"Paint—a WOMAN!" he exclaimed.

It was as though you had said—paint an angel!

I could bear no more of it. The gulf yawned shiveringly wide at remarks like that; so, with the privilege of an elder, I declared it time for bed, and yawned off to my room.

Next morning we bade good-bye, and went our several ways. As we parted, he handed me a letter which I was not to open till I was well on my journey. We waved good-bye to each other till the turnings of the road made parting final, and then, sitting down by the roadside, I opened the letter. It proved to be not a letter, but a poem, which he had evidently written after I had left him for bed. It was entitled, with twenty's love for a tag of Latin, Ad Puellam Auream, and it ran thus:—

The Golden Girl in every place Hides and reveals her lovely face; Her neither skill nor strength may find— 'T is only loving moves her mind. If but a pretty face you seek, You'll find one any day or week; But if you look with deeper eyes, And seek her lovely, pure, and wise, Then must you wear the pilgrim's shoon For many a weary, wandering moon.

Only the pure in heart may see That lily of all purity, Only in clean unsullied thought The image of her face is caught, And only he her love may hold Who buys her with the spirit's gold.

Thus only shall you find your pearl, O seeker of the Golden Girl! She trod but now the grassy way, A vision of eternal May.

The devil take his impudence! "Only the pure in heart," "clean, unsullied thought." How like the cheek of twenty! And all the same how true! Dear lad, how true! Certainly, the child is father to the man. Dirige nos! O sage of the Golden Twenties!

As I meditatively folded up the pretty bit of writing, I made a resolution; but it was one of such importance that not only is another chapter needed to do it honour, but it may well inaugurate another book of this strange uneventful history.



BOOK II



CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I DECIDE TO BE YOUNG AGAIN

Yes, I said to myself, the lad is quite right; I will follow his advice. I'm afraid I was in danger of developing into a sad cynic, with a taste for the humour of this world. What should have been a lofty high-souled pilgrimage, only less transcendental than that of the Holy Grail itself, has so far failed, no doubt, because I have undertaken it too much in the wanton spirit of a troubadour.

I will grow young and serious again. Yes, why not? I will take a vow of Youth. One's age is entirely a matter of the imagination. From this moment I am no longer thirty. Thirty falls from me like a hideous dream. My back straightens again at the thought; my silvering hair blackens once more; my eyes, a few moments ago lacklustre and sunken, grow bright and full again, and the whites are clear as the finest porcelain. Veni, veni, Mephistophile! your Faust is young again,—young, young, and, with a boy's heart, open once more to all the influences of the mighty world.

I bring down my stick upon the ground with a mighty ring of resolution, and the miracle is done. Who would take me for thirty now? From this moment I abjure pessimism and cynicism in all their forms, put from my mind all considerations of the complexities of human life, unravel all by a triumphant optimism which no statistics can abash or criticism dishearten. I likewise undertake to divest myself entirely of any sense of humour that may have developed within me during the baneful experiences of the last ten years, and, in short, will consent for the future to be nothing that is not perfectly perfect and pure. These, I take it, are the fundamental conditions of being young again.

And as for the Quest, it shall forthwith be undertaken in an entirely serious and high-minded spirit. From this moment I am on the look-out for a really transcendental attachment. No "bright-eyed bar-maids," however "refined," need apply. Ladies who are prodigal of their white petticoats are no longer fit company for me. Indeed I shall no longer look upon a petticoat, unless I am able first entirely to spiritualise it. It must first be disinfected of every earthly thought.

Yes, I am once more a young man, sound in wind and limb, with not a tooth or an illusion lost, my mind tabula rasa, my heart to be had for the asking. Oh, come, ye merry, merry maidens! The fairy prince is on the fairy road.

Incipit vita nuova!

So in the lovely rapture of a new-born resolution—and is there any rapture like it?—nature has no more intoxicating illusion than that of turning over a new leaf, or beginning a new life from to-day—I sprang along the road with a carolling heart; quite forgetting that Apuleius and Fielding and Boccaccio were still in my knapsack—not to speak of the petticoat.



CHAPTER II

AT THE SIGN OF THE SINGING STREAM

Apuleius and Fielding and Boccaccio, bad companions for a petticoat, I'm afraid, bad companions too for so young a man as I had now become. However, as I say, I had for the time forgotten that pagan company, or, in my puritanic zeal, I might have thrown them all to be washed clean in the upland stream, whose pure waters one might fancy were fragrant from their sunny day among the ferns and the heather, fragrant to the eye, indeed, if one may so speak, with the shaken meal of the meadowsweet. This stream had been the good angel of my thoughts all the day, keeping them ever moving and ever fresh, cleansing and burnishing them, quite an open-air laundry of the mind.

We were both making for the same little town, it appeared, and as the sun was setting we reached it together. I entered the town over the bridge, and the stream under it, washing the walls of the high-piled, many-gabled old inn where I proposed to pass the night. I should hear it still rippling on with its gentle harpsichord tinkle, as I stretched myself down among the cool lavendered sheets, and little by little let slip the multifarious world.

The inn windows beamed cheerily, a home of ruddy rest. Having ordered my dinner and found my room, I threw down my knapsack and then came out again to smoke an ante-prandial pipe, listen to the evensong of the stream, and think great thoughts. The stream was still there, and singing the same sweet old song. You could hear it long after it was out of sight, in the gathering darkness, like an old nurse humming lullabies in the twilight.

The dinner was good, the wine was old, and oh! the rest was sweet! Nothing fills one with so exquisite a weariness as a day spent in good resolutions and great thoughts. There is something perilously sensuous in the relaxation of one's muscles, both of mind and body, after a day thus well spent.

Lighting up my pipe once more, and drawing to the fire, I suddenly realised a sense of loneliness. Of course, I was lonely for a book,—Apuleius or Fielding or Boccaccio!

An hour ago they had seemed dangerous companions for so lofty a mood; but now, under the gentle influences of dinner, the mood had not indeed changed—but mellowed. So to say, we would split the difference between the ideal and the human, and be, say, twenty-five.

It was in this genial attitude of mind that I strode up the quaint circular staircase to fetch Fielding from my room, and, shade of Tom Jones! what should be leaving my room, as I advanced to enter it, but—well, it's no use, resolutions are all very well, but facts are facts, especially when they're natural, and here was I face to face with the most natural little natural fact, and withal the most charming and merry-eyed, that—well, in short, as I came to enter my room I was confronted by the roundest, ruddiest little chambermaid ever created for the trial of mortal frailty.

And the worst of it was that her merry eye was in partnership with a merry tongue. Indeed, for some unexplained reason, she was bubbling over with congested laughter, the reason for which mere embarrassment set one inquiring. At last, between little gushes of laughter which shook her plump shoulders in a way that aroused wistful memories of Hebe, she archly asked me, with mock solemnity, if I should need a lady's maid.

"Certainly," I replied with inane promptitude, for I had no notion of her drift; but then she ran off in a scurry of laughter, and still puzzled I turned into my room, TO FIND, neatly hung over the end of the bed, nothing less than the dainty petticoat and silk stockings of Sylvia Joy.

You can imagine the colour of my cheeks at the discovery. No doubt I was already the laughing-stock of the whole inn. What folly! What a young vixen! Oh, what's to be done? Pay my bill and sneak off at once to the next town; but how pass through the grinning line of boots, and waiter, and chambermaid, and ironically respectful landlord and landlady, in the hall...

But while I thus deliberated, something soft pressed in at the door; and, making a sudden dart, I had the little baggage who had brought about my dilemma a prisoner in my arms.

I stayed some days at this charming old inn, for Amaryllis—oh, yes, you may be sure her name was Amaryllis—had not betrayed me; and indeed she may have some share in my retrospect of the inn as one of the most delightful which I encountered anywhere in my journeying. Would you like to know its name? Well, I know it as The Singing Stream. If you can find it under that name, you are welcome. And should you chance to be put into bedroom No. 26, you can think of me, and how I used to lie awake, listening to the stream rippling beneath the window, with its gentle harpsichord tinkle, and little by little letting slip the multifarious world.

And if anything about this chapter should seem to contradict the high ideals of the chapter preceding it, I can only say that, though the episode should not rigidly fulfil the conditions of the transcendental, nothing could have been more characteristic of that early youth to which I had vowed myself. Indeed, I congratulated myself, as I looked my last at the sign of The Singing Stream, that this had been quite in my early manner.



CHAPTER III

IN WHICH I SAVE A USEFUL LIFE

Though I had said good-bye to the inn, the stream and I did not part company at the inn-door, but continued for the best part of a morning to be fellow-travellers. Indeed, having led me to one pleasant adventure, its purpose, I afterwards realised, was to lead me to another, and then to go about its own bright business.

I don't think either of us had much idea where we were or whither we were bound. Our guiding principle seemed to be to get as much sunshine as possible, and to find the easiest road. We avoided dull sandy levels and hard rocky places, with the same instinctive dexterity. We gloomed together through dark dingles, and came out on sunny reaches with the same gilded magnificence. There are days when every stream is Pactolus and every man is Croesus, and thanks to that first and greatest of all alchemists, the sun, the morning I write of was a morning when to breathe was gold and to see was silver. And to breathe and see was all one asked. It was the first of May, and the world shone like a great illuminated letter with which that father of artists, the sun, was making splendid his missal of the seasons.

The month of May was ever his tour de force. Each year he has strained and stimulated his art to surpass himself, seeking ever a finer and a brighter gold, a more celestial azure. Never had his gold been so golden, his azure so dazzlingly clear and deep as on this particular May morning; while his fancy simply ran riot in the marginal decorations of woodland and spinney, quaint embroidered flowers and copses full of exquisitely painted and wonderfully trained birds of song. It was indeed a day for nature to be proud of. So seductive was the sunshine that even the shy trout leapt at noonday, eager apparently to change his silver for gold.

O silver fish in the silver stream, O golden fish in the golden gleam, Tell me, tell me, tell me true, Shall I find my girl if I follow you?

I suppose the reader never makes nonsense rhymes from sheer gladness of heart,—nursery doggerel to keep time with the rippling of the stream, or the dancing of the sun, or the beating of his heart; the gibberish of delight. As I hummed this nonsense, a trout at least three pounds in weight, whom you would know again anywhere, leapt a yard out of the water, and I took it, in my absurd, sun-soaked heart, as a good omen, as though he had said, "Follow and see."

I had no will but to follow, no desire but to see. All the same, though I affected to take him seriously, I had little suspicion how much that trout was to mean to me,—yes, within the course of a very few moments. Indeed, I had hardly strolled on for another quarter of a mile, when I was suddenly aroused from wool-gathering by his loud cries for help. Looking up, I saw him flashing desperately in mid-air, a lovely foot of writhing silver. In another second he was swung through the sunlight, and laid out breathing hard in a death-bed of buttercups and daisies.

There was not a moment to be lost, if I were to repay the debt of gratitude which in a flash I had seen that I owed him.

"Madam," I said, breathlessly springing forward, as a heavenly being was coldly tearing the hook from the gills of the unlucky trout, "though I am a stranger, will you do me a great favour? It is a matter of life or death..."

She looked up at me with some surprise, but with a fine fearless glance, and almost immediately said, "Certainly, what can I do?"

"Spare the life of that trout—"

"It is a singular request," she replied, "and one," she smiled, "self-sacrificing indeed for an angler to grant, for he weighs at least three pounds. However, since he seems a friend of yours, here goes—" And with the gladdest, most grateful sound in the world, the happy smack of a fish back home again in the water, after an appalling three minutes spent on land, that prophetic trout was once more an active unit in God's populous universe.

"Now that's good of you," I said, with thankful eyes, "and shows a kind heart."

"And kind hearts, they say, are more than coronets," she replied merrily, indulging in that derisive quotation which seems to be the final reward of the greatest poets.

For a moment there was a silence, during which I confess to wondering what I should say next. However, she supplied my place.

"But of course," she said, "you owe it to me, after this touching display of humanitarianism, to entertain me with your reason for interposing between me and my just trout. Was it one of those wonderful talking fishes out of the Arabian Nights, or are you merely an angler yourself, and did you begrudge such a record catch to a girl?"

"I see," I replied, "that you will understand me. That trout was, so to speak, out of the Arabian Nights. Only five minutes ago it was a May-day madness of mine to think that he leaped out of the water and gave me a highly important message. So I begged his life from a mere fancy. It was just a whim, which I trust you will excuse."

"A whim! So you are a follower of the great god Whim," she replied, with somewhat of an eager interest in her voice. "How nice it is to meet a fellow-worshipper!"

"Do women ever have whims?" I respectfully asked.

"I don't know about other women," she replied. "Indeed, I'm afraid I'm unnatural enough to take no interest in them at all. But, as for me,—well, what nonsense! Tell me some more about the trout. What was the wonderful message he seemed to give you? Or perhaps I oughtn't to ask?"

"I'm afraid," I said, "it would hardly translate into anything approaching common-sense."

"Did I ask for common-sense?" she retorted. It was true, she hadn't. But then I couldn't, with any respect for her, tell her the trout's message, or, with any respect for myself, recall those atrocious doggerel lines. In my dilemma, I caught sight of a pretty book lying near her fishing-basket, and diverted the talk by venturing to ask its name.

"'T is of Aucassin and Nicolete," she replied, with something in her voice which seemed to imply that the tender old story would be familiar to me. My memory served me for once gallantly.

I answered by humming half to myself the lines from the prologue,—

"Sweet the song, the story sweet, There is no man hearkens it, No man living 'neath the sun, So outwearied, so foredone, Sick and woful, worn and sad, But is healed, but is glad 'T is so sweet."

"How charming of you to know it!" she laughed. "You are the only man in this county, or the next, or the next, who knows it, I'm sure."

"Are the women of the county more familiar with it?" I replied.

"But tell me about the trout," she once more persisted.

At the same moment, however, there came from a little distance the musical tinkle of a bell that sounded like silver, a fairy-like and almost startling sound.

"It is my lunch," she explained. "I'm a worshipper of the great god Whim too, and close by here I have a little summer-house, full of books and fishing-lines and other childishness, where, when my whim is to be lonely, I come and play at solitude. If you'll be content with rustic fare, and promise to be amusing, it would be very pleasant if you'd join me."

O! most prophetic and agreeable trout! Was it not like the old fairy tales, the you-help-us and we'll-help-you of Psyche and the ants?

It had been the idlest whim for me to save the life of that poor trout. There was no real pity in it. For two pins, I had been just as ready to cut it open, to see if by chance it carried in its belly the golden ring wherewith I was to wed the Golden—

However, such is the gratitude of nature to man, that this little thoughtless act of kindness had brought me face to face with—was it the Golden Girl?



CHAPTER IV

'T IS OF NICOLETE AND HER BOWER IN THE WILDWOOD

But I have all this time left the reader without any formal descriptive introduction to this whimsical young lady angler. Not without reason, for, like any really charming personality, she was very difficult to picture. Paint a woman! as our young friend Alastor said.

Faces that fall into types you can describe, or at all events label in such a way that the reader can identify them; but those faces that consist mainly of spiritual effect and physical bloom, that change with everything they look upon, the light in which ebbs and flows with every changing tide of the soul,—these you have to love to know, and to worship to portray.

Now the face of Nicolete, as I learnt in time to call her, was just soul and bloom, perhaps mainly bloom. I never noticed whether she had any other features except her eyes. I suppose she had a nose; a little lace pocket-handkerchief I have by me at the moment is almost too small to be evidence on that important point.

As I walked by her side that May morning, I was only conscious of her voice and her exquisite girlhood; for though she talked with the APLOMB of a woman of the world, a passionate candour and simple ardour in her manner would have betrayed her, had her face not plainly declared her the incarnation of twenty. But if she were twenty years young, she was equally twenty years OLD; and twenty years old, in some respects, is the greatest age attained to by man or woman. In this she rather differed from Alastor, of whom otherwise she was the female counterpart. Her talk, and something rather in her voice than her talk, soon revealed her as a curious mixture of youth and age, of dreamer and desillusionee.

One soon realised that she was too young, was hoping too much from life, to spend one's days with. Yet she had just sufficiently that touch of languor which puts one at one's ease, though indeed it was rather the languor of waiting for what was going to happen than the weariness of experience gone by. She was weary, not because of the past, but because the fairy theatre of life still kept its curtain down, and forced her to play over and over again the impatient overture of her dreams.

I have no doubt that it was largely nervousness that kept the mysterious playwright so long fumbling behind the scenes, for it was obvious that it would be no ordinary sort of play, no every-day domestic drama, that would satisfy this young lady, to whom life had given, by way of prologue, the inestimable blessing of wealth, and the privilege, as a matter of course, of choosing as she would among the grooms (that is, the bride-grooms) of the romantic British aristocracy.

She had made youth's common mistake of beginning life with books, which can only be used without danger by those who are in a position to test their statements. Youth naturally believes everything that is told it, especially in books.

Now, books are simply professional liars about life, and the books that are best worth reading are those which lie the most beautifully. Yet, in fairness, we must add that they are liars, not with intent to mislead, but merely with the tenderest purpose to console. They are the good Samaritans that find us robbed of all our dreams by the roadside of life, bleeding and weeping and desolate; and such is their skill and wealth and goodness of heart, that they not only heal up our wounds, but restore to us the lost property of our dreams, on one condition,—that we never travel with them again in the daylight.

A library is a better world, built by the brains and hearts of poets and dreamers, as a refuge from the real world outside; and in it alone is to be found the land of milk and honey which it promises.

"Milk and honey" would have been an appropriate inscription for the delicious little library which parents who, I surmised, doted on Nicolete in vain, had allowed her to build in a wild woodland corner of her ancestral park, half a mile away from the great house, where, for all its corridors and galleries, she could never feel, at all events, spiritually alone. All that was most sugared and musical and generally delusive in the old library of her fathers had been brought out to this little woodland library, and to that nucleus of old leather-bound poets and romancers, long since dead, yet as alive and singing on their shelves as any bird on the sunny boughs outside, my young lady's private purse had added all that was most sugared and musical and generally delusive in the vellum bound Japanese-paper literature of our own luxurious day. Nor were poets and romancers from over sea—in their seeming simple paper covers, but with, oh, such complicated and subtle insides!—absent from the court which Nicolete held here in the greenwood. Never was such a nest of singing-birds. All day long, to the ear of the spirit, there was in this little library a sound of harping and singing and the telling of tales,—songs and tales of a world that never was, yet shall ever be. Here day by day Nicolete fed her young soul on the nightingale's-tongues of literature, and put down her book only to listen to the nightingale's-tongues outside. Yea, sun, moon, and stars were all in the conspiracy to lie to her of the loveliness of the world and the good intentions of life. And now, thus unexpectedly, I found myself joining the nefarious conspiracy. Ah, well! was I not twenty myself, and full of dreams!



CHAPTER V

'T IS OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE

Thus it was that we lunched together amid the books and birds, in an exquisite solitude a deux; for the ringer of the silver bell had disappeared, having left a dainty meal in readiness—for two.

"You see you were expected," said Nicolete, with her pretty laugh. "I dreamed I should have a visitor to-day, and told Susan to lay the lunch for two. You mustn't be surprised at that," she added mischievously; "it has often happened before. I dream that dream every other night, and Susan lays for two every day. She knows my whims,—knows that the extra knife and fork are for the fairy knight that may turn up any afternoon, as I tell her—"

"To find the sleepless princess," I added, thinking at the same time one of those irrelevant asides that will go through the brain of thirty, that the woman who would get her share of kisses nowadays must neither slumber nor sleep.

A certain great poet, I think it was Byron, objected to seeing women in the act of eating. He thought their eating should be done in private. What a curiously perverse opinion! For surely woman never shows to better advantage than in the dainty exercises of a dainty repast, and there is nothing more thrilling to man than a meal alone with a woman he loves or is about to love. Perhaps, deep down, the reason is that there still vibrates in the masculine blood the thrilling surprise of the moment when man first realised that the angel woman was built upon the same carnivorous principles as his grosser self.

That is one of the first heart-beating surprises that come upon the boy Columbus, as he sets out to discover the New World of woman; and indeed his surprise has not seldom deepened into admiration, as he has found that not only does woman eat, but frequently eats a lot.

This privilege of seeing woman eat is the earliest granted of those delicate animal intimacies, the fuller and fuller confiding of which plays not the least important part, and ever such a sweet one, even in a highly transcendental affection. It is this gradual humanising of the divine female that brings about the spiritualising of the unregenerate male.

In the earliest stages of love the services are small that we are privileged to do for the loved one. But if we are allowed to sit at meat with her,—ever a royal condescension,—it is ours at least to pass her the salt, to see that she is never kept waiting a moment for the mustard or the pepper, to cut the bread for her with geometrical precision, and to lean as near her warm shoulder as we dare to pour out for her the sacred wine.

Yes! for sure I was twenty again, for the performance of these simple services for Nicolete gave me a thrill of pure boyish pleasure such as I had never expected to feel again. And did she not make a knight of me by gently asking if I would be so kind as to carve the chicken, and how she laughed quite disproportionally at my school-boy story of the man who, being asked to carve a pigeon, said he thought they had better send for a wood-carver, as it seemed to be a wood pigeon.

And while we ate and drank and laughed and chatted, the books around us were weaving their spells. Even before the invention of printing books were "love's purveyors." Was it not a book that sent Paolo and Francesca for ever wandering on that stormy wind of passion and of death? And nowadays the part played by books in human drama is greater than we perhaps realise. Apart from their serious influence as determining destinies of the character, what endless opportunities they afford to lovers, who perhaps are denied all other meeting-places than may be found on the tell-tale pages of a marked volume. The method is so easy and so unsuspect. You have only to put faint pencil-marks against the tenderest passages in your favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has only to leave here and there the dropped violet of a timid confirmatory initial, for you to know your fate. And what a touchstone books thus become! Indeed they simplify love-making, from every point of view. With books so inexpensive and accessible to all as they are to-day, no one need run any risks of marrying the wrong woman. He has only to put her through an unconscious examination by getting her to read and mark a few of his favourite authors, and he is thus in possession of the master clues of her character. With a list of her month's reading and a photograph, a man ought to be able to make up his mind about any given woman, even though he has never spoken to her. "Name your favourite writer" should be one of the first questions in the Engagement Catechism.

There is, indeed, no such short cut to knowledge of each other as a talk about books. One short afternoon is enough for any two book-lovers, though they may have met for the first time in the morning, to make up their minds whether or not they have been born for each other. If you are agreed, say, in admiring Meredith, Hardy, Omar Khayyam, and Maeterlinck,—to take four particularly test-authors,—there is nothing to prevent your marrying at once. Indeed, a love for any one of these significant writers will be enough, not to speak of an admiration for "Aucassin and Nicolete."

Now, Nicolete and I soon found that we had all these and many another writer in common, and before our lunch was ended we were nearer to each other than many old friends. The heart does not more love the heart that loves it than the brain loves the brain that comprehends it; and, whatever else was to befall us, Nicolete and I were already in love with each other's brains. Whether or not the malady would spread till it reached the heart is the secret of some future chapter.



CHAPTER VI

A FAIRY TALE AND ITS FAIRY TAILORS

As this is not a realistic novel, I do not hold myself bound, as I have said before, to account reasonably for everything that is done—least of all, said—within its pages. I simply say, So it happened, or So it is, and expect the reader to take my word. If he be uncivil enough to doubt it, we may as well stop playing this game of fancy. It is one of the first conditions of enjoying a book, as it is of all successful hypnotism, that the reader surrenders up his will to the writer, who, of course, guarantees to return it to him at the close of the volume. If you say that no young lady would have behaved as I have presently to relate of Nicolete, that no parents were ever so accommodating in the world of reality, I reply,—No doubt you are right, but none the less what I have to tell is true and really did happen, for all that. And not only did it happen, but to the whimsically minded, to the true children of fancy, it will seem the most natural thing in the world. No doubt they will wonder why I have made such a preamble about it, as indeed, now I think of it, so do I.

Again I claim exemption in this wandering history from all such descriptive drudgery upon second, third, and fourth dramatis personsonae as your thorough-going novelist must undertake with a good grace. Like a host and hostess at a reception, the poor novelist has to pretend to be interested in everybody,—in the dull as in the brilliant, in the bore as in the beauty. I'm afraid I should never do as a novelist, for I should waste all my time with the heroine; whereas the true novelist is expected to pay as much attention to the heroine's parents as though he were a suitor for her hand. Indeed, there is no relative of hero or heroine too humble or stupid for such a novelist as the great Balzac. He will invite the dullest of them to stay with him for quite prolonged visits, and without a murmur set apart a suite of chapters for their accommodation. I'm not sure that the humanity of the reader in these cases is of such comprehensive sympathy as the novelist's, and it may well be that the novelist undertakes all such hard labour under a misapprehension of the desires of the reader, who, as a rule, I fancy, is as anxious to join the ladies as the novelist himself. Indeed, I believe that there is an opportunity for a new form of novel, in which the novelist, as well as the reader, will skip all the dull people, and merely indicate such of them as are necessary to the action by an outline or a symbol, compressing their familiar psychology, and necessary plot-interferences with the main characters, into recognised formulae. For the benefit of readers voracious for everything about everybody, schedule chapters might be provided by inferior novelists, good at painting say tiresome bourgeois fathers, gouty uncles and brothers in the army, as sometimes in great pictures we read that the sheep in the foreground have been painted by Mr. So-and-so, R.A.

The Major-General and his Lady were taking the waters at Wiesbaden. That was all I knew of Nicolete's parents, and all I needed to know; with the exception of one good action,—at her urgent entreaty they had left Nicolete behind them, with no other safeguard than a charming young lady companion, whose fitness for her sacred duties consisted in a temperament hardly less romantic and whimsical than Nicolete's own. She was too charming to deserve the name of obstacle; and as there was no other—

But I admit that the cart has got a little in front of the horse, and I grow suddenly alarmed lest the reader should be suspecting me of an elopement, or some such romantic vulgarity. If he will only put any such thoughts from his mind, I promise to proceed with the story in a brief and business-like manner forthwith.

We are back once more at the close of the last chapter, in Nicolete's book-bower in the wildwood. It is an hour or two later, and the afternoon sun is flooding with a searching glory all the secret places of the woodland. Hidden nooks and corners, unused to observation, suddenly gleam and blush in effulgent exposure,—like lovers whom the unexpected turning on of a light has revealed kissing in the dark,—and are as suddenly, unlike the lovers, left in their native shade again. It was that rich afternoon sunlight that loves to flash into teacups as though they were crocuses, that loves to run a golden finger along the beautiful wrinkles of old faces and light up the noble hollows of age-worn eyes; the sunlight that loves to fall with transfiguring beam on the once dear book we never read, or, with malicious inquisitiveness, expose to undreamed-of detection the undusted picture, or the gold-dusted legs of remote chairs, which the poor housemaid has forgotten.

So in Nicolete's bower it illuminated with strange radiancy the dainty disorder of deserted lunch, made prisms out of the wine-glasses, painted the white cloth with wedge-shaped rainbows, and flooded the cavernous interiors of the half-eaten fowl with a pathetic yellow torchlight.

Leaving that melancholy relic of carnivorous appetite, it turned its bold gold gaze on Nicolete. No need to transfigure her! But, heavens! how grandly her young face took the great kiss of the god! Then it fell for a tender moment on the jaundiced page of my old Boccaccio,—a rare edition, which I had taken from my knapsack to indulge myself with the appreciation of a connoisseur. Next minute "the unobstructed beam" was shining right into the knapsack itself, for all the world like one of those little demon electric lights with which the dentist makes a momentary treasure-cave of your distended jaws, flashing with startled stalactite. At the same moment Nicolete's starry eyes took the same direction; then there broke from her her lovely laughter, merry and inextinguishable.

Once more, need I say, my petticoat had played me false—or should I not say true? For there was its luxurious lace border, a thing for the soft light of the boudoir, or the secret moonlight of love's permitted eyes, alone to see, shamelessly brazening it out in this terrible sunlight. Obviously there was but one way out of the dilemma, to confess my pilgrimage to Nicolete, and reveal to her all the fanciful absurdity to which, after all, I owed the sight of her.

"So that is why you pleaded so hard for that poor trout," she said, when I had finished. "Well, you are a fairy prince indeed! Now, do you know what the punishment of your nonsense is to be?"

"Is it very severe and humiliating?" I asked.

"You must judge of that. It is—to take me with you!"

"You,—what do you mean?"

"Yes,—not for good and all, of course, but just for, say, a fortnight, just a fortnight of rambles and adventures, and then to deliver me safe home again where you found me—"

"But it is impossible," I almost gasped in surprise. "Of course you are not serious?"

"I am, really, and you will take me, won't you?" she continued pleadingly. "You don't know how we women envy you men those wonderful walking-tours we can only read about in Hazlitt or Stevenson. We are not allowed to move without a nurse or a footman. From the day we are born to the day we die, we are never left a moment to ourselves. But you—you can go out into the world, the mysterious world, do as you will, go where you will, wander here, wander there, follow any bye-way that takes your fancy, put up at old inns, make strange acquaintances, have all kinds of romantic experiences— Oh, to be a man for a fortnight, your younger brother for a fortnight!"

"It is impossible!" I repeated.

"It isn't at all," she persisted, with a fine blush. "If you will only be nice and kind, and help me to some Rosalind's clothes. You have only to write to your tailors, or send home for a spare suit of clothes,—with a little managing yours would just fit me, you're not so much taller,—and then we could start, like two comrades, seeking adventures. Oh, how glorious it would be!"

It was in vain that I brought the batteries of common-sense to bear upon her whim. I raised every possible objection in vain.

I pointed out the practical difficulties. There were her parents.

Weren't they drinking the waters at Wiesbaden, and weren't they to go on drinking them for another three weeks? My fancy made a picture of them distended with three weeks' absorption of mineral springs. Then there was her companion. Nicolete was confident of her assistance. Then I tried vilifying myself. How could she run the risk of trusting herself to such intimate companionship with a man whom she hadn't known half a dozen hours? This she laughed to scorn. Presently I was silent from sheer lack of further objections; and need I say that all the while there had been a traitor impulse in my heart, a weak sweetness urging me on to accept the pretty chance which the good genius of my pilgrimage had so evidently put in my way,—for, after all, what harm could it do? With me Nicolete was, indeed, safe,—that, of course, I knew,—and safely she should come back home again after her little frolic. All that was true enough. And how charming it would be to have such a dainty companion! then the fun, the fancy, the whim of it all. What was the use of setting out to seek adventures if I didn't pursue them when found.

Well, the long and short of it was that I agreed to undertake the adventure, provided that Nicolete could win over the lady whom at the beginning of the chapter I declared too charming to be described as an obstacle.

By nine o'clock the following morning the fairy tailors, as Nicolete called them, were at work on the fairy clothes, and, at the end of three days, there came by parcel-post a bulky unromantic-looking brown-paper parcel, which it was my business to convey to Nicolete under cover of the dark.



CHAPTER VII

FROM THE MORNING STAR TO THE MOON

I quite realise that this book is written perhaps only just in time for the motive of these two or three chapters to be appreciated in its ancient piquancy. Very soon, alas! the sexes will be robbed of one of the first and most thrilling motives of romance, the motive of As You Like It, the romance of wearing each other's clothes. Alas, that every advance of reason should mean a corresponding retreat of romance! It is only reasonable that woman, being—have you yet realised the fact?—a biped like her brothers, should, when she takes to her brothers' recreations, dress as those recreations demand; and yet the death of Rosalind is a heavy price to pay for the lady bicyclist. So soon as the two sexes wear the same clothes, they may as well wear nothing; the game of sex is up. In this matter, as in others, we cannot both have our cake and eat it. All romance, like all temptation, is founded on the Fascination of the Exception. So soon as the exception becomes, instead of merely proving, the rule, that particular avenue of romance is closed. The New Woman of the future will be the woman with the petticoats, she who shall restore the ancient Eleusinian mysteries of the silk skirt and the tea-gown.

Happily for me, my acquaintance among the Rosalinds of the bicycle, at this period of my life, was but slight, and thus no familiarity with the tweed knickerbocker feminine took off the edge of my delight on first beholding Nicolete clothed in like manhood with ourselves, and yet, delicious paradox! looking more like a woman than ever.

During those three days while the fairy tailors were at work our friendship had not been idle. Indeed, some part of each day we had spent diligently learning each other, as travellers to distant lands across the Channel work hard at phrase-book and Baedeker the week before their departure. Meanwhile too I had made the acquaintance of the charming lady Obstacle,—as it proved so unfair to call her,—and by some process of natural magnetism we had immediately won each other's hearts, so that on the moonlight night on which I took the river path with my brown-paper parcel there was no misgiving in my heart,—nothing but harping and singing, and blessings on the river that seemed all silver with the backs of magic trout. As I thought of all I owed that noble fish, I kneeled by the river's bearded lip, among the nettles and the meadowsweet, and swore by the inconstant moon that trout and I were henceforth kinsmen, and that between our houses should be an eternal amity. The chub and the dace and the carp, not to speak of that Chinese pirate the pike, might still look to it, when I came forth armed with rod and line; but for me and my house the trout is henceforth sacred. By the memory of the Blessed Saint Izaak, I swore it!

My arrival at Beaucaire was one of great excitement. Nicolete and the Obstacle were both awaiting me, for the mysteries of masculine attire were not to be explored alone. The parcel was snatched quite unceremoniously from my hands, the door shut upon me, and I laughingly bidden go listen to the nightingale. I was not long in finding one, nor, being an industrious phrase-maker, did I waste my time, for, before I was summoned to behold Nicolete in all her boyhood, I had found occasion and moonlight to remark to my pocket-book that, Though all the world has heard the song of the Nightingale to the Rose, only the Nightingale has heard the answer of the Rose. This I hurriedly hid in my heart for future conversation, as the pre-arranged tinkle of the silver bell called me to the rose.

Would, indeed, that I were a nightingale to sing aright the beauty of that rose with which, think of it, I was to spend a whole fortnight,—yes, no less than fourteen wonderful days.

The two girls were evidently proud of themselves at having succeeded so well with the mysterious garments. There were one or two points on which they needed my guidance, but they were unimportant; and when at last Nicolete would consent to stand up straight and let me have a good look at her,—for, poor child! she was as shy and shrinking as though she had nothing on,—she made a very pretty young man indeed.

She didn't, I'm afraid, look like a young man of our degenerate day. She was far too beautiful and distinguished for that. Besides, her dark curling hair, quite short for a woman, was too long, and her eyes—like the eyes of all poets—were women's eyes. She looked, indeed, like one of those wonderful boys of the Italian Renaissance, whom you may still see at the National Gallery, whose beauty is no denial, but rather the stamp of their slender, supple strength, young painters and sculptors who held the palette for Leonardo, or wielded the chisel for Michelangelo, and anon threw both aside to take up sword for Guelf or Ghibelline in the narrow streets of Florence.

Her knapsack was already packed, and its contents included a serge skirt "in case of emergencies." Already, she naughtily reminded me, we possessed a petticoat between us.

The brief remainder of the evening passed in excited chatter and cigarettes, and in my instructing Nicolete in certain tricks of masculine deportment. The chief difficulty I hardly like mentioning; and if the Obstacle had not been present, I certainly dare not have spoken of it to Nicolete. I mean that she was so shy about her pretty legs. She couldn't cross them with any successful nonchalance.

"You must take your legs more for granted, dear Nicolete," I summoned courage to say. "The nonchalance of the legs is the first lesson to be learnt in such a masquerade as this. You must regard them as so much bone and iron, rude skeleton joints and shins, as though they were the bones of the great elk or other extinct South Kensington specimen,"—"not," I added in my heart, "as the velvet and ivory which they are."

We had agreed to start with the sun on the morrow, so as to get clear of possible Peeping Toms; and when good-nights had been said, and I was once more swinging towards my inn, it seemed but an hour or two, as indeed it was, before I heard four o'clock drowsily announced through my bedroom door, and before I was once more striding along that river-bank all dew-silvered with last night's moonlight, the sun rubbing his great eye on the horizon, the whole world yawning through dainty bed-clothes of mist, and here and there a copse-full of birds congratulating themselves on their early rising.

Nicolete was not quite ready, so I had to go listen to the lark, about whom, alas! I could find nothing to say to my pocket-book, before Nicolete, armed cap-a-pie with stick and knapsack, appeared at the door of her chalet.

The Obstacle was there to see us start. She and Nicolete exchanged many kisses which were hard to bear, and the first quarter of an hour of our journey was much obstructed by the farewells of her far-fluttering handkerchief. When at last we were really alone, I turned and looked at Nicolete striding manfully at my side, just to make sure that it was really true.

"Well, we're in for it now," I said; "aren't you frightened?"

"Oh, it's wonderful," she replied; "don't spoil it by talking."

And I didn't; for who could hope to compete with the sun, who was making the whole dewy world shake with laughter at his brilliancy, or with the birds, any one of whom was a poet at least equal to Herrick?

Presently we found ourselves at four crossroads, with a four-fingered post in the centre. We had agreed to leave our destination to chance. We read the sign-post.

"Which shall we choose?" I said,—

"Aucassin, true love and fair, To what land do we repair?"

"Don't you think this one," she replied, "this one?—To the Moon!"

"Certainly, we couldn't find a prettier place; but it's a long way," I replied, looking up at the sky, all roses and pearls,—"a long way from the Morning Star to the Moon."

"All the longer to be free," cried Nicolete, recklessly.

"So be it," I assented. "Allons—to the Moon!"



CHAPTER VIII

THE KIND OF THING THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOON

Two friends of my youth, with whom it would be hopeless to attempt competition, have described the star-strewn journey to the moon. It is not for me to essay again where the ingenious M. Jules Verne and Mr. William Morris have preceded me. Besides, the journey is nowadays much more usual, and therefore much less adventurous, than when those revered writers first described it. In the middle ages a journey to the moon with a woman you loved was a very perilous matter indeed. Even in the last century the roads were much beset with danger; but in our own day, like most journeys, it is accomplished with ease and safety in a few hours.

However, to the latter-day hero, whose appetite for dragons is not keen, this absence of adventure is perhaps rather pleasurable than otherwise; and I confess that I enjoyed the days I spent on foot with Nicolete none the less because they passed in tranquil uneventfulness,—that is, without events of the violent kind. Of course, all depends on what you call an event. We were not waylaid by robbers, we fed and slept unchallenged at inns, we escaped collision with the police, and we encountered no bodily dangers of any kind; yet should I not call the journey uneventful, nor indeed, I think, would Nicolete.

To me it was one prolonged divine event, and, with such daily intercourse with Nicolete, I never dreamed of craving for any other excitement. To walk from morning to evening by her side, to minister to her moods, to provide such entertainment as I might for her brain, and watch like a father over her physical needs; to note when she was weary and too proud to show it, and to pretend to be done up myself; to choose for her the easiest path, and keep my eyes open for wayside flowers and every country surprise,—these, and a hundred other attentions, kept my heart and mind in busy service.

To picnic by some lonely stream-side on a few sandwiches, a flask of claret, and a pennyworth of apples; to talk about the books we loved; to exchange our hopes and dreams,—we asked nothing better than this simple fare.

And so a week went by. But, though so little had seemed to happen, and though our walking record was shamefully modest, yet, imperceptible as the transition had been, we were, quite insensibly indeed, and unacknowledged, in a very different relation to each other than when we had started out from the Morning Star. In fact, to make no more words about it, I was head over heels in love with Nicolete, and I think, without conceit, I may say that Nicolete was rapidly growing rather fond of me. Apart from anything else, we were such excellent chums. We got along together as if indeed we had been two brothers, equable in our tempers and one in our desires.

At last the feeling on my side became so importunate that I could no longer keep silence.

We were seated together taking tea at a small lonely inn, whose windows looked out over a romantic little lake, backed by Salvator Rosa pine-woods. The sun was beginning to grow dreamy, and the whole world to wear a dangerously sentimental expression.

I forget exactly what it was, but something in our talk had set us glowing, had touched tender chords of unexpected sympathy, and involuntarily I stretched out my hand across the corner of the table and pressed Nicolete's hand as it rested on the cloth. She did not withdraw it, and our eyes met with a steady gaze of love.

"Nicolete," I said presently, when I could speak, "it is time for you to be going back home."

"Why?" she asked breathlessly.

"Because," I answered, "I must love you if you stay."

"Would you then bid me go?" she said.

"Nicolete," I said, "don't tempt me. Be a good girl and go home."

"But supposing I don't want to go home," she said; "supposing—oh, supposing I love you too? Would you still bid me go?"

"Yes," I said. "In that case it would be even more imperative."

"Aucassin!"

"It is true, it is true, dear Nicolete."

"Then, Aucassin," she replied, almost sternly, in her great girlish love, "this is true also,—I love you. I have never loved, shall never love, any man but you!"

"Nicolete!"

"Aucassin!"

There were no more words spoken between us for a full hour that afternoon.



CHAPTER IX

WRITTEN BY MOONLIGHT

I knew deep down in my heart that it couldn't last, yet how deny myself these roses, while the opportunity of gathering them was mine!—the more so, as I believed it would do no harm to Nicolete. At all events, a day or two more or less of moonshine would make no matter either way. And so all next day we walked hand in hand through Paradise.

It has been said by them of old time, and our fathers have told us, that the kiss of first love, the first kiss of the first woman we love, is beyond all kisses sweet; and true it is. But true is it also that no less sweet is the first kiss of the last woman we love.

Putting my faith in old saws, as a young man will, I had never dreamed to know again a bliss so divinely passionate and pure as came to me with every glance of Nicolete's sweet eyes, with every simple pressure of her hand; and the joy that was mine when sometimes, stopping on our way, we would press together our lips ever so gravely and tenderly, seems too holy even to speak of.

The holy angels could not have loved Nicolete with a purer love, a love freer from taint of any earthly thought, than I, a man of thirty, blase, and fed from my youth upon the honeycomb of woman.

It was curious that the first difficulty of our pilgrimage should befall us the very next day. Coming towards nightfall to a small inn in a lonely unpopulated countryside, we found that the only accommodation the inn afforded was one double-bedded room, and there was no other inn for at least ten miles. I think I was more troubled than Nicolete. When, after interviewing the landlady, I came and told her of the dilemma, where she sat in the little parlour wearied out with the day's walk, she blushed, it is true, but seemed little put about. Indeed, she laughed, and said it was rather fun, "like something out of Sterne,"—of such comfort is a literary reference in all seasons and circumstances,—and then she added, with a sweet look that sent the blood rioting about my heart, "It won't matter so much, will it, love, NOW?"

There proved nothing for it but to accept the situation, and we made the arrangement that Nicolete was to slip off to bed first, and then put out the light and go to sleep. However, when I followed her, having sat up as long as the landlady's patience would endure, I found that, though she had blown out the candle, she had forgotten to put out the moon, which shone as though it were St. Agnes' Eve across half the room.

I stole in very shyly, kept my eyes sternly from Nicolete's white bed, though, as I couldn't shut my ears, the sound of her breathing came to me with indescribable sweetness. After I had lain among the sheets some five or ten minutes, I was suddenly startled by a little voice within the room saying,—

"I'm not asleep."

"Well, you should be, naughty child. Now shut your eyes and go to sleep,—and fair dreams and sweet repose," I replied.

"Won't you give me one little good-night kiss?"

"I gave you one downstairs."

"Is it very wicked to want another?"

There was not a foot between our two beds, so I bent over and took her soft white shoulders in my arms and kissed her. All the heaped-up sweetness of the whitest, freshest flowers of the spring seemed in my embrace as I kissed her, so soft, so fragrant, so pure; and as the moonlight was the white fire in our blood. Softly I released her, stroked her brown hair, and turned again to my pillow. Presently the little voice was in the room again,—

"Mayn't I hold your hand? Somehow I feel lonely and frightened."

So our hands made a bridge across which our dreams might pass through the night, and after a little while I knew that she slept.

As I lay thus holding her hand, and listening to her quiet breathing, I realised once more what my young Alastor had meant by the purity of high passion. For indeed the moonlight that fell across her bosom was not whiter than my thoughts, nor could any kiss—were it even such a kiss as Venus promised to the betrayer of Psyche—even in its fiercest delirium, be other than dross compared with the wild white peace of those silent hours when we lay thus married and maiden side by side.



CHAPTER X

HOW ONE MAKES LOVE AT THIRTY

My sleeplessness while Nicolete slept had not been all ecstasy, for I had come to a bitter resolution; and next morning, when we were once more on our way, I took a favourable opportunity of conveying it to Nicolete.

"Nicolete," I said, as we rested awhile by the roadside, "I have something serious to say to you."

"Yes, dear," she said, looking rather frightened.

"Well, dear, it is this,—our love must end with our holiday. No good can come of it."

"But oh, why? I love you."

"Yes, and I love you,—love you as I never thought I could love again. Yet I know it is all a dangerous dream,—a trick of our brains, an illusion of our tastes."

"But oh, why? I love you."

"Yes, you do to-day, I know; but it couldn't last. I believe I could love you for ever; but even so, it wouldn't be right. You couldn't go on loving me. I am too old, too tired, too desillusione, perhaps too selfish."

"I will love you always!" said girl Nicolete.

"Whereas you," I continued, disregarding the lovely refrain of her tear-choked voice, "are standing on the wonderful threshold of life, waiting in dreamland for the dawn. And it will come, and with it the fairy prince, with whom you shall wander hand in hand through all its fairy rose-gardens; but I, dear Nicolete,—I am not he."

Nicolete did not speak.

"I know," I continued, pressing her hand, "that I may seem young enough to talk like this, but some of us get through life quicker than others, and when we say, 'It is done,' it is no use for onlookers to say, 'Why, it is just beginning!' Believe me, Nicolete, I am not fit husband for you."

"Then shall I take no other," said Nicolete, with set face.

"Oh, yes, you will," I rejoined; "let but a month or two pass, and you will see how wise I was, after all. Besides, there are other reasons, of which there is no need to speak—"

"What reasons?"

"Well," I said, half laughing, "there is the danger that, after all, we mightn't agree. There is nothing so perilously difficult as the daily intercourse of two people who love each other. You are too young to realise its danger. And I couldn't bear to see our love worn away by the daily dropping of tears, not to speak of its being rent by the dynamite of daily quarrels. We know each other's tastes, but we know hardly anything of each other's natures."

Nicolete looked at me strangely. 'Troth, it was a strange way to make love, I knew.

"And what else?" she asked somewhat coldly.

"Well, then, though it's not a thing one cares to speak of, I'm a poor man—"

Nicolete broke through my sentence with a scornful exclamation.

"You," I continued straight on,—"well, you have been accustomed to a certain spaciousness and luxury of life. This it would be out of my power to continue for you. These are real reasons, very real reasons, dear Nicolete, though you may not think so now. The law of the world in these matters is very right. For the rich and the poor to marry is to risk, terribly risk, the very thing they would marry for—their love. Love is better an unmarried than a married regret."

Nicolete was silent again.

"Think of your little woodland chalet, and your great old trees in the park,—you couldn't live without them. I have, at most, but one tree worth speaking of to offer you—"

I purposely waived the glamour which my old garden had for my mind, and which I wouldn't have exchanged for fifty parks.

"Trees!" retorted Nicolete,—"what are trees?"

"Ah, my dear girl, they are a good deal,—particularly when they are genealogical, as my one tree is not."

"Aucassin," she said suddenly, almost fiercely, "can you really jest? Tell me this,—do you love me?"

"I love you," I said simply; "and it is just because I love you so much that I have talked as I have done. No man situated as I am who loved you could have talked otherwise."

"Well, I have heard it all, weighed it all," said Nicolete, presently; "and to me it is but as thistledown against the love within my heart. Will you cast away a woman who loves you for theories? You know you love me, know I love you. We should have our trials, our ups and downs, I know; but surely it is by those that true love learns how to grow more true and strong. Oh, I cannot argue! Tell me again, do you love me?"

And there she broke down and fell sobbing into my arms. I consoled her as best I might, and presently she looked up at me through her tears.

"Tell me again," she said, "that you love me, just as you did yesterday, and promise never to speak of all those cruel things again. Ah! have you thought of the kind of men you would give me up to?"

At that I confess I shuddered, and I gave her the required assurance.

"And you won't be wise and reasonable and ridiculous any more?"

"No," I answered; adding in my mind, "not, at all events, for the present."



CHAPTER XI

HOW ONE PLAYS THE HERO AT THIRTY

Had we only been able to see a day into the future, we might have spared ourselves this agonising, for all our doubts and fears were suddenly dispersed in an entirely unexpected manner. Happily these interior problems are not infrequently resolved by quite exterior forces.

We were sitting the following afternoon in one of those broad bay windows such as one finds still in some old country inns, just thinking about starting once more on our way, when suddenly Nicolete, who had been gazing out idly into the road, gave a little cry. I followed her glance. A carriage with arms on its panels had stopped at the inn, and as a smart footman opened the door, a fine grey-headed military-looking man stepped out and strode hurriedly up the inn steps.

"Aucassin," gasped Nicolete, "it is my father!"

It was too true. The old man's keen eye had caught sight of Nicolete at the window also, and in another moment we were all three face to face. I must do the Major-General the justice of saying that he made as little of a "scene" of it as possible.

"Now, my girl," he said, "I have come to put an end to this nonsense. Have you a petticoat with you? Well, go upstairs and get it on. I will wait for you here... On you, sir, I shall waste no words. From what I have heard, you are as moonstruck as my daughter."

"Of course," I stammered, "I cannot expect you to understand the situation, though I think, if you would allow me, I could in a very few words make it somewhat clearer,—make you realise that, after all, it has been a very innocent and childish escapade, in which there has been no harm and a great deal of pleasure—"

But the Major-General cut me short.

"I should prefer," he said, "not to discuss the matter. I may say that I realise that my daughter has been safe in your hands, however foolish,"—for this I thanked him with a bow,—"but I must add that your eccentric acquaintance must end here—"

I said him neither yea nor nay; and while we stood in armed and embarrassed silence, Nicolete appeared with white face at the door, clothed in her emergency petticoat. Alas! it was for no such emergency as this that it had been destined that merry night when she had packed it in her knapsack. With a stern bow her father turned from me to join her; but she suddenly slipped past him, threw her arms round me, and kissed me one long passionate kiss.

"Aucassin, be true," she cried, "I will never forget you,—no one shall come between us;" and then bursting into tears, she buried her face in her hands and followed her father from the room.

In another moment she had been driven away, and I sat as one stupefied in the inn window. But a few short minutes ago she had been sitting merrily prattling by my side, and now I was once more as lonely as if we had never met. Presently I became conscious in my reverie of a little crumpled piece of paper on the floor. I picked it up. It was a little note pencilled in her bedroom at the last moment. "Aucassin," it ran, just like her last passionate words, "be true. I will never forget you. Stay here till I write to you, and oh, write to me soon!— Your broken-hearted Nicolete."

As I read, I saw her lovely young face, radiant with love and sorrow as I had last seen it, and pressing the precious little letter to my lips, I said fervently, "Yes, Nicolete, I will be true."



CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH I REVIEW MY ACTIONS AND RENEW MY RESOLUTIONS

No doubt the youthful reader will have but a poor opinion of me after the last two chapters. He will think that in the scene with the Major-General I acted with lamentably little spirit, and that generally my friend Alastor would have proved infinitely more worthy of the situation. It is quite true, I confess it. The whole episode was made for Alastor. Nicolete and he were born for each other. Alas! it is one of the many drawbacks of experience that it frequently prevents our behaving with spirit.

I must be content to appeal to the wiser and therefore sadder reader, of whom I have but a poor opinion if he too fails to understand me. He, I think, will understand why I didn't promptly assault the Major-General, seize Nicolete by the waist, thrust her into her ancestral carriage, haul the coachman from his box, and, seizing the reins, drive away in triumph before astonishment had time to change into pursuit. Truly it had been but the work of a moment, and there was only one consideration which prevented my following this now-I-call-that-heroic course. It is a consideration I dare hardly venture to write, and the confession of which will, I know, necessitate my changing my age back again to thirty on the instant. Oh, be merciful, dear romantic reader! I didn't strike the Major-General, because, oh, because I AGREED WITH HIM!

I loved Nicolete, you must have felt that. She was sweet to me as the bunch of white flowers that, in their frail Venetian vase, stand so daintily on my old bureau as I write, doing their best to sweeten my thoughts. Dear was she to me as the birds that out in the old garden yonder sing and sing their best to lift up my leaden heart. She was dear as the Spring itself, she was only less dear than Autumn.

Yes, black confession! after the first passion of her loss, the immediate ache of her young beauty had passed, and I was able to analyse what I really felt, I not only agreed with him, I thanked God for the Major-General! He had saved me from playing the terrible part of executioner. He had just come in time to behead the Lady Jane Grey of our dreams.

I should have no qualms about tightening the rope round the neck of some human monster, or sticking a neat dagger or bullet into a dangerous, treacherous foe, but to kill a dream is a sickening business. It goes on moaning in such a heart-breaking fashion, and you never know when it is dead. All on a sudden some night it will come wailing in the wind outside your window, and you must blacken your heart and harden your face with another strangling grip of its slim appealing throat, another blow upon its angel eyes. Even then it will recover, and you will go on being a murderer, making for yourself day by day a murderer's face, without the satisfaction of having really murdered.

But what of Nicolete? do you exclaim. Have you no thought for her, bleeding her heart away in solitude? Can you so soon forget those appealing eyes? Yes, I have thought for her. Would God that I could bear for her those growing pains of the heart! and I shall never forget those farewell eyes. But then, you see, I had firmly realised this, that she would sooner recover from our separation than from our marriage; that her love for me, pretty and poignant and dramatic while it lasted, was a book-born, book-fed dream, which must die soon or late,—the sooner the better for the peace of the dreams that in the course of nature would soon spring up to take its place.

But while I realised all this, and, with a veritable aching of the heart at the loss of her, felt a curious satisfaction at the turn of events, still my own psychology became all the more a puzzle to me, and I asked myself, with some impatience, what I would be at, and what it was I really wanted.

Here had I but a few moments ago been holding in my hands the very dream I had set out to find, and here was I secretly rejoicing to be robbed of it! If Nicolete did not fulfil the conditions of that mystical Golden Girl, in professed search for whom I had set out that spring morning, well, the good genius of my pilgrimage felt it time to resign. Better give it up at once, and go back to my books and my bachelorhood, if I were so difficult to please. No wonder my kind providence felt provoked. It had provided me with the sweetest pink-and-porcelain dream of a girl, and might reasonably have concluded that his labours on my behalf were at an end.

But, really, there is no need to lecture me upon the charms and virtues of Nicolete, for I loved them from the first moment of our strange introduction, and I dream of them still. There was indeed only one quality of womanhood in which she was lacking, and in which, after much serious self-examination, I discovered the reason of my instinctive self-sacrifice of her,—SHE HAD NEVER SUFFERED. As my heart had warned me at the beginning, "she was hoping too much from life to spend one's days with." She lacked the subtle half-tones of experience. She lacked all that a pretty wrinkle or two might have given. There was no shadowy melancholy in her sky-clear eyes. She was gay indeed, and had a certain childish humour; but she had none of that humour which comes of the resigned perception that the world is out of joint, and that you were never born to set it right. These characteristics I had yet to find in woman. There was still, therefore, an object to my quest. Indeed my experience had provided me with a formula. I was in search of a woman who, in addition to every other feminine charm and virtue, was a woman who had suffered.

With this prayer I turned once more to the genius of my pilgrimage. "Grant me," I asked, "but this—A WOMAN WHO HAS SUFFERED!" and, apparently as a consequence, he became once more quite genial. He seemed to mean that a prayer so easy to grant would put any god into a good temper; and possibly he smiled with a deeper meaning too.



BOOK III



CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I RETURN TO MY RIGHT AGE AND ENCOUNTER A COMMON OBJECT OF THE COUNTRY

And so when the days of my mourning for Nicolete were ended (and in this sentence I pass over letters to and fro,—letters wild from Nicolete, letters wise from Aucassin, letters explanatory and apologetic from the Obstacle—how the Major-General had suddenly come home quite unexpectedly and compelled her to explain Nicolete's absence, etc., etc. Dear Obstacle! I should rather have enjoyed a pilgrimage with her too)—I found myself one afternoon again upon the road. The day had been very warm and dusty, and had turned sleepy towards tea-time.

I had now pretty clearly in my mind what I wanted. This time it was, all other things equal, to be "a woman who had suffered," and to this end, I had, before starting out once more, changed my age back again at the inn and written "Aetat. 30" after my name in the visitors' book. As a young man I was an evident failure, and so, having made the countersign, I was speedily transformed to my old self; and I must say that it was a most comfortable feeling, something like getting back again into an old coat or an old pair of shoes. I never wanted to be young again as long as I lived. Youth was too much like the Sunday clothes of one's boyhood. Moreover, I had a secret conviction that the woman I was now in search of would prefer one who had had some experience at being a man, who would bring her not the green plums of his love, but the cunningly ripened nectarines, a man to whom love was something of an art as well as an inspiration.

It was in this frame of mind that I came upon the following scene.

The lane was a very cloistral one, with a ribbon of gravelly road, bordered on each side with a rich margin of turf and a scramble of blackberry bushes, green turf banks and dwarf oak-trees making a rich and plenteous shade. My attention was caught firstly by a bicycle lying carelessly on the turf, and secondly and lastly by a graceful woman's figure, recumbent and evidently sleeping against the turf bank, well tucked in among the afternoon shadows. My coming had not aroused her, and so I stole nearer to her on tiptoe.

She was a pretty woman, of a striking modern type, tall, well-proportioned, strong, I should say, with a good complexion that had evidently been made just a little better. But her most striking feature was an opulent mass of dark red hair, which had fallen in some disorder and made quite a pillow for her head. Her hat was off, lying in its veil by her side, and a certain general abandon of her figure,—which was clothed in a short cloth skirt, cut with that unmistakable touch which we call style—betokened weariness that could no longer wait for rest.

Poor child! she was tired out. She must never be left to sleep on there, for she seemed good to sleep till midnight.

I turned to her bicycle, and, examining it with the air of a man who had won silver cups in his day, I speedily discovered what had been the mischief. The tire of the front wheel had been pierced, and a great thorn was protruding from the place. Evidently this had been too much for poor Rosalind, and it was not unlikely that she had cried herself to sleep.

I bent over her to look—yes, there were traces of tears. Poor thing! Then I had a kindly human impulse. I would mend the tire, having attended ambulance classes, do it very quietly so that she wouldn't hear, like the fairy cobblers who used to mend people's boots while they slept, and then wait in ambush to watch the effect upon her when she awoke.

What do you think of the idea?

But one important detail I have omitted from my description of the sleeper. Her left hand lay gloveless, and of the four rings on her third finger one was a wedding-ring.

"Such red hair,—and a wedding-ring!" I exclaimed inwardly. "How this woman must have suffered!"



CHAPTER II

IN WHICH I HEAL A BICYCLE AND COME TO THE WHEEL OF PLEASURE

Moving the bicycle a little away, so that my operations upon it might not arouse her, I had soon made all right again, and when I laid it once more where she had left it, she was still sleeping as sound as ever. She had only to sleep long enough, a sly thought suggested, to necessitate her ending her day's journey at the same inn as myself, some five miles on the road. One virtue at least the reader will allow to this history,—we are seldom far away from an inn in its pages. When I thought of that I sat stiller than ever, hardly daring to turn over the pages of Apuleius, which I had taken from my knapsack to beguile the time, and, I confess, to give my eyes some other occupation than the dangerous one of gazing upon her face, dangerous in more ways than one, but particularly dangerous at the moment, because, as everybody knows, a steady gaze on a sleeping face is apt to awake the sleeper. And she wasn't to be disturbed!

"No! she mustn't waken before seven at the latest," I said to myself, holding my breath and starting in terror at every noise. Once a great noisy bee was within an ace of waking her, but I caught him with inspired dexterity, and he buzzed around her head no more.

But despite the providential loneliness of the road, there were one or two terrors that could not be disposed of so summarily. The worst of all was a heavy miller's cart which one could hardly crush to silence in one's handkerchief; but it went so slowly, and both man and horses were so sleepy, that they passed unheard and unnoticing.

A sprightly tramp promised greater difficulty, and nothing but some ferocious pantomime and a shilling persuaded him to forego a choice fantasia of cockney humour.

A poor tired Italian organ-grinder, tramping with an equally tired monkey along the dusty roads, had to be bought off in a similar manner,—though he only cost sixpence. He gave me a Southern smile and shrug of comprehension, as one acquainted with affairs of the heart,—which was a relief after the cockney tramp's impudent expression of, no doubt, a precisely similar sentiment.

And then at last, just as my watch pointed to 6.50 (how well I remember the exact moment!) Rosalind awoke suddenly, as women and children do, sitting straight up on the instant, and putting up her hands to her tousled hair, with a half-startled "Where am I?" When her hair was once more "respectable," she gave her skirts a shake, bent sideways to pull up her stockings and tighten her garters, looked at her watch, and then with an exclamation at the lateness of the hour, went over, with an air of desperate determination, to her bicycle.

"Now for this horrid puncture!" were the first words I was to hear fall from her lips.

She sought for the wound in the india-rubber with growing bewilderment.

"Goodness!" was her next exclamation, "why, there's nothing wrong with it. Can I have been dreaming?"

"I hope your dreams have been pleasanter than that," I ventured at this moment to stammer, rising, a startling apparition, from my ambush behind a mound of brambles; and before she had time to take in the situation I added that I hoped she'd excuse my little pleasantry, and told her how I had noticed her and the wounded bicycle, et cetera, et cetera, as the reader can well imagine, without giving me the trouble of writing it all out.

She was sweetness itself on the instant.

"Excuse you!" she said, "I should think so. Who wouldn't? You can't tell the load you've taken off my mind. I'm sure I must have groaned in my sleep—for I confess I cried myself to sleep over it."

"I thought so," I said with gravity, and eyes that didn't dare to smile outright till they had permission, which, however, was not long withheld them.

"How did you know?"

"Oh, intuition, of course—who wouldn't have cried themselves to sleep, and so tired too!"

"You're a nice sympathetic man, anyhow," she laughed; "what a pity you don't bicycle!"

"Yes," I said, "I would give a thousand pounds for a bicycle at this moment."

"You ought to get a good one for that," she laughed,—"all bright parts nickel, I suppose; indeed, you should get a real silver frame and gold handle-bars for that, don't you think? Well, it would be nice all the same to have your company a few miles, especially as it's growing dark," she added.

"Especially as it's growing dark," I repeated.

"You won't be going much farther to-night. Have you fixed on your inn?" I continued innocently. She had—but that was in a town too far to reach to-night, after her long sleep.

"You might have wakened me," she said.

"Yes, it was stupid of me not to have thought of it," I answered, offering no explanation of the dead bee which at the moment I espied a little away in the grass, and saying nothing of the merry tramp and the melancholy musician.

Then we talked inns, and thus she fell beautifully into the pit which I had digged for her; and it was presently arranged that she should ride on to the Wheel of Pleasure and order a dinner, which she was to do me the honour of sharing with me.

I was to follow on foot as speedily as might be, and it was with a high heart that I strode along the sunset lanes, hearing for some time the chiming of her bell in front of me, till she had wheeled it quite out of hearing, and it was lost in the distance.

I never did a better five miles in my life.



CHAPTER III

TWO TOWN MICE AT A COUNTRY INN.

When I reached the Wheel of Pleasure, I found Rosalind awaiting me in the coffee-room, looking fresh from a traveller's toilette, and with the welcome news that dinner was on the way. By the time I had washed off the day's dust it was ready, and a merry meal it proved. Rosalind had none of Alastor's objections to the wine-list, so we drank an excellent champagne; and as there seemed to be no one in the hotel but ourselves, we made ourselves at home and talked and laughed, none daring to make us afraid.

At first, on sitting down to table, we had grown momentarily shy, with one of those sudden freaks of self-consciousness which occasionally surprise one, when, midway in some slightly unconventional situation to which the innocence of nature has led us, we realise it—"for an instant and no more."

Positively, I think that in the embarrassment of that instant I had made some inspired remark to Rosalind about the lovely country which lay dreamy in the afterglow outside our window. Oh, yes, I remember the very words. They were "What a heavenly landscape!" or something equally striking.

"Yes," Rosalind had answered, "it is almost as beautiful as the Strand!"

If I'd known her better, I should have exclaimed, "You dear!" and I think it possible that I did say something to that effect,—perhaps "You dear woman!" At all events, the veil of self-consciousness was rent in twain at that remark, and our spirits rushed together at this touch of London nature thus unexpectedly revealed.

London! I hadn't realised till this moment how I had been missing it all these days of rustication, and my heart went out to it with a vast homesickness.

"Yes! the Strand," I repeated tenderly, "the Strand—at night!"

"Indeed, yes! what is more beautiful in the whole world?" she joined in ardently.

"The wild torrents of light, the passionate human music, the hansoms, the white shirts and shawled heads, the theatres—"

"Don't speak of them or you'll make me cry," said Rosalind.

"The little suppers after the theatre—"

"Please don't," she cried, "it is cruel;" and I saw that her eyes were indeed glistening with tears.

"But, of course," I continued, to give a slight turn aside in our talk, "it is very wrong of us to have such sophisticated tastes. We ought to love these lonely hills and meadows far more. The natural man revels in solitude, and wants no wittier company than birds and flowers. Wordsworth made a constant companion of a pet daisy. He seldom went abroad without one or two trotting at his side, and a skylark would keep Shelley in society for a week."

"But they were poets," retorted Rosalind; "you don't call poets natural. Why, they are the most unnatural of men. The natural person loves the society of his kind, whereas the poet runs away from it."

"Well, of course, there are poets and poets, poets sociable and poets very unsociable. Wordsworth made the country, but Lamb made the town; and there is quite a band of poets nowadays who share his distaste for mountains, and take London for their muse. If you'll promise not to cry again, I'll recall some lines by a friend of mine which were written for town-tastes like ours. But perhaps you know them?"

It will gratify my friend to learn that Rosalind had the verses I refer to by heart, and started off humming,—

"Ah, London, London, our delight, Great flower that opens but at night, Great city of the midnight sun, Whose day begins when day is done... Like dragon-flies the hansoms hover With jewelled eyes to catch the lover;"

and so on, with a gusto of appreciation that must have been very gratifying to the author had he been present.

Thus perceiving a taste for a certain modern style of poetry in my companion, I bethought me of a poem which I had written on the roadside a few days before, and which, I confess, I was eager to confide to some sympathetic ear. I was diffident of quoting it after such lines as Rosalind had recalled, but by the time we had reached our coffee, I plucked up courage to mention it. I had, however, the less diffidence in that it would have a technical interest for her, being indeed no other than a song of cycling a deux which had been suggested by one of those alarmist danger-posts always placed at the top of the pleasantest hills, sternly warning the cyclist that "this hill is dangerous,"—just as in life there is always some minatory notice-board frowning upon us in the direction we most desire to take.

But I omit further preface and produce the poem:—

"This hill is dangerous," I said, As we rode on together Through sunny miles and sunny miles Of Surrey heather; "This hill is dangerous—don't you think We'd better walk it?" "Or sit it out—more danger still!" She smiled—"and talk it?"

"Are you afraid?" she turned and cried So very brave and sweetly,— Oh that brave smile that takes the heart Captive completely!

"Afraid?" I said, deep in her eyes Recklessly gazing; "For you I'd ride into the sun And die all blazing!"

"I never yet saw hill," I said, "And was afraid to take it; I never saw a foolish law, And feared to break it. Who fears a hill or fears a law With you beside him? Who fears, dear star, the wildest sea With you to guide him?"

Then came the hill—a cataract, A dusty swirl, before us; The world stood round—a village world— In fearful chorus. Sure to be killed! Sure to be killed! O fools, how dare ye! Sure to be killed—and serve us right! Ah! love, but were we?

The hill was dangerous, we knew, And knew that we must take it; The law was strong,—that too we knew Yet dared to break it. And those who'd fain know how we fared Follow and find us, Safe on the hills, with all the world Safely behind us.

Rosalind smiled as I finished. "I'm afraid," she said, "the song is as dangerous as the hill. Of course it has more meanings than one?"

"Perhaps two," I assented.

"And the second more important than the first."

"Maybe," I smiled; "however, I hope you like it."

Rosalind was very reassuring on that point, and then said musingly, as if half to herself, "But that hill is dangerous, you know; and young people would do well to pay attention to the danger-board!"

Her voice shook as she spoke the last two or three words, and I looked at her in some surprise.

"Yes, I know it," she added, her voice quite broken; and before I realised what was happening, there she was with her beautiful head down upon the table, and sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Forgive me for being such a fool," she managed to wring out.

Now, usually I never interrupt a woman when she is crying, as it only encourages her to continue; but there was something so unexpected and mysterious about Rosalind's sudden outburst that it was impossible not to be sympathetic. I endeavoured to soothe her with such words as seemed fitting; and as she was crying because she really couldn't help it, she didn't cry long.

These tears proved, what certain indications of manner had already hinted to me, that Rosalind was more artless than I had at first supposed. She was a woman of the world, in that she lived in it, and loved its gaieties, but there was still in her heart no little of the child, as is there not in the hearts of all good women—or men?

And this you will realise when I tell you the funny little story which she presently confided to me as the cause of her tears.



CHAPTER IV

MARRIAGE A LA MODE

For Rosalind was no victim of the monster man, as you may have supposed her, no illustration of his immemorial perfidies. On the contrary, she was one half of a very happy marriage, and, in a sense, her sufferings at the moment were merely theoretical, if one may so describe the sufferings caused by a theory. But no doubt the reader would prefer a little straightforward narrative.

Well, Rosalind and Orlando, as we may as well call them, are two newly married young people who've been married, say, a year, and who find themselves at the end of it loving each other more than at the beginning,—for you are to suppose two of the tenderest, most devoted hearts that ever beat as one. However, they are young people of the introspective modern type, with a new theory for everything.

About marriage and the law of happiness in that blessed estate, they boasted the latest philosophical patents. To them, among other matters, the secret of unhappy marriages was as simple as can be. It was in nothing more or less than the excessive "familiarity" of ordinary married life, and the lack of personal freedom allowed both parties to the contract. Thus love grew commonplace, and the unhappy ones to weary of each other by excessive and enforced association. This was obvious enough, and the remedy as obvious,—separate bedrooms, and a month's holiday in each year to be spent apart (notoriously all people of quality had separate bedrooms, and see how happy they were!). These and similar other safeguards of individual liberty they had in mock-earnest drawn up and signed on their marriage eve, as a sort of supplemental wedding service.

It would not be seemly to inquire how far certain of these conditions had been kept,—how often, for example, Orlando's little hermit's bed had really needed remaking during those twelve months! Answer, ye birds of the air that lie in your snug nests, so close, so close, through the tender summer nights, and maybe with two or three little ones besides,—unless, indeed, ye too have felt the influence of the Zeit-geist, and have taken to sleeping in separate nests.

The condition with which alone we have here to concern ourselves was one which provided that each of the two lovers, hereafter to be called the husband of the one part and the wife of the other part, solemnly bound themselves to spend one calendar month of each year out of each other's society, with full and free liberty to spend it wheresoever, with whomsoever, and howsoever they pleased; and that this condition was rigidly to be maintained, whatever immediate effort it might cost, as the parties thereto believed that so would their love the more likely maintain an enduring tenderness and an unwearied freshness. And to this did Orlando and his Rosalind set their hands and hearts and lips.

Now, wisdom is all very well till the time comes to apply it; and as that month of June approached in which they had designed to give their love a holiday, they had found their courage growing less and less. Their love didn't want a holiday; and when Orlando had referred to the matter during the early days of May, Rosalind had burst into tears, and begged him to reconsider a condition which they had made before they really knew what wedded love was. But Orlando, though in tears himself (so Rosalind averred), had a higher sense of their duty to their ideal, and was able, though in tears, to beg her look beyond the moment, and realise what a little self-denial now might mean in the years to come. They hadn't kept any other of their resolutions,—thus Rosalind let it out!—this must be kept.