He thought: Between that stone, covered up by the dust of centuries, marking the first spot where the foot of man had touched Britain, and that on which now the mightiest city of all time had been gathered, what cycles and revolutions of things and of thoughts! Here the rude barbarian, clad in skins, disfigured with paint, had knelt in worship before the sun, the tempest, the river, the winds. Here had come in time, pressed out of the East, the fire-worshipper and the Druid. Here men had bent the knee to every form of heathen god conjured up by the weird fertile brain of the North. Here Odin and Thor, in the heat of battle, when the death-blow came, had been implored to open the gates of immortality to the soul that yearned for Valhalla. Here had smoked the sacrificial garlanded bull, under the knife of mysterious priests of the sacred groves. Here had striven anarchy, bloodshed, rapine, pillage, and desolating invasions during century upon century of barbaric sway. While Phideas and Praxiteles marked the climax of Greek art, the half-clad native of these Thames islands was prowling along its banks in a condition as low as the North American savages of to-day. What a history lay in the space between the top of the gilded cross and that unhewn slab against which the first human habitation had been erected in England! Wave after wave of races had passed over the spot. Belgic giants had invaded the place, and pushed back aborigines into the unexplored forest depths of the central plain. Then came Romans, and Jutes, and Angles, and Saxons, Norsemen, and Normans. All had passed between that buried stone and that exalted cross. Each had lived awhile here, had multiplied and buried its dead, and offered sacrifice; had raised temple, statue, idol; had bowed down and worshipped, and been driven away by new men who spoke a strange tongue. Each had come with greater power than its predecessor, had conquered, and slain, and pillaged, and overturned the old altars, and set new ones up. Time after time a stronger race bore back a weaker, and upon the site of the temple of the old faith rose the temple of the new. Until William conquered Harold, there had always been a change of faith with each change of masters, and faith had had much to do with strengthening the hands of those who had fought and won. That august cathedral of St Paul's now stood upon a mound formed of mouldered churches and groves and mystic stones, where people had prayed to false deities before the True One had been preached to them. In the crypt of that church stood the carriage upon which the body of the great Duke of Wellington was drawn to sepulchre in St Paul's thirty-seven years after his crowning triumph of Waterloo; and twenty-five feet beneath that car lay the petrified sides of the first boat and the petrified ribs of the first man that ever landed in Britain from the Thames. Partly owing to the silting up by the river, and partly owing to the crumbling of edifices built by man, that island had century after century grown in height and extent, until it had joined another island close at hand, and in two thousand five hundred years raised its head twenty-five feet above the floor of that primal hut. Every inch of that mound is rich in ecclesiastical history, every foot of earth is the record of a century. There is more knowledge to be extracted from this humble English hillock than from all the books of Greece or Rome; for historians and poets often lie, but cairns, the burial-places of a thousand generations, never! Never? George Osborne drew back from the window. Dull light of dawn was beginning to spread over the sky, and take up the city out of the ocean of darkness. Scarcely a sound struck upon the silence of the hour. All was dreary, chill, forlorn. The pale light fell upon the pale countenance of the man. He covered his face. Never! Never! What a staggering blow that was! Never? Intolerable thought! What, could it be after all that that bone was as old as they had said? Ugh! The excitement of the day and want of sleep at night had been too much for him. He was wholly worn out, exhausted. It was not fair to tax nature thus. It was not just to himself to sit up all night, and then face such awful questions in the cheerless dawn. It was not fair. No one could blame him for being a little shocked and shaken. It was only a shock or a shake, and he would laugh at it as soon he had had rest and quiet. But for the one moment it had lasted, the shock, the shake--call it what you will--was terrible to bear. All at once had glanced in upon him Doubt, the most repellent spectre he had ever yet seen. What! could any mere man dare to impugn the verdict of a hundred generations? From century to century, men of various creeds and forms of worship had crowded around the summit of that little hill. Now, almost within his own lifetime, a set of men had arisen who, unlike the cynics and scoffers of old, undertook to prove, out of God's own earth, the absence of a Guiding Spirit, an Omnipotent Ruler! Now that religion had reached a degree of purity and elevation never touched before, were we to sit still, and hear calm, bland, unaggressive men professing to show beyond doubt that there was no ascertainable reason for believing the greatest theory man had cherished? It was a nightmare, a blasphemous jest. There was the cold winter dawn breaking silently over the vastest city of all the world. How small each individual man looked amid the millions now swarming at the foot of that great cathedral! How infinitesimally little looked individual man under that dome of cloud! Nothing short of the eye of Omnipotence could distinguish individual man on this insignificant planet spinning round one sun out of millions squandered in the unfathomable realms of space! And yet this miserable parasite of earth, man, had dared to raise up his head and declare his ability to prove out of the works of Omnipotence that no such power existed! Which was this, insolence beyond endurance, or insanity beyond cure? Osborne went to the window and looked out. A cold chill struck through him. He shuddered, leaned feebly against the window-frame, and gazed upon the plain of roofs stretched beneath him. He fell into a profound melancholy. His mind was now as calm and settled about its own attitude as ever it had been by the quiet banks of the Avon, under the pious shadows of Trinity Church, that sheltered Shakespeare's ashes. But out there, below where he stood, were men now sleeping who would wake in awhile, and devote their day to the services of Doubt, of Unbelief. These men were worse than the cynics, or the scoffers, or the sceptics. They could not be accused of passion or violence: they carried the manners of sincerity and impartiality; they advocated no code of their own; they simply tried to destroy yours; or, worse still, they did not assail your beliefs, but furnished you with weapons against all you held highest, noblest, holiest. It was worse than sad to think of these men. He would think no more of them now. He would take off his boots, and coat, and waistcoat, and try if he could not get a little sleep. He lay down, and in a few minutes the substantial things of the room faded from his gaze, and a period of unconsciousness followed. Then he opened his eyes again. He found himself in a skiff blown by the winds over the tawny waters of the German Ocean towards the shores of Britain. The skiff was in deadly peril, for the waves were high. She had no sail to steady her. Any moment a broken wave might swamp her. At his feet lay a bundle of skins on the bottom of the boat, and he knew under those skins lay a woman, the woman destined to be the first to land in England. But where was the man? Where was the mate of this woman? Osborne did not know, but he felt sure the man would appear in due time. For days and nights that skiff pitched about the German Ocean. It did not encounter disaster or reach security. At last, one evening, as it grew dusk, and he was well-nigh spent, he saw the mouth of a great river, and steered the skiff in. What a difference between this river and the river of his vision! They were not the same, and yet they were. The waters and the shores of that river had shown no trace of man. No vessel had swum in that stream, no house or hut had stood upon its banks. The waters of this stream were crowded with craft of every size and build. The shores were lined with houses and wharfs, and stores of every height and kind. And yet the two rivers were identical in all things. How was this? Ah, now he saw. The explanation was simple. How stupid of him not to have seen it at once! Of course the reason the river was the same, although it was now full of vessels and had buildings all along its banks, was because in all these vessels and in all these buildings there was not a single living soul. How could he have been so stupid as for even a moment to forget that wave of red wind which had come from the south and killed all living things in London? Yes, that had been a dreadful wind, and yet not so bad as it might have been, for it had killed all. How much more merciful to kill all than to leave some to mourn! Suppose he had been in London at the time, it would have been hard upon his mother and sister; much harder than if the whole family had been carried off together, for then they would have had no earthly sorrow, and would have entered at once upon their heavenly union hereafter. His mother and his sisters were all the people in the world who would grieve for him. He had no other relatives now. All his other relatives were dead, and he had no close friend, no friend who would say more than 'Poor Osborne!' in a passing kindly way. How strange he should have been selected to bring this woman lying down there beneath the skins from the coast of Jutland to the Thames, to the wharf under St Paul's! A moment ago he had thought not a living soul was to be found in all London. What an oversight! Of course there was this woman's husband. He had been sent on before. The sole man in all London was now waiting for his savage wife under St Paul's; and when that woman had been landed out of the canoe, and given over to her savage husband, once more would provision be made for the peopling of London. This savage pair would inherit this vast London, with all its palaces, and ships, and warehouses, and churches. They were destined to be the first parents of the future people of the city. He wondered what this savage woman was like. Hideous, no doubt--hideous, with high cheek-bones and fat flat face. No doubt she was painted too, and had a necklace of shells or fish-bones. He was glad she slept so well. It would have been a dreadful thing to look at such a loathsome creature. Fancy his disgust at being obliged to spend all this time in view of a savage woman, he who had such an intense yearning after the beautiful--he whose life had hitherto been spent with Shakespeare in Stratford-on-Avon, and in the forests of Arden surrounding that town. Intolerable! When he had landed this unhandsome freight he should at once leave this death-stricken city, and go back to Stratford and Shakespeare and the forests of Arden. Ah! here was St Paul's clearly visible at last. His labours were nearly at an end. It was twilight dawn. All the objects on the river and shore were dimly visible. As he drew near the wharf he felt greatly relieved. He should, when he landed the woman now lying at his feet, have performed the great object of his life, and should spend the remainder of his days in placid contemplation in the old haunts he loved so well. On the wharf appeared the figure of a man, not semi-nude as Osborne had anticipated, but clad in a long cloak reaching from neck to heel. Osborne guided the canoe towards the wharf, and ran it alongside. The figure of the man never stirred. Osborne shouted out, and said he had brought the man's wife from Jutland. Upon this the figure moved across the wharf, and, having descended into the boat, caught the bundle of skins and the figure under it, and bore both to the wharf. For the first time Osborne now noticed he himself was chained by the leg to the thwart of the canoe. He did not care about that, for he was not going to land in desolate London; but would now push off, and go as far as Oxford by river. The tide was still running up strongly. The man stood on the wharf close to the edge, and held the woman in his arms. Osborne put the paddle against the wharf and pushed off with all his might. As he did so his foot slipped, and the paddle fell from his grasp, shot into the water, and did not rise again. It had stuck in the mud. With a cry of dismay he tried to clutch the side of the wharf, but it was beyond his grasp. He caught the side of the canoe and tugged at it with all his might, as though that could in that way influence the career of the boat, which now drifted slowly away from the wharf. He was in despair. What should he do? He could not guide this canoe without a paddle or oar. It would be driven against the abutment of a bridge, and capsized or stove in, and sunk. He stood up and looked around him with perplexity and alarm. At length he thought of the figures on the wharf. He was now thirty yards from it. The light was fuller. He raised his head. 'Merciful Heaven, seal up my eyes! Strike me dead! Take away my reason! O God of all mercy, have mercy upon me! Have mercy and let me die! 'Courage, Marie, Mary, love, sweetheart, wife! Courage! 'Maker of me, Maker of the universe, pardon me that one impious doubt, and let me come to her and save her! Oh, let me save her, my Marie, my love, my sweetheart! 'Courage, love! Courage!' He tore at the chain. It would not yield. He stamped and beat his brows in a frenzy of despair. At last he looks calm. A strong tide is running up. There is only one chance. Can he swim back to the wharf, towing the upturned boat after him? There is no other hope. He flings aside his coat and waistcoat and boots. In a moment he is in the water. How cold! He keeps his eye fixed on a spot on the shore. Merciful Heaven, his last chance is gone! His utmost efforts are powerless to stem the tide. He is rapidly drifting away from the wharf. 'Oh, to think I had Marie in the boat, and never knew it! Oh, to think I should have carried her all over those leagues of ocean, to resign her for ever into those awful arms!' The two figures on the wharf came out black against the grey dawn-light in the sky. From the head and shoulders of the man the covering had fallen away, and the woman now stood divested of the furs. The figure which had worn the cloak was that of a skeleton; the woman he had landed was his Marie. The skeleton held her tightly in its arms. She stretched forth her arms to him entreating delivery. Gradually he drifted farther and farther away from that awful group. In another minute the wharf would be out of sight. He turned round, and sought to seize the upturned boat. He lost sight of everything. There was a shout of the waters in his ear. He knew he was drowning, and he thanked God.
With a cry he sprang sitting up, and looked around him. 'A dream!' he whispered. 'A dream! What a hideous dream! Ah, that is the most terrible dream I have ever had. God, forgive me. God pardon me, if in one brief moment yesterday I allowed a question of any of Your inconceivable qualities to enter my mind.' He flung himself out of bed and dropped on his knees, facing the light. He threw his hands up to Heaven beseechingly, imploringly, and prayed with all the fervour of his nature, asking for strength and grace and undying faith. He covered his face with his hands, bowed his head to the floor, and wailed for mercy, for forgiveness. He admitted that for one moment yesterday his faith had been shaken. He admitted this with all the humility of his soul. He was unworthy to raise his eyes to Heaven, he who had sinned so heinously; but the All-Merciful might show him mercy. Mercy had been promised to all who humbled themselves and asked for mercy. He lay there, prone, full of pitiful sorrow and passionate importunity. Grant him mercy, grant him mercy, grant him hope! Here he paused a long time. His thoughts made no progress. After a time they took a new form, and a wilder fervour of entreaty burst from him. 'Bowed down, body and soul, will I remain all day, beseeching Thee not to visit this sin upon her, beseeching Thee not to punish me through her happiness.' He felt a flush dash through him, and he raised up his head in abject entreaty. 'No, no, no! Judge me not, O Lord! I am not moved by mixed motives. I do not place an earthly being between Thee and me. But if it be Thy will, spare her and smite me; spare her and smite me. If she must suffer, Thy will be done. Thy will be done. Thy will be done.' He felt calmer. 'Thy will be done' had solaced him. So long as he pleaded his own cause or her cause he was overwhelmed by a sense of his unworthiness. Having confessed his sin and expressed his sorrow, and thrown himself upon the mercy of God, he felt more easy with the words of absolute submission on his lips than with the most passionate entreaty. He rose, went to the window, and looked out. It was now busy morning. Sounds of traffic filled the air. From the window he could see no street, but he could hear the rattle and the din. A vast plain of houses stretched before him. From a thousand chimneys he saw arise a thousand shafts of smoke. The simple people who lived in these modest homes were stirring. The smoke showed breakfast was in course of preparation. These simple people had gone to bed and slept peacefully, had risen and said a few fervent prayers, and were now preparing for the morning meal. Here and there above the houses rose spires and towers of churches in the sober morning light, like sentinels guarding the people from spiritual harm. Happy, busy folk! Happy people who had no leisure for speculations or fears! Happy you who are not open places for the four winds of love to beat into tumult! You cannot sit late reading forbidden words, for you must be up and away to business betimes. The idle man's faith is open to continual assault. The idle man's heart is ever exposed to the arrows of outrageous love. And yet neither his own faith nor his heart had been assailed until now. Did that fact result from the nature of life led by him, or from qualities inherent in himself? Most likely from the kind of life. Happy you busy people down there who have no time for the luxury of such soul-abandoned love! Your dull lives are mere routines of commonplaces. Your love-making is no more exciting than your going to a new school or taking a new house. You settle most of your worldly affairs by the rule of three, and leave your spiritual concerns in the hands of a methodical rector you know to be well-informed and blameless. Who could live among the immutable, the unemotional Chinese? De Quincey says he should go mad in the Flowery Land. He could not endure their immortal traditions, their immemorial customs. After all, perhaps it was better to be more finely strung than these honest dull traders below. The man was a coward who would not risk the higher pain for the higher pleasure. What was the sum of happiness in the life of one dull plodding man of method compared with the rapture which came to him at the touch of Marie's hand?' Ah well, honest folk of method, go your way; I will go mine. If life shall give me nothing else great, it shall give me love. I will fling all other ambitions to the wind now. I will think of nothing else on earth. I shall look for my earthly and heavenly happiness in being with her here all my life, and in death to be with her in the land of the faithful.' For the first time he became sensible he was cold. He had slept more than an hour without coat, waistcoat, or boots, and the raw chilliness of winter dawn had entered his blood and stiffened his joints. He did not know the hour; he felt no curiosity to know. He put on his coat, waistcoat, and boots. He was low and wretched. 'I shall never be so foolish as to sit up another night. She sat up last night, and I this. After all, there are some things to be approved of in the life of those people down there.' He was standing at the window once again. 'If they have natures too practical, vitalities too low to experience the highest privileges of pleasure, they are obliged to keep regular hours. They cannot, after the wear and tear of the day, sit up until winter daylight surprises them. If I had not sat up, I should not have had that dream. If I had not sat up, I should not feel so weak and depressed now. If I had not sat up, I should not have got that revolting shock. It is against nature to sit up. All living things retire with the sun except man. Of course there are exceptions; but all creatures that come out after dusk are unclean and loathsome. 'And yet some men must sit up all night, for the good of others: lighthouse-keepers, and policemen, and watchmen, and sailors at sea, and astronomers. 'Astronomers and, no doubt, other men of science. Other men of science! Other men of science! How chill and dismal the morning! Other men of science no doubt. Astronomy is a loyal science. If difficulties arose in reconciling it now and then with Revelation, the difficulties disappeared. But other sciences were ruthless, impious; they respected nothing, they would reconcile with nothing. They were arrogant autocrats, absolute iconoclasts. 'Out there, down beneath, were the honest hardworking men of London rising and going forth from their homes to their blameless work. While they had slept the policemen had watched over their lives and their properties; while they had slept these sentinel churches had watched over their spirits. Their lives were spent in daily toil and nightly sleep to fit them for the morrow's labour. When the day of rest came, they flocked to those, churches from which rose those towers and spires, and there gave thanks for benefits received, begged continuance of grace and favours, and humbly prayed that in the end, when the shadow of death fell upon them, they might be permitted to join the pious hosts around the Eternal Throne. 'But in the darkness of the night-time, in silence and in secrecy, came forth an impious band of men, who, unsweetened by any faith, devoted all their time to undermining the faith of others. They came forth disguised as benefactors of mankind, philanthropists, progressionists; and when good simple people slept they went to work down there. Down there, where the churches stood, the churches which watched over the spirits of sleeping man by night, under which his fervent thanks and dearest aspirations were uttered on the Lord's Day, they stole, and, hidden in their cloaks, strove to sap the walls! Sought to sap the walls of the churches and bring down the towers and spires, and leave man with no thought above this gross earth and its gross pains and pleasures! 'Of all other crimes, what could equal this? It was not like the enthusiasm of creed against creed, or sect against sect, which sought, even in the worst days of religious persecution, only to impose what it believed to be a better upon people supposed to have a less perfect faith. Men do now, in the name of civilisation, what they did formerly in the name of faith. But there was a principle of humanity to be found in the forcible obtrusion of faith or civilisation upon a people; it was believed to be for the benefit of the people upon whom it was forced. But upon what humane principle do those stand who go out by night and undermine the temples of our fathers, and desecrate, with the blasphemous gabble of man, the consecrated walls of God, and the sacred clay of those who sleep in the faith of Christ? 'The breakfast-bell! I had no notion it was so late. I must run down at once; Marie will be there. Now that I want to call her Mary I can't. That is strange. What is the reason for it? I do not know. I feel dull and heavy; I wish I had slept.' He left the room and went downstairs. They were all sitting at breakfast when he entered the room. His eyes sought and found her. She had never looked so beautiful before. He paused a moment, smiling at her. He did not notice that all eyes were fixed on him in surprise; he did not notice that people at the table exchanged peculiar looks when they took their eyes off him; he did not notice that, the moment he entered, Nevill rose, and was now approaching him from the opposite side of the table. Without saying a word, Nevill caught Osborne, and pushed him back through the doorway into the passage. When they were in the passage, and the door had been closed, Nevill surveyed him and said,-- 'What on earth is the matter with you?' Osborne looked at him with amazement. 'The matter with me--the matter with me? Nothing.' 'Do you know you have not brushed your hair, your shirt and collar are all rumpled, and you are looking as if you had stepped out of a coffin?' Osborne started. 'I had quite forgotten that. Do you think they,' pointing to the breakfast-room door, 'noticed me?' 'Of course they did. What have you been doing with yourself? You don't drink?' 'No, no. I merely sat up reading those books you lent me.' 'You fool! Run upstairs, and put yourself right. Be down as quickly as you can--before they get up from table, if possible. Eat an enormous breakfast, and hold a full cup of tea out at arm's length, to show your hand is steady, and that you have not been to an orgy.' Nevill pushed Osborne up the stairs, and then returned to the breakfast table. 'I hope Mr Osborne is not ill?' said Mrs Barclay, from the top of the table. 'Not a bit of it, not a bit of it,' answered Nevill briskly, looking first at Mrs Barclay, then at Miss Osborne, and finally at Miss Gordon. 'Not a bit of it. He sat up reading, and got frost-bitten all over. He was so much interested he never knew the hour until the bell rang; and then he felt so outrageously hungry he charged down just as he sat, never thinking of putting on his back hair or his goloshes--I beg your pardon, I mean his umbrella and carpet bag. The same kind of thing, and even still more extraordinary, has happened to me over and over again. Once I remember sitting down on a balk of wood at the mouth of the Chesapeake river. I had a favourite author with me--' 'Munchausen?' interrupted the solid-looking man. 'No, sir; the book was "Grotesque Animals," by E. W. Cooke. Well, I began reading, and never noticed anything but the book for a whole day. I had begun to read at six o'clock of a summer morning, and never took my eyes off the book until I could read no more. Well, judge of my surprise at finding myself out of sight of land, away in the Atlantic! I had not minded the rising of the tide, and the balk had been floated and carried out to sea. The most wonderful thing about the affair was that my legs had not been eaten off by sharks; for there were thousands of sharks about, and my legs were about nine inches in the water. How was it I had escaped, you will reasonably ask--' 'To be unreasonably answered,' interrupted the solid-looking man, with a smile. 'Sir,' said Nevill, 'I am a practical man--a man of business. If I have fiction on hand, I go to a publisher and sell it. If I have truth on hand, I give it away to my friends. Truth fetches nothing in the market. Look at science. You can't make money out of science; and yet science is the only branch of human knowledge you can be sure of, for you can prove your work day by day. History is the greatest liar of all.' 'We are most anxious, sir,' said the solid man, 'to hear the remaining scientific facts of your remarkable voyage.' 'Oh, certainly. I immediately sang out! "All hands to let go sail! Let go all sail! Hard a-port, and let go the anchor!" There was nothing else for it. She might run over her anchor and drag and foul it; but what could one do? Now, sir, what would you have done in this case?' 'I should have drawn my feet out of the water at once, and taken off my boots and stockings.' 'But when you interrupted me I was about to explain to you that I owed my legs to my shoes and stockings. Common gratitude, sir, would not allow me to treat my shoes and stockings in that way. You must know that on the coast just there you find an extraordinary quick growth of all kinds of marine creatures. Well, while I was occupied reading my book, barnacles and mussels began to settle on my boots and stockings, and when I tried to raise my feet out of the water they felt as heavy as lead; and when I succeeded, in getting them into view, they looked exactly like two spars which had been floating about the Mediterranean for a couple of years!' The door opened once more, and Osborne entered. By this time the first breakfast was over. Osborne had dressed, and now looked much brighter than he had half-an-hour before. His manner was more subdued than ever, and he spoke little during the meal. Breakfast was a long irregular meal. Some guests came down punctually at the hour appointed; some were an hour late. A few lingered at the table, and now and then there was a fresh arrival from upstairs. Osborne and his sister sat at the left-hand side of the table; Nevill and Miss Gordon at the right. Opposite Nevill sat Miss Osborne; opposite Osborne Miss Gordon. Her eyes rested in wonder upon him. What had happened to him? Look at his eyes; they were changed. They did not look at her in the old way. Their old way had been constant and tender. Now his glances were sharp, quick, abrupt. And this, too, when he had sat up all night over those wretched books. Her king, her noble lord. Her simple-hearted, great-minded master. Her lord. Strangest of all, there was in his eyes a look of question, if not reproach. What could that look mean? She had done nothing which could give cause for such a look. When they parted last night they had been most cordial. He had, in fact, been compassionately affectionate. What could have happened to him since? One would think sitting up all night would make a man dull and languid; and now, for the first time, she saw him quick, excited. Could it be he was troubled in his mind about anything? Could it be he had had an unpleasant letter that morning--some bad news? She hoped not. He had too good and noble a nature to be troubled with petty trials. It would be her pleasure and her pride to save him all worry and trouble by-and-by. What could his sister see in that Mr Nevill's talk to smile at? Kate had told her no man ever frightened her more than Mr Nevill. She was now smiling at his talk. How uncertain of their own minds women were! How could Kate Osborne smile so and enjoy the flippant gabble of that man, while her brother wore such a look? He was pale. Nevill had said he was not ill. But then Nevill may have drawn on his imagination for that as for many of his other statements. No, no, he was not ill of any ailment of the body. His eyes were bright and clear. He may have been faint and exhausted by his long, lonely watch, but he was not ill. What could it be? How could he sit there and show no resentment against the wearisome chatter of this other man? He seemed to take no notice of the talk, not to hear it. He did not speak to her beyond almost formal words of greeting. Yesterday she should have spoken to him, but matters were changed now. So long as he had been her unaccepted suitor she had felt free and untrammelled. Now she was shy and diffident with him. Surely he might speak to her. She had wittingly done nothing to make him act thus towards her. Could it be she had been too hasty, and that he considered, upon a night's reflection, she had not acted with propriety? Or could it be that he, having obtained the assurance he sought, had lost one of the principal sources of interest in her? All through breakfast he did not address a word to her. When he had finished they all rose, and passed into the drawing-room. Nevill called Miss Osborne's attention to something at one end of the room. Osborne, by a glance, conveyed to Miss Gordon that he wished to speak with her at the other. When they reached the window he turned, and, casting another of those quick, unquiet glances at her, said,-- 'I have had a terrible night.' He spoke so low those at the other end of the room could not hear him. 'What made it terrible?' she asked, trying to force a smile. 'You.' 'I?' She uttered a startled laugh. 'What have I done? Tell me at once. You may tell me.' 'You have done nothing. I was not disturbed by the past, but by the future.' Involuntarily she placed a hand on his arm, and looked up into his eyes with a swift, pleading glance. 'You did not think I could do anything unworthy of you, George?' He started. He took her hand spasmodically and pressed it. He looked into her eyes with a terrible tenderness. She had never called him by his Christian name before. This was their betrothal. From this moment all reserve between them was broken down--their joint lives dated. He answered hurriedly,-- 'No, child. But I had a dreadful dream, a dream in which I thought I lost you.' She pressed his hand, and looked into his eyes with profound constant glance, and whispered,-- 'Never, George, until you wish me to go.' 'Child, child, child!' he whispered passionately, 'I must speak to you privately--at once. Let us get out of this place for awhile. Oh, Marie, I do not know why, I feel as if you were already drifting away from me for ever!' 'Do I look as if I wanted to go?' She glanced at the other end of the room. She then looked up at him with an arch, joyous smile. 'Their backs are to us.' They were bent over some engravings in the portfolio. 'Say good morning to me.' He stooped, kissed her, and sighed. 'You do not want me to go away from you?' she asked slyly, tenderly. 'My God!' he whispered, 'take all other earthly things from me if You will, but leave me this!' 'I do not want to go away from you. You do not want me to go away. Why are you uneasy? What caused you anxiety last night?' 'Wait until we are out of this. Let us go at once.' 'Without telling them?' She nodded towards where Nevill and Miss Osborne stood. 'Yes.' 'That will be our first little romance.' 'Run off now. Don't be long.' 'What!' she pouted. 'You are sending me away, although you said you did not want me to go.' He glanced in the direction of the other group, and then stooped and kissed her again. She broke from him and glided out of the room, giving him a smile of tender sauciness as she went.
When at last they reached the street he said,-- 'I could not speak to you in a room. A room is quiet too and lonely now. I feel lonely in my mind, and I like to see thousands of people round me. It diminishes my own importance in my own eyes, and I want to put myself wholly out of sight if I can.' The hazel-grey eyes were lifted to his in curiosity and trouble. What was it he could not say to her in a room and could in a crowded street? Something unpleasant. What could it be? His eyes were fixed before him. He did not look at her. She simply said, 'Yes,' softly. 'On a country road, or in a wood I could say to you what I have in my mind, or in our own quiet house at home. But in that boarding-house I could not, Marie. On a country road, or among trees, or in our home there would be a solemn background of nature or of associations, and these would take my mind off, Marie, your beauty and my great love of you. I should there understand you and I were then taking only a part in a vast concert in which thousands sang. I should be able to keep my mind off the overwhelming importance to me of your personality, by having forced upon me greater facts than our association. These busy streets act on me like the wood or open fields or the house to which my mother came as bride, in which she mourned as widow.' He was talking more to himself than to her. He was accounting to himself rather than explaining to her why he preferred the streets to the house. She was looking up timidly at him. This was to her unintelligible. She knew he had some reason for wishing to speak to her out of doors. That was all she wanted to know. That was quite enough for her. What could this great long introduction mean? What was he going to say? He had kissed her, and looked at her very affectionately that morning, but his manner was strange. He went on,-- 'But in that house we have left all is vulgar and commonplace but your presence, and when we are alone I can think of nothing but your great beauty and my great love for you.' She pressed his arm very softly, looked up at him with eyes of timid mirth. 'Why should you wish to forget, love?' He knit his brows, and looked down at her with eyes that did not see. 'Because I had a dream last night.' 'But surely you put no faith in dreams?' 'No. But I put no faith in omens either. Yet, if I see an angry sky, I prepare for bad weather.' 'Bad weather often, generally, follows angry skies, but nothing follows dreams.' He looked down at her again for a moment with abstracted eyes. 'You are quite right. I employed a bad figure; I will try to find a better one. If I am driving a coach along a road, and I see another coach overturned by reckless driving, I am likely to be more careful for awhile, although there may be nothing more than coincidence in my seeing the drag overturned. So my dreaming last night that I had lost you may make me more careful not to lose you, although there is nothing more than coincidence between the facts of yesterday and my dream.' She pressed his arm slightly, and bowed her head. 'This is the love I dreamed of,' she thought. 'This is the love that will not change; for it is the love that first thinks of the loved one, and then of the love, and last of itself. This is the royal self-disdaining love. My George! My love!' She said aloud, 'May I hear what the dream was?' 'It was a kind of allegory, and was connected with one of my waking dreams. This fact alone would make it remarkable, for not one time in fifty thousand do we dream in sleep what we dream awake. I need not trouble you with my waking dream; I will tell you that at another time. In sleep this morning (I lay down for an hour or so after dawn) I saw the sea--' 'You have never really seen the sea?' 'No, but I know something of it.' 'I have seen much of it.' 'Then you shall tell me of it in our evenings by the fire by-and-by.' She pressed his arm, and looked up softly into his face. His eyes were fixed before him, and he did not look down. 'And in your dream?' 'I saw a boat come into this sea. I was in this boat, steering it. A bundle of furs lay at my feet. For days and nights I steered that boat until it entered the Thames. I knew someone--a woman--lay under these furs. I knew she was a stranger, a savage woman--' 'How fond you are of this place,' she said, interrupting him. He threw his eyes up, and surveyed, with eager admiration the august pile rising up to heaven. 'I have always loved the place,' he said, 'even before I saw it.' He withdrew his glance from aloft and cast it once more before him. Her eyes were fixed on him wistfully as she asked,-- 'And since you have seen it?' 'I have loved it all the more.' His eyes were still speculative and busy with some scene not present to his bodily eye. 'It was here,' she whispered, 'that I first saw how good and how noble you are--here, just where we are now, under St Paul's.' He looked down at that beautiful young face with that wistful expression upon it. For a moment his face softened; he bent a little over her. Then he lifted his eyes once more, and resumed speaking in the same voice he had used before--a dull, monotonous voice, under which ran an undercurrent of uneasiness. 'Ah! Is it so? I did not know that.' A vague shadow of disappointment came over her face. He might take a little interest in that fact, no matter what other things were in his mind. He went on,-- 'I knew she was a strange savage woman, and I knew why I brought her to England. The reason was ridiculous, but it satisfied, as ridiculous reasons satisfy in dreams.' She had a much lessened interest in the story of that dream now. That dream had come between him and her, and had made him indifferent to the place at which her heart had first felt moved towards him. He still kept on,-- 'In a while we drew near London. I knew I had to land my passenger as near this spot as possible. I steered the boat to the wharf down there. The husband of the woman stood upon the wharf. I called to him to come for his wife; he came and carried away the woman. Then I pushed off my boat.' He paused, and, looking at the northern entrance of the cathedral, said,-- 'Shall we go in?' 'Yes, if you wish it,' she answered listlessly. As they entered the vestibule he said,-- 'In getting away from the wharf I lost my paddle. I had now no power to guide the boat, no power to regain the wharf. I cried to the man for help.' Here they entered the body of the cathedral. 'When I looked, the cloak and hat which the man had worn had fallen away, and the furs from the figure of his wife--' 'The service is going on, George; do you wish to take part in it?' she said. She thought, 'This dream is very long, and he is so wrapped up in it he does not remember this is service-time; he cannot even see that the service is going on.' 'The figure of the man was now a fleshless skeleton, and the woman in the arms of the skeleton was you!' She started from his side, with an exclamation of terror she could not suppress. 'So I have come here to-day during service, to thank God that it was only a dream, and to pray that no evil may ever come to my Marie through my fault, and that her faith may be permanently confirmed. Marie, of course the dream has no more to do with you and me than with Kate or Mr Nevill; but it will do neither of us harm to thank God my dream was but a dream; to pray I may never do you harm, and to ask that you may be continued in your pious resolves.' 'There is only need for us to pray for the last,' she said, clinging to his arm with redoubled tenderness. All had been explained--more than explained. All had been not only justified, but swept away; and, in place of the cold sensation caused by his peculiar manner of that morning, now glowed a love warmed for the first time by gratitude. They moved into the cathedral and sat down. He bent over her and whispered,-- 'That dream did not affect me as you might think. It did not chill me or make me uneasy because of any dread I had I should lose you in an ordinary way. My notion of life here and life hereafter is that we are sent here to learn to love one another, and then we go to a better place to enjoy the love we have acquired here. Now, Marie, what horrified me in that dream is that it seemed to me a kind of allegory. The sea-voyage which I had with you when I did not know you, was our life on earth. When our earthly life had run, when our voyage was finished, we were separated, and I saw you in terrible company, and was powerless to rescue you. You were in the arms of Death, at the gateway of the great city of the Dead. This suggested to me that, though you and I might go through time together, we might be separated in eternity.' She turned her face to his, and asked gravely, sadly,-- 'Why should we be separated in eternity? What could separate us?' 'Marie, I am no bigot. I do not say that any man will be lost because of his faith, so long as he has faith of some kind. But I believe that when we die we shall be classed together in the order of our faith. You have been long indifferent. Suppose you should grow indifferent again. Suppose you should be indifferent at the last. Suppose I should die ten years hence, and you should survive me ten, twenty years; and at the end of those twenty years have lost all faith, or have married again and adopted a new one, you would be lost to me.' 'George, how can you say such cruel things? You should not say such things. You know I should not marry.' 'Let us not talk like children, Marie. No one knows that. I am sure that if you marry me now, you and I will be for ever together in the hereafter. We do not know everything. We are not told that; but I believe, when a man and woman marry for love, they are husband and wife for ever. Now you see, child, why I am so anxious.' 'Yes,' she murmured, looking up at him half-frightened. He was putting things in a terribly earnest way. She had often thought of love and marriage before--who is it does not think of these things?--but she had never thought of them so surrounded by awe before. Most people treated love with levity, and marriage as a matter of legal contract, to be embodied in documents and secured by stamps. Now this man whom she had agreed to accept as a husband was taking precautions, not only for their earthly happiness, but for their eternal union also. He had often seemed great and noble to her, but he had never overawed her before. She looked up at him with wonder and devotion, mingled with grave concern. He went on, still in the low voice he had first employed, and with his lips close to her ear,-- 'I thought, Marie, that as under these walls we had our first serious conversation, as under these walls you had first been guided from trivial things by my hand, there could be no place better for a talk of this importance, and asking you to do the first favour I request of you.' She was profoundly moved. She had wronged him. She had thought him indifferent to her to-day, and all the time he had been taking the most elaborate care of her, had been expending the finest portion of his intellect, and the deepest fountains of his love on her. She looked upon him with gratitude that was a kind of worship, and said,-- 'I will promise you beforehand. I will promise now to do in my life all you may ask me.' 'No,' he said. 'That would not be a wise or a just promise.' 'I will promise, then, beforehand.' 'No; there is no reason for that. That would be unfair. Besides, there is no reason why you should not know what I want you to promise. It is this, "I promise God never to be again indifferent to religious matters; to adhere to the faith of the Church in which I was born, the faith of the Church in which I now kneel, and to marry no man who does not belong to the faith of this Church, and take an active part in its worship."' She repeated the words slowly and distinctly. When she had finished, she looked up at him with eyes full of happy tears, and said,-- 'It would be a great sin to break that promise, George?' 'It would. A great sin.' 'That promise is as binding in your eyes as the marriage ceremony?' 'Quite as binding in my eyes as the marriage ceremony.' 'Oh, thank you for having asked me to make it, and to make it here. I feel now as if some great dread or weight had fallen off me.' 'But, Marie, you have accepted a grave responsibility.' 'How?' she asked, looking up at him incredulously. 'You have promised to be a practical Christian of the Church of England all your life.' 'That will not be very hard; and you will help me all my life.' 'But if I die you must not marry any man of any other faith.' 'I shall marry one man, and one only, and that is you. I will add that to the promise.' 'No, no. Such a promise would be wrong. You have done all I ask.' 'Will you do all I ask now, George?' 'What is it?' 'Believe that all the love woman has to give to man I give to you, and that I am more grateful to you for the trust you have shown in me to-day than for all the other things you will ever do for me.' 'Trust! What trust, my love, my child?' He looked at her with a puzzled, perplexed expression. 'When, although you do not know me a month, you take my word that I will not do a certain thing, even if I live twenty years after you die.' He looked at her in amazement. 'Break your promise to me, love! How could you? What would be the value in my mind of vows at the altar if I thought you would not keep a solemn promise like that? The woman who would, after my explanation, break a promise such as that, would care little how she broke any vows or oaths.' She looked up at him with some of her old archness. 'I know whom all this is aimed at!' 'Whom?' 'The only man I know who doesn't believe anything is Mr Nevill; and you know he and I were great friends once.' Osborne shook his head gravely. 'I should not like you to marry a man such as he.' 'George, George, the service is over, and we have not minded it.' 'The service has not yet begun.' 'Begun! The people are all going away.' 'Wait a moment, and you will see I am right.' When the people had cleared off, and they were almost alone in the portion of the church where they sat, he said,-- 'Let us kneel hand-in-hand for a betrothal.' She took off her glove. He knelt at her left side and took her hand. He let go her hand in a moment. A vivid blush darted over her face, and they both rose. As she did so, upon the third finger of her left hand flashed five rubies she had never seen before.