They had left Brighton early in the morning, and reached home as the winter's afternoon was closing in. In the drawing-room, where many a time she had seen his wife perform that office, the Bride poured out tea for him.

"At last," he said, and stood upon the rug before the fire, cup in hand, and smiled at her. "This is pleasant, isn't it?"

With a smile up at him, and a full glance of the dark melancholy eyes he so much admired, she let him know that indeed she thought it pleasant.

Her costly fur coat, one of his wedding-gifts to her, was tossed over the back of her chair; the firelight gleamed on heavy gold ornaments at wrists and throat. She had been a poor woman, clothing, not dressing, herself, till in her eight-and-thirtieth year all the fine things which money could buy were suddenly lavished upon her. So soon the feminine mind accustoms itself to that change! Every woman is born to fine raiment, meant to be softly swathed, richly decked, daintily tired. Cheated of her inheritance though she be, it is as natural to her as her own skin when at length she comes into it. The Bride felt a sense of well-being, but no strangeness.

The room in which she sat was perhaps a little overcrowded with beautiful things. In the days which were past, which she did not trouble too much to remember, she had sat here on Sunday afternoons—her one holiday, and always spent with the good-natured wife of the man she had married—and had told herself that the room bore too evident stamp of the wealth of the master of the house, and the too sumptuous tastes of the mistress. Yet, now that it was her own, so desirable in itself seemed each piece of furniture, so beautiful each ornament, it would be difficult, she felt, to decide what to banish.

The man's gaze followed hers, speculatively, roaming over the costly objects. He was by no means anxious to make a display of his wealth.

He dreaded above all things the charge of vulgarity, distrusting his first wife's taste, not being quite sure of his own. A compactly built, well-featured man of middle size and pale complexion; a man careful and correct in speech, manner and dress; in his gently reserved, modest bearing giving no sign that he had raised himself far above his origin, that his wealth was new.

"Do what you like here," he said to his wife, as if reading her thoughts. "Alter the disposition of the furniture—do away with it altogether. I am by no means wedded to things as they are."

He crossed as he spoke to a rosewood cabinet placed against the opposite wall. On its polished surface, above its innumerable little shelves and drawers, a Crown Derby tea and coffee service was set forth. Standing in the midst, propped between a basin and a cup, was the unframed photograph of a woman. This the man removed. Holding it loosely between his finger and thumb, still talking to his wife, he returned with it to his old position on the hearth.

"I have not set foot in this room since—for a year," he said. "I thought I would leave everything till you came. Do just as you like."

"You are so good to me——" she began, and then started forward in her chair. "Oh, don't, don't, love!" she cried. "Don't burn her picture!"

She was too late. For one instant the face of the first wife looked up at her, smiling, fat, fatuous, from the heart of the glowing coals, then, with a stab of the poker, wielded by a remorseless hand, vanished in the blaze.

"Oh, love!" she sighed, reproachfully, "Oh, love!"

"Why not?" he asked, with a smile which went no further than his close-set lips. He put down the poker on the hearth and rose up again. "She must have laid in a stock of hundreds of those photographs," he said. "The servants appear to have an inexhaustible supply. In spite of—discouragement—they kept my dressing-room and study-table garnished with them till I ordered them to desist."

The new wife looked away from him into the fire in a minute's silence. "It seems cruel," at last she said, with an obvious effort. "I wish you had not burnt it, love. At least, not to-night. In this big house there should be room for me and—her photographs."

When she found that their bedroom was to be the same which he and his former wife had occupied, she was uncomfortably surprised.

The servant who showed her to that apartment in time for her to change her dress for dinner was the middle-aged woman, calling herself parlour-maid, but who had acted as lady's-maid, factotum, confidante to the dead wife. She had made confidantes of all who would listen, poor woman, pouring out the secrets of her heart, and, as far as she knew them, of her husband's heart, into any stranger's ears.

"Can I be of any assistance to you, madam?" the maid had inquired; and madam, in order not to give offence, accepted for a time her services.

"I like to do my hair myself," she said, "but if you brush it for me I shall be glad."

She did not like this servant who had been on terms of close familiarity with the other woman; while, outwardly acquiescent, she allowed herself to be buttoned into a dressing-gown by the hard, bony fingers, in spirit she protested.

As the pins were taken out of the heavy dark hair, and the braids untwisted, the eyes of the new mistress and the eyes of the old servant met again and again in the glass. And the thought came to the bride: how often in that same glass those slanting eyes of the maid must have encountered other eyes! Eyes of shallow blue beneath a fringe of yellow-dyed, tousled locks.

The reflection was not a comforting one, and warm and cosy as was the brightly-lit room, she shivered. Hastily casting down her gaze it fell upon a photograph of her husband, taken ten years or so ago, shrined in its silver frame amid the silver accessories of the dressing-table. In order to break a silence which was getting on her nerves—

"Is that the picture which was always here?" she asked.

"Always," the servant replied. "It stood opposite one of my late mistress, taken at the same time, and framed in the same way. After my late mistress's death my master wished to have her photographs removed. He destroyed many of them. I think he destroyed the last to-day."

"Now, how in the world did she know that?" the Bride asked herself, guiltily conscious of the tell-tale face in the looking-glass, reddening before the servant's inquisitive eyes.

"After all, I will brush my hair myself," she said hastily. "I am used to doing it."

The servant, with no sign of either pleasure or displeasure on her shut-up, solemn face, withdrew.

"The silver-backed brushes on the table are those of my late mistress," she said from the door—"my master's last present to her. In the drawer beneath the looking-glass I think you will find your own brushes."

She found them there, and, lying beneath them, face upwards, a photograph of the dead wife.

The two women for years had called each other friend, but the Bride started back from the smiling presentment of the face now as if it had been some loathable thing. Started back, and shut the drawer.

Yet, in a minute had recovered herself, had taken out the picture, and laid it on the table before her, forcing herself to look long into the face that from among the medley of silver-topped bottles, pans and jars, smiled up at her.

As she looked, an inexplicable feeling of uneasiness and insecurity took possession of her. The fat, fatuous, and smiling face! It seemed to look with an air of contemptuous toleration upon her as an interloper; to say with its shallow gaze—"These are Mine. All this is Mine. It is I, you understand, who am mistress here."

Fascinated by this fancied new expression in the once expressionless eyes, the Bride looked and looked again—looked till the happy present slipped away from her and she was back in the unhappy past. The humble friend, her own poor toilette so soon made, sitting, by gracious permission, to watch the magnificent toilette of the other woman. In her bitter heart she felt again the scorn which her mind had always secretly held for this poor-witted, vulgar creature, who had not the brains to adapt herself to her husband's altered circumstances, who angered and shamed him beneath his still exterior, to his face, and gave him away to the first who would condescend to listen, behind his back. Who had sat before the dressing-table, watching in the glass the wide expanse of her bare bosom and white arms, and had boasted of her jewels and her dress. Babbled of things which should have been sacred between her husband and herself. How that woman sitting beside her, with the poor dress and the melancholy, dark eyes, hated her! With what an agony of pity she pitied the husband! Of what good were money, position, power to him with such a wife as this! She hated her. Hated her, as she sat before the glass, smiling at the reflection of her fair big arms and neck; hated her as, later at the dinner-table, she watched the husband's face, listening against his will to the woman gabbling forth some bit of information which the dullest-witted present knew she was expected to keep to herself.

Still lost to her surroundings in her reverie, the Bride heard again the outburst of foolish laughter with which the wife had once publicly declared her husband could keep nothing from her because of his habit of talking in his sleep. What she wished to know that in the daytime he would not tell her, she got from him at night by asking questions he never failed to answer while he slept.

She had hated her; and at last the poor creature, whose smiling face lay there beneath her fascinated gaze, had known it, and with the inferior force of her inferior nature had hated back. She had learnt—who knew how?—of the love between the woman who had been her friend and her own husband. The eyes had smiled no longer then.

The Bride lay back in her chair, motionless, while before her mind's eye rose the altered face of the woman who, deceived for long, was deceived no more—who knew! With her there had been no self-respecting reticence, no decency of secret tears. She had heaped insult upon the woman who had wronged her, she had led her husband a life of hell.

That time had been, mercifully, of short duration. A little illness of which no one took account, had ended all for the unhappy wife, had been the beginning of a joy beyond words for the other two. She had kept her bed for two days, suffering from a nervous attack, accompanied by excruciating neuralgia, and had died quite suddenly from the bursting of a vessel on the brain.

It had been, of course, in this room she had died. Upon the bed, there. And her husband, sleeping beside her, had not known that she was dead. Slowly the Bride, as if fearing what she might see, looked over her shoulder. The room, with a bright fire, and lit by electric light, was as cheerful as day. But as her eyes, slowly travelling back again, met their own reflection in the glass, she saw in them a haunted look which frightened her. She flew to her feet; snatching the portrait from the table, she hurriedly crossed the room and flung it to the flames.

"He is right. Why not?" she said. "To burn a picture is nothing—nothing! And it has given me horrible thoughts."

It was difficult to banish them.

When the newly-married pair were alone in the drawing-room after dinner, and she was seated at the piano, she asked him, through the chords she was softly touching, if there was not another room in the house they could take for their sleeping-chamber.

"Certainly," he said; "most certainly if she wished."

He, himself, had not slept there since the night of his first wife's death, he told her. Told her, too, that before leaving for their wedding-trip, he had given orders to have one of the other rooms prepared against their return. The reason this had not been done, the invaluable parlour-maid had informed him, was because the wardrobe he had particularly desired to be moved there had proved too big for the niche which was to have received it. Wardrobe or no wardrobe, however, since she wished it, they would migrate on the morrow.

"You do wish it?" he asked her.

She nodded, softly striking her chords.

"I wonder why? You are no more superstitious or fanciful than I."

She shook her head, bending forward to study the score of the music on the desk, one of Sullivan's operas they had heard together at Brighton. He, sitting close behind her, his chin touching her shoulder, had fixed his eyes on the music too, although he could not read a note of it. "Horrid thoughts came to me there," she said. "I don't think, love, I shall ever like to be alone in that room."

He named the invaluable maid. "Have her up to dress you," he advised.

The Bride shrugged her shoulders, and her fingers moved more quickly in a livelier movement. "We will change the room," she said.

Later, he had placed himself on the rug at her feet, and she, leaning forward in the armchair drawn over the fire, had her arm about his neck while he talked to her of himself, she questioning. Of his early life he talked, and what had been for and what against him; of his later success, and his old ambitions.

"All achieved now," he said, and turned to smile at her the curious, characteristic smile accomplished by a twist of a closed lip.

"I have not bored you?" he asked her with anxiety, when the evening was over. "Except to you, I have never in my life talked of myself. It is a luxury in which I must not too much indulge."

She reassured him with the zeal of the newly-wedded, much loved and loving wife. "Promise me that you will always tell me all, that you will never keep a secret from me," she said; and he promised, smiling upon her with his twisted lip.

"If you do," she cried, fondly threatening, "I shall know it, Sleep-talker! I shall ask you in your sleep and you will tell me all."

That, under those circumstances, he should probably tell her much that had no foundation in fact, and much that it would by no means please her to hear, he warned her.

She fancied by his tone that he was annoyed, and hastily asserted that she had been in fun, that not for a moment could she seriously entertain such an intention.

"What you do not wish to tell me, be sure I do not wish to hear," she told him.

He stood by the open drawing-room door and watched her as she ran lightly upstairs.

Conscious of his eyes following her, the knowledge of his love and admiration warm at her heart, she went into their brightly-lit bedroom. For years she had lived such an unloved life, watching her youth fade, fighting only for bread to keep herself alive in a world where none wanted her. Since, in this man's eyes she was still so young and fair, let her look at herself!

She crossed the room to the looking-glass with a quick, exultant step, but having reached the dressing-table, drew back with almost a cry. Standing on it in its old place, facing her husband in his silver frame, was the silver-framed portrait with the elaborately-dressed fair hair, the smiling, shallow eyes of the first wife.

The Bride stifled the little cry upon her lips, but with her heart beating thickly, fell back from the dressing-table, and leant against the foot of the bed.

A moment's thought reassured her. There was nothing, after all, disturbing in the reappearance of a photograph which had been displaced. The invaluable maid with her slanting eyes, with, perhaps, her stupid devotion to a memory, was responsible.

At the thought the Bride's nerves steadied themselves, but her anger arose. She moved to the bell—but stopped. Better not to create talk among the servants by the order she had meditated; rather let this portrait of the dead wife follow the rest.

But when she held it, frame and all, over the fire, she relented and drew it back. "It is not like me to be a superstitious fool. I will not," she said. "She is in her grave, and I am—here. In a way I did not wish, but could not help, I spoilt the last year of her life. She is dead, buried out of mind, shovelled away under the earth, that a joy undreamt of might come to me. This poor triumph at least she shall have, to keep her old place on the table. I will never dress in the morning without remembering I am in her place. When I prepare for my bed at night she shall not be forgotten."

"'Les morts que l'on fait saigner dans leur tombe se vengent toujours!'" she quoted to herself as she undressed; and while she prided herself upon being above superstition, decided upon the above method of propitiating the Shade.

In the night she had a dream which bathed her in the sweat of terror. Opening her dreaming eyes upon the dressing-table which faced the foot of the bed she saw the figure of the dead wife standing there. Its back, clothed in its long nightdress, was turned to her, but in the glass which had so often reflected it she saw the foolish, fat face, the over-curled, fair hair. She saw, too, that the figure held in one hand its own photograph, while, with a pencil held in the other it wrote, smiling the while its own fatuous smile, on the reverse of the picture.

In her dream the Bride knew this vision to be a dream, a knowledge which by no means lessened the horror of it. "I must awake or die!" she said, and in a minute seemed broad awake.

It was morning; the sunshine flooding the room shone, with a brilliance which hurt the eyes upon the silver frame of the picture on the dressing-table. Nothing else was there; all the silver-topped pans and jars and bottles had disappeared; even the companion photograph was no longer to be seen; only the face of her one-time friend smiled and smiled and seemed to beckon from the strangely brilliant, dazzling frame.

With the horror of the dream no whit abated, the Bride rose heavily from her bed, dragged mysteriously attracted feet, that yet seemed weighted with lead, across the floor to the dressing-table; picked up in a hand that fumblingly obeyed the motion of her will, the picture.

Upon the back, written in the dead woman's familiar scrawl were the date of her death, and the words, "Died by my own hand."

In the desperate effort to cast the picture from her paralysed grasp, the Bride awoke.

She was really awake at last, and lying, faint with the dews of remembered terror, upon her bed, her head upon her husband's shoulder.

Thank God, awake at last! How horrible that had been!

Clinging to him in terror at first, she presently extricated herself from the man's encircling arm, and switched on the light. She dared not lie in the darkness with the thoughts that assailed her. Never for one instant before had the possibility of the wife's self-destruction occurred to her. Yet, all at once, how probable, how almost certain it seemed.

Died by her own hand! How easy it would have been! An overdose of the opiate the doctor was giving her to ease her pain. And she, weary of life—life made suddenly hideous to her; all her foolish vanities killed, her delight in herself, her belief in her friend, her faith in her husband. The gilding all stripped from the bauble which till then had made her happy. How possible! Nay, was it possible longer to doubt it?

And who was responsible? The woman who lay in her place, staring out into the room which had witnessed that foolish, harmless life, which had witnessed that tragic death; and the man sleeping beside her. They two.

Slowly, lest she should disturb him, the Bride raised herself upon her elbow, looked upon the sleeping face.

It was a face still unfamiliar to her in sleep. The always close-shut mouth was open, the straight-cut upper lip was strained tightly over the gums with a look almost of suffering, the eyes and temples looked as if sunken in pain. Feeling her gaze upon him, the man's lids half lifted themselves, an incoherent word or two fell from the stretched lips, the head moved restlessly upon the pillow.

Did he too guess this thing? Did he know?

"If he does he will never tell it to me," the Bride said to herself, knowing well he would spare her that pain.

In the next moment she was leaning over him, calling him in soft, distinct tones by his name.

"Love," she said, "do you hear me?"

He moaned, turning upon his back. The heavy jaw came fully into view, and the too thick throat which in the daytime the tall, close collar hid. With a light touch she swept the hair which, clinging low over his brow, so disguised it, backward.

"I hear," he answered in the thick, difficult voice of the sleeper.

"Love, I love you," she said. "Tell me, do you love me?"

A pause; then, "With my soul," he answered heavily.

"And—that other wife? Tell me, love."

The answer had always to be waited for, and seemed to come in unwilling response to the command of an intelligence afar off.

"Hate—I hated her," the sleeper said.

"She knew it—at last. Did she—did she kill herself? Tell me the truth, love, as you love me."

No answer but a strangled muttering, a head that moved as if in pain. The eyes watching him saw that the sleeper was tortured.

"But this once," she said to herself, "I must ask—I will know."

She bent over, without touching him, and put her lips down close to his ear. "Swear to tell me the truth," she said in her distinct, arresting whisper.

Long she waited, watching lips that writhed before speaking, eyes that seemed to ache to open and were sealed by an invisible hand. At length in the low, stumbling, unwilling voice came the response—"I swear."

"Did—she—kill—herself?"

"No!"

"Oh, love! Are you certain? Will you swear it?"

"I swear it," said the muffled voice.

"Why are you so sure? Why? Oh, tell me! Listen: she said she died by her own hand."

"A lie. It is a lie. I killed her."

* * * * *

Hours later, the light of morning, outshining the electric light, found the woman, the heavily slumbering man beside her, gazing, with a stricken face and eyes which looked as if sleep had been banished from them for ever, upon the new, unwelcome day.

Brightly the rays of the ascending sun struck upon the silver-framed portrait on the dressing-table, upon the smiling presentment of the fatuous-faced, shallow-eyed, dead wife.



THE EXCELLENT JOYS OF YOUTH

"No head without its nimbus of gold-coloured light."

He had that delicately tinted infantine complexion which only accompanies red hair; his eyes were brightly blue; his features well chiselled, with the exception of the lips, which were clumsily cut and loosely held together. He came down to breakfast in a not very agreeable mood, for he had been drinking for the last week, and this was the first time he had been thoroughly sober for that period. His head ached, his tongue was hot and leathery; he kept his hands in his trousers-pockets because they shook heavily, and he did not want the lodging-house servant to see.

The pockets were quite empty. He could not tell where the last few pounds had gone—if he had lost them at that game of poker he remembered playing before he fell asleep, or if they had been stolen since. He did not remember, and it would be worse than useless to inquire. Not a penny was left to him, and he had not a notion where a penny was to come from—even to pay for the breakfast which he had no appetite to eat.

With a heavy gloom upon his face, he stood and looked at the meal spread for him for several minutes before he sat down to table. There was smoked haddock, and he shook his head at it; scrambled eggs, and having looked at the dish he hastily covered it from sight. Beneath the sideboard a few bottles of soda-water were lying. He opened one, and, there being no glass at hand, poured the contents into his breakfast-cup, then drank with a thirst which threatened the cup as well as what it held.

Then he sat down to the table and stared at his reflection in the teapot.

"God! What a fool I've been," he said. "And what the devil am I to do now?"

Two or three letters lay beside his plate; he flicked them apart with his shaking finger. "Bills—bills—bills!" he said. "All bills!"

Unopened, he chucked them one by one into the fire, but stopped at the last. "A lawyer's fist," he said, regarding the ominously legal-looking hand-writing. "Someone threatening proceedings again. Let 'em proceed!"

He was about to throw that communication also in the fire, but paused in the act, and laid it down by his plate again, putting another plate on the top of it to conceal it from his sight.

He took up the knife, old and worn and sharpened at the point, which lay by the loaf of bread, and looked at its edge.

"This is how poor old Fleming got out of the scrape," he said. "And Fleming wasn't in a worse hole than I am."

But he turned the knife upon the bread instead of his own throat, and having begun with an expression of distaste upon the salt fish, his appetite arrived with eating, and, that dish disposed of, he attacked the buttered eggs, and found himself in a fair way to make a good meal. For, in spite of his intemperate habits, he had an invariably good appetite—an almost indomitable cheerfulness also. The inability to take himself and his misfortunes seriously had been at the bottom of all his failures. With his family history and his temperament he was foreordained to disaster; but he met it smiling, with the courage which was more the outcome of indifference than of heroism.

"Which is the way to the workhouse, Polly?" he inquired of the little lodging-house servant who came to clear the table.

He had filled his pipe and had turned his chair to the fire. His blue eyes shone as brightly, his red hair was watered as carefully free of curl, his person was as neat and spruce and daintily cared for as if he had been the most immaculate of mothers' sons.

Polly, at her first place, and with an unbounded admiration and regard for the lodger who, if he did make a sight of work splashing about in his bath, was always free with his shillings and full of his fun, looked at the young man distrustfully.

"What you got to do wi' th' work'us?" Polly asked resentfully, and seized the bread under one arm and the remains of the haddock under the other.

"If folks have no money and don't want to starve, what do they do?" he asked, puffing at his pipe.

"They work," said Polly, laconically; pushed open the door with her foot, deposited the dishes in the yard-wide hall beyond, and returned for the rest of the breakfast-things.

"They work if they're lucky and born poor," he said. "But if they're like me they can't work, Polly, because they don't know how, and no one will give them the chance to learn. No. It'll have to be the workhouse, my good girl."

Upon which Polly snuffled loudly, and her tears fell—splash—upon the plates she was carrying away. It was not the first time that the workhouse had been threatened; the dread of her life was that the threat should be carried into effect. So she cried, and her poor little red hands shook as she shuffled the plates together.

"Here's a letter," she snuffled.

"Fling it on the fire, Polly."

"'Tain't opened. I 'ont, then. You should ope your letters."

"Open it for me, then."

So the little maid-of-all work opened, and, in obedience to his orders, she being a sixth-standard scholar, and not stumbling once at a hard word, read the letter.

And as she read, the young man sat upright in his chair, pulled the pipe from lips which had fallen open in astonishment, and fixed unblinking eyes of innocent blue upon the handmaiden.

For in legal phraseology, the sense of which, if not the words, was a sore stumbling-block to Polly, the letter set forth that by the death of a certain James Playford, legatee under the will of Mr Daniel Thrower's uncle, a sum of money had been released which now, according to the said will, was to be divided between the said uncle's nephews and nieces. Due deduction having been made for this and that, Mr Daniel Thrower's share was found to amount to the sum of L98, 17s. 6d., for which a cheque was herewith enclosed.

"Do you mean to say he's sent the money?" Mr Daniel Thrower demanded, in the accents of incredulity.

"There ain't no money—not a farden—only a bit o' paper," Polly said, with disappointment.

Dan seized the cheque from her hand. "All right!" he said; "I shan't go to that institution we spoke of just yet, Polly. We've got another chance, my girl."

Truth to say, he had had several in his life, but this seemed to him the happiest which had ever befallen. After each drunken outburst he made resolution that it should be the last, and remained a strictly temperate person till the madness seized him again. The resolution he made as he sat gazing at the cheque he held in his hand, being the last, was the one he meant to keep. Years ago an elder brother had gone out to New South Wales, had bought some land there, and had prospered. He was not a very sympathetic brother, and had not responded to the suggestion that the ungain-doing Dan should take himself, his bad fortune, his unsatisfactory habits, also to New South Wales to settle down beside him.

Dan was of opinion, however, that, once there, this brother would find a difficulty in getting rid of him. He thought with longing of that clean and healthy life, the escape from the slough into which his feet would always wander while he remained here. The means to escape he now held in his hand!

"Here I keep on sinking, sinking!" Dan said to himself, illustrating the process with a movement of the hand which held the cheque. "Bill—he's as hard as nails, but he'll hold me up. I shall begin over again. I shall be free of this infernal embroglio. I shall write my name on a clean page——"

He would not stop to repent; he would look out the first steamer that sailed; he would pay his debts—they were not, after all, many, for he had a constitutional objection to cheating people, and always paid when he could. He would say good-bye to the man for whose friendship's sake he had come here, and would shake the dust of the miserable little town where he had played the fool of late from his feet. It was three or four days, he remembered, since he had seen the friend of whom he thought; he would have news to take him now! So slipping the letter which contained the cheque into his pocket, he walked out into the April sunshine of the little High Street, and betook himself to Gunton's lodgings.

Gunton was the not altogether satisfactory assistant to the one doctor in the place. Going thus early, he would catch him before he started on his rounds.

No need to hurry, Dan! Before the good people of Hayford shall see again the young doctor flying round on his long legs to visit the pauper patients, or clattering in Doctor Owen's tall gig over the cobblestones of the High Street on his way to those invalids of least consideration entrusted to his care, the last trump shall sound.

He was not in the little sitting-room where Dan and he had smoked so many pipes together. The visitor was striding across the passage to the bedroom, also on the ground-floor, when the landlady issued therefrom; and the landlady was in tears.

"I have kep' these apartments respectable and comf'table, and not a week unlet, these seventeen year, come Michaelmas," she sobbed. "And never have I had a death in 'em before."

Dan recoiled before the word. "Death?" he said.

And she repeated the word. "Poor Mr Gunton, he have had one of his throats, and he was took worse yesterday morning. He kep' askin' for you, sir, and no one could say where you was; and now he have sent me to fetch you, whatever happen, and to say as he's a-dyin'!"

"It's one of his jokes," Dan said; but he had grown grey about the lips, and his mouth fell open.

He pushed open the bedroom door, half expecting to be greeted by a smothered laugh from Gunton, and a whispered account of the last trick he'd played the old woman.

But Gunton, poor fellow, who had laughed and played his foolish jests, and got into mischief industriously all through his short life, had laid his mirth aside to-day. He had done but indifferently well the few tasks allotted him, shirking them when he could; the business he had now on hand was a very serious one, and there was no slipping out of it. He had to die.

He told his friend so in so many words. "What's o'clock now?" he asked. "Eleven? By two I shall be dead."

Dan tried not to believe. "I'll go for the doctor—I'll fetch a nurse!" he said.

The other stayed him with his difficult speech. "Don't waste time. It's no good," he said. "I've seen men die like this. I know. Owen was here till ten minutes ago. I told him last night it was all up. You know what an old ass it is—he wouldn't listen. He listens now. He's wired for ——" (naming a man locally celebrated in the profession). "He's driven, himself, to Fakenham for a nurse. I shall be dead before they get here. I told him so—the old ass! He's wired for my mother—she'll be too late. You can say I sent my love, Dan——"

All this in a hoarse, broken voice, interrupted by loud and painful breathing, and now and again by a short, rough cough.

"I didn't know you were seedy, old man! I'd have come at once," Dan said. "I've been on the spree again, for a day or so. It's the end. I'm not going to play the fool that fashion any more!"

"The end of my sprees!" poor Gunton said. "We've had one or two together, Dan. Don't look at me. I ain't pleasant to watch. Sorry. It won't be for long. Dan—my watch and studs, and a chain I never wore—they're"—he lifted a cold hand and tried to point to a little heap of trinkets lying on the drawers at the foot of the bed—"they're for you. Take them, will you? Take them now."

Dan nodded. "I'll take 'em, thank you, old man," he said, and sobbed suddenly. "Don't worry, Ted. Don't try to talk, dear old boy."

"I've got to. You know about Kitty. I was going to marry her next week. I took her away from the shop—made her give up her living. She's bought things to marry me. She can't pay for them. You—you——"

A struggle here, upon which Dan, in spite of himself, turned his back.

"I know," he said, brokenly. "I'll pay for them. I'll see to her. It'll be all right, Ted."

"No! My mother," the dying boy said; "tell her. She won't be pleased. Ask her to give Kitty a hundred pounds from me—with my love. Promise—promise."

"I promise," Dan said. "Anything—anything, dear old man. I know what you'll want done—don't, for God's sake, talk any more."

But for another hour of misery, of battling for breath, hideous to suffer and heart-breaking to witness, he would attempt to talk, irrationally at times, but now and again with a startling coherence. His mind ran on that gift of a hundred pounds. He sent message after message to the little shop-girl for whom, with the senseless prodigality of such youth, he had proposed to fling away his future. Again and again he adjured his friend to tell his mother what a good little girl Kitty was, how she had stuck to him and been a brick.

They said he was a clever fellow in his profession, the long-haired, long-legged young doctor, with his harum-scarum ways and his ready laugh. He had made a true diagnosis of his own case. Before doctors and nurses could be got to him he was dead.

"Don't look at me," was the last he said. "Pull the sheet over my face—don't look."

And so, with the thoughtfulness for others which had proclaimed him Gentleman in that inferior society where it had pleased him to move, he hid his suffering from the man who sat weeping like a woman beside him, and died.

* * * * *

It was Dan, his face blurred and swollen by crying, his usually darkened and subdued red hair proclaiming its curly nature in all the fierceness of its roseate hue—Dan, who at that moment would rather have been in any other place on earth—who received the bereaved mother, led her to the door of the death-chamber, and retired in miserable solitude to await the interview, to avoid which he would gladly have blown out his brains.

She came to him at last, a long, lean woman who had bent a stubborn back to many sorrows. A meek, unsubdued woman. The lankiness of limb, and the lankness of feature and hair, sufficiently pleasing in poor Ted, stretched forth at his long length yonder, were not such agreeable characteristics in the mother. Narrow face—narrow nature. In the thin features, contracted nostrils, close, small mouth, Dan might have read poor hope for Kitty.

"I have taken his jewellery," she said in her toneless voice. "I thought it best not to leave it about in a lodging-house. I miss a ring—a ring I gave him on his last birthday. Can you tell me where it is?"

She spread the watch, the chain, the sleeve-links, a certain pearl stud which Dan had noticed once or twice in his shirt when poor Gunton wore dress clothes, upon the table—all the poor, invaluable trifles which had lain on the drawers in that pathetic little heap bequeathed to the dead man's friend. "The ring is missing, you see," she said. She tied up the articles in a spare white handkerchief and slipped them into the pocket of her dress.

"Everything of his has become doubly precious to me," she said. "Perhaps you will be so good as to make inquiries about the ring."

Dan roused himself. Here was his opportunity. "I think the ring——" he began. "I think he gave the ring to Kitty, you know—the girl he was engaged to," he got out.

"Engaged?" the lady repeated. "My boy engaged—and without my knowledge!"

"We don't tell our mothers everything, I'm afraid," Dan said. He made a ghastly attempt to smile, to get back to his habitual easy manner which had forsaken him. "'Twouldn't be for our mothers' peace of mind——"

She interrupted him with cold dislike. "I know nothing of you and your mother," she said. "I know that there was perfect confidence between my son and me."

It was hard, after that, to tell her the story, but he told it, and saw her narrow face change from its frozen grieving to a still more frozen anger. She would not believe, or she affected not to believe, the story. A girl out of a little country shop to marry—her boy!

"You have no right to take away his character so, and he not here to defend himself!" she said. "He—I perceive that he has consorted with low company since he has been here; but he is a gentleman—my son, by birth and education."

"He was a gentleman," Dan said gently. Was—was? Ted was! Ted, who had been so alive, so "in it" in the jovial sense always—was! The word choked poor Dan, but he stumbled on, and told of the poor fellow's last charge to him, his last request to his mother.

Sometimes, in his confidential moments, Ted had spoken of this mother of his. "She is a good woman," he had said; "I suppose she never did, or said, or thought a wicked thing in her life."

She might be good, but she had now a heart as hard as the nether millstone. She did not choose to credit the story. She would not do her dear son's memory such an insult as to believe it. She looked with suspicion as well as dislike upon the poor friend with the rumpled red hair, with the fair skin, blurred and mottled, as such fair skins are wont to be, by his weeping. It was quite possible, she told herself in her miserable little wisdom, that he had made up the tale for his own ends. The hundred pounds was for himself, or at least he would share it. She would not believe; and presently she would hear no more.

"I must now really ask you to leave me alone," she said. "Your good feeling will show you that I have enough to bear."

"And you refuse to do this last thing poor Ted asked of you?" Dan said to her.

"I have no proof that he asked it," she answered.

And with that insult ringing in his ears, Dan went.

He pulled the door to upon him with a muttered oath on his lips; but he was not so enraged as another man would have been in his place. The "old girl" wasn't behaving well; but in Dan's experience, so many people did not behave well; and as it happened, the thing could be put right. If it had been yesterday, how helpless he would have been in the emergency! But old Playford's death had come just in the nick of time. As for himself and his chance—his last chance—well! He looked across at that other door behind which Ted lay. Ted and he had stuck together through ill report and good, had helped each other out of many a scrape, had had such good times!

Dan looked for a moment at the closed door, then stepped across the yard of matting and opened it.

Many a time he had run in without waiting for admission to his friend's lodgings, had pushed open the door to call a word to the young doctor, already gone to bed or not yet got up, perhaps. So, once more he opened the door far enough to admit his red head, and looked in. Ted was dead, he knew; but it takes time to reconcile us to the fact that the dead are also deaf, senseless, past grieving or comfort.

"It's all right, old man; don't you worry. I'll see to it," Dan said.



CARES OF A CURATE

"November 6th, 1901.

"... You were with me much down at H—— in the spring, and saw many of the ins and outs of a certain affair then going on in which I was personally interested, and which took up a large portion of my time; and I think I owe it to you, Charles, to let you know how to all that foolishness there came a finish. This 'excellent bachelor' is not to be spoilt by matrimony. She wouldn't have me. And so on, and so on. I spare you all particulars, and you see that I am alive to tell the tale. It made things a little difficult at H——. I got away as soon as I could and met with another curacy in this place, and I write to you on the evening of my arrival. It looks a cheerful, pretty little spot, but I haven't shaken down yet, and thoughts of H——, and of last May when you were with me, keep turning up in my mind to-night.

"My vicar seems all right. I thought it very decent of him to meet me himself at the station. He apologised for having insisted on an answer to his written question—was I a confirmed bachelor? The ladies of the parish were in favour of a celibate curate, he said, and he himself did not want to be bothered by a man who would be getting married directly, and going away. I told him there would not be any fear of misdemeanour of that kind with me.

"He brought me on here—well no, he didn't, that was what I wished him to do. He took me to the vicarage and gave me tea. His daughter gave it, rather. You'd like the daughter. Not very young, and not pretending to be; filled with good sense, a practical, companionable sort of body. She, too, was good enough to approve my estate of confirmed bachelorhood. She said they had found things work so much pleasanter on these lines. The last three of her father's curates had been devoted to the single life. I asked, for the sake of conversation, what had become of them, and she told me, without the change of a muscle of her face, that they had married. The vicar awoke to the subject of our conversation here, and said that they had married his three other daughters.

"'Jessica is the only one left me now,' he said.

"'Jessica must always be left or what will become of you?' the sensible young woman said.

"A great many women would have felt it a little awkward, but she was quite unembarrassed. She very kindly put on her hat to show me the way to my rooms. Even came in, and sat talking for an hour. She said quite naturally that the best thing a woman got out of advancing years was the possibility of making of a man a friend. She is thirty-five, and isn't ashamed of the fact. Altogether a refreshing woman.

"My rooms are not like those at H——. Do you remember that evening in May when your sister had been on the river with the Hysopps, and she and Tom and the mother came in, and they brought Mary? The moon was on the water, and we would not have in the lamps, but sat and talked in that light. Well, there's no river here, and the moon doesn't shine, and there are one or two other things missing! But Mrs Bust, my landlady—what a name!—appears a decent sort, and to judge by my supper to-night, an excellent cook.

"By the way, every available jug and jar and glass is filled with chrysanthemums. No less than seven ladies, whose names she gave me, had brought up bunches during the day, Mrs Bust said.

"This really looks extremely kind of the people. I thought it such a pretty way of welcoming a stranger....

* * * * *

"26th November.

"I'm not in the least offended. Why should I be? I know, as you say, that lookers-on see most of the game, and I am sure that you are perfectly genuine in your advice. But I have had enough, thank you. It will last me my life. Besides, you are mistaken—she wouldn't. A girl like that with four hundred a year—I always knew the money was a bar—why should she? I've got no illusions about myself, as a rule. I was a fool ever to think it possible. Thank you—but don't say any more about it. I ask it as a favour. I have rolled a stone against that door, you understand. 'Want but a few things and complain of nothing' shall be my motto; and although at a certain time of my life I wanted a good deal, at least I won't complain.

"If only there were fewer women in the world! Fewer in B——, perhaps, would answer my purpose. The fact of my being a confirmed bachelor makes them feel safe with me, I suppose, but the fact is I can't stir for them, Charles; I stifle with them. I wish you'd run down and take some of the pressure off. I wish a few other good fellows would come and rescue me. Her mother said that Mary (the forbidden topic!) was not suited for a clergyman's wife, that she hated useful work. Perhaps that was why I liked her so much. She never bored me. These women—!

"They are as kind as angels. I'm going to run my pen through the above.

"I've got in a piano—you know my weakness for strumming? My landlady's daughter shares that weakness. I hear the piano begin before I reach the garden gate, I hear it shut with a bang as I come in at the door. Waltzes, played very quick, and galops with the loud pedal down and an impromptu bass. Her mother suggested to me that Cissy should come in and play to me in the evenings sometimes. I did not exactly jump at the offer, and Mrs Bust, to remove a possible objection in my mind, explained that of course she had not intended to leave her daughter alone with me; she herself could bring her sewing and chaperon her, she said.

"I am beginning to dread my meals because this good woman waits on me. I have begged to be allowed to pour out my own glass of beer and to reach my own salt-cellar. No use.

"Mrs Carter, an influential parishioner, living at a nice place called The Lawns (I haven't counted how many there are of them, but have noticed a few yards of grass-plot at the side of the house), said to me the other day that she believed I was a woman-hater. I had encountered fifteen of them at her house and was in a desperate mood. I said I was. I thought I was safe with Mrs Carter. I've met each one of that fifteen since, and she has in every case stopped to say to me—'Oh, I hear you're a woman-hater!' They all seemed to be mightily pleased. It put me in a stupid position. I managed to say something civil to each; but I have a bone to pick with Mrs Carter! She is always poking her fun at every one, and wants to know if I don't make an exception in favour of Jessica.

"Jessica!!

"She and I get on together, however. So we need; for she is an ardent worker in the parish, and morn and noon and dewy eve are she and I thrown together. Often, when I think to have an hour to myself for reading or writing, she comes to my room and sits over the fire with me, her petticoats carefully lifted, her feet on the fender—I am tempted to wish her at Jericho; but she is a good sort....

* * * * *

"5th December.

"Many thanks for your brilliant suggestion. Very thoughtful of you. Jessica is not in the least that kind of woman. She might have been married ten years ago if she had liked. She told me all about it. The last man who married the sister meant to have Jessica.

"I say, there's a tragedy, Charles! To feel as you do about the woman you want to marry, and to have to go through it with another!

"She's a splendid manager and organiser, and a devoted worker. She told me yesterday that if ever she did consent to marry it would have to be her father's curate; she would neither leave the parish nor her father, she said. A lot of women would have been embarrassed in saying that, and I can see the expression of your face as you read it. Spare your gibes. Jessica is miles above the ordinary tricks and wiles and falsities of women. You'd know it if you saw her. A stout, strong-looking young woman in thick boots and short skirts; a weather-beaten, serviceable being.

"It must have been for her sterling qualities those other men were in love with Jessica. All the same, dreadful, doubtless, to lose her.

"I note your news of H——. I have cut off all relations with that place. People there don't know where I am. Have forgotten that I exist, most likely. Do not trouble to send me any further information.

"Ah, my dear Charles! If I only might do my work for the next world after a manly fashion, as other men do the work of this! These women won't let me. They are in everything. They meddle and mar and make mischief. Half of the Fifteen (can you halve them?) are at loggerheads with the other half because of words I am reported to have said. They quarrel with each other, but, heaven help me! they won't quarrel with me. They make me perpetual presents, they ask me endless questions, they consult me in difficulties of their own ingenious making and always cropping up. Half of them have husbands they might go to, children to occupy their time. One is at least sixty—!

"A girl and her mother have been here to see me to-day. Mother indignant, girl in floods of tears. Some one of the Fifteen had said that the girl was 'running after' me. Me, with my thirty-eight years, my fortune of a hundred and fifty a year! Can't you see my blushes on the paper as I write it? Had her daughter by look, by word, by deed, done anything to deserve that cruel slander, the mother wanted to know? Then, was I not ashamed such things should be said? God knows I am ashamed, but what can I do? They are always saying such things one of another. How can I stop it?

"'You must not be so civil to them,' Jessica says.

"I assure her that without positive rudeness I can't be less civil than I am.

"'Then, be rude to them,' counsels Jessica.

"How can one man, standing alone, immersed in rummage sales, parish concerts, mothers' meetings, school teas, and other feminine functions, be rude to Fifteen women at once? Between you and me, I have tried it, in my desperation, in individual cases, and it has no effect. I have discovered you can't please a woman better than to bully her.

"'You must marry Jessica,' Mrs Carter says. 'Married to Jessica you will find yourself a mere man, a very ordinary person.'

"'I should want an extraordinary nerve to do it,' I was on the point of saying, but remembered in time how she had reported me to the Fifteen. The pulpit is becoming the only place where I can enjoy the luxury of free speech. Words spoken in any less public place are brought back to me distorted past recognition.

"Heigho! I am always grumbling. As a fact, people put themselves out in the most flattering manner to be kind to me; I suppose I am as comfortable here as I should be in any place after H——.

"Little Cissy Bust found out that I was fond of flowers. Since then she pulls off a chrysanthemum every morning from the plant in her mother's window, and lays it beside my plate. Sweet of the little thing, but I watch with dismay the blooms lessening on the maternal plant. The mother is a good sort, in her way, but as I've been working in it all day I don't care to be bothered with the tittle-tattle of the parish when I come home at night. She is always bringing me delicacies off her own table. I have to eat them, because she stops to see me do it....

* * * * *

"19th December.

"How many afternoon tea-cloths have I had given me since I came, Charles? Guess.

"Nine. I haven't the smallest use for one of them. I never get the chance of having tea at home in the afternoon, being always under the obligation to eat muffins in this lady's house or that. Jessica came in through wind and rain one day and said she'd like to have a cup. Here seemed my opportunity. I showed her the nine and facetiously asked her to choose; or should I spread them all at once? She always has too much in hand to stop to jest over trifles; she waved the tea-cloths aside, and seized her cup off Mrs Bust's tray, and went on talking shop. I don't want to decry Jessica. She's worth all the rest put together. While they gabble, she does things. If Mrs Carter (who hates the sight of her, by the way) and the rest of them would only let us alone!

"So the engagement at H—— is broken off! It must be a blow to poor Holt, but I never thought him suited to her. Who is, I wonder? What a madness it was to think that she and I could pull together. Imagine that little teasing, irresponsible child in such a box as this, bored to death by these interminable women! For all her naughtiness and her folly she was wiser than I. But I am wiser now.

"Of course, if you hear of any fresh engagements or new freaks of the young lady, you will let me know at once.

"Mrs Bust was insolent about that cup of tea. I greatly hope Jessica did not notice the way she banged the tray down. She said afterwards that no single lady should come to a single gentleman's rooms, let alone take a meal with him. If there were other rooms to be had I would not put up with this creature. My dear Charles, I'm getting to be, in reality, what I've had the credit for being all along—a woman-hater.

"I go a good bit to Mrs Carter's. Her house is comfortable, and she is an amusing creature. Sees jokes, and cheers one up. She teases me about my beset condition, and tries to get me to say things. She calls me Job, and the Fifteen my comforters. Neither witty nor appropriate, but it pleases Mrs Carter. She says the least I can do is to give the nine donors of the nine tea-cloths tea. I frankly told her of the difficulty with Bust, who is inexorable on the matter of etiquette. It will be all right if she comes, Mrs Carter says. She is so set on it, I've had to give in. I've asked them. They're coming on Thursday.

"Oh, my dear old man, how my head aches!

"Mrs Carter keeps sending me up chickens, jellies, game, and things. She says I've shrunk three stone since I came. It's love, she says, and I shan't be all right till I'm married to Jessica.

"What rot women talk!

"Can this be true? She declares to me that the vicar told her in confidence he would soon be losing his daughter from his house, if not from his parish.

"You see the inference. There is not another even faintly eligible bachelor in the whole charming place. (Use your own epithet in place of the underlined word. I should rather like to hear you do it).

"I said, straight out, she had no business to repeat to me what, however silly, had been said in her private ear. She was quite unimpressed. 'In such a place as this what should we do if we did not repeat things?' she asked.

"She told me, as a huge joke, that her husband had overheard the servants saying she called me by my Christian name! Carter went to her for an explanation. No doubt she had chosen to call me 'Job,' or some nonsense of the kind, when the servants were in the room. She's delighted, and says Carter was quite annoyed.

"He's about the only Man in the woman-ridden place; after this I shall be ashamed to look him in the face.

"When Mrs Bust was taking away my supper to-night she requested me not in future to speak to her daughter as 'Cissy.' It was so very marked. I was not in the mood to receive the rebuff calmly, and she simmered down. Young girls got such strange ideas in their heads, she said. It was better not to be too familiar!

"Poor little Cissy, aged sixteen, and her flower on my plate! I've had a certain pleasure in that unfailing mark of a little girl's goodwill; but to receive a flower from Miss Bust! I shall hurl it into the coal-box in the morning....

* * * * *

"2nd January 1902.

"You harp a great deal on one string, old man. I know you mean it kindly, I know you'd like to see things put right for me in that quarter, but do believe I've had enough. I don't pretend—to you—it was a pleasant experience. I won't deny it was a nasty knock—but it's over, and Richard's himself again.

"You ask about the tea. Oh, well, there was no tea. At the last minute Mrs Bust refused to make tea for Mrs Carter. To the other nine she did not actively object—safety in numbers, I suppose—but Mrs Carter, it seems, had asked her during the progress of my last cold if she had neglected to air the sheets for my room. Such impertinence from any woman no lady could suffer, Mrs Bust informed me. Into her house Mrs Carter shall never set foot again. Seeing that I had laid in the cakes and sweeties and rubbish for the tea she suggested that she herself and Cissy should be of the company. In that case the most particular, she assured me, would have nothing to get hold of. I scrupled not to make plain to her that her plan did not commend itself to me.

"Mrs Carter is delighted, and tells the story, with additions, everywhere. She asked the nine to her own house and I had to show up. Carter was to have come home but of course he didn't. Small blame to him. By the way, he has become positively uncivil to me lately. In my hearing, the other night, he said something about the clergy 'for ever smothered with women's petticoats, and with their feet under better men's tables.' I have liked Carter hitherto, and shall have it out with him when I get the chance.

"You see, Charles, that girl fooled me thoroughly. I thought she liked me. You thought it yourself; you said so. I thought she meant me to know she liked. She is so young, so pretty, so rich in everything the world holds of value. If I had not fancied encouragement I never should have made the attempt. To come down such a crusher! Perhaps what you say is right. She may seem to think kindly of me now, she may even have spoken to your sister of the episode as you say; but let me put myself in the same place again and the same thing would happen. I'm not blaming her. God knows I don't blame her. I blame myself for being a blind ass. I hope she'll be happy, poor little girl. I want her to be. With all her irresponsibleness and her outside naughtiness and frivolity, her carelessness of men's feelings, her nonsense, and her teasing, pretty ways, I know that she is good at heart, sound, and sane and sweet. I want her to be happy!

"There is a girl among my Fifteen—she is quite young and has to be protected against herself. She has haunted me. When I got home she would be lurking in the dark of the road, when I went out I met her coming round the corner. Notes in her childish scrawl have fallen on me, thick as autumn leaves. I have had to see her mother at length. Mother, for my pains, told me roundly I was not a gentleman. I declare to you she abused me like a pickpocket, Charles.

"But this silly child had the excuse of youth. There is another of nearly three times her age to whom I had thought it safe to be civil. Well, it wasn't. She pursued me even within my own strong-hold, the pulpit. In a moment's weakness I had owned to her that I liked violets—pah! I am sick of the scent of them now. On Sunday morning I found a bunch of them, done up after a well-known fashion, with dried maiden-hair as a background, laid beside the pulpit cushion. I had good reason to know from whence it came. I said to her when she waylaid me on my homeward course that the woman who cleaned the church would have to be reprimanded. She had let fall a bunch of flowers from her frowsy dress upon the pulpit desk and had left them there. An unpardonable piece of negligence.

"'I thought you liked violets?' the foolish old woman said, looking ashamed; and I told her hardily that I loathed the sight of them and hoped never to look upon one again.

"This all seems only laughable to you. I can hear you snigger over it—and me! Laugh at me, but don't hate me as I do myself. A man nearing forty years of age, not particularly anything—either clever, or eloquent, or good-looking, or attractive. Don't I know it all? I can't write of it——

"And yet this one thing more I must tell you before I close.

"As I parted from the sensible, self-respecting, self-contained Jessica the other day—I protest to you my reliance on her womanly dignity and sturdy reasonableness has been to me as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land—I ran against her father, the old vicar. He put his hand on my shoulder, and looked at me with a kind of playful reproof in the face.

"'Ah, how long is this shilly-shallying to go on?' he asked.

"... I broke off there to see Mrs Carter. It has hitherto been a relief to see her. The only laughing I've done since I've been here has been with her. She did not laugh to-day. She came to me because she had no other friend, she said. She could not trust the gabbling womankind. Her husband had changed to her. He had become all at once unreasonable and unkind. He had told her that he did not trust her. He would no longer allow her to go to church, he had forbidden her to receive me again in his house.

"In utter bewilderment I could only ask her why. And then she burst into tears, and then—then there was another scene.

"Mrs Bust was no doubt listening at the door. At any rate she burst in upon us. I, for my part, was not sorry, but poor Mrs Carter—! Poor? Fool, idiot!

"She is forty years of age, her husband is a decent, honourable sort of fellow who worships her——

"That finishes the Carter friendship.

"If it were not for Jessica—good, matter-of-fact, reliable Jessica, welcome contrast to these hysterical, half-mad women, who laugh at and despise her—where should I be, Charles?...

* * * * *

"1st February.

"You have been a true friend to me and to her. I shall see you soon (D.V.), and then no doubt I shall say—nothing. But you will remember that I am grateful to you to the last drop of my heart's blood—and so is she.

"Now as for B.... The finish has come; it came to-day. Let us sing and give thanks with the best member that we have! All the same, the end has been a shock, and I wish it had come in some other way.

"She came in here at eleven this morning. You know who—Jessica. I thought she came to talk over last night's concert. It was a failure. The room was as empty as the church has been of late. Those—women (my cloth prohibits me from supplying the adjective, Charles. I leave it with satisfaction in your hands) with their gabble have robbed me of my last shred of character. I assure you I am regarded as a libertine in the place—a professional breaker of hearts, a Don Juan bragging of my conquests! Each of those Fifteen has her own tale to tell of her own wrongs and of my deceit. They hold indignation meetings in Mrs Carter's house. I shouldn't care the value of one of their hairpins, but one does not like to see the church empty; and it is not agreeable, having gone to the bother of getting up a concert, to sing to empty benches. It was not, however, to talk over the concert she had come.

"She had come to tell me she thought it would be better for us thoroughly to understand each other. I said I thought we had done so from the first. She told me she hoped so, but that we were going to speak out plainly now. She despised the underhand methods of other women, she said, and when she wanted to know a thing she went to the person capable of giving an answer and asked a direct question.

"Then she asked me, 'Did I mean to make her an offer of marriage?'

"In so many words she asked me, and never flinched.

"And I didn't flinch. I was so indignant, so outraged!

"'No!' I said.

"I hope I did not shout the word, but the room seemed to echo with it, somehow.

"'You mean that?' she asked; and I said that I meant it fervently.

"She got up and went to the door. There she waited, her hands in her coat-pockets, staring at the door. 'Of course you know that you have behaved disgracefully?' she said. 'I should never have trusted myself so much in your society but that I believed you to be an honourable man. I find you are not. If my father were younger he would punish you as you deserve. As it is—.'

"As it is, thank goodness, she went. Where's the good of bothering you with more of her invective?

"And I am going; to make room for another curate—another confirmed bachelor.

"She did not spare me of course. Among other agreeable things she said that I was a heartless Brute, and she hoped I should get what I deserved.

"I shall get a lot more than I deserve, between you and me, Charles. For, thanks to you and your pegging away, I wrote and asked little Mary once again if she would have me.

"And a letter has come from her this blessed morning to say that she will...."

* * * * *

COLSTON AND CO. LTD., PRINTERS, EDINBURGH

THE END