Miss Brotherton looked considerably puzzled sometimes, and indeed out of her element. But her dignity had no chance with so many young people, and was compelled to thaw visibly; and while growing more friendly with the others, she could not avoid unbending towards me also, notwithstanding I was a neighbour and the son of a dairy-farmer.

Mary Osborne took little part in the fun beyond a smile, or in the more solid conversation beyond an assent or an ordinary remark. I did not find her very interesting. An onlooker would probably have said she lacked expression. But the stillness upon her face bore to me the shadow of a reproof. Perhaps it was only a want of sympathy with what was going on around her. Perhaps her soul was either far withdrawn from its present circumstances, or not yet awake to the general interests of life. There was little in the form or hue of her countenance to move admiration, beyond a complexion without spot. It was very fair and delicate, with little more colour in it than in the white rose, which but the faintest warmth redeems from dead whiteness. Her features were good in form, but in no way remarkable; her eyes were of the so-called hazel, which consists of a mingling of brown and green; her figure was good, but seemed unelastic, and she had nothing of her brother's gaiety or grace of movement or expression. I do not mean that either her motions or her speech was clumsy—there was simply nothing to remark in them beyond the absence of anything special. In a word, I did not find her interesting, save as the sister of my delightful Charley, and the sharer of his mother's griefs concerning him.

'If I had as good help in the afternoon,' I said, 'we should have all the books on the shelves to-night, and be able to set about assorting them to-morrow.'

'I am sorry I cannot come this afternoon,' said Miss Brotherton. 'I should have been most happy if I could. It is really very pleasant notwithstanding the dust. But Mrs Osborne and mamma want me to go with them to Minstercombe. You will lunch with us to-day, won't you?' she added, turning to Charley.

'Thank you, Miss Brotherton,' he replied; 'I should have been delighted, but I am not my own master—I am Cumbermede's slave at present, and can eat and drink only when and where he chooses.'

'You must stay with your mother, Charley,' I said. 'You cannot refuse Miss Brotherton.'

She could thereupon scarcely avoid extending the invitation to me, but I declined it on some pretext or other, and I was again, thanks to Lilith, back from my dinner before they had finished luncheon. The carriage was at the door when I rode up, and the moment I heard it drive away, I went to the dining-room to find my coadjutors. The only person there was Miss Pease. A thought struck me.

'Won't you come and help us, Miss Pease?' I said. 'I have lost one of my assistants, and I am very anxious to get the room we are at now so far finished to-night.'

A smile found its way to her cold eyes, and set the blue sparkling for one briefest moment.

'It is very kind of you, Mr Cumbermede, but—'

'Kind!' I exclaimed—'I want your help, Miss Pease.'

'I'm afraid—'

'Lady Brotherton can't want you now. Do oblige me. You will find it fun.'

She smiled outright—evidently at the fancy of any relation between her and fun.

'Do go and put a cap on, and a cotton dress, and come,' I persisted.

Without another word she left the room. I was still alone in the library when she came to me, and having shown her what I wanted, we were already busy when the rest arrived.

'Oh, Peasey! Are you there?' said Clara, as she entered—not unkindly.

'I have got a substitute for Miss Brotherton, you see, Clara—Miss Coningham—I beg your pardon.'

'There's no occasion to beg my pardon. Why shouldn't you call me Clara if you like? It is my name.'

'Charley might be taking the same liberty,' I returned, extemporizing a reason.

'And why shouldn't Charley take the same liberty?' she retorted.

'For no reason that I know,' I answered, a trifle hurt, 'if it be agreeable to the lady.'

'And the gentleman,' she amended.

'And the gentleman,' I added.

'Very well. Then we are all good boys and girls. Now, Peasey, I'm very glad you're come. Only mind you get back to your place before the ogress returns, or you'll have your head snapped off.'

Was I right, or was it the result of the slight offence I had taken? Was the gracious, graceful, naive, playful, daring woman—or could she be—or had she been just the least little bit vulgar? I am afraid I was then more sensitive to vulgarity in a woman, real or fancied, than even to wickedness—at least I thought I was. At all events, the first conviction of anything common or unrefined in a woman would at once have placed me beyond the sphere of her attraction. But I had no time to think the suggestion over now; and in a few minutes—whether she saw the cloud on my face I cannot tell—Clara had given me a look and a smile which banished the possibility of my thinking about it for the present.

Miss Pease worked more diligently than any of the party. She seldom spoke, and when she did, it was in a gentle, subdued, almost mournful tone; but the company of the young people, without the restraint of her mistress, was evidently grateful to what of youth yet remained in her oppressed being.

Before it was dark we had got the books all upon the shelves, and leaving Charley with the ladies, I walked home.

I found Styles had got everything out of the lumber-room except a heavy oak chest in the corner, which, our united strength being insufficient to displace it, I concluded was fixed to the floor. I collected all the keys my aunt had left behind her, but sought the key of this chest in vain. For my uncle, I never saw a key in his possession. Even what little money he might have in the house, was only put away at the back of an open drawer. For the present, therefore, we had to leave it undisturbed.

When Charley came home we went to look at it together. It was of oak, and somewhat elaborately carved.

I was very restless in bed that night. The air was close and hot, and as often as I dropped half asleep I woke again with a start. My thoughts kept stupidly running on the old chest. It had mechanically possessed me. I felt no disturbing curiosity concerning its contents; I was not annoyed at the want of the key; it was only that, like a nursery rhyme that keeps repeating itself over and over in the half-sleeping brain, this chest kept rising before me till I was out of patience with its intrusiveness. It brought me wide awake at last; and I thought, as I could not sleep, I would have a search for the key. I got out of bed, put on my dressing-gown and slippers, lighted my chamber-candle, and made an inroad upon the contents of the closet in my room, which had apparently remained undisturbed since the morning when I missed my watch. I believe I had never entered it since. Almost the first thing I came upon was the pendulum, which woke a strange sensation for which I could not account, until by slow degrees the twilight memory of the incidents connected with it half dawned upon me. I searched the whole place, but not a key could I find.

I started violently at the sound of something like a groan, and for the briefest imaginable moment forgot that my grannie was dead, and thought it must come from her room. It may be remembered that such a sound had led me to her in the middle of the night on which she died. Whether I really heard the sound, or only fancied I heard it—by some half-mechanical action of the brain, roused by the association of ideas—I do not even yet know. It may have been changed or expanded into a groan, from one of those innumerable sounds heard in every old house in the stillness of the night; for such, in the absence of the correction given by other sounds, assume place and proportion as it were at their pleasure. What lady has not at midnight mistaken the trail of her own dress on the carpet, in a silent house, for some tumult in a distant room? Curious to say, however, it now led to the same action as the groan I had heard so many years before; for I caught up my candle at once, and took my way down to the kitchen, and up the winding stair behind the chimney to grannie's room. Strange as it may seem, I had not been in it since my return; for my thoughts had been so entirely occupied with other things, that, although I now and then looked forward with considerable expectation to a thorough search of the place, especially of the bureau, I kept it up as a bonne bouche, the anticipation of which was consolation enough for the postponement.

I confess it was with no little quavering of the spirit that I sought this chamber in the middle of the night. For, by its association with one who had from my earliest recollection seemed like something forgotten and left behind in the onward rush of life, it was, far more than anything else in the house, like a piece of the past embedded in the present—a fragment that had been, by some eddy in the stream of time, prevented from gliding away down its course, and left to lie for ever in a cranny of the solid shore of unmoving space. But although subject to more than the ordinary tremor at the thought of unknown and invisible presences, I must say for myself that I had never yielded so far as to allow such tremor to govern my actions. Even in my dreams I have resisted ghostly terrors, and can recall one in which I so far conquered a lady-ghost who took every means of overcoming me with terror, that at length she fell in love with me, whereupon my fear vanished utterly—a conceited fancy, and as such let it fare.

I opened the door then with some trembling, half expecting to see first the white of my grannie's cap against the tall back of her dark chair. But my senses were sound, and no such illusion seized me. All was empty, cheerless, and musty. Grannie's bed, with its white curtains, looked as if it were mouldering away after her. The dust lay thick on the counterpane of patchwork silk. The bureau stood silent with all its secrets. In the fire-place was the same brushwood and coals which Nannie laid the morning of grannie's death: interrupted by the discovery of my presence, she had left it, and that fire had never been lighted. Half for the sake of companionship, half because the air felt sepulchral and I was thinly clad, I put my candle to it and it blazed up. My courage revived, and after a little more gazing about the room, I ventured to sit down in my grannie's chair and watch the growing fire. Warned, however, by the shortness of my candle, I soon rose to proceed with my search, and turned towards the bureau.

Here, however, the same difficulty occurred. The top of the bureau was locked as when I had last tried it, and not one of my keys would fit it. At a loss what to do or where to search, I dropped again into the chair by the fire, and my eyes went roving about the room. They fell upon a black dress which hung against the wall. At the same moment I remembered that, when she gave me the watch, she took the keys of the bureau from her pocket. I went to the dress and found a pocket, not indeed in the dress, but hanging under it from the same peg. There her keys were! It would have been a marvel to me how my aunt came to leave them undisturbed all those years, but for the instant suggestion that my uncle must have expressed a wish to that effect. With eager hand I opened the bureau. Besides many trinkets in the drawers, some of them of exceedingly antique form, and, I fancied, of considerable value, I found in the pigeon-holes what I was far more pleased to discover—a good many letters, carefully tied in small bundles, with ribbon which had lost all determinable colour. These I reserved to take an early opportunity of reading, but replaced for the present, and, having come at last upon one hopeful-looking key, I made haste to return before my candle, which was already flickering in the socket, should go out altogether, and leave me darkling. When I reached the kitchen, however, I found the grey dawn already breaking. I retired once more to my chamber, and was soon fast asleep.

In the morning, my first care was to try the key. It fitted. I oiled it well, and then tried the lock. I had to use considerable force, but at last there came a great clang that echoed through the empty room. When I raised the lid, I knew by the weight it was of iron. In fact, the whole chest was iron with a casing of oak. The lock threw eight bolts, which laid hold of a rim that ran all round the lip of the chest. It was full of 'very ancient and fish-like' papers and parchments. I do not know whether my father or grandfather had ever disturbed them, but I am certain my uncle never had, for, as far back as I can remember, the part of the room where it stood was filled with what had been, at one time and another, condemned as lumber.

Charley was intensely interested in the discovery, and would have sat down at once to examine the contents of the chest, had I not persuaded him to leave them till the afternoon, that we might get on with our work at the Hall.

The second room was now ready for the carpenter, but, having had a peep of tapestry behind the shelves, a new thought had struck me. If it was in good preservation, it would be out of the question to hide it behind books.

I fear I am getting tedious. My apology for diffuseness in this part of my narrative is that some threads of the fringe of my own fate show every now and then in the record of these proceedings. I confess also that I hang back from certain things which are pressing nearer with their claim for record.

When we reached the Hall, I took the carpenter with me, and had the bookshelves taken down. To my disappointment we found that an oblong piece of some size was missing from the centre of the tapestry on one of the walls. That which covered the rest of the room was entire. It was all of good Gobelins work—somewhat tame in colour. The damaged portion represented a wooded landscape with water and reedy flowers and aquatic fowl, towards which in the distance came a hunter with a crossbow in his hand, and a queer, lurcher-looking dog bounding uncouthly at his heel; the edge of the vacant space cut off the dog's tail and the top of the man's crossbow.

I went to find Sir Giles. He was in the dining-room, where they had just finished breakfast.

'Ah, Mr Cumbermede!' he said, rising as I entered, and holding out his hand—'here already?'

'We have uncovered some tapestry, Sir Giles, and I want you to come and look at it, if you please.'

'I will,' he answered. 'Would any of you ladies like to go and see it?'

His daughter and Clara rose. Lady Brotherton and Mrs Osborne sat still. Mary, glancing at her mother, remained seated also.

'Won't you come, Miss Pease?' I said.

She looked almost alarmed at the audacity of the proposal, and murmured, 'No, thank you,' with a glance at Lady Brotherton, which appeared as involuntary as it was timid.

'Is my son with you?' asked Mrs Osborne.

I told her he was.

'I shall look in upon you before the morning is over,' she said quietly.

They were all pleased with the tapestry, and the ladies offered several conjectures as to the cause of the mutilation.

'It would be a shame to cover it up again—would it not, Sir Giles?' I remarked.

'Indeed it would,' he assented.

'If it weren't for that broken piece,' said Clara. 'That spoils it altogether. I should have the books up again as soon as possible.'

'It does look shabby,' said Charley. 'I can't say I should enjoy having anything so defective always before my eyes.'

'We must have it taken down very carefully, Hobbes,' said Sir Giles, turning to the carpenter.

'Must it come down, Sir Giles?' I interposed. 'I think it would be risky. No one knows how long it has been there, and though it might hang where it is for a century yet, and look nothing the worse, it can't be strong, and at best we could not get it down without some injury, while it is a great chance if it would fit any other place half as well.'

'What do you propose, then?'

'This is the largest room of the six, and the best lighted—with that lovely oriel window: I would venture to propose, Sir Giles, that it should be left clear of books and fitted up as a reading-room.'

'But how would you deal with that frightful lacuna in the tapestry?' said Charley.

'Yes,' said Sir Giles; 'it won't look handsome, I fear—do what you will.'

'I think I know how to manage it,' I said. 'If I succeed to your satisfaction, will you allow me to carry out the project?'

'But what are we to do with the books, then? We shan't have room for them.'

'Couldn't you let me have the next room beyond?'

'You mean to turn me out, I suppose,' said Clara.

'Is there tapestry on your walls?' I asked.

'Not a thread—all wainscot—painted.'

'Then your room would be the very thing.'

'It is much larger than any of these,' she said.

'Then do let us have it for the library, Sir Giles,' I entreated.

'I will see what Lady Brotherton says,' he replied, and left the room.

In a few minutes we heard his step returning.

'Lady Brotherton has no particular objection to giving up the room you want,' he said. 'Will you see Mrs Wilson, Clara, and arrange with her for your accommodation?'

'With pleasure. I don't mind where I'm put—unless it be in Lord Edward's room—where the ghost is.'

'You mean the one next to ours? There is no ghost there, I assure you,' said Sir Giles, laughing, as he again left the room with short, heavy steps. 'Manage it all to your own mind, Mr Cumbermede. I shall be satisfied,' he called back as he went.

'Until further notice,' I said, with grandiloquence, 'I request that no one may come into this room. If you are kind enough to assort the books we put up yesterday, oblige me by going through the armoury. I must find Mrs Wilson.'

'I will go with you,' said Clara. 'I wonder where the old thing will want to put me. I'm not going where I don't like, I can tell her,' she added, following me down the stair and across the hall and the court.

We found the housekeeper in her room. I accosted her in a friendly way. She made but a bare response.

'Would you kindly show me where I slept that night I lost my sword, Mrs Wilson?' I said.

'I know nothing about your sword, Mr Cumbermede,' she answered, shaking her head and pursing up her mouth.

'I don't ask you anything about it, Mrs Wilson; I only ask you where I slept the night I lost it.'

'Really, Mr Cumbermede, you can hardly expect me to remember in what room a visitor slept—let me see—it must be twelve or fifteen years ago! I do not take it upon me.'

'Oh! never mind, then. I referred to the circumstances of that night, thinking they might help you to remember the room; but it is of no consequence; I shall find it for myself. Miss Coningham will, I hope, help me in the search. She knows the house better than I do.'

'I must attend to my own business first, if you please, sir,' said Clara. 'Mrs Wilson, I am ordered out of my room by Mr Cumbermede. You must find me fresh quarters, if you please.'

Mrs Wilson stared.

'Do you mean, miss, that you want your things moved to another bed-room?'

'That is what I mean, Mrs Wilson.'

'I must see what Lady Brotherton says to it, miss.'

'Do, by all means.'

I saw that Clara was bent on annoying her old enemy, and interposed.

'Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton have agreed to let me have Miss Coningham's room for an addition to the library, Mrs Wilson,' I said.

She looked very grim, but made no answer. We turned and left her. She stood for a moment as if thinking, and then, taking down her bunch of keys, followed us.

'If you will come this way,' she said, stopping just behind us at another door in the court, 'I think I can show you the room you want. But really, Mr Cumbermede, you are turning the place upside down. If I had thought it would come to this—'

'I hope to do so a little more yet, Mrs Wilson,' I interrupted. 'But I am sure you will be pleased with the result.'

She did not reply, but led the way up a stair, across the little open gallery, and by passages I did not remember, to the room I wanted. It was in precisely the same condition as when I occupied it.

'This is the room, I believe,' she said, as she unlocked and threw open the door. 'Perhaps it would suit you, Miss Coningham?'

'Not in the least,' answered Clara. 'Who knows which of my small possessions might vanish before the morning!'

The housekeeper's face grew turkey-red with indignation.

'Mr Cumbermede has been filling your head with some of his romances, I see, Miss Clara!'

I laughed, for I did not care to show myself offended with her rudeness.

'Never you mind,' said Clara; 'I am not going to sleep there.'

'Very good,' said Mrs Wilson, in a tone of offence severely restrained.

'Will you show me the way to the library?' I requested.

'I will,' said Clara; 'I know it as well as Mrs Wilson—every bit.'

'Then that is all I want at present, Mrs Wilson,' I said, as we came out of the room. 'Don't lock the door, though, please,' I added. 'Or, if you do, give me the key.'

She left the door open, and us in the passage. Clara led me to the library. There we found Charley waiting our return.

'Will you take that little boy to his mother, Clara?' I said. 'I don't want him here to-day. We'll have a look over those papers in the evening, Charley.'

'That's right,' said Clara. 'I hope Charley will help you to a little rational interest in your own affairs. I am quite bewildered to think that an author, not to say a young man, the sole remnant of an ancient family, however humble, shouldn't even know whether he had any papers in the house or not.'

'We've come upon a glorious nest of such addled eggs, Clara. Charley and I are going to blow them to-night,' I said.

'You never know when such eggs are addled,' retorted Clara. 'You'd better put them under some sensible fowl or other first,' she added, looking back from the door as they went.

I turned to the carpenter's tool-basket, and taking from it an old chisel, a screw-driver, and a pair of pincers, went back to the room we had just left.

There could be no doubt about it. There was the tip of the dog's tail, and the top of the hunter's crossbow.

But my reader may not have retained in her memory the facts to which I implicitly refer. I would therefore, to spare repetition, beg her to look back to chapter xiv., containing the account of the loss of my sword.

In the consternation caused me by the discovery that this loss was no dream of the night, I had never thought of examining the wall of the chamber, to see whether there was in it a door or not; but I saw now at once plainly enough that the inserted patch did cover a small door. Opening it, I found within, a creaking wooden stair, leading up to another low door, which, fashioned like the door of a companion, opened upon the roof:—nowhere, except in the towers, had the Hall more than two stories. As soon as I had drawn back the bolt and stepped out, I found myself standing at the foot of an ornate stack of chimneys, and remembered quite well having tried the door that night Clara and I were shut out on the leads—the same night on which my sword was stolen.

For the first time the question now rose in my mind whether Mrs Wilson could have been in league with Mr Close. Was it likely I should have been placed in a room so entirely fitted to his purposes by accident? But I could not imagine any respectable woman running such a risk of terrifying a child out of his senses, even if she could have connived at his being robbed of what she might well judge unsuitable for his possession.

Descending again to the bed-room, I set to work with my tools. The utmost care was necessary, for the threads were weak with old age. I had only one or two slight mishaps, however, succeeding on the whole better than I had expected. Leaving the door denuded of its covering, I took the patch on my arm, and again sought the library. Hobbes's surprise, and indeed pleasure, when he saw that my plunder not only fitted the gap, but completed the design, was great. I directed him to get the whole piece down as carefully as he could, and went to extract, if possible, a favour from Lady Brotherton.

She was of course very stiff—no doubt she would have called it dignified; but I did all I could to please her, and perhaps in some small measure succeeded. After representing, amongst other advantages, what an addition a suite of rooms filled with a valuable library must be to the capacity of the house for the reception and entertainment of guests, I ventured at last to beg the services of Miss Pease for the repair of the bit of the tapestry.

She rang the bell, sent for Miss Pease, and ordered her, in a style of the coldest arrogance, to put herself under my direction. She followed me to the door in the meekest manner, but declined the arm I offered. As we went I explained what I wanted, saying I could not trust it to any hands but those of a lady, expressing a hope that she would not think I had taken too great a liberty, and begging her to say nothing about the work itself, as I wished to surprise Sir Giles and my assistants. She said she would be most happy to help me, but when she saw how much was wanted, she did look a little dismayed. She went and fetched her work-basket at once, however, and set about it, tacking the edges to a strip of canvas, in preparation for some kind of darning, which would not, she hoped, be unsightly.

For a whole week she and the carpenter were the only persons I admitted, and while she gave to her darning every moment she could redeem from her attendance on Lady Brotherton, the carpenter and I were busy—he cleaning and polishing, and I ranging the more deserted parts of the house to find furniture suitable for our purpose. In Clara's room was an old Turkey-carpet which we appropriated, and when we had the tapestry up again, which Miss Pease had at length restored in a marvellous manner—surpassing my best hopes, and more like healing than repairing—the place was to my eyes a very nest of dusky harmonies.



CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE OLD CHEST.

I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the scene, although it is not of the slightest consequence to my story, when Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton entered the reading-room of the resuscitated library of Moldwarp Hall. It was a bright day of Autumn. Outside all was brilliant. The latticed oriel looked over the lawn and the park, where the trees had begun to gather those rich hues which could hardly be the heralds of death if it were the ugly thing it appears. Beyond the fading woods rose a line of blue heights meeting the more ethereal blue of the sky, now faded to a colder and paler tint. The dappled skins of the fallow deer glimmered through the trees, and the whiter ones among them cast a light round them in the shadows. Through the trees that on one side descended to the meadow below, came the shine of the water where the little brook had spread into still pools. All without was bright with sunshine and clear air. But when you turned, all was dark, sombre, and rich, like an Autumn ten times faded. Through the open door of the next room on one side, you saw the shelves full of books, and from beyond, through the narrow uplifted door, came the glimmer of the weapons on the wall of the little armoury. Two ancient tapestry-covered settees, in which the ravages of moth and worm had been met by a skilful repair of chisel and needle, a heavy table of oak, with carved sides as black as ebony, and a few old, straight-backed chairs, were the sole furniture.

Sir Giles expressed much pleasure, and Lady Brotherton, beginning to enter a little into my plans, was more gracious than hitherto.

'We must give a party as soon as you have finished, Mr Cumbermede,' she said; 'and—'

'That will be some time yet,' I interrupted, not desiring the invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; 'and I fear there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity and value of the library—if the other rooms should turn out as rich as that one.'

'I believe old books are expensive now-a-days,' she returned. 'They are more sought after, I understand.'

We resumed our work with fresh vigour, and got on faster. Both Clara and Mary were assiduous in their help.

To go back for a little to my own old chest—we found it, as I said, full of musty papers. After turning over a few, seeming, to my uneducated eye, deeds and wills and such like, out of which it was evident I could gather no barest meaning without a labour I was not inclined to expend on them—for I had no pleasure in such details as involved nothing of the picturesque—I threw the one in my hand upon the heap already taken from the box, and to the indignation of Charley, who was absorbed in one of them, and had not spoken a word for at least a quarter of an hour, exclaimed—

'Come, Charley; I'm sick of the rubbish. Let's go and have a walk before supper.'

'Rubbish!' he repeated; 'I am ashamed of you!'

'I see Clara has been setting you on. I wonder what she's got in her head. I am sure I have quite a sufficient regard for family history and all that.'

'Very like it!' said Charley—'calling such a chestful as this rubbish!'

'I am pleased enough to possess it,' I said; 'but if they had been such books as some of those at the Hall—'

'Look here, then,' he said, stooping over the chest, and with some difficulty hauling out a great folio which he had discovered below, but had not yet examined—'just see what you can make of that.'

I opened the title-page rather eagerly. I stared. Could I believe my eyes? First of all on the top of it, in the neatest old hand, was written—'Guilfrid Combremead His Boke. 1630.' Then followed what I will not write, lest this MS. should by any accident fall into the hands of book-hunters before my death. I jumped to my feet, gave a shout that brought Charley to his feet also, and danced about the empty room hugging the folio. 'Have you lost your senses?' said Charley; but when he had a peep at the title-page, he became as much excited as myself, and it was some time before he could settle down to the papers again. Like a bee over a flower-bed, I went dipping and sipping at my treasure. Every word of the well-known lines bore a flavour of ancient verity such as I had never before perceived in them. At length I looked up, and finding him as much absorbed as I had been myself—

'Well, Charley, what are you finding there?' I asked.

'Proof perhaps that you come of an older family than you think,' he answered; 'proof certainly that some part at least of the Moldwarp property was at one time joined to the Moat, and that you are of the same stock, a branch of which was afterwards raised to the present baronetage. At least I have little doubt such is the case, though I can hardly say I am yet prepared to prove it.'

'You don't mean I'm of the same blood as—as Geoffrey Brotherton!' I said. 'I would rather not, if it's the same to you, Charley.'

'I can't help it: that's the way things point,' he answered, throwing down the parchment. 'But I can't read more now. Let's go and have a walk. I'll stop at home to-morrow and take a look over the whole set.'

'I'll stop with you.'



'No, you won't. You'll go and get on with your library. I shall do better alone. If I could only get a peep at the Moldwarp chest as well!'

'But the place may have been bought and sold many times. Just look here, though,' I said, as I showed him the crest on my watch and seal. 'Mind you look at the top of your spoon the next time you eat soup at the Hall.'

'That is unnecessary, quite. I recognise the crest at once. How strangely these cryptographs come drifting along the tide, like the gilded ornaments of a wreck after the hull has gone down!'

'Or, like the mole or squint that re-appears in successive generations, the legacy of some long-forgotten ancestor,' I said—and several things unexplained occurred to me as possibly having a common solution.

'I find, however,' said Charley, 'that the name of Cumbermede is not mentioned in your papers more than about a hundred years back—as far as I have yet made out.'

'That is odd,' I returned, 'seeing that in the same chest we find that book with my name, surname and Christian, and the date 1630.'

'It is strange,' he acquiesced, 'and will perhaps require a somewhat complicated theory to meet it.'

We began to talk of other matters, and, naturally enough, soon came to Clara.

Charley was never ready to talk of her—indeed, avoided the subject in a way that continued to perplex me.

'I confess to you, Charley,' I said, 'there is something about her I do not and cannot understand. It seems to me always as if she were—I will not say underhand—but as if she had some object in view—some design upon you—'

'Upon me!' exclaimed Charley, looking at me suddenly and with a face from which all the colour had fled.

'No, no, Charley, not that,' I answered, laughing. 'I used the word impersonally. I will be more cautious. One would think we had been talking about a witch—or a demon-lady—you are so frightened at the notion of her having you in her eye.'

He did not seem altogether relieved, and I caught an uneasy glance seeking my countenance.

'But isn't she charming?' I went on. 'It is only to you I could talk about her so. And after all it may be only a fancy.'

He kept his face downwards and aside, as if he were pondering and coming to no conclusion. The silence grew and grew until expectation ceased, and when I spoke again it was of something different.

My reader may be certain from all this that I was not in love with Clara. Her beauty and liveliness, with a gaiety which not seldom assumed the form of grace, attracted me much, it is true; but nothing interferes more with the growth of any passion than a spirit of questioning, and, that once roused, love begins to cease and pass into pain. Few, perhaps, could have arrived at the point of admiration I had reached without falling instantly therefrom into an abyss of absorbing passion; but with me, inasmuch as I searched every feeling in the hope of finding in it the everlasting, there was in the present case a reiterated check, if not indeed recoil; for I was not and could not make myself sure that Clara was upright;—perhaps the more commonplace word straightforward would express my meaning better.

Anxious to get the books arranged before they all left me, for I knew I should have but little heart for it after they were gone, I grudged Charley the forenoon he wanted amongst my papers, and prevailed upon him to go with me the next day as usual. Another fortnight, which was almost the limit of their stay, would, I thought, suffice; and giving up everything else, Charley and I worked from morning till night, with much though desultory assistance from the ladies. I contrived to keep the carpenter and housemaid in work, and by the end of the week began to see the inroads of order 'scattering the rear of darkness thin.'



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MARY OSBORNE.

All this time the acquaintance between Mary Osborne and myself had not improved. Save as the sister of my friend I had not, I repeat, found her interesting. She did not seem at all to fulfil the promise of her childhood. Hardly once did she address me; and, when I spoke to her, would reply with a simple, dull directness which indicated nothing beyond the fact of the passing occasion. Rightly or wrongly, I concluded that the more indulgence she cherished for Charley, the less she felt for his friend—that to him she attributed the endlessly sad declension of her darling brother. Once on her face I surprised a look of unutterable sorrow resting on Charley's; but the moment she saw that I observed her, the look died out, and her face stiffened into its usual dulness and negation. On me she turned only the unenlightened disc of her soul. Mrs Osborne, whom I seldom saw, behaved with much more kindness, though hardly more cordiality. It was only that she allowed her bright indulgence for Charley to cast the shadow of his image over the faults of his friend; and except by the sadness that dwelt in every line of her sweet face, she did not attract me. I was ever aware of an inward judgment which I did not believe I deserved, and I would turn from her look with a sense of injury which greater love would have changed into keen pain.

Once, however, I did meet a look of sympathy from Mary. On the second Monday of the fortnight I was more anxious than ever to reach the end of my labours, and was in the court, accompanied by Charley, as early as eight o'clock. From the hall a dark passage led past the door of the dining-room to the garden. Through the dark tube of the passage we saw the bright green of a lovely bit of sward, and upon it Mary and Clara, radiant in white morning dresses. We joined them.

'Here come the slave-drivers!' remarked Clara.

'Already!' said Mary, in a low voice, which I thought had a tinge of dismay in its tone.

'Never mind, Polly,' said her companion—'we're not going to bow to their will and pleasure. We'll have our walk in spite of them.'

As she spoke she threw a glance at us which seemed to say—'You may come if you like;' then turned to Mary with another which said—'We shall see whether they prefer old books or young ladies.'

Charley looked at me—interrogatively.

'Do as you like, Charley,' I said.

'I will do as you do,' he answered.

'Well,' I said, 'I have no right—'

'Oh! bother!' said Clara. 'You're so magnificent always with your rights and wrongs! Are you coming, or are you not?'

'Yes, I'm coming,' I replied, convicted by Clara's directness, for I was quite ready to go.

We crossed the court, and strolled through the park, which was of great extent, in the direction of a thick wood, covering a rise towards the east. The morning air was perfectly still; there was a little dew on the grass, which shone rather than sparkled; the sun was burning through a light fog, which grew deeper as we approached the wood; the decaying leaves filled the air with their sweet, mournful scent. Through the wood went a wide opening or glade, stretching straight and far towards the east, and along this we walked, with that exhilaration which the fading Autumn so strangely bestows. For some distance the ground ascended softly, but the view was finally closed in by a more abrupt swell, over the brow of which the mist hung in dazzling brightness.

Notwithstanding the gaiety of animal spirits produced by the season, I felt unusually depressed that morning. Already, I believe, I was beginning to feel the home-born sadness of the soul whose wings are weary and whose foot can find no firm soil on which to rest. Sometimes I think the wonder is that so many men are never sad. I doubt if Charley would have suffered so but for the wrongs his father's selfish religion had done him; which perhaps were therefore so far well, inasmuch as otherwise he might not have cared enough about religion even to doubt concerning it. But in my case now, it may have been only the unsatisfying presence of Clara, haunted by a dim regret that I could not love her more than I did. For with regard to her my soul was like one who in a dream of delight sees outspread before him a wide river, wherein he makes haste to plunge that he may disport himself in the fine element; but, wading eagerly, alas! finds not a single pool deeper than his knees.

'What's the matter with you, Wilfrid?' said Charley, who, in the midst of some gay talk, suddenly perceived my silence. 'You seem to lose all your spirits away from your precious library. I do believe you grudge every moment not spent upon those ragged old books.'

'I wasn't thinking of that, Charley; I was wondering what lies beyond that mist.'

'I see!—A chapter of the Pilgrim's Progress! Here we are—Mary, you're Christiana, and, Clara, you're Mercy. Wilfrid, you're—what?—I should have said Hopeful any other day, but this morning you look like—let me see—like Mr Ready-to-Halt. The celestial city lies behind that fog—doesn't it, Christiana?'

'I don't like to hear you talk so, Charley,' said his sister, smiling in his face.

'They ain't in the Bible,' he returned.

'No—and I shouldn't mind if you were only merry, but you know you are scoffing at the story, and I love it—so I can't be pleased to hear you.'

'I beg your pardon, Mary—but your celestial city lies behind such a fog that not one crystal turret, one pearly gate of it was ever seen. At least we have never caught a glimmer of it, and must go tramp, tramp—we don't know whither, any more than the blind puppy that has crawled too far from his mother's side.'

'I do see the light of it, Charley dear,' said Mary, sadly—not as if the light were any great comfort to her at the moment.

'If you do see something—how can you tell what it's the light of? It may come from the city of Dis, for anything you know.'

'I don't know what that is.'

'Oh! the red-hot city—down below. You will find all about it in Dante.'

'It doesn't look like that—the light I see,' said Mary, quietly.

'How very ill-bred you are—to say such wicked things, Charley!' said Clara.

'Am I? They are better unmentioned. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die! Only don't allude to the unpleasant subject.'

He burst out singing: the verses were poor, but I will give them.

'Let the sun shimmer! Let the wind blow! All is a notion—What do we know? Let the moon glimmer! Let the stream flow! All is but motion To and fro!

'Let the rose wither! Let the stars glow! Let the rain batter— Drift sleet and snow! Bring the tears hither! Let the smiles go! What does it matter? To and fro!

'To and fro ever, Motion and show! Nothing goes onward— Hurry or no! All is one river— Seaward and so Up again sunward— To and fro!

'Pendulum sweeping High, and now low! That star—tic, blot it! Tac, let it go! Time he is reaping Hay for his mow; That flower—he's got it! To and fro!

'Such a scythe swinging, Mighty and slow! Ripping and slaying— Hey nonny no! Black Ribs is singing— Chorus—Hey, ho! What is he saying— To and fro?

'Singing and saying "Grass is hay—ho! Love is a longing; Water is snow." Swinging and swaying, Toll the bells go! Dinging and donging To and fro!'

'Oh, Charley!' said his sister, with suppressed agony, 'what a wicked song!'

'It is a wicked song,' I said. 'But I meant——it only represents an unbelieving, hopeless mood.'

'You wrote it, then!' she said, giving me—as it seemed, involuntarily—a look of reproach.

'Yes, I did; but—'

'Then I think you are very horrid,' said Clara, interrupting.

'Charley!' I said, 'you must not leave your sister to think so badly of me! You know why I wrote it—and what I meant.'

'I wish I had written it myself,' he returned. 'I think it splendid. Anybody might envy you that song.'

'But you know I didn't mean it for a true one.'

'Who knows whether it is true or false?'

'I know,' said Mary: 'I know it is false.'

'And I hope it,' I adjoined.

'Whatever put such horrid things into your head, Wilfrid?' asked Clara.

'Probably the fear lest they should be true. The verses came as I sat in a country church once, not long ago.'

'In a church!' exclaimed Mary.

'Oh! he does go to church sometimes,' said Charley, with a laugh.

'How could you think of it in church?' persisted Mary.

'It's more like the churchyard,' said Clara.

'It was in an old church in a certain desolate sea-forsaken town,' I said. 'The pendulum of the clock—a huge, long, heavy, slow thing—hangs far down into the church, and goes swing, swang over your head, three or four seconds to every swing. When you have heard the tic, your heart grows faint every time between—waiting for the tac, which seems as if it would never come.'

We were ascending the acclivity, and no one spoke again before we reached the top. There a wide landscape lay stretched before us. The mist was rapidly melting away before the gathering strength of the sun: as we stood and gazed we could see it vanishing. By slow degrees the colours of the Autumn woods dawned out of it. Close under us lay a great wave of gorgeous red—beeches, I think—in the midst of which, here and there, stood up, tall and straight and dark, the unchanging green of a fir-tree. The glow of a hectic death was over the landscape, melting away into the misty fringe of the far horizon. Overhead the sky was blue, with a clear thin blue that told of withdrawing suns and coming frosts.

'For my part,' I said, 'I cannot believe that beyond this loveliness there lies no greater. Who knows, Charley, but death may be the first recognizable step of the progress of which you despair?'

It was then I caught the look from Mary's eye, for the sake of which I have recorded the little incidents of the morning. But the same moment the look faded, and the veil or the mask fell over her face.

'I am afraid,' she said, 'if there has been no progress before, there will be little indeed after.'

Now of all things, I hated the dogmatic theology of the party in which she had been brought up, and I turned from her with silent dislike.

'Really,' said Clara, 'you gentlemen have been very entertaining this morning. One would think Polly and I had come out for a stroll with a couple of undertaker's-men. There's surely time enough to think of such things yet! None of us are at death's door exactly.'

'"Sweet remembrancer!"—Who knows?' said Charley.

'"Now I, to comfort him,"' I followed, quoting Mrs Quickly concerning Sir John Falstaff, '"bid him, 'a should not think of God: I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet."'

'I beg your pardon,' said Mary—'there was no word of Him in the matter.'

'I see,' said Clara: 'you meant that at me, Wilfrid. But I assure you I am no heathen. I go to church regularly—once a Sunday when I can, and twice when I can't help it. That's more than you do, Mr Cumbermede, I suspect.'

'What makes you think so?' I asked.

'I can't imagine you enjoying anything but the burial service.'

'It is to my mind the most consoling of them all,' I answered.

'Well, I haven't reached the point of wanting that consolation yet, thank heaven.'

'Perhaps some of us would rather have the consolation than give thanks that we didn't need it,' I said.

'I can't say I understand you, but I know you mean something disagreeable. Polly, I think we had better go home to breakfast.'

Mary turned, and we all followed. Little was said on the way home. We divided in the hall—the ladies to breakfast, and we to our work.

We had not spoken for an hour, when Charley broke the silence.

'What a brute I am, Wilfrid!' he said. 'Why shouldn't I be as good as Jesus Christ? It seems always as if a man might. But just look at me! Because I was miserable myself, I went and made my poor little sister twice as miserable as she was before. She'll never get over what I said this morning.'

'It was foolish of you, Charley.'

'It was brutal. I am the most selfish creature in the world—always taken up with myself. I do believe there is a devil, after all. I am a devil. And the universal self is the devil. If there were such a thing as a self always giving itself away—that self would be God.'

'Something very like the God of Christianity, I think.'

'If it were so, there would be a chance for us. We might then one day give the finishing blow to the devil in us. But no: he does all for his own glory.'

'It depends on what his glory is. If what the self-seeking self would call glory, then I agree with you—that is not the God we need. But if his glory should be just the opposite—the perfect giving of himself away—then—Of course I know nothing about it. My uncle used to say things like that.'

He did not reply, and we went on with our work. Neither of the ladies came near us again that day.

Before the end of the week the library was in tolerable order to the eye, though it could not be perfectly arranged until the commencement of a catalogue should be as the dawn of a consciousness in the half-restored mass.



CHAPTER XXXIX.

A STORM.

So many books of rarity and value had revealed themselves, that it was not difficult to make Sir Giles comprehend in some degree the importance of such a possession. He had grown more and more interested as the work went on; and even Lady Brotherton, although she much desired to have, at least, the oldest and most valuable of the books re-bound in red morocco first, was so far satisfied with what she was told concerning the worth of the library, that she determined to invite some of the neighbours to dinner, for the sake of showing it. The main access to it was to be by the armoury; and she had that side of the gallery round the hall which led thither covered with a thick carpet.

Meantime Charley had looked over all the papers in my chest, but, beyond what I have already stated, no fact of special interest had been brought to light.

In sending an invitation to Charley, Lady Brotherton could hardly avoid sending me one as well: I doubt whether I should otherwise have been allowed to enjoy the admiration bestowed on the result of my labours.

The dinner was formal and dreary enough: the geniality of one of the heads of a household is seldom sufficient to give character to an entertainment.

'They tell me you are a buyer of books, Mr Alderforge,' said Mr Mellon to the clergyman of a neighbouring parish, as we sat over our wine.

'Quite a mistake,' returned Mr Alderforge. 'I am a reader of books.'

'That of course! But you buy them first—don't you?'

'Not always. I sometimes borrow them.'

'That I never do. If a book is worth borrowing, it is worth buying.'

'Perhaps—if you can afford it. But many books that book-buyers value I count worthless—for all their wide margins and uncut leaves.'

'Will you come-and have a look at Sir Giles's library?' I ventured to say.

'I never heard of a library at Moldwarp Hall, Sir Giles,' said Mr Mellon.

'I am given to understand there is a very valuable one,' said Mr Alderforge. 'I shall be glad to accompany you, sir,' he added, turning to me, '—if Sir Giles will allow us.'

'You cannot have a better guide than Mr Cumbermede,' said Sir Giles. 'I am indebted to him almost for the discovery—altogether for the restoration of the library.'

'Assisted by Miss Brotherton and her friends, Sir Giles,' I said.

'A son of Mr Cumbermede of Lowdon Farm, I presume?' said Alderforge, bowing interrogatively.

'A nephew,' I answered.

'He was a most worthy man.—By the way, Sir Giles, your young friend here must be a distant connection of your own. I found in some book or other lately, I forget where at the moment, that there were Cumbermedes at one time in Moldwarp Hall.'

'Yes—about two hundred years ago, I believe. It passed to our branch of the family some time during the troubles of the seventeenth century—I hardly know how—I am not much of an historian.'

I thought of my precious volume, and the name on the title-page. That book might have been in the library of Moldwarp Hall. If so, how had it strayed into my possession—alone, yet more to me than all that was left behind?

We betook ourselves to the library. The visitors expressed themselves astonished at its extent, and the wealth which even a glance revealed—for I took care to guide their notice to its richest veins.

'When it is once arranged,' I said, 'I fancy there will be few private libraries to stand a comparison with it—I am thinking of old English literature, and old editions: there is not a single volume of the present century in it, so far as I know.'

I had had a few old sconces fixed here and there, but as yet there were no means of really lighting the rooms. Hence, when a great flash of lightning broke from a cloud that hung over the park right in front of the windows, it flooded them with a dazzling splendour. I went to find Charley, for the library was the best place to see the lightning from. As I entered the drawing-room, a tremendous peal of thunder burst over the house, causing so much consternation amongst the ladies, that, for the sake of company, they all followed to the library. Clara seemed more frightened than any. Mary was perfectly calm. Charley was much excited. The storm grew in violence. We saw the lightning strike a tree which stood alone a few hundred yards from the house. When the next flash came, half of one side seemed torn away. The wind rose, first in fierce gusts, then into a tempest, and the rain poured in torrents.

'None of you can go home to-night, ladies,' said Sir Giles. 'You must make up your minds to stop where you are. Few horses would face such a storm as that.'

'It would be to tax your hospitality too grievously, Sir Giles,' said Mr Alderforge. 'I dare say it will clear up by-and-by, or at least moderate sufficiently to let us get home.'

'I don't think there's much chance of that,' returned Sir Giles. 'The barometer has been steadily falling for the last three days. My dear, you had better give your orders at once.'

'You had better stop, Charley,' I said.

'I won't if you go,' he returned.

Clara was beside.

'You must not think of going,' she said.

Whether she spoke to him or me I did not know, but as Charley made no answer—

'I cannot stop without being asked,' I said, 'and it is not likely that any one will take the trouble to ask me.'

The storm increased. At the request of the ladies, the gentlemen left the library and accompanied them to the drawing-room for tea. Our hostess asked Clara to sing, but she was too frightened to comply.

'You will sing, Mary, if Lady Brotherton asks you, I know,' said Mrs Osborne.

'Do, my dear,' said Lady Brotherton; and Mary at once complied.

I had never heard her sing, and did not expect much. But although she had little execution, there was, I found, a wonderful charm both in her voice and the simplicity of her mode. I did not feel this at first, nor could I tell when the song began to lay hold upon me, but when it ceased, I found that I had been listening intently. I have often since tried to recall it, but as yet it has eluded all my efforts. I still cherish the hope that it may return some night in a dream, or in some waking moment of quiescent thought, when what we call the brain works as it were of itself, and the spirit allows it play.

The close was lost in a louder peal of thunder than had yet burst. Charley and I went again to the library to look out on the night. It was dark as pitch, except when the lightning broke and revealed everything for one intense moment.

'I think sometimes,' said Charley, 'that death will be like one of those flashes, revealing everything in hideous fact—for just one-moment and no more.'

'How for one moment and no more, Charley?' I asked.

'Because the sight of the truth concerning itself must kill the soul, if there be one, with disgust at its own vileness, and the miserable contrast between its aspirations and attainments, its pretences and its efforts. At least, that would be the death fit for a life like mine—a death of disgust at itself. We claim immortality; we cringe and cower with the fear that immortality may not be the destiny of man; and yet we—I—do things unworthy not merely of immortality, but unworthy of the butterfly existence of a single day in such a world as this sometimes seems to be. Just think how I stabbed at my sister's faith this morning—careless of making her as miserable as myself! Because my father has put into her mind his fancies, and I hate them, I wound again the heart which they wound, and which cannot help their presence!'

'But the heart that can be sorry for an action is far above the action, just as her heart is better than the notions that haunt it.'

'Sometimes I hope so. But action determines character. And it is all such a muddle! I don't care much about what they call immortality. I doubt if it is worth the having. I would a thousand times rather have one day of conscious purity of heart and mind and soul and body, than an eternity of such life as I have now.—What am I saying?' he added, with a despairing laugh. 'It is a fool's comparison; for an eternity of the former would be bliss—one moment of the latter is misery.'

I could but admire and pity my poor friend both at once.

Miss Pease had entered unheard.

'Mr Cumbermede,' she said, 'I have been looking for you to show you your room. It is not the one I should like to have got for you, but Mrs Wilson says you have occupied it before, and I dare say you will find it comfortable enough.'

'Thank you, Miss Pease. I am sorry you should have taken the trouble. I can go home well enough. I am not afraid of a little rain.'

'A little rain!' said Charley, trying to speak lightly.

'Well, any amount of rain,' I said.

'But the lightning!' expostulated Miss Pease in a timid voice.

'I am something of a fatalist, Miss Pease,' I said. '"Every bullet has its billet," you know. Besides, if I had a choice, I think I would rather die by lightning than any other way.'

'Don't talk like that, Mr Cumbermede.—Oh! what a flash!'

'I was not speaking irreverently, I assure you,' I replied.—'I think I had better set out at once, for there seems no chance of its clearing.'

'I am sure Sir Giles would be distressed if you did.'

'He will never know, and I dislike giving trouble.'

'The room is ready. I will show you where it is, that you may go when you like.'

'If Mrs Wilson says it is a room I have occupied before, I know the way quite well.'

'There are two ways to it,' she said. 'But of course one of them is enough,' she added with a smile. 'Mr Osborne, your room is in another part quite.'

'I know where my sister's room is,' said Charley. 'Is it anywhere near hers?'

'That is the room you are to have. Miss Osborne is to be with your mamma, I think. There is plenty of accommodation, only the notice was short.'

I began to button my coat.

'Don't go, Wilfrid,' said Charley. 'You might give offence. Besides, you will have the advantage of getting to work as early as you please in the morning.'

It was late and I was tired—consequently less inclined than usual to encounter a storm, for in general I enjoyed being in any commotion of the elements. Also I felt I should like to pass another night in that room, and have besides the opportunity of once more examining at my leisure the gap in the tapestry.

'Will you meet me early in the library, Charley?' I said.

'Yes—to be sure I will—as early as you like.'

'Let us go to the drawing-room, then.'

'Why should you, if you are tired, and want to go to bed?'

'Because Lady Brotherton will not like my being included in the invitation. She will think it absurd of me not to go home.'

'There is no occasion to go near her, then.'

'I do not choose to sleep in the house without knowing that she knows it.'

We went. I made my way to Lady Brotherton. Clara was standing near her.

'I am much obliged by your hospitality, Lady Brotherton,' I said. 'It is rather a rough night to encounter in evening dress.'

She bowed.

'The distance is not great, however,' I said, 'and perhaps—'

'Out of the question!' said Sir Giles, who came up at the moment.

Will you see, then, Sir Giles, that a room is prepared for your guest?' she said.

'I trust that is unnecessary,' he replied. 'I gave orders.'—But as he spoke he went towards the bell.

'It is all arranged, I believe, Sir Giles,' I said. 'Mrs Wilson has already informed me which is my room. Good-night, Sir Giles.'

He shook hands with me kindly. I bowed to Lady Brotherton and retired.

It may seem foolish to record such mere froth of conversation, but I want my reader to understand how a part, at least, of the family of Moldwarp Hall regarded me.



CHAPTER XL.

A DREAM.

My room looked dreary enough. There was no fire, and the loss of the patch of tapestry from the wall gave the whole an air of dilapidation. The wind howled fearfully in the chimney and about the door on the roof, and the rain came down on the leads like the distant trampling of many horses. But I was not in an imaginative mood. Charley was again my trouble. I could not bear him to be so miserable. Why was I not as miserable as he? I asked myself. Perhaps I ought to be, for although certainly I hoped more, I could not say I believed more than he. I wished more than ever that I did believe, for then I should be able to help him—I was sure of that; but I saw no possible way of arriving at belief. Where was the proof? Where even the hope of a growing probability?

With these thoughts drifting about in my brain, like waifs which the tide will not let go, I was poring over the mutilated forms of the tapestry round the denuded door, with an expectation, almost a conviction, that I should find the fragment still hanging on the wall of the kitchen at the Moat, the very piece wanted to complete the broken figures. When I had them well fixed in my memory, I went to bed, and lay pondering over the several broken links which indicated some former connection between the Moat and the Hall, until I fell asleep, and began to dream strange wild dreams, of which the following was the last.

I was in a great palace, wandering hither and thither, and meeting no one. A weight of silence brooded in the place. From hall to hall I went, along corridor and gallery, and up and down endless stairs. I knew that in some room near me was one whose name was Athanasia,—a maiden, I thought in my dream, whom I had known and loved for years, but had lately lost—I knew not how. Somewhere here she was, if only I could find her! From room to room I went seeking her. Every room I entered bore some proof that she had just been there—but there she was not. In one lay a veil, in another a handkerchief, in a third a glove; and all were scented with a strange entrancing odour, which I had never known before, but which in certain moods I can to this day imperfectly recall. I followed and followed until hope failed me utterly, and I sat down and wept. But while I wept, hope dawned afresh, and I rose and again followed the quest, until I found myself in a little chapel like that of Moldwarp Hall. It was filled with the sound of an organ, distance-faint, and the thin music was the same as the odour of the handkerchief which I carried in my bosom. I tried to follow the sound, but the chapel grew and grew as I wandered, and I came no nearer to its source. At last the altar rose before me on my left, and through the bowed end of the aisle I passed behind it into the lady-chapel. There against the outer wall stood a dusky ill-defined shape. Its head rose above the sill of the eastern window, and I saw it against the rising moon. But that and the whole figure were covered with a thick drapery; I could see nothing of the face, and distinguish little of the form.

'What art thou?' I asked trembling.

'I am Death—dost thou not know me?' answered the figure, in a sweet though worn and weary voice. 'Thou hast been following me all thy life, and hast followed me hither.'

Then I saw through the lower folds of the cloudy garment, which grew thin and gauze-like as I gazed, a huge iron door, with folding leaves, and a great iron bar across them.

'Art thou at thine own door?' I asked. 'Surely thy house cannot open under the eastern window of the church?'

'Follow and see,' answered the figure.

Turning, it drew back the bolt, threw wide the portals, and low-stooping entered. I followed, not into the moonlit night, but through a cavernous opening into darkness. If my Athanasia were down with Death, I would go with Death, that I might at least end with her. Down and down I followed the veiled figure, down flight after flight of stony stairs, through passages like those of the catacombs, and again down steep straight stairs. At length it stopped at another gate, and with beating heart I heard what I took for bony fingers fumbling with a chain and a bolt. But ere the fastenings had yielded, once more I heard the sweet odour-like music of the distant organ. The same moment the door opened, but I could see nothing for some time for the mighty inburst of a lovely light. A fair river, brimming full, its little waves flashing in the sun and wind, washed the threshold of the door, and over its surface, hither and thither, sped the white sails of shining boats, while from somewhere, clear now, but still afar, came the sound of a great organ psalm. Beyond the river the sun was rising—over blue Summer hills that melted into blue Summer sky. On the threshold stood my guide, bending towards me, as if waiting for me to pass out also. I lifted my eyes: the veil had fallen—it was my lost Athanasia! Not one beam touched her face, for her back was to the sun, yet her face was radiant. Trembling, I would have kneeled at her feet, but she stepped out upon the flowing river, and with the sweetest of sad smiles, drew the door to, and left me alone in the dark hollow of the earth. I broke into a convulsive weeping, and awoke.



CHAPTER XLI.

A WAKING.

I suppose I awoke tossing in my misery, for my hand fell upon something cold. I started up and tried to see. The light of a clear morning of late Autumn had stolen into the room while I slept, and glimmered on something that lay upon the bed. It was some time before I could believe that my troubled eyes were not the sport of one of those odd illusions that come of mingled sleep and waking. But by the golden hilt and rusted blade I was at length convinced, although the scabbard was gone, that I saw my own sword. It lay by my left side, with the hilt towards my hand. But the moment I turned a little to take it in my right hand, I forgot all about it in a far more bewildering discovery, which fixed me staring half in terror, half in amazement, so that again for a moment I disbelieved in my waking condition. On the other pillow lay the face of a lovely girl. I felt as if I had seen it before—whether only in the just vanished dream, I could not tell. But the maiden of my dream never comes back to me with any other features or with any other expression than those which I now beheld. There was an ineffable mingling of love and sorrow on the sweet countenance. The girl was dead asleep, but evidently dreaming, for tears were flowing from under her closed lids. For a time I was unable even to think; when thought returned, I was afraid to move. All at once the face of Mary Osborne dawned out of the vision before me—how different, how glorified from its waking condition! It was perfectly lovely—transfigured by the unchecked outflow of feeling. The recognition brought me to my senses at once. I did not waste a single thought in speculating how the mistake had occurred, for there was not a moment to be lost. I must be wise to shield her, and chiefly, as much as might be, from the miserable confusion which her own discovery of the untoward fact would occasion her. At first I thought it would be best to lie perfectly still, in order that she, at length awaking and discovering where she was, but finding me fast asleep, might escape with the conviction that the whole occurrence remained her own secret. I made the attempt, but I need hardly say that never before or since have I found myself in a situation half so perplexing; and in a few moments I was seized with such a trembling that I was compelled to turn my thoughts to the only other possible plan. As I reflected, the absolute necessity of attempting it became more and more apparent. In the first place, when she woke and saw me, she might scream and be heard; in the next, she might be seen as she left the room, or, unable to find her way, might be involved in great consequent embarrassment. But, if I could gather all my belongings, and, without awaking her, escape by the stair to the roof, she would be left to suppose that she had but mistaken her chamber, and would, I hoped, remain in ignorance that she had not passed the night in it alone. I dared one more peep into her face. The light and the loveliness of her dream had passed; I should not now have had to look twice to know that it was Mary Osborne; but never more could I see in hers a common face. She was still fast asleep, and, stealthy as a beast of prey, I began to make my escape. At the first movement, however, my perplexity was redoubled, for again my hand fell on the sword which I had forgotten, and question after question as to how they were together, and together there, darted through my bewildered brain. Could a third person have come and laid the sword between us? I had no time, however, to answer one of my own questions. Hardly knowing which was better, or if there was a better, I concluded to take the weapon with me, moved in part by the fact that I had found it where I had lost it, but influenced far more by its association with this night of marvel.

Having gathered my garments together, and twice glanced around me—once to see that I left nothing behind, and once to take farewell of the peaceful face, which had never moved, I opened the little door in the wall, and made my strange retreat up the stair. My heart was beating so violently from the fear of her waking, that, when the door was drawn to behind me, I had to stand for what seemed minutes before I was able to ascend the steep stair, and step from its darkness into the clear frosty shine of the Autumn sun, brilliant upon the leads wet with the torrents of the preceding night.

I found a sheltered spot by the chimney-stack, where no one could see me from below, and proceeded to dress myself—assisted in my very imperfect toilet by the welcome discovery of a pool of rain in a depression of the lead-covered roof. But alas, before I had finished, I found that I had brought only one of my shoes away with me! This settled the question I was at the moment debating—whether, namely, it would be better to go home, or to find some way of reaching the library. I put my remaining shoe in my pocket, and set out to discover a descent. It would have been easy to get down into the little gallery, but it communicated on both sides immediately with bed-rooms, which for anything I knew might be occupied; and besides I was unwilling to enter the house for fear of encountering some of the domestics. But I knew more of the place now, and had often speculated concerning the odd position and construction of an outside stair in the first court, close to the chapel, with its landing at the door of a room en suite with those of Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton. It was for a man an easy drop to this landing. Quiet as a cat, I crept over the roof, let myself down, crossed the court swiftly, drew back the bolt which alone secured the wicket, and, with no greater mishap than the unavoidable wetting of shoeless feet, was soon safe in my own room, exchanging my evening for a morning dress. When I looked at my watch, I found it nearly seven o'clock.

I was so excited and bewildered by the adventures I had gone through, that, from very commonness, all the things about me looked alien and strange. I had no feeling of relation to the world of ordinary life. The first thing I did was to hang my sword in its own old place, and the next to take down the bit of tapestry from the opposite wall, which I proceeded to examine in the light of my recollection of that round the denuded door. Room was left for not even a single doubt as to the relation between this and that: they had been wrought in one and the same piece by fair fingers of some long vanished time.



CHAPTER XLII.

A TALK ABOUT SUICIDE.

In the same excited mood, but repressing it with all the energy I could gather, I returned to the Hall and made my way to the library. There Charley soon joined me.

'Why didn't you come to breakfast?' he asked.

'I've been home, and changed my clothes,' I answered. 'I couldn't well appear in a tail-coat. It's bad enough to have to wear such an ugly thing by candle-light.'

'What's the matter with you?' he asked again, after an interval of silence, which I judge from the question must have been rather a long one.

'What is the matter with me, Charley?'

'I can't tell. You don't seem yourself somehow.'

I do not know what answer I gave him, but I knew myself what was the matter with me well enough. The form and face of the maiden of my dream, the Athanasia lost that she might be found, blending with the face and form of Mary Osborne, filled my imagination so that I could think of nothing else. Gladly would I have been rid of even Charley's company, that, while my hands were busy with the books, my heart might brood at will now upon the lovely dream, now upon the lovely vision to which I awoke from it, and which, had it not glided into the forms of the foregone dream, and possessed it with itself, would have banished it altogether. At length I was aware of light steps and sweet voices in the next room, and Mary and Clara presently entered.

How came it that the face of the one had lost the half of its radiance, and the face of the other had gathered all that the former had lost. Mary's countenance was as still as ever; there was not in it a single ray of light beyond its usual expression; but I had become more capable of reading it, for the coalescence of the face of my dream with her dreaming face had given me its key; and I was now so far from indifferent, that I was afraid to look for fear of betraying the attraction I now found it exercise over me. Seldom surely has a man been so long familiar with and careless of any countenance to find it all at once an object of absorbing interest! The very fact of its want of revelation added immensely to its power over me now—for was I not in its secret? Did I not know what a lovely soul hid behind that unexpressive countenance? Did I not know that it was as the veil of the holy of holies, at times reflecting only the light of the seven golden lamps in the holy place; at others almost melted away in the rush of the radiance unspeakable from the hidden and holier side—the region whence come the revelations. To draw through it, if but once, the feeblest glimmer of the light I had but once beheld, seemed an ambition worthy of a life. Knowing her power of reticence, however, and of withdrawing from the outer courts into the penetralia of her sanctuary, guessing also at something of the aspect in which she regarded me, I dared not now make any such attempt. But I resolved to seize what opportunity might offer of convincing her that I was not so far out of sympathy with her as to be unworthy of holding closer converse; and I now began to feel distressed at what had given me little trouble before, namely, that she should suppose me the misleader of her brother, while I knew that, however far I might be from an absolute belief in things which she seemed never to have doubted, I was yet in some measure the means of keeping him from flinging aside the last cords which held him to the faith of his fathers. But I would not lead in any such direction, partly from the fear of hypocrisy, partly from horror at the idea of making capital of what little faith I had. But Charley himself afforded me an opportunity which I could not, whatever my scrupulosity, well avoid.

'Have you ever looked into that little book, Charley?' I said, finding in my hands an early edition of the Christian Morals of Sir Thomas Browne.—I wanted to say something, that I might not appear distraught.

'No,' he answered, with indifference, as he glanced at the title-page. 'Is it anything particular?'

'Everything he writes, however whimsical in parts, is well worth more than mere reading,' I answered. 'It is a strangely latinized style, but has its charm notwithstanding.'

He was turning over the leaves as I spoke. Receiving no response, I looked up. He seemed to have come upon something which had attracted him.

'What have you found?' I asked.

'Here's a chapter on the easiest way of putting a stop to it all,' he answered.

'What do you mean?'

'He was a medical man—wasn't he? I'm ashamed to say I know nothing about him.'

'Yes, certainly he was.'

'Then he knew what he was about.'

'As well probably as any man of his profession at the time.'

'He recommends drowning,' said Charley, without raising his eyes from the book.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean for suicide.'

'Nonsense, He was the last man to favour that. You must make a mistake. He was a thoroughly Christian man.'

'I know nothing about that. Hear this.'

He read the following passages from the beginning of the thirteenth section of the second part.

'With what shifts and pains we come into the world, we remember not; but 'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it. Many have studied to exasperate the ways of death, but fewer hours have been spent to soften that necessity.'—'Ovid, the old heroes, and the Stoicks, who were so afraid of drowning, as dreading thereby the extinction of their soul, which they conceived to be a fire, stood probably in fear of an easier way of death; wherein the water, entering the possessions of air, makes a temporary suffocation, and kills as it were without a fever. Surely many, who have had the spirit to destroy themselves, have not been ingenious in the contrivance thereof.'—'Cato is much to be pitied, who mangled himself with poniards; and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his delivery, not in the point but the pummel of his sword.'

'Poison. I suppose,' he said, as he ended the extract.

'Yes, that's the story, if you remember,' I answered; 'but I don't see that Sir Thomas is favouring suicide. Not at all. What he writes there is merely a speculation on the comparative ease of different modes of dying. Let me see it.'

I took the book from his hands, and, glancing over the essay, read the closing passage.

'But to learn to die, is better than to study the ways of dying. Death will find some ways to untie or cut the most gordian knots of life, and make men's miseries as mortal as themselves: whereas evil spirits, as undying substances, are unseparable from their calamities; and, therefore, they everlastingly struggle under their angustias, and, bound up with immortality, can never get out of themselves.'

'There! I told you so!' cried Charley. Don't you see? He is the most cunning arguer—beats Despair in the Fairy Queen hollow!'

By this time, either attracted by the stately flow of Sir Thomas's speech, or by the tone of our disputation, the two girls had drawn nearer, and were listening.

'What do you mean, Charley?' I said, perceiving, however, the hold I had by my further quotation given him.

'First of all, he tells you the easiest way of dying, and then informs you that it ends all your troubles. He is too cunning to say in so many words that there is no hereafter, but what else can he wish you to understand when he says that in dying we have the advantage over the evil spirits, who cannot by death get rid of their sufferings? I will read this book,' he added, closing it and putting it in his pocket.

'I wish you would,' I said: 'for although I confess you are logically right in your conclusions, I know Sir Thomas did not mean anything of the sort. He was only misled by his love of antithesis into a hasty and illogical remark. The whole tone of his book is against such a conclusion. Besides, I do not doubt he was thinking only of good people, for whom he believed all suffering over at their death.'

'But I don't see, supposing he does believe in immortality, why you should be so anxious about his orthodoxy on the other point. Didn't Dr Donne, as good a man as any, I presume, argue on the part of the suicide?'

'I have not read Dr Donne's essay, but I suspect the obliquity of it has been much exaggerated.'

'Why should you? I never saw any argument worth the name on the other side. We have plenty of expressions of horror—but those are not argument. Indeed, the mass of the vulgar are so afraid of dying that, apparently in terror lest suicide should prove infectious, they treat in a brutal manner the remains of the man who has only had the courage to free himself from a burden too hard for him to bear. It is all selfishness—nothing else. They love their paltry selves so much that they count it a greater sin to kill oneself than to kill another man—which seems to me absolutely devilish. Therefore, the vox populi, whether it be the vox Dei or not, is not nonsense merely, but absolute wickedness. Why shouldn't a man kill himself?'

Clara was looking on rather than listening, and her interest seemed that of amusement only. Mary's eyes were wide-fixed on the face of Charley, evidently tortured to find that to the other enormities of his unbelief was to be added the justification of suicide. His habit of arguing was doubtless well enough known to her to leave room for the mitigating possibility that he might be arguing only for argument's sake, but what he said could not but be shocking to her upon any supposition.

I was not ready with an answer. Clara was the first to speak.

'It's a cowardly thing, anyhow,' she said.

'How do you make that out, Miss Clara?' asked Charley. 'I'm aware it's the general opinion, but I don't see it myself.'

'It's surely cowardly to run away in that fashion.'

'For my part,' returned Charley, 'I feel that it requires more courage than I've got, and hence it comes, I suppose, that I admire any one who has the pluck.'

'What vulgar words you use, Mr Charles!' said Clara.

'Besides,' he went on, heedless of her remark, 'a man may want to escape—not from his duties—he mayn't know what they are—but from his own weakness and shame.'

'But, Charley dear,' said Mary, with a great light in her eyes, and the rest of her face as still as a sunless pond, 'you don't think of the sin of it. I know you are only talking, but some things oughtn't to be talked of lightly.'

'What makes it a sin? It's not mentioned in the ten commandments,' said Charley.

'Surely it's against the will of God, Charley dear.'

'He hasn't said anything about it, anyhow. And why should I have a thing forced upon me whether I will or not, and then be pulled up for throwing it away when I found it troublesome?'

'Surely I don't quite understand you, Charley.'

'Well, if I must be more explicit—I was never asked whether I chose to be made or not. I never had the conditions laid before me. Here I am, and I can't help myself—so far, I mean, as that here I am.'

'But life is a good thing,' said Mary, evidently struggling with an almost overpowering horror.

'I don't know that. My impression is that if I had been asked—'

'But that couldn't be, you know.'

'Then it wasn't fair. Bat why couldn't I be made for a moment or two, long enough to have the thing laid before me, and be asked whether I would accept it or not? My impression is that I would have said—No, thank you; that is, if it was fairly put.'

I hastened to offer a remark, in the hope of softening the pain such flippancy must cause her.

'And my impression is, Charley,' I said, 'that if such had been possible—'

'Of course,' he interrupted, 'the God you believe in could have made me for a minute or two. He can, I suppose, unmake me now when he likes.'

'Yes; but could he have made you all at once capable of understanding his plans, and your own future? Perhaps that is what he is doing now—making you, by all you are going through, capable of understanding them. Certainly the question could not have been put to you before you were able to comprehend it, and this may be the only way to make you able. Surely a being who could make you had a right to risk the chance, if I may be allowed such an expression, of your being satisfied in the end with what he saw to be good—so good indeed that, if we accept the New Testament story, he would have been willing to go through the same troubles himself for the same end.'

'No, no; not the same troubles,' he objected. 'According to the story to which you refer, Jesus Christ was free from all that alone makes life unendurable—the bad inside you, that will come outside whether you will or not.'

'I admit your objection. As to the evil coming out, I suspect it is better it should come out, so long as it is there. But the end is not yet; and still I insist the probability is that, if you could know it all now, you would say with submission, if not with hearty concurrence—"Thy will be done."'

'I have known people who could say that without knowing it all now, Mr Cumbermede,' said Mary.

I had often called her by her Christian name, but she had never accepted the familiarity.

'No doubt,' said Charley, 'but I'm not one of those.'

'If you would but give in,' said his sister, 'you would—in the end, I mean—say, "It is well." I am sure of that.'

'Yes—perhaps I might—after all the suffering had been forced upon me, and was over at last—when I had been thoroughly exhausted and cowed, that is.'

'Which wouldn't satisfy any thinking soul, Charley—much less God,' I said. 'But if there be a God at all—'

Mary gave a slight inarticulate cry.

'Dear Miss Osborne,' I said, 'I beg you will not misunderstand me. I cannot be sure about it, as you are—I wish I could—but I am not disputing it in the least; I am only trying to make my argument as strong as I can.—I was going to say to Charley—not to you—that, if there be a God, he would not have compelled us to be, except with the absolute fore-knowledge that, when we knew all about it, we would certainly declare ourselves ready to go through it all again if need should be, in order to attain the known end of his high calling.'

'But isn't it very presumptuous to assert anything about God which he has not revealed in his Word?' said Mary, in a gentle, subdued voice, and looking at me with a sweet doubtfulness in her eyes.

'I am only insisting on the perfection of God—as far as I can understand perfection,' I answered.

'But may not the perfection of God be something very different from anything we can understand?'

'I will go further,' I returned. 'It must be something that we cannot understand—but different from what we can understand by being greater, not by being less.'

'Mayn't it be such that we can't understand it at all?' she insisted.

'Then how should we ever worship him? How should we ever rejoice in him? Surely it is because you see God to be good—'

'Or fancy you do,' interposed Charley.

'Or fancy you do,' I assented, 'that you love him—not merely because you are told he is good. The Fejee islander might assert his God to be good, but would that make you love him? If you heard that a great power, away somewhere, who had nothing to do with you at all, was very good, would that make you able to love him?'

'Yes, it would,' said Mary, decidedly. 'It is only a good man who would see that God was good.'

'There you argue entirely on my side. It must be because you supposed his goodness what you call goodness—not something else—that you could love him on testimony. But even then your love could not be of that mighty absorbing kind which alone you would think fit between you and your God. It would not be loving him with all your heart and soul and strength and mind—would it? It would be loving him second-hand—not because of himself, seen and known by yourself.'

'But Charley does not even love God second-hand,' she said, with a despairing mournfulness.

'Perhaps because he is very anxious to love him first-hand, and what you tell him about God does not seem to him to be good. Surely neither man nor woman can love because of what seems not good! I confess one may love in spite of what is bad, but it must be because of other things that are good.'

She was silent.

'However goodness may change its forms,' I went on, 'it must still be goodness; only if we are to adore it, we must see something of what it is—of itself. And the goodness we cannot see, the eternal goodness, high above us as the heavens are above the earth, must still be a goodness that includes, absorbs, elevates, purifies all our goodness, not tramples upon it and calls it wickedness. For if not such, then we have nothing in common with God, and what we call goodness is not of God. He has not even ordered it; or, if he has, he has ordered it only to order the contrary afterwards; and there is, in reality, no real goodness—at least in him; and, if not in him, of whom we spring—where then?—and what becomes of ours, poor as it is?'

My reader will see that I had already thought much about these things; although, I suspect, I have now not only expressed them far better than I could have expressed them in conversation, but with a degree of clearness which must be owing to the further continuance of the habit of reflecting on these and cognate subjects. Deep in my mind, however, something like this lay; and in some manner like this I tried to express it.

Finding that she continued silent, and that Charley did not appear inclined to renew the contest, anxious also to leave no embarrassing silence to choke the channel now open between us—I mean Mary and myself—I returned to the original question.

'It seems to me, Charley—and it follows from all we have been saying—that the sin of suicide lies just in this, that it is an utter want of faith in God. I confess I do not see any Other ground on which to condemn it—provided, always, that the man has no other dependent upon him, none for whom he ought to live and work.'

'But does a man owe nothing to himself?' said Clara.

'Nothing that I know of,' I replied. 'I am under no obligation to myself. How can I divide myself, and say that the one-half of me is indebted to the other? To my mind, it is a mere fiction of speech.'

'But whence, then, should such a fiction arise?' objected Charley, willing, perhaps, to defend Clara.

'From the dim sense of a real obligation, I suspect—the object of which is mistaken. I suspect it really springs from our relation to the unknown God, so vaguely felt that a false form is readily accepted for its embodiment by a being who, in ignorance of its nature, is yet aware of its presence. I mean that what seems an obligation to self is in reality a dimly apprehended duty—an obligation to the unknown God, and not to self, in which lies no causing, therefore no obligating power.'

'But why say the unknown God, Mr Cumbermede?' asked Mary.

'Because I do not believe that any one who knew him could possibly attribute to himself what belonged to Him—could, I mean, talk of an obligation to himself, when that obligation was to God.'

How far Mary Osborne followed the argument or agreed with it I cannot tell, but she gave me a look of something like gratitude, and my heart felt too big for its closed chamber.

At this moment the housemaid who had, along with the carpenter, assisted me in the library, entered the room. She was rather a forward girl, and I suppose presumed on our acquaintance to communicate directly with myself instead of going to the housekeeper. Seeing her approach as if she wanted to speak to me, I went to meet her. She handed me a small ring, saying, in a low voice,

'I found this in your room, sir, and thought it better to bring it to you.'

'Thank you,' I said, putting it at once on my little finger; 'I am glad you found it.'

Charley and Clara had begun talking. I believe Clara was trying to make Charley give her the book he had pocketed, imagining it really of the character he had, half in sport, professed to believe it. But Mary had caught sight of the ring, and, with a bewildered expression on her countenance, was making a step towards me. I put a finger to my lips, and gave her a look by which I succeeded in arresting her. Utterly perplexed, I believe, she turned away towards the bookshelves behind her. I went into the next room, and called Charley.

'I think we had better not go on with this talk,' I said. 'You are very imprudent indeed, Charley, to be always bringing up subjects that tend to widen the gulf between you and your sister. When I have a chance, I do what I can to make her doubt whether you are so far wrong as they think you, but you must give her time. All your kind of thought is so new to her that your words cannot possibly convey to her what is in your mind. If only she were not so afraid of me! But I think she begins to trust me a little.'

'It's no use,' he returned. Her head is so full of rubbish!'

'But her heart is so full of goodness!'

'I wish you could make anything of her! But she looks up to my father with such a blind adoration that it isn't of the slightest use attempting to put an atom of sense into her.'

'I should indeed despair if I might only set about it after your fashion. You always seem to shut your eyes to the mental condition of those that differ from you. Instead of trying to understand them first, which gives the sole possible chance of your ever making them understand what you mean, you care only to present your opinions; and that you do in such a fashion that they must appear to them false. You even make yourself seem to hold these for very love of their untruth; and thus make it all but impossible for them to shake off their fetters: every truth in advance of what they have already learned, will henceforth come to them associated with your presumed backsliding and impenitence.'

'Goodness! where did you learn their slang?' cried Charley. 'But impenitence, if you like,—not backsliding. I never made any profession. After all, however, their opinions don't seem to hurt them—I mean my mother and sister.'

'They must hurt them if only by hindering their growth. In time, of course, the angels of the heart will expel the demons of the brain; but it is a pity the process should be retarded by your behaviour.'

'I know I am a brute, Wilfrid. I will try to hold my tongue.'

'Depend upon it,' I went on, 'whatever such hearts can believe, is, as believed by them, to be treated with respect. It is because of the truth in it, not because of the falsehood, that they hold it; and when you speak against the false in it, you appear to them to speak against the true; for the dogma seems to them an unanalyzable unit. You assail the false with the recklessness of falsehood itself, careless of the injury you may inflict on the true.'

I was interrupted by the entrance of Clara.

'If you gentlemen don't want us any more, we had better go,' she said.

I left Charley to answer her, and went back into the next room. Mary stood where I had left her, mechanically shifting and arranging the volumes on a shelf at the height of her eyes.

'I think this is your ring, Miss Osborne,' I said, in a low and hurried tone, offering it.

Her expression at first was only of questioning surprise, when suddenly something seemed to cross her mind; she turned pale as death, and put her hand on the bookshelves as if to support her; as suddenly flushed crimson for a moment, and again turned deadly pale—all before I could speak.

'Don't ask me any questions, dear Miss Osborne,' I said. 'And, please, trust me this far; don't mention the loss of your ring to any one, unless it be your mother. Allow me to put it on your finger.'



She gave me a glance I cannot and would not describe. It lies treasured—for ever, God grant!—in the secret jewel-house of my heart. She lifted a trembling left hand, and doubtingly held—half held it towards me. To this day I know nothing of the stones of that ring—not even their colour; but I know I should know it at once if I saw it. My hand trembled more than hers as I put it on the third finger.

What followed, I do not know. I think I left her there and went into the other room. When I returned a little after, I know she was gone. From that hour, not one word has ever passed between us in reference to the matter. The best of my conjectures remains but a conjecture; I know how the sword got there—nothing more.

I did not see her again that day, and did not seem to want to see her, but worked on amongst the books in a quiet exultation. My being seemed tenfold awake and alive. My thoughts dwelt on the rarely revealed loveliness of my Athanasia; and, although I should have scorned unspeakably to take the smallest advantage of having come to share a secret with her, I could not help rejoicing in the sense of nearness to and alone-ness with her which the possession of that secret gave me; while one of the most precious results of the new love which had thus all at once laid hold upon me, was the feeling—almost a conviction—that the dream was not a web self-wove in the loom of my brain, but that from somewhere, beyond my soul even, an influence had mingled with its longings to in-form the vision of that night—to be as it were a creative soul to what would otherwise have been but loose, chaotic, and shapeless vagaries of the unguided imagination. The events of that night were as the sudden opening of a door through which I caught a glimpse of that region of the supernal in which, whatever might be her theories concerning her experiences therein, Mary Osborne certainly lived, if ever any one lived. The degree of God's presence with a creature is not to be measured by that creature's interpretation of the manner in which he is revealed. The great question is whether he is revealed or not; and a strong truth can carry many parasitical errors.