PART II

CHILDREN OF LAST CENTURY

A SMALL EVENT

All service ranks the same with God: If now, as formerly He trod Paradise, His presence fills Our earth, each only as God wills Can work--God’s puppets, best and worst, Are we; there is no last nor first.

Say not “a small event”! Why “small”? Costs it more pain than this, ye call A “great event” should come to pass, Than that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!

_Pippa Passes._

Every night the Alfresco Entertainers gave their performance on a little platform set right under the shadow of the great cliff; while in front of them, not a dozen yards away, the rhythmic wash of the sea on a rocky shore seemed a sort of accompaniment to their songs, much softer and more tuneful than that of the poor, jingly, rheumatic piano, which had nothing between it and every sort of weather save an ancient mackintosh cover.

The village itself was but a shelf of shore with one long, straggling, lop-sided street: cottage and shop and great hotel set down haphazard, cheek by jowl, all apparently somewhat inept excrescences on the side of the green-clad cliffs rising behind them straight and steep, a sheer five hundred feet, and just across the narrow line of red road lies the Bristol Channel, with, on a clear day, the Welsh coast plainly in view.

At ten years old, people are generally found more interesting than scenery, and Basil took a great interest in the variety entertainers. They looked so smart and debonair, he thought, in their blue reefers, white duck trousers, and gold-laced yachting caps--though they none of them ever put out to sea. There were five of them altogether, two ladies and three men. Basil did not care so much about the ladies, in spite of the rows of Chinese lanterns that outlined the little stage and shone so pink in the darkness; there seemed no glamor or mystery about them. They were not transcendently beautiful like the gauzy good fairy of pantomime, or the peerless, fearless circus lady in pink and spangles: neither did they possess the mirth-provoking qualities of the dauntless three clad in yatching garb. One always sang sentimentally of “daddies,” or “aunties,” or “chords,” that had somehow gone amissing; and the other--Basil almost disliked that other--sang about things he could in nowise understand, in a hoarse voice, and danced in between the verses, and she didn’t dance at all prettily, for she had thick ankles and high shoulders.

But the three “naval gentlemen,” as Basil respectfully called them, sang funny songs, and acted and knocked each other about in such fashion as caused him almost to roll off his chair in fits of ecstatic mirth. Nearly every fine night after dinner, if nobody wanted him, Harnet, the tall man-servant, would take Basil, and they sat on two chairs in the front row and listened to the entertainment. Sometimes grandfather himself would come, but he generally went to sleep in his chair at home; for when a man goes peel-fishing all day, walking half a dozen miles up the rocky bank of a Devonshire trout stream to his favorite pool, he is disinclined to move again, once he has changed and dined.

The bulk of the audience attending the Alfresco Entertainment sat on the wall separating shore from road, or on the curbstone, but there were always a few chairs placed directly facing the stage, which were charged for at sixpence each. Harnet was far too grand and dignified to sit on either wall or curbstone, and as grandfather always gave Basil a shilling to put in the cardboard plate, Harnet preferred to spend it in this wise.

Now all that company had high-sounding, aristocratic names, except one, who was called, as Basil said, “just simply Mr. Smith.” There was Mr. Montmorency, the manager, whose cheeks were almost as blue as his reefer, and his wife, the lady who danced in the evening, but in the daytime affected flowing tea-gowney garments and large flat hats; there was Mr. Neville Beauchamp, who sang coster songs, to whom the particular accent required for this sort of ditty really seemed no effort, as all his songs were given in similarly pronounced and singular fashion. The lady of the melancholy ballads was called De Vere; she looked thin and young and generally cold, as well she might, for she played everyone’s accompaniments, and never wore a coat, however cold the night. But it was for Mr. Smith that Basil felt most enthusiasm. In the first place, his speaking voice was as the voices of “grandfather’s friends.” In the second, he was, to Basil’s thinking, an admirable actor--changing face and voice, even his very body, to suit the part he happened to be playing; and thirdly, he was funny--funny in a way that Basil understood. Even grandfather laughed at Mr. Smith and applauded him, and when the cardboard plate went round, he sent Basil with the first bit of gold they had had that season.

“Clever chap that,” he said as they strolled homeward under the quiet stars. “Reminds me of someone somehow--looks like a broken-down gentleman; got nice voice, and nice hands--wonder what he’s doing with that lot?”

Basil, however, was quite content to admire Mr. Smith without concerning himself as to his antecedents. He forthwith christened him “the jokey man,” and it rather puzzled him that, except at night, the jokey man was hardly ever with the others, but went wandering about by himself in an aimless and somewhat dismal fashion. Could it be that Mr. Montmorency and Mr. Neville Beauchamp were proud, Basil wondered, because they had such fine names.

Basil’s face was as round as a full moon, and fresh and fair as a monthly rose. Tall and well set up, he was good at games, and keen on every kind of sport. Long days did he spend up the river with his grandfather fishing for trout--he was to have a license for peel next summer, but had to be content with trout during this. He went sea-fishing, too, in charge of a nice fisherman called Oxenham, and caught big pollock outside the bay, and every morning Oxenham rowed Basil and Harnet out from the shore that they might have their morning swim, for the coast is so rocky and dangerous that bathing from the land is no fun at all--though the rocks are very nice to potter about on at low tide, when energetic persons can find prawns in the pools.

One day as Basil was busily engaged in this pursuit, who should come up behind him but the jokey man, looking as melancholy as though there was no sunshine, or blue water, or pleasant pools full of strange sea beasts. Indeed, although he was by profession such an amusing man, he had by no means a cheerful face. Tired lines were written all round his eyes, his shoulders were bent, and his long slim hands hung loose and listless at his sides, yet it was plain that he was by no means old. Moreover, he had changed his smart yachting suit for an old tweed coat and knickerbockers, and a grey billycock dragged over his eyes bereft his appearance of all traces of the jokey man. So that for a minute or two Basil did not know him, even although he sat down on a rock close by and lit his pipe.

Basil was standing bare-legged and knee-deep in water in pursuit of a particularly active and artful shrimp, so that it was only when he at last lifted his head with an emphatic “bother,” that he noticed the stranger; then he beamed, for chance had tossed plump into his lap the opportunity he had long been seeking.

“How do you do?” the little boy inquired politely, taking off his muffin cap with one wet hand while he grasped his net with the other. “I am so pleased to have met you; I’ve wanted to for ever so long.”

“That’s very nice of you,” said the man, and when he smiled he looked quite young. “I am sure the pleasure is mutual.”

“I’ve something most pertickler to ask you,” continued Basil eagerly, scrambling out of the pool to sit on the rock beside him, “and it seemed as if I was never to get a chance. It’s not for myself either, it’s for Viola--you know Viola by sight, I daresay?”

Now it happened that the jokey man, like most other people in that village, knew Viola by sight very well indeed. In fact, Viola, and the General, and Basil, were as speedily pointed out to every stranger who arrived as though they had been bits of scenery. For they came every summer and the village was proud of them.

“Is she your sister?” asked the jokey man, suddenly taking his pipe out of his mouth.

“Yes, and she’s two year older than me, but she doesn’t go to school--I’ve been for a year--she has a ma’mselle. I daresay you’ve seen us with her. It’s been such a bore having her here, but she’s going to-morrow, and then we shall do just what we like, for there will be only Harnet and Polly, and we like them. Grannie had to go off quite suddenly to nurse Aunt Alice, and won’t be back for a week, so there’ll be nobody but grandfather and us; it’ll be simply ripping,” and Basil paused breathless, beaming at the pleasant picture he had conjured up.

The jokey man put his pipe back into his mouth and waited; but it had gone out, so he just laid it on the rocks beside him, saying:

“What was it you wanted to ask me?”

“It’s rather difficult to explain,” Basil began, turning very red and rumpling his hair. “It’s Viola, you know; she wants so dreadfully to come to your entertainment. I’ve told her about it, you know, but grandfather says----” Here Basil paused, and turned even redder than before: “One has to be so particular over one’s girls, you know,” he interpolated apologetically, “and she’s the only girl in our family. Grandfather never had any sisters or any daughters, so he thinks no end of Viola, and father and mother are in India, and he says----”

“That some of the songs are vulgar,” said the jokey man shortly. “So they are; he’s perfectly right.”

The jokey man looked at Basil, and Basil looked at the jokey man for a full minute. Then the little boy said very earnestly:

“Do you think that you could persuade them--those other gentlemen, I mean--to leave out one or two songs one evening? There’s that one about the ‘giddy little girl in the big black hat’ that Mr. Montmorency sings. Grandfather doesn’t like that one, and it’s not very amusing, is it? And Viola _does_ want to come so dreadfully.”

The jokey man made no reply, but stared straight out to sea with a very grave face. Perhaps he was thinking of all those other Violas who listened night after night to the songs the General objected to, and were perhaps, unlike his Viola, not “cared about, kept out of harm, and schemed for, safe in love as with a charm.”

Basil waited politely for some minutes, then, as the jokey man didn’t speak, he continued earnestly:

“You see she can just hear that there is music and singing when the windows are open, and it’s so tantalizing, and you see it would be rude to walk away when we’d heard you, and come back next time you sang, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t matter for boys----”

“I’m not at all sure of that,” said Mr. Smith hastily; “it matters very much for boys, too, I think--especially if they don’t happen to have wise grandfathers with good taste. I’ll see what can be done, and let you know.”

“Oh, thank you so much!” cried Basil; “that is kind of you. Viola will be so pleased; she’s up the village now with Polly, or I’d fetch her to thank you herself.”

Now while Basil was talking he noticed that the jokey man’s coat had got leather on the shoulders, and that the leather looked as worn as the coat, so he rightly deduced that at some time or another his new friend must have been something of a sportsman, and asked:

“D’you fish at all?”

“Not here,” said the jokey man, “but I’ve done some fishing in my time. Have you had good sport?”

Then immediately ensued a long discussion on the relative merits of flies, and Basil gave forth his opinion, an opinion backed up by the experience of numerous natives, that the “Coachman” was the fly for that neighborhood, but that there were occasions, especially early in July, when exceedingly good results might be obtained by using red ants. They told each other fishing stories. Basil confided to the jokey man that he had just got a beautiful new split cane rod from “Hardy Brothers,” promised to show it to him at the earliest possible opportunity, and they speedily became the best of friends. For it is a curious fact that although the actual sport itself is a somewhat taciturn pursuit, there are no more conversational sportsmen in the world than ardent followers of the gentle craft.

Another thing--they are always courteous listeners, and generally full of good stories themselves, yet have the most delicate appreciation of other people’s anecdotes. You can nearly always tell a member of a fishing family by this rare and pleasing trait.

Next morning the jokey man called at the hotel and asked for Basil at the door. He wouldn’t come in, and when Basil, greatly excited, appeared, only waited to say hastily: “If you like to bring your sister to-night, I think I can promise you that it will be all right.” Then fled before Basil could thank him, and was soon pounding up the steep hill that ends abruptly at the hotel door, as though he were training for a mountaineering race.

Basil tore back into their sitting-room to lay the case before his grandfather, who, for once, was lunching in the hotel.

“He promised, you know,” he concluded jubilantly, “so she _can_ come, can’t she?”

Grandfather pulled his moustache and laughed. Then Viola came and laid her fresh soft cheek against his, murmuring pleadingly: “Darling, it would be so lovely,” till he pinched Viola’s cheek and made stipulations about heavy cloaks, and the children knew the day was won.

And the end of it all was that, at half-past eight that evening, grandfather, Basil and Viola were seated on three chairs in the very middle of the road that ran past the Alfresco Entertainers’ stage; but as the road ends abruptly in a precipitous rock some thirty yards further along, there is no fear of being run over by traffic.

What an evening of delight that was! How Basil and Viola laughed, and how pleased was grandfather! Another thing is quite certain--that the Alfresco Entertainers in no way lost by the alterations they had made in their programme; the rest of the audience seemed as pleased as Basil and Viola, and no one appeared to miss the “giddy little girl in the big black hat” the least little bit in the world.

“Really, it’s vastly civil of Mr. Thingummy,” said grandfather on their way home.

* * * * *

Grandfather and Harnet had gone fishing for the whole day. Mademoiselle had departed, only Polly was left in charge, and she had so bad a headache--she put it down to the close, cloudy weather--that she was fain to go and lie down directly she had waited upon Basil and Viola at their lunch, having given the children permission to go for a walk along the beach.

It was a grey day, humid and still, and, being low tide, there seemed no fresh wind blowing in from the sea as usual. The children scrambled over the rocks, very happy and important at being, for once, left to their own devices, and they decided to make an expedition to a little sandy bay that can be reached from the shore at low tide, and to come back by a steep winding path up the cliffs which terminates in the coach road just above the village. They had not considered it necessary to confide their intention to Polly, who would certainly have objected. They reached the bay all right, paddled for a little time on the hard, smooth sand, and then set out to climb the path which winds in and out of the side of the cliff for all the world like a spiral staircase up to some nine hundred feet above the sea. This path is so narrow that travelers can only walk in Indian file. On the one side is the steep face of the heather-clad rock, on the other a sheer drop on to the rocks below.

When the children had climbed about a third of the way they found themselves enveloped in white mist--a mist so thick, and fine, and clinging, that you cannot see your own hand held before your face. It was no use to go down again; the tide had turned, and soon the sea would be lapping gently at the foot of the pathway. There was nothing for it but to go on slowly, carefully, step by step, feeling all the time for the rocks on the inner side; by and by the path would widen.

“Don’t be frightened, Viola,” said Basil cheerfully. “It’ll take us a goodish while, but a bit higher up we can walk together.”

“I’m not exactly frightened,” said Viola in a tremulous voice, “but I rather wish we hadn’t come.”

“So do I,” Basil answered fervently. “If I hadn’t been such a juggins I’d have looked up and seen the mist on those cliffs long ago. Probably you can’t see that there _are_ any cliffs in the village now.”

On they toiled, slowly and painfully. It is really a most unpleasant mode of progression, walking sideways up a hill with your back against a very nubbly sort of wall.

“Hark!” cried Basil presently. “Didn’t you hear a call?”

The children paused, leant against the cliff, and listened breathlessly. Sure enough someone was calling. It sounded very muffled and far off; but it was plainly a man’s voice, and he was calling for help.

“Do you think it’s above or below?” Basil asked anxiously. “I can’t seem to tell in this fog.”

“It must be above, or we should have heard it before. Call out that we’re coming.”

Basil shouted with all the force of his young lungs, and again the faint, muffled voice answered with a cry for help.

“Come on,” exclaimed Basil in great excitement; “we’ll find him!” and sure enough in another bend of the path Basil nearly fell over the prostrate figure of a man lying right across it, for here it suddenly grew wider. The man raised himself on his elbow, exclaiming:

“I say, do you think that when you get to the village you could send help? I’m very much afraid that I’ve broken my leg. I can’t stand, and moving at all hurts it no end.”

“Why, it’s the jokey man!” Basil cried out in dismay. “However did you do it?”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” added Viola. “This is sad.”

None of them could see the other, but nevertheless, the jokey man knew in a minute who had come to his rescue, and forgot his injuries in his surprise, exclaiming:

“Whatever are you two doing here? Is the General with you?”

“Oh, dear, no,” said Viola proudly; “we’re _quite_ alone, or we shouldn’t be here, but isn’t it a good thing we _are_ here? How did you fall?”

“I was mooning along, not thinking where I was going, when down came the mist. I made a false step and went bang over the edge, but only fell on to the path below, not right over, as I might have done.... Perhaps it would have been better if I had,” he added to himself.

“You’d better go and get help, Basil,” said Viola decidedly, “and I’ll stay and take care of Mr. Smith till they come.”

But Mr. Smith wouldn’t hear of this. The children helped him to crawl as near the inner side as possible, and when they left him he nearly fainted with the pain of moving. It began to rain, the cold, soft, wetting rain of a Devonshire summer, and Mr. Smith groaned and shivered.

“I am so sorry for you,” said a soft voice close beside him. “Is there nothing I could do? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you were to rest your head in my lap? It would be a sort of pillow. Daddie used to go to sleep like that sometimes out on the moors last summer, when they were home.”

“Oh, Viola, Viola!” exclaimed the jokey man, with far more distress than he had yet shown, “why did you stay? You will get cold. It’s raining already, and they will be ages.”

“There’s no use worrying about that,” said Viola, edging herself nearer. “We couldn’t leave you here all alone and hurt, and Basil wouldn’t let me go on to the village ’cause of the fog, so of course I stayed. I hope you won’t mind very much; I won’t talk if you’d rather not, but I think I’d like to hold your hand if you don’t mind. It would be comforting.”

The kind little hand was curiously comforting to the jokey man: he insisted on taking off his coat and wrapping Viola in it, in spite of all her protests. Presently the white pall of mist lifted a little and they could see one another, and it certainly was a great pleasure to the man lying against the cliff to watch the little high-bred face with the kind blue eyes turned in such friendly wise toward him. Viola was so like Basil, and yet so entirely individual. Basil’s face was round, hers was oval; Basil’s nose was broad and indefinite as yet, Viola’s nose was small and straight and decided, with the dearest little band of freckles across the bridge. Basil’s manner was extremely friendly, Viola’s was tender and protecting, and it was such a long time since anyone had taken care of the jokey man, that he almost crooned to himself in the delight of being so tended. She was very tender in her inquiries after his aches and pains, expressed a pious hope that he always wore “something woolly next him,” and being reassured on that head, proceeded to suggest that he should smoke if he found it comforting. Then she told him a great deal in very admirative terms about daddy, and grandfather, and Basil, for Viola was of that old-fashioned portion of femininity that looks upon her own mankind as beings of stupendous strength and wisdom. The man lay watching her very intently, but it is not certain that he heard half of what she was saying. He had the look of one who was trying to make a difficult decision. The voices of habit and tradition called very loudly to him just then--dared he listen?

Presently Viola’s voice ceased. She was evidently waiting for an answer, and none came.

“Have you any sisters, Mr. Smith?” she repeated.

Mr. Smith shook his head, then he raised himself on his elbow, saying earnestly:

“Look here, Viola! I want you to tell me exactly what you think about something. Suppose Basil--of course it’s utterly impossible, but still--suppose that when he was grown up he did something that annoyed you all very much, something disappointing and entirely against his father’s wishes”--he paused, for Viola looked very grave and pained--“and then,” he continued, “if he went right out of sight, and you, none of you, heard anything more about him for nearly a year--supposing _then_ he was sorry, said he was sorry----”

“We should never lose sight of Basil,” said Viola decidedly, her eyes dark and tragic at the mere thought. “At least, I’m sure I shouldn’t; whatever he did I should love him just the same. You don’t love people for their goodness--you love them because they’re _they_.”

“Are you sure?” asked the jokey man earnestly.

Viola looked hard at him, turned very red, and said shyly:

“Do you think you could tell me just what you did? I know it’s you.”

The man leant back against the wall again.

“It’s not an interesting story,” he said wearily, “but it may pass the time. I was at the ’varsity, Cambridge. I was always very fond of acting, and I was extravagant and lazy, too. The very term I went in for my degree I was acting in the A.D.C., and--I was plucked. My father was furious. Then came a whole sheaf of debts. He said I must go back to a small college, live on next to nothing, work, and take my degree. Instead of taking my punishment like a man, I quarreled with everybody, vowed I’d go on to the stage, and came to this. I have kept body and soul together, and I don’t think I’ve done anything to be ashamed of since, but I’m sick and sorry at the whole business. Yet now that I’m all smashed up and useless, it seems somehow mean to go back. My father’s a parson, you know, not over well off, and there are a good many of us.”

All the pauses in his story, and there were a good many, had been punctuated by Viola with reassuring little pats, and now that the pause was so long that he seemed to have finished his story, she turned a beaming face toward him.

“How _glad_ they will be!” she exclaimed. “You must write to-night directly you get back. How _glad_ your mother will be!”

A spasm of pain crossed his face. “My mother died just before I left school,” he said.

Viola’s eyes filled with tears, and she had just exclaimed, “And you have no sisters either, you poor dear?” when the rescue party, accompanied by Basil and the nearly frantic Polly, appeared just below them. They carried the jokey man to the foot of the cliff and took him back to the village in a boat, and as his ankle proved to be very badly broken he elected to go into the cottage hospital on the hill. The long wait in the wet, that had not in the least hurt Viola, proved altogether too much for the jokey man. That night he became feverish and delirious, and when the children and the General went to ask for him next day, they were told that he was very ill indeed, and that the broken ankle was quite a small matter in comparison with the pneumonia. That evening the doctor called on the General, and directly the performance was over, the General went to see the Alfresco Players at their lodgings.

“Do you happen to know who his people are?” the General asked Mrs. Montmorency.

“He never let on that he’d got any folks, poor fellah,” she answered with a sob. She had a kind heart if her ankles were thick. “He was never one to talk about himself, and he’s never had so much as a postcard by post since he’s been here, that I do know. His real name’s not Smith at all; all his linen--beautiful and fine his shirts are too--is all marked ‘Selsley.’”

“Have you no idea what part of the country he came from?” the General asked. “Then we could look in a directory. It would be a horrible thing if----”

“He joined us in London,” Mrs. Montmorency gasped between her sobs, while her tears made little pathways on her painted cheeks. “He hadn’t any references, but I persuaded my husband to take him. He carried his references in his face, I said, and so I’m sure we’ve found it, for a nicer, more obliging, gentlemanly----”

“Do you think, sir,” Mr. Montmorency interrupted, “that he told the little lady anything about himself when they were up on the cliff together?”

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the General in great excitement. “Of course he did; I have it. Who has got a clergy list?”

Naturally none of the Alfresco Players possessed such a work, and it was already too late to knock up the vicar of the parish. But next morning the General called on the vicar very early, and then despatched an exceedingly long telegram to the post office and several bottles of champagne to the cottage hospital, where Polly, Basil and Viola hung about the doors all the morning hoping for better news. The Alfresco Players got out a green leaflet to the effect that there would be that night a benefit performance for that talented artist, Mr. Smith, who had been suddenly stricken down by serious illness. The General seemed to send and receive a great many telegrams, and did not go fishing all that day. At sundown there was no better news at the hospital, and it seemed exceedingly probable that the jokey man would joke no more. The General met the last train, and drove away from the station accompanied by an elderly, severe-looking clergyman. They stopped at the hospital and the clergyman went in.

* * * * *

The jokey man was so noisy and talked so continuously that the hospital authorities had him moved from the men’s surgical ward into a little room by himself. As the matron showed the strange clergyman into this room, a nurse rose from the chair at the bedside. The jokey man’s voice was no longer loud, but he kept saying the same thing over and over again.

“All day long he keeps repeating it,” she whispered. “I’m so thankful you’ve come, for he can’t possibly last if this restlessness continues.”

“I’m sure he’ll come if you send,” the weak, irritable voice went on. “Why don’t you send? I want my father--‘father, I have sinned’--that’s it--‘father, I have sinned’--but I know he’ll come if you send. I want my father, I tell you--why won’t you send? I want my father.”

The whispering voice persisted in its plaint, the hot hands plucked at the sheet when other hands closed over them, holding them firmly, and the voice he was waiting for said quietly:

“My dear son, I am here.”

As the sick man raised his tired eyes to the grave grey face bent over him, his troubled mind was flooded with an immense content, his poignant restlessness was calmed.

“Good old father!” he said softly, and lay quite still.

The jokey man thought better of it, and didn’t die after all. In another week Basil and Viola were allowed to go and see him. They stood very hushed and solemn on either side of his bed, for he looked very thin and white, and was still lying right on his back, which made him seem more ill somehow. For quite a minute nobody said anything at all, till Basil, who held a large folded bracken leaf in his hand, laid it down on the jokey man’s chest and spread it out. A fish speckled with brown reposed in solemn glory in the midst.

“It’s for your dinner,” whispered Basil. “It’s only four ounces off the pound. I caught it myself two hours ago. Viola saw me do it. I think a ‘Coachman’s’ the best fly after all.”

IN DURANCE VILE

Gabrielle always remembered the day that the ringmaster of the circus came to see her pony jump. She was proud of her pony, who was dapple grey and Welsh, and could jump nine inches higher than himself.

Gabrielle was five, and had ridden without a leading rein for two years, but her father never let her jump Roland, the pony. So the pony jumped by himself, greatly to the edification of the ringmaster who had been bidden to see the feat.

While all this was going on, Nana called her to nursery tea, and as she trotted down the long yard, past the stables, and towards the drive, the ringmaster turned to Jack Ainslie, Gabrielle’s father, and said: “Has the little Missie hurt her foot? She’s a thought lame.”

Jack Ainslie looked hastily after the idolized little figure, and noted that the ringmaster was right. She _was_ a thought lame.

Hastily excusing himself, he ran after the child. “Have you hurt your foot, darling?” he asked anxiously. “You’re limping a little. Did you twist your ankle?”

“Oh, no, Daddy dear, I’m not hurt. I’m going to tea.” Gabrielle put up her face for the ever-expected kiss and ran after her nurse. Jack Ainslie dismissed the subject from his mind and showed the ringmaster the rest of the horses.

From that day, however, things changed for Gabrielle. Other people noticed the little limp, and her parents, terrified and distressed, sent for the family doctor. He discovered that in some way, probably at birth, her hip had been dislocated, and had formed a new socket for itself, and that henceforth she would limp--unless--and here all the mischief began--something could be done. Her father was frantic. Of course something must be done. That his Gabrielle, his dainty little lady with her pretty face, her quick intelligence, and her gracious ways, should be lame--oh, it was intolerable! He was broken-hearted and rebellious, and even his wife’s steadfast patience and unchanging tenderness could not make him resigned. Then began for Gabrielle a series of visits to London. She was taken from one great doctor to another till she grew quite used to marching about on thick piled carpets, clad in nothing but her sunny hair, while they discussed her interesting “case.”

“Doctors are chilly men,” said Gabrielle; “their hands are always cold to my body.”

An operation was arranged, but at the last moment Jack Ainslie drew back, for the surgeons would not guarantee success, and the family doctor said grave things about Gabrielle’s constitutional delicacy. So it was decided that more gradual means must be tried to bring about the desired result. The “gradual means” assumed the shape of an instrument, hideous to behold and painful to wear. It broke Jack Ainslie’s heart to see his little lady cabined and confined in such a cruel cage, and for the little lady herself it blotted out the sunshine and made life very grey and terrible. One thing was quite plain to Gabrielle, and that was that evidently Nature was very much to blame in having provided a new “socket” for the poor little dislocated bone. This impertinence must be interfered with at all costs--the doctors seemed to agree upon that. And Gabrielle wondered why it was so wrong to have no pain, to be perfectly unconscious of her “affliction,” as her nurse called it, and so interesting (to the doctors) and right, to be uncomfortable and to wear a hideous high-soled boot and an iron cage, with crutches under the arms that pushed her shoulders up to her ears.

As for the instrument, it was designed and ordered by three famous surgeons, and it cost the price of many ponies. Gabrielle tried to be brave. She was curiously conscious that the pain her parents suffered was far greater than her own. The instrument was adjusted in London, and on the way home in the train her mother asked her many times, “Does it hurt you, my darling?” And Gabrielle always answered bravely, “I can bear it, mother dear; I can bear it!”

When she got home that night, the poor little leg was black from the cruel pressure, and Mary Ainslie broke down and cried till she could cry no longer. Gabrielle tried to walk bravely in her cramping irons, and to smile at her parents when she met their troubled eyes. At first she broke the thing continually, for she was an active child, much given to jumping off chairs and playing at circus on the big old sofa. But by and by all desire to jump and run left her. She grew high-shouldered, and would sit very still for hours, while her daddy told her stories or drove her behind Roland in a little basket-carriage he had bought for her. Truly the iron entered into her soul, the cruel iron that cramped the child’s soft body; and Gabrielle’s eyes grew larger and larger, and her chin more pointed, while the once plump little hands were white as the petals of the pear-blossom outside the nursery window.

“I wish people wouldn’t ask me about it; they are kind, but I wish they wouldn’t,” Gabrielle would say. “I’m tired of telling them about the socket, and I’m not ‘a poor little soul’--I’m daddy’s little lady!”

There came to Jack Ainslie a very old college friend, a doctor, Gabrielle’s godfather, and devoted to her, and he was supremely dissatisfied with her treatment and implored them to take her to see a young surgeon, a friend of his own, who was making a great name, and doing wonders for everyone who came under his care. Jack Ainslie and his wife needed but small persuasion, and it was decided that Gabrielle should go to London as soon as possible.

What hastened the visit was this: Gabrielle was devoted to fairy lore, and a favorite play of hers was to be the beautiful princess who is freed from giants and dragons and lions by the gallant “Boots” of the Norse tales. Her father always enacted the part of that redoubtable third son, and was wont to kneel before her, making extravagant protestations of his devotion, which she accepted with gracious condescension. On this particular afternoon, just after tea, her father proposed to play the favorite game, but Gabrielle would have none of it. “I can’t be a princess any more, Daddy; I’m sure no princess ever wore an instrument!” she said. “I don’t feel like a princess any more at all.” Her father caught her up in his arms, with a great hard sob, which frightened her, and she stroked his face, saying tenderly: “Don’t be sorry, dear, dear Dad! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ll be a princess, I will, indeed! I _will_ feel like a princess really!” The next day Jack Ainslie and his wife took Gabrielle up to town. They did not even take the faithful Nana, for Gabrielle’s mother could hardly bear to let any hands but hers touch her darling, ever since the day that the ringmaster had made his sad discovery.

Mary Ainslie took Gabrielle to the new doctor the following morning, while Jack sat in the smoking-room of the hotel, lighting innumerable cigars which he did not smoke, and turning over illustrated papers which he did not see. Then he turned out of the hotel and walked down Piccadilly, blundering into the passers-by, and when he crossed the road, was nearly ridden over by an omnibus, so blind and stupid was he in his heavy sorrow. Poor Jack! his honest heart was very full of grief, for he loved his little lady dearly, and he felt that unless something were done quickly, he would soon have nothing but a tender memory to love.

Gabrielle and her mother were shown into the new doctor’s consulting-room at once. He was a tall young man, with red hair and keen green eyes. Her mother undressed Gabrielle, all but the “instrument,” which clasped the tender little body, and seemed so cruelly unnecessary. The young doctor frowned when he saw it, then he took it off himself, and Gabrielle noticed that his touch was as gentle as her mother’s, and that his hands were warm. She gave a happy little shake when she was free of it, a little wriggle and jump of relief. Then the doctor made her walk, and felt her all over, after which he rolled her up in a big fur rug, to sit in front of the fire, while he went into the next room with her mother. They were not long away, and on their return Gabrielle looked up at the doctor with bright, curious eyes.

“Does the instrument hurt you?” he asked. Gabrielle looked at it, as it leaned feebly against a chair, and said: “It does, rather; but it does its best not to. I think...!”

“Well, any way, you’re not going to wear it any more. Are you glad?”

“But what will the socket do?”

“Bless me, child; they’ve talked about you far too much. The socket will do beautifully--much better without it than with it!”

“May I wear shoes like other little girls?”

“Certainly; the prettiest shoes that can be got!”

“Not compensatum shoes?”

“No; ordinary shoes, exactly alike!”

By this time Gabrielle had been arrayed in some clothes. She noticed that her mother’s hands trembled, but that her eyes were glad. The child looked up at the tall young doctor, who was watching her with his keen green eyes, and said: “My Daddy will be so glad. He will look at me, and not look so sorry, and there will be no hard things to stick into him when he cuddles me! He will be so glad!”

The doctor made a queer little sound in his throat; then he lifted Gabrielle in his arms and carried her to the window.

“Do you see the end of this street,” he asked, “where the roar and the rumbling sound comes from? That’s Oxford Street. Well, in that street is a beautiful shop full of shoes--shoes for little girls--and you are going there directly, to get the prettiest pair that mother can find for you!”

“May they have silver buckles?” Gabrielle asked eagerly.

“I think it extremely advisable they should have big silver buckles. You will walk both fast and far in buckles shoes, and you must learn to dance the _tarantella_, and all the dolls will sit in a row to watch you!”

Gabrielle gave a delighted laugh. “Will the leg that wore the irons get fat again, like the other?”

“Oh, dear, yes! You mustn’t think about that leg any more, but you must do all the exercises mother is going to show you, and when you can hang on a trapeze for twenty minutes, without falling off, you must write and tell me.”

Then Gabrielle’s mother finished dressing her, all but her boots. The boot with the “compensatum” sole lay near the instrument. Gabrielle looked at it with great aversion. “It’s a very dry day,” said she. “May I go to the cab in my stockings, and not put on no shoes till I have my new ones?”

The doctor pushed the little boot out of sight, under the chair, with his foot, and said: “I’ll carry you to the cab, and mother or the cabman will carry you to the shop across the pavement, and you shall never see that iron horror or that boot again!”

As the doctor carried her across the hall, Gabrielle put her arms round his neck, and kissed him on both his eyes.

“Your eyes taste very salt!” she said, “But you are the best doctor in the world!”

THE SURRENDER OF LADY GRIZELL

Geordie had found the world a rather draughty place since that March morning when his mother went out hunting and was brought back in a strange secret fashion, and he saw her face no more.

“Your poor Ma’s met with a haccident, Master Geordie--poor lady she’ve broke her back and now she’s gone to ’Eaven.”

So Nana explained things to him. New black clothes came from the tailor’s, and Geordie went with Nana to lay flowers upon his mother’s grave.

At five years old discomfort is felt, rather than defined; Geordie was conscious of a difference, an uncomfortable difference in his surroundings, but by no means directly traced its cause to the loss of his mother. Nor was he actively miserable. It is true that he sometimes wondered why Nana so often omitted his bath in the morning, and why he was never dressed to go down in the evening; but in some respects he had quite a dissipated time. So many people asked him out to tea, and amusement of which Nana distinctly approved, for she went too.

Geordie regarded his father with immense admiration, he was so tall, and handsome, and jolly. But since that day when everything was altered, the Hon. Donald Cochran found less time than ever to devote to Geordie. It is true he did not go out hunting any more, but he seemed always to be shut up in that hitherto almost unused room--called the “study,” sorting papers and interviewing stout gentlemen, who wore aggressive watch-chains, and whose footsteps were much lighter than those of the hunting friends who used to come about the house.

After a month of vague loneliness and discomfort there came a change in Geordie’s fortunes. His aunt, Lady Grizell Fane, who had been abroad at the time of Mrs. Cochran’s death, appeared upon the scene.

A tall woman, with keen grey eyes, a woman who observed much and said little--Lady Grizell after three days realized the exact position of affairs. On the fourth day she went back to the Towers, taking Geordie with her.

Lady Grizell was one of those women, so often childless, in whom the maternal instinct is passionately alive. The love of children was a religion with her, and all the love she would have lavished on her own child had the fates bestowed one on her, she lavished upon Geordie.

The world suddenly became a sunny, sheltered place for the lonely little boy. Baths were plentiful and nursery tableclothes were clean, as meals were regular. Above all, somebody wanted him, somebody took an interest in his doings, and a great warm human love “enwheeled him round.” A new experience this for Geordie--no one had ever been actively unkind to him, his mother had looked after his creature comforts thoroughly. He was always well dressed and well tended, but she had never found his society particularly interesting, nor did she manifest any desire to see him often during the day. Though a fine strong child, he was too like the Cochrans to be pretty. Big nose, grey eyes, thin face, high cheekbones, and dogged mouth, may be well enough in a man, but in a child are apt to be all indefinite and out of proportion. No, Geordie was not a pretty child. Neither was he very clever; but he was honest and kind-hearted, and he worshipped those who were kind to him, Aunt Grizell most of all.

Uncle Fane was a philanthropist, absorbed in blue books and statistics. When Parliament was sitting he went to London, while Aunt Grizell not infrequently preferred to remain with Geordie at the Towers.

Geordie learned to ride with his aunt (his father had never been able to afford a pony for him, it takes such a lot of money to keep hunters), he did gardening with her, and with her he learned to read indifferently well. But he learned many things more important than these.

He learned to be immensely proud of “the family,” to hold the reigning house in due respect certainly, but with reservations in favor of one Charles Edward, and his descendants, for whose sake “the family” had greatly dared and suffered. He learned that he must be courteous and deferent in his manners, true and just in all his dealings, and that he must control his temper, which, like that of the rest of the family, was inclined to be hasty. Moreover, he quickly discovered that his aunt _was_ herself all she would have him be. To know that a thing grieved her was enough with Geordie to prevent its happening again, so they were very happy.

His father came from time to time to spend a few days at the Towers, praised his improved appearance, and his seat in the saddle, took him out shooting on occasions, and was always profuse in his thanks to his sister for her care of the boy.

But this happy and peaceful state of things was not to last. A cloud came over the horizon. Lady Grizell went about with red eyes and a harrassed look, and Geordie found Uncle Fane regarding him with an expression, kindlier than of yore certainly, but in which he discovered so large a proportion of pity that he resented it, without knowing why.

Then Lord Lochmaben, his father’s eldest brother, came to the Towers. During his visit, the child was always hearing scraps of conversation in which the words “madness,” “that woman,” and “social suicide” occurred with bewildering frequency. He felt that in some mysterious way these irrelevant remarks had some bearing on his own fortunes. Lord Lochmaben also regarded him with that strange pitying expression, and during his lordship’s visit, Aunt Grizell’s eyes were redder, and her manner more perturbed than ever.

At last, one morning at the end of May--Geordie will always hate the scent of the lilacs--Lady Grizell called him from his play to come to her in the morning room.

He came, running through the open French window, and when he reached his aunt’s chair she put her arm round him, saying huskily: “Geordie dear! your father wants you at home, until September--and then you are to go to school!”

Lady Grizell made the announcement abruptly. To her surprise it was received in absolute silence. Geordie was, as his aunt herself would have said, “utterly dumbfoundered.” To go to school some day was natural and proper--but to go home.... “Why does father want me now?” asked Geordie in a shaky voice. The Hon. Donald never betrayed any distress at parting from him when he left the Towers--what could it mean?

The child was very like “the family,” he was not at all demonstrative, and he “thought shame” to cry.

He flung his arms round his aunt, holding her so tight that the buttons of his Norfolk jacket made deep dents on her cheek, and Lady Grizell could hear how painfully the little heart was thumping.

There was silence for a minute between these two who understood each other so well; then Geordie asked: “When am I to go, Aunt Grizy?”

“In a week--oh, what shall I do without you, my bonnie man?”

“But I shall come to see you often, shan’t I? Papa won’t want me all the time, and you will ask him to let me come often, won’t you, Aunty?”

Lady Grizell stroked his hair tenderly, but she could not deceive even a child, and she shook her head.

“I’ll ask him, my dear, you may be sure. But I fear he may not be able to grant my request. Unfortunately, there is a subject upon which your father and I cannot agree, and he is vexed with me, and naturally wants his son for himself.”

“Is it that ‘suicide woman’ that is the subject?” asked Geordie breathlessly.

Lady Grizell gazed at him in thunderstruck amazement. “What _do_ you mean, child?”

“Well, whenever I was out walking with Uncle Lochmaben and Uncle Fane, I kept hearing little bits about ‘that woman’ and ‘suicide’ and papa, so I thought it might be that. I didn’t listen, truly--I couldn’t help hearing, and I didn’t understand.”

Lady Grizell put back the hair from the boy’s square forehead and looked into his honest grey eyes, then she spoke:

“Geordie dear, there are always things in life that we cannot understand, and things we cannot help; what we must do is to be as brave and honest as we can, and leave the rest to God. Your dear father is very lonely and he has recently married a lady who will be your new mamma. You must try to be as good and courteous and obedient to her as you are to me--and Geordie, son! don’t forget me!”

Here Lady Grizell broke down, and Geordie thought it no shame to cry too.

That week was terribly short. At the end of it Geordie went out into the draughty world again, while Lady Grizell went about saying like her more famous namesake: “Oh, werena my heart lecht I wad dee!”

Geordie could never be induced to speak much about the three months that followed. During those three months Lady Grizell grew thin and pale.

One morning she received a letter from the Hon. Donald in which he informed her that he and his wife had made arrangements for Geordie to go in September to an excellent school in the Forest of Dean where boys received board and education for the modest sum of twenty guineas a year.

Lady Grizell gave a little cry, and stared at the letter in her hand as though it had been some horrible phantom. Then she flew downstairs and into her husband’s study, where he sat writing a report for the Society of Agriculture.

“Augustus, read this! I am going to see Donald to-day, and tell him that I will receive his wife--I can’t let my pride stand in the way of that child any longer--read this!” and she thrust the letter under her husband’s aristocratic nose.

Mr. Fane put on his glasses, read the letter, took them off, folded them up and put them in the case--a methodical, deliberate man, Mr. Fane--then he said slowly:

“Have you considered what people will say? Have you forgotten that everybody knows her most unpleasant story?”

“I cannot help it. People must say what they please. I will not have Geordie go to such a school, even if I have to receive half the fallen women in London to prevent it. If Lochmaben never marries, Geordie will be head of our house.”

Lady Grizell spoke with passionate excitement. Mr. Fane felt that he hardly knew his wife, always so gentle and dignified, in this woman with the pale face and blazing eyes. He expostulated forcibly and at his usual length. If he was somewhat less conscious of the dignity of the House of Cochran than was Lady Grizell, he was keenly alive to the dignity of the House of Fane. But all his exhortation, all his arguments were of no avail. He could not shake Lady Grizell’s determination; and the afternoon saw her speeding in the express toward the interview with her brother.

The journey was not long, but the August day was hot. Lady Grizell felt faint and shaken when the omnibus (she had been too excited to wire for a cab) deposited her at her brother’s door.

The parlormaid looked curiously at the tall lady who asked so pointedly for _Mr._ Cochran, and showed her into the study. No ladies ever called, and here was an undoubted lady--“my lady” to boot--as the sharp girl discovered on reading the card.

She carried the card to her master in the garden, where he was sitting with his wife. He flushed as he read it, and tossed it to the woman beside him, exclaiming: “Grizie, by Jove!--can she be coming round?”

The woman caught the card, reading the name aloud in an eager, excited voice, then said, a little bitterly: “She only asks for _you_.”

“She wouldn’t come here to insult you. I know Grizie. It’s something about the boy, and she wants to be friends. You wait here till I send for you.”

He strode across the lawn, and entered the study by the open French window.

“Now this is really good of you, Grizie; Geordie will be in raptures--it’s kind and friendly!”

Lady Grizell was pale, and the cheek she turned to his kiss was very cold. She clasped her hands to stay their trembling and began in a low voice:

“Donald! you said that if I would receive Mrs. Cochran----”

“Nelly, you mean!” interrupted the Hon. Donald.

“If I would receive your wife--you would let me keep Geordie. If I promise to ask you both to the Towers--twice every year--will you let me have him, instead of sending him to that horrible school--will you, Donald? I’ll educate him, he shall cost you nothing--I have a little money, you know, and Augustus is very generous to me--will you let him come to me?”

Donald looked rather shamefaced as he muttered: “Isn’t it rather like selling the little chap?”

“But it’s selling him into happiness, Donald: he is such a dear lad, and he loves me, and ... it isn’t very easy for me!”

There was silence for two minutes. Lady Grizell’s heart thumped in her ears.

Overhead there was a sudden patter of little feet, and Lady Grizell sank upon her knees, sobbing: “Oh, give him to me, Donald, for God’s sake, give him to me! I cannot bear it!”

Donald’s eyes were red as he raised his sister and gently put her in an easy chair. He patted her shoulder soothingly, and his voice trembled as he said: “Look here, Grizie! you shall have the boy. There shall be no bargain between us; I never meant to send him to that beastly school. I tried it on to fetch you--as it has--but I can’t play the game so low down as that--I don’t set up for a model parent. I know you’ll bring him up better than we should. You can leave this house without meeting my wife if you prefer it, and I’ll send Geordie to you to-morrow. But, if you like to do a kind and generous thing to a woman who has known little but unkindness, and shame, and sorrow all her life, and who is a good and loyal wife to me, then I say, God bless you, Grizell Cochran, for you are a good woman!”

Donald was not given to the making of long speeches. His voice broke many times in the course of this, and the tears were running down Lady Grizell’s pale cheeks. She held out her hands to him, saying simply, “Take me to her!” and the two tall figures went out across the grass together.

A CLEAN PACK

Basil sat alone in the schoolroom, although it was past bedtime. Nurse, like everybody else, had apparently forgotten him, but Basil, absorbed in his own thoughts, sat on by the dying fire. There were always fires in his grandfather’s house whenever it was in the least cold, and that August it was very cold, so cold that grandfather, getting wet through out shooting, somehow got a chill, was ill only three days, and now was lying dead in the big bedroom over Basil’s head. So Basil had a good deal to think about. It was not that death was new to him--from his earliest infancy it had been impressed upon him that his father was dead--but that he could not by any stretch of fancy imagine what life would be without grandfather--grandfather who was lying with his beautiful hands crossed on his breast in that long, light-colored wooden box upstairs.

Basil resented the fact that grandfather’s coffin should be made of light wood. It seemed incongruous and impertinent, somehow, that anything used by grandfather should be otherwise than old--old and rich-colored and seemly; and the child found himself wondering whether grandfather was annoyed. There were many things in that bedroom calculated to annoy him, Basil reflected. In the first place, when mother took him in that afternoon that he might lay the asters gathered in his own garden at his grandfather’s feet, he remarked that all the blinds were down, and grandfather would have hated that, and the windows were shut, and there was a heavy scent of hot-house flowers. “I fear he’s very uncomfortable,” whispered Basil to himself. “He’ll be glad to get to heaven out of that stuffy room.” For grandfather had loved air as much as he liked fires.

The horizon of Basil’s experience was somewhat limited. It consisted of mother and grandfather, and of “other grandfather,” who lived at Altringham in Cheshire, and was mother’s father.

Every year Basil and mother went to Altringham for six weeks, and life there was so utterly different from what it was with grandfather that Basil never ceased to puzzle over it and to wonder why mother always cried when she came away, and why “other grandfather” always said: “You moost bear with the old heathen, Sophia; he’s been generous enough as regards mooney, and, remember, you can be _in_ the world but not of it.”

There were aunts, too, at Altringham, who made a great fuss of Basil for about three days, and then seemed to find him greatly in the way; while “other grandfather” had a most embarrassing way of suddenly demanding: “Well, yoong mon, and how’s the ciphering?”

Basil loved his mother very dearly, but he could have wished that she took life a little less sadly. A gentle melancholy characterized her every thought, and the child felt rather than understood that her mental attitude toward her father-in-law was that of a deprecating disapproval. Grandfather felt it too, for only a week before Basil had heard him say to one of the gentlemen who were tramping the stubble with him: “We shall never understand each other, my poor little daughter and I, though we’ve lived together seven years. She’s as good as gold, and I don’t think I’m particularly _difficile_, but there it is--we can never get the same focus for anything.” Basil was walking just behind with the keeper, who blushed up to the roots of his hair as he called out: “I’m here, you know, grandfather.”

Grandfather pulled up short and turned to look at Basil. Then he gave a queer little laugh. “There’s not much Manchester about the boy,” he said, and tramped on.

They all went to London from November till the end of March, and there grandfather generally dined at his club and played whist afterward, while Basil’s mother had supper with him or had friends of her own to dinner, just as she liked. Grandfather could not get on without his rubber. Even in the country, three times a week three broughams drove solemnly up the drive, and three old gentlemen descended therefrom to dine with grandfather and play whist afterwards.

In London on fine nights he walked to his club, and Basil used to watch him go from the nursery window just as he was going to bed; and at the lamp grandfather always stopped and looked up at the curly head pressed against the pane, then he would lift his hat with a grand sweep and walk on, while Basil hugged himself with the delighted conviction that _his_ grandfather was the very handsomest old gentleman in the whole world. And sometimes grandfather would crush his hat over his eyes, while a spasm of pain crossed his clean-shaven, stately old face, and he’d whisper to himself: “My God! how like he is to my poor boy.”

* * * * *

Among the very first things that Basil ever learned were the different “suits” in cards. Grandfather taught him and gave him a shilling for every suit as he knew them and the values of the cards, as in whist. Then he taught Basil whist, playing double-dummy, and explaining as they went along: “I wish you, Basil, to play whist as a gentleman should, carefully and with due consideration, with the intelligence and respect that the game deserves, not like a counter jumper for penny points.”

It must be confessed that Basil took to this instruction much more kindly than to that included under the heading of “ciphering,” or even of reading and spelling. At six he could play a “fair hand,” at which he was somewhat puffed up, the only drawback being that mother did not seem to take any interest in his achievements. She never played herself, though grandfather impressed upon her that she was preparing for herself an unhappy old age; in fact, she did not seem to like cards at all.

One very wet Sunday grandfather had arranged four “hands” on the library table, and was proceeding to play a game out of “Cavendish” for Basil’s instruction, when his mother suddenly came into the room. She gave one quick glance at the table with the cards, and came forward and stood beside it, saying very quietly: “I do not wish Basil to play cards on Sunday.”

Grandfather had risen to his feet as Basil’s mother entered the room. It would never have occurred to him to sit down while his daughter-in-law was standing; he swept the cards into a little heap with one swift movement of his beautiful white old hands, and said, with a grave little bow:

“I apologize, my dear. I had for the moment forgotten your--er--convictions on this question. What _may_ we play at?--for I’ve made a bet with myself to keep Basil amused till teatime, and I don’t want to lose it.” Then, turning to Basil--who, conscious of the thunder in the air, felt very unhappy indeed: “It’s not your fault, my boy. You’ve not been naughty. It’s I who was forgetful.”

Basil’s mother looked from one to the other a little piteously. She had no weapons wherewith to meet her father-in-law’s smiling courtesy. She might have liked him better had he sometimes been rude. “Other grandfather” was not uniformly courteous.

On Sunday mornings they all three went to church together, and grandfather sat under the big carved tablet which set forth how Basil’s father had died at Ulundi, “aged twenty-nine.” Grandfather always carried his daughter-in-law’s prayer book for her up to the house, discussed the sermon with her, and was, as he himself would have put it, “vastly agreeable.”

* * * * *

A piece of coal fell out on the hearth and startled Basil out of his reverie. He had evidently come to some decision, for he nodded his head emphatically, muttering: “I’d better do it. I’m sure he’ll be bored if I don’t, and I mayn’t get another chance.”

The room was quite dark but for the flickering firelight, which had brightened since that big piece of coal fell apart. Basil went to his own special cupboard and took from it a pack of cards, which his grandfather had given him only last week. Grandfather never used the same pack on two consecutive evenings, and gave one to Basil nearly every week with the instruction: “Never use dirty cards, even to build castles with.” The child had never played with the ones he held in his hands, and his big grey eyes filled with tears as he wrapped them up in a leaf torn out of his copy-book. Then, laboriously, for Basil was no scribe, he wrote on the packet, a proceeding which took a considerable time. He gave a sob as he kissed his message, but there was no time to be lost. Slipping off his shoes, he opened the door very softly, raced across the hall and up the stairs. The staircase was quite dark, for Chapman had forgotten to light the lamps.

When he reached his grandfather’s bedroom door he paused with his hand on the handle. His heart was pounding in his ears, and for a full minute he could not hear whether all was quiet in the room or not. Opening the door very softly, and as softly shutting it after him, he ran across the room and pulled up the blind of the big window that faced the bed. The moon came out from behind a bank of cloud, as if to aid him in his task, and shone full on that strange last couch at the foot of the bed in which grandfather lay so still under his coverlet of flowers. Basil pushed at the heavy window, but it was fastened far out of his reach, and he could not let in the fresh night air that grandfather loved. As his eyes grew accustomed to the lighter room, he came and stood by that light-colored box that he hated so, lifted the white cloth covering his grandfather’s face, and looked at him long and earnestly.

Basil had very vague notions as to what heaven was like; but, on reviewing all that he had heard of it, he came to the conclusion that if there was no whist there grandfather would be dull, and he had often heard him say: “There’s only one thing that I dread, and that’s boredom.” So Basil had decided that at all costs such a contingency must be avoided, and grandfather must teach the angels to play whist. “They can p’obably make more cards when they’ve seen them,” said Basil to himself, and pushed his little packet underneath the folded hands, kissed them, and turned to go as softly as he had come.

But the door opened at that moment, and his mother, candle in hand, stood on the threshold gazing at the little figure standing full in the strand of moonlight thrown across the carpet.

“What are you doing here, Basil?” she asked breathlessly.

“I came to give something to grandfather. Oh, don’t take it away from him!”

The passionate distress in the child’s voice moved her.

“I will take nothing away from him that you wish to give him. But what is it? Is it flowers?”

“No, mother, it is not flowers.”

She came into the room, closing the door after her.

“I must see what it is,” she said very gently.

Basil stood where he was as though turned to stone. Would she take it away--or would she put it back? He could not see her, for he stood with his back to her, and seemed incapable of turning round. His mother, noting the disarrangement of the flowers, drew out the little packet, and, holding her candle close, read the inscription in the large uncertain writing:

“DEAR GRANDFATHER,

“I’m sory it’s not a cleane pak, but I don’t know where they are.

“Your loving boy, “BASIL.”

AN IRON SEAT

He sat at one end of the seat, she at the other, and the seat was on the cliffs overlooking the sea at Wolsuth on the Suffolk coast. They say that if your eyes were strong enough you could see the coast of Holland; but even with telescopes no one has yet succeeded in doing that.

At first he hardly noticed her--she was so small and still and read her book so assiduously; but she could have passed a searching examination as to his appearance, for she had studied it carefully. She would have told you that he was tall, and thin, and dark, and “rather old”; that his beard was grey, though his hair was black and decidedly thin on the top; that his spectacles had gold rims and the eyes behind them were very kind; that his manner struck you as extremely grave and decorous: what impressed her most, however, was that big, dull, paper-covered book he was always reading. She was sure it was dull, for _she_ couldn’t read a word of it; it was in German--she knew that much, and she had tried to pronounce the title to herself in bed at night, but never came near it at all, for it looked like this: “Mendelejeef Chemie,” and it would take a very sharp little girl of ten to make much out of that.

No one ever came to sit between them on that iron seat; it was far from the esplanade, and overlooked a lonely part of the beach where there were no “entertainments.” When they had sat there for several days, the man who read “Mendelejeef Chemie” looked up suddenly to find that his companion at the other end of the seat was wiping her eyes with the absurdest little red-bordered handkerchief. She held her book in one hand--a somewhat large and heavy book for such a little hand--and wiped her eyes with the other, and yet the man was sure that she was not unhappy, for her thin brown cheeks were flushed, and though her mouth was tremulous it wore a proud and happy smile. He was devoured by curiosity. What book could it be that had the power to move a little girl in so complex a fashion?

He shifted down the seat toward her; but she was so absorbed in what she was reading that she never looked his way, and he found that the book she held in her hand was “From London to Ladysmith via Pretoria.”

Suddenly she looked round and saw him. Quite simply and naturally she offered him a share of her book, saying enthusiastically:

“Isn’t it splendid? And my daddie was there through it all.”

“Are you ready?” she said presently.

The man nodded, and she turned the page. Then, with tears still shining on her cheeks, she began to read aloud:

“It was a procession of lions. And presently, when the two battalions of Devons met--both full of honors--and old friends breaking from the ranks gripped each other’s hands and shouted, everyone was carried away, and I waved my feathered hat and cheered and cheered until I could cheer no longer for joy that I had lived to see the day....”

Here she stopped, and, turning her radiant face to the man beside her, cried:

“Aren’t you glad you weren’t born in any other century? Isn’t it a good thing to be in the world when there are such splendid things happening?”

The man smiled down at her, saying heartily: “It is, indeed!” And straightway they were friends.

Ever afterward they sat in the middle of the seat quite close together, and although Winny--that was her name--continued to read “From London to Ladysmith,” she read it aloud, and “Mendelejeef” lay neglected on the far end of the seat.

They talked a great deal about the war, and the man found that this little girl knew all about it, from the battle of Glencoe to the relief of Ladybrand, the name and whereabouts of every regiment, the result of every single engagement big or little.

He learned that last year her father had been home on long leave and had brought them all to Wolsuth, “and oh! we did have a lovely time!” but that this year mother couldn’t afford it, “War risks are so expensive, you know,” that she--Winny--had been silly enough to get influenza in July, and an aunt had consented to let her come with her own family.

“Mother and the boys--there’s three boys younger than me: I’m the eldest--have got to stay at home this year. I’m so sorry, though I’d far rather be with them, only I’ve _got_ to get strong. Daddie said so in his last letter.”

The man gathered that her aunt and cousins were not altogether _simpatica_, though Winny never said so; still, every day she came and sat on the iron seat after her bath and talked of her book, for which she had unbounded admiration, and of her own small affairs. Being an excellent listener, the man found himself well amused, for he was one of those people who keep the best part of themselves for old friends and little children, and are always quite misunderstood and unappreciated by casual acquaintances, which lack of appreciation doesn’t trouble them in the least.

He learned that one of the “boys” was going into the Royal Engineers, “because there you can live on your pay from the first if you’re careful,” another into the Artillery, “and we may spare one for the Navy.”

“And what are you going to be?” he asked one day, after they had exhaustively discussed the futures of the three boys.

“Oh, I’m going to be a mother,” she replied, with immense decision. “You see, you have such a lot of people to take care of you and love you, if you’re a mother.”

“But you have to take care of them first, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, just at first--but afterwards---- You should just see the care we take of mother, daddie and all.”

The man looked out to sea and tried to picture the eager little figure at his side as a large comfortable mother of many children. He tried so hard that he forgot to answer her last remark, and she asked anxiously:

“Don’t you think it’s a good thing to be?”

“Excellent!” he answered heartily. “It is one of the oldest and most honorable professions; mothers are people we can in nowise ever do without.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Winny, in a satisfied voice, “and that’s what I’m going to be; I made up my mind years ago.”

* * * * *

One day as he arrived at their trysting place he discovered that Winny was crying in right down earnest, and not for joy that Ladysmith had been relieved. The little red-bordered handkerchief was screwed up into a tight, wet ball, and the small figure in blue serge looked very woebegone indeed. She had taken off her fisherman’s cowl, and cast it on the ground beside her; and when she saw her friend, instead of waving him a gay welcome as he came up, she shook her curly brown hair round her cheeks to hide her face.

All this was so unlike Winny that the man immediately reflected with dismay that he had not read the morning paper at all carefully. It was possible that some disaster had happened to her father. In those days we were apt to trace all sorrows to South Africa.

“No bad news, I hope?” he said in rather a hesitating way as he came up.

Winny shook her head till her face was entirely hidden by her hair; but she did not answer otherwise.

“You may as well tell me what’s the matter,” said the man; “it may not be past mending.”

Now there was something about this man that inspired confidence; moreover, he offered Winny his own handkerchief, which was large and clean and comforting. So she accepted it, mopped her wet face, shook back her hair, and began: “I don’t bathe with the others, you know.” Here she paused so long that the man said, “Well?” though it was against his principles to interrupt anybody’s narrative.

“I bathe at Herrington’s machines,” she continued, “where we always bathed last year--daddie too--right far away at the end of the beach. My aunt and cousins bathe where the niggers are, and the concert, and such crowds of people you have to wait ever so long for a machine. So I asked if I might bathe with Herrington like last year, for he’s such a nice man, and he takes such care of me, and daddie liked him awfully. There’s been Herringtons in Wolsuth since 1400!”

Winny paused after this announcement, evidently expecting comment of some sort.

“That’s a long record,” said the man, rising to the occasion. “And what was Mr. Herrington before he took to keeping bathing-machines?”

“He was mate on a schooner, and one of his sons is a captain of a merchantman; he’s raised himself tremendously. Then there’s two sons who help Herrington, and are fishermen in winter; and Mrs. Herrington does washing. Oh, they’re such a nice family!” she exclaimed ecstatically.

The man looked out to sea, wondering what on earth all this had to do with her tears. But he was a patient person; so he waited.

“I go home to-morrow,” she continued, “and I’ve had one of Herrington’s bathing-machines ever since I came--going on for three weeks now--and he’s taken me out in the boat and let me dive and swim, and been so kind and jolly, and to-day, when I asked my aunt for the money to pay him--it’s fourpence each time--she wouldn’t give it me, and laughed and said that it wouldn’t hurt him to take me for nothing this year, he made such a lot out of us last. Think of it!” she exclaimed, clasping and unclasping her hands. “It’s his living! It’s like taking a leg of mutton from a butcher for nothing. I told auntie that mother would send it to her if she’d let me have it, but she only laughed and said it was nonsense. Of course mother will send it to _him_, but that’s not the same. He’ll have to think me shabby and ungrateful for nearly three days, for I can’t go and say good-bye to him when I’ve nothing to give him. I’ve only sixpence. Isn’t it dreadful?”

The man reflected that there were people who had no objection to accepting legs of mutton from their butchers, who rather resented the fact that these same butchers ventured on occasion to send in a bill; but evidently the soldier who had been shut up in Ladysmith brought up his children with a different view of their obligations. He was very sorry for Winny, but he didn’t dare to offer her the money. There are people to whom one cannot offer money.

“Can’t you tell Herrington how you are placed?” he feebly suggested.

“Of course not,” the child answered scornfully. “He’d say I was ‘more’n welcome’ to my baths, and that it didn’t matter a pin. It’s just because I know he’d gladly give me my baths that it hurts so. It’s his _living_,” she repeated. As she spoke she stood up and stuffed the little wet handkerchief into her pocket.

The man was sitting with his hands thrust deep into his own, as men will when perplexed or troubled. Winny stood with her back to him, gazing sorrowfully at Herrington’s bathing-machines on the distant beach.

The little pocket gaped, and the man succumbed to temptation. Very gingerly he dropped a crown piece into the opening which displayed the drenched handkerchief. Then he stood up. “I’m going by the afternoon train,” he said, “so I fear I must say good-bye. But I hope we shall meet again some day.”

“I hope so,” sighed Winny, as she held up her face to be kissed, and wondered why he seemed in such a hurry and never even asked her to walk back with him.

LÉON

I would have our children taught, so far as teaching can go, to love and admire France, that glorious nation which has done so much and suffered so much for humanity.--WILLIAM ARCHER, 1898.

We did not believe it possible that a boy of nine could wear high-buttoned boots, a pale blue sash, and long hair like a girl’s, and yet possess a character unaffected by these deplorable externals. That, in addition to this, he should be French, speaking that “_nimini pimini_” language with perfect ease; and, in further proof of his mental slipperiness, speak English almost equally well--but for a curious roll and rumble of the letter “r” in the back of the throat--was another serious stumbling-block in the way of our liking. It was not natural. Had he been puny, or sallow, or in any way physically “Frenchy” as we supposed it, we should have found him less bewildering. But he was sturdy, ruddy, and fair-haired; tall for his age, and of a frank cheerfulness that was rather engaging. Absolutely unashamed of his inferior nationality, unconscious, seemingly, of those elongated buttoned boots, he would shake back his tawny hair and look you squarely in the face with big blue eyes that smiled. He didn’t look a “Molly,” somehow, in spite of his hair; but we children were convinced that he “must be one, really,” and that what the twins called his “false French smile” was a sort of cloak for the innate cowardice of his disposition.

What induced Aunt Alice to marry a French officer, we could not think! That she and her husband were what mother called “devoted to one another” seemed to us an insufficient explanation. Not only did she marry this foreigner and desert her native land, but she became a Roman Catholic--nurse minded this most and called her a Papist--and she seemed perfectly happy in her exile. She was supposed to be a very beautiful person, but what most impressed us during her rare and brief visits was the quality and quantity of the sweets she brought us; sweets in gorgeous boxes which bore the mystic device _Gouache_. France was, we were convinced, a poor sort of place, but exception must be made in favor of her sweets.

In reflecting upon our general attitude toward France and the French at this time, I am reminded of the man who scornfully held up to ridicule a country so far left to itself as to speak of bread as “Pain.”

“But,” suggested a more tolerant friend, “we call it bread.”

“Ah! it _is_ bread, you see.”

But to return to Léon. His father’s regiment had been ordered to some place in Africa, where they could not take Léon, and as Aunt Alice was going with her husband for at least six months, Léon was sent to us.

Eric and I decided that it was a bore. Jennie, who is queer and contradictory at times, said nothing. She adores Aunt Alice. The twins, who had just been doing the Battle of Waterloo in history, and were rampantly patriotic, expressed grave doubts as to whether it was quite loyal to Queen Victoria to receive Léon at all.

“No one likes to go about all day with a mountebank!” grumbled Eric.

“If only he’d had fewer clothes!” I sighed.

But even the most sanguine destroyer of garments could hardly hope that Léon would wear out the quantity of which he was possessed in less than six months.

The twins and Léon came toward us from the tennis lawn; the twins red and triumphant, Léon red and evidently perturbed. Jennie followed, lingering in the rear; she is lame, not a cripple, you know, but noticeably lame.

“England won!” shouted the twins. They always seemed to speak in a sort of chorus.

Léon sat down on the bank beside us and shook his hair back from his face. He evidently intended to appeal to Eric about something; but just as he opened his mouth to speak, he noticed Jennie.

“Come, my cousin,” he called, patting the bank beside him; “we shall have good fortune another time!”

“England won!” chanted the twins again. “We always do!”

“That is not so!” cried Léon angrily. “Why do you speak to despise my country? If you were in France, my guest, we speak not forever of Hastings?”

“Oh, that was ages ago,” said Eric judicially; “but you were not fairly matched.”

“Léon had me, you see,” put in Jennie.

“Not so, my cousin, your play was beautiful,” said Léon, and he took her hand and patted it. He had queer affectionate ways, and never seemed to mind showing that he liked people. “We beat them next time.”

“I wonder what makes Léon so chummy with Jennie?” I asked Eric half an hour later, as we rested after a hot “single.” “Do you think it’s because she’s the only one of us that couldn’t lick him?”

Eric raised himself on his elbows and stared at me.

“Well, of all the chuckle-headed ideas I ever heard! Really, for downright wrong-headedness, give me the average girl. Can’t you see, you silly, that it’s because she’s lame, and the little beggar’s sorry for her? He’s a good-hearted kid if he is Frenchy, and as to licking, just you wait----”

I felt very much snubbed and rather aggrieved, for only that afternoon Eric had grumbled about Léon’s clothes and called him a “mountebank.” Boys seem to keep things separate somehow, in a curious way.

One day Jennie and Léon had been sent to the Home Farm to fetch eggs. It was really the twins’ turn, but they hid so that they shouldn’t have to go, for it was a very hot afternoon. Eric and I went for a stroll through the fields in the same direction to look at a nest of young yellow-hammers in the big paddock. There’s a sort of hill in the big paddock, and we saw Jennie and Léon coming down the cart road from the farm; they went by the road because Jennie hates climbing gates--it hurts her. Léon was carrying the eggs and they came very slowly, because Jennie was tired. Toward them came one, Fred Oram, a village boy, not a nice boy at all. He hates us because the head groom gave him a thrashing when he caught him throwing stones at the thoroughbreds.

Fred Oram began to limp like Jennie, and called out:

“’Ullo, Frenchy! Shall I plait your ’air for ya?”

Eric, who happened to be at home because two-thirds of his school got measles and mother was nervous, began to run, and I ran after him; but we were a good way from the gate, and the hedge is too thick to get through. We ran alongside of it, and heard Léon say in his funny, stilted English:

“Please hold the eggs, my cousin!” Then, evidently to Fred: “How dare you to mock at my cousin and insult me?”

As we reached the gate Eric pulled me back.

“Let the kid alone!” he whispered. “He’s not afraid.”

It reminded me of old King Edward, and “Let the boy win his spurs.”

None of the three saw us. Jennie was standing on the grass at the side, looking very red and excited; Fred Oram was pulling Léon’s hair and dancing round him, making derisive remarks. Léon wrenched his head away, and with a bound stood in the middle of the road, facing his enemy. In spite of his buttony boots--in spite of his blue sash and his long hair--Fred seemed rather afraid of him, for Léon looked, and was, furious.

For about half a minute they stood looking at each other. Léon shouted, “Lâche! Lâche!”--he forgot to speak English, he was so excited--then, “En garde!”--and there seemed a thousand _r_s in that _garde_--and he sprang on Fred, who went down like a ninepin.

Eric vaulted the gate, yelling excitedly, “By Jove! the kid can box.”

Jennie laid down the eggs on the grass, and hid her face in her hands. But she looked through her fingers. I saw her.

In another minute Fred was upon his feet. He was bigger than any of us--even Eric. Léon went at him again, calling out what we supposed to be battle-cries in French, and I do believe that the French alarmed Fred as much as the pommelling. Anyway, down he went again, with Léon on the top of him.

“Time!” shouted Eric, picking upon Léon and wiping his face, which was hard to see, for his nose was bleeding and one eye was swollen.

But Fred got up and began to walk away, remarking with surly dignity:

“I don’t care for to fight with no French tiger-cats.”

Léon broke away from Eric, and ran after his late foe. Fred stopped and took up a defensive attitude, but Léon went up with his grubby right hand held out.

“Shake!” he cried. “We have foughten; it is over. Shake with me?” And Fred shook. “That was quite English?” asked Léon anxiously, as he came back to be cleaned.

Eric looked at him very kindly. “It was all right,” he said; and Léon squared his shoulders with modest pride.

“I never saw such a nose to bleed!” exclaimed Eric, ten minutes later, as the last available handkerchief had been reduced to a crimson, pulpy ball. “There’s one sash done for, anyway. I suppose the suit’ll wash, which is a pity.”

On the way home Eric carried the eggs, and Jennie walked hand in hand with Léon. They rather lagged behind, and presently I heard Jennie whisper--I have very sharp ears:

“Léon, am I so very lame?”

“My little cousin, I do not see you lame at all, except when you are fatigued; and we all of us walk badly when we are fatigued;” and he stopped and kissed Jennie on both cheeks.

I had often heard that the French say what is pleasant at the expense of what is true; but just then I wondered if it was always such a bad thing, for when I turned and looked at my little sister her face was perfectly radiant, and she was hardly limping at all.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Eric, when Léon had been carried off by the authorities to have keys put down his back, his eye bathed, and to be generally cleaned up; and we were all five sitting in solemn conclave on the largest wheelbarrow--the twins had joined us, much excited by recent events--“I’ll tell you what it is: you kids must drop that Waterloo business, and we must none of us mind his queer clothes any more. He’s a ripping good sort, and, after all, he can’t help being French!”

“And he wouldn’t help it if he could!” cried Jennie. “France is a great country.”

For a wonder nobody contradicted her. We were all busy readjusting preconceived ideas.

THE OLD RELIGION

God is above the sphere of our esteem, And is the best known, not defining Him.

ROBERT HERRICK.

It’s a far cry from a busy street in Leith to a village in the loveliest part of wooded Gloucestershire; but, at eight years old, vicissitude is borne with a calm philosophy seemingly unattainable in later years, and Maggie McClachlan expressed no great wonder at her new environment, rather to the disappointment of her worthy aunt, who was fully aware of her own extreme good nature and condescension in “taking the lassie for the whole summer, and paying her fare _both_ ways.”

Measles followed by an obstinate “hoast,” was the commonplace cause that transported Maggie to this strange new country. The long, roaring, whirring, bewildering journey--in which she was passed by a kindly official into the varied guardianship of such passengers as were going her way--left her dazed and puzzled, but not unhappy. Her childless uncle and aunt were kind, and there were the woods.

The first thing that struck Maggie about these woods was the singular absence of bits of paper; neither did she come upon any broken bottles in the course of her wanderings. This lack seemed even more wonderful to her than the presence of innumerable foxgloves. She had spent an occasional afternoon in the woods at Aberdour, but always in a crowd. Here the spaciousness and peace attracted her, even as it filled her little soul with an awe that was a thing apart from fear. If in after years Maggie should read what Mr. Henry James has written of “a great, good Place,” she will understand it better than most people.

For the first week she met with no adventures. Her aunt, a bustling, busy, thrifty Scotswoman, worked a great deal up at the big house; her uncle assisted in the manufacture of the “superfine broadcloth” for which the little village used to be famous, and Maggie was left to do much as she pleased. Her cough left her, and the color came into her pale cheeks, and the sun set his mark upon the bridge of her nose in the shape of a band of the dearest little brown freckles.

Hitherto she had not gone far into the woods, but with returning health came a spirit of adventure. One afternoon she wandered on and on, singing softly to herself a ditty relating that “Kitty Bairdie had a coo,” going on to describe minutely, and at length, the various animals owned by this worthy lady, and concluding each verse with the cheerful injunction, “Dance, Kitty Bairdie!”

Everything seemed to want to sing that afternoon, and did sing, too, lustily and long. Unconsciously Maggie raised her voice till the final “Dance, Kitty Bairdie!” had quite a rollicking sound, and she found herself doing a sort of double shuffle among the ground ivy and foxgloves.

It is not easy to dance in and out of ground ivy and brambles, and Maggie paused for breath, only to catch it again in a perfect agony of fear, as, not five yards from her, she beheld a big white figure, apparently just risen out of the ground.

Paralyzed with terror, she stood staring at the vision. A tall man it was--she was sure it was a man, and no ghost--clad in curious flowing robes of soft whitey flannel, falling to his feet in innumerable folds, while in his hand he held what Maggie took to be some instrument of torture. It was a butterfly net; but Maggie did not know this, for people did not catch many butterflies in Commercial Street, Leith.

The whole dreadful truth flashed upon her. This was one of the monks! Had she not read in a guide to the neighborhood that “The Dominican Priory of the Annunciation is a large and handsome building; here candidates for the priesthood pursue a course of study in divinity and philosophy. It is under the government of a Prior.” This, then, must be one of the priests, and having been very well brought up in the strictest sect of the Free Kirk, she was sure that if only he succeeded in “catching her,” she would be put to unspeakable tortures, or forced to recant her faith.

Had she not with her own eyes seen her mother hastily slam the door of their flat in the face of a woman wearing a queer head-dress and long cloak, who had come to beg for money?

“I’ll ha’e none o’ they Papishes here!” her mother exclaimed angrily, and then--for it was just before Maggie came south--“and you, Maggie, if you see ony o’ them when you’re wi’ your aunty, just turn and flee. I’m told there’s a whole clamjamfray o’ them there, an’ ye can never tell what they Jesuits will be at.”

So, having found her breath sufficiently to give a wild cry, Maggie turned and fled.

The queer white man, who, as she afterward remembered, looked astonished, called something after her. But Maggie’s heart was thumping in her ears to the exclusion of every other sound, and she ran blindly on till one treacherous little foot, more used to pavements than rough forest ground, gave under her with a horrid wrench, and she fell forward in a terrified little heap just as she reached a footpath leading she knew not whither.

There she lay shivering with pain and fear, with her eyes shut, for she heard the soft swish of long garments through the undergrowth. Then a shadow fell upon her, and she was lifted up into a pair of strong arms, while a voice that even her excited imagination could not construe as unkindly exclaimed:

“I do believe I frightened you, and I’m awfully sorry. I don’t suppose you ever saw such a funny frock before!”

There was something human and disarming about the “awfully” and “funny frock”; moreover, the owner of the voice did not hold her as though she were a captive. He sat down at the foot of the big tree whose gnarled roots had tripped Maggie up, and set her on his knee. Besides, the voluminous flannel garment had a most reassuring and workaday smell of soap. But she could not bring herself to open her eyes just yet. She screwed them and her courage up very tight, and whispered:

“I’ll no recant! Ye may burn me, but I’ll no recant!”

The big, queer man threw back his head and laughed, and his laugh was even more inspiring of confidence than his speaking voice. But he pulled himself up short in the very middle of his laugh to ask:

“I say, though, did you hurt yourself when you fell?”

Maggie opened her eyes the tiniest little bit, and for the first time saw this queer man’s face. It was a kind face, a handsome face, with large merry brown eyes and an exceedingly straight nose. His mouth was well cut and firm, and when he smiled as he did then, he showed two rows of admirably white and even teeth. And the good smell of soap was in no way deceptive, for there was about this queer man’s appearance a radiant cleanliness that was by no means merely physical. All this did Maggie gravely take in through half-shut eyes, and though the pain in her ankle was horrible, and her heart still danced a sort of breakdown against her ribs, she was no longer afraid--only very, very curious.

The queer tall man, looking down at the face resting against his arm, noticed that it was small and white, with long-lashed closed eyes set rather far apart, and that the little freckles looked pathetically prominent across the thin small nose; and even as Maggie was comforted by the good smell of clean flannel, so he recognized approvingly that he held in his arms a very clean little girl, even though her pinafore was patched and her shoes worn at the toes.

“Are you hurt, you poor mite?” he asked again.

For answer Maggie stuck out the painful foot, and behold! there was a big lump on the ankle, and it looked twice as big as the other one.

“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish!” cried the queer man. “You’ve sprained your ankle.”

As he spoke he set Maggie on the ground beside him very gently, and diving into the folds of his habit produced a large handkerchief, which he proceeded to tear into strips. Then, very gently and deftly, he bandaged up the poor swollen foot. By this time Maggie’s blue eyes were wide open, and as he stooped over her foot she found time to wonder why he wore such “a wee, wee roond cappie” on the back of his head. The pain was bad, but she tried hard not to flinch, and when it was all done and the bandage fastened with a little pebble brooch that she had worn at her neck, he said gaily:

“And now to carry you home, for that foot must have hot fomentations as soon as possible.”

Here, however, Maggie demurred. “I can walk fine,” she announced with great dignity, and tried; but it was no use--she couldn’t even stand, the pain was so bad.

So the “papist man” picked her up in his arms and set off toward the village.

Now, Maggie was just a little anxious at this, for she had wandered a good way into the park, and the path he took seemed quite unfamiliar.

With unprecedented courage she took hold of his chin with her hand and turned his face that she could see it.

“You’re sure you’re no takin’ me to your convent?” she asked gravely, as one who begs to know the worst at once. She still had fleeting visions of a dungeon followed by stake and faggots if she proved leal to the faith of her fathers.

“My dear child, they wouldn’t have you there. We don’t allow any women to come in--not even little girls--where I live.”

Maggie was silent for a minute; then, because every Scotsman, woman, or child loves an argument, and a theological argument best of all, she said slowly:

“But you worship a woman--images of a woman.”

“Ah, that’s rather different. I don’t think we’ll discuss that, because, you see, we look at everything from rather different points of view. How’s that poor foot of yours? You’re a regular Spartan to bear pain. Am I carrying you comfortably?”

Here was another facer for Maggie; he did not want “to discuss that.”

“I thought,” she said, “that you liked to burn everybody wha’ didna ’gree wi’ you--when ye got the chance,” she added.

“Oh, we’re not quite so black as we’re painted, and the world is big enough for us all nowadays, even though there are so many more people in it. Isn’t that a good thing?”

Maggie’s honest little heart yearned over this mistaken man, who carried little girls so tenderly, who seemed so kind and gay.

“I wish that you were no a papish,” she said softly, “for I’m sorely afraid that ye’ll no win Heaven if you worship graven images.”

The papist in question stopped short in the middle of the woodland path. The sunlight shining through the leaves painted fantastic patterns on his white draperies, and his eyes were very kind as he said gently:

“Don’t you think there will be even more room in Heaven than there is here for all sorts of people, provided they are kind, and brave, and honest, and do their best?”

And Maggie agreed that it might be possible, and was something comforted. By and by he asked her what the nice song was that she had been singing when he first met her, and she sang it again for him all through, till he, too, learned the tune; then she taught him the words, and although his Scotch left much to be desired, they made a very considerable noise between them, and the woods resounded to the strains of “Dance, Kitty Bairdie.”

* * * * *

“They monks seem different to the ordinary sort,” said Maggie that night, when, after much fomentation of the injured ankle, her aunt tucked her into bed.

“They’re just harmless haverals,” said her aunt indulgently; but Maggie “added a wee thing” onto her prayers, and whispered under the bed-clothes:

“Please make room for yon clean man at--any--rate.”

COMRADES

He was called Bunchy because, when a very little boy, his clothes _would_ bunch; the tiny petticoats were short for their width, and everything stuck out all round him like a frill.

Now that he was five, and wore breeches with four little buttons at the knee, the name still stuck to him, though it was no longer appropriate.

Bunchy was lonely.

If Pussy had been there it would have been very different; but she had been sent for quite suddenly to go and nurse dad, who had incontinently fallen ill with influenza just three days after mother (Bunchy always called her Pussy), Nana, and he had settled down for a fortnight’s holiday in a Cotteswold village.

It was a delightful village! It had a green with noisy geese upon it, a stream that gurgled and splashed and told fairy tales on sleepy September afternoons, and real woods surrounded it.

The cottage where Pussy had taken rooms was ever so pretty, and had a garden full of currant-bushes and celery.

For three days they had a lovely time. They sought giants in the woods, finding squirrels instead--which were prettier and only less exciting; they paddled their feet in the stream and caught minnows in a bottle; they pretended that the geese on the green were “Trolls,” and routed them with great slaughter; and they had found mushrooms before breakfast in a neighboring field.

Then Pussy had to go away, and for Bunchy the face of Nature was changed and clouded. Only Nana was left, and, although very kind, she was not an exciting companion. She knew nothing of giants, and seemed to care very little about Trolls. Moreover, on this particular morning she sat indoors making a cotton dress, and told Bunchy to “run and play in the garden like a good little boy, and not worry.” How can people, he thought, sit in a room and sew when all the beautiful out-of-doors seems clamoring for them to come and admire it?

However, he played in the garden for a while; but it was rather a small garden, and he grew tired of being a “third son” all by himself, with no one to admire him, so he came in again and climbed the steep little staircase. Finding the door of his mother’s room open, he went in. The dressing-table faced the door, and the first thing he saw was a pair of Pussy’s slippers standing in front of it. They had tall curly heels and buckles, such as she loved, and he remembered how, even with the tall heels, she did not reach to daddy’s shoulder. Somehow the sight of those slippers made him want her so dreadfully that he couldn’t stay in the room or in the garden. He went out into the road to walk and walk until he should come to Yorkshire, where daddy was laid up in the house of a bachelor friend with whom he had gone to shoot.

It was a very straight road, with a trim path by the side. By and by he came to some big gates. There was a little house inside them, all covered with purple clematis. The gate stood open, and as Bunchy was rather tired of the neat, straight road, he turned in, and went down a very broad gravel path. A little way inside the gate stood two little churches, one on each side of the path; beyond them, as far as Bunchy could see, it was all garden. There were flowering shrubs, and trees, and lots of grass, but it was unlike any garden he had ever seen before, for it was full of little mounds, and there were crosses, and slabs of stone, and marble angels dotted about among the mounds.

He turned down a side-path to investigate further in this strange garden. Nobody was in sight, and he wandered on by himself till, turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a man.

The man was dressed in black, and was sitting on a big stone slab--a very grew old slab; but close at his feet there was one of those curious mounds that puzzled Bunchy, and although this one had no grass upon it, you could hardly see the brown earth, for it was almost covered with scattered flowers--all of one kind.

Bunchy knew the flower by sight, for Pussy always wore a bit in her tam-o’-shanter when she came back from Scotland. The man did not move as Bunchy came up to him. The little boy regarded him with grave brown eyes, and something in his expression made Bunchy sure that the man was sorry.

Now, in Bunchy’s house, when people are sorry, Pussy talks about something else, and she does it so beautifully that they straightway forget their sorrow in the interest of her remarks. Bunchy felt that he ought to talk about something else to this man who looked so sorry; but how can you change a subject when no subject has been broached?

So the child went up to the sorry man and lifted his tam-o’-shanter, saying politely:

“Can you, please, tell me whose garden this is?”

Now it is an easy thing to take off a tam-o’-shanter, but when you try to put it on again it has a shabby way of curling up and sitting on the top of your head so insecurely that it topples off again directly. Pussy generally put Bunchy’s on again for him, and as she wasn’t there he left the matter alone and held it in his hand. The man started a little as Bunchy spoke, then he said slowly:

“I think it is God’s garden.”

Bunchy was not surprised. He felt that he knew God very well indeed. When you say prayers morning and evening, and know that there is a benevolent Somebody somewhere, who gives you your home, and your parents, and your little white bed, who likes you to be truthful and courteous, and to have clean hands at meals, it is quite natural to hear that this benevolent Person has a garden. All nice people ought to have gardens, so Bunchy said:

“Why does God have so many little rockeries in His garden? Why are there all these stones, and figures, and little mounds?”

“When people die they are buried in this garden, and their friends put up the crosses and stones----”

“And angels?” interrupted Bunchy admiringly; and as he looked up in the man’s face he noticed that his eyes were very kind, but that there were big black shadows round them, and their lids looked red and heavy.

“They put up the crosses, and stones, and angels to show where their friends are sleeping,” continued the tall man.

“Then it’s a funeral,” said Bunchy solemnly, and there was silence.

The man looked sorrier than ever, and Bunchy felt that now was the time to talk of something else, so he said:

“Can you tell me the nearest way to Yorkshire?”

The man seemed to give himself a shake, as though he were trying to wake up. He held out his hand to Bunchy, who placed his own in it confidingly; then he drew the child toward him and set him on his knee, asking:

“Why do you want to go to Yorkshire, old chap?”

“Because Pussy is there and I am so lonely,” Bunchy’s voice broke. “I went into her room, and I saw her shoes--the ones with the curly heels--and they made me want her so bad. They’re such tall heels.”

“She had such little feet,” murmured the man.

And Bunchy saw that he had gone to sleep again, so he sat very still for a minute or two, then he said mournfully:

“I’m so lonely!”

“So am I,” said the man. “My Pussy has gone to sleep. She is not coming back any more. She is sleeping under the heather here.”

Bunchy felt the man’s shoulder heave as he leant against him, but he said nothing. He felt that this was not a time to talk of something else; this sorryness was something beyond him; so he stroked the man’s face with a soft, sticky little hand, and the corners of his mouth drooped, but he did not feel quite so lonely.

The man seemed to like the feel of the little hand, for he bent his head, and, laying his cheek against Bunchy’s, said in a queer broken voice:

“How is it that you understand, you quaint little boy?”

“Sorry people always understand, and I feel to love you! Will you come to Yorkshire too? We should be such nice company.”

The man seemed to consider; then he said:

“It’s a long way. I’m afraid we shouldn’t get there by candle-light. You’d be very tired, and your shoes would be quite worn out.”

“Couldn’t you carry me a bit sometimes? Daddy does when I’m very tired.”

“Well, I might do that; but even then we shouldn’t get there to-day. How is it you are here all alone?”

The man seemed waking up, and waited quite anxiously for Bunchy’s answer.

“Well, you see, Nana was busy sewing, and I was lonely wivout Pussy, so I thought I’d walk to Yorkshire just to see her.”

“Suppose you come to lunch with me instead. It’s not so far as Yorkshire; still, it’s a good way, and we’ll go and tell Nana you’re coming, then she won’t be anxious. I don’t think Pussy would like you to walk all that way to-day. She’ll come back as soon as she can, you may be quite sure. Will you come? We’d be nice company, as you say.”

Bunchy looked up into the man’s eyes; then he slid off his knee, saying:

“I’ll come, thank you.”

The man got up off the big flat stone and held out his hand to Bunchy; but the little boy had knelt down by the mound all covered with heather. He stooped his curly head and kissed the flowers, saying in his sweet child’s voice:

“Good-bye, man’s Pussy! I hope you are happy in God’s garden.”

Then he took the man’s hand and they walked away together.

But the man had gone to sleep again, for he said:

“Nay! And though all men, seeing, had pity on me, she would not see.”

LITTLE SHOES

The Vicarage stands at the bottom of the market place, inside high walls and entered by wooden gates which generally stand open. Thus the passer-by can, for a moment, feast his eyes upon the perfect garden within.

The Vicaress was dead-heading her roses. She does this carefully every summer afternoon just after lunch. She had reached the bush of cabbage roses close to the gate, and her long lath basket lay on the drive beside her.

The market place was empty and still; nobody was shopping, for all the world rested preparatory to attending the Earl’s garden-party later on. Road and houses alike glared white in the hot June sunshine, while in contrast the Vicarage garden seemed doubly cool and shady. The yew hedge just inside the gates threw long green shadows on drive and lawn. Such a lawn it was! Plantains or dandelions were a thing unknown. Other lawns might get brown or worn in a drought, but the Vicarage lawn was watered every night by a specially constructed hose, that the beauty of its velvet turf might never vary. The Vicar was wont to excuse his exceeding pride in his lawn by quoting: “The green hath two pleasures: the one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the midst.” It was a sunken lawn surrounded by smoothly shaven banks and reached by broad stone steps.

The Vicar and like-minded clerics occasionally played bowls upon it; but to think of lawn tennis or croquet in connection with such grass were little short of sacrilege.

Presently the Vicaress became aware that a woman stood in the doorway, a woman carrying a baby, while a little girl of some three years clung to her skirts.

They stood gazing wistfully into the garden. As both mother and child wore red kerchiefs instead of hats, the Vicaress looked for the inevitable organ, but could not see it.

As she strongly disapproved of indiscriminate charity she shook her head at them, saying: “We never give at the door!”

Wearily shifting the baby to her other arm, the woman answered, with a touch of gentle dignity: “I have not ask the senora for money, but if she permit that we rest on the seat in the shade; we do no harm.”

Her voice was soft, and her English refined by its foreign accent. The Vicaress pointed to a rustic seat under the yews, saying: “You may certainly come in and rest.” Then she continued to deadhead the cabbage rose--it was an untidy bush that cabbage rose.

As the child toddled past her to climb into the seat the Vicaress noticed that the little feet made red marks on the gravel. The woman pointed to them with an apologetic shrug: “The little Zita she wear out her shoes, her feet bleed. The senora has a pair of old shoes of her children? Yes?”

The Vicaress shook her head, and a spasm of pain crossed her face. There were no children at the Vicarage now. But shoes? Yes! there were shoes. She bent down to look at the ragged little feet, and very gently took off Zita’s shoes. “Her feet must be washed,” she announced. “Will she come with me?”

Zita shook her curls out of her eyes, but on further inspection of the senora declined to budge. “Then I must bring the water here,” said the Vicaress, marching away to fetch it.

She was a tall, thin woman, with keen grey eyes and a lined, hard face, framed in hair that Nature had intended to break into fluffy rings of sunlight round her brow. But the Vicaress coerced her hair with some abomination that kept it flat and close to her head. It was only when a shaft of sunlight struck the tight braid at the back that one realized it was of the true Titian color. She went up the wide oak staircase into her cool, sweet-scented bedroom, where the _Gloire de Dijon_ roses nodded into the windows. Stopping in front of a big Chippendale wardrobe, she pulled out one of the deep drawers.

“I can’t bear to do it!” she murmured, “but I never give money, and her little feet were cut and bleeding.”

In that drawer lay many pairs of half-worn little shoes--shoes that had pattered gaily down the Vicarage stairs and danced across the sacred lawn. Her eyes were very soft as she chose out a pair of little strap shoes and some woollen socks. Had the Murillo cherub, chattering in her sweet jargon of Pyrenean Spanish under the shade of the yew trees, seen the face of the Vicaress just then, she would not have refused to go with her. But the Vicaress kept what Mr. Barrie tenderly calls her “soft face” for solitary places. The best that people could say of her was, that if her manner was hard her deeds were often kindly. She filled a basin with warm water and went through the silent house into the garden again. Zita laughed and showed her white teeth as she dabbled her feet in the water, becoming quite friendly; then the Vicaress dried her brown legs and arrayed her in the new shoes and socks. On the party being regaled with Vicarage cake and milk, the mother informed her hostess that they purposed to go on to Gloucester that day--a fifteen-mile walk.

“Have you no money to go by train?” asked the Vicaress.

“Oh, no, senora! My ’usban’ sell ze ice cream there, he cannot send me large money.”

“But you can’t get there to-night; where will you sleep?”

The woman shrugged her shoulders, turning her unoccupied hand outward with an expressive gesture. “In the hedge, senora, it is cool and dry.”

“But the children?”

“Oh, zay sleep--and Zita, she walk well till her foots come to ze ground.” Then turning to the child she said something rapidly in Spanish, adding: “She sing for you, senora, you so kind for her.”

“_A la puerta del cielos, venden zapatos_,” crooned Zita in her funny little nasal chant, and sang the lullaby right through.

“What is it all about?” demanded her hostess with a queer little catch in her voice.

“Senora! it is that zay sell shoes at ze doorway of heaven, to ze ragged little angels who have none!”

The woman rose, and shouldering the brown baby, prepared to depart. But the baby, who approved of Vicarage cake, choked alarmingly, and delayed matters for a while.

The baby’s equanimity restored, they bade their hostess farewell. They had not gone very far, however, when hearing hasty footsteps behind them, they turned. It was the Vicaress. She thrust something into little Zita’s hand, exclaiming breathlessly: “I wish you to go by train; it is not safe for such babies to be out all night!” Then she turned and fairly ran home.

An hour later, as she stood in front of her looking-glass, smoothing her hair till it looked like a yellow skull-cap, she said to herself: “To pay for a person’s railway journey is not indiscriminate charity!” and her eyes grew tender as she thought of the little shoes.

“PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN”

“You sent for me, mother?”

“Yes, child; I sent for you to say good-bye. I am going away for some time.” The woman spoke deliberately in the monotonous voice of one giving a piece of information tedious to give.

Angus did not express any surprise, or regret. The nine years he had spent with his mother had not helped him to know her. Without in the least understanding wherein lay her strange aloofness, he was conscious that he was supremely uninteresting to her. He wondered why it should be so, and his honest boyish soul was sometimes troubled. But children submit readily to the inevitable, and Angus had his compensations.

Vera Warden looked at her son with more interest than was usual with her. He was certainly a handsome lad, tall and well built, with blue eyes that were both kind and honest. She had been long in making her decision. Now that it was made she did not regret: she only wondered if, somehow, she had missed something that more commonplace women find easily.

“Angus, dear, you must take care of father. You and your father are so much alike--understand each other so well--that it will be easy for you. You must be especially good to him, now.”

There was a curious little catch in Vera’s voice as she said the “now.”

“Why are you going, mother?” questioned Angus, feeling that here was something even more puzzling than usual in his mother’s manner. “When are you coming back? Father will miss you.”

“Will he?” asked Vera wistfully. “And you, Angus, will you miss me at all?”

Angus was profoundly astonished. He would like to have kissed his mother just as he kissed dad, but he did not dare. He only grew red, and fidgeted awkwardly, as he answered: “Of course I shall miss you, mother--at meals.”

It was not greed that prompted the child’s definition, but the fact that he seldom saw his mother, except at breakfast and lunch.

Vera Warden did not care for children, and said so--frequently.

The carriage came to the door, good-bye being said without much emotion on either side. As she was driven out of the big stone gates, Vera gave herself a little shake, saying: “And now for life!”

* * * * *

An hour later Thomas Warden returned from a fishing expedition on the other side of the Dale. The oak trees in the avenue had burst into gold-green leaf. The big chestnut on the lawn--the only chestnut on the estate--was covered with cones of pinky blossom. The May sunset touched the grim grey house with rosy light, and Thomas Warden felt a welcome in it all.

Laying down his rods and fishing-baskets in the hall, he went straight to his study. There on his blotting-book lay the letter he had both dreaded and expected.

His sunburnt face looked grey as he took it up. He sat down heavily; then, with shaking hands, opened the letter and read:

“I have burnt my boats; there is no going back. I warned you that it would come to this: that I would bear the monotony no longer. I have given you ten years of my life--the ten best years. Now I owe it to myself to live--it may be ten years more--but anyway, to _live_. Marriage and maternity have, for me, proved uninteresting; but I have endured them for your sake, and for the sake of the boy--while he was quite young. Had he been in any way an unusual boy I might have found life more tolerable. To develop his mind would have been an interest for me; he might have shared, in some degree, my aspirations after a fuller intellectual life. But he is a healthy, handsome, quite commonplace boy, who will grow into what you would call ‘an honest, God-fearing man’ without my help. He has an excellent governess, and your good mother will doubtless come frequently to worship you both. I wish I could free you of me altogether, and that you could marry again and be happy. But you are not the sort of man to bear with equanimity any sort of scandal or publicity, and you have my promise that the life I lead shall be such as can give you no cause for offence other than the fact that I lead it away from you. For your never-failing courtesy and kindness I thank you. Believe me, I shall always have the sincerest affection and respect for you. The fact remains, however, that I cannot lead your life, and you can lead no other. Let us then separate, and go our different ways in peace.

“In every conventional and actual sense, I am and will be your faithful wife,

“VERA WARDEN.”

There was nothing in the letter that she had not said to him, many times, during the last six months.

Now, she had actually carried out her so often announced intention, and was gone; and the realization stunned him. He felt cold and numbed. The roar of the beck, in which he had stood all morning, was in his ears, and he gazed out into the gathering twilight, seeing nothing--only conscious that it was dark and chill everywhere.

There was a knock at the door, and a servant came in, saying: “Please, sir, Master Angus is ready, and would like you to come to him, if you are not too tired.”

Dragging himself out of his chair, he passed his hand across his dazed, strained eyes. Then he went out of the room and up the wide old staircase to his dressing-room, where Angus slept.

“I’ve got a new nightsuit, dad, just like yours. Look--pocket and trowsies, and all!” exclaimed the child, displaying the latter garments with great pride. “Miss Taylor had them made for me in York. Aren’t they nice?”

“Yes, my boy, yes--very!” but the voice was absent, and Angus felt that there was a something lacking, something that he generally found there.

The child felt frightened. Was dad, too, going to hold himself “aloof”? Would he, too, take to looking over people’s heads, and answering in a far-away voice? The thought was one full of omen.

Angus gazed into his father’s face, as he sat wearily on the edge of the little bed. The child, if commonplace, was quick to understand those who loved him. In a moment he acquitted his father, and came and knelt beside him, rubbing his curly head against his knees. He said his prayer with devoutly folded hands, as Grannie had taught him. Then, climbing into Warden’s arms, put his own round his neck.

“Shall I sing my psalm, dad? Or are you too tired?”

His father held him very close. “Sing it, laddie. Sing Grannie’s psalm.”

Grannie was Scotch. When she came she taught Angus the psalms in metre. She taught him other things that he learned more easily than the psalms; chief among them a great love and trust in her, and through her, for everything Scotch.

Shortbread was Scotch, and it was good. Scones were Scotch, and they were good, especially with currants. Edinburgh rock was excellent; therefore the psalms, too, were probably superior in the Scotch version. Angus learned all Grannie’s favorites, the first of which was the twenty-third:

My table thou hast furnished, In presence of my foes.

The child always pictured a long table, covered with a fair white cloth, and plentifully plenished with plates piled high with scones and shortbread. He wondered what “foes” were, for he hadn’t any; he thought they must be the servants who handed round the plates.

“Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me.” The sad, patient tune Grannie had taught him sounded almost triumphant, as the child’s strong treble voice rang out. When he had finished, his father leant his head against the little rounded shoulder, and there was silence save for the man’s quick breathing.

“Good-night, dad!” said Angus at last, turning himself to see his father’s face.

Thomas Warden rose hastily; he laid the boy in his little white bed, kissed him, and blessed him, and went down and sat in the study again. But a man cannot dine in his fishing boots; so he went upstairs, had a bath, and while he dressed, Angus discoursed cheerfully to him through the half-open door.

* * * * *

The silence was unbearable; it was so lonely. Thomas Warden could not sleep. He got up and walked about his room. Only one o’clock! The night had hardly begun.

The moon shone brilliantly, but the wind blew shrewdly through the open casement. May nights are cold in the North country.

He went into the dressing-room and looked at Angus. “If she had only loved the boy--if she had only loved the boy.” He could have forgiven her all the rest. A just and tolerant man, he knew his own limitations. He granted to the full his wife’s intellectual superiority; but she might have loved the boy.

“Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me.” Why did those lines ring in his head? and then, there always followed the sentence in his wife’s letter: “I cannot live your life, and you can live no other.”

It was true: _he_ could live no other. But the boy--why did she not love the boy?

He drew up the blind, and the mellow moonlight fell on the sleeping child. Surely he was a goodly child, so comely, and kindly, and honest. As he looked at the boy his heart went out to him. He did not stoop and kiss him as a woman would have done; he reverenced too much this fair sleep which wrapped him round. He went back to his own room and got a pillow. Then, laying his long length on the floor beside the little bed, and with the child’s psalm still sounding in his ears, he too slept.

The room was flooded with moonlight when Angus awoke. There was a sound of regular and heavy breathing. Angus felt puzzled; puzzled, but not in the least afraid. Such breathing must come from a man, or a dog; from men and dogs the child had experienced nothing but kindness.

He sat up, and listening, looked about to see where the sound came from. He shook his hair back from his forehead, and rubbed his eyes. Yes! he was not mistaken, it _was_ his father who lay there on the floor beside his bed.

Angus rose softly, and touched his father’s bare feet; they were very cold. “Poor dad,” he said to himself--“and him so tired!”

Then suddenly he remembered his mother’s words: “You must take care of father.” It was bad to sleep without a covering, Grannie had told him that. He pulled his little quilt off his bed, and laid it lightly on his father. To his delight the sleeping figure never stirred, but the quilt was short, and Thomas Warden was long--by no amount of stretching would it cover both his shoulders and his feet--poor cold feet! Then Angus was seized by an inspiration, which even his mother could not have called quite commonplace. He lay down at his father’s feet, and unbuttoning the jacket of the new sleeping suit, he cuddled up so that the cold feet rested on his own warm breast. Then he, too, fell asleep.

The kindly moon shone in upon them, and it was very still.

When Thomas Warden awoke the moonlight had changed to pearly dawn. He was no longer cold, and when he realized why, he was no longer lonely.

A THROW BACK

Nana had at last gone out and left the coast clear. Kit seized her little brother’s hand, and they sped down the long passage to the red baize door which swung heavily but did not latch, shutting off the nursery quarters from the house.

Kit was a person of dramatic instincts, and as they ran down the passage she quoted in a deep and awful voice, “The tiger is a fearful beast, He comes when you expect him least.” Addison gazed fearfully over his shoulder, and ran at the top of his speed.

At last by a mighty effort they pushed open the heavy red door, and the staircase and the house lay before them for exploration. It was a very wide staircase, black and shiny and slippery, and as they went down their little feet made a pattering noise which seemed to echo and multiply in the silent house. Kit turned and said, “Hush!” in a reproving voice to Addison, who was, like Agag, walking delicately, on the banister side. “I can’t hush any more than I’m doing!” he replied in an injured tone. “I must put my feet down firm or I’d skate!”

“Come on!” said Kit. “Let’s go and see if Jakes is in the dining-room, and he’ll tell us what’s for lunch.”

They crossed the stone-flagged hall, and Kit opened the dining-room door and marched boldly in. There was no one there; the big room was wrapped in silence, and Addison felt very small and timid as he stood on the threshold. Not so Kit; she walked boldly up to the table, which was laid. There was a great deal of old silver on the table, and many flowers; but its appearance was evidently most displeasing to Kit, for she exclaimed angrily:

“Look here, Addison, just look here! Jakes has only laid lunch for _one_!”

Even the mild and gentle Addison was roused to something like indignation at this tremendous intelligence. To have breakfast and tea in the nursery is an understood thing; but lunch--whoever heard of a well-conducted child having lunch anywhere but in the dining-room, once he or she could hold a spoon and fork? It was abominable; it had to be seen into at once.

Kit gave an indignant sniff, saying: “I know it isn’t Jakes; it’s Nana. She’d go and say we could have lunch with her till Miss Mercer came; but I’ll go and speak to grandpapa at once; it’s a shame; I won’t stand it. Come on!”

The obedient Addison trotted after Kit across the hall with some alacrity. He hadn’t seen much of grandpapa; but what he had seen he liked. How still the old house was, no sound to be heard but the drip, drip of the rain on the ivy outside the windows and the sizzle and fiz of the big logs in the great stone fireplace.

The children looked upon “Nanas” and their like as necessary evils. They divided mankind into two classes, which they called respectively “the dears” and “the deafs.” To the “dears” belonged father and mother, all father’s friends and most of mother’s; Gaffer and all Gaffer’s servants; orderlies--particularly orderlies--and grooms. To the “deafs” belonged nurses, governesses, cross gardeners, and a great many young ladies who wore smart frocks and were affectionate in public. These latter were called “deafs” not because of any defect in their aural arrangements, but simply because the children considered them incapable of discussing anything interesting. “Stupid people!” Kit was wont to observe, “who ask you how old you are, and who fetch stale cake out of tin boxes, and one’s got to eat it for politeness’ sake. Oh, I hate deafs!”

When Kit reached the study door she knocked, but there was no answer. “Mother says he never hears if he’s writing,” she whispered. “Let’s go in--come on!” So she turned the handle of the door and went in. Grandfather was writing. His great knee-hole table was piled with open books, and he had on his gold-rimmed spectacles. He never looked up as Kit shut the door softly behind her. For one thing, doors never creaked in grandfather’s house.

The children stood inside the door and waited, but he never looked up. “Come on,” said Kit, as, holding Addison by the hand, they walked leisurely across the room, till she stood close by their grandfather; then she said in a loud and cheerful voice:

“Good-morning, Gaffer; we’ve come to see you!”

“We’ve come to see you!” echoed the ever-obedient Addison. Grandfather was fond of old-fashioned things, and the name “Gaffer” was so delightfully inappropriate that he encouraged the children to use it when they spoke to him.

“Oh, you’ve come, have you?” he said, taking off his spectacles and turning himself in his heavy revolving chair toward the children. “And how are you, my dears? Did you sleep well after your long journey?”

It did not take long to install a child on each knee. Addison gazed at him in adoring silence, but Kit hastened to unbosom herself of her wrongs. “I’ve come to complain!” she began with dignity. “They’ve only laid lunch for you in the dining-room. Now I know you’d like our company. Mother said we were to keep you company--will you give orders about it?”

Gaffer seemed duly impressed, as he said: “I will give orders at once. Of course you are to have lunch with me while you are here. It’s a pity it’s so wet for your first day, but it’s nice to think that those dear people are going further and further away from the fogs and damp. It will do mother so much good to be in a warm climate, and you must try not to feel dull without them.”

“I wish they’d taken me!” said Kit. “I love hotels!” Gaffer looked at her and laughed: “What a traveled little person you are! I never slept in a hotel till I was seventeen.”

“Ah, but that’s long ago. People go about more now, and, you see, we have to go with the regiment.”

“To go with the regiment,” echoed Addison.

Kit conversed affably with her grandfather for some time; she told him who were her favorite officers, and which her favorite puddings. She carefully explained that, as she was four years older than Addison, she went to bed an hour later, and that she intended to spend that hour in her grandfather’s society. She expressed her approval of the study as a room, but thought it was a pity that, owing to the large number of books, there was no space for any pictures on the walls. Addison stared about him in solemn silence, till at last Gaffer suggested that, as he had got to write to mother, they had better go back to the nursery till lunchtime. Then they trotted across the room together, but when they reached the door and Kit had gone out, Addison raced back and stood by his grandfather’s chair, whispering breathlessly: “Will you let me see some of the books some day--wivout Kit?” There was a passionate eagerness in the question which startled Gaffer. He looked down at the imploring, upturned face.

And then “a strange thing happened.” It was no longer Addison, his namesake, that he saw; it was himself. Himself of sixty years ago. There he stood, the quaint, serious-eyed boy, whose portrait hung in his dead wife’s dressing-room. The boy who longed for books, and who had asked the same question of a scholar in an Oxford library, on a long-forgotten morning all those years ago. With a sudden rush of gratitude he remembered how the question had been answered, and though his smile was very pleasant, his voice was a trifle husky as he said:

“Assuredly!”

“Wivout Kit?” persistently questioned the little boy.

“Without Kit, I promise,” repeated Gaffer. Then he and Addison shook hands, and Addison followed Kit.

She was waiting in the hall. “What did you say to Gaffer?” she asked inquisitively, but Addison shook his head. He could keep his own counsel even when coerced by pinches.

At lunch Gaffer inquired: “Addison, can you read?”

“Not well!” answered Kit. “He can’t read well; he’s only doing ‘sequel,’ and he’s six. He’s very backward!”

“I asked Addison, my dear,” said Gaffer, in gently reproving tones.

Addison blushed and held down his head; then he said: “I don’t like what I read; it’s so uninteresting. They ask such silly questions, over and over again.”

“He knows heaps of poetry!” said Kit magnanimously. “He can learn anything when he’s heard it once, and he knows pages of verses, and psalms, and that, but he’s no good on horseback. He’s got no nerve. Dad says he’ll never be any good across country! And he’s afraid of the dark!”

“Are you not nervous?” asked Gaffer.

“Me nervous!” said Kit with great scorn. “I can ride dad’s chargers!”

“Ah, you’re like your mother,” said Gaffer, smiling at her. “Now I, I was never any good across country; but yet I haven’t found that it has alienated my friends, or done me any great damage in life. Has Addison begun Latin?”

“Oh, no; Miss Mercer doesn’t teach Latin, and he’s far too backward in other things to begin.”

“I began Greek when I was his age,” said Gaffer dreamily; “but there’s no reason why Addison should not begin Latin. He shall begin it with me.”

Addison flushed up to the roots of his hair; then he scrambled off his seat--a most unheard-of proceeding in the middle of lunch--and ran round to his grandfather. He threw himself upon him, exclaiming: “I love you; oh, how I love you!”

Kit regarded him with astonished eyes. That Addison, who never kissed anybody but mother, who was so undemonstrative, so slow to show feeling, should behave in this extraordinary manner, because he was told he might have Latin lessons, was to her incomprehensible; and Gaffer seemed to approve, for he lifted Addison on to his knee, and said in such a queer voice: “I think we’re rather of a kidney, you and I; we’re going to understand each other uncommonly well,” and Addison sat enthroned on Gaffer’s knee all the rest of lunch, and shared his cheese. Kit felt injured.

When Gaffer went back to his study he sat down before the fire, and he pondered for a long time over his queer little grandson. Then he gave his shoulders a shake and sighed: “I was a disappointment to my father, and he’ll be a disappointment--he is a disappointment--poor little chap, to his. He is unaccountably like me.”

A lonely child was Addison. The fact that he was always called Addison from the time he ceased to be baby was proof enough. A child who is understood gets a nickname. Kit had fifty. Addison was always called by his baptismal name. It was Gaffer’s name, and Gaffer’s grandfather had been called after a gentleman who wrote poetry and things. Little Addison knew that much, and he wondered if the writings of that far-away Mr. Addison were more interesting than “Step by Step.” Addison was called an “old-fashioned child”; he was not very sure precisely what that was, but that it was something a child ought not to be, he was convinced. Kit was pretty, very pretty; so the officers said, not infrequently to Kit herself. Kit was never afraid of anything by day or by night. Kit always spoke the truth; Addison had been known to prevaricate when he was frightened, and he was often frightened--at nothing at all, Kit said.

But the worst and most unforgivable thing about Addison was this: he had no wish to be a soldier--and said so. The sound of a pop-gun caused his heart to thump against his breast in an unpleasantly violent manner, and a review was to him a prolonged agony that made him ill for days.

His mother--whom he worshipped--and who loved him tenderly, was quite unconscious of his many sufferings. She was absolutely devoid of nerves herself, and thought that Addison would grow out of his “delicacy,” as she called it. She was proud of his remarkable resemblance to her father, whom she admired above all mortal men--but she was disappointed; and poor Addison, with the quick intuition of childhood, was perfectly aware of it--at his being what her husband called “such a Molly.”

So it came about that Kit was always brought forward, and Addison kept in the background--to his own satisfaction certainly, but very much to the detriment of Kit.

Edinburgh, where the regiment was stationed, was too cold for mother, and dad obtained leave to take her to the Riviera for the worst months; so Kit and Addison were sent to Gaffer, and for Addison it was the turning-point of his life.

To most people, their initiation into the accidence of the Latin language is not a very happy recollection. To Addison it is a recollection little short of rapturous.

To him the first pages of a Latin grammar call up the picture of a large, old-fashioned room, flooded with a mellow light like that of the sun through a veil of yellowing beeches. There is a goodly smell in the room, the smell of dressed and well-kept leather. The walls are lined with books, books bound in calf and russet-colored Russia, and in the middle of the room stands a knee-hole table both deep and wide. It, too, is covered with books; but here they lie open, one upon the other, a crowd of witnesses to the tastes of the owner of the room. That gracious owner! Addison’s eyes grow dim as he thinks of the spare upright figure seated in the revolving chair; the keen scholarly face and noble white head. He hears again the kind, cultivated voice ever ready to answer questions, to answer them so fully and so beautifully, with such a tender sympathy for the eager childish questioner. And then Addison goes down on his mental knees and thanks his God that as yet he had brought no look of sorrow into those kind eyes, but many a look of pride and joy.

Is there not one shelf in that library devoted to Addison’s prizes? And the row is lengthening by leaps and bounds. Yet they wonder at Winchester why he should be so fond of classics.

THE INTERVENTION OF THE DUKE

I

ENTER WIGGINS

The Reverend Andrew Methven stood at his study window gazing out to sea. The sea was very blue, the sands yellow and smooth, but it was not the sea that the Reverend Andrew saw.

Elgo, on the Fife coast, is growing fashionable. In summer every house is let, and there are sometimes as many as fifty bathers at once in the bay. At Elgo the bathers usually wear blue serge, adorned it may be by red or white braid. Pale blue silk with white facings and short sleeves is not the usual uniform. It impressed the Reverend Andrew, and consequently he stood and stared. Moreover, the wearer of this wonderful creation--he felt it was a “creation,” though he had never heard the word so used--came out of the house next door to the Manse, the house being that of his most worthy parishioner, Mrs. Urquhart, Baker and Confectioner, who let her rooms during the summer months.

Elgo streets are somewhat one-sided, the town being built upon the cliff with a railing near the outer edge for the protection of the unwary.

The vision in pale blue silk tripped down the steep steps cut in the rocks, and ran across the sands. She was followed by a small thin boy, whose freckled face was broad and good-natured. On the sands they took hands and danced into the water together.

The vision was tall and slim, with wonderful arms that flashed white in the June sunshine, and the minister remarked that she could swim magnificently. The little naked boy splashed after her, looking like a terrier as he shook the water from his crop of curly hair.

The minister’s window was open, and across the sunlit sands came the sound of a woman’s voice, crying: “Come on, Wiggins, get on my back, and I’ll swim with you to the Cock’s-tail Rocks!”

The Reverend Andrew swung his telescope into position; he had the grace to blush as he did so, but none the less did he eagerly follow that swimmer by its aid. She did it, there and back; then she and the small boy ran dripping over the sands and vanished through Mrs. Urquhart’s side door.

An hour later the minister (he was the Free Kirk minister really; there is an Established Church in Elgo, but as its pews are empty and its incumbent of small account, he was “the minister” to Elgo) strolled into Mrs. Urquhart’s shop to buy cookies. Mrs. Urquhart herself bustled forward to serve him.

“You’ve let your rooms, I see, Mrs. Urquhart! And early in the season, too!”

“Yes, sir! I’ve let my rooms, and to my own young lady that I was nurse to; you’ll mind my telling you of Sir John Penberthy and his bonny family. Well, Mrs. Burton is just my Miss Mary, married and widowed too, poor lamb, and she and Master Wiggins have come all the way from London to be with me, and it’s proud I am to have them!” Mrs. Urquhart paused breathless.

The minister murmured something sympathetic, and taking up his bag of cookies strode back to the Manse. “Mary, mother of names,” he thought, as he turned over the information he had received. “Widowed! She doesn’t wear much mourning anyway!” as he thought of the blue silk bathing-dress. Then he said with a sigh, “She is very beautiful!” and sat him down to write his Sunday sermon.

In the afternoon he met Wiggins on the beach: that gentleman was digging while a French _bonne_ kept guard in the rear.

“Do you like Elgo?” asked the minister. He had a kindly way with children; he was rather childlike himself, and they knew it.

“Awfully,” answered Wiggins, patting his castle walls, and barely looking up.

“Have you ever been to the sea before?”

“Oh, dear, yes; haven’t you?”

“I live here,” said the minister, rather discomposed by this exceedingly cool child.

“I wish I did!” sighed Wiggins. “I hate Kensington.”

“Ah, that’s London! I’ve never been there,” said the minister simply. “I wish I had.”

“It’s not a very nice place. There’s gardens and busses, and sometimes we ride in a hansom, and you always have to wear your shoes and generally gloves, it’s beastly.” Wiggins spoke bitterly, as one who had tasted the hollow shams of Kensington.

The minister sat down on the sand.

“Isn’t there a museum there, and an Art Gallery?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, but you mayn’t touch anything, and you have to wear your hat!”

“You seem to object to clothing,” remarked the minister.

“Don’t you?” responded this discomposing child.

“Well, no, I can’t say I do. It’s warm, and----”

“Oh, it’s warm enough in Kensington, if that’s what you want!” and Wiggins turned to dig a fresh channel from his castle to the sea.

“M’sieu Wiggins, il faut aller à la maison pour le thé. Faites vos adieux à M’sieu le Curé!” and Madeleine, the pretty French _bonne_, folded up her crochet, and rose.

But Wiggins was smitten with deafness, and waded deeper into the water, with a seraphically unconscious look.

Madeleine went down to the water’s edge, where she discoursed volubly for about five minutes. The minister sat watching; he wondered why French people speak so fast, and whether Wiggins understood. He evidently did, for he answered derisively, and sat down suddenly in the water. Then he came out, and grinning at the minister, remarked gleefully as he took his dripping way homeward:

“That’s the third pair to-day, soon shan’t have any left to wear. What a rux!”

“So that’s a London child!” mused the minister. “He’s a fine frank lad; I must call upon his mother.”

II

A NEW ATMOSPHERE

But the days went on, and the minister did not call. He was a sociable fellow, much beloved by his fisher folk, and by such summer visitors as knew him. Elgo was his first “charge.” Had he been small, instead of six-foot-three, he would doubtless long ago have been dubbed “The Little Minister,” after Mr. Barrie’s immortal hero, for he was young as a minister can be.

He did not call on Mrs. Burton because he had conceived for her an extravagant admiration, or rather adoration. He met her constantly on the beach and in the village street, and on these occasions gravely lifted his hat. Had he followed his impulse, he would have gone down on his knees and begged leave to kiss her feet. We do not follow our impulses in these matters nowadays, and Mary Burton never wondered why he did not call, for she thought about him not at all.

She did not go to church that first Sunday, but played with Wiggins on the beach all the morning. Mrs. Urquhart was scandalized and suggested the Episcopalian church at Pittenweem; but Mary only put her arms round her old nurse and laughingly promised to come and sit in her pew next Sunday.

The minister progressed in his friendship with Wiggins; while Mary was scouring the country on her bicycle, Wiggins and his new friend played on the beach or fished for poddlies from the rocks.

Madeleine with the inevitable crochet sat on the beach and beamed at them.

“You’re a Presbyterian, aren’t you?” asked Wiggins abruptly of the minister one afternoon.

“Yes, I’m a member of the Free Kirk.”

“Oh, you’re Free Kirk, and Madeleine’s a Roman Catholic, and mother and me is Pagans!”

“Pagans?” echoed the minister in astonished tones.

“Well, mother says so. It means that you love the sun, and the sea, and bare feet and meringues and music-halls and things!”

“Pagans, music-halls!” The minister gazed in horror at the unconscious but breathless Wiggins. “Do you mean to say,” he asked solemnly, “that you do not know anything about our Saviour who died for us?”

Wiggins turned and looked at him with something of reproachful scorn on his broad freckled face; then he said slowly: “Of course, I know, but we never talk about _that_ to strangers, mother and me. It is bad form, like the people who give you tracts in busses.”

“I beg your pardon, I misunderstood,” said the minister.

They were silent for a few minutes, during which the minister digested this, to him, new view of confessing your faith before men.

Although he himself never gave tracts either in busses or anywhere else, he had certainly in a sort of hazy fashion considered that to do so was praiseworthy, if mistaken.

“There’s mother!” announced Wiggins suddenly. “Let’s come and talk to her.”

The minister scrambled to his feet, and in another moment he had shaken hands with Mrs. Burton, and they all sat down on the beach together.

Wiggins did most of the talking, and then it began to rain.

“Will you come in and have a cup of tea with Wiggins and me?” asked Mrs. Burton.

The minister felt that no words at all expressed the rapture with which this proposal filled him.

Mrs. Urquhart’s parlor looked so different that afternoon. Many photographs stood on the mantelpiece, books other than albums or Family Bibles were scattered on the table, papers and magazines strewed the horsehair sofa, while on the mantelpiece among the photographs and the little vases full of roses were the ends of many half-smoked cigarettes. Another shock was in store for the minister.

They had tea; he drank three cups and ate endless scones in order to prolong the meal. To sit opposite to Mary and watch her white, heavily ringed hands flit in and out among the cups as she made tea was a wonderful thing. To listen to her as she praised Elgo, and Scotland generally, in her soft Southern voice was wonderful; but most wonderful of all was to gaze at her unrebuked, to drink in the beauty of her face, to note the gracious line of cheek and chin as she turned her head, and lose himself in the depths of her eyes, brown as the trout stream beyond Glen Dynoch. When at last some small consciousness of material things awoke in him and he rose to go, Mary reached to the chimneypiece for a slim tin box.

“Will you have a cigarette?” she asked. “Dear Mrs. Urquhart forgives my evil habits, and pretends she thinks that I smoke for asthma. I don’t look asthmatical, do I?”

“Thank you,” faltered the minister. “I do not smoke now--I gave it up after my student days, just as I gave up drinking anything, for the sake of my people. I daresay it was useless, but I thought it was right--then.”

He spoke diffidently, humbly, half expecting a flash of amused scorn in her, such as he not infrequently encountered in Wiggins. But Mary held out her hand, saying softly:

“I am sure it was right then, and is now; but don’t judge me hardly, for I have no flock to influence. My boys will smoke, anyhow, when they are big.”

“It is kind of you not to laugh at me,” he said, and with that took his leave.

Mary lit her cigarette and smoked thoughtfully for some time. Wiggins was once more searching for treasure on his beloved beach. She sat at the open window and watched the boats come in. Presently she rang the bell for Mrs. Urquhart. When that good lady appeared, breathless from her ascent of the steep little stairs, Mary pushed her into an armchair and sat down at her feet, with her head against the old woman’s knees.

“Amuse me, nursey; tell me about your minister. Where does he come from? How is it that, without having been anywhere or seen anything, he is such a perfect gentleman, and why--oh, why is he a Free Church minister?”

“And what for no, my dearie? He’s an excellent, well-doing young man. You should hear him preach; it’s just wonderfu’. His father’s a doctor near Aberdeen; bein’ douce people they are--a large young family, and all doing well. He was at the college in Edinburgh, and passed very high. But it’s no his learning that we care about, it’s his kind, friendly ways. He’d take his turn nursing a body that’s sick just like one of the family; and he’s just a wonderful way with young men. To be sure, he’s young himself--only just twenty-six--but he’s not a bit bumptious or puffed up, like many young men. He’s greatly set up with Master Wiggins; they’re grand friends.”

“He has been very kind to Wiggins. I’ll ask him to dinner. Will you cook me a very nice dinner, nursey dear, on Thursday evening?”

“He’ll no come then, my dearie, for it’s prayer-meeting night. I just wish you’d go yourself.”

“I’ve never been to a prayer-meeting. What’s it like? What happens?”

“It’s just beautiful, my dearie; and the gentry go too. Mrs. Braid, of Elgo House, she always goes.”

Mary made a little face. “She called upon me yesterday. I didn’t find her very exciting. I’ve got to dine there to-night, so I suppose I must dress. You might send Madeleine to do my hair. Dear nursey, I’d far rather stay with you than go to Elgo House.”

III

“ALL SECRET SHADOWS AND MYSTIC SIGHTS”

Dinner parties at Elgo House were not, as a rule, exciting. The conversation generally vibrated between the harvest prospects and the game prospects, with somewhat numerous flashes of silence, during which each guest madly racked his brain for a fresh topic of conversation, only to fall back finally upon the weather.

Andrew Methven did not expect to enjoy himself much on that particular evening. His presence at Elgo House was something of an anomaly, for the family were “established” by conviction, yet Mrs. Braid attended the Free Kirk because she liked Andrew’s sermons.

He felt rather as though he were poaching on his neighbor’s preserves when he went there. He liked his brother cleric (as he liked most people), who, if old and somewhat dull, was kindly and human. So long as his evening pipe and toddy were forthcoming with regularity the “established” minister recked little if he preached to empty benches. Andrew Methven felt the blood rush to his face as on entering the Braids’ drawing-room he heard that voice which had been ringing in his ears ever since his parting with Mary that afternoon.

Daylight lasts long in the North Country, and there were no candles needed at Elgo House for dinner. Mary sat opposite the minister, and had he been given to cursing he would have cursed the tall epergne of fruit that hid her from his sight, especially as the majority of her remarks were addressed to him.

The only other guests were an elderly colonel and his wife, who were staying at the hotel. The colonel, whenever he looked at or spoke to Mary, seemed by his very atmosphere to ejaculate “Monstrous fine woman,” and Andrew felt an insane desire to choke him there and then in his own high white collar.

Dinner over, they all strolled into the garden, and then that happened which made an epoch in Andrew Methven’s life.

When they had all duly admired the roses and the goodly promise of peaches on the south wall, someone brought a guitar out of the house and Mary sat down to sing.

Her dress, some soft transparent blackness over white, faded into the shadows among which she sat. Somehow it reminded Andrew of the silver birch trees in the copse beyond. She bent her head as she tuned the guitar, and the throb of the strings seemed an appropriate background to the sweetness of her profile. Vision and sound became indissolubly mixed. Andrew could never afterward separate Mary’s face from her voice, and both were irresistibly a part of the beech copse seen dimly in the evening light. The whole making a picture, subtle, detached, vivid; an experience in which all the senses bore an equal part and were indistinguishable.

Mary’s voice was a big, soft contralto, as unlike the usual “drawing-room voice” as it is possible to be, and she sang seriously. She gave her message to the four winds to be carried where they listed. She sang to the scented night, to the distant sea, to the flowers and the moonlight: not to the little handful of human beings, whose chairs creaked as they sat, and who, saving one, only realized that she was a beautiful woman who had a fine voice.

They thanked her when she had finished, all but Andrew, who, white-faced and dumb, gazed into the deepening shadows as he stood by Mary’s chair.

“It’s really most extraordinary to be able to sit out at night in June in Scotland, is it not?” said the colonel’s wife in his ear. He started, looking at her stupidly. “A very absent young man!” she said to herself.

Truly he was absent, for he had been in heaven.

Mary, too, was silent, softly beating out a faint melody on her guitar as it lay across her knees.

Suddenly she looked up at Andrew, saying under her breath: “The rest may reason and welcome, ’tis we musicians know!”

“The rest” did not hear, or hearing did not understand; but Andrew said: “Thank God!”

The colonel’s voice was heard declaring that it was “deucedly chilly,” and everybody made a move to go indoors, except Andrew, who, pleading work, fled down the drive, only to walk for miles aimlessly in a direction leading further and further from the Manse.

Had he but known it, that walk was symbolical of the rest of his life. When he did get home his rather ancient “evening shoes” were quit worn out.

IV

THE EDUCATION OF THE MINISTER

“The Duke is coming at the end of the month,” announced Wiggins to the minister, as they anchored and fished for poddlies in the bay.

“What Duke?”

“My brother; he’s at school at Leamington; he’s going to Eton in three years. He’s ten, four years older nor me.” Wiggins was a model of conciseness in the way he imparted information.

“Why do you call him the Duke?” asked the minister in rather an abstracted voice; he was watching a tall lady on the distant links.

“’Cause he is one; his name’s Marmaduke, and he is a tremenjous Duke; they all say so.”

“Who are _they_?”

“Oh, mother, and uncles, and boys, and people.”

“Is he like you?”

“Not a bit; he’s handsome; he’s exactly like mother.”

The minister smiled. Was Mary handsome? he wondered. For many days now he had forgotten to take her beauty into account. He never compared her with other women. She was not to him more beautiful, not more clever, not more kind than other women; she was simply what that Frenchman said of his lady--she was _mieux femme_. There was no one else.

“Are you very fond of your brother?” asked the minister, forcing himself to attend to Wiggins.

“I’m glad he goes to school,” replied that gentleman guardedly. “He rather bangs me about.”

“Is Wiggins a family name?” abruptly demanded the minister.

“You _are_ a jokey man,” said Wiggins admiringly. “Why, it’s because of my hair they call me that; my name’s Tregenna--‘Tre, Pol, and Pen,’ you know. Mother’s Cornish.”

At this moment Wiggins had a bite, therefore excitement reigned for the next five minutes, and even the advent of the Duke was forgotten.

* * * * *

Did Mary Burton know what she was doing when she admitted this obscure Free Kirk minister to friendship and intimacy? Did she realize how contact with her kindness, her simplicity, her gentlehood, was making him every day more hopelessly her slave? In after years, when he walked in darkness, with a hunger that nothing appeased, Andrew would ask himself this question, and whichever way he answered it he blessed her. He no more thought of blaming her than the sailor thinks of tracing the storm to the evening star.

“She shall have worship of me,” he said in those early days of wonder and happiness. “She still has worship of me,” he said after years of unsatisfied longing and ceaseless pain.

There was a song that Mary used to sing, a song he loved, written by a man for whom and for whose writings in those youthful opinionated days Andrew felt a hatred that was almost fear. Yet the song dominated him, and in after years he would repeat it to himself with a curious fierce sense of possession.

O brother, the Gods were good to you. Sleep, and be glad while the world endures. Be well content as the years wear through; Give thanks for life, and the loves and lures; Give thanks for life, O brother, and death, For the sweet last sound of her feet, her breath, For gifts she gave you, gracious and few, Tears and kisses, that lady of yours.

Again across the silence he would hear Mary’s voice; again would he see against the evening sky her delicate pale profile and the little head weighted with its coils of shadowy hair; accompanying it all, the soft plash of the waves as they rolled over the sands beneath her window and the sharp salt wind which sighed foreboding things.

* * * * *

“No! I won’t sing any more to-night; let us talk,” said Mary.

The weather had turned unkindly, a bright fire flickered on the hearth, while the rain outside drove and pattered against the rattling windows. The minister had come in “for some music” as had become his habit during the last weeks, but, Mary was in no mood to sing, so she laid the guitar aside.

“You told me that you intended to criticize my sermon of yesterday,” said Andrew deferentially. “I gather that you altogether disagree with me.”

Mary lit a cigarette and smiled at him, her own indulgent smile, which always softened the severity of her remarks. “Yes, I think your view is narrow, and in some respects unjust. Of course, I know it is the kind of sermon that is popular; and it is certainly kind to the novelists to abuse them from the pulpit--it increases the sale of their books so enormously. But that was hardly your object, was it?”

“I do not know what was my object, unless it were to deliver a message that I felt had been entrusted to me. I do feel strongly on this question. It seems to me so pitiful that people should waste their time in reading injurious trash, when all the time there waits in silent patience the great company of the Immortals.”

“I like Schumann’s view best. He says, ‘Reverence what is old, but have a warm heart also for what is new.’ Much that is new is true, and beautiful, and helpful.”

Mary leant forward, looking eagerly through a little cloud of smoke at the minister.

He shook his head. “A great deal is hopelessly false, and ugly and lowering.”

“I think you overrate the influence of bad books,” said Mary. “It is only the great books that live; a meretricious book may have a few months’ popularity, and then no one reads it any more, it is forgotten as absolutely as we forget the smell of decaying cabbage when we have passed the rubbish heaps.”

“But surely you will allow that there is a great badness as well as a great goodness. Look at those Frenchmen; you cannot say their work is good, but it certainly will live, because it is great.”

The minister spoke earnestly. He hated that she should think him narrow; but he had the courage of his opinions.

Mary was silent for a minute, then she looked at him and smiled, saying frankly:

“That is true; but I believe that in all genius there must be something of goodness. We are all going to heaven, and De Maupassant is going too.”

“I would like to think they are all going, but it seems to me some of them have much to answer for. Influence is an awful responsibility. I believe it is the one thing for which we shall have to give the strictest account.”

Mary looked grave. “Do you think that people always realize when they have influence?”

“No, not always; they do not certainly realize the extent of their influence. You, for instance, were you less noble-minded, might do incalculable harm, for you never think about the effect you produce at all.”

“Oh, please don’t be so seriously complimentary,” she exclaimed. “To pose as ‘a good influence’ would be too dreadful! I should feel like seven curates rolled into one. Confess now, though, that you always thought a liking for cigarettes was the sign in a woman of moral obliquity, now, didn’t you?”

Andrew blushed. “I have seen very little, and known few interesting people,” he said modestly; “none from your world.”

“How far we are getting from your sermon on modern literature; that is what we were going to talk about.”

“I spoke as I felt; I daresay I am wrong, but I can’t feel wrong yet. It may be that I overestimate the influence of books; but you see, in my case, books have been the only great influences I have known--until lately,” he added softly.

Mary looked into the fire in silence for a few minutes, then she said: “Never judge a man by one book any more than you would judge him by one single act, but be grateful when you come across any piece of work that you like. It always seems to me that we render so little gratitude to the people who give us so much pleasure, and it must be sad for them.”

She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire, and stood up, holding out her hand.

“I must send you away, for it’s half-past ten, and we are early folk here.”

Andrew bowed over the fair kind hand, and went back to his study at the Manse. Here there was no fire, no genial smell of smoke, everything was orderly, cold, and dull. Andrew sat down by his writing-table, and laid his head down on his arms. Truly the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

A sleepless night is interminable at six-and-twenty. At forty, one takes it as something that has to be got through, probably with the aid of chloral.

V

MARY

There are people who can stir up the worst that is in us; that strange, inherent moral obliquity, which few are so happy as to be without, but which most of us bury under our strivings after things lovely and of good report. When success crowns the efforts of these moral dredgers, and they are generally as successful as they are persevering, they stand aside, apparently aghast, and proceed to cry “shame” noisily upon our depravity. These are they who “compound for sins they are inclined to” by damning, not “those they have no mind to,” but such sins as at the time they happen to be tired of.

There are others, thank God for it, with whom intercourse is a sort of festival, not merely because their own outlook is so generous and kindly, but because they rouse what is best in one’s self. One leaves such friends--they are friends if you have met them once--strong and gay and full of belief in the infinite possibilities of life.

Mary Burton was of this latter class. She made no great sacrifices, she enjoyed her life thoroughly, taking eagerly all pleasure that came in her way; but her temper was generous, her mind broad, and because she herself could not understand meanness, she never suspected others. She was seldom disappointed. It is the narrow little soul who so constantly encounters other narrow souls. The simple, kindly people meet with simplicity and kindness.

Perhaps the fact that their outlook was so similar proved the great bond between Mary and the minister of Elgo. Their upbringing and environment were so absolutely dissimilar, their views of life so unlike, yet beyond it all and through it all sounded the same note, dominating the discords and making harmony.

“He’s such a lovable good fellow,” Mary would say to herself. “One forgives him for always using shall and will in the wrong places, and for denying himself everything that some people think makes life endurable.”

“She is so kind and gracious, so dignified without being haughty, so absolute an aristocrat in all her beautiful ways; she is a princess. What does it matter if she does smoke and read French novels? If she does it, it must be right for her.” So argued the minister, though he kept his own sturdy Scottish opinion with regard to the unwholesomeness for ordinary digestions of some of the literature which Mary affected.

So the days went on and these two lovable good people saw more and more of one another, worshipper and worshipped, and although the parties mainly concerned preserved the ostrich-like blindness of people in their condition, the “summer visitors” of Elgo and the parish itself took a lively interest in their doings and waited with a somewhat impatient expectation of the climax.

One thing struck Andrew Methven as curious: in all their many conversations Mary had never mentioned her husband. She talked frankly of her father and her brothers, of the people she had met in India, and of those she was in the habit of meeting in London, but of her husband, never. Andrew found himself wondering what manner of man Captain Burton had been; but it never occurred to him to try to find out anything about Mary or her surroundings. He never spoke of her to anyone, and winced if anyone spoke of her to him. About his own family and his own “past,” if so uneventful life can be said to have a past, he was most frank.

“My people are what you would call ‘nice middle-class’ people, perhaps a little fonder of books than their sort are in England, but you have never met anybody of that kind except me, and you would not find them congenial.”

Mary made a little face. “I’m sure I never spoke of anybody as a ‘nice middle-class person,’ I shouldn’t be such a snob, and I have met all sorts of people--people you would think Bohemian and terrible!”

“I should like to meet literary people,” said Andrew wistfully, “but I suppose I never shall.”

“Oh, yes, you will, and you won’t find them any more interesting than your Fifeshire fisher folk. Epigrams pall upon you when they form the staple commodity of conversation. The somewhat dingy journalist, who has a trick of smart talking and who poses to himself as everything he is not, is just as great a bore as the respectable city clerk who lives at Hornsey and expatiates upon its advantages. You must not mistake cleverness for genius. The one is often merely the result of environment and atmosphere. The other nearly always appears in unlikely and seemingly impossible places. You know what Swinburne says: ‘There is only one thing we may reverence, and that is genius. There is only one thing we may worship, and that is goodness.’”

“It seems to me,” said Andrew thoughtfully, “that you reverse it. You reverence goodness and worship genius!”

“Perhaps I do, certainly and perhaps fortunately, the one is much rarer than the other. The best things in life are the commonest. There are flowers, and children, and love, and friendship for everybody, if they will have them.”

“And death and disillusion.”

“You, turning pessimist, _Padre mio_! This will never do. You are too serious--far too serious. I prescribe a course of Anthony Hope immediately. I have the ‘Dolly Dialogues’ with me, and you must force yourself to appreciate them. It’s plain you have met with little real tragedy in your life, or you would be more cheerful.”

“Have you a tragic past, that you are always gay?”

Mary shivered, but she did not answer. She called to Wiggins to come out of the water, for it was growing cold.

The minister scourged himself for four hours afterward, for he noticed that she was pale, and that there were shadows under her brown eyes. What had he said?

VI

MARY’S HUSBAND

Mary had gone to play golf at St. Andrews. The minister called on Mrs. Urquhart anent some parish matters and she detained him, rather against his will, to talk of Mary and her perfections. She never spoke of her except as “My Miss Mary,” and it was apt to bewilder the uninitiated. Suddenly she asked the minister:

“Does she ever talk to you of the wee girlie who was killed?”

“What wee girlie? Never!”

“Eh, it was just an awful thing. Sit down, Mr. Methven, and I’ll tell you.”

“But, Mrs. Urquhart, do you think if it is so sad, and if she--Mrs. Burton never told me herself--that she would like----”

“Tuts, sir! It’s nothing disgraceful; it’s just fearfully sad. Ye can only admire her the more for her courage. Well, as I was saying, she had a wee girlie just three years old when they all came home from India on long leave. Master Wiggins was the baby, and Miss Molly was the bonniest creature you ever saw. The Captain--a fine, free-handed gentleman he was, if a wee thing wild--was just wrapped up in her, the boys were nowhere; and he would aye go and fetch her out o’ her cot every evening after dinner and play, and nothing Miss Mary could say would stop him. Well, that August they had taken a house down in Cornwall to be near Miss Mary’s father. And one evening Miss Mary had gone to dine with an old aunt some miles off, and the Captain and a gentleman staying dined alone. It is thought that the Captain may have taken rather much champagne--he did whiles--but anyway he went and got Miss Molly out of bed and wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out-of-doors. It was no use for the nurse to say anything--he was a masterful gentleman, and brooked no interference. The other gentleman had gone to write letters in the study. Well, Miss Mary came home about ten, and of course went straight up to the night nursery. The little boys were both in bed asleep, but Miss Molly’s cot was empty, and the nurse told her the Captain had not brought her up to bed yet. Miss Mary was rather indignant, for she thought it so bad for the child, and went down to fetch her. But the Captain was not in the study, and the other gentleman had not seen him since dinner. He seemed rather alarmed when he heard that Miss Molly was missing, and everybody went out to search the garden, for they were nowhere in the house. They sought and sought, and nothing could they find. Then Miss Mary sent the grooms out with lanterns, and she and the gentleman took the carriage lamps and went down to the foot of the garden where the cliff went sharp down to the sea. There was a steep path cut in the cliff, and down this they went. At the bottom, lying on the hard rock, they found the Captain, with Miss Molly in his arms quite dead, and his back was broken. He lived for three days, and he died with his hand in my dear lady’s. She never spoke one word of reproach; but he didn’t need it, poor man; his grief was terrible to see, they say. He must have stumbled and fallen sheer over. It’s six years ago now; my young lady was only three-and-twenty. Eh, it was a heavy sorrow for a young thing like that!”

Mrs. Urquhart’s voice broke, and she stopped. The minister was very white, he held out his hand to her, but did not speak. The Scotch understand each other. They have realized this great truth--that some things are unsayable. The minister held good Mrs. Urquhart’s hand in both his for two silent minutes, then he took his hat and went his way.

“He’s a grand young man yon!” said Mrs. Urquhart to herself, “he’ll make it up till her.”

But the young man in question felt that he was further off than ever from his divinity. The wall of unshared experience is high and impassable; we may break it down in places, but it stretches its gaunt length along life’s highway and we each of us must keep to our own side.

VII

“BESIDE THE IDLE SUMMER SEA”

“I rather like that minister person,” said the Duke to Wiggins in his most patronizing voice, “he seems a decent chap.”

“He is,” ejaculated Wiggins with immense conviction; “he’s a splendid chap--a bit Scotchy, you know, but he’s awfully kind.”

“The mater likes him too, doesn’t she?”

“Oh, yes. He’s always with us, you see, living next door and that. He knows all the best places to fish, and he can build the most splendid castles with moats and secret passages and no end!”

The Duke turned his handsome head and smiled indulgently at Wiggins. “I bet he can’t shoot or play cricket much, or ride anything but a bike. You can’t remember father, Wiggins; he was a soldier, you know, and he used to say: ‘Ride straight, shoot straight, and speak the truth, and you’ll be a gentleman, sonny.’ An officer and a gentleman. I remember though it’s so long ago.”

The Duke’s eyes grew soft. He had loved that big handsome father of his with the uncomprehending, admiring love of a little-noticed child. The little daughter had been everything to Captain Burton, yet the Duke cherished his memory and rendered him a devotion greater than that he gave to the mother who understood him; a devotion which Mary took care should never be disturbed by any word of hers.

As Captain Burton lay dying he had lifted his weak arms and dragged her head down close to his face.

“Don’t tell the boys,” he whispered. “Let them think the best of me. Duke is a fine chap; he’ll make it up to you. I’ve been a beast and a fool, but I always loved you, Mary. Promise you won’t tell the boys.”

And Mary promised.

The Duke was a singularly handsome boy, with grave, beautiful manners. He never looked untidy or slovenly. Like his mother, he wore his clothes in such a way that he always seemed better and more suitably dressed than other people. He was rather a silent person, but gave one the impression that he was silent from choice, not because he had nothing to say.

He was very unmistakably a member of the “classes,” and though exceedingly urbane and gracious to what he was pleased to call mentally his “inferiors,” he was so because it would be ungentlemanly to be otherwise.

He would gravely assist a fishwife to raise her heavy creel to her shoulders, and lift his cap to her with a Hyde Park flourish when she started on her way. But he did so because he considered it the duty of a gentleman to assist women--not as Wiggins would have done, from a friendly interest in that particular fishwife. Slim, tall, and aristocratic, with oval face, straight nose, and big brown eyes, the Duke was a noticeable boy anywhere, and Mary was immensely proud of him.

He was good at most games, and quick to learn. He ferreted out a pony in the next village and rode about the country, to the admiration of the natives. He golfed on the gentlemen’s links and played a very good game for his age. He went fishing with the minister and Wiggins, and he bicycled with his mother.

Since the advent of her eldest boy, it seemed to the minister that there was a certain remoteness about Mary. Certainly her time was very much taken up. The Duke required other amusements than those afforded by the beach, a bucket, and a wooden spade. He expected and received the constant companionship of his mother. On several occasions the minister was allowed to join their bicycling expeditions. To watch Mary bicycle was a never-ending wonder to him. She never seemed to go fast; it was only when you rode after her that you found she was hard to catch. The minister always wondered why her skirts never seemed to bunch and blow as did those of other women. He knew nothing of tailors as a great artistic power, but he was keenly alive to the result of their labors in the grace and symmetry of her appearance.

The Duke also was a constant surprise, but for him the minister’s frank admiration was tempered by a subtle but searching discomfort in his society.

“Do you know,” he said ruefully one day to Mary, “that the Duke makes me conscious of my boots, and the lack of trees to keep them on? I never thought of it before, but I am sure now that it has been a serious omission.”

“The Duke is the descendant of generations of dandies, and has all the faults and the good qualities that belong to the class. In many respects the dandy is a limited person both for good and evil; certain social solecisms are, of course, impossible to him, but he generally is lacking in imagination. The Duke, for instance, is less sympathetic than Wiggins, but he is harder on himself also.”

“Can a woman be a dandy?” inquired the minister in a tone of grave interest.

Mary laughed. “Every woman of the world is more or less a dandy, but she takes the position less seriously than does a man. If in some directions our sense of proportion is undeveloped, it has arrived at perfection in matters of clothes.”

“I’m glad I can only wear one sort of clothes; it saves so much trouble, and I should be certain to get the wrong ones.”

“I think you would. Be thankful for your uniform; it is becoming!”

“It’s very hot and uncomfortable in summer. I almost feel I could echo Wiggins in his abuse of clothing.”

“Why don’t you wear flannels?”

“I do for tennis, but one can’t call on one’s parishioners in flannels; they’d think it casual and disrespectful.”

“So they would. Well, you must dree your weird!” Mary spoke lightly, but for the minister her last words had an ominous sound.

Presently they all halted “to give the bicycles a feed” as the Duke put it--the fact being that they had arrived at the foot of what was for Fife a very steep hill. The day was hot, and they had six more miles to do before they reached the East Neuk, whither they were escorting the Duke. Grass and the shade of trees looked inviting. Mary and the minister decided to rest, but the energetic Duke went off on an exploring expedition in an adjacent wood.

The minister and Mary sat quite silent for some minutes; then Mary said slowly:

“Mrs. Urquhart told you of my great trouble six years ago. I am glad. I wanted you to know, and I wanted you to know that I am glad.” Her voice was very soft, her eyes were bent on the grass.

Andrew Methven looked at her but he did not speak.

She looked up a little surprised, and saw his face working strangely. She understood.

“Don’t try to say anything,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. “You are sorry. You are a good friend of mine.”

Somehow the touch of the little gloved hand on his arm made the minister lose his head. He did not attempt to hold it in his own--his reverence for her was too great for that--but he told her simply and forcibly what he felt for her. She did not try to stop him. The sunshine and the summer had got into her blood, and this worship that was offered to her was sweet and precious. There was nothing ridiculous in it, nothing impossible. He did not ask her to be his wife; in his wildest dreams of happiness he had never reckoned on the possibility of that. He did not ask to be anything to her; all he told her was what she was to him.

And in the very middle of it all the Duke came back, saying:

“If we are to get to the East Neuk by teatime, we’d better be off; it’s four already.”

So they rode off, and very silent companions the Duke found them.

* * * * *

Seven years before in Simla, Mary had had a great success. She had been made much of, and had enjoyed it. Many men had made love to her, and she had enjoyed it. A beautiful, healthy girl accepts admiration as her natural right.

But the men who made love to her did not enjoy it, for many of them had the misfortune to be serious, and although Mary accepted their flowers and their compliments and their devotion in her own gay, gracious fashion, she gave nothing in return but that gay graciousness and the privilege of her society.

“If she were in love with that card-playing, drinking fool, her husband, I could understand it,” said Major Molyneux of the 42nd; “but she isn’t in love with him, not a bit; and yet she’s an icicle to every other chap. It’s not as if she were one of those cold, saint-in-a-shrine sort of women; she’s as human as she can be. She’s no fool, either. What, in heaven’s name, made her marry her husband?”

“Calm yourself, my dear Molly! Calm yourself,” answered the elderly civilian to whom he was unburdening himself. “You have yet to learn that the selective faculty is latest of development in women. Most women, especially if they are pretty, marry before it has developed at all. If they are good as well as pretty, they take care it shan’t develop afterwards.”

“Burton hasn’t even the grace to be jealous; he lets her do just what she pleases. He’s so mighty conceited that he never seems to think she may come across a man capable of understanding her.”

The commissioner smiled. “I don’t think much of Burton’s intellectual capacity, but I do give him credit for this--he understands his wife, and because he understands her, he trusts her absolutely. It’s no use, my dear boy, Simla will never have the pleasure of discussing Mrs. Burton in connection with any sort of scandal; she’s not that kind!”

The commissioner was right. Her husband never had reason to find fault with Mary, and since his death she had devoted herself to her boys and to the cultivation of her mind. She took it as a matter of course that men should fall in love with her; they always did. But her experience did not make her eager to investigate further the realms of marriage.

Men made love to her because they wanted to possess her. She was so tired of hearing, “Don’t you understand? I want you for myself, for my very own.”

Mary understood, but as yet she had felt no desire to belong to anybody in that exclusive fashion.

Andrew Methven touched her. Here at last was the Princely Giver she had dreamed of, as women will dream, the man ready to give everything, asking only for leave to lay his homage at her feet, nothing more.

When she had first met him, she set him down as one of those who are destined “to do something.” It was not his fate to remain an obscure Free Kirk minister, of that she was sure. The more she saw of him the more she felt the reality of the strange power that lay behind his apparently commonplace views of men and things. “It is there,” she said to herself exultingly, and now that he had made love to her in this strange, unusual way, she was seized with a passionate desire to take this man into her life, and help him to give form and substance to that latent force of his.

So Mary dreamed dreams while she listened to the minister as he discoursed upon the historical interests of the East Neuk; as they rode home swiftly and for the most part silently; as, the Duke having gone to bed, she sat at the open window and watched the moonlight on the sea.

Then she went and looked at the boys in their two little straight beds side by side. As she bent over the Duke he smiled, and threw his arm round her neck, murmuring sleepily, “Dear mater.”

Shading the candle with her hand, she looked long and greedily at the sleeping children, and, like all women at such moments, the triumphant sense of possession swamped every other feeling.

As she reached her own room and stood before her glass, she looked into the reflected eyes, saying: “Take ship, for happiness is somewhere to be had!”

VIII

THE COLONEL INTERFERES

“There’s little Burton. I’ll ask him if it’s true,” ejaculated Colonel Colquhoun, as he noticed three or four small red-coated figures coming down the long slope at the far end of the gentlemen’s links.

“No, not the child; I would not ask the child if I were you, Colquhoun.” Mr. Braid spoke earnestly, laying his hand on the colonel’s arm to detain him. “He may know nothing about it, you know, there may be nothing to know. In any case I wouldn’t ask the boy.”

But Colonel Colquhoun had just made an inferior drive, he was in a bad temper as are many people during the royal and ancient game, so he bustled off, ignoring his friend’s remonstrance, toward the putting-green where the Duke was triumphantly holing in after a specially brilliant placing of his ball.

The caddie shouldered the colonel’s clubs, and Mr. Braid followed more slowly. He felt a curious disinclination to join the little group on the putting-green. His own lad--just home from Fettes--was one of the players; he had said kind things of the pluck and perseverance of little Burton. Mr. Braid’s heart was tender, and he himself had not forgotten the moment when he first heard of a possible stepfather. He walked more and more slowly.

The hole that the Duke and his friends were playing was the last on the links; the boyish figures were outlined sharply against the sky. Mr. Braid saw the Duke lift his cap as the colonel came up. He could not hear what passed, but he saw the four boys turn, and one after another tee their balls and drive. The colonel was left alone on the putting-green, where his ball was not. The caddie stood grinning, and the colonel cuffed his ears, declaring that the young ruffian had stolen his ball.

Mr. Braid waited in patience till the ball was discovered in some distant bents, but the colonel did not again mention little Burton or his mother.

The Duke was playing abominably. Halfway home he said: “Braid, would you think me an awful cad if I break up the foursome? I can’t play a hang.” The child’s lips were quivering, and his sunburnt cheeks looked white under the tan.

Braid put his arm round his shoulders affectionately. “You go home, old chap. You’re hipped, but never mind that old beast Colquhoun, he’s always making mischief. Don’t you notice him.”

“I didn’t--much, did I?” the Duke asked anxiously. “I hope I didn’t--show.”

“Not you--not a bit. Here, scoot! I’ll bring your clubs.”

The Duke broke into a run, and regardless of the enraged “fores” which sounded on every side, made straight across the links to the rocky shore. There he would be alone--alone with this terrible possibility that flashed its lurid light across his path.

Once behind the rocks he sat down and sobbed, even as he did so wondering when he had cried before. The Duke did not “blub”--never--he considered tears unworthy of a man, “of an officer and a gentleman,” had not the father whose memory he adored once said to him: “Curse if you like, old man, but never cry.” So the Duke never cried, though his language on occasions would have surprised his mother by its forcible variety. Before ladies, though, “gentlemen do not swear,” so Mary remained in blissful ignorance of her son’s proficiency in certain forms of objurgation.

Now, however, the Duke sobbed, great tearing, dreadful sobs that racked his slender body with a pain that was almost physical.

The colonel had done his work. As he walked across the green to enlighten Duke, he had said to himself: “I’ll make it hot for Mrs. Burton, haughty minx; the boy’s a tartar.”

Mary had found it necessary to snub the colonel on more than one occasion; so he no longer called her “a monstrous fine woman.” A fancied slight rankles in the mean and narrow soul; revenge is doubly sweet if one near and dear to the offender can be made the instrument of punishment.

The Duke sat behind the rocks and sobbed until he felt sick and stupid. Had he not heard of that horrible institution called a stepfather? Had he not read only last holidays a book called “David Copperfield,” wherein the iniquities of such an one were set forth with terrible distinctness.

He was not a religious child. Mary was not dogmatic in her teaching, she influenced more by her example and her mental attitude than by conscious effort. Yet here and now the boy felt that circumstances were too strong for him, and he prayed in a hopeless, muddled fashion that if his mother did this thing, God would take him to join the father she seemed to have forgotten.

It is a mistake to think that children never come face to face with despair. They do, more often than the superior, omniscient grown-ups themselves. There is a finality about every sorrow for children, they cannot realize that such pain as they feel _can_ pass; they do not believe it. That saddest of all poets must have thought of sorrowing children when he wrote:

We are most hopeless, who had once most hope, And most beliefless, who had most believed.

What matter if the grief be short, its poignancy while it lasts is none the less acute.

The Duke stopped crying, and looked at the bare wall of rock before him with hopeless, unseeing eyes. Then as he prayed, a great wave of tenderness, of longing for his mother, broke over his child soul, and he got up. Scrambling over the great boulder he had hidden behind, he set off to run home. If this amazing, this shameful news were true, he would set a seal on his misery, and uncertainty would be at an end. If it were false, the Duke set his teeth as he thought of the colonel, then he squared his shoulders and dropped into the swinging run which made him such an admirable hare at “hare and hounds.”

He ran by the beach, a good three miles, and burst into their little sitting-room, tear-stained and breathless, just as Mary had arranged her writing-board on her knee.

She looked up in astonishment at his somewhat noisy entrance. He still wore his cap in the room, before her, and his face was dirty. Who had seen the Duke with a dirty face since he arrived at years of discretion?

“My darling boy, what has happened? Is it Wiggins? Is he hurt?” Mary stood up in her excitement, and the paper and envelopes were scattered about the floor.

The Duke only looked at her, his lips trembling.

“Speak, Duke, what is it? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“No one is hurt, mother, except me, and I’m only hurt in my heart.” The tears ran down his cheeks as he spoke. “Mother, is it true--are you going to marry Mr. Methven? Oh, say it isn’t true. It’s so dreadful!”

Mary drew the boy to her, and sitting down she took him on her knee. He buried his dirty face in her neck and sobbed.

“My dearest, who has said that I am going to marry Mr. Methven? Surely you do not suspect me of telling people--other people--before I would tell you such a thing as that! Oh, Duke, I thought you trusted me.”

“But, mother, you might not have _told_ them, they might have guessed, and it’s not the not knowing that I mind, it’s--it’s--Mr. Methven!”

“Dear Duke, did it never strike you as possible that I might marry again?”

“Never! Never! You belong to Wiggins and me--and father. Have you forgotten father?”

“No, sonny, no. I have not forgotten.”

“Oh, mother, say it isn’t true, say it isn’t true, or I shall die!”

Mary folded the boy closer in her arms. “It is not true, dear. Mr. Methven has not even asked me to marry him.”

As she spoke she remembered her own words as she looked into the glass the night before. Her face grew very sad.

“But if he did ask you, mother, you would say no? You would say no?”

The Duke’s voice, husky with long crying, was very pathetic.

Mary leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She held her boy very close, and her breath came quickly.

“I don’t think he will ask me, dear, but if he does, I must say no, for his sake!”

The Duke sat up and gazed at his mother in absolute amazement.

“For his sake,” he repeated in a hushed, almost frightened voice. “Do you want to marry him, mother?”

“It does not matter much what I want to do, my little son; it’s what I must _not_ do that we have to do with. I shall not marry Mr. Methven. Some day when you are a man you will realize what I have given up for you--and for him!” And Mary fell a-weeping with her boy clasped in her arms.

The Duke felt her hot tears on his short-cropped hair, and he trembled; then, releasing himself from his mother’s arms, got off her knee and stood beside her, very pale and grave.

“Dear!” he said solemnly, “if you want to marry this--gentleman--if it will make you happier, you shall. Do you hear, darling? You shall.” And throwing himself into his mother’s arms, they cried together. When it came to the point, he found that he loved his mother better--than himself.

Presently Mary began to laugh. “Oh, Duke, Duke, how funny you are! You talk as if I were a little girl, as if--but it doesn’t matter--some day you will understand.... It’s not going to happen, Duke dear. It’s been a storm in a teacup. You must never listen to what ignorant people say.”

“May I contradict them, politely?” asked the Duke eagerly, with an immense relief shining in his eyes.

“Certainly, if anyone has the impertinence to speak of such a thing again. It is an insult to Mr. Methven and to me. Oh, Duke, there’s somebody coming upstairs. Quick, go and say I’ve got a headache and can’t see people.”

It flashed across the boy’s mind that he was not very presentable either. However, the staircase was dark, and he shut the sitting-room door behind him. A tall, black-coated figure was ascending the stairs.

“Mother can’t see anyone to-day, Mr. Methven; she’s got a headache.”

But even as he spoke the door at the top of the stairs opened, and Mary said:

“I’ll see Mr. Methven, sonny, but ask Mrs. Urquhart to say I am engaged if anyone else calls.”

The sitting-room door closed behind the minister and Mary. The Duke went to his own room to wash his face, and to ponder over his mother’s words.

IX

VALE

Somebody has said that women have no sense of humor. It is one of those knock-me-down assertions that provoke argument. The sense of humor is so blessed a gift, it were unjust indeed to deny its benefits to the larger half of humanity. The gods had bestowed it with no niggardly hand upon Mary. It had stood her in good stead during many a crisis; its divine attribute did not desert her now.

There was a poetic justice in the appearance of Andrew Methven at that particular moment that appealed to her sense of artistic inevitability; and as Andrew shut the door behind him, though the tears shone wet upon her cheeks, she laughed.

“I am sorry you have a headache,” began Andrew lamely. “Shall I go away?”

“No, sit down; I want to talk to you. I’ve just been through a somewhat trying scene with the Duke, and I long that somebody should horsewhip Colonel Colquhoun.”

“I don’t possess a horsewhip, but I have a good stout stick.” The minister’s manner was most unclerical as his grasp tightened on the weapon in question.

“You do not even ask what he has done.”

“He has annoyed you--that is quite enough; but I wish he was a younger man.”

“He is not young enough to thrash, and he is not quite old enough to ignore; all the same, we shall have to ignore him. But, you Quixotic person, would you really thrash a man because I asked you to?”

“If you asked me to thrash a man, I should know he well deserved thrashing, and I--should enjoy it.”

“You’re more man than minister, after all,” said Mary, more to herself than to him.

“Better man, better minister. Do you think I could have had any sort of influence over my colliers at Cowdenbeath if I couldn’t fight? I can’t fence, but I can box. I’ll teach the Duke, if you like.”

“Why don’t you ask me what Colonel Colquhoun has done?”

“Because if you want to tell me, you will tell me; and if it is unpleasant to you to tell me, why should you?”

“It’s as unpleasant as it is necessary I should tell you, because we must both publicly contradict a foolish report that has got spread abroad in Elgo to the effect that we are to be married.”

Mary did not blush as she spoke, but the minister crimsoned to the roots of his hair. “I am too sorry you should have been subjected to this annoyance. You know what my feeling for you is; you also know that I have not the right to ask a fisher lass to marry me. I am nothing, and have nothing; but you have let me lay my great love at your feet.”

Mary made a little sound, half sob, half laugh, and held out her hands to him in a helpless, unseeing way that went to his heart. He caught them in his own, and looking into the dear face with purple shadows painted by tears under the eyes, he knew that she, too, cared.

What does it avail to tell in words how these two plighted their troth, that was to be ever unfulfilled? The tenderest and truest of lovers have generally small literary value.

For half an hour they went to heaven together.

Then they faced realities, and Andrew asked: “Will you write to me?”

Mary shook her head. “No; if we write we shall simply waste our lives in everlasting watching for the postman. We are very human, you and I, and how can we hope to be better and wiser than other people?”

“You are hard,” murmured Andrew. “I can find no comfort in virtuous soliloquy. A letter would be something tangible.”

“No, I am not hard; but I am old who once was young, and I know. As it is we shall have a perfect and unspoiled memory, full of tenderness and grace and poetry; but if we write we shall be miserable, ever unsatisfied, hanging, like Mahomet’s coffin, between heaven and earth. No; let us keep this sweet experience untarnished by impotent tears and regrets.”

* * * * *

Three days after, Mary and her boys had joined some of the numerous uncles at a shooting-box near Kingussie. The Duke was very happy; but Wiggins missed his beloved sea. “I think my minister must miss me,” he said. “I miss him so very much; he’s such a kind man.”