation +began to steal upon her, and in ten minutes she was asleep.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-4" id="CHAPTER_IV-4"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<p>When David came in later, he took advantage of Lucy's sleep to sit +up awhile in his own room. He was excited, and any strong +impression, in the practical loneliness of his deepest life, always +now produced the impulse to write.</p> + +<p>'<i>Midnight</i>.—Lucy is asleep. I hope she has been happy and +they have been kind to her. I saw Mrs. Wellesdon talking to her +after dinner. She must have liked that. But <i>at</i> dinner she +seemed to be sitting silent a good deal.</p> + +<p>'What a strange spectacle is this country-house life to anyone +bringing to it a fresh and unaccustomed eye! "After all," said Mrs. +Wellesdon, "you must admit that the best of anything is worth +keeping. And in these country-houses, with all their drawbacks, you +do from time to time get the best of social intercourse, a phase of +social life as gay, complex, and highly finished as it can possibly +be made."</p> + +<p>'Certainly this applies to me to-night. When have I enjoyed any +social pleasure so much as my talk with her at dinner? When have I +been conscious of such stimulus, such exhilaration, as the +evening's discussion produced in me? In the one case, Mrs. +Wellesdon taught me what general conversation might be how nimble, +delicate, and pleasure-giving; in the other, there was the joy of +the intellectual wrestle, mingled with a glad respect for one's +opponents. Perhaps nowhere, except on some such ground and in +some such circumstances as these, could a debate so earnest +have taken quite so wholesome a tone, so wide a range. We were +equals—debaters, not controversialists—friends, not rivals—in +the quest for truth.</p> + +<p>'Yet what drawbacks! This army of servants—which might be an army +of slaves without a single manly right, so mute, impassive, and +highly trained it is—the breeding of a tyrannous temper in the +men, of a certain contempt for facts and actuality even in the best +of the women. Mrs. Wellesdon poured out her social aspirations to +me. How naive and fanciful they were! They do her credit, but they +will hardly do anyone else much good. And it is evident that they +mark her out in her own circle, that they have brought her easily +admiration and respect, so that she has never been led to test +them, as any one, with the same social interest, living closer to +the average realities and griefs of life, must have been led to +test them.</p> + +<p>'The culture, too, of these aristocratic women, when they +are cultured, is so curious. Quite unconsciously and innocently +it takes itself for much more than it is, merely by contrast with +the <i>milieu</i>—the <i>milieu</i> of material luxury and complication—in +which it moves.</p> + +<p>'But I am ungrateful. What a social power in the best sense such a +woman might become—a woman so sensitively endowed, so nobly +planned!'</p> + +<p>David dropped his pen awhile. In the silence of the great house, a +silence broken only by the breathings of a rainy autumn wind +through the trees outside, his thought took that picture-making +intensity which was its peculiar gift. Images of what had been +in his own life, and what might have been—the dream of passion +which had so deeply marked and modified his manhood—Elise, seen +in the clearer light of his richer experience—his married +years—the place of the woman in the common life—on these his mind +brooded, one by one, till gradually the solemn consciousness of +opportunities for ever missed, of failure, of limitation, evoked +another, as solemn, but sweeter and more touching, of human lives +irrevocably dependent on his, of the pathetic unalterable claim of +marriage, the poverty and hopelessness of all self-seeking, the +essential wealth, rich and making rich, of all self-spending. As he +thought of his wife and son a deep tenderness flooded the man's +whole nature. With a long sigh, it was as though he took them both +in his arms, adjusting his strength patiently and gladly to the +familiar weight.</p> + +<p>Then, by a natural reaction, feeling, to escape itself, passed into +speculative reminiscence and meditation of a wholly different kind.</p> + +<p>'Our discussion to-night arose from an attack—if anyone so gentle +can be said to attack—made upon me by Canon Aylwin, on the subject +of those "Tracts on the New Testament"—tracts of mine, of which we +have published three, while I have two or three more half done in +my writing-table drawer. He said, with a certain nervous decision, +that he did not wish to discuss the main question, but he would +like to ask me, Could anyone be so sure of supposed critical and +historical fact as to be clear that he was right in proclaiming it, +when the proclamation of it meant the inevitable disturbance in his +fellow-men of conceptions whereon their moral life depended? It was +certain that he could destroy; it was most uncertain, even to +himself, whether he could do anything else, with the best +intentions; and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, ought not +the certainty of doing a moral mischief to outweigh, with any just +and kindly mind, the much feebler and less solid certainty he may +imagine himself to have attained with regard to certain matters of +history and criticism?</p> + +<p>'It was the old question of the rights of "heresy," the function of +the individual in the long history of thought. We fell into sides: +Lord Driffield and I against the Dean and Canon Aylwin. The Dean +did not, indeed, contribute much. He sat with his square powerful +head bent forward, throwing in a shrewd comment here and there, +mainly on the logical course of the argument. But when we came to +the main question, as we inevitably did, he withdrew altogether, +though he listened.</p> + +<p>'"No," he said, "no. I am not competent. It has not been my line +in life. I have found more than enough to tax my strength in the +practical administration of the goods of Christ. All such questions +I leave, and must leave, to experts, such experts as"—and he +mentioned the names of some of the leading scholars of the +English Church—"or as my friend here", and he laid his hand +affectionately on Canon Aylwin's knee.</p> + +<p>'Strange! He leaves to experts such questions as those of the +independence, authenticity, and trustworthiness of the Gospel +records; of the culture and idiosyncrasies of the first two +centuries as tending to throw light on those records; of the +earliest growth of dogma, as, thanks mainly to German labour, it +may now be exhibited within the New Testament itself. In a Church +of private judgment, he takes all this at second hand, after having +vowed at his ordination "to be diligent in such studies as help to +the knowledge of the Scriptures"!</p> + +<p>'Yet a better, a more God-fearing, a more sincere, and, within +certain lines, a more acute man than Dean Manley it would certainly +be difficult to find at the present time within the English Church. +It is an illustration of the dualism in which so many minds tend to +live, divided between two worlds, two standards, two wholly +different modes of thought—the one applied to religion even in its +intellectual aspect, the other applied to all the rest of +existence. Yet—is truth divided?</p> + +<p>'To return to Canon Aylwin. I could only meet his reproach, which +he had a special right to make, for he has taken the kindliest +interest in some of the earlier series of our "Workmen's Tracts," +by going back to some extent to first principles. I endeavoured to +argue the matter on ground more or less common to us both. If both +knowledge and morality have only become possible for man by the +perpetual action of a Divine spirit on his since the dawn of +conscious life; if this action has taken effect in human history, +as, broadly speaking, the Canon would admit, through a free and +constant struggle of opposites, whether in the realm of interest or +the realm of opinion; and if this struggle, perpetually reconciled, +perpetually renewed, is the divinely ordered condition, nay, if you +will, the sacred task of human life,—how can the Christian, who +clings, above all men, to the victory of the Divine in the human, +who, moreover, in the course of his history has affronted and +resisted all possible "authorities" but that of conscience—how +can he lawfully resent the fullest and largest freedom of speech, +employed disinterestedly and in good faith, on the part of his +brother man? The truth must win; and it is only through the free +life of the spirit that she has hitherto prevailed. So much, at +least, the English Churchman must hold.</p> + +<p>It comes to this: must there be no movement of thought because the +individual who lives by custom and convention may at least +temporarily suffer? Yet the risks of the individual throughout +nature—so far we were agreed—are the correlative of his freedom +and responsibility.</p> + +<p>'"Ah, well," said the dear old man at last, with a change of +expression which went to my heart, so wistful and spiritual it was, +"perhaps I have been faithless; perhaps the Christian minister +would do better to trust the Lord with His own. But before we leave +the subject, let me say, once for all, that I have read all your +tracts, and weighed most carefully all that they contain. The +matter of them bears on what for me has been the study of many +years, and all I can say is that I regard your methods of reasoning +as unsound, and your conclusions as wholly false. I have been a +literary man from my youth as well as a theologian, and I +completely dissent from your literary judgments. I believe that if +you had not been already possessed by a hostile philosophy—which +will allow no space for miracle and revelation—you would not have +arrived at them. I am old and you are young. Let me bear my +testimony while there is time. I have taken a great interest in you +and your work."</p> + +<p>'He spoke with the most exquisite courtesy and simplicity, his look +was dignified and heavenly. I felt like kneeling to ask his +blessing, even though he could only give it in the shape of a +prayer for my enlightenment.</p> + +<p>'But now, alone with conscience, alone with God, how does the +matter stand? The challenge of such a life and conviction as Canon +Aylwin's is a searching one. It bids one look deep into one's self, +it calls one to truth and soberness. What I seem to see is that he +and I both approach Christianity with a prepossession, with, as he +says, "a philosophy." His is a prepossession in favour of a system +of interference from without, by Divine or maleficent powers, for +their own ends, with the ordinary sequences of nature—which once +covered, one may say, the whole field of human thought and shaped +the whole horizon of humanity. From the beginning of history this +prepossession—which may be regarded in all its phases as an +expression of man's natural impatience to form a working hypothesis +of things—has struggled with the "impulse to know." And slowly, +irrevocably, from age to age—the impulse to know has beaten back +the impulse to imagine, has confined the prepossession of faith +within narrower and narrower limits, till at last it is even +preparing to deny it the guidance of religion, which it has so long +claimed. For the impulse of science, justified by the long wrestle +of centuries, is becoming itself religious,—and there is a new awe +rising on the brow of Knowledge.</p> + +<p>'<i>My</i> prepossession—but let the personal pronoun be merely +understood as attaching me to that band of thinkers, "of all +countries, nations, and languages," whose pupil and creature I +am—is simply that of science, of the organised knowledge of the +race. It is drawn from the whole of experience, it governs without +dispute every department of thought, and without it, in fact, +neither Canon Aylwin nor I could think at all.</p> + +<p>'Moreover, I humbly believe that I desire the same spiritual goods +as he: holiness, the knowledge of God, the hope of immortality. But +while for him these things are bound up with the maintenance of the +older prepossession, for me there is no such connection at all.</p> + +<p>'And again, I seem to see that when this intellect of his, so keen, +so richly stored, approaches the special ground of Christian +thought, it changes in quality. It becomes wholly subordinate to +the affections, to the influences of education and habitual +surroundings. Talk to him of Dante, of the influence of the +barbarian invasions on the culture and development of Europe, of +the Oxford movement, you will find in him an historical sense, a +delicate accuracy of perception, a luminous variety of statement, +which carry you with him into the very heart of the truth. But +discuss with him the critical habits and capacity of those earliest +Christian writers, on whose testimony so much of the Christian +canon depends—ask him to separate the strata of material in the +New Testament, according to their relative historical and ethical +value, under the laws which he would himself apply to any other +literature in the world—invite him to exclude this as legendary +and that as accretion, to distinguish between the original kernel +and that which the fancy or the theology of the earliest hearers +inevitably added—and you will feel that a complete change has come +over the mind. However subtle and precise his arguments may +outwardly look, they are at bottom the arguments of affection, of +the special pleader. He has fenced off the first century from the +rest of knowledge; has invented for all its products alike special +<i>criteria</i> and a special perspective. He cannot handle the New +Testament in the spirit of science, for he approaches it on his +knees. The imaginative habit of a lifetime has decided for him; and +you ask of him what is impossible.</p> + +<p>'"An end must come to scepticism somewhere!" he once said in the +course of our talk. "Faith must take her leap—you know as well as +I!—if there is to be faith at all."</p> + +<p>'Yes, but <i>where</i>—at what point? Is the clergyman who talks +with sincere distress about infidel views of Scripture and preaches +against them, while at the same time he could not possibly give an +intelligible account of the problem of the Synoptic Gospels as it +now presents itself to the best knowledge, or an outline of the +case pressed by science for more than half a century with +increasing force and success against the historical character of +St. John's Gospel—is he justified in making his ignorance the +leaping-point?</p> + +<p>'Yet the upshot of all our talk is that I am restless and +oppressed.</p> + +<p>'... I sit and think of these nine years since Berkeley and sorrow +first laid hold of me. Berkeley rooted in me the conception of mind +as the independent antecedent of all experience, and none of the +scientific materialism, which so troubles Ancrum that he will +ultimately take refuge from it in Catholicism, affects me. But the +ethical inadequacy of Berkeley became very soon plain to me. I +remember I was going one day through one of the worst slums of +Ancoats, when a passage in his examination of the origin of evil +occurred to me:</p> + +<p>'"But we should further consider that the very blemishes and +defects of nature are not without their use, in that <i>they make +an agreeable sort of variety</i>, and augment the beauty of the +rest of creation, as shades in a picture serve to set off the +brighter and more enlightened parts."</p> + +<p>'I had just done my best to save a little timit scarecrow of a +child, aged about six, from the blows of its brutal father, who had +already given it a black eye—my heart blazed within me,—and from +that moment Berkeley had no spell for me.</p> + +<p>'Then came that moment when, after my marriage, haunted as I was by +the perpetual oppression of Manchester's pain and poverty, the +Christian mythology, the Christian theory with all its varied and +beautiful flowerings in human life, had for a time an attraction +for me so strong that Dora naturally hoped everything, and I felt +myself becoming day by day more of an orthodox Christian. What +checked the tendency I can hardly now remember in detail. It was a +converging influence of books and life—no doubt largely helped, +with regard to the details of Christian belief, by the pressure of +the German historical movement, as I became more and more fully +acquainted with it.</p> + +<p>'At any rate, St. Damian's gradually came to mean nothing to me, +though I kept, and keep still, a close working friendship with most +of the people there. But I am thankful for that Christian phase. It +enabled me to realise as nothing else could the strength of the +Christian case.</p> + +<p>'And since then it has been a long and weary journey through many +paths of knowledge and philosophy, till of late years the new +English phase of Kantian and Hegelian thought, which has been +spreading in our universities, and which is the outlet of men who +can neither hand themselves over to authority, like Newman, nor to +a mere patient nescience in the sphere of metaphysics, like Herbert +Spencer, has come to me with an ever-increasing power of healing +and edification.</p> + +<p>'That the spiritual principle in nature and man exists and governs; +that mind cannot be explained out of anything but itself; that the +human consciousness derives from a universal consciousness, and is +thereby capable both of knowledge and of goodness; that the +phenomena and history of conscience are the highest revelation of +God; that we are called to co-operation in a divine work, and in +spite of pain and sin may find ground for an infinite trust, +covering the riddle of the individual lot, in the history and +character of that work in man, so far as it has gone—these things +are deeper and deeper realities to me. They govern my life; they +give me peace; they breathe me hope.</p> + +<p>'But the last glow, the certainties, the <i>vision</i>, of faith! +Ah! me, I believe that He is there, yet my heart gropes in +darkness. All that is personality, holiness, compassion in us, must +be in Him intensified beyond all thought. Yet I have no familiarity +of prayer. I cannot use the religious language which should be mine +without a sense of unreality. My heart is athirst.</p> + +<p>'And can religion possibly <i>depend</i> upon a long process of +thought? How few can think their way to Him—perhaps none, indeed, +by the logical intellect alone. He reveals himself to the simple. +<i>Speak to me, to me also, O my Father!</i>'</p> + +<p>Sunday morning broke fresh and golden after a wet night. Lucy lay +still in the early dawn, thinking of the day that had to be faced, +feeling more cheerful, however, with the refreshment of sleep, and +inclined to hope that she might have got over the worst, and that +better things might be in store for her.</p> + +<p>So that when David said to her, 'You poor little person, did they +eat you up last night—Lady Driffield and her set?' she only +answered evasively that Mrs. Wellesdon had been nice, but that Lady +Driffield had very bad manners, and she was sure everybody thought +so.</p> + +<p>To which David heartily assented. Then Lucy put her question:</p> + +<p>'Did you think, when you looked at me last night at dinner, that +I—that I looked nice?' she said, flushing, yet driven on by an +inward smart.</p> + +<p>'Of course I did!' David declared. 'Perhaps you should hold yourself +up a little more. The women here are so astonishingly straight and +tall, like young poplars.'</p> + +<p>'Mrs. Wellesdon especially,' Lucy reflected, with a pang.</p> + +<p>'But you thought I—had done my hair nicely?' she said desperately.</p> + +<p>'Very! And it was the prettiest hair there!' he said, smoothing +back the golden brown curls from her temple.</p> + +<p>His compliment so delighted her that she dressed and prepared to +descend to breakfast with a light heart. She was not often now so +happily susceptible to a word of praise from him; she was more +exacting than she had once been, but since her acquaintance with +Lady Driffield she had been brought low!</p> + +<p>And her evil fortune returned upon her, alas, at breakfast, and +throughout the day. Breakfast, indeed, seemed to her a more +formidable meal than any. For people straggled in, and the ultimate +arrangement of the table seemed entirely to depend upon the +personal attractiveness of individuals, upon whether they annexed +or repelled new-comers. Lucy found herself at one time alone and +shivering in the close neighbourhood of Lady Driffield, who was +intrenched behind the tea-urn, and after giving her guest a finger, +had, Lucy believed, spoken once to her, expressing a desire for +scones. The meal itself, with its elaborate cakes and meats and +fruits, intimidated Lucy even more than the dinner had done. The +breach between it and any small housekeeping was more complete. She +felt that she was eating like a schoolgirl; she devoured her toast +dry, out of sheer inability to ask for butter; and, sitting for the +most part isolated in the unpopular—that is to say, the Lady +Driffield—quarter of the table, went generally half-starved.</p> + +<p>As for David, he, with Lord Driffield, Mrs. Wellesdon, Lady Alice, +Reggie, and Mrs. Shepton for company at the other end, had on the +whole an excellent time. There was, however, one uncomfortable +moment of friction between him and Colonel Danby, who had strolled +in last of all, with the vicious look of a man who has not had the +good night to which he considered himself entitled, and must +somehow wreak it on the world.</p> + +<p>Just before he entered, Lady Driffield, looking round to see that +the servants had departed, had languidly started the question: +'Does one talk to one's maid? Do you, Marcia, talk to your maid? +How can anyone ever find anything to say to one's maid?'</p> + +<p>The topic proved unexpectedly interesting. Both Marcia Wellesdon +and Lady Alice declared that their maids were their bosom friends. +Lady Driffield shrugged her shoulders, then looked at Mrs. Grieve, +who had sat silent, opened her mouth to speak, recollected herself, +and said nothing. At that moment Colonel Danby entered.</p> + +<p>'I say, Danby!' called the young attache, Marcia's brother, 'do you +talk to your valet?'</p> + +<p>'Talk to my valet!' said the Colonel, putting up his eyeglass to +look at the dishes on the side table—he spoke with suavity, but +there was an ominous pucker in the brow—'what should I do that +for? I don't pay the fellow for his conversation, I presume, but to +button my boots, and precious badly he does it too. I don't even +know what his elegant surname is. "Thomas," or "James," or "William" +is enough peg for me to hang my orders on. I generally christen +them fresh when they come to me.'</p> + +<p>Little Lady Alice looked indignant. Lucy caught her husband's face, +and saw it suddenly pale, as it easily did under a quick emotion. +He was thinking of the valet he had seen at the station standing by +the Danbys' luggage—a dark, anxious-looking man, whose likeness to +one of the compositors in his own office—a young fellow for whom +he had a particular friendship—had attracted his notice.</p> + +<p>'Why do you suppose he puts up with you—your servant?' he said, +bending across to Colonel Danby. He smiled a little, but his eyes +betrayed him.</p> + +<p>'Puts up with me!' Colonel Danby lifted his brows, regarding David +with an indescribable air of insolent surprise. 'Because I make it +worth his while in pounds, shillings, and pence; that's all.'</p> + +<p>And he put down his pheasant <i>salmi</i> with a clatter, while his +wife handed him bread and other propitiations.</p> + +<p>'Probably because he has a mother or sister,' said David, slowly.' +We trust a good deal to the patience of our "masters."'</p> + +<p>The Colonel stopped his wife's attentions with an angry hand. But +just as he was about to launch a reply more congruous with his gout +and his contempt for 'Driffield's low-life friends' than with the +amenities of ordinary society, and while Lady Venetia was slowly +and severely studying David through her eyeglass, Lord Driffield +threw himself into the breach with a nervous story of some +favourite 'man' of his own, and the storm blew over.</p> + +<p>Lady Driffield, indeed, who herself disliked Colonel Danby, as one +overbearing person dislikes another, and only invited him because +Lady Venetia was her cousin and an old friend, was rather pleased +with David's outbreak. After breakfast she graciously asked him if +she should show him the picture gallery.</p> + +<p>But David was still seething with wrath, and looked at Vandeveldes +and De Hoochs and Rembrandts with a distracted eye. Once, indeed, +in a little alcove of the gallery hung with English portraits, he +woke to a start of interest.</p> + +<p>'Imagine that that should be Gray!' he said, pointing to a +picture—well known to him through engraving—of a little man in a +bob wig, with a turned-up nose and a button chin, and a general air +of eager servility. '<i>Gray</i>,—one of our greatest poets!' He +stood wondering, feeling it impossible to fit the dignity of Gray's +verse to the insignificance of Gray's outer man.</p> + +<p>'Oh, Gray—a great poet, you think? I don't agree with you. I have +always thought the "Night Thoughts" very dull,' said Lady +Driffield, sweeping along to the next picture, in a sublime +unconsciousness. David smiled—a flash of mirth that cleared his +whole look—and was himself again. Moreover he was soon taken +possession of by Lord Driffield, and the two disappeared for a +happy morning spent between the library and the woods.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Lucy went to church, and had the bliss of feeling that +she made one too many in the omnibus, and that, squeeze herself as +small as she might, she was still crushing Miss Danby's new +dress—a fact of which both mother and daughter were clearly aware. +Looking back upon it, Lucy could not remember that for her there +had been any conversation going or coming; but it is quite possible +that her memory of Benet's Park was even more pronounced than in +reality.</p> + +<p>David and Lord Driffield came in when lunch was half over, and +afterwards there was a general strolling into the garden.</p> + +<p>'Are you all right?' said David to his wife, taking her arm +affectionately.</p> + +<p>'Oh yes, thank you,' she said hurriedly, perceiving that Reggio +Calvert was coming up to her. 'I'm all right. Don't take my arm, +David. It looks so odd.'</p> + +<p>And she turned delightedly to talk to the young diplomatist, who +had the kindliness and charm of his race, and devoted himself to +her very prettily for a while, though they had great difficulty in +finding topics, and he was coming finally to the end of his +resources when Lady Driffield announced that 'the carriage would be +round in half an hour.'</p> + +<p>'Goodness gracious! then I must write some letters first,' he said, +with the importance of the budding ambassador, and ran into the +house.</p> + +<p>The others seemed to melt away—David and Canon Aylwin strolling +off together—and soon Lucy found herself alone. She sat down in a +seat round which curved a yew hedge, and whence there was a +somewhat wide view over a bare, hilly country, with suggestions +everywhere of factory life in the hollows, till on the southwest it +rose and melted into the Derbyshire moors. Autumn—late autumn—was +on all the reddening woods and in the cool sunshine; but there was +a bright border of sunflowers and dahlias near, which no frost had +yet touched, and the gaiety both of the flowers and of the clear +blue distance forbade as yet any thought of winter.</p> + +<p>Lucy's absent and discontented eye saw neither flowers nor +distance; but it was perforce arrested before long by the figure of +Mrs. Shepton, who came round the corner of the yew hedge.</p> + +<p>'Have they gone?' said that lady.</p> + +<p>'Who?' said Lucy, startled. 'I heard a carriage drive off just now, +I think.'</p> + +<p>'Ah! then they <i>are</i> gone. Lady Driffield has carried off all +her friends—except Mrs. Wellesdon, who, I believe, is lying down +with a headache—to tea at Sir Wilfrid Herbart's. You see the house +there'—and she pointed to a dim, white patch among woods, about +five miles off. 'It is not very civil of a hostess, perhaps, to +leave her guests in this way. But Lady Driffield is Lady Driffield.'</p> + +<p>Mrs. Shepton laughed, and threw back the flapping green gauze veil +with which she generally shrouded a freckled and serviceable +complexion, in no particular danger, one would have thought, of +spoiling.</p> + +<p>Lucy instinctively looked round to see how near they were to the +house, and whether there were any windows open.</p> + +<p>'It must be very difficult, I should think, to be—to be friends +with Lady Driffield.'</p> + +<p>She looked up at Mrs. Shepton with the childish air of one both +hungry for gossip and conscious of the naughtiness of it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Shepton laughed again. She had never seen anyone behave worse, +she reflected, than Lady Driffield to this little Manchester +person, who might be uninteresting, but was quite inoffensive.</p> + +<p>'Friends! I should think so. An armed neutrality is all that pays +with Lady Driffield. I have been here many times, and I can now +keep her in order perfectly. You see, Lady Driffield has a brother +whom she happens to be fond of—everybody has some soft place—and +this brother is a Liberal member down in our West Riding part of +the world. And my husband is the editor of a paper that possesses a +great deal of political influence in the brother's constituency. We +have backed him up through this election. He is not a bad fellow at +all, though about as much of a Liberal at heart as this hedge,' and +Mrs. Shepton struck it lightly with the parasol she carried. 'My +husband thinks we got him in—by the skin of his teeth. So Lady +Driffield asks us periodically, and behaves herself, more or less. +My husband likes Lord Driffield. So do I; and an occasional descent +upon country houses amuses me. It especially entertains me to make +Lady Driffield talk politics.'</p> + +<p>'She must be very Conservative,' said Lucy, heartily. Conservatism +stood in her mind for the selfish exclusiveness of big people. Her +father had always been a bitter Radical.</p> + +<p>'Oh dear no—not at all! Lady Driffield believes herself an +advanced Liberal; that is the comedy of it. <i>Liberals!</i>' cried +Mrs. Shepton, with a sudden bitterness, which transformed the +broad, plain, sleepy face. 'I should like to set her to work for a +year in one of those mills down there. She might have some politics +worth having by the end of it.'</p> + +<p>Lucy looked at her in amazement. Why, the mill people were very +happy—most of them.</p> + +<p>'Ah well!' said Mrs. Shepton, recovering herself, 'what we have to +do—we intelligent middle class—for the next generation or two, is +to <i>drive</i> these aristocrats. Then it will be seen what is to +be done with them finally. Well, Mrs. Grieve, we must amuse +ourselves. <i>Au revoir!</i> My husband has some writing to do, and +I must go and help him.'</p> + +<p>She waved her hand and disappeared, sweeping her green and yellow +skirts behind her with an air as though Benet's Park were already a +seminary for the correction of the great.</p> + +<p>Lucy sat on pondering till she felt dull and cold, and decided to +go in. On finding her way back she passed round a side of the house +which she had not yet seen. It was the oldest part of the building, +and the windows, which were mullioned and narrow, and at some +height from the ground, looked out upon a small bowling-green, +closely walled in from the rest of the gardens and the park by a +thick screen of trees. She lingered along the path looking at a few +late roses which were still blooming in this sheltered spot against +the wall of the house, when she was startled by the sound of her +own name, and, looking up, she saw that there was an open window +above her. The temptation was too great. She held her breath and +listened.</p> + +<p>'Lord Driffield says he married her when he was quite young, that +accounts for it.' Was not the voice Lady Alice's? 'But it is a pity +that she is not more equal to him. I never saw a more striking +face, did you? Yet Lord Driffield says he is not as good-looking as +he promised to be as a boy. I wish we had been there last night +after dinner, Marcia! They say he gave Colonel Danby such a +dressing about some workmen's question. Colonel Danby was laying +down the law about strikes in his usual way—he <i>is</i> an odious +creature!—and wishing that the Government would just send an +infantry regiment into the middle of the Yorkshire miners that are +on strike now, when Mr. Grieve fired up. And everybody backed him. +Reggie told me it was splendid; he never saw a better shindy. It is +a pity about her. Everybody says he might have a great career if he +pleased. And she can't be any companion to him.—Now, Marcia, you +know your head <i>is</i> better, so don't say it isn't! Why, I have +used a whole bottle of eau de Cologne on you.'</p> + +<p>So chattered pretty, kindly Lady Alice, sitting with her back to +the window beside Marcia Wellesdon. Lucy stood still a moment, +could not hear what Mrs. Wellesdon said languidly in answer, then +crept on, her lip quivering.</p> + +<p>From then till long after the dark had fallen she was quite alone. +David, coming back from a long walk, and tea at the agent's house +on the further edge of the estate, found his wife lying on her bed, +and the stars beginning to look in upon her through the unshuttered +windows.</p> + +<p>'Why, Lucy! aren't you well, dear?' he said, hurrying up to her.</p> + +<p>'Oh yes, very well, thank you' she said, in a constrained voice. +'My head aches rather.'</p> + +<p>'Who has been looking after you?' he said, instantly reproaching +himself for the enjoyment of his own afternoon.</p> + +<p>'I have been here since three o'clock.'</p> + +<p>'And nobody gave you any tea?' he asked, flushing.</p> + +<p>'No, I went down, but there was nobody in the drawing-room. I +suppose the footman thought nobody was in.'</p> + +<p>'Where was Lady Driffield?'</p> + +<p>'Oh! she and most of them went out to tea—to a house a good way +off.'</p> + +<p>Lucy's tone was dreariness itself. David sat still, his breath +coming quickly. Then suddenly Lucy turned round and drew him down +to her passionately.</p> + +<p>'When can we get home? Is there an early train?'</p> + +<p>Then David understood. He took her in his arms, and she broke down +and cried, sobbing out a catalogue of griefs that was only half +coherent. But he saw at once that she had been neglected and +slighted, nay more, that she had been somehow wounded to the quick. +His clasped hand trembled on his knee. This was hospitality! He had +gauged Lady Driffield well.</p> + +<p>'An early train?' he said, with frowning decision. 'Yes, of course. +There is to be an eight o'clock breakfast for those who want to get +off. We shall be home by a little after nine. Cheer up, darling. I +will look after you to-night—and think of Sandy to-morrow!'</p> + +<p>He laid his cheek tenderly against hers, full of a passion of +resentment and pity. As for her, the feeling with which she clung +to him was more like the feeling she had first shown him on the +Wakely moors, than anything she had known since.</p> + +<p>'Sandy! why don't you say good morning, sir?' said David next +morning, standing on the threshold of his own study, with Lucy just +behind. His face was beaming with the pleasures of home.</p> + +<p>Sandy, who was lying curled up in David's arm-chair, looked +sleepily at his parents. His thumb was tightly wedged in his mouth, +and with the other he held pressed against him a hideous rag doll, +which had been presented to him in his cradle.</p> + +<p>'Jane's asleep,' he said, just removing his thumb for the purpose, +and then putting it back again.</p> + +<p>'Heartless villain!' said David, taking possession of both him and +Jane. 'And do you mean to say you aren't glad to see Daddy and +Mammy?'</p> + +<p>'Zes—but Sandy's <i>so</i> fond of childwen,' said Sandy, cuddling +Jane up complacently, and subsiding into his father's arms.</p> + +<p>Husband and wife laughed into each other's eyes. Then Lucy knelt +down to tie the child's shoe, and David, first kissing the boy, +bent forward and laid another kiss on the mother's hair.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-4" id="CHAPTER_V-4"></a>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<p>'An exciting post,' said David to Lucy one morning as she entered +the dining-room for breakfast. 'Louie proposes to bring her little +girl over to see us, and Ancrum will be home to-night!'</p> + +<p>'Louie!' repeated Mrs. Grieve, standing still in her amazement. +'What do you mean?'</p> + +<p>It was certainly unexpected. David had not heard from Louie for +more than six months; his remittances to her, however, were at all +times so casually acknowledged that he had taken no particular +notice; and he and she had not met for two years and more—since +that visit to Paris, in fact, recorded in his journal.</p> + +<p>'It is quite true,' said David; 'it seems to be one of her sudden +schemes. I don't see any particular reason for it. She says she +must "put matters before" me, and that Cecile wants a change. I +don't see that a change to Manchester in February is likely to help +the poor child much. No, it must mean more money. We must make up +our minds to that,' said David with a little sad smile, looking at +his wife.</p> + +<p>'David! I don't see that you're called to do it at all!' cried +Lucy. 'Why, you've done much more for her than anybody else would +have done! What they do with the money I can't think—dreadful +people!'</p> + +<p>She began to pour out the tea with vehemence and an angry lip. She +had always in her mind that vision of Louie, as she had seen her +for the first and only time in her life, marching up Market Place +in the 'loud' hat and the black and scarlet dress, stared at and +staring. Nor had she ever lost her earliest impression of strong +dislike which had come upon her immediately afterwards, when Louie +and Reuben had mounted to Dora's sitting-room, and she, Lucy, had +angrily told the quick-fingered, bold-eyed girl who claimed to be +David Grieve's sister not to touch Dora's work. Nay, every year +since had but intensified it, especially since their income had +ceased to expand rapidly, and the drain of the Montjoies' allowance +had been more plainly felt. She might have begun to feel a little +ashamed of herself that she was able to give her husband so little +sympathy in his determination to share his gains with his +co-workers. She was quite clear that she was right in resenting the +wasting of his money on such worthless people as the Montjoies. It +was disgusting that they should sponge upon them so—and with +hardly a 'thank you' all the time. Oh dear, no!—Louie took +everything as her right, and had once abused David through four +pages because his cheque had been two days late.</p> + +<p>David received his wife's remarks in a meditative silence. He +devoted himself a while to Sandy, who was eating porridge at his +right hand, and tended with great regularity to bestow on his +pinafore what was meant for his mouth. At last he said, pushing the +letter over to Lucy:</p> + +<p>'You had better read it, Lucy. She talks of coming next week.'</p> + +<p>Lucy read it with mounting wrath. It was the outcome of a fit of +characteristic violence. Louie declared that she could stand her +life no longer; that she was coming over to put things before +David; and if he couldn't help her, she and her child would just go +out and beg. She understood from an old Manchester acquaintance +whom she had met in the Rue de Rivoli about Christmas-time that +David was doing very well with his business. She wished him joy of +it. If he was prosperous, it was more than she was. Nobody ever +seemed to trouble their heads about her.</p> + +<p>'Well, I never!' said Lucy, positively choked. 'Why, it's not much +more than a month since you sent her that last cheque. And now I +know you'll be saying you can't afford yourself a new great-coat. +It's disgraceful! They'll suck you dry, those kind of people, if +you let them.'</p> + +<p>She had taken no pains so far to curb her language for the sake of +her husband's feelings. But as she gave vent to the last acid +phrase she felt a sudden compunction. For David was looking +straight before him into vacancy, with a painful intensity in the +eyes, and a curious droop and contraction of the mouth. Why did he +so often worry himself about Louie? <i>He</i> had done all he +could, anyway.</p> + +<p>She got up and went over to him with his tea. He woke up from his +absorption and thanked her.</p> + +<p>'Is it right?'</p> + +<p>'Just right!' he said, tasting it. 'All the same, Lucy, it would be +really nice of you to be kind to her and poor little Cecile. It +won't be easy for either of us having Louie here.'</p> + +<p>He began to cut up his bread with sudden haste, then, pausing +again, he went on in a low voice. 'But if one leaves a task like +that undone it makes a sore spot, a fester in the mind.'</p> + +<p>She went back to the place in silence.</p> + +<p>'What day is it to be?' she said presently. Certainly they both +looked dejected.</p> + +<p>'The 16th, isn't it? I wonder who the Manchester acquaintance was. +He must have given a rose-coloured account. We aren't so rich as +all that, are we, wife?'</p> + +<p>He glanced at her with a charming half-apprehensive smile, which +made his face young again. Lucy looked ready to cry.</p> + +<p>'I know you'll get out of buying that coat,' she said with energy, +as though referring to an already familiar topic of discussion +between them.</p> + +<p>'No, I won't,' said David cheerfully. 'I'll buy it before Louie +comes, if that will please you. Oh, we shall do, dear! I've had a +real good turn at the shop this last month. Things will look better +this quarter's end, you'll see.'</p> + +<p>'Why, I thought you'd been so busy in the printing office,' she +said, a good deal cheered, however, by his remark.</p> + +<p>'So we have. But John's a brick, and doesn't care how much he does. +And the number of men who take a personal interest in the house, +who do their utmost to forward work, and to prevent waste and +scamping, is growing fast. When once we get the apprentices' school +into full working order, we shall see.'</p> + +<p>David gave himself a great stretch; and then, thrusting his hands +deep into his pockets, stood by the fire enjoying it and his dreams +together.</p> + +<p>'Has it begun?' said Lucy. Her tone was not particularly cordial; +but anyone who knew them well would perhaps have reflected that six +months before he would have neither made his remark, nor she have +asked her question.</p> + +<p>'Yes—what?' he said with a start. 'Oh, the school! It has begun +tentatively. Six of our best men give in rotation two hours a day +to it at the time when work and the machines are slackest. And we +have one or two teachers from outside. Twenty-three boys have +entered. I have begun to pay them a penny a day for attendance.'</p> + +<p>His face lit up with merriment as though he anticipated her +remonstrance.</p> + +<p>'David, how foolish! If you coax them like that they won't care a +bit about it.'</p> + +<p>'Well, the experiment has been tried by a great French firm,' he +said, 'and it did well. It is really a slight addition to wages, and +pays the firm in the end. You should see the little fellows hustle +up for their money. I pay it them every month.'</p> + +<p>'And it all comes out of <i>your</i> pocket—that, of course, I +needn't ask,' said Lucy. But her sarcasm was not bitter, and she +had a motherly eye the while to the way in which Sandy was stuffing +himself with his bread and jam.</p> + +<p>'Well,' he said, laughing and making no attempt to excuse himself, +'but I tell you, madam, you will do better this year. I positively +must make some money out of the shop for you and myself too. So I +have been going at it like twenty horses, and we've sent out a +splendid catalogue.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, I say, David!' said Lucy, dismayed, 'you're not going to take +the shop-money too to spend on the printing?'</p> + +<p>'I won't take anything that will leave you denuded,' he said +affectionately; 'and whenever I want anything I'll tell you all +about it—if you like.'</p> + +<p>He looked at her significantly. She did not answer for a minute, +then she said:</p> + +<p>'Don't you want me to give those boys a treat some time?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, when the weather gets more decent, if it ever does. We must +give them a day on the moors—take them to Clough End perhaps. Oh, +look here!' he exclaimed with a sudden change of tone, 'let us ask +Uncle Reuben to come and spend the day to see Louie!'</p> + +<p>'Why, he won't leave <i>her</i>,' said Lucy.</p> + +<p>'Who? Aunt Hannah? Oh yes, he will. It's wonderful what she can do +now. I saw her in November, you remember, when I went to see +Margaret. It's a resurrection. Poor Uncle Reuben!'</p> + +<p>'What do you mean?' said Lucy, startled.</p> + +<p>'Well,' said David slowly, with a half tender, half humorous twist +of the lip, 'he can't understand it. He prayed so many years, and it +made no difference. Then came a new doctor, and with electricity +and rubbing it was all done. Oh yes, Uncle Reuben would like to see +Louie. And I want to show him that boy there!'</p> + +<p>He nodded at Sandy, who sat staring open-mouthed and open-eyed at +his parents, a large piece of bread and jam slipping slowly down +his throat.</p> + +<p>'David, you're silly,' said Lucy. But she went to stand by him at +the fire, and slipped her hand inside his arm. 'I suppose she and +Cecile had better have the front room,' she went on slowly.</p> + +<p>'Yes, that would be the most cheerful.'</p> + +<p>Then they were silent a little, he leaning his head lightly against +hers.</p> + +<p>'Well, I must go,' he said, rousing himself; 'I shall just catch the +train. Send a line to Ancrum, there's a dear, to say I will go and +see him to-night. Four months! I am afraid he has been very bad.'</p> + +<p>Lucy stood by the fire a little, lost in many contradictory +feelings. There was in her a strange sense as of some long strain +slowly giving way, the quiet melting of some old hardness. Ever +since that autumn time when, after their return from Benet's Park, +her husband's chivalry and delicacy of feeling had given back to +her the self-respect and healed the self-love which had been so +rudely hurt, there had been a certain readjustment of Lucy's nature +going on below the little commonplaces and vanities and affections +of her life which she herself would never have been able to +explain. It implied the gradual abandonment of certain ambitions, +the relinquishment bit by bit of an arid and fruitless effort.</p> + +<p>She would stand and sigh sometimes—long, regretful sighs like a +child—for she knew not what. But David would have his way, and it +was no good; and she loved him and Sandy.</p> + +<p>But she owed no love to Louie Montjoie! It was a relief to her +now—an escape from an invading sweetness of which her little heart +was almost afraid—to sit down and plan how she would protect David +from that grasping woman and her unspeakable husband.</p> + +<p>'David, my dear fellow!' said Ancrum's weak voice. He rose with +difficulty from his seat by the fire. The room was the same little +lodging-house sitting-room in Mortimer Road, where David years +before had poured out his boyish account of himself. Neither +chiffonnier, nor pictures, nor antimacassars had changed at all; +the bustling landlady was still loud and vigorous. But Ancrum +was a shadow.</p> + +<p>'You are better?' David said, holding his hand in both his.</p> + +<p>'Oh yes, better for a time. Not for long, thank God!'</p> + +<p>David looked at him with painful emotion. Several times during +these eight years had he seen Ancrum emerge from these mysterious +crises of his, a broken and shattered man, whom only the force of a +superhuman will could drag back to life and work. But he had never +yet seen him so beaten down, so bloodless, so emaciated as this. +Lung mischief had declared itself more than a year before this +date, and had clearly made progress during this last attack of +melancholia. He thought to himself that his old friend could not +have long to live.</p> + +<p>'Has Williams been to see you?' he asked, naming a doctor whom +Ancrum had long known and trusted.</p> + +<p>'Oh yes! He can do nothing. He tells me to give in and go to the +south. But there is a little work left in me still. I wanted my +boys. I grew to pine for my boys—up there.'</p> + +<p>'Up there' meant that house in Scotland where lived the friends +bound to him by such tragic memories of help asked and rendered in +a man's worst extremity, that he could never speak of them when he +was living his ordinary life in Manchester, passionately as he +loved them.</p> + +<p>They chatted a little about the boys, some of whom David had been +keeping an eye on. Five or six of them, indeed, were in his +printing-office, and learning in the apprentices' school he had +just started.</p> + +<p>But in the middle of their talk, with a sudden change of look, +Ancrum stooped forward and laid his hand on David's.</p> + +<p>'A little more, Davy—I have just to get a <i>little</i> worse—and +<i>she</i> will come to me.'</p> + +<p>David was not sure that he understood. Ancrum had only spoken of +his wife once since the night when, led on by sympathy and emotion, +he had met David's young confession by the story of his own fate. +She was still teaching at Glasgow so far as David knew, where she +was liked and respected.</p> + +<p>'Yes, Davy—when I have come to the end of my tether—when I +can do no more but die—I shall call—and she will come. It +has so far killed us to be together—more than a few hours in the +year. But when life is all over for me—she will be kind—and +I shall be able to forget it all. Oh, the hours I have sat here +thinking—thinking—and <i>gnashing my teeth!</i> My boys think me +a kind, gentle, harmless creature, Davy. They little know the +passions I have carried within me—passions of hate and +bitterness—outcries against God and man. But there has been One +with me through the storms'—his voice sank—'aye! and I have gone +to Him again and again with the old cry—<i>Master!—Master! +—carest Thou not that we perish?</i>'</p> + +<p>His drawn grey face worked and he mastered himself with difficulty. +David held his hand firm and close in a silence which carried with +it a love and sympathy not to be expressed.</p> + +<p>'Let me just say this to you, Davy,' Ancrum went on presently, +'before we shut the door on this kind of talk—for when a man has +got a few things to do and very little strength to do 'em with, he +must not waste himself. You may hear any day that I have been +received into the Catholic Church, or you may only hear it when I +am dying. One way or the other, you <i>will</i> hear it. It has +been strange to go about all these years among my Unitarian and +dissenting friends and to know that this would be the inevitable +end of it. I have struggled alone for peace and certainty. I cannot +get them for myself. There is an august, an inconceivable +possibility which makes my heart stand still when I think of it, +that the Catholic Church may verily have them to give, as she says +she has. I am weak—I shall submit—I shall throw myself upon her +breast at last.'</p> + +<p>'But why not now,' said David, tenderly, 'if it would give you +comfort?'</p> + +<p>Ancrum did not answer at once; he sat rubbing his hands restlessly +over the fire.</p> + +<p>'I don't know—I don't know,' he said at last. 'I have told you what +the end will be, Davy. But the will still flutters—flutters—in my +poor breast, like a caged thing.'</p> + +<p>Then that beautiful half-wild smile of his lit up the face.</p> + +<p>'Bear with me, you strong man! What have you been doing with +yourself? How many more courts have you been pulling down? And how +much more of poor Madam Lucy's money have you been throwing out of +window?'</p> + +<p>He took up his old tone, half bantering, half affectionate, and +teased David out of the history of the last six months. While he +sat listening he reflected once more, as he had so often reflected, +upon the difference between the reality of David Grieve's life as +it was and his, Ancrum's, former imaginations of what it would be. +A rapid rise to wealth and a new social status, removal to London, +a great public career, a personality, and an influence conspicuous +in the eyes of England—all these things he had once dreamed of as +belonging to the natural order of David's development. What he had +actually witnessed had been the struggle of a hidden life to +realise certain ideal aims under conditions of familiar difficulty +and limitation, the dying down of that initial brilliance and +passion to succeed, into a wrestle of conscience as sensitive as it +was profound, as tenacious as it was scrupulous. He had watched an +unsatisfactory marriage, had realised the silent resolve of the +north-countryman to stand by his own people, of the man sprung from +the poor to cling to the poor: he had become familiar with the +veins of melancholy by which both character and life were crossed. +That glittering prince of circumstance as he had once foreseen him, +was still enshrined in memory and fancy; but the real man was knit +to the cripple's inmost heart.</p> + +<p>Another observer, perhaps, might have wondered at Ancrum's sense of +difference and disillusion. For David after all had made a mark. As +he sat talking to Ancrum of the new buildings behind the +printing-office where he now employed from two to three hundred +men, of the ups and downs of his profit-sharing experiences, of +this apprentices' school for the sons of members of the 'house,' +imitated from one of the same kind founded by a great French +printing firm, and the object just now of a passionate energy of +work on David's part—or as he diverged into the history of an +important trade dispute in Manchester, where he had been appointed +arbitrator by the unanimous voice of both sides—as he told these +things, it was not doubtful even for Ancrum that his power and +consideration were spreading in his own town.</p> + +<p>But, substantially, Ancrum was right. Hard labour and natural gift +had secured their harvest; but that vivid personal element in +success which captivates and excites the bystander seemed, in +David's case, to have been replaced by something austere, which +pointed attention and sympathy rather to the man's work than to +himself. When he was young there had been intoxication for such a +spectator as Ancrum in the magical rapidity and ease with which he +seized opportunity and beat down difficulty. Now that he was +mature, he was but one patient toiler the more at the eternal +puzzles of our humanity.</p> + +<p>Ancrum let him talk awhile. He had always felt a certain interest +in David's schemes, though they were not of a quality and sort with +which a mind like his naturally concerned itself. But his interest +now could not hold out so long as once it could.</p> + +<p>'Ah, that will do—that will do, dear fellow!' he said, +interrupting and touching David's hand with apologetic affection. +'I seem to feel your pulse beating 150 to the minute, and it tires +me so I can't bear myself. Gossip to me. How is Sandy?'</p> + +<p>David laughed, and had as usual a new batch of 'Sandiana' to +produce. Then he talked of Louie's coming and of the invitation +which had been sent to Reuben Grieve.</p> + +<p>'I shall come and sit in a corner and look at <i>her</i>,' said +Ancrum, nodding at Louie's name. 'What sort of a life has she been +leading all these years? Neither you nor I can much imagine. But +what beauty it used to be! How will John stand seeing her again?'</p> + +<p>David smiled, but did not think it would affect John very greatly. +He was absorbed in the business of Grieve & Co., and no less round, +roseate, and trusty than he had always been.</p> + +<p>'Well, good night—good night!' said Ancrum, and seemed to be +looking at the clock uneasily. 'Come again, Davy, and I dare say I +shall struggle up to you.'</p> + +<p>At that moment the door opened, and, in spite of a hasty shout from +Ancrum, which she did not or would not understand, Mrs. Elsley, his +landlady, came into the room, bearing his supper. She put down the +tray, seemed to invite David's attention to it by her indignant +look, and flounced out again like one bursting with forbidden +speech.</p> + +<p>'Ancrum, this is absurd!' cried David, pointing to the tea and +morsel of dry bread which were to provide this shrunken invalid +with his evening meal. 'You <i>can't</i> live on this stuff now, you +know—you want something more tempting and more nourishing. Do be +rational!'</p> + +<p>Ancrum sprang up, hobbled with unusual alacrity across the room, +and, laying hold of David, made a feint of ejecting his visitor.</p> + +<p>'You get along and leave me to my wittles!' he said with the smile +of a schoolboy; 'I don't spy on you when you're at your meals.'</p> + +<p>David crossed his arms.</p> + +<p>'I shall have to send Lucy down every morning to housekeep with +Mrs. Elsley,' he said firmly.</p> + +<p>'Now, David, hold your tongue! I couldn't eat anything else if I +tried. And there are two boys down with typhoid in Friar's +Yard—drat 'em!—and scarcely a rag on 'em: don't you understand? +And besides, David, if <i>she</i> comes, I shall want a pound or +two, you see?'</p> + +<p>He did not look at his visitor's face nor let his own be seen. He +simply pushed David through the door and shut it.</p> + +<p>'Sandy, they're just come!' cried Lucy in some excitement, hugging +the child to her by way of a last pleasant experience before the +advent of her sister-in-law. Then she put the child down on the +sofa and went out to meet the new-comers.</p> + +<p>Sandy sucked a meditative thumb, putting his face to the window, +and surveyed the arrival which was going on in the front garden. +There was a great deal of noise and talking; the lady in the grey +cloak was scolding the cabman, and 'Daddy' was taking her bags and +parcels from her, and trying to make her come in. On the steps +stood a little girl looking frightened and tired. Sandy twisted his +head round and studied her carefully. But he showed no signs of +running out to meet her. She might be nice, or she might be nasty. +Sandy had a cautious philosophical way with him towards novelties. +He remained perfectly still with his cheek pressed against the +glass.</p> + +<p>The door opened. In came Louie, with Lucy looking already flushed +and angry behind her, and David, last of all, holding Cecile by the +hand.</p> + +<p>Louie was in the midst of denunciations of the cabman, who had, +according to her, absorbed into his system, or handed over to an +accomplice on the way, a bandbox which had <i>certainly</i> been +put in at St. Pancras, and which contained Cecile's best hat. She +was red and furious, and David felt himself as much attacked as the +cabman, for to the best of his ability he had transferred them and +their packages, at the Midland station, from the train to the cab.</p> + +<p>In the midst of her tirade, however, she suddenly stopped short and +looked round the room she had just entered—Lucy's low comfortable +sitting-room, with David's books overflowing into every nook and +corner, the tea-table spread, and the big fire which Lucy had been +nervously feeding during her time of waiting for the travellers.</p> + +<p>'Well, you've got a fire, anyway,' she said, brusquely. 'I thought +you'd have a bigger house than this by now.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, thank you, it's quite big enough!' cried Lucy, going to the +tea-table and holding herself very straight. '<i>Quite</i> big +enough for anything <i>we</i> want! Will you take your tea?'</p> + +<p>Louie threw herself into an armchair and looked about her.</p> + +<p>'Where's the little boy?' she inquired.</p> + +<p>'I'm here,' said a small solemn voice from behind the sofa, 'but I'm +not <i>your</i> boy.'</p> + +<p>And Sandy, discovered with his back to the window, replaced the +thumb which he had removed to make the remark, and went on staring +with portentous gravity at the new-comers. Cecile had nervously +disengaged herself from David and was standing by her mother.</p> + +<p>'Why, he's small for his age!' exclaimed Louie; 'I'm sure he's small +for his age. Why, he's nearly five!'</p> + +<p>'Come here, Sandy,' said David, 'and let your aunt and cousin look +at you.'</p> + +<p>Sandy reluctantly sidled across the room so as to keep as far as +possible from his aunt and cousin, and fastened on his father's +hand. He and the little girl looked at one another.</p> + +<p>'Go and kiss her,' said David.</p> + +<p>Sandy most unwillingly allowed himself to be put forward. Cecile +with a little patronising woman-of-the-world air stooped and kissed +him first on one cheek and then on the other. Louie only looked at +him. Her black eyes—no less marvellous than of yore, although now +the brilliancy of them owed something to art as well as nature, as +Lucy at once perceived—stared him up and down, taking stock +minutely.</p> + +<p>'He's well made,' she said grudgingly, 'and his colour isn't bad. +Cecile, take your hat off.'</p> + +<p>The child obeyed, and the mother with hasty fingers pulled her hair +forward here, and put it back there. 'Look at the thickness of it,' +she said, proudly pointing it out to David. 'They'd have given me +two guineas for it in the Rue de la Paix the other day. Why didn't +that child have your hair, I wonder?' she added, nodding towards +Sandy.</p> + +<p>'Because he preferred his mother's, I suppose,' said David, smiling +at Lucy, and wondering through his discomfort what Sandy could +possibly be doing with his coat-tail. He seemed to be elaborately +scrubbing his face with it.</p> + +<p>'What are you doing with my coat, villain?' he said, lifting his +son in his arms.</p> + +<p>Sandy found his father's ear, and with infinite precaution +whispered vindictively into it:</p> + +<p>'I've wiped <i>them</i> kisses off anyhow.'</p> + +<p>David suppressed him, and devoted himself to the travellers and +their tea.</p> + +<p>Every now and then he took a quiet look at his sister. Louie was in +some ways more beautiful than ever. She carried herself +magnificently, and as she sat at the tea-table—restless +always—she fell unconsciously into one fine attitude after +another, no doubt because of her long practice as a sculptor's +model. All the girl's awkwardness had disappeared; she had the +insolent ease which goes with tried and conscious power. But with +the angularity and thinness of first youth had gone also that wild +and startling radiance which Montjoie had caught and fixed in the +Maenad statue—the one enduring work of a ruined talent, now to be +found in the Luxembourg by anyone who cares to look for it. Her +beauty was less original; it had taken throughout the second-rate +Parisian stamp; she had the townswoman's pallor, as compared with +the moorland red and white of her youth; and round the eyes and +mouth in a full daylight were already to be seen the lines which +grave the history of passionate and selfish living.</p> + +<p>But if her beauty was less original, it was infinitely more +finished. Lucy beside her stumbled among the cups, and grew more +and more self-conscious; she had felt much the same at Benet's Park +beside Lady Venetia Danby; only here there was a strong personal +animosity and disapproval fighting with the disagreeable sense of +being outshone.</p> + +<p>She left almost all the talk to her husband, and employed herself +in looking after Cecile. David, who had left his work with +difficulty to meet his sister, did his best to keep her going on +indifferent subjects, wondering the while what it was that she had +come all this way to say to him, and perfectly aware that her sharp +eyes were in every place, taking a depreciatory inventory of his +property, his household, and his circumstances.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Louie said something to Cecile in violent French. It was +to the effect that she was to hold herself up and not stoop like an +idiot.</p> + +<p>The child, who was shyly eating her tea, flushed all over, and drew +herself up with painful alacrity. Louie went on with a loud account +of the civility shown her by some gentlemen on the Paris boat and +on the journey from Dover. In the middle of it she stopped short, +her eye flamed, she bent forward with the rapidity of a cat that +springs, and slapped Cecile smartly on the right cheek.</p> + +<p>'I was watching you!' she cried. 'Are you never going to obey me—do +you think I am going to drag a hunchback about with me?'</p> + +<p>Both David and Lucy started forward. Cecile dropped her bread and +butter and began to cry in a loud, shrill voice, hitting out +meanwhile at her mother with her tiny hands in a frenzy of rage and +fear. Sandy, frightened out of his wits, set up a loud howl also, +till his mother caught him up and carried him away.</p> + +<p>'Louie, the child is tired out!' said David, trying to quiet Cecile +and dry her tears. 'What was that for?'</p> + +<p>Louie's chest heaved.</p> + +<p>'Because she won't do what I tell her,' she said fiercely. 'What am +I to do with her when she grows up? Who'll ever look at her twice?'</p> + +<p>She scowled at the child who had taken refuge on David's knee, then +with a sudden change of expression she held out her arms, and said +imperiously:</p> + +<p>'Give her to me.'</p> + +<p>David relinquished her, and the mother took the little trembling +creature on her knee.</p> + +<p>'Be quiet then,' she said to her roughly, always in French, 'I +didn't hurt you. There! <i>Veux-tu du gateau</i>?'</p> + +<p>She cut some with eager fingers and held it to Cecile's lips. The +child turned away, silently refusing it, the tears rolling down her +cheeks. The mother devoured her with eyes of remorse and adoration, +while her face was still red with anger.</p> + +<p>'<i>Dis-moi</i>, you don't feel anything?' she said, kissing her +hungrily. 'Are you tired? Shall I carry you upstairs and put you on +the bed to rest?'</p> + +<p>And she did carry her up, not allowing David to touch her. When +they were at last safe in their own room, David came down to his +study and threw himself into his chair in the dark with a groan.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-4" id="CHAPTER_VI-4"></a>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<p>Louie and her child entered the sitting-room together when the bell +rang for supper-tea. Louie had put on a high red silk dress of a +brilliant, almost scarlet, tone, which showed her arms from the +elbows and was very slightly clouded here and there with black; +Cecile crept beside her, a little pale shadow, in a white muslin +frock, adorned, however, as Lucy's vigilant eyes immediately +perceived, with some very dainty and expensive embroidery. The +mother's dress reminded her of that in which she first saw Louie +Grieve; so did her splendid and reckless carriage; so did the wild +play of her black eyes, always on the watch for opportunities of +explosion and offence. How did they get their dresses? Who paid for +them? And now they had come over to beg for more! Lucy could hardly +keep a civil tongue in her head at all, as her sister-in-law swept +round the room making strong and, to the mistress of the house, +cutting remarks on the difference between 'Manchester dirt' and +the brightness and cleanliness of Paris. Why, she lorded it over +them as though the place belonged to her! 'And she is just a +pauper—living on what we give her!' thought Lucy to herself with +exasperation.</p> + +<p>After supper, at which Louie behaved with the same indefinable +insolence—whether as regarded the food or the china, or the shaky +moderator lamp, a relic from David's earliest bachelor days, which +only he could coax into satisfactory burning—Lucy made the move, +and said to her with cold constraint:</p> + +<p>'Will you come into the drawing-room?—David has a pipe in the +study after dinner.'</p> + +<p>'I want to speak to David,' said Louie, pushing back her chair with +noisy decision. 'I'll go with him. He can smoke as much as he +likes—I'm used to it.'</p> + +<p>'Well, then, come into my study,' said David, trying to speak +cheerfully. 'Lucy will look after Cecile.'</p> + +<p>To Louie's evident triumph Cecile made difficulties about going +with her aunt, but was at last persuaded by the prospect of seeing +Sandy in bed. She had already shown signs in her curious frightened +way of a considerable interest in Sandy.</p> + +<p>Then David led the way to the study. He put his sister into his +armchair and stood pipe in hand beside her, looking down upon her. +In his heart there was the passionate self-accusing sense that he +could not feel pity, or affection, or remorse for the past when she +was there; every look and word roused in him the old irritation, +the old wish to master her, he had known so often in his youth. Yet +he drew himself together, striving to do his best.</p> + +<p>Well, now, look here,' said Louie defiantly, 'I want some money.'</p> + +<p>'So I supposed,' he said quietly, lighting his pipe.</p> + +<p>Louie reddened.</p> + +<p>'Well, and if I do want it,' she said, breathing quickly, 'I've a +right to want it. You chose to waste all that money—all my +money—on that marrying business, and you must take the +consequence. I look upon it this way—you promised to put my money +into your trade and give me a fair share of your profits. Then you +chucked it away—you made me spend it all, and now, of course, I'm +to have nothing to say to your profits. Oh dear, no! It's a trifle +that I'm a pauper and you're rolling in money compared to me +anyway. Oh! it doesn't matter nothing to nobody—not at all! All +the same you couldn't have made the start you did—not those few +months I was with you—without my money. Why can't you confess it, +I want to know—and behave more handsome to me now—instead of +leaving me in that state that I haven't a franc to bless myself +with!'</p> + +<p>She threw herself back in her chair, with one arm flung behind her +head. David stared at her tongue-tied for a while by sheer +amazement.</p> + +<p>'I gave you everything I had,' he said, at last, with a slow +distinctness,' all your money, and all my own too. When I came back +here, I had my new stock, it is true, but it was much of it unpaid +for. My first struggle was to get my neck out of debt.'</p> + +<p>He paused, shrinking with a kind of sick repulsion from the memory +of that bygone year of shattered nerves and anguished effort. +Deliberately he let thought and speech of it drop. Louie was the +last person in the world to whom he could talk of it.</p> + +<p>'I built up my business again,' he resumed, 'by degrees. Mr. Doyle +lent me money—it was on that capital I first began to thrive. From +the very beginning, even in the very year when I handed over to you +all our father's money—I sent you more. And every year since—you +know as well as I do—'</p> + +<p>But again he looked away and paused. Once more he felt himself on a +wrong tack. What was the use of laying out, so to speak, all that +he had done in the sight of these angry eyes? Besides, a certain +high pride restrained him.</p> + +<p>Louie looked a trifle disconcerted, and her flush deepened. Her +audacious attempt to put him in the wrong and provide herself with +a grievance could not be carried on. She took refuge in passion.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I dare say you think you've done a precious lot!' she said, +sitting straight up and locking her hands round her knee, while the +whole frame of her stiffened and quivered. 'I suppose you think +other people would think so too. <i>I</i> don't care! It don't +matter to me. You're the only belonging I've got—who else was +there for me to look to? Oh, it is all very fine! All I know is, I +can't stand my life any more! If you can't do anything, I'll just +pack up my traps and go. <i>Somebody</i>'ll have to make it easier +for me, that's all! Last week—I was out of the house—he found out +where I kept my money, he broke the lock open, and when I got home +there was nothing. <i>Nothing</i>, I tell you!' Her voice rose to a +shrillness that made David look to see that the door between them +and Lucy was securely closed. 'And I'd promised a whole lot of +things to the church for Easter, and Cecile and I haven't got a rag +between us; and as for the rent, the landlord may whistle for it! +Oh! the beast!' she said, between her teeth, while the fierce tears +stood in her eyes.</p> + +<p>Lucy—any woman of normal shrewdness, putting two and two +together—would have allowed these complaints about half their +claimed weight. Upon David—unconsciously inclined to measure all +emotion by his own standard—they produced an immediate and deep +impression.</p> + +<p>'You poor thing!' he murmured, as he stood looking down upon her.</p> + +<p>She tossed her head, as though resenting his compassion.</p> + +<p>'Yes, I'm about tired of it! I thought I'd come over and tell you +that. Now you know,—and if you hear things you don't like, don't +blame me, that's all!'</p> + +<p>Her great eyes blazed into his. He understood her. Her child—the +priests—had, so far, restrained her. Now—what strange mixture of +shameless impulse—curiosity, greed, reckless despair—had driven +her here that she might threaten him thus!</p> + +<p>'Ah, I dare say you think I've had a gay life of it over there with +your money,' she went on, not allowing him to speak. '<i>My God!</i>'</p> + +<p>She shrugged her shoulders, with a scornful laugh, while the +tempest gathered within her.</p> + +<p>'Don't I know perfectly that for years I have been one of the most +beautiful women in Paris! Ask the men who have painted me for the +Salon—ask that brute who might have made a fortune out of me if he +hadn't been the sot he is! And what have I got by it? What do other +women who are not a tenth part as good-looking as I am get by it? A +comfortable life, anyway! <i>Eh bien! essayons!—nous aussi.</i>'</p> + +<p>The look she flung at him choked the words on his lips.</p> + +<p>'When I think of these ten years,' she cried, 'I just wonder at +myself. There,—what you think about it I don't know, and I don't +care. I might have had a good time, and I've had a <i>devil's</i> +time. And, upon my word, I think I'll make a change!'</p> + +<p>In her wild excitement she sprang up and began to pace the narrow +room.</p> + +<p>David watched her, fighting with himself, and with that inbred +antipathy of temperament which seemed to paralyse both will and +judgment. Was the secret of it that in their profound unlikeness +they were yet so much alike?</p> + +<p>Then he went up to her and made her sit down again.</p> + +<p>'Let me have a word now,' he said quietly, though his hand as it +gripped hers had a force of which he was unconscious. 'You say you +wonder at yourself. Well, I can tell you this: other people have +wondered too! When I left you in Paris ten years ago, I tell you +frankly, I had no hopes. I said to myself—don't rage at me!—with +that way of looking at things, and with such a husband, what chance +is there? And for some years now, Louie, I confess to you, I have +been simply humbled and amazed to see what—what'—his voice sank +and shook—'<i>love—and the fear of God</i>—can do. It has been +hard to be miserable and poor—I know that—but you have cared for +Cecile, and you have feared to shut yourself out from good people +who spoke to you in God's name. Don't do yourself injustice. +Believe in yourself. Look back upon these years and be thankful. +With all their miseries they have been a kind of victory! Will you +throw them away <i>now</i>? But your child is growing up and will +understand. And there are hands to help—mine, always—always.'</p> + +<p>He held out his to her, smiling. He could not have analysed his own +impulse—this strange impulse which had led him to bless instead of +cursing. But its effect upon Louie was startling. She had looked +for, perhaps in her fighting mood she had ardently desired, an +outburst of condemnation, against which her mad pleasure in the +sound of her own woes and hatreds might once more spend itself. And +instead of blaming and reproaching he had—</p> + +<p>She stared at him. Then with a sudden giving way, which was a matter +partly of nerves and partly of surprise, she let her two arms fall +upon the edge of the chair, and dropping her head upon them, burst +out into wild sobbing.</p> + +<p>His own eyes were wet. He soothed her hurriedly and incoherently, +told her he would spare her all the money he could; that he and +Lucy would do their best, but that she must not suppose they were +very rich. He did not regard all his money as his own.</p> + +<p>He went on to explain to her something of his business position. +Her sobbing slackened and ceased. And presently, his mood changing +instinctively with hers, he became more vague and cautious in +statement; his tone veered back towards that which he was +accustomed to use to her. For, once her burst of passion over, he +felt immediately that she was once more criticising everything that +he said and did in her own interest.</p> + +<p>'Oh, I know you've become a regular Communist,' she said sullenly +at last, drying her eyes in haste.' Well, I tell you, I must have a +hundred pounds. I can't do with a penny less than that.'</p> + +<p>He tried to get out of her for what precise purposes she wanted it, +and whether her husband had stolen from her the whole of the +quarter's allowance he had just sent her. She answered evasively; +he felt that she was telling him falsehoods; and once more his +heart grew dry within him.</p> + +<p>'Well,' he said at last with a certain decision, 'I will do it if I +can, and I think I can do it. But, Louie, understand that I have +got Lucy and the child to think for, that I am not alone.'</p> + +<p>'I should think she had got more than she could expect!' cried +Louie, putting her hair straight with trembling hands.</p> + +<p>His cheek flushed at the sneer, but before he could reply she said +abruptly:</p> + +<p>'Have you ever told her about Paris?'</p> + +<p>'No,' he said, with equal abruptness, his mouth taking a stern +line, 'and unless I am forced to do so I never shall. That you +understand, I know, for I spoke to you about it in Paris. My past +died for me when I asked Lucy to be my wife. I do not ask you to +remember this. I take it for granted.'</p> + +<p>'I saw that woman the other day,' said Louie with a strange smile, +as she sat staring into the fire.</p> + +<p>He started, but he did not reply. He went to straighten some papers +on his table. It seemed to him that he did not want her to say a +word more, and yet he listened for it.</p> + +<p>'I remember they used to call her pretty,' said Louie, a hateful +scorn shining in her still reddened eyes. 'She is just a little +frump now—nobody would ever look at her twice. They say her +husband leads her a life. He poisoned himself at an operation and +has gone half crippled. She has to keep them both. She doesn't give +herself the airs she used to, anyway.'</p> + +<p>David could bear it no longer.</p> + +<p>'I think you had better go and take Cecile to bed,' he said +peremptorily. 'I heard it strike nine a few minutes ago. I will go +and talk business to Lucy.'</p> + +<p>She went with a careless air. As he saw her shut the door his heart +felt once more dead and heavy. A few minutes before there had been +the flutter of a divine presence between them. Now he felt nothing +but the iron grip of character and life. And that little picture +which her last words had left upon the mind—it carried with it a +shock and dreariness he could only escape by hard work, that best +medicine of the soul. He went out early next morning to his +printing-office, spent himself passionately upon a day of +difficulties, and came back refreshed.</p> + +<p>For the rest, he talked to Lucy, and with great difficulty +persuaded her in the matter of the hundred pounds. Lucy's +indignation may be taken for granted, and the angry proofs she +heaped on David that Louie was an extravagant story-telling hussy, +who spent everything she could get on dress and personal luxury.</p> + +<p>'Why, her dressing-table is like a perfumer's shop!' she cried in +her wrath; 'what she does with all the messes I can't imagine—makes +herself beautiful, I suppose! Why should we pay for it all? And I +tell you she has got a necklace of real pearls. I know they are +real, for she told Lizzie'(Lizzie was the boy's nurse)'that she +always took them about with her to keep them safe out of her +husband's clutches—just imagine her talking to the girl like that! +When will you be able to give <i>me</i> real pearls, and where do +you suppose she got them?'</p> + +<p>David preferred not to inquire. What could he do, he asked himself +in despair—what even could he know, unless Louie chose that he +should know it? But she, on the contrary, carefully avoided the +least recurrence to the threats of her first talk with him.</p> + +<p>Ultimately, however, he brought his wife round, and Louie was +informed that she could have her hundred pounds, which should be +paid her on the day of her departure, but that nothing more, beyond +her allowance, could or should be given her during the current +year.</p> + +<p>She took the promise very coolly, but certainly made herself more +agreeable after it was given. She dressed up Cecile and set her +dancing in the evenings, weird dances of a Spanish type, +alternating between languor and a sort of 'possession,' which had +been taught the child by a moustached violinist from Madrid, who +admired her mother and paid Louie a fantastic and stormy homage +through her child. She also condescended to take an interest in +Lucy's wardrobe. The mingled temper and avidity with which Lucy +received her advances may be imagined. It made her mad to have it +constantly implied that her gowns and bonnets would not be worn by +a maid-of-all-work in Paris. At the same time, when Louie's fingers +had been busy with them it was as plain to her as to anyone else +that they became her twice as well as they had before. So she +submitted to be pinned and pulled about and tried on, keeping as +much as possible on her dignity all the time, and reddening with +fresh wrath each time that Louie made it plain to her that she +thought her sister-in-law a provincial little fool, and was only +troubling herself about her to pass the time.</p> + +<p>Dora, of course, came up to see Louie, and Louie was much more +communicative to her than to either Lucy or David. She told stories +of her husband which made Dora's hair stand on end; but she boasted +in great detail of her friendships with certain Legitimist ladies +of the bluest blood, with one of whom she had just held a +<i>quete</i> for some Catholic object on the stairs of the Salon. +'I was in blue and pink with a little silver,' she said, looking +quickly behind her to see that Lucy was not listening. 'And Cecile +was a fairy, with spangled wings—the sweetest thing you ever saw. +We were both in the illustrated papers the week after, but as +nobody took any notice of Madame de C—she has behaved like a +washerwoman to me ever since. As if I could help her complexion or +her age!'</p> + +<p>But above all did she boast herself against Dora in Church matters. +She would go to St. Damian's on Sunday, triumphantly announcing +that she should have to confess it as a sin when she got home, and +afterwards, when Dora, as her custom was, came out to early dinner +with the Grieves, Louie could not contain herself on the subject of +the dresses, the processions, the decorations, the flowers, and +ceremonial trappings in general, with which <i>she</i> might, if +she liked, regale herself either at Ste. Eulalie or the Madeleine, +in comparison with the wretched show offered by St. Damian's. Dora, +after an early service and much Sunday-school, sat looking pale and +weary under the scornful information poured out upon her. She was +outraged by Louie's tone; yet she was stung by her contempt. Once +her gentleness was roused to speech, and she endeavoured to give +some of the reasons for rejecting the usurped authority of the +'Bishop of Rome,' in which she had been drilled at different times. +But she floundered and came to grief. Her adversary laughed at her, +and in the intervals of rating Cecile for having inked her dress, +flaunted some shrill controversy which left them all staring. Louie +vindicating, the claims of the Holy See with much unction and an +appropriate diction! It seemed to David, as he listened, that the +irony of life could hardly be carried further.</p> + +<p>On the following day, David, not without a certain consciousness, +said to John Dalby, his faithful helper through many years, and of +late his partner:</p> + +<p>'My sister is up at our place, John, with her little girl. Lucy +would be very glad if you would go in this evening to see them.'</p> + +<p>John, who was already aware of the advent of Madame Montjoie, +accepted the invitation and went. Louie received him with a manner +half mocking—half patronising—and made no effort whatever to be +agreeable to him. She was preoccupied; and the stout, shy man in +his new suit only bored her. As for him, he sat and watched her; +his small, amazed eyes took in her ways with Cecile, alternately +boastful and tyrannical; her airs towards Lucy; her complete +indifference to her brother's life and interests. When he got up to +go, he took leave of her with all the old timid <i>gaucherie</i>. +But if, when he entered the room, there had been anything left in +his mind of the old dream, he was a wholly free man when he +recrossed the threshold. He walked home thinking much of a small +solicitor's daughter, who worshipped at the Congregational chapel +he himself attended. He had been at David Grieve's side all these +years; he loved him probably more than he would now love any woman; +he devoted himself with ardour to the printing and selling of the +various heretical works and newspapers published by Grieve & Co.; +and yet for some long time past he had been—and was likely to +remain—a man of strong religious convictions, of a common +Evangelical type.</p> + +<p>The second week of Louie's stay was a much greater trial than the +first to all concerned. She grew tired of dressing and patronising +Lucy; her sharp eyes and tongue found out all her sister-in-law's +weak points; the two children were a fruitful source of jarring and +jealousy between the mothers; and by the end of the week their +relation was so much strained, and David had so much difficulty in +keeping the peace, that he could only pine for the Monday morning +which was to see Louie's departure. Meanwhile nothing occurred to +give him back his momentary hold upon her. She took great care not +to be alone with him. It was as though she felt the presence of a +new force in him, and would give it no chance of affecting her in +mysterious and incalculable ways.</p> + +<p>On the Saturday before her last Sunday, Reuben Grieve arrived in +Manchester—with his wife. His nephew's letter and invitation had +thrown the old man into a great flutter. Ultimately his curiosity +as to David's home and child—David himself he had seen several +times since the marriage—and the desire, which the more prosperous +state of his own circumstances allowed him to feel, to see what +Louie might be like after all these years—decided him to go. And +when he told Hannah of his intended journey, he found, to his +amazement, that she was minded to go too. 'If yo'll tell me when yo +gan me a jaunt last, I'll be obliged to yo!' she said sourly, and +he at once felt himself a selfish brute that he should have thought +of taking the little pleasure without her.</p> + +<p>When they were seated in the railway-carriage, he broke out in a +sudden excitement:</p> + +<p>'Wal, I never thowt, Hannah, to see yo do thissens naw moor!'</p> + +<p>'Aye, yo wor allus yan to mak t' warst o' things,' she said to him, +as she slowly settled herself in her corner.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Reuben's feeling was amply justified. It had been a +resurrection. The clever young doctor, brimful of new methods, who +had brought her round, had arrived just in time to stop the process +of physical deterioration before it had gone too far; and the +recovery of power both on the paralysed side and in general health +had been marvellous. She walked with a stick, and was an old and +blanched woman before her time. But her indomitable spirit was once +more provided with its necessary means of expression. She was at +least as rude as ever, and it was as clear as anything can be in +the case of a woman who has never learnt to smile, that her visit +to Manchester—the first for ten years—was an excitement and +satisfaction to her.</p> + +<p>David met them at the station; but Reuben persisted in going to an +old-fashioned eating-house in the centre of the city, where he had +been accustomed to stay on the occasion of his rare visits to +Manchester, in spite of his nephew's repeated offers of +hospitality.</p> + +<p>'Noa, Davy, noa,' he said, 'yo're a gen'leman now, and yo conno' be +moidered wi' oos. We'st coom and see yo—thank yo kindly,—bit +we'st do for oursels i' th' sleepin' way.'</p> + +<p>To which Hannah gave a grim and energetic assent.</p> + +<p>When Louie had been told of their expected arrival she opened her +black eyes to their very widest extent.</p> + +<p>'Well, you'd better keep Aunt Hannah and me out of each other's +way,' she remarked. 'I shall let her have it, you'll see. I'm bound +to.' A remark that David did his best to forget, seeing that the +encounter was now past averting.</p> + +<p>When on Sunday afternoon the door of the Grieves's sitting-room +opened to admit Hannah and Reuben Grieve, Louie was lying half +asleep in an armchair by the fire, Cecile and Sandy were playing +with bricks in the middle of the floor, and Dora and Lucy were +chatting on the sofa.</p> + +<p>Lucy, who had seen Reuben before, but had never set eyes on Hannah, +sprang up ill at ease and awkward, but genuinely anxious to behave +nicely to her husband's relations.</p> + +<p>'Won't you take a chair? I'll go and call David. He's in the next +room. This is Miss Lomax. Louie!'</p> + +<p>Startled by the somewhat sharp call, Louie sat up and rubbed her +eyes.</p> + +<p>Hannah, resting on her stick, was standing in the middle of +the floor. At sight of the familiar tyrannous face, grown +parchment-white in place of its old grey hue—of the tall gaunt +figure robed in the Sunday garb of rusty black which Louie +perfectly remembered, and surmounted by the old head-gear—the +stiff frizzled curls held in place by two small combs on the +temples, the black bandeau across the front of the head, and the +towering bonnet—Louie suddenly flushed and rose.</p> + +<p>'How do you do?' she said in a cool off-hand way, holding out her +hand, which Hannah's black cotton glove barely touched. 'Well, Uncle +Reuben, do you think I'm grown? I have had about time to, anyway, +since you saw me. That's my little girl.'</p> + +<p>With a patronising smile she pushed forward Cecile. The +short-sighted tremulous Reuben, staring uncomfortably about him at +the town splendours in which 'Davy' lived, had to have the child's +hand put into his by Dora before he could pull himself together +enough to respond.</p> + +<p>'I'm glad to see tha, my little dear.' he said, awkwardly dropping +his hat and umbrella as he stooped to salute her. 'I'm sure yo're +varra kind, miss'—This was said apologetically to Dora, who had +picked up his belongings and put them on a chair. 'Wal, Louie, she +doan't feature her mither mich, as I can see.'</p> + +<p>He looked hurriedly at his wife for confirmation. Hannah, who had +seated herself on the highest and plainest chair she could find, +stared the child up and down, and then slowly removed her eyes, +saying nothing. Instantly her manner woke the old rage in Louie, +who was observing her excitedly.</p> + +<p>'Come here to me, Cecile. I'd be sorry, anyway, if you were like +what your mother was at your age. You'd be a poor, ill-treated, +half-starved little wretch if you were!'</p> + +<p>Hannah started, but not unpleasantly. Her grim mouth curved with a +sort of satisfaction. It was many years since she had enjoyed those +opportunities for battle which Louie's tempers had once so freely +afforded her.</p> + +<p>'She's nobbut a midge,' she remarked audibly to Dora, who had just +tried to propitiate her by a footstool. 'The chilt looks as thoo +she'd been fed on spiders or frogs, or summat o' that soart.'</p> + +<p>At this moment David came in, just in time to prevent another +explosion from Louie. He was genuinely glad to see his guests; his +feeling of kinship was much stronger now than it ever had been in +his youth; and in these years of independent, and on the whole +happy, living he had had time to forget even Hannah's enormities.</p> + +<p>'Well, have you got a comfortable inn?' he asked Reuben presently, +when some preliminaries were over.</p> + +<p>'I thank yo kindly, Davy,' said Reuben cautiously, 'we're meeterly +weel sarved; bit yo conno look for mich fro teawn folk.'</p> + +<p>'What are yo allus so mealy-mouthed for?' said his wife +indignantly. 'Why conno yo say reet out 'at it's a pleeace not fit +for ony decent dog to put his head in, an' an ill-mannert +daggle-tail of a woman to keep it, as I'd like to sweep out wi th' +bits of a morning, an' leave her on th' muck-heap wheer she +belongs?'</p> + +<p>David laughed. To an ear long accustomed to the monotony of town +civilities there was a not unwelcome savour of the moors even in +these brutalities of Hannah's.</p> + +<p>'Sandy, where are you?' he said, looking round. 'Have you had a look +at him, Aunt Hannah?'</p> + +<p>Sandy, who was sitting in the midst of his bricks sucking his thumb +patiently till Cecile should be given back to him by her mother, +and these invaders should be somehow dispersed, looked up and gave +his father a sleepy and significant nod, as much as to say, 'Leave +me alone, and turn these people out.'</p> + +<p>But David lifted him up, and carried him off for exhibition. Hannah +looked at him, as he lay lazily back on his father's arm; his fair +curls straying over David's coat, his cheek flushed by the heat. +'Aye, he's a gradely little chap,' she said, more graciously it +seemed to David than he ever remembered to have heard Hannah Grieve +speak before. His paternal vanity was instantly delighted.</p> + +<p>'Sit up, Sandy, and tell your great-uncle and aunt about the fine +games you've been having with your cousin.'</p> + +<p>But Sandy was lost in quite other reflections. He looked out upon +Hannah and Reuben with grave filmy eyes, as though from a vast +distance, and said absently:</p> + +<p>'Daddy!'</p> + +<p>'Yes, Sandy, speak up.'</p> + +<p>'Daddy, when everybody in the world was babies, who put 'em to bed?'</p> + +<p>The child spoke as usual with a slow flute-like articulation, so +that every word could be heard. Reuben and Hannah turned and looked +at each other.</p> + +<p>'Lord alive!' cried Hannah 'whativer put sich notions into th' +chilt's yed?'</p> + +<p>David, with a happy twinkle in his eye, held up a hand for silence.</p> + +<p>'I don't know, Sandy; give it up.'</p> + +<p>Sandy considered a second or two, then said, with the sigh of one +who relinquishes speculation in favor of the conventional solution:</p> + +<p>'I s'pose God did.'</p> + +<p>His tone was dejected, as though he would gladly have come to +another conclusion if he could.</p> + +<p>'Reuben,' said Hannah with severity, 'hand me that sugar-stick.'</p> + +<p>Reuben groped in his pockets for the barley-sugar, which, in spite +of Hannah's scoffs, he had bought in Market Street the evening +before, 'for t' childer.' He watched his wife in gaping astonishment +as he saw her approaching Sandy, with blandishments which, rough +and clumsy as they were, had nevertheless the effect of beguiling +that young man on to the lap where barley-sugar was to be had. +Hannah fed him triumphantly, making loud remarks on his beauty and +cleverness.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Louie stood on the other side of the fire, holding Cecile +close against her, with a tight defiant grip—her lip twitching +contemptuously. David, always sensitively alive to her presence and +her moods, insisted in the midst of Sandy's feast that Cecile +should have her share. Sandy held out the barley-sugar, following +it with wistful eyes. Louie beat down Cecile's grasping hand. 'You +shan't spoil your tea—you'll be sick with that stuff!' she said +imperiously. Hannah turned, and brought a slow venomous scrutiny to +bear upon her niece—on the slim tall figure in the elegant +Parisian dress, the daintily curled and frizzled head, the wild +angry eyes. Then she withdrew her glance, contented. Louie's +evident jealousy appeased her. She had come to Manchester with one +fixed determination—not to be 'talked foine to by that hizzy.'</p> + +<p>At this juncture tea made its appearance, Lucy having some time ago +given up the sit-down tea in the dining-room, which was the natural +custom of her class, as not genteel. She seated herself nervously +to pour it out. Hannah had at the very beginning put her down 'as a +middlin' soart o' person,' and vouchsafed her very little notice.</p> + +<p>'Auntie Dora! auntie Dora!' cried Sandy, escaping from Hannah's +knee, 'I'm coming to sit by zoo.'</p> + +<p>And as soon as he had got comfortably into her pocket, he pulled +her head down and whispered to her, his thoughts running as before +in the theological groove, 'Auntie Dora, God made me—and God made +Cecile—<i>did</i> God make that one?'</p> + +<p>And he nodded across at Hannah, huddling himself together meanwhile +in a paroxysm of glee and mischief. He was excited by the +flatteries he had been receiving, and Dora, thankful to see that +Hannah had heard nothing, could only quiet him by copious supplies +of bread and butter.</p> + +<p>David wooed Cecile to sit on a stool beside him, and things went +smoothly for a time, though Hannah made it clearly evident that +this was not the kind of tea she had expected, and that she 'didn't +howd wi' new-fangled ways o' takkin' your vittles.' Reuben did his +best to cover and neutralise her remarks by gossip to David about +the farm and the valley. 'Eh—it's been nobbut <i>raggy</i> weather +up o' the moors this winter, Davy, an' a great lot o' sheep lost. +Nobbut twothrey o' mine, I thank th' Lord.' But in the midst of a +most unflattering account of the later morals and development of +the Wigson family, Reuben stopped dead short, with a stare at the +door.</p> + +<p>'Wal, aa niver!—theer's Mr. Ancrum hissel,—I do uphowd yo!'</p> + +<p>And the old man rose with effusion, his queer eyes and face beaming +and blinking with a light of affectionate memory, for Ancrum stood +in the doorway, smiling a mute inquiry at Lucy as to whether he +might come in. David sprang up to bring him into the circle. Hannah +held out an ungracious hand. Never, all these years, had she +forgiven the ex-minister those representations he had once made on +the subject of David's 'prenticing.</p> + +<p>Then the new-comer sat down by Reuben cheerily, parrying the +farmer's concern about his altered looks, and watching Louie, who +had thrown him a careless word in answer to his greeting. Dora, who +had come to know him well, and to feel much of the affectionate +reverence for him that David did, in spite of some bewilderment as +to his religious position, went round presently to talk to him, and +Sandy as it happened was left on his stool for a minute or two +forgotten. He asked his mother plaintively for cake, and she did +not hear him. Meanwhile Cecile had cake, and he followed her eating +of it with resentful eyes.</p> + +<p>'Come here, Cecile,' said David, 'and hold the cake while I cut it; +there's a useful child.'</p> + +<p>He handed a piece to Reuben, and then put the next into Cecile's +hand.</p> + +<p>'Ready for some more, little woman?'</p> + +<p>Cecile in a furtive squirrel-like way seized the piece and was +retiring with it, when Sandy, beside himself, jumped from his +stool, rushed at his cousin and beat her wildly with his small +fists.</p> + +<p>'Yo're a geedy thing—a geedy 'gustin' thing!' he cried, sobbing +partly because he wanted the cake, still more because, after his +exaltation on Hannah's knee, he had been so unaccountably +neglected. To see Cecile battening on a second piece while he was +denied a first was more than could be borne.</p> + +<p>'You little viper, you!' exclaimed Louie, and springing up, she +swept across to Sandy, and boxed his ears smartly, just as she was +accustomed to box Cecile's, whenever the fancy took her.</p> + +<p>The child raised a piercing cry, and David caught him up.</p> + +<p>'Give him to me, David, give him to me,' cried Lucy, who had almost +upset the tea-table in her rush to her child. 'I'll see whether that +sister of yours shall beat and abuse my boy in my own house! Oh, +she may beat her own child as much as she pleases, she does it all +day long! If she were a poor person she would be had up.'</p> + +<p>Her face glowed with passion. The exasperation of many days spoke +in her outburst. David, himself trembling with anger, in vain tried +to quiet her and Sandy.</p> + +<p>'Ay, I reckon she maks it hot wark for them 'at ha to live wi her,' +said Hannah audibly, looking round on the scene with a certain +enjoyment which contrasted with the panic and distress of the rest.</p> + +<p>Louie, who was holding Cecile—also in tears—in her arms, swept +her fierce, contemptuous gaze from Lucy to her ancient enemy.</p> + +<p>'You must be putting in <i>your</i> word, must you?—you old toad, +you—you that robbed us of our money till your own husband was +ashamed of you!'</p> + +<p>And, totally regardless of the presence of Dora and Ancrum, and of +the efforts made to silence her by Dora or by the flushed and +unhappy Reuben, she descended on her foe. She flung charge after +charge in Hannah's face, showing the minutest and most vindictive +memory for all the sordid miseries of her childhood; and then when +her passion had spent itself on her aunt, she returned to Lucy, +exulting in the sobs and the excitement she had produced. In vain +did David try either to silence her or to take Lucy away. Nothing +but violence could have stopped the sister's tongue; his wife, +under a sort of fascination of terror and rage, would not move. +Flinging all thoughts of her dependence on David—of the money she +had come to ask—of her leave-taking on the morrow—to the winds, +Louie revenged herself amply for her week's unnatural self-control, +and gave full rein to a mad propensity which had been gradually +roused and spurred to ungovernable force by the trivial incidents +of the afternoon. She made mock of Lucy's personal vanity; she +sneered at her attempts to ape her betters, shrilly declaring that +no one would ever take her for anything else than what she was, the +daughter of a vulgar cheese-paring old hypocrite; and, finally, she +attacked Sandy as a nasty, greedy, abominable little monkey, not +fit to associate with her child, and badly in want of the stick.</p> + +<p>Then slowly she retreated to the door out of breath, the wild +lightnings of her eyes flashing on them still. David was holding +the hysterical Lucy, while Dora was trying to quiet Sandy. +Otherwise a profound silence had fallen on them all, a silence +which seemed but to kindle Louie's fury the more.</p> + +<p>'Ah, you think you've got him in your power, him and his money, you +little white-livered cat!' she cried, standing in the doorway, and +fixing Lucy with a look beneath which her sister-in-law quailed, +and hid her face on David's arm. 'You think you'll stop him giving +it to them that have a right to look to him? Perhaps you'd better +look out; perhaps there are people who know more about him than +you. Do you think he would ever have looked at you, you little +powsement, if he hadn't been taken on the rebound?'</p> + +<p>She gave a mad laugh as she flung out the old Derbyshire word of +abuse, and stood defying them, David and all. David strode forward +and shut the door upon her. Then he went tenderly up to his wife, +and took her and Sandy into the library.</p> + +<p>The sound of Cecile's wails could be heard in the distance. The +frightened Reuben turned and looked at his wife. She had grown +paler even than before, but her eyes were all alive.</p> + +<p>'A racklesome, natterin' creetur as ivir I seed,' she said calmly; +'I allus telt tha, Reuben Grieve, what hoo'd coom to. It's bred in +her—that's yan thing to be hodden i' mind. But I'll shift her in +double quick-sticks if she ever cooms meddlin' i' <i>my</i> house, +Reuben Grieve—soa yo know.'</p> + +<p>'She oughtn't to stay here,' said Ancrum in a quick undertone to +Dora; 'she might do that mother and child a mischief.'</p> + +<p>Dora sat absorbed in her pity for David, in her passionate sympathy +for this home that was as her own.</p> + +<p>'She is going to-morrow, thank God!' she said with a long breath; +'oh, what an awful woman!'</p> + +<p>Ancrum looked at her with a little sad smile.</p> + +<p>'Whom are you sorry for?' he asked. 'Those two in there?' and he +nodded towards the library. 'Think again, Miss Dora. There is one +face that will haunt me whenever I think of this—the face of that +French child.'</p> + +<p>All the afternoon visitors dispersed. The hours passed. Lucy, worn +out, had gone to bed with a crying which seemed to have in it some +new and heavy element she would not speak of, even to David. The +evening meal came, and there was no sign or sound from that room +upstairs where Louie had locked herself in.</p> + +<p>David stood by the fire in the dining-room, his lips sternly set. +He had despatched a servant to Louie's door with an offer to send +up food for her and Cecile. But the girl had got no answer. Was he +bound to go—bound to bring about the possible renewal of a +degrading scene?</p> + +<p>At this moment Lizzie, the little nurse, tapped at the door.</p> + +<p>'If you please, sir—'</p> + +<p>'Yes. Anything wrong with Master Sandy?'</p> + +<p>David went to the door in a tremor. 'He won't go to sleep, sir. He +wants you, and I'm afraid he'll disturb mistress again.'</p> + +<p>David ran upstairs.</p> + +<p>'Sandy, what do you want?'</p> + +<p>Sandy was crying violently, far down under the bedclothes. When +David drew him out, he was found to be grasping a piece of +crumbling cake, sticky with tears.</p> + +<p>'It's Cecile's cake,' he sobbed into his father's ear. 'I want to +give it her.'</p> + +<p>And in fact, after his onslaught upon her, Cecile had dropped the +offending cake, which he had instantly picked up the moment before +Louie struck him. He had held it tight gripped ever since, and +repentance was busy in his small heart.</p> + +<p>David thought a moment.</p> + +<p>'Come with me, Sandy,' he said at last, and, wrapping up the child +in an old shawl that hung near, he carried him off to Louie's door. +'Louie!' he called, after his knock, in a low voice, for he was +uncomfortably aware that his household was on the watch for +developments.</p> + +<p>For a while there was no answer. Sandy, absorbed in the interest of +the situation, clung close to his father and stopped crying.</p> + +<p>At last Louie suddenly flung the door wide open.</p> + +<p>'What do you want?' she said defiantly, with the gesture and +bearing of a tragic actress. She was, however, deadly white, and +David, looking past her, saw that Cecile was lying wide awake in +her little bed.</p> + +<p>'Sandy wants to give Cecile her cake,' he said quietly, 'and to +tell her that he is sorry for striking her.'</p> + +<p>He carried his boy up to Cecile. A smile flashed over the child's +worn face. She held out her little arms. David, infinitely touched, +laid down Sandy, and the children crooned together on the same +pillow, he trying to stuff the cake into Cecile's mouth, she gently +refusing.</p> + +<p>'She's ill,' said Louie abruptly, 'she's feverish—I want a +doctor.'</p> + +<p>'We can get one directly,' he said. 'Will you come down and have +some food? Lucy has gone to bed. If Lizzie comes and sits by the +children, perhaps they will go to sleep. I can carry Sandy back +later.'</p> + +<p>Louie paused irresolutely. Then she went up to the bed, knelt down +by it, and took Cecile in her arms.</p> + +<p>'You can take him away,' she said, pointing to Sandy. 'I will put +her to sleep. Don't you send me anything to eat. I want a doctor. +And if you won't order a fly for me at twenty minutes to nine +to-morrow, I will go out myself, that's all.'</p> + +<p>'Louie!' he cried, holding out his hand to her in despair, 'why will +you treat us in this way—what have we done to you?'</p> + +<p>'Never you mind,' she said sullenly, gathering the child to her and +confronting him with steady eyes. There was a certain magnificence +in their wide unconscious despair—in this one fierce passion.</p> + +<p>She and Lucy did not meet again. In the morning David paid her her +hundred pounds, and took her and Cecile to the station, a doctor +having seen the child the night before, and prescribed medicine, +which had given her a quiet night. Louie barely thanked him for the +money. She was almost silent and still very pale.</p> + +<p>Just before they parted, the thought of the tyranny of such a +nature, of the life to which she was going back, wrung the +brother's heart. The outrage of the day before dropped from his +mind as of no account, effaced by sterner realities.</p> + +<p>'Write to me, Louie!' he said to her just as the train was moving +off; 'I could always come if there was trouble—or Dora.'</p> + +<p>She did not answer, and her hand dropped from his. But he +remembered afterwards that her eyes were fixed upon him, as long as +the train was in sight, and the picture of her dark possessed look +will be with him to the end.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-4" id="CHAPTER_VII-4"></a>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<p>It was a warm April Sunday. Lucy and Dora were pacing up and down +in the garden, and Lucy was talking in a quick, low voice.</p> + +<p>'Oh! there was something, Dora. You know as well as I do there was +something. That awful woman didn't say that for nothing. I suppose +he'd tell me if I asked him.'</p> + +<p>'Then why don't you ask him?' said Dora, with a little frown.</p> + +<p>Lucy gathered a sprig of budding lilac, and restlessly stripped off +its young green.</p> + +<p>'It isn't very pleasant,' she said at last, slowly. 'I dare say it's +silly to expect your husband never to have looked at anybody +else—'</p> + +<p>She paused again, unable to explain herself. Dora glanced at her, +and was somewhat struck by her thin and worn appearance. She had +often, moreover, seemed to her cousin to be fretting during these +last weeks. Not that there was much difference in her ways with +David and Sandy. But her small vanities, prejudices, and passions +were certainly less apparent of late; she ordered her two servants +about less; she was less interested in her clothes, less eager for +social amusement. It was as though something clouding and dulling +had passed over a personality which was naturally restless and +vivacious.</p> + +<p>Yet it was only to-day, in the course of some conversation about +Louie, of whom nothing had been heard since her departure, that +Lucy had for the first time broken silence on the subject of those +insolent words of her sister-in-law, which Ancrum and Dora had +listened to with painful shock, while to Reuben and Hannah, +pre-occupied with their own long-matured ideas of Louie, they had +been the mere froth of a venomous tongue.</p> + +<p>'Why didn't you ask him about it at first—just after?' Dora +resumed.</p> + +<p>'I didn't want to,' said Lucy, after a minute, and then would say +no more. But she walked along, thinking, unhappily, of the moment +when David had taken her into the library to be out of the sound of +Louie's rage; of her angry desire to ask him questions, checked by +a childish fear she could not analyse, as to what the answers might +be; of his troubled, stormy face; and of the tender ways by which +he tried to calm and comfort her. It had seemed to her that once or +twice he had been on the point of saying something grave and +unusual, but in the end he had refrained. Louie had gone away; +their everyday life had begun again; he had been very full, in the +intervals of his hard daily business, of the rebuilding of the +James Street court, and of the apprentices' school; and, led by a +variety of impulses—by a sense of jeopardised possession and a +conscience speaking with new emphasis and authority—she had taken +care that he should talk to her about both; she had haunted him in +the library, and her presence there, once the signal of antagonism +and dispute, had ceased to have any such meaning for him. Her +sympathy was not very intelligent, and there was at times a +childish note of sulkiness and reluctance in it; she was extremely +ready to say, 'I told you so,' if anything went wrong; but, +nevertheless, there was a tacit renunciation at the root of her new +manner to him which he perfectly understood, and rewarded in his +own ardent, affectionate way.</p> + +<p>As she sauntered along in this pale gleam of sun, now drinking in +the soft April wind, now stooping to look at the few clumps of +crocuses and daffodils which were pushing through the blackened +earth, Lucy had once more a vague sense that her life this +spring—this past year—had been hard. It was like the feeling of +one who first realises the intensity of some long effort or +struggle in looking back upon it. Her little life had been breathed +into by a divine breath, and growth, expansion, had brought a pain +and discontent she had never known before.</p> + +<p>Dora meanwhile had her own thoughts. She was lost in memories of +that first talk of hers with David Grieve after his return from +Paris, with the marks of his fierce, mysterious grief fresh upon +him; then, pursuing her recollection of him through the years, she +came to a point of feeling where she said, with sudden energy, +throwing her arm round Lucy, and taking up the thread of their +conversation:—</p> + +<p>'I wouldn't let what Louie said worry you a bit, Lucy. Of course, +she wanted to make mischief; but you know, and I know, what sort of +a man David has been since you and he were married. That'll be +enough for you, I should think.'</p> + +<p>Lucy flushed. She had once possessed very little reticence, and had +been quite ready to talk her husband over, any day and all day, +with Dora. But now, though she would begin in the old way, there +soon came a point when something tied her tongue.</p> + +<p>This time she attacked the lilac-bushes again with a restless hand.</p> + +<p>'Why, I thought you were shocked at his opinions,' she said, +proudly.</p> + +<p>Dora sighed. Her conscience had not waited for Lucy's remark to +make her aware of the constant perplexity between authority and +natural feeling into which David's ideals were perpetually throwing +her.</p> + +<p>'They make one very sad,' she said, looking away. 'But we must +believe that God, who sees everything, judges as we cannot do.'</p> + +<p>Lucy fired up at once. It annoyed her to have Dora making spiritual +allowance for David in this way.</p> + +<p>'I don't believe God wants anything but that people should be good,' +she said. 'I am sure there are lots of things like that in the New +Testament.'</p> + +<p>Dora shook her head slowly. '"He that hath not the Son, hath not +life,"' she said under her breath, a sudden passion leaping to her +eye.</p> + +<p>Lucy looked at her indignantly. 'I don't agree with you, +Dora—there! And it all depends on what things mean.'</p> + +<p>'The meaning is quite plain,' said Dora, with rigid persistence. 'O +Lucy, don't be led away. I missed you at early service this +morning.'</p> + +<p>The look she threw her cousin melted into a pathetic and heavenly +reproach.</p> + +<p>'Well, I know,' said Lucy, ungraciously, 'I was tired. I don't know +what's wrong with me these last weeks; I can't get up in the +morning.'</p> + +<p>Dora only looked grieved. Lucy understood that her plea seemed to +her cousin too trivial and sinful to be noticed.</p> + +<p>'Oh! I dare say I'd go,' she said in her own mind, defiantly, 'if +<i>he</i> went.'</p> + +<p>Aloud, she said:—</p> + +<p>'Dora, just look at this cheek of mine; I can't think what +the swelling is.'</p> + +<p>And she turned her right cheek to Dora, pointing to a lump, not +discoloured, but rather large, above the cheek-bone. Dora stopped, +and looked at it carefully.</p> + +<p>'Yes, I had noticed it,' she said. 'It is odd. Can't you account for +it in any way?'</p> + +<p>'No. It's been coming some little while. David says I must ask Dr. +Mildmay about it. I don't think I shall. It'll go away. Oh! there +they are.'</p> + +<p>As she spoke, David and Sandy, who had been out for a Sunday walk +together, appeared on the steps of the garden-door. David waved his +hat to his wife, an example immediately followed by Sandy, who +twisted his Scotch cap madly, and then set off running to her.</p> + +<p>Lucy looked at them both with a sudden softening and brightening +which gave her charm. David came up to her, ran his arm through +hers, and began to give her a laughing account of Sandy's +behaviour. The April wind had flushed him, tumbled his black hair, +and called up spring lights in the eyes, which had been somewhat +dimmed by overmuch sedentary work and a too small allowance of +sleep. His plenitude of virile energy, the glow of health and power +which hung round him this afternoon, did but make Lucy seem more +languid and faded as she hung upon him, smiling at his stories of +their walk and of Sandy's antics.</p> + +<p>He broke off in the middle, and looked at her anxiously.</p> + +<p>'She isn't the thing, is she, Dora? I believe she wants a change.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! thank you!' cried Lucy, ironically—'with all Sandy's spring +things and my own to look to, and some new shirts to get for you, +and the spring cleaning to see to. Much obliged to you.'</p> + +<p>'All those things, madam,' said David, patting her hand, 'wouldn't +matter twopence, if it should please your lord and master to order +you off. And if this fine weather goes on, you'll have to take +advantage of it. By the way, I met Mildmay, and asked him to come +in and see you.'</p> + +<p>Lucy reddened.</p> + +<p>'Why, there's nothing,' she said, pettishly. 'This'll go away +directly.' Instinctively she put up her hand to her cheek.</p> + +<p>'Oh! Mildmay won't worry you,' said David; 'he'll tell you what's +wrong at once. You know you like him.'</p> + +<p>'Well, I must go,' said Dora.</p> + +<p>They understood that she had a mill-girls' Bible class at half-past +five, and an evening service an hour later, so they did not press +her to stay. Lucy kissed her, and Sandy escorted her halfway to the +garden-door, giving her a breathless and magniloquent account of +the 'hy'nas and kangawoos' she might expect to find congregated in +the Merton Road outside. Dora, who was somewhat distressed by his +powers of imaginative fiction, would not 'play up' as his father +did, and he left her half-way to run back to David, who was always +ready to turn road and back garden into 'Africa country' at a +moment's notice, and people it to order with savages, elephants, +boomerangs, kangaroos, and all other possible or impossible things +that Sandy might chance to want.</p> + +<p>Dora, looking back from the garden, saw them all three in a group +together—Sandy tugging at his mother's skirts, and shouting at the +top of his voice; David's curly black head bent over his wife, who +was gathering her brown shawl round her throat, as though the light +wind chilled her. But there was no chill in her look. That, for the +moment, as she swayed between husband and child, had in it the +qualities of the April sun—a brightness and promise all the more +radiant by comparison with the winter or the cloud from which it +had emerged.</p> + +<p>Dora went home as quickly as tramcar and fast walking could take +her. She still lived in the same Ancoats rooms with her +shirt-making friend, who had kept company, poor thing! for four +years with a young man, and had then given him up with anguish +because he was not 'the sort of man she'd been taking him for,' +though no one but Dora had ever known what qualities or practices, +intolerable to a pure mind, the sad phrase covered. Dora might long +ago have moved to more comfortable rooms and a better quarter of +the town had she been so minded, for her wages as an admirable +forewoman and an exceptionally skilled hand were high; but she +passionately preferred to be near St. Damian's and amongst her +'girls.' Also, there was the thought that by staying in the place +whither she had originally moved she would be more easily +discoverable if ever,—ay, if <i>ever</i>—Daddy should come back +to her. She was certain that he was still alive; and great as the +probabilities on the other side became with every passing year, few +people had the heart to insist upon them in the face of her +sensitive faith, whereof the bravery was so close akin to tears.</p> + +<p>Only once in all these years had there been a trace of Daddy. +Through a silk-merchant acquaintance of his, having relations with +Lyons and other foreign centres, David had once come across a +rumour which had seemed to promise a clue. He had himself gone +across to Lyons at once, and had done all he could. But the clue +broke in his hand, and the tanned, long-faced lunatic from +Manchester, whereof report had spoken, could be only doubtfully +identified with a man who bore no likeness at all to Daddy.</p> + +<p>Dora's expectation and hope had been stirred to their depths, and +she bore her disappointment hardly. But she did not therefore cease +to hope. Instinctively on this Sunday night, when she reached home, +she put Daddy's chair, which had been pushed aside, in its right +place by the fire, and she tenderly propped up a stuffed bird, +originally shot by Daddy in the Vosges, and now vilely overtaken by +Manchester moths. Then she set round chairs and books for her +girls.</p> + +<p>Soon they came trooping up the stairs, in their neat Sunday +dresses, so sharply distinguished from the mill-gear of the week, +and she spent with them a moving and mystical hour. She was +expounding to them a little handbook of 'The Blessed Sacrament,' +and her explanations wound up with a close appeal to each one of +them to make more use of the means of grace, to surrender +themselves more fully to the awful and unspeakable mystery by which +the Lord gave them His very flesh to eat, His very blood to drink, +so fashioning within them, Communion after Communion, the immortal +and incorruptible body which should be theirs in the Resurrection.</p> + +<p>She spoke in a low, vibrating voice, somewhat monotonous in tone; +her eyes shone with strange light under her round, prominent brow; +all that she said of the joys of frequent Communion, of the mortal +perils of unworthy participation, of treating the heavenly food +lightly—coming to it, that is, unfasting and unprepared—of the +need especially of Lenten self-denial, of giving up 'what each one +of you likes best, so far as you can,' in preparation for the great +Easter Eucharist—came evidently from the depths of her own intense +conviction. Her girls listened to her with answering excitement and +awe; one of them she had saved from drink, all of them had been her +Sunday-school children for years, and many of them possessed, under +the Lancashire exterior, the deep-lying poetry and emotion of the +North.</p> + +<p>When she dismissed them she hurried off to church, to sit once more +dissolved in feeling, aspiration, penitence; to feel the thrill of +the organ, the pathos of the bare altar, and the Lenten hymns.</p> + +<p>After the service she had two or three things to settle with one of +the curates and with some of her co-helpers in the good works of +the congregation, so that when she reached home she was late and +tired out. Her fellow-lodger was spending the Sunday with friends; +there was no one to talk to her at her supper; and after supper she +fell, sitting by the fire, into a mood of some flatness and +reaction. She tried to read a religious book, but the religious +nerve could respond no more, and other interests, save those of her +daily occupations, she had none.</p> + +<p>In Daddy's neighbourhood, what with his travels, his whims, and his +quotations, there had been always something to stir the daughter's +mind, even if it were only to reprobation. But since he had left +her the circle of her thoughts had steadily and irrevocably +narrowed. All secular knowledge, especially the reading of other +than religious books, had become gradually and painfully +identified, for her, with those sinister influences which made +David Grieve an 'unbeliever,' and so many of the best Manchester +workmen 'atheists.'</p> + +<p>So now, in her physical and moral slackness, she sat and thought +with some bitterness of a 'young woman' who had recently entered +the shop which employed her, and, by dint of a clever tongue, was +gaining the ear of the authorities, to the disturbance of some of +Dora's cherished methods of distributing and organising the work. +They might have trusted her more after all these years; but nobody +appreciated her; she counted for nothing.</p> + +<p>Then her mind wandered on to the familiar grievances of Sandy's +religious teaching and Lucy's gradual defection from St. Damian's. +She must make more efforts with Lucy, even if it angered David. She +looked back on what she had done to bring about the marriage, and +lashed herself into a morbid sense of responsibility.</p> + +<p>But her missionary projects were no more cheering to her than her +thoughts about the shop and her work, and she felt an intense sense +of relief when she heard the step of her room-mate, Mary Styles, +upon the stairs. She made Mary go into every little incident of her +day; she was insatiable for gossip—a very rare mood for her—and +could not be chattered to enough.</p> + +<p>And all through she leant her head against her father's chair, +recalling Lucy on her husband's arm, and the child at her skirts, +with the pathetic inarticulate longing which makes the tragedy of +the single life. She could have loved so well, and no one had ever +wished to make her his wife; the wound of it bled sometimes in her +inmost heart.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, on this same April Sunday, Lucy, after Sandy was safe in +bed, brought down some needlework to do beside David while he read. +It was not very long since she had induced herself to make so great +a breach in the Sunday habits of her youth. As soon as David's +ideals began to tease her out of thought and sympathy, his freedoms +also began to affect her. She was no longer so much chilled by his +strictness, or so much shocked by his laxity.</p> + +<p>David had spoken of a busy evening. In reality, a lazy fit overtook +him. He sat smoking, and turning over the pages of Eckermann's +'Conversations with Goethe.'</p> + +<p>'What are you reading?' said Lucy at last, struck by his face of +enjoyment. 'Why do you like it so much?'</p> + +<p>'Because there is no one else in the world who hits the right nail +on the head so often as Goethe,' he said, throwing himself back +with a stretch of pleasure. 'So wide a brain—so acute and sane a +temper!'</p> + +<p>Lucy looked a little lost, as she generally did when David made +literary remarks to her. But she did not drop the subject.</p> + +<p>'You said something to Professor Madgwick the other day about a +line of Goethe you used to like so when you were a boy. What did it +mean?'</p> + +<p>She flushed, as though she were venturing on something which would +make her ridiculous.</p> + +<p>'A line of Goethe?' repeated David, pondering. 'Oh! I know. Yes, it +was a line from Goethe's novel of "Werther." When I was young and +foolish—when you and I were first acquainted, in fact, and you +used to scold me for going to the Hall of Science!—I often said +this line to myself over and over. I didn't know much German, but +the swing of it carried me away.'</p> + +<p>And, with a deep voice and rhythmic accent, he repeated:' +<i>Handwerker trugen ihn; kein Geistlicher hat ihn begleitet</i>.'</p> + +<p>'What does it mean?' said Lucy.</p> + +<p>'Well, it comes at the end of the story. The hero commits suicide +for love, and Goethe says that at his burial, on the night after +his death, "labouring men bore him; no priest went with him."'</p> + +<p>He bent forward, clasping his hands tightly, with the half smiling, +half dreamy look of one who recalls a bygone thrill of feeling, +partly in sympathy, partly in irony.</p> + +<p>'Then he wasn't a Christian?' said Lucy, wondering. 'Do you still +hate priests so much, David?'</p> + +<p>'It doesn't look like it, does it, madam,' he said, laughing, 'when +you think of all my clergymen friends?'</p> + +<p>And, in fact, as Lucy's mind pondered his answer, she easily +remembered the readiness with which any of the clergy at St. +Damian's would ask his help in sending away a sick child, or giving +a man a fresh start in life, or setting the necessary authorities +to work in the case of some moral or sanitary scandal. She thought +also of various Dissenting ministers who called on him and +corresponded with him; of his reverent affection for Canon Aylwin, +for Ancrum.</p> + +<p>'Well, anyway, you care about the labouring men,' she went on +persistently. 'I suppose you're what father used to call a "canting +Socialist"?'</p> + +<p>'No,' said David, quietly—'no, I'm not a Socialist, except'—and +he smiled—'in the sense in which some one said the other day, "we +are all Socialists now."'</p> + +<p>'Well, what does it mean?' said Lucy, threading another needle, and +feeling a certain excitement in this prolonged mental effort.</p> + +<p>David tried to explain to her the common Socialist ideal in simple +terms—the hope of a millennium, when all the instruments of +production shall be owned by the State, and when the surplus profit +produced by labour, over and above the maintenance of the worker +and the general cost of production, will go, not to the capitalist, +the individual rich man, but to the whole community of workers; +when everybody will be made to work, and as little advantage as +possible will be allowed to one worker above another.</p> + +<p>'I think it's absurd!' said Lucy, up in arms at once for all the +superiorities she loved. 'What nonsense! Why, they can't ever do it!'</p> + +<p>'Well, it's about that!' said David, smiling at her. 'Still, +no doubt it <i>could</i> be done, if it ought to be done. But +Socialism, as a system, seems to <i>me</i>, at any rate, to strike +down and weaken the most precious thing in the world, that on which +the whole of civilised life and progress rests—the spring of will +and conscience in the individual. Socialism as a spirit, as an +influence, is as old as organised thought—and from the beginning +it has forced us to think of the many when otherwise we should be +sunk in thinking of the one. But, as a modern dogmatism, it is like +other dogmatisms. The new truth of the future will emerge from it +as a bud from its sheath, taking here and leaving there.' He sat +looking into the fire, forgetting his wife a little.</p> + +<p>'Well, any way, I'm sure you and I won't have anything to do with +it,' said Lucy positively. 'I don't a bit believe Lady Driffield +will have to work in the mills, though Mrs. Shepton did say it +would do her good. I shouldn't mind something, perhaps, which would +make her and Colonel Danby less uppish.'</p> + +<p>She drew her needle in and out with vindictive energy.</p> + +<p>'Well, I don't see much prospect of uppish people dying out of the +world,' said David, throwing himself back in his chair; 'until—'</p> + +<p>He paused.</p> + +<p>'Until what?' inquired Lucy.</p> + +<p>'Well, of course,' he said after a minute, in a low voice, 'we must +always hold that the world is tending to be better, that the Divine +Life in it will somehow realise itself, that pride will become +gentleness, and selfishness love. But the better life cannot be +imposed from without—it must grow from within.'</p> + +<p>Lucy pondered a moment.</p> + +<p>'Then is it—is it because you think working-men <i>better</i> than +other people that you are so much more interested in them? Because +you are, you know.'</p> + +<p>'Oh dear no!' he said, smiling at her from under the hand which shaded +his eyes; 'they have their own crying faults and follies. But—so many +of them lack the first elementary conditions which make the better life +possible—that is what tugs at one's heart and fills one's mind! How can +<i>we</i>—we who have gained for ourselves health and comfort and +knowledge—how can we stand by patiently and see our brother diseased +and miserable and ignorant?—how can we bear our luxuries, so long as a +child is growing up in savagery whom we might have taught,—or a man is +poisoning himself with drink whom we might have saved,—or a woman is +dropping from sorrow and overwork whom we might have cherished and +helped? We are not our own—we are parts of the whole. Generations of +workers have toiled for us in the past. And are we, in return, to carry +our wretched bone off to our own miserable corner!—sharing and giving +nothing? Woe to us if we do! Upon such comes indeed the "second +death,"—the separation final and irretrievable, as far, at any rate, as +this world is concerned, between us and the life of God!'</p> + +<p>Lucy had dropped her work. She sat staring at him—at the shining +eyes, at the hand against the brow which shook a little, at the +paleness which went so readily in him with any expression of deep +emotion. Never had he so spoken to her before; never, all these +years. In general no one shrank more than he from 'high phrases;' +no one was more anxious than he to give all philanthropic talk a +shrewd business-like aspect, which might prevent questions as to +what lay beneath.</p> + +<p>Her heart fluttered a little.</p> + +<p>'David!' she broke out, 'what is it you believe? You know Dora +thinks you believe nothing.'</p> + +<p>'Does she?' he said, with evident shrinking. 'No, I don't think she +does.'</p> + +<p>Lucy instinctively moved her chair closer to him, and laid her head +against his knee.</p> + +<p>'Yes, she does. But I don't mind about that. I just wish you'd tell +me why you believe in God, when you won't go to church, and when +you think Jesus was just—just a man.'</p> + +<p>She drew her breath quickly. She was making a first voyage of +discovery in her husband's deepest mind, and she was astonished at +her own venturesomeness.</p> + +<p>He put out a hand and touched her hair.</p> + +<p>'I can't read Nature and life any other way,' he said at last, +after a silence. 'There seems to me something in myself, and in +other human beings, which is beyond Nature—which, instead of being +made by Nature, is the condition of our knowing there is a Nature +at all. This something—reason, consciousness, soul, call it what +you will—unites us to the world; for everywhere in the world +reason is at home, and gradually finds itself; it makes us aware of +a great order in which we move; it breaks down the barriers of +sense between us and the absolute consciousness, the eternal +life—"not ourselves," yet in us and akin to us!—whence, if there +is any validity in human logic, that order must spring. And so, in +its most perfect work, it carries us to God—it bids us claim our +sonship—it gives us hope of immortality!'</p> + +<p>His voice had the vibrating intensity of prayer. Lucy hardly +understood what he said at all, but the tears came into her eyes as +she sat hiding them against his knee.</p> + +<p>'But what makes you think God is good—that He cares anything about +us?' she said softly.</p> + +<p>'Well—I look back on human life, and I ask what reason—which is +the Divine Life communicated to us, striving to fulfil itself in +us—has done, what light it throws upon its "great Original." And +then I see that it has gradually expressed itself in law, in +knowledge, in love; that it has gradually learnt, under the +pressure of something which is itself and not itself, that to be +gained life must be lost; that beauty, truth, love, are the +realities which abide. Goodness has slowly proved itself in the +world,—is every day proving itself,—like a light broadening in +darkness!—to be that to which reason tends, in which it realises +itself. And, if so, goodness here, imperfect and struggling as we +see it always, must be the mere shadow and hint of that goodness +which is in God!—and the utmost we can conceive of human +tenderness, holiness, truth, though it tell us all we know, can yet +suggest to us only the minutest fraction of what must be the Divine +tenderness,—holiness,—truth.'</p> + +<p>There was a silence.</p> + +<p>'But this,' he added after a bit, 'is not to be proved by argument, +though argument is necessary and inevitable, the mind being what it +is. It can only be proved by living,—by taking it into our hearts, +—by every little victory we gain over the evil self.'</p> + +<p>The fire burnt quietly beside them. Everything was still in the +house. Nothing stirred but their own hearts.</p> + +<p>At last Lucy looked up quickly.</p> + +<p>'I am glad,' she said with a kind of sob—'glad you think God loves +us, and, if Sandy and I were to die, you would find us again.'</p> + +<p>Instead of answering, he bent forward quickly and kissed her. She +gave a little shrinking movement.</p> + +<p>'Oh! that poor cheek!' he said remorsefully; 'did I touch it? I hope +Dr. Mildmay won't forget to-morrow.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! never mind about it,' she said, half impatiently. 'David!'</p> + +<p>Her little thin face twitched and trembled. He was puzzled by her +sudden change of expression, her agitation.</p> + +<p>'David!—you know—you know what Louie said. I want you to tell me +whether she—she meant anything.'</p> + +<p>He gave a little start, then he understood perfectly.</p> + +<p>'My dear wife,' he said, laying his hand on hers, which were +crossed on his knee.</p> + +<p>She waited breathlessly.</p> + +<p>'You shall know all there is to know,' he said at last, with an +effort. 'I thought perhaps you would have questioned me directly +after that scene, and I would have told you; but as you did not, I +could not bring myself to begin. What Louie said had to do with +things that happened a year before I asked you to be my wife. When +I spoke to you, they were dead and gone. The girl herself—was +married. It was her story as well as my own, and it seemed to +concern no one else in the world—not even you, dear. So I thought +then, any way. Since, I have often wondered whether I was right.'</p> + +<p>'Was it when you were in Paris?' she asked sharply.</p> + +<p>He gave a sign of assent.</p> + +<p>'I thought so!' she cried, drawing her breath. 'I always said there +was more than being ill. I said so to Dora. Well, tell me—tell me +at once! What was she like? Was she young, and good-looking?'</p> + +<p>He could not help smiling at her—there was something so childish +in her jealous curiosity.</p> + +<p>'Let me tell you in order,' he said, 'and then we will both put it +out of sight—at least, till I see Louie again.'</p> + +<p>His heavy sigh puzzled her. But her strained and eager eyes +summoned him to begin.</p> + +<p>He told her everything, with singular simplicity and frankness. To +Lucy it was indeed a critical and searching moment! No wife, +whatever stuff she may be made of, can listen to such a story for +the first time, from the husband she loves and respects, without +passing thereafter into a new state of consciousness towards him. +Sometimes she could hardly realise at all that it applied to David, +this tale of passion he was putting, with averted face, into these +short and sharp sentences. That conception of him which the daily +life of eight years, with its growing self-surrender, its expanding +spiritual force, had graven on her mind, clashed so oddly with all +that he was saying! A certain desolate feeling, too large and deep +in all its issues to be harboured long in her slight nature, came +over her now and then. She had been so near to him all these years, +and had yet known nothing. It was the separateness of the +individual lot—that awful and mysterious chasm which divides even +lover from lover—which touched her here and there like a cold +hand, from which she shrank.</p> + +<p>She grew a little cold and pale when he spoke of his weeks of +despair, of the death from which Ancrum had rescued him. But any +ordinary prudish word of blame, even for his silence towards her, +never occurred to her. Once she asked him a wistful question:—</p> + +<p>'You and she thought that marrying didn't matter at all when people +loved each other—that nobody had a right to interfere? Do you +think that now, David?'</p> + +<p>'No,' he said, with deep emphasis. 'No.—I have come to think the +most disappointing and hopeless marriage, nobly borne, to be better +worth having than what people call an "ideal passion,"—if the +ideal passion must be enjoyed at the expense of one of those +fundamental rules which poor human nature has worked out, with such +infinite difficulty and pain, for the protection and help of its +own weakness. I did not know it,—but, so far as in me lay, I was +betraying and injuring that society which has given me all I have.'</p> + +<p>She sat silent. 'The most disappointing marriage.' An echo from that +overheard talk at Benet's Park floated through her mind. She +winced, and shrank, even as she realised his perfect innocence of +any such reference.</p> + +<p>Then, with eagerness, she threw herself into innumerable questions +about Elise—her looks, her motives, the details of what she said +and did. Beneath the satisfaction of her curiosity, of course, +there was all the time a pang—a pang not to be silenced. In her +flights of idle fancy she had often suspected something not unlike +the truth, basing her conjecture on the mystery which had always +hung round that Paris visit, partly on the world's general +experience of what happened to handsome young men. For, in her +heart of hearts, had there not lurked all the time a wonder which +was partly self-judgment? Had David, with such a temperament, never +been more deeply moved than she knew herself to have moved him? +More than once a secret inarticulate suspicion of this kind had +crossed her. The poorest and shallowest soul may have these flashes +of sad insight, under the kindling of its affections.</p> + +<p>But now she knew, and the difference was vast. After she had asked +all her questions, and delivered a vehement protest against the +tenacity of his self-reproach with regard to Louie—for what decent +girl need go wrong unless she has a mind to?—she laid her head +down again on David's knee.</p> + +<p>'I don't think she cared much about you—I'm sure she couldn't +have,' she said slowly, finding a certain pleasure in the words.</p> + +<p>David did not answer. He was sunk in memory. How far away lay that +world of art and the artist from this dusty, practical life in +which he was now immersed! At no time had he been really akin to +it. The only art to which he was naturally susceptible was the art +of oratory and poetry. Elise had created in him an artificial +taste, which had died with his passion. Yet now, as his quickened +mind lingered in the past, he felt a certain wide philosophic +regret for the complete divorce which had come about between him +and so rich a section of human experience.</p> + +<p>He was roused from his reverie, which would have reassured her, +could she have followed it, more than any direct speech, by a +movement from Lucy. Dropping the hand which had once more stolen +over his brow, he saw her looking at him with wide, wet eyes.</p> + +<p>'David!'</p> + +<p>'Yes.'</p> + +<p>'Come here! close to me!'</p> + +<p>He moved forward, and laid his arm round her shoulders, as she sat +in her low chair beside him.</p> + +<p>'What is it, dear? I have been keeping you up too late.'</p> + +<p>She lifted a hand, and brought his face near to hers.</p> + +<p>'David, I am a stupid little thing—but I do understand more than I +did, and I would never, <i>never</i> desert you for anything,—for +any sorrow or trouble in the world!'</p> + +<p>The mixture of yearning, pain, triumphant affection in her tone, +cannot be rendered in words.</p> + +<p>His whole heart melted to her. As he held her to his breast, the +hour they had just passed through took for both of them a sacred +meaning and importance. Youth was going—their talk had not been +the talk of youth. Was true love just beginning?</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-4" id="CHAPTER_VIII-4"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<p>'<i>My God! My God!</i>'</p> + +<p>The cry was David's. He had reeled back against the table in his +study, his hand upon an open book, his face turned to Doctor +Mildmay, who was standing by the fireplace.</p> + +<p>'Of course, I can't be sure,' said the doctor hastily, almost +guiltily. 'You must not take it upon my authority alone. Try and +throw it off your mind. Take your wife up to town to see Selby or +Paget, and if I am wrong I shall be too thankful! And, above all, +don't frighten her. Take care—she will be down again directly.'</p> + +<p>'You say,' said David, thickly, 'that if it were what you suspect, +operation would be difficult. Yes, I see there is something of the +sort here.'</p> + +<p>He turned, shaking all over, to the book beside him, which was a +medical treatise he had just taken down from his scientific +bookcase.</p> + +<p>'It would be certainly difficult,' said the doctor, frowning, his +lower lip pushed forward in a stress of thought, 'but it would have +to be attempted. Only, on the temporal bone it will be a puzzle to +go deep enough.'</p> + +<p>David's eye ran along the page beside him. 'Sarcoma, which was +originally regarded with far less terror than cancer (carcinoma), +is now generally held by doctors to be more malignant and more +deadly. There is much less pain, but surgery can do less, and death +is in most cases infinitely more rapid.'</p> + +<p>'Hush!' said the doctor, with short decision, 'I hear her coming +down again. Let me speak.'</p> + +<p>Lucy, who had run upstairs to quiet a yell of crying from Sandy +immediately after Doctor Mildmay had finished his examination of +her swollen cheek, opened the door as he spoke. She was slightly +flushed, and her eyes were more wide open and restless than usual. +David was apparently bending over a drawer which he had opened on +the farther side of his writing-table. The doctor's face was +entirely as usual.</p> + +<p>'Well now, Mrs. Grieve,' he said cheerily, 'we have been +agreeing—your husband and I—that it will be best for you to go up +to London and have that cheek looked at by one of the crack +surgeons. They will give you the best advice as to what to do with +it. It is not a common ailment, and we are very fine fellows down +here, but of course we can't get the experience, in a particular +line of cases, of one of the first-rate surgical specialists. Do +you think you could go to-morrow? I could make an appointment for +you by telegraph to-day.'</p> + +<p>Lucy gave a little unsteady, affected laugh.</p> + +<p>'I don't see how I can go all in a moment like that,' she said. 'It +doesn't matter! Why don't you give me something for it, and it will +go away.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! but it does matter,' said the doctor, firmly. 'Lumps like that +are serious things, and mustn't be trifled with.'</p> + +<p>'But what will they want to do to it?' said Lucy nervously. She was +standing with one long, thin hand resting lightly on the back of a +chair, looking from David, whose face and figure were blurred to +her by the dazzle of afternoon light coming in through the window, +to Doctor Mildmay.</p> + +<p>The doctor cleared his throat.</p> + +<p>'They would only want to do what was best for you in every way,' he +said; 'you may be sure of that. Could you be very brave if they +advised you that it ought to be removed?'</p> + +<p>She gave a little shriek.</p> + +<p>'What! you mean cut it out—cut it away!' she cried, shaking, and +looking at him with the frowning anger of a child. 'Why, it would +leave an ugly mark, a hideous mark!'</p> + +<p>'No, it wouldn't. The mark would disfigure you much less than the +swelling. They would take care to draw the skin together again +neatly, and you could easily arrange your hair a little. But you +ought to get a first-rate opinion.'</p> + +<p>'What is it? what do you call it?' said Lucy, irritably. 'I can't +think why you make such a fuss.'</p> + +<p>'Well, it might be various things,' he said evasively. 'Any way, you +take my advice, and have it seen to. I can telegraph as I go from +here.'</p> + +<p>'I could take you up to-morrow,' said David, coming forward in +answer to the disturbed look she threw him. Now that her flush had +faded, how pale and drooping she was in the strong light! 'It would +be better, dear, to do what Doctor Mildmay recommends. And you +never mind a day in London, you know.'</p> + +<p>Did she detect any difference in the voice? She moved up to him, +and he put his arm round her.</p> + +<p>'Must I?' she said, helplessly; 'it's such a bore, to-morrow +particularly. I had promised to take Sandy out to tea.'</p> + +<p>'Well, let that young man go without a treat for once,' said the +doctor, laughing. 'He has a deal too many, anyway. Very well, that's +settled. I will telegraph as I go to the train. Just come here a +moment, Grieve.'</p> + +<p>The two went out together. When David returned, any one who had +happened to be in the hall would have seen that he could hardly +open the sitting-room door, so fumbling were his movements. As he +passed through the room to reach the study he caught sight of his +own face in a glass, and stopping, with clenched hands, pulled +himself together by the effort of his whole being.</p> + +<p>When he opened the study-door, Lucy was hunting about his table in +a quick, impatient way.</p> + +<p>'I can't think where you keep your india-rubber rings, David. I want +to put one round a parcel for Dora.'</p> + +<p>He found one for her. Then she stood by the fire, as the +sunset-light faded into dusk, and poured out to him a story of +domestic grievances. Sarah, their cook, wished to leave and be +married—it was very unexpected and very inconsiderate, and Lucy +did not believe the young man was steady; and how on earth was she +to find another cook? It was enough to drive one wild, the +difficulty of getting cooks in Manchester.</p> + +<p>For nearly an hour, till the supper-bell rang, she stood there, +with her foot on the fender, chattering in a somewhat sharp, shrill +way. Not one word would she say, or let him say, of London or the +doctor's visit.</p> + +<p>After supper, as they went back into the study, David looked for +the railway-guide. 'The 10. 15 will do,' he said. 'Mildmay has made +the appointment for three. We can just get up in time.'</p> + +<p>'It is great nonsense!' said Lucy, pouting. 'The question is, can we +get back? I must get back. I don't want to leave Sandy for the +night. He's got a cold.'</p> + +<p>It seemed to David that something clutched at his breath and voice. +Was it he or some one else that said:—</p> + +<p>'That will be too tiring, dear. We shall have to stay the night.'</p> + +<p>'No, I must get back,' said Lucy, obstinately.</p> + +<p>Afterwards she brought her work as usual, and he professed to smoke +and read. But the evening passed, for him, beneath his outward +quiet, in a hideous whirl of images and sensations, which +ultimately wore itself out, and led to a mood of dulness and +numbness. Every now and then, as he sat there, with the fire +crackling, and the familiar walls and books about him, he felt +himself sinking, as it were, in a sudden abyss of horror; then, +again, the scene of the afternoon seemed to him absurd, and he +despised his own panic. He dwelt upon everything the doctor had +said about the rarity, the exceptional nature of such an illness. +Well, what is rare does not happen—not to oneself—that was what +he seemed to be clinging to at last.</p> + +<p>When Lucy went up to bed, he followed her in about a quarter of an +hour.</p> + +<p>'Why, you are early!' she said, opening her eyes.</p> + +<p>'I am tired,' he said. 'There was a great press of work to-day. I +want a long night.'</p> + +<p>In reality, he could not bear her out of his sight. Hour after hour +he tossed restlessly, beside her quiet sleep, till the spring +morning broke.</p> + +<p>They left Manchester next morning in a bitter east wind. As she +passed through the hall to the cab, Lucy left a little note for +Dora on the table, with instructions that it should be posted.</p> + +<p>'I want her to come and see him at his bedtime,' she said, 'for of +course we can't get back for that.'</p> + +<p>David said nothing. When they got to the station, he dared not even +propose to her the extra comfort of first class, lest he should +intensify the alarm he perfectly well divined under her offhand, +flighty manner.</p> + +<p>By three o'clock they were in the waiting-room of the famous doctor +they had come to see. Lucy looked round her nervously as they +entered, with quick, dilating nostrils, and across David there +swept a sudden choking memory of the trapped and fluttering birds +he had sometimes seen in his boyhood struggling beneath a +birdcatcher's net on the moors.</p> + +<p>As the appointment was at an unusual time, they were not kept +waiting very long by the great man. He received them with a sort of +kindly distance, made his examination very quickly, and asked her a +number of general questions, entering the answers in his large +patients' book.</p> + +<p>Then he leant back in his chair, looking thoughtfully at Lucy over +his spectacles.</p> + +<p>'Well,' he said at last, with a perfectly cheerful and businesslike +voice, 'I am quite clear there is only one thing to be done, Mrs. +Grieve. You must have that growth removed.'</p> + +<p>Lucy flushed.</p> + +<p>'I want you to give me something to take it away,' she said, half +sullenly, half defiantly. She was sitting very erect, in a little +tight-fitting black jacket, with her small black hat and veil on +her knee.</p> + +<p>'No, I am sorry to say nothing can be done in that way. If you were +my daughter or sister, I should say to you, have that lump removed +without a day's, an hour's unnecessary delay. These growths are not +to be trifled with.'</p> + +<p>He spoke with a mild yet penetrating observance of her. A number of +reflections were passing rapidly through his mind. The operation +was a most unpromising one, but it was clearly the surgeon's duty +to try it. The chances were that it would prolong life which was +now speedily and directly threatened, owing to the proximity of the +growth to certain vital points.</p> + +<p>'When could you do it?' said David, so hoarsely that he had to +repeat his question. He was standing with his arm on the +mantelpiece, looking down on the surgeon and his wife.</p> + +<p>The great man lifted his eyebrows, and looked at his +engagement-book attentively.</p> + +<p>'I <i>could</i> do it to-morrow,' he said at last; 'and the sooner, +the better. Have you got lodgings? or can I help you? And—'</p> + +<p>Then he stopped, and looked at Lucy. 'Let me settle things with your +husband, Mrs. Grieve,' he said, with a kindly smile. 'You look tired +after your journey. You will find a fire and some newspapers in the +waiting-room.'</p> + +<p>And, with a suavity not to be gainsaid, he ushered her himself +across the hall, and shut the waiting-room door upon her. Then he +came back to David.</p> + +<p>A little while after a bell rang, and the man-servant who answered +it presently took some brandy into the consulting-room. Lucy +meanwhile sat, in a dazed way, looking out of window at the square +garden, where the lilacs were already in full leaf in spite of the +east wind.</p> + +<p>When her husband and the doctor came in she sprang up, looking +partly awkward, partly resentful. Why had they been discussing it +all without her?</p> + +<p>'Well, Mrs. Grieve,' said the doctor, 'your husband is just going to +take you on to see the lodgings I recommend. By good luck they are +just vacant. Then, if you like them, you know, you can settle in at +once.'</p> + +<p>'But I haven't brought anything for the night,' cried Lucy in an +injured voice, looking at David.</p> + +<p>'We will telegraph to Dora, darling,' he said, taking up her bag +and umbrella from the table; 'but now we mustn't keep Mr. Selby. He +has to go out.'</p> + +<p>'How long will it take?' interrupted Lucy, addressing the surgeon. +'Can I get back next day?'</p> + +<p>'Oh no! you will have to be four or five days in town. But don't +alarm yourself, Mrs. Grieve. You won't know anything at all about +the operation itself; your husband will look after you, and then a +little patience—and hope for the best. Now I really must be off. +Good-bye to you—good-bye to you.'</p> + +<p>And he hurried off, leaving them to find their own cab. When they +got in, Lucy said, passionately:—</p> + +<p>'I want to go back, David. I want Sandy. I won't go to these +lodgings.'</p> + +<p>Then courage came to him. He took her hand.</p> + +<p>'Dear, dear wife—for my sake—for Sandy's!'</p> + +<p>She stared at him—at his white face.</p> + +<p>'Shall I die?' she cried, with the same passionate tone.</p> + +<p>'No, no, no!' he said, kissing the quivering hand, and seeing no +one but her in the world, though they were driving through the +crowd of Regent Street. 'But we must do everything Mr. Selby said. +That hateful thing must be taken away—it is so near—think for +yourself!—to the eye and the brain; and it might go downwards to +the throat. You will be brave, won't you? We will look after you +so—Dora and I.'</p> + +<p>Lucy sank back in the cab, with a sudden collapse of nerve and +spirit. David hung over her, comforting her, one moment promising +her that in a few days she should have Sandy again, and be quite +well; the next, checked and turned to stone by the memory of the +terrible possibilities freely revealed to him in his private talk +with Mr. Selby, and by the sense that he might be soothing the +present only to make the future more awful.</p> + +<p>'David! she is in such fearful pain! The nurse says she must have +more morphia. They didn't give her enough. Will you run to Mr. +Selby's house? You won't find him, of course—he is on his +round—but his assistant, who was with him here just now, went back +there. Run for him at once.'</p> + +<p>It was Dora who spoke, as she closed the folding-doors of the inner +room where Lucy lay. David, who was crouching over the fire in the +sitting-room, whither the nurse had banished him for a while, after +the operation, sprang up, and disappeared in an instant. Those +faint, distant sounds of anguish which had been in his ear for half +an hour or more, ever since the doctors had departed, declaring +that everything was satisfactorily over, had been more than his +manhood could bear.</p> + +<p>He returned in an incredibly short space of time with a young +surgeon, who at once administered another injection of morphia.</p> + +<p>'A highly sensitive patient,' he said to David, 'and the nerves +have, no doubt, been badly cut. But she will do now.'</p> + +<p>And, indeed, the moaning had ceased. She lay with closed eyes—so +small a creature in the wide bed—her head and face swathed in +bandages. But the breathing was growing even and soft. She was once +more unconscious.</p> + +<p>The doctor touched David's hand and went, after a word with the +nurse.</p> + +<p>'Won't you go into the next room, sir, and have your tea? Mrs. +Grieve is sure to sleep now,' said the nurse to him in her +compassion.</p> + +<p>He shook his head, and sat down near the foot of the bed. The nurse +went into the dressing-room a moment to speak to Dora, who was +doing some unpacking there, and he was left alone with his wife.</p> + +<p>The sounds of the street came into the silent room, and every now +and then he had a start of agony, thinking that she was moving +again—that she was in pain again. But no, she slept; her breath +came gently through the childish parted lips, and the dim +light—for the nurse had drawn the curtains on the lengthening +April day—hid her pallor and the ghastliness of the dressings.</p> + +<p>Forty-eight hours ago, and they were in the garden with Sandy! And +now life seemed to have passed for ever into this half-light of +misery. Everything had dropped away from him—the interests of his +business, his books, his social projects. He and she were shut out +from the living world. Would she ever rise from that bed +again—ever look at him with the old look?</p> + +<p>He sat on there, hour after hour, till Dora coaxed him into the +sitting-room for a while, and tried to make him take some food. But +he could not touch it, and how the sudden gas which the servant lit +glared on his sunken eyes! He waited on his companion mechanically, +then sat, with his head on his hand, listening for the sound of the +doctors' steps.</p> + +<p>When they came, they hardly disturbed their patient. She moaned at +being touched; but everything was right, and the violent pain which +had unexpectedly followed the operation was not likely to recur.</p> + +<p>'And what a blessing that she took the chloroform so well, with +hardly any after-effects!' said Mr. Selby cheerily, drawing on his +gloves in the sitting-room. 'Well, Mr. Grieve, you have got a good +nurse, and can leave your wife to her with perfect peace of mind. +You must sleep, or you will knock up; let me give you a sleeping +draught.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! I shall sleep,' said David, impatiently. 'You considered the +operation successful—completely successful?'</p> + +<p>The surgeon looked gravely into the fire.</p> + +<p>'I shall know more in a week or so,' he said. 'I have never +disguised from you, Mr. Grieve, how serious and difficult the case +was. Still, we have done what was right—we can but wait for the +issue.'</p> + +<p>An hour later Dora looked into the sitting-room, and said softly:—</p> + +<p>'She would like to see you, David.'</p> + +<p>He went in, holding his breath. There was a night-light in the room, +and her face was lying in deep shadow.</p> + +<p>He knelt down beside her, and kissed her hand.</p> + +<p>'My darling!' he said—and his voice was quite firm and +steady—'are you easier now?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' she said faintly. 'Where are you going to sleep?'</p> + +<p>'In a room just beyond Dora's room. She could make me hear in a +moment if you wanted me.'</p> + +<p>Then, as he looked closer, he saw that about her head was thrown +the broad white lace scarf she had worn round her neck on the +journey up. And as he bent to her, she suddenly opened her languid +eyes, and gazed at him full. For the moment it was as though she +were given back to him.</p> + +<p>'I made Dora put it on,' she said feebly, moving her hand towards +the lace. 'Does it hide all those nasty bandages?'</p> + +<p>'Yes. I can't see them at all.'</p> + +<p>'Is it pretty?'</p> + +<p>The little gleam of a smile nearly broke down his self-command.</p> + +<p>'Very,' he said, with a quivering lip.</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes again.</p> + +<p>'Oh! I hope Lizzie will look after Sandy,' she said after a while, +with a long sigh.</p> + +<p>Not a word now of wilfulness, of self-assertion! After the +sullenness and revolt of the day before, which had lasted +intermittently almost up to the coming of the doctors, nothing +could be more speaking, more pathetic, than this helpless +acquiescence.</p> + +<p>'I mustn't stay with you,' he said. 'You ought to be going to sleep +again. Nurse will give you something if you can't.'</p> + +<p>'I'm quite comfortable,' she said, sleepily. 'There isn't any pain.'</p> + +<p>And she seemed to pass quickly and easily into sleep as he sat +looking at her.</p> + +<p>An hour or two later, Dora, who could not sleep from the effects of +fatigue and emotion, was lying in her uncomfortable stretcher-bed, +thinking with a sort of incredulity of all that had passed since +David's telegram had reached her the day before, or puzzling +herself to know how her employers could possibly spare her for +another three or four days' holiday, when she was startled by some +recurrent sounds from the room beyond her own. David was sleeping +there, and Dora, with her woman's quickness, had at once perceived +that the partition between them was very thin, and had been as +still as a mouse in going to bed.</p> + +<p>The sound alarmed her, though she could not make it out. +Instinctively she put her ear to the wall. After a minute or two +she hastily moved away, and hiding her head under the bedclothes, +fell to soft crying and praying.</p> + +<p>For it was the deep rending sound of suppressed weeping, the +weeping of a strong man who believes himself alone with his grief +and with God. That she should have heard it at all filled her with +a sort of shame.</p> + +<p>Things, however, looked much brighter on the following morning. The +wound caused by the operation was naturally sore and stiff, and the +dressing was painful; but when the doctor's visit was over, and +Lucy was lying in the halo of her white scarf on her fresh pillows, +in a room which Dora and the nurse had made daintily neat and +straight, her own cheerfulness was astonishing. She made Dora go +out and get her some patterns for Sandy's summer suits, and when +they came she lay turning them over from time to time, or weakly +twisting first one and then another round her finger. She was, of +course, perpetually anxious to know when she would be well, and +whether the scar would be very bad; but on the whole she was a +docile and promising patient, and she even began to see some gleams +of virtue in Mr. Selby, for whom at first she had taken the +strongest dislike.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, David, haunted always by a horrible knowledge which was +hid from her, could get nothing decided for the future out of the +doctors.</p> + +<p>'We must wait,' said Mr. Selby; 'for the present all is healing +well, but I wish we could get up her general strength. It must have +been running down badly of late.'</p> + +<p>Whereupon David was left reproaching himself for blindness +and neglect, the real truth being that, with any one of Lucy's +thin elastic frame and restless temperament, a good deal of +health-degeneration may go on without its becoming conspicuous.</p> + +<p>A few days passed. Dora was forced to go back to work; but as she +was to take up her quarters at the Merton Road house, and to write +long accounts of Sandy to his mother every day, Lucy saw her depart +with considerable equanimity. Dora left her patient on the sofa, a +white and ghostly figure, but already talking eagerly of returning +to Manchester in a week. When she heard the cab roll off, Lucy lay +back on her cushions and counted the minutes till David should come +in from the British Museum, whither, because of her improvement, he +had gone to clear up one or two bibliographical points. She +caressed the thought of being left alone with him, except for the +nurse—left to that tender and special care he was bestowing on her +so richly, and through which she seemed to hold and know him +afresh.</p> + +<p>When he came in she reproached him for being late, and both enjoyed +and scouted his pleas in answer.</p> + +<p>'Well, I don't care,' she said obstinately; 'I wanted you.'</p> + +<p>Then she heaved a long sigh.</p> + +<p>'David, I made nurse let me look at the horrid place this morning. +I shall always be a fright—it's no good.'</p> + +<p>But he knew her well enough to perceive that she was not really +very downcast, and that she had already devised ways and means of +hiding the mark as much as possible.</p> + +<p>'It doesn't hurt or trouble you at all?' he asked her anxiously.</p> + +<p>'No, of course not,' she said impatiently. 'It's getting well. Do +ask nurse to bring me my tea.'</p> + +<p>The nurse brought it, and she and David spoiled their invalid with +small attentions.</p> + +<p>'It's nice being waited on,' said Lucy when it was over, settling +herself to rest with a little sigh of sensuous satisfaction.</p> + +<p>Another week passed, and all seemed to be doing well, though Mr. +Selby would say nothing as yet of allowing her to move. Then came a +night when she was restless; and in the morning the wound troubled +her, and she was extremely irritable and depressed. The moment the +nurse gave him the news at his door in the early morning, David's +face changed. He dressed, and went off for Mr. Selby, who came at +once.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' he said gravely, after his visit, as he shut the +folding-doors of Lucy's room behind him—'yes, I am sorry to say +there is a return. Now the question is, what to do.'</p> + +<p>He came and stood by the fireplace, legs apart, head down, debating +with himself. David, haggard and unshorn, watched him helplessly.</p> + +<p>'We could operate again,' he said thoughtfully, 'but it would cut +her about terribly. And I can't disguise from you, Mr. Grieve'—as +he raised his head and caught sight of his companion his tone +softened insensibly—'that, in my opinion, it would be all but +useless. I more than suspect, from my observation to-day, that +there are already secondary growths in the lung. Probably they have +been there for some time.'</p> + +<p>There was a silence.</p> + +<p>'Then we can do nothing,' said David.</p> + +<p>'Nothing effectual, alas!' said the doctor, slowly. 'Palliatives, of +course, we can use, of many kinds. But there will not be much pain.'</p> + +<p>'Will it be long?'</p> + +<p>David was standing with his back to the doctor, looking out of +window, and Mr. Selby only just heard the words.</p> + +<p>'I fear it will be a rapid case,' he said reluctantly. 'This return +is rapid, and there are many indications this morning I don't like. +But don't wish it prolonged, my dear sir!—have courage for her and +yourself.'</p> + +<p>The words were not mere platitudes—the soul of a good man looked +from the clear and masterful eyes. He described the directions he +had left with the nurse, and promised to come again in the evening. +Then he grasped David's hand, and would have gone away quickly. But +David, following him mechanically to the door, suddenly recollected +himself.</p> + +<p>'Could we move her?' he asked; 'she may crave to get home, or to +some warm place.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, you can move her,' the doctor said, decidedly. 'With an +invalid-carriage and a nurse you can do it. We will talk about it +when I come again to-night.'</p> + +<p>'A ghastly case,' he was saying to himself as he went downstairs, +'and, thank heaven! a rare one. Strange and mysterious thing it is, +with its ghoulish preference for the young. Poor thing! poor thing! +and yesterday she was so cheerful—she would tell me all about her +boy.'</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-4" id="CHAPTER_IX-4"></a>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<p>The history of the weeks that followed shall be partly told in +David's own words, gathered from those odds-and-ends of paper, old +envelopes, the half-sheets of letters, on which he would write +sometimes in those hours when he was necessarily apart from Lucy, +thrusting them on his return between the leaves of his locked +journal, clinging to them as the only possible record of his wife's +ebbing life, yet passionately avoiding the sight of them when they +were once written.</p> + +<p>'RYDAL, AMBLESIDE: <i>May 5th</i>—We arrived this afternoon. The +day has been glorious. The mountains round the head of the lake, as +we drove along it at a foot's pace that the carriage might not +shake her, stood out in the sun; the light wind drove the +cloud-shadows across their blues and purples; the water was a sheet +of light; the larches were all out, though other trees are late; +and every breath was perfume.</p> + +<p>'But she was too weary to look at it; and before we had gone two +miles, it seemed to me that I could think of nothing but the +hateful length of the drive, and the ups and downs of the road.</p> + +<p>'When we arrived, she would walk into the cottage, and before +nurse or I realised what she was doing, she went straight through +the little passage which runs from front to back, out into the +garden. She stood a moment—in her shawls, with the little white +hood she has devised for herself drawn close round her head and +face—looking at the river with its rocks and foaming water, at the +shoulder of Nab Scar above the trees, at the stone house with the +red blinds opposite.</p> + +<p>'"It looks just the same," she said, and the tears rolled down her +cheeks.</p> + +<p>'We brought her in—nurse and I—and when she had been put +comfortably on the low couch I had sent from London beforehand, and +had taken some food, she was a little cheered. She made us draw her +to the window of the little back sitting-room, and she lay looking +out till it was almost dark. But as I foresaw, the pain of coming +is more than equal to any pleasure there may be.</p> + +<p>'Yet she would come. During those last days in London, when she +would hardly speak to us, when she lay in the dark in that awful +room all day, and every attempt to feed her or comfort her made her +angry, I could not, for a long time, get her to say what she wished +about moving, except that she would not go back to Manchester.</p> + +<p>'Her hand-glass could not be kept from her, and one morning she +cried bitterly when she saw that she could no longer so arrange her +laces as to completely hide the disfigurement of the right side of +the face.</p> + +<p>'"No! I will <i>never</i> go back to Merton Road!" she cried, +throwing down the glass; "no one shall see me!"</p> + +<p>'But at night, after I hoped she was asleep, she sent nurse to say +that she wanted to go to—<i>Rydal!</i>—to the same cottage by the +Rotha we had stayed at on our honeymoon. Nurse said she could—she +could have an invalid-carriage from door to door. Would I write for +the rooms at once? And Sandy could join us there.</p> + +<p>'So, after nine years, we are here again. The house is empty. We +have our old rooms. Nothing is changed in the valley. After she was +asleep, I went out along the river, keeping to a tiny path on the +steep right bank till I reached a wooden bridge, and then through a +green bit, fragrant with fast-springing grass and flowers, to that +point beside the lake I remember so well. I left her there one day, +sitting, and dabbling in the water, while I ran up Loughrigg. She +was nineteen. How she tripped over the hills!</p> + +<p>'To-night there was a faint moon. The air was cold, but quite +still, and the reflections, both of the islands and of Nab Scar, +seemed to sink into unfathomed depths of shadowy water. Loughrigg +rose boldly to my left against the night sky; I could see the +rifle-butts and the soft blackness of the great larch-plantation on +the side of Silver How.</p> + +<p>'There, to my right, was the tower of the little church, whitish +against the woods, and close beside it, amid the trees, I felt the +presence of Wordsworth's house, though I could not see it.</p> + +<p>'O Poet! who wrote for me, not knowing—oh, heavenly valley!—you +have but one voice; it haunts my ears:—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>'Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The bowers where Lucy played;</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>And thine, too, is the last green field</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>That Lucy's eyes surveyed.</i>'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>'<i>May 10th</i>.—She never speaks of dying, and I dare not +speak of it. But sometimes she is like a soul wandering in terror +through a place of phantoms. Her eyes grow large and strained, she +pushes me away from her. And she often wakes at night, sinking in +black gulfs of fear, from which I cannot save her.</p> + +<p>'Oh, my God! my heart is torn, my life is sickened with pity! Give +me some power to comfort—take from me this impotence, this +numbness. She, so little practised in suffering, so much of +a child still, called to bear this <i>monstrous</i> thing. Savage, +incredible Nature! But behind Nature there is God—</p> + +<p>'To-night she asked me to pray with her—asked it with reproach. +"You never say good things to me now!" And I could not explain +myself.</p> + +<p>'It was in this way. When Dora was with her, she used to read and +pray with her. I would not have interfered for the world. When Dora +left, I thought she would use the little manual of prayers for the +sick that Dora had left behind; the nurse, who is a religious +woman, and reads to her a good deal, would have read this whenever +she wished. One night I offered to read it to her myself, but she +would not let me. And for the rest—in spite of our last talk—I +was so afraid of jarring her, of weakening any thought that might +have sustained her. 'But to-night she asked me, and for the first +time since our earliest married life I took her hand and prayed. +Afterwards she lay still, till suddenly her lip began to quiver. +'"I wasn't ever so very bad. I did love you and Sandy, and I did help +that girl,—you know—that Dora knew, who went wrong. And I am so +ill—SO ill!"'</p> + +<p>'MAY 20TH.—A fortnight has passed. Sandy and his nurse are lodging +at a house on the hill; every morning he comes down here, and I +take him for a walk. He was very puzzled and grave at first when he +saw her, but now he has grown used to her look, and he plays +merrily about among the moss-grown rocks beside the river, while +she lies in the slung couch, to which nurse and I carry her on a +little stretcher, watching him. 'There was a bright hour this +morning. We are in the midst of a spell of dry and beautiful +weather, such as often visits this rainy country in the early +summer, before any visitors come. The rhododendrons and azaleas are +coming out in the gardens under Loughrigg—some little copses here +and there are sheets of blue—and the green is rushing over the +valley. We had put her among the rocks under a sycamore-tree—a +singularly beautiful tree, with two straight stems dividing its +rounded masses of young leaf. There were two wagtails perching on +the stones in the river, and swinging their long tails; and the +light flickered through the trees on to the water foaming round the +stones or slipping in brown cool sheets between them. There was a +hawthorn-tree in bloom near by; in the garden of the house opposite +a woman was hanging out some clothes to dry; the Grasmere coach +passed with a clatter, and Sandy with the two children from the +lodgings ran out to the bridge to look at it. 'Yes, she had a moment +of enjoyment! I bind the thought of it to my heart. Lizzie was +sitting sewing near the edge of the river, that she might look +after Sandy. He was told not to climb on to the stones in the +current of the stream, but as he was bent on catching the vain, +provoking wagtails who strutted about on them, the prohibition was +unendurable. As soon as Lizzie's head was bent over her work, he +would clamber in and out till he reached some quite forbidden rock; +and then, looking back with dancing eyes and the tip of his little +tongue showing between his white teeth, he would say, "Go on with +your work, Nana, DARLING!"—And his mother's look never left him +all the time. 'Once he had been digging with his little spade among +the fine grey gravel silted up here and there among the hollows of +the rocks. He had been digging with great energy, and for May the +air was hot. Lizzie looked up and said to him, "Sandy, it's time +for me to take you to bed"—that is, for his midday sleep. "Yes," +he said, with a languid air, sitting down on a stone with his spade +between his knees—"yes, I think I'd better come to bed. My heart +is very dreary."</p> + +<p>'What do you mean?'</p> + +<p>'My heart is very dreary—dreary means tired, you know.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, indeed!—where is your heart?'</p> + +<p>'Here,' he said, laying his hand lackadaisically on the +small of his back.</p> + +<p>'And then she smiled, for the first time for so many, many days! I +came to sit by her; she left her hand in mine; and after the child +was gone the morning slipped by peacefully, with only the sound of +the river and the wheels of a few passing carts to break the +silence.</p> + +<p>'In the afternoon she asked me if I should not have to go back to +Manchester. How could all those men and those big printing-rooms +get on without me? I told her that John reported to me every other +day; that a batch of our best men had sent word to me, through him, +that everything was going well, and I was not to worry; that there +had been a strike of some importance among the Manchester +compositors, but that our men had not joined.</p> + +<p>'She listened to it all, and then she shut her eyes and said:—</p> + +<p>'"I'm glad you did that about the men. I don't understand quite—but +I'm glad."</p> + +<p>'... You can see nothing of her face now in its white draperies +but the small, pointed chin and nose; and then the eyes, with their +circles of pain, the high centre of the brow, and a wave or two of +her pretty hair tangled in the lace edge of the hood.</p> + +<p>'"<i>My darling,—my darling! God have mercy upon us!</i>"'</p> + +<p>'<i>June 2nd.—"For the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this +commandment.</i>" How profoundly must he who spoke the things +reported in this passage have conceived of marriage! <i>For the +hardness of your hearts.</i> Himself governed wholly by the inward +voice, unmoved by the mere external authority of the great Mosaic +name, he handles the law presented to him with a sort of sad irony.</p> + +<p>The words imply the presence in him of a slowly formed and +passionately held ideal. Neither sin, nor suffering, nor death can +nor ought to destroy the marriage bond, once created. It is not +there for our pleasure, nor for its mere natural object,—but to +form the soul.</p> + +<p>'The world has marched since that day, in law—still more, as it +supposes, in sentiment. But are we yet able to bear such a saying?</p> + +<p>'... Then compare with these words the magnificent outburst in +which, a little earlier, he sweeps from his path his mother and his +brethren. There are plentiful signs—take the "corban" passage, for +instance, still more, the details of the Prodigal Son—of the same +deep and tender thinking as we find in the most authentic sayings +about marriage applied to the parental and brotherly relation. But +he himself, realising, as it would seem, with peculiar poignancy, +the sacredness of marriage and the claim of the family, is yet +alone, and must be alone to the end. The fabric of the Kingdom +rises before him; his soul burns in the fire of his message; and +the lost sheep call.</p> + +<p>'She has been fairly at ease this afternoon, and I have been lying +on the grass by the lake, pondering these things. The narrative of +Mark, full as it is already of legendary accretion, brings one so +close to him; the living breath and tone are in one's ears.'</p> + +<p>'<i>June 4th</i>.—These last two days she is much worse. The +local trouble is stationary; but there must be developments we know +nothing of elsewhere. For she perishes every day before our +eyes—we cannot give her sleep—there is such malaise, emaciation, +weariness.</p> + +<p>'She is wonderfully patient. It seems to me, looking back, that a +few days ago came a change. I cannot remember any words that marked +it, but it is as though—without our knowing it—her eyes had +turned themselves irrevocably from us and from life, to the hills +of death. Yet—strange!—she takes more notice of those about her.</p> + +<p>Yesterday she showed an interest just like her old self in the +children's going to a little fete at Ambleside. She would have them +all in—Sandy and the landlady's two little girls—to look at them +when they were dressed.—What strikes me with awe is that she has +no more tears, though she says every now and then the most touching +things—things that pierce to the very marrow.</p> + +<p>'She told me to-day that she wished to see her father. I have +written to him this evening.'</p> + +<p>'<i>June 6th</i>.—Purcell has been here a few hours, and has gone +back to-night. She received him with perfect calmness, though they +have not spoken to each other for ten years. He came in with his +erect, military port and heavy tread, looking little older, though +his hair is gray. But he blenched at sight of her.</p> + +<p>'"You must kiss me on the forehead," she said to him feebly, "but, +please, very gently."</p> + +<p>'So he kissed her, and sat down. He cleared his throat often, and +did not know what to say. But she asked him, by degrees, about some +of her mother's relations whom she had not seen for long, then +about himself and his health. The ice thawed, but the talk was +difficult. Towards the end he inquired of her—and, I think, with +genuine feeling—whether she had "sought salvation." She said +faintly, "No;" and he, looking shocked and shaken, bade her, with +very much of his old voice and manner, and all the old phraseology, +"lay hold of the merits of Jesus."</p> + +<p>'Towards the end of his exhortations she interrupted him.</p> + +<p>'"You must see Sandy, and you must kiss me again. I wasn't a good +daughter. But, oh! why wouldn't you make friends with me and David? +I tried—you remember I tried?"</p> + +<p>'"I am ready to forgive all the past," he said, drawing himself +up: "I can say no more."</p> + +<p>'"Well, kiss me!" she said, in a melancholy whisper. And he kissed +her again.</p> + +<p>'Then I would not let him exhaust her any more, or take any set +farewell. I hurried him away as though for tea, and nurse and I +pronounced against his seeing her again.</p> + +<p>'On our walk to the coach he broke out once more, and implored me, +with much unction and some dignity, not to let my infidel opinions +stand in the way, but to summon some godly man to see and talk with +her. I said that a neighbouring clergyman had been several times to +see her, since, as he probably knew, she had been a Churchwoman for +years. In my inward frenzy I seemed to be hurling all sorts of wild +sayings at his head; but I don't believe they came to speech, for I +know at the end we parted with the civility of strangers. I +promised to send him news. What amazed me was his endless curiosity +about the details of her illness. He would have the whole history +of the operation, and all the medical opinion she could remember +from the nurse. And on our walk he renewed the subject; but I could +bear it no more.</p> + +<p>'Oh, my God! what does it matter to me <i>why</i> she is dying?'</p> + +<p>'Then, when I got home, I found her rather excited, and she +whispered to me: "He asked me if I had sought salvation, and +I said No. I didn't seek it, David; but it comes—when you are +here." Then her chest heaved, but with that strange instinct of +self-preservation she would not say a word more, nor would she let +me weep. She asked me to hold her hands in mine, and so she slept a +little.</p> + +<p>'Dora writes that in a fortnight more she can get a holiday of a +week or two. Will she be in time?</p> + +<p>'It is two months to-day since we went to London.'</p> + +<p>On one of the last days in June Dora arrived. It seemed to her that +Lucy could have but a few days to live. Working both outwardly and +inwardly, the terrible disease had all but done its work. She had +nearly lost the power of swallowing, and lived mainly on the +morphia injections which were regularly administered to her. But at +intervals she spoke a good deal, and quite clearly.</p> + +<p>And Dora had not been six hours with her before a curious thing +happened. The relation which, ever since their meeting as girls, +had prevailed between her and Lucy, seemed to be suddenly reversed. +She was no longer the teacher and sustainer; in the little dying +creature there was now a remote and heavenly power; it could not be +described, but Dora yielded with tears to the awe and sovereignty +of it.</p> + +<p>She saw with some plainness, however, that it depended on the +relation between the husband and wife. Since she had been with them +last, it had been touched—this relation—by a Divine alchemy. The +self in both seemed to have dropped away. The two lives were no +longer two, but one—he cherishing, she leaning.</p> + +<p>The night she came she pressed Lucy to take the Holy Communion. +Lucy assented, and the Communion was administered, with David +kneeling beside her pillow. But afterwards Lucy was troubled, and +when Dora proposed at night to read and pray with her, she said +faintly, 'No; David does.' And thenceforward, though she was all +gentleness, Dora did not find it very easy to get religious speech +with her, and went often—poor Dora!—sadly, and in fear.</p> + +<p>Dora had been in the house five days, when new trouble followed on +the old. David one morning received a letter from Louie, forwarded +from Manchester, and when Dora followed him into the garden with a +message, she found him walking about distracted.</p> + +<p>'Read it!' he said.</p> + +<p>The letter was but a few scrawled lines:—</p> + +<p>'Cecile has got diphtheria. Our doctor says so, but he is a devil. I +must have another—the best—and there is no money. If she dies, +you will never see me again, I swear. I dare say you will think it +a good job, but now you know.'</p> + +<p>The writing was hardly legible, and the paper had been twisted and +crumpled by the haste of the writer.</p> + +<p>'What is to be done?' said David, in pale despair. 'Can I leave this +house one hour?—one minute?'</p> + +<p>Then a sudden thought struck him. He looked at Dora with a flash of +appeal.</p> + +<p>'Dora, you have been our friend always, and you have been good to +Louie. Will you go? I need not say all shall be made easy. I could +get John to take you over. He has been several times to Paris for +me this last five years, and would be a help.'</p> + +<p>That was indeed a struggle for Dora! Her heart clung to these +people she loved, and the devote in her yearned for those last +opportunities with the dying, on the hope of which she still fed +herself. To go from this deathbed, to that fierce mother, in those +horrible surroundings!</p> + +<p>But just as she had taught Louie in the old days because David +Grieve asked her, so now she went, in the end, because he asked +her.</p> + +<p>She was to be away six days at least. But the doctor thought it +possible she might return to find Lucy alive. David made every +possible arrangement—telegraphed to Louie that she was coming; and +to John directing him to meet her at Warrington and take her on; +wrote out the times of her journey; the address of a pension in the +Avenue Friedland, kept by an English lady, to which he happened to +be able to direct her; and the name of the English lawyer in Paris +who had advised him at the time of Louie's marriage, had done +various things for him since, and would, he knew, be a friend in +need.</p> + +<p>Twelve hours after the arrival of Louie's letter, Dora tore herself +from Lucy. 'Don't say good-bye,' said David, his face working, and +to spare him and Lucy she went as though she were just going across +the road for the night. David saw her—a white and silent +traveller—into the car that was to take her on the first stage of +a journey which, apart from everything else, alarmed her provincial +imagination. David's gratitude threw her into a mist of tears as +she drove off. Surely, of all the self-devoted acts of Dora's life, +this mission and this leave-taking were not the least!</p> + +<p>Lucy heard the wheels roll away. A stony, momentary sense of +desolation came over her as this one more strand was cut. But David +came in, and the locked lips relaxed. It had been necessary to tell +her the reason of Dora's departure. And in the course of the long +June evening David gathered from the motion of her face that she +wished to speak to him. He bent down to her, and she murmured:—</p> + +<p>'Tell Louie I wished I'd been kinder—I pray God will let her keep +Cecile.... She must come to Manchester again when I'm gone.'</p> + +<p>The night-watch was divided between David and the nurse. At five +o'clock in the summer morning—brilliant once more after storm and +rain—he injected morphia into the poor wasted arm, and she took a +few drops of brandy. Then, after a while, she seemed to sleep; and +he, stretched on a sofa beside her, and confident of waking at the +slightest sound, fell into a light doze.</p> + +<p>Lucy woke when the sun was high, rather more than an hour later. +Her eyes were teased by a chink in the curtain; she hardly knew +what it was, but her dying sense shrank, and she vaguely thought of +calling David. But as she lay, propped up, she looked down on him, +and she saw his pale, sunken face, with the momentary softening of +rest upon it. And there wandered through her mind fragments of his +sayings to her in that last evening of theirs together in the +Manchester house,—especially, '<i>It can only be proved by +living—by every victory over the evil self</i>.' In its mortal +fatigue her memory soon lost hold of words and ideas; but she had +the strength not to wake him.</p> + +<p>Then as she lay in what seemed to her this scorching light—in +reality it was one little ray which had evaded the thick curtains— +a flood of joy seemed to pour into her soul. 'I shall not live +beyond to-day,' she thought, 'but I know now I shall see him again.'</p> + +<p>When at last she made a faint movement, and he woke at once, he saw +that the end was very near. He thought of Dora in Paris with a +pang, but there was no help for it. Through that day he never +stirred from her side in the darkened room, and she sank fast. She +spoke only one connected sentence—to say with great difficulty, +'Dying is long—but—<i>not</i>—painful.' The words woke in him a +strange echo; they had been among the last words of 'Lias, his +childhood's friend. But she breathed one or two names—the landlady +of the lodging-house, and the servants, especially the nurse.</p> + +<p>They came in on tiptoe and kissed her. She had already thanked each +one.</p> + +<p>Sandy was just going to bed, when David carried him in to her. One +of her last conscious looks was for him. He was in his nightgown, +with bare feet, holding his father tight round the neck, and +whimpering. They bent down to her, and he kissed her on the cheek, +as David told him, 'very softly.' Then he cried to go away from this +still, grey mother. David gave him to the nurse and came back.</p> + +<p>The day passed, and the night began. The doctor in his evening +visit said it would be a marvel if she saw the morrow. David sat +beside the bed, his head bowed on the hand he held; the nurse was +in the farther corner. His whole life and hers passed before him; +and in his mind there hovered perpetually the image of the potter +and the wheel. He and she—the Hand so unfaltering, so divine had +bound them there, through resistance and anguish unspeakable. And +now, for him there was only a sense of absolute surrender and +submission, which in this hour of agony and exaltation rose +steadily into the ecstasy—ay, the <i>vision</i> of faith! In the +pitying love which had absorbed his being he had known that 'best' +at last whereat his craving youth had grasped; and losing himself +wholly had found his God.</p> + +<p>And for her, had not her weak life become one flame of love—a cup +of the Holy Grail, beating and pulsing with the Divine Life?</p> + +<p>The dawn came. She pulled restlessly at her white wrapper—seemed +to be in pain—whispered something of 'a weight.' Then the last +change came over her. She opened her eyes—but they saw no longer. +Nature ceased to resist, and the soul had long since yielded +itself. With a meekness and piteousness of look not to be told, +never to be forgotten, Lucy Grieve passed away.</p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-4" id="CHAPTER_X-4"></a>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<p>The very day after Lucy had been carried to her last rest in that +most poetic of all graveyards which bends its grassy shape to the +encircling Rotha and holds in trust the ashes of Wordsworth, David +Grieve started for Paris.</p> + +<p>He had that morning received a telegram from Dora: 'Louie +disappeared. Have no clue. Can you come?' Two days before, the news +of Cecile's death from diphtheria had reached him in a letter from +poor Dora, rendered almost inarticulate by her grief for Lucy and +bitter regret for her own absence from her cousin's deathbed, +mingling with her pity for Louie's unfortunate child and her dread +and panic with regard to Louie herself.</p> + +<p>But so long as that white form lay shrouded in the cottage upper +room, he could not move—and he could scarcely feel. The telegram +broke in upon a sort of lethargy which had held him ever since +Lucy's last breath. He started at once. On the way he spent two +hours at Manchester. On the table in his study there still lay the +medical book he had taken down from his scientific shelf on the +night of Dr. Mildmay's visit; in Lucy's room her dresses hung as +she had left them on the doors; a red woollen cap she had been +knitting for Sandy was thrown down half finished on the +dressing-table. Of the hour he spent in that room, putting away +some of the little personal possessions, still warm as it were from +her touch, let no more be said.</p> + +<p>When he reached Paris he inquired for Dora at the <i>pension</i> in +the Avenue Friedland, to which he had sent her. John, who had also +written to him, and was still in Paris, was staying, he knew, at an +hotel on the Quai Voltaire. But he went to Dora first.</p> + +<p>Dora, however, was not at home. She had left for him the full +address of the house in the Paris <i>banlieue</i> where she had +found Louie, and full directions as to how to reach it. He took one +of the open cabs and drove thither in the blazing July sun.</p> + +<p>An interminable drive!—the whole length of the Avenue de la +Grande-Armée and the Avenue de Neuilly, past the Seine and the Rond +Pont de Courbevoie, until at last turning to the left into the wide +and villainously paved road that leads to Rueil, Bougival, and St. +Germain, the driver and David between them with difficulty +discovered a side street which answered to the name Dora had +several times given.</p> + +<p>They had reached one of the most squalid parts of the western +<i>banlieue</i>. Houses half built and deserted in the middle, +perhaps by some bankrupt builder; small traders, bakers, +<i>charcutiers</i>, fried-fish sellers, lodged in structures +of lath and plaster, just run up and already crumbling; +<i>cabarets</i> of the roughest and meanest kind, adorned with +high-sounding devices,—David mechanically noticed one which had +blazoned on its stained and peeling front, <i>A la renaissance du +Phénix</i>;—heaps of rubbish and garbage with sickly children +playing among them; here and there some small, ill-smelling +factory; a few melancholy shrubs in new-made gardens, drooping and +festering under a cruel sun in a scorched and unclean soil:—the +place repelled and outraged every sense. Was it here that little +Cecile had passed from a life of pain to a death of torture?</p> + +<p>He rang at a sinister and all but windowless house, which he was +able to identify from Dora's directions. John opened to him, and in +a little room to the right, which looked on to a rank bit of +neglected garden, he found Dora. A woman, with a scowling brow and +greedy mouth, disappeared into the back premises as he entered.</p> + +<p>Dora and he clasped hands. Then the sight of his face broke down +even her long-practised self-control, and she laid her head down on +the table and sobbed. But he showed little emotion; while John, +standing shyly on the other side of the room, and the weeping Dora +could hardly find words to tell their own story, so overwhelmed +were they by those indelible signs upon him of all that he had gone +through.</p> + +<p>He asked them rapidly a number of questions.</p> + +<p>In the first place Dora explained that she and John were engaged in +putting together whatever poor possessions the house contained of a +personal kind, that they might not either be seized for debt, or +fall into the claws of the old <i>bonne</i>, a woman of the lowest +type, who had already plundered all she could. As to the wretched +husband, very little information was forthcoming. John believed +that he had been removed to the hospital in a state of alcoholic +paralysis the very week that Cecile was taken ill; at any rate he +had made no sign.</p> + +<p>The rest of the story which Dora had to tell may be supplemented by +a few details which were either unknown to his informants, or +remained unknown to David.</p> + +<p>Louie, on her return to Paris with David's hundred pounds, had +promptly staked the greater part of it in certain Bourse +speculations. She was quite as sorely in need of money as she had +professed to be while in Manchester, but for more reasons than one, +as David had uncomfortably suspected. Not only did her husband +strip her of anything he could lay hands on, but a certain +fair-haired Alsatian artist a good deal younger than herself had +for some months been preying upon her. What his hold upon her +precisely was, Father Lenoir, her director, when David went to see +him, either could not or—because the matter was covered by the +confessional seal—would not say. The artist, Brenart by name, was +a handsome youth, with a droll facile tongue, and a recklessness of +temper matching her own. He became first known to her as one of her +husband's drinking companions, then, dazzled by the wife's mad +beauty, he began to haunt the handsome Madame Montjoie, as many +other persons had haunted her before him,—with no particular +results except to increase the arrogant self-complacency with which +Louie bore herself among her Catholic friends.</p> + +<p>In the first year of his passion, Brenart came into a small +inheritance, much of which he spent on jewellery and other presents +for his idol. She accepted them without scruple, and his hopes +naturally rose high. But in a few months he ran through his money, +his drinking habits, under Montjoie's lead, grew upon him, and he +fell rapidly into a state of degradation which would have made it +very easy for Louie to shake him off, had she been so minded.</p> + +<p>But by this time he had, no doubt, a curious spell for her. He +was a person of considerable gifts, an etcher of fantastic +promise, a clever musician, and the owner of a humorous <i>carillon</i> +of talk, to quote M. Renan's word, which made life in his +neighbourhood perpetually amusing for those, at any rate, who took +the grossness of its themes as a matter of course. Louie found on +the one hand that she could not do without him, in her miserable +existence; on the other that if he was not to starve she must keep +him. His misfortunes revealed the fact that there was neither +chivalry nor delicacy in him; and he learnt to live upon her with +surprising quickness, and on the most romantic pretexts.</p> + +<p>So she made her pilgrimage to Manchester for money, and then she +played with her money to make it more, on the Bourse. But clever as +she was, luck was against her, and she lost. Her losses made her +desperate. So too did the behaviour of her husband, who robbed her +whenever he could, and spent most of his time on the pavements of +Paris, dragging himself from one low drinking-shop to another, only +coming home to cheat her out of fresh supplies, and goad his wife +to hideous scenes of quarrel and violence, which frightened the +life out of Cecile. Brenart, whom she could no longer subsidise, +kept aloof, for mixed reasons of his own. And the landlord, not to +be trifled with any longer, gave them summary notice of eviction.</p> + +<p>While she was in these straits, Father Lenoir, who even during +these months of vacillating passion and temptation had exercised a +certain influence over her, came to call upon her one afternoon, +being made anxious by her absence from Ste. Eulalie. He found a +wild-eyed haggard woman in a half-dismantled apartment, whom, for +the first time, he could not affect by any of those arts of +persuasion or rebuke, in which his long experience as a guide of +souls had trained him. She would tell him nothing either about her +plans, or her husband; she did not respond to his skilful and +reproachful comments upon her failure to give them assistance in a +recent great function at Ste. Eulalie; nor was she moved by the +tone of solemn and fatherly exhortation into which he gradually +passed. He left her, fearing the worst.</p> + +<p>On the following morning she fled to the wretched house on the +outskirts of Paris where Dora had found her. She went thither to +escape from her husband; to avoid the landlord's pursuit; to cut +herself adrift from the clergy of Ste. Eulalie, and to concert with +Brenart a new plan of life. But Brenart failed to meet her there, +and, a very few days after the flight, Cecile, already worn to a +shadow, sickened with diphtheria. Either the seeds were already in +her when they left Paris, or she was poisoned by the half-finished +drainage and general insanitary state of the quarter to which they +had removed.</p> + +<p>From the moment the child took to her bed, Louie fell into the +blackest despair. She had often ill-used her daughter during these +last months; the trembling child, always in the house, had again +and again been made the scapegoat of her mother's miseries; but she +no sooner threatened to die than Louie threw everything else in the +world aside and was madly determined she should live.</p> + +<p>She got a doctor, of an inferior sort, from the neighbourhood, and +when he seemed to her to bungle, and the child got no better, she +drove him out of the house with contumely. Then she herself tried +to caustic Cecile's throat, or she applied some of the old-wives' +remedies, suggested by the low servant she had taken. The result +was that the poor little victim was brought to the edge of the +grave, and Louie, reduced to abjectness, went and humbled herself +to the doctor and brought him back. This time he told her bluntly +that the child was dying and nothing could save her. Then, in her +extremity, she telegraphed to David. Her brother had written to her +twice since the beginning of Lucy's illness; but when she sent her +telegram, all remembrance of her sister-in-law had vanished from +Louie's mind—Lucy might never have existed; and whether she was +alive or dead mattered nothing.</p> + +<p>When Dora came, she found the child speechless, and near the end. +Tracheotomy had been performed, but its failure was already clear. +It seemed a question of hours. John went off post-haste for a +famous doctor. The great man came, agreed with the local +practitioner that nothing more could be done, and that death was +imminent. Louie, beside herself, first turned and rent him, and +then fell in a dead faint beside Cecile's bed. While the nurse, +whom John had also brought from Paris, was tending both mother and +daughter, Dora sent John—who in these years had acquired a certain +smattering of foreign languages under the pressure of printing-room +needs and David's counsel—to inquire for and fetch a priest. She +was in an agony lest the child should die without the sacraments of +her Church.</p> + +<p>The priest came—a young man of a heavy peasant type—bearing the +Host. Never did Dora forget that scene—the emaciated child gasping +her life away, the strange people, dimly seen amid the wreaths of +incense, who seemed to her to have flocked in from the street in +the wake of the priest, to look—the sacred words and gestures in +the midst, which, because of the quick unintelligible Latin, she +could only follow as a mystery of ineffable and saving power, the +same, so she believed, for Anglican and Catholic—and by the +bedside the sullen erect form of the mother, who could not be +induced to take any part whatever in the ceremony.</p> + +<p>But when it was all over, and the little procession which had +brought the Host was forming once more, Louie thrust Dora and the +nurse violently away from the bed, and bent her ear down to +Cecile's mouth. She gave a wild and hideous cry; then drawing +herself to her full height, with a tragic magnificence of movement +she stretched out one shaking hand over the poor little wasted +body, while with the other she pointed to the priest in his white +officiating dress.</p> + +<p>'Go out of this house!—go this <i>instant</i>! Who brought you in? +Not I! I tell you,—last night'—she flung the phrases out in +fierce gasps—' I gave God the chance. I said to Him, Make Cecile +well, and I'll behave myself—I'll listen to Father Lenoir. Much +good I've got by it all this time!—but I will. I'll live on a +crust, and I'll give all I can skin and scrape to those people at +Ste. Eulalie. If not—then I'll go to the devil—<i>to the devil!</i> +Do you hear? I swore that.'</p> + +<p>Her voice sank to a hoarse whisper; she bent down, still keeping +everyone at bay and at a distance from her dead child,—though Dora +ran to her—her head turned over her shoulder, her glowing eyes of +hatred fixed upon the priest.</p> + +<p>'She is mad!' he said to himself, receding quickly, lest the sacred +burden he bore should suffer any indignity.</p> + +<p>At that moment she fell heavily on her knees beside the bed +insensible, her dark head lying on Cecile's arm. Dora, in a pale +trance of terror, closed little Cecile's weary eyes, the nurse +cleared the room, and they laid Louie on her bed.</p> + +<p>When she revived, she crawled to the place where Cecile lay in her +white grave-dress strewn with flowers, and again put everyone away, +locking herself in with the body. But the rules of interment in the +case of infectious diseases are strict in France; the authorities +concerned intervened; and after scenes of indescribable misery and +violence, the little corpse was carried away, and, thanks to Dora's +and John's care, received tender and reverent burial.</p> + +<p>The mother was too exhausted to resist any more. When Dora came +back from the funeral, the nurse told her that Madame Montjoie, +after having refused all meat or drink for two days, had roused +herself from what seemed the state of stupor in which the departure +of the funeral procession had left her, had asked for brandy, which +had been given her, and had then, of her own accord, swallowed a +couple of opium pills, which the doctor had so far vainly +prescribed for her, and was now heavily asleep.</p> + +<p>Dora went to her own bed, too tired to stand, yet inexpressibly +relieved. Her bed was a heap of wraps contrived for her by the +nurse on the floor of the lower room—a bare den, reeking of damp, +which called itself the <i>salon</i>. But she had never rested +anywhere with such helpless thankfulness. For some hours at least, +agony and conflict were still, and she had a moment in which to +weep for Lucy, the news of whose death had now lain for two days a +dragging weight at her heart. Hateful memory!—she had forced her +way in to Louie with the letter, thinking in her innocence that the +knowledge of the brother's bereavement must touch the sister, or at +least momentarily divert her attention: and Louie had dashed it +down with the inconceivable words,—Dora's cheek burnt with anguish +and shame, as she tried to put them out of her mind for ever,—</p> + +<p>'Very well. Now, then, you can marry him! You know you've always +wanted to!'</p> + +<p>But at last that biting voice was hushed; there was not a sound in +the house; the summer night descended gently on the wretched +street, and in the midst of anxious discussion with herself as to +how she and John were to get Louie to England, she fell asleep.</p> + +<p>When Dora awoke, Louie was not in the house. After a few hours of +opium-sleep, she must have noiselessly put together all her +valuables and money, a few trifles belonging to Cecile, and a small +parcel of clothes, and have then slipped out through the garden +door, and into a back lane or track, which would ultimately lead +her down to the bank of the river. None of the three other persons +sleeping in the house—Dora, the nurse, the old <i>bonne</i>, had +heard a sound.</p> + +<p>When John arrived in the morning, his practical common sense +suggested a number of measures for Louie's pursuit, or for the +discovery of her fate, should she have made away with herself, as +he more than suspected—measures which were immediately taken by +himself, or by the lawyer, Mr. O'Kelly.</p> + +<p>Everything had so far been in vain. No trace of the +fugitive—living or dead—could be found.</p> + +<p>David, sitting with his arms on the deal table in the lower room, +and his face in his hands, listened in almost absolute silence to +the main facts of the story. When he looked up, it was to say, +'Have you been to Father Lenoir?'</p> + +<p>No. Neither Dora nor John knew anything of Father Lenoir.</p> + +<p>David went off at once. The good priest was deeply touched and +overcome by the story, but not astonished. He first told David of +the existence of Brenart, and search was instantly made for the +artist. He, too, was missing, but the police, whose cordial +assistance David, by the help of Lord Driffield's important friends +in Paris, was able to secure, were confident of immediate +discovery. Day after day passed, however; innumerable false clues +were started; but at the end of some weeks Louie's fate was much of +a secret as ever.</p> + +<p>Dora and John had, of course, gone back to England directly after +David's arrival; and he now felt that his child and his work called +him. He returned home towards the middle of August, leaving the +search for his sister in Mr. O'Kelly's hands.</p> + +<p>For five months David remained doggedly at his work in Prince's +Street. John watched him silently from day to day, showing him a +quiet devotion which sometimes brought his old comrade's hand upon +his shoulder in a quick touch of gratitude, or a flash to eyes +heavy with broken sleep. The winter was a bad one for trade; the +profits made by Grieve & Co., even on much business, were but +small; and in the consultative council of employés which David had +established the chairman constantly showed a dreaminess or an +irritability in difficult circumstances which in earlier days would +have cost him influence and success. But the men, who knew him +well, looked at each other askance, and either spoke their minds or +bore with him as seemed best. They were well aware that while wages +everywhere else had been cut down, theirs were undiminished; that +the profits from the second-hand book trade which remained +nominally outside the profit-sharing partnership were practically +all spent in furthering the social ends of it; and that the master, +in his desolate house, with his two maid-servants, one of them his +boy's nurse, lived as modestly as any of them, yet with help always +to spare for the sick and the unfortunate. To a man they remained +loyal to the firm and the scheme; but among even the best of them +there was a curious difference of opinion as to David and his ways. +They profited by them, and they would see him through; but there +was an uncomfortable feeling that, if such ideas were to spread, +they might cut both ways and interfere too much with the easy +living which the artisan likes and desires as much as any other +man.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, those who have followed the history of David Grieve with +any sympathy will not find it difficult to believe that this autumn +and winter were with him a time of intense mental anguish and +depression. The shock and tragedy of Louie's disappearance +following on the prolonged nervous exhaustion caused by Lucy's +struggle for life had brought him into a state similar to that in +which his first young grief had left him; only with this +difference, that the nature being now deeper and richer was but the +more capable of suffering. The passion of religious faith which had +carried him through Lucy's death had dwindled by natural reaction; +he believed, but none the less he walked in darkness. The cruelty +of his wife's fate, meditated upon through lonely and restless +nights, tortured beyond bearing a soul made for pity; and every now +and then wild fits of remorse for his original share in Louie's +sins and misfortunes would descend upon him, and leave no access to +reason.</p> + +<p>His boy, his work, and his books, these were ultimately his +protections from himself. Sandy climbed about him, or got into +mischief with salutary frequency. The child slept beside his father +at night, and in the evenings was always either watching for him at +the gate or standing thumb in mouth with his face pressed against +the window, and his bright eye scanning the dusk.</p> + +<p>For the rest, after a first period of utter numbness and +languor, David was once more able to read, and he read with +voracity—science, philosophy, belles lettres. Two subjects, +however, held his deepest mind all through, whatever might be added +to them—the study of ethics, in their bearing upon religious +conceptions, and the study of Christian origins. His thoughts +about them found occasional outlet, either in his talks with +Ancrum—whose love soothed him, and whose mind, with all its +weaknesses and its strong Catholic drift, he had long found to be +infinitely freer and more hospitable in the matter of ideas than +the average Anglican mind—or in his journal.</p> + +<p>A few last extracts from the journal may be given. It should be +remembered that the southern element in him made such a mode of +expression more easy and natural to him than it ever can be to most +Englishmen.</p> + +<p>'<i>November 2nd</i>.—It seems to me that last night was the +first night since she died that I have not dreamt of her. As a +rule, I am always with her in sleep, and for that reason I am the +more covetous of the sleep which comes to me so hardly. It is a +second life. Yet before her illness, during our married life, I +hardly knew what it was to dream.</p> + +<p>'Two nights ago I thought I was standing beside her. She was lying +on the long couch under the sycamore tree whither we used to carry +her. At first, everything was wholly lifelike and familiar. Sandy +was somewhere near. She had the grey camel's hair shawl over her +shoulders, which I remember so well, and the white frilled cap +drawn loosely together under her chin, over bandages and dressings, +as usual. She asked me to fetch something for her from the house, +and I went, full of joy. There seemed to be a strange mixed sense +at the bottom of my heart that I had somehow lost her and found her +again.</p> + +<p>'When I came back, nurse was there, and everything was changed. +Nurse looked at me with meaning, startled eyes, as much as to say, +"Look closely, it is not as you think." And as I went up to her, +lying still and even smiling on her couch, there was an +imperceptible raising of her little white hand as though to keep me +off. Then in a flash I saw that it was not my living Lucy; that it +could only be her spirit. I felt an awful sense of separation and +yet of yearning; sitting down on one of the mossy stones beside +her, I wept bitterly, and so woke, bathed in tears.</p> + +<p>'... It has often seemed to me lately that certain elements in the +Resurrection stories may be originally traced to such experiences +as these. I am irresistibly drawn to believe that the strange and +mystic scene beside the lake, in the appendix chapter to the Gospel +of St. John, arose in some such way. There is the same mixture of +elements—of the familiar with the ghostly, the trivial with the +passionate and exalted—which my own consciousness has so often +trembled under in these last visionary months.</p> + +<p>The well-known lake, the old scene of fishers and fishing-boats, +and on the shore the mysterious figure of the Master, the same, yet +not the same, the little, vivid, dream-like details of the fire of +coals, the broiled fish, and bread, the awe and longing of the +disciples—it is borne in upon me with extraordinary conviction +that the whole of it sprang, to begin with, from the dream of grief +and exhaustion. Then, in an age which attached a peculiar and +mystical importance to dreams, the beautiful thrilling fancy passed +from mouth to mouth, became almost immediately history instead of +dream,—just as here and there a parable misunderstood has taken +the garb of an event,—was after a while added to and made more +precise in the interest of apologetics, or of doctrine, or of the +simple love of elaboration, and so at last found a final +resting-place as an epilogue to the fourth Gospel.'</p> + +<p>'NOVEMBER 4TH.—To-night I have dared to read again Browning's +"Rabbi ben Ezra." For months I have not been able to read it, or +think of it, though for days and weeks towards the end of her life +it seemed to be graven on my heart.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">Look not thou down, but up!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">To uses of a cup,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">The new wine's foaming glow,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">The Master's lips a-glow!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Thou heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?</p> + +<p>'Let me think again, my God, of that astonishing ripening of her +last days!—of all her little acts of love and gratitude towards +me, towards her nurse, towards the people in the house, who had +helped to tend her—of her marvellous submission, when once the +black cloud of the fear of death, and the agony of parting from +life had left her.</p> + +<p>'And such facts alone in the world's economy are to have no +meaning, point no-whither? I could as soon believe it as that, in +the physical universe, the powers of the magnet, or the flash of +the lightning, are isolated and meaningless—tell us nothing and +lead nowhere.</p> + +<p><i>'November 10th.</i>—In the old days—there is a passage of the +kind in an earlier part of this journal—I was constantly troubled, +and not for myself only, but for others, the poor and unlearned +especially, who, as it seemed to me, would lose most in the +crumbling of the Christian mythology—as to the intellectual +difficulties of the approach to God. All this philosophical travail +of two thousand years—and so many doubts and darknesses! A +world athirst for preaching, and nothing simple or clear to +preach—when once the miracle-child of Bethlehem had been +dispossessed. And <i>now</i> it is daylight-plain to me that in the +simplest act of loving self-surrender there is the germ of all +faith, the essence of all lasting religion. Quicken human service, +purify and strengthen human love, and have no fear but that the +conscience will find its God! For all the time this quickening +and this purification are His work in thee. Around thee are the +institutions, the ideals, the knowledge and beliefs, ethical or +intellectual, in which that work, that life, have been so far +fragmentarily and partially realised. Submit thyself and press +forward. Thou knowest well what it means to be <i>better:</i> more +pure, more loving, more self-denying. And in thy struggle to be all +these, God cometh to thee and abides.... <i>But the greatest of +these is love!</i>'</p> + +<p><i>'November 20th.</i>—To-day I have finished the last of my New +Testament tracts, the last at any rate for a time. While Ancrum +lives I have resolved to suspend them. They trouble him deeply; and +I, who owe him so much, will not voluntarily add to his burden. His +wife is with him, a somewhat heavy, dark-faced woman, with a +slumbrous eye, which may, however, be capable of kindling. They +have left Mortimer Street, and have gone to live in a little house +on the road to Cheadle. He seems perfectly happy, and though the +doctor is discouraging, I at least can see no change for the worse. +She sits by him and reads or works, without much talking, but is +all the time attentive to his lightest movement. Friends send them +flowers which brighten the little house, his "boys" visit him in +the evenings, he is properly fed, and altogether I am more happy +about him than I have been for long. It required considerable +courage, this move, on her part; for there are a certain number of +people still left who knew Ancrum at college, and remember the +story; and those who believed him a bachelor are of course +scandalised and wondering. But the talk, whatever it is, does not +seem to molest them much. He offered to leave Manchester, but she +would not let him. "What would he do away from you and his boys?" +she said to me. There is a heroism in it all the same.</p> + +<p>'... So my New Testament work may rest a while.—During these +autumn weeks, it has helped me through some terrible hours.</p> + +<p>'When I look back over the mass of patient labour which has +accumulated during the present century round the founder of +Christianity and the origins of his society—when I compare the +text-books of the day with the text-books of sixty years ago—I no +longer wonder at the empty and ignorant arrogance with which the +French eighteenth century treated the whole subject. The first +stone of the modern building had not been laid when Voltaire wrote, +unless perhaps in the Wolfenbuttel fragments. He knew, in truth, +no more than the Jesuits, much less in fact than the better men +among them.</p> + +<p>'... It has been like the unravelling of a piece of fine and +ancient needlework—and so discovering the secrets of its make and +craftsmanship. A few loose ends were first followed up; then +gradually the whole tissue has been involved, till at last the +nature and quality of each thread, the purpose and the skill of +each stitch, are becoming plain, and what was mystery rises into +knowledge.</p> + +<p>'... But how close and fine a web!—and how difficult and patient +the process by which Christian reality has to be grasped! There is +no short cut—one must toil.</p> + +<p>'But after one has toiled, what are the rewards? Truth first—which +is an end in itself and not a means to anything beyond. Then—the +great figure of Christianity given back to you—with something at +least of the first magic, the first "natural truth" of look and +tone. Through and beyond dogmatic overlay, and Messianic theory and +wonder-loving addition, to recover, at least fragmentarily, the +actual voice, the first meaning, which is also the eternal meaning, +of Jesus—Paul—"John"!</p> + +<p>'Finally—a conception of Christianity in which you discern once +more its lasting validity and significance—its imperishable place +in human life. It becomes simply that preaching of the Kingdom +of God which belongs to and affects you—you, the modern +European—just as Greek philosophy, Stoic or Cynic, was that +preaching of it which belonged to and affected Epictetus.'</p> + +<p>'November 24th.—Mr. O'Kelly writes to me to-day his usual hopeless +report. No news! I do not even know whether she is alive, and I can +do nothing—absolutely nothing.</p> + +<p>'Yes—let me correct myself, there is some news of an event which, +if we could find her, might simplify matters a little. Montjoie is +dead in hospital—at the age of thirty-six—</p> + +<p>'Is there any other slavery and chain like that of temperament? As +I look back on the whole course of my relation to Louie, I am +conscious only of a sickening sense of utter failure. Our father +left her to me, and I have not been able to hold her back +from—nay, I have helped to plunge her into the most obvious and +commonplace ruin. Yet I am always asking myself, if it were to do +again, could I do any better? Has any other force developed in me +which would make it possible for me <i>now</i> to break through the +barriers between her nature and mine, to love her sincerely, asking +for nothing again, to help her to a saner and happier life?</p> + +<p>'If sometimes I dream that so it is, it is to <i>her</i> I owe +it—to <i>her</i> whom I carry on my bosom, and whose hand did +once, or so it seemed, unlock to me the gates of God. <i>Lucy! my +Lucy!</i></p> + +<p>'... All my past life becomes sometimes intolerable to me. I can +see nothing in it that is not tarnished and flecked with black +stains of egotism, pride, hardness, moral indolence.</p> + +<p>'And the only reparation possible, "Be ye transformed by the +renewing of your minds," at which my fainting heart sinks.</p> + +<p>'Sometimes I find much comfort in the saying of a lonely thinker, +"Let us humbly accept from God even our own nature; not that we are +called upon to accept the evil and the disease in us, but let us +accept <i>ourselves</i> in spite of the evil and the disease."</p> + +<p class="c"><i>'Que vivre est difficile—Ô mon cœur fatigué!'</i></p> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI-4" id="CHAPTER_XI-4"></a>CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<p>By the end of December David Grieve was near breaking down.</p> + +<p>Dr. Mildmay insisted brusquely on his going away.</p> + +<p>'As far as I can see you will live to be an old man,' he said, 'but +if you go on like this, it will be with shattered powers. You are +driving yourself to death, yet at the present moment you have no +natural driving force. It is all artificial, a matter of will. Do, +for heaven's sake, get away from these skies and these streets, and +leave all work and all social reforms behind. The first business of +the citizen—prate as you like!—is to keep his nerves and his +digestion in going order.'</p> + +<p>David laughed and yielded. The advice, in fact, corresponded to an +inward thirst, and had, moreover, a coincidence to back it. In one +of the Manchester papers two or three mornings before he had seen +the advertisement of a farm to let, which had set vibrating all his +passion for and memory of the moorland. It was a farm about half a +mile from Needham Farm, on one of the lower slopes of Kinder Low. +It had belonged to a peasant owner, lately dead. The heirs wished +to sell, but failing a purchaser were willing to let on a short +lease.</p> + +<p>It was but a small grazing farm, and the rent was low. David went +to the agent, took it at once, and in a few days, to the amazement +of Reuben and Hannah, to whom he wrote only the night before he +arrived, he and Sandy, and a servant, were established with a +minimum of furniture, but a sufficiency of blankets and coals, in +two or three rooms of the little grey-walled house.</p> + +<p>'Well, it caps me, it do!' Hannah said to herself, in her +astonishment as she stood on her own doorstep the day after the +arrival, and watched the figures of David and Sandy disappearing +along the light crisp snow of the nearer fields in the direction of +the Red Brook and the sheep-fold. They had looked in to ask for +Reuben, and had gone in pursuit of him.</p> + +<p>What on earth should make a man in the possession of his natural +senses leave a warm town-house in January, and come to camp in 'owd +Ben's' farm, was, indeed, past Hannah's divination. In reality, no +sudden resolve could have been happier. Sandy was a hardy little +fellow, and with the first breath of the moorland wind David felt a +load, which had been growing too heavy to bear, lifting from his +breast. His youth, his manhood, reasserted themselves. The bracing +clearness of what seemed to be the setting-in of a long frost put a +new life into him; winter's 'bright and intricate device' of +ice-fringed stream, of rimy grass, of snow-clad moor, of steel-blue +skies, filled him once more with natural joy, carried him out of +himself. He could not keep himself indoors; he went about with +Reuben or the shepherd, after the sheep; he fed the cattle at +Needham Farm, and brought his old knowledge to bear on the rearing +of a sickly calf; he watched for the grouse, or he carried his +pockets full of bread for the few blackbirds or moor-pippits that +cheered his walks into the fissured solitudes of the great Peak +plateau, walks which no one to whom every inch of the ground was +not familiar dared have ventured, seeing how misleading and +treacherous even light snow-drifts may become in the black bog-land +of these high and lonely moors; or he toiled up the side of the +Scout with Sandy on his back, that he might put the boy on one of +the boulders beside the top of the Downfall, and, holding him fast, +bid him look down at the great icicles which marked its steep and +waterless bed, gleaming in the short-lived sun.</p> + +<p>The moral surroundings, too, of the change were cheering. There, +over the brow, in the comfortable little cottage, where he had +long since placed her, with a woman to look after her, was +Margaret—quite childish and out of her mind, but happy and well +cared for. He and Sandy would trudge over from time to time to see +her, he carrying the boy in a plaid slung round his shoulders when +the snow was deep. Once Sandy went to Frimley with the Needham Farm +shepherd, and when David came to fetch him he found the boy and +Margaret playing cat's-cradle together by the fire, and the +eagerness in Sandy's pursed lips, and on the ethereally blanched +and shrunken face of Margaret, brought the tears to David's eyes, +as he stood smiling and looking on. But she did not suffer; for +memory was gone; only the gentle 'imperishable child' remained.</p> + +<p>And at Needham Farm he had never known the atmosphere so still. +Reuben was singularly cheerful and placid. Whether by the mere +physical weakening of years, or by some slow softening of the soul, +Hannah and her ways were no longer the daily scourge and perplexity +to her husband they had once been. She was a harsh and tyrannous +woman still, but not now openly viperish or cruel. With the +disappearance of old temptations, the character had, to some +extent, righted itself. Her sins of avarice and oppression towards +Sandy's orphans had raised no Nemesis that could be traced, either +within or without. It is doubtful whether she ever knew what +self-reproach might mean; in word, at any rate, she was to the end +as loudly confident as at the first. Nevertheless it might +certainly be said that at sixty she was a better and more tolerable +human being than she had been at fifty.</p> + +<p>'Aye, if yo do but live long enoof, yo get past t' bad bits o' t' +road,' Reuben said one night, with a long breath, to David, and +then checked himself, brought up either by a look at his nephew's +mourning dress, or by a recollection of what David had told him of +Louie the night before.</p> + +<p>It troubled Reuben indeed, something in the old fashion, that his +wife would show no concern whatever for Louie when he repeated to +her the details of that disappearance whereof so far he and she had +known only the bare fact.</p> + +<p>'Aye, I thowt she'd bin and married soom mak o' rabblement,' +remarked Hannah. 'Yo doant suppose ony decent mon ud put up wi her. +What Davy wants wi lookin for her I doant know. He'll be hard-set +when he's fand her, I should think.'</p> + +<p>She was equally impervious and sarcastic with regard to David's +social efforts. Her sharp tongue exercised itself on the 'poor way' +in which he seemed to live, and when Reuben repeated to her, with +some bewilderment, the facts which she had egged him on to get out +of David, her scorn knew no bounds.</p> + +<p>'Weel, it's like t' Bible after aw, Hannah,' said Reuben, perplexed +and remonstrating; 'theer's things, yo'll remember, abeawt gien t' +coat off your back, an sellin aw a mon has, an th' loike, 'at fairly +beats me soomtimes.'</p> + +<p>'Oh—go long wi yo!' said Hannah in high wrath. 'He an his loike'll +mak a halliblash of us aw soon, wi their silly faddle, an pamperin +o' workin men, wha never wor an never will be noa better nor they +should be. But—thank the Lord—<i>I</i>'ll not be theer to see.'</p> + +<p>And after this communication she found it very difficult to treat +David civilly.</p> + +<p>But to David's son—to Sandy—Hannah Grieve capitulated, for the +first and only time in her life.</p> + +<p>On the second and third day after his arrival, Sandy came over with +the servant to ask Hannah's help in some small matter of the new +household. As they neared the farm door, Tim, the aged Tim, who was +slouching behind, was suddenly set upon by a new and ill-tempered +collie of Reuben's, who threatened very soon to shake the life out +of his poor toothless victim. But Sandy, who had a stick, rushed at +him, his cheeks and eyes glowing with passion.</p> + +<p>'Get away! you great big dog, you! and leave my middle-sized dog +alone!'</p> + +<p>And he belaboured and pulled at the collie, without a thought of +fear, till the farm-man and Hannah came and separated the +combatants,—stalking into the farm kitchen afterwards in a +speechless rage at the cowardly injustice which had been done to +Tim. As he sat in the big rocking-chair, fiercely cuddling Tim and +sucking his thumb, his stormy breath subsiding by degrees, Hannah +thought him, as she confessed to the only female friend she +possessed in the world, 'the pluckiest and bonniest little grig i' +th' coontry side.'</p> + +<p>Thenceforward, so far as her queer temper would allow, she became +his nurse and slave, and David, with all the memorials of his own +hard childhood about him, could not believe his eyes, when he found +Sandy established day after day in the Needham Farm kitchen, +sucking his thumb in a corner of the settle, and ordering Hannah +about with the airs of a three-tailed bashaw. She stuffed him with +hot girdle-cakes; she provided for him a store of 'humbugs,' the +indigenous sweet of the district, which she made and baked with her +own hands, and had not made before for forty years; she took him +about with her, 'rootin,' as she expressed it, after the hens and +pigs and the calves; till, Sandy's exactions growing with her +compliance, the common fate of tyrants overtook him. He one day +asked too much and his slave rebelled. David saw him come in one +afternoon, and found him a minute or two after viciously biting the +blind-cord in the parlour, in a black temper. When his father +inquired what was the matter, Sandy broke out in a sudden wail of +tears.</p> + +<p>'Why <i>can't</i> she be a Kangawoo when I want her to?'</p> + +<p>Whereupon David, with the picture of Hannah's grim figure, cap and +all, before his mind's eye, went into the first fit of side-shaking +laughter that had befallen him for many and many a month.</p> + +<p>On a certain gusty afternoon towards the middle of February, David +was standing alone beside the old smithy. The frost, after a +temporary thaw, had set in again, there had been tolerably heavy +snow the night before, and it was evident from the shifting of the +wind and the look of the clouds that were coming up from the +north-east over the Scout that another fall was impending. But the +day had been fine, and the sun, setting over the Cheshire hills, +threw a flood of pale rose into the white bosom of the Scout and on +the heavy clouds piling themselves above it. It was a moment of +exquisite beauty and wildness. The sunlit snow gleamed against the +stormy sky; the icicles lining the steep channel of the Downfall +shone jagged and rough between the white and smoothly rounded banks +of moor, or the snow-wreathed shapes of the grit boulders; to his +left was the murmur of the Red Brook creeping between its frozen +banks; while close beside him about twenty of the moor sheep were +huddling against the southern wall of the smithy in prescience of +the coming storm. Almost within reach of his stick was the pan of +his childish joy, the water left in it by the December rains frozen +hard and white; and in the crevice of the wall he had just +discovered the mouldering remains of a toy-boat.</p> + +<p>He stood and looked out over the wide winter world, rejoicing in +its austerity, its solemn beauty. Physically he was conscious of +recovered health; and in the mind also there was a new energy of +life and work. Nature seemed to say to him, "Do but keep thy heart +open to me, and I have a myriad aspects and moods wherewith to +interest and gladden and teach thee to the end;" while, as his eye +wandered to the point where Manchester lay hidden on the horizon, +the world of men, of knowledge, of duty, summoned him back to it +with much of the old magic and power in the call. His grief, his +love, no man should take from him; but he must play his part.</p> + +<p>Yes—he and Sandy must go home—and soon. Yet even as he so +decided, the love of the familiar scene, its freedom, its +loneliness, its unstainedness, rose high within him. He stood lost +in a trance of memory. Here he and Louie had listened to 'Lias'; +there, far away amid the boulders of the Downfall, they had waited +for the witch; among those snow-laden bushes yonder Louie had +hidden when she played Jenny Crum for the discomfiture of the +prayer-meeting; and it was on the slope at his feet that she had +pushed the butter-scotch into his mouth, the one and only sign of +affection she had ever given him, that he could remember, in all +their forlorn childhood.</p> + +<p>As these things rose before him, the moor, the wind, the rising +voice of the storm became to him so many channels, whereby the +bitter memory of his sister rushed upon him and took possession. +Everything spoke of her, suggested her. Then with inexorable force +his visualising gift carried him on past her childhood to the +scenes of her miserable marriage; and as he thought of her child's +death, the desolation and madness of her flight, the mystery of her +fate, his soul was flooded once more for the hundredth time with +anguish and horror. Here in this place, where their childish lives +had been so closely intertwined, he could not resign himself for +ever to ignorance, to silence; his whole being went out in protest, +in passionate remorseful desire.</p> + +<p>The wind was beginning to blow fiercely; the rosy glow was gone; +darkness was already falling. Wild gusts swept from time to time +round the white amphitheatre of moor and crag; the ghostly sounds +of night and storm were on the hills. Suddenly it was to him as +though he heard his name called from a great distance—breathed +shrilly and lingeringly along the face of the Scout.</p> + +<p>'<i>David</i>!'</p> + +<p>It was Louie's voice. The illusion was so strong that, as he raised +his hand to his ear, turning towards the Downfall, whence the sound +seemed to come, he trembled from head to foot.</p> + +<p>'<i>David!</i>'</p> + +<p>Was it the call of some distant boy or shepherd? He could not tell, +could not collect himself. He sank down on one of the grit-boulders +by the snow-wreathed door of the smithy and sat there long, +heedless of the storm and cold, his mind working, a sudden purpose +rising and unfolding, with a mysterious rapidity and excitement.</p> + +<p>Early on the following morning he made his way down through the +deep snow to the station, having first asked Hannah to take charge +of Sandy for a day or two; and by the night mail he left London for +Paris.</p> + +<p>It was not till he walked into Mr. O'Kelly's office, on the ground +floor of a house in the Rue d'Assas, at about eleven o'clock on the +next day, that he was conscious of any reaction. Then for a +bewildered instant he wondered why he had come, and what he was to +say.</p> + +<p>But to his amazement the lawyer rose at once, throwing up his hands +with the gesture of one who notes some singular and unexpected +stroke of good fortune.</p> + +<p>'This is <i>most</i> extraordinary, Mr. Grieve! I have not yet +signed the letter on my desk—there it is!—summoning you to Paris. +We have discovered Madame Montjoie! As constantly happens, we have +been pursuing inquiries in all sorts of difficult and remote +quarters, and she is here—at our doors, living for some weeks +past, at any rate, without any disguise, at <i>Barbizon</i>, of all +places in the world! Barbizon <i>pres</i> Fontainebleau. You know +it?'</p> + +<p>David sat down.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' he said, after an instant. 'I know it. Is he—is that man +Brenart there?'</p> + +<p>'Certainly. He has taken a miserable studio, and is making, or +pretending to make, some winter studies of the forest. I hear that +Madame Montjoie looks ill and worn; the neighbours say the +<i>menage</i> is a very uncomfortable one, and not likely to last +long. I wish I had better news for you, Mr. Grieve.'</p> + +<p>And the lawyer, remembering the handsome hollow-eyed boy of twenty +who had first asked his help, studied with irrepressible curiosity +the man's noble storm-beaten look and fast grizzling hair, as David +sat before him with his head bent and his hat in his hands.</p> + +<p>They talked a while longer, and then David said, rising:</p> + +<p>'Can I get over there to-night? The snow will be deep in the +forest.'</p> + +<p>'I imagine they will keep that main road to Barbizon open in some +fashion,' said the lawyer. 'You may find a sledge. Let me know how +you speed and whether I can assist you. But, I fear, '—he shrugged +his shoulders—'in the end this wild life <i>gets into the +blood</i>. I have seen it so often.'</p> + +<p>He spoke with the freedom and knowledge of one who had observed +Louie Montjoie with some closeness for eleven years. David said +nothing in answer; but at the door he turned to ask a question.</p> + +<p>'You can't tell me anything of the habits of this man—this +Brenart?'</p> + +<p>'Stop!' said the lawyer, after a moment's thought; 'I remember this +detail—my agent told me that M. Brenart was engaged in some work +for "D—et Cie"'—he named a great picture-dealing firm on the +Boulevard St. Germain, famous for their illustrated books and +<i>editions de luxe</i>.—'He did not hear what it was, but—ah! I +remember,—it has taken him occasionally to Paris, or so he says, +and it has been these absences which have led to some of the worst +scenes between him and your sister. I suppose she put a jealous +woman's interpretation on them. You want to see her alone?—when +this man is out of the way? I have an idea: take my card and your +own to this person—' he wrote out an address—'he is one of the +junior partners in "D—et Cie"; I know him, and I got his firm +the sale of a famous picture. He will do me a good turn. Ask him +what the work is that M. Brenart is doing, and when he expects him +next in Paris. It is possible you may get some useful information.'</p> + +<p>David took the card and walked at once to the Boulevard St. +Germain, which was close by. He was civilly received by the man to +whom O'Kelly had sent him, and learned from him that Brenart was +doing for the firm a series of etchings illustrating the forest in +winter, and intended to make part of a great book on Fontainebleau +and the Barbizon school. They were expecting the last batch from +him, were indeed desperately impatient for them. But he was a +difficult fellow to deal with—an exceedingly clever artist, but +totally untrustworthy. In his last letter to them he had spoken of +bringing the final instalment to them, and returning some corrected +proofs by February 16—'to-morrow, I see,' said the speaker, +glancing at an almanac on his office table. 'Well, we may get them, +and we mayn't. If we don't, we shall have to take strong measures. +And now, Monsieur, I think I have told you all I can tell you of +our relations to M. Brenart.'</p> + +<p>David bowed and took his leave. He made his way through the great +shop with its picture-covered walls and its floors dotted with +stands on which lay exposed the new etchings and engravings of +the season. In front of him a lady in black was also making her +way to the door and the street. No one was attending her, and +instinctively he hurried forward to open the heavy glass door for +her. As he did so a sudden sharp presentiment shot through him. The +door swung to behind them, and he found himself in the covered +entrance of the shop face to face with Elise Delaunay.</p> + +<p>The meeting was so startling that neither could disguise the shock +of it. He took off his hat mechanically; she grew white and leant +against the glass window.</p> + +<p>'You!—how can it be you?' she said in a quick whisper, then +recovering herself—'Monsieur Grieve, old associations are painful, +and I am neither strong—nor—nor stoical. Which way are you +walking?'</p> + +<p>'Towards the Rue de Seine,' he said, thrown into a bewildering mist +of memory by her gesture, the crisp agitated decision of her +manner. 'And you?'</p> + +<p>'I also. We will walk a hundred yards together. What are you in +Paris for?'</p> + +<p>'I am here on some business of my sister's,' he said evasively.</p> + +<p>She raised her eyes, and looked at him long and sharply. He, on his +side, saw, with painful agitation, that her youth was gone, but not +her grace, not her singular and wiltful charm. The little face +under her black hat was lined and sallow, and she was startlingly +thin. The mouth had lost its colour, and gained instead the hard +shrewdness of a woman left to battle with the world and poverty +alone; but the eyes had their old plaintive trick; the dead gold of +the hair, the rings and curls of it against the white temples, were +still as beautiful as they had ever been; and the light form moved +beside him with the same quick floating gait.</p> + +<p>'You have grown much older,' she said abruptly. 'You look as if you +had suffered—but what of that?—<i>C'est comme tout le monde</i>.'</p> + +<p>She withdrew her look a moment, with a little bitter gesture, then +she resumed, drawn on by a curiosity and emotion she could not +control.</p> + +<p>'Are you married?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, but my wife is dead.'</p> + +<p>She gave a start; the first part of the answer had not prepared her +for the second.</p> + +<p>'<i>Ah, mon Dieu!</i>' she said, 'always grief—<i>always</i>! Is +it long?'</p> + +<p>'Eight months. I have a boy. And you?—I heard sad news of you +once—the only time.'</p> + +<p>'You might well,' she said, with a half-ironical accent, driving +the point of her umbrella restlessly into the crevices of the +stones, as they slowly crossed a paved street. 'My husband is only a +cripple, confined to his chair,—I am no longer an artist but an +artisan,—I have not painted a <i>picture</i> for years,—but what +I paint sells for a trifle, and there is soup in the pot—of a +sort. For the rest I spend my life in making <i>tisane</i>, in +lifting weights too heavy for me, and bargaining for things to eat.'</p> + +<p>'But—you are not unhappy!' he said to her boldly, with a change of +tone.</p> + +<p>She stopped, struck by the indescribable note in his voice. They +had turned into a side street, whither she had unconsciously led +him. She stood with her eyes on the ground, then she lifted them +once more, and there was in them a faint beautiful gleam, which +transformed the withered and sharpened face.</p> + +<p>'You are quite right,' she said, 'if he will only live. He depends +on me for everything. It is like a child, but it consoles. Adieu!'</p> + +<p>That night David found himself in the little <i>auberge</i> at +Barbizon. He had discovered a sledge to take him across the forest, +and he and his driver had pushed their way under a sky of lead and +through whirling clouds of fresh sleet past the central beechwood, +where the great boles stood straight and bare amid fantastic masses +of drift; through the rock and fir region, where all was white, and +the trees drooped under their wintry load; and beneath withered and +leaning oaks, throwing gaunt limbs here and there from out the +softening effacing mantle of the snow. Night fell when the journey +was half over, and as the lights of the sledge flashed from side to +side into these lonely fastnesses of cold, how was it possible to +believe that summer and joy had ever tabernacled here?</p> + +<p>He was received at the inn, as his driver had brought him—with +astonishment. But Barbizon has been long accustomed, beyond most +places in France, to the eccentricities of the English and American +visitor; and being a home of artists, it understands the hunt for +"impressions," and easily puts up with the unexpected. Before a +couple of hours were over, David was installed in a freezing room, +and was being discussed in the kitchen, where his arrival produced +a certain animation, as the usual English madman in quest of a +sensation, and no doubt ready to pay for it.</p> + +<p>There were, however, three other guests in the inn, as he found, +when he descended for dinner. They were all artists—young, noisy, +<i>bons camarades</i>, and of a rough and humble social type. To +them the winter at Barbizon was as attractive as anywhere else. +Life at the inn was cheap, and free; they had the digestion of +ostriches, eating anything that was put before them, and drinking +oceans of red wine at ten sous a litre; on bad days they smoked, +fed, worked at their pictures or played coarse practical jokes on +each other and the people of the inn; in fine weather there was +always the forest to be exploited, and the chance of some happy and +profitable inspiration.</p> + +<p>They stared at David a good deal during the <i>biftek</i>, the black +pudding which seemed to be a staple dish of the establishment, +and the <i>omelette aux fines herbes</i>, which the landlord's wife +had added in honour of the stranger. One of them, behind the +shelter of his glasses, drew the outline of the Englishman's +head and face on the table-cloth, and showed it to his neighbour.</p> + +<p>'Poetical, grand style, <i>hein</i>?'</p> + +<p>The other nodded carelessly. '<i>Pourtant—l'hiver lui plaît</i>,' +he hummed under his breath, having some lines of Hugo's, which he +had chosen as a motto for a picture, running in his head.</p> + +<p>After dinner everybody gathered round the great fire, which +the servant had piled with logs, while the flames, and the +wreaths of smoke from the four pipes alternately revealed and +concealed the rough sketches of all sorts—landscape, portrait, +<i>genre</i>—legacies of bygone visitors, wherewith the walls of +the <i>salle ŕ manger</i> were covered. David sat in his corner +smoking, ready enough to give an account of his journey across the +forest, and to speak when he was spoken to.</p> + +<p>As soon as the strangeness of the new-comer had a little worn off, +the three young fellows plunged into a flood of amusing gossip +about the storm and the blocking of the roads, the scarcity of food +in Barbizon, the place in general, and its inhabitants. David fell +silent after a while, stiffening under a presentiment which was +soon realised. He heard his sister's wretched lot discussed with +shouts of laughter—the chances of Brenart's escape from the +mistress he had already wearied of and deceived—the perils of 'la +Montjoie's' jealousy. <i>'Il veut bien se debarrasser d'elle—mais +on ne plaisante pas avec une tigress</i>!' said one of the +speakers. So long as there was information to be got which might +serve him he sat motionless, withdrawn into the dark, forcing +himself to listen. When the talk became mere scurrility and noise, +he rose and went out.</p> + +<p>He passed through the courtyard of the inn, and turned down the +village street. The storm had gone down, and there were a few stars +amid the breaking clouds. Here and there a light shone from the low +houses on either hand; the snow, roughly shovelled from the foot +pavements, lay piled in heaps along the roadway, the white roofs +shone dimly against the wild sky. He passed Madame Pyat's +<i>maisonnette</i>, pausing a moment to look over the wall. Not a +sign of life in the dark building, and, between him and it, great +drifts of snow choking up and burying the garden. A little further +on, as he knew, lay the goal of his quest. He easily made out the +house from Mr. O'Kelly's descriptions, and he lingered a minute, on +the footway, under an overhanging roof to look at it. It was just a +labourer's cottage standing back a little from the street, and to +one side rose a high wooden addition which he guessed to be the +studio. Through the torn blind came the light of a lamp, and as he +stood there, himself invisible in his patch of darkness, he heard +voices—an altercation, a woman's high shrill note.</p> + +<p>Then he crept back to the inn vibrating through all his being to +the shame of those young fellows' talk, the incredible difficulty +of the whole enterprise. Could he possibly make any impression upon +her whatever? What was done was done; and it would be a crime on +his part to jeopardise in the smallest degree the wholesome +brightness of Sandy's childhood by any rash proposals which it +might be wholly beyond his power to carry out.</p> + +<p>He carried up a basket of logs to his room, made them blaze, and +crouched over them till far into the night. But in the end the +doubt and trouble of his mind subsided; his purpose grew clear +again. 'It was my own voice that spoke to me on the moor,' he +thought, 'the voice of my own best life.'</p> + +<p>About eight o'clock, with the first light of the morning, he was +roused by bustle and noise under his window. He got up, and, +looking out, saw two sledges standing before the inn, in the cold +grey light. Men were busy harnessing a couple of horses to each, +and there were a few figures, muffled in great coats and carrying +bags and wraps, standing about.</p> + +<p>'They are going over to Fontainebleau station,' he thought; 'if that +man keeps his appointment in Paris to-day, he will go with them.'</p> + +<p>As the words passed through his mind, a figure came striding +up from the lower end of the street, a young fair-haired man, +in a heavy coat lined with sheepskin. His delicately made +face—naturally merry and <i>bon enfant</i>—was flushed and +scowling. He climbed into one of the sledges, complained of the +lateness of the start, swore at the ostler, who made him take +another seat on the plea that the one he had chosen was engaged, +and finally subsided into a moody silence, pulling at his +moustache, and staring out over the snow, till at last the signal +was given, and the sledges flew off on the Fontainebleau road, +under a shower of snowballs which a group of shivering bright-eyed +urchins on their way to school threw after them, as soon as the +great whips were at a safe distance.</p> + +<p>David dressed and descended.</p> + +<p>'Who was that fair-haired gentleman in the first sledge?' he +casually asked of the landlord who was bringing some smoking hot +coffee into the <i>salle ŕ manger</i>.</p> + +<p>'That was a M. Brenart, monsieur,' said the landlord, cheerfully, +absorbed all the while in the laying of his table. '<i>C'est un +drôle de corps, M. Brenart</i>. I don't take to him much myself; +and as for madame—<i>qui n'est pas madame!</i>'</p> + +<p>He shrugged his shoulders, saw that there were no fresh rolls, and +departed with concern to fetch them.</p> + +<p>David ate and drank. He would give her an hour yet.</p> + +<p>When his watch told him that the time was come, he went out slowly, +inquiring on the way if there would be any means of getting to +Paris later in the day. Yes, the landlord thought a conveyance of +some sort could be managed—if monsieur would pay for it!</p> + +<p>A few minutes later David knocked at the door of Brenart's house. +He could get no answer at all, and at last he tried the latch. It +yielded to his hand, and he went in.</p> + +<p>There was no one in the bare kitchen, but there were the remains of +a fire, and of a meal. Both the crockery on the table and a few +rough chairs and stools the room contained struck him as being in +great disorder. There were two doors at the back. One led into a +back room which was empty, the other down a few steps into a +garden. He descended the steps and saw the long wooden erection of +the studio stretching to his left. There was a door in the centre +of its principal wall, which was ajar. He went up to it and softly +pushed it open. There, at the further end, huddled over an iron +stove, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaken with +fierce sobs, was Louie.</p> + +<p>He closed the door behind him, and at the sound she turned, +hastily. When she saw who it was she gave a cry, and, sinking back +on her low canvas chair, she lay staring at him, and speechless. +Her eyes were red with weeping; her beauty was a wreck; and in face +of the despair which breathed from her, and from her miserable +surroundings, all doubt, all repulsion, all condemnation fled from +the brother's heart. The iron in his soul melted. He ran up to her, +and, kneeling beside her, he put his arms round her, as he had +never done in his life.</p> + +<p>'Oh you poor thing—you poor thing!' he cried, scarcely knowing +what he said. He took her worn, tear-stained face, and, laying it +on his shoulder, he kissed her, breathing incoherent words of pity +and consolation.</p> + +<p>She submitted a while, helpless with shock and amazement, and still +shaken with the tempest of her own passion. But there came a moment +when she pushed him away and tried desperately to recover herself.</p> + +<p>'I don't know what you want—you're not going to have anything to +do with me now—you can't. Let me alone—it will be over soon—one +way or the other.'</p> + +<p>And she sat upright, one hand clenched on her knees, her frowning +brows drawn together, and the tears falling in spite of her intense +effort to drive them back.</p> + +<p>He found a painter's stool, and sat down by her, pale and +determined. He told her the history of his search; he implored her +to be guided by him, to let him take her home to England and +Manchester, where her story was unknown, save to Dora and John. He +would make a home for her near his own; he would try to comfort her +for the loss of her child; they would understand each other better, +and the past should be buried.</p> + +<p>Louie looked at him askance. Every now and then she ceased to +listen to him at all; while, under the kindling of her own +thoughts, her wild eyes flamed into fresh rage and agony.</p> + +<p>'Don't!—leave me alone!' she broke out at last, springing up. 'I +don't want your help, I don't want you; I only want <i>him</i>, +—and I will have him, or we shall kill each other.'</p> + +<p>She paced to and fro, her hands clasped on her breast, her white +face setting into a ghastly calm. David gazed at her with horror. +This was another note! one which in all their experience of each +other he had never heard on her lips before. <i>She loved this +man</i>!—this mean wretch, who had lived upon her and betrayed +her, and, having got from her all she had to give, was probably +just about to cast her off into the abyss which yawns for such +women as Louie. He had thought of her flight to him before as the +frenzy of a nature which must have distraction at any cost from the +unfamiliar and intolerable weight of natural grief.</p> + +<p>But this!—one moment it cut the roots from hope, the next it +nerved him to more vigorous action.</p> + +<p>'You cannot have him,' he said, steadily and sternly. 'I have +listened to the talk here for your sake—he is already on the point +of deserting you—everyone else in this place knows that he is +tired of you—that he is unfaithful to you.'</p> + +<p>She dropped into her chair with a groan. Even her energies were +spent—she was all but fainting—and her miserable heart knew, with +more certainty than David himself did, that all he said was true.</p> + +<p>Her unexpected weakness, the collapse of her strained nerves, +filled him with fresh hopes. He came close to her again and +pleaded, by the memory of her child, of their father—that she +would yield, and go away with him at once.</p> + +<p>'What should I do'—she broke in passionately, her sense of +opposition of absurdity reviving her, 'when I get to your hateful +Manchester? Go to church and say my prayers! And you? In a week or +two, I tell you, you would be sick of having soiled your hands with +such <i>mud</i> as I am.'</p> + +<p>She threw herself back in her chair with a superb gesture, and +folded her arms, looking him defiance.</p> + +<p>'Try me,' he said quietly, while his lip trembled. 'I am not as I +was, Louie. There are things one can only learn by going +down—down—into the depths of sorrow. The night before Lucy +died—she could hardly speak—she sent you a message: "I wish I had +been kinder—ask her to come to Manchester when I am gone." I have +not seen her die—not seen her whole life turn to love—through +such unspeakable suffering—for nothing. Oh Louie—when we submit +ourselves to God—when we ask for His life—and give up our +own—then, and then only, there is peace—and strength. We +ourselves are nothing—creatures of passion—miserable—weak—but +in Him and through Him—'</p> + +<p>His voice broke. He took her cold hand and pressed it tenderly. She +trembled in spite of herself, and closed her eyes.</p> + +<p>'<i>Don't</i>—I know all about that—why did the child die? There +is no God—nothing. It's just talk. I told Him what I'd do—I vowed +I'd go to the bad, for good and all—and I have. There—let me +alone!'</p> + +<p>But he only held her hand tighter.</p> + +<p>'No I—never! Your trouble was awful—it might well drive you +mad. But others have suffered, Louie—no less—and yet have +believed—have hoped. It is not beyond our power—for it has been +done again and again!—by the most weak, the most miserable. Oh! +think of that—tear yourself first from the evil life—and you, +too, will know what it is to be consoled—to be strengthened. The +mere effort to come with me—I promise it you!—will bring you +healing and comfort. We make for ourselves the promise of eternal +life, by turning to the good. Then the hope of recovering our dear +ones—which was nothing to us before—rises and roots itself in our +heart. Come with me,—conquer yourself,—let us begin to love each +other truly, give me comfort and yourself—and you will bear to +think again of Cecile and of God—there will be calm and peace +beyond this pain.'</p> + +<p>His eyes shone upon her through a mist. She said no more for a +while. She lay exhausted and silent, the tears streaming once more +down her haggard cheeks.</p> + +<p>Then, thinking she had consented, he began to speak of arrangements +for the journey—of the possibility of getting across the forest.</p> + +<p>Instantly her passion returned. She sprang up and put him away from +her.</p> + +<p>'It is ridiculous, I tell you—<i>ridiculous!</i> How can I decide +in such an instant? You must go away and leave me to think.'</p> + +<p>'No,' he said firmly, 'my only chance is to stay with you.'</p> + +<p>She walked up and down, saying wild incoherent things to herself +under her breath. She wore the red dress she had worn at +Manchester—now a torn and shabby rag—and over it, because of the +cold, a long black cloak, a relic of better days. Her splendid +hair, uncombed and dishevelled, hung almost loose round her head +and neck; and the emaciation of face and figure made her height and +slenderness more abnormal than ever as she swept tempestuously to +and fro.</p> + +<p>At last she paused in front of him.</p> + +<p>'Well, I dare say I'll go with you,' she said, with the old +reckless note. 'That fiend thinks he has me in his power for good, +he amuses himself with threats of leaving <i>me</i>—perhaps I'll +turn the tables.... But you must go—go for an hour. You can +find out about a carriage. There will be an old woman here +presently for the house-work. I'll get her to help me pack. You'll +only be in the way.'</p> + +<p>'You'll be ready for me in an hour?' he said, rising reluctantly.</p> + +<p>'Well, it don't look, does it, as if there was much to pack in this +hole!' she said with one of her wild laughs.</p> + +<p>He looked round for the first time and saw a long bare studio, +containing a table covered with etcher's apparatus and some blocks +for wood engraving. There was besides an easel, and a picture upon +it, with a pretentious historical subject just blocked in, a tall +oak chair and stool of antique pattern, and in one corner a stand +of miscellaneous arms such as many artists affect—an old flintlock +gun or two, some Moorish or Spanish rapiers and daggers. The north +window was half blocked by snow, and the atmosphere of the place, +in spite of the stove, was freezing.</p> + +<p>He moved to the door, loth, most loth, to go, yet well aware, by +long experience, of the danger of crossing her temper or her whims. +After all, it would take him some time to make his arrangements +with the landlord, and he would be back to the moment.</p> + +<p>She watched him intently with her poor red eyes. She herself opened +the door for him, and to his amazement put a sudden hand on his +arm, and kissed him—roughly, vehemently, with lips that burnt.</p> + +<p>'Oh, you fool!' she said, 'you fool!'</p> + +<p>'What do you mean?' he said, stopping. 'I believe I <i>am</i> a +fool, Louie, to leave you for a moment.'</p> + +<p>'Nonsense! You are a fool to want to take me to Manchester, and I +am a fool to think of going. There:—if I had never been born!—oh! +go, for God's sake, go! and come back in an hour. I <i>must</i> +have some time, I tell you—' and she gave a passionate stamp—'to +think a bit, and put my things together.'</p> + +<p>She pushed him out, and shut the door. With a great effort he +mastered himself and went.</p> + +<p>He made all arrangements for the two-horse sledge that was to take +them to Fontainebleau. He called for his bill, and paid it. Then he +hung about the entrance to the forest, looking with an unseeing eye +at the tricks which the snow had been playing with the trees, at +the gleams which a pale and struggling sun was shedding over the +white world—till his watch told him it was time.</p> + +<p>He walked briskly back to the cottage, opened the outer door, was +astonished to hear neither voice nor movement, to see nothing of +the charwoman Louie had spoken of—rushed to the studio and +entered.</p> + +<p>She sat in the tall chair, her hands dropping over the arms, her +head hanging forward. The cold snow-light shone on her open and +glazing eyes—on the red and black of her dress, on the life-stream +dripping among the folds, on the sharp curved Algerian dagger at +her feet. She was quite dead. Even in the midst of his words of +hope, the thought of self-destruction—of her mother—had come upon +her and absorbed her. That capacity for sudden intolerable despair +which she had inherited, rose to its full height when she had +driven David from her—guided her mad steps, her unshrinking hand.</p> + +<p>He knelt by her—called for help, laid his ear to her heart, her +lips. Then the awfulness of the shock, and of his self-reproach, +the crumbling of all his hopes, became too much to bear. +Consciousness left him, and when the woman of whom Louie had spoken +did actually come in, a few minutes later, she found the brother +lying against the sister's knee, his arms outstretched across her, +while the dead Louie, with fixed and frowning brows, sat staring +beyond him into eternity—a figure of wild fate—freed at last and +for ever from that fierce burden of herself.</p> + +<p>EPILOGUE</p> + +<p><i>Alas!—Alas!</i></p> + +<p>—But to part from David Grieve under the impression of this scene +of wreck and moral defeat would be to misread and misjudge a life, +destined, notwithstanding the stress of exceptional suffering it +was called upon at one time to pass through, to singularly rich and +fruitful issues. Time, kind inevitable Time, dulled the paralysing +horror of his sister's death, and softened the memory of all that +long torture of publicity, legal investigation, and the like, which +had followed it. The natural healing 'in widest commonalty spread,' +which flows from affection, nature, and the direction of the mind +to high and liberating aims, came to him also as the months and +years passed. His wife's death, his sister's tragedy, left indeed +indelible marks; but, though scarred and changed, he was in the end +neither crippled nor unhappy. The moral experience of life had +built up in him a faith which endured, and the pangs of his own +pity did but bring him at last to rest the more surely on a pity +beyond man's. During the nights of semi-delirium which followed the +scene at Barbizon, John, who watched him, heard him repeat again +and again words which seemed to have a talismanic power over his +restlessness. 'Neither do I condemn thee. Come, and sin no more.' +They were fragments dropped from what was clearly a nightmare of +anguish and struggle; but they testified to a set of character, +they threw light on the hopes and convictions which ultimately +repossessed themselves of the sound man.</p> + +<p>Two years passed. It was Christmas Eve. The firm of Grieve & Co. in +Prince's Street was shut for the holiday, and David Grieve, a mile +or two away, was sitting over his study fire with a book. He closed +it presently, and sat thinking.</p> + +<p>There was a knock at his door. When he opened it he found Dora +outside. It was Dora, in the quasi-sister's garb she had assumed of +late—serge skirt, long black cloak, and bonnet tied with white +muslin strings under the throat. In her parish visiting among the +worst slums of Ancoats, she had found such a dress useful.</p> + +<p>'I brought Sandy's present,' she said, looking round her +cautiously. 'Is his stocking hung up?'</p> + +<p>'No! or the rascal would never go to sleep to-night. He is nearly +wild about his presents as it is. Give it to me. It shall go into +my drawer, and I will arrange everything when I go to bed +to-night.'</p> + +<p>He looked at the puzzle-map she had brought with a childish +pleasure, and between them they locked it away carefully in a +drawer of the writing-table.</p> + +<p>'Do sit down and get warm,' he said to her, pushing forward a +chair.</p> + +<p>'Oh no! I must go back to the church. We shall be decorating till +late to-night. But I had to be in Broughton, so I brought this on +my way home.'</p> + +<p>Then Sandy and I will escort you, if you will have us. He made me +promise to take him to see the shops. I suppose Market Street is a +sight.'</p> + +<p>He went outside to shout to Sandy, who was having his tea, to get +ready, and then came back to Dora. She was standing by the fire +looking at an engagement tablet filled with entries, on the +mantelpiece.</p> + +<p>'Father Russell says they have been asking you again to stand for +Parliament,' she said timidly, as he came in.</p> + +<p>'Yes, there is a sudden vacancy. Old Jacob Cherritt is dead.'</p> + +<p>'And you won't?'</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>'No,' he said, after a pause. 'I am not their man; they would be +altogether disappointed in me.'</p> + +<p>She understood the sad reverie of the face, and said no more.</p> + +<p>No. For new friends, new surroundings, efforts of another type, his +power was now irrevocably gone; he shrank more than ever from the +egotisms of competition. But within the old lines he had recovered +an abundant energy. Among his workmen; amid the details now +fortunate, now untoward of his labours for the solution of certain +problems of industrial ethics; in the working of the remarkable +pamphlet scheme dealing with social and religious fact, which was +fast making his name famous in the ears of the England which thinks +and labours; and in the self-devoted help of the unhappy,—he was +developing more and more the idealist's qualities, and here and +there—inevitably—the idealist's mistakes. His face, as middle +life was beginning to shape it—with its subtle and sensitive +beauty—was at once the index of his strength and his limitations.</p> + +<p>He and Dora stood talking a while about certain public schemes that +were in progress for the bettering of Ancoats. Then he said with +sudden emphasis:</p> + +<p><i>'Ah!</i> if one could but jump a hundred years and see what +England will be like! But these northern towns, and this northern +life, on the whole fill one with hope. There is a strong social +spirit and strong individualities to work on.'</p> + +<p>Dora was silent. From her Churchwoman's point of view the prospect +was not so bright.</p> + +<p>'Well, people seem to think that co-operation is going to do +everything,' she said vaguely.</p> + +<p>'We all cry our own nostrums,' he said, laughing; 'what co-operation +has done up here in the north is wonderful! It has been the making +of thousands. But the world is not going to give itself over wholly +to committees. There will be room enough for the one-man-power at +any rate for generations to come. What we want is leaders; but +leaders who will feel themselves "members of one body," instruments +of one social order.'</p> + +<p>They stood together a minute in silence; then he went out to the +stairs and called: 'Sandy, you monkey, come along!'</p> + +<p>Sandy came shouting and leaping downstairs, as lithe and handsome +as ever, and as much of a compound of the elf and the philosopher.</p> + +<p>'I <i>know</i> Auntie Dora's brought me a present,' he said, +looking up into her face,—'but father's locked it up!'</p> + +<p>David chased him out of doors with contumely, and they all took the +tram to Victoria Street.</p> + +<p>Once there, Sandy was in the seventh heaven. The shops were ablaze +with lights, and gay with every Christmas joy; the pavements were +crowded with a buying and gaping throng. He pulled at his father's +hand, exclaiming here and pointing there, till David, dragged +hither and thither, had caught some of the boy's mirth and +pleasure.</p> + +<p>But Dora walked apart. Her heart was a little heavy and dull, her +face weary. In reality, though David's deep and tender gratitude +and friendship towards her could not express themselves too richly, +she felt, as the years went on, more and more divided from him and +Sandy. She was horrified at the things which David published, or +said in public; she had long dropped any talk with the child on all +those subjects which she cared for most. Young as he was, the boy +showed a marvellous understanding in some ways of his father's +mind, and there were moments when she felt a strange and dumb +irritation towards them both.</p> + +<p>Christmas too, in spite of her Christian fervour, had always its +sadness for her. It reminded her of her father, and of the +loneliness of her personal life.</p> + +<p>'How father would have liked all this crowd!' she said once to +David as they passed into Market Street.</p> + +<p>David assented with instant sympathy, and they talked a little of +the vanished wanderer as they walked along, she with a yearning +passion which touched him profoundly.</p> + +<p>He and Sandy escorted her up the Ancoats High Street, and at last +they turned into her own road. Instantly Dora perceived a little +crowd round her door, and, as soon as she was seen, a waving of +hands, and a Babel of voices.</p> + +<p>'What is it?' she cried, paling, and began to run.</p> + +<p>David and Sandy followed. She had already flown upstairs; but the +shawled mill-girls, round the door, flushed with excitement, +shouted their news into his ear.</p> + +<p>'It's her feyther, sir, as ha coom back after aw these years—an +he's sittin by the fire quite nat'ral like, Mary Styles says—and +they put him in a mad-house in furrin parts, they did—an his +hair's quite white—an oh! sir, yo mun just goo up an look.'</p> + +<p>Pushed by eager hands, and still holding Sandy, David, though half +unwilling, climbed the narrow stairs.</p> + +<p>The door was half open. And there, in his old chair, sat Daddy, his +snow-white hair falling on his shoulders, a childish excitement and +delight on his blanched face. Dora was kneeling at his feet, her +head on his knees, sobbing.</p> + +<p>David took Sandy up in his arms.</p> + +<p>'Be quiet, Sandy; don't say a word.'</p> + +<p>And he carried him downstairs again, and into the midst of the +eager crowd.</p> + +<p>'I think,' he said, addressing them, 'I would go home if I were +you—if you love her.'</p> + +<p>They looked at his shining eyes and twitching lips, and understood.</p> + +<p>'Aye, sir, aye, sir, yo're abeawt reet—we'st not trouble her, sir.'</p> + +<p>He carried his boy home, Sandy raining questions in a tumult of +excitement. Then when the child was put to bed he sat on in his +lonely study, stirred to his sensitive depths by the thought of +Dora's long waiting and sad sudden joy—by the realisation of the +Christmas crowds and merriment—by the sharp memory of his own +dead. Towards midnight, when all was still, he opened the locked +drawer which held for him the few things which symbolised and +summed up his past—a portrait of Lucy, by the river under the +trees, taken by a travelling photographer, not more than six weeks +before her death—a little collection of pictures of Sandy from +babyhood onwards—Louie's breviary—his father's dying letter—a +book which had belonged to Ancrum, his vanished friend. But though +he took thence his wife's picture, communing awhile, in a passion +of yearning, with its weary plaintive eyes, he did not allow +himself to sink for long into the languor of memory and grief. He +knew the perils of his own nature, and there was in him a stern +sense of the difficulty of living aright, and the awfulness of the +claim made by God and man on the strength and will of the +individual. It seemed to him that he had been 'taught of God' +through natural affection, through repentance, through sorrow, +through the constant energies of the intellect. Never had the +Divine voice been clearer to him, or the Divine Fatherhood more +real. Freely he had received—but only that he might freely give. +On this Christmas night he renewed every past vow of the soul, and +in so doing rose once more into that state and temper which is +man's pledge and earnest of immortality—since already, here and +now, it is the eternal life begun.</p> + +<p>THE END</p> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The History of David Grieve, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE *** + +***** This file should be named 8076-h.htm or 8076-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/0/7/8076/ + +Produced by Charles Franks, Robert Prince + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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