Part 4

"Very well: then hear me. To-morrow my life and honour will be lost. The bridge must fall into the river, and I on the keystone shall perish with the fabric which, with so much anxiety and so many hopes, I have erected!"

"No, no!" cried Catherine, as she clasped her husband in her arms with loving tenderness, smothering in her own heart the anguish of the revelation.

"Yes, dear wife! When I was most confident of my triumph, I discovered that, owing to an error in my calculations, the bridge must fall to-morrow when the framework is removed. And with it perishes the architect who projected and directed it."

"The bridge may sink into the waters, but not you, my loved one. On bended knees I will beseech the noble Cardinal to release you from your terrible engagement."

"What you ask will be in vain. Even should the Cardinal accede to your entreaty, I refuse life destitute of honour."

"You shall have life and honour both, dear husband," replied Catherine.

IV.

It was midnight. Juan, worn out with grief and anxious work, at last had fallen asleep; a feverish sleep that partook more of the character of a nightmare than of Nature's sweet restorer.

Meanwhile his wife had for some time made a show of sleeping. But she watched her husband anxiously. When she felt certain that he had at length succumbed to a deep sleep, she softly rose, and scarcely daring to breathe, crept out into the kitchen. She opened the window gently and looked out.

The night was dark; now and again vivid flashes of lightning lit up the sky. No sound was heard save the roar of the rushing currents of the Tagus, and the sighing of the wind as it swept in and out among the scaffolding and complicated framework of the bridge.

Catherine noiselessly closed the window. From the hearth she took one of the half-burnt faggots which still smouldered, and throwing a cloak over her shoulders went out into the silent streets, her heart beating wildly.

Where was she proceeding? Was she carrying that burning faggot as a torch to light her path in the dense darkness of a moonless night? It was indeed a dangerous track, covered as it was with broken boulders, and uneven ground. Yet she strove rather to conceal the lighted wood beneath her cloak.

At last she reached the bridge. The wind still sighed and whistled, and the river continued to break its current against the pillars, as though irritated at meeting obstacles which it could no longer sweep away.

Catherine approached the buttress of the bridge. An involuntary shudder of terror passed through her frame. Was it because she stood on the edge of that abyss of roaring waters? Or was it because her hand, only accustomed hitherto to deeds of goodness, was now brandishing the torch of destruction? Or rather did she tremble because a tremendous peal of thunder at that moment resounded through the vault of heaven.

Waving the torch to kindle it afresh, she applied it to the dry, resinous wood of the scaffolding. The wood quickly ignited, and the flame, fanned by the wind, ascended with fearful rapidity, spreading and involving arches and framework and the whole structure of the bridge.

Then she quitted the scene swiftly. Aided by the glare of the conflagration and the vivid flashes of lightning which lit up the sky, Catherine soon traversed the space which separated her from her home. She entered as noiselessly as she had left it, and closed the door. Her husband still slept soundly, and had not missed her. Catherine again pretended to be fast asleep, as though she had never left her bed.

A few moments later, a noise of many people running arose within the city, while from every belfry the bells rang forth the terrible alarm of fire. A tremendous crash succeeded, followed by a cry of anguish such as had been uttered years before, when the besieging army wrecked the former bridge.

Juan awoke in terror; Catherine lay at his side, apparently sleeping calmly. He dressed himself in haste, and ran out to learn the reason of the uproar. To his secret joy he beheld the ruin of the burning bridge.

The Cardinal Archbishop and the Toledans attributed the disaster to a flash of lightning which had struck the central arch, and had, moreover, ignited the whole structure. The general sorrow was intense. Great also was the public sympathy with the despair which the calamity must have caused the architect, who was on the eve of a great triumph. The inhabitants never knew whether it was fire from heaven, or an accident that had caused the conflagration; but Juan de Arèvalo, who was good and pious, and firmly believed in the protection of heaven, never wavered for an instant in the belief that the bridge had really been destroyed by lightning.

The destruction of the bridge, however, only retarded Juan's triumph for a twelve-month. On the following year, on the same festival of San Ildefonso, his new bridge was solemnly thrown open by the Cardinal; and the joyous Toledans once more crossed the Tagus to visit the lovely grounds of the Cigarrales, which they had been deprived of for so many years. On that auspicious day the Cardinal celebrated the event by giving a magnificent banquet. At his right hand sat the architect and his noble wife; and after a highly complimentary speech from the Cardinal, the whole company, amidst a tumult of applause, conducted Juan and Catherine to their home.

Five hundred years have passed since then, but Juan's bridge still stands secure above the rushing waters of the Tagus. His second calculation had no error. The following illustration shows its appearance at the present day.

_On the Decay of Humour in the House of Commons._

BY HENRY W. LUCY ("TOBY, M.P.").

THERE is no doubt--it is not feigned by tired fancy--that the present House of Commons is a less entertaining assembly than it was wont to be. This is partly due to the lack of heaven-born comedians and largely to the curtailment of opportunity. The alteration of the rules of time under which the House sits for work was fatal to redundancy of humour. The House of Commons is, after all, human, and it is an indisputable fact that mankind is more disposed to mirth after dinner than before. If the record be searched it will be found that ninety per cent. of the famous scenes that have established its reputation as a place of public entertainment have happened after dinner.

Under the new rules, which practically close debate at midnight, there is no "after dinner." Mechanically, apparently involuntarily, the old arrangement of debate has shifted. Time was, within the memory of many sitting in the present House, when the climax of debate was found in its closing hours. The Leader of the House rose at eleven or half-past, and before a crowded and excited assembly cheered on his followers to an impending division. When he sat down, amid thundering cheers from his supporters, the Leader of the Opposition sprang to his feet, was hailed with a wild cheer from his friends, struck ringing blows across the table, and then, at one o'clock, or two o'clock, or whatever hour of the morning it might chance to be, members poured forth in tumultuous tide, parting at the division lobby.

This was the period of the evening when chartered libertines of debate appeared on the scene and the fun grew fast and furious. It was Mr. O'Donnell's pleasing habit to rise when the duel between the Leaders was concluded, and the crowded House roared for the division like caged lions whose feeding-time is overstepped. Pausing to recapture his errant eyeglass, Mr. O'Donnell was accustomed to gaze round the seething mass of senators with admirably-feigned surprise at their impatience. When the uproar lulled he began his speech; when it rose again he stopped; but the speech was inevitable, and members presently recognising the position, sat in sullen silence till he had said his say.

This was comedy, not highly conceived it is true, but worked out with great skill, the enraged House chiefly contributing to its success. It was varied by the tragedy of the desperate English or Scotch member who, striving vainly night after night to catch the Speaker's eye, made a mad plunge at his last chance, and was literally howled down. It was a favourite hour for the late Mr. Biggar's manifestations, and the lamented and immortal Major O'Gorman never failed to put in an appearance at eleven o'clock, ready for any fun that might be going or might be made.

Now, when members slowly fill the House after dinner, dropping in between ten and eleven o'clock, they know there is no time for anything but business. If a division is imminent the debate must necessarily stop before midnight for the question to be put. If it is to be continued, it must be adjourned sharp on the stroke of midnight. As the House rarely refills much before eleven o'clock, there is not opportunity after dinner for more than one set speech from a favourite orator. The consequence is that the plums of debate are in these days all pulled out before dinner; and though at this period, the withers of the House being unwrung it is ready for a brisk fight, it is not in the mellow mood that invites and encourages the humorous.

Whilst the opportunities of the Parliamentary Yorick are thus peremptorily curtailed, he is at a further disadvantage in view of the personality of the Leadership. It is impossible that a House led by Mr. W. H. Smith can be as prone to merriment as was one which found its head in Mr. Disraeli. When, in the Parliament of 1868, Mr. Gladstone was Premier and Mr. Disraeli Leader of the Opposition, or in the succeeding Parliament, when these positions were reversed, the House of Commons enjoyed a unique incentive to conditions of humour. Mr. Gladstone, with his gravity of mien, his sonorous sustained eloquence, and his seriousness about trifles, was a superb foil for the gay, but always mordant humour of Mr. Disraeli.

From the outset of his career that great Parliamentarian enjoyed extraordinary advantage by reason of the accident of the personality against which, first and last, he was pitted. Having had Sir Robert Peel to gird against through the space of a dozen years, it was too much to hope that for fully a quarter of a century he should have enjoyed the crowning mercy of being opposed to and contrasted with Mr. Gladstone. Yet such was his good fortune. How little he did with Lord Hartington in the interregnum of 1874-7, and how little mark he made against Lord Granville when he met him in the Lords, brings into strong light the advantage fortune had secured for him through the longer period of his life.

Whilst the tone and habit of the House of Commons in matters of humour are to a considerable extent conformable with the idiosyncrasy of its leaders, it will sometimes, in despair of prevailing dulness, assume a joke if it has it not. There is nothing more delightful in the happiest efforts of Mr. Disraeli than the peculiar relations which subsist between the present House of Commons and Mr. W. H. Smith. On one side we have a good, amiable, somewhat pedagogic gentleman, unexpectedly thrust into the seat haunted by the shades of Palmerston and Disraeli. On the other side is the House of Commons, a little doubtful of the result, but personally liking the new Leader, and constitutionally prone to recognise authority.

At first Mr. Smith was voted unbearably dull. His hesitating manner, his painful self-consciousness, his moral reflections, and his all-pervading sense of "duty to his Queen and country" bored the House. In the first few months of his succession to Lord Randolph Churchill, there was seen the unwonted spectacle of members getting up and leaving the House when the Leader presented himself at the table. But Mr. Smith plodded on, patiently, pathetically, trolling out his moral reflections, and tremulously preserving what with full consciousness of the contradiction of words may be described as an air of submissive authority. Members began to perceive, or perhaps to invent, the fun of the thing. Mr. Smith realised their boyhood's idea of Mr. Barlow conversing with his pupils; only he was always benevolent, and though he frequently shook his ferule with threatening gesture, Sandford and Merton felt that the palms of their hands were safe.

Mr. Smith is, however, peculiarly a House of Commons' possession. No one out of the House can quite understand how precious he is, how inimitable, how indescribable. To the outsider he makes poor amends for the Irish Members of the Parliament of 1874, or the Fourth Party that played so prominent a _rôle_ in the House that met in 1880. The Fourth Party, like the Major, Mr. Biggar, Mr. Delahunty, Mr. McCarthy Downing, and the famous Lord Mayor of Dublin--who warned Mr. Forster what would happen in the event of an (absolutely uncontemplated) attempt on the part of the Chief Secretary to drag his lordship's spouse out of her bed in the dead of the night--are with us no more. Gone too, faded into dreamland, are the characters who made up the Fourth Party. Happily three of them remain with us, though in strangely altered circumstances. Two sit on the Treasury Bench, and one watches it from behind with friendly concern that adds a new terror to Ministerial office.

Each in his way brilliantly sustains the reputation of the famous school in which he was trained. There is in the House only one possibly superior combination of debaters to Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Arthur Balfour, and Sir John Gorst. In the quality of humour especially under consideration, this combination carries away the palm from the other. I think it is untrue to say, as is commonly accepted, that Mr. Gladstone is devoid of the sense of humour, though it must be admitted that it does not predominate in his House of Commons speeches. Mr. Chamberlain is even more conspicuously lacking in this commanding quality. On the other hand, Mr. Balfour in his House of Commons addresses does not shine as a humorist. He is in his public character (in strange contrast, by the way, with his personal habitude) not sufficiently genial. But he has a pretty wit of the sarcastic, poisoned-dagger style, which, differing from the effects of humour, makes everybody laugh, save the object of the attack. _He_ writhes.

Mr. Balfour's Parliamentary style, doubtless unconsciously, perhaps for reasons connected with heredity, is shaped upon his distinguished uncle's. He lacks the grave ponderosity which gives the finishing touch to Lord Salisbury's occasional trifling with public questions. But he is still young, and his style inchoate.

The Minister who answers for India in the House of Commons cannot fairly be expected to contribute to the hilarity of its proceedings. Yet occasionally Sir John Gorst, more particularly at question-time, standing at the table with almost funereal aspect, drops a parenthetical remark that convulses the House with laughter. Lord Randolph Churchill, since he has taken to racing, has assumed a gravity of manner which militates against repetition of his old successes in setting the table in a roar.

But the gloom under which he has enveloped himself is, like that which just now obscures the sunlight of laughter over the House generally, only a temporary condition. The present House has accidentally run into a groove of gloom, which will probably outlast its existence. But there is no reason to believe that the decay of humour noted will be permanent. There is no assembly in the world so pathetically eager to be amused as is the House of Commons. It sits and listens entranced to bursts of sustained argument. It follows with keen intellectual delight the course of subtle argument. It burns with fierce indignation at a story of wrong-doing. It flashes with generous impulse at an invitation to do right. But it likes, above all things, to be made to laugh. In its despair of worthier efforts, almost anything will do. An agitated orator rounding off his peroration by sitting down on his hat; a glass of water upset; or, primest joke of all, an impassioned oratorical fist brought down with resonant thud on the hat of a listener sitting attentive on the bench below--these are trivial, familiar accidents that never fail to bring down the House.

So persistently eager is the House to be amused that, failing the gift of beneficent nature, it will, as in the case of Mr. W. H. Smith, invent a humorous aspect of a man, and laugh at its own creation. There are many cases where a man has commenced his Parliamentary career amidst evidences not only of personal disfavour, but of almost malignant animosity, and has finished by finding his interposition in debate hailed by hilarious cheering. Such a case was that of the late Mr. Biggar, who for fully ten years of his Parliamentary career was an object of unbridled execration. He lived to find himself almost a prime favourite in the House, a man who, when he had not got further in his speech than to ejaculate "Mr. Speaker, sir," found himself the focus of a circle of beaming faces, keenly anticipatory of fun. Mr. Biggar in the sessions of 1886-9 was the same member for Cavan who, in the Parliament of 1874, was a constant mark of contumely, and even of personal hatred. The House had grown used to him, and had gradually built up round his name and personality an ideal of eccentric humour. But the creative power was with the audience--a priceless quality that remains with it even in these dull times, and though temporarily subdued, will presently have its day again.

_The Snowstorm._

FROM THE RUSSIAN OF ALEXANDER PUSHKIN.

TOWARDS the end of 1811, at a memorable period for Russians, lived on his own domain of Nenaradova the kind-hearted Gavril R. He was celebrated in the whole district for his hospitality and his genial character. Neighbours constantly visited him to have something to eat and drink, and to play at five-copeck boston with his wife, Praskovia. Some, too, went to have a look at their daughter, Maria; a tall pale girl of seventeen. She was an heiress, and they desired her either for themselves or for their sons.

Maria had been brought up on French novels, and consequently was in love. The object of her affection was a poor ensign in the army, who was now at home in his small village on leave of absence. As a matter of course, the young man reciprocated Maria's passion. But the parents of his beloved, noticing their mutual attachment, forbade their daughter even to think of him, while they received him worse than an ex-assize judge.

Our lovers corresponded, and met alone daily in the pine wood or by the old roadway chapel. There they vowed everlasting love, inveighed against fate, and exchanged various suggestions. Writing and talking in this way, they quite naturally reached the following conclusion:--

If we cannot exist apart from each other, and if the tyranny of hard-hearted parents throws obstacles in the way of our happiness, then can we not manage without them?

Of course, this happy idea originated in the mind of the young man; but it pleased immensely the romantic imagination of Maria.

Winter set in, and put a stop to their meetings. But their correspondence became all the more active. Vladimir begged Maria in every letter to give herself up to him that they might get married secretly, hide for a while, and then throw themselves at the feet of their parents, who would of course in the end be touched by their heroic constancy and say to them, "Children, come to our arms!"

Maria hesitated a long while, and out of many different plans proposed, that of flight was for a time rejected. At last, however, she consented. On the appointed day she was to decline supper, and retire to her room under the plea of a headache. She and her maid, who was in the secret, were then to go out into the garden by the back stairs, and beyond the garden they would find a sledge ready for them, would get into it and drive a distance of five miles from Nenaradova, to the village of Jadrino, straight to the church, where Vladimir would be waiting for them.

On the eve of the decisive day, Maria did not sleep all night; she was packing and tying up linen and dresses. She wrote, moreover, a long letter to a friend of hers, a sentimental young lady; and another to her parents. Of the latter, she took leave in the most touching terms. She excused the step she was taking by reason of the unconquerable power of love, and wound up by declaring that she should consider it the happiest moment of her life when she was allowed to throw herself at the feet of her dearest parents. Sealing both letters with a Toula seal, on which were engraven two flaming hearts with an appropriate inscription, she at last threw herself upon her bed before daybreak, and dosed off, though even then she was awakened from one moment to another by terrible thoughts. First it seemed to her that at the moment of entering the sledge in order to go and get married, her father stopped her, and with cruel rapidity dragged her over the snow, and threw her into a dark bottomless cellar--down which she fell headlong with an indescribable sinking of the heart. Then she saw Vladimir, lying on the grass, pale and bleeding; with his dying breath he implored her to make haste and marry him. Other hideous and senseless visions floated before her one after another. Finally, she rose paler than usual, and with a real headache.

Both her father and her mother remarked her indisposition. Their tender anxiety and constant inquiries, "What is the matter with you, Masha--are you ill?" cut her to the heart. She tried to pacify them and to appear cheerful; but she could not. Evening set in. The idea that she was passing the day for the last time in the midst of her family oppressed her. In her secret heart she took leave of everybody, of everything which surrounded her.

Supper was served; her heart beat violently. In a trembling voice she declared that she did not want any supper, and wished her father and mother goodnight. They kissed her, and as usual blessed her; and she nearly wept.

Reaching her own room, she threw herself into an easy chair and burst into tears. Her maid begged her to be calm and take courage. Everything was ready. In half an hour Masha would leave for ever her parents' house, her own room, her peaceful life as a young girl.

Out of doors the snow was falling, the wind howling. The shutters rattled and shook. In everything she seemed to recognise omens and threats.

Soon the whole home was quiet and asleep. Masha wrapped herself in a shawl, put on a warm cloak, and with a box in her hand, passed out on to the back staircase. The maid carried two bundles after her. They descended into the garden. The snowstorm raged; a strong wind blew against them, as if trying to stop the young culprit. With difficulty they reached the end of the garden. In the road a sledge awaited them.

The horses, from cold, would not stand still. Vladimir's coachman was walking to and fro in front of them, trying to quiet them. He helped the young lady and her maid to their seats, and packing away the bundles and the dressing-case, took up the reins, and the horses flew forward into the darkness of the night.

* * * * *

Having entrusted the young lady to the care of fate and of Tereshka the coachman, let us return to the young lover.