Lippincott’s Magazine of Popular Literature

“For Percival.”

Chapter XLVIII Engagements — Hostile and Otherwise

The fairest season of the year, the debatable ground between spring and summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft. Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, felt as if a new life had come to him with the spring. Now that the evenings had grown long and light, he could escape into the country, breathe a purer air and wander in fields and lanes. And as he wandered, musing, it seemed to him that he had awakened from a dream.

He looked back upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated him so highly as to take him as articled clerk, if he had passed all his examinations and been duly admitted, if the brightest possibilities in such a life as his had become realities and he had attained at last to a small share in the business,—what would be the end of this most improbable success? Merely that he would have to spend his whole life in Brenthill absorbed in law. Now, the law was a weariness to him, and he loathed Brenthill. Yet he had voluntarily accepted a life which could offer him no higher prize than such a fate as this, when Godfrey Hammond or Mrs. Middleton, or even old Hardwicke, would no doubt have helped him to something better.

Certainly he had been a fool; and yet, while he realized this truth, he sincerely respected—I might almost say he admired—his own folly. He had been sick of dependence, and he had gone down at once to the bottom of everything, taken his stand on firm ground and conquered independence for himself. He had gained the precious knowledge that he could earn his own living by the labor of his hands. He might have been a fool to reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful career to him, yet if he had accepted it he would never have known the extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he had not understood.

And now, having conquered in the race, could he go back and ask for the help which he had once refused? Hardly. The life in which we first gain independence may be stern and ugly, the independence itself—when we gather in our harvest—may have a rough and bitter taste, yet it will spoil the palate for all other flavors. They will seem sickly sweet after its wholesome austerity. Neither did Percival feel any greater desire for a career of any kind than he had felt a year earlier when he talked over his future life with Godfrey Hammond. If he were asked what was his day-dream, his castle in the air, the utmost limit of his earthly wishes, he would answer now as he would have answered then, “Brackenhill,” dismissing the impossible idea with a smile even as he uttered it. Asked what would content him—since we can hardly hope to draw the highest prize in our life’s lottery—he would answer now as then—to have an assured income sufficient to allow him to wander on the Continent, to see pictures, old towns, Alps, rivers, blue sky; wandering, to remain a foreigner all his life, so that there might always be something a little novel and curious about his food and his manner of living (things which are apt to grow so hideously commonplace in the land where one is born), to drink the wine of the country, to read many poems in verse, in prose, in the scenery around; and through it all, from first to last, to “dream deliciously.”

And yet, even while he felt that his desire was unchanged, he knew that there was a fresh obstacle between him and its fulfilment. Heaven help him! had there not been enough before? Was it needful that it should become clear to him that nowhere on earth could he find the warmth and the sunlight for which he pined while a certain pair of sad eyes grew ever sadder and sadder looking out on the murky sky, the smoke, the dust, the busy industry of Brenthill? How could he go away? Even these quiet walks of his had pain mixed with their pleasure when he thought that there was no such liberty for Judith Lisle. Not for her the cowslips in the upland pastures, the hawthorn in the hedges, the elm-boughs high against the breezy sky, the first dog-roses pink upon the briers. Percival turned from them to look at the cloud which hung ever like a dingy smear above Brenthill, and the more he felt their loveliness the more he felt her loss.

He had no walk on Sunday mornings. A few months earlier Mr. Clifton of St. Sylvester’s would have claimed him as a convert. Now he was equally devout, but it was the evangelical minister, Mr. Bradbury of Christ Church, who saw him week after week a regular attendant, undaunted and sleepless though the sermon should be divided into seven heads. Mr. Bradbury preached terribly, in a voice which sometimes died mournfully away or hissed in a melodramatic whisper, and then rose suddenly in a threatening cry. Miss Macgregor sat in front of a gallery and looked down on the top of her pastor’s head. The double row of little boys who were marshalled at her side grew drowsy in the hot weather, blinked feebly as the discourse progressed, and nodded at the congregation. Now and then Mr. Bradbury, who was only, as it were, at arm’s length, turned a little, looked up and flung a red-hot denunciation into the front seats of the gallery. The little boys woke up, heard what was most likely in store for them on the last day, and sat with eyes wide open dismally surveying the prospect. But presently the next boy fidgeted, or a spider let himself down from the roof, or a bird flew past the window, or a slanting ray of sunlight revealed a multitude of dusty dancing motes, and the little lads forgot Mr. Bradbury, who had forgotten them and was busy with somebody else. It might be with the pope: Mr. Bradbury was fond of providing for the pope. Or perhaps he was wasting his energy on Percival Thorne, who sat with his head thrown back and his upward glance just missing the preacher, and was quite undisturbed by his appeals.

Judith Lisle had accepted the offer of a situation at Miss Macgregor’s with the expectation of being worked to death, only hoping, as she told Mrs. Barton, that the process would be slow. The hope would not have been at all an unreasonable one if she had undertaken her task in the days when she had Bertie to work for. She could have lived through much when she lived for Bertie. But, losing her brother, the mainspring of her life seemed broken. One would have said that she had leaned on him, not he on her, she drooped so pitifully now he was gone. Even Miss Macgregor noticed that Miss Lisle was delicate, and expressed her strong disapprobation of such a state of affairs. Mrs. Barton thought Judith looking very far from well, suggested tonics, and began to consider whether she might ask her to go to them for her summer holidays. But to Percival’s eyes there was a change from week to week, and he watched her with terror in his heart. Judith had grown curiously younger during the last few months. There had been something of a mother’s tenderness in her love for Bertie, which made her appear more than her real age and gave decision and stateliness to her manner. Now that she was alone, she was only a girl, silent and shrinking, needing all her strength to suffer and hide her sorrow. Percival knew that each Sunday, as soon as she had taken her place, she would look downward to the pew where he always sat to ascertain if he were there. For a moment he would meet that quiet gaze, lucid, uncomplaining, but very sad. Then her eyes would be turned to her book or to the little boys who sat near her, or it might even be to Mr. Bradbury. The long service would begin, go on, come to an end. But before she left her place her glance would meet his once more, as if in gentle farewell until another Sunday should come round. Percival would not for worlds have failed at that trysting-place, but he cursed his helplessness. Could he do nothing for Judith but cheer her through Mr. Bradbury’s sermons?

About this time he used deliberately to indulge in an impossible fancy. His imagination dwelt on their two lives, cramped, dwarfed and fettered. He had lost his freedom, but it seemed to him that Judith, burdened once with riches, and later with poverty, never had been free. He looked forward, and saw nothing in the future but a struggle for existence which might be prolonged through years of labor and sordid care. Why were they bound to endure this? Why could they not give up all for just a few days of happiness? Percival longed intensely for a glimpse of beauty, for a little space of warmth and love, of wealth and liberty. Let their life thus blossom together into joy, and he would be content that it should be, like the flowering of the aloe, followed by swift and inevitable death. Only let the death be shared like the life! It would be bitter and terrible to be struck down in their gladness, but if they had truly lived they might be satisfied to die. Percival used to fancy what they might do in one glorious, golden, sunlit week, brilliant against a black background of death. How free they would be to spend all they possessed without a thought for the future! Nothing could pall upon them, and he pictured to himself how every sense would be quickened, how passion would gather strength and tenderness, during those brief days, and rise to its noblest height to meet the end. His imagination revelled in the minute details of the picture, adding one by one a thousand touches of beauty and joy till the dream was lifelike in its loveliness. He could pass in a moment from his commonplace world to this enchanted life with Judith. Living alone, and half starving himself in the attempt to pay his debts, he was in a fit state to see visions and dream dreams. But they only made his present life more distasteful to him, and the more he dreamed of Judith the more he felt that he had nothing to offer her.

He was summoned abruptly from his fairyland one night by the arrival of Mrs. Bryant. She made her appearance rather suddenly, and sat down on a chair by the door to have a little chat with her lodger. “I came back this afternoon,” she said. “I didn’t tell Lydia: where was the use of bothering about writing to her? Besides, I could just have a look round, and see how Emma’d done the work while I was away, and how things had gone on altogether.” She nodded her rusty black cap confidentially at Percival. It was sprinkled with bugles, which caught the light of his solitary candle.

“I hope you found all right,” he said.

“Pretty well,” Mrs. Bryant allowed. “It’s a mercy when there’s no illness nor anything of that kind, though, if you’ll excuse my saying it, Mr. Thorne, you ain’t looking as well yourself as I should have liked to see you.”

“Oh, I am all right, thank you,” said Percival.

Mrs. Bryant shook her head. The different movement brought out quite a different effect of glancing bugles. “Young people should be careful of their health,” was her profound remark.

“I assure you there’s nothing the matter with me.”

“Well, well! we’ll hope not,” she answered, “though you certainly do look altered, Mr. Thorne, through being thinner in the face and darker under the eyes.”

Percival smiled impatiently.

“What was I saying?” Mrs. Bryant continued. “Oh yes—that there was a many mercies to be thankful for. To find the house all right, and the times and times I’ve dreamed of fire and the engines not to be had, and woke up shaking so as you’d hardly believe it! And I don’t really think that I’ve gone to bed hardly one night without wondering whether Lydia had fastened the door and the little window into the yard, which is not safe if left open. As regular as clockwork, when the time came round, I’d mention it to my sister.”

Percival sighed briefly, probably pitying the sister. “I think Miss Bryant has been very careful in fastening everything,” he said.

“Well, it does seem so, and very thankful I am. And as I always say when I go out, ‘Waste I must expect, and waste I do expect,’ but it’s a mercy when there’s no thieving.”

“Things will hardly go on quite the same when you are not here to look after them, Mrs. Bryant.”

“No: how should they?” the landlady acquiesced. “Young heads ain’t like old ones, as I said one evening to my sister when Smith was by. ‘Young heads ain’t like old ones,’ said I. ‘Why, no,’ said Smith: ‘they’re a deal prettier.’ I told him he ought to have done thinking of such things. And so he ought—a man of his age! But that’s what the young men mostly think of, ain’t it, Mr. Thorne? Though it’s the old heads make the best housekeepers, I think, when there’s a lot of lodgers to look after.”

“Very likely,” said Percival.

“I dare say you think there’d be fine times for the young men lodgers if it wasn’t for the old heads. And I don’t blame you, Mr. Thorne: it’s only natural, and what we must expect in growing old. And if anything could make one grow old before one’s time, and live two years in one, so to speak, I do think it’s letting lodgings.”

Percival expressed himself as not surprised to hear it, though very sorry that lodgers were so injurious to her health.

“There’s my drawing-room empty now, and two bedrooms,” Mrs. Bryant continued. “Not but what I’ve had an offer for it this very afternoon, since coming back. But it doesn’t do to be too hasty. Respectable parties who pay regular,” she nodded a little at Percival as if to point the compliment, “are the parties for me.”

“Of course,” he said.

“A queer business that of young Mr. Lisle’s, wasn’t it?” she went on. “I should say it was about time that Miss Crawford did shut up, if she couldn’t manage her young ladies better. I sent my Lydia to a boarding-school once, but it was one of a different kind to that. Pretty goings on there were at Standon Square, I’ll be bound, if we only knew the truth. But as far as this goes there ain’t no great harm done, that I can see. He hasn’t done badly for himself, and I dare say they’ll be very comfortable. She might have picked a worse—I will say that—for he was always a pleasant-spoken young gentleman, and good-looking too, though that’s not a thing to set much store by. And they do say he had seen better times.”

She paused. Percival murmured something which was quite unintelligible, but it served to start her off again, apparently under the impression that she had heard a remark of some kind.

“Yes, I suppose so. And as I was saying to Lydia—The coolness of them both! banns and all regular! But there now! I’m talking and talking, forgetting that you were in the thick of it. You knew all about it, I’ve no doubt, and finely you and he must have laughed in your sleeves—”

“I knew nothing about it, Mrs. Bryant—nothing.”

Mrs. Bryant smiled cunningly and nodded at him again. But it was an oblique nod this time, and there was a sidelong look to match it. Percival felt as if he were suffering from an aggravated form of nightmare.

“No, no: I dare say you didn’t. At any rate, you won’t let out if you did: why should you? It’s a great thing to hold one’s tongue, Mr. Thorne; and I ought to know, for I’ve found the advantage of being naturally a silent woman. And I don’t say but what you are wise.”

“I knew nothing,” he repeated doggedly.

“Well, I don’t suppose it was any the worse for anybody who did know,” said Mrs. Bryant. “And though, of course, Miss Lisle lost her situation through it, I dare say she finds it quite made up to her.”

“Not at all,” said Percival shortly. The conversation was becoming intolerable.

“Oh, you may depend upon it she does,” said Mrs. Bryant. “How should a gentleman like you know all the ins and outs, Mr. Thorne? It makes all the difference to a young woman having a brother well-to-do in the world. And very fond of her he always seemed to be, as I was remarking to Lydia.”

Percival felt as if his blood were on fire. He dared not profess too intimate a knowledge of Judith’s feelings and position, and he could not listen in silence. “I think you are mistaken, Mrs. Bryant,” he said, in a tone which would have betrayed his angry disgust to any more sensitive ear. Even his landlady perceived that the subject was not a welcome one.

“Well, well!” she said. “It doesn’t matter, and I’ll only wish you as good luck as Mr. Lisle; for I’m sure you deserve a young lady with a little bit of money as well as he did; and no reason why you shouldn’t look to find one, one of these fine days.”

“No, Mrs. Bryant, I sha’n’t copy Mr. Lisle.”

“Ah, you’ve something else in your eye, I can see, and perhaps one might make a guess as to a name. Well, people must manage those things their own way, and interfering mostly does harm, I take it. And I’ll wish you luck, anyhow.”

“I don’t think there’s any occasion for your good wishes,” said Percival. “Thank you all the same.”

“Not but what I’m sorry to lose Mr. and Miss Lisle,” Mrs. Bryant continued, as if that were the natural end of her previous sentence, “for they paid for everything most regular.”

“I hope these people who want to come may do the same,” said Percival. Though he knew that he ran the risk of hearing all that Mrs. Bryant could tell him about their condition and prospects, he felt he could endure anything that would turn the conversation from the Lisles and himself.

But there was a different train of ideas in Mrs. Bryant’s mind. “And, by the way,” she said, “I think we’ve some little accounts to settle together, Mr. Thorne.” Then Percival perceived, for the first time, that she held a folded bit of paper in her hand. The moment that he feared had come. He rose without a word, went to his desk and unlocked it. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Mrs. Bryant had approached the table, had opened the paper and was flattening it out with her hand. He stooped over his hoard—a meagre little hoard this time—counting what he had to give her.

Mrs. Bryant began to hunt in her purse for a receipt stamp. “It’s a pleasure to have to do with a gentleman who is always so regular,” she said with an approving smile.

Percival, who was steadying a little pile of coin on the sloping desk, felt a strong desire to tell her the state of affairs while he stooped in the shadow with his face turned away. Precisely because he felt this desire he drew himself up to his full height, walked to the table, looked straight into her eyes and said, “Not so very regular this time, Mrs. Bryant.”

She stepped back with a perplexed and questioning expression, but she understood that something was wrong, and the worn face fell suddenly, deepening a multitude of melancholy wrinkles. He laid the money before her: “That’s just half of what I owe you: I think you’ll find I have counted it all right.”

“Half? But where’s the other half, Mr. Thorne?”

“Well, I must earn the other half, Mrs. Bryant. You shall have it as soon as I get it.”

She looked up at him. “You’ve got to earn it?” she repeated. Her tone would have been more appropriate if Percival had said he must steal it. There was a pause: Mrs. Bryant’s lean hand closed over the money. “I don’t understand this, Mr. Thorne—I don’t understand it at all.”

“It is very simple,” he replied. “According to your wishes, I kept the rent for you, but during your absence there was a sudden call upon me for money, and I could not refuse to advance it. I regret it exceedingly if it puts you to inconvenience. I had hoped to have made it all right before you returned, but I have not had time. I can only promise you that you shall be paid all that I can put by each week till I have cleared off my debt.”

“Oh, that’s all very fine,” said Mrs. Bryant. “But I don’t think much of promises.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he answered gravely.

She looked hard at him, and said: “I did think you were quite the gentleman, Mr. Thorne. I didn’t think you’d have served me so.”

“No,” said Percival. “I assure you I’m very sorry. If I could explain the whole affair to you, you would see that I am not to blame. But, unluckily, I can’t.”

“Oh, I don’t want any explanations: I wouldn’t give a thank-you for a cartload of ’em. Nobody ever is to blame who has the explaining of a thing, if it’s ever so rascally a job.”

“I am very sorry,” he repeated. “But I can only say that you shall be paid.”

“Oh, I dare say! Look here, Mr. Thorne: I’ve heard that sort of thing scores of times. There’s always been a sudden call for money; it’s always something that never happened before, and it isn’t ever to happen again; and it’s always going to be paid back at once, but there’s not one in a hundred who does pay it. Once you begin that sort of thing—”

“You’ll find me that hundredth one,” said Percival.

“Oh yes. To hear them talk you’d say each one was one in a thousand, at least. But I’d like you to know that though I’m a widow woman I’m not to be robbed and put upon.”

“Mrs. Bryant”—Percival’s strong voice silenced her querulous tones—“no one wants to rob you. Please to remember that it was entirely of your own free-will that you trusted me with the money.”

“More fool I!” Mrs. Bryant ejaculated.

“It was to oblige you that I took charge of it.”

“And a pretty mess I’ve made of it! It had better have gone so as to be some pleasure to my own flesh and blood, instead of your spending it in some way you’re ashamed to own.”

“If you had been here to receive it, it would have been ready for you,” Percival went on, ignoring her last speech. “As it is, it has waited all these weeks for you. It isn’t unreasonable that it should wait a little longer for me.”

She muttered something to the effect that there was justice to be had, though he didn’t seem to think it.

“Oh yes,” he said, resting his arm on the chimney-piece, “there’s the county court or something of that kind. By all means go to the county court if you like. But I see no occasion for discussing the matter any more beforehand.”

His calmness had its effect upon her. She didn’t want any unpleasantness, she said.

“Neither do I,” he replied: “I do not see why there need be any. If I live you will be paid, and that before very long. If I should happen to die first, I have a friend who will settle my affairs for me, and you will be no loser.”

Mrs. Bryant suggested that it might be pleasanter for all parties if Mr. Thorne were to apply to his friend at once. She thought very likely there were little bills about in the town—gentlemen very often had little bills—and if there were any difficulties—gentlemen so often got into difficulties—it was so much better to have things settled and make a fresh start. She had no doubt that Mr. Lisle would be very willing.

“Mr. Lisle!” Percival exclaimed. “Do you suppose for one moment I should ask Mr. Lisle?”

Startled at his vehemence, Mrs. Bryant begged pardon, and substituted “the gentleman” for “Mr. Lisle.”

“Thank you, no,” said Percival. “I prefer to manage my own affairs in my own way. If I live I will not apply to any one. But if I must go to my grave owing five or six weeks’ rent to one or other of you, I assure you most solemnly, Mrs. Bryant, that I will owe it to my friend.”

The storm had subsided into subdued grumblings. Their purport was, apparently, that Mrs. Bryant liked lodgers who paid regular, and as for those who didn’t, they would have to leave, and she wished them to know it.

“Does that mean that you wish me to go?” the young man demanded with the readiness which was too much for his landlady. “I’ll go to-night if you like. Do you wish it?” There was an air of such promptitude about him as he spoke that Mrs. Bryant half expected to see him vanish then and there. She had by no means made up her mind that she did wish to lose a lodger who had been so entirely satisfactory up to that time. And she preferred to keep her debtor within reach; so she drew back a little and qualified what she had said.

“Very well,” said Percival, “just as you please.”

Mrs. Bryant only hoped it wouldn’t occur again. The tempest of her wrath showed fearful symptoms of dissolving in a shower of tears. “You don’t know what work I have to make both ends meet, Mr. Thorne,” she said, “nor how hard it is to get one’s own, let alone keeping it. I do assure you, Mr. Thorne, me and Lydia might go in silks every day of our lives, and needn’t so much as soil our fingers with the work of the house, if we had all we rightly should have. But there are folks who call themselves honest who don’t think any harm of taking a widow woman’s rooms and getting behindhand with the rent, running up an account for milk and vegetables and the like by the week together; and there’s the bell ringing all day, as you may say, with the bills coming in, and one’s almost driven out of one’s wits with the worry of it all, let alone the loss, which is hard to bear. Oh, I do hope, Mr. Thorne, that it won’t occur again!”

“It isn’t very likely,” said Percival, privately thinking that suicide would be preferable to an existence in which such interviews with his landlady should be of frequent occurrence. Pity, irritation, disgust, pride and humiliation made up a state of feeling which was overshadowed by a horrible fear that Mrs. Bryant would begin to weep before he could get rid of her. He watched her with ever-increasing uneasiness while she attempted to give him a receipt for the money he had paid. She began by wiping her spectacles, but her hand trembled so much that she let them fall, and she, Percival and the candle were all on the floor together, assisting one another in the search for them. The rusty cap was perilously near the flame more than once, which was a cause of fresh anxiety on his part. And when she was once more established at the table, writing a word or two and then wiping her eyes, it was distracting to discover that the receipt-stamp, which Mrs. Bryant had brought with her, and which she was certain she had laid on the table, had mysteriously disappeared. It seemed to Percival that he spent at least a quarter of an hour hunting for that stamp. In reality about two minutes elapsed before it was found sticking to Mrs. Bryant’s damp pocket handkerchief. It was removed thence with great care, clinging to her fingers by the way, after which it showed a not unnatural disinclination to adhere to the paper. But even that difficulty was at last overcome: a shaky signature and a date were laboriously penned, and Percival’s heart beat high as he received the completed document.

And then—Mrs. Bryant laid down the pen, took off her spectacles, shook her pocket handkerchief and deliberately burst into tears.

Percival was in despair. Of course he knew perfectly well that he was not a heartless brute, but equally of course he felt that he must be a heartless brute as he stood by while Mrs. Bryant wept copiously. Of course he begged her to calm herself, and of course a long-drawn sob was her only answer. All at once there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Percival, feeling that matters could not possibly be worse. It opened, and Lydia stood on the threshold, staring at the pair in much surprise.

“Well, I never!” she said; and turning toward Percival she eyed him suspiciously, as if she thought he might have been knocking the old lady about. “And pray what may be the meaning of this?”

“Mrs. Bryant isn’t quite herself this evening, I am afraid,” said Percival, feeling that his reply was very feeble. “And we have had a little business to settle which was not quite satisfactory.”

At the word “business” Lydia stepped forward, and her surprise gave place to an expression of half incredulous amusement—Percival would almost have said of delight.

“What! ain’t the money all right?” she said. “You don’t say so! Well, ma, you have been clever this time, haven’t you? Oh I suppose you thought I didn’t know what you were after when you were so careful about not bothering me with the accounts? Lor! I knew fast enough. Don’t you feel proud of yourself for having managed it so well?”

Mrs. Bryant wept. Percival, not having a word to say, preserved a dignified silence.

“Come along, ma: I dare say Mr. Thorne has had about enough of this,” Lydia went on, coolly examining the paper which lay on the table. She arrived at the total. “Oh that’s it, is it? Well, I like that, I do! Some people are so clever, ain’t they? So wonderfully sharp they can’t trust their own belongings! I do like that! Come along, ma.” And Lydia seconded her summons with such energetic action that it seemed to Percival that she absolutely swept the old lady out of the room, and that the wet handkerchief, the rusty black gown and the bugle-sprinkled head-dress vanished in a whirlwind, with a sound of shrill laughter on the stairs.

For a moment his heart leapt with a sudden sense of relief and freedom, but only for a moment. Then he flung himself into his arm-chair, utterly dejected and sickened.

Should he be subject to this kind of thing all his life long? If he should chance to be ill and unable to work, how could he live for any length of time on his paltry savings? And debt would mean this! He need not even be ill. He remembered how he broke his arm once when he was a lad. Suppose he broke his arm now—a bit of orange-peel in the street might do it—or suppose he hurt the hand with which he wrote?

And this was the life which he might ask Judith to share with him! She might endure Mrs. Bryant’s scolding and Lydia’s laughter, and pinch and save as he was forced to do, and grow weary and careworn and sick at heart. No, God forbid! And yet—and yet—was she not enduring as bad or worse in that hateful school?

Oh for his dream! One week of life and love, and then swift exit from a hideous world, where Mrs. Bryant and Miss Macgregor and Lydia and all his other nightmares might do their worst and fight their hardest in their ugly struggle for existence!

Percival had achieved something of a victory in his encounter with his landlady. His manner had been calm and fairly easy, and from first to last she had been more conscious of his calmness than Percival was himself. She had been silenced, not coaxed and flattered as she often was by unfortunate lodgers whose ready money ran short. Indeed, she had been defied, and when she recovered herself a little she declared that she had never seen any one so stuck up as Mr. Thorne. This was unkind, after he had gone down on his knees to look for her spectacles.

But if Percival had conquered, his was but a barren victory. He fancied that an unwonted tone of deference crept into his voice when he gave his orders. He was afraid of Mrs. Bryant. He faced Lydia bravely, but he winced in secret at the recollection of her laughter. He very nearly starved himself lest mother or daughter should be able to say, “Mr. Thorne might have remembered his debts before he ordered this or that.” He had paid Lisle’s bill at Mr. Robinson’s, but he could not forget his own, and he walked past the house daily with his head high, feeling himself a miserable coward.

There was a draper’s shop close to it, and as he went by one day he saw a little pony chaise at the door. A girl of twelve or thirteen sat in it listlessly holding the reins and looking up and down the street. It was a great field-day for the Brenthill volunteers, and their band came round a corner not a dozen yards away and suddenly struck up a triumphant march. The pony, although as quiet a little creature as you could easily find, was startled. If it had been a wooden rocking-horse it might not have minded, but any greater sensibility must have received a shock. The girl uttered a cry of alarm, but there was no cause for it. Percival, who was close at hand, stepped to the pony’s head, a lady rushed out of the shop, the band went by in a tempest of martial music, a crowd of boys and girls filled the roadway and disappeared as quickly as they came. It was all over in a minute. Percival, who was coaxing the pony as he stood, was warmly thanked.

“There is nothing to thank me for,” he said. “That band was enough to frighten anything, but the pony seems a gentle little thing.”

“So it is,” the lady replied. “But you see, the driver was very inexperienced, and we really are very much obliged to you, Mr. Thorne.”

He looked at her in blank amazement. Had some one from his former life suddenly arisen to claim acquaintance with him? He glanced from her to the girl, but recognized neither. “You know me?” he said.

She smiled: “You don’t know me, I dare say. I am Mrs. Barton. I saw you one day when I was just coming away after calling on Miss Lisle.” She watched the hero of her romance as she spoke. His dark face lighted up suddenly.

“I have often heard Miss Lisle speak of you and of your kindness,” he said. “Do you ever see her now?”

“Oh yes. She comes to give Janie her music-lesson every Wednesday afternoon.—We couldn’t do without Miss Lisle, could we, Janie?” The girl was shy and did not speak, but a broad smile overspread her face.

“I had no idea she still came to you. Do you know how she gets on at Miss Macgregor’s?” he asked eagerly. “Is she well? I saw her at church one day, and I thought she was pale.”

“She says she is well,” Mrs. Barton replied. “But I am not very fond of Miss Macgregor myself: no one ever stays there very long.” A shopman came out and put a parcel into the chaise. Mrs. Barton took the reins. “I shall tell Miss Lisle you asked after her,” she said as with a bow and cordial smile she drove off.

It was Monday, and Percival’s mind was speedily made up. He would see Judith Lisle on Wednesday.

Tuesday was a remarkably long day, but Wednesday came at last, and he obtained permission to leave the office earlier than usual. He knew the street in which Mrs. Barton lived, and had taken some trouble to ascertain the number, so that he could stroll to and fro at a safe distance, commanding a view of the door.

He had time to study the contents of a milliner’s window: it was the only shop near at hand, and even that pretended not to be a shop, but rather a private house, where some one had accidentally left a bonnet or two, a few sprays of artificial flowers and an old lady’s cap in the front room. He had abundant leisure to watch No. 51 taking in a supply of coals, and No. 63 sending away a piano. He sauntered to and fro so long, with a careless assumption of unconsciousness how time was passing, that a stupid young policeman perceived that he was not an ordinary passer-by. Astonished and delighted at his own penetration, he began to saunter and watch him, trying to make out which house he intended to favor with a midnight visit. Percival saw quite a procession of babies in perambulators being wheeled home by their nurses after their afternoon airing, and he discovered that the nurse at No. 57 had a flirtation with a soldier. But at last the door of No. 69 opened, a slim figure came down the steps, and he started to meet it, leisurely, but with a sudden decision and purpose in his walk. The young policeman saw the meeting: the whole affair became clear to him—why, he had done that sort of thing himself—and he hurried off rather indignantly, feeling that he had wasted his time, and that the supposed burglar had not behaved at all handsomely.

And Percival went forward and held out his hand to Judith, but found that even the most commonplace greeting stuck in his throat somehow. She looked quickly up at him, but she too was silent, and he walked a few steps by her side before he said, “I did not know what day you were going away.”

The rest of the conversation followed in a swift interchange of question and reply, as if to make up for that pause.

“No, but I thought I should be sure to have a chance of saying good-bye.”

“And I was out. I was very sorry when I came home and found that you were gone. But since we have met again, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” he said with a smile. “How do you get on at Miss Macgregor’s?”

“Oh, very well,” she answered. “It will do for the present.”

“And Miss Crawford?”

“She will not see me nor hear from me. She is ill and low-spirited, and Mrs. Barton tells me that a niece has come to look after her.”

“Isn’t that rather a good thing?”

“No: I don’t like it. I saw one or two of those nieces—there are seven of them—great vulgar, managing women. I can’t bear to think of my dear little Miss Crawford being bullied and nursed by Miss Price. She couldn’t endure them, I know, only she was so fond of their mother.”

Percival changed the subject: “So you go to Mrs. Barton’s still? I didn’t know that till last Monday.”

“When you rescued Janie from imminent peril. Oh, I have heard,” said Judith with a smile.

“Please to describe me as risking my own life in the act. It would be a pity not to make me heroic while you are about it.”

“Janie would readily believe it. She measures her danger by her terror, which was great. But she is a dear, good child, and it is such a pleasure to me to go there every week!”

“Ah! Then you are not happy at Miss Macgregor’s?”

“Well, not very. But it might be much worse. And I am mercenary enough to think about the money I earn at Mrs. Barton’s,” said Judith. “I don’t mind telling you now that Bertie left two or three little bills unpaid when he went away, and I was very anxious about them. But, luckily, they were small.”

“You don’t mind telling me now. Are they paid, then?”

“Yes, and I have not heard of any more.”

“You paid them out of your earnings?”

“Yes. You understand me, don’t you, Mr. Thorne? Bertie and I were together then, and I could not take Emmeline’s money to pay our debts.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“And I had saved a little. It is all right now, since they are all paid. I fancied there would be some more to come in, but it seems not, so I have a pound or two to spare, and I feel quite rich.”

It struck Percival that Judith had managed better than he had. “Do you ever hear from him?” he asked.

“Yes. Mr. Nash has forgiven them.”

“Already?”

Judith nodded: “He has, though I thought he never would. Bertie understood him better.”

(The truth was, that she had taken impotent rage for strength of purpose. Mr. Nash was aware that he had neglected his daughter, and was anxious to stifle the thought by laying the blame on every one else. And Bertie was quicker than Judith was in reading character when it was on his own level.)

“He has forgiven them,” Percival repeated with a smile. “Well, Bertie is a lucky fellow.”

“So is my father lucky, if that is luck.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. He has written to me and to my aunt Lisle—at Rookleigh, you know. He has taken another name, and it seems he is getting on and making money: he wanted to send me some too. And my aunt is angry with me because I would not go to her. She has given me two months to make up my mind in.”

“And you will not go?”

“I cannot leave Brenthill,” said Judith. “She is more than half inclined to forgive Bertie too. So I am alone; and yet I am right.” She uttered the last words with lingering sadness.

“No doubt,” Percival answered. They were walking slowly through a quiet back street, with a blank wall on one side. “Still, it is hard,” he said.

There was something so simple and tender in his tone that Judith looked up and met his eyes. She might have read his words in them even if he had not spoken. “Don’t pity me, Mr. Thorne,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Oh, because—I hardly know why. I can’t stand it when any one is kind to me, or sorry for me, sometimes at Mrs. Barton’s. I don’t know how to bear it. But it does not matter much, for I get braver and braver when people are hard and cold. I really don’t mind that half as much as you would think, so you see you needn’t pity me. In fact, you mustn’t.”

“Indeed, I think I must,” said Percival. “More than before.”

“No, no,” she answered, hurriedly. “Don’t say it, don’t look it, don’t even let me think you do it in your heart. Tell me about yourself. You listen to me, you ask about me, but you say nothing of what you are doing.”

“Working.” There was a moment’s hesitation. “And dreaming,” he added.

“But you have been ill?”

“Not I.”

“You have not been ill? Then you are ill. What makes you so pale?”

He laughed: “Am I pale?”

“And you look tired.”

“My work is wearisome sometimes.”

“More so than it was?” she questioned anxiously. “You used not to look so tired.”

“Don’t you think that a wearisome thing must grow more wearisome merely by going on?”

“But is that all? Isn’t there anything else the matter?”

“Perhaps there is,” he allowed. “There are little worries of course, but shall I tell you what is the great thing that is the matter with me?”

“If you will.”

“I miss you, Judith.”

The color spread over her face like a rosy dawn. Her eyes were fixed on the pavement, and yet they looked as if they caught a glimpse of Eden. But Percival could not see that. “You miss me?” she said.

“Yes.” He had forgotten his hesitation and despair. He had outstripped them, had left them far behind, and his words sprang to his lips with a glad sense of victory and freedom. “Must I miss you always?” he said. “Will you not come back to me, Judith? My work could never be wearisome then when I should feel that I was working for you. There would be long to wait, no doubt, and then a hard life, a poor home. What have I to offer you? But will you come?”

She looked up at him: “Do you really want me, or is it that you are sorry for me and want to help me? Are you sure it isn’t that? We Lisles have done you harm enough: I won’t do you a worse wrong still.”

“You will do me the worst wrong of all if you let such fears and fancies stand between you and me,” said Percival. “Do you not know that I love you? You must decide as your own heart tells you. But don’t doubt me.”

She laid her hand lightly on his arm: “Forgive me, Percival.”

And so those two passed together into the Eden which she had seen.

---

Chapter XLIX

How the Sun Rose in Gladness, and Set in the Valley of the Shadow of Death

The Wednesday which was so white a day for Judith and Percival had dawned brightly at Fordborough. Sissy, opening her eyes on the radiant beauty of the morning, sprang up with an exclamation of delight. The preceding day had been gray and uncertain, but this was golden and cloudless. A light breeze tossed the acacia-boughs and showed flashes of blue between the quivering sprays. The dew was still hanging on the clustered white roses which climbed to her open window, and the birds were singing among the leaves as if they were running races in a headlong rapture of delight. Sissy did not sing, but she said to herself, “Oh, how glad the Latimers must be!”

She was right, for at a still earlier hour the Latimer girls had been flying in and out of their respective rooms in a perfectly aimless, joyous, childishly happy fashion, like a flock of white pigeons. And the sum of their conversation was simply this: “Oh, what a day! what a glorious day!” Yet it sufficed for a Babel of bird-like voices. At last one more energetic than the rest, in her white dressing-gown and with her hair hanging loose, flew down the long oak-panelled corridor and knocked with might and main at her brother’s door: “Walter! Walter! wake up! do! You said it would rain, and it doesn’t rain! It is a lovely morning! Oh, Walter!”

Walter responded briefly to the effect that he had been awake since half after three, and was aware of the fact.

Henry Hardwicke, who had been to the river for an early swim, stopped to discuss the weather with a laborer who was plodding across the fields. The old man looked at the blue sky with an air of unutterable wisdom, made some profound remarks about the quarter in which the wind was, added a local saying or two bearing on the case, and summed up to the effect that it was a fine day.

Captain Fothergill had no particular view from his window, but he inquired at an early hour what the weather was like.

Ashendale Priory was a fine old ruin belonging to the Latimers, and about six miles from Latimer’s Court. Sissy Langton had said one day that she often passed it in her rides, but had never been into it. Walter Latimer was astonished, horrified and delighted all at once, and vowed that she must see it, and should see it without delay. This Wednesday had been fixed for an excursion there, but the project was nearly given up on account of the weather. As late as the previous afternoon the question was seriously debated at the Court by a council composed of Walter and three of his sisters. One of the members was sent to look at the barometer. She reported that it had gone up in the most extraordinary manner since luncheon.

The announcement was greeted with delight, but it was discovered late that evening that Miss Latimer had had a happy thought. Fearing that the barometer would be utterly ruined by the shaking and tapping which it underwent, she had screwed it up to a height at which her younger brothers and sisters could not wish to disturb it, had gone into the village, and had forgotten all about it. There was general dismay and much laughter.

“It will rain,” said Walter: “it will certainly rain. I thought it was very queer. Well, it is too late to do anything now. We must just wait and see what happens.”

And behold the morrow had come, the clouds were gone, and it was a day in a thousand, a very queen of days.

The party started for Ashendale, some riding, some driving, waking the quiet green lanes with a happy tumult of wheels and horse-hoofs and laughing voices. Captain Fothergill contrived to be near Miss Langton, and to talk in a fashion which made her look down once or twice when she had encountered the eagerness of his dark eyes. The words he said might have been published by the town-crier. But that functionary could not have reproduced the tone and manner which rendered them significant, though Sissy hardly knew the precise amount of meaning they were intended to convey. She was glad when the tower of the priory rose above the trees. So was Walter Latimer, who had been eying the back of Fothergill’s head or the sharply-cut profile which was turned so frequently toward Miss Langton, and who was firmly persuaded that the captain ought to be shot.

Ashendale Priory was built nearly at the bottom of a hill. Part of it, close by the gateway, was a farmhouse occupied by a tenant of the Latimers. His wife, a pleasant middle-aged woman, came out to meet them as they dismounted, and a rosy daughter of sixteen or seventeen lingered shyly in the little garden, which was full to overflowing of old-fashioned flowers and humming with multitudes of bees. The hot sweet fragrance of the crowded borders made Sissy say that it was like the very heart of summer-time.

“A place to recollect and dream of on a November day,” said Fothergill.

“Oh, don’t talk of November now! I hate it.”

“I don’t want November, I assure you,” he replied. “Why cannot this last for ever?”

“The weather?”

“Much more than the weather. Do you suppose I should only remember that it was a fine day?”

“What, the place too?” said Sissy. “It is beautiful, but I think you would soon get tired of Ashendale, Captain Fothergill.”

“Do you?” he said in a low voice, looking at her with the eyes which seemed to draw hers to meet them. “Try me and see which will be tired first.” And, without giving her time to answer, he went on: “Couldn’t you be content with Ashendale?”

“For always? I don’t think I could—not for all my life.”

“Well, then, the perfect place is yet to find,” said Fothergill. “And how charming it must be!”

“If one should ever find it!” said Sissy.

“One?” Fothergill looked at her again. “Not one! Won’t you hope we may both find it?”

“Like the people who hunted for the Earthly Paradise,” said Sissy hurriedly. “Look! they are going to the ruins.” And she hastened to join the others.

Latimer noticed that she evidently, and very properly, would not permit Fothergill to monopolize her, but seemed rather to avoid the fellow. To his surprise, however, he found that there was no better fortune for himself. Fothergill had brought a sailor cousin, a boy of nineteen, curly-haired, sunburnt and merry, with a sailor’s delight in flirtation and fun, and Archibald Carroll fixed his violent though temporary affections on Sissy the moment he was introduced to her at the priory. To Latimer’s great disgust, Sissy distinctly encouraged him, and the two went off together during the progress round the ruins. There were some old fish-ponds to be seen, with swans and reeds and water-lilies, and when they were tired of scrambling about the gray walls there was a little copse hard by, the perfection of sylvan scenery on a small scale. The party speedily dispersed, rambling where their fancy led them, and were seen no more till the hour which had been fixed for dinner. Mrs. Latimer meanwhile chose a space of level turf, superintended the unpacking of hampers, and when the wanderers came dropping in by twos and threes from all points of the compass, professing unbounded readiness to help in the preparations, there was nothing left for them to do. Among the latest were Sissy and her squire, a radiant pair. She was charmed with her saucy sailor-boy, who had no serious intentions or hopes, who would most likely be gone on the morrow, and who asked nothing more than to be happy with her through that happy summer day. People and things were apt to grow perplexing and sad when they came into her every-day life, but here was a holiday companion, arrived as unexpectedly as if he were created for her holiday, with no such thing as an afterthought about the whole affair.

Latimer sulked, but his rival smiled, when the two young people arrived. For—thus argued Raymond Fothergill, with a vanity which was so calm, so clear, so certain that it sounded like reason itself—it was not possible that Sissy Langton preferred Carroll to himself. Even had it been Latimer or Hardwicke! But Carroll—no! Therefore she used the one cousin merely to avoid the other. But why did she wish to avoid him? He remembered her blushes, her shyness, the eyes that sank before his own, and he answered promptly that she feared him. He triumphed in the thought. He had contended against a gentle indifference on Sissy’s part, till, having heard rumors of a bygone love-affair, he had suspected the existence of an unacknowledged constancy. Then what did this fear mean? It was obviously the self-distrust of a heart unwilling to yield, clinging to its old loyalty, yet aware of a new weakness—seeking safety in flight because unable to resist. Fothergill was conscious of power, and could wait with patience. (It would have been unreasonable to expect him to spend an equal amount of time and talent in accounting for Miss Langton’s equally evident avoidance of young Latimer. Besides, that was a simple matter. He bored her, no doubt.)

When the business of eating and drinking was drawing to a close, little Edith Latimer, the youngest of the party, began to arrange a lapful of wild flowers which she had brought back from her ramble. Hardwicke, who had helped her to collect them, handed them to her one by one.

A green tuft which he held up caught Sissy’s eye. “Why, Edie, what have you got there?” she said. “Is that maiden-hair spleenwort? Where did you find it?”

“In a crack in the wall: there’s a lot more,” the child answered; and at the same moment Hardwicke said, “Shall I get you some?”

“No: I’ll get some,” exclaimed Archie, who was lying at Sissy’s feet. “Miss Langton would rather I got it for her, I know.”

Sissy arched her brows.

“She has so much more confidence in me,” Archie explained. “Please give me a leaf of that stuff, Miss Latimer: I want to see what it’s like.”

“My confidence is rather misplaced, I’m afraid, if you don’t know what you are going to look for.”

“Not a bit misplaced. You know very well I shall have a sort of instinct which will take me straight to it.”

“Dear me! It hasn’t any smell, you know,” said Sissy with perfect gravity.

“Oh, how cruel!” said Carroll, “withering up my delicate feelings with thoughtless sarcasm! Smell? no! My what-d’ye-call-it—sympathy—will tell me which it is. My heart will beat faster as I approach it. But I’ll have that leaf all the same, please.”

“And it might be as well to know where to look for it.”

“We found it in the ruins—in the wall of the refectory,” said Hardwicke.

Sissy looked doubtful, but Carroll exclaimed, “Oh, I know! That’s where the old fellows used to dine, isn’t it? And had sermons read to them all the time.”

“What a bore!” some one suggested.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Archie. “Sermons always are awful bores, ain’t they? But I don’t think I should mind ’em so much if I might eat my dinner all the time.” He stopped with a comical look of alarm. “I say, we haven’t got any parsons here, have we?”

“No,” said Fothergill smiling. “We’ve brought the surgeon, in case of broken bones, but we’ve left the chaplain at home. So you may give us the full benefit of your opinions.”

“I thought there wasn’t one,” Archie remarked, looking up at Sissy, “because nobody said grace. Or don’t you ever say grace at a picnic?”

“I don’t think you do,” Sissy replied. “Unless it were a very Low Church picnic perhaps. I don’t know, I’m sure.”

“Makes a difference being out of doors, I suppose,” said Archie, examining the little frond which Edith had given him. “And this is what you call maiden-hair?”

“What should you call it?”

“A libel,” he answered promptly. “Maiden—hair, indeed! Why, I can see some a thousand times prettier quite close by. What can you want with this? You can’t see the other, but I’ll tell you what it’s like. It’s the most beautiful brown, with gold in it, and it grows in little ripples and waves and curls, and nothing ever was half so fine before, and it catches just the edge of a ray of sunshine—oh, don’t move your head!—and looks like a golden glory—”

“Dear me!” said Sissy. “Then I’m afraid it’s very rough.”

“—And the least bit of it is worth a cartload of this green rubbish.”

“Ah! But you see it is very much harder to get.”

“Of course it is,” said Archie. “But exchange is no robbery, they say. Suppose I go and dig up some of this, don’t you think—remembering that I am a poor sailor-boy, going to be banished from ‘England, home and beauty,’ and that I shall most likely be drowned on my next voyage—don’t you think—”

“I think that, on your own showing, you must get me at least a cartload of the other before you have the face to finish that sentence.”

“A cartload! I feel like a prince in a fairy-tale. And what would you do with it all?”

“Well, I really hardly know what I should do with it.”

“There now!” said Archie. “And I could tell you in a moment what I would do with mine if you gave it me.”

“Oh, but I could tell you that.”

“Tell me, then.”

“You would fold it up carefully in a neat little bit of paper, but you would not write anything on it, because you would not like it to look business-like. Besides, you couldn’t possibly forget. And a few months hence you will have lost your heart to some foreign young lady—I don’t know where you are going—and you would find the little packet in your desk, and wonder who gave it to you.”

“Oh, how little you know me!” Archie exclaimed, and sank back on the turf in a despairing attitude. But a moment later he began to laugh, and sat up again. “There was a bit once,” he said confidentially, “and for the life of me I couldn’t think whose it could be. There were two or three girls I knew it couldn’t possibly belong to, but that didn’t help me very far. That lock of hair quite haunted me. See what it is to have such susceptible feelings! I used to look at it a dozen times a day, and I couldn’t sleep at night for thinking of it. At last I said to myself, ‘I don’t care whose it is: she was a nice, dear girl anyhow, and I’m sure she wouldn’t like to think that she bothered me in this way.’ So I consigned it to a watery grave. I felt very melancholy when it went, I can tell you, and if my own hair had been a reasonable length I’d have sent a bit of it overboard with hers, just for company’s sake. But I’d had a fever, and I was cropped like a convict, so I couldn’t.”

“You tell that little story very nicely,” said Sissy when he paused. “Do you always mention it when you ask—”

“Why, no,” Archie exclaimed. “I thought you would take it as it was meant—as the greatest possible compliment to yourself. But I suppose it’s my destiny to be misunderstood. Don’t you see that I couldn’t tell that to any one unless I were quite sure that she was so much higher, so altogether apart, that she never, never could get mixed up with anybody else in my mind?”

“She had better have some very particular sort of curliness in her hair too,” said Sissy. “Don’t you think it would be safer?”

“Oh, this is too much!” he exclaimed. “It’s sport to you, evidently, but you don’t consider that it’s death to me. I say, come away, and we’ll look for this green stuff.”

Fothergill smiled, but Latimer’s handsome face flushed. He had made a dozen attempts to supplant Carroll, and had been foiled by the laughing pair. What was the use of being a good-looking fellow of six-and-twenty, head of one of the county families and owner of Latimer’s Court and Ashendale, if he were to be set aside by a beggarly sailor-boy? What did Fothergill mean by bringing his poor relations dragging after him where they were not wanted? He sprang to his feet, and went away with long strides to make violent love to the farmer’s rosy little daughter. He knew that he meant nothing at all, and that he was filling the poor child’s head and heart with the vainest of hopes. He knew that he owed especial respect and consideration to the daughter of his tenant, a man who had dealt faithfully by him, and whose father and grandfather had held Ashendale under the Latimers. He felt that he was acting meanly even while he kissed little Lucy by the red wall where the apricots were ripening in the sun. And he had no overmastering passion for excuse: what did he care for little Lucy? He was doing wrong, and he was doing it because it was wrong. He was in a fiercely antagonistic mood, and, as he could not fight Fothergill and Carroll, he fought with his own sense of truth and honor, for want of a better foe. And Lucy, conscious of her rosy prettiness, stood shyly pulling the lavender-heads in a glad bewilderment of vanity, wonder and delight, while Latimer’s heart was full of jealous anger. If Sissy Langton could amuse herself, so could he.

But Sissy was too happily absorbed in her amusement to think of his. She had avoided him, as she had avoided Captain Fothergill, from a sense of danger. They were becoming too serious, too much in earnest, and she did not want to be serious. So she went gayly across the grass, laughing at Archie because he would look on level ground for her maiden-hair spleenwort. They came to a small enclosure.

“Here you are!” said Carroll. “This is what somebody said was the refectory. It makes one feel quite sad and sentimental only to think what a lot of jolly dinners have been eaten here. And nothing left of it all!”

“That’s your idea of sentiment, Mr. Carroll? It sounds to me as if you hadn’t had enough to eat.”

“Oh yes, I had plenty. But we ought to pledge each other in a cup of sack, or something of the kind. And a place like this ought at least to smell deliciously of roast and boiled. Instead of which it might as well be the chapel.”

Sissy gazed up at the wall: “There’s some maiden-hair! How was it I never saw it this morning? Surely, we came along the top and looked down into this place.”

“No,” said Archie. “That was the chapel we looked into. Didn’t I say they were just alike?”

“Well, I can easily get up there,” she said. “And you may stay down here if you like, and grow sentimental over the ghost of a dinner.” And, laughing, she darted up a steep ascent of turf, slackening her pace when she came to a rough heap of fallen stones. Carroll was by her side directly, helping her. “Why, this is prettier than where we went this morning,” she said when they reached the top: “you see the whole place better. But it’s narrower, I think. This is the west wall, isn’t it? Oh, Mr. Carroll, how much the sun has gone down already!”

“I wish I were Moses, or whoever it was, to make it stop,” said the boy: “it would stay up there a good long time.”

There was a black belt of shadow at the foot of the wall. Archie looked down as if to measure its breadth. A little tuft of green caught his eye, and stooping he pulled it from between the stones.

“Oh, how broken it is here! Doesn’t it look as if a giant had taken a great bite out of it?” Sissy exclaimed, at the same moment that he called after her, “Is this right, Miss Langton?”

She turned her head, and for a second’s space he saw her bright face, her laughing, parted lips. Then there was a terrible cry, stretched hands at which he snatched instinctively but in vain, and a stone which slipped and fell heavily. He stumbled forward, and recovered himself with an effort. There was blank space before him—and what below?

Archie Carroll half scrambled down by the help of the ivy, half slid, and reached the ground. Thus, at the risk of his life, he gained half a minute, and spent it in kneeling on the grass—a yard away from that which he dared not touch—saying pitifully, “Miss Langton! Oh, won’t you speak to me, Miss Langton?”

He was in the shadow, but looking across the enclosure he faced a broken doorway in the south-east corner. The ground sloped away a little, and the arch opened into the stainless blue. A sound of footsteps made Carroll look up, and through the archway came Raymond Fothergill. He had heard the cry, he had outrun the rest, and, even in his blank bewilderment of horror, Archie shrank back scared at his cousin’s aspect. His brows and moustache were black as night against the unnatural whiteness of his face, which was like bleached wax. His eyes were terrible. He seemed to reach the spot in an instant. Carroll saw his hands on the stone which had fallen, and lay on her—O God!—or only on her dress?

Fothergill’s features contracted in sudden agony as he noted the horribly twisted position in which she lay, but he stooped without a moment’s hesitation, and, lifting her gently, laid her on the turf, resting her head upon his knee. There was a strange contrast between the tenderness with which he supported her and the fierce anger of his face. Others of the party came rushing on the scene in dismay and horror.

“Water!” said Fothergill. “Where’s Anderson?” (Anderson was the young doctor.) “Not here?”

“He went by the fish-ponds with Evelyn,” cried Edith suddenly: “I saw him.” Hardwicke darted off.

“Curse him! Playing the fool when he’s wanted more than he ever will be again.—Mrs. Latimer!”

Edith rushed away to find her mother.

Some one brought water, and held it while Fothergill, with his disengaged hand, sprinkled the white face on his knee.

Walter Latimer hurried round the corner. He held a pink rosebud, on which his fingers tightened unconsciously as he ran. Coming to the staring group, he stopped aghast. “Good God!” he panted, “what has happened?”

Fothergill dashed more water on the shut eyes and bright hair.

Latimer looked from him to the others standing round: “What has happened?”

A hoarse voice spoke from the background: “She fell.” Archie Carroll had risen from his knees, and, lifting one hand above his head, he pointed to the wall. Suddenly, he met Fothergill’s eyes, and with a half-smothered cry he flung himself all along upon the grass and hid his face.

“Fothergill! is she much hurt?” cried Latimer. “Is it serious?”

The other did not look up. “I cannot tell,” he said, “but I believe she is killed.”

Latimer uttered a cry: “No! no! For God’s sake don’t say that! It can’t be!”

Fothergill made no answer.

“It isn’t possible!” said Walter. But his glance measured the height of the wall and rested on the stones scattered thickly below. The words died on his lips.

“Is Anderson never coming?” said some one else. Another messenger hurried off. Latimer stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after him. All at once he noticed the rose which he still held, and jerked it away with a movement as of horror.

The last runner returned: “Anderson and Hardwicke will be here directly: I saw them coming up the path from the fish-ponds. Here is Mrs. Latimer.”

Edith ran through the archway first, eager and breathless. “Here is mamma,” she said, going straight to Raymond Fothergill with her tidings, and speaking softly as if Sissy were asleep. A little nod was his only answer, and the girl stood gazing with frightened eyes at the drooping head which he supported. Mrs. Latimer, Hardwicke and Anderson all arrived together, and the group divided to make way for them. The first thing to be done was to carry Sissy to the farmhouse, and while they were arranging this Edith felt two hands pressed lightly on her shoulders. She turned and confronted Harry Hardwicke.

“Hush!” he said: “do not disturb them now, but when they have taken her to the house, if you hear anything said, tell them that I have gone for Dr. Grey, and as soon as I have sent him here I shall go on for Mrs. Middleton. You understand?” he added, for the child was looking at him with her scared eyes, and had not spoken.

“Yes,” she said, “I will tell them. Oh, Harry! will she die?”

“Not if anything you and I can do will save her—will she, Edith?” and Hardwicke ran off to the stables for his horse. A man was there who saddled it for him, and a rough farm-boy stood by and saw how the gentleman, while he waited, stroked the next one—a lady’s horse, a chestnut—and how presently he turned his face away and laid his cheek for a moment against the chestnut’s neck. The boy thought it was a rum go, and stood staring vacantly while Hardwicke galloped off on his terrible errand.

Meanwhile, they were carrying Sissy to the house. Fothergill was helping, of course. Latimer had stood by irresolutely, half afraid, yet secretly hoping for a word which would call him. But no one heeded him. Evelyn and Edith had hurried on to see that there was a bed on which she could be laid, and the sad little procession followed them at a short distance. The lookers-on straggled after it, an anxiously-whispering group, and as the last passed through the ruined doorway Archie Carroll lifted his head and glanced round. The wall, with its mosses and ivy, rose darkly above him—too terrible a presence to be faced alone. He sprang up, hurried out of the black belt of shadow and fled across the turf. He never looked back till he stood under the arch, but halting there, within sight of his companions, he clasped a projection with one hand as if he were giddy, and turning his head gazed intently at the crest of the wall. Every broken edge, every tuft of feathery grass, every aspiring ivy-spray, stood sharply out against the sunny blue. The breeze had gone down, and neither blade nor leaf stirred in the hot stillness of the air. There was the way by which they had gone up, there was the ruinous gap which Sissy had said was like a giant’s bite. Archie’s grasp tightened on the stone as he looked. He might well feel stunned and dizzy, gazing thus across the hideous gulf which parted him from the moment when he stood upon the wall with Sissy Langton laughing by his side. Not till every detail was cruelly stamped upon his brain did he leave the spot.

By that time they had carried Sissy in. Little Lucy had been close by, her rosy face blanched with horror, and had looked appealingly at Latimer as he went past. She wanted a kind word or glance, but the innocent confiding look filled him with remorse and disgust. He would not meet it: he stared straight before him. Lucy was overcome by conflicting emotions, went off into hysterics, and her mother had to be called away from the room where she was helping Mrs. Latimer. Walter felt as if he could have strangled the pretty, foolish child to whom he had been saying sweet things not half an hour before. The rose that he had gathered for her was fastened in her dress, and the pink bud that she had given him lay in its first freshness on the turf in the ruins.

Some of the party waited in the garden. Fothergill stood in the shadow of the porch, silent and a little apart. Archie Carroll came up the path, but no one spoke to him, and he went straight to his cousin. Leaning against the woodwork, he opened his lips to speak, but was obliged to stop and clear his throat, for the words would not come. “How is she?” he said at last.

“I don’t know.”

“Why do you look at me like that?” said the boy desperately.

Fothergill slightly changed his position, and the light fell more strongly on his face. “I don’t ever want to look at you again,” he said with quiet emphasis. “You’ve done mischief enough to last your lifetime if you lived a thousand years.”

“It wasn’t my fault! Ray, it wasn’t!”

“Whose, then?” said Fothergill. “Possibly you think it would have happened if I had been there?”

“They said that wall—” the young fellow began.

“They didn’t. No one told you to climb the most ruinous bit of the whole place. And she didn’t even know where the refectory was.”

Carroll groaned: “Don’t, Ray: I can’t bear it! I shall kill myself!”

“No, you won’t,” said Fothergill. “You’ll go safe home to your people at the rectory. No more of this.”

Archie hesitated, and then miserably dragged himself away. Fothergill retreated a little farther into the porch, and was almost lost in the shadow. No tidings, good or evil, had come from the inner room where Sissy lay, but his state of mind was rather despairing than anxious. From the moment when he ran across the grass and saw her lying, a senseless heap, at the foot of the wall, he had felt assured that she was fatally injured. If he hoped at all it was an unconscious hope—a hope of which he never would be conscious until a cruel certainty killed it.

His dominant feeling was anger. He had cared for this girl—cared for her so much that he had been astonished at himself for so caring—and he felt that this love was the crown of his life. He did not for a moment doubt that he would have won her. He had triumphed in anticipation, but Death had stepped between them and baffled him, and now it was all over. Fothergill was as furious with Death as if it had been a rival who robbed him. He felt himself the sport of a power to which he could offer no resistance, and the sense of helplessness was maddening. But his fury was of the white, intense, close-lipped kind. Though he had flung a bitter word or two at Archie, his quarrel was with Destiny. No matter who had decreed this thing, Raymond Fothergill was in fierce revolt.

And yet, through it all, he knew perfectly well that Sissy’s death would hardly make any outward change in him. He was robbed of his best chance, but he did not pretend to himself that his heart was broken or that his life was over. Walter Latimer might fancy that kind of thing, but Fothergill knew that he should be much such a man as he had been before he met her, only somewhat lower, because he had so nearly been something higher and missed it. That was all.

Mrs. Latimer came for a few moments out of the hushed mystery of that inner room. The tidings ran through the expectant groups that Sissy had moved slightly, and had opened her eyes once, but there was little hopefulness in the news. She was terribly injured: that much was certain, but nothing more. Mrs. Latimer wanted her son. “Walter,” she said, “you must go home and take the girls. Indeed you must. They cannot stay here, and I cannot send them back without you.” Latimer refused, protested, yielded. “Mother,” he said, as he turned to go, “you don’t know—” His voice suddenly gave way.

“I do know. Oh, my poor boy!” She passed quickly to where Evelyn stood, and told her that Walter had gone to order the horses. “I would rather you were all away before Mrs. Middleton comes,” she said: “Henry Hardwicke has gone for her.”

This departure was a signal to the rest. The groups melted away, and with sad farewells to one another, and awestruck glances at the windows of the farmhouse, almost all the guests departed. The sound of wheels and horse-hoofs died away in the lanes, and all was very still. The bees hummed busily round the white lilies and the lavender, and on the warm turf of one of the narrow paths lay Archie Carroll.

He had a weight on heart and brain. There had been a moment all blue and sunny, the last of his happy life, when Sissy’s laughing face looked back at him and he was a light-hearted-boy. Then had come a moment of horror and incredulous despair, and that black moment had hardened into eternity. Nightmare is hideous, and Archie’s very life had become a nightmare. Of course he would get over it, like his cousin, though, unlike his cousin, he did not think so; and their different moods had their different bitternesses. In days to come Carroll would enjoy his life once more, would be ready for a joke or an adventure, would dance the night through, would fall in love. This misery was a swift and terrible entrance into manhood, for he could never be a boy again. And the scar would be left, though the wound would assuredly heal. But Archie, stumbling blindly through that awful pass, never thought that he should come again to the light of day: it was to him as the blackness of a hopeless hell.

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Chapter L

Through the Night

The village-clock struck five. As the last lingering stroke died upon the air there was the sound of a carriage rapidly approaching. Carroll raised his head when it stopped at the gate, and saw Hardwicke spring out and help a lady to alight. She was an old lady, who walked quickly to the house, looking neither to right nor left, and vanished within the doorway. Hardwicke stopped, as if to give some order to the driver, and then hurried after her. Archie stared vaguely, first at them, and then at the man, who turned his horses and went round to the stables. When they were out of sight he laid his head down again. The little scene had been a vivid picture which stamped itself with curious distinctness on his brain, yet failed to convey any meaning whatever. He had not the faintest idea of the agony of love and fear in Mrs. Middleton’s heart as she passed him. To Archie, just then, the whole universe was his agony, and there was no room for more.

Ten minutes later came Dr. Grey’s brougham. The doctor, as he jumped out, told his man to wait. He went from the gate to the house more hurriedly than Mrs. Middleton, and his anxiety was more marked, but he found time to look round as he went with keen eyes, which rested for an instant on the young sailor, though he lay half hidden by the bushes. He too vanished, as the others had vanished.

About an hour later he came out again, and Fothergill followed him. The doctor started when he encountered his eager eyes. Fothergill demanded his opinion. He began some of the usual speeches in which men wrap up the ghastly word “death” in such disguise that it can hardly be recognized.

The soldier cut him short: “Please to speak plain English, Dr. Grey.”

The doctor admitted the very greatest danger.

“Danger—yes,” said Fothergill, “but is there any hope? I am not a fool—I sha’n’t go in and scare the women: is there any hope?”

The answer was written on the doctor’s face. He had known Sissy Langton from the time when she came, a tiny child, to Brackenhill. He shook his head, and murmured something about “even if there were no other injury, the spine—”

Fothergill caught a glimpse of a hideous possibility, and answered with an oath. It was not the profanity of the words, so much as the fury with which they were charged, that horrified the good old doctor. “My dear sir,” he remonstrated gently, “we must remember that this is God’s will.”

“God’s will! God’s will! Are you sure it isn’t the devil’s?” said Fothergill. “It seems more like it. If you think it is God’s will, you may persuade yourself it’s yours, for aught I know. But I’m not such a damned hypocrite as to make believe it’s mine.”

And with a mechanical politeness, curiously at variance with his face and speech, he lifted his hat to the doctor as he turned back to the farmhouse.

So Sissy’s doom was spoken—to linger a few hours, more or less, in helpless pain, and then to die. The sun, which had dawned so joyously, was going down as serenely as it had dawned, but it did not matter much to Sissy now. She was sensible, she knew Mrs. Middleton. When the old lady stooped over her she looked up, smiled faintly and said, “I fell.”

“Yes, my darling, I know,” Aunt Harriet said.

“Can I go home?” Sissy asked after a pause.

“No, dear, you must not think of it: you mustn’t ask to go home.”

“I thought not,” said Sissy.

Mrs. Middleton asked her if she felt much pain.

“I don’t know,” she said, and closed her eyes.

Later, Henry Hardwicke sent in a message, and the old lady came out to speak to him. He was standing by an open casement in the passage, looking out at the sunset through the orchard boughs. “What is it, Harry?” she said.

He started and turned round: “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Middleton, but I thought in case you wanted to send any telegrams—if—if—I mean I thought you might want to send some, and there is not very much time.”

She put her hand to her head. “I ought to, oughtn’t I?” she said. “Who should be sent for?”

“Mr. Hammond?” Hardwicke questioned doubtfully.

Something like relief or pleasure lighted her sad eyes: “Yes, yes! send for Godfrey Hammond. He will come.” She was about to leave him, but the young fellow stepped forward: “Mrs. Middleton”—was it the clear red light from the window that suddenly flushed his face?—“Mrs. Middleton, shall I send for Mr. Percival Thorne?”

She stopped, looking strangely at him: something in his voice surprised her. “For Percival?” she said.

“May I? I think he ought to come.” The hot color was burning on his cheeks. What right had he to betray the secret which he believed he had discovered? And yet could he stand by and not speak for her when she had so little time in which to speak for herself?

“Is it for his sake,” said Mrs. Middleton, “or is it that you think—? Well, let it be so: send for Percival. Yes,” she added, “perhaps I have misunderstood. Yes, send at once for Percival.”

“I’ll go,” said Harry, hurrying down the passage. “The message shall be sent off at once. I’ll take it to Fordborough.”

“Must you go yourself?” Mrs. Middleton raised her voice a little as he moved away.

“No: let me go,” said Captain Fothergill, turning the farther corner: “I am going to Fordborough. What is it? I will take it. Mrs. Middleton, you will let me be your messenger?”

“You are very good,” she said.—“Harry, you will write—I can’t. Oh, I must go back.” And she vanished, leaving the two men face to face.

“I’ve no telegraph-forms,” said Harry after a pause. “If you would take the paper to my father, he will send the messages.”

Fothergill nodded silently, and went out to make ready for his journey. Hardwicke followed him, and stood in the porch pencilling on the back of an old letter. When Fothergill had given his orders he walked up to Carroll, touched the lad’s shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and stood away. “Come,” he said.

Archie raised himself from the ground and stumbled to his feet: “Come? where?”

“To Fordborough.”

The boy started and stepped back. He looked at the farmhouse, he looked at his cousin. “I’ll come afterward,” he faltered.

“Nonsense!” said Fothergill. “I’m going now, and of course you go with me.”

Archie shrank away, keeping his eyes fixed, as if in a kind of fascination, on his cousin’s terrible eyes. The idea of going back alone with Raymond was awful to him. “No, I can’t come, Ray—indeed I can’t,” he said. “I’ll walk: I’d much rather—I would indeed.”

“What for?” said Fothergill. “You are doing no good here. Do you know I have a message to take? I can’t be kept waiting. Don’t be a fool,” he said in a lower but not less imperative voice.

Archie glanced despairingly round. Hardwicke came forward with the paper in his outstretched hand: “Leave him here, Captain Fothergill. I dare say I shall go to the inn in the village, and he may go with me. He can take you the earliest news to-morrow morning.”

Archie looked breathlessly from one to the other. “As you please,” said Fothergill, and strode off without another word.

The boy tried to say something in the way of thanks. “Oh, it’s nothing,” Hardwicke replied. “You won’t care what sort of quarters they may turn out to be, I know.” And he went back to the house with a little shrug of his shoulders at the idea of having young Carroll tied to him in this fashion. He did not want the boy, but Hardwicke could never help sacrificing himself.

So Archie went to the gate and watched his cousin ride away, a slim black figure on his black horse against the burning sky. Fothergill never turned his head. Where was the use of looking back? He was intent only on his errand, and when that piece of paper should have been delivered into Mr. Hardwicke’s hands the last link between Sissy Langton and himself would be broken. There would be no further service to render. Fothergill did not know that the message he carried was to summon his rival, but it would have made no difference in his feelings if he had. Nothing made any difference now.

Mrs. Middleton sat by Sissy’s bedside in the clear evening light. Harry Hardwicke’s words haunted her: why did he think that Sissy wanted Percival? They had parted a year ago, and she had believed that Sissy was cured of her liking for him. It was Sissy who had sent him away, and she had been brighter and gayer of late: indeed, Mrs. Middleton had fancied that Walter Latimer— Well, that was over, but if Sissy cared for Percival—

A pair of widely-opened eyes were fixed on her: “Am I going to die, Aunt Harriet?”

“I hope not. Oh, my darling, I pray that you may live.”

“I think I am going to die. Will it be very soon? Would there be time to send—”

“We will send for anything or any one you want. Do you feel worse, dear? Time to send for whom?”

“For Percival.”

“Harry Hardwicke has sent for him already. Perhaps he has the message by now: it is an hour and a half since the messenger went.”

“When will he come?”

“To-morrow, darling.”

There was a pause. Then the faint voice came again: “What time?”

Mrs. Middleton went to the door and called softly to Hardwicke. He had been looking in Bradshaw, and she returned directly: “Percival will come by the express to-night. He will be at Fordborough by the quarter-past nine train, and Harry will meet him and bring him over at once—by ten o’clock, he says, or a few minutes later.”

Sissy’s brows contracted for a moment: she was calculating the time. “What is it now?” she said.

“Twenty minutes to eight.”

Fourteen hours and a half! The whole night between herself and Percival! The darkness must come and must go, the sun must set and must again be high in the heavens, before he could stand by her side. It seemed to Sissy as if she were going down into the blackness of an awful gulf, where Death was waiting for her. Would she have strength to escape him, to toil up the farther side, and to reach the far-off to-morrow and Percival? “Aunt Harriet,” she said, “shall I live till then? I want to speak to him.”

“Yes, my darling—indeed you will. Don’t talk so: you will break my heart. Perhaps God will spare you.”

“No,” said Sissy—“no.”

Between eight and nine Hardwicke was summoned again. Mrs. Latimer wanted some one to go to Latimer’s Court, to take the latest news and to say that it was impossible she could return that night. “You see they went away before Dr. Grey came,” she said. “I have written a little note. Can you find me a messenger?”

“I will either find one or I will go myself,” he replied.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to trouble you. And wait a moment, for Mrs. Middleton wants him to go on to her house. She will come and speak to you when I go back to the poor girl.”

“How is Miss Langton?”

“I hardly know. I think she is wandering a little: she talked just now about some embroidery she has been doing—asked for it, in fact.”

“When Dr. Grey was obliged to go he didn’t think there would be any change before he came back, surely?” said Hardwicke anxiously.

“No. But she can’t know what she is saying, can she? Poor girl! she will never do another stitch.” Mrs. Latimer fairly broke down. The unfinished embroidery which never could be finished brought the truth home to her. It is hard to realize that a life with its interlacing roots and fibres is broken off short.

“Oh, Mrs. Latimer, don’t! don’t!” Harry exclaimed, aghast at her tears. “For dear Mrs. Middleton’s sake!” He rushed away, and returned with wine. “If you give way what will become of us?”

She was better in a few minutes, and able to go back, while Harry waited in quiet confidence for Mrs. Middleton. He was not afraid of a burst of helpless weeping when she came. She was gentle, yielding, delicate, but there was something of the old squire’s obstinacy in her, and in a supreme emergency it came out as firmness. She looked old and frail as she stepped into the passage and closed the door after her. Her hand shook, but her eyes met his bravely and her lips were firm.

“You’ll have some wine too,” he said, pouring it out as a matter of course. “You can drink it while you tell me what I am to do.”

She took the glass with a slight inclination of her head, and explained that she wanted an old servant who had been Sissy’s nurse when she was a little child. “Mrs. Latimer is very kind,” she said, “but Sissy will like her own people best. And Sarah would be broken-hearted—” She paused. “Here is a list of things that I wish her to bring.”

“Mrs. Latimer thought Miss Langton was not quite herself,” he said inquiringly.

“Do you mean because she talked of her work? Oh, I don’t think so. She answers quite sensibly—indeed, she speaks quite clearly. That was the only thing.”

“Then is it down in the list, this needlework? Or where is it to be found?”

“You will bring it?” said Mrs. Middleton. “Well, perhaps—”

“If she should ask again,” he said.

“True. Yes, yes, bring it.” She told him where to find the little case. “The fancy may haunt her. How am I to thank you, Harry?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Only let me do what I can.”

It was nearly eleven before Hardwicke had accomplished his double errand and returned with Sarah. The stars were out, the ruins of the priory rose in great black masses against the sky, the farmhouse windows beneath the overhanging eaves were like bright eyes gazing out into the night. Dr. Grey had come back in the interval, and had seen his patient. There was nothing new to say, and nothing to be done, except to make the path to the grave as little painful as might be. He was taking a nap in Mr. Greenwell’s arm-chair when the young man came in, but woke up clear and alert in a moment. “Ah, you have come?” he said, recognizing the old servant. “That’s well: you’ll save your mistress a little. Only, mind, we mustn’t have any crying. If there is anything of that sort you will do more harm than good.”

Sarah deigned no reply, but passed on. Mrs. Middleton came out to meet them. Sissy had not spoken. She lay with her eyes shut, and moaned now and then. “Are you going home, Harry?” said the old lady.

“Only into the village: I’ve got a room at the Latimer Arms. It isn’t two minutes’ walk from here, so I can be fetched directly if I’m wanted.”

“And you will be sure to meet the train?”

“I will: you may depend upon me. But I shall come here first.”

“Good-night, then. Go and get some rest.”

Hardwicke went off to look for Archie Carroll. He found him in the square flagged hall, sitting on the corner of a window-seat, with his head leaning against the frame, among Mrs. Greenwell’s geraniums. “Come along, old fellow,” said Harry.

There was only a glimmering candle, and the hall was very dim. Archie got up submissively and groped his way after his guide. “Where are we going?” he asked as the door was opened.

“To a little public-house close by. We couldn’t ask the Greenwells to take us in.”

As they went out into the road the priory rose up suddenly on the left and towered awfully above them. Carroll shuddered, drew closer to his companion and kept his eyes fixed on the ground. “I feel as if I were the ghost of myself, and those were the ghosts of the ruins,” he said as he hurried past.

The flight of fancy was altogether beyond Hardwicke: “You’ve been sitting alone and thinking. There has been nothing for you to do, and I couldn’t help leaving you. Here we are.”

They turned into the little sanded parlor of the ale-house. Hardwicke had looked in previously and given his orders, and supper was laid ready for them. He sat down and began to help himself, but Archie at first refused to eat.

“Nonsense!” said Harry. “You have had nothing since the beginning of the day. We must not break down, any of us.” And with a little persuasion he prevailed, and saw the lad make a tolerable supper and drink some brandy and water afterward. “Vile brandy!” said Hardwicke as he set his tumbler down. Archie was leaning with both elbows on the table, gazing at him. His eyes were heavy and swollen, and there were purple shadows below them.

“Mr. Hardwicke,” he said, “you’ve been very good to me. Do you think it was my fault?”

“Do I think what was your fault?”

“This!” Archie said—“to-day.”

“No—not if I understand it.”

“Ray said if he had been there—”

“I wish he had been. But we must not expect old heads on young shoulders. How did it happen?”

“We climbed up on the wall, and she was saying how narrow and broken it was, and I picked some of that stuff and called to her, and as she looked back—”

Hardwicke groaned. “It was madly imprudent,” he said. “But I don’t blame you. You didn’t think. Poor fellow! I only hope you won’t think too much in future. Come, it’s time for bed.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” Archie answered: “I can’t sleep.”

“Very well,” said Hardwicke. “But I must try and get a little rest. They had only one room for us, so if you can’t sleep you’ll keep quiet and let a fellow see what he can do in that line. And you may call me in the morning if I don’t wake. But don’t worry yourself, for I shall.”

“What time?” said Carroll.

“Oh, from five to six—not later than six.”

But in half an hour it was Carroll who lay worn out and sleeping soundly, and Hardwicke who was counting the slow minutes of that intolerable night.

Sarah had been indignant that Dr. Grey should tell her not to cry. But when Sissy looked up with a gentle smile of recognition, and instead of calling her by her name said “Nurse,” as she used to say in old times, the good woman was very near it indeed, and was obliged to go away to the window to try to swallow the lump that rose up in her throat and almost choked her.

Mrs. Middleton sat by her darling’s bedside. She had placed the little work-case in full view, and presently Sissy noticed it and would have it opened. The half-finished strip of embroidery was laid within easy reach of hand and eye. She smiled, but was not satisfied. “The case,” she said. Her fingers strayed feebly among the little odds and ends which it contained, and closed over something which she kept.

Then there was a long silence, unbroken till Sissy was thirsty and wanted something to drink. “What time?” she said when she had finished.

“Half-past twelve.”

“It’s very dark.”

“We will have another candle,” said Aunt Harriet.

“No: the candle only makes me see how dark it is all round.”

Again there was silence, but not so long this time. And again Sissy broke it: “Aunt Harriet, he is coming now.”

“Yes, darling, he is coming.”

“I feel as if I saw the train, with red lights in front, coming through the night—always coming, but never any nearer.”

“But it is nearer every minute. Percival is nearer now than when you spoke.”

Sissy said “Yes,” and was quiet again till between one and two. Then Mrs. Middleton perceived that her eyes were open. “What is it, dear child?” she said.

“The night is so long!”

“Sissy,” said Aunt Harriet softly, “I want you to listen to me. A year ago, when Godfrey died and I talked about the money that I hoped to leave you one day, you told me what you should like me to do with it instead, because you had enough and you thought it was not fair. I didn’t quite understand then, and I would not promise. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Sissy, shall I promise now? I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve no wish on earth but to make you happy. Will it make you happier if I promise now that it shall be as you said?”

“Yes,” said Sissy with eager eyes.

“Then I do promise: all that is mine to leave he shall have.”

Sissy answered with a smile. “Kiss me,” she said. And so the promise was sealed. After that the worst of the night seemed somehow to be over. Sissy slept a little, and Aunt Harriet nodded once or twice in the easy-chair. Starting into wakefulness after one of these moments, she saw the outline of the window faintly defined in gray, and thanked God that the dawn had come.

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Chapter LI

By the Express

Mr. Hardwicke, not knowing Percival Thorne’s precise address, had telegraphed to Godfrey Hammond, begging him to forward the message without delay. A couple of days earlier Hammond had suddenly taken it into his head that he was tired of being in town and would go away somewhere. In a sort of whimsical amusement at his own mood he decided that the Land’s End ought to suit a misanthrope, and promptly took a ticket for Penzance as a considerable step in the right direction.

It made no difference to Percival, for Hammond had left full directions with a trustworthy servant in case any letters should come for Mr. Thorne, and the man sent the message on to Brenthill at once. But it made a difference to Hammond himself. When Hardwicke despatched the telegram to his address in town Godfrey lay on the turf at the Lizard Head, gazing southward across the sunlit sea, while the seabirds screamed and the white waves broke on the jagged rocks far below.

But with Percival there was no delay. The message found him in Bellevue street, though he did not return there immediately after his parting with Judith. He wanted the open air, the sky overhead, movement and liberty to calm the joyful tumult in heart and brain. He hastened to the nearest point whence he could look over trees and fields. The prospect was not very beautiful. The trees were few—some cropped willows by a mud-banked rivulet and a group or two of gaunt and melancholy elms. And the fields had a trodden, suburban aspect, which made it hardly needful to stick up boards describing them as eligible building-ground. Yet there was grass, such as it was, and daisies sprinkled here and there, and soft cloud-shadows gliding over it. Percival’s unreal and fantastic dream had perished suddenly when Judith put her hand in his. Now, as he walked across these meadows, he saw a new vision, that dream of noble, simple poverty, which, if it could but be realized, would be the fairest of all.

When he returned from his walk, and came once more to the well-known street which he was learning to call “home,” he was so much calmer that he thought he was quite himself again. Not the languid, hopeless self who had lived there once, but a self young, vigorous, elate, rejoicing in the present and looking confidently toward the future.

This I can tell,
That all will go well,

was the keynote of his mood. He felt as if he trod on air—as if he had but to walk boldly forward and every obstacle must give way. The door of No. 13 was open, and a boy who had brought a telegram was turning away from it. Hurrying in with eager eyes and his face bright with unspoken joy, Percival nearly ran up against Mrs. Bryant and Emma, whose heads were close together over the address on the envelope.

“Lor! Mr. Thorne, how you startled me! It’s for you,” said his landlady.

He went up the stairs two at a time, with his message in his hand. Here was some good news—not for one moment did he dream it could be other than good news—come to crown this day, already the whitest of his life. He tore the paper open and read it by the red sunset light, hotly reflected from a wilderness of tiles.

He read it twice—thrice—caught at the window-frame to steady himself, and stood staring vaguely at the smoke which curled upward from a neighboring chimney. He was stunned. The words seemed to have a meaning and no meaning. “This is not how people receive news of death, surely?” he thought. “I suppose I am in my right senses, or is it a dream?”

He made a strong effort to regain his self-command, but all certainties eluded him. This was not the first time that he had taken up a telegram and believed that he read the tidings of Sissy’s death. He had misunderstood it now as then. It could not be. But why could he not wake?

“Ashendale.” Yes, he remembered Ashendale. He had ridden past the ruins the last day he ever rode with Sissy, the day that Horace came home. It belonged to the Latimers—to Walter Latimer. And Sissy was dying at Ashendale!

All at once he knew that it was no dream. But the keen edge of pain awoke him to the thought of what he had to do, and sent him to hunt among a heap of papers for a time-table. He drew a long breath. The express started at 10.5, and it was now but twenty minutes past eight.

He caught up his hat and hurried to the office. Mr. Ferguson, who seldom left much before that time, was on the doorstep. While he was getting into his dog-cart Percival hastily explained that he had been summoned on a matter of life and death. “Sorry to hear it,” said the lawyer as he took the reins—“hope you may find things better than you expect. We shall see you again when you come back.” And with a nod he rattled down the street. Percival stood on the pavement gazing after him, when he suddenly remembered that he had no money. “I might have asked him to give me my half week’s salary,” he reflected. “Not that that would have paid my fare.”

A matter of life and death! Sissy waiting for him at Ashendale, and no money to pay for a railway-ticket! It would have been absurd if it had not been horrible. What had he to sell or pawn? By the time he could go to Bellevue street and return would not the shops be shut? It was a quarter to nine already. He did not even know where any pawnbroker lived, nor what he could take to him, and the time was terribly short. He was hurrying homeward while these thoughts passed through his mind when Judith’s words came back to him: “I have a pound or two to spare, and I feel quite rich.” He took the first turning toward Miss Macgregor’s house.

Outside her door he halted for a moment. If they would not let him see Judith, how was he to convey his request? He felt in his pocket, found the telegram and pencilled below the message, “Sissy Langton was once to have been my wife: we parted, and I have never seen her since. I have not money enough for my railway-fare: can you help me?” He folded it and rang the bell.

No, he could not see Miss Lisle. She was particularly engaged. “Very well,” he said: “be so good as to take this note to her, and I will wait for the answer.” His manner impressed the girl so much that, although she had been carefully trained by Miss Macgregor, she cast but one hesitating glance at the umbrella-stand before she went on her errand.

Percival waited, eager to be off, yet well assured that it was all right since it was in Judith’s hands. Presently the servant returned and gave him a little packet. The wax of the seal was still warm. He opened it where he stood, and by the light of Miss Macgregor’s hall-lamp read the couple of lines it contained:

“I cannot come, but I send you all the money I have. I pray God you may be in time. Yours, Judith.”

There were two sovereigns and some silver. He told the girl to thank Miss Lisle, and went out into the dusk as the clocks were striking nine. Ten minutes brought him to Bellevue street, and rushing up to his room he began to put a few things into a little travelling-bag. In his haste he neglected to shut the door, and Mrs. Bryant, whose curiosity had been excited, came upon him in the midst of this occupation.

“And what may be the meaning of this, Mr. Thorne, if I may make so bold as to ask?” she said, eying him doubtfully from the doorway.

Percival explained that he had had bad news and was off by the express.

Mrs. Bryant’s darkest suspicions were aroused. She said it was a likely story.

“Why, you gave me the telegram yourself,” he answered indifferently while he caught up a couple of collars. He was too much absorbed to heed either Mrs. Bryant or his packing.

“And who sent it, I should like to know?”

Percival made no answer, and she began to grumble about people who had money enough to travel all over the country at a minute’s notice if they liked, and none to pay their debts—people who made promises by the hour together, and then sneaked off, leaving boxes with nothing inside them, she’d be bound.

Thus baited, Percival at last turned angrily upon her, but before he could utter a word another voice interposed: “What are you always worrying about, ma? Do come down and have your supper, and let Mr. Thorne finish his packing. He’ll pay you every halfpenny he owes you: don’t you know that?” And the door was shut with such decision that it was a miracle that Mrs. Bryant was not dashed against the opposite wall. “Come along,” said Lydia: “there’s toasted cheese.”

Percival ran down stairs five minutes later with his bag in his hand. He turned into his sitting-room, picked up a few papers and thrust them into his desk. He was in the act of locking it when he heard a step behind him, and looking round he saw Lydia. She had a cup of tea and some bread and butter, which she set down before him. “You haven’t had a morsel since the middle of the day,” she said. “Just you drink this. Oh, you must: there’s lots of time.”

“Miss Bryant, this is very kind of you, but I don’t think—”

“Just you drink it,” said Lydia, “and eat a bit too, or you’ll be good for nothing.” And while Percival hastily obeyed she glanced round the room: “Nobody’ll meddle with your things while you’re gone: don’t you trouble yourself.”

“Oh, I didn’t suspect that any one would,” he replied, hardly thinking whether it was likely or not as he swallowed the bread and butter.

“Well, that was very nice of you, I’m sure, I should have suspected a lot if I’d been you,” said Lydia candidly. “But nobody shall. Now, you aren’t going to leave that tea? Why, it wants twenty minutes to ten, and not six minutes’ walk to the station!”

Percival finished the tea: “Thank you very much, Miss Bryant.”

“And I say,” Lydia pursued, pulling her curl with less than her usual consideration for its beauty, “I suppose you have got money enough? Because if not, I’ll lend you a little. Don’t you mind what ma says, Mr. Thorne. I know you’re all right.”

“You are very good,” said Percival. “I didn’t expect so much kindness, and I’ve been borrowing already, so I needn’t trouble you. But thank you for your confidence in me and for your thoughtfulness.” He held out his hand to Lydia, and thus bade farewell to Bellevue street.

She stood for a moment looking after him. Only a few hours before she would have rejoiced in any small trouble or difficulty which might have befallen Mr. Thorne. But when he turned round upon her mother and herself as they stood at his door, her spite had vanished before the sorrowful anxiety of his eyes. She had frequently declared that Mr. Thorne was no gentleman, and that she despised him, but she knew in her heart that he was a gentleman, and she was ashamed of her mother’s behavior. Lydia was capable of being magnanimous, provided the object of her magnanimity were a man. I doubt if she could have been magnanimous to a woman. But Percival Thorne was a young and handsome man, and though she did not know what his errand might be, she knew that she was not sending him to Miss Lisle. Standing before his glass, she smoothed back her hair with both hands, arranged the ribbon at her throat and admired the blue earrings and a large locket which she wore suspended from a chain. Even while she thought kindly of Mr. Thorne, and wished him well, she was examining her complexion and her hands with the eye of a critic. “I don’t believe that last stuff is a mite of good,” she said to herself; “and it’s no end of bother. I might as well pitch the bottle out of the window. It was just as well that he’d borrowed the money of some one else, but I’m glad I offered it. I wonder when he’ll come back?” And with that Lydia returned to her toasted cheese.

Percival had had a nervous fear of some hinderance on his way to the station. It was so urgent that he should go by this train that the necessity oppressed him like a nightmare. An earthquake seemed a not improbable thing. He was seriously afraid that he might lose his way during the five minutes’ walk through familiar streets. He imagined an error of half an hour or so in all the Brenthill clocks. He hardly knew what he expected, but he felt it a relief when he came to the station and found it standing in its right place, quietly awaiting him. He was the first to take a ticket, and the moment the train drew up by the platform his hand was on the door of a carriage, though before getting in he stopped a porter to inquire if this were the express. The porter answered “Yes, sir—all right,” with the half smile of superior certainty: what else could it be? Thorne took his place and waited a few minutes, which seemed an eternity. Then the engine screamed, throbbed, and with quickening speed rushed out into the night.

A man was asleep in one corner of the carriage, otherwise Percival was alone. His nervous anxiety subsided, since nothing further depended upon him till he reached town, and he sat thinking of Sissy and of that brief engagement which had already receded into a shadowy past. “It was a mistake,” he mused, “and she found it out before it was too late. But I believe her poor little heart has been aching for me, lest she wounded me too cruelly that night. It wasn’t her fault. She would have hid her fear of me, poor child! if she had been able. And she was so sorry for me in my trouble! I don’t think she could be content to go on her way and take her happiness now while my life was spoilt and miserable. Poor little Sissy! she will be glad to know—”

And then he remembered that it was to a dying Sissy that the tidings of marriage and hope must be uttered, if uttered at all. And he sat as it were in a dull dream, trying to realize how the life which in the depths of his poverty had seemed so beautiful and safe was suddenly cut short, and how Sissy at that moment lay in the darkness, waiting—waiting—waiting. The noise of the train took up his thought, and set it to a monotonous repetition of “Waiting at Ashendale! waiting at Ashendale!” If only she might live till he could reach her! He seemed to be hurrying onward, yet no nearer. His overwrought brain caught up the fancy that Death and he were side by side, racing together through the dark, at breathless, headlong speed, to Sissy, where she waited for them both.

Outside, the landscape lay dim and small, dwarfed by the presence of the night. And with the lights burning on its breast, as Sissy saw them in her half-waking visions, the express rushed southward across the level blackness of the land, beneath the arch of midnight sky.

---

Chapter LII

Quand on a trouvé ce qu’on cherchait, on n’a pas le temps de le dire: il faut mourir.

—J. Joubert.

When the gray of the early morning had changed to golden sunlight, and the first faint twittering of the birds gave place to fuller melody, Mrs. Middleton went softly to the window, opened it and fastened it back. She drew a long breath of the warm air fresh from the beanfields, and, looking down into the little orchard below, saw Harry Hardwicke, who stepped forward and looked up at her. She signed to him to wait, and a couple of minutes later she joined him.

“How is she? How has she passed the night?” he asked eagerly.

“She is no worse. She has lived through it bravely, with one thought. You were very right to send for Percival.”

Hardwicke looked down and colored as he had colored when he spoke of him before. “I’m glad,” he said. “I’m off to fetch him in about an hour and a half.”

“Nothing from Godfrey Hammond?” she asked after a pause.

“No. I’ll ask at my father’s as I go by. He will either come or we shall hear, unless he is out.”

“Of course,” the old lady answered. “Godfrey Hammond would not fail me. And now good-bye, Harry, till you bring Percival.”

She went away as swiftly and lightly as she had come a minute before, and left Hardwicke standing on the turf under the apple trees gazing up at the open casement. A June morning, sun shining, soft winds blowing, a young lover under his lady’s window: it should have been a perfect poem. And the lady within lay crushed and maimed, dying in the very heart of her June!

Hardwicke let himself out through the little wicket-gate, and went back to the Latimer Arms. He entered the bedroom without disturbing Archie, who lay with his sunburnt face on the white pillow, smiling in his sleep. He could not find it in his heart to arouse him. The boy’s lips parted, he murmured a word or two, and seemed to sink into a yet deeper slumber. Hardwicke went softly out, gave the landlady directions about breakfast, and returned, watch in hand. “I suppose I must,” he said to himself.

But he stopped short. Carroll stirred, stretched himself, his eyes were half open: evidently his waking was a pleasant one. But suddenly the unfamiliar aspect of the room attracted his attention: he looked eagerly round, a shadow swept across his face, and he turned and saw Hardwicke. “It’s true!” he said, and flung out his arms in a paroxysm of despair.

Harry walked to the window and leant out. Presently a voice behind him asked, “Have you been to the farm, Mr. Hardwicke?”

“Yes,” said Harry. “But there is no news. She passed a tolerably quiet night: there is no change.”

“I’ve been asleep,” said Archie after a pause. “I never thought I should sleep.” He looked ashamed of having done so.

“It would have been strange if you hadn’t: you were worn out.”

“My watch has run down,” the other continued. “What is the time?”

“Twenty minutes past seven. I want to speak to you, Carroll. I think you had better go home.”

“Home? To Fordborough? To Raymond?”

“No. Really home, to your own people. You can write to your cousin. You don’t want to go back to him?”

Archie shook his head. Then a sudden sense of injustice to Fothergill prompted him to say, “Ray was never hard on me before.”

“You mustn’t think about that,” Hardwicke replied. “People don’t weigh their words at such times. But, Carroll, you can do nothing here—less than nothing. You’ll be better away. Give me your address, and I’ll write any news there is. Look sharp now, and you can go into Fordborough with me and catch the up train.”

As they drove through the green lanes, along which they had passed the day before, Archie looked right and left, recalling the incidents of that earlier drive. Already he was better, possessing his sorrow with greater keenness and fulness than at first, but not so miserably possessed by it. Hardly a word was spoken till they stood on the platform and a far-off puff of white showed the coming train. Then he said, “I shall never forget your kindness, Mr. Hardwicke. If ever there’s anything I can do—”

“You’ll do it,” said Harry with a smile.

“That I will! And you’ll write?”

Hardwicke answered “Yes.” He knew too well what it was he promised to write to say a word more.

It was a relief to him when Carroll was gone and he could pace the platform and watch for the London train. He looked through the open doorway, and saw his dog-cart waiting in the road and the horse tossing his head impatiently in the sunshine. Through all his anxiety—or rather side by side with his anxiety—he was conscious of a current of interest in all manner of trivial things. He thought of the price he had given for the horse five months before, and of Latimer’s opinion of his bargain. He noticed the station-master in the distance, and remembered that some one had said he drank. He watched a row of small birds sitting on the telegraph-wires just outside the station, and all at once the London train came gliding rapidly and unexpectedly out of the cutting close by, and was there.

A hurried rush along the line of carriages, with his heart sinking lower at every step, a despairing glance round, and he perceived the man he came to meet walking off at the farther end of the platform. He came up with him as he stopped to speak to a porter.

“Ah! I am in time, then?” said Percival when he looked round in reply to Hardwicke’s hurried greeting.

“Yes, thank God! I promised to drive you over to Ashendale at once.”

Percival nodded, and took his place without a word. Not till they were fairly started on their journey did he turn to his companion. “How did it happen?” he asked.

Hardwicke gave him a brief account of the accident. He listened eagerly, and then, just saying “It’s very dreadful,” he was silent again. But it was the silence of a man intent on his errand, leaning slightly forward as if drawn by a powerful attraction, and with eyes fixed on the point where he would first see the ruins of Ashendale Priory above the trees. Hardwicke did not venture to speak to him. As the man whom Sissy Langton loved, Percival Thorne was to him the first of men, but, considered from Hardwicke’s own point of view, he was a fellow with whom he had little or nothing in common—a man who quoted poetry and saw all manner of things in pictures and ruins, who went out of his way to think about politics, and was neither Conservative nor Radical when all was done—a man who rather disliked dogs and took no interest in horses. Hardwicke did not want to speak about dogs, horses or politics then, but the consciousness of their want of sympathy was in his mind.

As they drove through the village they caught a passing glimpse of a brougham. “Ha! Brackenhill,” said Thorne, looking after it. They dashed round a corner and pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Hardwicke took no pains to spare the noise of their arrival. He knew very well that the sound of wheels would be music to Sissy’s ears.

A tall, slim figure, which even on that June morning had the air of being wrapped up, passed and repassed in the hall within. As the two young men came up the path Horace appeared in the porch. Even at that moment the change which a year had wrought in him startled Percival. He was a mere shadow. He had looked ill before, but now he looked as if he were dying.

“She will not see me,” he said to Hardwicke. His voice was that of a confirmed invalid, a mixture of complaint and helplessness. He ignored his cousin.

“She will see you now that Percival has come,” said Mrs. Middleton, advancing from the background. “She will see you together.”

And she led the way. Horace went in second, and Percival last, yet he was the first to meet the gaze of those waiting eyes. The young men stood side by side, looking down at the delicate face on the pillow. It was pale, and seemed smaller than usual in the midst of the loosened waves of hair. On one side of the forehead there was a dark mark, half wound, half bruise—a mere nothing but for its terrible suggestiveness. But the clear eyes and the gentle little mouth were unchanged. Horace said “Oh, Sissy!” and Sissy said “Percival.” He could not speak, but stooped and kissed the little hand which lay passively on the coverlet.

“Whisper,” said Sissy. He bent over her. “Have you forgiven him?” she asked.

“Yes.” The mere thought of enmity was horrible to him as he looked into Sissy’s eyes with that spectral Horace by his side.

“Are you sure? Quite?”

“Before God and you, Sissy.”

“Tell him so, Percival.”

He stood up and turned to his cousin. “Horace!” he said, and held out his hand. The other put a thin hot hand into it.—“See here, Sissy,” said Percival, “we are friends.”

“Yes, we’re friends,” Horace repeated. “Has it vexed you, Sissy? I thought you didn’t care about me. I’m sorry, dear—I’m very sorry.”

Aunt Harriet, standing by, laid her hand on his arm. She had held aloof for that long year, feeling that he was in the wrong. He had not acted as a Thorne should, and he could never be the same to her as in old days. But she had wanted her boy, nevertheless, right or wrong, and since Percival had pardoned him, and since it was partly Godfrey’s hardness that had driven him into deceit, and since he was so ill, and since—and since—she loved him, she drew his head down to her and kissed him. Horace was weak, and he had to turn his face away and wipe his eyes. But, relinquishing Percival’s hand, he held Aunt Harriet’s.

Percival stooped again, in obedience to a sign from Sissy. “Ask him to forgive me,” she said.

“He knows nothing, dear.”

“Ask him for me.”

“Horace,” said Percival, “Sissy wants your forgiveness.”

“I’ve nothing to forgive,” said Horace. “It is I who ought to ask to be forgiven. It was hard on me when first you came to Brackenhill, Percy, but it has been harder on you since. I hardly know what I said or did on that day: I thought you’d been plotting against me.”

“No, no,” said Sissy—“not he.”

“No, but I did think so.—Since then I’ve felt that, anyhow, it was not fair. I suppose I was too proud to say so, or hardly knew how, especially as the wrong is past mending. But I do ask your pardon now.”

“You have it,” said Percival. “We didn’t understand each other very well.”

“But I never blamed you, Sissy—never, for one moment. I wasn’t so bad as that. I’ve watched for you now and then in Fordborough streets, just to get a glimpse as you went by. I thought it was you who would never forgive me, because of Percival.”

“He has forgiven,” said Sissy. But her eyes still sought Percival’s.

“Look here, Horace,” he said. “There was a misunderstanding you knew nothing of, and Sissy feels that she might have cleared it up. It was cleared up at last, but I think it altered my grandfather’s manner to you for a time. If you wish to know the whole I will tell you. But since it is all over and done with, and did not really do you any harm, if you like best”—he looked steadily at Horace—“that we should forgive and forget on both sides, we will bury the past here to-day.”

“Yes, yes,” said Horace. “Sissy may have made a mistake, but she never meant me any harm, I know.”

“Don’t! don’t! Oh, Horace, I did, but I am sorry.”

“God knows I forgive you, whatever it was,” he said.

“Kiss me, Horace.”

He stooped and kissed her, as he had kissed her many a time when she was his little pet and playmate. She kissed him back again, and smiled: “Good-bye, Horry!”

Mrs. Middleton interposed. “This will be too much for her,” she said.—“Percival, she wants you, I see: be careful.” And she drew Horace gently away.

Percival sat down by the bedside. Presently Sarah came in and went to the farther end of the room, waiting in case she should be wanted. Sissy was going to speak once, but Percival stopped her: “Lie still a little while, dear: I’m not going away.”

She lay still, looking up at this Percival for whom she had watched and waited through the dreary night, and who had come to her with the morning. And he, as he sat by her side, was thinking how at that time the day before he was in the office at Brenthill. He could hardly believe that less than twenty-four hours had given him the assurance of Judith’s love and brought him to Sissy’s deathbed. He was in a strangely exalted state of mind. His face was calm as if cast in bronze, but a crowd of thoughts and feelings contended for the mastery beneath it. He had eaten nothing since the night before, and had not slept, but his excitement sustained him.

He met Sissy’s eyes and smiled tenderly. How was it that he had frightened her in old days? Could he ever have been cruel to one so delicate and clinging? Yet he must have been, since he had driven away her love. She was afraid of him: she had begged to be free. Well, the past was past, but at least no word nor look of his should frighten or grieve the poor child now.

After a time she spoke: “You have worked too hard. Isn’t it that you wanted to do something great?”

“That isn’t at all likely,” said Percival with a melancholy smile. “I’m all right, Sissy.”

“No, you are pale. You wanted to surprise us. Oh, I guessed! Godfrey Hammond didn’t tell me. I should have been glad if I could have waited to see it.”

“Don’t talk so,” he entreated. “There will be nothing to see.”

“You mustn’t work too hard—promise,” she whispered.

“No, dear, I won’t.”

“Percival, will you be good to me?”

“If I can I will indeed. What can I do?”

“I want you to have my money. It is my own, and I have nobody.” Sissy remembered the terrible mistake she had once made, and wanted an assurance from his own lips that her gift was accepted.

Percival hesitated for a moment, and even the moment’s hesitation alarmed her. It was true, as she said, that she had nobody, and her words opened a golden gateway before Judith and himself. Should he tell her of that double joy and double gratitude? He believed that she would be glad, but it seemed selfish and horrible to talk of love and marriage by that bedside. “I wish you might live to need it all yourself, dear,” he answered, and laid his hand softly on hers. The strip of embroidery caught his eye. “What’s this?” he said in blank surprise. “And your thimble! Sissy, you mustn’t bother yourself about this work now.” He would have drawn it gently away.

The fingers closed on it suddenly, and the weak voice panted: “No, Percival. It’s mine. That was before we were engaged: you spoilt my other.”

“O God!” he said. In a moment all came back to him. He remembered the summer day at Brackenhill—Sissy and he upon the terrace—the work-box upset and the thimble crushed beneath his foot. He remembered her pretty reproaches and their laughter over her enforced idleness. He remembered how he rode into Fordborough and bought that little gold thimble—the first present he ever made her. All his gifts during their brief engagement had been scrupulously returned, but this, as she had said, was given before. And she was dying with it in her hand! She had loved him from first to last.

“Percival, you will take my money?” she pleaded, fearing some incomprehensible scruple.

“For God’s sake, Sissy! I must think a moment.” He buried his face in his hands.

“Oh, you are cruel!” she whispered.

How could he think? Sissy loved him—had always loved him. It was all plain to him now. He had been blind, and he had come back to find out the truth the day after he had pledged himself to Judith Lisle!

“Don’t be unkind to me, Percival: I can’t bear it, dear.”

How could he stab her to the heart by a refusal of that which he so sorely needed? How could he tell her of his engagement? How could he keep silence, and take her money to spend it with Judith?

“Say ‘Yes,’ Percival. It is mine. Why not? why not?”

He spoke through his clasped hands: “One moment more.”

“I shall never ask you anything again,” she whispered. “Oh, Percival, be good to me!”

He raised his head and looked earnestly at her. He must be true, happen what might.

“Sissy, God knows I thank you for your goodness. I sha’n’t forget it, living or dying. If only you might be spared—”

“No, no. Say ‘Yes,’ Percival.”

“I will say ‘Yes’ if, when I have done, you wish it still. But it must be ‘Yes’ for some one besides myself. Dear, don’t give it to me to make amends in any way. You have not wronged me, Sissy. Don’t give it to me, dear, unless you give it to Judith Lisle.”

As he spoke he looked into her eyes. Their sweet entreaty gave place to a flash of pained reproach, as if they said “So soon?” Then the light in them wavered and went out. Percival sprang up. “Help! she has fainted!”

Sarah hurried from her post by the window, and the sound of quick footsteps brought back Mrs. Middleton. The young man stood aside, dismayed. “She isn’t dead?” he said in a low voice.

Aunt Harriet did not heed him. A horrible moment passed, during which he felt himself a murderer. Then Sissy moaned and turned her face a little to the wall.

“Go now: she cannot speak to you,” said Mrs. Middleton.

“I can’t. Only one more word!”

“What do you mean? What have you done? You may wait outside, and I will call you. She cannot bear any more now: do you want to kill her outright?”

He went. There was a wide window-seat in the passage, and he dropped down upon it, utterly worn out and wretched. “What have I done?” he asked himself. “What made me do it? She loved me, and I have been a brute to her. If I had been a devil, could I have tortured her more?”

Presently Mrs. Middleton came to him: “She cannot see you now, but she is better.”

He looked up at her as he sat: “Aunt Harriet, I meant it for the best. Say what you like: I was a brute, I suppose, but I thought I was doing right.”

“What do you mean?” Her tone was gentler: she detected the misery in his.

Percival took her hand and laid it on his forehead. “You can’t think I meant to be cruel to our Sissy,” he said. “You will let me speak to her?”

She softly pushed back his hair. After all, he was the man Sissy loved. “What was it?” she asked: “what did you do?”

He looked down. “I’m going to marry Miss Lisle,” he said.

She started away from him: “You told her that? God forgive you, Percival!”

“I should have been a liar if I hadn’t.”

“Couldn’t you let her die in peace? It is such a little while! Couldn’t you have waited till she was in her grave?”

“Will she see me? Just one word, Aunt Harriet.” And yet while he pleaded he did not know what the one word was that he would say. Only he felt that he must see her once more.

“Not now,” said Mrs. Middleton. “My poor darling shall not be tortured any more. Later, if she wishes it, but not now. She could not bear it.”

“But you will ask her to see me later?” he entreated. “I must see her.”

“What is she to you? She is all the world to me, and she shall be left in peace. It is all that I can do for her now. You have been cruel to her always—always. She has been breaking her heart for you: she lived through last night with the hope of your coming. Oh, Percival, God knows I wish we had never called you away from Miss Lisle!”

“Don’t say that.”

“Go back to her,” said Aunt Harriet, “and leave my darling to me. We were happy at Brackenhill till you came there.”

He sprang to his feet: “Aunt Harriet! have some mercy! You know I would die if it could make Sissy any happier.”

“And Miss Lisle?” she said.

He turned away with a groan, and, leaning against the wall, put his hand over his eyes. Mrs. Middleton hesitated a moment, but her haste to return to Sissy triumphed over any relenting feelings, and she left him, pausing only at the door to make sure of her calmness.

Noon came and passed. Sissy had spoken once to bid them take the needlework away. “I’ve done with it,” she said. Otherwise she was silent, and only looked at them with gentle, apathetic eyes when they spoke to her. Dr. Grey came and went again. On his way out he noticed Percival, looked keenly at him, but said nothing.

Henry Hardwicke’s desire to be useful had prompted him to station himself on the road a short distance from the farm, at the turning from the village. There he stopped people coming to inquire, and gave the latest intelligence. It was weary work, lounging there by the wayside, but he hoped he was serving Sissy Langton to the last. He could not even have a cigar to help to pass the time, for he had an idea that Mrs. Middleton disliked the smell of smoke. He stared at the trees and the sky, drew letters in the dust with the end of a stick, stirred up a small ants’ nest, examined the structure of a dog-rose or two and some buttercups, and compared the flavors of different kinds of leaves. He came forward as Dr. Grey went by. The doctor stopped to tell him that Miss Langton was certainly weaker. “But she may linger some hours yet,” he added; and he was going on his way when a thought seemed to strike him. “Are you staying at the farm?” he asked.

“No: they’ve enough without me. I’m at the little public-house close by.”

“Going there for some luncheon?”

Hardwicke supposed so.

“Can’t you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted.”

Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to stir. “All right!” he said at last: “then I shall bring you something to eat here.” Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that he felt better for the food he had taken.

The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting vainly for the summons which did not come.

Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. “I’ve got a kind of tea-dinner,” he said—“chops and that sort of thing. You’d better have some.” But it was of no use. So when he came back to the house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.

“Where are you going to spend the night?” asked Harry, coming up again when he had taken away the cup and plate.

“Here,” said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the square of sunset sky.

Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. “But you can’t sleep here,” he said.

“That doesn’t matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay.”

A sudden hope flashed in his eyes, for the door of Sissy’s room opened, and, closing it behind her, Mrs. Middleton came out and looked up and down the passage. But she called “Harry” in a low voice, and Percival leant back again.

Harry went. Mrs. Middleton had moved a little farther away, and stood with her back toward Percival and one hand pressed against the wall to steady herself. Her first question was an unexpected one: “Isn’t the wind getting up?” Her eyes were frightened and her voice betrayed her anxiety.

“I don’t know—not much, I think.” He was taken by surprise, and hesitated a little.

“It is: tell me the truth.”

“I am—I will,” he stammered. “I haven’t thought about it. There is a pleasant little breeze, such as often comes in the evening. I don’t really think there’s any more.”

“It isn’t rising, then?”

“Wait a minute,” said Hardwicke, and hurried off. He did not in the least understand his errand, but it was enough for him that Mrs. Middleton wanted to know. If she had asked him the depth of water in the well or the number of trees on the Priory farm, he would have rushed away with the same eagerness to satisfy her. His voice was heard in the porch, alternating with deeper and less carefully restrained tones. Then there was a sound of steps on the gravel-path. Presently he came back. Mrs. Middleton’s attitude was unchanged, except that she had drawn a little closer to the wall. But though she had never looked over her shoulder, she was uneasily conscious of the young man half sitting, half lying in the window-seat behind her.

“Greenwell says it won’t be anything,” Hardwicke announced. “The glass has been slowly going up all day yesterday and to-day, and it is rising still. He believes we have got a real change in the weather, and that it will keep fine for some time.”

“Thank God!” said Mrs. Middleton. “Do you think I’m very mad?”

“Not I,” Harry answered in a “theirs-not-to-reason-why” manner.

“A week or two ago,” she said, “my poor darling was talking about dying, as you young folks will talk, and she said she hoped she should not die in the night, when the wind was howling round the house. A bitter winter night would be worst of all, she said. It won’t be that but I fancied the wind was getting up, and it frightened me to think how one would hear it moaning in this old place. It is only a fancy, of course, but she might have thought of it again lying there.”

Hardwicke could not have put it into words, but the fancy came to him too of Sissy’s soul flying out into the windy waste of air.

“Of course it is nothing—it is nonsense,” said Mrs. Middleton. “But if it might be, as she said, when it is warm and light!—if it might be!” She stopped with a catching in her voice.

Harry, in his matter-of-fact way, offered consolation: “Dear Mrs. Middleton, the sun will rise by four, and Greenwell says there won’t be any wind.”

“Yes, yes! And she may not remember.”

“I hope you have been taking some rest,” he ventured to say after a brief silence.

“Yes. I was lying down this afternoon, and Sarah will take part of the night.” She paused, and spoke again in a still lower tone: “Couldn’t you persuade him to go away?”

“Mr. Thorne?”

She nodded: “I will not have her troubled. I asked her if she would see him again, and she said, ‘No.’ I wish he would go. What is the use of his waiting there?”

Hardwicke shrugged his shoulders: “It is useless for me to try and persuade him. He won’t stir for me.”

“I would send for him if she wanted him. But she won’t.”

“I’ll speak to him again if you like,” said Harry, “though it won’t do any good.”

Nor did it when a few minutes later the promised attempt was made. “I shall stay here,” said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later, regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival, however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at last he was left alone.

Again the night came on, with its shadows and its stillness, and the light burning steadily in the one room. To all outward seeming it was the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but Mrs. Middleton, watching by the bedside, was conscious of a difference. Life was at a lower ebb: there was less eagerness and unrest, less of hope and fear, more of a drowsy acquiescence. And Percival, who had been longed for so wearily the night before, seemed to be altogether forgotten.

Meanwhile, he kept his weary watch outside. He said to himself that he had darkened Sissy’s last day: he cursed his cruelty, and yet could he have done otherwise? He was haunted through the long hours of the night by the words which had been ever on his lips when he won her—

If she love me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve;

and he vowed that never was man so forsworn as he. Yet his one desire had been to be true. Had he not worshipped Truth? And this was the end of all.

His cruelty, too, had been worse than useless. He had lost this chance of an independence, as he had lost Brackenhill. He hated himself for thinking of money then, yet he could not help thinking of it—could not help being aware that Sissy’s entreaty to him to take her fortune was worth nothing unless a will were made, and that there had been no mention of such a thing since she spoke to him that morning. And he was so miserably poor! Of whom should he borrow the money to take him back to his drudgery at Brenthill? Well, since Sissy no longer cared for his future, it was well that he had spoken. Better poverty than treachery. Let the money go; but, oh, to see her once again and ask her to forgive him!

As the night crept onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window at his side—a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud were driven swiftly before the breeze. The wan crescent of the moon gleamed through them from time to time, showing how thin and phantom-like they were, and how they hurried on their way across the heavens. After a time the clouds and moon and midnight sky were mingled with Percival’s dreams, and toward morning he fell fast asleep.

Again Aunt Harriet saw the first gray gleam of dawn. Slowly it stole in, widening and increasing, till the candle-flame, which had been like a golden star shining out into the June night, was but a smoky yellow smear on the saffron morning. She rose and put it out. Turning, she encountered Sissy’s eyes. They looked from her to a window at the foot of the bed. “Open,” said Sissy.

Mrs. Middleton obeyed. The sound of unfastening the casement awoke Sarah, who was resting in an easy-chair. She sat up and looked round.

The breeze had died away, as Harry had foretold it would, and that day had dawned as gloriously as the two that had preceded it. A lark was soaring and singing—a mere point in the dome of blue.

Sissy lay and looked a while. Then she said, “Brackenhill?”

Aunt Harriet considered for a moment before she replied: “A little to the right, my darling.”

The dying eyes were turned a little to the right. Seven miles away, yet the old gray manor-house rose before Aunt Harriet’s eyes, warm on its southern slope, with its shaven lawns and whispering trees and the long terrace with its old stone balustrade. Perhaps Sissy saw it too.

“Darling, it is warm and light,” the old lady said at last.

Sissy smiled. Her eyes wandered from the window. “Aunt, you promised,” she whispered.

“Yes, dear—yes, I promised.”

There was a pause. Suddenly, Sissy spoke, more strongly and clearly than she had spoken for hours: “Tell Percival—my love to Miss Lisle.”

“Fetch him,” said Mrs. Middleton to Sarah, with a quick movement of her hand toward the door. As the old woman crossed the room Sissy looked after her. In less than a minute Percival came in. His dark hair was tumbled over his forehead, and his eyes, though passionately eager, were heavy with sleep. As he came forward Sissy looked up and repeated faintly, like an echo, “My love to Miss Lisle, Percival.” Her glance met his and welcomed him. But even as he said “Sissy!” her eyes closed, and when, after a brief interval, they opened again, he was conscious of a change. He spoke and took her hand, but she did not heed. “She does not know me!” he said.

Her lips moved, and Aunt Harriet stooped to catch the faint sound. It was something about “Horry—coming home from school.”

Hardly knowing what she said—only longing for one more look, one smile of recognition, one word—Aunt Harriet spoke in painfully distinct tones: “My darling, do you want Horace? Shall we send for Horace?”

No answer. There was a long pause, and then the indistinct murmur recommenced. It was still “Horry,” and “Rover,” and presently they thought she said “Langley Wood.”

“Horace used to take her there for a treat,” said Mrs. Middleton.—“Oh, Sissy, don’t you know Aunt Harriet?”

Still, from time to time, came the vague murmur of words. It was dark—the trees—she had lost—

Percival stood in silent anguish. There was to him a bitterness worse than the bitterness of death in the sound of those faint words. Sissy was before him, yet she had passed away into the years when she did not know him. He might cry to her, but she would not hear. There was no word for him: the Sissy who had loved him and pardoned him was dead. This was the child Sissy with whom Horace had played at Brackenhill.

The long bright morning seemed an eternity of blue sky, softly rustling leaves, birds singing and golden chequers of sunlight falling on walls and floor. Dr. Grey came in and stood near. The end was at hand, and yet delayed. The sun was high before the faint whispers of “Auntie,” and “Horry,” ceased altogether, and even then there was an interval during which Sissy still breathed, still lingered in the borderland between living and dying. Eagerly though they watched her, they could not tell the moment when she left them.

It was late that afternoon. Hardwicke lounged with his back against the gate of the orchard and his hands in his pockets. When he lifted his eyes from the turf on which he stood he could see the white blankness of a closed window through the boughs.

He was sorely perplexed. Not ten minutes earlier Mrs. Latimer had been there, saying, “Something should be done: why does not Mr. Thorne go to her? Or could Dr. Grey say anything if he were sent for? I’m sure it isn’t right that she should be left so.”

Mrs. Middleton was alone with her dead in that darkened room. She was perfectly calm and tearless. She only demanded to be left to herself. Mrs. Latimer would have gone in to cry and sympathize, but she was repulsed with a decision which was almost fierce. Sarah was not to disturb her. She wanted nothing. She wanted nobody. She must be by herself. She was terrible in her lonely misery.

Hardwicke felt that it could not be his place to go. Somewhere in the priory ruins was Percival Thorne, hiding his sorrow and himself: should he find him and persuade him to make the attempt? But Harry had an undefined feeling that Mrs. Middleton did not want Percival.

He stood kicking at a daisy-root in the grass, feeling himself useless, yet unwilling to desert his post, when a hand was pressed on his shoulder and he started round. Godfrey Hammond was on the other side of the gate, looking just as cool and colorless as usual.

“Thank God you’re come, Mr. Hammond!” Harry exclaimed, and began to pour out his story in such haste that it was a couple of minutes before Godfrey fully understood him. The new-comer listened attentively, asking a question or two. He brushed some imperceptible dust from his gray coat-sleeve, and sticking his glass in his eye he surveyed the farmhouse.

“I think I should like to see Mrs. Middleton at once,” he said when Hardwicke had finished.

Sarah showed him the way, but he preferred to announce himself. He knocked at the door.

“Who is there?” said the voice within.

“It is I, Godfrey Hammond: I may come in?”

“Yes.”

He opened the door and saw her sitting by the bedside, where something lay white and straight and still. She turned her head as he entered, then stood up and came a step or two to meet him. “Oh, Godfrey!” she said in a low voice, “she died this morning.”

He put his arm about her. “I would have been here before if I could,” he said.

“I knew it.” She trembled so much that he drew her nearer, supporting her as tenderly as if he were her son, though his face above her was unmoved as ever.

“She died this morning,” Mrs. Middleton repeated. She hid her face suddenly and burst into a passion of tears. “Oh, Godfrey! she was hurt so! she was hurt so! Oh my darling!”

“We could not wish her to linger in pain,” he said softly.

“No, no. But only this morning, and I feel as if I had been alone for years!”

Still, through her weeping, she clung to him. His sympathy made a faint glimmer of light in the darkness, and her sad eyes turned to it.

---

Chapter LIII

Afterward

There is little more to write. Four years, with their varying seasons, their endless procession of events, their multitude of joys and sorrows, have passed since Sissy died. Her place in the world, which seemed so blank and strange in its first vacancy, is closed up and lost in the crowding occupations of our ordinary life. She is not forgotten, but she has passed out of the light of common day into the quiet world of years gone by, where there is neither crowd nor haste, but soft shadows and shadowy sunshine, and time for every tender memory and thought. Even Aunt Harriet’s sorrow is patient and subdued, and she sees her darling’s face, with other long-lost faces, softened as in a gentle dream. She looks back to the past with no pain of longing. At seventy-eight she believes that she is nearer to those she loves by going forward yet a little farther. Nor are these last days sad, for in her loneliness Godfrey Hammond persuaded her to come to him, and she is happy in her place by his fireside. He is all that is left to her, and she is wrapped up in him. Nothing is good enough for Godfrey, and he says, with a smile, that she would make the planets revolve round him if she could. It is very possible that if she had her will she might attempt some little rearrangement of that kind. Her only fear is lest she should ever be a burden to him. But that will never be. Godfrey likes her delicate, old-fashioned ways and words, and is glad to see the kind old face which smiled on him long ago when he was a lad lighted up with gentle pleasure in his presence now. When he bids her good-night he knows that she will pray before she lies down, and he feels as if his home and he were the better for those simple prayers uttered night and morning in an unbroken sequence of more than seventy years. There is a tranquil happiness in that house, like the short, golden days of a St. Martin’s summer or the November blooming of a rose.

In the February after Sissy’s death Godfrey went to Rookleigh for a day, to be present at a wedding in the old church where the bridegroom had once lingered idly in the hot summer-time and pictured his marriage to another bride. That summer afternoon was not forgotten. Percival, standing on the uneven pavement above the Shadwells’ vault, remembered his vision of Sissy’s frightened eyes even while he uttered the words that bound him to Judith Lisle. But those words were not the less true because the thought of Sissy was hidden in his heart for ever.

Since that day Percival has spent almost all his time abroad, leading such a life as he pictured long ago, only the reality is fairer than the day-dream, because Judith shares it with him. Together they travel or linger as the fancy of the moment dictates. Percival does not own a square yard of the earth’s surface, and therefore he is at liberty to wander over it as he will. He is conscious of a curious loneliness about Judith and himself. They have no child, no near relations: it seems as if they were freed from all ordinary ties and responsibilities. His vague aspirations are even less definite than of old; yet, though his life follows a wandering and uncertain track, fair flowers of kindliness, tolerance and courtesy spring up by that wayside. Judith and he do not so much draw closer day by day as find ever new similarity of thought and feeling already existing between them. His heart turns to her as to a haven of peace; all his possibilities of happiness are in her hands; he rests in the full assurance that neither deed nor word of hers can ever jar upon him; in his darker moods he thinks of her as clear, still sunlight, and he has no desire apart from her. Yet when he looks back he doubts whether his life can hold another moment so supreme in love and anguish as that moment when he looked into Sissy’s eyes for the last time and knew himself forgiven.