It was hard on Rickie thus to meet the devil. He did not deserve it, for he was comparatively civilized, and knew that there was nothing shameful in love. But to love this woman! If only it had been any one else! Love in return—that he could expect from no one, being too ugly and too unattractive. But the love he offered would not then have been vile. The insult to Miss Pembroke, who was consecrated, and whom he had consecrated, who could still see Gerald, and always would see him, shining on his everlasting throne this was the crime from the devil, the crime that no penance would ever purge. She knew nothing. She never would know. But the crime was registered in heaven.
He had been tempted to confide in Ansell. But to what purpose? He would say, “I love Miss Pembroke.” and Stewart would reply, “You ass.” And then. “I’m never going to tell her.” “You ass,” again. After all, it was not a practical question; Agnes would never hear of his fall. If his friend had been, as he expressed it, “labelled”; if he had been a father, or still better a brother, one might tell him of the discreditable passion. But why irritate him for no reason? Thinking “I am always angling for sympathy; I must stop myself,” he hurried onward to the Union.
He found his guests half way up the stairs, reading the advertisements of coaches for the Long Vacation. He heard Mrs. Lewin say, “I wonder what he’ll end by doing.” A little overacting his part, he apologized nonchalantly for his lateness.
“It’s always the same,” cried Agnes. “Last time he forgot I was coming altogether.” She wore a flowered muslin—something indescribably liquid and cool. It reminded him a little of those swift piercing streams, neither blue nor green, that gush out of the dolomites. Her face was clear and brown, like the face of a mountaineer; her hair was so plentiful that it seemed banked up above it; and her little toque, though it answered the note of the dress, was almost ludicrous, poised on so much natural glory. When she moved, the sunlight flashed on her ear-rings.
He led them up to the luncheon-room. By now he was conscious of his limitations as a host, and never attempted to entertain ladies in his lodgings. Moreover, the Union seemed less intimate. It had a faint flavour of a London club; it marked the undergraduate’s nearest approach to the great world. Amid its waiters and serviettes one felt impersonal, and able to conceal the private emotions. Rickie felt that if Miss Pembroke knew one thing about him, she knew everything. During this visit he took her to no place that he greatly loved.
“Sit down, ladies. Fall to. I’m sorry. I was out towards Coton with a dreadful friend.”
Mrs. Lewin pushed up her veil. She was a typical May-term chaperon, always pleasant, always hungry, and always tired. Year after year she came up to Cambridge in a tight silk dress, and year after year she nearly died of it. Her feet hurt, her limbs were cramped in a canoe, black spots danced before her eyes from eating too much mayonnaise. But still she came, if not as a mother as an aunt, if not as an aunt as a friend. Still she ascended the roof of King’s, still she counted the balls of Clare, still she was on the point of grasping the organization of the May races. “And who is your friend?” she asked.
“His name is Ansell.”
“Well, now, did I see him two years ago—as a bedmaker in something they did at the Foot Lights? Oh, how I roared.”
“You didn’t see Mr. Ansell at the Foot Lights,” said Agnes, smiling.
“How do you know?” asked Rickie.
“He’d scarcely be so frivolous.”
“Do you remember seeing him?”
“For a moment.”
What a memory she had! And how splendidly during that moment she had behaved!
“Isn’t he marvellously clever?”
“I believe so.”
“Oh, give me clever people!” cried Mrs. Lewin. “They are kindness itself at the Hall, but I assure you I am depressed at times. One cannot talk bump-rowing for ever.”
“I never hear about him, Rickie; but isn’t he really your greatest friend?”
“I don’t go in for greatest friends.”
“Do you mean you like us all equally?”
“All differently, those of you I like.”
“Ah, you’ve caught it!” cried Mrs. Lewin. “Mr. Elliot gave it you there well.”
Agnes laughed, and, her elbows on the table, regarded them both through her fingers—a habit of hers. Then she said, “Can’t we see the great Mr. Ansell?”
“Oh, let’s. Or would he frighten me?”
“He would frighten you,” said Rickie. “He’s a trifle weird.”
“My good Rickie, if you knew the deathly dullness of Sawston—every one saying the proper thing at the proper time, I so proper, Herbert so proper! Why, weirdness is the one thing I long for! Do arrange something.”
“I’m afraid there’s no opportunity. Ansell goes some vast bicycle ride this afternoon; this evening you’re tied up at the Hall; and tomorrow you go.”
“But there’s breakfast tomorrow,” said Agnes. “Look here, Rickie, bring Mr. Ansell to breakfast with us at Buoys.”
Mrs. Lewin seconded the invitation.
“Bad luck again,” said Rickie boldly; “I’m already fixed up for breakfast. I’ll tell him of your very kind intention.”
“Let’s have him alone,” murmured Agnes.
“My dear girl, I should die through the floor! Oh, it’ll be all right about breakfast. I rather think we shall get asked this evening by that shy man who has the pretty rooms in Trinity.”
“Oh, very well. Where is it you breakfast, Rickie?”
He faltered. “To Ansell’s, it is—” It seemed as if he was making some great admission. So self-conscious was he, that he thought the two women exchanged glances. Had Agnes already explored that part of him that did not belong to her? Would another chance step reveal the part that did? He asked them abruptly what they would like to do after lunch.
“Anything,” said Mrs. Lewin,—“anything in the world.”
A walk? A boat? Ely? A drive? Some objection was raised to each. “To tell the truth,” she said at last, “I do feel a wee bit tired, and what occurs to me is this. You and Agnes shall leave me here and have no more bother. I shall be perfectly happy snoozling in one of these delightful drawing-room chairs. Do what you like, and then pick me up after it.”
“Alas, it’s against regulations,” said Rickie. “The Union won’t trust lady visitors on its premises alone.”
“But who’s to know I’m alone? With a lot of men in the drawing-room, how’s each to know that I’m not with the others?”
“That would shock Rickie,” said Agnes, laughing. “He’s frightfully high-principled.”
“No, I’m not,” said Rickie, thinking of his recent shiftiness over breakfast.
“Then come for a walk with me. I want exercise. Some connection of ours was once rector of Madingley. I shall walk out and see the church.”
Mrs. Lewin was accordingly left in the Union.
“This is jolly!” Agnes exclaimed as she strode along the somewhat depressing road that leads out of Cambridge past the observatory. “Do I go too fast?”
“No, thank you. I get stronger every year. If it wasn’t for the look of the thing, I should be quite happy.”
“But you don’t care for the look of the thing. It’s only ignorant people who do that, surely.”
“Perhaps. I care. I like people who are well-made and beautiful. They are of some use in the world. I understand why they are there. I cannot understand why the ugly and crippled are there, however healthy they may feel inside. Don’t you know how Turner spoils his pictures by introducing a man like a bolster in the foreground? Well, in actual life every landscape is spoilt by men of worse shapes still.”
“You sound like a bolster with the stuffing out.” They laughed. She always blew his cobwebs away like this, with a puff of humorous mountain air. Just now the associations he attached to her were various—she reminded him of a heroine of Meredith’s—but a heroine at the end of the book. All had been written about her. She had played her mighty part, and knew that it was over. He and he alone was not content, and wrote for her daily a trivial and impossible sequel.
Last time they had talked about Gerald. But that was some six months ago, when things felt easier. Today Gerald was the faintest blur. Fortunately the conversation turned to Mr. Pembroke and to education. Did women lose a lot by not knowing Greek? “A heap,” said Rickie, roughly. But modern languages? Thus they got to Germany, which he had visited last Easter with Ansell; and thence to the German Emperor, and what a to-do he made; and from him to our own king (still Prince of Wales), who had lived while an undergraduate at Madingley Hall. Here it was. And all the time he thought, “It is hard on her. She has no right to be walking with me. She would be ill with disgust if she knew. It is hard on her to be loved.”
They looked at the Hall, and went inside the pretty little church. Some Arundel prints hung upon the pillars, and Agnes expressed the opinion that pictures inside a place of worship were a pity. Rickie did not agree with this. He said again that nothing beautiful was ever to be regretted.
“You’re cracked on beauty,” she whispered—they were still inside the church. “Do hurry up and write something.”
“Something beautiful?”
“I believe you can. I’m going to lecture you seriously all the way home. Take care that you don’t waste your life.”
They continued the conversation outside. “But I’ve got to hate my own writing. I believe that most people come to that stage—not so early though. What I write is too silly. It can’t happen. For instance, a stupid vulgar man is engaged to a lovely young lady. He wants her to live in the towns, but she only cares for woods. She shocks him this way and that, but gradually he tames her, and makes her nearly as dull as he is. One day she has a last explosion—over the snobby wedding presents—and flies out of the drawing-room window, shouting, ‘Freedom and truth!’ Near the house is a little dell full of fir-trees, and she runs into it. He comes there the next moment. But she’s gone.”
“Awfully exciting. Where?”
“Oh Lord, she’s a Dryad!” cried Rickie, in great disgust. “She’s turned into a tree.”
“Rickie, it’s very good indeed. The kind of thing has something in it. Of course you get it all through Greek and Latin. How upset the man must be when he sees the girl turn.”
“He doesn’t see her. He never guesses. Such a man could never see a Dryad.”
“So you describe how she turns just before he comes up?”
“No. Indeed I don’t ever say that she does turn. I don’t use the word ‘Dryad’ once.”
“I think you ought to put that part plainly. Otherwise, with such an original story, people might miss the point. Have you had any luck with it?”
“Magazines? I haven’t tried. I know what the stuff’s worth. You see, a year or two ago I had a great idea of getting into touch with Nature, just as the Greeks were in touch; and seeing England so beautiful, I used to pretend that her trees and coppices and summer fields of parsley were alive. It’s funny enough now, but it wasn’t funny then, for I got in such a state that I believed, actually believed, that Fauns lived in a certain double hedgerow near the Cog Magogs, and one evening I walked a mile sooner than go through it alone.”
“Good gracious!” She laid her hand on his shoulder.
He moved to the other side of the road. “It’s all right now. I’ve changed those follies for others. But while I had them I began to write, and even now I keep on writing, though I know better. I’ve got quite a pile of little stories, all harping on this ridiculous idea of getting into touch with Nature.”
“I wish you weren’t so modest. It’s simply splendid as an idea. Though—but tell me about the Dryad who was engaged to be married. What was she like?”
“I can show you the dell in which the young person disappeared. We pass it on the right in a moment.”
“It does seem a pity that you don’t make something of your talents. It seems such a waste to write little stories and never publish them. You must have enough for a book. Life is so full in our days that short stories are the very thing; they get read by people who’d never tackle a novel. For example, at our Dorcas we tried to read out a long affair by Henry James—Herbert saw it recommended in ‘The Times.’ There was no doubt it was very good, but one simply couldn’t remember from one week to another what had happened. So now our aim is to get something that just lasts the hour. I take you seriously, Rickie, and that is why I am so offensive. You are too modest. People who think they can do nothing so often do nothing. I want you to plunge.”
It thrilled him like a trumpet-blast. She took him seriously. Could he but thank her for her divine affability! But the words would stick in his throat, or worse still would bring other words along with them. His breath came quickly, for he seldom spoke of his writing, and no one, not even Ansell, had advised him to plunge.
“But do you really think that I could take up literature?”
“Why not? You can try. Even if you fail, you can try. Of course we think you tremendously clever; and I met one of your dons at tea, and he said that your degree was not in the least a proof of your abilities: he said that you knocked up and got flurried in examinations. Oh!”—her cheek flushed,—“I wish I was a man. The whole world lies before them. They can do anything. They aren’t cooped up with servants and tea parties and twaddle. But where’s this dell where the Dryad disappeared?”
“We’ve passed it.” He had meant to pass it. It was too beautiful. All he had read, all he had hoped for, all he had loved, seemed to quiver in its enchanted air. It was perilous. He dared not enter it with such a woman.
“How long ago?” She turned back. “I don’t want to miss the dell. Here it must be,” she added after a few moments, and sprang up the green bank that hid the entrance from the road. “Oh, what a jolly place!”
“Go right in if you want to see it,” said Rickie, and did not offer to go with her. She stood for a moment looking at the view, for a few steps will increase a view in Cambridgeshire. The wind blew her dress against her. Then, like a cataract again, she vanished pure and cool into the dell.
The young man thought of her feelings no longer. His heart throbbed louder and louder, and seemed to shake him to pieces. “Rickie!”
She was calling from the dell. For an answer he sat down where he was, on the dust-bespattered margin. She could call as loud as she liked. The devil had done much, but he should not take him to her.
“Rickie!”—and it came with the tones of an angel. He drove his fingers into his ears, and invoked the name of Gerald. But there was no sign, neither angry motion in the air nor hint of January mist. June—fields of June, sky of June, songs of June. Grass of June beneath him, grass of June over the tragedy he had deemed immortal. A bird called out of the dell: “Rickie!”
A bird flew into the dell.
“Did you take me for the Dryad?” she asked. She was sitting down with his head on her lap. He had laid it there for a moment before he went out to die, and she had not let him take it away.
“I prayed you might not be a woman,” he whispered.
“Darling, I am very much a woman. I do not vanish into groves and trees. I thought you would never come.”
“Did you expect—?”
“I hoped. I called hoping.”
Inside the dell it was neither June nor January. The chalk walls barred out the seasons, and the fir-trees did not seem to feel their passage. Only from time to time the odours of summer slipped in from the wood above, to comment on the waxing year. She bent down to touch him with her lips.
He started, and cried passionately, “Never forget that your greatest thing is over. I have forgotten: I am too weak. You shall never forget. What I said to you then is greater than what I say to you now. What he gave you then is greater than anything you will get from me.”
She was frightened. Again she had the sense of something abnormal. Then she said, “What is all this nonsense?” and folded him in her arms.
VIII
Ansell stood looking at his breakfast-table, which was laid for four instead of two. His bedmaker, equally peevish, explained how it had happened. Last night, at one in the morning, the porter had been awoke with a note for the kitchens, and in that note Mr. Elliot said that all these things were to be sent to Mr. Ansell’s.
“The fools have sent the original order as well. Here’s the lemon-sole for two. I can’t move for food.”
“The note being ambiguous, the Kitchens judged best to send it all.” She spoke of the kitchens in a half-respectful, half-pitying way, much as one speaks of Parliament.
“Who’s to pay for it?” He peeped into the new dishes. Kidneys entombed in an omelette, hot roast chicken in watery gravy, a glazed but pallid pie.
“And who’s to wash it up?” said the bedmaker to her help outside.
Ansell had disputed late last night concerning Schopenhauer, and was a little cross and tired. He bounced over to Tilliard, who kept opposite. Tilliard was eating gooseberry jam.
“Did Elliot ask you to breakfast with me?”
“No,” said Tilliard mildly.
“Well, you’d better come, and bring every one you know.”
So Tilliard came, bearing himself a little formally, for he was not very intimate with his neighbour. Out of the window they called to Widdrington. But he laid his hand on his stomach, thus indicating it was too late.
“Who’s to pay for it?” repeated Ansell, as a man appeared from the Buttery carrying coffee on a bright tin tray.
“College coffee! How nice!” remarked Tilliard, who was cutting the pie. “But before term ends you must come and try my new machine. My sister gave it me. There is a bulb at the top, and as the water boils—”
“He might have counter-ordered the lemon-sole. That’s Rickie all over. Violently economical, and then loses his head, and all the things go bad.”
“Give them to the bedder while they’re hot.” This was done. She accepted them dispassionately, with the air of one who lives without nourishment. Tilliard continued to describe his sister’s coffee machine.
“What’s that?” They could hear panting and rustling on the stairs.
“It sounds like a lady,” said Tilliard fearfully. He slipped the piece of pie back. It fell into position like a brick.
“Is it here? Am I right? Is it here?” The door opened and in came Mrs. Lewin. “Oh horrors! I’ve made a mistake.”
“That’s all right,” said Ansell awkwardly.
“I wanted Mr. Elliot. Where are they?”
“We expect Mr. Elliot every-moment,” said Tilliard.
“Don’t tell me I’m right,” cried Mrs. Lewin, “and that you’re the terrifying Mr. Ansell.” And, with obvious relief, she wrung Tilliard warmly by the hand.
“I’m Ansell,” said Ansell, looking very uncouth and grim.
“How stupid of me not to know it,” she gasped, and would have gone on to I know not what, but the door opened again. It was Rickie.
“Here’s Miss Pembroke,” he said. “I am going to marry her.”
There was a profound silence.
“We oughtn’t to have done things like this,” said Agnes, turning to Mrs. Lewin. “We have no right to take Mr. Ansell by surprise. It is Rickie’s fault. He was that obstinate. He would bring us. He ought to be horsewhipped.”
“He ought, indeed,” said Tilliard pleasantly, and bolted. Not till he gained his room did he realize that he had been less apt than usual. As for Ansell, the first thing he said was, “Why didn’t you counter-order the lemon-sole?”
In such a situation Mrs. Lewin was of priceless value. She led the way to the table, observing, “I quite agree with Miss Pembroke. I loathe surprises. Never shall I forget my horror when the knife-boy painted the dove’s cage with the dove inside. He did it as a surprise. Poor Parsival nearly died. His feathers were bright green!”
“Well, give me the lemon-soles,” said Rickie. “I like them.”
“The bedder’s got them.”
“Well, there you are! What’s there to be annoyed about?”
“And while the cage was drying we put him among the bantams. They had been the greatest allies. But I suppose they took him for a parrot or a hawk, or something that bantams hate for while his cage was drying they picked out his feathers, and PICKED and PICKED out his feathers, till he was perfectly bald. ‘Hugo, look,’ said I. ‘This is the end of Parsival. Let me have no more surprises.’ He burst into tears.”
Thus did Mrs. Lewin create an atmosphere. At first it seemed unreal, but gradually they got used to it, and breathed scarcely anything else throughout the meal. In such an atmosphere everything seemed of small and equal value, and the engagement of Rickie and Agnes like the feathers of Parsival, fluttered lightly to the ground. Ansell was generally silent. He was no match for these two quite clever women. Only once was there a hitch.
They had been talking gaily enough about the betrothal when Ansell suddenly interrupted with, “When is the marriage?”
“Mr. Ansell,” said Agnes, blushing, “I wish you hadn’t asked that. That part’s dreadful. Not for years, as far as we can see.”
But Rickie had not seen as far. He had not talked to her of this at all. Last night they had spoken only of love. He exclaimed, “Oh, Agnes-don’t!” Mrs. Lewin laughed roguishly.
“Why this delay?” asked Ansell.
Agnes looked at Rickie, who replied, “I must get money, worse luck.”
“I thought you’d got money.”
He hesitated, and then said, “I must get my foot on the ladder, then.”
Ansell began with, “On which ladder?” but Mrs. Lewin, using the privilege of her sex, exclaimed, “Not another word. If there’s a thing I abominate, it is plans. My head goes whirling at once.” What she really abominated was questions, and she saw that Ansell was turning serious. To appease him, she put on her clever manner and asked him about Germany. How had it impressed him? Were we so totally unfitted to repel invasion? Was not German scholarship overestimated? He replied discourteously, but he did reply; and if she could have stopped him thinking, her triumph would have been complete.
When they rose to go, Agnes held Ansell’s hand for a moment in her own.
“Good-bye,” she said. “It was very unconventional of us to come as we did, but I don’t think any of us are conventional people.”
He only replied, “Good-bye.” The ladies started off. Rickie lingered behind to whisper, “I would have it so. I would have you begin square together. I can’t talk yet—I’ve loved her for years—can’t think what she’s done it for. I’m going to write short stories. I shall start this afternoon. She declares there may be something in me.”
As soon as he had left, Tilliard burst in, white with agitation, and crying, “Did you see my awful faux pas—about the horsewhip? What shall I do? I must call on Elliot. Or had I better write?”
“Miss Pembroke will not mind,” said Ansell gravely. “She is unconventional.” He knelt in an arm-chair and hid his face in the back.
“It was like a bomb,” said Tilliard.
“It was meant to be.”
“I do feel a fool. What must she think?”
“Never mind, Tilliard. You’ve not been as big a fool as myself. At all events, you told her he must be horsewhipped.”
Tilliard hummed a little tune. He hated anything nasty, and there was nastiness in Ansell. “What did you tell her?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“What do you think of it?”
“I think: Damn those women.”
“Ah, yes. One hates one’s friends to get engaged. It makes one feel so old: I think that is one of the reasons. The brother just above me has lately married, and my sister was quite sick about it, though the thing was suitable in every way.”
“Damn THESE women, then,” said Ansell, bouncing round in the chair. “Damn these particular women.”
“They looked and spoke like ladies.”
“Exactly. Their diplomacy was ladylike. Their lies were ladylike. They’ve caught Elliot in a most ladylike way. I saw it all during the one moment we were natural. Generally we were clattering after the married one, whom—like a fool—I took for a fool. But for one moment we were natural, and during that moment Miss Pembroke told a lie, and made Rickie believe it was the truth.”
“What did she say?”
“She said `we see’ instead of ‘I see.’”
Tilliard burst into laughter. This jaundiced young philosopher, with his kinky view of life, was too much for him.
“She said ‘we see,’” repeated Ansell, “instead of ‘I see,’ and she made him believe that it was the truth. She caught him and makes him believe that he caught her. She came to see me and makes him think that it is his idea. That is what I mean when I say that she is a lady.”
“You are too subtle for me. My dull eyes could only see two happy people.”
“I never said they weren’t happy.”
“Then, my dear Ansell, why are you so cut up? It’s beastly when a friend marries,—and I grant he’s rather young,—but I should say it’s the best thing for him. A decent woman—and you have proved not one thing against her—a decent woman will keep him up to the mark and stop him getting slack. She’ll make him responsible and manly, for much as I like Rickie, I always find him a little effeminate. And, really,”—his voice grew sharper, for he was irritated by Ansell’s conceit, “and, really, you talk as if you were mixed up in the affair. They pay a civil visit to your rooms, and you see nothing but dark plots and challenges to war.”
“War!” cried Ansell, crashing his fists together. “It’s war, then!”
“Oh, what a lot of tommy-rot,” said Tilliard. “Can’t a man and woman get engaged? My dear boy—excuse me talking like this—what on earth is it to do with us?”
“We’re his friends, and I hope we always shall be, but we shan’t keep his friendship by fighting. We’re bound to fall into the background. Wife first, friends some way after. You may resent the order, but it is ordained by nature.”
“The point is, not what’s ordained by nature or any other fool, but what’s right.”
“You are hopelessly unpractical,” said Tilliard, turning away. “And let me remind you that you’ve already given away your case by acknowledging that they’re happy.”
“She is happy because she has conquered; he is happy because he has at last hung all the world’s beauty on to a single peg. He was always trying to do it. He used to call the peg humanity. Will either of these happinesses last? His can’t. Hers only for a time. I fight this woman not only because she fights me, but because I foresee the most appalling catastrophe. She wants Rickie, partly to replace another man whom she lost two years ago, partly to make something out of him. He is to write. In time she will get sick of this. He won’t get famous. She will only see how thin he is and how lame. She will long for a jollier husband, and I don’t blame her. And, having made him thoroughly miserable and degraded, she will bolt—if she can do it like a lady.”
Such were the opinions of Stewart Ansell.
IX
Seven letters written in June:—
Cambridge
Dear Rickie,
I would rather write, and you can guess what kind of letter this is when I say it is a fair copy: I have been making rough drafts all the morning. When I talk I get angry, and also at times try to be clever—two reasons why I fail to get attention paid to me. This is a letter of the prudent sort. If it makes you break off the engagement, its work is done. You are not a person who ought to marry at all. You are unfitted in body: that we once discussed. You are also unfitted in soul: you want and you need to like many people, and a man of that sort ought not to marry. “You never were attached to that great sect” who can like one person only, and if you try to enter it you will find destruction. I have read in books and I cannot afford to despise books, they are all that I have to go by—that men and women desire different things. Man wants to love mankind; woman wants to love one man. When she has him her work is over. She is the emissary of Nature, and Nature’s bidding has been fulfilled. But man does not care a damn for Nature—or at least only a very little damn. He cares for a hundred things besides, and the more civilized he is the more he will care for these other hundred things, and demand not only—a wife and children, but also friends, and work, and spiritual freedom.
I believe you to be extraordinarily civilized.—Yours ever,
S.A.
Shelthorpe, 9 Sawston Park Road, Sawston
Dear Ansell,
But I’m in love—a detail you’ve forgotten. I can’t listen to English Essays. The wretched Agnes may be an “emissary of Nature,” but I only grinned when I read it. I may be extraordinarily civilized, but I don’t feel so; I’m in love, and I’ve found a woman to love me, and I mean to have the hundred other things as well. She wants me to have them—friends and work, and spiritual freedom, and everything. You and your books miss this, because your books are too sedate. Read poetry—not only Shelley. Understand Beatrice, and Clara Middleton, and Brunhilde in the first scene of Gotterdammerung. Understand Goethe when he says “the eternal feminine leads us on,” and don’t write another English Essay.—Yours ever affectionately,
R.E.
Cambridge
Dear Rickie:
What am I to say? “Understand Xanthippe, and Mrs. Bennet, and Elsa in the question scene of Lohengrin”? “Understand Euripides when he says the eternal feminine leads us a pretty dance”? I shall say nothing of the sort. The allusions in this English Essay shall not be literary. My personal objections to Miss Pembroke are as follows:—(1) She is not serious. (2) She is not truthful.
Shelthorpe, 9 Sawston Park Road Sawston
My Dear Stewart,
You couldn’t know. I didn’t know for a moment. But this letter of yours is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me yet—more wonderful (I don’t exaggerate) than the moment when Agnes promised to marry me. I always knew you liked me, but I never knew how much until this letter. Up to now I think we have been too much like the strong heroes in books who feel so much and say so little, and feel all the more for saying so little. Now that’s over and we shall never be that kind of an ass again. We’ve hit—by accident—upon something permanent. You’ve written to me, “I hate the woman who will be your wife,” and I write back, “Hate her. Can’t I love you both?” She will never come between us, Stewart (She wouldn’t wish to, but that’s by the way), because our friendship has now passed beyond intervention. No third person could break it. We couldn’t ourselves, I fancy. We may quarrel and argue till one of us dies, but the thing is registered. I only wish, dear man, you could be happier. For me, it’s as if a light was suddenly held behind the world.
R.E.
Shelthorpe, 9 Sawston Park Road, Sawston
Dear Mrs. Lewin,—
The time goes flying, but I am getting to learn my wonderful boy. We speak a great deal about his work. He has just finished a curious thing called “Nemi”—about a Roman ship that is actually sunk in some lake. I cannot think how he describes the things, when he has never seen them. If, as I hope, he goes to Italy next year, he should turn out something really good. Meanwhile we are hunting for a publisher. Herbert believes that a collection of short stories is hard to get published. It is, after all, better to write one long one.
But you must not think we only talk books. What we say on other topics cannot so easily be repeated! Oh, Mrs Lewin, he is a dear, and dearer than ever now that we have him at Sawston. Herbert, in a quiet way, has been making inquiries about those Cambridge friends of his. Nothing against them, but they seem to be terribly eccentric. None of them are good at games, and they spend all their spare time thinking and discussing. They discuss what one knows and what one never will know and what one had much better not know. Herbert says it is because they have not got enough to do.—Ever your grateful and affectionate friend,
Agnes Pembroke
Shelthorpe, 9 Sawston Park Road Sawston
Dear Mr. Silt,—
Thank you for the congratulations, which I have handed over to the delighted Rickie.
(The congratulations were really addressed to Agnes—a social blunder which Mr. Pembroke deftly corrects.)
I am sorry that the rumor reached you that I was not pleased. Anything pleases me that promises my sister’s happiness, and I have known your cousin nearly as long as you have. It will be a very long engagement, for he must make his way first. The dear boy is not nearly as wealthy as he supposed; having no tastes, and hardly any expenses, he used to talk as if he were a millionaire. He must at least double his income before he can dream of more intimate ties. This has been a bitter pill, but I am glad to say that they have accepted it bravely.
Hoping that you and Mrs. Silt will profit by your week at Margate.-I remain, yours very sincerely,
Herbert Pembroke
Cadover, Wilts.
Dear Miss Pembroke,—Agnes—
I hear that you are going to marry my nephew. I have no idea what he is like, and wonder whether you would bring him that I may find out. Isn’t September rather a nice month? You might have to go to Stone Henge, but with that exception would be left unmolested. I do hope you will manage the visit. We met once at Mrs. Lewin’s, and I have a very clear recollection of you.—Believe me, yours sincerely,
Emily Failing
X
The rain tilted a little from the south-west. For the most part it fell from a grey cloud silently, but now and then the tilt increased, and a kind of sigh passed over the country as the drops lashed the walls, trees, shepherds, and other motionless objects that stood in their slanting career. At times the cloud would descend and visibly embrace the earth, to which it had only sent messages; and the earth itself would bring forth clouds—clouds of a whiter breed—which formed in shallow valleys and followed the courses of the streams. It seemed the beginning of life. Again God said, “Shall we divide the waters from the land or not? Was not the firmament labour and glory sufficient?” At all events it was the beginning of life pastoral, behind which imagination cannot travel.
Yet complicated people were getting wet—not only the shepherds. For instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar’s wife. So were the lieutenant and the peevish damsels in his Battleston car. Gallantry, charity, and art pursued their various missions, perspiring and muddy, while out on the slopes beyond them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal sheep until the world is vegetarian.
Inside an arbour—which faced east, and thus avoided the bad weather—there sat a complicated person who was dry. She looked at the drenched world with a pleased expression, and would smile when a cloud would lay down on the village, or when the rain sighed louder than usual against her solid shelter. Ink, paperclips, and foolscap paper were on the table before her, and she could also reach an umbrella, a waterproof, a walking-stick, and an electric bell. Her age was between elderly and old, and her forehead was wrinkled with an expression of slight but perpetual pain. But the lines round her mouth indicated that she had laughed a great deal during her life, just as the clean tight skin round her eyes perhaps indicated that she had not often cried. She was dressed in brown silk. A brown silk shawl lay most becomingly over her beautiful hair.
After long thought she wrote on the paper in front of her, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light at Wolverhampton on May the 14th, 1842.” She laid down her pen and said “Ugh!” A robin hopped in and she welcomed him. A sparrow followed and she stamped her foot. She watched some thick white water which was sliding like a snake down the gutter of the gravel path. It had just appeared. It must have escaped from a hollow in the chalk up behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The lady did not think of all this, for she hated questions of whence and wherefore, and the ways of the earth (“our dull stepmother”) bored her unspeakably. But the water, just the snake of water, was amusing, and she flung her golosh at it to dam it up. Then she wrote feverishly, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light in the middle of the night. It was twenty to eleven. His pa was a parson, but he was not his pa’s son, and never went to heaven.” There was the sound of a train, and presently white smoke appeared, rising laboriously through the heavy air. It distracted her, and for about a quarter of an hour she sat perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper aside, took afresh piece, and was beginning to write, “On May the 14th, 1842,” when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said, “I am sorry for Flea Thompson.”
“I daresay I am sorry for him too,” said the lady; her voice was languid and pleasant. “Who is he?”
“Flea’s a liar, and the next time we meet he’ll be a football.” Off slipped a sodden ulster. He hung it up angrily upon a peg: the arbour provided several.
“But who is he, and why has he that disastrous name?”
“Flea? Fleance. All the Thompsons are named out of Shakespeare. He grazes the Rings.”
“Ah, I see. A pet lamb.”
“Lamb! Shepherd!”
“One of my Shepherds?”
“The last time I go with his sheep. But not the last time he sees me. I am sorry for him. He dodged me today.”
“Do you mean to say”—she became animated—“that you have been out in the wet keeping the sheep of Flea Thompson?”
“I had to.” He blew on his fingers and took off his cap. Water trickled over his unshaven cheeks. His hair was so wet that it seemed worked upon his scalp in bronze.
“Get away, bad dog!” screamed the lady, for he had given himself a shake and spattered her dress with water. He was a powerful boy of twenty, admirably muscular, but rather too broad for his height. People called him “Podge” until they were dissuaded. Then they called him “Stephen” or “Mr. Wonham.” Then he said, “You can call me Podge if you like.”
“As for Flea—!” he began tempestuously. He sat down by her, and with much heavy breathing told the story,—“Flea has a girl at Wintersbridge, and I had to go with his sheep while he went to see her. Two hours. We agreed. Half an hour to go, an hour to kiss his girl, and half an hour back—and he had my bike. Four hours! Four hours and seven minutes I was on the Rings, with a fool of a dog, and sheep doing all they knew to get the turnips.”
“My farm is a mystery to me,” said the lady, stroking her fingers.
“Some day you must really take me to see it. It must be like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, with a chorus of agitated employers. How is it that I have escaped? Why have I never been summoned to milk the cows, or flay the pigs, or drive the young bullocks to the pasture?”
He looked at her with astonishingly blue eyes—the only dry things he had about him. He could not see into her: she would have puzzled an older and clever man. He may have seen round her.
“A thing of beauty you are not. But I sometimes think you are a joy for ever.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, you understand right enough,” she exclaimed irritably, and then smiled, for he was conceited, and did not like being told that he was not a thing of beauty. “Large and steady feet,” she continued, “have this disadvantage—you can knock down a man, but you will never knock down a woman.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m not likely—”
“Oh, never mind—never, never mind. I was being funny. I repent. Tell me about the sheep. Why did you go with them?”
“I did tell you. I had to.”
“But why?”
“He had to see his girl.”
“But why?”
His eyes shot past her again. It was so obvious that the man had to see his girl. For two hours though—not for four hours seven minutes.
“Did you have any lunch?”
“I don’t hold with regular meals.”
“Did you have a book?”
“I don’t hold with books in the open. None of the older men read.”
“Did you commune with yourself, or don’t you hold with that?”
“Oh Lord, don’t ask me!”
“You distress me. You rob the Pastoral of its lingering romance. Is there no poetry and no thought in England? Is there no one, in all these downs, who warbles with eager thought the Doric lay?”
“Chaps sing to themselves at times, if you mean that.”
“I dream of Arcady. I open my eyes. Wiltshire. Of Amaryllis: Flea Thompson’s girl. Of the pensive shepherd, twitching his mantle blue: you in an ulster. Aren’t you sorry for me?”
“May I put in a pipe?”
“By all means put a pipe in. In return, tell me of what you were thinking for the four hours and the seven minutes.”
He laughed shyly. “You do ask a man such questions.”
“Did you simply waste the time?”
“I suppose so.”
“I thought that Colonel Robert Ingersoll says you must be strenuous.”
At the sound of this name he whisked open a little cupboard, and declaring, “I haven’t a moment to spare,” took out of it a pile of “Clarion” and other reprints, adorned as to their covers with bald or bearded apostles of humanity. Selecting a bald one, he began at once to read, occasionally exclaiming, “That’s got them,” “That’s knocked Genesis,” with similar ejaculations of an aspiring mind. She glanced at the pile. Reran, minus the style. Darwin, minus the modesty. A comic edition of the book of Job, by “Excelsior,” Pittsburgh, Pa. “The Beginning of Life,” with diagrams. “Angel or Ape?” by Mrs. Julia P. Chunk. She was amused, and wondered idly what was passing within his narrow but not uninteresting brain. Did he suppose that he was going to “find out”? She had tried once herself, but had since subsided into a sprightly orthodoxy. Why didn’t he read poetry, instead of wasting his time between books like these and country like that?
The cloud parted, and the increase of light made her look up. Over the valley she saw a grave sullen down, and on its flanks a little brown smudge—her sheep, together with her shepherd, Fleance Thompson, returned to his duties at last. A trickle of water came through the arbour roof. She shrieked in dismay.
“That’s all right,” said her companion, moving her chair, but still keeping his place in his book.
She dried up the spot on the manuscript. Then she wrote: “Anthony Eustace Failing, the subject of this memoir, was born at Wolverhampton.” But she wrote no more. She was fidgety. Another drop fell from the roof. Likewise an earwig. She wished she had not been so playful in flinging her golosh into the path. The boy who was overthrowing religion breathed somewhat heavily as he did so. Another earwig. She touched the electric bell.
“I’m going in,” she observed. “It’s far too wet.” Again the cloud parted and caused her to add, “Weren’t you rather kind to Flea?” But he was deep in the book. He read like a poor person, with lips apart and a finger that followed the print. At times he scratched his ear, or ran his tongue along a straggling blonde moustache. His face had after all a certain beauty: at all events the colouring was regal—a steady crimson from throat to forehead: the sun and the winds had worked on him daily ever since he was born. “The face of a strong man,” thought the lady. “Let him thank his stars he isn’t a silent strong man, or I’d turn him into the gutter.” Suddenly it struck her that he was like an Irish terrier. He worried infinity as if it was a bone. Gnashing his teeth, he tried to carry the eternal subtleties by violence. As a man he often bored her, for he was always saying and doing the same things. But as a philosopher he really was a joy for ever, an inexhaustible buffoon. Taking up her pen, she began to caricature him. She drew a rabbit-warren where rabbits were at play in four dimensions. Before she had introduced the principal figure, she was interrupted by the footman. He had come up from the house to answer the bell. On seeing her he uttered a respectful cry.
“Madam! Are you here? I am very sorry. I looked for you everywhere. Mr. Elliot and Miss Pembroke arrived nearly an hour ago.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Failing. “Take these papers. Where’s the umbrella? Mr. Stephen will hold it over me. You hurry back and apologize. Are they happy?”
“Miss Pembroke inquired after you, madam.”
“Have they had tea?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Leighton!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I believe you knew she was here all the time. You didn’t want to wet your pretty skin.”
“You must not call me ‘she’ to the servants,” said Mrs. Failing as they walked away, she limping with a stick, he holding a great umbrella over her. “I will not have it.” Then more pleasantly, “And don’t tell him he lies. We all lie. I knew quite well they were coming by the four-six train. I saw it pass.”
“That reminds me. Another child run over at the Roman crossing. Whish—bang—dead.”
“Oh my foot! Oh my foot, my foot!” said Mrs. Failing, and paused to take breath.
“Bad?” he asked callously.
Leighton, with bowed head, passed them with the manuscript and disappeared among the laurels. The twinge of pain, which had been slight, passed away, and they proceeded, descending a green airless corridor which opened into the gravel drive.
“Isn’t it odd,” said Mrs. Failing, “that the Greeks should be enthusiastic about laurels—that Apollo should pursue any one who could possibly turn into such a frightful plant? What do you make of Rickie?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Shall I lend you his story to read?”
He made no reply.
“Don’t you think, Stephen, that a person in your precarious position ought to be civil to my relatives?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Failing. I meant to be civil. I only hadn’t—anything to say.”
She a laughed. “Are you a dear boy? I sometimes wonder; or are you a brute?”
Again he had nothing to say. Then she laughed more mischievously, and said—
“How can you be either, when you are a philosopher? Would you mind telling me—I am so anxious to learn—what happens to people when they die?”
“Don’t ask ME.” He knew by bitter experience that she was making fun of him.
“Oh, but I do ask you. Those paper books of yours are so up-to-date. For instance, what has happened to the child you say was killed on the line?”
The rain increased. The drops pattered hard on the leaves, and outside the corridor men and women were struggling, however stupidly, with the facts of life. Inside it they wrangled. She teased the boy, and laughed at his theories, and proved that no man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour. Suddenly she stopped, not through any skill of his, but because she had remembered some words of Bacon: “The true atheist is he whose hands are cauterized by holy things.” She thought of her distant youth. The world was not so humorous then, but it had been more important. For a moment she respected her companion, and determined to vex him no more.
They left the shelter of the laurels, crossed the broad drive, and were inside the house at last. She had got quite wet, for the weather would not let her play the simple life with impunity. As for him, he seemed a piece of the wet.
“Look here,” she cried, as he hurried up to his attic, “don’t shave!”
He was delighted with the permission.
“I have an idea that Miss Pembroke is of the type that pretends to be unconventional and really isn’t. I want to see how she takes it. Don’t shave.”
In the drawing-room she could hear the guests conversing in the subdued tones of those who have not been welcomed. Having changed her dress and glanced at the poems of Milton, she went to them, with uplifted hands of apology and horror.
“But I must have tea,” she announced, when they had assured her that they understood. “Otherwise I shall start by being cross. Agnes, stop me. Give me tea.”
Agnes, looking pleased, moved to the table and served her hostess. Rickie followed with a pagoda of sandwiches and little cakes.
“I feel twenty-seven years younger. Rickie, you are so like your father. I feel it is twenty-seven years ago, and that he is bringing your mother to see me for the first time. It is curious—almost terrible—to see history repeating itself.”
The remark was not tactful.
“I remember that visit well,” she continued thoughtfully, “I suppose it was a wonderful visit, though we none of us knew it at the time. We all fell in love with your mother. I wish she would have fallen in love with us. She couldn’t bear me, could she?”
“I never heard her say so, Aunt Emily.”
“No; she wouldn’t. I am sure your father said so, though. My dear boy, don’t look so shocked. Your father and I hated each other. He said so, I said so, I say so; say so too. Then we shall start fair.—Just a cocoanut cake.—Agnes, don’t you agree that it’s always best to speak out?”
“Oh, rather, Mrs. Failing. But I’m shockingly straightforward.”
“So am I,” said the lady. “I like to get down to the bedrock.—Hullo! Slippers? Slippers in the drawingroom?”
A young man had come in silently. Agnes observed with a feeling of regret that he had not shaved. Rickie, after a moment’s hesitation, remembered who it was, and shook hands with him. “You’ve grown since I saw you last.”
He showed his teeth amiably.
“How long was that?” asked Mrs. Failing.
“Three years, wasn’t it? Came over from the Ansells—friends.”
“How disgraceful, Rickie! Why don’t you come and see me oftener?”
He could not retort that she never asked him.
“Agnes will make you come. Oh, let me introduce Mr. Wonham—Miss Pembroke.”
“I am deputy hostess,” said Agnes. “May I give you some tea?”
“Thank you, but I have had a little beer.”
“It is one of the shepherds,” said Mrs. Failing, in low tones.
Agnes smiled rather wildly. Mrs. Lewin had warned her that Cadover was an extraordinary place, and that one must never be astonished at anything. A shepherd in the drawing-room! No harm. Still one ought to know whether it was a shepherd or not. At all events he was in gentleman’s clothing. She was anxious not to start with a blunder, and therefore did not talk to the young fellow, but tried to gather what he was from the demeanour of Rickie.
“I am sure, Mrs. Failing, that you need not talk of ‘making’ people come to Cadover. There will be no difficulty, I should say.”
“Thank you, my dear. Do you know who once said those exact words to me?”
“Who?”
“Rickie’s mother.”
“Did she really?”
“My sister-in-law was a dear. You will have heard Rickie’s praises, but now you must hear mine. I never knew a woman who was so unselfish and yet had such capacities for life.”
“Does one generally exclude the other?” asked Rickie.
“Unselfish people, as a rule, are deathly dull. They have no colour. They think of other people because it is easier. They give money because they are too stupid or too idle to spend it properly on themselves. That was the beauty of your mother—she gave away, but she also spent on herself, or tried to.”
The light faded out of the drawing-room, in spite of it being September and only half-past six. From her low chair Agnes could see the trees by the drive, black against a blackening sky. That drive was half a mile long, and she was praising its gravelled surface when Rickie called in a voice of alarm, “I say, when did our train arrive?”
“Four-six.”
“I said so.”
“It arrived at four-six on the time-table,” said Mr. Wonham. “I want to know when it got to the station?”
“I tell you again it was punctual. I tell you I looked at my watch. I can do no more.”
Agnes was amazed. Was Rickie mad? A minute ago and they were boring each other over dogs. What had happened?
“Now, now! Quarrelling already?” asked Mrs. Failing.
The footman, bringing a lamp, lit up two angry faces.
“He says—”
“He says—”
“He says we ran over a child.”
“So you did. You ran over a child in the village at four-seven by my watch. Your train was late. You couldn’t have got to the station till four-ten.”
“I don’t believe it. We had passed the village by four-seven. Agnes, hadn’t we passed the village? It must have been an express that ran over the child.”
“Now is it likely”—he appealed to the practical world—“is it likely that the company would run a stopping train and then an express three minutes after it?”
“A child—” said Rickie. “I can’t believe that the train killed a child.” He thought of their journey. They were alone in the carriage. As the train slackened speed he had caught her for a moment in his arms. The rain beat on the windows, but they were in heaven.
“You’ve got to believe it,” said the other, and proceeded to “rub it in.” His healthy, irritable face drew close to Rickie’s. “Two children were kicking and screaming on the Roman crossing. Your train, being late, came down on them. One of them was pulled off the line, but the other was caught. How will you get out of that?”
“And how will you get out of it?” cried Mrs. Failing, turning the tables on him. “Where’s the child now? What has happened to its soul? You must know, Agnes, that this young gentleman is a philosopher.”
“Oh, drop all that,” said Mr. Wonham, suddenly collapsing.
“Drop it? Where? On my nice carpet?”
“I hate philosophy,” remarked Agnes, trying to turn the subject, for she saw that it made Rickie unhappy.
“So do I. But I daren’t say so before Stephen. He despises us women.”
“No, I don’t,” said the victim, swaying to and fro on the window-sill, whither he had retreated.
“Yes, he does. He won’t even trouble to answer us. Stephen! Podge! Answer me. What has happened to the child’s soul?”
He flung open the window and leant from them into the dusk. They heard him mutter something about a bridge.
“What did I tell you? He won’t answer my question.”
The delightful moment was approaching when the boy would lose his temper: she knew it by a certain tremor in his heels.
“There wants a bridge,” he exploded. “A bridge instead of all this rotten talk and the level-crossing. It wouldn’t break you to build a two-arch bridge. Then the child’s soul, as you call it—well, nothing would have happened to the child at all.”
A gust of night air entered, accompanied by rain. The flowers in the vases rustled, and the flame of the lamp shot up and smoked the glass. Slightly irritated, she ordered him to close the window.
XI
Cadover was not a large house. But it is the largest house with which this story has dealings, and must always be thought of with respect. It was built about the year 1800, and favoured the architecture of ancient Rome—chiefly by means of five lank pilasters, which stretched from the top of it to the bottom. Between the pilasters was the glass front door, to the right of them the drawing room windows, to the left of them the windows of the dining-room, above them a triangular area, which the better-class servants knew as a “pendiment,” and which had in its middle a small round hole, according to the usage of Palladio. The classical note was also sustained by eight grey steps which led from the building down into the drive, and by an attempt at a formal garden on the adjoining lawn. The lawn ended in a Ha-ha (“Ha! ha! who shall regard it?”), and thence the bare land sloped down into the village. The main garden (walled) was to the left as one faced the house, while to the right was that laurel avenue, leading up to Mrs. Failing’s arbour.
It was a comfortable but not very attractive place, and, to a certain type of mind, its situation was not attractive either. From the distance it showed as a grey box, huddled against evergreens. There was no mystery about it. You saw it for miles. Its hill had none of the beetling romance of Devonshire, none of the subtle contours that prelude a cottage in Kent, but profferred its burden crudely, on a huge bare palm. “There’s Cadover,” visitors would say. “How small it still looks. We shall be late for lunch.” And the view from the windows, though extensive, would not have been accepted by the Royal Academy. A valley, containing a stream, a road, a railway; over the valley fields of barley and wurzel, divided by no pretty hedges, and passing into a great and formless down—this was the outlook, desolate at all times, and almost terrifying beneath a cloudy sky. The down was called “Cadbury Range” (“Cocoa Squares” if you were young and funny), because high upon it—one cannot say “on the top,” there being scarcely any tops in Wiltshire—because high upon it there stood a double circle of entrenchments. A bank of grass enclosed a ring of turnips, which enclosed a second bank of grass, which enclosed more turnips, and in the middle of the pattern grew one small tree. British? Roman? Saxon? Danish? The competent reader will decide. The Thompson family knew it to be far older than the Franco-German war. It was the property of Government. It was full of gold and dead soldiers who had fought with the soldiers on Castle Rings and been beaten. The road to Londinium, having forded the stream and crossed the valley road and the railway, passed up by these entrenchments. The road to London lay half a mile to the right of them.
To complete this survey one must mention the church and the farm, both of which lay over the stream in Cadford. Between them they ruled the village, one claiming the souls of the labourers, the other their bodies. If a man desired other religion or other employment he must leave. The church lay up by the railway, the farm was down by the water meadows. The vicar, a gentle charitable man scarcely realized his power, and never tried to abuse it. Mr. Wilbraham, the agent, was of another mould. He knew his place, and kept others to theirs: all society seemed spread before him like a map. The line between the county and the local, the line between the labourer and the artisan—he knew them all, and strengthened them with no uncertain touch. Everything with him was graduated—carefully graduated civility towards his superior, towards his inferiors carefully graduated incivility. So—for he was a thoughtful person—so alone, declared he, could things be kept together.
Perhaps the Comic Muse, to whom so much is now attributed, had caused his estate to be left to Mr. Failing. Mr. Failing was the author of some brilliant books on socialism,—that was why his wife married him—and for twenty-five years he reigned up at Cadover and tried to put his theories into practice. He believed that things could be kept together by accenting the similarities, not the differences of men. “We are all much more alike than we confess,” was one of his favourite speeches. As a speech it sounded very well, and his wife had applauded; but when it resulted in hard work, evenings in the reading-rooms, mixed-parties, and long unobtrusive talks with dull people, she got bored. In her piquant way she declared that she was not going to love her husband, and succeeded. He took it quietly, but his brilliancy decreased. His health grew worse, and he knew that when he died there was no one to carry on his work. He felt, besides, that he had done very little. Toil as he would, he had not a practical mind, and could never dispense with Mr. Wilbraham. For all his tact, he would often stretch out the hand of brotherhood too soon, or withhold it when it would have been accepted. Most people misunderstood him, or only understood him when he was dead. In after years his reign became a golden age; but he counted a few disciples in his life-time, a few young labourers and tenant farmers, who swore tempestuously that he was not really a fool. This, he told himself, was as much as he deserved.