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Altar of the Dead
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 IP re 96 piniO\\& (continued)

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 ERMINATIONS
T
THE DEATH OF THE
LION THE COXON
. .

FUND. THE MIDDLE .

YEARS. THE ALTAR .

OF THE DEAD.

By HENRY JAMES

ONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN

MDCCCXCV
 SECOND EDITION

First Edition, May 1895

All rights reserved

NOTE. The first two of these Tales were

originally published in
"

The Yellow Book,"

the third in "

Scribner s Magazine." The

last appears for the first time.

954
 CONTENTS
Page
The Death of the Lion . . i

The Coxon Fund ... 65

The Middle Years . .

.165
The Altar of the Dead .
.199
THE DEATH OF THE LION
 I

I HAD simply, I suppose, a change of heart, and it

must have begun when I received my manuscript
back from Mr. Pinhorn. Mr. Pinhorn was my
"

chief,"
as he was called in the office he had
:

accepted the high mission of bringing the paper

up. This was a weekly periodical, and had been
supposed to be almost past redemption when he
took hold of it. It was Mr. Deedy who had let it

down so dreadfully he was never mentioned in

:

the office now save in connection with that mis

demeanour. Young as I was I had been in a
manner taken over from Mr. Deedy, who had been
owner as well as editor forming part of a pro
;

miscuous lot, mainly plant and office-furniture,

which poor Mrs. Deedy, in her bereavement and
depression, parted with at a rough valuation. I

could account for my continuity only on the sup

position that I had been cheap. I rather resented

the practice of fathering all flatness on my late

protector, who was in his unhonoured grave but

;

as I had my way to make I found matter enough for

complacency in being on a
"

staff." At the same

time I was aware that I was exposed to suspicion as
a product of the old lowering system. This made
4 THE DEATH OF THE LION
me feel that I was doubly bound tohave ideas, and had
doubtless been at the bottom of my proposing to Mr.
Pinhorn that I should lay my lean hands on Neil
Paraday. I remember that he looked at me first

as if he had never heard of this celebrity, who

indeed at that moment was by no means in the
centre of the heavens and even when I had know
;

ingly explained he expressed but little confidence in

the demand for any such matter. When I had
reminded him that the great principle on which we
were supposed to work was just to create the
demand we required, he considered a moment
and then rejoined I see ; you want to write him
"

up."

"

Call it that if you like."

"

And what s your inducement ?

"

admiration
"
"

Bless my soul my 1

Mr. Pinhorn pursed up his mouth. "Is there much

be done with him ?
"

to
"

Whatever there is, we should have it all to our

selves, for he hasn t been touched."

This argument was effective, and Mr. Pinhorn

responded Very well, :
"

touch him." Then he

But where can you do
"

added :
"

it ?

Under the
"

fifth rib
"

Mr. Pinhorn stared. Where s that ?

" "

You want me to
"

go down and see him ?

"

inquired when I had enjoyed his visible search for

this obscure suburb.
don t want anything the proposal s your
"I

own. But you must remember that that s the way

 THE DEATH OF THE LION 5

we do things now" said Mr. Pinhorn, with another

dig at Mr. Deedy.
Unregenerate as I was, I could read the queer

implications of this speech. The present owner s

superior virtue as well as his deeper craft
spoke in his reference to the late editor as one of
that baser sort who deal in false representations.
Mr. Deedy would as soon have sent me to call on
Neil Paraday as he would have published a "holiday-
number;" but such scruples presented themselves
as mere ignoble thrift to his sucessor, whose own
sincerity took the form of ringing door-bells and
whose definition of genius was the art of finding
people at home. It was as if Mr. Deedy had
published reports without his young men s having,
as Pinhorn would have said, really been there. I

was unregenerate, as I have hinted, and I was not

concerned to straighten out the journalistic morals
of my chief, feeling them indeed to be an abyss over
the edge of which it was better not to peer. Really
to be there this time moreover was a vision that
made the idea of writing something subtle about Neil

Paraday only the more inspiring. I would be as con

siderate as even Mr. Deedy could have wished, and

yet I should be as present as only Mr. Pinhorn could

conceive. My allusion to the sequestered manner
in which Mr. Paraday lived (which had formed part
of my explanation, though I knew of it only by

hearsay) was, I could divine, very much what had

made Mr. Pinhorn nibble. It struck him as in

consistent with the success of his paper that any

6 THE DEATH OF THE LION
one should be so sequestered as that. And then
was not an immediate exposure of everything just
what the public wanted ? Mr. Pinhorn effectually
called me by reminding me of the prompt
to order
ness with which had met Miss Braby at Liverpool
I

on her return from her fiasco in the States. Hadn t

we published, while its freshness and flavour were
unimpaired, Miss Braby s own version of that
great international episode ? I felt somewhat
uneasy at this lumping of the actress and the

author, and I confess that after having enlisted

Mr. Pinhorn s sympathies I procrastinated a little
I had succeeded better than I wished, and I had,

as it A few days
happened, work nearer at hand.
later I called Lord Crouchley and carried off
on
in triumph the most unintelligible statement that
had yet appeared of his lordship s reasons for his
change of front. I thus set in motion in the daily
papers columns of virtuous verbiage. The follow
ing week I ran down
Brighton for a chat, as
to
Mr. Pinhorn called it, with Mrs. Bounder, who
gave me, on the subject of her divorce, many
curious particulars that had not been articulated
in court. If ever an article flowed from the
primal fount it was
on Mrs. Bounder.
that article

By this time, became aware that Neil

however, I

Paraday s new book was on the point of appear

ing and that its approach had been the ground of
my original appeal to Mr. Pinhorn, who was now
annoyed with me for having lost so many days.
He bundled me off we would at least not lose
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 7

another. I have always thought his sudden alert

ness a remarkable example of the journalistic

instinct.Nothing had occurred, since I first spoke
and no enlight
to him, to create a visible urgency,
enment could possibly have reached him. It was
a pure case of professional flair he had smelt
the coming glory as an animal smells its distant
prey.
 II

I MAY as well
say at once that this little record
pretends in no degree to be a picture either of
my introduction to Mr. Paraday or of certain proxi
mate steps and stages. The scheme of my nar
rative allows no space things, and in
for these
any case a prohibitory sentiment would be attached
to my recollection of so rare an hour. These
meagre notes are essentially private, so that if

they see the light the insidious forces that, as

my story itself shows, make at present for publicity
will simply have overmastered my precautions.
The curtain fell enough on the lamentable
lately
drama. My memory of the day I alighted at Mr.
Faraday s door is a fresh memory of kindness,
hospitality, compassion, and of the wonderful illumi
nating talk in which the welcome was conveyed.
Some voice of the air had taught me the right
moment, the moment of his life at which an act
of unexpected young might most come
allegiance
home. He had recently recovered from a long,
grave illness. I had gone to the neighbouring inn
for the but I spent the evening in his
night,
company, and he insisted the next day on my
sleeping under his roof. I had not an indefinite
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 9

leave : Mr. Pinhorn supposed us to put our victims

through on the gallop. It was later, in the office,

that the dance was set to music. I fortified myself,

however, as my training had taught me to do, by
the conviction that nothing could be more advan

tageous for my article than to be written in the

very atmosphere. I said nothing to Mr. Faraday
about it, but in the morning, after my removal
from the inn, while he was occupied in his study,
as he had notified me that he should need to be,
I committed to paper the quintessence of my im
pressions. Then thinking to commend myself to
Mr. Pinhorn by my celerity, I walked out and
posted my little packet before luncheon. Once my
paper was written I was free to stay on, and if
it was designed to divert attention from my frivolity

in so doing I could reflect with satisfaction that

I had never been so clever. I don t mean to deny

of course that was aware il was much too good

I

for Mr. Pinhorn; but I was equally conscious that

Mr. Pinhorn had the supreme shrewdness of recog
nising from time to time the cases in which an
article was not too bad only because it was too
good. There was nothing he loved so much as
to printon the right occasion a thing he hated. I
had begun my visit to Mr. Paraday on a Monday,
and on the Wednesday his book came out. A
copy of it arrived by the first post, and he let me
go out into the garden with it immediately after
breakfast. I read it from beginning to end that

day, and in the evening he asked me to remain

io THE DEATH OF THE LION
with him the rest of the week and over the Sun
day.
That night my manuscript came back from Mr.
Pinhorn, accompanied with a letter, of which the
gist was the desire to know what I meant by
sending him such stuff. That was the meaning
of the question, if not exactly its form, and it made
my mistake immense to me. Such as this mistake
was I could now only look it in the face and
accept it. I knew where I had failed, but it was

exactly where I couldn t have succeeded. I had

been Sent down there to be personal, and in point

of fact I hadn t been personal at all what I had :

sent up to London was just a little finicking,

feverish study of my author s talent. Anything
less relevant to Mr.
Pinhorn s purpose couldn t
well be imagined, and he was visibly angry at my

having (at his expense, with a second-class ticket)

approached the object of our arrangement only to
be so deucedly distant. For myself, I knew but
too well what had happened, and how a miracle
as pretty as some old miracle of legend had been
wrought on the spot to save me. There had been
a big brush of wings, the flash of an opaline robe,
and then, with a great cool stir of the air, the
sense of an angel s having swooped down and
caught me to his bosom. He held me only till
the danger was over, and it all took place in a
minute. With my manuscript back on my hands
I understood the phenomenon better, and the re
flections I made on it are what I meant, at the
 THE DEATH OF THE LION n
beginning of this anecdote, by my change of heart.
Mr. Pinhorn s note was not only a rebuke decidedly
stern, but an invitation immediately to send him

(it was the case to say so) the genuine article,

the revealing and reverberating sketch to the
promise of which and of which alone I owed
my A week or two later
squandered privilege.
I my peccant paper,
recast and giving it a particular
application to Mr. Faraday s new book, obtained
for it the hospitality of another journal, where,
I must admit, Mr. Pinhorn was so far justified that
it attracted not the least attention.
 Ill

I WAS end of three days, a very preju

frankly, at the
dicedcritic, so that one morning when, in the garden,
Neil Paraday had offered to read me something I

quite held my breath as I listened. It was the

written scheme of another book something he had

put aside long ago, before his illness, and lately

taken out again to reconsider. He had been turning
it round when I came down
upon him, and it had
grown magnificently under this second hand. Loose,
liberal, confident, it might have passed for a great
gossiping, eloquent letter the overflow into talk of
an artist s amorous plan. The subject I thought
singularly rich, quite the strongest he had yet
treated; and this familiar statement
of it, full
too of fine maturities, was really, in summarised

splendour, a mine of gold, a precious, independent

work. I remember rather profanely wondering
whether the ultimate production could possibly be so
happy. His reading of the epistle, at any rate, made
me feelif I were, for the advantage of posterity,
as
in closecorrespondence with him were the distin
guished person to whom it had been affectionately
addressed. It was high distinction simply to be

told such things. The idea he now communicated

 THE DEATH OF THE LION 13

had the freshness, the flushed fairness of the

all

conception untouched and untried it was Venus :

rising from the sea, before the airs had blown upon
her. I had never been so throbbingly present at

such an unveiling. But when he had tossed the last

bright word after the others, as I had seen cashiers

in banks, weighing mounds of coin, drop a final

sovereign into the tray, I became conscious of a

sudden prudent alarm.
"

My dear master, how, after all, are

you going to
do noble, but what
"

it ? I asked. "

It s infinitely

time will take, what

it
patience and indepen
dence, what assured, what perfect conditions it will
demand ! Oh for a lone isle in a tepid sea !
"

Isn a lone isle, and aren

"

t this practically
t
you,
as an encircling medium, tepid enough ? he replied, "

alluding with a laugh to the wonder of my young

admiration and the narrow limits of his little pro

vincial home. "

Time isn t what I ve lacked hitherto :

the question hasn t been to find it, but to use it. Of
course my illness made a great hole, but I daresay
there^vould have been a hole at any rate. The earth
we tread has more pockets than a billiard-table.
The great thing is now to keep on my feet."

That s exactly what I mean."

"

Neil Paraday looked at me with eyes such plea

sant eyes as he had in which, as I now recall their

expression, I seem to have seen a dim imagination

of his fate. He was years old, and his illness
fifty
had been cruel, his convalescence slow. "

It isn t as
if I weren t all right."
I4 THE DEATH OF THE LION
you weren wouldn look at
"

Oh, if t all right I t

"

you !
tenderly said.
I

We had both got up, quickened by the full sound

of it all, and he had lighted a cigarette. I had taken
a fresh one, and, with an intenser smile, by way of
answer to my exclamation, he touched it with the
flame of his match.
"

If I weren t better I shouldn t

have thought of that !

"

He flourished his epistle in

his hand.
"

I don t want to be discouraging, but that s not

true,"
I returned.
"

I m sure that during the months

you lay here in pain you had visitations sublime.

You thought of a thousand things. You think of
more and more all the while. That s what makes
you, if you will pardon my familiarity, so respect
able. At a time when so many people are spent you
come into your second wind. But, thank God, all

the same, you re better ! Thank God, too, you re

not, as you were telling me yesterday, successful.
If youweren t a failure, what would be the use of
trying? That s my one reserve on the subject of
that it makes you score, as the
your recovery
newspapers say. It looks well in the newspapers,

and almost anything that does that is horrible. We

are happy to announce that Mr. Paraday, the cele
brated author, is again in the enjoyment of excellent
health. Somehow I shouldn t like to see it."

"

You won t see it I m not in the least ;

celebrated

my obscurity protects me. But couldn t you

bear even to see I was dying or dead ? my com
"

panion asked.
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 15

passe encore; there s nothing so safe.

"Dead

One never knows what a living artist may do one

has mourned so many. However, one must make
the worst of you must be as dead as you can."
it ;

Don t I meet that condition in having just pub

"

lished a book ?
"

Adequately, let us hope for the book is verily a

"

masterpiece."
At this moment the parlour-maid appeared in the
door that opened into the garden Paraday lived at :

no great cost, and the frisk of petticoats, with a

timorous "

Sherry, sir ? was about his modest "

mahogany. He allowed half his income to his wife,

from whom he had succeeded in separating without
redundancy of legend. I had a general faith in his

having behaved well, and I had once, in London,

taken Mrs. Paraday down to dinner. He now turned
to speak to the maid, who offered him, on a tray,
some card or note, whileagitated, excited, I wandered
to theend of the garden. The idea of his security
became supremely dear to me, and I asked myself if
I were the same young man who had come down a

few days before to scatter him to the four winds.

When I retraced my steps he had gone into the
house, and the woman
(the second London post had
come in) had placed my letters and a newspaper on
a bench. I sat down there to the letters, which were
a brief business, and then, without heeding the
address, took the paper from its envelope. It was

the journal of highest renown, The Empire of that

morning. It
regularly came to Paraday, but I
16 THE DEATH OF THE LION
remembered that neither of us had yet looked at the

copy already delivered. This one had a great mark

on the "

editorial
"

page, and, uncrumpling the wrap

per, Isaw it to be directed to my host and stamped
with the name of his publishers. I instantly divined

that The Empire had spoken of him, and I have

not forgotten the odd little shock of the circum
stance. It checked all eagerness and made me drop
the paper a moment. As I sat there conscious of a
palpitation I think Ihad a vision of what was to be.
I had also a vision of the letter I would presently
address to Mr. Pinhorn, breaking as it were with
Mr. Pinhorn. Of course, however, the next minute
the voice of The Empire was in my ears.
The article was not, I thanked heaven, a review ;
it was a leader," the last of three, presenting Neil
"

Paraday to the human race. His new book, the fifth

from his hand, had been but a day or two out, and
The Empire, already aware of fired, as if on the
it,

birth of a prince, a salute of a whole column. The

guns had b~en booming these three hours in the
house without our suspecting them. The big blun
dering newspaper had discovered him, and now he was
proclaimed and anointed and crowned. His place was
assigned him as publicly as if a fat usher with a wand
had pointed to the topmost chair ; he was to pass up
and still up, higher and higher, between the watch
ing faces and the envious sounds away up to the da is
and the throne. The article was a date he had taken ;

rank at a bound waked up a national glory. A

national glory was needed, and it was an immense
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 17

convenience he was there. What all this meant

rolled over me, and I fear I grew a little faint it
meant so much more than I could say yea to on
" "

the spot. In a flash, somehow, all was different ;

the tremendous wave I speak of had swept some
thing away. It had knocked down, I suppose, my

littlecustomary altar, my twinkling tapers and my

flowers, and had reared itself into the likeness of a
temple vast and bare. When Neil Paraday should
come out of the house he would come out a con
temporary. That was what had happened : the

poor man was to be squeezed into his horrible age.

as if he had been overtaken on the crest of the
I felt

hilland brought back to the city. A little more and

he would have dipped down the short cut to posterity
and escaped.
 IV

WHEN he came out it was exactly as if he had been

in custody, for beside him walked a stout man with
a big black beard, who, save that he wore spectacles,
might have been a policeman, and in whom at a
second glance I recognised the highest contemporary
enterprise.
"

This is Mr. Morrow," said Paraday, looking, I

thought, rather white :

"

he wants to publish heaven

knows what about me."

I winced as I remembered that this was exactly

what I myself had wanted. Already ? I exclaimed,

" "

with a sort of sense that my friend had fled to me for

protection.
Mr. Morrow glared, agreeably, through his glasses :

they suggested the electric headlights of some mon

strous modern ship, and I felt as if Paraday and I
were tossing terrified under his bows. I saw that
his momentum was irresistible.
"

I was confident
that I should be the first in the field,"
he declared.
"

A great interest is naturally felt in Mr. Paraday s

surroundings."
I hadn t the least idea of said Paraday, as if
"

it,"

he had been told he had been snoring.

I find he has not read the article in The Empire,
"
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 19

Mr. Morrow remarked to me. "

That s so very
interesting it s something to start with," he smiled.

He had begun to pull off his gloves, which were

violently new, and to look encouragingly round the
little garden. As a "surrounding" I felt that I

myself had already been taken in ;

I was a little fish

in the stomach of a bigger one. our

"

I represent,"

visitor continued, "a

syndicate of influential journals,
no less than thirty-seven, whose public whose
publics, I may say are in peculiar sympathy with
Mr. Faraday s line of thought. They would
greatly
appreciate any expression his views on the
of
subject of the art he so brilliantly practises. Besides
my connection with the syndicate just mentioned, I
hold a particular commission from The Taller, whose
most prominent department, Smatter and Chatter
I daresay you ve often enjoyed it attracts such
attention. I was honoured only last week, as a
representative of The Taller, with the confidence of
Guy Walsingham, the author of Obsessions. She
expressed herself thoroughly pleased with my sketch
of her method ; she went so far as to say that I had
made her genius more comprehensible even to
herself."

Neil Paraday had dropped upon the garden-bench

and sat there at once detached and confused; he
looked hard at a bare spot in the lawn, as if with an
anxiety that had suddenly made him grave. His
movement had been interpreted by his visitor as an in
vitation to sink sympathetically into a wicker chair that
stood hard by, and as Mr. Morrow so settled himself
20 THE DEATH OF THE LION
I felt that he had taken official possession and that
there was no undoing it. One had heard of unfor
tunate people s having "

a man in the house," and

this was just what we had. There was a silence of
a moment, during which we seemed to acknowledge
in the only that was possible the presence of
way
universal fate the sunny stillness took no pity, and
;

my thought, as I was sure Faraday s was doing,

performed within the minute a great distant revolu
tion. I saw just how emphatic I should make my
rejoinder to Mr. Pinhorn,and that having come, like
Mr. Morrow, to betray, I must remain as long as
possible to save. Not because I had brought my
mind back, but because our visitor s last words were
in my ear, I presently inquired with gloomy irrele
vance if Guy Walsingham were a woman.
"

Oh yes, a mere pseudonym ; but convenient,

you know, for a lady who goes in for the larger
latitude. Obsessions, by Miss So-and-so, would
look a little odd, but men are more naturally indeli
Have you peeped into Obsessions ?
"

cate. Mr.
Morrow continued sociably to our companion.
Paraday, still absent, remote, made no answer, as
if he had not heard the question : a manifestation
that appeared to suit the cheerful Mr. Morrow as
well as any other. Imperturbably bland, he was a
man of resources he only needed to be on the spot.
lie had pocketed the whole poor place while Paraday
and I were woolgathering, and I could imagine that
he had already got his
"

heads." His system, at

9.ny rate, was justified by the inevitability with

 THE DEATH OF THE LION 21

which I replied, to save my friend the trouble :

"

Dear, no ;
he hasn t read it. He doesn t read
unwarily added.
"

such things ! I

Things that are too far over the fence, eh ? I

"
"

was indeed a godsend to Mr. Morrow. It was the

psychological moment ; it determined the appearance

of his notebook, which, however, he at first kept

slightly behind him, even as the dentist, approaching

his victim, keeps the horrible forceps. Mr. Para- "

day holds with the good old proprieties I see 1

"

And thinking of the thirty-seven influential journals,

I found myself, as I found poor Paraday, helplessly
gazing promulgation of this ineptitude.
at the
"

no point on which distinguished views are

There s
so acceptable as on this question raised perhaps
more strikingly than ever by Guy Walsingham of
the permissibility of the larger latitude. I have an

appointment, precisely in connection with it, next

week, with Dora Forbes, the author of The Other
Way Round, which everybody is talking about.
Has Mr. Paraday glanced at The Other Way
Round ?
"

Mr. Morrow
frankly appealed to now
me. I took upon myself to repudiate the supposition,
while our companion, still silent, got up nervously

and walked away. His visitor paid no heed to his

withdrawal he only opened out the notebook with
;

a more motherly pat. Dora Forbes, I gather, "

takes the ground, the same as Guy Walsingham s,

that the larger latitude has simply got to come. He
holds that it has got to be squarely faced. Of course
his sex makes him a less prejudiced witness. But
22 THE DEATH OF THE LION
an authoritative word from Mr. Paraday from the
point of view of his sex, you know would go right
round the globe. He takes the line that we haven t
"

got to face it ?
I was bewildered it sounded somehow as if :

there were three sexes. My interlocutor s pencil

was poised, my private responsibility great. I simply

sat staring, however, and only found presence

of mind to say :
"

Is this Miss Forbes a gentle

man ? "

Mr. Morrow hesitated an instant, smiling. "

It

wouldn t be Miss *
there s a wife I
"

mean is she a man ?

"

I
"

The wife ?
"

Mr. Morrow, for a moment, was

"

as confused as myself. But when I explained that

I alluded to Dora Forbes he informed me, in person
with visible amusement at being so out of it, my
that this was the "pen-name" of an indubitable
male he had a big red moustache. "He only
assumes a feminine personality because the ladies
are such popular favourites. A great deal of interest
is felt in this assumption, and there s every prospect
of its
being widely Our host at this imitated."

moment joined us again, and Mr. Morrow remarked

invitingly that he should be happy to make a note
of any observation the movement in question, the
bid for success under a lady s name, might suggest
to Mr. Paraday. But the poor man, without catch
ing the allusion, excused himself, pleading that,
though he was greatly honoured by his visitor s
interest, he suddenly felt unwell and should have to
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 23

take leave of him have to go and lie down and

keep quiet. His young friend might be trusted to
answer for him, but he hoped Mr. Morrow didn t
expect great things even of his young friend. His
young friend, at this moment, looked at Neil Para-
day with an anxious eye, greatly wondering if he
were doomed to be ill again but Faraday s own ;

kind face met his question reassuringly, seemed to

say in a glance intelligible enough Oh, I m not
"

ill,
but I m scared get him out of the house as
:

quietly as possible." Getting newspaper-men out

of the house was odd business for an emissary of
Mr. Pinhorn, and I was so exhilarated by the idea
of it that I called after him as he left us :

"

Read the article in The Empire and , you ll soon

"

be all right 1
 my having come down to tell him of
"DELICIOUS

Mr. Morrow ejaculated.

"

My cab was at the

"

it !

door twenty minutes after The Empire had been laid

upon my breakfast-table. Now what have you got
for me ? he continued, dropping again into his
"

chair, from which, however, the next moment he

I was shown into the
"

quickly rose. drawing-room,

but there must be more to see his study, his
literary sanctum, the little things he has about, or
other domestic objects or features. He wouldn t be
lying down on his study-table? There s a great
interest always felt in the scene of an author s
labours. Sometimes we re favoured with very
delightful peeps. Dora Forbes showed me all his
table-drawers, and almost jammed my hand into one
into which I made a dash I don t ask that of
you, !

but if we could talk things over right there where

he sits I feel as if I should get the keynote."

I had no wish whatever to be rude to Mr. Morrow,

I was much too initiated not to prefer the safety of
other ways ; but I had a quick inspiration and I
entertained an insurmountable, an almost supersti
tious objection to his crossing the threshold of my
friend s little lonely, shabby, consecrated workshop.
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 25

"

we sha n t get at his life that way," I said.

No, no
way to get at his life is to But wait a
"The

moment I broke off and went quickly into the

"

house ; then, in three minutes, I reappeared before

Mr. Morrow with the two volumes of Faraday s new
His life s here," I went on, and I m so
"

book. "

full of this admirable thing that I can t talk of any

thing else. The artist s life s his work, and this is

the to observe him.
place What he has to tell us
he tells us with this perfection. My dear sir, the

best interviewer s the best reader."

Morrow good-humouredly protested. "Do

Mr.
you mean to say that no other source of information
"

should be open to us ?
"None other till this particular one by far the
most copious has been quite exhausted. Have
you exhausted Had you ex it, my dear sir ?

hausted it when you came down here? It seems

to me in our time almost wholly neglected, and

something should surely be done to restore its

ruined credit. It s the course to which the artist

himself at every step, and with such pathetic con

fidence, refers us. This last book of Mr. Faraday s

is full of revelations."

"Revelations?" panted Mr. Morrow, whom I

had forced again into his chair.

"The only kind that count. It tells you with

a perfection that seems to me quite final all the

author thinks, for instance, about the advent of

"

the larger latitude.

"

Where does it do that ?

"

asked Mr. Morrow,

26 THE DEATH OF THE LION
who had picked up the second volume and was
insincerely thumbing it.

"Everywhere in the whole treatment of his

case. Extract the opinion, disengage the answer
those are the real acts of homage."
Mr. Morrow, after a minute, tossed the book
away. "Ah,
but you mustn t take me for a
reviewer."
"

Heaven forbid I should take you for anything

so dreadful ! You came down to perform a little
act of sympathy, and so, I may confide to you,
did I. Let us perform our little act together.
These pages overflow with the testimony we want :

let us read them and taste them and interpret them.

You will of course have perceived for yourself that
one scarcely does read Neil Paraday till one reads
him aloud he gives out to the ear an extraordinary
;

quality, and it s only when you expose it confidently

you really get near his style. Take
to that test that

up your book again and let me listen, while you

pay it out, to that wonderful fifteenth chapter. If
you feel that you can t do it justice, compose
yourself to attention while I produce for you I

think I can ! this scarcely less admirable ninth."

Mr. Morrow gave me a straight glance which

was as hard as a blow between the eyes ; he had
turned rather red, and a question had formed itself
in his mind which reached my sense as distinctly
as if he had uttered it: "What sort of a damned
fool areyou ? Then he got up, gathering together
"

his hat and gloves, buttoning his coat, projecting

 THE DEATH OF THE LION 27

hungrily all over the place the big transparency of

his mask. It seemed to flare over Fleet Street and
somehow made the actual spot distressingly humble :
there was so little for it to feed on unless he counted
the blisters of our stucco or saw his way to do
something with the roses. Even the poor roses
were common kinds. Presently his eyes fell upon
the manuscript from which Paraday had been read

ing to me and which still lay on the bench. As

my own followed them I saw that it looked
promising, looked pregnant, as if it gently throbbed
with the life the reader had given it. Mr. Morrow
indulged in a nod toward it and a vague thrust
of his umbrella. What s that ? "
"

"

Oh, it s a plan a secret."

"

A secret !
"

There was an instant s silence,

and then Mr. Morrow made another movement.
I may have been mistaken, but it affected me as

the translated impulse of the desire to lay hands

on the manuscript, and this led me to indulge in
a quick anticipatory grab which may very well
have seemed ungraceful, or even impertinent, and
which at any rate left Mr. Faraday s two admirers
very erect, glaring at each other while one of them
held a bundle
of papers well behind him. An
instant later Mr. Morrow quitted me abruptly, as
if he had really carried something off with him.
To reassure myself, watching his broad back recede,
I only grasped my manuscript the tighter. He
went to the back-door of the house, the one he
had come out from, but on trying the handle he
28 THE DEATH OF THE LION
appeared to find it So he passed round
fastened.
into the front garden, and by listening intently
enough I could presently hear the outer gate close
behind him with a bang. I thought again of the

thirty-seven influential journals and wondered what

would be his revenge. I hasten to add that he
was magnanimous: which was just the most
dreadful thing he could have been. The Taller
published a charming, chatty, familiar account of
Mr. Faraday s Home-life," and on the wings of
"

the thirty-seven influential journals it went, to use

Mr. Morrow s own expression, right round the
globe.
 VI

A WEEK later, early in May, my glorified friend came

up to town, where, may it be veraciously recorded,
he was the king of the beasts of the year. No
advancement was ever more rapid, no exaltation
more complete, no bewilderment more teachable.
His book sold but moderately, though the article in
The Empire had done unwonted wonders for it but ;

he circulated in person in a manner that the libraries

might well have envied. His formula had been
found he was a "revelation." His momentary
terror had been real, just as mine had been the
overclouding of his passionate desire to be left to
finish his work. He was far from unsociable, but he
had the finest conception of being let alone that I
have ever met. For the time, however, he took
his profit where it seemed most to crowd upon him,

having in his pocket the portable sophistries about

the nature of the artist s task. Observation too was
a kind of work and experience a kind of success ;

London dinners were all material and London ladies

were No one has the faintest concep
fruitful toil. "

tion ofwhat I m trying he said to me, and not

for,"
"

many have read three pages that I ve written but ;

I must dine with them first they ll find out why

30 THE DEATH OF THE LION
when they ve time." It was rather rude justice,
perhaps ; but the fatigue had the merit of being a
new sort, and the phantasmagoric town was probably
after all less of a battlefield than the haunted study.
He once told me that he had had no personal life to

speak of since his fortieth year, but had had more

than was good for him before. London closed the
parenthesis and exhibited him in relations ; one of
the most inevitable of these being that in which he
found himself to Mrs. Weeks Wimbush, wife of the
boundless brewer and proprietress of the universal
menagerie. In this establishment, as everybody
knows, on occasions when the crush is great, the
animals rub shoulders freely with the spectators and
the lions sit down for whole evenings with the
lambs.
It had been ominously clear to me from the first

that in Neil Paraday this lady, who, as all the world

agreed, was tremendous fun, considered that she had

secured a prime attraction, a creature of almost
Nothing could exceed her enthu
heraldic oddity.
siasm over her capture, and nothing could exceed the
confused apprehensions it excited in me. I had an
instinctive fear of her which I tried without effect to
conceal from her victim, but which I let her perceive
with perfect impunity. Paraday heeded it, but she
never did, for her conscience was that of a romping
child. She was a blind, violent force, to which I

could attach no more idea of responsibility than to

the creaking of a sign in the wind. It was difficult

to say what she conduced to but to circulation. She

 THE DEATH OF THE LION 31

was constructed of steel and leather, and asked

all I

of her for our tractable friend was not to do him to

death. He had consented for a time to be of india-
rubber, but my thoughts were fixed on the day he
should resume his shape or at least get back into his
box. It was evidently all right, but I should be

glad when it was well over. I had a special fear

the impression was ineffaceable of the hour when,

after Mr. Morrow s departure, I had found him on
the sofa in his study. That pretext of indisposition
had not in the least been meant as a snub to the
envoy of The Tatler he had gone to lie down in
very truth. He had felt a pang of his old pain, the
result of the agitation wrought in him by this forcing

open of a new period. His old programme, his old

ideal even had to be changed. Say what one would,
success was a complication and recognition had to
be reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious illumina
tion of the missal in the convent cell were
things of
the gathered past. It didn t engender
despair, but
it at least required adjustment. Before I left him on
that occasion we had passed a bargain, my part of
which was that I should make it
my business to take
care of him. Let whoever would represent the
interest in his presence (I had a mystical
prevision
of Mrs. Weeks Wimbush) I should represent the
interest in his work in other words in his absence.
These two interests were in their essence opposed ;

and I doubt, as youth is fleeting, if I shall ever again

know the intensity of joy with which I felt that in so
good a cause I was willing to make myself odious.
32 THE DEATH OF THE LION
One day, in Sloane Street, I found myself ques
tioning Faraday s landlord, who had come to the
door in answer to my knock. Two vehicles, a
barouche and a smart hansom, were drawn up before
the house.
"

In the drawing-room, sir ? Mrs. Weeks Wim-

bush."

"

"And in the dining-room ?

"

A young lady, sir waiting : I think a

foreigner."

It was three o clock, and on days when Paraday

didn t lunch out he attached a value to these sub
jugated hours. On which days, however, didn t
the dear man lunch out ? Mrs. Wimbush, at such
a crisis, would have rushed round immediately
after her own repast. I went into the dining-
room first, postponing the pleasure of seeing
how, upstairs, the lady of the barouche would, on
my arrival, point the moral of my sweet solicitude.
No one took such an interest as herself in his
doing only what was good for him, and she was
always on the spot to see that he did it. She made
appointments with him to discuss the best means of
economising his time and protecting his privacy.
She further made his health her special business,
and had so much sympathy with my own zeal for
it that she was the author of pleasing fictions on
the subject of what my devotion had led me to give

up. gave up nothing (I don

I t count Mr. Pinhorn)
because I had nothing, and all had as yet achieved
I

was the menagerie. I had

to find myself also in
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 33

dashed in to save my friend, but I had only got

domesticated and wedged ; so that I could do
nothing for him but exchange with him over people s
heads looks of intense but futile intelligence
 VII

THE young lady in the dining-room had a brave face,

black hair, blue eyes, and in her lap a big volume.
I ve come for his autograph," she said when I had
"

explained to her that I was under bonds to see

people for him when he was occupied. I ve been

"

waiting half an hour, but I m prepared to wait all

day."
I don t know whether it was this that told

me she was American, for the propensity to wait all

day is not in general characteristic of her race. I

was enlightened probably not so much by the spirit

of the utterance as by some quality of its sound.
At any rate I saw she had an individual patience
and a lovely frock, together with an expression that
played among her pretty features like a breeze

among flowers. Putting her book upon the table,

she showed me a massive album, showily bound and
fullof autographs of price. The collection of faded

notes, of still more faded of quotations,

"

thoughts,"

platitudes, signatures, represented a formidable pur

pose.
"

Most people apply to Mr. Paraday by letter, you

know," I said.
"

Yes, but he doesn t answer. I ve written three

times."
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 35

sort of letter
"

Very true,"
I reflected; "the
you
mean goes straight into the fire."

"

How
do you know the sort I mean ? My
"

interlocutress had blushed and smiled, and in a

moment she added I don t believe he gets many :
"

like them !
"

"

I m
sure they re beautiful, but he burns with
out reading." I didn t add that I had told him he

ought to.
"

Isn t he then in danger of burning things of

"

importance ?
"

He would be, if distinguished men hadn t an

infallible nose for nonsense."

She looked a moment her face was sweet at me

and gay. you burn without reading, too?"
"Do

she asked in answer to which I assured her that if

;

she would trust me with her repository I would see

that Mr. Paraday should write his name in it.

She considered a little. That s very well, but it "

wouldn t make me see him."

Do you want very much to see him ?
"

It
"

seemed ungracious to catechise so charming a

creature, but somehow I had never yet taken my
duty to the great author so seriously.
Enough to have come from America for the
"

purpose."

I stared. "All alone?"

"

I don see that that s exactly your business ;

t

but if it will make me more appealing I ll confess

that I m
quite by myself. I haa to come alone or
not come at all."
36 THE DEATH OF THE LION
She was interesting I could imagine that she
;

had lost parents, natural protectors could conceive

even that she had inherited money. I was in a
phase of my own fortune when keeping hansoms at
doors seemed to me pure swagger. As a trick of
this bold and sensitive girl, however, it became
romantic a part of the general romance of her
freedom, her errand, her innocence. The confidence
of young Americans was notorious, and I speedily
arrived at a conviction that no impulse could have
been more generous than the impulse that had
operated here. I foresaw at that moment that it

would make her my peculiar charge, just as circum

stances had made Neil Paraday. She would be
another person to look after, and one s honour would
be concerned in guiding her straight. These things
became clearer to me later ;
at the instant I had
scepticism enough observe to her, as I turned the
to

pages of her volume, that her net had, all the same,
caught many a big fish. She appeared to have had
fruitful access to the great ones of the earth ;
there
were people moreover whose signatures she had
presumably secured without a personal interview.
She couldn t have worried George Washington and
Friedrich Schiller and Hannah More. She met this

argument, my
to surprise, by throwing up the album
without a pang. It wasn t even her own ;
she was
responsible for none of its treasures.
belonged It

to a girl-friend in America, a young lady in a

western city. This young lady had insisted on her
bringing it, to pick up more autographs she thought :
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 37

they might like to see, in Europe, in what company

they would be. The "girl-friend," the western
city, the immortal names, the curious errand, the

idyllic faith, all made a story as strange to me, and

as beguiling, as some tale in the Arabian Nights.
Thus it was that my informant had encumbered
herself with the ponderous tome ;
but she hastened
to assure me that this was the first time she had
brought it out. For her Mr. Paraday it had
visit to

simply been a pretext. She didn t really care a

straw that he should write his name ;
what she did
want was to look straight into his face.
I demurred a little. And why do you require to "

do that ?
"

Because I just love him

"

Before I could !
"

recover from the agitating effect of this crystal ring

my companion had continued : Hasn t there "

ever been any face that you ve wanted to look

"

into ?
How could I tell her so soon how much I appre
ciated the opportunity of looking into hers ? I could

only assent in general to the proposition that there

were certainly for every one such hankerings, and
even such faces ;
and I felt that the crisis demanded
all my lucidity, all my wisdom. "

Oh, yes, I m a
student of physiognomy. Do you mean," I pursued,
that you ve a passion for Mr. Faraday s books ?
" "

They ve been everything to me and a little more

"

beside I know them by heart. They ve completely

taken hold of me. There s no author about whom I

feel as I do about Neil Paraday."

38 THE DEATH OF THE LION
"

Permit me to remark then," I presently rejoined,

you re one of the
"

that right sort."

"

One of the enthusiasts ? Of course I am !

"

"

Oh, there are enthusiasts who are quite of the

wrong. I mean you re one of those to whom an
appeal can be made."

"An
appeal?" Her face lighted as if with the
chance of some great sacrifice.
If she was ready for one it was only waiting for

her, and in a moment I mentioned it. Give up "

this crude purpose of seeing him. Go away without

it. That will be far better."

She looked mystified ;

then she turned visibly
Why, hasn t he any charm
" "

pale. personal ?
The girl was terrible and laughable in her bright
directness.

Ah, that dreadful word

l
ex
"
"

I personal !

claimed ;
and you women
"

we re dying
bring of it,

it out with murderous effect. When you encounter

a genius as fine as this idol of ours, let him off the
dreary duty of being a personality as well. Know
him only by what s best in him, and spare him for
the same sweet sake."

My young lady continued to look at me in con

fusion and mistrust, and the result of her reflection on
what I had just said was to make her suddenly break
Look here, sir what matter with him ?
"

out :
"
s the
"

The matter with him is that, if he doesn t look

out, people will eat a great hole in his life."

She considered a moment. He hasn "

t
any dis
"

figurement ?
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 39
"

speak of
"

Nothing to !

"

Do you mean that social engagements interfere

"

with his occupations ?

"That but
feebly expresses it."

"

So that he can t give himself up to his beautiful

"

imagination ?
He s badgered, bothered, overwhelmed, on the
"

pretext of being applauded. People expect him to

give them his time, his golden time, who wouldn t
themselves give five shillings for one of his books."
Five ? I d give five thousand
"
"

Give your sympathy give your forbearance.

"

Two-thirds of those who approach him only do it

to advertise themselves."
"

Why, it s too bad !

"

the girl exclaimed with

the face of an angel. the first time I was ever
"

It s

called crude she laughed.

"

I followed up my
advantage. "There s a lady

with him now who s a terrible complication, and

who yet hasn t read, I am sure, ten pages that he
ever wrote."

My visitor s wide eyes grew tenderer. "Then

how does she talk ?

"

"Without ceasing. I only mention her as a

single case. Do you want to know how to show a

superlative consideration ? Simply avoid him."

"

Avoid him ?
"

she softly wailed.

"

Don t
force him to have to take account of you ;

admire him in silence, cultivate him at a distance

and secretly appropriate his message. Do you
want to know," I continued, warming to my idea,
40 THE DEATH OF THE LION
how to perform an act of homage really sublime ?
" "

Then as she hung on my words Succeed in never :

"

seeing him at all

"

Never at all ? she pathetically gasped.

" "

The more you get into his writings the less

l(

you ll want to ; and you ll be immensely sustained

by the thought of the good you re doing him."
She looked at me without resentment or spite,
and at the truth I had put before her with candour,
credulity, pity. I was afterwards happy to remember
that she must have recognised in my face the liveli
ness of my interest in herself. I think I see what
"

you mean."

Oh, I express it badly ; but I should be delighted

"

if you would let me come to see you to explain it

better."

She made no response

to this, and her thoughtful

eyes on the big album, on which she presently

fell

laid her hands as if to take it away. I did use to

"

say out West that they might write a little less for

autographs (to all the great poets, you know) and

study the thoughts and style a little more."
What do they care for the thoughts and style ?
"

They didn t even understand you. I m not sure,"

I

added, that
"

I do myself, and
you by I daresay that
no means make me She had got up to go, out."

and though I wanted her to succeed in not seeing

Neil Paraday I wanted her also, inconsequently, to
remain in the house. I was at any rate far from
desiring to hustle her off. As Mrs. Weeks Wimbush,
upstairs, was still saving our friend in her own way,
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 41

I asked my young lady to let me briefly relate, in

illustration of my point, the little incident of my
having gone down into the country for a profane
purpose and been converted on the spot to holiness.
Sinking again into her chair to listen, she showed a
deep interest in the anecdote.
thinking it Then
over gravely, she exclaimed with her odd intona
tion :

Yes, but you do see him I had to admit that

" "

this was the case ; and I was not so prepared with

an effective attenuation as I could have wished.
She eased the however, by the charm
situation off,

ing quaintness with which she finally said

"

Well, :

I wouldn t want him to be lonely This time she "

rose in earnest, but I persuaded her to let me keep

the album to show to Mr. Paraday. I assured her

I would bring itback to her myself. Well, you ll

"

find my address somewhere in it, on a paper she !

"

sighed resignedly, at the door.

 VIII

I BLUSH to confess it, but I invited Mr.

Paraday that
very day to transcribe into the album one of his
most characteristic passages. I told him how I had
got rid of the strange girlwho had brought it her
ominous name was Miss Hurter, and she lived at an
hotel ; quite agreeing with him moreover as to the
wisdom of getting rid with equal promptitude of the
book itself. This was why I carried it to Albemarle
Street no later than on the morrow. I failed to find
her at home, but she wrote to me and I went again :

she wanted so much to hear more about Neil Para-

day. I returned repeatedly, I may briefly declare, to
supply her with this information. She had been
immensely taken, the more she thought of it, with
that idea of mine about the act of homage : it had
ended by tilling her with a generous rapture. She
positively desired to do something sublime for him,
though indeed I could see that, as this particular
flight was she appreciated the fact that my
difficult,
visits kept her up. I had it on my conscience to

keep her up ; I neglected nothing that would con

tribute to it,
and her conception of our cherished
author s independence became ai last as fine as his
own conception. Read him, read him," I con-
"
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 43

stantly repeated while, seeking him in his works,

;

she represented herself as convinced that, according

to my assurance, this was the system that had, as
she expressed it, weaned her. We
read him to
gether when I could find time, and the generous
creature s sacrifice was fed by our conversation.
There were twenty selfish women, about whom I

told her, who stirred her with a beautiful rage.

Immediately after my first visit her sister, Mrs.
Milsom, came over from Paris, and the two ladies
began to present, as they called it, their letters. I
thanked our stars that none had been presented to
Mr. Paraday. They received invitations and dined
out, and some of these occasions enabled Fanny
Hurter to perform, for consistency s sake, touching
feats of submission. Nothing indeed would now
have induced her even to look at the object of her
admiration. Once, hearing his name announced at
a party, she instantly left the room by another door
and then straightway quitted the house. At another
time,when I was at the opera with them (Mrs.
Milsom had invited me to their box) I attempted to
point Mr. Paraday out to her in the stalls. On this
she asked her sister to change places with her, and
while that lady devoured the great man through a
powerful glass, presented, all the rest of the evening,
her inspired back to the house. To torment her
tenderly pressed the glass upon her, telling her
I

how wonderfully near it brought our friend s hand

some head. By way of answer she simply looked
at me in charged silence, letting me see that tears
44 THE DEATH OF THE LION
had gathered in her eyes. These tears, I may
remark, produced an effect on me of which the end
is not yet. There was a moment when I felt it my
duty to mention them to Neil Paraday ; but I was
deterred by the reflection that there were questions
more relevant to his happiness.
These questions indeed, by the end of the season,
were reduced to a single one the question of re
constituting, so far as might be possible, the con
ditions under which he had produced his best work.
Such conditions could never all come back, for there
was a new one that took up too much place ; but
some perhaps were not beyond recall. I wanted
above all things to see him sit down to the subject
of which, on my making his acquaintance, he had
read me that admirable sketch. Something told me
there was nosecurity but in his doing so before the
new factor, as we used to say at Mr. Pinhorn s,
should render the problem incalculable. It only

half reassured me that the sketch itself was so

copious and so eloquent that even at the worst there
would be the making of a small but complete book,
a tiny volume which, for the faithful, might well
become an object of adoration. There would even
not be wanting critics to declare, I foresaw, that the
plan was a thing to be more thankful for than the
structure to have been reared on it.
My impatience
for the structure, none the grew and grew with
less,
the interruptions. He had, on coming up to town,
begun to sit for his portrait to a young painter, Mr.
Rumble, whose little game, as we also used to say
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 45

at Mr. Pinhorn s, was to be the first to perch on the

shoulders of renown. Mr. Rumble s studio was a
circus in which the man of the hour, and still more
the woman, leaped through the hoops of his showy
frames almost as electrically as they burst into tele

grams and specials." He pranced into the exhibi

"

tions on their back ; he was the reporter on canvas,

the Vandyke up to date, and there was one roaring

year in which Mrs. Bounder and Miss Braby, Guy

Walsingham and Dora Forbes proclaimed in chorus
from the same pictured walls that no one had yet
got ahead of him.
Paraday had been promptly caught and saddled,
accepting with characteristic good-humour his con
fidential hint that to figure in his show was not so
much a consequence as a cause of immortality.
From Mrs. Wimbush to the last representative " "

who called to ascertain his twelve favourite dishes,

it was the same ingenuous assumption that he would

rejoice in the repercussion. There were moments

when I fancied I might have had more patience with
them if they had not been so fatally benevolent. I

hated, at all events, Mr. Rumble s picture, and had

my bottled resentment ready when, later on, I found
my distracted friend had been stuffed by Mrs. Wim
bush into the mouth of another cannon. A young
artistin whom she was intensely interested, and
who had no connection with Mr. Rumble, was to
show how far he could make him go. Poor
Paraday, in return, was naturally to write something
somewhere about the young artist. She played her
46 THE DEATH OF THE LION
victims against each other with admirable ingenuity,
and her establishment was a huge machine in which
the tiniest and the biggest wheels went round to the
same treadle. I had a scene with her in which I
tried to express that the function of such a man was
to exercise his genius not to serve as a hoarding
for posters.
pictorial The people I was perhaps
angriest with were the editors of magazines who
had introduced what they called new features, so
aware were they that the newest feature of all would
be to make him grind their axes by contributing his
views on vital topics and taking part in the periodi
cal prattle about the future of fiction. I made sure
that before I should have done with him there
would scarcely be a current form of words left me
to be sick of; but meanwhile I could make surer
still of my animosity to bustling ladies for whom he

drew the water that irrigated their social flower

beds.
I had a battle with Mrs. Wimbush over the artist

she protected, and another over the question of a

certain week, at the end of July, that Mr. Paraday

appeared to have contracted to spend with her in the

country. I protested against this visit ;
I intimated
that he was too unwell for hospitality without a
nuance, for caresses without imagination ; I begged
he might rather take the time in some restorative
way. A sultry air of promises, of ponderous parties,
hung over his August, and he would greatly profit

by the interval of rest. He had not told me he was

ill again that he had had a warning ;
but I had
 THE DEATH OP THE LION 47

not needed this, and I found his reticence his worst

symptom. thing he said to me was that
The only
he believed a comfortable attack of something or
other would set him up it would put out of the
:

question everything but the exemptions he prized.

I am afraid I shall have presented him as a martyr

in a very small cause if I fail to explain that he

surrendered himself much more liberally than I sur
rendered him. He filled his lungs, for the most
part, with the comedy of his queer fate : the tragedy
was in the spectacles through which I chose to look.
He was conscious of inconvenience, and above all of
a great renouncement ; but how could he have heard
a mere dirge in the bells of his accession ? The
sagacity and the jealousy were mine, and his the
impressions and the anecdotes. Of course, as re
gards Mrs. Wimbush, I was worsted in my en
counters, for was not the state of his health the
very reason for his coming to her at Prestidge ?
Wasn t it precisely at Prestidge that he was to be
coddled, and wasn t the dear Princess coming to
help her to coddle him ? The dear Princess, now
on a visit to England, was of a famous foreign house,
and, in her gilded cage, with her retinue of keepers
and feeders, was the most expensive specimen in
the good lady s collection. I don t think her august

presence had had to do with Faraday s consenting

to go, but it is not impossible that he had operated
as a bait to the illustrious stranger. The party had
been made up for him, Mrs. Wimbush averred, and
every one was counting on it, the dear Princess
48 THE DEATH OF THE LION
most of all. If he was well enough he was to
read them something absolutely fresh, and it was on
that particular prospect the Princess had set her
heart. She was so fond of genius, in any walk of
life, and she was
so used to it, and understood it
so well ; she was the greatest of Mr. Faraday s ad
mirers, she devoured everything he wrote. And
then he read like an angel. Mrs. Wimbush reminded
me that he had again and again given her, Mrs.
Wimbush, the privilege of listening to him.
I looked at her a moment.
"

What has he read

"

to you ? I
crudely inquired.
For a moment too she met my eyes, and for the
fraction of a moment she hesitated and coloured.
"

Oh, all sorts of things

"

I wondered whether this were an imperfect recol

lection or only a perfect fib, and she quite understood

my unuttered comment on her perception of such

things. But if she could forget Neil Faraday s

beauties she could of course forget my rudeness, and

three days later she invited me, by telegraph, to join
the party at Prestidge. This time she might indeed
have had a story about what I had given up to be
near the master. I addressed from that fine resi
dence several communications to a young lady in
London, a young lady whom, I confess, I quitted
with reluctance and whom the reminder of what she
herself could give up was required to make me quit
at adds to the gratitude I owe her on other
all. It

grounds that she kindly allows me to transcribe from

my letters a few of the passages in which that hateful

sojourn is candidly commemorated.

 IX

I ought to enjoy the joke of what s

SUPPOSE
"

going on here,"
I wrote, but somehow it doesn t
"

amuse me. Pessimism on the contrary possesses

me and cynicism solicits. I positively feel my own

flesh sore from the brass nails in Neil Faraday s

social harness. The house is full of people who like
him, as they mention, awfully, and with whom his
talent for talking nonsense has prodigious success.
I delight in his nonsense myself; why is it therefore
that I grudge these happy folk their artless satisfac
tion ? Mystery of the human heart abyss of the
critical spirit! Mrs. Wimbush thinks she can
answer that question, and as my want of gaiety has
at last worn out her patience she has given me a
glimpse of her shrewd guess. I am made restless

by the selfishness of the insincere friend I want to

monopolise Paraday in order that he may push me
on. To be intimate with him is a feather in my cap ;
it gives me an importance that I couldn t naturally

pretend to, and I seek to deprive him of social refresh

ment because I fear that meeting more disinterested
people may enlighten him as to my real motive. All
the disinterested people here are
particular his
admirers and have been carefully selected as such.
50 THE DEATH OF THE LION
There is supposed to be a copy of his last book in

the house, and in the hall I come upon ladies, in

attitudes, bending gracefully over the first volume.

I discreetly avert my eyes, and when I next look
round the precarious joy has been superseded by the
book of life. There is a sociable circle or a con
fidential couple, and the relinquished volume lies

open on its face, as if it had been dropped under

extreme coercion. Somebody else presently finds it
and transfers it, with its air of momentary desolation,
to another piece of furniture. Every one is asking
every one about it all day, and every one is telling
I m
every one where they put it last. sure it s
rather smudgy about the twentieth page. I have a

strong impression too that the second volume is lost

has been packed in the bag of some departing
guest and yet everybody has the impression that
;

somebody else has read to the end. You see there

fore that the beautiful book plays a great part in our
conversation. Why should I take the occasion of
such distinguished honours to say that I begin to
see deeper into Gustave Flaubert s doleful refrain
about the hatred of literature ? I refer you again to
the perverse constitution of man.
"

The
Princess is a massive lady with the organi
sation of an athlete and the confusion of tongues
of a valet de place. She contrives to commit herself
extraordinarily little in a great many languages, and
is entertained and conversed with in detachments

and relays, like an institution which goes on from

generation to generation or a big building contracted
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 51

for under a forfeit. She can t have a personal taste

any more than, when her husband succeeds, she can
have a personal crown, and her opinion on any
matter is rusty and heavy and plain made, in the
night of ages, to last and be transmitted. I feel as

if I ought to pay some one a fee for my glimpse of it.

She has been told everything in the world and has

never perceived anything, and the echoes of her
education respond awfully to the rash footfall I

mean the casual remark in the cold Valhalla of her

memory. Mrs. Wimbush delights in her wit and

says there is nothing so charming as to hear Mr.
Paraday draw it out. He is perpetually detailed for
this job, and he tells me it has a peculiarly exhaust
ing effect. Every one is beginning at the end of
two days to sidle obsequiously away from her, and
Mrs. Wimbush pushes him again and again into the
breach. None of the uses I have yet seen him put to
irritate me He looks very fagged,
quite so much.
and has at last confessed to me that his condition
makes him uneasy has even promised me that he
willgo straight home instead of returning to his final

engagements in town. Last night I had some talk

with him about going to-day, cutting his visit short ;
so sure am I that he will be better as soon as he is
shut up in his lighthouse. He told me that this is
what he would like to do ; reminding me, however, that
the first lesson of his greatness has been precisely
that he can t do what he likes. Mrs. Wimbush
would never forgive him if he should leave her before
the Princess has received the last hand. When I say
52 THE DEATH OF THE LION
that a violent rupture with our hostess would be the
best thing in the world for him he gives me to under
stand that if his reason assents to the proposition his
courage hangs wofully back. He makes no secret
of being mortally afraid of her, and when I ask what
harm she can do him that she hasn t already done he
simply repeats : I m afraid, I m afraid ! Don t
inquire too closely, he said last night ; only believe
that I feel a sort of terror. It s strange, when she s

so kind ! At any rate, I would as soon overturn

that piece of priceless Sevres as tell her that I must

go before my date. It sounds dreadfully weak, but

he has some reason, and he pays for his imagination,

which puts him (I should hate it) in the place of
others and makes him feel, even against himself,
their feelings, their appetites, their motives. It s

indeed inveterately against himself that he makes

his imagination act. What a pity he has such a lot
of it He s too beastly intelligent. Besides, the
!

famous reading is still to come off, and it has been

postponed a day, to allow Guy Walsingham to arrive.
It appears that this eminent lady is staying at a house

a few miles off, which means of course that Mrs.

Wimbush has forcibly annexed her. She s to come
over in a day or two Mrs. Wimbush wants her to
hear Mr. Paraday.
"

To-day s wet and cold, and several of the com

pany, at the invitation of the Duke, have driven
over to luncheon at Bigwood. I saw poor Paraday
wedge himself, by command, into the little supple
mentary seat of a brougham in which the Princess
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 53

and our hostess were already ensconced. If the

front glass isn t open on his dear old back perhaps
he ll survive. Bigwood, I believe, is very grand and
I wish him
frigid, all marble and precedence, and
well out of the adventure. I can t tell you how much

more and more your attitude to him, in the midst of

all this, shines out by contrast. I never willingly

talk to these people about him, but see what a com

fort I find it to scribble to you I appreciate it
I it

keeps me warm there ;

are no fires in the house.
Mrs. Wimbush goes by the calendar, the tempera
ture goesby the weather, the weather goes by God
knows what, and the Princess is easily heated. I

have nothing but my acrimony to warm me, and

have been out under an umbrella to restore my cir
culation. Coming in an hour ago, I found Lady
Augusta Minch rummaging about the hall. When I
asked her what she was looking for she said she had
mislaid something that Mr. Paraday had lent her. I

ascertained in amoment that the article in question

isa manuscript, and I have a foreboding that it s the
noble morsel he read me six weeks ago. When I
expressed my surprise that he should have bandied
about anything so precious (I happen to know it s
his only copy in the most beautiful hand in all the

world) Lady Augusta confessed to me that she had

not had it from himself, but from Mrs. Wimbush,
who had wished to give her a glimpse of it as a salve
for her not being able to stay and hear it read.
"

Is that the piece he s to read, I asked,

*
when
"

Guy Walsingham arrives ?

54 THE DEATH OF THE LION
"

It s not for Guy Walsingham they re waiting

now, it s for Dora Forbes, Lady Augusta said.
1
She s coming, I believe, early to-morrow. Mean
while Mrs. Wimbush has found out about him, and
is actively wiring to him. She says he also must
hear him/"

"

You bewilder me a little, Ireplied ; in the age

we live in one gets lost among the genders and the

pronouns. The clear thing is that Mrs. Wimbush

doesn t guard such a treasure as jealously as she
might.
"

Poor dear, she has the Princess to guard ! Mr.

Paraday lent her the manuscript to look over.
Did she speak as if it were the morning paper ?
"

Lady Augusta stared my irony was lost upon

"

her. She didn t have time, so she gave me a chance

first ;
because unfortunately I go to-morrow to Big-
wood.
"

And your chance has only proved a chance to

lose it?
"

I haven t lost it. I remember now it was

very stupid of me to have forgotten. I told my
maid to give it to Lord Dorimont or at least to his
man.
"

And Lord Dorimont went away directly after

luncheon.
"

Of course he gave it back to my maid or else

his man did, said Lady Augusta. I daresay it s all

right.
"The conscience of these people is like a summer
sea. They haven t time to look over a priceless
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 55

composition they ve only time to kick it about the

;

house. I suggested that the man/ fired with a

noble emulation, had perhaps kept the work for his
own perusal ; and her ladyship wanted to know
whether, if the thing didn t turn up again in time
for the session appointed by our hostess, the author
wouldn have something else to read that would do
t

just as well. Their questions are too delightful I !

declared to Lady Augusta briefly that nothing in the

world can ever do so well as the thing that does
best and at this she lookd a little confused and
;

scared. But I added that if the manuscript had gone

astray our little circle would have the less of an

effort of attention to make. The piece in question

was very long it would keep them three hours.
Three hours
"

Oh, the Princess will get up

! !

said Lady Augusta.

thought she was Mr.
"

1 Faraday s greatest
admirer.
I daresay she is she s so awfully clever. But
"

what s the use of being a Princess

If you can t dissemble your love ?
"

I asked, as

Lady Augusta was vague. She said, at any rate,

that she would question her maid and I am hoping ;

that when I go down to dinner I shall find the manu

script has been recovered."
"!T has not been recovered," I wrote early the
next day, and I am moreover much troubled about
"

our friend. He came back from Bigwood with a

chill and, being allowed to have a fire in his room,
lay down awhile before dinner. I tried to send him

to bed, and indeed thought I had put him in the way

of ;
it I had gone to dress Mrs. Wimbush
but after
came up to see him, with the inevitable result that
when I returned I found him under arms and flushed
and feverish, though decorated with the rare flower
she had brought him for his button-hole. He came
down to dinner, but Lady Augusta Minch was
very
shy of him. To-day he s in great pain, and the
advent of ces dames I mean of Guy Walsingham
and Dora Forbes doesn t at all console
It does me.
Mrs. Wimbush
however, for she has consented to
his remaining in bed, so that he may be all right to
morrow for the listening circle. Guy Walsingham is

already on the scene, and the doctor, for Paraday,

also arrived early. I haven t yet seen the author of

Obsessions, but of course I ve had a moment by

myself with the doctor. I tried to get him to say
that our invalid must go straight home I mean

to-morrow or next day ; but he quite refuses to talk

 THE DEATH OF THE LION 57

about the future. Absolute quiet and warmth and

the regular administration of an important remedy
are the points he mainly insists on. He returns this
afternoon, and I m to
go back to see the patient at
one o clock, when he next takes his medicine. It

consoles me a little that he certainly won be able to

t

read an exertion he was already more than unfit

for. Lady Augusta went off after breakfast, assuring
me that her first care would be to follow up the lost

manuscript. I can see she thinks me a shocking

busybody and doesn t understand my alarm, but she
will do what she can, for she s a good-natured
woman. So are they all honourable men. That
was precisely what made her give the thing to Lord
Dorimont and made Lord Dorimont bag it. What
use he has for it God only knows. I have the worst

forebodings, but somehow I m

strangely without
passion desperately calm. As I consider the
unconscious, the well-meaning ravages of our ap
preciative circle I bow my head in submission to
some great natural, some universal accident ;
I m
rendered almost indifferent, in fact quite gay (ha-ha !)

by the sense of immitigable fate. Lady Augusta

promises me to trace the precious object and let me
have it, through the post, by the time Paraday is
well enough to play his part with it. The last
evidence is that her maid did give it to his lordship s
valet. One would think it was some thrilling
number of The Family Budget. Mrs.Wimbush, who
is aware of the accident, is much less agitated
by it than she would doubtless be were she
58 THE DEATH OF THE LION
not for the hour engrossed with
inevitably Guy
Walsingham."
Later in the day I informed my correspondent,
for whom indeed I kept a sort of diary of the situa
I had made the
that
tion, acquaintance of this
celebrity and that she was a pretty little girl who
wore her hair in what used to be called a crop.
She looked so juvenile and so innocent that if, as
Mr. Morrow had announced, she was resigned to
the larger latitude, her superiority to prejudice must
have come to her early. I spent most of the day
hovering about Neil Faraday s room, but it was
communicated to me from below that Guy Walsing
ham, at Prestidge, was a success. Towards evening
I became conscious somehow that her
superiority
was contagious, and by the time the company
separated for the night I was sure that the larger
had been generally accepted. I thought of
latitude
Dora Forbes and felt that he had no time to lose.
Before dinner I received a telegram from Lady
Augusta Minch. "Lord Dorimont thinks he must
have left bundle in train inquire." How could I

inquire if I was to take the word as command ? I

was too worried and now too alarmed about Neil

Faraday. The doctor came back, and it was an
immense satisfaction to me to feel that he was wise
and interested. He was proud of being called to so
distinguished a patient, but he admitted to me that
night that my friend was gravely ill. It was really

a relapse, a recrudescence of his old malady. There

could be no question of moving him we must at :
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 59

any rate see first, on the what turn his condi

spot,
tion would take. Meanwhile, on the morrow, he
was to have a nurse. On the morrow the dear man
was easier, and my spirits rose to such cheerfulness
that I could over Lady Augusta s
almost laugh
second telegram Lord Dorimont s servant been to
:
"

station nothing found. Push inquiries." I did

laugh, I am sure, as I remembered this to be the
mystic scroll I had scarcely allowed poor Mr. Morrow

to point his umbrella at. Fool that I had been :

the thirty-seven influential journals wouldn t have

destroyed it, they would only have printed it. Of

course I said nothing to Paraday.
When the nurse arrived she turned me out of the
room, on which I went downstairs. I should pre

mise that at breakfast the news that our brilliant

friend was doing well excited universal complacency,
and the Princess graciously remarked that he was
only to be commiserated for missing the society of
Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush, whose social gift
never shone brighter than in the dry decorum with
which she accepted this fizzle in her fireworks,
mentioned to me that Guy Walsingham had made a
very favourable impression on her Imperial Highness.
Indeed I think every one did so, and that, like the
money-market or the national honour, her Imperial
Highness was constitutionally sensitive. There was
a certain gladness, a perceptible bustle in the air,

however, which I thought slightly anomalous in a

house where a great author lay critically ill. Le "

roy est mort vive le roy :

"

1 was reminded that

6o THE DEATH OF THE LION
another great author had already stepped into his
shoes. When I came down again after the nurse
had taken possession I found a strange gentleman
hanging about the hall and pacing to and fro by the
closed door of the drawing-room. This personage
was florid and bald ; he had a big red moustache and
wore showy knickerbockers characteristics all that
fitted into my conception of the identity of Dora
Forbes. In a moment I saw what had happened :

the author of The Other Way Round had just

" "

alighted at the portals of Prestidge, but had suffered a

scruple to restrain him from penetrating further. I

recognised his scruple when, pausing to listen at his

gesture of caution, I heard a shrill voice lifted in a
sort of rhythmic, uncanny chant. The famous reading
had begun, only it was the author of Obsessions " "

who now furnished the sacrifice. The new visitor

whispered to me that he judged something was

going on that he oughtn t to interrupt.

Collop arrived last night," I smiled,

"Miss "and

the Princess has a thirst for the inedit"

Dora Forbes lifted his bushy brows. "Miss
Collop?"
"

Guy Walsingham, your distinguished confrere

"

or shall I say your formidable rival ?

"

Oh !
"

growled Dora Forbes. Then he added :

"
"

Shall I spoil it if I go in ?
"

I should think nothing could spoil it !

"

I am
biguously laughed.
Dora Forbes evidently felt the dilemma ;
he gave
an crook to his moustache. Shall
" "

irritated I go in ?
he presently asked.
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 61

We looked at each other hard a moment then ;

I expressed something bitter that was in me, ex

pressed it in an infernal Do After this
"

!
"

I got
out into the air, but not so fast as not to hear, when
the door of the drawing-room opened, the disconcerted

drop of Miss Collop s public manner she must have :

been in the midst of the larger latitude. Producing

with extreme rapidity, Guy Walsingham has just
published a work in which amiable people who are
not initiated have been pained to see the genius of a
sister-novelist held up to unmistakable ridicule ; so
fresh an exhibition does it seem to them of the
dreadful way men have always treated women.
Dora Forbes, it is true, at the present hour, is
immensely pushed by Mrs. Wimbush, and has sat
for his portrait to the young artists she protects,
sat for it not only in oils but in monumental ala
baster.
What happened at Prestidge later in the day is of
course contemporary history. If the interruption I
had whimsically sanctioned was almost a scandal,
what be said of that general dispersal of the
is to

company which, under the doctor s rule, began to

take place in the evening ? His rule was soothing
to behold, small comfort as was
to have at the end.
I

He decreed in the interest of his patient an abso

lutely soundless house and a consequent break-up of
the party. Little country practitioner as he was, he
packed off the Princess. She departed as
literally

promptly as if a revolution had broken out, and Guy

Walsingham emigrated with her. I was kindly
62 THE DEATH OF THE LION
permitted to remain, and this was not denied even to
Mrs. Wimbush. The privilege was withheld indeed
from Dora Forbes ;
so Mrs. Wimbush kept her
latest capture temporarily concealed. This was so
little, however, her usual way of dealing with her

eminent friends that a couple of days of it exhausted

her patience, and she went up to town with him in
great publicity. The sudden turn for the worse her
afflicted improvement, taken
guest had, after a brief
on the third night raised an obstacle to her seeing
him before her retreat a fortunate circumstance
;

doubtless, for she was fundamentally disappointed in

him. This was not the kind of performance for
which she had invited him to Prestidge, or invited
the Princess. Let me hasten to add that none of
the generous acts which have characterised her
patronage of intellectual and other merit have done
so much
for her reputation as her lending Neil

Paraday the most beautiful of her numerous homes

to die in. He took advantage to the utmost of the
singular favour. Day by day I saw him sink, and I
roamed alone about the empty terraces and gardens.
His wife never came near him, but I scarcely noticed
it as I paced there with rage in my heart I was too
:

full of another wrong. In the event of his death it

would fall to me perhaps to bring out in some charm
ing form, with notes, with the tenderest editorial
care, that precious heritage of his written project.
But where was that precious heritage, and were both
the author and the book to have been snatched from
us ? Lady Augusta wrote me that she had done all
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 63

she could and that poor Lord Dorimont, who had

reallybeen worried to death, was extremely sorry.
I couldn t have the matter out with Mrs. Wimbush,
for I didn twant to be taunted by her with desiring
to aggrandise myself by a public connection with
Mr. Faraday s sweepings. She had signified her
willingness to meet the expense of all advertising, as
indeed she was always ready to do. The last night
of the horrible series, the night before he died, I put

my ear closer to his pillow.

"That thing I read you that morning, you
know."

In your garden that dreadful day ?

"

Yes !
"

"Won t it do as it is?"
"

It would have been a glorious book."

"

It is a glorious book," Neil Paraday murmured.

"

Print it as it stands beautifully."

" "

Beautifully ! I passionately promised.

It may be imagined whether, now
that he is gone,
the promise seems to me less sacred. I am con

vinced that if such pages had appeared in his life

time the Abbey would hold him to-day. I have

kept the advertising in my own hands, but the

manuscript has not been recovered. It s impossible,
and at any rate intolerable, to suppose it can have
been wantonly destroyed. Perhaps some hazard
of a blind hand, some brutal ignorance has lighted
kitchen-fires with it. Every stupid and hideous
accident haunts my meditations. My undiscourage-
able search for the lost treasure would make a
long chapter. Fortunately I have a devoted asso-
64 THE DEATH OF THE LION
ciate in theperson of a young lady who has every
day a fresh indignation and a fresh idea, and who
maintains with intensity that the prize will still
turn up. Sometimes I believe her, but I have
quite ceased to believe myself. The only thing
go on seeking and hoping
for us, at all events, is to

together ; and we should be closely united by this

firm tie even were we not at present by another.
THE COXON FUND
"

THEY VE got him for life !

"

said to myself that

I

evening on my way back to the station ; but later,

alone in compartment (from Wimbledon to
the

Waterloo, before the glory of the District Railway)

I amended this declaration in the light of the sense

that my friends would probably after all not enjoy

a monopoly of Mr. Saltram. I won t pretend to

have taken his vast measure on that first occasion,

but I think I had achieved a glimpse of what the
privilege of his acquaintance might mean for many
persons in the way of charges accepted. He had
been a great experience, and it was this perhaps
that had put me into the frame of foreseeing how
we should all, sooner or later, have the honour of

dealing with him as a whole. Whatever impression

I then received of the amount of this total, I had a

fullenough vision of the patience of the Mulvilles.

He was staying with them all the winter Adelaide :

dropped it in a tone which drew the sting from the

temporary. These excellent people might indeed
have been content to give the circle of hospitality
a diameter of six months but if they didn t say
;

that he was staying for the summer as well it was

only because this was more than they ventured to

68 THE COXON FUND
hope. I remember that at dinner that evening he

wore slippers, new and predominantly purple, of

some queer carpet-stuff; but the Mulvilles were
stillin the stage of supposing that he might be
snatched from them by higher bidders. At a later
time they grew, poor dears, to fear no snatching ;
but theirs was a fidelity which needed no help from
competition to make them proud. Wonderful indeed
as, when all was said, you inevitably pronounced
Frank Saltram, it was not to be overlooked that
the Kent Mulvilles were in their way still more ex
traordinary as striking an instance as could easily
:

be encountered of the familiar truth that remarkable

men find remarkable conveniences.

They had sent for me from Wimbledon to come

out and dine, and there had been an implication in
Adelaide s note (judged by her notes alone she might
have been thought silly) that it was a case in which

something momentous was to be determined or done.

I had never known them not be in a about
"
"

state

somebody, and I daresay I tried to be droll on this

point in accepting their invitation. On finding my
self in the presence of their latest revelation I had
not at first felt irreverence droop and, thank heaven,
I have never been absolutely deprived of that alter
native in Mr. Saltram s company. I saw, however

(I hasten to declare it),

that compared to this speci
men their other phcenixes had been birds of incon
siderable feather, and I afterwards took credit to

myself for not having even in primal bewilderments

made a mistake about the essence of the man
 THE COXON FUND 69

He had an incomparable gift ;

I never was blind to
it it dazzles me at present. It dazzles me perhaps
even more in remembrance than in fact, for I m not
unaware that for a subject so magnificent the imagina
tion goes to inserting a jewel here and
some expense,
there or giving a twist to a plume. the art of How
portraiture would rejoice in this figure if the art of

portraiture had only the canvas Nature, in truth, had

!

largely rounded it, and if memory, hovering about it,

sometimes holds her breath, this is because the voice
that comes back was really golden.

Though the great man was an inmate and didn t

dress,he kept dinner on this occasion waiting, and the
firstwords he uttered on coming into the room were
a triumphant announcement to Mulville that he had
found out something. Not catching the allusion and
gaping doubtless a little at his face, I privately asked
Adelaide what he had found out. I shall never

forget the look she gave me as she replied :

"Everything!" She really believed it. At that

moment, at any rate, he had found out that the

mercy of the Mulvilles was infinite. He had previously
of course discovered, as I had myself for that matter,
that their dinners were soignes. Let me not indeed,
in saying this, neglect to declare that I shall falsify

my counterfeit if I seem to hint that there was in his

nature any ounce of calculation. took whatever He
came, but he never plotted forit, and no man who
was so much of an absorbent can ever have been
so little of a parasite. He had a system of the
universe, but he had no system of sponging that
70 THE COXON FUND
was quite hand-to-mouth. He had fine, gross, easy
senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite that
wrought confusion. If he had loved us for our
dinners we could have paid with our dinners, and
it would have been a great economy of finer matter.

I make free in these connections with the plural pos

sessive because if I was never able to do what the
Mulvilles did, and people with still bigger houses and
simpler charities, met,I first every demand
and last,
of reflection, of emotion particularly perhaps those
of gratitude and of resentment. No one, I think, paid
the tribute of giving him up so often, and if it s

rendering honour to borrow wisdom I have a right

to talk of my sacrifices. He yielded lessons as the
sea yields fish I lived for a while on this diet.
Sometimes it almost appeared to me that his
massive, monstrous failure if failure after all it
was had been intended for my private recreation.
He fairly pampered my curiosity ; but the history
of that experience would take me too far. This is
not the large canvas I just now spoke of, and I
would not have approached him with my present
hand had it been a question of all the features.
Frank Saltram s features, for artistic purposes, are
verily the anecdotes that are to be gathered. Their
name is legion, and this is only one, of which the
interest is that it concerns even more closely several
other persons. Such episodes, as one looks back,
are the little dramas that made up the innumerable
facets of the big drama which is yet to be re.

ported.
 II

IT is furthermore remarkable that though the two

stories are distinct my own, as it were, and this
other they equally began, in a manner, the first
night of my acquaintance with Frank Saltram, the
night I came back from Wimbledon so agitated with
a new sense of life that, in London, for thevery
thrill of it,
I could only walk home. Walking and
swinging my stick, I overtook, at Buckingham
Gate, George Gravener, and George Gravener s

story may be said to have begun with my making

him, as our paths lay together, come home with me
for a talk. I duly remember, let me parenthesise,

that it was still more that of another person, and

also that several years were to elapse before it
was to extend to a second chapter. I had much
to say to him, none the less, about my visit to
the Mulvilles, whom he more indifferently knew,
and I was at any rate so amusing that for long
afterwards he never encountered me without asking
for news of the old man of the sea. I hadn t said
Mr. Saltram was old, and it was to be seen that
he was of an age to outweather George Gravener.
I had at that time a lodging in Ebury Street, and
Gravener was staying at his brother s empty house
72 THE COXON FUND
in Eaton Square. At Cambridge, five years before,
even in our devastating set, his intellectual power
had seemed to me almost awful. Some one had
once asked me privately, with blanched cheeks,
what it was then that after all such a mind as that
left standing. "It leaves itself!" I could recollect
devoutly replying. I could smile at present at
this reminiscence, for even before we got to Ebury
Street I was struck with the fact that, save in the
sense of being well set
legs, George up on his
Gravener had actually ceased to tower. The uni
verse he laid low had somehow bloomed again
the usual eminences were visible. I wondered
whether he had lost his humour, or only, dreadful
thought, had never had any not even when I
had fancied him most Aristophanesque. What was
the need of appealing to laughter, however, I could
enviously inquire, where you might appeal so con
fidently to measurement ? Mr. Saltram s queer
figure, his thick nose and hanging lip, were fresh
to me : in the light of my old friend s fine cold

symmetry they presented mere success in amusing

as the refuge of conscious Already, at ugliness.
hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank and
parliamentary as if he were fifty and popular. In
my scrap of a residence (he had a worldling s eye
for its futile conveniencies, but never a comrade s
joke) I sounded Frank Saltram in his ears a ;

circumstance I mention in order to note that even

then I was surprised at his impatience of my

enlivenment. As he had never before heard of
 THE COXON FUND 73

the personage, it took indeed the form of impatience

of the preposterous Mulvilles, his relation to whom,
likemine, had had its origin in an early, a childish

intimacy with the young Adelaide, the fruit of

multiplied ties in the previous generation. When

she married Kent Mulville, who was older than
Gravener and I and much more amiable, I gained

a friend, but Gravener practically lost one. We

were affected in different ways by the form taken
by what he called their deplorable social action
the form (the term was also his) of nasty second-
rate gush. I may have held in my for interieur

that the good people at Wimbledon were beautiful

fools, but when he sniffed at them I couldn t help

taking the opposite line, for I already felt that

even should we happen to agree it would always
be for reasons that differed. It came home to me

that he was admirably British as, without so much

as a sociable sneer at
my bookbinder, he turned
away from the serried rows of my little French
library.
"

Of course I ve never seen the fellow, but it s

clear enough he s a humbug."
enough is just what it isn
(
"

Clear I replied t,"

.

if it only were
"

That ejaculation on my part must

!
"

have been the beginning of what was to be later a

long ache for final frivolous rest. Gravener was
profound enough to remark after a moment that in
the first place he couldn t be anything but a Dis

senter, and when I answered that the very note of

his fascination was his extraordinary speculative
74 THE COXON FUND
breadth, my friend retorted that there was no cad like
your cultivated cad and that I might depend upon
discovering (since I had had the levity not already

to have inquired) that my shining light proceeded, a

generation back, from a Methodist cheesemonger.
I confess I was struck with his insistence, and I

said, after reflection :

"

It may be I admit it may

be but why on
earth are you so sure ?
"

; asking
the question mainly to lay him the trap of saying
that it was because the poor man didn t dress for
dinner. He took an instant to circumvent my trap
and come blandly out the other side.
Because the Kent Mulvilles have invented him.
"

They ve an infallible hand for frauds. All their

geese are swans. They were born to be duped,
they like it, they cry for it, they don t know any

thing from anything, and they disgust one (luckily

perhaps !) with Christian charity." His vehemence
was doubtless an accident, but it might have been a
strange foreknowledge. I forget what protest I

it was at any rate

dropped ; something which led
him to go on after a moment I only ask one thing :
"

it s perfectly simple. Is a man, in a given case,

"

a real gentleman ?
"A real gentleman, my dear fellow that s so
soon said
"

"Not so soon when he isn t! If they ve got

hold of one this time he must be a great rascal
"

might feel injured," I answered,

"I I didn t "if

reflect that they don t rave about me"

"

Don t be too sure ! I ll

grant that he s a gentle-
 THE COXON FUND 75

man,"
Gravener presently added, "if
you ll admit
that he s a scamp."

I don t know which to admire most, your logic

"

or your benevolence."

My friend coloured at this, but he didn t change

the subject. Where did they pick him up ? " "

"

I think they were struck with something he had

published."

can fancy the dreary thing

" "

I !

believe they found out he had of

"

I all sorts
worries and difficulties."

of course, was not to be endured, and

"

That,
"

they jumped at the privilege of paying his debts !

I replied that I his debts, and I knew nothing about

reminded though the dear Mulvilles
my visitor that
were angels they were neither idiots nor million
aires. What they mainly aimed at was re-uniting
Mr. Saltram to his wife. I was expecting to hear
"

that he has basely abandoned her," Gravener went

on, at this, and I m too glad you don t disappoint
"

me."

I tried to recall exactly what Mrs. Mulville had

told me. "

He didn t leave her no. It s she who

has left him."

"Left him to us?" Gravener asked. "The

monster many thanks ! I decline to take him."

"

You ll hear more about him in spite of yourself.

I can t, no, I really can t resist the impression that

he s a big man." I was already learning to my

shame perhaps be it said just the tone that my old
friend least liked.
76 THE COXON FUND
"It s doubtless only a trifle,"
he returned, "but

you haven t happened to mention what his reputa

tion s to rest on."

Why, on what began by boring you with

"

I his
mind."
extraordinary
As exhibited in his writings ?
" "

Possibly in his writings, but certainly in his

"

talk,
which and away the richest I ever listened
is far to."

"

And what is it all about ? "

"

My dear fellow, don t ask me About every !

"

thing ! I pursued, reminding myself of poor

Adelaide. "About his ideas of things," I then more

charitably added. "You must have heard him to

know what I mean it s unlike anything that ever
was heard." I coloured, I admit, I overcharged a

little, for such a picture was an anticipation of

Saltram development and still more of my
s later

fuller acquaintance with him. However, I really

expressed, a little lyrically perhaps, my actual im
agination of him when I proceeded to declare that,
in a cloud of tradition, of legend, he might very well
go down to posterity as the greatest of all great
talkers. Before we
parted George Gravener de
manded why such a row should be made about a
chatterbox the more and why he should be pam
pered and pensioned. greater the wind-bag The
the greater the calamity. Out of proportion to

everything else on earth had come to be this wagging

of the tongue. We were drenched with talk our
wretched age was dying of it. I differed from him
here sincerely, only going so far as to concede, and
 THE COXON FUND 77

gladly, that we were drenched with sound. It was

not however the mere speakers who were killing us
it was the mere stammerers. Fine talk was as
rare as it was refreshing the gift of the gods them

selves, the one starry spangle on the ragged cloak

of humanity. How many men were there who rose
to this privilege, of how many masters of conversa
tion could he boast the acquaintance ? Dying of
talk ? why, we were dying of the lack of it Bad I

writing wasn t talk, as many people seemed to think,

and even good wasn always to be compared to it.
t

From the best talk indeed the best writing had

something to learn. I fancifully added that we too
should peradventure be gilded by the legend, should
be pointed at for having listened, for having actually
heard. Gravener, who had glanced at his watch and
discovered it was midnight, found to all this a
response beautifully characteristic of him.
There is one little fact to be borne in mind in
"

the presence equally of the best talk and of the

worst. He looked, in saying this, as if he meant
so much that I thought he could only mean once
more that neither of them mattered if a man wasn t
a real gentleman. Perhaps it was what he did
mean ;
he deprived me however of the exultation of
being right by putting the truth in a slightly different
way. The only thing that really counts for one s
"

estimate of a person is his conduct." He

had his
watch still in his hand, and I reproached him with
unfair play in having ascertained beforehand that it

was now the hour at which I always gave in. My

78 THE COXON FUND
pleasantry so failed to far
mollify him that he
promptly added that to the rule he had just enun
ciated there was absolutely no
exception.
None whatever ?
" "

"

None whatever."

"Trust me then to try to be good at

any price !
"

I
laughed as I went with him to the door. "

I
declare I will be, if I have to be horrible !
"
 Ill

IF that first night was one of the liveliest, or at any

rate was the my exaltations, there was
freshest, of
another, four years later, that was one of my great
discomposures. Repetition, I well knew by this
time, was the secret of Saltram s power to alienate,
and of course one would never have seen him at his
finest if one hadn t seen him in his remorses. They
set in mainly at this season and were magnificent,
orchestral. I was perfectly aware that something of

the sort was now due; but none the less, in our
arduous attempt to set him on his feet as a lecturer,
it was impossible not to feel that two failures were a

large order, as we said, for a short course of five.

This was the second time, and it was past nine
o clock ; the audience, a muster unprecedented and
really encouraging, had fortunately the attitude of
blandness that might have been looked for in persons
whom the promise (if I am not mistaken) of an

Analysis of Primary Ideas had drawn to the neigh

bourhood of Upper Baker Street. There was in
those days in that region a petty lecture-hall to be
secured on terms as moderate as the funds left at
our disposal by the irrepressible question of the
maintenance of five small Saltrams (I include the
80 THE COXON FUND
mother) and one large one. By the time the Sal-
trams, of different sizes, were all maintained, we had
pretty well poured out the oil that might have lubri
cated the machinery for enabling the most original
of men to appear to maintain them.
It the other time, who had been forced into
was I,

the breach, standing up there for an odious lamplit

moment to explain to half a dozen thin benches,
where the earnest brows were virtuously void of
anything so cynical as a suspicion, that we couldn t
put so much as a finger on Mr. Saltram. There
was nothing to plead but that our scouts had been
out from the early hours and that we were afraid
that on one of his walks abroad he took one, for
meditation, whenever he was to address such a
company some accident had disabled or delayed
him. The meditative walks were a fiction, for he
never, that any one could discover, prepared any
thing but a magnificent prospectus ; so that his
circulars and programmes, of which I possess an
almost complete collection, are the solemn ghosts of
I put the case, as it seemed
generations never born.
to me, at the best ; but I admit I had been angry,
and Kent Mulville was shocked at my want of public

optimism. This time therefore I left the excuses to

his more practisedpatience, only relieving myself in
response to a direct appeal from a young lady next
whom, in the hall, I found myself sitting. My
position was an accident, but if it had been calculated
the reason would scarcely have eluded an observer of
the fact that no one else in the room had an approach to
 THECOXON FUND 81

an appearance. Our philosopher s

"

tail
"

was
deplorably limp. This visitor was the only person
who looked at her ease, who had come a little in the
spirit of adventure. She seemed to carry amuse
ment in her handsome young head, and her presence
quite gave me the sense of a sudden extension of
Saltram ssphere of influence. He was doing better
than we hoped, and he had chosen such an occasion,
of occasions, to succumb to heaven knew which of
all

his infirmities. The young lady produced an impres

sion of auburn hair and black velvet, and had on her
other hand a companion of obscurer type, presumably
a waiting-maid. She herself might perhaps have
been a foreign countess, and before she spoke to me
I had beguiled our
sorry interval by thinking that
she brought vaguely back the first page of some
novel of Madame Sand. It didn t make her more
fathomable to perceive in a few minutes that she
could only be an American ; it simply engendered

depressing reflections as to the possible check to

contributions from Boston. She asked me if, as a
person apparently more initiated, I would recommend
further waiting, and I replied that if she considered
I was on
my honour
would privately deprecate it.
I

Perhaps she didn t at any rate something passed

;

between us that led us to talk until she became

aware that we were almost the only people left. I
presently discovered that she knew Mrs. Saltram,
and this explained in a manner the miracle. The
brotherhood of the friends of the husband was as
nothing to the brotherhood, or perhaps I should say
82 THE COXON FUND
the sisterhood, of the friends of the wife. Like the
Kent Mulvilles I belonged to both fraternities, and
even better than they I think I had sounded the
abyss of Mrs. Saltram s wrongs. She bored me to

extinction, and I knew but too well how she had

bored her husband but she had those who stood by
;

her, the most efficient of whom were indeed the

handful of poor Saltram s backers. They did her
liberal justice, whereas her mere patrons and parti
sans had nothing but hatred for our philosopher. I

am bound to say it was we, however we of both

camps, as it were who had always done most for
her.

my young lady looked rich I scarcely

I thought
knew why and I hoped she had put her hand in
;

her pocket. But I soon discovered that she was not

a fine fanatic she was only a generous, irrespon
sible inquirer. She had come to England to see her
aunt, and it was at her aunt s she had met the dreary
lady we had all much on our mind. I saw she
so
would help to pass the time when she observed that
it was a pity this lady wasn t intrinsically more
interesting. That was refreshing, for it was an
article of faith in Mrs. Saltram s circle at least

among those who scorned to know her horrid

husband that she was attractive on her merits.
She was really a very common person, as Saltram
himself would have been if he hadn t been a prodigy.
The question of vulgarity had no application to him,
but it was a measure that his wife kept challenging

you to apply. I hasten to add that the consequences

 THE COXON FUND 83

of your doing so were no sufficient reason for his

having left her to starve. He doesn t seem to "

have much force of character," said my young lady ;

at which
laughed out so loud that my departing
I

friends looked back at me over their shoulders as if

I were making a joke of their discomfiture. My
joke probably cost Saltram a subscription or two,
but it helped me on with my interlocutress. She "

says he drinks like a fish," she sociably continued,

and yet she admits that his mind is wonderfully
"

clear." It was amusing to converse with a pretty

girl who could talk of the clearness of Saltram s

mind. expected her next to say that she had been
I

assured he was awfully clever. I tried to tell her

I had it almost on my conscience what was the

proper way to regard him; an effort attended
perhaps more than ever on this occasion with the
usual effect of my feeling that I wasn t after all very
sure of it. She had come to-night out of high
curiosity she had wanted to find out this proper
way for herself. She had read some of his papers
and hadn t understood them but it was at home, at
;

her aunt that her curiosity had been kindled

s,
kindled mainly by his wife s remarkable stories of
his want of virtue.
"

Isuppose they ought to have

kept me away," my companion dropped, and I "

suppose they would have done so if I hadn t some

how got an idea that he s fascinating. In fact Mrs.
Saltram herself says he is."

you came to see where

"So the fascination
resides ? Well, you ve seen 1
"
84 THE COXON FUND
My young lady raised her fine eyebrows.
"

Do
you mean bad "

in his faith ?
"

In the extraordinary effects of it ; his possession,

that is, of some quality or other that condemns us

in advance to forgive him the humiliation, as I may

call it,
to which he has subjected us."

"

The humiliation ?
"

"Why mine, for instance, as one of his guarantors,

before you as the purchaser of a ticket."
You don t look humiliated a bit, and if you did I
"

should disappointed as I am; for the

let you off,

mysterious quality you speak of is just the quality I

came to see."

Oh, you can t see it I exclaimed.

"
"

"

How then do you get at it ? "

"

You don t You mustn t suppose he

! s good-
looking,"
I added.
his wife says he s lovely
"
"

Why, !

My hilarity may have struck my interlocutress as

excessive, but I confess it broke out afresh. Had

she acted only in obedience to this singular plea, so
characteristic, on Mrs. Saltram s part, of what was
irritating in the narrowness of that lady s point of
view ?
"

Mrs. Saltram," I explained, undervalues "

him where he is strongest, so that, to make up for it

perhaps, she overpraises him where he s weak.

He s not, assuredly, superficially attractive ;
he s
middle-aged, fat, featureless save for his great
eyes."

Yes, his great said my young lady atten

"

eyes,"

tively. She had evidently heard all about his great

 THE COXON FUND 85

eyes the beaux yeux for which alone we had really

done it all.

tragic and splendid lights on a danger

"

They re
ous coast. But he moves badly and dresses worse,
and altogether he s anything but smart."
My companion appeared to reflect on this, and
after a moment she inquired Do you call him a :
"

"

real gentleman ?
I started slightly at the question, for I had a sense
of recognising it George Gravener, years before, :

that first flushed night, had put me face to face with

it. It had embarrassed me then, but it didn t em

barrass me now, for I had lived with it and overcome

it and disposed of it. real gentleman? Emphati "A

"

cally not !

My promptitude surprised her a little, but I

quickly felt that it was not to Gravener I was now

talking.
"

Do you say that because he s what do

England ? of humble extraction ?
call it in
"

you
"Not a bit. His father was a country school
master and his mother the widow of a sexton, but
that has nothing to do with it. I say it simply

because I know him well."

But isn t it an awful drawback ?
" "

Awful quite awful."

"

"

I mean isn t it
positively fatal ?
"

"

Fatal to what ? Not to his magnificent vitality."

Again there was a meditative moment. "

And is

his magnificent vitality the cause of his vices ?

"

"

Your questions are formidable, but I m glad you

put them. I was thinking of his noble intellect.
86 THE COXON FUND
His you say, have been much exaggerated
vices, as
:

they consist mainly after all in one comprehensive

defect."

"

A want of will?"

"

A want of dignity."
"

He doesn t recognise his obligations ?

"

"On the recognises them

contrary, he with

effusion, especially in public he smiles and : bows

and beckons across the street to them. But when
they pass over he turns away, and he speedily loses
them in the crowd. The recognition is purely
spiritual it isn t in the least social. So he leaves
all his belongings to other people to take care of.

He accepts favours, loans, sacrifices, with nothing

more deterrent than an agony of shame. Fortu
nately we re a little faithful band, and we do what
we can." I held my tongue about the natural
children, engendered, to the number of three, in the
wantonness of his youth. I only remarked that he

did make efforts often tremendous ones. "But

the efforts,"
I said,
"

never come to much : the only

things that come to much are the abandonments, the

surrenders."

how much do they come to

"

"And ?

re right to put it as if we had a big bill to

"You

are
pay, but, as I ve told you before, your questions
rather terrible. They come, these mere exercises of

genius, to a great sum total of poetry, of philosophy,

a mighty mass of speculation, of notation. The
genius is there, you see, to meet the surrender ;
but
there s no genius to support the defence."
 THE COXON FUND 87
"

But what is there, after all, at his age, to

show ?
"

"

In the way of achievement recognised and repu

tation established?" I interrupted. "To show
ifyou will, there isn t much, for his writing, mostly,
isn t as fine, isn t certainly as showy, as his talk.
Moreover two-thirds of his work are merely colossal
projects and announcements. Showing Frank
Saltram is often a poor business : we endeavoured,
you will have observed, to show him to-night !

However, if he had lectured, he would have lectured

divinely. It would just have been his talk."

And what would his talk just have been ?

" "

I was conscious of some ineffectiveness as well

perhaps as of a little impatience as I replied :

"

The
exhibition of a splendid intellect."
My young lady
looked not quite satisfied at this, but as I was not
prepared for another question I hastily pursued :

"The sight of a
great suspended, swinging crystal,
huge, lucid, lustrous, a block of light, flashing back
every impression of life and every possibility of
thought !
"

This gave her something to think about

till we had passed
out to the dusky porch of the hall,
in front of which the lamps of a quiet brougham
were almost the only thing Saltram s treachery
hadn t extinguished. I went with her to the door of
her carriage, out of which she leaned a moment after
she had thanked me and taken her seat. Her smile
even in the darkness was pretty. "

I do want to see
"

that crystal !

"

You ve only to come to the next lecture."

88 THE COXON FUND
go abroad in a day or two with my
"

I aunt."

"

Wait over till next week,"

I suggested.
"

It s

quite worth it."

She became grave. "

Not unless he really comes !

"

At which the brougham started off, carrying her

away too fast, fortunately for my manners, to allow
me to exclaim
"

Ingratitude !
"
 IV

MRS. SALTRAM made a great affair of her right to be

informed where her husband had been the second
evening he failed to meet his audience. She came
to me to ascertain, but I couldn t satisfy her, for in

spite of my ingenuity I remained in ignorance. It

was not till much later that I found this had not
been the case with Kent Mulville, whose hope for
the best never twirled his thumbs more placidly than
when he happened to know the worst. He had
known it on the occasion I speak of that is imme
diately after. He was impenetrable then, but he
ultimately confessed. What he confessed was more
than I shall venture to confess to-day. It was of

course familiar to me that Saltram was incapable of

keeping the engagements which, after their separa
tion,he had entered into with regard to his wife, a
deeply wronged, justly resentful, quite irreproachable
and insufferable person. She often appeared at my
chambers to talk over his lapses, for if, as she
declared, she had washed her hands of him, she had
carefully preserved the water of this ablution and
she handed about for inspection. She had arts of
it

her own of exciting one s impatience, the most

infallible of which was perhaps her assumption that
90 THE COXON FUND
we were kind to her because we liked her. In
reality her personal fall had been a sort of social rise,
for there had been a moment when, in our little

conscientious circle, her desolation almost made her

the fashion. Her voice was
grating and her children
ugly ; moreover she hated the good Mulvilles, whom
I more and more loved. They were the people who
by doing most for her husband had in the long run
done most for herself ; and the warm confidence with
which he had laid his length upon them was a
pressure gentle compared with her stiffer persuada-
bility. I am bound to say he didn t criticise his

benefactors, though practically he got tired of them ;

she, however, had the highest standards about
eleemosynary forms. She offered the odd spectacle
of a spirit puffed up by dependence, and indeed it
had introduced her to some excellent society. She
pitied me knowing certain people who aided
for not
her and whom she doubtless patronised in turn for
their luck in not knowing me. I daresay I should

have got on with her better if she had had a ray of

imagination if it had occasionally seemed to occur
to her to regard Saltram s manifestations in any
other manner than as separate subjects of woe.
They were all flowers of his nature, pearls strung on
an endless thread ;
but she had a stubborn little way
of challenging them one after the other, as if she
never suspected that he had a nature, such as was, it

or that deficiencies might be organic ; the irritating

effect of a mind incapable of a generalisation. One
might doubtless have overdone the idea that there
 THE COXON FUND 91

was a general exemption for such a man but if this

;

had happened it would have been through one s

feeling that there could be none for such a woman.
I recognised her superiority when I asked her

about the aunt of the disappointed young lady it :

sounded like a sentence from a phrase-book. She

triumphed what she told me and she may have
in

triumphed more in what she withheld. My

still

friend of the other evening, Miss Anvoy, had but

lately come to England Lady Coxon, the aunt, had

;

been established here for years in consequence of

her marriage with the late Sir Gregory of that ilk.
She had a house in the Regent s Park, a Bath-chair
and a fernery ; and above all she had sympathy.
Mrs. Saltram had made her acquaintance through
mutual friends.This vagueness caused me to feel
how much I was out of it and how large an indepen
dent circle Mrs. Saltram had at her command. I

should have been glad to know more about the dis

appointed young lady, but I felt that I should know
most by not depriving her of her advantage, as she
might have mysterious means of depriving me of my
knowledge. For the present, moreover, this experi
ence was arrested, Lady Coxon having in fact gone
abroad, accompanied by her niece. The niece,
besides being immensely clever, was an heiress,
Mrs. Saltram said the only daughter and the light
;

of the eyes of some great American merchant, a man,

over there, of endless indulgences and dollars. She
had pretty clothes and pretty manners, and she had,
what was prettier still, the great thing of all. The
92 THE COXON FUND
great thing of all for Mrs. Saltram was always
sympathy, and she spoke as if during the absence of
these ladies she might not know where to turn for it.
A few months later indeed, when they had come
back, her tone perceptibly changed she alluded to :

them, on my leading her up to it, rather as to persons

in her debt for favours received. What had hap
pened I didn t
know, but I saw it would take only a
little more or a little less to make her speak of them
as thankless subjects of social countenance people
for whom she had vainly tried to do something. I

confess I saw that it would not be in a mere week

or two that I should rid myself of the image of Ruth
Anvoy, in whose very name, when I learnt it, I

found something secretly should probablyto like. I

neither see her nor hear of her again : the knight s

widow (he had been mayor of Clockborough) would
pass away and the heiress would return to her
inheritance. I gathered with surprise that she had
not communicated to his wife the story of her

attempt to hear Mr. Saltram, and I founded this

reticence on the easy supposition that Mrs. Saltram
had fatigued by over-pressure the spring of the
sympathy of which she boasted. The girl at any
ratewould forget the small adventure, be distracted,
take a husband besides which she would lack
;

opportunity to repeat her experiment.

Weclung to the idea of the brilliant course, de
livered without an accident, that, as a lecturer, would
still make the paying public aware of our great
mind ;
but the fact remained that in the case of an
 THE COXON FUND 93

inspiration so unequal there was treachery, there

was fallacy at least, in the very conception of a
series. In our scrutiny of ways and means we were
inevitably subject to the old convention of the syn
opsis, the syllabus, partly of course not to lose the
advantage of his grand free hand in drawing up such
things ; but for myself I laughed at our play
bills I stickled for them.
even while It was indeed

amusing work to be scrupulous for Frank Saltram,

who also at moments laughed about it, so far as the
comfort of a sigh so unstudied as to be cheerful
might pass for such a sound. He admitted with a
candour all his own that he was in truth only to be
depended on in the Mulvilles drawing-room.
"

Yes,"

he suggestively conceded, "

it s there, I think, that I

am at my best ; quite late, when it gets toward

eleven and if I ve not been too much worried."

We all knew what too much worry meant; it

meant too enslaved for the hour to the superstition

of sobriety. On the Saturdays I used to bring my
portmanteau, so as not to have to think of eleven
o clock trains. I had a bold theory that as regards

this temple of talk and its altars of cushioned chintz,

its pictures and its flowers, large fireside and
its

clear lamplight, we might really arrive at something

ifthe Mulvilles would only charge for admission.
But here it was that the Mulvilles shamelessly broke
down ;
as there is a flaw in every perfection, this
was the inexpugnable refuge of their egotism. They
declined to make their saloon a market, so that
Saltram s golden words continued to be the only
94 THE COXON FUND
coin that rang there. It can have happened to no

man, however, be paid a greater price than such

to
an enchanted hush as surrounded him on his greatest
nights. The most profane, on these occasions, felt

a presence ; all minor eloquence grew dumb.

Adelaide Mulville, for the pride of her hospitality,
anxiously watched the door or stealthily poked the
fire. I used to call it the music-room, for we had

anticipated Bayreuth. The very gates of the king

dom of light seemed to open and the horizon of
thought to flash with the beauty of a sunrise at sea.
In the consideration of ways and means, the sit

tings of our little

board, we were always conscious
of the creak of Mrs. Saltram s shoes. She hovered,
she interrupted, she almost presided, the state of
being mostly such as to supply her with every
affairs

incentive for inquiring what was to be done next.

It was the pressing pursuit of this knowledge that,

in concatenations of omnibuses and usually in very

wet weather, led her so often to my door. She
thought us spiritless creatures with editors and pub
lishers ; but she carried matters to no great effect
when she personally pushed into back-shops. She
wanted all moneys to be paid to herself they were
:

otherwise liable to such strange adventures. They

trickled away into the desert, and they were mainly
at best, alas, but a slender stream. The editors and
the publishers were the last people to take this re
markable thinker at the valuation that has now
pretty well come to be established.
The former
were half distraught between the desire to cut
"
"
 THE COXON FUND 95

him and the difficulty of finding a crevice for their

shears; and when a volume on this or that por
tentous subject was proposed to the latter they

suggested alternative titles which, as reported to our

friend, brought into his face the noble blank melan
choly that sometimes made it handsome. The title
of an unwritten book didn t after all much matter,
but some masterpiece of Saltram s may have died in
his bosom of the shudder with which it was then
convulsed. The ideal solution, failing the fee at
Kent Mulville s door, would have been some system
of subscription to projected treatises with their non-
appearance provided for provided for, I mean, by
the indulgence of subscribers. The author s real
misfortune was that subscribers were so wretchedly
literal. When they tastelessly inquired why publi
cation had not ensued I was tempted to ask who in
the world had ever been so published. Nature her
self had brought him out in voluminous form, and
the money was simply a deposit on borrowing the
work.
 V
I WAS doubtless often a nuisance to my friends in
those years; but there were sacrifices I declined
to make, and I never passed the hat to George

Gravener. never forgot our little discussion in

I

Ebury Street, and I think it stuck in my throat to

have to make to him the admission I had made so
easily to Miss Anvoy. It had cost me nothing to
confide to this charming girl, but it would have cost
me much to confide to the friend of my youth, that
the character of the "real
gentleman" was not an
attribute of the man I took such pains for. Was
this because I had already generalised to the point
of perceiving that women are really the unfastidious
sex ? I knew at any rate that Gravener, already

quite in view but still hungry and frugal, had natur

ally enough more ambition than charity. He had
sharp aims for stray sovereigns, being in view most
from the tall steeple of Clockborough. His imme
diate ambition was to wholly occupy the field of
vision of that smokily-seeing city, and all his move
ments and postures were calculated for this angle.
The movement of the hand to the pocket had thus
to alternate gracefully with the posture of the hand
on the heart. He talked to Clockborough in short
 THE COXON FUND 97

only less beguilingly than Frank Saltram talked to his

electors ;
with the difference in our favour, however,
that we had already voted and that our candidate
had no antagonist but himself. He had more than
once been at Wimbledon it was Mrs. Mulville s work,
not mine and, by the time the claret was served,
had seen the god descend. He took more pains to
swing his censer than I had expected, but on our
way back to town he forestalled any little triumph I

might have been so artless as to express by the

observation that such a man was a hundred times !

a man to use and never a man to be used by. I

remember that this neat remark humiliated me

almost as much as if virtually, in the fever of broken

slumbers, I hadn t often made it myself. The

difference was that on Gravener s part a force at
tached to it that could never attach to it on mine.
He was able to use people he had the machinery ;
and the irony of Saltram s being made showy
at Clockborough came out to me when he said,
as if he had no memory of our original talk and
the idea were quite fresh to him : "I hate his

type, you know, but I ll be hanged if I don t put

some of those things in. I can find a place for

them : we might even find a place for the fellow

himself."
myself should have had some fear, not,
I

I need scarcely say, for the "things" themselves,

but for some other things very near them in fine
for the rest of my eloquence.
Later on I could see that the oracle of Wimbledon
was not in this case so appropriate as he would
98 THE COXON FUND
have been had the politics of the gods only coincided
more exactly with those of the part} There was
.

a distinct moment when, without saying anything

more definite to me, Gravener entertained the idea
of annexing Mr. Saltram. Such a project was
delusive, for
discovery the between of analogies
his body of doctrine and that pressed from head
quarters upon Clockborough the bottling, in a
word, the air of those lungs for convenient
of

public uncorking in corn-exchanges was an ex

periment for which no one had the leisure. The
only thing would have been to carry him massively
about, paid, caged, clipped ; to turn him on for a
particular occasion in a particular channel. Frank
Saltram channel, however, was essentially not
s

calculable, and there was no knowing what dis

astrous floods might have ensued. For what there
would have been to do The Empire, the great
newspaper, was there to look to but it was no ;

new misfortune that there were delicate situations

inwhich The Empire broke down. In fine there
was an instinctive apprehension that a clever young
journalist commissioned to report upon Mr. Saltram
might never come back from the errand. No one
knew better than George Gravener that that was
a time when prompt returns counted double. If
he therefore found our friend an exasperating
waste of orthodoxy was because he was, as he
it

said, up in the clouds, not because he was down

in the dust. He would have been a real enough
gentleman if he could have helped to put in a
 THE COXON FUND 99

real gentleman. Gravener s great objection to the

actual member was that he was not one.

Lady Coxon had a fine old house, a house with

Clockborough, which she had let
at
"

;
grounds,"

but after she returned from abroad I learned from

Mrs. Sal tram that the lease had fallen in and
that she had gone down to resume possession. I

could see the faded red

big square
livery, the

shoulders, the high-walled garden of this decent

abode. As the rumble of dissolution grew louder
the suitor would have pressed his suit, and I found

myself hoping that the politics of the late Mayor s

widow would not be such as to enjoin upon her
to ask him to dinner; perhaps indeed I went so
far as to hope that they would be such as to put
all countenance out of the question. I tried to
focus the page, in the daily airing, as he perhaps
even pushed the Bath-chair over somebody s toes.
I was destined to hear, however, through Mrs.
Saltram (who, I afterwards learned, was in corre
spondence with Lady Coxon s housekeeper) that
Gravener was known to have spoken of the habi
tation I had in my eye as the pleasantest thing at

Clockborough. On his part, I was sure, this was

the voice not of envy but of experience. The vivid
scene was now peopled, and I could see him in
the old-time garden with Miss Anvoy, who would
be certain, and very justly, to think him good-look
ing. It would be too much to say that I was
troubled by this evocation ; but I seem to remember
the relief, singular enough, of feeling it suddenly
TOO THE COXON FUND
brushed away by an annoyance really much greater ;
an annoyance the result of its happening to come
over me
about that time with a rush that I was
simply ashamed of Frank Saltram. There were
limits after all, and my mark at last had been
reached.
I had had my disgusts, if I may allow myself
to-day such an expression ; but this was a supreme
revolt. Certain things cleared up in my mind,
certain values stood out. It was all very well to

have an unfortunate temperament ;

there was
nothing so unfortunate as to have, for practical
purposes, nothing else. I avoided George Gravener
at this moment and reflected that at such a time I
should do so most effectually by leaving England.
I wanted to forget Frank Saltram that was all. I

didn t want do anything in the world to him

to
but that. Indignation had withered on the stalk^
and I felt that one could pity him as much as one
ought only by never thinking of him again. It
wasn t for anything he had done to me ; it was for
something he had done to the Mulvilles. Adelaide
cried about it for a week, and her husband, profiting

by the example so signally given him of the fatal

effect of a want of character, left the letter un

answered. The letter, an incredible one, addressed

by Saltram to Wimbledon during a stay with the
Pudneys at Ramsgate, was the central feature of
the incident, which, however, had many features,
each more painful than whichever other we com
pared it with. The Pudneys had behaved shock-
 THE COXON FUND 101

ingly, but that was no excuse. Base ingratitude,

gross indecency one had one
choice only of
s

such formulas as that the more they fitted the

less they gave one rest. These are dead aches
now, and I am under no obligation, thank heaven,
to be definite about the business. There are
things which if I had had to tell them well, I
wouldn t have told my story.
I went abroad for the general election, and if I

don t know how much, on the Continent, I forgot, I

at least know how much I missed, him. At a
distance, in a foreign land, ignoring, abjuring, un
learning him, I discovered what he had done for me.
I owed him, oh unmistakably, certain noble concep

tions I had lighted my little taper at his smoky

;

lamp, and lo, it continued to twinkle. But the light

it gave me just showed me how much more I wanted.

I was pursued of course by letters from Mrs. Saltram r

which I didn t scruple not to read, though I was

duly conscious that her embarrassments would now
be of the gravest. I sacrificed to propriety by simply

putting them away, and this is how, one day as my

absence drew to an end, my eye, as I rummaged in
my desk for another paper, was caught by a name
on a leaf that had detached itself from the packet.
The allusion was to Miss Anvoy, who, it appeared,
was engaged to be married to Mr. George Gravener ;
and the news was two months old. A direct ques
tion of Mrs. Saltram s had thus remained unanswered
she had inquired of me in a postscript what sort
of man this Mr. Gravener might be. This Mr.
to2 THE COXON FUND
Gravener had been triumphantly returned for Clock-

borough, in the interest of the party that had swept

the country, so that I might easily have referred
Mrs. Saltram to the journals of the day. But when
wrote to her that I was coming home and
I at last

would discharge my accumulated burden by seeing

her, I remarked in regard to her question that she
must really put it to Miss Anvoy.
 VI

I HAD almost avoided the general election, but some

of its consequences, on my return, had smartly to
be faced. The season, in London, began to breathe
again and to flap its folded wings. Confidence,
under the new Ministry, was understood to be re
viving, and one of the symptoms, in the social body,
was a recovery of appetite. People once more fed
together, and it happened that, one Saturday night,
at somebody s house, I fed with George Gravener.
When the ladies left the room I moved up to where
he sat and offered him my congratulation.
"

On my
he asked after a moment
"

election ? ; whereupon I

feigned, jocosely, not to have heard of his election

and to be alluding to something much more impor
tant, the rumour of his engagement. I daresay I

coloured, however, for his political victory had

momentarily passed out of my mind. What was
present to it was that he was to marry that beautiful
girland yet his question made me conscious of
;

some discomposure I had not intended to put

that before everything. He himself indeed ought
gracefully to have done so, and I remember thinking
the whole man was in this assumption that in
expressing my sense of what he had won I had
104 THE COXON FUND
fixed thoughts on his
my seat."
"

straightened We
the matter out, and he was so much lighter in hand
than I had lately seen him that his spirits might
well have been fed from a double source. He was
so good as to say that he hoped I should soon make
the acquaintance of Miss Anvoy, who, with her aunt,
was presently coming up to town. Lady Coxon, in
the country, had been seriously unwell, and this
had delayed him I had heard
their arrival. I told
the marriage would be a splendid one ; on which,

brightened and humanised by his luck, he laughed

and said Do you mean for her ?
:
"

When I had "

again explained what I meant he went on Oh, :

"

she s an American, but you d scarcely know it ;

unless, perhaps," he added, by her being used to
"

more money than most girls in England, even the

daughters of rich men. That wouldn t in the least
do for a fellow like me, you know, if it wasn t for
the great liberality of her father. He really has
been most and everything is quite satis
kind,
factory."
He added that his eldest brother had
taken a tremendous fancy to her and that during a
recent visit at Coldfield she had nearly won over

Lady Maddock. I gathered from something he

dropped later that the free-handed gentleman beyond
made a settlement, but had given a
the seas had not
handsome present and was apparently to be looked
to, across the water, for other favours. People are
simplified alike by great contentments and great
yearnings, and whether or no itwas Gravener s
directness that begot my own I seem to recall that
 THE COXON FUND 105

in some turn taken by our talk he almost imposed it

on me as an act of decorum to ask if Miss Anvoy
had also by chance expectations from her aunt. My
inquiry drew out that Lady Coxon, who was the
oddest of women, would have in any contingency to
act under her late husband s will, which was odder

saddling her with a mass of queer obligations

still,

complicated with queer loopholes. There were

several dreary people, Coxon cousins, old maids,
to whom she would have more or less to minister.
Gravener laughed, without saying no, when I
suggested that the young lady might come in
through a loophole ; then suddenly, as if he sus
pected that I had turned a lantern on him, he ex
claimed quite dryly : That s all rot one is moved
"

"

by other springs !

A fortnight later, at Lady Coxon s own house, I

understood well enough the springs one was moved

by. Gravener had spoken of me there as an old
friend, and I received a gracious invitation to dine.
The knight s widow was again indisposed she had
succumbed at the eleventh
hour; found so that I
Miss Anvoy bravely playing hostess, without even
Gravener s help, inasmuch as, to make matters
worse, he had just sent up word that the House,
the insatiable House, with which he supposed he
had contracted for easier terms, positively declined
to release him. I was struck with the courage, the
grace and gaiety of the young lady left to deal
unaided with the possibilities of the Regent s Park.
I did what I could to
help her to keep them down,
io6 THE COXON FUND
or up, after I had recovered from the confusion of
seeing her slightly disconcerted at perceiving in the
guest introduced by her intended the gentleman
with whom she had had that talk about Frank
Saltram. I had moment my first glimpse of
at that
the fact that she was a person who could carry a
responsibility ;
but I leave the reader to judge of
my sense of the aggravation, for either of us, of
such a burden when I heard the servant announce
Mrs. Saltram. From what immediately passed
between the two ladies I gathered that the latter
had been sent for post-haste to fill the gap created
by the absence of the mistress of the house.
Good
"

I exclaimed,
!" she will be put by me;"
"

and my apprehension was promptly justified. Mrs.

Saltram taken in to dinner, and taken in as a conse
quence of an appeal to her amiability, was Mrs.
Saltram with a vengeance. I asked myself what
Miss Anvoy meant by doing such things, but the
only answer I arrived at was that Gravener was
verily fortunate. She had not happened to tell him
of her visit to Upper Baker Street, but she would
certainly tell him to-morrow not indeed that this ;

would make him like any better her having had the
simplicity to invite such a person as
Mrs. Saltram
on such an occasion. I reflected that I had never
seen a young woman put such ignorance into her
cleverness, such freedom into her modesty ; this,
I

think, was when, after dinner, she said to me

mirth Oh, you don t
"

frankly, with almost jubilant

:

admire Mrs. Saltram ? Why should I ? This was

"
 THE COXON FUND 107

truly an innocent maiden. I had briefly to consider

before I could reply that my objection to the lady in

question was the objection often formulated in

regard to persons met at the social board I knew

all Then, as Miss
her stories. Anvoy remained
momentarily vague, I added :
"

About her hus

band."

"

Oh yes, but there are some new ones."

"

None for me. Oh, novelty would be pleasant I

"

"

Doesn t it appear that of late he has been par

ticularly horrid ?
"

"

His fluctuations don t matter,"

I replied,
"

for
at night all cats are grey. You saw the shade of
this one the night we waited for him together.
What will you have ? He has no dignity."
Miss Anvoy, who had been introducing with her
American distinctness, looked encouragingly round
at some of the combinations she had risked. It s
"

too bad I can t see him."

You mean Gravener won t let you ?
" "

I haven t asked him.

"

He lets me do every
thing."

But you know he knows him and wonders what

"

some of us see in him."

We haven t happened to talk of him," the girl
"

said.
II
Get him to take you some day out to see the
Mulvilles."
II
1 thought Mr. Saltram had thrown the Mulvilles
over."

"Utterly. But that won t prevent his being

io8 TKE COXON FUND
planted there again, to bloom like a rose, within a
month or two."

Miss Anvoy thought a moment. Then, I should "

like to see them," she said with her fostering smile.

"

They re tremendously worth it. You mustn t

miss them."

make George take me," she went on as Mrs.

"

I ll

Saltram came up to interrupt us. The girl smiled

at her as kindly as she had smiled at me and, ad

dressing the question to her, continued But the :

"

chance of a lecture one of the wonderful lectures ?

Isn t there another course announced ? "

There are about thirty!" I ex

"Another?

claimed, turning away and feeling Mrs. Saltram s

little eyes in my back. A few days after this I
heard that Gravener s marriage was near at hand
was settled for Whitsuntide ; but as I had received
no invitation I doubted it, and presently there came
to me in fact the report of a postponement. Some
thing was the matter
what was the matter was ;

supposed to be that Lady Coxon was now critically

ill. I had called on her after my dinner in the

Regent s Park, but I had neither seen her nor seen

Miss Anvoy. I forget to-day the exact order in
which, at this period, certain incidents occurred and
the particular stage at which it suddenly struck me,
making me catch my breath a little, that the pro
gression, the acceleration was for all the world that
of a drama. This was probably rather late in the

day, and the exact order doesn t matter. What had

already occurred was some accident determining a
 THE COXON FUND 109

more patient wait. George Gravener, whom I met

again, in fact told me as much, but without signs of

perturbation. Lady Coxon had to be constantly

attended to, and there were other good reasons as
well. Lady Coxon had to be so constantly attended
to that on the occasion of a second attempt in the
Regent s Park I equally failed to obtain a sight of
her niece. I judged it discreet under the circum
stances not tomake a third but this didn t matter,
;

for was through Adelaide Mulville that the side

it

wind of the comedy, though I was at first unwitting,

began to reach me. I went to Wimbledon at times
because Saltram was there, and I went at others
because he was not. The Pudneys, who had taken
him to Birmingham, had already got rid of him, and
we had a horrible consciousness of his wandering

roofless, in dishonour, about the smoky Midlands,

almost as the injured Lear wandered on the storm-
lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been lately
done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz)
and the difference only made his smirches and
bruises, his splendid tainted genius, the more tragic.
If he wasn t barefoot in the mire he was sure to be

unconventionally shod. These were the things

Adelaide and I, who were old enough friends to
stare at each other in silence, talked about when we
didn t speak. When we spoke it was only about
the brilliant girl George Gravener was to marry,
whom he had brought out the other Sunday. I
could see that this presentation had been happy, for
Mrs. Mulville commemorated it in the only way in
I io THE COXON FUND
which she ever expressed her confidence in a ne\v

relation.
"

She likes me she likes me "

: her
native humility exulted in that measure of success.
We all knew for ourselves how she liked those who
liked her,and as regards Ruth Anvoy she was more
easily won over than Lady Maddock.
 VII

ONE of the consequences, for the Mulvilles, of the

sacrifices they made for Frank Saltram was that
they had to give up their carnage. Adelaide drove
gently into London in a one-horse greenish thing,
an early Victorian landau, hired, near at hand,
imaginatively, from a broken-down jobmaster whose
wife was in consumption a vehicle that made
people turn round all the more when her pensioner
sat beside her in a soft white hat and a shawl, one
of her own. This was his position and I daresay
his costume when on an afternoon in July she went
to return Miss Anvoy s visit. The wheel of fate had
now revolved, and amid silences deep and exhaus
tive, compunctions and condonations alike unutter
able, Saltram was reinstated. Was it in pride or
in penance that Mrs. Mulville began immediately to
drive him about ? If he was ashamed of his in
gratitude she might have been ashamed of her
forgiveness ; but she was incorrigibly capable of
liking him to be seen strikingly seated in the landau
while she was in shops or with her acquaintance.
However, if he was in the pillory for twenty minutes
in the Regent s Park (I mean at Lady Coxon s door,
call) it was not for
while her companion paid her
ii2 THE COXON FUND
the further humiliation of any one concerned that
she presently came out for him in person, not even
to show either of them what a fool she was that she
drew him in to be introduced to the clever young
American. Her account of the introduction I had
in its order, but before that, very late in the season,

under Gravener s auspices, I met Miss Anvoy at tea

at the House of Commons. The member for Clock-
borough had gathered a group of pretty ladies, and
the Mulvilles were not of the party. On the great
terrace, as I strolled off a little with her, the guest
of honour immediately exclaimed to me :
"

I ve seen
him, you know I ve seen him !
"

She told me
about Saltram s call.
"

And how did you find him ?

"

11 "

Oh, so strange !

"

You didn t like him?"

"

I can tsee him tell till I again."

"

You want
do that ? to
"

She was silent a moment. "

Immensely."
We stopped become aware
;
I fancied she had
Gravener was looking at us. She turned back
toward the knot of the others, and I said :
"Dislike him as much as you will I see you are

bitten."

thought she coloured a little.

"
"

Bitten ? I

one doesn
"
"

Oh, it doesn t matter I laughed ; !

"

die of it."

I hope I sha n t die of anything before I ve seen

"

more of Mrs. Mulville." I rejoiced with her over

plain Adelaide, whom she pronounced the loveliest
 THE COXON FUND 113

woman she had met in England ;

but before we
separated I remarked to her that it was an act of

mere humanity to warn her that if she should see

more of Frank Sal tram (which would be likely to
follow on any increase of acquaintance with Mrs.

Mulville) she might find herself flattening her nose

against the clear, hard pane of an eternal question
that of the relative importance of virtue. She
replied that thiswas surely a subject on which one
took everything for granted ; whereupon I admitted
that had perhaps expressed myself ill. What I
I

was what I had referred to the night

referred to
we met in Upper Baker Street the importance
relative (relative to virtue) of other gifts. She
asked me if I were
called virtue a gift as if it
handed to us in a parcel on our birthday; and
I declared that this very inquiry showed me the

problem had already caught her by the skirt.

She would have help, however, help that I myself
had once had, in resisting its tendency to make one
cross.
"

What help do you mean ?

"

"

That of the member for Clockborough."

She stared, smiled, then exclaimed :
"

Why, my
idea has been to help him ! "

She had helped him I had his own word for it

that at Clockborough her bedevilment of the voters

had really put him in. She would do so doubtless
again and again, but I heard the very next month
that this fine faculty had undergone a temporary

eclipse. News of the catastrophe first came to me

114 THE COXON FUND
from Mrs. Saltram, and it was afterwards confirmed
atWimbledon poor Miss Anvoy was in trouble :

America had suddenly summoned

great disasters in
her home. father, in New York, had had
Her
reverses lost so much money that it was really
provoking as showing how much he had had. It
was Adelaide who told me that she had gone off
alone at less than a week s notice.
"Alone ? Gravener has permitted that ?
"

"What will you have? The House of Com

mons !
"

I m afraid I cursed the House of Commons : I was

so much interested. Of course he would follow her
as soon as he was free to make her his wife ; only
she mightn t now be
able to bring him anything like
the marriage-portion of which he had begun by
having the virtual promise. Mrs. Mulville let me
know what was already said she was charming,:

this American girl, but really these American

fathers ! What was
a man to do ? Mr. Saltram,
according to Mrs. Mulville, was of opinion that a
man was never to suffer his relation to money to
become a spiritual relation, but was to keep it

wholesomely mechanical.
"

Moi pas comprendre!"

I commented on this ;
in rejoinder to which
Adelaide, with her beautiful sympathy, explained
that she supposed he simply meant that the thing
was to use it, don t you know? but not to think
too much about it.
"

To take it, but not to thank

you for it ?
"

I still more profanely inquired. For

a quarter of an hour afterwards she wouldn t look
 THE COXON FUND 115

at me, but this didn t prevent my asking her

what had been the result, that afternoon in the
Regent s Park, of her taking our friend to see Miss
Anvoy.
"Oh,
so charming she answered, brightening.
I"

"

He said he recognised in her a nature he could

absolutely trust."

"

Yes, but I m speaking of the effect on her

self."

Mrs. Mulville was silent an instant. "

It was
everything one could wish."
Something in her tone made me laugh.
"

Do you
mean she gave him something ?
"

"

Well, since you ask me !

"

Right there on the spot ?

"
"

Again poor Adelaide faltered.

"

It was to me of
course she gave it."

I stared ; somehow I couldn t see the scene. "

Do
you mean a sum of money ?
"

was very handsome."

"It Now at last she met
my eyes, though I could see it was with an effort,
"

Thirty pounds."

Straight out of her pocket ?

"
"

"Out of the drawer of a table at which she had

been writing. She just slipped the folded notes into

my hand. He wasn t
looking ; it was while he was
going back to the carriage. Oh," said Adelaide re
assuringly, I dole it out
"

The dear practical !

"

soul thought my agitation, for I confess I was

agitated, had reference to the administration of the

money. Her disclosure made me for a moment

ii6 THE COXON FUND
muse violently, and I daresay that during that
moment I wondered if anything else in the world
makes people so indelicate as unselfishness. I

uttered, I suppose, some vague synthetic cry, for

she went on as if she had had a glimpse of my
inward amaze at such episodes. I assure "

you, my dear friend, he was in one of his happy

hours."

But I wasn t thinking of that.

"

Truly, indeed,
these Americans!" I said. "With her father
in the very act, as it were, of swindling her
"

betrothed !

Mrs. Mulville stared. Oh, I suppose Mr. Anvoy

"

has scarcely failed on purpose. Very likely they

won t be able to keep it up, but there it was, and it
was a very beautiful impulse."
"

You say Saltram was very fine ?

"

Beyond everything. He suprised even

"

me."

"And I know what you ve heard." After a

moment I added Had he peradventure caught a
:
"

"

glimpse of the money in the table-drawer ?

At companion honestly flushed.
this my
"

How
can you be so cruel when you know how little he
"

calculates ?

"Forgive me, I do know it. But you tell me

things that act on my nerves. I m sure he hadn t

caught a glimpse of anything but some splendid

idea."

Mrs. Mulville brightly concurred.

"

And perhaps
even of her beautiful listening face."
"

Perhaps even ! And what was it all about ?

"
 THE COXON FUND 117

"

His talk ? It was a propos of her engagement,

which I had told him about the idea of marriage,
:

the philosophy, the poetry, the sublimity of It it."

was impossible wholly to restrain one s mirth at this,

and some rude ripple that I emitted again caused
It sounds a little
my companion to admonish me.
"

stale, but you know freshness." his

"

Of illustration ? Indeed I do !
"

"

And how he has always been right on that great

question."

"On what great question, dear lady, hasn t he

been right ?
"

Of what other great men can you equally say it ?

"

I mean that he has never, but never, had a devia

Mrs. Mulville exultantly demanded.
"

tion ?
I tried to think of some other great man, but
I had to give it up.
"

Didn t Miss Anvoy express

her satisfaction in any less diffident way than by her
charming present ?
"

I was reduced to inquiring

instead.
"

Oh yes, she overflowed to me on the steps while

he was getting into the carriage." These words
somehow brushed up a picture of Saltram s big
shawled back as he hoisted himself into the green
landau. "She said she was not disappointed,"
Adelaide pursued.
I meditated a moment. "Did he wear his
shawl
"

?
"

His shawl ?
"

She had not even noticed.

"

I mean yours."
"

He looked very nice, and you know he s really

ii8 THE COXON FUND
clean. Miss Anvoy used such a remarkable expres
"

sion s he said his mind is like a crystal 1

I pricked up my ears.
"

A crystal ?
"

"Suspended
in the moral world swinging and
shining and flashing there. She s monstrously
know."
clever, you
"

I reflected again.
"

Monstrously 1
 VIII

GEORGE GRAVENER didn t follow her, for late in

September, after the House had risen, I met him in
a railway-carriage. He was coming up from Scot
land, and I had just quitted the abode of a relation
who lived near Durham. The current of travel back
to London was not yet strong at any rate on enter
;

ing the compartment I found he had had it for some

time to himself. We fared in company, and though
he had a blue-book in his lap and the open jaws of
his bag threatened me with the white teeth of con
fused papers, we inevitably, we even at last sociably
conversed. I saw that things were not well with
him, but I asked no question until something dropped
by himself made, as it had made on another occasion,
an absence of curiosity invidious. He mentioned
that he was worried about his good old friend Lady

Coxon, who, with her niece likely to be detained

some time in America, lay seriously ill at Clock-

borough, much on his mind and on his hands.

Ah, Miss Anvoy s in America ?

" "

"Her father has got into a horrid hole, lost no

end of money."

I hesitated, after expressing due concern, but I

 120 THE COXON FUND
presently said hope that raises no objection to
"

: I

your marriage."
"

None whatever ; moreover it s my trade to meet

objections. But it
may create tiresome delays,
of which there have been too many, from various

causes, already. Lady Coxon got very bad, then

she got much better. Then Mr. Anvoy suddenly
began and now he seems quite on his back.
to totter,
I m afraid he s
really in for some big reverse. Lady
Coxon is worse again, awfully upset by the news
from America, and she sends me word that she
must have Ruth. How can I give her Ruth ? I
haven t got Ruth myself! "

Surely you haven t lost her ? I smiled.

" "

"She s everything to her wretched father. She

writes me every post telling me to smooth
her aunt s pillow. I ve other things to smooth ;

but the old lady, save her servants, is really

for
alone. She won t her Coxon relations,
receive
because she s angry at so much of her money
going to them. Besides, she s hopelessly mad," said
Gravener very frankly.
I don t remember whether it was this, or what
it was, that made me ask if she had not such an
appreciation of Mrs. Saltram as might render that
active person of some use.
He gave me a cold glance, asking me what
had put Mrs. Saltram head, and I replied into my
that she was unfortunately never out of it. I hap

pened to remember the wonderful accounts she

had given me of the kindness Lady Coxon had
 THE COXON FUND 121

shown her. Gravener declared this to be false;

Lady Coxon, who didn t care for her, hadn t seen
her three times. The only foundation for it was
that Miss Anvoy, who used, poor girl, to chuck

money about in a manner she must now regret,

had for an hour seen in the miserable woman (you
could never know what she would see in people) ,

an interesting pretext for the liberality with which

her nature overflowed. But even Miss Anvoy was
now quite tired of her. Gravener told me more
about the crash in New York and the annoyance
it had been to him, and we also glanced here and
there in other directions ;
but by the time we got
to Doncaster the principal thing he had communi
cated was that he was keeping something back.
We stopped at that station, and, at the carriage-
door, some one made a movement to get in. Gra
vener uttered a sound of impatience, and I said to
myself that but for this I should have had the
secret. Then some reason, spared
the intruder, for
us his company ; we started afresh, and my hope
of the secret returned. Gravener remained silent,
however, and I pretended to go to sleep ;
in fact,
in discouragement, I really dozed. When I opened
my eyes I found he was looking at me with an
injured air. He tossed away with some vivacity
the remnant of a cigarette and then he said: "If

you re not too sleepy I want to put you a case."

I answered that I would make every effort to attend,

and I felt it was going to be interesting when he

went on As I told you a while ago, Lady Coxon,
:
"
122 THE COXON FUND
poor dear, is a maniac." His tone had much behind
it was
of promise. I inquired if her
full ladyship s
misfortune were a feature of her malady or only
of her character, and he replied that it was a

product of both. The case he wanted to put to me

was a matter on which it would interest him to
have the impression the judgment, he might also
of another person. I mean of the average
"

say
intelligent man,"
he said; "but you see I take
what I can get."
There would be the technical,
the strictly legal view ;
then there would be the
way the question would strike a man of the world.
He had lighted another cigarette while he talked,
and I saw he was glad to have it to handle when
he brought out at last, with a laugh slightly arti
ficial In fact it s a subject on which Miss Anvoy
:
"

and I are pulling different ways."

And you want me to pronounce between you ?
"

I pronounce in advance for Miss Anvoy."

"In advance that s quite right. That s how I

pronounced when I asked her to marry me. But
my story will interest you only so far as your
mind is not made Gravener puffed his
up."

cigarette a minute and then continued Are :

"

you familiar with the idea of the Endowment of

Research ?
"

Of Research ? I was at sea for a moment.

"
"

I give you Lady Coxon s phrase.

"

She has it
on the brain."

"

She wishes to endow ?

"

"

Some earnest and disinterested seeker," Gravener

 THE COXON FUND 123

said.
"

was a sketchy design of her late hus

It

band and he handed it on to her setting apart in ;

s,

his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy

the interest for life, but of which, should she
eventually see her opportunity the matter was left

largely to her discretion she would best honour his

memory by determining the exemplary public use.
This sum of money, no less than thirteen thousand
pounds, was to be called the Coxon Fund ; and
poor Sir Gregory evidently proposed to himself that
the Coxon Fund should cover his name with glory
be universally desired and admired. He left his
wife a full declaration of his views, so far at least
as that term may be applied to views vitiated by a
vagueness really infantine. A little learning is a
dangerous thing, and a good citizen who happens
to have been an ass is worse for a community than
bad sewerage. He s worst of all when he s dead,
because then he can t be stopped. However, such
as they were, the poor man s aspirations are now in
his wife s bosom, or fermenting rather in her foolish
brain : it lies with her to carry them out. But of
course she must first catch her hare."
"

Her earnest, disinterested seeker ?

"

"The flower that blushes unseen for want of

the pecuniary independence necessary to cause the

light that is in it to shine upon the human race.

The individual, in a word, who, having the rest of
the machinery, the spiritual, the intellectual, is most

hampered in his search."

His search for what ?
" "
124 THE COXON FUND
"For Moral Truth. That s what Sir Gregory
calls it."

I burst out laughing. "

Delightful, munificent Sir

Gregory It s a charming idea."
!

So Miss Anvoy thinks."

"

Has she a candidate for the Fund ?

" "

Not that I know of; and she s perfectly reason

"

able about it. But Lady Coxon has put the matter
before her, and we ve naturally had a lot of talk."
Talk that, as you ve so interestingly intimated,
"

has landed you in a disagreement."

"

She considers there s something in it,"

Gravener
said.
"

And you consider there s nothing ? "

"

It seems to me a puerility fraught with conse

quences inevitably grotesque and possibly immoral.
To begin with, fancy the idea of constituting an
endowment without establishing a tribunal a bench
of competent people, of judges."
"The sole tribunal is Lady Coxon ?"

"And any one she chooses to invite."

"

But she has invited you."

"

I m not competent I hate the

thing. Besides,
she hasn t. The real history of the matter, I take it,
is that the inspiration was originally Lady Coxon s

own, that she infected him with it, and that the
flattering option left her is simply his tribute to her
beautiful, her aboriginal enthusiasm. She came to

England forty years ago, a thin transcendental

Bostonian, and even her odd, happy, frumpy Clock-
borough marriage never really materialised her.
 THE COXON FUND 125

She feels indeed that she has become very British

as if that, as a process, as a Werden, were conceiv
able ;
but it s precisely what makes her cling to the
notion of the Fund cling to it as to a link with
the ideal."

"

How can she cling ifshe s dying ?

"

"

Do you mean how can she act in the matter ?

"

my companion asked.
"

That s precisely the ques

tion. She can t ! As she has never yet caught her
hare, never spied out her lucky impostor (how
should she, with the life she has led ?), her husband s
intention has come very near lapsing. His idea, to
do him was that it should lapse if exactly the
justice,

right person, the perfect mixture of genius and chill

penury, should fail to turn up. Ah Lady Coxon s !

very particular she says there must be no mis

take."

I found all this quite thrilling I took it in witn

avidity.
"

If she dies without doing anything, what

becomes of the money ? I demanded. "

It goes back to his family, if she hasn t madd

"

some other disposition of it."

She may do that, then she may divert it ?

" "

Her hands are not tied. The proof is that three

"

months ago she offered to make it over to her

niece."

"

For Miss Anvoy s own use ? "

"

For Miss Anvoy s own use on the occasion of

her prospective marriage. She was discouraged
the earnest seeker required so earnest a search.
She was afraid of making a mistake ; every one she
126 THE COXON FUND
could think of seemed either not earnest enough or
not poor enough. On the receipt of the first bad
news about Mr. Anvoy s affairs she proposed to Ruth
tomake the sacrifice for her. As the situation in
New York got worse she repeated her proposal."
"

Which Miss Anvoy declined ?

"

Except as a formal
"

trust."

"You mean except as committing herself legally

"

to place the money ?

On
the head of the deserving object, the great
"

man frustrated," said Gravener. "She

only con
sents to act in the spirit of Sir Gregory s scheme."
"

And you blame her for that ?

"

I asked with an
excited smile.

My tone was not harsh, but he coloured a little

and there was a queer light in his eye. My dear "

fellow, if I blamed the young lady I m engaged to,

I shouldn t
immediately say so even to so old a
friend as you."
I saw
that some deep discomfort,
some be sided with, reassuringly,
restless desire to

approvingly mirrored, had been at the bottom of his

drifting so far, and I was genuinely touched by his
confidence. It was inconsistent with his habits ;

but being troubled about a woman was not, for him,

a habit that itself was an inconsistency.
:
George
Gravener could stand straight enough before any
other combination of forces. amused me to think It

that the combination he had succumbed to had an

American accent, a transcendental aunt and an
insolvent father ; but all my old loyalty to him
mustered to meet this unexpected hint that I could
 THE COXON FUND 127

help him. I saw that I could from the insincere

tone in which he pursued I ve criticised her of

"

course, I ve contended with her, and it has been

great fun." It clearly couldn t have been such great

fun as to improper for me presently to ask

make it

if Miss Anvoy had nothing at all settled upon her

self. To this he replied that she had only a trifle

from her mother a mere four hundred a year, which
was exactly why it would be convenient to him that
she shouldn t decline, in the face of this total
change
in her prospects, an accession of income which would

distinctly help them to marry. When I inquired if

there were no other way in which so rich and so
an aunt could cause the weight of her
affectionate
benevolence to be felt, he answered that Lady Coxon
was affectionate indeed, but was scarcely to be
called rich. She could let her project of the Fund
lapse for her niece s benefit, but she couldn t do any
thing else. She had been accustomed to regard her
as tremendously provided for, and she was up to
her eyes in promises to anxious Coxons. She was
a woman of an inordinate conscience, and her con
science was now a distress to her, hovering round
her bed in irreconcilable forms of resentful husbands,
portionless nieces and undiscoverable philosophers.
We were by this time getting into the whirr of

fleeting platforms, the multiplication of lights.

"

think you ll
find,"
I said with a laugh, "that
your
predicament will disappear in the very fact that the
is undiscoverable."
philosopher
He began to gather up his papers. "Who can
128 THE COXON FUND
set a limit to the ingenuity of an extravagant
woman ?
"

"Yes, all, who indeed?" I echoed,

after as I
recalled extravagance commemorated in Mrs.
the
Mulville s anecdote of Miss Anvoy and the thirty
pounds.
 IX

THE thing I had been most sensible of in that talk

with George Gravener was the way Saltram s name
kept out of it. It seemed to me at the time that we

were quite pointedly silent about him but after ;

wards it appeared more probable there had been on

my companion s part no conscious avoidance. Later
on I was sure of this, and for the best of reasons
the simple reason of my perceiving more completely

that, for evil as well as for good, he said nothing to

Gravencr s imagination. Gravener was not afraid
of him ; he was too much disgusted with him. No
more was I, doubtless, and for very much the same
reason. I treated my friend s story as an absolute
confidence ;
but when by Mrs.
before Christmas,
Saltram, was
I informed of Lady Coxon s death

without having had news of Miss Anvoy s return,

I found myself taking for granted that we should

hear no more of these nuptials, in which I now

recognised an element incongruous from the first.
I began to ask myself how people who suited
each other so little could please each other so
much. The charm was some material charm,
some affinity exquisite doubtless, yet superficial ;

some surrender to youth and beauty and passion, to

i
130 THE COXON FUND
force and grace and fortune, happy accidents and
easy contacts. They might dole on each other s
persons, but how could they know each other s
souls ? How could they have the same prejudices,
how could they have the same horizon? Such
questions, I confess, seemed quenched but not
answered when, one day in February, going out
to Wimbledon, I found our young lady in the
house. A passion that had brought her back across
the wintry ocean was as much of a passion as was

necessary. No
impulse equally strong indeed had
drawn George Gravener to America ; a circumstance
on which, however, I reflected only long enough to
remind myself that it was none of my business.
Ruth Anvoy was distinctly different, and I felt that
the difference was not simply that of her being in
mourning. Mrs. Mulville told me soon enough what it
was : it was the difference between a handsome girl
with large expectations and a handsome girl with
only four hundred a year. This explanation indeed
did not wholly content me, not even when I learned
that her mourning had a double cause learned
that poor Mr. Anvoy, giving way altogether, buried
under the ruins of his fortune and leaving next to
nothing, had died a few weeks before.
"

So she has come out to marry

George
Gravener?" demanded. "Wouldn t it have been
I

of him to have saved her the trouble ?

"

prettier
"Hasn t the House just met?" said Adelaide.
Then she added :
"

I gather that her having come

is exactly a sign that the marriage is a little shaky ^
 THE COXON FUND 131

If it were certain, a self-respecting girl like Ruth

would have waited for him over there."
I noted that they were already Ruth and Adelaide,

but what I said was Do you mean that she has

:
"

returned to make it a certainty ?

"

"

No, I mean that I figure she has come out for

some reason independent of Adelaide could it."

only figure as yet, and there was more, as we

found, to be revealed. Mrs, Mulville, on hearing of
her arrival, had brought the young lady out in the
green landau for the Sunday. The Coxons were
in possession of the house in Regent s Park, and
Miss Anvoy was in dreary lodgings. George
Gravener was with her when Adelaide called, but
he had assented graciously enough to the little
visit at Wimbledon. The carriage, with Mr.
Saltram in but not mentioned, had been sent
it

off on some errand from which it was to return and

pick the ladies up. Gravener left them together,

and at the end of an hour, on the Saturday after
noon, the party of three drove out to Wimbledon.
This was the second glimpse of our great man,
girl s
and I was interested in asking Mrs. Mulville if the
impression made by the first appeared to have been
confirmed. On her replying, after consideration,
that of course with time and opportunity it couldn t

fail to be, but as yet she was disappointed, I was

sufficiently struck with her use of this last word to
question her further.
"

Do you mean that you re disappointed because

judge that Miss
"

you Anvoy is ?
132 THE COXON FUND
"

Yes I hoped for a greater effect last evening.

;

We had two or three people, but he scarcely opened

his mouth."
"

He ll be all the better this evening," I added

after a moment. particular importance do
"

What
you attach to the idea of her being impressed ?
"

Adelaide turned her mild, pale eyes on me as if

she were amazed at my levity. Why, the import
"

ance of her being as happy as we are

"

I m afraid that at this my levity increased.

"

Oh,
that s a happiness almost too great to wish a per
son I
"

I saw she had not yet in her mind what I

had in mine, and at any rate the visitor s actual bliss

was limited to a walk in the garden with Kent
Mulville. Later in the afternoon I also took one,
and I saw nothing of Miss Anvoy till dinner, at
which we were without the company of Saltram,
who had caused it to be reported that he was in
disposed, lying down. This made us, most of us
for there were other friends present convey to
each other in silence some of the unutterable things
which in those years our eyes had inevitably acquired
the art of expressing. If an American inquirer had

not been there we would have expressed them other

wise, and Adelaide would have pretended not to hear.
I had seen her, before the very fact, abstract herself
nobly and I knew that more than once, to keep it
;

from the servants, managing, dissimulating cleverly,

she had helped her husband to carry him bodily to
his room. Just recently he had been so wise and so
deep and so high that I had begun to get nervous
 THE COXON FUND 133

to wonder if by chance there were something behind

it, if he were kept straight for instance by the know

ledge that the hated Pudneys would have more to

tell us if they chose. He was lying low, but unfor
tunately it was common wisdom with us that the
biggest splashes took place in the quietest pools. We
should have had a merry life indeed if all the splashes
had sprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were
even then to feel about our ears. Kent Mulville had
been up to his room, but had come back with a face
that told as few tales as I had seen it succeed in

telling on the evening I waited in the lecture-room

with Miss Anvoy. I said to myself that our friend

had gone out, but I was glad that the presence

of a comparative stranger deprived us of the dreary
duty of suggesting to each other, in respect of his
errand, edifying possibilities in which we didn t our
selves believe. At ten o clock he came into the
drawing-room with his waistcoat much awry but
his eyes sending out great signals. It was pre

cisely with his entrance that I ceased to be vividly

conscious of him. I saw that the crystal, as I had

called it, had begun to swing, and I had need of my

immediate attention for Miss Anvoy.
Even when I was told afterwards that he had, as
we might have said to-day, broken the record, the
manner in which that attention had been rewarded
relieved me of a sense of loss. I had of course a

perfect general consciousness that something great

was going on : it was a little like having been
etherised to hear Herr Joachim play. The old
134 THE COXON FUND
music was in the air; I felt the strong pulse of
thought, the sink and swell, the flight, the poise, the
plunge; but I knew something about one of the
listeners that nobody else knew, and Saltram s

monologue could reach me only through that

medium. To this hour I m of no use when, as a wit
ness, I m appealed to (for they still absurdly contend
about it)
as to whether or no on that historic night
he was drunk ; and my position is slightly ridiculous,
for I have never cared to tell them what it really
was I was taken up with. What I got out of it is
the only morsel of the total experience that is quite

my own. The others were shared, but this is

incommunicable. I feel that now, I m bound to say,

in even thus roughly evoking the occasion, and it

takes something from my pride of clearness. How
ever, I shall perhaps be as clear as is absolutely
necessary if I remark that she was too much given
up to her own intensity of observation to be sensible
of mine. It was plainly not the question of her
marriage that had brought her back. I greatly

enjoyed this discovery and was sure that had that

question alone been involved she would have re
mained away. In this case doubtless Gravener
would, in spite of the House of Commons, have
found means to rejoin her. It afterwards made me
uncomfortable for her that, alone in the lodging Mrs.
Mulville had put before me as dreary, she should
have in any degree the air of waiting for her fate ;
so that I was presently relieved at hearing of her

having gone to stay at Coldfield. If she was in

 THE COXON FUND 135

England at all while the engagement stood the only

proper place for her was under Lady Maddock s
wing. Now that she was unfortunate and relatively
poor, perhaps her prospective sister-in-law would be
wholly won over. There would be much to say, if
I had space, about the way her behaviour, as I
caught gleams of it, ministered to the image that
had taken birth in my mind, to my private amuse
ment, as I listened to George Gravener in the rail

way-carriage. I watched her in the light of this

queer possibility a formidable thing certainly to

meet and I was aware that it
coloured, extra
vagantly perhaps, my interpretation of her very
looks and tones. At Wimbledon for instance it had
seemed to me that she was literally afraid of Sal-
tram, in dread of a coercion that she had begun
already to feel. I had come up to town with her

the next day and had been convinced that, though

deeply interested, she was immensely on her guard.

She would show as little as possible before she
should be ready to show everything. What this
final exhibition might be on the part of a
girl per
ceptibly so able to think things out I found it great
sport to forecast. It would have been exciting to

be approached by her, appealed to by her for advice ;

but I prayed to heaven I mightn t find myself in
snch a predicament. If there was really a present
rigour in the situation of which Gravener had
sketched for me the elements she would have to get
out of her difficulty by herself. It was not I who

had launched her and it was not I who could help

136 THE COXON FUND
her. I didn t fail to ask
myself why, since I couldn t
help her, I should think so much about her. It was
in part rny suspense that was responsible for this ;

I waited impatiently to see whether she wouldn t

have told Mrs. Mulville a portion at least of what I
had learned from Gravener. But I saw Mrs.
Mulville was still reduced to wonder what she had
come out again for if she hadn t come as a concilia
tory bride. That she had come in some other
character was the only thing that fitted all the
appearances. Having for family reasons to spend
some time that spring in the west of England, I was
in a manner out of earshot of the great oceanic
rumble (I mean of the continuous hum of Saltram s
thought) and my uneasiness tended to keep me
quiet. There was something I wanted so little to
have to say that my prudence surmounted my
I only wondered if Ruth
curiosity. Anvoy talked
over the idea of the Coxon Fund with Lady
Maddock, and also somewhat why I didn t hear
from Wimbledon. I had a reproachful note about
something or other from Mrs. Saltram, but it con
tained no mention of Lady Coxon s niece, on whom
her eyes had been much less fixed since the recent
untoward events.
ADELAIDE was fully explained later it was
S silence ;

practically explained when in June, returning to

London, I was honoured by this admirable woman
with an early visit. As soon as she appeared I

guessed everything, and as soon as she told me that

darling Ruth had been in her house nearly a month
I exclaimed What in the name of maidenly
:
"

she
"

modesty staying in England for ?

is

Because she loves me so

"

cried Adelaide !
"

gaily. But she had not come to see me only to tell

me Miss Anvoy loved her that was now sufficiently :

established, and what was much more to the point

was that Mr. Gravener had now raised an objection
to it. That is he had protested against her being
at Wimbledon, where in the innocence of his heart
he had originally brought her himself ; in short he
wanted her to put an end to their engagement in
the only proper, the only happy manner.
"And why in the world doesn t she do so?" I

inquired.
Adelaide hesitated. "

She says you know."

Then on my also hesitating she added :

"

A condi
tion he makes."
"

The Coxon Fund ?

"

I cried.
138 THE COXON FUND
"

He has mentioned to her his having told you

about it."

11
Ah, but so little ! Do you mean she has ac
"

cepted the trust ?

In the most splendid spirit as a duty about
"

which there can be no two opinions." Then said

Adelaide after an instant :
"

Of course she s think

ing of Mr. Saltram."
I gave a quick cry at this, which, in its violence,

made my visitor turn pale. How very awful "

!
"

Awful
"
"

Why, to have anything to do with such an idea

oneself."

"

I m sure you needn t!" Mrs. Mulville gave a

slight toss of her head.
"

He
good enoughisn I went on ; to which
t !
"

she responded with an ejaculation almost as lively

as mine had been. This made me, with genuine,
immediate horror, exclaim You haven t influenced :
"

her, I hope and my emphasis brought back the

!
"

blood with a rush to poor Adelaide s face. She de

clared while she blushed (for I had frightened her

again) that she had never influenced anybody and

that the girl had only seen and heard and judged for
herself. He had
influenced her, if I would, as he
did every one who had a soul that word, as we :

knew, even expressed feebly the power of the things

he said haunt the mind. How could she, Adelaide,
to

help Miss Anvoy s mind was haunted ? I de

it if

manded with a groan what right a pretty girl

engaged to a rising M.P. had to have a mind ; but
 THE COXON FUND 139

the only explanation my bewildered friend could

give me was that she was so clever. She regarded

Mr. Saltram naturally as a tremendous force for
good. She was intelligent enough to understand
him and generous enough to admire.
She s many things enough, but
"

is she, among
them, rich enough ? I demanded.
" "

Rich enough,
mean, to sacrifice such a lot of good money ?
"

That s for herself to judge. Besides, it s not

"

her own money ; she doesn t in the least consider

it so."

And Gravener does,

"

if not his own ;

and that s
"

the whole difficulty ?

"

The difficulty that brought her back, yes : she

had absolutely to see her poor aunt s solicitor. It s

clear that by Lady Coxon s will she may have the

money, but it s still clearer to her conscience that
the original condition, definite, intensely implied on
her uncle s part, is attached to the use of it. She
can only take one view of it. It s for the Endow
ment or it s for nothing."
"

The Endowment is a conception superficially

sublime, but fundamentally ridiculous."

you repeating
"Are Mr. Gravener s words?"

Adelaide asked.
Possibly, though I ve not seen him for months.
"

It s simply the way it strikes me too. It s an old

wife s Gravener made some reference to the
tale.

legal aspect, but such an absurdly loose arrange

ment has no legal aspect."
Ruth doesn t insist on that," said Mrs. Mulville ;
"
140 THE COXON FUND
"and it s, for her, exactly this technical weak
ness that constitutes the force of the moral obliga
tion."

Are you repeating her words ? I

" "

inquired. I

forget what else Adelaide said, but she said she was

magnificent. I thought of George Gravener con

fronted with such magnificence as that, and I asked

what could have made two such people ever suppose
they understood each other. Mrs. Mulville assured
me the girl loved him as such a woman could love
and that she suffered as such a woman could suffer.
Nevertheless she wanted to see me. At this I

sprang up with a groan. Oh, I m so sorry

"

when ? Small though her sense of humour, I

"

think Adelaide laughed at my tone. We discussed

the day, the nearest it w ould be convenient I should
r

come out ; but before she went I asked my visitor

how long she had been acquainted with these pro
digies.
"

For several weeks, but I was pledged to

secrecy."
"

And that s why you didn t write? "

I couldn t very well tell you she was with me

"

without telling you that no time had even yet been

fixed for her marriage. And I couldn t very well
tell you as much as that without telling you what I

knew of the reason of it. It was not till a day or

two ago,"
Mrs. Mulville went on, "

that she asked

me to ask you if you wouldn t come and see her.
Then she said that you knew about the idea
at last
of the Endowment."
 THE COXON FUND 141

I considered a little.
"

Why on earth does she

want to see me ? "

"

To talk with you, naturally, about Mr. Sal-

tram."

As This was hugely

"

a subject for the prize ?

"

obvious, and I presently exclaimed I think I ll

"

sail to-morrow for Australia."

"Well then sail!" said Mrs. Mulville, get

ting up.
"

On Thursday at five, we said ?

"

I frivolously
continued. The appointment was made definite and
I inquired how, time, the unconscious candi
all this

date had carried himself.

"

In perfection, really, by the happiest of chances :

he has been a dear. And then, as to what we
revere him for, in the most wonderful form. His
very highest pure celestial light. You worit do
him an ill turn ? Adelaide pleaded at the door.
"

"

What danger can equal for him the danger to

which he exposed from himself?" I asked.
is
II
Look out sharp, if he has lately been decorous.
He ll presently take a day off, treat us to some
exhibition that will make an Endowment a scandal."
"

A scandal ? "

Mrs. Mulville dolorously echoed.

"

Is Miss Anvoy prepared for that ? "

My visitor, for a moment, screwed her parasol into

my He grows bigger every day."

carpet.
"

So do you
"

I laughed as she went off.

!
"

That girl at Wimbledon, on the Thursday after

noon, more than justified my apprehensions. I

recognised fully now the cause of the agitation she

142 THE COXON FUND
had produced in me from the first the faint fore

knowledge that there was something very stiff I

should have to do for her. I felt more than ever

committed to my fate as, standing before her in the

big drawing-room where they had tactfully left us to
ourselves, I tried with a smile to string together the
pearls of lucidity which, from her chair, she succes
sively tossed me. Pale and bright, in her monotonous
mourning, she was an image of intelligent purpose, of
the passion of duty ; but I asked myself whether
any girl had ever had so charming an instinct as that
which permitted her to laugh out, as if in the joy of
her difficulty, into the priggish old room. This re
markable young woman could be earnest without
being solemn, and at moments when I ought doubt
less to have cursed her obstinacy I found myself

watching the unstudied play of her eyebrows or the

recurrence of a singularly intense whiteness pro
duced by the parting of her lips. These aberrations,
I hasten to add, didn t prevent my learning soon
enough why she had wished to see me. Her reason
for this was as distinct as her beauty : it was to
make me explain what had meant, on the occasion
I

of our first meeting, by Mr. Saltram s want of

dignity. It wasn t that she couldn t imagine, but
she desired it there from my lips. What she really
desired of course was to know whether there was
worse about him than what she had found out for
herself. She hadn t been a month in the house with
him, that way, without discovering that he wasn t a
 THE COXON FUND 143

man of monumental bronze. He was like a jelly

without a mould, he had to be embanked ; and that
was precisely the source of her interest in him and
the ground of her project. She put her project
boldly before me there it stood in its preposterous
:

beauty. She was as willing to take the humorous

view of it as I could be the only difference was that
:

for her the humorous view of a thing was not neces

sarily prohibitive, was not paralysing.
Moreover she professed that she couldn t discuss
with me the primary question the moral obligation :

that was in her own breast. There were things she

couldn t go into injunctions, impressions she had re
ceived. They were a part of the closest intimacy of
her intercourse with her aunt, they were absolutely
clear to her ; and on questions of delicacy, the inter

pretation of a fidelity, of a promise, one had always in

the last resort to make up one s mind for oneself. It
was the idea of the application to the particular case,
such a splendid one at last, that troubled her, and
she admitted that it stirred very deep things. She
didn pretend that such a responsibility was a
t

simple matter; if it had been she wouldn t have

attempted to saddle me with any portion of it. The
Mulvilles were sympathy itself; but were they
absolutely candid ? Could they indeed be, in their
position would it even have been to be desired?
me to ask no less than that of
Yes, she had sent for
me whether there was anything dreadful kept back.
She made no allusion whatever to George Gravener
144 THE COXON FUND
I thought her silence the only good taste and her
gaiety perhaps a part of the very anxiety of that
discretion, the effect of a determination that people
shouldn t know from herself that her relations with
the man
she was to marry were strained. All the
weight, however, that she left me to throw was a
sufficient implication of the weight that he had
thrown vain.
in Oh, she knew the question of
character was immense, and that one couldn t enter
tain any plan for making merit comfortable without
running the gauntlet of that terrible procession of
interrogation-points which, like a young ladies
school out for a walk, hooked their uniform noses at
the tail of governess Conduct. But were we abso
lutely to hold that there was never, never, never an
exception, never, never, never an occasion for liberal
acceptance, for clever charity, for suspended pe
dantry for letting one side, in short, outbalance
another ? When Miss Anvoy threw off this
inquiry could have embraced her for so delight
I

fully emphasising her unlikeness to Mrs. Saltram.

"

not have the courage of one s forgiveness,"

Why
she asked, "

as well as the enthusiasm of one s

"

adhesion ?
Seeing how wonderfully you have threshed the
"

gives me an
"

whole thing out," I evasively replied,

extraordinary notion of the point your enthusiasm
has reached."

this remark an instant with her

She considered
eyes on mine, and I divined that it struck her I

might possibly intend it as a reference to some

 THE COXON FUND 145

personal subjection to our fat philosopher, to some

aberration of sensibility,some perversion of taste.
At least I couldn t interpret otherwise the sudden
flush that came into her face. Such a manifestation,
as the result of any word of mine, embarrassed me ;
but while I was thinking how to reassure her the
flush passed a smile of exquisite good
away in
nature. Oh, you see, one forgets so wonderfully
"

how one dislikes him she said ; and if her tone

1
"

simply extinguished his strange figure with the

brush of its compassion, it also rings in my ear to
day as the purest of all our praises. But with what
quick response of compassion such a relegation of
the man himself made me privately sigh, Ah, poor
"

Saltram She instantly, with this, took the

1
"

measure of all I didn t believe, and it enabled her to

go on What can one do when a person has given
:
"

such a lift to one s interest in life ? "

"Yes,
what can one do? If I struck her as a
"

little vague it was because I was thinking of another

person. I indulged in another inarticulate murmur
Poor George Gravener
"

What had become of 1

"

the lift he had given that interest ? Later on I made

up that she was sore and stricken at the
my mind
appearance he presented of wanting the miserable
money. This was the hidden reason of her aliena
tion. The probable sincerity, in spite of the illi-
berality, of his scruples about the particular use of
it under discussion didn t efface the ugliness of his
demand that they should buy a good house with it.

Then, as for his alienation, he didn t, pardonably

K
, 46 THE COXON FUND
enough, grasp the Frank Saltram had given her
lift

interest in life. If a mere spectator could ask that

last question, with what rage in his heart the

man
himself might ! He was not, like her, I was to see,
too proud to show me why he was disappointed.
 XI

I WASunable, this time, to stay to dinner : such, at

any rate, was the plea on which I took leave. I

desired in truth to get away from my young lady,

for that obviously helped me not to pretend to

satisfy her. How could I satisfy her? I asked

myself how could I tell her how much had been
kept back ? I didn t even know, and I certainly

didn t desire to know. My own policy had ever been

to learn the least about poor Saltram s weaknesses
not to learn the most. A great deal that I had in
fact learned had been forced upon me by his wife.
There was something even irritating in Miss Anvoy s
crude conscientiousness, and I wondered why, after
all, she couldn t have let him alone and been content

to entrust George Gravener with the purchase of the

good house. I was sure he would have driven a

bargain, got something excellent and cheap. I

laughed louder even than she, I temporised, I failed

her; I told her I must think over her case. I
professed a horror of responsibilities and twitted her
with her own extravagant passion for them. It was
not really that I was afraid of the scandal, the moral
discredit for the Fund ; what troubled me most was
a feeling of a different order. Of course, as the
I 48 THE COXON FUND
beneficiary of the Fund was to enjoy a simple life-
interest, as it was hoped that new beneficiaries would
arise and come up to new standards, it would not be
a trifle that the first of these worthies should not
have been a striking example of the domestic virtues.
The Fund would start badly, as it were, and the
laurel would, in some respects at least, scarcely be

greener from the brows of the original wearer. That

idea, however, was at that hour, as I have hinted,
not the source of anxiety it ought perpaps to have
been, for I felt less the irregularity of Saltram s
getting the money than that of this exalted young
woman s giving it wanted her to have it for
up. I

herself, and I told her so before I went away. She

looked graver at this than she had looked at all,
saying she hoped such a preference wouldn t make
me dishonest.
Itmade me, to begin with, very restless made
me, instead of going straight to the station, fidget
a little about that many-coloured Common which
gives Wimbledon horizons. There was a worry
for me to work off, or rather keep at a distance, for
I declined even to admit to
myself that I had, in
Miss Anvoy been saddled with it. What
s phrase,

could have been clearer indeed than the attitude

of recognising perfectly what a world of trouble
the Coxon Fund would in future save us, and of

yet liking better to face a continuance of that

trouble than see, and in fact contribute to, a
deviation from attainable blissin the life of two
other persons in whom I was deeply interested?
 THE COXON FUND 149

Suddenly, at the end of twenty minutes, there was

projected across this clearness the image of a
massive, middle-aged man seated on a bench, under
a tree, with sad, far-wandering eyes and plump
white hands folded on the head of a stick a stick
I recognised, a stout gold-headed staff that I had
given him in throbbing days. I stopped short as
he turned his face to me, and it
happened that
for some reason or other I took in as I had perhaps
never done before the beauty of his rich blank
gaze. It was charged with experience as the sky

is charged with light, and I felt on the instant

as if we had been overspanned and conjoined by

the great arch of a bridge or the great dome of
a temple. Doubtless I was rendered peculiarly
sensitive to it by something in the way I had been
giving him up and sinking him. While I met it
I stood there smitten, and I felt
myself responding
to it with a sort of guilty grimace. This brought
back his attention in a smile which expressed for
me a cheerful, weary patience, a bruised, noble
gentleness. I had told Miss Anvoy that he had
no dignity, but what did he seem to me, all un
buttoned and fatigued as he waited for me to come
up, if he didn t seem unconcerned with small things,
didn t seem in short majestic ? There was majesty
in his mere unconsciousness of our little conferences
and puzzlements over his maintenance and his
reward.
After I had sat by him a few minutes I passed
my arm over his big soft shoulder (wherever you
ISO THE COXON FUND
touched him you found equally little firmness) and

said in a tone of which the suppliance fell oddly

on my own ear: "Come back to town with me,
old friend come back and spend the evening."
I wanted to hold him, I wanted to keep him, and
at Waterloo, an hour later, I telegraphed posses
sively to the Mulvilles. When he objected, as

regards staying all night, that he had no things,

I asked him if he hadn t everything of mine. I

had abstained from ordering dinner, and it was

too late for preliminaries at a club; so we were
reduced to tea and fried fish at my rooms reduced
also to the transcendent. Something had come up
which made me want him to feel at peace with
me, which was all the dear man himself wanted on
any occasion. I had too often had to press upon
him considerations irrelevant, but it gives me
pleasure now to think that on that particular
evening I didn t even mention Mrs. Saltram and
the children. Late into the night we smoked and
talked ; old shames and old rigours fell away from
us I only let him see that I was conscious of what
;

I owed him. He was as mild as contrition and

as abundant as faith he was never so fine as on
;

a shy return, and even better at forgiving than at

being forgiven. I daresay it was a smaller matter

than that famous night at Wimbledon, the night

of the problematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy s
initiation ; but I was as much in it on this occasion
as I had been out of it then. At about 1.30 he
was sublime.
 THE COXON FUND 151

He never, under any circumstances, rose till all

other risings were over, and his breakfasts, at

Wimbledon, had always been the principal reason

mentioned by departing cooks. The coast was
therefore clear for me to receive her when, early
the next morning, to my surprise, it was announced
to me that his wife had called. I hesitated, after

she had come up, about telling her Saltram was

in the house, but she herself settled the question,

kept me reticent by drawing forth a sealed letter

which, looking at me very hard in the eyes, she
placed, with a pregnant absence of comment, in
my hand. For a single moment there glimmered
before me the fond hope that Mrs. Saltram had
tendered me, as itwere, her resignation and desired
to embody the act in an unsparing form. To bring
this about I would have feigned any humiliation ;

but after eyes had caught the superscription

my
I heard myself say with a flatness that betrayed

a sense of something very different from relief:

"

Oh, the Pudneys !

"

I knew their envelopes

though they didn t know mine. They always used
the kind sold at post-offices with the stamp affixed,
and as this letter had not been posted they had
wasted a penny on me. I had seen their horrid
missives to the Mulvilles, but had not been in direct
correspondence with them.
11
They enclosed it to me, to be delivered. They
doubtless explain to you that they hadn tyour address."
I turned the thing over without opening it.
"

Why in the world should they write to me ? "

152 THE COXON FUND
"

Because they have something to tell you. The

worst," Mrs. Saltram dryly added.
It was another chapter, I felt, of the history

of their lamentable quarrel with her husband, the

episode in which, vindictively, disingenuously as
they themselves had behaved, one had to admit
that he had put himself more grossly in the wrong
than at any moment of his life. He had begun
by insulting the matchless Mulvilles for these more
specious protectors, and then, according to his wont
at the end of a few months, had dug a still deeper
ditch for his aberration than the chasm left yawn

ing behind. The chasm at Wimbledon was now

blessedly closed ;
but the Pudneys, across their

up the nastiest fire. I never

persistent gulf, kept
doubted they had a strong case, and I had been
from the first for not defending him reasoning
that if they were not contradicted they would

perhaps subside. This was above all what I

wanted, and I so far prevailed that I did arrest
the correspondence in time to save our little circle
an infliction heavier than it perhaps would have

borne. I knew, that is I divined, that their alle

gations had gone as yet only as far as their courage,

conscious as they were in their own virtue of an
exposed place in which Saltram could have planted
a blow.was a question with them whether
It

a man who had himself so much to cover up would

dare his blow ;
so that these vessels of rancour
were in a manner afraid of each other. I judged
that on the day the Pudneys should cease for some
 THE COXON FUND 153

reason or other to be afraid they would treat us

to some revelation more disconcerting than any
of its predecessors. As I held Mr. Saltram s letter
in my hand it was communicated to me
distinctly
that the day had come they had ceased to be
afraid. "I don t want to know the worst," I
presently declared.
"

You ll have to open the letter. It also contains

an enclosure."

I felt it it was fat and uncanny. "Wheels

within wheels !
"

I exclaimed. There is something

"

for me too to deliver."

"

So they tell me to Miss Anvoy."

I stared ;
I felt a certain thrill.
"

Why don t

they send it to her directly

"

Mrs. Saltram hesitated.

"

Because she s staying

with Mr. and Mrs. Mulville."

"

And why should that prevent ?

"

Again my visitor faltered, and I began to reflect

on the grotesque, the unconscious perversity ol
her action. I was the only person save George

Gravener and the Mulvilles who was aware of Sir

Gregory Coxon s and of Miss Anvoy s strange

bounty. Where could there have been a more
signal illustration of the clumsiness of human affairs

than her having complacently selected this moment

to fly in the face of it ? There s the chance of "

their seeing her letters. They know Mr. Pudney s

hand."

Still I didn t understand ;

then it flashed upon
me. "You mean they might intercept it? How
154 THE COXON FUND
can you imply anything so base ?
"

I indignantly
demanded.
"It s not I; it s Mr. Pudney!" cried Mrs.
Saltram with a flush.
"

It s his own idea."

"

Then why couldn t he send the letter to you to

be delivered
"

Mrs. Saltram s embarrassment increased ;

she
gave me another hard look. "

You must make that

out for yourself."

I made it out quickly enough. "

It s a denuncia
tion?"

"A real lady doesn t betray her husband!" this

virtuous woman exclaimed.

burst out laughing, and I fear
I my laugh may
have had an effect of impertinence.
"

Especially to Miss Anvoy, who s so easily

shocked ? Why do such things concern her? I
"

asked, much at a loss.

"

Because she s there, exposed to all his craft.

Mr. and Mrs. Pudney have been watching this :

they feel she may be taken in."

"

Thank you for all the rest of us What differ I

ence can it make when she has lost her power to

"

contribute ?

Again Mrs. Saltram considered then very nobly, ;

There are other things in the world than money,"

"

she remarked. This hadn t occurred to her so long

as the young lady had any; but she now added,
with a glance at my letter, that Mr. and Mrs.
Pudney doubtless explained their motives. "

It s
all in kindness," she continued as she got up.
 THE COXON FUND 155

"Kindness to Miss Anvoy? You took, on the

whole, another view of kindness before her reverses."
My companion smiled with some acidity. Per "

haps you re no safer than the Mulvilles

"

I didn t want her to think that, nor that she

should report to the Pudneys that they had not been

happy in their agent and I well remember that this
;

was the moment at which I began, with considerable

emotion, to promise myself to enjoin upon Miss
Anvoy never to open any letter that should come to
her in one of those penny envelopes. My emotion
and I fear I must add my confusion quickly deep
ened; I presently should have been as glad to
frighten Mrs. Saltram as to think I might by some
diplomacy restore the Pudneys to a quieter vigilance.
It s best you should take my view of my safety,"
"

I at any rate soon responded. When I saw she

didn t know what I meant by this I added :
"

You
may turn out to have done, in bringing me this

letter, a
thing you will profoundly regret." My
tone had a significance which, I could see, did make
her uneasy, and there was a moment, after I had
made two or three more remarks of studiously
bewildering effect, atwhich her eyes followed so
hungrily the little flourish of the letter with which I

emphasised them that I instinctively slipped Mr.

Pudney s communication into my pocket. She
looked, in her embarrassed annoyance, as if she
might grab it and send it back to him. I felt, after
she had gone, as if I had almost given her my word
I wouldn t deliver the enclosure. The passionate
156 THE COXON FUND
movement, at any rate, with which, in solitude, I
transferred the whole thing,unopened, from my
pocket to a drawer which I double-locked would
have amounted for an initiated observer to some
such promise.
 XII

MRS. SALTRAM left me drawing my breath more

quickly and indeed almost in pain as if I had just

perilously grazed the loss of something precious. I

didn t quite know what it was it had a shocking

resemblance to my honour. The emotion was the
livelier doubtless in that my pulses were still shaken
with the rejoicing with which, the night before,
I had rallied to the rare analyst, the great in
tellectualadventurer and pathfinder. What had
dropped from me like a cumbersome garment as
Saltram appeared before me in the afternoon on the
heath was the disposition to haggle over his value.
Hang one had to choose, one had to put that
it,

value somewhere ;
so I would put it really high and
have done with it. Mrs. Mulville drove in for him
at a discreet hour the earliest she could suppose
him to have got up ; and I learned that Miss Anvoy
would also have come had she not been expecting
a visit from Mr. Gravener. I was perfectly mindful
that I was under bonds to see this young lady, and
also that I had a letter to deliver to her ;
but I took
my time, I waited from day to day. 1 left Mrs.
Saltram to deal as her apprehensions should prompt
with the Pudneys. I knew at last what I meant I
153 THE COXON FUND
had ceased to wince at my
responsibility. I gave

thissupreme impression of Saltram time to fade if it

would ; but it didn t
fade, and, individually, it has
not faded even now. During the month that I thus
invited myself to stiffen again, Adelaide Mulville,

perplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why I

was so stiff. At that season of the year I was
usually oftener with them. She also wrote that she
feared a real estrangement had set in between Mr.
Gravener and her sweet young friend a state of
things only partly satisfactory to her so long as the
advantage accruing to Mr. Saltram failed to disen
gage itself from the merely nebulous state. She
intimated that her sweet young friend was, if
anything, a trifle too reserved ;
she also intimated
that there might now be an opening for another
clever young man. There never was the slightest
opening, I may here parenthesise, and of course the
t come
question can up to-day. These are old frus
trations now. Ruth Anvoy has not married, I hear,
and neither have I. During the month, toward the
end, I wrote to George Gravener to ask if, on a
special errand, I might come to see him, and his
answer was to knock the very next day at my door.
I saw he had immediately connected my inquiry
with the talk we had had in the railway carriage,
and his promptitude showed that the ashes of his
eagerness were not yet cold. I told him there was
something I thought I ought in candour to let him
know I recognised the obligation his friendly con
fidence had laid upon me.
 THE COXON FUND 159

You mean that Miss Anvoy

"

has talked to you ?

She has told me so herself," he said.
It was not to tell you so that I wanted to see
"

for it seemed to me that such a

"

you,"
I replied ;

communication would rest wholly with herself. If

however she did speak to you of our conversation
she probably told you I was discouraging."
"
"

Discouraging ?
"

On the subject of a present application of the

Coxon Fund."

"

To the case of Mr. Saltram ? My dear fellow, I

don t know what you call discouraging!" Gravener

exclaimed.
"

Well I thought I was, and I thought she thought

I was."

"

I believe she did, but such a thing is measured

by the effect. She s not discouraged."
"

That s her own affair. The reason I asked you

to see me was that it appeared to me I ought to tell
you frankly that decidedly I can t undertake to
In fact I don t want to
"

produce that effect. !

very good of you, damn you

"

my visitor
"

It s !

laughed, red and really grave. Then he said You :

"

would like to see that fellow publicly glorified

perched on the pedestal of a great complimentary
"

fortune ?

Taking one form of public recognition with

"

another, it seems to me on the whole I could bear it.

When I see the compliments that are paid right and
left, I ask myself why this one shouldn t take its

course. This therefore is what you re entitled to

160 THE COXON FUND
have looked to me to mention to you. I have some
evidence that perhaps would be really dissuasive,
but I propose to invite Miss Anvoy to remain in
ignorance of it."

"

And to invite me to do the same ?

"

"Oh, you don t require it

you ve evidence
enough. I speak of a sealed letter which I ve been
requested to deliver to her."

11
And you don t mean to ?
"

"

There s only one consideration that would make

me."

Gravener s clear, handsome eyes plunged into

mine a minute, but evidently without fishing up a
clue to this motive a failure by which I was almost
wounded. What does the letter contain ?
"
"

It s sealed, as I tell you, and I don t know what

"

it contains."

Why
"
"

sent through you ?

is it
"

Rather than you ? I hesitated

"

a moment.
"The only explanation I can think of is that the

person sending may have imagined your relations

it

with Miss Anvoy to be at an end may have been

told this is the case by Mrs. Saltram."
"

My relations with Miss Anvoy are not at an end,"

poor Gravener stammered.

Again, for an instant, I deliberated.
"

The offer I

propose to make you gives me the right to put you a

question remarkably direct. Are you still engaged

Miss Anvoy ?
"

to
"

No, I m not,"
he slowly brought out.
"

But
we re perfectly good friends."
 THE COXON FUND 161

Such good friends that you will again become

"

prospective husband and wife if the obstacle in your

path be removed ?
"

Removed ? Gravener anxiously repeated.

" "

"

If I give Miss Anvoy the letter I speak of she

may drop her project."

"Then for God s sake give it !

"

do so you re ready to assure me that her

"

I ll if

dropping it would now presumably bring about your

marriage."
"

Id marry her the next day my !

"

visitor cried.
"

Yes, but would she marry you ? What I ask of

you of course is nothing less than your word of
honour as to your conviction of this. If you give it
engage to hand her the
"

me,"
I said, I ll letter
before night."

Gravener took up his hat ; turning it mechanically

round, he stood looking a moment hard at its un
ruffled perfection. Then, very angrily, honestly and
he broke out; with
"

gallantly: "Hand it to the devil !

which he clapped the hat on his head and left me.

Will you read it or not ? I said to Ruth Anvoy,
" "

at Wimbledon, when I had told her the story of Mrs.

Saltram s visit.

She reflected for a period which was probably of

the briefest, but which was long enough to make me
nervous. Have you brought it with you ?
" "

No indeed. It s at home, locked up."

"

There was another great silence, and then she

said Go back and destroy
:
"

it."

I went back, but I didn t it till after

destroy
L
162 THE COXON FUND
Saltram s death, when I burnt it unread. The
Pudneys approached her again pressingly, but,
prompt as they were, the Coxon Fund had already
become an operative benefit and a general amaze :

Mr. Saltram, while we gathered about, as it were, to

watch the manna descend, was already drawing the
magnificent income. He drew it as he had always
drawn everything, with a grand abstracted gesture.
Its magnificence, alas, as all the world now knows,
quite quenched him it was the beginning of his
;

decline. It was also naturally a new grievance for

his wife, who began to believe in him as soon as he

was blighted, and who at this hour accuses us of
having bribed him, on the whim of a meddlesome
American, to renounce his glorious office, to become,
as she says, like everybody else. The very day he
found himself able to publish he wholly ceased to
produce. This deprived us, as may easily be
imagined, of much of our occupation, and especially
deprived the Mulvilles, whose want of self-support
I never measured till they lost their great inmate.

They have no one to live on now. Adelaide s most

is embodied
frequent reference to their destitution
in the remark that dear far-away Ruth s intentions
were doubtless good. She and Kent are even yet
looking for another prop, but no one presents a
true sphere of usefulness. They complain that

people are self-sufficing. With Saltram the fine

type of the child of adoption was scattered, the
grander, the elder style. They have got their car-
liage back, but what s an empty carriage ? In short
 THE COXON FUND 163

I think we were all happier as well as poorer before ;

even including George Gravener, who, by the deaths

of his brother and his nephew, has lately become
Lord Maddock. His wife, whose fortune clears the
property, is he hates being in the
criminally dull ;

upper House, and he has not yet had high office.

But what are these accidents, which I should perhaps
apologise for mentioning, in the light of the great
eventual boon promised the patient by the rate at
which the Coxon Fund must be rolling up ?
THE MIDDLE YEARS
THE April day was soft and bright, and poor Den-
combe, happy in the conceit of reasserted strength,
stood in the garden of the hotel, comparing, with
a deliberation in which, however, there was still
something of languor, the attractions of easy
strolls. He liked the feeling of the south, so far
as you could have it in the north, he liked the
sandy cliffs and the clustered pines, he liked even
the colourless sea. Bournemouth as a health-
"

resort
"

had sounded like a mere advertisement,

but now he was reconciled to the prosaic. The
sociable country postman, passing through the

garden, had just given him a small parcel, which he

took out with him, leaving the hotel to the right
and creeping to a convenient bench that he knew
of, a safe recess in the cliff. It looked to the south,
to the tinted walls of the Island, and was protected
behind by the sloping shoulder of the down. He
was tired enough when he reached it, and for a
moment he was disappointed ; he was better, of
course, but better, after all, than what ? He should
never again, as at one or two great moments of the
past, be better than himself. The infinite of life had
gone, and what was left of the dose was a small
168 THE MIDDLE YEARS
glass engraved like a thermometer by the apothecary.
He sat and stared at the sea, which appeared all
surface and twinkle, far shallower than the spirit
of man. It was the abyss of human illusion that
was the real, the tideless deep. He held his packet,
which had come by book-post, unopened on his knee,
liking, in the lapse of so many joys (his illness had
made him feel his age), to know that it was there,
but taking for granted there could be no complete
renewal of the pleasure, dear to young experience,
of seeing one s self "just out." Dencombe, who had
a reputation, had come out too often and knew too
well in advance how he should look.
His postponement associated itself vaguely, after
a little, with a group of three persons, two ladies
and a young man, whom, beneath him, straggling
and seemingly silent, he could see move slowly
together along the sands. The gentleman had
his head bent over a book and was occasionally
brought to a stop by the charm of this volume, which,
as Dencombe could perceive even at a distance, had
a cover alluringly red. Then his companions, going
a little further, waited for him to come up, poking
their parasols into the beach, looking around them at
the sea and sky and clearly sensible of the beauty
of the day. To these things the young man with
the book was still more clearly indifferent ; linger
ing, credulous, absorbed, he was an object of
envy to an observer from whose connection with
literature all such artlessness had faded. One of
the ladies was large and mature; the other had
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 169

the spareness of comparative youth and of a social

situation possibly inferior. The large lady carried
back Dencombe s imagination to the age of crinoline ;
she wore a hat of the shape of a mushroom, decorated
with a blue veil, and had the air, in her aggressive
amplitude, of clinging to a vanished fashion or even
a lost cause. Presently her companion produced
from under the folds of a mantle a limp, portable
chair which she stiffened out and of which the

large lady took possession. This act, and some

thing in the movement of either party, instantly
the performers
characterised they performed for
Dencombe s recreation as opulent matron and
humble dependant. What, moreover, was the
use of being an approved novelist if one couldn t
establish a relation between such figures ; the
clever theory, for instance, that the young man
was the son of the opulent matron, and that the
humble dependant, the daughter of a clergyman
or an officer, nourished a secret passion for him ?
Was that not visible from the way she stole behind
her protectress to look back at him ? back to where
he had let himself come to a full stop when his
mother sat down to rest. His book was a
novel ;
had the catchpenny cover, and while the
it

romance of life stood neglected at his side he lost

himself in that of the circulating library. He
moved mechanically to where the sand was softer,
and ended by plumping down in it to finish his
chapter at his ease. The humble dependant, dis
couraged by his remoteness, wandered, with a
170 THE MIDDLE YEARS
martyred droop of the head, in another direction,
and the exorbitant lady, watching the waves, offered
a confused resemblance to a flying-machine that had
broken down.
When his drama began to fail Dencombe remem
bered he had, after all, another pastime.
that

Though such promptitude on the part of the

publisher was rare, he was already able to draw
from its wrapper his
"

latest," perhaps his last.

The cover of "

The Middle Years "

was duly meretri

cious, the smell of the fresh pages the very odour
of sanctity ; moment he went no further
but for the
he had become conscious of a strange alienation.
He had forgotten what his book was about. Had
the assault of his old ailment, which he had so
fallaciously come to Bournemouth to ward off,
interposed utter blankness as to what had preceded
it ? He
had finished the revision of proof before
quitting London, but his subsequent fortnight in bed
had passed the sponge over colour. He couldn t have
chanted to himself a single sentence, couldn t have
turned with curiosity or confidence to any particular
page. His subject had already gone from him,
leaving scarcely a superstition behind. He uttered
a low moan as he breathed the chill of this dark
void, so desperately it seemed to represent the
completion of a sinister process. The tears filled
his mild eyes; something precious had passed away.
This was the pang that had been sharpest during
the last few years the sense of ebbing time, of
shrinking opportunity ; and now he felt not so much
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 171

that his last chance was going as that it was gone

indeed. He
had done all that he should ever do,
and yet he had not done what he wanted. This was
the laceration that practically his career was over :

it as violent as a rough hand at his throat.

was He
rose from his seat nervously, like a creature hunted
by a dread; then he fell back in his weakness
and nervously opened his book. It was a single
volume he preferred single volumes and aimed
;

at a rare compression. He began to read, and

littleby little, in this occupation, he was pacified
and reassured. Everything came back to him, but
came back with a wonder, came back, above all,
with a high and magnificent beauty. He read his
own prose, he turned his own leaves, and had,
as he sat there with the spring sunshine on the
page, an emotion peculiar and intense. His career
was over, no doubt, but it was over, after all,

with that.

He had forgotten during his illness the work of

the previous year but what he had chiefly forgotten
;

was that it was

extraordinarily good. He lived
once more into his story and was drawn down,
as by a siren s hand, to where, in the dim under
world of fiction, the great glazed tank of art, strange
silent subjects float. He recognised his motive
and surrendered to his talent. Never, probably,
had that talent, such as it was, been so fine. His
difficulties were still there, but what was also there,
to his perception, though probably, alas to nobody s
!

else, was the art that in most cases had surmounted

172 THE MIDDLE YEARS
them. In his surprised enjoyment of this ability
he had a glimpse of a possible reprieve. Surely
its force was not spent there was life and service
in it yet. It had not come to him easily, it had

been backward and roundabout. It was the child

of time, the nursling of delay; he had struggled
and suffered for it, making sacrifices not to be
counted, and now that it was really mature was it
to cease to yield, to confess itself brutally beaten ?
There was an infinite charm for Dencombe in feeling
as he had never felt before that diligence vincit
omnia. The result produced in his little book was
somehow a result beyond his conscious intention :

itwas as if he had planted his genius, had trusted

his method, and they had grown up and flowered
with this sweetness. If the achievement had
been real, however, the process had been manful
enough. What he saw so intensely to-day, what
he felt as in, was that only now,
a nail driven
at the very last, had he come into possession. His
development had been abnormally slow, almost
grotesquely gradual. He had been hindered and
retarded by experience, and for long periods had
only groped his way. It had taken too much of

his life to produce too little of his art. The art

had come, but it had come after everything else.
At such a rate a first existence was too short long
enough only to collect material ;
so that to fructify,
to use the material, one must have a second age,
an extension. This extension was what poor
Dencombe sighed for. As he turned the last leaves
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 173

of his volume he murmured :

"

Ah for another go !

ah a better chance
"

for !

The three persons he had observed on the sands

had vanished and then reappeared; they had now
wandered up a path, an artificial and easy ascent,
which led to the top of the cliff. Dencombe s bench
was half-way down, on a sheltered ledge, and the
large lady, a massive, heterogeneous person, with
bold black eyes and kind red cheeks, now took
a few moments to rest. She wore dirty gauntlets
and immense diamond ear-rings ; at first she looked
vulgar, but she contradicted this announcement in
an agreeable off-hand tone. While her companions
stood waiting for her she spread her skirts on the
end of Dencombe s seat. The young man had gold
spectacles, through which, with his finger still in
his red-covered book, he glanced at the volume,
bound in the same shade of the same colour, lying
on the lap of the original occupant of the bench.
After an instant Dencombe understood that he was
struck with a resemblance, had recognised the
gilt stamp on the crimson cloth, was reading The "

Middle Years," and now perceived that somebody

else had kept pace with him. The stranger was
startled, possibly even a little ruffled, to find that
he was not the only person who had been favoured
with an early copy. The eyes of the two pro
prietors met for a moment, and Dencombe borrowed
amusement from the expression of those of his
competitor, those, it might even be inferred, of his
admirer. They confessed to some resentment
174 THE MIDDLE YEARS
they seemed to Hang it, has he got
"

say : it

already? Of course he s a brute of a reviewer 1"

Dencombe shuffled his copy out of sight while

the opulent matron, rising from her repose, broke
I feel already the good of this air
"

out :
"

"

I can t say I do,"

said the angular lady.
"

find myself quite let down."

"I
myself horribly hungry. At what time
find
did you order lunch ? her protectress pursued.
"

The 3 oung person put the question by.

r
Doctor "

Hugh always orders it."

ordered nothing to-day

"

I I m going to make
you diet,"
said their comrade.
"Then I shall go home and sleep. Qui dort
dine!"

"

Can I trust you to Miss Vernham ?

"

asked
Doctor Hugh of his elder companion.
"Don t I trust you?" she archly inquired.
Not too much
"

!
"

Miss Vernham, with her eyes

on the ground, permitted herself to declare. You "

must come with us at least to the house," she

went on, while the personage on whom they
appeared to be in attendance began to mount higher.
She had got a little out of ear-shot; nevertheless
Miss Vernham became, so far as Dencombe was
concerned, less distinctly audible to murmur to the
young man : I don t think you realise all you owe
"

the Countess
"

Absently, a moment, Doctor Hugh caused his

gold-rimmed spectacles to shine at her.
"

see
"

Is that the way I strike you ? I see I !

 THE MIDDLE YEARS 175

"She s awfully good to us,"

continued Miss
Vernham, compelled by her interlocutor s immova
bility to stand there in spite of his discussion
of private matters. Of what use would it have
been that Dencombe should be sensitive to shades
had he not detected in that immovability a strange
influence from the quiet old convalescent in the

great tweed cape? Miss Vernham appeared sud

denly to become aware of some such connection,
for she added in a moment : If you want to sun "

yourself here you can come back after you ve seen

us home."

Doctor Hugh, at this, hesitated, and Dencombe,

in spite of a desire to pass for unconscious, risked
a covert glance at him. What his eyes met this
time, as it happened, was on the part of the young
lady a queer stare, naturally vitreous, which made
her aspect remind him of some figure (he couldn t
name it)
in a play or a novel, some sinister
governess or tragic old maid. She seemed to
scrutinise him, to challenge him, to say, from
general spite :
"

What have you got to do with us ?

"

At the same instant the rich humour of the Countess

reached them from above Come, come, my little :
"

lambs, you should follow your old bergere!" Miss

Vernham turned away at this, pursuing the ascent,
and Doctor Hugh, after another mute appeal to
Dencombe and a moment s evident demur, deposited
his book on the bench, as if to keep his place or
even as a sign that he would return, and bounded
without difficulty up the rougher part of the cliff.
176 THE MIDDLE YEARS
Equally innocent and infinite are the pleasures
of observation and the resources engendered by
the habit of analysing life. It amused poor Den-
combe, as he dawdled in his tepid air-bath, to
think that he was waiting for a revelation of some
thing at the back of a fine young mind. He looked
hard at the book on the end of the bench, but
he wouldn t have touched it for the world. It
served his purpose to have a theory which should
not be exposed to refutation. He already felt
better of his melancholy; he had, according to his
old formula, put his head at the window. passing A
Countess could draw off the fancy when, like the
elder of the ladies who had
just retreated, she was
as obvious as the giantess of a caravan. It was

indeed general views that were terrible ; short ones,

contrary to an opinion sometimes expressed, were
the refuge, were the remedy. Doctor Hugh
couldn t possibly be anything but a reviewer who
had understandings for early copies with publishers
or with newspapers. He reappeared in a quarter
of an hour, with visible relief at finding Dencombe
on the spot, and the gleam of white teeth in an
embarrassed but generous smile. He was per
ceptibly disappointed at the eclipse of the other
copy of the book; it was a pretext the less for
speaking to the stranger. But he spoke notwith
standing; he held up his own copy and broke out

pleadingly :

"Do
say, if you have occasion to speak of it, that
he has done yet
"

it s the best thing !

 THE MIDDLE YEARS 17?

Dencombe responded with a laugh Done :

"

yet"

was so amusing to him, made such a grand avenue

of the future. Better still, the young man took him
He pulled out The Middle Years
"
"

for a reviewer.
from under his cape, but instinctively concealed any
look of fatherhood.
tell-tale This was partly be
cause a person was always a fool for calling attention
to his work. Is that what you re going to say
"

yourself ? he inquired of his visitor.

"

"I m
not quite sure I shall write anything. I

don t, as a regular thing I enjoy in peace. But it s

awfully fine."

Dencombe debated a moment. If his interlocutor

had begun to abuse him he would have confessed on
the spot to his identity, but there was no harm in

drawing him on a little to praise. He drew him on

with such success that in a few moments his new
acquaintance, seated by his side, was confessing
candidly that Dencombe s novels were the only ones
he could read a second time. He had come the day
before from London, where a friend of his, a jour
nalist, had lent him his copy of the last the copy
sent to the office of the journal and already the
subject of a which, as was pretended there
" "

notice

(but one had to allow for it had taken

"

swagger ")

a full quarter of an hour to prepare. He intimated

that he was ashamed for his friend, and in the case
of a work demanding and repaying study, of such
inferior manners ; and, with his fresh appreciation
and inexplicable wish to express it, he speedily
became for poor Dencombe a remarkable, a delight-
M
178 THE MIDDLE YEARS
ful apparition. Chance had brought the weary man
of letters face to face with the greatest admirer in
the new generation whom it was supposable he
possessed. The admirer, in truth, was mystifying,
so rare a case was it to find a bristling young doctor
he looked like a German physiologist enamoured
of literary form. It was an accident, but happier

than most accidents, so that Dencombe, exhilarated

as well as confounded, spent half an hour in making
his visitor talk while he kept himself quiet. He
explained his premature possession of The Middle
"

Years by an allusion to the friendship of the pub

"

lisher,who, knowing he was at Bournemouth for his

health, had paid him this graceful attention. He
admitted that he had been ill, for Doctor Hugh
would infallibly have guessed it ;
he even went so
far as to wonder whether he mightn t look for some
hygenic tip from a personage combining so bright
"
"

an enthusiasm with a presumable knowledge of the

remedies now in vogue. It would shake his faith a
little perhaps to have to take a doctor seriously who
could take him so seriously, but he enjoyed this
gushing modern youth and he felt with an acute
pang that there would still be work to do in a world
in which such odd combinations were presented. It
was not true, what he had tried for renunciation s
sake to believe, that all the combinations were ex
hausted. They were not, they were not they were
infinite the exhaustion was in the miserable artist.
:

Doctor Hugh was an ardent physiologist, saturated

with the spirit of the age in other words he had
 THE MIDDLE YEARS ijg

just taken his degree ; but he was independent

and
various, he talked like a man who would have
preferred to love literature best. He would fain

have made fine phrases, but nature had denied him

the trick. Some of the finest in The Middle Years
"
"

had struck him inordinately, and he took the liberty

of reading them to Dencombe in support of his plea.
He grew vivid, in the balmy air, to his companion,
for whose deep refreshment he seemed to have been
sent ; and was particularly ingenuous in describing
how recently he had become acquainted, and how
instantly infatuated, with the only man who had put
flesh between the ribs of an art that was starving
on superstitions. He had not yet written to him
he was deterred by a sentiment of respect. Den-
combe at this moment felicitated himself more than
ever on having never answered the photographers.
His visitor s attitude promised him a luxury of inter
course, but he surmised that a certain security in
it, for Doctor Hugh, would depend not a little on
the Countess. He learned without delay with what
variety of Countess they were concerned, as well as
the nature of the tie that united the curious trio.
The large lady, an Englishwoman by birth and the
daughter of a celebrated baritone, whose taste, with
out his talent, she had inherited, was the widow of a
French nobleman and mistress of all that remained
of the handsome fortune, the fruit of her father s
earnings, had constituted her dower. Miss
that

Vernham, an odd creature but an accomplished

pianist, was attached to her person at a salary. The
I8o THE MIDDLE YEARS
Countess was generous, independent, eccentric she ;

travelled with her minstreland her medical man.

Ignorant and passionate, she had nevertheless
moments in which she was almost irresistible. Den-
combe saw her sit for her portrait in Doctor Hugh s
free sketch, and
the picture of his young friend s
felt

relation to her frame itself in his mind. This young

friend, for a representative of the new psychology,
was himself easily hypnotised, and if he became ab
normally communicative it was only a
sign of his
real subjection. Dencombe
did accordingly what he
wanted with him, even without being known as
Dencombe.
Taken ill on a journey in Switzerland the Coun
tess had picked him up at an hotel, and the accident
of his happening to please her had made her offer
him, with her imperious liberality, terms that couldn t
fail to dazzle a practitioner without patients and

whose resources had been drained dry by his studies.

It was not the way he would have elected to spend

his time, but it was time that would pass quickly,

and meanwhile she was wonderfully kind. She
exacted perpetual attention, but it was impossible
not to like her. He gave details about his queer
type if there ever was one, who had in
"

patient, a "

connection with her flushed obesity and in addition

to the morbid strain of a violent and aimless will a

grave organic disorder ; but he came back to his

loved novelist, whom he was so good as to pronounce
more essentially a poet than many of those who
went in for verse, with a zeal excited, as all his in-
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 181

had been excited, by the happy chance of

discretion
Dencombe s sympathy and the coincidence of their
occupation. Dencombe had confessed to a slight
personal acquaintance with the author of "The
Middle Years," but had not felt himself as ready as
he could have wished when his companion, who had
never yet encountered a being so privileged, began
to be eager for particulars. He even thought that
Doctor Hugh eye s at that moment emitted a glimmer
of suspicion. But the young man was too inflamed
to be shrewd and repeatedly caught up the book to
exclaim : Did you notice this ? or Weren t you
" "
"

immensely struck with that ? There s a beauti"

"

ful passage toward the end," he broke out; and

again he laid his hand upon the volume. As he

turned the pages he came upon something else,
while Dencombe saw him suddenly change colour.
He had taken up, as it lay on the bench, Dencombe s
copy instead of his own, and his neighbour immedi
ately guessed the reason of his start. Doctor Hugh
looked grave an instant ;
then he said :
"

I see you ve
been altering the text Dencombe was a passionate
1
"

corrector, a fingerer of style ; the last thing he ever

arrived at was a form final for himself. His ideal
would have been to publish secretly, and then, on
the published text, treat himself to the terrified
revise, sacrificing always a first edition and be
ginning for posterity and even for the collectors,
poor dears, with a second. This morning, in
"

The
Middle Years," his pencil had pricked a dozen lights.
He was amused at the effect of the young man s
182 THE MIDDLE YEARS
reproach ;
for an instant it made him change colour.
He stammered, at
any rate, ambiguously then, ;

through a blur of ebbing consciousness, saw Doctor

Hugh s mystified eyes. He only had time to feel
he was about to be ill again that emotion, excite

ment, fatigue, the heat of the sun, the solicitation of

the air, had combined to play him a trick, before,
stretching out a hand to his visitor with a plaintive
cry, he lost his senses altogether.
Later he knew that he had fainted and that Doctor
Hugh had got him home in a bath-chair, the con
ductor of which, prowling within hail for custom,
had happened to remember seeing him
in the garden
of the hotel. He had
recovered his perception in
the transit, and had, in bed, that afternoon, a vague
recollection of Doctor Hugh s young face, as they
went together, bent over him in a comforting laugh
and expressive of something more than a suspicion
of his identity. That identity was ineffaceable now,
and all the more that he was disappointed, disgusted.
He had been rash, been stupid, had gone out too
soon, stayed out too long. He oughtn t to have ex
posed himself to strangers, he ought to have taken
his servant. He felt as if he had fallen into a hole
too deep to descry any little patch of heaven. He
was confused about the time that had elapsed he
pieced the fragments together. He had seen his
doctor, the real one, the one who had treated him
from the first and who had again been very kind.
His servant was in and out on tiptoe, looking very
wise after thefact. He said more than once some-
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 183

thing about the sharp young gentleman. The rest

was vagueness, in so far as it wasn t
despair. The
vagueness, however, justified itself by dreams,
dozing anxieties from which he finally emerged to
the consciousness of a dark room and a shaded
candle.
You ll be I know all about you
"

all right again

now,"
said a voice near him that he knew to be

young. Then his meeting with Doctor Hugh came

back. He was too discouraged to joke about it yet,
but he was able to perceive, after a little, that the
interest of it was intense for his visitor. "Of

course I can t attend you professionally you ve got

your own man, with whom I ve talked and who s

Doctor Hugh went on. But you must
"

excellent,"

let me come to see you as a good friend. I ve just

looked in before going to bed. You re doing beauti
fully, but it s a good job I was with you on the cliff.
I shall come in early to-morrow. I want to do some

thing for you. I want to do everything. You ve

done a tremendous lot for me." The young man
held his hand, hanging over him, and poor Dencombe,
weakly aware of this living pressure, simply lay
there and accepted his devotion. He couldn t do
anything less he needed help too much.
The idea of the help he needed was very present
to him
that night, which he spent in a lucid stillness,
an intensity of thought that constituted a reaction from
his hours of stupor. He was lost, he was lost he
was lost if he couldn t be saved. He was not afraid of
suffering, of death ;
he was not even in love with
184 THE MIDDLE YEARS
life but he had had a deep demonstration of desire.
;

It came over him in the long, quiet hours that only

with "

The Middle Years

had he taken his flight ; "

only on that day, visited by soundless processions,

had he recognised his kingdom. He had had a
revelation of his range. What he dreaded was the
idea that his reputation should stand on the un
finished. It was not with his past but with his

future that it should properly be concerned. Illness

and age rose before him like spectres with pitiless
eyes how was he to bribe such fates to give him the
:

second chance ? He had had the one chance that all

men have he had had the chance of life. He went
to sleep again very late, and when he awoke Doctor

Hugh was sitting by his head. There was already,

by this time, something beautifully familiar in him.
41
Don t think I ve turned out
your physician," he
said ;
"

I m acting with his consent. He has been

here and seen you. Somehow he seems to trust me.
I told him how we happened to come together
yesterday, and he recognises that I ve a peculiar
right."

Dencombe looked at him with a calculating

earnestness.
"

How have you squared the Coun

"

tess ?
The young man blushed a little, but he laughed.
Oh, never mind the Countess
"
"

"You told me she was very

exacting."

Doctor Hugh was silent a moment. So she

"

is."

"And Miss Vernham s an intrigante"

"

How do you know that ?

"
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 185

"

I know everything. One lias to, to write

"

decently I

I think she s
"

said limpid Doctor

mad," Hugh.
41
Well, don t quarrel with the Countess she s a
present help to you."
"

I don t
quarrel,"
Doctor Hugh But I
replied.
"

don t
get on with silly women." Presently he added :

"

You seem very much alone."

"That often happens at my age. I ve outlived,

I ve lost by the way."
Doctor Hugh hesitated ;
then surmounting a soft
scruple :
"

Whom have you lost ?

"

"

Every one."

"Ah, no,"
the young man murmured, la}^ing a
hand on his arm.
"

I once had a wife I once had a son. My wife

died when my child was born, and my boy, at school,
was carried off by typhoid."

wish d been there Doctor

"
"

I I ! said Hugh
simply.
"Well Dencombe answered, with
if you re here !
"

a smile dimness, showed how much

that, in spite of
he liked to be sure of his companion s whereabouts.
"You talk strangely of your age. You re not
old."

"
"

Hypocrite so early !

"I
speak physiologically."
"

That s the way I ve been speaking for the last

five years, and it s exactly what I ve been saying to
myself. It isn t till we are old that we begin to tell
ourselves we re not !
"
186 THE MIDDLE YEARS
"

Yet I know I myself am young," Doctor Hugh

declared.
Not so well as I
"

laughed his patient, whose

!
"

visitor indeed would have established the truth in

question by the honesty with which he changed the

point of view, remarking that it must be one of the
charms of age at any rate in the case of high
distinction to feel that one has laboured and
achieved. Doctor Hugh employed the common
phrase about earning one s rest, and it made poor
Dencombe, for an instant, almost angry. He re
covered himself, however, to explain, lucidly enough,
that if he, ungraciously, knew nothing of such a balm,
it was doubtless because he had wasted inestimable
years. He had followed literature from the first,
but he had taken a lifetime to get alongside of her.
Only to-day, at last, had he begun to see, so that
what he had hitherto done was a movement without
a direction. He had ripened too late and was so
clumsily constituted that he had had to teach himself
by mistakes.
prefer your flowers, then, to other people s
"

fruit, and your mistakes to other people s successes,"

said gallant Doctor Hugh. It s for your mistakes I
"

admire you."
"You re
happy you don t know," Dencombe
answered.
Looking at his watch the young man had got
up ; he named the hour of the afternoon at which
he would return. Dencombe warned him against
committing himself too deeply, and expressed again
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 187

all making him neglect the Countess

his dread of

perhaps incur her displeasure.

I want to be like you I want to learn by mis
"

Doctor
"

takes 1
Hugh laughed.
Take care you don t make too grave a one
"

But do come back," Dencombe added, with the

glimmer of a new idea.
You should have had more vanity
"

!
"

Doctor
Hugh spoke as if he knew the exact amount required
to make a man of letters normal.

No, no I only should have had more time. I

"

want another go."

Another go ?
" "

I want an extension."
"

An extension ?
"

Again Doctor Hugh repeated

"

Dencombe s words, with which he seemed to have

been struck.
Don t you know?
"

I want what they call live.

to
"

The young man, for good-bye, had taken his hand,

which closed with a certain force. They looked at
each other hard a moment. "

You will live,"

said
Doctor Hugh.
Don t be superficial.
"

It s too serious !
"

"

You shall live !

"

Dencombe s visitor declared,

turning pale.
"Ah,
that s better!" And as he retired the
invalid, with a troubled laugh, sank gratefully back.
All that day and all the following night he won
dered if it mightn t be arranged. His doctor came
again, his servant was attentive, but it was to his
confident young friend that he found himself mentally
i83 THE MIDDLE YEARS
appealing. His collapse on the cliff was plausibly
explained, and his liberation, on a better basis,
promised for the morrow ; meanwhile, however, the
intensity of his meditations kept him tranquil and
made him indifferent. The idea that occupied him
was none the less absorbing because it was a morbid
fancy. Here was a clever son of the age, ingenious
and ardent, who happened to have set him up for
connoisseurs to worship. This servant of his altar
had all the new learning in science and all the old

reverence in faith ;
wouldn the therefore put his
knowledge at the disposal of his sympathy, his craft
at the disposal of his love ? Couldn t he be trusted
to invent a remedy for a poor artist to whose art he
had paid a tribute ? If he couldn t, the alternative
was hard : Dencombe would have to surrender to

silence, unvindicated and undivined. The rest of

the day and all the next he toyed in secret with this
sweet futility. Who would work the miracle for him
but the young man who could combine such lucidity
with such passion ? He thought of the fairy-tales
of science and charmed himself into forgetting that
he looked for a magic that was not of this world.
Doctor Hugh was an and that placed him
apparition,
above the law. He came and went while his patient,
who sat up, followed him with supplicating eyes.
The interest of knowing the great author had made
young man begin The Middle Years afresh,
"
"

the
and would help him to find a deeper meaning in its
pages. Dencombe had told him what he
" "

tried for ;

with all his intelligence, on a first perusal, Doctor

 THE MIDDLE YEARS 189

Hugh had failed to guess it. The baffled celebrity

wondered then who in the world would guess it he :

was amused once more at the fine, full way with

which an intention could be missed. Yet he
wouldn t rail at the general mind to-day consoling
as that ever had been the revelation of his own
:

slowness had seemed to make all stupidity sacred.

Doctor Hugh, after a little, was visibly worried,
confessing, on inquiry, to a source of embarrassment
at home. "

Stick to the Countess don t mind me,"

Dencombe said, repeatedly ;

for his companion was
frank enough about the large lady s attitude. She
was so jealous that she had fallen ill she resented
such a breach of allegiance. She paid so much for
his fidelity that she must have it all she refused :

him the right to other sympathies, charged him with

scheming to make her die alone, forwas needless
it

to point out how little Miss Vernham was a resource

in trouble. When Doctor Hugh mentioned that the
Countess would already have left Bournemouth if he
hadn t kept her in bed, poor Dencombe held his arm
tighter and said with decision "Take her straight
:

away." They had gone out together, walking back

to the sheltered nook in which, the other day, they
had met. The young man, who had given his com
panion a personal support, declared with emphasis
that his conscience was clear he could ride two
horses at once. Didn t he dream, for his future, of
a time when he should have to ride five hundred ?

Longing equally for virtue, Dencombe replied that

in that golden age no patient would pretend to have
190 THE MIDDLE YEARS
contracted with him for his whole attention. On the
was not such an avidity lawful ?
part of the Countess
Doctor Hugh denied it, said there was no contract
but only a free understanding, and that a sordid
servitude was impossible to a generous spirit ; he
liked moreover to talk about art, and that was the
subject on which, this time, as they sat together on
the sunny bench, he tried most to engage the author
of The Middle Years." Dencombe, soaring again a
"

little on the weak wings of convalescence and still

haunted by that happy notion of an organised rescue,

found another strain of eloquence to plead the cause
of a certain splendid "last manner," the very citadel,
as it would prove, of his reputation, the stronghold

into which his real treasure would be gathered.

While his listener gave up the morning and the
great sea appeared to wait, he had a wonderful
still

explanatory hour. Even for himself he was inspired

as he told of what his treasure would consist the

precious metals he would dig from the mine, the

jewels rare, strings of pearls, he would hang between
the columns of his temple. He was wonderful for
himself, so thick his convictions crowded; but he
was still more wonderful for Doctor Hugh, who
assured him, none the he
less, that the very pages
had just published were already encrusted with
gems. The young man, however, panted for the
combinations to come, and, before the face of the
beautiful day, renewed to Dencombe his guarantee
that his profession would hold itself responsible for
such a life. Then he suddenly clapped his hand
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 19!

upon his watch-pocket and asked leave to absent him

self for half an hour. Dencombe waited there for his

return, but was at last recalled to the actual by the

of a shadow across the ground.
fall The shadow
darkened into that of Miss Vernham, the young lady
in attendance on the Countess ;
whom Dencombe,
recognising her, perceived so clearly to have come
to speak to him that he rose from his bench to

acknowledge the civility. Miss Vernham indeed

proved not particularly civil she looked strangely ;

agitated, and her type was now unmistakable.

"

Excuse me if Ishe said, whether it s

inquire,"
"

too much to hope that you may be induced to leave

Doctor Hugh alone."
Then, before Dencombe,
greatly disconcerted, could protest You ought to :
"

be informed that you stand in his light ; that you

may do him a terrible injury."

Do you mean by
"

causing the Countess to dis

pense with his services ?
"

By causing her to disinherit him." Dencombe

"

stared at this, and Miss Vernham pursued, in the

gratification of seeing she could produce an impres

sion It has depended on himself to come into
"

something very handsome. He has had a magni

ficent prospect, but I think you ve succeeded in

spoiling it."

"Not
intentionally, I assure you. Is there no
hope the accident may be repaired ?
"

Dencombe
asked.
"She was ready to do anything for him. She
takes great fancies, she lets herself go it s her way.
ig2 THE MIDDLE YEARS
She has no relations, she s free to dispose of her
money, and she s very ill."

I m very sorry to hear Dencombe stammered.

"

it,"

Wouldn t it be possible
"

for you to leave Bourne

mouth ? That s what I ve come to ask of you."

Poor Dencombe sank down on his bench. "

I m
very ill myself, but I ll try
"

Miss Vernham still stood there with her colourless

eyes and the brutality of her good conscience.
14
she said ; and with
"

Before it s too late, please !

this she turned her back, in order, quickly, as if it

had been a business to which she could spare but a

precious moment, to pass out of his sight.

Oh, yes, after this Dencombe was certainly very
ill. Miss Vernham had upset him with her rough,
fiercenews ; it was the sharpest shock to him to dis
cover what was at stake for a penniless young man
of fine parts. He sat trembling on his bench,
staring at the waste of waters, feeling sick with the
directness of the blow. He was indeed too weak,
too unsteady, too alarmed ;
but he would make the
effort to get away, for he couldn
accept the guilt of t

interference, and his honour was really involved.

He would hobble home, at any rate, and then he
would think what was to be done. He made his
way back to the hotel and, as he went, had a
characteristic vision of Miss Vernham s great
motive.The Countess hated women, of course ;

Dencombe was lucid about that so the hungry ;

pianist had no personal hopes and could only con

sole herself with the bold conception of helping
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 193

Doctor Hugh in order either to marry him after he

should get his money or to induce him to recognise
her compensation and buy her off.
title to If she

had befriended him at a fruitful crisis he would

really, as a man of delicacy, and she knew what to
think of that point, have to reckon with her.
At the hotel Dencombe s servant insisted on his
going back to bed. The invalid had talked about
catching a train and had begun with orders to pack ;
after which his humming nerves had yielded to a
sense of sickness. He consented to see his physi
cian, who immediately was sent for, but he wished
it to be understood that his door was irrevocably
closed to Doctor Hugh. He had his plan, which
was so he rejoiced in
fine that it after getting back

to bed. Doctor Hugh, suddenly finding himself

snubbed without mercy, would, in natural disgust
and to the joy of Miss Vernham, renew his allegiance
to the Countess. When his physician arrived Den-
combe learned that he was feverish and that this
was very wrong : he was to cultivate calmness and
try, if possible, For the rest of the
not to think.
day he wooed stupidity but there was an ache
;

;hat kept him sentient, the probable sacrifice of his

extension," the limit of his course.

;<

His medical
adviser was anything but pleased his successive
;

relapses were ominous. He charged this personage

to put out a strong hand and take Doctor Hugh off
his mind it would contribute so much to his
being
quiet. The agitating name, in his room, was not
mentioned again, but his security was a smothered
H
194 THE MIDDLE YEARS
fear, and it was not confirmed by the receipt, at ten
o clock that evening, of a telegram which his servant
opened and read for him and to which, with an
address in London, the signature of Miss Vernham
was attached. "Beseech you to use all influence

to make our friend join us here in the morning.

Countess much the worse for dreadful journey, but

everything may still be saved." The two ladies had

gathered themselves up and had been capable in the
afternoon of a spiteful revolution. They had started
for the capital, and if the elder one, as Miss Vern
ham had announced, was very ill, she had wished to
make it clear that she was proportionately reckless.
Poor Dencombe, who was not reckless and who
only desired that everything should indeed be
saved," sent this missive straight off to the young
"

man s lodging and had on the morrow the pleasure

of knowing that he had quitted Bournemouth by an
early train.
Two days later he pressed in with a copy of a
literary journal in his hand. He had returned
because he was anxious and for the pleasure of
flourishing the great review of The Middle Years."
"

Here at least was something adequate it rose to

the occasion ;
it was an acclamation, a reparation,
a critical attempt to place the author in the
niche he had fairly won. Dencombe accepted
and submitted ;
he made neither objection nor
inquiry, for old complications had returned and he
had had two atrocious days. He was convinced
not only that he should never again leave his bed,
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 195

so that his young friend might pardonably remain,

but that thedemand he should make on the patience
of beholders would be very moderate indeed. Doctor

Hugh had been to town, and he tried to find in his

eyes some confession that the Countess was pacified

and his legacy clinched but all he could see there ;

was the light of his juvenile joy in two or three of

the phrases of the newspaper. Dencombe couldn t
read them, but when his visitor had insisted on
repeating them more than once he was able to
shake an unintoxicated head. Ah, no ; but they
"

would have been true of what I could have done !

"

What people could have done is mainly what

"

they ve in fact done," Doctor Hugh contended.

"

Mainly, yes ;
but I ve been an idiot !
"

said
Dencombe.
Doctor Hugh did remain the end was coming
;

fast. Two days later Dencombe observed to him,

by way of the feeblest of jokes, that there would
now be no question whatever of a second chance.
At this the young man stared then he exclaimed ; :

Why, it has come to pass it has come to pass

"

The second chance has been the public s the

chance to find the point of view, to pick up the
pearl!"

poor Dencombe uneasily sighed.

"

Oh, the pearl

"

A smile as cold as a winter sunset flickered on his

drawn lips as he added The pearl is the unwritten
:
"

the pearl is the unalloyed, the rest, the lost !

"

From that moment he was less and less present,

heedless to all appearance of what went on around
lg6 THE MIDDLE YEARS
him. His disease was definitely mortal, of an
action as relentless, after the short arrest that had
enabled him to fall in with Doctor Hugh, as a leak
in a great ship. Sinking steadily, though this

visitor, a man of rare resources, now cordially

approved by his physician, showed endless art in
guarding him from pain, poor Dencombe kept no
reckoning of favour or neglect, betrayed no symptom
of regret or speculation. Yet toward the last he
gave a sign of having noticed that for two days
Doctor Hugh had not been in his room, a sign
that consisted of his suddenly opening his e}^es to
ask of him if he had spent the interval with the
Countess.
"The Countess is dead,"
said Doctor Hugh. "I

knew that in a particular contingency she wouldn t

resist. I went to her grave."

Dencombe s eyes opened wider. She left you "

something handsome ?
* "

The young man gave a laugh almost too light for

a chamber of woe. Never a penny. She roundly "

cursed me."

"

Cursed you ? Dencombe murmured.

"

"

For giving her up. I gave her up for you. I had

to choose," his
companion explained.
"

You chose to let a fortune go ? "

I chose to accept, whatever they might

"

be, the
consequences of my infatuation," smiled Doctor
Hugh. Then, as a larger pleasantry A fortune be :
"

hanged It s your own fault if I can t get your things

!

out of my head."
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 197

The immediate tribute to his humour was a long f

bewildered moan after which, for many hours,

;

many days, Dencombe lay motionless and absent.

A response so absolute, such a glimpse of a definite
result and such a sense of credit worked together
in his mind and, producing a strange commotion,
slowly altered and transfigured his despair. The
sense of cold submersion left him he seemed to
float without an effort. The incident was extra
ordinary as evidence, and it shed an intenser light.
At the last he signed to Doctor Hugh to listen, and,
when he was down on his knees by the pillow, brought
him very near.
You ve made me think it all a delusion."
41

Not your glory, my dear friend," stammered the

"

young man.
Not my glory what there is of it
"

It 15 glory !

to have been tested, to have had our little quality

and cast our little spell. The thing is to have made
somebody care. You happen to be crazy, of course,
but that doesn t affect the law."

"

You re a great success !

"

said Doctor Hugh,

putting into his young voice the ring of a marriage-
bell.

Dencombe lay taking this in ; then he gathered

strength to speak once more. second chance "

A
thafs the delusion. There never was to be but one.
We work in the dark we do what we can we give
what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our
passion is our task. The rest is the madness of
198 THE MIDDLE YEARS
you ve doubted, if you ve despaired, you ve
"If

always done his visitor subtly argued.

it,"

"We ve done something or other," Dencombe con

ceded.

Something or other
"

is everything. It s the feasi

ble. It s you!"

Comforter poor Dencombe ironically sighed.

"
"

"

But it s true,"
insisted his friend.
"

It s true. It s frustration that doesn t count."

Frustration s only said Doctor

"

life," Hugh.
"

Yes, it s what passes." Poor Dencombe was

barely audible, but he had marked with the words
the virtual end of his first and only chance
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
HE had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean
anniversaries,and he disliked them still more when
they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations and
suppressions were equally painful to him, and there
was only one of the former that found a place in his
life. Again and again he had kept in his own
fashion the day of the year on which Mary Antrim
died. It would be more to the point perhaps to say

that the day kept him it kept him at least, effectu

:

ally, from doing anything else. It took hold of him

year after year with a hand of which time had

softened but had never loosened the touch. He
waked up to this feast of memory as consciously as
he would have waked up to his marriage-morn.
Marriage had had, of old, but too little to say to the
matter : for the girl who was to have been his bride
there had been no bridal embrace. She had died of
a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been
fixed, and he had lost, before fairly tasting it, an
affection that promised to fill his life to the brim.
Of that benediction, however, would have been
it

false to say this life could really be emptied it was :

still ruled by a pale ghost, it was ordered by a

still

sovereign presence. He had not been a man of

202 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
numerous passions, and even in all these } ears no
r

sense had grown stronger with him than the sense

of being bereft. He had needed no priest and no
altar to make him for ever widowed. He had done
many things in the world he had done almost all
things but one he
: had never forgotten. He had
tried to put into his existence whatever else might
take up room in it, but he had never made it any
thing but a house of which the mistress was eter
nally absent. She was most absent of all on the
recurrent December day that his tenacity set apart.
He had no designed observance of it, but his nerves
made it all their own. They always drove him
forth on a long walk, for the goal of his pilgrimage
was far. She had been buried in a London suburb,
in a place then almost natural, but which he had
seen lose one after another every feature of fresh
ness. It was in truth during the moments he
stood there that his eyes beheld the place least.
They looked atanother image, they opened to
another light. Was it a credible future ? Was it an
incredible past ? Whatever it was, it was an
immense escape from the actual.
It is true that if there were not other dates than

this there were other memories ; and by the time

George Stransom was fifty-five such memories had
greatly multiplied. There were other ghosts in his
life than the ghost of Mary Antrim. He had
perhaps not had more losses than most men, but he
had counted his losses more ;
he had not seen death
more closely, but he had, in a manner, felt it more
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 203

deeply. He had formed

little by little the habit of

numbering his Dead had : come to him tolerably

it

early in life that there was something one had to do

for them. They were there in their simplified,
intensified essence, their conscious absence and
expressive patience, as personally there as if they
had only been stricken dumb. When all sense of
them failed, all sound of them ceased, it was as if
their purgatory were really still on earth they asked :

so little that they got, poor things, even less, and

died again, died every day, of the hard usage of life.

They had no organised service, no reserved place, no

honour, no shelter, no safety. Even ungenerous
people provided for the living, but even those who
were called most generous did nothing for the
others. So, on George Stransom s part, there grew
up with the years a determination that he at least
would do something, do it, that is, for his own, and
perform the great charity without reproach. Every
man had his own, and every man had, to meet this
charity, the ample resources of the soul.
It was doubtless the voice of Mary Antrim that
spoke for them best at any rate, as the years went
;

on, he found himself in regular communion with

these alternative associates, with those whom indeed
he always called in his thoughts the Others. He
spared them the moments, he organised the charity.
How it grew up he probably never could have told
you, but what came to pass was that an altar, such
as was after all within everybody s compass, lighted
with perpetual candles and dedicated to these secret
204 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
rites,reared itself in his spiritual spaces. He had
wondered of old, in some embarrassment, whether
he had a religion being very sure, and not a little
;

content, that he had not at all events the religion

some of the people he had known wanted him to
have. Gradually this question was straightened out
for him : it became clear to him that the religion
instilled by his earliest consciousness had been
simply the religion of the Dead. It suited his incli

nation, it satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to

his piety. It answered his love of great offices, of a

solemn and splendid ritual, for no shrine could be

more bedecked and no ceremonial more stately than
those to which his worship was attached. He had
no imagination about these things save that they
were accessible to every one who should ever feel
the need of them. The poorest could build such
temples of the spirit could make them blaze with
candles and smoke with incense, make them flush
with pictures and flowers. The cost, in the common
phrase, of keeping them up fell entirely on the liberal
heart.
 II

HE had this year, on the eve of his anniversary, as it

happened, an emotion not unconnected with that

range of feeling. Walking home at the close of a
busy day, he was arrested in the London street by
the particular effect of a shop-front which lighted the
dull brown air with its mercenary grin and before
which several persons were gathered. It was the
window of a jeweller whose diamonds and sapphires
seemed to laugh, in flashes like high notes of sound,
with the mere joy of knowing how much more they
were worth than most of the dingy pedestrians
"
"

staring at them from the other side of the pane.

Stransom lingered long enough to suspend, in a

vision, a string of pearls about the white neck of Mary

Antrim, and then was kept an instant longer by the
sound of a voice he knew. Next him was a mumb
ling old woman, and be}^ond the old woman a gentle
man with a lady on his arm. It was from him, from
Paul Creston, the voice had proceeded he was :

talking with the lady of some precious object in the

window. Stransom had no sooner recognised him
than the oldwoman turned away ; but simultaneously
with this increase of opportunity he became aware
of a strangeness which stayed him in the very act of
206 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
laying his hand on his friend s arm. It lasted only

a few seconds, but a few seconds were long enough

for the flash of a wild question. Was not Mrs.
Creston dead ? the ambiguity met him there in the
short drop of her husband s voice, the drop conjugal,
if it ever was, and in the way the two figures leaned

to each other. Creston, making a step to look at

something else, came nearer, glanced at him, started
and exclaimed a circumstance the effect of which
was at first only to leave Stransom staring, staring
back across the months at the different face, the

wholly other face the poor man had shown him last, the
blurred, ravaged mask bent over the open grave by
which they had stood together. Creston was not in
mourning now ; he detached his arm from his
companion s to grasp the hand of the older friend.
He coloured as well as smiled in the strong light of
the shop when Stransom raised a tentative hat to the

lady. Stransom had just time to see that she was

pretty before he found himself gaping at a fact more
portentous.
"

My dear fellow, let me make you

acquainted with my wife."
Creston had blushed and stammered over it,
but in
half a minute, at the rate we live in polite society, it

had practically become, for Stransom, the mere

memory of a shock. stood there and laughed
They
and talked ;
Stransom had instantly whisked the
shock out of the way, to keep it for private consump
tion. He felt himself grimacing, he heard himself
exaggerating the usual, but he was conscious that he
had turned slightly faint. That new woman, that
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 207

hired performer, Mrs. Creston ? Mrs. Creston had

been more living for him than any woman but one.
This lady had a face that shone as publicly as the
jeweller s window, and in the happy candour with
which she wore her monstrous character there was an
effectof gross immodesty. The character of Hugh
Creston s wife thus attributed to her was monstrous
for reasons which Stransom could see that his friend
perfectly knewthat he knew. The happy pair
had just arrived from America, and Stransom had not
needed to be told this to divine the nationality of the
lady. Somehow it deepened the foolish air that her
husband s confused cordiality was unable to conceal.
Stransom recalled that he had heard of poor Creston s
having, while his bereavement was still fresh, gone to
the United States for what people in such predica
ments call a little change. He had found the little
change indeed, he had brought the little change back;
it was the little change that stood there and that, do

what he would, he couldn t, while he showed those

high front-teeth of his, look like anything but a con
scious ass about. They were going into the shop
Mrs. Creston said, and she begged Mr. Stransom to
come with them and help to decide. He thanked
watch and pleading an engagement for
her, opening his
which he was already late, and they parted while
she shrieked into the fog,
"

Mind now you come to

see me right away !
"

Creston had had the delicacy

not to suggest that, and Stransom hoped it hurt him
somewhere to hear her scream it to all the echoes.
He felt quite determined, as he walked away,
2o8 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
never in his life to go near her. She was perhaps a
human being, but Creston oughtn t to have shown

her without precautions, oughtn t indeed to have

shown her at all. His precautions should have
been those of a forger or a murderer, and the people
at home would never have mentioned extradition.
This was a wife for foreign service or purely ex
ternal use a decent consideration would have
;

spared her the injury of comparisons. Such were

the first reflections of George Stransom s amazement ;

but as he sat alone that night there were particular

hours that he always passed alone the harshness
dropped from them and left only the pity. He could
spend an evening with Kate Creston, if the man to
whom she had given everything couldn t. He had
known her twenty years, and she was the only
woman for whom he might perhaps have been
unfaithful. She was all cleverness and sympathy

and charm ; her house had been the very easiest in

all the world and her friendship the very firmest.

Without accidents he had loved her, without

accidents every one had loved her she had made :

the passions about her as regular as the moon makes

the tides. She had been also of course far too good
for herhusband, but he never suspected it, and in
nothing had she been more admirable than in the
exquisite art with which she tried to keep every one
else (keeping Creston was no trouble) from finding
it out. Here was a man to whom she had devoted
her life and for whom she had given it up dying to
bring into the world a child of his bed ;
and she had
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 209

had only to submit to her fate to have, ere the grass

was green on her grave, no more existence for him
than a domestic servant he had replaced. The
frivolity, the indecency of it made Stransom s eyes
fill ; and he had that evening a rich, almost happy

sense that he alone, in a world without delicacy, had

a right to hold up his head. While he smoked, after
dinner, he had a book in his lap, but he had no eyes
for his page his eyes, in the swarming void of
:

things, seemed to have caught Kate Creston s, and it

was into their sad silences he looked. It was to him
her sentient spirit had turned, knowing that it was
of her he would think. He
a long time,
thought, for
of how the closed eyes of dead women could still
live how they could open again, in a quiet lamplit
room, long after they had looked their last. They
had looks that remained, as great poets had quoted
lines.

The newspaper lay by his chair the thing that

came in the afternoon and the servants thought one
wanted ; without sense for what was in it he had
mechanically unfolded and then dropped it. Before
he went to bed he took it up, and this time, at the
top of a paragraph, he was caught by five words
that made him start. He stood staring, before the
fire, at the Death of
"

Sir Acton Hague, K.C.B.,"

the man who, ten years earlier, had been the nearest
of his friends and whose deposition from this
eminence had practically left it without an occupant.
He had seen him after that catastrophe, but he had
not seen him for years. Standing there before the
o
210 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
firehe turned cold as he read what had befallen him.
Promoted a short time previous to the governorship
of the Westward Islands, Acton Hague had died, in
the bleak honour of this exile, of an illness conse
quent on the bite of a poisonous snake. His career
was compressed by the newspaper into a dozen lines,
the perusal of which excited on George Stransom s

part no warmer feeling than one of relief at the

absence of any mention of their quarrel, an incident
accidentally tainted at the time, thanks to their

joint immersion in large affairs, with a horrible

publicity. Public indeed was the wrong Stransom

had, to his own sense, suffered, the insult he had
blankly taken from the only man with whom he had
ever been intimate ; the friend, almost adored, of
his University years, the subject, later, of his
passionate loyalty so public that he had never
:

spoken of it to a human creature, so public that he

had completely overlooked it. It had made the
difference for him that friendship too was all over,
but it had only made just that one. The shock of
interests had been private, intensely so ;
but the
action taken by Hague had been in the face of men.
it all seemed to have occurred merely to the
To-day
end that George Stransom should think of him as
Hague and measure exactly how much he him
"
"

self could feel like a stone. He went cold, suddenly

and horribly cold, to bed.
 Ill

THE next day, in the afternoon, in the great grey

suburb, he felt that his long walk had tired him. In
the dreadful cemetery alone he had been on his feet
an hour. Instinctively, coming back, they had taken
him a devious course, and it was a desert in which
no circling cabman hovered over possible prey. He
paused on a corner and measured the dreariness ;
then he became aware in the gathered dusk that he
was in one of those tracts of London which are less
gloomy by night than by day, because, in the former
case, of the civil gift of light. By day there was
nothing, but by night there were lamps, and George
Stransom was in a mood which made lamps good in
themselves. It wasn t that they could show him

anything ;
it was only that they could burn clear.
To his surprise, however, after a while, they did
show him something the arch of a high doorway
:

approached by a low terrace of steps, in the depth of

which it formed a dim vestibule the raising of a
curtain, at the moment he passed, gave him a glimpse
of an avenue of gloom with a glow of tapers at the
end. He stopped and looked up, making out that
the place was a church. The thought quickly came
to him that since he was tired he might rest there ;
212 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
so that after a moment he had in turn pushed up the
leathern curtain and gone in. It was a temple of

the old persuasion, and there had evidently been a

function perhaps a service for the dead ; the high
altar was still a blaze of candles. This was an
exhibition he always liked, and he dropped into a
seat with relief. More than it had ever yet come
home to him it struck him as good that there should
be churches.
This one was almost empty and the other altars
were dim ;
a verger shuffled about, an old woman
coughed, but it seemed to Stransom there was
hospitality in the thick sweet air. Was it
only the
savour of the incense, or was it
something larger
and more guaranteed ? He had
any rate quitted at
the great grey suburb and come nearer to the warm
centre. He presently ceased to feel an intruder
he gained at last even a sense of community with
the only worshipper in his neighbourhood, the
sombre presence of a woman, in mourning unrelieved,
whose back was all he could see of her and who had
sunk deep into prayer at no great distance from him.
He wished he could sink, like her, to the very
bottom, be as motionless, as rapt in prostration.
After a few moments he shifted his seat it was ;

almost indelicate to be so aware

But of her.
Stransom subsequently lost himself altogether he ;

floated away on the sea of light. If occasions like

this had been more frequent in his life he would
have been more frequently conscious of the great
original type, set up in a myriad temples, of the
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 213

unapproachable shrine he had erected in his mind.

That shrine had begun as a reflection of ecclesi
astical pomps, but the echo had ended by growing
more distinct than the sound. The sound now rang
out, the type blazed at him with all its fires
and with
a mystery of radiance in which endless meanings
could glow. The thing became, as he sat there, his
appropriate altar, and each starry candle an appro
priate vow. He numbered them, he named them, he
grouped them it was the silent roll-call of his Dead.
They made together a brightness vast and intense, a
brightness in which the mere chapel of his thoughts
grew so dim that as it faded away he asked himself
if he shouldn t find his real comfort in some material
act, some outward worship.
This idea took possession of him while, at a
distance, the black-robed lady continued prostrate ;
he was quietly thrilled with his conception, which at
last brought him to his feet in the sudden excitement
of a plan. He wandered softly about the church,
pausing in the different chapels, which were all, save
one, applied to a special devotion. It was in this

one, dark and ungarnished, that he stood longest

the length of time it took him fully to grasp the con
ception of gilding it with his bounty. He should
snatch it from no other rites and associate it with
nothing profane ; he would simply take it as it
should be given up to him and make it a masterpiece
of splendour and a mountain of fire. Tended sacredly
all the year, with the sanctifying church around it, it

would always be ready for his offices. There would

214 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
be difficulties, but from the first they presented
themselves only as difficulties surmounted. Even
for a person so little affiliated the thing would be a
matter of arrangement. He saw it all in advance,
and how bright in especial the place would become
to him in the intermissions of toil and the dusk of
afternoons ;
how rich in assurance at all times, but

especially in the indifferent world. Before with

drawing he drew nearer again to the spot where he
had first sat down, and in the movement he met the
lady whom he had seen praying and who was now
on her way to the door. She passed him quickly,
and he had only a glimpse of her pale face and her
unconscious, almost sightless eyes. For that instant
she looked faded and handsome.
This was the origin of the rites more public, yet
certainly esoteric, that he at last found himself
able to establish. It took a long time, it took a

year, and both the process and the result would

have been for any who knew a vivid picture
of his good faith. No one did know, in fact
no one but the bland ecclesiastics whose acquain
tance he had promptly sought, whose objections
he had softly overridden, whose curiosity and sym
pathy he had artfully charmed, whose assent to
his eccentric munificence he had eventually won,
and who had asked for concessions in exchange for
indulgences. Stransom had of course at an early
stage of his inquiry been referred to the Bishop, and
the Bishop had been delightfully human, the Bishop
had been almost amused. Success was within sight,
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 21$

at any rate, from the moment the attitude of those

whom it concerned became liberal in response to
liberality. The altar and the small chapel that
enclosed it,
consecrated to an ostensible and cus
tomary worship, were to be splendidly maintained ;
all that Stransom reserved to himself was the
number of his lights and the free enjoyment of his
intention. When the intention had taken complete
effect the enjoyment became even greater than he
had ventured to hope. He liked to think of this
effect when he was far from it he liked to convince
himself of it yet again when he was near. He was
not often, indeed, so near as that a visit to it had
not perforce something of the patience of a pil
grimage ; but the time he gave to his devotion came
to seem to him
more a contribution to his other
interests than a betrayal of them. Even a loaded
life might be easier when one had added a new
necessity to it.

How much easier was probably never guessed

by those who simply knew that there were hours

when he disappeared and for many of whom there
was a vulgar reading of what they used to call his
plunges. These plunges were into depths quieter
than the deep sea-caves, and the habit, at the end of
a year or two, had become the one it would have
cost him most to relinquish. Now they had really,
his Dead, something that was indefeasibly theirs
and he liked to think that they might, in cases, be
the Dead of others, as well as that the Dead of
others might be invoked there under the protection
216 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
of what he had done. Whoever bent a knee on the
carpet he had laid down appeared to him to act in
the spirit of his intention. Each of his lights had a
name for him, and from time to time a new light
was kindled. This was what he had fundamentally
agreed for, that there should always be room for
them all. What those who passed or lingered saw
was simply the most resplendent of the altars, called
suddenly into vivid usefulness, with a quiet elderly
man, for whomevidently had a fascination, often
it

seated there in a maze or a doze ; but half the satis

faction of the spot for this mysterious and fitful

worshipper was that he found the years of his life

there, and the ties, the affections, the struggles, the

submissions, the conquests, if there had been such,

a record of that adventurous journey in which the
beginnings and the endings of human relations are
the lettered mile-stones. He had in general little
taste for the past as a part of his own history ; at
other times and in other places it mostly seemed to
him pitiful to consider and impossible to repair ; but
on these occasions he accepted it with something of
that positive gladness with which one adjusts one s
self to an ache that is beginning to succumb to treat
ment. To the treatment of time the malady of life

begins at a given moment to succumb ; and these

were doubtless the hours at which that truth most
came home to him. The day was written for him
there on which he had first become acquainted with
death, and the successive phases of the acquaintance
were each marked with a flame.
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 217

The flames were gathering thick at present, for

Stransom had entered that dark defile of our
earthly descent in which some one dies every day.
It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had flashed

out her white fire ; yet already there were younger

stars ablaze on the tips of the tapers.. Various

persons in whom his interest had not been intense
drew closer to him by entering this company.
He went over it, head by head, till he felt like
the shepherd of a huddled flock, with all a shep
herd s vision of differences imperceptible. He knew
his candles apart, up to the colour of the flame,
and would still have known them had their positions
all been changed. To other imaginations they
might stand for other things that they should
stand for something to be hushed before was all
he desired ; but he was intensely conscious of
the personal note of each and of the distinguish
able way it contributed to the concert. There
were hours at which he almost caught himself
wishing that certain of his friends would now die,
that he might establish with them in this manner
a connection more charming than, as it happened,
it was possible to enjoy with them in life. In
regard to those from whom one was separated by
the long curves of the globe such a connection
could only be an improvement it
brought them
:

instantly within reach. Of course there were gaps

in the constellation, for Stransom knew he could

only pretend to act for his own, and it was not

every figure passing before his eyes into the great

2i8 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
obscure that was entitled to a memorial. There
was a strange sanctification in death, but some
characters were more sanctified by being forgotten
than by being remembered. The greatest blank
in the shining page was the memory of Acton

Hague, of which he inveterately tried to rid himself.

For Acton Hague no flame could ever rise on any
altar of his.
 IV

EVERY year,day he walked back from the

the

great graveyard, he went to church as he had

done the day his idea was born. It was on this
occasion, as it happened, after a year had passed,
that he began to observe his altar to be haunted

by a worshipper at least as frequent as himself.

Others of the faithful, and in the rest of the church,
came and went, appealing sometimes, when they
disappeared, to a vague or to a particular recog
nition ; but this unfailing presence was always to
be observed when he arrived and still in possession
when he departed. He was
surprised, the first
time, at the promptitude with which it assumed
an identity for him the identity of the lady whom,
two years before, on his anniversar} he had seen ,

so intensely bowed, and of whose tragic face he

had had so flitting a vision. Given the time that
had elapsed, his recollection of her was fresh

enough to make him wonder. Of himself she had

of course no impresssion, or rather she had none
at first the time came when her manner of trans
:

acting her business suggested to him that she had

gradually guessed his call to be of the same order.
She used his altar for her own purpose he could
220 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
only hope that, sad and solitary as she always
struck him, she used it for her own Dead. There
were interruptions, infidelities, all on his part,
calls to other associations and duties ;
but as the
months went on he found her whenever he returned,
and he ended by taking pleasure in the thought
that he had given her almost the contentment he
had given himself. They worshipped side by side
so often that there were moments when he wished
he might be sure, so straight did their prospect
stretch away of growing old together in their rites.
She was younger than he, but she looked as if
her Dead were at least as numerous as his candles.
She had no colour, no sound, no fault, and another of
the things about which he had made up his mind was
that she had no fortune. She was always black-
robed, as if she had had a succession of sorrows.
People were not poor, after all, whom so many
losses could overtake ; they were positively rich
when they had so much to give up. But the air
of this devoted and indifferent woman, who always
made, in any attitude, a beautiful, accidental line,
conveyed somehow to Stransom that she had known
more kinds of trouble than one.
He had a great love of music and little time
for the joy of it but occasionally, when workaday
;

noises were muffled by Saturday afternoons, it

used to come back to him that there were glories.
There were moreover friends who reminded him
of this and side by side with whom he found
himself sitting out concerts. On one of these
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 221

winter evenings, in St. James s Hall, he became

aware after he had seated himself that the lady
he had so often seen at church was in the place

next him and was evidently alone, as he also this

time happened to be. She was at first too absorbed
in the consideration of the programme to heed him,
but when she at last glanced at him he took ad
vantage of the movement to speak to her, greeting
her with the remark that he felt as if he already
knew her. She smiled as she said "Oh
yes, I

in spite of this admission of

"

recognise you; yet

theirlong acquaintance it was the first time he
had ever seen her smile. The effect of it was
suddenly to contribute more to that acquaintance
than all the previous meetings had done. He
hadn t "taken he said to himself, that she was
in,"

so pretty. Later, that evening (it was while he

rolled along in a hansom on his way to dine out)
he added that he hadn t taken in that she was
so interesting. The next morning, in the midst
of his work, he quite suddenly and irrelevantly
reflected that his impression of her, beginning so
far back, was like a winding river that had at last

reached the sea.

His work was indeed blurred a little, all that

day, by the sense of what had now passed between

them. It wasn t much, but it had just made the
difference.They had listened together to Beet
hoven and Schumann ; they had talked in the pauses
and at the end, when at the door, to which they
moved together, he had asked her if he could help
222 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
her in the matter of getting away. She had thanked
him and put up her umbrella, slipping into the
crowd without an allusion to their meeting yet
again and leaving him to remember at leisure that
not a word had been exchanged about the place
in which they frequently met. This circumstance
seemed to him at one moment natural enough and
at another perverse. She mightn t in the least
have recognised his warrant for speaking to her;
and yet if she hadn t he would have judged her an
underbred woman. It was odd that when nothing
had really ever brought them together he should
have been able successfully to assume that they
were in a manner old friends that this negative
quantity was somehow more than they could ex
press. His success, it was true, had been quali
fied by her quick escape, so that there grew up
in him an absurd desire to put it to some better
test. Save in so far as some other improbable
accident might assist him, such a test could be
only to meet her afresh at church. Left to himself
he would have gone to church the very next after
noon, just for the curiosity of seeing if he should
find her there. But he was not left to himself,
a facthe discovered quite at the last, after he had
virtually made up his mind to go. The influence
that kept him away really revealed to him how
little to himself his Dead ever left him. They
reminded him that he went only for them for

nothing else in the world.

The force of this reminder kept him away ten
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 223

days: he hated to connect the place with anything

but his offices or to give a glimpse of the curiosity
that had been on the point of moving him. It was

absurd to weave a tangle about a matter so simple

as a custom of devotion that might so easily have
been daily or hourly; yet the tangle got itself
woven. He was sorry, he was disappointed it :

was as if a long, happy spell had been broken and

he had lost a familiar security. At the last, how
ever, he asked himself if he was to stay away

for ever from the fear of this muddle about motives.

After an interval neither longer nor shorter than
usual he re-entered the church with a clear con
viction thathe should scarcely heed the presence
or the absence of the lady of the concert. This
indifference didn t prevent his instantly perceiving
that for the only time since he had first seen her
she was not on the spot. He had now no scruple
about giving her time to arrive, but she didn t

and when he went away still missing her

arrive,
he was quite profanely and consentingly sorry.
If her absence made the tangle more intricate,
that was only her fault. By the end of another
year it was very intricate indeed ; but by that time
he didn t in the least care, and it was only his
cultivated consciousness that had given him scruples.
Three times in three months he had gone to church
without finding her, and he felt that he had not
needed these occasions to show him that his
suspense had quite dropped. Yet it was, incon
gruously, not indifference, but & refinement of
224 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
delicacy that had kept him from asking the sacristan,
who would of course immediately have recognised
his description of her, whether she had been seen
at other hours. His delicacy had kept him from
asking any question about her at any time, and
it was exactly the same virtue that had left him
so free to be decently civil to her at the concert.
This happy advantage now served him anew,
enabling him when she finally met his eyes it was
after a fourth trial to determine without hesitation
to wait till she should retire. He joined her in the
street as soon as she had done
so, and asked her if
he might accompany her a certain distance. With
her placid permission he went as far as a house in
the neighbourhood at which she had business she :

let him know it was not where she lived. She lived,
as she said, in a mere slum, with an old aunt, a
person in connection with whom she spoke of the
engrossment of humdrum duties and regular occupa
tions. She was not, the mourning niece, in her first

youth, and her vanished freshness had left some

thing behind which, for Stransom, represented the
proof that it had been tragically sacrificed. What
ever she gave him the assurance of she gave it
without references. She might in fact have been
a divorced duchess, and she might have been an old
maid who taught the harp.
 V
THEY fell at last into the way of walking together

almost every time they met, though, for a long time,

they never met anywhere save at church. He
couldn t ask her to come and see him, and, as if she
had not a proper place to receive him, she never
invited him. As much as himself she knew the
world of London, but from an undiscussed instinct
of privacy they haunted the region not mapped on
the social chart. On the return she always made
him leave her at the same corner. She looked with
him, as a pretext for a pause, at the depressed

things in suburban shop-fronts ; and there was

never a word he had said to her that she had not

beautifully understood. For long ages he never

knew her name, any more than she had ever pro
nounced his own ;
but it was not their names that

mattered, it was only their perfect practice and their

common need.
These things made their whole relation so imper
sonal that they had not the rules or reasons people
found in ordinary friendships. They didn t care for
the things it was supposed necessary to care for in
the intercourse of the world. They ended one day
(they never knew which of them expressed it
first)
226 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
by throwing out the idea that they didn t care for
each other. Over this idea they grew quite intimate ;
they rallied to it in a way that marked a fresh start
in their confidence. If to feel deeply together about
certain things wholly distinct from themselves didn t
constitute a safety, where was safety to be looked
for? Not lightly nor often, not without occasion
nor without emotion, any more than in any other
reference by serious people to a mystery of their
faith ;
but when something had happened to warm,
as were, the air for it, they came as near as they
it

could come to calling their Dead by name. They

felt it was coming very near to utter their thought at
all. The word expressed enough; it
"they"

limited the mention, ithad a dignity of its own, and

if,
in their talk, you had heard our friends use it,
you might have taken them for a pair of pagans of
old alluding decently to the domesticated gods.
They never knew at least Stransom never knew
how they had learned to be sure about each other.
If had been with each a question of what the
it

other was there for, the certitude had come in some

fine way of its own. Any faith, after all, has the
instinct of propagation, and it was as natural as it
was beautiful that they should have taken pleasure
on the spot in the imagination of a following. If
the following was for each but a following of one,
it had proved in the event to be sufficient. Her
debt, however, of course, was much greater than his,
because while she had only given him a worshipper
he had given her a magnificent temple. Once she
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 227

said she pitied him for the length of his list (she had
counted his candles almost as often as himself) and
this made him wonder what could have been the

length of hers. He had wondered before at the

coincidence of their losses, especially as from time
to time a new candle was set up. On some occa
sion some accident led him to express this curiosity,
and she answered as if she was surprised that he

hadn t already understood. Oh, for me, you know,

"

the more there are the better there could never be

too many. I should like hundreds and hundreds I

should like thousands ;

I should like a perfect moun
tain of light."

Then of course, in a flash, he understood. Your "

Dead are only One ? "

She hesitated as she had never hesitated. Only

"

One,"
she answered, colouring as if now he knew
her innermost secret. It really made him feel that he
knew less than before, so difficult was it for him to
reconstitute a which a single experience had
life in
reduced all His own life, round
others to nought.
its central hollow, had been packed close enough.

After this she appeared to have regretted her con

fession, though at the moment she spoke there had
been pride in her very embarrassment. She de
clared to him that his own was the larger, the dearer

possession the portion one would have chosen if

one had been able to choose ; she assured him she
could perfectly imagine some of the echoes with
which his silences were peopled. He knew she
couldn t one s relation to what one had loved and
:
228 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
hated had been a relation too distinct from the re
lations of others. But this didn t affect the fact that

they were growing old together in their piety. She

was a feature of that piety, but even at the ripe
stage of acquaintance in which they occasionally
arranged to meet at a concert or to go together to
an exhibition she was not a feature of anything
else. The most that happened was that his worship
became paramount. Friend by friend dropped away
till at last there were more emblems on his altar

than houses left him to enter. She was more

than any other the friend who remained, but she
was unknown to all the rest. Once when she had
discovered, as they called it, a new star, she used
the expression that the chapel at last was full.
"

Oh no,"
Stransom replied,
"

there is a great
thing wanting for that ! The chapel will never be
full till a candle is set up before which all the others
will pale. It will be the tallest candle of all."

Her mild wonder rested on him. "

What candle
do you mean ?
"

mean, dear lady, my own."

"

He had learned after a long time that she earned

money by her pen, writing under a designation that
she never told him in magazines that he never saw.
She knew too well what he couldn t read and what
she couldn t write, and she taught him to cultivate
indifference with a success that did much for their

good relations. Her invisible industry was a con

venience to him ;
it helped his contented thought of
her, the thought that rested in the dignity of her
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 229

proud, obscure life, her little remunerated art and

her impenetrable home. Lost, with her obscure
little

relative, in her dim suburban world, she came to the

surface for him in distant places. She was really
the priestess of his altar, and whenever he quitted

England he committed it to her keeping. She

proved to him afresh that women have more of the

spirit of religion than men he felt his

; fidelity pale
and comparison with hers.
faint in He often said
to her that since he had so little time to live he

rejoiced in her having so much so glad was he to

;

think she would guard the temple when he should

have ceased. He had a great plan for that, which
of course he told her too, a bequest of money to
keep it up in undiminished state. Of the adminis
tration of this fund he would appoint her superin
tendent, and if the spirit should move her she might
kindle a taper even for him.
"And who will kindle one even for me?" she
gravely inquired.
 VI

SHE was always in mourning, yet the day he came

back from the longest absence he had yet made her
appearance immediately told him she had lately had
a bereavement. They met on this occasion as she
was leaving the church, so that postponing his own
entrance he instantly offered to turn round and walk
away with her. She considered, then she said :

Go now, but come and see me in an hour." He

"

in
knew the small vista of her street, closed at the end
and as dreary as an empty pocket, where the pairs of
shabby little houses, semi-detached but indissolubly
united, were like married couples on bad terms.
Often, however, as he had gone to the beginning, he
had never gone beyond. Her aunt was dead that
he immediately guessed, as well as that it made a
difference but when she had for the first time
;

mentioned her number he found himself, on her

leaving him, not a little agitated by this sudden
liberality. She was not a person with whom, after
all, one got on so very fast it had:taken him
months and months to learn her name, years and
years to learn her address. If she had looked, on

this reunion, so much older to him, how in the world

did he look to her ? She had reached the period of
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 231

life that he had long since reached, when, after

separations, the dreadful clockface of the friend we

meet announces the hour we have tried to forget.
He have said what he expected as, at the
couldn t

end of his waiting, he turned the corner at which,

for years, he had always paused ; simply not to

pause was a sufficient cause for emotion. It was an

event, somehow ; and in all their long acquaintance
there had never been such a thing. The event grew

larger when, five minutes later, in the faint elegance

of her little drawing-room, she quavered out some

greeting which showed the measure she took of it.

He had a strange sense of having come for some
thing in particular; strange because, literally, there
was nothing particular between them, nothing save
that they were at one on their great point, which
had long ago become a magnificent matter of course.
It was true that after she had said You can always "

come now, you know," the thing he was there for

seemed already to have happened. He asked her
if it was the death of her aunt that made the differ

ence to which she replied

; She never knew I
:
"

knew you. I wished her not The beautiful

to."

clearness of her candour her faded beauty was

like a summer twilight disconnected the words
from any image of They might have struck
deceit.
him as the record of a deep dissimulation ; but she
had always given him a sense of noble reasons.
The vanished aunt was present, as he looked about
him, in the small complacencies of the room, the
beaded velvet and the fluted moreen ;
and though,
232 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
as we know, he had the worship of the Dead, he
found himself not definitely regretting this lady. If

she was not in his long list, however, she was in

her
niece s short one, and Stransom presently observed
to his friend that now, at least, in the place they
haunted together, she would have another object of
devotion.
"

Yes, I shall She was very kind

have another.
to me. makes the difference."
It s that that
He judged, wondering a good deal before he made
any motion to leave her, that the difference would
somehow be very great and would consist of still
other things than her having let him come in. It

rather chilled him, for they had been happy together

as they were. He extracted from her at any rate
an intimation that she should now have larger
means, that her aunt s tiny fortune had come to
her, so that there was henceforth only one to con
sume what had formerly been made to suffice for
two. This was a joy to Stransom, because it had
hitherto been equally impossible for him either to
offer her presents or to find contentment in not doing
so. It was too ugly to be at her side that way,

abounding himself and yet not able to overflow a

demonstration that would have been a signally false
note. Even her better situation too seemed only to
draw out in a sense the loneliness of her future.

It would merely help her to live more and more for

their small ceremonial, at a time when he himself

had begun wearily to feel that, having set it in

motion, he might depart. When they had sat a

 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 233

while in the pale parlour she got up and said :

This isn my room us go into They

"

t : let mine."

had only to cross the narrow as he found, to

hall,

pass into quite another air. When she had closed

the door of the second room, as she called it, he felt
that he had at last real possession of her. The place
had the flush of life it was expressive; its dark
red walls were articulate with memories and relics.
These were simple things photographs and water-
colours, scraps of writing framed and ghosts of
flowers embalmed but only a moment was needed
;

to show him they had a common meaning. It was

here that she had lived and worked ;
and she had
already him she
told would make no change of
scene. He saw that the objects about her mainly
had reference to certain places and times ; but after
a minute he distinguished among them a small
portrait of a gentleman. At a distance and with
out their glasses his eyes were only caught by it
enough to feel a vague curiosity. Presently this
impulse carried him nearer, and in another moment
he was staring at the picture in stupefaction and
with the sense that some sound had broken from
him. He was further conscious that he showed his

companion a white face when he turned round on her

with the exclamation "Acton Hague
"

: !

She gave him back his astonishment. Did you "

know him ? "

He was the friend of all my youth my early

"

manhood. And you knew him ? "

She coloured at this, and for a moment her

234 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
answer failed ; her eyes took in everything in the
place, and a strange irony reached her lips as she
Knew him ?
"

echoed":
"

Then Stransom understood, while the room heaved

like the cabin of a ship, that its whole contents cried
out with him, that it was a museum in his honour,
that all her later years had been addressed to him
and that the shrine he himself had reared had been
passionately converted to this use. It was all for

Acton Hague that she had kneeled every day at his

altar. What need had there been for a consecrated
candle when he was present in the whole array ?
The revelation seemed to smite our friend in the

face, and he dropped into a seat and sat silent. He

had quickly become aware that she was shocked at
the vision of his own shock, but as she sank on the
sofa beside him and laid her hand on his arm he

perceived almost as soon that she was unable to

resent it as much as she would have liked.
 VII

HE learned in that instant two things : one of them

was that even in so long a time she had gathered
no knowledge of his great intimacy and his great
quarrel ;
the other was that in spite of this igno

rance, strangely enough, she supplied on the spot

a reason for his confusion. extraordinary,"
"

How
he presently exclaimed, "that we should never have
known !
"

She gave a wan smile which seemed to Stransom

stranger even than the never, never
"

fact itself. I

spoke of him."

Stransom looked about the room again. "

Why
then, if your life had been so full of him ?
"

"

Mayn t I put you that question as well ? Hadn t

your life also been full of him ? "

"Any one s, every one s life was who had the

wonderful experience of knowing him. I never spoke

of him," Stransom added in a moment, "because he
did me years ago an unforgettable wrong." She
was silent, and with the full effect of his presence
all about them it almost startled her visitor to hear
no protest escape from her. She accepted his words ;
he turned his eyes to her again to see in what
manner she accepted them. It was with rising tears
236 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
and an extraordinary sweetness in the movement of
putting out her hand to take his own. Nothing more
wonderful had ever appeared to Stransom than, in
that little chamber of remembrance and homage, to
see her convey with such exquisite mildness that as
from Acton Hague any injury was credible. The
clock ticked in the stillness Hague had probably
given it to her and while he let her hold his hand
with a tenderness that was almost an assumption of
responsibility for his old pain as well as his new,
Stransom after a minute broke out : Good God, "

how he must have used you ! "

She dropped his hand at this, got up and, moving

across the room, made straight a small picture to
which, on examining it, he had given a slight push.

Then turning round on him with her pale gaiety

recovered I ve forgiven him she declared.
"
"

: !

"

I know what you ve done,"

said Stransom ; I
"

know what you ve done for years."

For a moment
they looked at each other across the room, with
their long community of service in their eyes. This
short passage made, to Stransom s sense, for the
woman before him, an immense, an absolutely naked
confession ; which was presently, suddenly blushing
red and changing her place again, what she appeared
to become aware that he perceived in it. He got
up. How you must have loved him
"

I
"

he cried.
"

Women are not like men. They can love even

where they ve suffered."

"

Women are wonderful," said Stransom.

"

But
I assure you I ve forgiven him too."
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 237

I had known of anything so strange I

"If

wouldn t have brought you here."

So that we might have gone on in our ignorance
"

"

to the last ?
"

What do you call the last ?

"

she asked, smiling

still.

At this he could smile back at her.

"

You ll see
when it comes."

She reflected a moment. "This is better perhaps;

but as we were was good."
it

"

Did it never happen that he spoke of me ?

"

Stransom inquired.
Considering more intently, she made no answer,
and he quickly recognised that he would have been
adequately answered by her asking how often he
himself had spoken of their terrible friend. Sud
denly a brighter light broke in her face, and an
excited idea sprang to her lips in the question :

"

You have forgiven him ? "

How, if I hadn t, could linger here ?

" "

She winced, for an instant, at the deep but

unintended irony of this ; but even while she did so
she panted quickly Then in the lights on you :
"

"

altar ?

There s never a light for Acton Hague

"

!
"

She stared, with a great visible fall. "But if he s

one of your Dead ?
"

He s one of the world s, if you like he s one of

"

yours. But he s not one of mine. Mine are only

the Dead who died possessed of me. They re mine
in death because they were mine in life."
238 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
11
He was yours in life then, even if for a while he
ceased to be. If you forgave him you went back to
him. Those whom we ve once loved "

"Are those who can hurt us most," Stransom

broke in.

"Ah,
it s not true you ve not forgiven him!"

she wailed with a passion that startled him.

He looked at her a moment. What was "

it he
"

did to you ?
"

Everything !
"

Then abruptly she put out her

hand in farewell.
"

Good-bye."
He turned as cold as he had turned that night he
read of the death of Acton Hague. "You mean
that we meet no more ? "

"

Not as we have met not there \

"

He stood aghast at this snap of their great bond,

at the renouncement that rang out in the word she
so passionately emphasised.
"

But what s changed

"

foryou ?

She hesitated, in all the vividness of a trouble

that, fortime since he had known her,

the first

made her splendidly stern. How can you under "

stand now when you didn t understand before ?

"

"

I didn t understand before only because I didn t

know. Now that I know, I see what I ve been

living with for years,"

Stransom went on very
gently.
She looked at him with a larger allowance, as if

she appreciated his good-nature. "How can I,

then, with this new knowledge of my own, ask you

to continue to live with
"

it ?
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 239
"

I set up ray altar, with its multiplied meanings,"

Stnmsom began but she quickly interrupted him. ;

You set up your altar, and when I wanted one

"

most I found it magnificently ready. I used it, with

the gratitude I ve always shown you, for I knew

from of old that it was dedicated to Death. I told
you, long ago, that my Dead were not many.
Yours were, but all you had done for them was
none too much for my worship You had placed !

a great light for Each I gathered them together for

One!"

"We had simply different Stransom

intentions,"

That, as perfectly knew, and

"

replied. you say, I

I don t see why your intention shouldn t still sustain

you."

That s because you re generous you can ima

"

gine and think. But the spell is broken."

It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resis

tance, that it really was, and the prospect stretched
grey and void before him. All, however, that he
could say was I hope you ll try before you give
:
"

up."

"If I had known you had ever known him I

should have taken for granted he had his candle,"

she presently rejoined. What s changed, as you "

say, is that on making the discovery I find he never

has had it. That makes my attitude
"

she paused
a moment, as if thinking how to express it, then

said simply "all

wrong."
"

Come once again," Stransom pleaded.

"

Will you give him his candle ?

"

she asked.
240 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
He hesitated, but only because it would sound
ungracious ;
not because he had a doubt of his
feeling.
"

I can t do that !
"

he declared at last.
"

Then good-bye." And she gave him her hand

again.
He had got his dismissal
;
besides which, in the
agitation of everything that had opened out to him,
he felt the need to recover himself as he could only
do in solitude. Yet he lingered lingered to see if

she had no compromise to express, no attenuation

to propose. But he only met her great lamenting
eyes, in which indeed he read that she was as
sorry for him as for any one else. This made
him say :
"

At least, at any rate, I may see you

here."

Oh, yes, come But don think

"

if you like. I t it

will do."

Stransom looked round the room once more he ;

felt in truth by no means sure it would do. He

felt also stricken and more and more cold, and his

chill was like an ague in which he had to make an

effort not to shake. I must try on my side, if you

"

can t try on yours," he dolefully rejoined. She came

out with him to the hall and into the doorway,
and here he put to her the question that seemed to
him the one he could least answer from his
own wit. Why have you never let me come "

before?"

Because my aunt would have seen you, and

"

I should have had to tell her how I came to know

you."
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 241

tl
And what would have been the objection to
that?"

"

Itwould have entailed other explanations ; there

would at any rate have been that danger."

Surely she knew you went every day to church,"

"

Stransom objected.
She didn t know what
"

I went for."

"

Of me then she never even heard ? "

"

You ll think I was deceitful. But I didn t need to

be!"

Stransom was now on the lower doorstep, and

his hostess held the door half-closed behind him.

Through what remained of the opening he saw her

framed face. He made a supreme appeal. "What
did he do to you
"

would have come out she would have told

"

It

you. That fear, at my heart that was my reason !

"

And she closed the door, shutting him out.

 VIII

HE had ruthlessly abandoned her that, of course,

was what he had done. Stransom made it all out
in solitude, at leisure, fitting the unmatched pieces
gradually together and dealing one by one with a
hundred obscure points. She had known Hague
only after her present friend s relations with him had
wholly terminated ; obviously indeed a good while
after ;
it was natural enough that of his pre
and
vious she should have ascertained only what he
life

had judged good to communicate. There were pas

sages it was quite conceivable that even in moments
of the tenderest expansion he should have with
held. Of many facts in the career of a man so in
the eye of the world there was of course a common

knowledge but this lady lived apart from public

;

affairs, and the only period perfectly clear to her

would have been the period following the dawn
of her own drama. A man, in her place, would
have looked up" the past would even have con
sulted old newspapers. It remained singular indeed

that in her long contact with the partner of her

restrospect no accident had lighted a train ; but

there was no arguing about that ; the accident had
in fact come : it had simply been that security had
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 243

prevailed. She had taken what Hague had given

her, and
her blankness in respect of his other
connections was only a touch in the picture of
that plasticity Stransom had
supreme reason to
know so great a master could have been trusted to
produce.
This picture, for a while, was all that our friend
saw he caught his breath again and again as it
:

came over him that the woman with whom he

had had for years so fine a point of contact was
a woman whom Acton Hague, of all men in
the world, had more or less fashioned. Such
as she sat there to-day, she was ineffaceably
stamped Beneficent, blameless
with him. as
Stransom held her, he couldn t rid himself of the
sense that he had been the victim of a fraud. She
had imposed upon him hugely, though she had known
it as little as he. All this later past came back to
him as a time grotesquely misspent. Such at least
were his first reflections; after a while he found
himself more divided and only, as the end of it,
more troubled. He imagined, recalled, reconstituted,
figured out for himself the truth she had refused to
give him the effect of which was to make her seem
;

to him only more saturated with her fate. He felt

her spirit, in the strange business, to be finer than
his own in the very degree in which she might have
been, in which she certainly had been, more
wronged. A
woman, when she was wronged, was
always more wronged than a man, and there were
conditions when the least she could have got off
 .
,- -. .-x

- ,

. .
 ;...-., V>
", , .. ,

,-

>- -."/,-

- - -.

-
;

ma*
-
T
246 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
to make him forget how much they were estranged ;
but in the very presence of what they had given up
it was impossible not to be
sorry for her. He had
taken from her so much more than she had taken
from him. He argued with her again, told her she
could now have the altar to herself ; but she only
shook her head with pleading sadness, begging him
not to waste his breath on the impossible, the ex
tinct. Couldn t he see that in relation to her private
need the rites he had established were practically
an elaborate exclusion ? She regretted nothing
that had happened it had all been right so long as
;

she didn t know, and it was only that now she knew
too much and that from the moment their eyes
were open they would simply have to conform. It
had doubtless been happiness enough for them to go
on together so long. She was gentle, grateful, re
signed but this was only the form of a deep im
;

mutability. He saw that he should never more

cross the threshold of the second room, and he felt
how much this alone would make a stranger of him
and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He
would have hated to plunge again into that well of
reminders, but he enjoyed quite as little the vacant
alternative.
After he had been with her three or four times it
seemed to him that to have come at last into her
house had had the horrid effect of diminishing their
intimacy. He had known her better, had liked
her in greater freedom, when they merely walked
together or kneeled together. Now they only pre-
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 247

tended ;
before they had been nobly sincere. They
began to try their walks again, but it proved a lame
imitation, for these things, from the first, beginning
or ending, had been connected with their visits to
the church. They had either strolled away as they
came out or gone in to rest on the return. Besides,
Stransom now grew weary ; he couldn t walk as of
old. The omission made everything false ; it was a
horrible mutilation of their lives. Our friend was
frank and monotonous he made no mystery of his
;

remonstrance and no secret of his predicament.

Her response, whatever it was, always came to the
same thing an implied invitation to him to judge,
if he spoke of predicaments, of how much comfort

she had in hers. For him indeed there was no

comfort even in complaint, for every allusion to
what had befallen them only made the author of
their trouble more present. Acton Hague was
between them, that was the essence of the matter ;
and he was never so much between them as when
they were face to face. Stransom, even while he
wanted to banish him, had the strangest sense of
desiring a satisfaction that could come only from
having accepted him. Deeply disconcerted by what
he knew, he was still worse tormented by really not
knowing. Perfectly aware that it would have been
horribly vulgar to abuse his old friend or to tell his
companion the story of their quarrel, it yet vexed
him that her depth of reserve should give him no

opening and should have the effect of a magnanimity

greater even than his own.
24S THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
He challenged himself, denounced himself, asked
himself if he were in love with her that he should
care so much what adventures she had had. He
had never for a moment admitted that he was in
love with her ;
therefore nothing could have sur

prised him more than to discover that he was jealous.

What but jealousy could give a man that sore, con
tentious wish to have the detail of what would make
him suffer ? Well enough he knew indeed that
he should never have it from the only person who,
to-day, could give it to him. She let him press her
with his sombre eyes, only smiling at him with an
exquisite mercy and breathing equally little the
word that would expose her secret and the word
that would appear to deny his literal right to bitter
ness. She told nothing, she judged nothing; she
accepted everything but the possibility of her return
to the old symbols. Stransom divined that for her
too they had been vividly individual, had stood for
particular hours or particular attributes particular
links in her chain. He made it clear to himself, as
he believed, that his difficulty lay in the fact that
the very nature of the plea for his faithless friend
constituted a prohibition ; that it happened to have
come from her was precisely the vice that attached
to it. To the voice of impersonal generosity he felt
sure he would have listened; he would have de
ferred to an advocate who, speaking from abstract

justice, knowing of his omission without having

known Hague, should have had the imagination to
say "Oh, remember only the best of him; pity him ;
:
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 249

provide for him." To provide for him on the very

ground of having discovered another of his turpi
tudes was not to pity him, but to glorify him. The
more Stransom thought the more he made it out
that this relation of Hague s, whatever it was, could

only have been a deception finely practised. Where

had it come into the life that all men saw ? Why
had he never heard of it, if it had had the frankness
of an attitude honourable ? Stransom knew enough
of his other ties, of his obligations and appearances,
not to say enough of his general character, to be
sure there had been some infamy. In one way or
another the poor woman had been coldly sacrificed.
That was why, at the last as well as the first, he
must still leave him out.
 IX

AND yet this was no solution, especially after he

had talked again to his friend of all it had been his

plan that she should finally do for him. He had

talked in the other days, and she had responded
with a frankness qualified only by a courteous reluc
tance, a reluctance that touched him, to linger on the
question of his death. She had then practically
accepted the charge, suffered him to feel that he
could depend upon her to be the eventual guardian
of his shrine ; and it was in the name of what had
so passed between them that he appealed to her not
to forsake him in his old age. She listened to him
now with a sort of shining coldness and all her
habitual forbearance to insist on her terms ; her

deprecation was even still tenderer, for it expressed

the compassion of her own sense that he was aban
doned. Her
terms, however, remained the same,
and scarcely the less audible for not being uttered ;
although he was sure that, secretly, even more than
he, she felt bereft of the satisfaction his solemn trust
was to have provided for her. They both missed
the rich future, but she missed it most, because after
all it have been entirely hers and it was
was to ;

her acceptance of the loss that gave him the full

 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 251

measure of her thought of Acton

preference for the
Hague over any other thought whatever. He had
humour enough to laugh rather grimly when he said
to himself :
"

Why the deuce does she like him so

much more than she likes me ?
"

the reasons being

really so But even his faculty of

conceivable.

analysis left the irritation standing, and this irrita

tion proved perhaps the greatest misfortune that had
ever overtaken him. There had been nothing yet
that made him so much want to give up. He had
of course by this time well reached the age of re
nouncement ; but it had not hitherto been vivid to
him that it was time
to give up everything.
end of six months, he had re
Practically, at the
nounced the friendship that was once so charming
a.nd comforting. His privation had two faces, and
the face it had turned to him on the occasion of his
last attempt to cultivate that friendship was the one
he could iook at least. This was the privation he
inflicted ; the other was the privation he bore. The
conditions she never phrased he used to murmur to
himself in solitude : One more, one more only
"

just one."
Certainly he was going down ;
he often
felt it when he caught himself, over his work, star
ing at vacancy and giving voice to that inanity.
There was proof enough besides in his being so
weak and so ill. His irritation took the form of
melancholy, and his melancholy that of the convic
tion that his health had quite failed. His altar
moreover had ceased to exist; his chapel, in his
dreams, was a great dark cavern. All the lights
252 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
had gone out all his Dead had died again. He
couldn t
exactly see at first how it had been in the
power of his late companion to extinguish them,
since it was neither for her nor by her that they had
been called into being. Then he understood that it
was essentially in his own soul the revival had
taken place, and that in the air of this soul they
were now unable to breathe. The candles might
mechanically burn, but each of them had lost its
lustre. The church had become a void ; it was his
presence, her presence, their common presence, that
had made the indispensable medium. If anything
was wrong everything was her silence spoiled the
tune.
Then when threemonths were gone he felt so
lonely that he went back ; reflecting that as they
had been his best society for years his Dead
perhaps wouldn t let him forsake them without
doing something more for him. They stood there,
as he had left them, in their tall radiance, the bright
cluster that had already made him, on occasions
when he was willing to compare small things with
great, liken them to a group of sea-lights on the
edge of the ocean of life. It was a relief to him,

he sat there, to feel that they had

after a while, as
still a virtue. He was more and more easily tired,
and he always drove now ; the action of his heart
was weak and gave him none of the reassurance
conferred by the action of his fancy. None the less
he returned yet again, returned several times, and
Anally, during six months, haunted the place with a
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 253

renewal of frequency and a strain of impatience. In

winter the church was unwarmed, and exposure to
cold was forbidden him, but the glow of his shrine
was an influence in which he could almost bask. He
sat and wondered to what he had reduced his absent
associate and what she now did with the hours of
her absence. There were other churches, there were
other altars, there were other candles ; in one way
or another her piety would still operate ; he couldn t
absolutely have deprived her of her rites. So he
argued, but without contentment ;
for he well

enough knew there was no other such rare sem

blance of the mountain of light she had once men
tioned to him as the satisfaction of her need. As
this semblance again gradually grew great to him
and his pious practice more regular, there was a
sharper and sharper pang for him in the imagina
tion of her darkness ;
for never so much as in
these weeks had his rites been real, never had his
gathered company seemed so to respond and even to
invite. He lost himself in the large lustre, which
was more and more what he had from the first

wished it to be as dazzling as the vision of heaven

in the mind of a child. He wandered in the fields
of light ;
he passed, among the tall tapers, from tier
to tier, from fire to fire, from name to name, from

the white intensity of one clear emblem, of one

saved soul, to another. It was in the quiet sense of
having saved his souls that his deep, strange instinct
rejoiced. This was no dim theological rescue, no
boon of a contingent world ; they were saved better
254 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
than faith or works could save them, saved for the
warm world they had shrunk from dying to, for
actuality, for continuity, for the certainty of human
remembrance.
By this time he had survived all his friends ;

the last straight flame was three years old, there

was no one to add to the list. Over and over
he called his roll, and it appeared to him compact
and complete. Where should he put in another,
where, if there were no other objection, would
it stand in its place in the rank? He reflected,
with a want of sincerity of which he was quite
conscious, that it would be difficult to determine
that place. More and more, besides, face to face
with his little legion, reading over endless histories,
handling the empty shells and playing with the
silence more and more he could see that he had
never introduced an alien. He had had his great
compassions, his indulgences there were cases in
which they had been immense; but what had his
devotion after all been if it hadn t been fundamen
tally a respect ? He was, however, himself surprised
at his stiffness ; by the end of the winter the re

sponsibility of it was what was uppermost in his

thoughts. The refrain had grown old to them,

the plea for just one more. There came a day
when, for simple exhaustion, if symmetry should
really demand just one more he was ready to take
symmetry into account. Symmetry was harmony,
and the idea of harmony began to haunt him he ;

said to himself that harmony was of course every-

 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 255

thing. Hetook, in fancy, his composition to pieces,

redistributing it into other lines, making other juxta
positionsand contrasts. He shifted this and that
candle, he made the spaces different, he effaced
the disfigurement of a possible gap. There were
subtle and complex relations, a scheme of cross-
reference, and moments in which he seemed to
catch a glimpse of the void so sensible to the woman
who wandered in exile or sat where he had seen
her with the portrait of Acton Hague. Finally,
in this way, he arrived at a conception of the total,
the ideal, which left a clear opportunity for just
another figure. "Just one
more to round it off;
just one more, just one," continued to hum itself
in his head. There was a strange confusion in
the thought, for he felt the day to be near when
he too should be one of the Others. What, in this
case, would the Others matter to him, since they

only mattered to the living? Even

as one of the
Dead, what would his altar matter to him, since
his particular dream of keeping it up had melted

away ? What had harmony to do with the case

if his lights were all to be quenched ? What
he had hoped for was an instituted thing. He
might perpetuate it on some other pretext, but his
special meaning would have dropped. This mean
ing was to have lasted with the life of the one
other person who understood it.
In March he had an illness during which he
spent a fortnight in bed, and when he revived
a little he was told of two things that had happened.
256 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
One was that a lady,whose name was not known
to the servants left none) had been
(she three
times to ask about him the other was that in his
;

sleep, and on an occasion when his mind evidently

wandered, he was heard to murmur again and
again :
"Just
one more just one." As soon as
he found himself able to go out, and before the
doctor in attendance had pronounced him so, he
drove to see the lady who had come to ask about
him. She was not at home but this gave him
;

the opportunity, before his strength should fail

again, to take his way to the church. He entered

the church alone ;
he had declined, in a happy
manner he possessed of being able to decline
effectively, the company of his servant or of a
nurse. He knew nowperfectly what these good
people thought they had
;
discovered his clandestine
connection, the magnet that had drawn him for
so many years, and doubtless attached a significance
of their own to the odd words they had repeated
to him. The nameless lady was the clandestine
connection a fact nothing could have made clearer
than his indecent haste to rejoin her. He sank
on his knees before his altar, and his head fell
over on his hands. His weakness, his life s weari
ness overtook him. It seemed to him he had
come for the great surrender. At first he asked
himself how he should get away ; then, with the
failing belief in the power, the very desire to move
gradually left him. He
had come, as he always
came, to lose himself; the fields of light were still
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 257

there to stray in ; only this time, in straying, he

would never come back. He had given himself
to his Dead, and it was good this time his Dead
:

would keep him. He couldn t rise from his knees ;

he believed he should never rise again ; all he
could do was to lift his face and fix his eyes
upon his They looked unusually, strangely
lights.

splendid, but the one that always drew him most

had an unprecedented lustre. It was the central
voice of the choir, the glowing heart of the bright
ness, and on this occasion it seemed to expand,
to spread great wings of flame. The whole altar
flared it dazzled and blinded; but the source of
the vast radiance burned clearer than the rest,
it gathered itself into form, and the form was
human beauty and human charity itwas the
far-off face of Mary Antrim. She smiled at him
from the glory of heaven she brought the glory
down with her to take him. He bowed his head
in submission, and at the same moment another
wave Was it the quickening of
rolled over him.

joy to pain? In the midst of his joy at any rate

he felt his buried face grow hot as with some
communicated knowledge that had the force of a
reproach. It suddenly made him contrast that
very rapture with the bliss he had refused to
another. This breath of the passion immortal
was all that other had asked ; the descent of Mary
Antrim opened his spirit with a great compunctious
throb for the descent of Acton Hague. It was

as if Stransom had read what her eyes said to him.

R
258 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
After a moment he looked round him in a despair
which made him feel as if the source of life were
ebbing. The church had been empty he was
alone ; but he wanted to have something done, to make
a last appeal. This idea gave him strength for an
effort ; he rose to his feet with a movement that

made him turn, supporting himself by the back of a

bench. Behind him was a prostrate figure, a figure
he had seen before; a woman in deep mourning,
bowed in grief or in prayer. He had seen her in
other days first time he came into the church,
the
and he slightly wavered there, looking at her again
till she seemed to become aware he had noticed her.

She raised her head and met his eyes the partner :

of his long worship was there. She looked across

at him an instant with a face wondering and scared ;
he saw that he had given her an alarm. Then
quickly rising, she came straight to him with both
hands out.
Then you could come ? God sent you
"

he !
f>

murmured with a happy smile.

"

You re very ill

you shouldn t be here," she
urged in anxious reply.
"God sent me too, I think. I was ill when I

came, but the sight of you does wonders." He held

her hands, and they steadied and quickened him.
I ve something to tell you."
"

"

Don t tell me she tenderly pleaded ;

!
"

let me
"

tellyou. This afternoon, by a miracle, the sweetest

of miracles, the sense of our difference left me. I

was out I was near, thinking, wandering alone,

 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 259

when, on the spot, something changed in my heart.

It s my confession there it is. To come back, to
come back on the instant the idea gave me wings.
It was as if I suddenly saw something as if it all
became possible. I could come for what you
yourself came for that was enough. : So here I am.
It s not for my own that s over. But I m here for
them." And breathless, infinitely relieved by her
low, precipitate explanation, she looked with eyes
that reflected all its splendour at the magnificence of
their altar.
"

They re here for you,"

Stransom said,
"

they re
present to-night as they ve never been. They
speak for you don t
you see ? in a passion of
light they sing out like a choir of angels. Don t
you hear what they say ? they offer the very thing
you asked of me."
"

Don t talk of don t think of it forget it

it ;
!
"

She spoke in hushed supplication, and while the

apprehension deepened in her eyes she disengaged
one of her hands and passed an arm round him,
to support him better, to help him to sink into a

seat.

Helet himself go, resting on her ; he dropped

upon the bench, and she fell on her knees beside

him with his arm on her shoulder. So he remained
an instant, staring up at his shrine. "They say
there s a gap in the array they say it s not full,

complete. Just one more," he went on, softly

"isn t that what you wanted? Yes, one more, one
260 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
Ah, no more no more she wailed, as if with
" "

a quick, new horror of it, under her breath.

"Yes, one more,"
he repeated, simply; "just
one !And with this his head dropped on her
"

shoulder; she felt that in his weakness he had

fainted. But alone with him in the dusky church a
great dread was on her of what might still happen,
for his face had the whiteness of death.

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co.

London and Edinburgh.
 THE MANXMAN
BY HALL CAINE
In One Volume, price 6^.

The Times. the exception of The Scapegoat, this is unquestion

With
ably the finest and most dramatic of Mr. Hall Caine s novels . The . .

Manxman goes very straight to the roots of human passion and emotion. It
is a remarkable book, throbbing with human interest.

The Guardian. A
story of exceptional power and thorough originality.
The greater portion of it is like a Greek tragic drama, in the intensity of its
interest, and the depth of its overshadowing gloom. But this tragedy is . . .

merely a telling background for a series of brilliant sketches of men and

manners, of old-world customs, and forgotten ways of speech which still
linger in the Isle of Man.
The Standard. A
singularly powerful and picturesque piece of work,
extraordinarily dramatic. Taken altogether, 7^he Manxman cannot fail
. . .

to enhance Mr. Hall Caine s reputation. It is a most powerful book.

The Morning Post. If possible, Mr. Hall Caine s work, The Manx
1

man, more marked by passion, power, and brilliant local colouring than its
is

predecessors. ... It has a grandeur as well as strength, and the picturesque

features and customs of a delightful country are vividly painted.

The World. Over and above the absorbing interest of the story, which
never flags, the book is full of strength, of vivid character sketches, and
powerful word-painting, all told with a force and knowledge of local colour.

The Queen. The Manxman is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable

books of the century. It will be read and re-read, and take its place in the
literary inheritance of the English-speaking nations.
TheSt. James s Gazette. The Manxman is a contribution to litera
ture, and the most fastidious critic would give in exchange for it a wilderness
of that deciduous trash which our publishers call fiction. ... It is not possible
to part from The Manxman with anything but a warm tribute of approval.
EDMUND GOSSE.
The Christian World. There is a great fascination in being present,
as were, at the birth of a classic ; and a classic undoubtedly The Manxman
it

is ... He who reads 7^he Manxman feels that he is reading a book which
will be read and re-read by very many thousands with human tears and
human laughter.
Mr. T. P. O Connor, in the Sun. This is a very fine and great
story one of the finest and greatest of our time. Mr. Hall Caine reaches
. . .

heights which are attained only by the greatest masters of fiction. ... I think
of the great French writer, Stendhal, at the same moment as the great
English writer. ... In short, you feel what Mr. Howells said of Tolstoi,
"This is not like life ; it is life." He belongs to that small minority of
. . .

the Great Elect of Literature.

The Scotsman. It is not too much to say that it is the most powerful

story that has been written in the present generation. . The love of Pete, . .

his simple-mindedness, his sufferings when he has lost Kate, are painted with
a master-hand. ... It is a work of genius.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 THE BONDMAN
BY HALL CAINE
With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author.

In One Volume, price 6s.

Mr. Gladstone. The Bondman

a work of which I recognise the
is

freshness, vigour, and sustained interest, no less than its integrity of aim.
The Times. *
It is impossible to deny originality and rude power to this

saga, impossible not to admire its forceful directness, and the colossal
grandeur of its leading characters.*
The Academy. The language of The Bondman is full of nervous,
graphic, and poetical English ; its interest never flags, and its situations and
descriptions are magnificent. It is a splendid novel.

The Speaker. This is the best book that Mr. Hall Caine has yet
written, and it reaches a level to which fiction very rarely attains. We . . .

are, in fact, so loth to let such good work be degraded by the title of
"novel" that we are almost tempted to consider its claim to rank as a prose
epic.
The Scotsman. Mr. Hall Caine has in this work placed himself
beyond the front rank of the novelists of the day. He has produced a story
which, for the ingenuity of its plot, for its literary excellence, for its delinea
tions of human passions, and for its intensely powerful dramatic scenes, is
distinctlyahead of all the fictional literature of our time, and fit to rank with
the most powerful fictional writing of the past century.
The Athenaeum. Crowded with incidents.

The Observer. Many of the descriptions are picturesque and power

ful. ... As wayfine in their as anything in modern literature.

The Liverpool Mercury. A

story which will be read, not by his con
temporaries alone, but by later generations, so long as its chief features high
emotion, deep passion, exquisite poetry, and true pathos have power to
delight and to touch the heart.
The Pall Mall Gazette. It is the product of a strenuous and sustained

imaginative effort far beyond the power of any every-day story-teller.

The Scots Observer. In none of his previous works has he approached
the splendour of idealism which flows through The Bondman*
The Manchester Guardian. A remarkable story, painted with vigour
and brilliant effect.

The St. James s Gazette. A striking and highly dramatic piece of

fiction.

The Literary World. The book abounds in pages of great force and
beauty, and there is a touch of almost Homeric power in its massive and

grand simplicity.
The Liverpool Post. Graphic, dramatic, pathetic, heroic, full of
detail, crowded with incident and inspired by a noble purpose.
The Yorkshire Post. A book of lasting interest.

LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 THE SCAPEGOAT
BY HALL CAINE
In One Volume^ price 6s.

Mr. Gladstone writes: I congratulate you upon The Scapegoat as a work

of art, and especially upon the noble and skilfully drawn character of Israel.
Mr. Walter Besant, in The Author. Nearly every year there stands
out a head and shoulders above its companions one work which promises to
make the year memorable. This year a promise of lasting vitality is distinctly
made by Mr. Hall Caine s Scapegoat. It is a great book, great in conception
and in execution ; a strong book, strong in situation and in character ; and
a human book, human in its pathos, its terror, and its passion.
The Times. In our judgment it excels in dramatic force all the Author s
previous efforts. For grace and touching pathos Naomi is a character which
any romancist in the world might be proud to have created, and the tale of
her parents despair and hopes, and of her own development, confers upon
The Scapegoat a distinction which is matchless of its kind.
The Guardian. Mr. Hall Caine is undoubtedly master of a style which
is peculiarly his own. He is in a way a Rembrandt among novelists. His
figures, striking and powerful rather than beautiful, stand out, with the
ruggedness of their features developed and accentuated, from a background
of the deepest gloom. Every sentence contains a thought, and every word
. . .

of it is balanced and arranged to accumulate the intensity of its force.

The Athenaeum. It is a delightful story to read.
The Academy. Israel ben Oliel is the third of a series of the most
profoundly conceived characters in modern fiction.

The Saturday Review. This is the best novel which Mr. Caine has
5

yet produced.
The Literary World. The lifelike renderings of the varied situations,
the gradual changes in a noble character, hardened and lowered by the
world s cruel usage, and returning at last to its original grandeur, can only
be fully appreciated by a perusal of the book as a whole.
The Anti-Jacobin. It is, in truth, a romance of fine poetic
quality.
Israel Ben Oliel, the central figure of the tale, is sculptured rather than drawn :

a character of grand outline. A

nobler piece of prose than the death of
Ruth we have seldom met with.
The Scotsman. The new story will rank with Mr. Hall Caine s previous
productions. Nay, it will in some respects rank above them. It will take
its place by the side of the Hebrew histories in the
Apocrypha. It is nobly
and manfully written. It stirs the blood and kindles the imagination.
The Scottish Leader. The Scapegoat is a masterpiece.
Truth. Mr. Hall Caine has been winning his way slowly, but surely,
and securely, I think also, to fame. You must by all means read his
absorbing Moorish romance, The Scapegoat.
The Jewish World. Only one who had studied Moses could have
drawn that grand portrait of Israel ben Oliel.

LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 THE HEAVENLY TWINS
BY SARAH GRAND
In One Volume^ prict 6s.

The
Athenaeum. It is so full of interest, and the characters are so

eccentrically humorous yet true, that one feels inclined to pardon all its
faults, and give oneself up to unreserved enjoyment of it. ... The twins
Angelica and Diavolo, young barbarians, utterly devoid of all respect, con
ventionality, or decency, are among the most delightful and amusing children
in fiction.

The Academy. The adventures of Diavolo and Angelica the

are delightfully funny.
"heavenly twins" No more original children were
ever put into a book. Their audacity, unmanageableness, and genius for
mischief in none of which qualities, as they are here shown, is there any
taint of vice are refreshing ; and it is impossible not to follow, with very
keen interest, the progress of these youngsters.
The Daily Telegraph. Everybody ought to read it, for it is an inex
haustible source of refreshing and highly stimulating entertainment.
The World. There is much powerful and some beautiful writing in
this strange book.

The Westminster Gazette. Sarah Grand ... has put enough obser
vation, humour, and thought into this book to furnish forth half-a-dozen
ordinary novels.
Punch. The Twins themselves are a creation : the epithet "Heavenly"
for these two mischievous little fiends is admirable.
The Queen, There is a touch of real genius in The Heavenly Twins.
The Guardian. Exceptionally brilliant in dialogue, and dealing with
modern society life, this book has a purpose to draw out and emancipate
women.
The Lady. Apart from its more serious interest, the book should take
high rank on its literary merits alone. Its pages are brimful of good things,
and more than one passage, notably the episode of "The Boy and the
Tenor," is poem complete in itself, and worthy of separate publication.
a

The Manchester Examiner. As surely as Tess of the d Urbervilles

1

swept before it last year, so surely has Sarah Grand s heavenly Twins
all

provoked the greatest attention and comment this season. It is a most

daringly original work. Sarah Grand is a notable Woman s Righter,
. . .

but her book is the one asked for at Mudie s, suburban, and seaside libraries,
and discussed at every hotel table in the kingdom. The episode of the
Tenor and the Boy" is of rare beauty, and is singularly delicate and at the
"

same time un-English in treatment.

The New York Critic. It is written in an epigrammatic style, and,
besides its cleverness, has the great charm of freshness, enthusiasm, and
poetic feeling.

LONDON WILLIAM : HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 IDEALA
A STUDY FROM LIFE
BY SARAH GRAND
In One Volume, price 6s.

The Morning Post. Sarah Grand s Ideala. ... clever book in A

itself, especially interesting when read in the light of her later works.
is

Standing alone, it is remarkable as the outcome of an earnest mind seeking

in good faith the solution of a difficult and ever present problem. . . . Ideala
isoriginal and somewhat daring. . . . The story is iri
many ways delightful
and thought-suggesting.

The Literary World. When Sarah Grand came before the public in
1888 with Ideala, she consciously and firmly laid her finger on one of the
keynotes of the age. We welcome an edition that will place this minute
. . .

and careful study of an interesting question within reach of a wider circle of

readers.

The
Liverpool Mercury. The book is a wonderful one an evangel
and at once an inspiration and a comforting companion, to
for the fair sex,
which thoughtful womanhood will recur again and again.

The Glasgow Herald. Ideala has attained the honour of a fifth

edition. . . . The stir created by 7he Heavenly Twins, the more recent
work by the same authoress, Madame Sarah Grand, would justify this step.
Ideala can, however, stand on its own merits.

The Yorkshire Post. As a psychological study the book cannot fail to

be of interest to many readers.

The Birmingham Gazette. Madame Sarah Grand thoroughly deserves

her success. Ideala, the heroine, is a splendid conception, and her opinions
are noble. . . . The book is not one to be forgotten.

The Woman s Herald. One naturally wishes to Know something of

the woman for whose sake Lord Downe remained a bachelor. It must be
confessed that at first Idtala is a little disappointing. She ,js strikingly
original. . . As the story advances one forgets these peculiarities, and can
.

find little but sympathy and admiration for the many noble qualities of a
very complex character.

The Englishman. Madame

Sarah Grand s work is far from being a
common work. a clever young woman of great capabilities and
Ideala is
noble purposes. The orginality of the book does not lie in the plot, but
. . .

in the authoress s power to see and to describe the finer shades of a character
which is erratic and impetuous, but above all things truly womanly.

LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 OUR MANIFOLD NATURE
BY SARAH GRAND
In One Volume, price 6s.

The Daily Telegraph. Six stories by the gifted writer who still chooses
tobe known to the public at large by the pseudonym of "Sarah Grand."
In regard to them it is sufficient to
say that they display all the qualities,
stylistic, humorous, and pathetic, that have placed the author of Ideala and
The Heavenly Twins in the very front rank of contemporary novelists.

The Globe. Brief studies of character, sympathetic, and suggesting that

Sarah Grand
" "

can do something more than startle by her unconventionality

and boldness.

The Ladies Pictorial. If the volume does not achieve even greater
popularity than Sarah Grand s former works, it will be a proof that fashion,
and not intrinsic merit, has a great deal to do with the success of a book.

The Pall Mall Gazette. All are eminently entertaining.

The
Spectator. Insight into, and general sympathy with widely
differing phases of humanity, coupled with power to reproduce what is seen,
with vivid distinct strokes, that rivet the attention, are qualifications for
work of the kind contained in Our Manifold Nature which Sarah Grand
evidently possesses in a high degree. . All these studies, male and female
. .

alike, are marked by humour, pathos, fidelity to life, and power to recognise
in human nature the frequent recurrence of some apparently incongruous
and remote trait, which, when at last it becomes visible, helps to a com
prehension of what might otherwise be inexplicable.

The Speaker. In Our Manifold Nature Sarah Grand is seen at her

best. How good that is can only be known by those who read for them
selves this admirable little volume. In freshness of conception and originality
of treatment these stories are delightful, full of force and piquancy, whilst
the studies of character are carried out with equal firmness and delicacy.

The Guardian. Our Manifold Nature is a clever book. Sarah Grand

has the power of touching common things, which, if it fails to make them
rise to touch the spheres," renders them exceedingly interesting.
"

The Morning Post. Unstinted praise is deserved by the Irish story,

"

Boomellen," a tale remarkable both for power and pathos.

The Court Journal. Our Manifold Nature is simply full of good things,
and it is essentially a book to buy as well as to read.

The Birmingham Gazette. Mrs. Grand has genuine power. She

analyses keenly. . . . Her humour is good, and her delineation of character
one of her strongest points. The book is one to be read, studied, and acted
upon.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 THE EBB-TIDE
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
AND
LLOYD OSBOURNE
In One Volume, price 6s.

The Times. This is a novel of sensation. But the episodes and

incidents, although thrilling enough, are consistently subordinated to sensa
tionalism of character. . . . There is just enough of the coral reef and the
palm groves, of cerulean sky and pellucid water, to indicate rather than to
present the local colouring. Yet when he dashes in a sketch it is done to
perfection. . . . We see the scene vividly unrolled before us.
The Daily Telegraph. The story is full of strong scenes, depicted
with a somewhat lavish use of violet pigments, such as, perhaps, the stirring
situations demand. Here and there, however, are purple patches, in which
Mr. Stevenson shows all his cunning literary art the description of the
coral island, for instance. Some intensely graphic and dramatic pages
. . .

delineate the struggle which causes, and a final scene concludes this
. . .

strange fragment from the wild life of the South Sea.

The St. James s Gazette. The book takes your imagination and
attention captive from the first chapter nay, from the first paragraph and it
does not set them free till the last word has been read.
The Standard. Mr. Stevenson gives such vitality to his characters,
and so clear an outlook upon the strange quarter of the world to which he
takes us, that when we reach the end of the story, we come back to civilisa
tion with a start of surprise, and a moment s difficulty in realising that we
have not been actually away from it.
The Daily Chronicle. We are swept along without a pause on the
current of the animated and vigorous narrative. Each incident and adven
ture is told with that incomparable keenness of vision which is Mr. Stevenson s
greatest charm as a story-teller.
The Pall Mall Gazette. It is brilliantly invented, and it is not less

brilliantly told. There is not a dull sentence in the whole run of it. And
the style is fresh, alert, full of surprises in fact, is very good latter-day
Stevenson indeed.
The World. It is amazingly clever, full of that extraordinary know

ledge of humannature which makes certain creations of Mr. Stevenson s pen

far more real to us than persons we have met in the flesh. Grisly the book
undoubtedly is, with a strength and a vigour of description hardly to be
matched in the language. . . But it is just because the book is so extra
.

ordinarily good that it ought to be better, ought to be more of a serious whole

than a mere brilliant display of fireworks, though each firework display has
more genius in it than is to be found in ninety-nine out of every hundred
books supposed to contain that rare quality.
The Morning Post. 1

Boldly conceived, probing some of the darkest

depths of the human soul, the tale has a vigour and breadth of touch which
have been surpassed in none of Mr. Stevenson s previous works. . . . We
do not, of course, know how much Mr. Osbourne has contributed to the tale,
but there is no chapter in it which any author need be unwilling to acknow
ledge, or which is wanting in vivid interest.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 A VICTIM OF GOOD LUCK
BY W. E. NORRIS

In One Volume, price 6s.

The Speaker. A Victim of Good L^^ck is one of those breezy stories of

his in which the reader finds himself moving in good society, among men
or women who are neither better nor worse than average humanity, but who
always show good manners and good breeding. Suffice it to say that the
. . .

story is as readable as any we have yet had from the same pen.
The Daily Telegraph. A
Victim of Good Luck is one of the brightest
novels of the year, which cannot but enhance its gifted author s well-deserved
fame and popularity.
The World. Here is Mr. Norris in his best form again, giving us an
impossible story with such imperturbable composure, such quiet humour,
easy polish, and irresistible persuasiveness, that he makes us read Victim A
of Good Luck right through with eager interest and unflagging amusement
without being aware, until we regretfully reach the end, that it is just a
farcical comedy in two delightful volumes.

The Daily Chronicle. It has not a dull page from first to last. Any
one with normal health and taste can read a book like this with real pleasure.

The Globe. Mr. W. E. Norris is a writer who always keeps us on

good terms with ourselves. We can pick up or lay down his books at will,
but they are so pleasant in style and equable in tone that we do not usually
lay them down till we have mastered them ; A Victim of Good Luck is a
more agreeable novel than most of this author s.
The Westminster Gazette. ^4 Victim of Good Luck is in Mr. Norris s
best vein, which means that it is urbane, delicate, lively, and flavoured
with a high quality of refined humour. Altogether a most refreshing book,
and we take it as a pleasant reminder that Mr. Norris is still very near
his highwater mark.

The Spectator. Mr. Norris displays to the full his general command of
narrative expedients which are at once happily invented and yet quite natural
which seem to belong to their place in the book, just as a keystone belongs
to its place in the arch. The brightest and cleverest book which Mr.
. . .

Norris has given us since he wrote The Rogue.

The Saturday Review. Novels which are neither dull, unwholesome,

morbid, nor disagreeable, are so rare in these days, that A Victim of Good
Luck .
ought to find a place in a book-box filled for the most part with
. .

light literature. .We think it will increase the reputation of an already

. .

very popular author.

The Scotsman. A Victim of Good Luck, like others of this author s
books, depends on incident and much on the conception and drawing of
little

character, on clever yet natural conversation, and on the working out, with
masterly ease, of a novel problem of right and inclination.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMAXN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 THE COUNTESS RADNA
BY W. E. NORRIS

In One Volume, price 6s.

The Times. He is a remarkably even writer. And this novel is almost

as good a medium as any other for studying the delicacy and dexterity of
his workmanship.

The National Observer. Interesting and well written, as all Mr.

Norris s stories are.

The Morning" Post. The fidelity of his portraiture is remarkable, and

it has rarely appeared to so much advantage as in this brilliant novel.
The Saturday Review. The Countess Radna, which its author not
unjustly describes as "an unpretending tale," avoids, by the grace of its style
and the pleasant accuracy of its characterisation, any suspicion of boredom.
The Daily News. The Cotmtess Radna contains many of the qualities
that make a story by this writer welcome to the critic. It is caustic in style,
the character drawing is clear, the talk natural ; the pages are strewn with
good things worth quoting.
The Speaker. In style, skill in construction, and general "go,"
it is

worth a dozen ordinary novels.

The Academy. As a whole, the book is decidedly well written, while
it isundeniably interesting. It is bright and wholesome the work in fact :

of a gentleman and a man who knows the world about which he writes.
Black and White. The novel, like all Mr. Norris s work is an ex
cessively clever piece of work, and the author never for a moment allows his
grasp of his plot and his characters to slacken.
The Gentlewoman. Mr. Norris is a practised hand at his craft. He
can write bright dialogue and clear English, too.
The
Literary World. His last novel, The Countess Radna, is an ex
cellent sample of his style. The plot is simple enough. But the story
holds the attention and insists upon being read ; and it is scarcely possible
to say anything more favourable of a work of fiction.

The Scotsman. Thewhich there is more than a spice of

story, in
modern life romance, is an excellent study of the problem of mixed marriage.
The book is one of good healthy reading, and reveals a fine broad view of life
and human nature.
The Glasgow Herald. This isan unusually fresh and well-written
story. The tone is thoroughly healthy ; and Mr. Norris, without being in
the least old-fashioned, manages to get along without the aid of pessimism,
psychology, naturalism, or what is known as frank treatment of the relations
between the sexes.

The Westminster Gazette. Mr. Norris writes throughout with much

liveliness and force, saying now and then something that is worth remember
ing. And he sketches his minor characters with a firm touch.
LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO
A Study of a Peculiar People
BY I. ZANGWILL
In One Volume, price 6s.
The Times. From whatever point of view we regard it, it is a remark
able book.
The Athenaeum. The chief interest of the book lies in the wonderful
description of the Whitechapel Jews. The vividness and force with which
Mr. Zangwill brings before us the strange and uncouth characters with which
he has peopled his book are truly admirable. . Admirers of Mr. Zangwill s
. .

fecund wit will not fail to find flashes of it in these pages.

The Daily Chronicle. Altogether we are not aware of any such minute,
graphic, and seemingly faithful picture of the Israel of nineteenth century
London. . . . The book has taken hold of us.
The Spectator. Esther Ansell, Raphael Leon, Mrs. Henry Goldsmith,
Reb Shemuel, and the rest, are living creations.

The Speaker. A strong and remarkable book.

The National Observer. To ignore this book is not to know the East
End Jew.
The Guardian. A
novel such as only our own day could produce. A
masterly study of a complicated psychological problem in which every factor
is handled with such astonishing dexterity and intelligence that again and

again we are tempted to think a really good book has come

into our hands.

The Graphic. Absolutely fascinating. Teaches how closely akin are

laughter and tears.
Black and White. A moving panorama of Jewish life, full of truth, full
of sympathy, vivid in the setting forth, and occasionally most brilliant. Such
a book as this has the germs of a dozen novels. A
book to read, to keep, to
ponder over, to remember.
W. Archer in The World. The most powerful and fascinating book
1 many a
have read for long day.
Land and Water. The most wonderful multi-coloured and brilliant
description. Dickens has never drawn characters of more abiding indi
viduality. An exceeding beautiful chapter is the honeymoon of the Hyams.
Charles Kingsley in one of his books makes for something of the same sort.
But his idea is not half so tender and faithful, nor his handling anything like
so delicate and natural.

Andrew Lang in Longman s Magazine. Almost every kind of

reader will find Children of the Ghetto interesting.
T. P. O Connor in The Weekly Sun. Apart altogether from its
its subtle and skilful analysis of
great artistic merits, from its clear portraits,
character, its pathos and its humour, this book has, in my mind, an immense
interest as a record of a generation that has passed and of struggles that are
5

yet going on.

The Manchester Guardian. The best Jewish novel ever written.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 THE KING OF SCHNORRERS
Grotesques and Fantasies

BY I. ZANGWILL
With over Ninety Illustrations by PHIL MAY and Others

In One Volume, price 6s.

The Athenaeum. Several of Mr. Zangwill s contemporary Ghetto char

acters have already become almost classical ; but in The King of Schnorrers
he goes back to the Jewish community of the eighteenth century for the
hero of his principal story ; and he is indeed a stupendous hero .
anyhow, . .

he is well named the king of beggars. The ^lustrations, by Phil May, add
greatly to the attraction of the book.
The Saturday Review. Mr. Zangwill has created a new figure in
fiction,and a new type of humour. The entire series of adventures is a
triumphant progress. Humour of a rich and active character pervades
. . .

the delightful history of Manasses. Mr. Zangwill s book is altogether very

good reading. It is also very cleverly illustrated by Phil May and other
artists.

The Literary World. Of Mr. Zangwill s versatility there is ample

proof in this new volume of stories. More noticeable and welcome to
. . .

us, as well as more characteristic of the author, are the fresh additions he has
made to his long series of studies of Jewish life.
The James s Gazette.
St. The King of Schnorrers is a very fascinating
story. Mr. Zangwill returns to the Ghetto, and gives us a quaint old-world
picture as a most appropriate setting for his picturesque hero, the beggar-
king. . Good as the story of the arch-schnorrer is, there is perhaps an
. .

even better "Yiddish" tale in this book. This is "Flutter-Duck." . . .

Let us call attention to the excellence, as mere realistic vivid description, of

the picture of the room and atmosphere and conditions in which Flutter-Duck
and her circle dwelt there is something of Dickens in this.
;

The Daily Telegraph. The King of Schnorrers, like Children of the

Ghetto, depicts the habits and characteristics of Israel in London with pains
taking elaborateness and apparent verisimilitude. The King of Schnorrers is
a character-sketch which deals with the manners and customs of native and
lived and had their being" in the London of a century
"

foreign Jews as they

and a quarter ago.
The Daily Chronicle. It is a beautiful story. The King of Schnorrers
is that great rarity an entirely new thing, that is as good as it is new.
The Glasgow Herald. On the whole, the book does justice to Mr.
Zangwill s rapidly-growing reputation, and the character of Manasseh ought
to live.

The World. The exuberant and even occasionally overpowering

humour of Mr. Zangwill is at his highest mark in his new volume, The
King of Schnorrers.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 THE PREMIER AND THE PAINTER
BY I. ZANGWILL AND LOUIS COWEN
In One Volume, price 6.r.

The Cambridge (University) Review. That the book will have

readers in a future generation we do not doubt, for there is much in it that is
of lasting merit.

The Graphic. It might be worth the while of some industrious and

capable person with plenty of leisure to reproduce in a volume of reasonable

size the epigrams and other good things witty and serious which The Premier
and the Painter contains. There are plenty of them, and many are worth
noting and remembering.
St. James s Gazette. The satire hits all round with much impartiality ;
while one striking situation succeeds another till the reader is altogether
dazzled. The story is full of life and and brightness, and will well
"go"

repay perusal.
The Athenaeum. In spite of its close print and its five hundred pages
The Premier and the Painter is not very difficult to read. To speak of it,
however, is difficult. It is the sort of book that demands yet defies quotation
for one thing ;
and for another it is the sort of book the description of which
as "very clever" is at once inevitable and inadequate. In some ways it is
original enough to be a law unto itself, and withal as attractive in its
whimsical, wrong-headed way, as at times it is tantalising, bewildering, even
tedious. The theme is politics and politicians, and the treatment, while for
the most part satirical and prosaic, is often touched with sentiment, and
sometimes even with a fantastic kind of poetry. The several episodes of the
story are wildly fanciful in themselves and are clumsily connected but the ;

streak of humorous cynicism which shows through all of them is both curious
and pleasing. Again, it has to be claimed for the author that as is shown
to admiration by his presentation of the excellent Mrs. Dawe and her cook-
shop he is capable, when he pleases, of insight and observation of a high
order, and therewith of a masterly sobriety of tone. But he cannot be
depended upon for the length of a single page ; he seeks his effects and his
material when and where he pleases. In some respects his method is not,
perhaps, altogether unlike Lord Beaconsfield s. To our thinking, however,
he is strong enough to go alone, and to go far.
The World. Undeniably clever, though with a somewhat mixed and
eccentric cleverness.

The Morning Post.1

The story is described as a "fantastic romance,"

and, indeed, fantasy reigns supreme from the first to the last of its pages. It
relates the history of our time with humour and well-aimed sarcasm. All the
most prominent characters of the day, whether political or otherwise, come in
for notice. The identity of the leading politicians is but thinly veiled, while
many celebrities appear in propria persona. Both the "Premier" and
"Painter" now and again find themselves in the most critical situations.
Certainly this is not a story that he who runs may read, but it is cleverly
original, and often lightened by bright flashes of wit.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 THE POTTER S THUMB
BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL
In One Volume^ price 6s.

ThePall Mall Budget. For this week the only novel worth mentioning
is Mrs. Steel s The Potter s Thtirnb. Her admirable From the Five Rivers,
since it dealt with native Indian life, was naturally compared with Mr.

Kipling s stories. In The Potter s Thumb the charm which came from the
freshness of them still remains. Almost every character is convincing, and
some of them excellent to a degree.

The Globe. This

is a brilliant story a story that fascinates, tingling
with life, steeped in sympathy with all that is best and saddest.

The Manchester Guardian. The impression left upon one after reading
The Potter s Thumb is that a new literary artist, of very great and unusual
gifts, has arisen. ... In short, Mrs. Steel
must be congratulated upon having
achieved a very genuine and amply deserved success.
The Glasgow Herald. A clever story which, in many respects, brings
India very near to its readers. The novel is certainly one interesting alike to
the Anglo-Indian and to those untravelled travellers who make their only
voyages in novelists romantic company.
The Scotsman. It is a capital story, full of variety and movement, which

brings with great vividness before the reader one of the phases of Anglo-
Indian life. Mrs. Steel writes forcibly and sympathetically, and much of the
charm of the picture which she draws lies in the force with which she brings
out the contrast between the Asiatic and European world. The Potters
Thumb is very good reading, with its mingling of the tragedy and comedy
of life. Its evil woman par excellence . . . is a finished study.
The Westminster Gazette. A
very powerful and tragic story. Mrs.
Steel gives us again, but with greater elaboration than before, one of those
strong, vivid, and subtle pictures of Indian life which we have learnt to expect
from her. To a reader who has not been in India her books seem to get
deeper below the native crust, and to have more of the instinct for the Oriental
than almost anything that has been written in this time.
The Leeds Mercury. The Potter s Thumb is a powerful story of the
mystical kind, and one which makes an instant appeal to the imagination of
the reader. . . There is an intensity of vision in this story which is as re
.

markable as it is rare, and the book, in its vivid and fascinating revelations of
life, and some of its limitations, is at once brilliant and, in the deepest and
therefore least demonstrative sense, impassioned.
The National Observer. A romance of East and West, in which the
glamour, intrigue, and superstition of India are cunningly interwoven and
artfully contrasted with the bright and changeable aspects of modern European
society. Love stones," as Mr. Andrew Lang once observed, "are best done
"

by women" ; and Mrs. Steel s treatment of Rose Tweedie s love affair with
Lewis Gordon is a brilliant instance in point. So sane and delightful an
episode is rare in fiction now-a-days.

LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 FROM THE FIVE RIVERS
BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL
In One Volume^ price 6s.

The Times. Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society
would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They are sufficiently
remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the "dumb millions" of
India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small, vie in ministering to it.
They are the more notable as being the work of a woman. Mrs. Steel has
evidently been brought into close contact with the domestic life of all classes,
Hindu and Mahomedan, in city and village, and has steeped herself in their
customs and superstitions. . . . Mrs. Steel s book is of exceptional merit
and freshness.
*
Vanity Fair.Stories of the Punjaub evidently the work of one who
has an intimate knowledge of, and a kindly sympathy for, its people. It is
to be hoped that this is not the last book of Indian stories that Mrs. Steel
will give us.

The Spectator. Merit, graphic force, and excellent local colouring are
conspicuous in Mrs. Steel s From the Five Rivers, and the short stories of which
the volume is composed are evidently the work of a lady who knows what
she is writing about.
The Glasgow
Herald. This is a collection of sketches of Hindu life, full
for themost part of brilliant colouring and cleverly wrought in dialect. The
writer evidently knows her subject, and she writes about it with unusual
skill.

The North
British Daily Mail. In at least two of the sketches in Mrs.
Steel book we have a thoroughly descriptive delineation of life in Indian, or
s

rather, Hindoo, villages. Ganesh Chunel is little short of a masterpiece,

" "

and the same might be said of Shah Sujah s Mouse." In both we are made
"

the spectator of the conditions of existence in rural India. The stories are
told with an art that conceals the art of story-telling.

The Athenaeum. They possess this great merit, that they reflect the
habits, modes of and ideas of the middle and lower classes of the popula
life,
tion of Northern India better than do systematic and more pretentious works.
The Leeds Mercury. By no means a book to neglect. It is written
. . .

with brains. . . Mrs. Steel understands the life which she describes, and she
.

has sufficient literary art to describe it uncommonly well. These short

stories of Indian life are, in fact, quite above the average of stories long or
short. . . . There is originality, insight, sympathy, and a certain dramatic
instinct in the portrayal of character about the book.

The Globe. She puts before us the natives of our Empire in the East as

they live and move and

speak, with their pitiful superstitions, their strange
fancies, their melancholy ignorance of what poses with us for knowledge and
civilisation, their doubt of the new ways, the new laws, the new people.
Shah Sujah s Mouse," the gem of the collection a touching tale of
"

unreasoning fidelity towards an English "Sinny Baba" is a tiny bit of

perfect writing.

LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STEEET, W.C.

 THE LAST SENTENCE
BY MAXWELL GRAY
Author of The Silence of Dean Maitland, etc.

In One Volume^ price 6s.

The Standard. The, Last Sentence is a remarkable story; it abounds

with dramatic situations, the interest never for a moment flags, and the
characters are well drawn and consistent.
The Saturday Review. There is a great deal as well as a great variety
of incident in the story, and more than twenty years are apportioned to it ; but
it never seems over-crowded, nor has it the appearance of several stories rolled

into one. The Last Sentence is a remarkable novel, and the more so because
its strong situations are produced without recourse to the grosser forms of

immorality.
The Daily Telegraph. One of the most powerful and adroitly- worked-
out plots embodied in any modern work of fiction runs through The Last
Sentence. .. This terrible tale of retribution is told with well-sustained force
.

and picturesqueness, and abounds in light as well as shade,

The Morning Post. Maxwell Gray has the advantage of manner that is
both cultured and picturesque, and while avoiding even the appearance of the
melodramatic, makes coming events cast a shadow before them so as to excite
and entertain expectation. ... It required the imagination of an artist to
select the kind of Nemesis which finally overtakes this successful evil-doer, and
which affords an affecting climax to a rather fascinating tale.
The Glasgow Herald. This is a very strong story. ... It contains much
rich colouring, some striking situations, and plenty of thoroughly living
characters. The interest is of a varied kind, and, though the hero is an
aristocrat, the pictures of human life are by no means confined to the upper
circles.

The Leeds Mercury. It shows a command of the resources of the

novelist s art which is by no means common, and it has other qualities which
lift it far above the average level of the It is written with
circulating library.
a literary grace and a moral insight which are seldom at fault, and from first
to last it is pervaded with deep human interest.

The Queen. Maxwell Gray has a certain charm and delicacy of style.
She has mastered the subtleties of a particular type of weak character until
she may be almost called its prophet.
The Lady s Pictorial. The book is a clever and powerful one. . . .

Cynthia Marlowe will live in our memories as a sweet and noble woman ; one
of whom it is a pleasure to think of beside some of the emancipated heroines
so common in the fiction of the day.

The Manchester Courier. The author of The Silence of Dean Maitland

gives to the reading world another sound and magnificent work. ... In both
these works Maxwell Gray has taken Nemesis as his grand motif. In each
" "

work there sits behind the hero that atra cura which poisons the wholesome
draught of human joy. In each is present the corroding blight that comes
of evil done and not discovered.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET. W.C.

 THE NAULAHKA
A Tale of West and East

BY RUDYARD KIPLING AND WOLCOTT BALESTIER

In One Volume^ price 6s.

The Athenaeum. There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his
readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East ; and in this book
(if we except the description of Tarvin s adventures in the deserted city of
Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he has surely surpassed
himself. In his faculty for getting inside the Eastern mind and showing its
queer workings Mr. Kipling stands alone.
The Academy. The Naulahka contains passages of great merit.
There are descriptions scattered through its pages which no one but Mr.
Kipling could have written. Whoever reads this novel will find much of
. . .

it hard to forget and the story of the exodus from the hospital will rank
. . .

among the best passages in modern fiction.

The Times. A happy

idea, well adapted to utilize the respective ex
perience of the joint authors. ... An excellent story. . . . The dramatic train
of incident, the climax of which is certainly the interview between Sitabhai
and Tarvin, the alternate crudeness and ferocity of the girl-queen, the
susceptibility of the full-blooded American, hardly kept in subjection by his
alertness and keen eye to business, the anxious eunuch waiting in the distance
with the horses, and fretting as the stars grow paler and paler, the cough of
the tiger slinking home at the dawn after a fruitless night s hunt the whole
forms a scene not easily effaced from the memory.
The Glasgow Herald. An
entrancing story beyond doubt. . . The .

design is admirableto bring into violent contrast and opposition the widely
differing forces of the Old World and the New
and while, of course, it
could have been done without the use of Americanese, yet that gives a
wonderful freshness and realism to the story. The design is a bold one, and
it has been boldly carried out. . . . The interest is not only sustained through

out, it is at times breathless. The Maharajah, the rival queens, the

. . .

pomp and peril of Rhatore, are clearly Mr. Kipling s own, and some of the
Indian chapters are in his best style.

The Speaker. In the presentation of Rhatore there is something of the

old Kiplingesque glamour ; it is to the pages of Mr. Kipling that one must
go for the strange people and incidents of the royal household at Rhatore.
... It is enough to say that the plotting of that most beautiful and most
wicked gipsy, Sitabhai is interesting ; that Sitabhai is well created ; and that
the chapter which describes her secret meeting with Tarvin is probably the
finest and the most impressive in the book.

The Bookman. The real interest of the book is in the life behind the
curtains of the Maharajah s palace. The child Kunwar, his mother, the
forsaken Zulu queen, the gipsy with her wicked arts, are pictures of Indian
life, which even Mr. Kipling has not surpassed.

LONDON; WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

 14 DAY USE
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