OF TUB

UNIVERSITY V
 GANCONAGH

JOHN SHERMAN
AND

DHOYA

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE

M DCCC XCI

PSEUDONYM LIBR4RT
JOHN SHERMAN
AND
DHOYA

PSEUDONYM LIBRARY
 THE
PSEUDONYM LIBRARY.
Paptrt 1/6 ; cloth, a/-.

1. MLLE. IXE. By LANOB

FALCONER. 7th ed.

2. STORY OF ELEANOR
LAMBERT. By MAGDA-
LEN BROOKE. 2nd ed.

3. MYSTERY OF THE CAM-

PAGNA. By VON DEGEN.
3rded.

4. THE SCHOOL OF ART.

By ISABEL SNOW. 2nd ed.

5. AMARYLLIS. By
rEQPriOS APO2INH2.
and ed.
6. THE HOTEL D'ANGLE-
TERRE, and Other Stories.
By LANOE FALCONER. 2nd ed.
7. A RUSSIAN PRIEST. By
H. nOTAHEHKO. and ed.
8. SOME EMOTIONS AND
A MORAL. By JOHN OLI-
VER HOBBES.

9. EUROPEAN RELA-
TIONS : A Tirolese
Sketch, By TALMAGE DALIN.
10. JOHN SHERMAN, and
DHOYA. By GANCONAGH.
 GANCONAGH

JOHN SHERMAN
AND

DHOYA

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIJSf
PATERNOSTER SQUARE

M DCCC XCI
 1SS
XJ5I

GANCONAGH'S APOLOGY.
'HE maker of these
stories has
been told
that he must not bring
them to you himself.
He has asked me to
pretend that I am the
author. I am an old little Irish
spirit, and I sit in the hedges and
watch the world go by. I see
the boys going to market driving
donkeys with creels of turf, and
the girls carrying baskets of
apples. Sometimes I call to
some pretty face, and we chat a
little in the shadow, the apple
basket before us, for, as my faith-
ful historian O'Kearney has put
it in his now yellow manuscript,
I care for nothing in the world
but love and idleness. Will not

M628381
2 JOHN SHERMAN AND DHOYA.

you, too, sit down under the shade

of the bushes while I read you
the stories ? The first I do not
care for because it deals with dull
persons and the world's affairs,
but the second has to do with
my own people. If my voice at
whiles grows distant and dreamy
when I talk of the world's affairs,
remember that I have seen all
from my hole in the hedge. I
hear continually the songs of my
own people who dance upon the
hill-side, and am content. I
have never carried apples or
driven turf myself, or if I did it
was only in a dream. Nor do
my kind use any of man's belong-
ings except the little black pipes
which the farmers find now and
then when they are turning the
sods over with a plough.

GANCONAGH.
 PART I.

JOHN SHERMAN LEA VES

BALLAH.
 I.

the west of Ireland,

on the gth of December,
in the town of Ballah,
in the Imperial Hotel
there was a single guest,
clerical and youthful.
With the exception of a stray
commercial traveller, who stop-
ped once for a night, there had
been nobody for a whole month
but this guest, and now he was
thinking of going away. The
town, full enough in summer of
trout and salmon fishers, slept
all winter like the bears.
On the evening of the gth of
December, in the coffee-room of
the Imperial Hotel, there was
nobody but this guest. The
guest was irritated. It had
rained all day, and now that it
 JOHN SHERMAN.

was clearing up night had al-

most fallen. He had packed his
portmanteau: his stockings, his
clothes-brush, his razor, his dress
shoes were each in their corner,
and now he had nothing to do.
He had tried the paper that was
lying on the table. He did not
agree with its politics.
The waiter was playing an
accordion in a little room over
the stairs. The guest's irrita-
tion increased, for the more he
thought about it the more he
perceived that the accordion
was badly played. There was a
piano in the coffee-room; he sat
down at it and played the tune
correctly, as loudly as possible.
The waiter took no notice. He
did not know that he was being
played for. He was wholly ab-
sorbed in his own playing, and
besides he was old, obstinate,
and deaf. The guest could stand
it no longer. He rang for the
waiter, and then, remembering
that he did not need anything,
went out before he came.
 JOHN SHERMAN.

He went through Martin's

Street, and Lane, and
Peter's
turned down by the burnt house
at the corner of the fish- market,
picking his way towards the
bridge. The town was dripping,
but the rain was almost over.
The large drops fell seldomer and
seldomer into the puddles. It
was the hour of ducks. Three
or four had squeezed themselves
under a gate, and were now
splashing about in the gutter of
the main street. There was
scarcely any one abroad. Once
or twice a countryman went by in
yellow gaiters covered with mud
and looked at the guest. Once
an old woman with a basket of
clothes, recognizing the Protes-
tant curate's locum tenens, made a
low curtsey.
The clouds gradually drifted
away, the twilight deepened and
the stars came out. The guest,
having bought some cigarettes,
had spread his waterproof on the
parapet of the bridge and was
now leaning his elbows upon it,
 '

8 JOHN SHERMAN.

looking at the river and feeling

at last quite tranquil. His
meditations, he repeated, to
himself, were plated with
silver by the stars. The water
slid noiselessly, and one or
two of the larger stars made
little roadways of fire into the
darkness. The light from a dis-
tant casement made also its
roadway. Once or twice a fish
leaped. Along the banks were
the vague shadows of houses,
seeming like phantoms gathering
to drink.
Yes ; he felt now quite con-
tented with the world. Amidst
his enjoyment of the shadows and
the river a veritable festival of
silence was mixed pleasantly the
knowledge that, as he leant there
with the light of a neighbouring
gas-jet, flickering faintly on his
refined form and nervous face
and glancing from the little medal
of some Anglican order that
hung upon his watch-guard, he
must have seemed if there had
been any to witness a being
 JOHN SHERMAN.

of a different kind to the

inhabitants at once rough and
conventional of this half-
deserted town. Between these
two feelings the unworldly and
the worldly tossed a leaping wave
of perfect enjoyment. How
pleasantly conscious of his own
identity itmade him when he
thought how he and not those
whose birthright it was, felt
most the beauty of these shadows
and this river ? To him who had
read much, seen operas and
plays, known religious experi-
ences, and written verse to a
waterfall in Switzerland, and not
to those who dwelt upon its bor-
ders for their whole lives, did this
river raise atumult of images and
wonders. What meaning it had for
them he could not imagine. Some
meaning surely it must have !

As he gazed out into the

darkness, spinning a web of
thoughts from himself to the
river, from the river to himself,
he saw, with a corner of his eye,
a spot of red light moving in the
10 JOHN SHERMAN.

air at the other end of the bridge.

He turned towards it. It came
closer and closer, there ap-
pearing behind it the while a
man and a cigar. The man
carried in one hand a mass of
fishing-line covered with hooks,
and in the other a tin porringer
full of bait.
"
Good evening, Howard."
66
Good evening/' answered the
guest, taking his elbows off the
parapet and looking in a preoc-
cupied way at the man with the
hooks. It was only gradually
he remembered that he was in
Ballah among the barbarians,
for his mind had strayed from
the last evening gnats, making
circles on the water beneath, to
the devil's song against " the
" Mefistofele."
little spirits" in
Looking down at the stone
parapet he considered a moment
and then burst out
"
Sherman, how do you stand
this you who
place have
thoughts above mere eating and
sleeping and are not always grind-
 JOHN SHERMAN. II

ing at the stubble mill? Here

everybody lives in the eighteenth
century the squalid century.
Well, I am going to-morrow,
you know. Thank Heaven, I
am done with your grey streets
and grey minds ! The curate
must come home, sick or well.
I have a religious essay to
write, and besides I should
die. Think of that old fellow
at the corner there, our most

important parishioner. There

are no more hairs on his head
than thoughts in his skull. To
merely look at him is to rob
life of its dignity. Then there is

nothing in the shops but school-

books and Sunday-school prizes.
Excellent, no doubt, for any one
who has not had to read as many
as I have. Such a choir such !

"
rain !

"You need some occupation

peculiar to the place," said the
other, baiting his hooks with
worms out of the little porringer.
" I
catch eels. You should set
some night-lines too. You bait
12 JOHN SHERMAN.

them with worms in this way,

and put them among the weeds
at the edge of the river. In the
morning you find an eel or two, if
you have good fortune, turning
round and round and making the
weeds sway. I shall catch a

great many after this rain."

"
What a suggestion! Do you
mean to stay here," said Howard,
"till your mind rots like our
"
most important parishioner's ?
"
No, no To be quite frank
!

with you," replied the other, " I

have some good looks and shall
try to turn them to account by
going away from here pretty soon
and trying to persuade some girl
with money to fall in love with
me. I shall not be altogether a
bad match, you see, because after
she has made me a little pros-
perous my and
uncle will die
make me much more wishso. I

to be able always to remain a

lounger. I shall marry
Yes,
money. My mother has set her
heart on it, and I am not, you
see, the kind of person who falls
 JOHN SHERMAN.

present
"You
-
in love inconveniently.
"

are vegetating," inter-

For the

rupted the other.

"
No, I am seeing the world.
In your big towns a man finds
his minority and knows nothing
outside its border. He knows
only the people like himself.
But here one chats with the
whole world in a day's walk, for
every man one meets is a class,
The knowledge I am picking up
may be useful to me when I enter
the great cities and their ignor-
ance. But I have lines to set.
Come with me. I would ask
you home, but you and my
mother, you know, do not get
on well/'
" I
could not live with any
one I did not believe in," said
Howard; "you are so different
from me. You can live with
mere facts, and that is why, I

suppose, your schemes are so

mercenary. Before this beautiful
river, these stars, these great
purple shadows, do you not feel
14 JOHN SHERMAN.

like an insect in a flower ? As for

me, I also have
planned my
future. Not too near or too far
from a great city I see myself in
a cottage with diamond panes,
sitting by the fire. There are
books everywhere and etchings
on the wall on the table is a
;

manuscript essay on some re-

ligious matter. Perhaps I shall
marry some day. Probably not,
for I shall ask so much. Cer-
tainly I shall not marry for

money, for I hold the directness

and sincerity of the nature to be
its compass. If we once break
it the world grows trackless."
" 1

Good-bye,' said Sherman,

" I
briskly; have baited the last
hook. Your schemes suit you,
but a sluggish fellow like me,
poor devil, who wishes to lounge
through the world, would find
them expensive."
They parted Sherman to set ;

his lines and Howard to his

hotel in high spirits, for it seemed
to him he had been eloquent.
The billiard-room, which opened
 JOHN SHERMAN, 15

on the street, was lighted up. A

few young men came round to
play sometimes. He went in,
for among these provincial youths
he felt recherche; besides, he was a
really good player. As he came
in one of the players missed and
swore. Howard reproved him
with a look. He joined the play
for a time, and then catching
sight through a distant door of
the hotel-keeper's wife putting a
kettle on the hob he hurried off,
and, drawing a chair to the fire,
began one of those long gossips
about everybody's affairs peculiar
to the cloth.
As Sherman, having set his
lines,returned home, he passed a
tobacconist's a sweet-shop and
tobacconist's in one the only
shop in town, except public-
houses, that remained open. The
tobacconist was standing in his
door, and, recognizing one who
dealt consistently with a rival
at the other end of the town,
muttered " There
:
goes that
gluggerabtmthaun and Jack o*
 JOHN SHERMAN.

Dreams ; been fishing most

"
likely. Ugh ! Sherman paused
for a moment
as he repassed the
bridge and looked at the water,
on which now a new-risen and
crescent moon was shining dimly.
How full of memories it was to
him ! what playmates and boyish
adventures did it not bring to
mind ! To him itseemed to say,
"
Stay near to me," as to Howard
had " Go
it said, yonder, to those
other joys and other sceneries I
have told you of." It bade him
who loved stay still and dream,
and gave flying feet to him who
imagined.
 II.

(HE house where Sher-

man and his mother
lived was one of those
bare houses so common
Their
in country towns.
dashed fronts mounting
above empty pavements have a
kind of dignity in their utili-
tarianism. They seem to say,
" Fashion has not made
us, nor
ever do its caprices pass our
sand-cleaned doorsteps." On
every basement window is the
same dingy wire blind ; on every
door the same brass knocker.
" So much
Custom everywhere !

the longer," the blinds seem to

" have
say, eyes glanced through
us"; and the knockers to mur-
"
mur, And fingers lifted us."
l8 JOHN SHERMAN.

No. 15, Stephens' Row, was in

no manner peculiar among its
twenty fellows. The chairs in
the drawing-room facing the
street were of heavy mahogany
with horsehair cushions worn at
the corners. On the round table
was somebody's commentary on
the New Testament laid like the
spokes of a wheel on a table-
cover of American oilcloth with
stamped Japanese figures half
worn away. The room was sel-
dom used, for Mrs. Sherman was
solitary because silent. In this
room the dressmaker sat twice a
year, and here the rector's wife
used every month or so to drink
a cup of tea. It was quite clean.
There was not a fly-mark on the
mirror, and all summer the fern
in the grate was constantly
changed. Behind this room and
overlooking the garden was the
parlour, where cane- bottomed
chairs took the place of ma-
hogany. Sherman had lived here
with his mother all his life, and
their old servant hardly remem-
 JOHN SHERMAN. 19

bered having lived anywhere else;

and soon she would absolutely
cease to remember the world she
knew before she saw the four
walls of this house, for every day
she forgot something fresh. The
son was almost thirty, the mother
fifty, and the servant near seventy.

Every year they had two hundred

pounds among them, and once a
year the son got a new suit of
clothes and went into the draw-
ing-room to look at himself in
the mirror.
On the morning of the 20th of
December Mrs. Sherman was
down before her son. A spare,
delicate-featured woman, with
somewhat thin lips tightly closed
as with silent people, and eyes at
once gentle and distrustful, tem-
pering the hardness of the lips.
She helped the servant to set the
table, and then, for her old-
fashioned ideas would not allow
her to rest, began to knit, often
interrupting her knitting to go
into the kitchen or to listen at
the foot of the stairs. At last,
20 JOHN SHERMAN.

hearing a sound upstairs, she put

the eggs down to boil, muttering
the while, and began again to
knit. When her son appeared
she received him with a smile.
" Late
again, mother," he
said.
" The
young should sleep," she
answered, for to her he seemed
still a boy.
She had finished her breakfast
some time before the young man,
and because it would have ap-
peared very wrong to her to leave
the table, she sat on knitting be-
hind the tea-urn an industry
:

the benefit of which was felt by

many poor children almost the
only neighbours she had a good
word for.
" said the
Mother," young
man, presently, "your friend the
locum tenens is off to-morrow."
" A good riddance."
"Why are you so hard on
him? He talked intelligently
when here, I thought," answered
her son.
" I do not like his
theology,"
 JOHN SHERMAN. 21

she replied, " nor his way of run-

ning about and flirting with this
body and that body, nor his way
of chattering while he buttons
and unbuttons his gloves."
" You
forget he is a man of the
great world, and has about him a
manner that must seem strange
to us."
"
Oh, he might do very well/'
she answered, " for one of those
Carton girls at the rectory."
"That eldest girl is a good
girl," replied her son.
" She looks down on us
all, and
thinks herself intellectual," she
went on.
" I remember when
girlswere content with their
Catechism and their Bibles and
a little practice at the piano,
maybe, an accomplishment.
for
What does any one want more ?
It is all pride."
"
You used to like her as a
child," said the young man.
" I like all children."
Sherman having finished his
breakfast, took a book of travels
in one hand and a trowel in the
22 JOHN SHERMAN.

other and went out into the garden.

Having looked under the parlour
window for the first tulip shoots,
he went down to the further end
and began covering some sea-kale
for forcing. He had not been
long at work when the servant
brought him a letter. There was
a stone roller at one side of the
grass plot. He sat down upon it,
and taking the letter between his
finger and thumb began looking
at it with an air that said :

" know what

Well ! I you
mean." He
remained long thus
without opening it, the book
lying beside him on the roller.
The garden the letter the
book ! You have there the three
symbols of his life. Every
morning he worked in that
garden among the sights and
sounds of nature. Month by
month he planted and hoed and
dug there. In the middle he had
set a hedge that divided the
garden in two. Above the hedge
were flowers below it, vege-
;

tables. At the furthest end from

 JOHN SHERMAN. 23

the house, lapping broken

masonry of wallflowers, the
full
river said, month after month to
all its banks,
" Hush "
upon !

He dined at two with perfect

regularity, and in the afternoon
went out to shoot or walk.
At twilight he set night-lines.
Later on he read. He had not
many books a Shakespeare,
Mungo Park's travels, a few
"
two-shilling novels, Percy's
Reliques," and a volume on
etiquette. He seldom varied his
occupations. He had no pro-
fession. The town talked of it.
said
" He
They : lives upon his
mother," and were very angry.
They never let him see this,
however, for it was generally
understood he would be a
dangerous fellow to rouse ; but
there was an uncle from whom
Sherman had expectations who
sometimes wrote remonstrating.
Mrs. Sherman resented these
she was afraid of her
letters, for
son going away to seek his for-
tune perhaps even in America.
24 JOHN SHERMAN.

Now this matter preyed some-

what on Sherman. For three
years or so he had been trying to
make mind up and come to
his
some Sometimes when
decision.
reading he would start and press
his lips together and knit his
brows for a moment.
It will now be seen why the

garden, the book, and the letter

were the three symbols of his
life, summing up as they did his
love of out-of-door doings, his
meditations, his anxieties. His
lifein the garden had granted

serenity to his forehead, the

reading of his few books had
filled his eyes with reverie, and
the feeling that he was not quite
a good citizen had given a slight
and occasional trembling to his
lips.
He opened the letter. Its
contents were what he had long
expected. His uncle offered to
take him into his office. He laid
it spread out before him a foot
on each margin, right and left
and looked at it, turning the
 JOHN SHERMAN. 2$

matter over and over in his mind.

Would he go ? would he stay ?
He did not like the idea much.
The lounger in him did not
enjoy the thought of London.
Gradually his mind wandered
away into scheming infinite

scheming what he would do if

he went, what he would do if he
did not go.
A beetle, attracted by the faint
sunlight, had crawled out of his
hole. It saw the paper and
crept on to it, the better to catch
the sunlight. Sherman saw the
beetle but his mind was not
" Shall I tell
occupied with it.
"
Mary Carton ? he was thinking.
Mary had long been his adviser
and friend. She was, indeed,
everybody's Yes, he
adviser.
would ask her what to do.
Then again he thought no, he-
would decide for himself. The
beetle to move.
" If it
began
goes off the paper by the top I
will ask her if by the bottom I
will not."
The beetle went off by the
3
.26 JOHN SHERMAN.

top. He got up with an air of

decision and went into the tool-
house and began sorting seeds
and picking out the light ones,
sometimes stopping to watch a
spider; for he knew he must wait
till the afternoon to see Mary
Carton. The tool-house was a
favourite place with him. He
often read there and watched the
spiders in the corners.
At dinner he was preoccupied.
" " would
Mother," he said,
you much mind if we went away
from this?"
" I have often told
you," she
" I do not like one
answered,
place better than another. I
likethem all equally little."
After dinner he went again
into the tool-house. This time
he did not sort seeds only
watched the spiders.
 III.

COWARDS evening he-

went out The pale
sunshine of winter
flickered on his path.
The wind blew the
straws about. He grew
more and more melancholy. A
dog of his acquaintance was
chasing rabbits in a field. He
had never been known to catch
one, and since his youth had
never seen one for he was almost
wholly blind. They were his
form of the eternal chimera.
The dog left the field and
followed with a friendly sniff.
They came together to the
rectory. Mary Carton was not
in. There was a children's
practice in the school-house.
They went thither.
A child of four or five with a
-2 8 JOHN SHERMAN.

swelling on its face was sitting

under a wall opposite the school
door, waiting to make faces at
the Protestant children as they
came out. Catching sight of
the dog she seemed to debate in
her mind whether to throw a
stone at it or call it to her.
She threw the stone and made
it run. In after times he re-
membered all these things as
though they were of importance.
He opened the latched green
door and went in. About twenty
children were singing in shrill
voices standing in a row at the
further end. At the harmonium
he recognized Mary Carton, who
nodded to him and went on with
her playing. The white-washed
walls were covered with glazed
prints of animals ; at the further
end was a large map of Europe ;

by a fire at the near end was a

table with the remains of tea.
This tea was an idea of Mary's.
They had tea and cake first,
afterwards the singing. The
iloor was covered with crumbs.
 JOHN SHERMAN. 29

The fire was burning brightly.

Sherman sat down beside it. A.
child with a great deal of oil in
her hair was sitting on the end
of a form at the other side.
"Look," she whispered, "I
have been sent away. At any
rate they are further from the
fire. They have to be near the
harmonium. I would not sing.
Do you like hymns ? I don't.
Will you have a cup of tea ? I
can make it quite well. See, I
did not spill a drop. Have you
"
enough milk ? It was a cup
full ofmilk children's tea.
" there is a mouse carry-
Look,
ing away a crumb. Hush " !

They sat there, the child

watching the mouse, Sherman
pondering on his letter, until the
music ceased and the children
came tramping down the room.
The mouse having fled, Sher-
man's self-appointed hostess got
up with a sigh and went out
with the others.
Mary Carton closed the
harmonium and came towards.
30 JOHN SHERMAN.

Sherman. Her face and all her

movements showed a gentle
decision of character. Her
glance was serene, her features
regular, her figure at the same
time ample and beautifully
moulded her dress plain yet
;

not without a certain air of

distinction. In a different
society she would have had
many suitors. But she was ot
a type that in country towns
does not get married at all. Its
beauty is too lacking in pink and
white, its nature in that small
assertiveness admired for cha-
racter by the unin structed. Else-
where she would have known
her own beauty as it is right
that all the beautiful should
and have learnt how to display
it, to add gesture to her calm
and more of mirth and smiles to
her grave cheerfulness. As it
was, her manner was much older
than herself.
She sat down by Sherman
with the air of an old friend.
They had long been accustomed
 JOHN SHERMAN. 31

to consult together on every

matter. They were such good
friends they had never fallen in
love with each other. Perfect
love and perfect friendship are
indeed incompatible for the one
;

is a battlefield where shadows

war beside the combatants, and

the other a placid country where
Consultation has her dwelling.
These two were such good
friends that the most gossiping
townspeople had given them up
with a sigh. The doctor's wife,
a faded beauty and devoted
romance reader, said one day, as
they passed, "They are such cold
creatures." The old maid who
kept the Berlin-wool shop re-
"
marked, They are not of the
marrying sort," and now their
comings and goings were no
longer noticed. Nothing had
ever come to break in on their
quiet companionship and give
obscurity as a dweliing-place for
the needed illusions. Had one
been weak and the other strong,
one plain and the other hand-
32 JOHN SHERMAN.

some, one guide and the other

guided, one wise and the other
foolish, love might have found
them out in a moment, for love
is based on inequality as friend-
ship is on equality.
"John," said Mary Carton,
warming her hands at the fire,
" I have had a troublesome day.

Did you come to help me teach

the children to sing ? It was good
of you you were just too late."
:

" "
No," he answered, I have
come to be your pupil. I am
always your pupil."
"
Yes, and a most disobedient
one."
"
Well, advise me this time at
any rate. My uncle has written,
offering me 100 a year to begin
with in his London office. Am
"
I to go ?

"You -know quite well my

answer," she said.
"Indeed I do not. Why
should I go ? I am contented
here. I am now making my
garden ready for spring. Later
on there will be trout fishing
 JOHN SHERMAN. 33

and saunters by the edge of the

river in the evening when the
bats are flickering about. In
July there will be races. I

enjoy the bustle. I enjoy life

here. When anything annoys
me I keep away from it, that
is all. You know I am always
busy. I have occupation and
friends and am quite contented."
" It is a loss to of
great many
us, but you must go, John," she
" For
said. you know you will
be old some day, and perhaps
when the vitality of youth is
gone you will feel that your life
is empty and find that you are
too old to change it and you
;

will give up, perhaps, trying to

be happy and likeable and
become as the rest are. I think
I can see you," she said, with a
laugh, "a hypochondriac, like
Gorman, the retired excise
officer, or with a red nose like
Dr. Stephens, or growing like
Peters, the elderly cattle mer-
chant, who starves his horse."
"
They were bad material to
34 JOHN SHERMAN.

and "
begin with," he answered,
besides, I cannot take my mother
away with me at her age, and I
cannot leave her alone."
"
What annoyance it may be,"
she answered, "will soon be
forgotten. You will be able to

give her many more comforts.

We women we all like to be
dressed well and have pleasant
rooms to sit in, and a young man
at your age should not be idle.
You must go away from this
little backward
place. shall We
miss you, but you are clever and
must go and work with other
men and have your talents
admitted."
" How emulous
you would
have me. Perhaps I shall be
well-to-do some day meanwhile
;

I only wish to stay here with

my friends."
She went over to the window
and looked out with her face
turned from him. The evening
light cast a long shadow behind
her on the floor. After some
" I see
moments, she said,
 JOHN SHERMAN. 35

people ploughing on the slope

of the There are people
hill.

working on a house to the right.

Everywhere there are people
busy," and, with a slight tremble
in her voice, she added,
"
and,
John, nowhere are there any
doing what they wish. One has
to think of so many things of
duty and God."
"
Mary, I didn't know you
were so religious."
Coming towards him with a
"
smile, she said, No more did
I, perhaps. But sometimes the
self in one is very strong. One
has to think a great deal and
reason with it. Yet I try hard
to lose myself in things about
me. These children now I
often lie awake thinking about
them. That child who was
talking to you is often on my
mind. I do not know what will
happen to her. She makes me
unhappy. I am afraid she is
not a good child at all. I am
afraid she is not taught well at
home. I try hard to be gentle
36 JOHN SHERMAN.

and patient with her. I am a

little displeased with myself to-
day; so I have lectured you.
There I have made my con-
!

fession. But," she added, tak-

ing one of his hands in both
hers and reddening, " you must
go away. Yoti must not be idle.
You will gain Everything."
As she stood there with bright
eyes, the light of evening about
her, Sherman for perhaps the
first time saw how beautiful she
was, and was flattered by her
interest. For the first time also
her presence did not make him
at peace with the world.
" Will
you be an obedient
"
pupil ?

"You know so much more than

I he " and are
do," answered,
so much wiser. I will write to

my" uncle and agree to his offer."

Now
you must go home,"
vshe said.
" You must not
keep
your mother waiting for her tea.
There I have raked the fire
!

out. We must not forget to

lock the door behind us."
 JOHN SHERMAN. 37*

As they stood on the doorstep

the wind blew a whirl of dead
leaves about them.
"
They are my old thoughts,"
he said "
; see, they are all
withered."
They walked together silently.
At the vicarage he left her and
went homeward.
The deserted flour store at the
corner of two roads, the house
that had been burnt hollow ten
years before and still lifted its
blackened beams, the straggling
and leafless fruit-trees rising
above garden walls, the church
where he was christened these
foster-mothers of his infancy
seemed to nod and shake their
heads over him.
"
Mother," he said, hurriedly
the " we are
entering room,
going to London."
"As you wish. I always knew
you would be a rolling stone,"
she answered, and went out to
tellthe servant that as soon
as she had finished the week's
washing they must pack up
38 JOHN SHERMAN.

everything, for they were going

to London.
"
Yes, we must pack up," said
the old peasant; she did not
stop peeling the onion in her
hand she had not compre-
hended. In the middle of the
night she suddenly started up in
bed with a pale face and a prayer
to the Virgin whose image hung
over her head she had now
comprehended.
 N January the 5th about
two in the afternoon,
Sherman sat on the
deck of the steamer
Lavinia enjoying a
period ofsunshine
between two showers. The
steamer Lavinia was a cattle
boat. It had been his wish to
travel by some more expensive
route, but his mother, with her
old-fashioned ideas of duty,
would not hear of it, and now,
as he foresaw, was extremely
uncomfortable below, while he,
who was a good sailor, was
pretty happy on deck, and would
have been quite so if the pigs
would only tire of their continual
squealing. With the exception
4O JOHN SHERMAN.

of a very dirty old woman sitting

by a crate of geese, all the pas-
sengers but himself were below.
This old woman made the
journey monthly with geese for
the Liverpool market.
Sherman was dreaming. He
began to very desolate, and
feel
commenced a letter to Mary
Carton in his notebook to state
this fact. He was a laborious
and unpractised writer, and
found ithelped him to make a
pencil copy. Sometimes he
stopped and watched the puffin
sleeping on the waves. Each
one of them had its head tucked
in in a somewhat
different way.
That because their characters
is

are different," he thought.

Gradually he began to notice
a great many corks floating by,
one after the other. The old
woman saw them too, and said,
waking out of a half sleep
" Misther
John Sherman, we
will be in the Mersey before
evening. Why are ye goin'
among them savages in London,
 JOHN SHERMAN. 41

Misther John ? Why don't ye

stay among your own people
for what have we in this life but
"
a mouthful of air ?
 PART II.

MARGARET LELAND.
 I.

HERMAN and his

mother rented a small
house on the north side
of St. Peter's Square,
Hammersmith. The
front windows looked
out on to the old rank and green
square, the windows behind on
to a little patch of garden round
which the houses gathered and
^pressed as though they already
llonged to trample it out. In
this garden was a single tall
pear-tree that never bore fruit.
Three years passed by without
any notable event. Sherman
went every day to his office in
Tower Hill Street, abused his
!work a great deal, and was not
unhappy perhaps. He was pro-
46 JOHN SHERMAN.

bably a bad clerk, but then no-

body was very exacting with the
nephew of the head of the firm.
The firm of Sherman and
Saunders, ship brokers, was a
long-established, old-fashioned
house. Saunders had been dead
some years and old Michael
Sherman ruled alone an old
bachelor full of family pride and
pride in his wealth. He lived,
for all that, in a very simple
fashion. His mahogany furni-
ture was a little solider than
other people's perhaps. He did
not understand display. Display
finds its excuse in some taste
good or bad, and in a long indus-
trious life Michael Sherman had

never found leisure to form one.

He seemed to live only from
habit. Year by year he grew
more silent, gradually ceasing to
regard anything but his family
and his ships. His family were
represented by his nephew and
his nephew's mother. He did
not feel much affection for them.
He believed in his family that
 JOHN SHERMAN. 47

r
as all. To remind him of the
ther goal of his thoughts hung
nd his private office pictures
" S.S.
ath such inscriptions as
ndus the Cape of Good
at
The "
lope," barque Mary in
he Mozambique Channel/ "The
1

arque Livingstone at Port Said,"

nd many more. Every rope was
rawn accurately with a ruler,
nd here and there were added
istant vessels sailing proudly
y with that indifference to
all

perspective peculiar to the draw-

ngs of sailors. On every ship
vas the flag of the firm spread
ut to show the letters.
No man cared for old Michael
Sherman. Every one liked John.
Both were silent, but the young
nan had sometimes a talkative
it. The old man lived for his
edger, the young man for his
Ireams.
In spite of all these differences,
the uncle was on the whole
pleased with the nephew. He
noticed a certain stolidity that
was of the family. It sometimes
 JOHN SHERMAN.

irritated others. It pleased him.

He saw a hundred indications
besides that made him say, " He
is a true Sherman. We
Sher-
mans begin that way and give
up frivolity as we grow old. We
are all the same in the end."

Mrs. Sherman and her son

had but a
small round of
acquaintances a few rich
people, clients of the house of
Sherman and Saunders for the
most part. Among these was a
Miss Margaret Leland who lived
with her mother, the widow of
the late Henry Leland,
ship-
broker, on the eastern side of St.
Peter's Square. Their house
was larger than the Shermans,
and noticeable among its fellows
by the newly-painted hall door.
Within on every side were
bronzes and china vases and
heavy curtains. In all were dis-
played the curious and vagrant
taste of Margaret Leland. The
rich Italian and mediaeval
draperies of the pre-Raphaelites
 JOHN SHERMAN. 49

jostling the brightest and vulgar-

est products of more native and
Saxon schools. Vases of the
most artistic shape and colour
side by side with artificial flowers
and stuffed birds. This house
belonged to the Lelands. They
had bought it in less prosperous

days, and having altered it

according to their taste and the
need of their growing welfare
could not decide to leave it.
Sherman was an occasional
caller at the Lelands, and had
certainly a liking, though not a.
very deep one, for Margaret.
As yet he knew little more about
her than that she wore the most
fascinating hats, that the late
Lord Lytton was her favourite
author, and that she hated frogs.
It is clear that she did not know
that a French writer on magic
says the luxurious and extrava-
gant hate frogs because they are
cold, solitary, and dreary. Had
she done so, she would have been
more circumspect about revealing
her tastes.
50 JOHN SHERMAN.

For the rest John Sherman

was forgetting town of
the
Ballah. He corresponded indeed
with Mary Carton, but his la-
borious letter writing made his
letters fewer and fewer. Some-
times, too, he heard from
Howard, who had a curacy in
Glasgow and was on indifferent
terms with his parishioners.
They objected to his way of
conducting the services. His
letters were He would
full of it.
not give in, he said, whatever
happened. His conscience was
involved.
 II.

afternoon Mrs. Le-

land called on Mrs.
Sherman. She very
often called this fat,
sentimental woman,
moving in themidst
of a cloud of scent. The day
was warm, and she carried her
too elaborate and heavy dress as
a large caddis-fly drags its case
with much labour and patience.
She sat down on the sofa with
obvious relief, leaning so heavily
among the cushions that a
clothes-moth in an antimacassar
thought the end of the world
had come and fluttered out only
to beknocked down and crushed
by Mrs. Sherman, who was very
quick in her movements.
52 JOHN SHERMAN.

As
soon as she found her
breath, Mrs. Leland began a
long history of her sorrows. Her
daughter Margaret, had been
jilted and was in despair, had
taken bed with every
to her
resolution to die, and was grow-
ing paler and paler. The hard-
hearted man, though she knew
he had heard, did not relent.
She knew he had heard because
her daughter had told his sister
all about it, and his sister had
no heart, because she said it
was temper that ailed Margaret,
and she was a little vixen, and
that she had not flirted with
if

everybody the engagement would

never have been broken off. But
Mr. Sims had no heart clearly,
as Miss Marriot and Mrs. Eliza
Taylor, her daughter's friends,
said, when they heard, and Lock,
the butler, said the same too,
and Mary Young, the house-
maid, said so too and she knew
all about it, for Margaret used
to read his letters to her often
when having her hair brushed.
 JOHN SHERMAN. 53

"She must have been very

fond of him/' said Mrs. Sherman.
" She is so
romantic, my dear,"
answered Mrs. Leland, with a
"
sigh. I am afraid she takes

after an uncle on her father's

side, who wrote poetry and wore
a velvet jacket and ran away with
an Italian countess who used to
get drunk. When I married
Mr. Leland people said he was
not worthy of me, and that I
was throwing myself away and
he in business, too But Mar-
!

garet is so romantic. There was

Mr. Walters, the gentleman
farmer, and Simpson who had a
jeweller's shop I never approved

of him ! and Mr. Samuelson, and

the Hon. William Scott. She
tired of except the Hon.
them all
William Scott, who tired of her
because some one told him she
put belladonna in her eyes and
it is not true ; and now there is

Mr. Sims!" She then cried a

and allowed herself to be
little,
consoled by Mrs. Sherman.
"
You talk so and
intelligently
54 JOHN SHERMAN.

are so well informed," she said

at
" I have made a
parting.
very pleasant call," and the
caddis-worm toiled upon its way,
arriving in due course at other
cups of tea.
 III.

[HE day after Mrs. In-

land's call upon his
mother, John Sher-
man, returning home
after his not
very
day in the
lengthy
office, saw Margaret coming
towards him. She had a lawn
tennis racket under her arm,
and was walking slowly on the
shady side of the road. She
was a pretty girl with quitw
irregular features, who though
really not more than pretty, had
so much manner, so much of an
air,that every one called her a
beauty: a trefoil with the fra-
grance of a rose.
"
Mr. Sherman," she cried,
"
coming smiling to meet him, I
56 JOHN SHERMAN.

have been ill, but could not stand

the house any longer. I am going
to the Square to play tennis.
Will you come with me ?"
"
I am a bad player/' he said.
" Of course
you are," she an-
swered; "but you are the only
person under a hundred to be
found this afternoon. How dull
"
life is she continued, with a
!

" You heard how ill I have

sigh.
been ? What do you do all
"
day ?
" I at a desk, sometimes
sit

writing, and sometimes, when I

get lazy, looking up at the flies.
There are fourteen on the plaster
of the ceiling over my head.
They died two winters ago. I
sometimes think to have them
brushed off, but they have been
there so long now I hardly like
to."
"Ah! you like them," she
"
said, because you are accus-
tomed to them. In most
cases there is not much more
to be said for our family affec-
tions, I think.''
 JOHN SHERMAN. 57

"In a room close at hand," he

went on, " there is, you know,
Uncle Michael, who never
speaks."
"Precisely. You have an uncle
who never speaks; I have a
mother who never is silent. She
went to see Mrs. Sherman the
other day. What did she say to
her?"
"
Nothing."
"Really. What a dull thing
"
existence is this with a great
!

"
sigh. When the Fates are
weaving our web of life some
mischievous goblin always runs
off with the dye-pot. Everything
is dull and grey. Am I looking
a little pale ? I have been so
very ill."
"
A little bit pale, perhaps," he
said, doubtfully.
The Square
gate brought them
to a stop. It was
locked, but she
had the key. The lock was stiff,
but turned easily for John Sher-
man.
"
How strong you are," she
said.
58 JOHN SHERMAN.

It was an iridescent evening

of spring. The leaves of the
bushes had still their faint
green. As Margaret darted
about the tennis,
at a red
feather inher cap seemed to
rejoice with its wearer. Every-
thing was at once gay and tran-
quil. The whole world had that
unreal air it assumes at beautiful
moments, as though it might
vanish at a touch like an iri-
descent soap-bubble.
After a little Margaret said
she was tired, and, sitting on a
garden seat among the bushes,
began telling him the plots of
novels lately read by her. Sud-
denly she cried
"The novel-writers were all
serious people like you. They
are so hard on people like me.
They always make us come to
a bad end. They say we are
always acting, acting, acting;
and what else do you serious
people do? You act before the
world. I think, do you know, we
act before ourselves. All the old
 JOHN SHERMAN. 59

foolish kings and queens in his-

tory were like us. They laughed
and beckoned and went to the
block for no very good purpose.
I dare say the headsmen were
like you."
"We would never cut off so
pretty a head."
"
Oh, yes, you would you
would cut off mine to-morrow."
All this she said vehemently,
piercing him with her bright eyes.
"You would cut off my head
to-morrow," she repeated, almost
" I tell
fiercely; you you would."
Her departure was always un-
expected, her moods changed with
so much rapidity.
" Look " she
!

said, pointing where the clock on

St. Peter's church showed above
the bushes. " Five minutes to
five. In five minutes my
mother's tea-hour. It is like

growing old. I go to gossip.

Good-bye."
The red feather shone for a
moment among the bushes and
was gone.
 IV.

HE next day and the

day after, Sherman was
followed by those bright
eyes. When he opened
a letter at his desk they
seemed to gaze at him
from the open paper, and to
watch him from the flies upon
the ceiling. He was even a worse
clerk than usual.
One evening he said to his
" Miss Leland has
mother,
beautiful eyes."
"Mydear, she puts belladonna
in them."
" "
What a thing to say !

" know she

I does,'*though her
mother denies it."
"
Well, she is certainly beauti-
ful," he answered.
 JOHN SHERMAN. 61

"
My dear, if she has an attrac-
tion for you, I don't want to
discourage it. She is rich as
girls go nowadays one
; and
woman has one
fault, another
another one's untidy, one fights
:

with her servants, one fights

with her friends, another has a
crabbed tongue when she talks of
them."
Sherman became again silent,
finding no fragment of romance
in such discourse.
In the next week or two he
saw much of Miss Leland. He
met her almost every evening on
his return from the office, walk-
ing slowly, her racket under her
arm. They played tennis much
and talked more. Sherman began
to play tennis in his dreams.
Miss Leland told him all about

herself, her friends, her inmost

feelings and yet every day he
;

knew less about her. It was not

merely that saying everything
she said nothing, but that con-
tinually there came through her
wild words the sound of the mys-
62 JOHN SHERMAN.

terious flutes and viols of that

unconscious nature which dwells
so much nearer to woman than
to man. How often do we not
endow the beautiful and candid
with depth and mystery not their
own ? We
do not know that we
but hear in their voices those
flutes and viols playing to us of
the alluring secret of the world.
Sherman had never known in
life what is called first love,
^arly
and now, when he had passed
-thirty, it came to him that love
more of the imagination than of
either the senses or affections: it
was mainly the eyes that fol-

lowed him.
It is not to be denied that as
this love grew serious it grew
mercenary. Now active, now
.latent, the notion had long been
in Sherman's mind, as we know,
that he should marry money. A
born lounger, riches tempted him
greatly. When those eyes haunt-
ed him from the fourteen flies on
" I
the ceiling, he would say,
.should be rich ; I should have a
 JOHN SHERMAN. 63,

house in the country; I should

hunt and shoot, and have a
garden and three gardeners; I
should leave this abominable
office." Then the eyes became
even more beautiful. It was a
new kind of belladonna.
He shrank a little, however,
from choosing even this pleasant
pathway. He had planned many
futures for himself and learnt to
love them all. It was this that
had made him linger on at Ballah
for so long, and it was this that
now kept him undecided. He
would have to give up the universe,
for a garden and three gardeners.
How sad it was to make sub-
stantial even the best of his
dreams. How hard it was to
submit to that decree which com-
pels every step we take in life to-
be a death in the imagination.
How difficult it was to be so
enwrapped in this one new hope
as not to hear the lamentations
that were going on in dim corners
of his mind.
One day he resolved to propose*
"64 JOHN SHERMAN.

He examined himself in the glass

in the morning ; and for the first
time in his life smiled to see
how good-looking he was. In
the evening before leaving the
office he peered at himself in
the mirror over the mantlepiece
in the room where customers
were received. The sun was
blazing through the window full
on his face. He did not look so
well. Immediately all courage
left him.
That evening he went out after
his mother had gone to bed and
walked far along the towing-path
of theThames. A faint mist half
covered away the houses and fac-

tory chimneys on the further side;

beside him a band of osiers swayed
softly, the deserted and full river
lapping their stems. He looked on
all these things with foreign eyes.
He had no sense of possession.
Indeed it seemed to him that
everything in London was owned
by too many to be owned by
any one. Another river that he
.did seem to possess flowed
 JOHN SHERMAN.

through his memory with all its

familiar sights boys riding in
the stream to the saddle-girths,.
fish leaping, water-flies raising
their small ripples, a swan asleep,
the wallflowers growing on the
red brick of the margin. He.
grew very sad. Suddenly a
shooting star, fiery and vagabond,,
leaped from the darkness. It
brought his mind again in a
moment to Margaret Leland.
To marry her, he thought, was
to separate himself from the old
life he loved so well.

Crossing the river at Putney,.

he hurried homewards among
the market gardens. Nearing
home, the streets were deserted,
the shops closed. Where King
Street joins the Broadway, en-
tirely alone with itself, in the
very centre of the road a little
black cat was leaping after its
shadow.
" Ah!"
he thought, "it would
be a good thing to be a little
black cat. To leap about in the
moonlight and sleep in the sun-
66 JOHN SHERMAN.

light,and catch flies, to have no

hard tasks to do or hard deci-
sions to come to, to be simple
and full of animal spirits."
At the corner of Bridge Road
was a coffee-stall, the only sign
of human life. He bought some
cold meat and flung it to the
little black cat.
 V.

>OME more days went

by. At one day,
last,
arriving at the Square
somewhat earlier than
usual, and sitting down
to wait for Margaret on
the seat among the bushes, he
noticed the pieces of a
torn-up
letter lying about. Beside him
on the seat was a pencil, as
though some one had been writing
there and left it behind them.
The pencil-lead was worn very
short. The letter had been torn
up, perhaps, in a fit of im-
patience.
In a half-mechanical way he
glanced over the scraps. On one
of them he read : " MY DEAR

ELIZA, Whatanincurablegossip
68 JOHN SHERMAN.

my mother is. You heard of my

"
misfortune. I nearly died
Here he had to search among
the scraps ; at last he found one
that seemed to follow.
" Per-

haps you will hear news from

me soon. There is a handsome
young man who pays me atten-
"
tion, and Here another
"
piece had to be found. I would
take him though he had a face
like the man in the moon, and

limped like the devil at the

theatre. Perhaps I am a little

in love. Oh ! friend of my
"
heart Here it broke off
again. He was interested, and
searched the grass and the bushes
for fragments. Some had been
blown to quite a distance. He
got together several sentences
" I will not
now. spend another
winter with my mother for any-
thing. All this is, of course, a
secret. I had to tell somebody ;

secrets are bad for my health.

Perhaps it will all come to

nothing." the letter went

Then
off into dress, the last novel the
 JOHN SHERMAN. 69

writer had read, and so forth. A

Miss Sims, too, was mentioned,
who had said some unkind thing
of the writer.
Sherman wasgreatly amused.
It didnot seem to him wrong to
read we do not mind spying
on one of the crowd, any more
than on the personages of litera-
ture. It never occurred to him
that he, or any friend of his, was
concerned in these pencil scrib-
blings.
Suddenly he saw this sentence:
;<
Heigho your poor Margaret
!

!s
falling in love again ; condole
with her, my dear."
He started. The name "Mar-
garet," the mention of Miss
Sims, the style of the whole
etter, all made plain the author-
ship. Very desperately ashamed
)f himself, he got up and tore
jach scrap of paper into still
smaller fragments and scattered
hem far apart.
That evening he proposed, and
vas accepted.
 VI.

10R several days there

was a new heaven and
a new earth. Miss Le-
land seemed suddenly
impressed with the
seriousness of life. She
was gentleness itself; and as
Sherman sat on Sunday morn-
ings in his pocket-handkerchief
of a garden under the one tree,
with its smoky stem, watching
the little circles of sunlight fall-
like a shower
ing from the leaves
of new sovereigns, he gazed at
them with a longer and keener
heretofore a new
joy than
heaven and a new earth, surely !

Sherman planted and dug and

raked this pocket-handkerchiel
of a garden most diligently, root-
 JOHN SHERMAN. 71

.ng out the docksand dande-

.ions and mouse-ear and the
patches of untimely grass. It
was the point of contact between
his new life and the old. It was
Far too small and unfertile and
shaded in to satisfy his love of
gardener's experiments and early
vegetables.
Perforce this husbandry was
too little complex for his affec-
tions to gather much round plant
and bed. His garden in Ballah
used to touch him like the growth
of a young family.
Now he was content to satisfy
his barbaric sense of colour ;
were planted alternate
right round
holyhock and sunflower, and be-
hind them scarlet-runners showed
their inch-high cloven shoots.
One Sunday it occurred to
him to write to his friends on
the matter of his engagement.
He numbered them over. Ho-
ward, one or two less intimate,
and Mary Carton. At that name
he paused he would not write
;

just yet.
 VII.

JNE Saturday there was

a tennis party. Miss Le-
land devoted herself all
day to a young Foreign
Office clerk. She played
tennis with him, talked
with him, drank lemonade with
him, had neither thoughts nor
words for any one else. John
Sherman was quite happy*
Tennis was always a bore, and
now he was not called upon to
play. It had not struck him
there was occasion for jealousy.
As the guests were dispersing,
his betrothed came to him. Her
manner seemed strange.
" Does
anything ail you, Mar-
"
garet ? he asked, as they left
the Square.
 JOHN SHERMAN. 73

"
Everything," she answered,
looking about her with osten-
tatious secrecy. "You are a
most annoying person. You
have no feeling; you have no
temperament you are quite the
;

most stupid creature I was ever

engaged to."
"What is wrong with you?"*
he asked, in bewilderment.
" Don't
you see/* she replied,
"
with a broken voice, I flirted

all day with that young clerk?

You should have nearly killed
me with jealousy. You do not
love me a bit! There is no
"
knowing what I might do !

"Well, you know/' he said,

" it was not of
right you.
People might say, Look at John
'

Sherman ; how furious he must

be !
'
To beI wouldn't be-
sure
furious a bit ; but then they'd go
about saying I was. It would
not matter, of course; but you
know it is not right of you."
" It is no use pretending you
have feeling. It is all that
miserable little town you come:
5
74 JOHN SHERMAN.

from, with its sleepy old shops

and its sleepy old society. I
would give up loving you this
-minute/' she added, with a
"
.caressing look, if you had not
that beautiful bronzed face. I
will improve you. To-morrow
evening you must come to the
opera." Suddenly she changed
"
the subject. Do you see that
man coming out of the
little fat

Square and staring at me ? I

was engaged to him once. Look
at the four old ladies behind
him, shaking their bonnets at
me. Each has some story about
me, and it will be all the same
in a hundred years."
After this he had hardly a
moment's peace. She kept him
continually going to theatres,
operas, parties. These last were
an especial trouble ; for it was
her wont to gather about her an
admiring circle to listen to her
extravagancies, and he was no
longer at the age when we enjoy
audacity for its own sake.
 VIII.

GRADUALLY those
bright eyes of his imagi-
nation, watching him
from letters and from
amongthe fourteen flies-
onthe ceiling, had
ceased to be centres of peace.
They seemed like two whirl-
pools, wherein the order and
quiet of his life were absorbed
hourly and daily.
He still thought sometimes of
the country house of his dreams
and of the garden and the three
gardeners, but somehow they had
lost half their charm.
He had written to Howard
and some others, and commenced,
at last, a letter to Mary Carton..
It lay unfinished on his desk ; a
thin coating of dust was gather-
ing upon it.
76 JOHN SHERMAN.

Mrs. Leland called continually

on Mrs. Sherman. She senti-
mentalized over the lovers, and
even wept over them each visit
;

supplied the household with con-

versation for a week.
Every Sunday morning his
letter-writing time Sherman
looked at his uncompleted letter.
Gradually it became plain to
him he could not finish it. It had
never seemed to him he had more
than friendship for Mary Carton,
yet somehow it was not possible
to tell her of this love-affair.
The more his betrothed troubled
him the more he thought about
the unfinished letter. He was a
man standing at the cross-roads.
Whenever the wind blew from
the south he remembered his
friend, for that is the wind that
fills the heart with memory.

One Sunday he removed the

dust from the face of the letter
almost reverently, as though it
-were the dust from the wheels of
destiny. But the letter remained
unfinished.
 IX.

in
JNE Wednesday June
Sherman arrived home
an hour earlier than
usual from his office, as
his wont was the first

Wednesday in every
month, on which day his mother
was at home to her friends. They
had not many callers. To-day
there was no one as yet but a
badly-dressed old lady his mother
had picked up he knew not where..
She had been looking at his
photograph album, and recalling
names and dates from her own
prosperous times. As she went
out Miss Leland came in. She
gave the old lady in passing a
critical look that made the poor
creature very conscious of a
78 JOHN SHERMAN.

threadbare mantle, and went

over to Mrs. Sherman, holding
out both hands. Sherman, who
loiewall his mother's peculiarities,
noticed on her side a slight cold-
ness perhaps she did not alto-
;

gether like this beautiful dragon-

fly.
" have come," said Miss
I

Leland, "to tell John that he

must learn to paint. Music and
society are not enough. There
isnothing like art to give refine-
ment." Then turning to John
Sherman " I will make
My dear,
you quite You are a
different.
dreadful barbarian, you know."
" "
What ails me, Margaret
?
"
Just look at that necktie !

Nothing shows a man's culti-

vation like his necktie. Then
your reading You never read
!

anything but old books nobody

wants to talk about. I will lend

you three every one has read this

month. You really must acquire
small talk and change your neck-
tie."

Presently she noticed the

 JOHN SHERMAN. 79

photograph-book lying open

on a chair.
" "
she cried, " I must
Oh !

have another look at John's

beauties."
It was a habit of his to gather
allmanner of pretty faces. It
came from incipient old bachelor-
hood, perhaps.
Margaret criticized each photo
in turn with,
" Ah
shelooks as!

"
if she had some life in her or, !

" I do not like

your sleepy eye-
lids," or some such phrase. The
mere relations were passed by
without a word. One face occurred
several times a quiet face. As
Margaret came on this one for
the third time, Mrs. Sherman,
who seemed a little resentful
about something, said
"That is his friend, Mary
Carton."
" He told me about her. He
has a book she gave him. So
that is she ? How interesting !

I pity these poor country people.

It must be hard to keep from
"
getting stupid.
80 JOHN SHERMAN.

"
My friend is not at all

stupid," said Sherman.

" Does she
speakwith a brogue?
I remember you told me she was
very good. It must be difficult
to keep from talking platitudes
when one is very good/*
" You are
quite wrong about
her. You would like her very
much," he replied.
" She is one of those
people, I
suppose, who can only talk about
their relatives, or their families,
or about their friends' children :
how this one has got the hoop-
ing-cough, and this one is getting
"
well of the measles She kept !

swaying one of the leaves bet ween

her finger and thumb impatiently.
"
What a strange way she does
her hair ; and what an ugly
"
dress !

" You must not talk that way

about her she is my great
friend."
" "
Friend friend ! ! she burst
out.
" He thinks I will believe
in friendship between a man and
a woman."
 JOHN SHERMAN. 81

She got up, and said, turning

round with an air of changing
the subject, " Have you written
to your friends about our engage-
ment ? You had not done so
when I asked you lately."
"
" I have."
"All?"
J

"Well, not all.'

"
Your great friend, Miss
what do you call her ? "
"Miss Carton. I have not
written to her."
She tapped impatiently with
her foot.

"They were really old com-

panions that isall," said Mrs.
Sherman, wishing to mend
matters. "They were both
readers ;
that brought them
together. I never much fancied
her. Yet she was well enough
as a friend, and helped, maybe,
with reading, and the gardening,
and his good bringing-up, to keep
him from the idle young men of
the neighbourhood."
" You
must make him write
and tell her at once you must,
82 JOHN SHERMAN.
"
you must ! almost sobbed out
Miss Leland.
"I
promise/' he answered.
Immediately returning to her-
self, she cried, "If I were in
her place I know what I would
like to do when I got the letter.
"
I know who I would like to kill!

this with a laugh as she went

over, and looked at herself in the
mirror over the mantlepiece.
 PART III.

JOHN SHERMAN REVISITS

BALLAH.
 I.

'HE others had gone,,

and Sherman was alone
in the drawing-room by
himself, looking through
window.
the Never
had London seemed to
him so like a reef whereon he
was cast away. In the Square
the bushes were covered with
dust ;
some sparrows were
ruffling their feathers on the
side-walk; people passed, con-
tinually disturbing them. The
sky was full of smoke. A terrible

feeling of solitude in the midst

of a multitude oppressed him.
A portion of his life was ending.
He thought that soon he would
be no longer a young man, and
now, at the period when the
*86 JOHN SHERMAN.

desire of novelty grows less,

was coming the great change of
his life. He felt he was of
those whose granaries are in the
past. And now this past would
never renew itself. He was
going out into the distance as
though with strange sailors in a
strange ship.
He longed to see again the
town where he had spent his
childhood to see the narrow
:

roads and mean little shops. And

perhaps would be easier to tell
it

her who had been the friend of

so many years of this engage-
ment in his own person than by
letter. He wondered why it

was so hard to write so simple

a thing.
It was his custom to act sud-

denly on He had
his decisions.
not made many in his life.
The next day he announced at
the office that he would be absent
for three or four days. He told
his mother he had business in
.the country.
His betrothed met him on the
 JOHN SHERMAN.

way to the terminus, as he was

walking, bag in hand, and asked
where he was going. " I am

going on business to the country,"

he said, and blushed. He was.
creeping away like a thief.
 II.

E arrived in the town

of Ballahby rail, for
he had avoided the
slow cattle steamer and
gone by Dublin.
It was the forenoon,
and he made for the Imperial
Hotel to wait till four in the
evening, when he would find
Mary Carton in the school-
house, for he had timed his

journey so as to arrive on Thurs-

day, the day of the children's
practice.
As he went through the streets
his heart went out to every
familiarplace and sight the :

rows of tumble-down thatched

cottages; the slated roofs of the
shops the women selling goose-
;
 JOHN SHERMAN. 89

berries ; the river bridge ; the

high walls of the garden where
it was said the gardener used to

see the ghost of a former owner

in the shape of a rabbit ;
the
street corner no child would
pass at nightfall for fear of the
headless soldier; the deserted
flour store; the wharves covered
with grass. All these he watched
with Celtic devotion, that de-
votion carried to the ends of the
world by the Celtic exiles, and
since old time surrounding their
journeyings with rumour of
plaintive songs.
He sat in the window of the
Imperial Hotel, now full of
guests. He did not notice any of
them. He sat there meditating,
meditating. Grey clouds cover-
ing the town with flyir.g shadows
rushed by like the old and dis-
hevelled eagles that Maeldune saw
hurrying towards the waters of
life. Below in the street passed
by country people, townspeople,
women with baskets,,
travellers,
boys driving donkeys, old men
 JOHN SHERMAN.

with sticks; sometimes he recog-

nized a face or was recognized
himself, and welcomed by some
familiar voice.
" You have come home a hand-
somergentleman thanyourfather,
Misther John, and he was a
neat figure of a man, God bless
him " said the waiter, bringing
!

him his lunch and in truth

;

Sherman had grown handsomer

for these yearsaway. His face
and gesture had more of dignity,
for on the centre of his nature
life had dropped a pinch of ex-

perience.
At four he left the hotel and
waited near the schoolhouse till
the children came running out.
One or two of the elder ones he
recognized but turned away.
 III.

ARY CARTON was

locking the harmonium
as he went in. She
came to meet him with
a surprised and joyful
air.
How often I have wished to
see you. When did you come ?
How well you remembered my
rabits to know where to find
ne. My dear John, how glad I
im to see you."
"
You are the same as when
left, and this room is the same,
oo."
" she "
Yes," answered, the
ame, only I have had some
lew prints hung up prints of
ruits and leaves and bird-nests,
t was only done last week.
92 JOHN SHERMAN.

When people choose pictures

and poems for children they
choose out such domestic ones.
I would not have any of the
kind ; children are such un-
domestic animals. But, John,
I am so glad to see you in this
old schoolhouse again. So little
has changed with us here. Some
have died and some have been
married, and we are all a little
older and the trees a little
taller."
" I have come to tell you I
am going to be married."
She became in a moment
perfectly white, and sat down as
though attacked with faintness.
Her hand on the edge of the
chair trembled.
Sherman looked at her, and
went on in a bewildered, me-
chanical way "My betrothed is
a Miss Leland. She has a good
deal of money. You know my
mother always wished me to
marry some one with money.
Her father, when alive, was an
old client of Sherman and
 JOHN SHERMAN. 93

Saunders. She is much admired

in society."
Gradually his voice
became a mere murmur. He
did not seem to know that he
was speaking. He
stopped en-
tirely.He was looking at Mary
Carton.
Everything around him was
as it had been some three
years before. The table was
covered with cups and the floor
with crumbs.
Perhaps the
mouse pulling at a crumb under
the table was the same mouse
as on that other
evening. The
only difference was the brooding
daylight of summer and the
ceaseless chirruping of the
sparrows in the ivy outside.
He had a confused sense of
having lost his way. It was
just the same feeling he had
known as a child, when one dark
night he had taken a wrong
turning, and instead of arriving
at his own house, found himself
at a landmark he knew
was
miles from home.
A moment earlier, however
94 JOHN SHERMAN.

difficult his life, the issues were

always definite ; now suddenly
had entered the obscurity of
another's interest.
Before this it had not occurred
to him that Mary Carton had
any stronger feeling for him than
warm friendship.
He began again, speaking in
the same
mechanical way
" Miss Leland lives with her
mother near us. She is very
well educated and very well con-
nected, though she has lived
always among business people."
Miss Carton, with a great
effort, had recovered her com-
posure.
" I she
congratulate you,"
said. "I
hope you will be
always happy. You came here
on some business for your firm, I
suppose ? I believe they have
some connection with the town
still."
" I only came here to tell you
I was going to be married."
" Do you not think it would
have been better to have
 JOHN SHERMAN. 95

"
written? she said, beginning to
put away the children's tea-
things in a cupboard by the fire-
place.
" It would have been better/
he answered, drooping his head.
Without a word, locking the
door behind them, they went
out. Without a word they
walked the grey streets. Now
and then a woman or a child
curtseyed as they passed. Some
wondered, perhaps, to see these
old friends so silent. At the
rectory they bade each other
good-bye.
" I
hope you will be always
"
happy/' she said. I will pray
for you and your wife. I am

very busy with the children

and old people, but I shall
always find a moment to wish
you well in. Good-bye now."
They parted ; the gate in the
wall closed behind her. He
stayed for a few moments look-
ing up at the tops of the trees
and bushes showing over the
wall, and at the house a little
96 JOHN SHERMAN.

way beyond. He stood con-

sidering his problem her life,
his life. His, at any rate, would
have incident and change ; hers
would be the narrow existence
of a woman who, failing to fulfil
the only abiding wish she has
ever formed, seeks to lose herself
in routine mournfulest of things
on this old planet.
This had been revealed : he
loved Mary Carton, she loved
him. He remembered Margaret
Leland, and murmured she did
well to be jealous. Then all her
contemptuous words about the
town and its inhabitantscame
into his mind. Once they made
no impression on him, but now
the sense of personal identity
having been disturbed by this
sudden revelation, alien as they
were to his way of thinking,
they began to press in on him.
Mary, too, would have agreed
with them, he thought ; and
might it be that at some distant
time weary monotony in aban-
donment would have so weighed
 JOHN SHERMAN. 73

"
Everything," she answered,
looking about her with osten-
tatious
" You are a
secrecy.
most annoying person. You
have no feeling; you have no
temperament you are quite the
;

most stupid creature I was ever

engaged to."
"What is wrong with you ?"'
he asked, in bewilderment.
" Don't
you see/' she replied,
with a broken voice, " I flirted
all day with that young clerk?
You should have nearly killed-
me with jealousy. You do not
love me a bit There is no
!

"
knowing what I might do !

"
Well, you know/' he said,,
66
it was not right of you.
People might say,
'
Look at John
Sherman ; how furious he must
be !
'
To be sure I wouldn't be
furious a bit; but then they'd go
about saying I was. It would
not matter, of course but you ;

know it is not right of you."

" It is no use
pretending you
have feeling. It is all that
miserable little town you come
5
74 JOHN SHERMAN.

from, with its sleepy old shops

and its sleepy old society. I
would give up loving you this
minute/' she added, with a
"
caressing look, if you had not

that beautiful bronzed face. I

will improve you. To-morrow
evening you must come to the
opera." Suddenly she changed
" Do
the subject. you see that
man coming out of the
little fat

Square and staring at me ? I

was engaged to him once. Look
at the four old ladies behind
him, shaking their bonnets at
me. Each has some story about
me, and it will be all the same
in a hundred years."
After this he had hardly a
moment's peace. She kept him
continually going to theatres,
operas, parties. These last were
an especial trouble ;
for it was
her wont to gather about her an
admiring circle to listen to her
extravagancies, and he was no
longer at the age when we enjoy
.audacity for its own sake.
 VIII.

GRADUALLY those
bright eyes of his imagi-
nation, watching him
from letters and from
amongthe fourteen flies
onthe ceiling, had
ceased to be centres of peace.
They seemed like two whirl-
pools, wherein the order and
quiet of his life were absorbed
hourly and daily.
He thought sometimes of
still

the country house of his dreams

and of the garden and the three
gardeners, but somehow they had
lost half their charm.
He had written to Howard
and some others, and commenced,
at last, a letter to Mary Carton.
It lay unfinished on his desk ; a
thin coating of dust was gather-
ing upon it.
76 JOHN SHERMAN.

Mrs. Leland called continually

on Mrs. Sherman. She senti-
mentalized over the lovers, and
even wept over them each visit
;

supplied the household with con-

versation for a week.
Every Sunday morning his
letter-writing time Sherman
looked at his uncompleted letter.
Gradually it became plain to
him he could not finish it. It had
never seemed to him he had more
than friendship for Mary Carton,
yet somehow it was not possible
to tell her of this love-affair.
Themorehis betrothedtroubled
him the more he thought about
the unfinished letter. He was a
man standing at the cross-roads.
Whenever the wind blew from
the south he remembered his
friend, for that is the wind that
fills the heart with memory.

One Sunday he removed the

dust from the face of the letter
almost reverently, as though it
were the dust from the wheels of
destiny. But the letter remained
unfinished.
 IX.

in
|NE Wednesday June
Sherman arrived home
an hour earlier than
usual from his office, as
his wont was the first

Wednesday in every
month, on which day his mother
was at home to her friends. They
had not many callers. To-day
there was no one as yet but a
badly-dressed old lady his mother
had picked up he knew notwhere.
She had been looking at his
photograph album, and recalling,
names and dates from her own
prosperous times. As she went
out Miss Leland came in. She
gave the old lady in passing a
critical look that made the poor
creature very conscious of a
78 JOHN SHERMAN.

threadbare mantle, and went

over to Mrs. Sherman, holding
out both hands. Sherman, who
knewall his mother's peculiarities,
noticed on her side a slight cold-
ness perhaps she did not alto-
;

gether like this beautiful dragon-

fly.
" I come," said Miss
have
Leland, "to tell John that he
must learn to paint. Music and
society are not enough. There
isnothing like art to give refine-
ment." Then turning to John
Sherman " My dear, I will make
you quite different. You are a
dreadful barbarian, you know."
" "
What
ails me, Margaret
?
"
Just look at that necktie !

Nothing shows a man's culti-

vation like his necktie. Then
your reading You never read
!

anything but old books nobody

wants to talk about. I will lend
you three every one has read this
month. You really must acquire
small talk and change your neck-
tie."

Presently she noticed the

 JOHN SHERMAN. 79

photograph-book lying open

on a chair.
" Oh "
she cried,
! I must "
"have another look at John's
beauties."
It was a habit of his to gather
all manner of pretty faces. It
came from incipient old bachelor-
hood, perhaps.
Margaret criticized each photo
in turn with,
" Ah she
looks as
!

"
if she had some life in her or, !

" I do not like

your sleepy eye-
lids," or some such phrase. The
mere relations were passed by .

without aword. One face occurred

several times a quiet face. As
Margaret came on this one for
the third time, Mrs. Sherman,
who seemed a little resentful
about something, said
"That is his friend, Mary
Carton."
"
He told me about her. He
has a book she gave him. So
that she ? How interesting
is !

I pity these poor country people.

It must be hard to keep from

getting stupid."
80 JOHN SHERMAN.

"
My friend is not at all

stupid," said Sherman.

" Does she
speak with a brogue ?
I remember you told me she was
very good. It must be difficult
to keep from talking platitudes
when one is very good."
" You are
quite wrong about
her. You would like her very
much," he replied.
" She is one of those
people, I
suppose, who can only talk about
their relatives, or their families,
or about their friends' children :
how one has got the hoop-
this
ing-cough, and this one is getting
"
well of the measles She kept !

swaying one of the leaves bet ween

her finger and thumb impatiently.
"
What a strange way she does
her hair ; and what an ugly
"
dress !

"
You must not talk that way
about her she is my great
friend."
" "
Friend friend ! ! she burst
out.
" He thinks I will believe
in friendship between a man and
a woman."
 JOHN SHERMAN. 81

She got up, and said, turning

round with an air of changing
"
the subject, Have you written
to your friends about our engage-
ment ? You had not done so
when I asked you " lately."
"I have."
"All?"
"Wei!, not all."
"
Your great friend, Miss
what do you call her ? "
"Miss Carton. I have not
written to her."
She tapped impatiently with
her foot.
"They were really old com-
panions that isall," said Mrs.
Sherman, wishing to mend
"
matters. They were both
readers ;
that
brought them
together. I never much fancied
her. Yet she was well enough
as a friend, and helped, maybe,
with reading, and the gardening,
and his good bringing-up, to keep
him from the idle young men of
the neighbourhood."
" You must make him write
and tell her at once you must,
82 JOHN SHERMAN.

"
you must ! almost sobbed out
Miss Leland.
" I
promise/* he answered.
Immediately returning to her-
self, she cried, "If I were in
her place I know what I would
like to do when I got the letter.
"
I know who I would like to kill !

this with a laugh as she went

over, and looked at herself in the
mirror over the mantlepiece.
 PART III.

JOHN SHERMAN REVISITS

BALLAH.
 I.

HE others had gone,,

and Sherman was alone
in the drawing-room by
himself, looking through
thewindow. Never
had London seemed to
him so like a reef whereon he
was cast away. In the Square
the bushes were covered with
dust ; some sparrows were
ruffling their feathers on the
side-walk; people passed, con-
tinually disturbing them. The
sky was full of smoke. A terrible
feeling of solitude in the midst
of a multitude oppressed him.
A portion of his life was ending.
He thought that soon he would
be no longer a young man, and
now, at the period when the
 86 JOHN SHERMAN.

desire of novelty grows less,

was coming the great change of
his life. He felt he was of
those whose granaries are in the
past. And now this past would
never renew itself. He was
going out into the distance as
though with strange sailors in a
strange ship.
He longed to see again the
town where he had spent his
childhood : to see the narrow
roads and mean little shops. And
: perhaps it would be easier to tell
her who had been the friend of
so many years of this engage-
ment in his own person than by
letter. He wondered why it

was so hard to write so simple

a thing.
It was
his custom to act sud-
denly on his decisions. He had
not made many in his life.

The
next day he announced at
the office that he would be absent
for three or four days. He told
his mother he had business in
.the country.
His betrothed met him on the
 JOHN SHERMAN.

way to the terminus, as he was

walking, bag in hand, and asked
where he was going. " I am

going on business to the country,'

7

he said, and blushed. He

creeping away like a thief.
 II.

E arrived in the town

of Ballah by rail, for
he had avoided the
slow cattle steamer and
gone by Dublin.
It was the forenoon,
and he made for the Imperial
Hotel to wait till four in the
evening,when he would find
Mary Carton in the school-
house, for he had timed his
journey so as to arrive on Thurs-
day, the day of the children's
practice.
As he went through the streets
his heart went out to every
familiarplace and sight the :

rows of tumble-down thatched

cottages; the slated roofs of the
shops the women selling goose-
;
 JOHN SHERMAN. 891

berries the river bridge ; the

;

high walls of the garden where

it was said the gardener used to

see the ghost of a former owner

in the shape of a rabbit ; the
street corner no child would
pass at nightfall for fear of the
headless soldier; the deserted
flour store; the wharves covered
with grass. All these he watched
with Celtic devotion, that de-
votion carried to the ends of the
world by the Celtic exiles, and
since old time surrounding their
journeyings with rumour of
plaintive songs.
He sat in the window of the
Imperial Hotel, now full of
guests. He did not notice any of
them. He sat there meditating^,
meditating. Grey clouds cover-
ing the town with flyirg shadows-
rushed by like the old and dis-
hevelled eagles that Maeldune saw
hurrying towards the waters of
life. Below in the street passed
by country people, townspeople,
travellers, women with baskets,,
boys driving donkeys, old mea
90 JOHN SHERMAN.

with sticks; sometimes he recog-

nized a face or was recognized
himself, and welcomed by some
familiar voice.
" You have come home a hand-

somergentleman thanyourfather,
Misther John, and he was a
neat figure of a man, God bless
"
him ! said the waiter, bringing
him his lunch and in truth
;

Sherman had grown handsomer

for these yearsaway. His face
and gesture had more of dignity,
for on the centre of his nature
life had dropped a pinch of ex-

perience.
At four he left the hotel and
waited near the schoolhouse till
the children came running out.
One or two of the elder ones he
recognized but turned away.
 III.

CARTON was
locking the harmonium
as he went in. She
came to meet him with
a surprised and
joyful
air.
How often I have wished to
e you. When did you come ?
ow well you remembered my
tbits to know where to find
My dear John, how glad I
a to see you."
'You are the same as when
eft, and this room is the same,

'Yes," she answered, "the

Tie,only I have had some
y prints hung up prints of
and leaves and bird-nests.
its
was only done last week.
92 JOHN SHERMAN.

When people choose pictures

and poems for children they
choose out such domestic ones.
I would not have any of the
kind ; children are such un-
domestic animals. But, John,
I am so glad to see you in this
old schoolhouse again. So little
has changed with us here. Some
have died and some have been
married, and we are all a little
older and the trees a little
taller."
" I have come to tell I
you
am going to be married/'
She became in a moment
perfectly white, and sat down as
though attacked with faintness.
Her hand on the edge of the
chair trembled.
Sherman looked at her, and
went on in a bewildered, me-
chanical way "My betrothed is
a Miss Leland. She has a good
deal of money. You know my
mother always wished me to
marry some one with money.
Her father, when alive, was an
old client of Sherman and
 JOHN SHERMAN. 93

Saunders. She is much admired

in society."
Gradually his voice
became a mere murmur. He
did not seem to know that he
was speaking. He
stopped en-
tirely.He was looking at Mary
Carton.
Everything around him was
as it had been some three
years before. The table was
covered with cups and the floor
with crumbs.
Perhaps the
mouse pulling at a crumb under
the table was the same
mouse
as on that other
^ evening. The
only differencewas the brooding
daylight of summer and the
ceaseless of the
chirruping
sparrows in the ivy outside.
He had a confused sense of
;having lost his way. It was
just the same
feeling he had
known as a child, when one dark
night he had taken a wrong
turning, and instead of arriving
at his own
house, found himself
rt a landmark he knew was
niles from home.
A moment earlier, however
94 JOHN SHERMAN.

difficult his life, the issues were

always definite ;
now suddenly
of
had entered the obscurity
another's interest.
had not occurred
Before this it

to him Mary Carton had

that
feeling for him than
any stronger
warm friendship.
in
He
began again, speaking
the same mechanical way-
"Miss Leland lives with her
mother near us. She is very
well educated and very well con-
she has lived
nected, though
always among business people."
Miss Carton, with a great
had recovered her com-
effort,

posure.
sne
"I congratulate you,
will bd
said. "I
hope you
came her
always happy. You
on some business for your firm,
J

suppose? I believe they hav^

some connection with the towij
still."
" to tell yo
only came here
I
I was going to be married."
" Do not think it woul
you
been better to hav
have
 JOHN SHERMAN. 95
"
written? she said, beginning to
rput away the children's tea-
things in a cupboard by the fire-
[place.
"
would have been better/
It
he answered,
drooping his head.
Without a word, locking the
poor behind
them, they went
put. Without
a word they
Balked the grey streets. Now
tind then a woman or a child

.airtseyed as they passed. Some

wondered, perhaps, to see these
dd friends so silent. At the
^ectory they bade each other
t'ood-bye,
" I
hope you will be always
appy," she said. "I will pray
f>r you and your wife. I am
tery busy with the children
old people, but I shall
jnd
Iways find a moment to wish
ou well in.
Good-bye now."
They parted ; the gate in the
all closed
behind her. He
:ayed for a few moments look-
ig up at the tops of the trees
id bushes showing over the
all, and at the house a little
96 JOHN SHERMAN.

way beyond. He stood con-

sidering his problem her life,
his life. His, at any rate, would
have incident and change ; hers
would be the narrow existence
of a woman who, failing to fulfil
the only abiding wish she has
ever formed, seeks to lose herself
in routine mournfulest of things
on this old planet.
This had been revealed : he
loved Mary Carton, she loved
him. He remembered Margaret
Leland, and murmured she did
well to be jealous. Then all her
contemptuous words about the
town and its inhabitantscame
into his mind. Once they made
no impression on him, but now
the sense of personal identity
having been disturbed by this
sudden revelation, alien as they
were to his way of thinking,
they began to press in on him.
Mary, too, would have agreed
with them, he thought and ;

might be that at some distant

it

time weary monotony in aban-

donment would have so weighed
 JOHN SHERMAN. 97

down the spirit of Mary Carton,

that she would be merely one of
the old and sleepy whose dulness
filledthe place like a cloud ?
He went sadly towards the
hotel everything about him, the
;

road, the sky, the feet wherewith

he walked seeming phantasmal
and without meaning.
He told the waiter he would
leave by the first train in the
" What and
morning. you !

only just come home?" the man

answered. He ordered coffee
and could not drink it. He
went out and came in again
immediately. He went down
into the kitchen and talked
to the servants. They told
him of had
everything that
happened had gone.
since he
He was not interested, and
went up to his room. " I must
go home and do what people
expect of me one must be care-
;

ful to do that."
Through all the journey
home his problem troubled him.
He saw the figure of Mary
6
98 JOHN SHERMAN.

Carton perpetually passing

through a round of monotonous
duties. He saw his own life among
aliens going on endlessly, wearily.
From Holyhead to London his
fellow-travellerswere a lady and
her three young daughters, the
eldest about twelve. The smooth
faces shining with well-being
became to him ominous symbols.
He hated them. They were
symbolic of the indifferent world
about to absorb him, and of
the vague something that was
dragging him inch by inch from
the nook he had made for him-
self in the chimney corner. He
was at one of those dangerous
moments when the sense of
personal identity is shaken, when
one's past and present seem
about to dissolve partnership.
He sought refuge in memory,
and counted over every word of
Mary's he could remember. He
forgot the present and the future.
" Without
love," he said to him-
" we would be either
self, gods
or vegetables."
 JOHN SHERMAN. 99

The rain beat on the window

of the carriage. He began to
listen ; thought and memory
became a blank ; his mind was
full of the sound of rain-drops.
 PART IV.

7 HE REV. WILLIAM HOWARD.

 I.

(FTER his return to

London Sherman for
a time kept to himself,
going straight home
from his office, moody
and self-absorbed, try-
ing not to consider his pro-
blem her life, his life. He often
"
repeated to himself, I must do
what people expect of me. It
does not rest with me now my
choosing time is over." He felt
that whatever way he turned he
would do a great evil to himself
and others. To his nature all
sudden decisions were difficult,
and so he kept to the groove he
had entered upon. It did not
even occur to him to do other-
wise. He never thought of
104 JOHN SHERMAN.

breaking this
engagement off
and letting people say what they
would. He was bound in hope-
lessly by a chain of congratula-
tions.
A week passed slowly as a
month. The wheels of the cabs
and carriages seemed to be roll-
ing through his mind. He often
remembered the quiet river at
the end of his garden in the
town of Ballah. How the weeds
swayed there, and the salmon
leaped !At the week's end
came a note from Miss Leland,
complaining of his neglecting
her so many days. He sent a
rather formal answer, promising
to call soon. To add to his
other troubles a cold east wind
arose and made him shiver con-
tinually.
One evening he and his mother
were sitting silent, the one knit-
ting, the other half-asleep. He
had been writing letters and was
now in a reverie. Round the
walls were one or two drawings,
done by him at school. His
 JOHN SHERMAN. 105

mother had got them framed.

His eyes were fixed on a drawing
of a stream and some astonishing
cows.
A few days ago he had found
an old sketch-book for children
among some forgotten papers,
which taught how to draw a
horse by making three ovals for
the basis of his body, one lying
down in the middle, two standing
up each end for flank and
at
chest, and how to draw a cow
by basing its body on a square.
He kept trying to fit squares into
the cows. He was half inclined
to take them out of their frames
and retouch on this new prin-
ciple. Then he began some-
how to remember the child with
the swollen face who threw a
stone at the dog the day he re-
solved to leave home first. Then
some other image came. His
problem moved before him in
a disjointed way. He was
dropping asleep. Through his
reveriecame the click, click of
his mother's needles. She had
106 JOHN SHERMAN.

found some London children to

knit for. He was at that
marchland between waking and
dreaming where our thoughts be-
gin to have a life of their own
the region where art is nurtured
and inspiration born.
He started, hearing something
sliding and rustling, and looked
up to see a piece of cardboard
fall from one end of the mantle-
piece, and, driven by a slight gust
of air, circle into the ashes under
the grate.
" "
Oh," said his mother, that
is the portrait of the locum
tenens" She still spoke of the
Rev. William Howard by the
name she had first known him
" He is
by. always being photo-
graphed. They are all over the
house, and I, an old woman, have
not had one taken all my life.
Take it out with the tongs."
Her son after some poking in
the ashes, for it had fallen far
back, brought out a somewhat
"
dusty photograph. That," she
" is one he sent us
continued,
 JOHN SHERMAN. 107

two or three months ago. It

has been lying in the letter-rack
since."
" Heis not so spick and span

looking as usual," said Sherman,

rubbing the ashes off the photo-
graph with his sleeve.
"
By the by," his mother re-
" he has lost his
plied, parish, I
hear. He is very mediaeval, you
know, and he lately preached a
sermon to prove that children
who die unbaptized are lost. He
had been reading up the subject
and was full of it. The mothers
turned against him, not being so
familiar with St. Augustine as he
was. There were other reasons
in plenty too. I wonder that
any one can stand that mon-
keyish fantastic family."
As the way is with so many
country-bred people, the world
for her was divided up into
families rather than individuals.
While she was talking, Sher-
man, who had returned to his
chair, leant over the table and
began to write hurriedly. She
108 JOHN SHERMAN.

was continuing her denuncia-

tion when he interrupted with
" I have just written this
Mother,
letter to him :

" '
MY DEAR HOWARD :

"
'Will you come and spend the
autumn with us ? I hear you

are unoccupied just now. I am

engaged to be married, as you
know; it will be a long engage-
ment. You will like my be-
trothed. I hope you will be
great friends.
" '
Yours expectantly,
" "
JOHN SHERMAN/
*

" me
You rather take aback,"
she said.
"
I really like him," he an-
''
swered. You were always pre-
judiced against the Howards.
Forgive me, but I really want
very much to have him here."
"
Well, if you like him, I sup-
pose I have no objection."
"I do like him. He is very
clever," said her son, " and
knows a great deal. I wonder
 JOHN SHERMAN.

he does not marry. Do you not

think he would make a good
husband ? for you must admit
he issympathetic."
" It is
not difficult to sympa-
thize with every one if you have
no true principles and convic-
tions."
Principles and convictions were
her names for that strenuous con-
sistency attained without trouble
by men and women of few ideas.
" I
am sure you will like him
said the
" when
better," other,
you see more of him."
" Is that photograph quite
"
spoilt she answered.
?
" No there was
; nothing on it
but ashes."
" That is a
pity, for one less
would be something."
After this they both became
silent, she knitting, he gazing at
the cows browsing at the edge of
their stream, and trying to fit
squares into their bodies ; but
now a smile played about his
lips.
Mrs. Sherman looked a little
110 JOHN SHERMAN.

troubled. She would not object

to any visitor of her son's, but

quite made up her mind in no

manner to put .herself out to en-
tertain the Rev. William Howard.
.She was puzzled as well. She
did not understand the sudden-
ness of this invitation. They
usually talked over things for
weeks.
 II.

'EXT day his fellow-

clerks noticed a decided
improvement in Sher-
man's spirits. He had
a lark-like cheerfulness
and alacrity breaking
out at odd moments. When
evening came he called, for the
first time since his return, on
Miss Leland. She scolded him
roundly for having answered her
note in such a formal way, but
was sincerely glad to see him
return to his allegiance. We
have said he had sometimes,
though rarely, a talkative fit.
He had one this evening. The
last play they had been to, the
last party, the picture of the
year, all in turn he glanced at^
112 JOHN SHERMAN.

She was delighted. Her training

had not been in vain. Her
barbarian was learning to chatter.
This flattered her a deal.
" was never engaged,'* she
I
" to a more
thought, interesting
creature."
When he had risen to go
Sherman " have a friend
said I

coming to visit me in a few days

;

you will suit each other delight-

fully. He is very mediaeval."
"
Do tell me about him; I like
everything mediaeval."
"
Oh," he cried, with a laugh,
" his
medisevalism is not in your
line. He is neither a gay trou-
badour nor a wicked knight. He
is a High Church curate."
" Do not tell me anything
more about him," she answered ;
" I willtry to be civil to him, but
you know I never liked curates.
I have been an agnostic for many

years. You, I believe, are ortho-

dox."
As Sherman was on his way
home he met a fellow-clerk, and
stopped him with
 JOHN SHERMAN. 113?

Are you an agnostic ? "

" No. "
"
Why, what is that ?
Oh, nothing Good-bye," he
!

made answer, and hurried on his,

way.
 III.

'HE letter reached the

Rev. William Howard
at the right moment,
arriving as it did in
the midst of a crisis in
his fortunes. In the
course of a short life he had lost
many parishes. He
considered
himself a martyr, but was con-
sidered by his enemies a clerical
coxcomb. He had a habit of
getting his mind possessed with
some strange opinion, or what
seemed so to his parishioners,
and of preaching it while the
notion lasted in the most start-
ling way. The sermon on un-
baptized children was an instance.
It was not so much that he
thought it true as that it possessed
 JOHN SHERMAN. 115

him for a day. It was not so

much the thought as his own
relation to it that allured him.
Then, too, he loved what ap-
peared to his parishioners to be
the most unusual and dangerous
practices. He put candles on the
altar and crosses in unexpected
places. He delighted in the
intricacies of High Church cos-
tume, and was known to recom-
mend confession and prayers
for the dead.

Gradually the anger of his

parishioners would increase.
The rector, the washerwoman,
the labourers, the squire, the
doctor, the school teachers, the
shoemakers, the butchers, the
seamstresses, the local journalist,
the master of the hounds, the
innkeeper, the veterinary sur-
geon, the magistrate, the chil-
dren making mud pies, all would
be filled with one dread popery.
Then he would fly for consolation
to his little circle of the faithful,
the younger ladies, who still re-
peated his fine sentiments and
Il6 JOHN SHERMAN.

saw him intheir imaginations

standing perpetually before a wall
covered with tapestry and hold-
ing a crucifix in some constrained
and ancient attitude. At last he
would have to go, feeling for his
parishioners a gay and lofty dis- ;

dain, and for himself that reve-

rend approbation one gives to the
captains who lead the crusade of
ideas against those who merely
sleep and eat. An efficient cru-
sader he certainly was too
efficient, indeed, for his efficiency

gave to all his thoughts a cer-

tain over-completeness and isola-
tion, and a kind of hardness to his
mind. His intellect was like a
musician's instrument with no
sounding-board. He could think
carefully and cleverly, and even
with originality, but never in such
a way as to make his thoughts an
allusion to something deeper than
themselves. In this he was the
reverse of poetical, for poetry is
essentially a touch from behind a
curtain.
This conformation of his mind
 JOHN SHERMAN. 117

helped to lead him into all manner

of needless contests and to the
loss of this last parish among
much else. Did not the world
exist for the sake of these hard,
crystalline thoughts, with which
he played as with so many bone
spilikins, delighting in his own
skill ? and were not all who dis-
liked them merely the many ?
In this way it came about that
Sherman's letter Howard
reached
at the right moment. Now, next
to a new parish, he loved a new
friend. A visit to London meant
many. He had found he was, on
the whole, a success at the be-
ginning of friendships.
He at once wrote an acceptance
in his small and beautiful hand-

writing, and arrived shortly after

his letter. Sherman, on receiving
him, glanced at his neat and
shining boots, the little medal at
the watch-chain and the well-
brushed hat, and nodded as though
in answer to an inner
query. He
smiled approval at the slight,
elegant figure in its black clothes,
Il8 JOHN SHERMAN.

at the satiny hair, and at the face,

mobile as moving waters.
For several days the Shermans
saw little of their guest. He had
friends everywhere to turn into
enemies and acquaintances to turn
into friends. His days passed
in visiting, visiting, visiting.
Then there were theatres and
churches to see, and new clothes
to be bought, over which he was
as anxious as a woman. Finally
he settled down.
He passed his mornings in the
smoking-room. He asked Sher-
man's leave to hang on the walls
one or two religious pictures,
without which he was not happy,
and to place over the mantle-
piece, under the pipe-rack, an
ebony crucifix. In one corner of
the room he laid a rug neatly
folded for covering his knees on
chilly days, and on the table a
small collection of favourite
books a curious and carefully-
chosen collection, in which
Cardinal Newman and Bourget,
St. Chrysostom and Flaubert,
 JOHN SHERMAN. 119

lived together in perfect friend-

ship.
Early in his visit Sherman
brought him to the Lelands. He
was a success. The three Mar-
garet, Sherman, and Howard
played tennis in the Square.
Howard was a good player, and
seemed to admire Margaret. On
the way home Sherman once or
twice laughed to himself. It was
like the clucking of a hen with
a brood of chickens. He told
Howard, too, how wealthy Mar-
garet was said to be.
After this Howard always j oined
Sherman and Margaret at the
tennis. Sometimes, too, after a
little, on days when the study
seemed dull and lonely, and the
unfinished essay on St. Chrysos-
tom more than usually laborious,
he would saunter towards the
Square before his friend's arrival,
to findMargaret now alone, now
with an acquaintance or two.
About this time also press of
work, an unusual thing with him,
began to delay Sherman in town
 JOHN SHERMAN.

half an hour after his usual time.

In the evenings they often talked
of Margaret Sherman frankly
and carefully, as though in all
anxiety to describe her as she
was and Howard with some
;

enthusiasm: "She has a religious

vocation/* he said once, with a
slight sigh.
Sometimes they played chess
a game that Sherman had re-
cently become devoted to, for he
found it drew him out of himself
more than anything else.
Howard now began to notice a
curious thing. Sherman grew
shabbier and shabbier, and at
the same time more and more
cheerful. This puzzled him, for
he had noticed that he himself
was not cheerful when shabby,,
and did not even feel upright and
clever when was getting
his hat
old. He when
also noticed that
Sherman was talking to him
he seemed to be keeping some
thought to himself. When he
first came to know him long ago<
in Ballah he had noticed occa-
 JOHN SHERMAN. 121

sionally the same thing, and set

itdown to a kind of suspicious-
ness and over-caution, natural to
one who an out-of-
lived in such
the-way place. It seemed more
persistent now, however. "He
is not well trained," he
thought;.
" he is half a
peasant. He has
not the brilliant candour of the
man of the world."
this while the mind of
All
Sherman was clucking continually
over its brood of thoughts. Ballah
was being constantly suggested
to him. The grey corner of a
cloud slanting its rain upon
Cheapside called to mind by
some remote suggestion the
clouds rushing and falling in
cloven surf on the seaward steep
of a mountain north of Ballah.
A certain street corner made him
remember an angle of the Ballah
fish-market. At night a lantern,
marking where the road was
fenced off for mending, made him
think of a tinker's cart, with its
swing can of burning coals, that
used to stop on market days at
7
122 JOHN SHERMAN.

the corner of Peter's Lane at

Ballah. Delayed by acrush in the
Strand, he heard a faint trickling
of water near by; it came from
a shop window where a little
water-jet balanced a wooden ball
upon its point. The sound sug-
.gested with a long
a cataract
Gaelic name, that leaped crying
into the Gate of the Winds at
Ballah. Wandering among these
memories a footstep went to
and fro continually and the figure
of Mary Carton moved among
them like a phantom. He was
set dreaming a whole day
by walking down one Sunday
morning to the border of the
Thames a few hundred yards
from his house and looking at
the osier-covered Chiswick eyot.
It made him remember an old

day-dream of his. The source

of the river that passed his garden
at home was a certain wood-
bordered and islanded lake,
whither in childhood he had
often gone blackberry-gathering.
At the further end was a little islet
 JOHN SHERMAN. 123,

called Inniscrewin. Its rocky

centre, covered with manybushes,
rose some forty feet above the
lake. Often when life and its
difficulties had seemed to him
like the lessons of some elder
boy given to a younger by mis-
take, it had seemed good to
dream of going away to that
islet and building a wooden hut
there and burning a few years
out, rowing to and fro, fishing,
or lying on the island slopes by
day, and listening at night to
the ripple of the water and the
quivering of the bushes full

always of unknown creatures

and going out at morning to see
the island's edge marked by the
feet of birds.
These pictures became so vivid
to him that the world about
him that Howard, Margaret,
his mother even began to seem
far off. He hardly seemed aware
of anything they were thinking
and feeling. The light that
dazzled him flowed from the
vague and refracting regions of
124 JOHN SHERMAN.

hope and memory; the light that

made Howard's feet unsteady was
ever the too glaring lustre of life

itself.
 IV.

;N the evening of the

2oth of June, after the
blinds had been pulled
down and the gas
lighted, Sherman was
playing chess in the
smoking-room, right hand against
left. Howard had gone out with
a message to the Lelands. He
would often say, "Is there any
message I can deliver for you?
I know how lazy you are, and
will save you the trouble." A
message was always found for
him. A pile of books lent for
Sherman's improvement went
home one by one.
"
Look here," said Howard's
voice in the doorway,
" I have
been watching you for some time.
126 JOHN SHERMAN.

You are cheating the red men

most villainously. You are
forcing them to make mistakes
that the white men may win.
Why, a few such games would
ruin any man's moral nature."
He was leaning against the
doorway, looking, to Sherman's
not too critical eyes, an embodi-
ment of all that was self-possessed
and brilliant. The great care
with which he was dressed and
his whole manner seemed to say,
JU
Look at me do I not combine
;

perfectly the zealot with the man

"
of the world ? He seemed ex-
cited to-night. He had been
talking at the Lelands, and
talking well, and felt that elation
which brings us many thoughts.
"
My dear Sherman," he went
" do cease that
on, game. It is
very bad for you. There is no-

body alive who is honest enough

to play a game of chess fairly
out right hand against left.
We are so radically dishonest
that we even cheat ourselves.
We can no more play chess
 JOHN SHERMAN.

than we can think altogether by

ourselves with security. You
had much better play with me."
"
Very well, but you will beat
me I have not much practice,"
;

replied the other.

They reset the men and began
to play. Sherman relied most
upon his bishops and queen.
Howard was fondest of the
knights. At first Sherman was
the attacking party, but in his
characteristic to scheme
desire
out hisgame many moves ahead,
kept making slips, and at last
had to give up, with his men
nearly all gone and his king
hopelessly cornered. Howard
seemed to let nothing escape
him. When the game was
finished he leant back in his
chair and said, as he rolled a
cigarette
"You do not play well." It

gave him satisfaction to feel his

proficiency in many small arts.
" You do not do
any of these
things at all well," he went on,
with an insolence peculiar to him
128 JOHN SHERMAN.

when excited.
" You have been
really very badly brought up arid
stupidly educated in that intoler-
able Ballah. They do not un-
derstand there any, even the
least, of the arts of life ; they
only believe in information.
Men who are compelled to move
in the great world, and who are
also cultivated, only value the
personal acquirements self-pos-
session, adaptability, how to
dress well, how even to play
tennis decently you would be
not so bad at that, by the by,
ifyou practised or how to paint
or write effectively. They know
that it is better to smoke one's
cigarette with a certain charm
of gesture than to have by heart
all the encyclopedias. I say this
not merely as a man of the
world, but as a teacher of re-
ligion. A man when he rises
from the grave will take with
him only the things that he is

in himself. He will leave be*

hind the things that he merely
possesses, learning and informa-
 JOHN SHERMAN. 1 29

tion not less than money and

high estate. They will stay
behind with his house and his
clothes and his body. A col-
lection of facts will no more
help him than a collection of
stamps. The learned will not
get into heaven as readily as
the flute-player, or even as the
man who smokes a cigarette
gracefully. Now
you are not
learned, you have been
but
brought up almost as badly as
if you were. In that wretched
town they told you that educa-
tion was to know that Russia is
bounded on the north by the
Arctic Sea, and on the west by
the Baltic Ocean, and that Vienna
is situated on the Danube, and
that William the Third came to
the throne in the year 1688.
They have never taught you any
personal art. Even chess-play-
ing might have helped you at
the day of judgment."
" I am
really not a worse
chess-player than you. I am
only more careless."

I
130 JOHN SHERMAN.

There was a slight resentment

in Sherman's voice. The other
noticed it, and said, changing
his manner from the insolent
air of a young beauty to a self-
depreciatory one, which was wont
to give him at times a very
genuine charm
" It is
really a great pity, for
you Shermans are a deep people,
much deeper than we Howards.
We are like moths or butterflies
on rather rapid rivulets, while
you and yours are deep pools in
the forest where the beasts go to
drink. No I!have a better
metaphor. Your mind and mine
are two arrows. Yours has got
no feathers, and mine has nc
metal on the point. I don't know
which is most needed for right
conduct. I wonder where we
are going to strike earth. I

suppose it will be all right some

day when the world has gone by
and they have collected all the
arrows into one quiver."
He went over to the mantle-
piece to hunt for a match, as
 JOHN SHERMAN. 131

his cigarette had gone out.

Sherman had lifted a corner of
the blind and was gazing over
the roofs shining from a recent
shower, and thinking how on
such a night as this he had sat
with Mary Carton by the rectory
fire listening to the rain without
and talking of the future and of
the training of village children.
" Have
you seen Miss Leland
in her last new dress from
"
Paris ? said Howard, making
one of his rapid transitions.
"
It is very rich in colour, and
makes her look a little pale, like
St. Cecilia. She is wonderful as
she stands by the piano, a silver
cross round her neck. have We
been talking about you. She
complains to me. She says you
are a little barbarous you seem ;

to look down on style, and some-

times you must forgive me
even on manners, and you are
quite without small talk. You
must really try and be worthy of
that beautiful girl, with her great
soul and religious genius. She
132 JOHN SHERMAN.

told me quite sadly, too, that you

are not improving.'*
" " I am
No," said Sherman,
not going forward; I am at
present trying to go sideways
like the crabs."
"
Be answered the
serious/'
" She
other. told me these
things with the most sad and
touching voice. She makes me
her confidant, you know, in many
matters, because of my wide re-
ligious experience. You must
really improve yourself. You
must paint or something."
"Well, I will paint or some-
thing."
"I am quite serious, Sherman.
Try and be worthy of her, a soul
as gentle as St. Cecilia's."
" She is very wealthy," said
Sherman. " If she were engaged
to you and not to me you might
hope to die a bishop."
Howard looked at him in a
mystified way and the con-
versation dropped. Presently
Howard got up and went to
his room, and Sherman, resetting
 JOHN SHERMAN. 135

the chess-board, began to play

again, and, letting longer and
longer pauses of reverie come
between his moves, played far
into the morning, cheating now
in favour of the red men now in,

favour of the white.

 V.

next afternoon
Howard found Miss Le-
land sitting, reading in
an alcove in her draw-

ing - room, between a

stuffed paroquet and a
blue De Morgan jar. As he was
shown in he noticed, with a mo-
mentary shock, that her features
were quite commonplace. Then
she saw him, and at once seemed
to vanish wrapped in an exulting
flame'of life. She stood up, fling-
ing the book on to the seat with
some violence.
" I have been that
reading
*
sweet Imitation of Christ/
and was just feeling that I should
have to become a theosophist or
a socialist, or go and join the
 JOHN SHERMAN. 135;

Catholic Church, or do something.

How delightful it is to see you
again ! How is my
savage get-
ting on ? It is so good of you to

try and help me to reform him."

They talked on about Sherman,
and Howard did his best to con-
sole her for his shortcomings.
Time would certainly improve
her savage. Several times she
gazed at him with those
large
dark eyes of hers, of which the
pupils to-day seemed larger than
usual. They made him feel dizzy
and clutch tightly the arm of his
chair. Then she began to talk
about her life since childhood
how they he
got to the subject
never knew and made a number
of those confidences which are so
dangerous because so flattering.
To love there is nothing else
worth living for; but then men
are so shallow. She had never
found a nature deep as her own.
She would not pretend that she
had not often been in love, but
never had any heart rung back
to her the true note. As she
136 JOHN SHERMAN.

spoke her face quivered with ex-

citement. The exulting flame of
life seemed spreading from her to

the other things in the room. To

Howard's eyes it seemed as
though the bright pots and
stuffed birds and plush curtains
began to glow with a light not of
this world to glimmer like the
strange and chaotic colours the
mystic Blake imagined upon the
scaled serpent of Eden. The
light seemed gradually to dim
his past and future, and to make
pale his good resolves. Was it

not in itself that which all men

are seeking, and for which all
else exists ?

He leant forward and took her

hand, timidly and doubtingly.
She did not draw it away. He
leant nearer and kissed her on
the forehead. She gave a joyful
cry, and, casting her arms round
" Ah
his neck, burst out, you!

and I. We were made for each

other. I hate Sherman. He is
an egotist. He is a beast. He
is selfish and foolish." Releas-
 JOHN SHERMAN. 1 37"

ing one of her arms she struck

the seat with her hand, excitedly,
"
and went on, How angry he will
be! But it serves him right! How
badly he is dressing. He does
not know anything about any-
thing. But you you I knew
you were meant for me the mo-
ment I saw you."
That evening Howard flung
himself into a chair in the empty
smoking-room. He lighteda
cigarette it went
; out. Again he
lighted it ; went out. " I
again it

am a traitor and that good,

stupid fellow, Sherman, never to
" " But
be jealous ! he thought.
then, how could I help it ? And,
besides, it cannot be a bad action
to save her from a man she is so
much above in refinement and feel-
ing." He was getting into good-
humour with himself. He got up
and went over and looked at the
photograph of Raphael's Ma-
donna, which he had hung over
the mantlepiece. "How like
"
Margaret's are her big eyes !
 VI.

[HE next day when Sher-

man came home from
his office he saw an
envelope lying on the
smoking-room table. It
contained a letter from
Howard, saying that he had gone
away, and that he hoped Sher-
man would forgive his treachery,
but that he was hopelessly in
love with Miss Leland, and that
she returned his love.
Sherman went downstairs.
His mother was helping the
servant to set the table.
" You will never
guess what
"
has happened," he said. My
affair with Margaret is over."
" I cannot
pretend to be sorry,
John," she replied. She had
 JOHN SHERMAN. 139

long considered Miss Leland

among accepted things, like the
chimney-pots on the roof, and
submitted, as we do, to any un-
alterable fact, but had never
praised her or expressed liking
in
" She
any way. puts bella-
donna in her eyes, and is a vixen
and a flirt, and I dare say her
wealth is all talk. But how did
"
it happen ?

Her son was, however, too

excited to listen.
He went upstairs and wrote
the following note

" MY DEAR MARGARET :

"
congratulate you on a new
I

conquest. There is no end to

your victories. As for me, I bow
myself out with many sincere
wishes for your happiness, and
remain,
" Your
friend,
"JOHN SHERMAN/'

Having posted this letter he

sat down withHoward's note
spread out before him, and won-
140 JOHN SHERMAN.

dered whether there was anything

mean and small-minded in neat-
ness he himself was somewhat
untidy. He had often thought
so before, for their strong friend-
ship was founded in a great
measure on mutual contempt,
but now immediately added,
being in good-humour with the
" He is much cleverer
world,
than I am. He must have been
very industrious at school."
A week went by. He made
up his mind to put an end to his
London life. He broke to his
mother his resolve to return to
Ballah. She was delighted, and
at once began to pack. Her old
home had long seemed to her a
kind of lost Eden, wherewith
she was accustomed to contrast
the present. When, in time, this
present had grown into the past
it became an Eden in turn. She
was always ready for a change,
if the change came to her in the

form of a return to something old.

Others place their ideals in the
future ; she laid hers in the past*
 SHERMAN.

The only one this momentous

resolution seemed to surprise
was the old and deaf servant.
She waited with ever-growing
impatience. She would sit by
the hour wool-gathering on the
corner of a chair with a look of
bewildered delight. As the hour
of departure came near she sang
continually in a cracked voice.
Sherman, a few days before
leaving, was returning for the
last time from his office when he
saw, to his surprise, Howard and
Miss Leland carrying each a
brown paper bundle. He nodded
good -
humouredly, meaning to
pass on.
" look
"John," she said, at
this brooch William gave me a
ladder leaning against the moon
and a butterfly climbing up it.
Is it not sweet ? are going
J
We
to visit the poor.'
"
And he " am going
I," said,
to catch eels. I am leaving
town."
He made his excuses, saying
he had no time to wait, and
142 JOHN SHERMAN.

hurried off. She looked after

him with a mournful glance,
strange in anybody who had ex-
changed one lover for another
more favoured.
" Poor murmured
fellow,"
"
Howard, he is broken-hearted."
"
Nonsense," answered Miss
Leland, somewhat snappishly.
 PART V.

JOHN SHERMAN RETURNS TO

BALLAH.
 I.

HIS being the homeward

trip, SS. Lavinia carried
no cattle, but many
passengers. As the sea
was smooth and the
voyage near its end,
they lounged about the deck in
groups. Two cattle merchants
were leaning over the taffrail
smoking. In appearance they
were something between betting
men and commercial travellers.
For years they had done all their
sleeping in steamers and trains.
A short distance from them a
clerk from Liverpool, with a con-
sumptive cough, walked to and
fro,a little child holding his
hand. Shortly he would be
landed in a boat putting off from
8
146 JOHN SHERMAN.

the shore for the purpose. He

had come hoping that his native
air Teeling Head
of would
restore him. The little child
was a strange contrast her
cheeks ruddy with perfect health.
Further forward, talking to one
of the crew, was a man with a
red face and slightly unsteady
step. In the companion house
was a governess, past her first
youth, very much afraid of sea-
sickness. She had brought her
luggage up and heaped it round
her to be
ready for landing.
Sherman sat on a pile of cable

looking out over the sea. It was

just noon; SS. Lavinia, having

passed by Tory and Rathlin, was
approaching the Donegal cliffs.
They were covered by a faint
mist, which made them loom
even vaster than they were. To
westward the sun shone on a
perfectly blue
sea. Seagulls
come out the mist and
of
plunged into the sunlight, and
out of the sunlight and plunged
into the mist. To the westward
 JOHN SHERMAN. 147

gannets were striking continually,

and a porpoise showed now and
then, his fin and back gleaming
in the sun. Sherman was more
perfectly happy than he had been
for many a day, and more ar-
dently thinking. All nature
seemed full of a Divine fulfil-

ment. Everything fulfilled its

law fulfilment that is peace,
whether it be for good or for evil,
for evil also has its peace, the

peace of the birds of prey.

Sherman looked from the sea
to the ship and grew sad. Upon
this thing, crawling slowly along
the sea, moved to and fro many
mournful and slouching figures.
He looked from the ship to him-
self and his eyes filled with
tears. On himself, on these
moving figures, hope and memory
fed like flames.
Again his eyes gladdened, for
he knew he had found his present.
He would live in his love and the
day as it passed. He would live
that his law might be fulfilled.
Now, was he sure of this truth ?
148 JOHN SHERMAN.

the saints on the one hand, the

animals on the other, live in the
moment as it passes. Thither-
ward had his days brought him.
This was the one grain they had
ground. To grind one grain is
sufficient for a lifetime.
 II.

FEW days later Sher-

man was hurrying
through the town of
Ballah. It was Satur-
day, and he passed
down through the mar-
keting country people, and the
old women with baskets of cakes
and gooseberries and long pieces
of sugarstick shaped like walking-
sticks, and called by children
"Peggie's leg."
Now, as two months earlier he
was occasionally recognized and
greeted, and, as before, went on
without knowing, his eyes full of
unintelligent sadness because the
mind was making merry afar.
They had the look we see in the
eyes of animals and dreamers.
150 JOHN SHERMAN.

Everything had grown simple,

his problem had taken itself
away. He was thinking what he
would say to Mary Carton. Now
they would be married, they
would live in a small house with
a green door and new thatch,
and a row of beehives under a
hedge. He knew where just
such a house stood empty. The
day before he and his mother
had discussed, with their host of
the Imperial Hotel, this question
of houses. They knew the pecu-
liarities of every house in the

neighbourhood, except two or

three built while they were away.
All daySherman and his mother
had gone over the merits of the
few they were told were empty.
She wondered why her son had
grown so unpractical. Once he
was so easily pleased the row
of beehives and the new thatch
did not for her settle the question.
She set it all down to Miss
Leland and the plays, and the
singing, and the belladonna, and
remembered with pleasure how
 JOHN SHERMAN. 151

many miles of uneasy water lay

between the town of Ballah and
these things.
She did not know what else
beside the row of beehives and
the new thatch her son's mind
ran on as he walked among the
marketing country people, and
the gooseberry sellers, and the
merchants of " Peggie's leg,"
and the boys playing marbles in
odd corners, and the men in
waistcoats with flannel sleeves
driving carts, and the women
driving donkeys with creels of
turf or churns of milk. Just now
she was trying to remember
whether she used to buy her
wool for knitting at Miss Peters's
or from Mrs. Macallough's at the
bridge. One or other sold it a
halfpenny a skein cheaper. She
never knew what went on inside
her son's mind, she had always
her own fish to fry. Blessed are
the unsympathetic. They pre-
serve their characters in an iron
safe while the most of us poor
mortals are going about the
152 JOHN SHERMAN.

planet vainly searching for any

kind of a shell to contain us, and
evaporating the while.
Sherman began to mount the
hill to the vicarage. He was
happy. Because he was happy
he began to run. Soon the
steepness of the hill made him
walk. He thought about his love
for Mary Carton. Seen by the
light of this love everything
that had happened to him was
plain now. Hehad found his
centre of unity. His childhood
had prepared him for this love.
He had been solitary, fond of
favourite corners of fields, fond
of going about alone, unhuman
like the birds and the leaves, his
heart empty. How clearly he
remembered his first meeting
with Mary. They were both
children. At a school treat they
watched the fire balloon ascend,
and followed it a little way over
the fields together. What friends
they became, growing up to-
gether, reading the same books,
thinking the same thoughts.
 JOHN SHERMAN. 153

As he came to the door and

pulled at the great hanging iron
bell handle, the fire balloon re-
ascended in his heart, surrounded
with cheers and laughter.
 III.

E kept the servant talk-

ing for a moment or
two before she went for
Miss Carton. The old
rector, she told him, was
getting less and less
able to do much work. Old age
had come almost suddenly upon
him. He seldom moved from the
fireside. He was getting more
and more absent-minded. Once
lately he had brought his um-
brella into the reading-desk.
More and more did he leave all
things to his children to Mary
Carton and her younger sisters.
When the servant had gone
Sherman looked round the some-
what gloomy room. In the
window hung a canary in a
 JOHN SHERMAN. 1$$',

painted cage. Outside was a

narrow piece of shaded ground
between the window and the
rectory wall. The laurel and
holly bushes darkened the win-
dow a good deal. On a table in
the centre of the room were
evangelistic books with gilded
covers. Round the mirror over
the mantlepiece were stuck
various parish announcements,
thrust between the glass and the
gilding. On a small side table
was a copper ear-trumpet.
How familiar everything
seemed to Sherman. Only the
room seemed smaller than it did
three years before, and close to
the table with the ear-trumpet,,
at one side of the fireplace before
the arm-chair, was a new thread-
bare patch in the carpet.
Sherman recalled how in this
room he and Mary Carton had.
sat in winter by the fire, building
castles in the air for each other.
So deeply meditating was he
that she came in and stood
unnoticed beside him.
 JOHN SHERMAN.

"John," she said at last, "it

isa great pleasure to see you so
soon again. Are you doing well
"
in London ?
" I have left
London."
" Are
you married, then ?

You must introduce me to your

wife."
" I shall never be married to
Miss Leland."
" What ? "
"
She has preferred another
my William Howard. I
friend
have come here to tell you some-
thing, Mary." He went and stood
close to her and took her hand
" I have
tenderly. always been
very fond of you. Often in Lon-
don, when I was trying to think
of another kind of used to
life, I
see this fireside and you sitting
beside it, where we used to sit
and talk about the future. Mary
Mary," he held her hand in both
" "
his you will be my wife ?
" You do not love
me, John,"
she answered, drawing herself
" You have come to me
away.
.because you think it your duty.
 JOHN SHERMAN. 157

I have had nothing but duty all

my" life." "I

Listen," he said. was very
miserable I invited Howard to
;

stay with us. One morning I

found a note on the smoking-
room table to say that Margaret
had accepted him, and I have
come here to ask you to marry
me. I never cared for any one
else."
He found himself speaking
hurriedly, as though anxious to
get the words said and done with.
It now seemed to him that he
had done ill in this matter of
Miss Leland. He had not before
thought of it his mind had
always been busy with other
things. Mary Carton looked at
him wonderingly.
"John," she said at last, "did

you ask Mr. Howard to stay

with you on purpose to get him
to fall in love with Miss Leland,
or to give you an excuse for
breaking off your engagement, as
you knew he flirted with every
one ? "
158 JOHN SHERMAN.

"
Margaret seems very fond of
him. I think they are made for
each other/' he answered.
"
Did you ask him to London
"
on purpose ?
"Well, I will tell you," he
" I was
faltered. very miserable.
I had drifted into this engage-

ment I don't know how. Mar-

garet glitters and glitters and
glitters, but she is not of my
kind. L suppose I thought, like
a fool, should marry some one
I

who was rich. I found out soon

that I loved nobody but you. I

got to be always thinking of you

and of this town. Then I heard
that Howard had lost his curacy,
and asked him up. I just left

them alone and did not go near

Margaret much. I knew they

were made for each other. Do

not let us talk of them," he con-
" Let us talk
tinued, eagerly.
about the future. I will take a
farm and turn farmer. I dare say
my uncle will not give me any-
thing when he dies because I
have left his office. He will call
 JOHN SHERMAN. 159

me a ne'er-do-weel, and say I

would squander it. But you and
I we will get married, will we
not ? We will be very happy,"
he went on, pleadingly. " You
will still have your charities, and
I shall be busy with my farm.

We will surround ourselves with

a wall. The world will be on the
outside, and on the inside we and
our peaceful lives."
"Wait," she said "I will give
;

you your answer," and going into

the next room returned with
several bundles of letters. She
laid them on the table some ;

were white and new, some

slightly yellow with time.
"John," she said, growing very
"
pale, here are all the letters
you ever wrote me from your
earliest boyhood." She took one
of the large candles from the
mantlepiece, and, lighting it,
placed it on the hearth. Sher-
man wondered what she was
going to do with it. "I will
" what
tellyou," she went on,
I had thought to carry to the
l6o JOHN SHERMAN.

grave unspoken. I have loved

you for a long time. When you

came and told me you were
going to be married to another
I forgave you, for man's love is
like the wind, and I prayed that
God might bless you both." She
leant down over the candle, her
face pale and contorted with
emotion. ",A11 these letters
after that
grew very sacred.
Since we were never to be
married they grew a portion of
my life, separated from every-
thing and every one a some-
thing apart and holy. I re-read
them all, and arranged them in
little bundles according to their

dates, and tied them with thread.

Now I and you we have nothing
to do with each other any more."
She held the bundle of letters
in the flame. He got up from his
seat. She motioned him away
imperiously. He looked at the
flame in a bewildered way. The
letters fell in little burning frag-
ments about the hearth. It was
all like a terrible dream. He
 JOHN SHERMAN. l6l

watched those steady fingers hold

letter after letter in the candle
flame, and watched the candle
burning on like a passion in the
grey daylight of universal exist-
ence. A draught from under the
door began blowing the ash about
the room. The voice said
"You tried to marry a rich
girl. You did not love her, but
knew she was rich. You tired
of her as you tire of so many
things, and behaved to her most
wrongly, most and
wickedly
treacherously. Whenyou were
jilted you came again to me and
to the idleness of this little town.
We had all hoped great things
of you. You seemed good and
honest."
" I loved
you all along," he
" If
cried. you would marry me
we would be very happy. I loved
you all along," he repeated this
helplessly, several times over.
The bird shook a shower of seed
on his shoulder. He picked one
of them from the collar of his
coat and turned it over in his
162 JO HN SHERMAN.

"
fingers mechanically. I loved
you all along."
"
You have done no duty that
came to you. You have tired of
everything you should cling to ;

and now you have come to this

little town because here is idle-
ness and irresponsibility/*
The last letter lay in ashes on
the hearth. She blew out the
candle, and replaced it among
the photographs on the mantle-
piece, and stood there as calm as
a portion of the marble.
"
John, our friendship is over
it has been burnt in the candle.'*

He started forward, his mind

full of appeals half-stifled with
despair, on his lips gathered in-
coherent words " She will
: be
happy with Howard. They were
made for each other. I slipped
into it. I
always thought I
should marry some one who was
rich. I never loved any one but

you. I did not knowloved you

I

at first. I thought about you

always. You are the root of
1

my life/
 JOHN SHERMAN. 163

Steps were heard outside the

door at the end of a passage.
Mary Carton went to the door
and called. The steps turned
and came nearer. With a great
effort Sherman controlled him-
self. The door opened, and a
tall, slight girl of twelve came
into the room. A strong smell
of garden mould rose from a
basket in her hands. Sherman
recognized the child who had
given him tea that evening in
the schoolhouse three years
before.
" Have
you finished weeding
"
the carrots ? said Mary Carton.
"
Yes, Miss."
" Then
you are to weed the
small bed under the pear-tree by
the tool-house. Do not go yet,
child. This is Mr. Sherman.
Sit down a little."
The child sat down on the
corner of a chair with a scared
look in her eyes. Suddenly she
said
"Oh, what a lot of burnt
"
paper !
164 JOHN SHERMAN.

" Yes I have been burning

;

some old letters/'

" " I will
Ithink," said John,
go now." Without a word of
farewell he went out, almost
groping his way.
He had lost the best of all the
things he held dear. Twice he
had gone through the fire. The
first time worldly ambition left

him, on the second love. An

hour before the air had been full
of singing and peace that was
resonant like joy. Now he saw
standing before his Eden the
angel with the flaming sword.
All the hope he had ever gathered
about him had taken itself off,
and the naked soul shivered.
 IV.

?HE road under his feet

felt gritty and barren.
He hurried away from
the town. It was late
afternoon. Trees cast
bands of shadow across
the road. He walked rapidly as
if pursued. About a mile to the
south of the town he came on a
large wood bordering the road
and surrounding a desertedhouse.
Some local rich man once lived
there, now it was given over to a
caretaker who lived in two rooms
in the back part. Men were at
work cutting down trees in two
or three parts of the wood.
Many places were quite bare. A
mass of ruins a covered well,
and the wreckage of castle wall
1 66 JOHN SHERMAN.

that had been roofed with green

for centuries lifted themselves up,
bare as anatomies. The sight in-
tensified, by some strange sym-
pathy, his sorrow, and he hurried
away as from a thing accursed of
God.
The road led to the foot of a
mountain, topped by a cairn sup-
posed in popular belief to be the
grave of Maeve, Mab of the
fairies, and considered by anti-
quarians to mark the place where
certain prisoners were executed
in legendary times as sacrifices
to the moon.
He began to climb the moun-
tain. The sun was on the rim
of the sea. It stayed there with-
out moving, for as he ascended
he saw an ever-widening circle
of water.
He threw himself down upon
the cairn. The sun sank under
the sea. The Donegal headlands
mixed with the surrounding blue.
The stars grew out of heaven.
Sometimes he got up and
walked to and fro. Hours passed.
 JOHN SHERMAN. 167

The stars, the streams down in

the valley, the wind moving
among the boulders, the various
unknown creatures rustling in
the silence all these were con-
tained within themselves, ful-
filling their law, content to be
alone, content to be with others,
having the peace of God or the
peace of the birds of prey. He
only did not fulfil his law ; some-
thing that was not he, that was
not nature, that was not God,
had made him and her he loved
its tools. Hope, memory, tradi-
tion, conformity, had been laying
waste their lives. As he thought
this the night seemed to crush
him with its purple foot. Hour
followed hour. At midnight he
started up, hearing a faint mur-
mur of clocks striking the hour
in the distant town. His face
and hands were wet with tears,
his clothes saturated with dew.
He turned homeward, hurriedly
flying from the terrible firmament.
What had this glimmering and
silence to do with him this luxu-
-1-68 JOHN SHERMAN.

rious present ? He belonged to

the past and the future. With
pace somewhat slackened, because
of the furze, he came down into
the valley. Along the northern
horizon moved a perpetual dawn,
travelling eastward as the night
advanced. Once, as he passed a
marsh near a lime-kiln, a number
of small birds rose chirruping
from where they had been cling-
ing among the reeds. Once,
standing still for a moment where
two roads crossed on a hill-side,
he looked out over the dark fields.
A white stone rose in the middle
of a field, a score of yards in
front of him. He knew the place
well ; it was an ancient burying-
ground. He looked at the stone,
and suddenly filled by that terror
of the darkness children feel,
began again his hurried walk.
He re-entered Ballah by the
southern side. In passing he
looked at the rectory. To his
surprise a light burned in the
drawing-room. He stood still.
The dawn was brightening to-
 JOHN SHERMAN. 169

wards the east, but all round him

was darkness, seeming the more
intense to his eyes for their being
fresh from the unshaded fields.
In the midst of this darkness
shone the lighted window. He
went over to the gate and looked
in. The room was empty. He
was about to turn away when he
noticed a white figure standing
close to the gate. The latch
creaked and the gate moved
slowly on its hinges.
"
John," saida trembling voice,
"I have been praying, and a light
has come to me. I wished you
to be ambitious to go away and
do something in the world. You
did badly, and mypoor pride
was wounded. You do
not know
how much I had hoped from you ;

but it was all pride all pride and

foolishness. You love me. I ask
no more. We need each other ;

the rest with God."

is

She took his hand in hers, and

"
began caressing it. have We
been shipwrecked. Our goods
have been cast into the sea."
I 70 JOHN SHERMAN.

Something in her voice told of

the emotion that divides the love
of woman from the love of man.
She looked upon him whom she
loved as full of a helplessness
that needed protection, a rever-
beration of the feeling of the
mother for the child at the
breast.
DHOYA.
 I.

ago, before the

earliest stone of the
pyramids was laid, be-
fore the Bo tree of
Buddha unrolled its
first leaf, before a
Japanese had painted on a temple
wall the horse that every evening
descended and trampled the rice-
fields, before the ravens of Thor
had eaten their first worm to-

gether, there lived a man of

giant stature and of giant
strength named Dhoya. One
evening Fomorian galleys had
entered the Bay of the Red
Cataract, now the Bay of Ballah,
and there deserted him. Though
he rushed into the water and
hurled great stones after them
174 DHOYA.

they were out of reach. From

earliest childhood the Fomorians
had held him captive and com-
pelled him to toil at the oar, but
when his strength had come his
fits of passion made him a terror
to all on board. Sometimes he
would tear the seats of the galley
from their places, at others drive
the rowers to some corner where,
trembling, they would watch him
pacing to and fro till the passion
left him.
" The
demons," they
" have made him their
said,
own." So they enticed him on
shore, he having on his head a
mighty stone pitcher to fill with
water, and deserted him.
When the last sail had dropped
over the rim of the world he
rose from where he had flung
himself down on the sands and
paced through the forests east-
ward. After a time he reached
that lake among the mountains
where in later times Dermot
drove down four stakes and made
thereon a platform with four
flags in the centre for a hearth,
 DHOYA.

and placed over all a roof of

wicker and skins, and hid his
Grania, islanded thereon. Still
eastward he went, what is now
Bulban on one side, Cope's
mountain on the other, until at
last he threw himself at full

length in a deep cavern and

slept. Henceforward he made
this cavern his lair, issuing forth
to hunt the deer or the bears or
the mountain oxen. Slowly the
years went by, his fits of fury
growing more and more frequent,
though there was no one but his
own shadow to rave against.
When his fury was on him even
the bats and owls, and the brown
toads that crept out of the grass
at twilight would hide them-
selves even the bats and owls
and the brown toads. These he
had made his friends, and let
them crawl and
perch about
him, for at times he would be
very gentle, and they too were
sullen and silent the outcasts
from they knew not what. But
most of all, things placid and
1 76 DHOYA.

beautiful feared him. He would

watch for hours, hidden in the
leaves, to reach his hand out
slowly and carefully at last, and
seize and crush some glittering
halcyon.
Slowly the years went by and
human face he never saw, but
sometimes, when the gentle mood
was on him and it was twilight,
a presence seemed to float in-

visiblyby him and sigh softly,

and once or twice he awoke from
sleep with the sensation of a
finger having rested for a mo-
ment on his forehead, and would
mutter a prayer to the moon
before turning to sleep again
the moon that glimmered through
"
the door of his cave. O
"
moon," he would say, that
wandereth in the blue cave,
more white than the beard of
Partholan, whose years were five
hundred, sullen and solitary,
sleeping only on the floor of the
sea keep me from the evil
:

spirits of the islands of the lake

southward beyond the mountains,
 DHOYA. 177

and the evil spirits of the caves

northward beyond the moun-
tains, and the evil spirits who
wave their torches by the mouth
of the river eastward beyond the
valley, and the evil spirits of
the pools westward beyond the
mountains, and I will offer you a
bear and a deer in full horn, O
solitary of the cave divine, and if
any have done you wrong I will

avenge you."
Gradually, however, he began
to long for this mysterious touch.
At times he would make jour-
neys into distant parts, and once
the mountain oxen gathered to-
gether, proud of their over-
whelming numbers and their
white horns, and followed him
with great bellowing westward,
he being laden with their tallest,
well-nigh to his cave, and would
have gored him, but, pacing into
a pool of the sea to his shoulders,
he saw them thunder away,
losing him in the darkness. The
place where he stood is called
Pooldhoya to this day.
178 DHOYA.

So the years went slowly by,

and ever deeper and deeper
came his moodiness, and more
often his fits of wrath. Once in
his gloom he paced the forests
for miles, now this way now that,
until, returning in the twilight, he
found himself standing on a cliff
southward of the lake that was
southward of the mountains.
The moon was rising. The
sound of the swaying of reeds
floated from beneath, and the
twittering of the flocks of reed-
wrens who love to cling on the
moving stems. It was the hour
of votaries. He turned to the
moon, then hurriedly gathered a
pile of leaves and branches, and
making a fire cast thereon wild
strawberries and the fruit of the
quicken tree. As the smoke
floated upwards a bar of faint

purple clouds drifted over the

moon's face a refusal of the
sacrifice. Hurrying through the
surrounding woods he found an
owl sleeping in the hollow of a
tree, and returning cast him
 DHOYA.

on the fire. Still the clouds

gathered. Again he searched
the woods. This time a badger
was uselessly cast among the
flames. Time after time he came
and went, sometimes returning
immediately with some live thing,
at others not till the fire had
almost burnt itself out. Deer,
wild swine, birds, all to no pur-
pose. Higher and higher he
piled the burning branches, the
flames and the smoke waved and
circled like the lash of a giant's
whip. Gradually the nearer is-
lands passed the rosy colour on
to their more distant brethren.
The reed-wrens of the furthest
reed beds disturbed amid their
sleep must have wondered at the
red gleam reflected in each
other's eyes. Useless his night-
long toil ; the clouds covered the
moon's face more and more,
until, when the long fire lash was
at its brightest, they drowned her

completely in a surge of unbroken

mist. Raging against the fire he
scattered with his staff the burn-
1 80 DHOYA.

ing branches, and trampled in

his fury the sacrificial embers
beneath his feet. Suddenly a
voice in the surrounding dark-
ness called him softly by name.
He turned. For years no articu-
late voice had sounded in his
ears. It seemed to rise from the
air just beneath the verge of the

precipice. Holding by a hazel

bush he leaned out, and for a
moment it seemed to him the
form of a beautiful woman floated
faintly before him, but changed
as he watched to a little cloud of
vapour ; and from the nearest of
the haunted islands there came
assuredly a whiff of music. Then
behind him in the forest said the
" "
voice, Dhoya, my beloved.
He rushed in pursuit; something
white was moving before him.
He stretched out his hand it ;

was only a mass of white campion

trembling in the morning breeze,
for an ashen morning was just
touching the mists on the eastern
mountains. Beginning suddenly
to tremble with supernatural
 DHOYA.

fear Dhoya paced homewards.

Everything was changed ; dark
shadows seemed to come and go,
and elfin chatter to pass upon
the breeze. But when he reached
the shelter of the pine woods all
was still as of old. He slackened
his speed. Those solemn pine-
trees soothed him with their vast
unsociability many and yet each
one alone. Once ortwice, when
in some glade
further than usual
from kind arose some pine-
its
tree larger than the rest, he
paused with bowed head to
mutter an uncouth prayer to
that dark outlaw. But when
issuing once more, as he neared
his cave, into the region of moun-
tain ash and hazel the voices
seemed again to come and go,
and the shadows to circle round
him, and once a voice said, he
imagined, in accents faint and
"
soft as falling dew, Dhoya, my
beloved." But a few yards from
the cave all grew suddenly silent.
 II.

BLOWER and slower he

went, with his eyes on
the ground, bewildered
by all that was happen-
ing. A few feet from
the cave he stood still,,

counting aimlessly the round

spots of light made by the beams
slanting through trees that hid
with their greenness, as in the
centre of the sea, that hollow
rock. As over and over he counted
them, he heard, first with the ear
only, then with the mind also, a
footstep going to and fro within
the cave. Lifting his eyes he saw
the same figure seen on the cliff
the figure of a woman, beauti-
ful and young. Her dress was
white, save for a border of
 DHOYA. 183

feathers dyed the fatal red of

the spirits. She had arranged
in one corner the spears, and in
the other the brushwood and
branches used for the fire, and
spread upon the ground the skins,
and now began pulling vainly
at the great stone pitcher of the
Fomorians.
Suddenly she saw him, and
with a burst of wild laughter
flung her arms around his neck,
"
crying, Dhoya, I have left my
world far off. My people on
the floor of the lake they are
dancing and singing, and on the
islands of the lake always
;

happy, always young, always

without change. I have left
them for thee, Dhoya, for they
cannot love. Only the changing,
and moody, and angry, and
weary can love. I am beautiful ;

love me, Dhoya. Do you hear

me ? I the places where
left
"
they dance, Dhoya, for thee !

For long she poured out a tide of

words, he answering at first
little, then more and more as she
184 DHOYA.

melted away the silence of so

many inarticulate years and all;

the while she gazed on him with

eyes, no ardour could rob of the
mild and mysterious melancholy
that watches us from the eyes
of animals sign of unhuman
reveries.

Many days passed over these

strangely wedded ones. Some-
times when he asked " Do
her,
"
you love me she would answer,
?

"I do not know, but I long for

your love endlessly." Often at
twilight, returning from hunting,
he would find her bending over a
stream that flowed near to the
cave, decking her hair with
feathers and reddening her lips
with the juice of a wild berry.
He was very happy secluded
in that forest.
deep Hearing the
faint murmurs of the western
sea, theyseemed to have outlived
change. But Change is every-
where, with the tides and the stars
fastened to her wheel. Every
blood drop in their lips, every
cloud in the sky, every leaf in
 DHOYA. 185

the world changed a little, while

they brushed back their hair and
kissed. All things change save
only the fear of change. And
yet for his hour Dhoya was
happy and as dreams as
full of
an old man or an infant for
dreams wander nearest to the
grave and the cradle.
Once, as he was returning home
from hunting, by the northern
edge of the lake, at the hour
when the owls cry to each other,
"It is time to be abroad," and
the last flutter of the wind has
died away, leaving under every
haunted island an image legible
to the least hazel branch, there
suddenly stood before him a
slight figure, at the edge of the
narrow sand-line, dark against
the glowing water. Dhoya drew
nearer. It was a man leaning
on on his head a
his spear-staff,
small red cap. His spear was
slender and tipped with shining
metal the spear of Dhoya of
;

wood, one end pointed and har-

dened in the fire. The red-
1 86 DHOYA.

capped stranger silently raised

that slender spear and thrust at
Dhoya, who parried with his-

pointed staff.
For a long while they fought.
The last vestige of sunset passed
away and the stars came out.
Underneath them the feet of
Dhoya beat up the ground, but
the feet of the other as he rushed
hither and thither, matching his
agility with the mortal's mighty
strength, made neither shadow
nor footstep on the sands.
Dhoya was wounded, and grow-
ing weary a little, when the other

leaped away, and, crouching down

"
by the water, began You have
carried away by some spell un-
known the most beautiful of our
bands you who have neither
laughter nor singing. Restore
her,Dhoya, and go free." Dhoya
answered him no word, and the
other rose and again thrust at
him with the spear. They fought
to and fro upon the sands until
the dawn touched with olive the
distant sky, and then his anger
 DHOYA.

fit, long absent, fell on Dhoya,

and he closed with his enemy

and threw him, and put his knee
on his chest and his hands on
his throat, and would have
crushed all life out of him, when
lo he held beneath his knee no
!

more than a bundle of reeds.

Nearing home in the early
morning he heard the voice he
loved, singing

" Full
moody is my love and sad,
His moodsbowlowhis sombre crest,.
I hold him dearer than the glad,
And he shall slumber on my breast.
" hath many an evil mood
My love
111words for all things soft and fair,.
I hold him dearer than the good,
My fingers feel his amber hair.

"
No tender wisdom floods the eyes
That watch me with their suppliant
light
I hold him dearer than the wise,
And for him make me wise and
bright."

And when she saw him she cried,

" An old mortal
song heard
floating from a tent of skin, as
1 88 DHOYA.

we and mine, through a

rode, I
camping-place at night." From
that day she was always either
singing wild and melancholy
songs or else watching him with
that gaze of animal reverie.
Once he asked, " How old are
"
you ?
" A
thousand years, for I am
young."
"I am so little to you/' he
went on, " and you are so much
to me dawn, and sunset, tran-
quility, and speech, and solitude."
" Am I much ? "
so she said ;

" "
say it and her
many times !

eyes seemed to brighten and her

breast heaved with joy.
Often he would bring her the
beautiful skins of animals, and
she would walk to and fro on
them, laughing to feel their soft-
ness under her feet. Sometimes
she would pause and ask sud-
"
denly, Will you weep for me
"
when we have parted ? and he
" I will die then "
would answer, ;

and she would go on rubbing her

feet to and fro in the soft skin.
 DHOYA. 189

And so Dhoya grew tranquil

and gentle, and Change seemed
still to have forgotten them,
having so much on her hands.
The stars rose and set watching
them smiling together, and the
tides ebbed and flowed, bringing
mutability to all save them. But
always everything changes, save
only the fear of Change.
 III.

|NE evening as they sat

in the inner portion of
the watching
cave,
through the
opening
the paling of the sky
and the darkening of
the leaves, and counting the
budding stars, Dhoya suddenly
saw stand before him the dark
outline of him he fought on the
lake sand, and heard at the same
instant his companion sigh.
The stranger approached a
"
little, and said, Dhoya we have
fought heretofore, and now I
have come to play chess against
thee, for well thou knowest, dear
to the perfect warrior after war
is chess."
" I know answered
it," Dhoya.
 DHOYA. IQr

" And when we have played,

""
Dhoya, we will name the stake.
" Do not play," whispered his
companion at his side.
But Dhoya, being filled with
his anger fit at the sight of his
I will play,
"
enemy, answered,
and I know well the stake you
mean, and I name this for mine,
that I may again have my knee
on your chest and my hands on
your throat, and that you will
not again change into a bundle
of w et reeds." His companion
r

lay down on a skin and began ta

cry a little.
Dhoya felt sure of winning. He
had often played in his boyhood,
before the time of his anger fits,
with his masters of the galley ;
and besides, he could always
return to his hands and his
weapons once more.
Now the floor of the cave was
of smooth, white sand, brought
from the sea-shore in his great
Fomorian pitcher, to make it

soft for his beloved to walk upon ;

before it had been, as it now is,.
192 DHOYA.

of rough clay. On this sand the

red-capped stranger marked out
with his spear-point a chess-
board, and marked with rushes,
crossed and recrossed each
alternate square, fixing each end
of the rush in the sand, until a
complete board was finished of
white and green squares, and then
drew from a bag large chess-men
of mingled wood and silver. Two
or three would have made an
armful for a child. Standing
each at his end they began to
play. The game did not last

long. Nomatter how carefully

Dhoya played, each move went
against him. At last, leaping
back from the board he cried, " I
"
have lost !The two spirits
were standing together at the
entrance. Dhoya seized his
spear, but slowly the figures
began to fade, first a star and
then the leaves showed through
their forms. Soon all had
vanished away.
Then, realizing his loss, he
threw himself on the ground,
 DHOYA. 193

and rolling hither and thither,

roared like a wild beast. All
night long he lay on the ground,
and all the next day till night-
fall. He had crumbled his staff

unconsciously between his fingers

into small pieces, and now, full
of dull rage, arose and went forth
westward. In a ravine of the
northern mountain he came on
the tracks of wild horses. Soon
one passed him fearlessly, know-
ing nothing of man. The pointed
end of his staff he still carried.
He drove it deep in the flank,
making a long wound, sending
the horse rushing with short
screams down the mountain.
Other horses passed him one by
one, driven southward by a cold
wind laden with mist, arisen in
the night-time. Towards the
end of the ravine stood one black
and huge, the leader of the herd.
Dhoya leaped on his back with
a loud cry that sent a raven
circling from the neighbouring
cliff, and the horse, after vainly

seeking to throw him, rushed off

IP
194 DHOYA.

towards the north-west, over the

heights of the mountains where
the mists floated. The moon,
clear sometimes of the flying
clouds, from low down in the
south-east, cast a pale and mu-
table light, making their shadow
rise before them on the mists,
as though they pursued some
colossal demon, sombre on his
black charger. Then leaving
the heights they rushed wildly
down that valley where, in far
later times, Dermot hid in a

deep cavern his Grania, and

passed the stream where Muad-
han, their savage servant, caught
fish for them on a hook baited
with a quicken berry. On over
the plains, on northward, mile
after mile, the wild gigantic horse
leaping cliff and chasm in his
terrible race ; on until the moun-
tains of what is now Donegal
rose before them over these
among the clouds, driving rain
blowing in their faces from the
sea, Dhoya knowing not whither
he went, or why he rode. On
 DHOYA. 195

the stones loosened by the hoofs

rumbling down into the valleys
till far in the distance he saw

the sea, a thousand feet below

him then, fixing his eyes thereon,
;

and using the spear-point as a

goad, he roused his black horse
into redoubled speed, and with a
wild leap horse and rider plunged
headlong into the Western Sea.
Sometimes the cotters on the
mountains of Donegal hear on
windy nights a sudden sound of
horses' hoofs, and say to each
" There
other, goes" Dhoya."
And at the same hour men say
if any be abroad in the valleys
they see a huge shadow rushing
along the mountain.

THE END.
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