This is the story that, in the dining-room of the old Beacon Street
house (now the Aldebaran Club), Judge Anthony Bracknell, of the famous
East India firm of Bracknell & Saulsbee, when the ladies had withdrawn
to the oval parlour (and Maria’s harp was throwing its gauzy web of
sound across the Common), used to relate to his grandsons, about the
year that Buonaparte marched upon Moscow.

I

“Him Venice!” said the Lascar with the big earrings; and Tony Bracknell,
leaning on the high gunwale of his father’s East Indiaman, the Hepzibah
B., saw far off, across the morning sea, a faint vision of towers and
domes dissolved in golden air.

It was a rare February day of the year 1760, and a young Tony,
newly of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantman
of old Bracknell’s fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant city
trembled into shape. Venice! The name, since childhood, had been a
magician’s wand to him. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at Salem
there hung a series of yellowing prints which Uncle Richard Saulsbee had
brought home from one of his long voyages: views of heathen mosques and
palaces, of the Grand Turk’s Seraglio, of St. Peter’s Church in Rome;
and, in a corner — the corner nearest the rack where the old flintlocks
hung — a busy merry populous scene, entitled: ST. MARK’S SQUARE IN
VENICE. This picture, from the first, had singularly taken little Tony’s
fancy. His unformulated criticism on the others was that they lacked
action. True, in the view of St. Peter’s an experienced-looking
gentleman in a full-bottomed wig was pointing out the fairly obvious
monument to a bashful companion, who had presumably not ventured to
raise his eyes to it; while, at the doors of the Seraglio, a group of
turbaned infidels observed with less hesitancy the approach of a veiled
lady on a camel. But in Venice so many things were happening at once –
more, Tony was sure, than had ever happened in Boston in a twelve-month
or in Salem in a long lifetime. For here, by their garb, were people of
every nation on earth, Chinamen, Turks, Spaniards, and many more, mixed
with a parti-coloured throng of gentry, lacqueys, chapmen, hucksters,
and tall personages in parsons’ gowns who stalked through the crowd with
an air of mastery, a string of parasites at their heels. And all these
people seemed to be diverting themselves hugely, chaffering with the
hucksters, watching the antics of trained dogs and monkeys, distributing
doles to maimed beggars or having their pockets picked by
slippery-looking fellows in black — the whole with such an air of ease
and good-humour that one felt the cut-purses to be as much a part of the
show as the tumbling acrobats and animals.

As Tony advanced in years and experience this childish mumming lost
its magic; but not so the early imaginings it had excited. For the old
picture had been but the spring-board of fancy, the first step of a
cloud-ladder leading to a land of dreams. With these dreams the name of
Venice remained associated; and all that observation or report
subsequently brought him concerning the place seemed, on a sober
warranty of fact, to confirm its claim to stand midway between reality
and illusion. There was, for instance, a slender Venice glass,
gold-powdered as with lilypollen or the dust of sunbeams, that, standing
in the corner cabinet betwixt two Lowestoft caddies, seemed, among its
lifeless neighbours, to palpitate like an impaled butterfly. There was,
farther, a gold chain of his mother’s, spun of that same sunpollen, so
thread-like, impalpable, that it slipped through the fingers like light,
yet so strong that it carried a heavy pendant which seemed held in air
as if by magic. Magic! That was the word which the thought of Venice
evoked. It was the kind of place, Tony felt, in which things elsewhere
impossible might naturally happen, in which two and two might make five,
a paradox elope with a syllogism, and a conclusion give the lie to its
own premiss. Was there ever a young heart that did not, once and again,
long to get away into such a world as that? Tony, at least, had felt the
longing from the first hour when the axioms in his horn-book had brought
home to him his heavy responsibilities as a Christian and a sinner. And
now here was his wish taking shape before him, as the distant haze of
gold shaped itself into towers and domes across the morning sea!

The Reverend Ozias Mounce, Tony’s governor and bear-leader, was
just putting a hand to the third clause of the fourth part of a sermon
on Free-Will and Predestination as the Hepzibah B.’s anchor rattled
overboard. Tony, in his haste to be ashore, would have made one plunge
with the anchor; but the Reverend Ozias, on being roused from his
lucubrations, earnestly protested against leaving his argument in
suspense. What was the trifle of an arrival at some Papistical foreign
city, where the very churches wore turbans like so many Moslem
idolators, to the important fact of Mr. Mounce’s summing up his
conclusions before the Muse of Theology took flight? He should be happy,
he said, if the tide served, to visit Venice with Mr. Bracknell the next
morning.

The next morning, ha! — Tony murmured a submissive “Yes, sir,”
winked at the subjugated captain, buckled on his sword, pressed his hat
down with a flourish, and before the Reverend Ozias had arrived at his
next deduction, was skimming merrily shoreward in the Hepzibah’s gig.

A moment more and he was in the thick of it! Here was the very
world of the old print, only suffused with sunlight and colour, and
bubbling with merry noises. What a scene it was! A square enclosed in
fantastic painted buildings, and peopled with a throng as fantastic: a
bawling, laughing, jostling, sweating mob, parti-coloured,
parti-speeched, crackling and sputtering under the hot sun like a dish
of fritters over a kitchen fire. Tony, agape, shouldered his way through
the press, aware at once that, spite of the tumult, the shrillness, the
gesticulation, there was no undercurrent of clownishness, no tendency to
horse-play, as in such crowds on market-day at home, but a kind of
facetious suavity which seemed to include everybody in the circumference
of one huge joke. In such an air the sense of strangeness soon wore off,
and Tony was beginning to feel himself vastly at home, when a lift of
the tide bore him against a droll-looking bell-ringing fellow who
carried above his head a tall metal tree hung with sherbet-glasses.

The encounter set the glasses spinning and three or four spun off
and clattered to the stones. The sherbet-seller called on all the
saints, and Tony, clapping a lordly hand to his pocket, tossed him a
ducat by mistake for a sequin. The fellow’s eyes shot out of their
orbits, and just then a personable-looking young man who had observed
the transaction stepped up to Tony and said pleasantly, in English:

“I perceive, sir, that you are not familiar with our currency.”

“Does he want more?” says Tony, very lordly; whereat the other
laughed and replied: “You have given him enough to retire from his
business and open a gaming-house over the arcade.”

Tony joined in the laugh, and this incident bridging the
preliminaries, the two young men were presently hobnobbing over a glass
of Canary in front of one of the coffee-houses about the square. Tony
counted himself lucky to have run across an English-speaking companion
who was good-natured enough to give him a clue to the labyrinth; and
when he had paid for the Canary (in the coin his friend selected) they
set out again to view the town. The Italian gentleman, who called
himself Count Rialto, appeared to have a very numerous acquaintance, and
was able to point out to Tony all the chief dignitaries of the state,
the men of ton and ladies of fashion, as well as a number of other
characters of a kind not openly mentioned in taking a census of Salem.

Tony, who was not averse from reading when nothing better offered,
had perused the “Merchant of Venice” and Mr. Otway’s fine tragedy; but
though these pieces had given him a notion that the social usages of
Venice differed from those at home, he was unprepared for the surprising
appearance and manners of the great people his friend named to him. The
gravest Senators of the Republic went in prodigious striped trousers,
short cloaks and feathered hats. One nobleman wore a ruff and doctor’s
gown, another a black velvet tunic slashed with rose-colour; while the
President of the dreaded Council of Ten was a terrible strutting fellow
with a rapier-like nose, a buff leather jerkin and a trailing scarlet
cloak that the crowd was careful not to step on.

It was all vastly diverting, and Tony would gladly have gone on
forever; but he had given his word to the captain to be at the
landing-place at sunset, and here was dusk already creeping over the
skies! Tony was a man of honour; and having pressed on the Count a
handsome damascened dagger selected from one of the goldsmiths’ shops in
a narrow street lined with such wares, he insisted on turning his face
toward the Hepzibah’s gig. The Count yielded reluctantly; but as they
came out again on the square they were caught in a great throng pouring
toward the doors of the cathedral.

“They go to Benediction,” said the Count. “A beautiful sight, with
many lights and flowers. It is a pity you cannot take a peep at it.”

Tony thought so too, and in another minute a legless beggar had
pulled back the leathern flap of the cathedral door, and they stood in a
haze of gold and perfume that seemed to rise and fall on the mighty
undulations of the organ. Here the press was as thick as without; and as
Tony flattened himself against a pillar, he heard a pretty voice at his
elbow: –”Oh, sir, oh, sir, your sword!”

He turned at sound of the broken English, and saw a girl who
matched the voice trying to disengage her dress from the tip of his
scabbard. She wore one of the voluminous black hoods which the Venetian
ladies affected, and under its projecting eaves her face spied out at
him as sweet as a nesting bird.

In the dusk their hands met over the scabbard, and as she freed
herself a shred of her lace flounce clung to Tony’s enchanted fingers.
Looking after her, he saw she was on the arm of a pompous-looking
graybeard in a long black gown and scarlet stockings, who, on perceiving
the exchange of glances between the young people, drew the lady away
with a threatening look.

The Count met Tony’s eye with a smile. “One of our Venetian
beauties,” said he; “the lovely Polixena Cador. She is thought to have
the finest eyes in Venice.”

“She spoke English,” stammered Tony.

“Oh — ah — precisely: she learned the language at the Court of
Saint James’s, where her father, the Senator, was formerly accredited as
Ambassador. She played as an infant with the royal princes of England.”

“And that was her father?”

“Assuredly: young ladies of Donna Polixena’s rank do not go abroad
save with their parents or a duenna.”

Just then a soft hand slid into Tony’s. His heart gave a foolish
bound, and he turned about half-expecting to meet again the merry eyes
under the hood; but saw instead a slender brown boy, in some kind of
fanciful page’s dress, who thrust a folded paper between his fingers and
vanished in the throng. Tony, in a tingle, glanced surreptitiously at
the Count, who appeared absorbed in his prayers. The crowd, at the
ringing of a bell, had in fact been overswept by a sudden wave of
devotion; and Tony seized the moment to step beneath a lighted shrine
with his letter.

“I am in dreadful trouble and implore your help. Polixena” — he
read; but hardly had he seized the sense of the words when a hand fell
on his shoulder, and a stern-looking man in a cocked hat, and bearing a
kind of rod or mace, pronounced a few words in Venetian.

Tony, with a start, thrust the letter in his breast, and tried to
jerk himself free; but the harder he jerked the tighter grew the other’s
grip, and the Count, presently perceiving what had happened, pushed his
way through the crowd, and whispered hastily to his companion: “For
God’s sake, make no struggle. This is serious. Keep quiet and do as I
tell you.”

Tony was no chicken-heart. He had something of a name for pugnacity
among the lads of his own age at home, and was not the man to stand in
Venice what he would have resented in Salem; but the devil of it was
that this black fellow seemed to be pointing to the letter in his
breast; and this suspicion was confirmed by the Count’s agitated whisper.

“This is one of the agents of the Ten. — For God’s sake, no
outcry.” He exchanged a word or two with the mace-bearer and again
turned to Tony. “You have been seen concealing a letter about your
person –”

“And what of that?” says Tony furiously.

“Gently, gently, my master. A letter handed to you by the page of
Donna Polixena Cador. — A black business! Oh, a very black business!
This Cador is one of the most powerful nobles in Venice — I beseech
you, not a word, sir! Let me think — deliberate –”

His hand on Tony’s shoulder, he carried on a rapid dialogue with
the potentate in the cocked hat.

“I am sorry, sir — but our young ladies of rank are as jealously
guarded as the Grand Turk’s wives, and you must be answerable for this
scandal. The best I can do is to have you taken privately to the Palazzo
Cador, instead of being brought before the Council. I have pleaded your
youth and inexperience” — Tony winced at this –”and I think the
business may still be arranged.”

Meanwhile the agent of the Ten had yielded his place to a
sharp-featured shabby-looking fellow in black, dressed somewhat like a
lawyer’s clerk, who laid a grimy hand on Tony’s arm, and with many
apologetic gestures steered him through the crowd to the doors of the
church. The Count held him by the other arm, and in this fashion they
emerged on the square, which now lay in darkness save for the many
lights twinkling under the arcade and in the windows of the gaming-rooms
above it.

Tony by this time had regained voice enough to declare that he
would go where they pleased, but that he must first say a word to the
mate of the Hepzibah, who had now been awaiting him some two hours or
more at the landing-place.

The Count repeated this to Tony’s custodian, but the latter shook
his head and rattled off a sharp denial.

“Impossible, sir,” said the Count. “I entreat you not to insist.
Any resistance will tell against you in the end.”

Tony fell silent. With a rapid eye he was measuring his chances of
escape. In wind and limb he was more than a mate for his captors, and
boyhood’s ruses were not so far behind him but he felt himself equal to
outwitting a dozen grown men; but he had the sense to see that at a cry
the crowd would close in on him. Space was what he wanted: a clear ten
yards, and he would have laughed at Doge and Council. But the throng was
thick as glue, and he walked on submissively, keeping his eye alert for
an opening. Suddenly the mob swerved aside after some new show. Tony’s
fist shot out at the black fellow’s chest, and before the latter could
right himself the young New Englander was showing a clean pair of heels
to his escort. On he sped, cleaving the crowd like a flood-tide in
Gloucester bay, diving under the first arch that caught his eye, dashing
down a lane to an unlit waterway, and plunging across a narrow hump-back
bridge which landed him in a black pocket between walls. But now his
pursuers were at his back, reinforced by the yelping mob. The walls were
too high to scale, and for all his courage Tony’s breath came short as
he paced the masonry cage in which ill-luck had landed him. Suddenly a
gate opened in one of the walls, and a slip of a servant wench looked
out and beckoned him. There was no time to weigh chances. Tony dashed
through the gate, his rescuer slammed and bolted it, and the two stood
in a narrow paved well between high houses.

II

The servant picked up a lantern and signed to Tony to follow her. They
climbed a squalid stairway of stone, felt their way along a corridor,
and entered a tall vaulted room feebly lit by an oillamp hung from the
painted ceiling. Tony discerned traces of former splendour in his
surroundings, but he had no time to examine them, for a figure started
up at his approach and in the dim light he recognized the girl who was
the cause of all his troubles.

She sprang toward him with outstretched hands, but as he advanced
her face changed and she shrank back abashed.

“This is a misunderstanding — a dreadful misunderstanding,” she
cried out in her pretty broken English. “Oh, how does it happen that you
are here?”

“Through no choice of my own, madam, I assure you!” retorted Tony,
not over-pleased by his reception.

“But why — how — how did you make this unfortunate mistake?”

“Why, madam, if you’ll excuse my candour, I think the mistake was
yours –”

“Mine?”

–”in sending me a letter –”

“You — a letter?”

–”by a simpleton of a lad, who must needs hand it to me under your
father’s very nose –”

The girl broke in on him with a cry. “What! It was you who
received my letter?” She swept round on the little maid-servant and
submerged her under a flood of Venetian. The latter volleyed back in the
same jargon, and as she did so, Tony’s astonished eye detected in her
the doubleted page who had handed him the letter in Saint Mark’s.

“What!” he cried, “the lad was this girl in disguise?”

Polixena broke off with an irrepressible smile; but her face
clouded instantly and she returned to the charge.

“This wicked, careless girl — she has ruined me, she will be my
undoing! Oh, sir, how can I make you understand? The letter was not
intended for you — it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old
friend of my mother’s, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance — oh, how
can I ever excuse myself to you?”

“No excuses are needed, madam,” said Tony, bowing; “though I am
surprised, I own, that any one should mistake me for an ambassador.”

Here a wave of mirth again overran Polixena’s face. “Oh, sir, you
must pardon my poor girl’s mistake. She heard you speaking English, and
– and — I had told her to hand the letter to the handsomest foreigner
in the church.” Tony bowed again, more profoundly. “The English
Ambassador,” Polixena added simply, “is a very handsome man.”

“I wish, madam, I were a better proxy!”

She echoed his laugh, and then clapped her hands together with a
look of anguish. “Fool that I am! How can I jest at such a moment? I am
in dreadful trouble, and now perhaps I have brought trouble on you also
– Oh, my father! I hear my father coming!” She turned pale and leaned
tremblingly upon the little servant.

Footsteps and loud voices were in fact heard outside, and a moment
later the red-stockinged Senator stalked into the room attended by
half-a-dozen of the magnificoes whom Tony had seen abroad in the square.
At sight of him, all clapped hands to their swords and burst into
furious outcries; and though their jargon was unintelligible to the
young man, their tones and gestures made their meaning unpleasantly
plain. The Senator, with a start of anger, first flung himself on the
intruder; then, snatched back by his companions, turned wrathfully on
his daughter, who, at his feet, with outstretched arms and streaming
face, pleaded her cause with all the eloquence of young distress.
Meanwhile the other nobles gesticulated vehemently among themselves, and
one, a truculent-looking personage in ruff and Spanish cape, stalked
apart, keeping a jealous eye on Tony. The latter was at his wit’s end
how to comport himself, for the lovely Polixena’s tears had quite
drowned her few words of English, and beyond guessing that the
magnificoes meant him a mischief he had no notion what they would be at.

At this point, luckily, his friend Count Rialto suddenly broke in
on the scene, and was at once assailed by all the tongues in the room.
He pulled a long face at sight of Tony, but signed to the young man to
be silent, and addressed himself earnestly to the Senator. The latter,
at first, would not draw breath to hear him; but presently, sobering, he
walked apart with the Count, and the two conversed together out of earshot.

“My dear sir,” said the Count, at length turning to Tony with a
perturbed countenance, “it is as I feared, and you are fallen into a
great misfortune.”

“A great misfortune! A great trap, I call it!” shouted Tony, whose
blood, by this time, was boiling; but as he uttered the word the
beautiful Polixena cast such a stricken look on him that he blushed up
to the forehead.

“Be careful,” said the Count, in a low tone. “Though his
Illustriousness does not speak your language, he understands a few words
of it, and –”

“So much the better!” broke in Tony; “I hope he will understand me
if I ask him in plain English what is his grievance against me.”

The Senator, at this, would have burst forth again; but the Count,
stepping between, answered quickly: “His grievance against you is that
you have been detected in secret correspondence with his daughter, the
most noble Polixena Cador, the betrothed bride of this gentleman, the
most illustrious Marquess Zanipolo –” and he waved a deferential hand
at the frowning hidalgo of the cape and ruff.

“Sir,” said Tony, “if that is the extent of my offence, it lies
with the young lady to set me free, since by her own avowal –” but here
he stopped short, for, to his surprise, Polixena shot a terrified glance
at him.

“Sir,” interposed the Count, “we are not accustomed in Venice to
take shelter behind a lady’s reputation.”

“No more are we in Salem,” retorted Tony in a white heat. “I was
merely about to remark that, by the young lady’s avowal, she has never
seen me before.”

Polixena’s eyes signalled her gratitude, and he felt he would have
died to defend her.

The Count translated his statement, and presently pursued: “His
Illustriousness observes that, in that case, his daughter’s misconduct
has been all the more reprehensible.”

“Her misconduct? Of what does he accuse her?”

“Of sending you, just now, in the church of Saint Mark’s, a letter
which you were seen to read openly and thrust in your bosom. The
incident was witnessed by his Illustriousness the Marquess Zanipolo,
who, in consequence, has already repudiated his unhappy bride.”

Tony stared contemptuously at the black Marquess. “If his
Illustriousness is so lacking in gallantry as to repudiate a lady on so
trivial a pretext, it is he and not I who should be the object of her
father’s resentment.”

“That, my dear young gentleman, is hardly for you to decide. Your
only excuse being your ignorance of our customs, it is scarcely for you
to advise us how to behave in matters of punctilio.”

It seemed to Tony as though the Count were going over to his
enemies, and the thought sharpened his retort.

“I had supposed,” said he, “that men of sense had much the same
behaviour in all countries, and that, here as elsewhere, a gentleman
would be taken at his word. I solemnly affirm that the letter I was seen
to read reflects in no way on the honour of this young lady, and has in
fact nothing to do with what you suppose.”

As he had himself no notion what the letter was about, this was as
far as he dared commit himself.

There was another brief consultation in the opposing camp, and the
Count then said: –”We all know, sir, that a gentleman is obliged to
meet certain enquiries by a denial; but you have at your command the
means of immediately clearing the lady. Will you show the letter to her
father?”

There was a perceptible pause, during which Tony, while appearing
to look straight before him, managed to deflect an interrogatory glance
toward Polixena. Her reply was a faint negative motion, accompanied by
unmistakable signs of apprehension.

“Poor girl!” he thought, “she is in a worse case than I imagined,
and whatever happens I must keep her secret.”

He turned to the Senator with a deep bow. “I am not,” said he, “in
the habit of showing my private correspondence to strangers.”

The Count interpreted these words, and Donna Polixena’s father,
dashing his hand on his hilt, broke into furious invective, while the
Marquess continued to nurse his outraged feelings aloof.

The Count shook his head funereally. “Alas, sir, it is as I feared.
This is not the first time that youth and propinquity have led to fatal
imprudence. But I need hardly, I suppose, point out the obligation
incumbent upon you as a man of honour.”

Tony stared at him haughtily, with a look which was meant for the
Marquess. “And what obligation is that?”

“To repair the wrong you have done — in other words, to marry the
lady.”

Polixena at this burst into tears, and Tony said to himself: “Why
in heaven does she not bid me show the letter?” Then he remembered that
it had no superscription, and that the words it contained, supposing
them to have been addressed to himself, were hardly of a nature to
disarm suspicion. The sense of the girl’s grave plight effaced all
thought of his own risk, but the Count’s last words struck him as so
preposterous that he could not repress a smile.

“I cannot flatter myself,” said he, “that the lady would welcome
this solution.”

The Count’s manner became increasingly ceremonious. “Such modesty,”
he said, “becomes your youth and inexperience; but even if it were
justified it would scarcely alter the case, as it is always assumed in
this country that a young lady wishes to marry the man whom her father
has selected.”

“But I understood just now,” Tony interposed, “that the gentleman
yonder was in that enviable position.”

“So he was, till circumstances obliged him to waive the privilege
in your favour.”

“He does me too much honour; but if a deep sense of my unworthiness
obliges me to decline –”

“You are still,” interrupted the Count, “labouring under a
misapprehension. Your choice in the matter is no more to be consulted
than the lady’s. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is necessary that
you should marry her within the hour.”

Tony, at this, for all his spirit, felt the blood run thin in his
veins. He looked in silence at the threatening visages between himself
and the door, stole a side-glance at the high barred windows of the
apartment, and then turned to Polixena, who had fallen sobbing at her
father’s feet.

“And if I refuse?” said he.

The Count made a significant gesture. “I am not so foolish as to
threaten a man of your mettle. But perhaps you are unaware what the
consequences would be to the lady.”

Polixena, at this, struggling to her feet, addressed a few
impassioned words to the Count and her father; but the latter put her
aside with an obdurate gesture.

The Count turned to Tony. “The lady herself pleads for you — at
what cost you do not guess — but as you see it is vain. In an hour his
Illustriousness’s chaplain will be here. Meanwhile his Illustriousness
consents to leave you in the custody of your betrothed.”

He stepped back, and the other gentlemen, bowing with deep ceremony
to Tony, stalked out one by one from the room. Tony heard the key turn
in the lock, and found himself alone with Polixena.

III

The girl had sunk into a chair, her face hidden, a picture of shame and
agony. So moving was the sight that Tony once again forgot his own
extremity in the view of her distress. He went and kneeled beside her,
drawing her hands from her face.

“Oh, don’t make me look at you!” she sobbed; but it was on his
bosom that she hid from his gaze. He held her there a breathingspace, as
he might have clasped a weeping child; then she drew back and put him
gently from her.

“What humiliation!” she lamented.

“Do you think I blame you for what has happened?”

“Alas, was it not my foolish letter that brought you to this
plight? And how nobly you defended me! How generous it was of you not to
show the letter! If my father knew I had written to the Ambassador to
save me from this dreadful marriage his anger against me would be even
greater.”

“Ah — it was that you wrote for?” cried Tony with unaccountable
relief.

“Of course — what else did you think?”

“But is it too late for the Ambassador to save you?”

“From you?” A smile flashed through her tears. “Alas, yes.” She
drew back and hid her face again, as though overcome by a fresh wave of
shame.

Tony glanced about him. “If I could wrench a bar out of that window
–” he muttered.

“Impossible! The court is guarded. You are a prisoner, alas. — Oh,
I must speak!” She sprang up and paced the room. “But indeed you can
scarce think worse of me than you do already –”

“I think ill of you?”

“Alas, you must! To be unwilling to marry the man my father has
chosen for me –”

“Such a beetle-browed lout! It would be a burning shame if you
married him.”

“Ah, you come from a free country. Here a girl is allowed no choice.”

“It is infamous, I say — infamous!”

“No, no — I ought to have resigned myself, like so many others.”

“Resigned yourself to that brute! Impossible!”

“He has a dreadful name for violence — his gondolier has told my
little maid such tales of him! But why do I talk of myself, when it is
of you I should be thinking?”

“Of me, poor child?” cried Tony, losing his head.

“Yes, and how to save you — for I can save you! But every moment
counts — and yet what I have to say is so dreadful.”

“Nothing from your lips could seem dreadful.”

“Ah, if he had had your way of speaking!”

“Well, now at least you are free of him,” said Tony, a little
wildly; but at this she stood up and bent a grave look on him.

“No, I am not free,” she said; “but you are, if you will do as I
tell you.”

Tony, at this, felt a sudden dizziness; as though, from a mad
flight through clouds and darkness, he had dropped to safety again, and
the fall had stunned him.

“What am I to do?” he said.

“Look away from me, or I can never tell you.”

He thought at first that this was a jest, but her eyes commanded
him, and reluctantly he walked away and leaned in the embrasure of the
window. She stood in the middle of the room, and as soon as his back was
turned she began to speak in a quick monotonous voice, as though she
were reciting a lesson.

“You must know that the Marquess Zanipolo, though a great noble, is
not a rich man. True, he has large estates, but he is a desperate
spendthrift and gambler, and would sell his soul for a round sum of
ready money. — If you turn round I shall not go on! — He wrangled
horribly with my father over my dowry — he wanted me to have more than
either of my sisters, though one married a Procurator and the other a
grandee of Spain. But my father is a gambler too — oh, such fortunes as
are squandered over the arcade yonder! And so — and so — don’t turn, I
implore you — oh, do you begin to see my meaning?”

She broke off sobbing, and it took all his strength to keep his
eyes from her.

“Go on,” he said.

“Will you not understand? Oh, I would say anything to save you! You
don’t know us Venetians — we’re all to be bought for a price. It is not
only the brides who are marketable — sometimes the husbands sell
themselves too. And they think you rich — my father does, and the
others — I don’t know why, unless you have shown your money too freely
– and the English are all rich, are they not? And — oh, oh — do you
understand? Oh, I can’t bear your eyes!”

She dropped into a chair, her head on her arms, and Tony in a flash
was at her side.

“My poor child, my poor Polixena!” he cried, and wept and clasped her.

“You are rich, are you not? You would promise them a ransom?” she
persisted.

“To enable you to marry the Marquess?”

“To enable you to escape from this place. Oh, I hope I may never
see your face again.” She fell to weeping once more, and he drew away
and paced the floor in a fever.

Presently she sprang up with a fresh air of resolution, and pointed
to a clock against the wall. “The hour is nearly over. It is quite true
that my father is gone to fetch his chaplain. Oh, I implore you, be
warned by me! There is no other way of escape.”

“And if I do as you say — ?”

“You are safe! You are free! I stake my life on it.”

“And you — you are married to that villain?”

“But I shall have saved you. Tell me your name, that I may say it
to myself when I am alone.”

“My name is Anthony. But you must not marry that fellow.”

“You forgive me, Anthony? You don’t think too badly of me?”

“I say you must not marry that fellow.”

She laid a trembling hand on his arm. “Time presses,” she adjured
him, “and I warn you there is no other way.”

For a moment he had a vision of his mother, sitting very upright,
on a Sunday evening, reading Dr. Tillotson’s sermons in the best parlour
at Salem; then he swung round on the girl and caught both her hands in
his. “Yes, there is,” he cried, “if you are willing. Polixena, let the
priest come!”

She shrank back from him, white and radiant. “Oh, hush, be silent!”
she said.

“I am no noble Marquess, and have no great estates,” he cried. “My
father is a plain India merchant in the colony of Massachusetts — but
if you –”

“Oh, hush, I say! I don’t know what your long words mean. But I
bless you, bless you, bless you on my knees!” And she knelt before him,
and fell to kissing his hands.

He drew her up to his breast and held her there.

“You are willing, Polixena?” he said.

“No, no!” She broke from him with outstretched hands. “I am not
willing. You mistake me. I must marry the Marquess, I tell you!”

“On my money?” he taunted her; and her burning blush rebuked him.

“Yes, on your money,” she said sadly.

“Why? Because, much as you hate him, you hate me still more?”

She was silent.

“If you hate me, why do you sacrifice yourself for me?” he persisted.

“You torture me! And I tell you the hour is past.”

“Let it pass. I’ll not accept your sacrifice. I will not lift a
finger to help another man to marry you.”

“Oh, madman, madman!” she murmured.

Tony, with crossed arms, faced her squarely, and she leaned against
the wall a few feet off from him. Her breast throbbed under its lace and
falbalas, and her eyes swam with terror and entreaty.

“Polixena, I love you!” he cried.

A blush swept over her throat and bosom, bathing her in light to
the verge of her troubled brows.

“I love you! I love you!” he repeated.

And now she was on his breast again, and all their youth was in
their lips. But her embrace was as fleeting as a bird’s poise and before
he knew it he clasped empty air, and half the room was between them.

She was holding up a little coral charm and laughing. “I took it
from your fob,” she said. “It is of no value, is it? And I shall not get
any of the money, you know.”

She continued to laugh strangely, and the rouge burned like fire in
her ashen face.

“What are you talking of?” he said.

“They never give me anything but the clothes I wear. And I shall
never see you again, Anthony!” She gave him a dreadful look. “Oh, my
poor boy, my poor love — ‘I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, POLIXENA!’”

He thought she had turned light-headed, and advanced to her with
soothing words; but she held him quietly at arm’s length, and as he
gazed he read the truth in her face.

He fell back from her, and a sob broke from him as he bowed his
head on his hands.

“Only, for God’s sake, have the money ready, or there may be foul
play here,” she said.

As she spoke there was a great tramping of steps outside and a
burst of voices on the threshold.

“It is all a lie,” she gasped out, “about my marriage, and the
Marquess, and the Ambassador, and the Senator — but not, oh, not about
your danger in this place — or about my love,” she breathed to him. And
as the key rattled in the door she laid her lips on his brow.

The key rattled, and the door swung open — but the black-cassocked
gentleman who stepped in, though a priest indeed, was no votary of
idolatrous rites, but that sound orthodox divine, the Reverend Ozias
Mounce, looking very much perturbed at his surroundings, and very much
on the alert for the Scarlet Woman. He was supported, to his evident
relief, by the captain of the Hepzibah B., and the procession was closed
by an escort of stern-looking fellows in cocked hats and small-swords,
who led between them Tony’s late friends the magnificoes, now as sorry a
looking company as the law ever landed in her net.

The captain strode briskly into the room, uttering a grunt of
satisfaction as he clapped eyes on Tony.

“So, Mr. Bracknell,” said he, “you have been seeing the Carnival
with this pack of mummers, have you? And this is where your pleasuring
has landed you? H’m — a pretty establishment, and a pretty lady at the
head of it.” He glanced about the apartment and doffed his hat with mock
ceremony to Polixena, who faced him like a princess.

“Why, my girl,” said he, amicably, “I think I saw you this morning
in the square, on the arm of the Pantaloon yonder; and as for that
Captain Spavent –” and he pointed a derisive finger at the Marquess
–”I’ve watched him drive his bully’s trade under the arcade ever since
I first dropped anchor in these waters. Well, well,” he continued, his
indignation subsiding, “all’s fair in Carnival, I suppose, but this
gentleman here is under sailing orders, and I fear we must break up your
little party.”

At this Tony saw Count Rialto step forward, looking very small and
explanatory, and uncovering obsequiously to the captain.

“I can assure you, sir,” said the Count in his best English, “that
this incident is the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding, and if
you will oblige us by dismissing these myrmidons, any of my friends here
will be happy to offer satisfaction to Mr. Bracknell and his companions.”

Mr. Mounce shrank visibly at this, and the captain burst into a
loud guffaw.

“Satisfaction?” says he. “Why, my cock, that’s very handsome of
you, considering the rope’s at your throats. But we’ll not take
advantage of your generosity, for I fear Mr. Bracknell has already
trespassed on it too long. You pack of galley-slaves, you!” he
spluttered suddenly, “decoying young innocents with that devil’s bait of
yours –” His eye fell on Polixena, and his voice softened
unaccountably. “Ah, well, we must all see the Carnival once, I suppose,”
he said. “All’s well that ends well, as the fellow says in the play; and
now, if you please, Mr. Bracknell, if you’ll take the reverend
gentleman’s arm there, we’ll bid adieu to our hospitable entertainers,
and right about face for the Hepzibah.”

I

“Oh, there is one, of course, but you’ll never know it.”

The assertion, laughingly flung out six months earlier in a bright
June garden, came back to Mary Boyne with a sharp perception of its
latent significance as she stood, in the December dusk, waiting for the
lamps to be brought into the library.

The words had been spoken by their friend Alida Stair, as they sat
at tea on her lawn at Pangbourne, in reference to the very house of
which the library in question was the central, the pivotal “feature.”
Mary Boyne and her husband, in quest of a country place in one of the
southern or southwestern counties, had, on their arrival in England,
carried their problem straight to Alida Stair, who had successfully
solved it in her own case; but it was not until they had rejected,
almost capriciously, several practical and judicious suggestions that
she threw it out: “Well, there’s Lyng, in Dorsetshire. It belongs to
Hugo’s cousins, and you can get it for a song.”

The reasons she gave for its being obtainable on these terms — its
remoteness from a station, its lack of electric light, hot-water pipes,
and other vulgar necessities — were exactly those pleading in its favor
with two romantic Americans perversely in search of the economic
drawbacks which were associated, in their tradition, with unusual
architectural felicities.

“I should never believe I was living in an old house unless I was
thoroughly uncomfortable,” Ned Boyne, the more extravagant of the two,
had jocosely insisted; “the least hint of ‘convenience’ would make me
think it had been bought out of an exhibition, with the pieces numbered,
and set up again.” And they had proceeded to enumerate, with humorous
precision, their various suspicions and exactions, refusing to believe
that the house their cousin recommended was really Tudor till they
learned it had no heating system, or that the village church was
literally in the grounds till she assured them of the deplorable
uncertainty of the watersupply.

“It’s too uncomfortable to be true!” Edward Boyne had continued to
exult as the avowal of each disadvantage was successively wrung from
her; but he had cut short his rhapsody to ask, with a sudden relapse to
distrust: “And the ghost? You’ve been concealing from us the fact that
there is no ghost!”

Mary, at the moment, had laughed with him, yet almost with her
laugh, being possessed of several sets of independent perceptions, had
noted a sudden flatness of tone in Alida’s answering hilarity.

“Oh, Dorsetshire’s full of ghosts, you know.”

“Yes, yes; but that won’t do. I don’t want to have to drive ten
miles to see somebody else’s ghost. I want one of my own on the
premises. Is there a ghost at Lyng?”

His rejoinder had made Alida laugh again, and it was then that she
had flung back tantalizingly: “Oh, there is one, of course, but you’ll
never know it.”

“Never know it?” Boyne pulled her up. “But what in the world
constitutes a ghost except the fact of its being known for one?”

“I can’t say. But that’s the story.”

“That there’s a ghost, but that nobody knows it’s a ghost?”

“Well — not till afterward, at any rate.”

“Till afterward?”

“Not till long, long afterward.”

“But if it’s once been identified as an unearthly visitant, why
hasn’t its signalement been handed down in the family? How has it
managed to preserve its incognito?”

Alida could only shake her head. “Don’t ask me. But it has.”

“And then suddenly –” Mary spoke up as if from some cavernous
depth of divination –”suddenly, long afterward, one says to one’s self,
‘That was it?‘”

She was oddly startled at the sepulchral sound with which her
question fell on the banter of the other two, and she saw the shadow of
the same surprise flit across Alida’s clear pupils. “I suppose so. One
just has to wait.”

“Oh, hang waiting!” Ned broke in. “Life’s too short for a ghost who
can only be enjoyed in retrospect. Can’t we do better than that, Mary?”

But it turned out that in the event they were not destined to, for
within three months of their conversation with Mrs. Stair they were
established at Lyng, and the life they had yearned for to the point of
planning it out in all its daily details had actually begun for them.

It was to sit, in the thick December dusk, by just such a
widehooded fireplace, under just such black oak rafters, with the sense
that beyond the mullioned panes the downs were darkening to a deeper
solitude: it was for the ultimate indulgence in such sensations that
Mary Boyne had endured for nearly fourteen years the soul-deadening
ugliness of the Middle West, and that Boyne had ground on doggedly at
his engineering till, with a suddenness that still made her blink, the
prodigious windfall of the Blue Star Mine had put them at a stroke in
possession of life and the leisure to taste it. They had never for a
moment meant their new state to be one of idleness; but they meant to
give themselves only to harmonious activities. She had her vision of
painting and gardening (against a background of gray walls), he dreamed
of the production of his long-planned book on the “Economic Basis of
Culture”; and with such absorbing work ahead no existence could be too
sequestered; they could not get far enough from the world, or plunge
deep enough into the past.

Dorsetshire had attracted them from the first by a semblance of
remoteness out of all proportion to its geographical position. But to
the Boynes it was one of the ever-recurring wonders of the whole
incredibly compressed island — a nest of counties, as they put it –
that for the production of its effects so little of a given quality went
so far: that so few miles made a distance, and so short a distance a
difference.

“It’s that,” Ned had once enthusiastically explained, “that gives
such depth to their effects, such relief to their least contrasts.
They’ve been able to lay the butter so thick on every exquisite mouthful.”

The butter had certainly been laid on thick at Lyng: the old gray
house, hidden under a shoulder of the downs, had almost all the finer
marks of commerce with a protracted past. The mere fact that it was
neither large nor exceptional made it, to the Boynes, abound the more
richly in its special sense — the sense of having been for centuries a
deep, dim reservoir of life. The life had probably not been of the most
vivid order: for long periods, no doubt, it had fallen as noiselessly
into the past as the quiet drizzle of autumn fell, hour after hour, into
the green fish-pond between the yews; but these back-waters of existence
sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion,
and Mary Boyne had felt from the first the occasional brush of an
intenser memory.

The feeling had never been stronger than on the December afternoon
when, waiting in the library for the belated lamps, she rose from her
seat and stood among the shadows of the hearth. Her husband had gone
off, after luncheon, for one of his long tramps on the downs. She had
noticed of late that he preferred to be unaccompanied on these
occasions; and, in the tried security of their personal relations, had
been driven to conclude that his book was bothering him, and that he
needed the afternoons to turn over in solitude the problems left from
the morning’s work. Certainly the book was not going as smoothly as she
had imagined it would, and the lines of perplexity between his eyes had
never been there in his engineering days. Then he had often looked
fagged to the verge of illness, but the native demon of “worry” had
never branded his brow. Yet the few pages he had so far read to her –
the introduction, and a synopsis of the opening chapter — gave
evidences of a firm possession of his subject, and a deepening
confidence in his powers.

The fact threw her into deeper perplexity, since, now that he had
done with “business” and its disturbing contingencies, the one other
possible element of anxiety was eliminated. Unless it were his health,
then? But physically he had gained since they had come to Dorsetshire,
grown robuster, ruddier, and fresher-eyed. It was only within a week
that she had felt in him the undefinable change that made her restless
in his absence, and as tongue-tied in his presence as though it were
she who had a secret to keep from him!

The thought that there was a secret somewhere between them struck
her with a sudden smart rap of wonder, and she looked about her down the
dim, long room.

“Can it be the house?” she mused.

The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be
piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of
velvet shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the dusky walls of books,
the smoke-blurred sculpture of the hooded hearth.

“Why, of course — the house is haunted!” she reflected.

The ghost — Alida’s imperceptible ghost — after figuring largely
in the banter of their first month or two at Lyng, had been gradually
discarded as too ineffectual for imaginative use. Mary had, indeed, as
became the tenant of a haunted house, made the customary inquiries among
her few rural neighbors, but, beyond a vague, “They du say so, Ma’am,”
the villagers had nothing to impart. The elusive specter had apparently
never had sufficient identity for a legend to crystallize about it, and
after a time the Boynes had laughingly set the matter down to their
profitand-loss account, agreeing that Lyng was one of the few houses
good enough in itself to dispense with supernatural enhancements.

“And I suppose, poor, ineffectual demon, that’s why it beats its
beautiful wings in vain in the void,” Mary had laughingly concluded.

“Or, rather,” Ned answered, in the same strain, “why, amid so much
that’s ghostly, it can never affirm its separate existence as the
ghost.” And thereupon their invisible housemate had finally dropped out
of their references, which were numerous enough to make them promptly
unaware of the loss.

Now, as she stood on the hearth, the subject of their earlier
curiosity revived in her with a new sense of its meaning — a sense
gradually acquired through close daily contact with the scene of the
lurking mystery. It was the house itself, of course, that possessed the
ghost-seeing faculty, that communed visually but secretly with its own
past; and if one could only get into close enough communion with the
house, one might surprise its secret, and acquire the ghost-sight on
one’s own account. Perhaps, in his long solitary hours in this very
room, where she never trespassed till the afternoon, her husband had
acquired it already, and was silently carrying the dread weight of
whatever it had revealed to him. Mary was too well-versed in the code of
the spectral world not to know that one could not talk about the ghosts
one saw: to do so was almost as great a breach of goodbreeding as to
name a lady in a club. But this explanation did not really satisfy her.
“What, after all, except for the fun of the frisson,” she reflected,
“would he really care for any of their old ghosts?” And thence she was
thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one’s
greater or less susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular
bearing on the case, since, when one did see a ghost at Lyng, one did
not know it.

“Not till long afterward,” Alida Stair had said. Well, supposing
Ned had seen one when they first came, and had known only within the
last week what had happened to him? More and more under the spell of the
hour, she threw back her searching thoughts to the early days of their
tenancy, but at first only to recall a gay confusion of unpacking,
settling, arranging of books, and calling to each other from remote
corners of the house as treasure after treasure of their habitation
revealed itself to them. It was in this particular connection that she
presently recalled a certain soft afternoon of the previous October,
when, passing from the first rapturous flurry of exploration to a
detailed inspection of the old house, she had pressed (like a novel
heroine) a panel that opened at her touch, on a narrow flight of stairs
leading to an unsuspected flat ledge of the roof — the roof which, from
below, seemed to slope away on all sides too abruptly for any but
practised feet to scale.

The view from this hidden coign was enchanting, and she had flown
down to snatch Ned from his papers and give him the freedom of her
discovery. She remembered still how, standing on the narrow ledge, he
had passed his arm about her while their gaze flew to the long, tossed
horizon-line of the downs, and then dropped contentedly back to trace
the arabesque of yew hedges about the fish-pond, and the shadow of the
cedar on the lawn.

“And now the other way,” he had said, gently turning her about
within his arm; and closely pressed to him, she had absorbed, like some
long, satisfying draft, the picture of the gray-walled court, the squat
lions on the gates, and the lime-avenue reaching up to the highroad
under the downs.

It was just then, while they gazed and held each other, that she
had felt his arm relax, and heard a sharp “Hullo!” that made her turn to
glance at him.

Distinctly, yes, she now recalled she had seen, as she glanced, a
shadow of anxiety, of perplexity, rather, fall across his face; and,
following his eyes, had beheld the figure of a man — a man in loose,
grayish clothes, as it appeared to her — who was sauntering down the
lime-avenue to the court with the tentative gait of a stranger seeking
his way. Her short-sighted eyes had given her but a blurred impression
of slightness and grayness, with something foreign, or at least unlocal,
in the cut of the figure or its garb; but her husband had apparently
seen more — seen enough to make him push past her with a sharp “Wait!”
and dash down the twisting stairs without pausing to give her a hand for
the descent.

A slight tendency to dizziness obliged her, after a provisional
clutch at the chimney against which they had been leaning, to follow him
down more cautiously; and when she had reached the attic landing she
paused again for a less definite reason, leaning over the oak banister
to strain her eyes through the silence of the brown, sun-flecked depths
below. She lingered there till, somewhere in those depths, she heard the
closing of a door; then, mechanically impelled, she went down the
shallow flights of steps till she reached the lower hall.

The front door stood open on the mild sunlight of the court, and
hall and court were empty. The library door was open, too, and after
listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she quickly crossed
the threshold, and found her husband alone, vaguely fingering the papers
on his desk.

He looked up, as if surprised at her precipitate entrance, but the
shadow of anxiety had passed from his face, leaving it even, as she
fancied, a little brighter and clearer than usual.

“What was it? Who was it?” she asked.

“Who?” he repeated, with the surprise still all on his side.

“The man we saw coming toward the house.”

He seemed honestly to reflect. “The man? Why, I thought I saw
Peters; I dashed after him to say a word about the stable-drains, but he
had disappeared before I could get down.”

“Disappeared? Why, he seemed to be walking so slowly when we saw him.”

Boyne shrugged his shoulders. “So I thought; but he must have got
up steam in the interval. What do you say to our trying a scramble up
Meldon Steep before sunset?”

That was all. At the time the occurrence had been less than
nothing, had, indeed, been immediately obliterated by the magic of their
first vision from Meldon Steep, a height which they had dreamed of
climbing ever since they had first seen its bare spine heaving itself
above the low roof of Lyng. Doubtless it was the mere fact of the other
incident’s having occurred on the very day of their ascent to Meldon
that had kept it stored away in the unconscious fold of association from
which it now emerged; for in itself it had no mark of the portentous. At
the moment there could have been nothing more natural than that Ned
should dash himself from the roof in the pursuit of dilatory tradesmen.
It was the period when they were always on the watch for one or the
other of the specialists employed about the place; always lying in wait
for them, and dashing out at them with questions, reproaches, or
reminders. And certainly in the distance the gray figure had looked like
Peters.

Yet now, as she reviewed the rapid scene, she felt her husband’s
explanation of it to have been invalidated by the look of anxiety on his
face. Why had the familiar appearance of Peters made him anxious? Why,
above all, if it was of such prime necessity to confer with that
authority on the subject of the stable-drains, had the failure to find
him produced such a look of relief? Mary could not say that any one of
these considerations had occurred to her at the time, yet, from the
promptness with which they now marshaled themselves at her summons, she
had a sudden sense that they must all along have been there, waiting
their hour.

II

Weary with her thoughts, she moved toward the window. The library was
now completely dark, and she was surprised to see how much faint light
the outer world still held.

As she peered out into it across the court, a figure shaped itself
in the tapering perspective of bare lines: it looked a mere blot of
deeper gray in the grayness, and for an instant, as it moved toward her,
her heart thumped to the thought, “It’s the ghost!”

She had time, in that long instant, to feel suddenly that the man
of whom, two months earlier, she had a brief distant vision from the
roof was now, at his predestined hour, about to reveal himself as not
having been Peters; and her spirit sank under the impending fear of the
disclosure. But almost with the next tick of the clock the ambiguous
figure, gaining substance and character, showed itself even to her weak
sight as her husband’s; and she turned away to meet him, as he entered,
with the confession of her folly.

“It’s really too absurd,” she laughed out from the threshold, “but
I never can remember!”

“Remember what?” Boyne questioned as they drew together.

“That when one sees the Lyng ghost one never knows it.”

Her hand was on his sleeve, and he kept it there, but with no
response in his gesture or in the lines of his fagged, preoccupied face.

“Did you think you’d seen it?” he asked, after an appreciable
interval.

“Why, I actually took you for it, my dear, in my mad
determination to spot it!”

“Me — just now?” His arm dropped away, and he turned from her with
a faint echo of her laugh. “Really, dearest, you’d better give it up, if
that’s the best you can do.”

“Yes, I give it up — I give it up. Have you?” she asked, turning
round on him abruptly.

The parlor-maid had entered with letters and a lamp, and the light
struck up into Boyne’s face as he bent above the tray she presented.

“Have you?” Mary perversely insisted, when the servant had
disappeared on her errand of illumination.

“Have I what?” he rejoined absently, the light bringing out the
sharp stamp of worry between his brows as he turned over the letters.

“Given up trying to see the ghost.” Her heart beat a little at the
experiment she was making.

Her husband, laying his letters aside, moved away into the shadow
of the hearth.

“I never tried,” he said, tearing open the wrapper of a newspaper.

“Well, of course,” Mary persisted, “the exasperating thing is that
there’s no use trying, since one can’t be sure till so long afterward.”

He was unfolding the paper as if he had hardly heard her; but after
a pause, during which the sheets rustled spasmodically between his
hands, he lifted his head to say abruptly, “Have you any idea how long?”

Mary had sunk into a low chair beside the fireplace. From her seat
she looked up, startled, at her husband’s profile, which was darkly
projected against the circle of lamplight.

“No; none. Have YOU?” she retorted, repeating her former phrase
with an added keenness of intention.

Boyne crumpled the paper into a bunch, and then inconsequently
turned back with it toward the lamp.

“Lord, no! I only meant,” he explained, with a faint tinge of
impatience, “is there any legend, any tradition, as to that?”

“Not that I know of,” she answered; but the impulse to add, “What
makes you ask?” was checked by the reappearance of the parlormaid with
tea and a second lamp.

With the dispersal of shadows, and the repetition of the daily
domestic office, Mary Boyne felt herself less oppressed by that sense of
something mutely imminent which had darkened her solitary afternoon. For
a few moments she gave herself silently to the details of her task, and
when she looked up from it she was struck to the point of bewilderment
by the change in her husband’s face. He had seated himself near the
farther lamp, and was absorbed in the perusal of his letters; but was it
something he had found in them, or merely the shifting of her own point
of view, that had restored his features to their normal aspect? The
longer she looked, the more definitely the change affirmed itself. The
lines of painful tension had vanished, and such traces of fatigue as
lingered were of the kind easily attributable to steady mental effort.
He glanced up, as if drawn by her gaze, and met her eyes with a smile.

“I’m dying for my tea, you know; and here’s a letter for you,” he
said.

She took the letter he held out in exchange for the cup she
proffered him, and, returning to her seat, broke the seal with the
languid gesture of the reader whose interests are all inclosed in the
circle of one cherished presence.

Her next conscious motion was that of starting to her feet, the
letter falling to them as she rose, while she held out to her husband a
long newspaper clipping.

“Ned! What’s this? What does it mean?”

He had risen at the same instant, almost as if hearing her cry
before she uttered it; and for a perceptible space of time he and she
studied each other, like adversaries watching for an advantage, across
the space between her chair and his desk.

“What’s what? You fairly made me jump!” Boyne said at length,
moving toward her with a sudden, half-exasperated laugh. The shadow of
apprehension was on his face again, not now a look of fixed foreboding,
but a shifting vigilance of lips and eyes that gave her the sense of his
feeling himself invisibly surrounded.

Her hand shook so that she could hardly give him the clipping.

“This article — from the ‘Waukesha Sentinel’ — that a man named
Elwell has brought suit against you — that there was something wrong
about the Blue Star Mine. I can’t understand more than half.”

They continued to face each other as she spoke, and to her
astonishment, she saw that her words had the almost immediate effect of
dissipating the strained watchfulness of his look.

“Oh, that!” He glanced down the printed slip, and then folded it
with the gesture of one who handles something harmless and familiar.
“What’s the matter with you this afternoon, Mary? I thought you’d got
bad news.”

She stood before him with her undefinable terror subsiding slowly
under the reassuring touch of his composure.

“You knew about this, then — it’s all right?”

“Certainly I knew about it; and it’s all right.”

“But what is it? I don’t understand. What does this man accuse
you of?”

“Oh, pretty nearly every crime in the calendar.” Boyne had tossed
the clipping down, and thrown himself comfortably into an arm-chair near
the fire. “Do you want to hear the story? It’s not particularly
interesting — just a squabble over interests in the Blue Star.”

“But who is this Elwell? I don’t know the name.”

“Oh, he’s a fellow I put into it — gave him a hand up. I told you
all about him at the time.”

“I daresay. I must have forgotten.” Vainly she strained back among
her memories. “But if you helped him, why does he make this return?”

“Oh, probably some shyster lawyer got hold of him and talked him
over. It’s all rather technical and complicated. I thought that kind of
thing bored you.”

His wife felt a sting of compunction. Theoretically, she deprecated
the American wife’s detachment from her husband’s professional
interests, but in practice she had always found it difficult to fix her
attention on Boyne’s report of the transactions in which his varied
interests involved him. Besides, she had felt from the first that, in a
community where the amenities of living could be obtained only at the
cost of efforts as arduous as her husband’s professional labors, such
brief leisure as they could command should be used as an escape from
immediate preoccupations, a flight to the life they always dreamed of
living. Once or twice, now that this new life had actually drawn its
magic circle about them, she had asked herself if she had done right;
but hitherto such conjectures had been no more than the retrospective
excursions of an active fancy. Now, for the first time, it startled her
a little to find how little she knew of the material foundation on which
her happiness was built.

She glanced again at her husband, and was reassured by the
composure of his face; yet she felt the need of more definite grounds
for her reassurance.

“But doesn’t this suit worry you? Why have you never spoken to me
about it?”

He answered both questions at once: “I didn’t speak of it at first
because it did worry me — annoyed me, rather. But it’s all ancient
history now. Your correspondent must have got hold of a back number of
the ‘Sentinel.’”

She felt a quick thrill of relief. “You mean it’s over? He’s lost
his case?”

There was a just perceptible delay in Boyne’s reply. “The suit’s
been withdrawn — that’s all.”

But she persisted, as if to exonerate herself from the inward
charge of being too easily put off. “Withdrawn because he saw he had no
chance?”

“Oh, he had no chance,” Boyne answered.

She was still struggling with a dimly felt perplexity at the back
of her thoughts.

“How long ago was it withdrawn?”

He paused, as if with a slight return of his former uncertainty.
“I’ve just had the news now; but I’ve been expecting it.”

“Just now — in one of your letters?”

“Yes; in one of my letters.”

She made no answer, and was aware only, after a short interval of
waiting, that he had risen, and strolling across the room, had placed
himself on the sofa at her side. She felt him, as he did so, pass an arm
about her, she felt his hand seek hers and clasp it, and turning slowly,
drawn by the warmth of his cheek, she met the smiling clearness of his
eyes.

“It’s all right — it’s all right?” she questioned, through the
flood of her dissolving doubts; and “I give you my word it never was
righter!” he laughed back at her, holding her close.

III

One of the strangest things she was afterward to recall out of all the
next day’s incredible strangeness was the sudden and complete recovery
of her sense of security.

It was in the air when she woke in her low-ceilinged, dusky room;
it accompanied her down-stairs to the breakfast-table, flashed out at
her from the fire, and re-duplicated itself brightly from the flanks of
the urn and the sturdy flutings of the Georgian teapot. It was as if, in
some roundabout way, all her diffused apprehensions of the previous day,
with their moment of sharp concentration about the newspaper article, –
as if this dim questioning of the future, and startled return upon the
past,-had between them liquidated the arrears of some haunting moral
obligation. If she had indeed been careless of her husband’s affairs, it
was, her new state seemed to prove, because her faith in him
instinctively justified such carelessness; and his right to her faith
had overwhelmingly affirmed itself in the very face of menace and
suspicion. She had never seen him more untroubled, more naturally and
unconsciously in possession of himself, than after the cross-examination
to which she had subjected him: it was almost as if he had been aware of
her lurking doubts, and had wanted the air cleared as much as she did.

It was as clear, thank Heaven! as the bright outer light that
surprised her almost with a touch of summer when she issued from the
house for her daily round of the gardens. She had left Boyne at his
desk, indulging herself, as she passed the library door, by a last peep
at his quiet face, where he bent, pipe in his mouth, above his papers,
and now she had her own morning’s task to perform. The task involved on
such charmed winter days almost as much delighted loitering about the
different quarters of her demesne as if spring were already at work on
shrubs and borders. There were such inexhaustible possibilities still
before her, such opportunities to bring out the latent graces of the old
place, without a single irreverent touch of alteration, that the winter
months were all too short to plan what spring and autumn executed. And
her recovered sense of safety gave, on this particular morning, a
peculiar zest to her progress through the sweet, still place. She went
first to the kitchen-garden, where the espaliered pear-trees drew
complicated patterns on the walls, and pigeons were fluttering and
preening about the silvery-slated roof of their cot. There was something
wrong about the piping of the hothouse, and she was expecting an
authority from Dorchester, who was to drive out between trains and make
a diagnosis of the boiler. But when she dipped into the damp heat of the
greenhouses, among the spiced scents and waxy pinks and reds of
old-fashioned exotics, — even the flora of Lyng was in the note!-she
learned that the great man had not arrived, and the day being too rare
to waste in an artificial atmosphere, she came out again and paced
slowly along the springy turf of the bowling-green to the gardens behind
the house. At their farther end rose a grass terrace, commanding, over
the fish-pond and the yew hedges, a view of the long house-front, with
its twisted chimney-stacks and the blue shadows of its roof angles, all
drenched in the pale gold moisture of the air.

Seen thus, across the level tracery of the yews, under the
suffused, mild light, it sent her, from its open windows and hospitably
smoking chimneys, the look of some warm human presence, of a mind slowly
ripened on a sunny wall of experience. She had never before had so deep
a sense of her intimacy with it, such a conviction that its secrets were
all beneficent, kept, as they said to children, “for one’s good,” so
complete a trust in its power to gather up her life and Ned’s into the
harmonious pattern of the long, long story it sat there weaving in the sun.

She heard steps behind her, and turned, expecting to see the
gardener, accompanied by the engineer from Dorchester. But only one
figure was in sight, that of a youngish, slightly built man, who, for
reasons she could not on the spot have specified, did not remotely
resemble her preconceived notion of an authority on hot-house boilers.
The new-comer, on seeing her, lifted his hat, and paused with the air of
a gentleman — perhaps a traveler-desirous of having it immediately
known that his intrusion is involuntary. The local fame of Lyng
occasionally attracted the more intelligent sight-seer, and Mary
half-expected to see the stranger dissemble a camera, or justify his
presence by producing it. But he made no gesture of any sort, and after
a moment she asked, in a tone responding to the courteous deprecation of
his attitude: “Is there any one you wish to see?”

“I came to see Mr. Boyne,” he replied. His intonation, rather than
his accent, was faintly American, and Mary, at the familiar note, looked
at him more closely. The brim of his soft felt hat cast a shade on his
face, which, thus obscured, wore to her short-sighted gaze a look of
seriousness, as of a person arriving “on business,” and civilly but
firmly aware of his rights.

Past experience had made Mary equally sensible to such claims; but
she was jealous of her husband’s morning hours, and doubtful of his
having given any one the right to intrude on them.

“Have you an appointment with Mr. Boyne?” she asked.

He hesitated, as if unprepared for the question.

“Not exactly an appointment,” he replied.

“Then I’m afraid, this being his working-time, that he can’t
receive you now. Will you give me a message, or come back later?”

The visitor, again lifting his hat, briefly replied that he would
come back later, and walked away, as if to regain the front of the
house. As his figure receded down the walk between the yew hedges, Mary
saw him pause and look up an instant at the peaceful house-front bathed
in faint winter sunshine; and it struck her, with a tardy touch of
compunction, that it would have been more humane to ask if he had come
from a distance, and to offer, in that case, to inquire if her husband
could receive him. But as the thought occurred to her he passed out of
sight behind a pyramidal yew, and at the same moment her attention was
distracted by the approach of the gardener, attended by the bearded
pepper-and-salt figure of the boiler-maker from Dorchester.

The encounter with this authority led to such far-reaching issues
that they resulted in his finding it expedient to ignore his train, and
beguiled Mary into spending the remainder of the morning in absorbed
confabulation among the greenhouses. She was startled to find, when the
colloquy ended, that it was nearly luncheon-time, and she half expected,
as she hurried back to the house, to see her husband coming out to meet
her. But she found no one in the court but an under-gardener raking the
gravel, and the hall, when she entered it, was so silent that she
guessed Boyne to be still at work behind the closed door of the library.

Not wishing to disturb him, she turned into the drawing-room, and
there, at her writing-table, lost herself in renewed calculations of the
outlay to which the morning’s conference had committed her. The
knowledge that she could permit herself such follies had not yet lost
its novelty; and somehow, in contrast to the vague apprehensions of the
previous days, it now seemed an element of her recovered security, of
the sense that, as Ned had said, things in general had never been
“righter.”

She was still luxuriating in a lavish play of figures when the
parlor-maid, from the threshold, roused her with a dubiously worded
inquiry as to the expediency of serving luncheon. It was one of their
jokes that Trimmle announced luncheon as if she were divulging a state
secret, and Mary, intent upon her papers, merely murmured an
absent-minded assent.

She felt Trimmle wavering expressively on the threshold as if in
rebuke of such offhand acquiescence; then her retreating steps sounded
down the passage, and Mary, pushing away her papers, crossed the hall,
and went to the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered in
her turn, disliking to disturb her husband, yet anxious that he should
not exceed his normal measure of work. As she stood there, balancing her
impulses, the esoteric Trimmle returned with the announcement of
luncheon, and Mary, thus impelled, opened the door and went into the
library.

Boyne was not at his desk, and she peered about her, expecting to
discover him at the book-shelves, somewhere down the length of the room;
but her call brought no response, and gradually it became clear to her
that he was not in the library.

She turned back to the parlor-maid.

“Mr. Boyne must be up-stairs. Please tell him that luncheon is ready.”

The parlor-maid appeared to hesitate between the obvious duty of
obeying orders and an equally obvious conviction of the foolishness of
the injunction laid upon her. The struggle resulted in her saying
doubtfully, “If you please, Madam, Mr. Boyne’s not up-stairs.”

“Not in his room? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Madam.”

Mary consulted the clock. “Where is he, then?”

“He’s gone out,” Trimmle announced, with the superior air of one
who has respectfully waited for the question that a well-ordered mind
would have first propounded.

Mary’s previous conjecture had been right, then. Boyne must have
gone to the gardens to meet her, and since she had missed him, it was
clear that he had taken the shorter way by the south door, instead of
going round to the court. She crossed the hall to the glass portal
opening directly on the yew garden, but the parlormaid, after another
moment of inner conflict, decided to bring out recklessly, “Please,
Madam, Mr. Boyne didn’t go that way.”

Mary turned back. “Where did he go? And when?”

“He went out of the front door, up the drive, Madam.” It was a
matter of principle with Trimmle never to answer more than one question
at a time.

“Up the drive? At this hour?” Mary went to the door herself, and
glanced across the court through the long tunnel of bare limes. But its
perspective was as empty as when she had scanned it on entering the house.

“Did Mr. Boyne leave no message?” she asked.

Trimmle seemed to surrender herself to a last struggle with the
forces of chaos.

“No, Madam. He just went out with the gentleman.”

“The gentleman? What gentleman?” Mary wheeled about, as if to front
this new factor.

“The gentleman who called, Madam,” said Trimmle, resignedly.

“When did a gentleman call? Do explain yourself, Trimmle!”

Only the fact that Mary was very hungry, and that she wanted to
consult her husband about the greenhouses, would have caused her to lay
so unusual an injunction on her attendant; and even now she was detached
enough to note in Trimmle’s eye the dawning defiance of the respectful
subordinate who has been pressed too hard.

“I couldn’t exactly say the hour, Madam, because I didn’t let the
gentleman in,” she replied, with the air of magnanimously ignoring the
irregularity of her mistress’s course.

“You didn’t let him in?”

“No, Madam. When the bell rang I was dressing, and Agnes –”

“Go and ask Agnes, then,” Mary interjected. Trimmle still wore her
look of patient magnanimity. “Agnes would not know, Madam, for she had
unfortunately burnt her hand in trying the wick of the new lamp from
town –” Trimmle, as Mary was aware, had always been opposed to the new
lamp –”and so Mrs. Dockett sent the kitchen-maid instead.”

Mary looked again at the clock. “It’s after two! Go and ask the
kitchen-maid if Mr. Boyne left any word.”

She went into luncheon without waiting, and Trimmle presently
brought her there the kitchen-maid’s statement that the gentleman had
called about one o’clock, that Mr. Boyne had gone out with him without
leaving any message. The kitchen-maid did not even know the caller’s
name, for he had written it on a slip of paper, which he had folded and
handed to her, with the injunction to deliver it at once to Mr. Boyne.

Mary finished her luncheon, still wondering, and when it was over,
and Trimmle had brought the coffee to the drawing-room, her wonder had
deepened to a first faint tinge of disquietude. It was unlike Boyne to
absent himself without explanation at so unwonted an hour, and the
difficulty of identifying the visitor whose summons he had apparently
obeyed made his disappearance the more unaccountable. Mary Boyne’s
experience as the wife of a busy engineer, subject to sudden calls and
compelled to keep irregular hours, had trained her to the philosophic
acceptance of surprises; but since Boyne’s withdrawal from business he
had adopted a Benedictine regularity of life. As if to make up for the
dispersed and agitated years, with their “stand-up” lunches and dinners
rattled down to the joltings of the dining-car, he cultivated the last
refinements of punctuality and monotony, discouraging his wife’s fancy
for the unexpected; and declaring that to a delicate taste there were
infinite gradations of pleasure in the fixed recurrences of habit.

Still, since no life can completely defend itself from the
unforeseen, it was evident that all Boyne’s precautions would sooner or
later prove unavailable, and Mary concluded that he had cut short a
tiresome visit by walking with his caller to the station, or at least
accompanying him for part of the way.

This conclusion relieved her from farther preoccupation, and she
went out herself to take up her conference with the gardener. Thence she
walked to the village post-office, a mile or so away; and when she
turned toward home, the early twilight was setting in.

She had taken a foot-path across the downs, and as Boyne,
meanwhile, had probably returned from the station by the highroad, there
was little likelihood of their meeting on the way. She felt sure,
however, of his having reached the house before her; so sure that, when
she entered it herself, without even pausing to inquire of Trimmle, she
made directly for the library. But the library was still empty, and with
an unwonted precision of visual memory she immediately observed that the
papers on her husband’s desk lay precisely as they had lain when she had
gone in to call him to luncheon.

Then of a sudden she was seized by a vague dread of the unknown.
She had closed the door behind her on entering, and as she stood alone
in the long, silent, shadowy room, her dread seemed to take shape and
sound, to be there audibly breathing and lurking among the shadows. Her
short-sighted eyes strained through them, halfdiscerning an actual
presence, something aloof, that watched and knew; and in the recoil from
that intangible propinquity she threw herself suddenly on the bell-rope
and gave it a desperate pull.

The long, quavering summons brought Trimmle in precipitately with a
lamp, and Mary breathed again at this sobering reappearance of the usual.

“You may bring tea if Mr. Boyne is in,” she said, to justify her ring.

“Very well, Madam. But Mr. Boyne is not in,” said Trimmle, putting
down the lamp.

“Not in? You mean he’s come back and gone out again?”

“No, Madam. He’s never been back.”

The dread stirred again, and Mary knew that now it had her fast.

“Not since he went out with — the gentleman?”

“Not since he went out with the gentleman.”

“But who was the gentleman?” Mary gasped out, with the sharp note
of some one trying to be heard through a confusion of meaningless noises.

“That I couldn’t say, Madam.” Trimmle, standing there by the lamp,
seemed suddenly to grow less round and rosy, as though eclipsed by the
same creeping shade of apprehension.

“But the kitchen-maid knows — wasn’t it the kitchen-maid who let
him in?”

“She doesn’t know either, Madam, for he wrote his name on a folded
paper.”

Mary, through her agitation, was aware that they were both
designating the unknown visitor by a vague pronoun, instead of the
conventional formula which, till then, had kept their allusions within
the bounds of custom. And at the same moment her mind caught at the
suggestion of the folded paper.

“But he must have a name! Where is the paper?”

She moved to the desk, and began to turn over the scattered
documents that littered it. The first that caught her eye was an
unfinished letter in her husband’s hand, with his pen lying across it,
as though dropped there at a sudden summons.

“My dear Parvis,” — who was Parvis? –”I have just received your
letter announcing Elwell’s death, and while I suppose there is now no
farther risk of trouble, it might be safer –”

She tossed the sheet aside, and continued her search; but no folded
paper was discoverable among the letters and pages of manuscript which
had been swept together in a promiscuous heap, as if by a hurried or a
startled gesture.

“But the kitchen-maid saw him. Send her here,” she commanded,
wondering at her dullness in not thinking sooner of so simple a solution.

Trimmle, at the behest, vanished in a flash, as if thankful to be
out of the room, and when she reappeared, conducting the agitated
underling, Mary had regained her self-possession, and had her questions
pat.

The gentleman was a stranger, yes — that she understood. But what
had he said? And, above all, what had he looked like? The first question
was easily enough answered, for the disconcerting reason that he had
said so little — had merely asked for Mr. Boyne, and, scribbling
something on a bit of paper, had requested that it should at once be
carried in to him.

“Then you don’t know what he wrote? You’re not sure it was his
name?”

The kitchen-maid was not sure, but supposed it was, since he had
written it in answer to her inquiry as to whom she should announce.

“And when you carried the paper in to Mr. Boyne, what did he say?”

The kitchen-maid did not think that Mr. Boyne had said anything,
but she could not be sure, for just as she had handed him the paper and
he was opening it, she had become aware that the visitor had followed
her into the library, and she had slipped out, leaving the two gentlemen
together.

“But then, if you left them in the library, how do you know that
they went out of the house?”

This question plunged the witness into momentary inarticulateness,
from which she was rescued by Trimmle, who, by means of ingenious
circumlocutions, elicited the statement that before she could cross the
hall to the back passage she had heard the gentlemen behind her, and had
seen them go out of the front door together.

“Then, if you saw the gentleman twice, you must be able to tell me
what he looked like.”

But with this final challenge to her powers of expression it became
clear that the limit of the kitchen-maid’s endurance had been reached.
The obligation of going to the front door to “show in” a visitor was in
itself so subversive of the fundamental order of things that it had
thrown her faculties into hopeless disarray, and she could only stammer
out, after various panting efforts at evocation, “His hat, mum, was
different-like, as you might say –”

“Different? How different?” Mary flashed out at her, her own mind,
in the same instant, leaping back to an image left on it that morning,
but temporarily lost under layers of subsequent impressions.

“His hat had a wide brim, you mean? and his face was pale — a
youngish face?” Mary pressed her, with a white-lipped intensity of
interrogation. But if the kitchen-maid found any adequate answer to this
challenge, it was swept away for her listener down the rushing current
of her own convictions. The stranger — the stranger in the garden! Why
had Mary not thought of him before? She needed no one now to tell her
that it was he who had called for her husband and gone away with him.
But who was he, and why had Boyne obeyed his call?

IV

It leaped out at her suddenly, like a grin out of the dark, that they
had often called England so little –”such a confoundedly hard place to
get lost in.”

A confoundedly hard place to get lost in! That had been her
husband’s phrase. And now, with the whole machinery of official
investigation sweeping its flash-lights from shore to shore, and across
the dividing straits; now, with Boyne’s name blazing from the walls of
every town and village, his portrait (how that wrung her!) hawked up and
down the country like the image of a hunted criminal; now the little
compact, populous island, so policed, surveyed, and administered,
revealed itself as a Sphinx-like guardian of abysmal mysteries, staring
back into his wife’s anguished eyes as if with the malicious joy of
knowing something they would never know!

In the fortnight since Boyne’s disappearance there had been no word
of him, no trace of his movements. Even the usual misleading reports
that raise expectancy in tortured bosoms had been few and fleeting. No
one but the bewildered kitchen-maid had seen him leave the house, and no
one else had seen “the gentleman” who accompanied him. All inquiries in
the neighborhood failed to elicit the memory of a stranger’s presence
that day in the neighborhood of Lyng. And no one had met Edward Boyne,
either alone or in company, in any of the neighboring villages, or on
the road across the downs, or at either of the local railway-stations.
The sunny English noon had swallowed him as completely as if he had gone
out into Cimmerian night.

Mary, while every external means of investigation was working at
its highest pressure, had ransacked her husband’s papers for any trace
of antecedent complications, of entanglements or obligations unknown to
her, that might throw a faint ray into the darkness. But if any such had
existed in the background of Boyne’s life, they had disappeared as
completely as the slip of paper on which the visitor had written his
name. There remained no possible thread of guidance except — if it were
indeed an exception — the letter which Boyne had apparently been in the
act of writing when he received his mysterious summons. That letter,
read and reread by his wife, and submitted by her to the police, yielded
little enough for conjecture to feed on.

“I have just heard of Elwell’s death, and while I suppose there is
now no farther risk of trouble, it might be safer –” That was all. The
“risk of trouble” was easily explained by the newspaper clipping which
had apprised Mary of the suit brought against her husband by one of his
associates in the Blue Star enterprise. The only new information
conveyed in the letter was the fact of its showing Boyne, when he wrote
it, to be still apprehensive of the results of the suit, though he had
assured his wife that it had been withdrawn, and though the letter
itself declared that the plaintiff was dead. It took several weeks of
exhaustive cabling to fix the identity of the “Parvis” to whom the
fragmentary communication was addressed, but even after these inquiries
had shown him to be a Waukesha lawyer, no new facts concerning the
Elwell suit were elicited. He appeared to have had no direct concern in
it, but to have been conversant with the facts merely as an
acquaintance, and possible intermediary; and he declared himself unable
to divine with what object Boyne intended to seek his assistance.

This negative information, sole fruit of the first fortnight’s
feverish search, was not increased by a jot during the slow weeks that
followed. Mary knew that the investigations were still being carried on,
but she had a vague sense of their gradually slackening, as the actual
march of time seemed to slacken. It was as though the days, flying
horror-struck from the shrouded image of the one inscrutable day, gained
assurance as the distance lengthened, till at last they fell back into
their normal gait. And so with the human imaginations at work on the
dark event. No doubt it occupied them still, but week by week and hour
by hour it grew less absorbing, took up less space, was slowly but
inevitably crowded out of the foreground of consciousness by the new
problems perpetually bubbling up from the vaporous caldron of human
experience.

Even Mary Boyne’s consciousness gradually felt the same lowering of
velocity. It still swayed with the incessant oscillations of conjecture;
but they were slower, more rhythmical in their beat. There were moments
of overwhelming lassitude when, like the victim of some poison which
leaves the brain clear, but holds the body motionless, she saw herself
domesticated with the Horror, accepting its perpetual presence as one of
the fixed conditions of life.

These moments lengthened into hours and days, till she passed into
a phase of stolid acquiescence. She watched the familiar routine of life
with the incurious eye of a savage on whom the meaningless processes of
civilization make but the faintest impression. She had come to regard
herself as part of the routine, a spoke of the wheel, revolving with its
motion; she felt almost like the furniture of the room in which she sat,
an insensate object to be dusted and pushed about with the chairs and
tables. And this deepening apathy held her fast at Lyng, in spite of the
urgent entreaties of friends and the usual medical recommendation of
“change.” Her friends supposed that her refusal to move was inspired by
the belief that her husband would one day return to the spot from which
he had vanished, and a beautiful legend grew up about this imaginary
state of waiting. But in reality she had no such belief: the depths of
anguish inclosing her were no longer lighted by flashes of hope. She was
sure that Boyne would never come back, that he had gone out of her sight
as completely as if Death itself had waited that day on the threshold.
She had even renounced, one by one, the various theories as to his
disappearance which had been advanced by the press, the police, and her
own agonized imagination. In sheer lassitude her mind turned from these
alternatives of horror, and sank back into the blank fact that he was gone.

No, she would never know what had become of him — no one would
ever know. But the house knew; the library in which she spent her
long, lonely evenings knew. For it was here that the last scene had been
enacted, here that the stranger had come, and spoken the word which had
caused Boyne to rise and follow him. The floor she trod had felt his
tread; the books on the shelves had seen his face; and there were
moments when the intense consciousness of the old, dusky walls seemed
about to break out into some audible revelation of their secret. But the
revelation never came, and she knew it would never come. Lyng was not
one of the garrulous old houses that betray the secrets intrusted to
them. Its very legend proved that it had always been the mute
accomplice, the incorruptible custodian of the mysteries it had
surprised. And Mary Boyne, sitting face to face with its portentous
silence, felt the futility of seeking to break it by any human means.

V

“I don’t say it wasn’t straight, yet don’t say it was straight. It
was business.”

Mary, at the words, lifted her head with a start, and looked
intently at the speaker.

When, half an hour before, a card with “Mr. Parvis” on it had been
brought up to her, she had been immediately aware that the name had been
a part of her consciousness ever since she had read it at the head of
Boyne’s unfinished letter. In the library she had found awaiting her a
small neutral-tinted man with a bald head and gold eye-glasses, and it
sent a strange tremor through her to know that this was the person to
whom her husband’s last known thought had been directed.

Parvis, civilly, but without vain preamble, — in the manner of a
man who has his watch in his hand, — had set forth the object of his
visit. He had “run over” to England on business, and finding himself in
the neighborhood of Dorchester, had not wished to leave it without
paying his respects to Mrs. Boyne; without asking her, if the occasion
offered, what she meant to do about Bob Elwell’s family.

The words touched the spring of some obscure dread in Mary’s bosom.
Did her visitor, after all, know what Boyne had meant by his unfinished
phrase? She asked for an elucidation of his question, and noticed at
once that he seemed surprised at her continued ignorance of the subject.
Was it possible that she really knew as little as she said?

“I know nothing — you must tell me,” she faltered o

I

Hubert Granice, pacing the length of his pleasant lamp-lit library,
paused to compare his watch with the clock on the chimney-piece.

Three minutes to eight.

In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal
firm of Ascham and Pettilow, would have his punctual hand on the
door-bell of the flat. It was a comfort to reflect that Ascham was so
punctual — the suspense was beginning to make his host nervous. And the
sound of the door-bell would be the beginning of the end — after that
there’d be no going back, by God — no going back!

Granice resumed his pacing. Each time he reached the end of the
room opposite the door he caught his reflection in the Florentine mirror
above the fine old walnut credence he had picked up at Dijon — saw
himself spare, quick-moving, carefully brushed and dressed, but
furrowed, gray about the temples, with a stoop which he corrected by a
spasmodic straightening of the shoulders whenever a glass confronted
him: a tired middle-aged man, baffled, beaten, worn out.

As he summed himself up thus for the third or fourth time the door
opened and he turned with a thrill of relief to greet his guest. But it
was only the man-servant who entered, advancing silently over the mossy
surface of the old Turkey rug.

“Mr. Ascham telephones, sir, to say he’s unexpectedly detained and
can’t be here till eight-thirty.”

Granice made a curt gesture of annoyance. It was becoming harder
and harder for him to control these reflexes. He turned on his heel,
tossing to the servant over his shoulder: “Very good. Put off dinner.”

Down his spine he felt the man’s injured stare. Mr. Granice had
always been so mild-spoken to his people — no doubt the odd change in
his manner had already been noticed and discussed below stairs. And very
likely they suspected the cause. He stood drumming on the writing-table
till he heard the servant go out; then he threw himself into a chair,
propping his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his locked hands.

Another half hour alone with it!

He wondered irritably what could have detained his guest. Some
professional matter, no doubt — the punctilious lawyer would have
allowed nothing less to interfere with a dinner engagement, more
especially since Granice, in his note, had said: “I shall want a little
business chat afterward.”

But what professional matter could have come up at that
unprofessional hour? Perhaps some other soul in misery had called on the
lawyer; and, after all, Granice’s note had given no hint of his own
need! No doubt Ascham thought he merely wanted to make another change in
his will. Since he had come into his little property, ten years earlier,
Granice had been perpetually tinkering with his will.

Suddenly another thought pulled him up, sending a flush to his
sallow temples. He remembered a word he had tossed to the lawyer some
six weeks earlier, at the Century Club. “Yes — my play’s as good as
taken. I shall be calling on you soon to go over the contract. Those
theatrical chaps are so slippery — I won’t trust anybody but you to tie
the knot for me!” That, of course, was what Ascham would think he was
wanted for. Granice, at the idea, broke into an audible laugh — a queer
stage-laugh, like the cackle of a baffled villain in a melodrama. The
absurdity, the unnaturalness of the sound abashed him, and he compressed
his lips angrily. Would he take to soliloquy next?

He lowered his arms and pulled open the upper drawer of the
writing-table. In the right-hand corner lay a thick manuscript, bound in
paper folders, and tied with a string beneath which a letter had been
slipped. Next to the manuscript was a small revolver. Granice stared a
moment at these oddly associated objects; then he took the letter from
under the string and slowly began to open it. He had known he should do
so from the moment his hand touched the drawer. Whenever his eye fell on
that letter some relentless force compelled him to re-read it.

It was dated about four weeks back, under the letter-head of “The
Diversity Theatre.”

“My Dear Mr. Granice:

“I have given the matter my best consideration for the last month,
and it’s no use — the play won’t do. I have talked it over with Miss
Melrose — and you know there isn’t a gamer artist on our stage — and I
regret to tell you she feels just as I do about it. It isn’t the poetry
that scares her — or me either. We both want to do all we can to help
along the poetic drama — we believe the public’s ready for it, and
we’re willing to take a big financial risk in order to be the first to
give them what they want. But we don’t believe they could be made to
want this. The fact is, there isn’t enough drama in your play to the
allowance of poetry — the thing drags all through. You’ve got a big
idea, but it’s not out of swaddling clothes.

“If this was your first play I’d say: try again. But it has been
just the same with all the others you’ve shown me. And you remember the
result of ‘The Lee Shore,’ where you carried all the expenses of
production yourself, and we couldn’t fill the theatre for a week. Yet
‘The Lee Shore’ was a modern problem play — much easier to swing than
blank verse. It isn’t as if you hadn’t tried all kinds –”

Granice folded the letter and put it carefully back into the
envelope. Why on earth was he re-reading it, when he knew every phrase
in it by heart, when for a month past he had seen it, night after night,
stand out in letters of flame against the darkness of his sleepless lids?

“It has been just the same with all the other you’ve shown me.”

That was the way they dismissed ten years of passionate unremitting
work!

“You remember the result of ‘The Lee Shore’.”

Good God — as if he were likely to forget it! He re-lived it all
now in a drowning flash: the persistent rejection of the play, his
sudden resolve to put it on at his own cost, to spend ten thousand
dollars of his inheritance on testing his chance of success — the fever
of preparation, the dry-mouthed agony of the “first night,” the flat
fall, the stupid press, his secret rush to Europe to escape the
condolence of his friends!

“It isn’t as if you hadn’t tried all kinds.”

No — he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the
light curtain-raiser, the short sharp drama, the bourgeoisrealistic and
the lyrical-romantic — finally deciding that he would no longer
“prostitute his talent” to win popularity, but would impose on the
public his own theory of art in the form of five acts of blank verse.
Yes, he had offered them everything — and always with the same result.

Ten years of it — ten years of dogged work and unrelieved failure.
The ten years from forty to fifty — the best ten years of his life! And
if one counted the years before, the silent years of dreams,
assimilation, preparation — then call it half a man’s life-time: half a
man’s life-time thrown away!

And what was he to do with the remaining half? Well, he had settled
that, thank God! He turned and glanced anxiously at the clock. Ten
minutes past eight — only ten minutes had been consumed in that stormy
rush through his whole past! And he must wait another twenty minutes for
Ascham. It was one of the worst symptoms of his case that, in proportion
as he had grown to shrink from human company, he dreaded more and more
to be alone. . . . But why the devil was he waiting for Ascham? Why
didn’t he cut the knot himself? Since he was so unutterably sick of the
whole business, why did he have to call in an outsider to rid him of
this nightmare of living?

He opened the drawer again and laid his hand on the revolver. It
was a small slim ivory toy — just the instrument for a tired sufferer
to give himself a “hypodermic” with. Granice raised it slowly in one
hand, while with the other he felt under the thin hair at the back of
his head, between the ear and the nape. He knew just where to place the
muzzle: he had once got a young surgeon to show him. And as he found the
spot, and lifted the revolver to it, the inevitable phenomenon occurred.
The hand that held the weapon began to shake, the tremor communicated
itself to his arm, his heart gave a wild leap which sent up a wave of
deadly nausea to his throat, he smelt the powder, he sickened at the
crash of the bullet through his skull, and a sweat of fear broke out
over his forehead and ran down his quivering face. . .

He laid away the revolver with an oath and, pulling out a
cologne-scented handkerchief, passed it tremulously over his brow and
temples. It was no use — he knew he could never do it in that way. His
attempts at self-destruction were as futile as his snatches at fame! He
couldn’t make himself a real life, and he couldn’t get rid of the life
he had. And that was why he had sent for Ascham to help him. . .

The lawyer, over the Camembert and Burgundy, began to excuse
himself for his delay.

“I didn’t like to say anything while your man was about — but the
fact is, I was sent for on a rather unusual matter –”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Granice cheerfully. He was beginning to
feel the usual reaction that food and company produced. It was not any
recovered pleasure in life that he felt, but only a deeper withdrawal
into himself. It was easier to go on automatically with the social
gestures than to uncover to any human eye the abyss within him.

“My dear fellow, it’s sacrilege to keep a dinner waiting –
especially the production of an artist like yours.” Mr. Ascham sipped
his Burgundy luxuriously. “But the fact is, Mrs. Ashgrove sent for me.”

Granice raised his head with a quick movement of surprise. For a
moment he was shaken out of his self-absorption.

“Mrs. Ashgrove?”

Ascham smiled. “I thought you’d be interested; I know your passion
for causes celebres. And this promises to be one. Of course it’s out of
our line entirely — we never touch criminal cases. But she wanted to
consult me as a friend. Ashgrove was a distant connection of my wife’s.
And, by Jove, it is a queer case!” The servant re-entered, and Ascham
snapped his lips shut.

Would the gentlemen have their coffee in the dining-room?

“No — serve it in the library,” said Granice, rising. He led the
way back to the curtained confidential room. He was really curious to
hear what Ascham had to tell him.

While the coffee and cigars were being served he fidgeted about the
library, glancing at his letters — the usual meaningless notes and
bills — and picking up the evening paper. As he unfolded it a headline
caught his eye.

“ROSE MELROSE WANTS TO PLAY POETRY.

“THINKS SHE HAS FOUND HER POET.”

He read on with a thumping heart — found the name of a young
author he had barely heard of, saw the title of a play, a “poetic
drama,” dance before his eyes, and dropped the paper, sick, disgusted.
It was true, then — she was “game” — it was not the manner but the
matter she mistrusted!

Granice turned to the servant, who seemed to be purposely
lingering. “I shan’t need you this evening, Flint. I’ll lock up myself.”

He fancied the man’s acquiescence implied surprise. What was going
on, Flint seemed to wonder, that Mr. Granice should want him out of the
way? Probably he would find a pretext for coming back to see. Granice
suddenly felt himself enveloped in a network of espionage.

As the door closed he threw himself into an armchair and leaned
forward to take a light from Ascham’s cigar.

“Tell me about Mrs. Ashgrove,” he said, seeming to himself to speak
stiffly, as if his lips were cracked.

“Mrs. Ashgrove? Well, there’s not much to tell.”

“And you couldn’t if there were?” Granice smiled.

“Probably not. As a matter of fact, she wanted my advice about her
choice of counsel. There was nothing especially confidential in our talk.”

“And what’s your impression, now you’ve seen her?”

“My impression is, very distinctly, that nothing will ever be
known.”

“Ah — ?” Granice murmured, puffing at his cigar.

“I’m more and more convinced that whoever poisoned Ashgrove knew
his business, and will consequently never be found out. That’s a capital
cigar you’ve given me.”

“You like it? I get them over from Cuba.” Granice examined his own
reflectively. “Then you believe in the theory that the clever criminals
never are caught?”

“Of course I do. Look about you — look back for the last dozen
years — none of the big murder problems are ever solved.” The lawyer
ruminated behind his blue cloud. “Why, take the instance in your own
family: I’d forgotten I had an illustration at hand! Take old Joseph
Lenman’s murder — do you suppose that will ever be explained?”

As the words dropped from Ascham’s lips his host looked slowly
about the library, and every object in it stared back at him with a
stale unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room!
It was as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his
throat slowly; then he turned his head to the lawyer and said: “I could
explain the Lenman murder myself.”

Ascham’s eye kindled: he shared Granice’s interest in criminal cases.

“By Jove! You’ve had a theory all this time? It’s odd you never
mentioned it. Go ahead and tell me. There are certain features in the
Lenman case not unlike this Ashgrove affair, and your idea may be a help.”

Granice paused and his eye reverted instinctively to the table
drawer in which the revolver and the manuscript lay side by side. What
if he were to try another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he looked at the
notes and bills on the table, and the horror of taking up again the
lifeless routine of life — of performing the same automatic gestures
another day — displaced his fleeting vision.

“I haven’t a theory. I know who murdered Joseph Lenman.”

Ascham settled himself comfortably in his chair, prepared for
enjoyment.

“You know? Well, who did?” he laughed.

“I did,” said Granice, rising.

He stood before Ascham, and the lawyer lay back staring up at him.
Then he broke into another laugh.

“Why, this is glorious! You murdered him, did you? To inherit his
money, I suppose? Better and better! Go on, my boy! Unbosom yourself!
Tell me all about it! Confession is good for the soul.”

Granice waited till the lawyer had shaken the last peal of laughter
from his throat; then he repeated doggedly: “I murdered him.”

The two men looked at each other for a long moment, and this time
Ascham did not laugh.

“Granice!”

“I murdered him — to get his money, as you say.”

There was another pause, and Granice, with a vague underlying sense
of amusement, saw his guest’s look change from pleasantry to apprehension.

“What’s the joke, my dear fellow? I fail to see.”

“It’s not a joke. It’s the truth. I murdered him.” He had spoken
painfully at first, as if there were a knot in his throat; but each time
he repeated the words he found they were easier to say.

Ascham laid down his extinct cigar.

“What’s the matter? Aren’t you well? What on earth are you driving
at?”

“I’m perfectly well. But I murdered my cousin, Joseph Lenman, and I
want it known that I murdered him.”

“You want it known?”

“Yes. That’s why I sent for you. I’m sick of living, and when I try
to kill myself I funk it.” He spoke quite naturally now, as if the knot
in his throat had been untied.

“Good Lord — good Lord,” the lawyer gasped.

“But I suppose,” Granice continued, “there’s no doubt this would be
murder in the first degree? I’m sure of the chair if I own up?”

Ascham drew a long breath; then he said slowly: “Sit down, Granice.
Let’s talk.”

II

Granice told his story simply, connectedly.

He began by a quick survey of his early years — the years of
drudgery and privation. His father, a charming man who could never say
“no,” had so signally failed to say it on certain essential occasions
that when he died he left an illegitimate family and a mortgaged estate.
His lawful kin found themselves hanging over a gulf of debt, and young
Granice, to support his mother and sister, had to leave Harvard and bury
himself at eighteen in a broker’s office. He loathed his work, and he
was always poor, always worried and in ill-health. A few years later his
mother died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on
his hands. His own health gave out, and he had to go away for six
months, and work harder than ever when he came back. He had no knack for
business, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of
commerce. He wanted to travel and write — those were his inmost
longings. And as the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without
making any more money, or acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair
possessed him. He tried writing, but he always came home from the office
so tired that his brain could not work. For half the year he did not
reach his dim up-town flat till after dark, and could only “brush up”
for dinner, and afterward lie on the lounge with his pipe, while his
sister droned through the evening paper. Sometimes he spent an evening
at the theatre; or he dined out, or, more rarely, strayed off with an
acquaintance or two in quest of what is known as “pleasure.” And in
summer, when he and Kate went to the sea-side for a month, he dozed
through the days in utter weariness. Once he fell in love with a
charming girl — but what had he to offer her, in God’s name? She seemed
to like him, and in common decency he had to drop out of the running.
Apparently no one replaced him, for she never married, but grew
stoutish, grayish, philanthropic — yet how sweet she had been when he
had first kissed her! One more wasted life, he reflected. . .

But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have
sold his soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was in him
– he could not remember when it had not been his deepest-seated
instinct. As the years passed it became a morbid, a relentless obsession
– yet with every year the material conditions were more and more
against it. He felt himself growing middle-aged, and he watched the
reflection of the process in his sister’s wasted face. At eighteen she
had been pretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour,
trivial, insignificant — she had missed her chance of life. And she had
no resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply for the primitive
functions she had been denied the chance to fulfil! It exasperated him
to think of it — and to reflect that even now a little travel, a little
health, a little money, might transform her, make her young and
desirable. . . The chief fruit of his experience was that there is no
such fixed state as age or youth-there is only health as against
sickness, wealth as against poverty; and age or youth as the outcome of
the lot one draws.

At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to lean
against the mantel-piece, looking down at Ascham, who had not moved from
his seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated attention.

“Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near old
Lenman — my mother’s cousin, as you know. Some of the family always
mounted guard over him — generally a niece or so. But that year they
were all scattered, and one of the nieces offered to lend us her cottage
if we’d relieve her of duty for two months. It was a nuisance for me, of
course, for Wrenfield is two hours from town; but my mother, who was a
slave to family observances, had always been good to the old man, so it
was natural we should be called on — and there was the saving of rent
and the good air for Kate. So we went.

“You never knew Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an amoeba
or some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan’s microscope. He
was large, undifferentiated, inert — since I could remember him he had
done nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh, and
cultivate melons — that was his hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-door melons
– his were grown under glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield — his
big kitchen-garden was surrounded by blinking battalions of
green-houses. And in nearly all of them melons were grown — early
melons and late, French, English, domestic — dwarf melons and monsters:
every shape, colour and variety. They were petted and nursed like
children — a staff of trained attendants waited on them. I’m not sure
they didn’t have a doctor to take their temperature — at any rate the
place was full of thermometers. And they didn’t sprawl on the ground
like ordinary melons; they were trained against the glass like
nectarines, and each melon hung in a net which sustained its weight and
left it free on all sides to the sun and air. . .

“It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one
of his own melons — the pale-fleshed English kind. His life, apathetic
and motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable warm ventilated
atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries. The cardinal rule of his
existence was not to let himself be ‘worried.’ . . . I remember his
advising me to try it myself, one day when I spoke to him about Kate’s
bad health, and her need of a change. ‘I never let myself worry,’ he
said complacently. ‘It’s the worst thing for the liver — and you look
to me as if you had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You’ll make
yourself happier and others too.’ And all he had to do was to write a
cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!

“The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us
already. The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us and
the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate’s –
and one could picture him taking extra care of it for the joke of
keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight of our hungry eyes was
a tonic to him.

“Well, I tried to see if I couldn’t reach him through his vanity. I
flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he was
taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he was
driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through them,
prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio. When
he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded of a
hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost. And the
resemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn’t eat as much as a
mouthful of his melons — had lived for years on buttermilk and toast.
‘But, after all, it’s my only hobby — why shouldn’t I indulge it?’ he
said sentimentally. As if I’d ever been able to indulge any of mine! On
the keep of those melons Kate and I could have lived like gods. . .

“One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to
drag herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend the
afternoon with cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September afternoon
– a day to lie under a Roman stone-pine, with one’s eyes on the sky,
and let the cosmic harmonies rush through one. Perhaps the vision was
suggested by the fact that, as I entered cousin Joseph’s hideous black
walnut library, I passed one of the under-gardeners, a handsome
full-throated Italian, who dashed out in such a hurry that he nearly
knocked me down. I remember thinking it queer that the fellow, whom I
had often seen about the melon-houses, did not bow to me, or even seem
to see me.

“Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows,
his fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number of
the Churchman at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat melon –
the fattest melon I’d ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured the
ecstasy of contemplation from which I must have roused him, and
congratulated myself on finding him in such a mood, since I had made up
my mind to ask him a favour. Then I noticed that his face, instead of
looking as calm as an eggshell, was distorted and whimpering — and
without stopping to greet me he pointed passionately to the melon.

“‘Look at it, look at it — did you ever see such a beauty? Such
firmness — roundness — such delicious smoothness to the touch?’ It was
as if he had said ’she’ instead of ‘it,’ and when he put out his senile
hand and touched the melon I positively had to look the other way.

“Then he told me what had happened. The Italian under-gardener, who
had been specially recommended for the melon-houses — though it was
against my cousin’s principles to employ a Papist — had been assigned
to the care of the monster: for it had revealed itself, early in its
existence, as destined to become a monster, to surpass its plumpest,
pulpiest sisters, carry off prizes at agricultural shows, and be
photographed and celebrated in every gardening paper in the land. The
Italian had done well — seemed to have a sense of responsibility. And
that very morning he had been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be
shown next day at the county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to
gaze on its blonde virginity. But in picking it, what had the damned
scoundrelly Jesuit done but drop it — drop it crash on the sharp spout
of a watering-pot, so that it received a deep gash in its firm pale
rotundity, and was henceforth but a bruised, ruined, fallen melon?

“The old man’s rage was fearful in its impotence — he shook,
spluttered and strangled with it. He had just had the Italian up and had
sacked him on the spot, without wages or character — had threatened to
have him arrested if he was ever caught prowling about Wrenfield. ‘By
God, and I’ll do it — I’ll write to Washington — I’ll have the pauper
scoundrel deported! I’ll show him what money can do!’ As likely as not
there was some murderous Black-hand business under it — it would be
found that the fellow was a member of a ‘gang.’ Those Italians would
murder you for a quarter. He meant to have the police look into it. . .
And then he grew frightened at his own excitement. ‘But I must calm
myself,’ he said. He took his temperature, rang for his drops, and
turned to the Churchman. He had been reading an article on Nestorianism
when the melon was brought in. He asked me to go on with it, and I read
to him for an hour, in the dim close room, with a fat fly buzzing
stealthily about the fallen melon.

“All the while one phrase of the old man’s buzzed in my brain like
the fly about the melon. ‘I’ll show him what money can do!‘ Good
heaven! If I could but show the old man! If I could make him see his
power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I
tried to tell him something about my situation and Kate’s — spoke of my
ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make
myself a name — I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. ‘I can
guarantee to repay you, sir-I’ve a half-written play as security. . .’

“I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as
smooth as an egg-shell again — his eyes peered over his fat cheeks like
sentinels over a slippery rampart.

“‘A half-written play — a play of yours as security?’ He looked
at me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of insanity.
‘Do you understand anything of business?’ he enquired mildly. I laughed
and answered: ‘No, not much.’

“He leaned back with closed lids. ‘All this excitement has been too
much for me,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll prepare for my nap.’
And I stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the Italian.”

Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to the
tray set out with decanters and soda-water. He poured himself a tall
glass of soda-water, emptied it, and glanced at Ascham’s dead cigar.

“Better light another,” he suggested.

The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He
told of his mounting obsession — how the murderous impulse had waked in
him on the instant of his cousin’s refusal, and he had muttered to
himself: “By God, if you won’t, I’ll make you.” He spoke more tranquilly
as the narrative proceeded, as though his rage had died down once the
resolve to act on it was taken. He applied his whole mind to the
question of how the old man was to be “disposed of.” Suddenly he
remembered the outcry: “Those Italians will murder you for a quarter!”
But no definite project presented itself: he simply waited for an
inspiration.

Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the
incident of the melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept them
informed of the old man’s condition. One day, about three weeks later,
Granice, on getting home, found Kate excited over a report from
Wrenfield. The Italian had been there again — had somehow slipped into
the house, made his way up to the library, and “used threatening
language.” The house-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping, the whites of
his eyes showing “something awful.” The doctor was sent for, and the
attack warded off; and the police had ordered the Italian from the
neighbourhood.

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had “nerves,” and lost
his taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a colleague,
and the consultation amused and excited the old man-he became once more
an important figure. The medical men reassured the family — too
completely! — and to the patient they recommended a more varied diet:
advised him to take whatever “tempted him.” And so one day, tremulously,
prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up with
ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and a
hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead. . .

“But you remember the circumstances,” Granice went on; “how
suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the police
had given him he had been seen hanging about the house since ‘the
scene.’ It was said that he had tender relations with the kitchen-maid,
and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when they looked round to ask
him for the explanation he was gone — gone clean out of sight. He had
been ‘warned’ to leave Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to
heart that no one ever laid eyes on him again.”

Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer’s,
and he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking about the
familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and each
strange insistent object seemed craning forward from its place to hear him.

“It was I who put the stuff in the melon,” he said. “And I don’t
want you to think I’m sorry for it. This isn’t ‘remorse,’ understand.
I’m glad the old skin-flint is dead — I’m glad the others have their
money. But mine’s no use to me any more. My sister married miserably,
and died. And I’ve never had what I wanted.”

Ascham continued to stare; then he said: “What on earth was your
object, then?”

“Why, to get what I wanted — what I fancied was in reach! I
wanted change, rest, life, for both of us — wanted, above all, for
myself, the chance to write! I travelled, got back my health, and came
home to tie myself up to my work. And I’ve slaved at it steadily for ten
years without reward — without the most distant hope of success! Nobody
will look at my stuff. And now I’m fifty, and I’m beaten, and I know
it.” His chin dropped forward on his breast. “I want to chuck the whole
business,” he ended.

III

It was after midnight when Ascham left.

His hand on Granice’s shoulder, as he turned to go –”District
Attorney be hanged; see a doctor, see a doctor!” he had cried; and so,
with an exaggerated laugh, had pulled on his coat and departed.

Granice turned back into the library. It had never occurred to him
that Ascham would not believe his story. For three hours he had
explained, elucidated, patiently and painfully gone over every detail –
but without once breaking down the iron incredulity of the lawyer’s eye.

At first Ascham had feigned to be convinced — but that, as Granice
now perceived, was simply to get him to expose himself, to entrap him
into contradictions. And when the attempt failed, when Granice
triumphantly met and refuted each disconcerting question, the lawyer
dropped the mask suddenly, and said with a goodhumoured laugh: “By Jove,
Granice you’ll write a successful play yet. The way you’ve worked this
all out is a marvel.”

Granice swung about furiously — that last sneer about the play
inflamed him. Was all the world in a conspiracy to deride his failure?

“I did it, I did it,” he muttered sullenly, his rage spending
itself against the impenetrable surface of the other’s mockery; and
Ascham answered with a smile: “Ever read any of those books on
hallucination? I’ve got a fairly good medico-legal library. I could send
you one or two if you like. . .”

Left alone, Granice cowered down in the chair before his
writingtable. He understood that Ascham thought him off his head.

“Good God — what if they all think me crazy?”

The horror of it broke out over him in a cold sweat — he sat there
and shook, his eyes hidden in his icy hands. But gradually, as he began
to rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw again how
incontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any criminal lawyer would
believe him.

“That’s the trouble — Ascham’s not a criminal lawyer. And then
he’s a friend. What a fool I was to talk to a friend! Even if he did
believe me, he’d never let me see it — his instinct would be to cover
the whole thing up. . . But in that case — if he did believe me — he
might think it a kindness to get me shut up in an asylum. . .” Granice
began to tremble again. “Good heaven! If he should bring in an expert –
one of those damned alienists! Ascham and Pettilow can do anything –
their word always goes. If Ascham drops a hint that I’d better be shut
up, I’ll be in a strait-jacket by to-morrow! And he’d do it from the
kindest motives — be quite right to do it if he thinks I’m a murderer!”

The vision froze him to his chair. He pressed his fists to his
bursting temples and tried to think. For the first time he hoped that
Ascham had not believed his story.

“But he did — he did! I can see it now — I noticed what a queer
eye he cocked at me. Good God, what shall I do — what shall I do?”

He started up and looked at the clock. Half-past one. What if
Ascham should think the case urgent, rout out an alienist, and come back
with him? Granice jumped to his feet, and his sudden gesture brushed the
morning paper from the table. Mechanically he stooped to pick it up, and
the movement started a new train of association.

He sat down again, and reached for the telephone book in the rack
by his chair.

“Give me three-o-ten . . . yes.”

The new idea in his mind had revived his flagging energy. He would
act — act at once. It was only by thus planning ahead, committing
himself to some unavoidable line of conduct, that he could pull himself
through the meaningless days. Each time he reached a fresh decision it
was like coming out of a foggy weltering sea into a calm harbour with
lights. One of the queerest phases of his long agony was the intense
relief produced by these momentary lulls.

“That the office of the Investigator? Yes? Give me Mr. Denver,
please. . . Hallo, Denver. . . Yes, Hubert Granice. . . . Just caught
you? Going straight home? Can I come and see you . . . yes, now . . .
have a talk? It’s rather urgent . . . yes, might give you some
first-rate ‘copy.’ . . . All right!” He hung up the receiver with a
laugh. It had been a happy thought to call up the editor of the
Investigator — Robert Denver was the very man he needed. . .

Granice put out the lights in the library — it was odd how the
automatic gestures persisted! — went into the hall, put on his hat and
overcoat, and let himself out of the flat. In the hall, a sleepy
elevator boy blinked at him and then dropped his head on his folded
arms. Granice passed out into the street. At the corner of Fifth Avenue
he hailed a crawling cab, and called out an up-town address. The long
thoroughfare stretched before him, dim and deserted, like an ancient
avenue of tombs. But from Denver’s house a friendly beam fell on the
pavement; and as Granice sprang from his cab the editor’s electric
turned the corner.

The two men grasped hands, and Denver, feeling for his latch-key,
ushered Granice into the brightly-lit hall.

“Disturb me? Not a bit. You might have, at ten to-morrow morning .
. . but this is my liveliest hour . . . you know my habits of old.”

Granice had known Robert Denver for fifteen years — watched his
rise through all the stages of journalism to the Olympian pinnacle of
the Investigator’s editorial office. In the thickset man with grizzling
hair there were few traces left of the hungry-eyed young reporter who,
on his way home in the small hours, used to “bob in” on Granice, while
the latter sat grinding at his plays. Denver had to pass Granice’s flat
on the way to his own, and it became a habit, if he saw a light in the
window, and Granice’s shadow against the blind, to go in, smoke a pipe,
and discuss the universe.

“Well — this is like old times — a good old habit reversed.” The
editor smote his visitor genially on the shoulder. “Reminds me of the
nights when I used to rout you out. . . How’s the play, by the way?
There is a play, I suppose? It’s as safe to ask you that as to say to
some men: ‘How’s the baby?’”

Denver laughed good-naturedly, and Granice thought how thick and
heavy he had grown. It was evident, even to Granice’s tortured nerves,
that the words had not been uttered in malice — and the fact gave him a
new measure of his insignificance. Denver did not even know that he had
been a failure! The fact hurt more than Ascham’s irony.

“Come in — come in.” The editor led the way into a small cheerful
room, where there were cigars and decanters. He pushed an armchair
toward his visitor, and dropped into another with a comfortable groan.

“Now, then — help yourself. And let’s hear all about it.”

He beamed at Granice over his pipe-bowl, and the latter, lighting
his cigar, said to himself: “Success makes men comfortable, but it makes
them stupid.”

Then he turned, and began: “Denver, I want to tell you –”

The clock ticked rhythmically on the mantel-piece. The little room
was gradually filled with drifting blue layers of smoke, and through
them the editor’s face came and went like the moon through a moving sky.
Once the hour struck — then the rhythmical ticking began again. The
atmosphere grew denser and heavier, and beads of perspiration began to
roll from Granice’s forehead.

“Do you mind if I open the window?”

“No. It is stuffy in here. Wait — I’ll do it myself.” Denver
pushed down the upper sash, and returned to his chair. “Well — go on,”
he said, filling another pipe. His composure exasperated Granice.

“There’s no use in my going on if you don’t believe me.”

The editor remained unmoved. “Who says I don’t believe you? And how
can I tell till you’ve finished?”

Granice went on, ashamed of his outburst. “It was simple enough, as
you’ll see. From the day the old man said to me, ‘Those Italians would
murder you for a quarter,’ I dropped everything and just worked at my
scheme. It struck me at once that I must find a way of getting to
Wrenfield and back in a night — and that led to the idea of a motor. A
motor — that never occurred to you? You wonder where I got the money, I
suppose. Well, I had a thousand or so put by, and I nosed around till I
found what I wanted — a second-hand racer. I knew how to drive a car,
and I tried the thing and found it was all right. Times were bad, and I
bought it for my price, and stored it away. Where? Why, in one of those
no-questions-asked garages where they keep motors that are not for
family use. I had a lively cousin who had put me up to that dodge, and I
looked about till I found a queer hole where they took in my car like a
baby in a foundling asylum. . . Then I practiced running to Wrenfield
and back in a night. I knew the way pretty well, for I’d done it often
with the same lively cousin — and in the small hours, too. The distance
is over ninety miles, and on the third trial I did it under two hours.
But my arms were so lame that I could hardly get dressed the next
morning. . .

“Well, then came the report about the Italian’s threats, and I saw
I must act at once. . . I meant to break into the old man’s room, shoot
him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I thought I could manage
it. Then we heard that he was ill — that there’d been a consultation.
Perhaps the fates were going to do it for me! Good Lord, if that could
only be! . . .”

Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not
seem to have cooled the room.

“Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I came
up from my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that he was to
try a bit of melon. The house-keeper had just telephoned her — all
Wrenfield was in a flutter. The doctor himself had picked out the melon,
one of the little French ones that are hardly bigger than a large tomato
– and the patient was to eat it at his breakfast the next morning.

“In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But I
knew the ways of the house — I was sure the melon would be brought in
over night and put in the pantry ice-box. If there were only one melon
in the ice-box I could be fairly sure it was the one I wanted. Melons
didn’t lie around loose in that house-every one was known, numbered,
catalogued. The old man was beset by the dread that the servants would
eat them, and he took a hundred mean precautions to prevent it. Yes, I
felt pretty sure of my melon . . . and poisoning was much safer than
shooting. It would have been the devil and all to get into the old man’s
bedroom without his rousing the house; but I ought to be able to break
into the pantry without much trouble.

“It was a cloudy night, too — everything served me. I dined
quietly, and sat down at my desk. Kate had one of her usual headaches,
and went to bed early. As soon as she was gone I slipped out. I had got
together a sort of disguise — red beard and queer-looking ulster. I
shoved them into a bag, and went round to the garage. There was no one
there but a half-drunken machinist whom I’d never seen before. That
served me, too. They were always changing machinists, and this new
fellow didn’t even bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a
very easygoing place. . .

“Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon as
I was out of Harlem. Dark as it was, I could trust myself to strike a
sharp pace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second and got into the
beard and ulster. Then away again — it was just eleven-thirty when I
got to Wrenfield.

“I left the car in a dark lane behind the Lenman place, and slipped
through the kitchen-garden. The melon-houses winked at me through the
dark — I remember thinking that they knew what I wanted to know. . . .
By the stable a dog came out growling — but he nosed me out, jumped on
me, and went back. . . The house was as dark as the grave. I knew
everybody went to bed by ten. But there might be a prowling servant –
the kitchen-maid might have come down to let in her Italian. I had to
risk that, of course. I crept around by the back door and hid in the
shrubbery. Then I listened. It was all as silent as death. I crossed
over to the house, pried open the pantry window and climbed in. I had a
little electric lamp in my pocket, and shielding it with my cap I groped
my way to the ice-box, opened it — and there was the little French
melon . . . only one.

“I stopped to listen — I was quite cool. Then I pulled out my
bottle of stuff and my syringe, and gave each section of the melon a
hypodermic. It was all done inside of three minutes — at ten minutes to
twelve I was back in the car. I got out of the lane as quietly as I
could, struck a back road that skirted the village, and let the car out
as soon as I was beyond the last houses. I only stopped once on the way
in, to drop the beard and ulster into a pond. I had a big stone ready to
weight them with and they went down plump, like a dead body — and at
two o’clock I was back at my desk.”

Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at his
listener; but Denver’s face remained inscrutable.

At length he said: “Why did you want to tell me this?”

The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he had
explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if his motive
had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much less weight
with Denver. Both were successful men, and success does not understand
the subtle agony of failure. Granice cast about for another reason.

“Why, I — the thing haunts me . . . remorse, I suppose you’d call
it. . .”

Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe.

“Remorse? Bosh!” he said energetically.

Granice’s heart sank. “You don’t believe in — remorse?”

“Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your talking
of remorse proves to me that you’re not the man to have planned and put
through such a job.”

Granice groaned. “Well — I lied to you about remorse. I’ve never
felt any.”

Denver’s lips tightened sceptically about his freshly-filled pipe.
“What was your motive, then? You must have had one.”

“I’ll tell you –” And Granice began again to rehearse the story of
his failure, of his loathing for life. “Don’t say you don’t believe me
this time . . . that this isn’t a real reason!” he stammered out
piteously as he ended.

Denver meditated. “No, I won’t say that. I’ve seen too many queer
things. There’s always a reason for wanting to get out of life — the
wonder is that we find so many for staying in!” Granice’s heart grew
light. “Then you do believe me?” he faltered.

“Believe that you’re sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven’t the
nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes — that’s easy enough, too. But all
that doesn’t make you a murderer — though I don’t say it proves you
could never have been one.”

“I have been one, Denver — I swear to you.”

“Perhaps.” He meditated. “Just tell me one or two things.”

“Oh, go ahead. You won’t stump me!” Granice heard himself say with
a laugh.

“Well — how did you make all those trial trips without exciting
your sister’s curiosity? I knew your night habits pretty well at that
time, remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn’t the change in your
ways surprise her?”

“No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several
visits in the country soon after we came back from Wrenfield, and was
only in town for a night or two before — before I did the job.”

“And that night she went to bed early with a headache?”

“Yes — blinding. She didn’t know anything when she had that kind.
And her room was at the back of the flat.”

Denver again meditated. “And when you got back — she didn’t hear
you? You got in without her knowing it?”

“Yes. I went straight to my work — took it up at the word where
I’d left off — Why, Denver, don’t you remember?” Granice suddenly,
passionately interjected.

“Remember — ?”

“Yes; how you found me — when you looked in that morning, between
two and three . . . your usual hour . . .?”

“Yes,” the editor nodded.

Granice gave a short laugh. “In my old coat — with my pipe: looked
as if I’d been working all night, didn’t I? Well, I hadn’t been in my
chair ten minutes!”

Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. “I didn’t
know whether you remembered that.”

“What?”

“My coming in that particular night — or morning.”

Granice swung round in his chair. “Why, man alive! That’s why I’m
here now. Because it was you who spoke for me at the inquest, when they
looked round to see what all the old man’s heirs had been doing that
night — you who testified to having dropped in and found me at my desk
as usual. . . . I thought that would appeal to your journalistic sense
if nothing else would!”

Denver smiled. “Oh, my journalistic sense is still susceptible
enough — and the idea’s picturesque, I grant you: asking the man who
proved your alibi to establish your guilt.”

“That’s it — that’s it!” Granice’s laugh had a ring of triumph.

“Well, but how about the other chap’s testimony — I mean that
young doctor: what was his name? Ned Ranney. Don’t you remember my
testifying that I’d met him at the elevated station, and told him I was
on my way to smoke a pipe with you, and his saying: ‘All right; you’ll
find him in. I passed the house two hours ago, and saw his shadow
against the blind, as usual.’ And the lady with the toothache in the
flat across the way: she corroborated his statement, you remember.”

“Yes; I remember.”

Well, then?”

“Simple enough. Before starting I rigged up a kind of mannikin with
old coats and a cushion — something to cast a shadow on the blind. All
you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in the small hours — I
counted on that, and knew you’d take any vague outline as mine.”

“Simple enough, as you say. But the woman with the toothache saw
the shadow move — you remember she said she saw you sink forward, as if
you’d fallen asleep.”

“Yes; and she was right. It did move. I suppose some extra-heavy
dray must have jolted by the flimsy building — at any rate, something
gave my mannikin a jar, and when I came back he had sunk forward, half
over the table.”

There was a long silence between the two men. Granice, with a
throbbing heart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at any
rate, did not sneer and flout him. After all, journalism gave a deeper
insight than the law into the fantastic possibilities of life, prepared
one better to allow for the incalculableness of human impulses.

“Well?” Granice faltered out.

Denver stood up with a shrug. “Look here, man — what’s wrong with
you? Make a clean breast of it! Nerves gone to smash? I’d like to take
you to see a chap I know — an ex-prize-fighter — who’s a wonder at
pulling fellows in your state out of their hole –”

“Oh, oh –” Granice broke in. He stood up also, and the two men
eyed each other. “You don’t believe me, then?”

“This yarn — how can I? There wasn’t a flaw in your alibi.”

“But haven’t I filled it full of them now?”

Denver shook his head. “I might think so if I hadn’t happened to
know that you wanted to. There’s the hitch, don’t you see?”

Granice groaned. “No, I didn’t. You mean my wanting to be found
guilty — ?”

“Of course! If somebody else had accused you, the story might have
been worth looking into. As it is, a child could have invented it. It
doesn’t do much credit to your ingenuity.”

Granice turned sullenly toward the door. What was the use of
arguing? But on the threshold a sudden impulse drew him back. “Look
here, Denver — I daresay you’re right. But will you do just one thing
to prove it? Put my statement in the Investigator, just as I’ve made it.
Ridicule it as much as you like. Only give the other fellows a chance at
it — men who don’t know anything about me. Set them talking and looking
about. I don’t care a damn whether you believe me — what I want is to
convince the Grand Jury! I oughtn’t to have come to a man who knows
me-your cursed incredulity is infectious. I don’t put my case well,
because I know in advance it’s discredited, and I almost end by not
believing it myself. That’s why I can’t convince YOU. It’s a vicious
circle.” He laid a hand on Denver’s arm. “Send a stenographer, and put
my statement in the paper.

But Denver did not warm to the idea. “My dear fellow, you seem to
forget that all the evidence was pretty thoroughly sifted at the time,
every possible clue followed up. The public would have been ready enough
then to believe that you murdered old Lenman-you or anybody else. All
they wanted was a murderer — the most improbable would have served. But
your alibi was too confoundedly complete. And nothing you’ve told me has
shaken it.” Denver laid his cool hand over the other’s burning fingers.
“Look here, old fellow, go home and work up a better case — then come
in and submit it to the Investigator.”

IV

The perspiration was rolling off Granice’s forehead. Every few minutes
he had to draw out his handkerchief and wipe the moisture from his
haggard face.

For an hour and a half he had been talking steadily, putting his
case to the District Attorney. Luckily he had a speaking acquaintance
with Allonby, and had obtained, without much difficulty, a private
audience on the very day after his talk with Robert Denver. In the
interval between he had hurried home, got out of his evening clothes,
and gone forth again at once into the dreary dawn. His fear of Ascham
and the alienist made it impossible for him to remain in his rooms. And
it seemed to him that the only way of averting that hideous peril was by
establishing, in some sane impartial mind, the proof of his guilt. Even
if he had not been so incurably sick of life, the electric chair seemed
now the only alternative to the straitjacket.

As he paused to wipe his forehead he saw the District Attorney
glance at his watch. The gesture was significant, and Granice lifted an
appealing hand. “I don’t expect you to believe me now-but can’t you put
me under arrest, and have the thing looked into?”

Allonby smiled faintly under his heavy grayish moustache. He had a
ruddy face, full and jovial, in which his keen professional eyes seemed
to keep watch over impulses not strictly professional.

“Well, I don’t know that we need lock you up just yet. But of
course I’m bound to look into your statement –”

Granice rose with an exquisite sense of relief. Surely Allonby
wouldn’t have said that if he hadn’t believed him!

“That’s all right. Then I needn’t detain you. I can be found at any
time at my apartment.” He gave the address.

The District Attorney smiled again, more openly. “What do you say
to leaving it for an hour or two this evening? I’m giving a little
supper at Rector’s — quiet, little affair, you understand: just Miss
Melrose — I think you know her — and a friend or two; and if you’ll
join us. . .”

Granice stumbled out of the office without knowing what reply he
had made.

He waited for four days — four days of concentrated horror. During
the first twenty-four hours the fear of Ascham’s alienist dogged him;
and as that subsided, it was replaced by the exasperating sense that his
avowal had made no impression on the District Attorney. Evidently, if he
had been going to look into the case, Allonby would have been heard from
before now. . . . And that mocking invitation to supper showed clearly
enough how little the story had impressed him!

Granice was overcome by the futility of any farther attempt to
inculpate himself. He was chained to life — a “prisoner of
consciousness.” Where was it he had read the phrase? Well, he was
learning what it meant. In the glaring night-hours, when his brain
seemed ablaze, he was visited by a sense of his fixed identity, of his
irreducible, inexpugnable selfness , keener, more insidious, more
unescapable, than any

It was on an impulse hardly needing the arguments he found himself
advancing in its favor, that Thursdale, on his way to the club, turned
as usual into Mrs. Vervain’s street.

The “as usual” was his own qualification of the act; a convenient
way of bridging the interval — in days and other sequences — that lay
between this visit and the last. It was characteristic of him that he
instinctively excluded his call two days earlier, with Ruth Gaynor, from
the list of his visits to Mrs. Vervain: the special conditions attending
it had made it no more like a visit to Mrs. Vervain than an engraved
dinner invitation is like a personal letter. Yet it was to talk over his
call with Miss Gaynor that he was now returning to the scene of that
episode; and it was because Mrs. Vervain could be trusted to handle the
talking over as skilfully as the interview itself that, at her corner,
he had felt the dilettante’s irresistible craving to take a last look at
a work of art that was passing out of his possession.

On the whole, he knew no one better fitted to deal with the
unexpected than Mrs. Vervain. She excelled in the rare art of taking
things for granted, and Thursdale felt a pardonable pride in the thought
that she owed her excellence to his training. Early in his career
Thursdale had made the mistake, at the outset of his acquaintance with a
lady, of telling her that he loved her and exacting the same avowal in
return. The latter part of that episode had been like the long walk back
from a picnic, when one has to carry all the crockery one has finished
using: it was the last time Thursdale ever allowed himself to be
encumbered with the debris of a feast. He thus incidentally learned that
the privilege of loving her is one of the least favors that a charming
woman can accord; and in seeking to avoid the pitfalls of sentiment he
had developed a science of evasion in which the woman of the moment
became a mere implement of the game. He owed a great deal of delicate
enjoyment to the cultivation of this art. The perils from which it had
been his refuge became naively harmless: was it possible that he who now
took his easy way along the levels had once preferred to gasp on the raw
heights of emotion? Youth is a high-colored season; but he had the
satisfaction of feeling that he had entered earlier than most into that
chiar’oscuro of sensation where every half-tone has its value.

As a promoter of this pleasure no one he had known was comparable
to Mrs. Vervain. He had taught a good many women not to betray their
feelings, but he had never before had such fine material to work in. She
had been surprisingly crude when he first knew her; capable of making
the most awkward inferences, of plunging through thin ice, of recklessly
undressing her emotions; but she had acquired, under the discipline of
his reticences and evasions, a skill almost equal to his own, and
perhaps more remarkable in that it involved keeping time with any tune
he played and reading at sight some uncommonly difficult passages.

It had taken Thursdale seven years to form this fine talent; but
the result justified the effort. At the crucial moment she had been
perfect: her way of greeting Miss Gaynor had made him regret that he had
announced his engagement by letter. It was an evasion that confessed a
difficulty; a deviation implying an obstacle, where, by common consent,
it was agreed to see none; it betrayed, in short, a lack of confidence
in the completeness of his method. It had been his pride never to put
himself in a position which had to be quitted, as it were, by the back
door; but here, as he perceived, the main portals would have opened for
him of their own accord. All this, and much more, he read in the
finished naturalness with which Mrs. Vervain had met Miss Gaynor. He had
never seen a better piece of work: there was no over-eagerness, no
suspicious warmth, above all (and this gave her art the grace of a
natural quality) there were none of those damnable implications whereby
a woman, in welcoming her friend’s betrothed, may keep him on pins and
needles while she laps the lady in complacency. So masterly a
performance, indeed, hardly needed the offset of Miss Gaynor’s door-step
words — “To be so kind to me, how she must have liked you!” — though
he caught himself wishing it lay within the bounds of fitness to
transmit them, as a final tribute, to the one woman he knew who was
unfailingly certain to enjoy a good thing. It was perhaps the one
drawback to his new situation that it might develop good things which it
would be impossible to hand on to Margaret Vervain.

The fact that he had made the mistake of underrating his friend’s
powers, the consciousness that his writing must have betrayed his
distrust of her efficiency, seemed an added reason for turning down her
street instead of going on to the club. He would show her that he knew
how to value her; he would ask her to achieve with him a feat infinitely
rarer and more delicate than the one he had appeared to avoid.
Incidentally, he would also dispose of the interval of time before
dinner: ever since he had seen Miss Gaynor off, an hour earlier, on her
return journey to Buffalo, he had been wondering how he should put in
the rest of the afternoon. It was absurd, how he missed the girl. . . .
Yes, that was it; the desire to talk about her was, after all, at the
bottom of his impulse to call on Mrs. Vervain! It was absurd, if you
like — but it was delightfully rejuvenating. He could recall the time
when he had been afraid of being obvious: now he felt that this return
to the primitive emotions might be as restorative as a holiday in the
Canadian woods. And it was precisely by the girl’s candor, her
directness, her lack of complications, that he was taken. The sense that
she might say something rash at any moment was positively exhilarating:
if she had thrown her arms about him at the station he would not have
given a thought to his crumpled dignity. It surprised Thursdale to find
what freshness of heart he brought to the adventure; and though his
sense of irony prevented his ascribing his intactness to any conscious
purpose, he could but rejoice in the fact that his sentimental economies
had left him such a large surplus to draw upon.

Mrs. Vervain was at home — as usual. When one visits the cemetery
one expects to find the angel on the tombstone, and it struck Thursdale
as another proof of his friend’s good taste that she had been in no
undue haste to change her habits. The whole house appeared to count on
his coming; the footman took his hat and overcoat as naturally as though
there had been no lapse in his visits; and the drawing-room at once
enveloped him in that atmosphere of tacit intelligence which Mrs.
Vervain imparted to her very furniture.

It was a surprise that, in this general harmony of circumstances,
Mrs. Vervain should herself sound the first false note.

“You?” she exclaimed; and the book she held slipped from her hand.

It was crude, certainly; unless it were a touch of the finest art.
The difficulty of classifying it disturbed Thursdale’s balance.

“Why not?” he said, restoring the book. “Isn’t it my hour?” And as
she made no answer, he added gently, “Unless it’s some one else’s?”

She laid the book aside and sank back into her chair. “Mine,
merely,” she said.

“I hope that doesn’t mean that you’re unwilling to share it?”

“With you? By no means. You’re welcome to my last crust.”

He looked at her reproachfully. “Do you call this the last?”

She smiled as he dropped into the seat across the hearth. “It’s a
way of giving it more flavor!”

He returned the smile. “A visit to you doesn’t need such condiments.”

She took this with just the right measure of retrospective amusement.

“Ah, but I want to put into this one a very special taste,” she
confessed.

Her smile was so confident, so reassuring, that it lulled him into
the imprudence of saying, “Why should you want it to be different from
what was always so perfectly right?”

She hesitated. “Doesn’t the fact that it’s the last constitute a
difference?”

“The last — my last visit to you?”

“Oh, metaphorically, I mean — there’s a break in the continuity.”

Decidedly, she was pressing too hard: unlearning his arts already!

“I don’t recognize it,” he said. “Unless you make me –” he added,
with a note that slightly stirred her attitude of languid attention.

She turned to him with grave eyes. “You recognize no difference
whatever?”

“None — except an added link in the chain.”

“An added link?”

“In having one more thing to like you for — your letting Miss
Gaynor see why I had already so many.” He flattered himself that this
turn had taken the least hint of fatuity from the phrase.

Mrs. Vervain sank into her former easy pose. “Was it that you came
for?” she asked, almost gaily.

“If it is necessary to have a reason — that was one.”

“To talk to me about Miss Gaynor?”

“To tell you how she talks about you.”

“That will be very interesting — especially if you have seen her
since her second visit to me.”

“Her second visit?” Thursdale pushed his chair back with a start
and moved to another. “She came to see you again?”

“This morning, yes — by appointment.”

He continued to look at her blankly. “You sent for her?”

“I didn’t have to — she wrote and asked me last night. But no
doubt you have seen her since.”

Thursdale sat silent. He was trying to separate his words from his
thoughts, but they still clung together inextricably. “I saw her off
just now at the station.”

“And she didn’t tell you that she had been here again?”

“There was hardly time, I suppose — there were people about –” he
floundered.

“Ah, she’ll write, then.”

He regained his composure. “Of course she’ll write: very often, I
hope. You know I’m absurdly in love,” he cried audaciously.

She tilted her head back, looking up at him as he leaned against
the chimney-piece. He had leaned there so often that the attitude
touched a pulse which set up a throbbing in her throat. “Oh, my poor
Thursdale!” she murmured.

“I suppose it’s rather ridiculous,” he owned; and as she remained
silent, he added, with a sudden break –”Or have you another reason for
pitying me?”

Her answer was another question. “Have you been back to your rooms
since you left her?”

“Since I left her at the station? I came straight here.”

“Ah, yes — you could: there was no reason –” Her words passed
into a silent musing.

Thursdale moved nervously nearer. “You said you had something to
tell me?”

“Perhaps I had better let her do so. There may be a letter at your
rooms.”

“A letter? What do you mean? A letter from her? What has happened?”

His paleness shook her, and she raised a hand of reassurance.
“Nothing has happened — perhaps that is just the worst of it. You
always hated, you know,” she added incoherently, “to have things
happen: you never would let them.”

“And now — ?”

“Well, that was what she came here for: I supposed you had guessed.
To know if anything had happened.”

“Had happened?” He gazed at her slowly. “Between you and me?” he
said with a rush of light.

The words were so much cruder than any that had ever passed between
them that the color rose to her face; but she held his startled gaze.

“You know girls are not quite as unsophisticated as they used to
be. Are you surprised that such an idea should occur to her?”

His own color answered hers: it was the only reply that came to him.

Mrs. Vervain went on, smoothly: “I supposed it might have struck
you that there were times when we presented that appearance.”

He made an impatient gesture. “A man’s past is his own!”

“Perhaps — it certainly never belongs to the woman who has shared
it. But one learns such truths only by experience; and Miss Gaynor is
naturally inexperienced.”

“Of course — but — supposing her act a natural one — ” he
floundered lamentably among his innuendoes — “I still don’t see — how
there was anything –”

“Anything to take hold of? There wasn’t –”

“Well, then — ?” escaped him, in crude satisfaction; but as she
did not complete the sentence he went on with a faltering laugh: “She
can hardly object to the existence of a mere friendship between us!”

“But she does,” said Mrs. Vervain.

Thursdale stood perplexed. He had seen, on the previous day, no
trace of jealousy or resentment in his betrothed: he could still hear
the candid ring of the girl’s praise of Mrs. Vervain. If she were such
an abyss of insincerity as to dissemble distrust under such frankness,
she must at least be more subtle than to bring her doubts to her rival
for solution. The situation seemed one through which one could no longer
move in a penumbra, and he let in a burst of light with the direct
query: “Won’t you explain what you mean?”

Mrs. Vervain sat silent, not provokingly, as though to prolong his
distress, but as if, in the attenuated phraseology he had taught her, it
was difficult to find words robust enough to meet his challenge. It was
the first time he had ever asked her to explain anything; and she had
lived so long in dread of offering elucidations which were not wanted,
that she seemed unable to produce one on the spot.

At last she said slowly: “She came to find out if you were really
free.”

Thursdale colored again. “Free?” he stammered, with a sense of
physical disgust at contact with such crassness.

“Yes — if I had quite done with you.” She smiled in recovered
security. “It seems she likes clear outlines; she has a passion for
definitions.”

“Yes — well?” he said, wincing at the echo of his own subtlety.

“Well — and when I told her that you had never belonged to me, she
wanted me to define my status — to know exactly where I had stood all
along.”

Thursdale sat gazing at her intently; his hand was not yet on the
clue. “And even when you had told her that –”

“Even when I had told her that I had had no status — that I had
never stood anywhere, in any sense she meant,” said Mrs. Vervain, slowly
– “even then she wasn’t satisfied, it seems.”

He uttered an uneasy exclamation. “She didn’t believe you, you mean?”

“I mean that she did believe me: too thoroughly.”

“Well, then — in God’s name, what did she want?”

“Something more — those were the words she used.”

“Something more? Between — between you and me? Is it a conundrum?”
He laughed awkwardly.

“Girls are not what they were in my day; they are no longer
forbidden to contemplate the relation of the sexes.”

“So it seems!” he commented. “But since, in this case, there wasn’t
any –” he broke off, catching the dawn of a revelation in her gaze.

“That’s just it. The unpardonable offence has been — in our not
offending.”

He flung himself down despairingly. “I give it up! — What did you
tell her?” he burst out with sudden crudeness.

“The exact truth. If I had only known,” she broke off with a
beseeching tenderness, “won’t you believe that I would still have lied
for you?”

“Lied for me? Why on earth should you have lied for either of us?”

“To save you — to hide you from her to the last! As I’ve hidden
you from myself all these years!” She stood up with a sudden tragic
import in her movement. “You believe me capable of that, don’t you? If I
had only guessed — but I have never known a girl like her; she had the
truth out of me with a spring.”

“The truth that you and I had never –”

“Had never — never in all these years! Oh, she knew why — she
measured us both in a flash. She didn’t suspect me of having haggled
with you — her words pelted me like hail. ‘He just took what he wanted
– sifted and sorted you to suit his taste. Burnt out the gold and left
a heap of cinders. And you let him — you let yourself be cut in bits’
– she mixed her metaphors a little — ‘be cut in bits, and used or
discarded, while all the while every drop of blood in you belonged to
him! But he’s Shylock — and you have bled to death of the pound of
flesh he has cut out of you.’ But she despises me the most, you know –
far the most –” Mrs. Vervain ended.

The words fell strangely on the scented stillness of the room: they
seemed out of harmony with its setting of afternoon intimacy, the kind
of intimacy on which at any moment, a visitor might intrude without
perceptibly lowering the atmosphere. It was as though a grand
opera-singer had strained the acoustics of a private music-room.

Thursdale stood up, facing his hostess. Half the room was between
them, but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils of
reticence and ambiguity had fallen.

His first words were characteristic. “She does despise me, then?”
he exclaimed.

“She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near the
heart.”

He was excessively pale. “Please tell me exactly what she said of me.”

“She did not speak much of you: she is proud. But I gather that
while she understands love or indifference, her eyes have never been
opened to the many intermediate shades of feeling. At any rate, she
expressed an unwillingness to be taken with reservations — she thinks
you would have loved her better if you had loved some one else first.
The point of view is original — she insists on a man with a past!”

“Oh, a past — if she’s serious — I could rake up a past!” he said
with a laugh.

“So I suggested: but she has her eyes on his particular portion of
it. She insists on making it a test case. She wanted to know what you
had done to me; and before I could guess her drift I blundered into
telling her.”

Thursdale drew a difficult breath. “I never supposed — your
revenge is complete,” he said slowly.

He heard a little gasp in her throat. “My revenge? When I sent for
you to warn you — to save you from being surprised as I was surprised?”

“You’re very good — but it’s rather late to talk of saving me.” He
held out his hand in the mechanical gesture of leave-taking.

“How you must care! — for I never saw you so dull,” was her
answer. “Don’t you see that it’s not too late for me to help you?” And
as he continued to stare, she brought out sublimely: “Take the rest –
in imagination! Let it at least be of that much use to you. Tell her I
lied to her — she’s too ready to believe it! And so, after all, in a
sense, I sha’n't have been wasted.”

His stare hung on her, widening to a kind of wonder. She gave the
look back brightly, unblushingly, as though the expedient were too
simple to need oblique approaches. It was extraordinary how a few words
had swept them from an atmosphere of the most complex dissimulations to
this contact of naked souls.

It was not in Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; but
something in him cracked with it, and the rift let in new light. He went
up to his friend and took her hand.

“You would do it — you would do it!”

She looked at him, smiling, but her hand shook.

“Good-by,” he said, kissing it.

“Good-by? You are going — ?”

“To get my letter.”

“Your letter? The letter won’t matter, if you will only do what I
ask.”

He returned her gaze. “I might, I suppose, without being out of
character. Only, don’t you see that if your plan helped me it could only
harm her?”

“Harm her?”

“To sacrifice you wouldn’t make me different. I shall go on being
what I have always been — sifting and sorting, as she calls it. Do you
want my punishment to fall on her?”

She looked at him long and deeply. “Ah, if I had to choose between
you — !”

“You would let her take her chance? But I can’t, you see. I must
take my punishment alone.”

She drew her hand away, sighing. “Oh, there will be no punishment
for either of you.”

“For either of us? There will be the reading of her letter for me.”

She shook her head with a slight laugh. “There will be no letter.”

Thursdale faced about from the threshold with fresh life in his
look. “No letter? You don’t mean –”

“I mean that she’s been with you since I saw her — she’s seen you
and heard your voice. If there is a letter, she has recalled it –
from the first station, by telegraph.”

He turned back to the door, forcing an answer to her smile. “But in
the mean while I shall have read it,” he said.

The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful
emptiness of the room.

I

For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet
lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the
heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk
in the tasselled meadow-grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of
maple-leaves at the vast shadowless, and unsuggestive blue. Now and
then, at ever-lengthening intervals, a flash of pain darted through her,
like the ripple of sheet-lightning across such a midsummer sky; but it
was too transitory to shake her stupor, that calm, delicious, bottomless
stupor into which she felt herself sinking more and more deeply, without
a disturbing impulse of resistance, an effort of reattachment to the
vanishing edges of consciousness.

The resistance, the effort, had known their hour of violence; but
now they were at an end. Through her mind, long harried by grotesque
visions, fragmentary images of the life that she was leaving, tormenting
lines of verse, obstinate presentments of pictures once beheld,
indistinct impressions of rivers, towers, and cupolas, gathered in the
length of journeys half forgotten-through her mind there now only moved
a few primal sensations of colorless well-being; a vague satisfaction in
the thought that she had swallowed her noxious last draught of medicine
. . . and that she should never again hear the creaking of her husband’s
boots — those horrible boots — and that no one would come to bother
her about the next day’s dinner . . . or the butcher’s book. . . .

At last even these dim sensations spent themselves in the
thickening obscurity which enveloped her; a dusk now filled with pale
geometric roses, circling softly, interminably before her, now darkened
to a uniform blue-blackness, the hue of a summer night without stars.
And into this darkness she felt herself sinking, sinking, with the
gentle sense of security of one upheld from beneath. Like a tepid tide
it rose around her, gliding ever higher and higher, folding in its
velvety embrace her relaxed and tired body, now submerging her breast
and shoulders, now creeping gradually, with soft inexorableness, over
her throat to her chin, to her ears, to her mouth. . . . Ah, now it was
rising too high; the impulse to struggle was renewed;. . . her mouth was
full;. . . she was choking. . . . Help!

“It is all over,” said the nurse, drawing down the eyelids with
official composure.

The clock struck three. They remembered it afterward. Someone
opened the window and let in a blast of that strange, neutral air which
walks the earth between darkness and dawn; someone else led the husband
into another room. He walked vaguely, like a blind man, on his creaking
boots.

II

She stood, as it seemed, on a threshold, yet no tangible gateway was in
front of her. Only a wide vista of light, mild yet penetrating as the
gathered glimmer of innumerable stars, expanded gradually before her
eyes, in blissful contrast to the cavernous darkness from which she had
of late emerged.

She stepped forward, not frightened, but hesitating, and as her
eyes began to grow more familiar with the melting depths of light about
her, she distinguished the outlines of a landscape, at first swimming in
the opaline uncertainty of Shelley’s vaporous creations, then gradually
resolved into distincter shape — the vast unrolling of a sunlit plain,
aerial forms of mountains, and presently the silver crescent of a river
in the valley, and a blue stencilling of trees along its curve –
something suggestive in its ineffable hue of an azure background of
Leonardo’s, strange, enchanting, mysterious, leading on the eye and the
imagination into regions of fabulous delight. As she gazed, her heart
beat with a soft and rapturous surprise; so exquisite a promise she read
in the summons of that hyaline distance.

“And so death is not the end after all,” in sheer gladness she
heard herself exclaiming aloud. “I always knew that it couldn’t be. I
believed in Darwin, of course. I do still; but then Darwin himself said
that he wasn’t sure about the soul — at least, I think he did — and
Wallace was a spiritualist; and then there was St. George Mivart –”

Her gaze lost itself in the ethereal remoteness of the mountains.

“How beautiful! How satisfying!” she murmured. “Perhaps now I shall
really know what it is to live.”

As she spoke she felt a sudden thickening of her heart-beats, and
looking up she was aware that before her stood the Spirit of Life.

“Have you never really known what it is to live?” the Spirit of
Life asked her.

“I have never known,” she replied, “that fulness of life which we
all feel ourselves capable of knowing; though my life has not been
without scattered hints of it, like the scent of earth which comes to
one sometimes far out at sea.”

“And what do you call the fulness of life?” the Spirit asked again.

“Oh, I can’t tell you, if you don’t know,” she said, almost
reproachfully. “Many words are supposed to define it — love and
sympathy are those in commonest use, but I am not even sure that they
are the right ones, and so few people really know what they mean.”

“You were married,” said the Spirit, “yet you did not find the
fulness of life in your marriage?”

“Oh, dear, no,” she replied, with an indulgent scorn, “my marriage
was a very incomplete affair.”

“And yet you were fond of your husband?”

“You have hit upon the exact word; I was fond of him, yes, just as
I was fond of my grandmother, and the house that I was born in, and my
old nurse. Oh, I was fond of him, and we were counted a very happy
couple. But I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a
great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone
passes in going in and out; the drawingroom, where one receives formal
visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as
they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of
whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no
one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of
holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.”

“And your husband,” asked the Spirit, after a pause, “never got
beyond the family sitting-room?”

“Never,” she returned, impatiently; “and the worst of it was that
he was quite content to remain there. He thought it perfectly beautiful,
and sometimes, when he was admiring its commonplace furniture,
insignificant as the chairs and tables of a hotel parlor, I felt like
crying out to him: ‘Fool, will you never guess that close at hand are
rooms full of treasures and wonders, such as the eye of man hath not
seen, rooms that no step has crossed, but that might be yours to live
in, could you but find the handle of the door?’”

“Then,” the Spirit continued, “those moments of which you lately
spoke, which seemed to come to you like scattered hints of the fulness
of life, were not shared with your husband?”

“Oh, no — never. He was different. His boots creaked, and he
always slammed the door when he went out, and he never read anything but
railway novels and the sporting advertisements in the papers — and –
and, in short, we never understood each other in the least.”

“To what influence, then, did you owe those exquisite sensations?”

“I can hardly tell. Sometimes to the perfume of a flower; sometimes
to a verse of Dante or of Shakespeare; sometimes to a picture or a
sunset, or to one of those calm days at sea, when one seems to be lying
in the hollow of a blue pearl; sometimes, but rarely, to a word spoken
by someone who chanced to give utterance, at the right moment, to what I
felt but could not express.”

“Someone whom you loved?” asked the Spirit.

“I never loved anyone, in that way,” she said, rather sadly, “nor
was I thinking of any one person when I spoke, but of two or three who,
by touching for an instant upon a certain chord of my being, had called
forth a single note of that strange melody which seemed sleeping in my
soul. It has seldom happened, however, that I have owed such feelings to
people; and no one ever gave me a moment of such happiness as it was my
lot to feel one evening in the Church of Or San Michele, in Florence.”

“Tell me about it,” said the Spirit.

“It was near sunset on a rainy spring afternoon in Easter week. The
clouds had vanished, dispersed by a sudden wind, and as we entered the
church the fiery panes of the high windows shone out like lamps through
the dusk. A priest was at the high altar, his white cope a livid spot in
the incense-laden obscurity, the light of the candles flickering up and
down like fireflies about his head; a few people knelt near by. We stole
behind them and sat down on a bench close to the tabernacle of Orcagna.

“Strange to say, though Florence was not new to me, I had never
been in the church before; and in that magical light I saw for the first
time the inlaid steps, the fluted columns, the sculptured bas-reliefs
and canopy of the marvellous shrine. The marble, worn and mellowed by
the subtle hand of time, took on an unspeakable rosy hue, suggestive in
some remote way of the honeycolored columns of the Parthenon, but more
mystic, more complex, a color not born of the sun’s inveterate kiss, but
made up of cryptal twilight, and the flame of candles upon martyrs’
tombs, and gleams of sunset through symbolic panes of chrysoprase and
ruby; such a light as illumines the missals in the library of Siena, or
burns like a hidden fire through the Madonna of Gian Bellini in the
Church of the Redeemer, at Venice; the light of the Middle Ages, richer,
more solemn, more significant than the limpid sunshine of Greece.

“The church was silent, but for the wail of the priest and the
occasional scraping of a chair against the floor, and as I sat there,
bathed in that light, absorbed in rapt contemplation of the marble
miracle which rose before me, cunningly wrought as a casket of ivory and
enriched with jewel-like incrustations and tarnished gleams of gold, I
felt myself borne onward along a mighty current, whose source seemed to
be in the very beginning of things, and whose tremendous waters gathered
as they went all the mingled streams of human passion and endeavor. Life
in all its varied manifestations of beauty and strangeness seemed
weaving a rhythmical dance around me as I moved, and wherever the spirit
of man had passed I knew that my foot had once been familiar.

“As I gazed the mediaeval bosses of the tabernacle of Orcagna
seemed to melt and flow into their primal forms so that the folded lotus
of the Nile and the Greek acanthus were braided with the runic knots and
fish-tailed monsters of the North, and all the plastic terror and beauty
born of man’s hand from the Ganges to the Baltic quivered and mingled in
Orcagna’s apotheosis of Mary. And so the river bore me on, past the
alien face of antique civilizations and the familiar wonders of Greece,
till I swam upon the fiercely rushing tide of the Middle Ages, with its
swirling eddies of passion, its heaven-reflecting pools of poetry and
art; I heard the rhythmic blow of the craftsmen’s hammers in the
goldsmiths’ workshops and on the walls of churches, the party-cries of
armed factions in the narrow streets, the organroll of Dante’s verse,
the crackle of the fagots around Arnold of Brescia, the twitter of the
swallows to which St. Francis preached, the laughter of the ladies
listening on the hillside to the quips of the Decameron, while
plague-struck Florence howled beneath them — all this and much more I
heard, joined in strange unison with voices earlier and more remote,
fierce, passionate, or tender, yet subdued to such awful harmony that I
thought of the song that the morning stars sang together and felt as
though it were sounding in my ears. My heart beat to suffocation, the
tears burned my lids, the joy, the mystery of it seemed too intolerable
to be borne. I could not understand even then the words of the song; but
I knew that if there had been someone at my side who could have heard it
with me, we might have found the key to it together.

“I turned to my husband, who was sitting beside me in an attitude
of patient dejection, gazing into the bottom of his hat; but at that
moment he rose, and stretching his stiffened legs, said, mildly: ‘Hadn’t
we better be going? There doesn’t seem to be much to see here, and you
know the table d’hote dinner is at half-past six o’clock.”

Her recital ended, there was an interval of silence; then the Spirit of
Life said: “There is a compensation in store for such needs as you have
expressed.”

“Oh, then you do understand?” she exclaimed. “Tell me what
compensation, I entreat you!”

“It is ordained,” the Spirit answered, “that every soul which seeks
in vain on earth for a kindred soul to whom it can lay bare its inmost
being shall find that soul here and be united to it for eternity.”

A glad cry broke from her lips. “Ah, shall I find him at last?” she
cried, exultant.

“He is here,” said the Spirit of Life.

She looked up and saw that a man stood near whose soul (for in that
unwonted light she seemed to see his soul more clearly than his face)
drew her toward him with an invincible force.

“Are you really he?” she murmured.

“I am he,” he answered.

She laid her hand in his and drew him toward the parapet which
overhung the valley.

“Shall we go down together,” she asked him, “into that marvellous
country; shall we see it together, as if with the self-same eyes, and
tell each other in the same words all that we think and feel?”

“So,” he replied, “have I hoped and dreamed.”

“What?” she asked, with rising joy. “Then you, too, have looked for
me?”

“All my life.”

“How wonderful! And did you never, never find anyone in the other
world who understood you?”

“Not wholly — not as you and I understand each other.”

“Then you feel it, too? Oh, I am happy,” she sighed.

They stood, hand in hand, looking down over the parapet upon the
shimmering landscape which stretched forth beneath them into sapphirine
space, and the Spirit of Life, who kept watch near the threshold, heard
now and then a floating fragment of their talk blown backward like the
stray swallows which the wind sometimes separates from their migratory
tribe.

“Did you never feel at sunset –”

“Ah, yes; but I never heard anyone else say so. Did you?”

“Do you remember that line in the third canto of the ‘Inferno?’”

“Ah, that line — my favorite always. Is it possible –”

“You know the stooping Victory in the frieze of the Nike Apteros?”

“You mean the one who is tying her sandal? Then you have noticed,
too, that all Botticelli and Mantegna are dormant in those flying folds
of her drapery?”

“After a storm in autumn have you never seen –”

“Yes, it is curious how certain flowers suggest certain
painters-the perfume of the incarnation, Leonardo; that of the rose,
Titian; the tuberose, Crivelli –”

“I never supposed that anyone else had noticed it.”

“Have you never thought –”

“Oh, yes, often and often; but I never dreamed that anyone else had.”

“But surely you must have felt –”

“Oh, yes, yes; and you, too –”

“How beautiful! How strange –”

Their voices rose and fell, like the murmur of two fountains
answering each other across a garden full of flowers. At length, with a
certain tender impatience, he turned to her and said: “Love, why should
we linger here? All eternity lies before us. Let us go down into that
beautiful country together and make a home for ourselves on some blue
hill above the shining river.”

As he spoke, the hand she had forgotten in his was suddenly
withdrawn, and he felt that a cloud was passing over the radiance of her
soul.

“A home,” she repeated, slowly, “a home for you and me to live in
for all eternity?”

“Why not, love? Am I not the soul that yours has sought?”

“Y-yes — yes, I know — but, don’t you see, home would not be like
home to me, unless –”

“Unless?” he wonderingly repeated.

She did not answer, but she thought to herself, with an impulse of
whimsical inconsistency, “Unless you slammed the door and wore creaking
boots.”

But he had recovered his hold upon her hand, and by imperceptible
degrees was leading her toward the shining steps which descended to the
valley.

“Come, O my soul’s soul,” he passionately implored; “why delay a
moment? Surely you feel, as I do, that eternity itself is too short to
hold such bliss as ours. It seems to me that I can see our home already.
Have I not always seem it in my dreams? It is white, love, is it not,
with polished columns, and a sculptured cornice against the blue? Groves
of laurel and oleander and thickets of roses surround it; but from the
terrace where we walk at sunset, the eye looks out over woodlands and
cool meadows where, deep-bowered under ancient boughs, a stream goes
delicately toward the river. Indoors our favorite pictures hang upon the
walls and the rooms are lined with books. Think, dear, at last we shall
have time to read them all. With which shall we begin? Come, help me to
choose. Shall it be ‘Faust’ or the ‘Vita Nuova,’ the ‘Tempest’ or ‘Les
Caprices de Marianne,’ or the thirty-first canto of the ‘Paradise,’ or
‘Epipsychidion’ or “Lycidas’? Tell me, dear, which one?”

As he spoke he saw the answer trembling joyously upon her lips; but
it died in the ensuing silence, and she stood motionless, resisting the
persuasion of his hand.

“What is it?” he entreated.

“Wait a moment,” she said, with a strange hesitation in her voice.
“Tell me first, are you quite sure of yourself? Is there no one on earth
whom you sometimes remember?”

“Not since I have seen you,” he replied; for, being a man, he had
indeed forgotten.

Still she stood motionless, and he saw that the shadow deepened on
her soul.

“Surely, love,” he rebuked her, “it was not that which troubled
you? For my part I have walked through Lethe. The past has melted like a
cloud before the moon. I never lived until I saw you.”

She made no answer to his pleadings, but at length, rousing herself
with a visible effort, she turned away from him and moved toward the
Spirit of Life, who still stood near the threshold.

“I want to ask you a question,” she said, in a troubled voice.

“Ask,” said the Spirit.

“A little while ago,” she began, slowly, “you told me that every
soul which has not found a kindred soul on earth is destined to find one
here.”

“And have you not found one?” asked the Spirit.

“Yes; but will it be so with my husband’s soul also?”

“No,” answered the Spirit of Life, “for your husband imagined that
he had found his soul’s mate on earth in you; and for such delusions
eternity itself contains no cure.”

She gave a little cry. Was it of disappointment or triumph?

“Then — then what will happen to him when he comes here?”

“That I cannot tell you. Some field of activity and happiness he
will doubtless find, in due measure to his capacity for being active and
happy.”

She interrupted, almost angrily: “He will never be happy without me.”

“Do not be too sure of that,” said the Spirit.

She took no notice of this, and the Spirit continued: “He will not
understand you here any better than he did on earth.”

“No matter,” she said; “I shall be the only sufferer, for he always
thought that he understood me.”

“His boots will creak just as much as ever –”

“No matter.”

“And he will slam the door –”

“Very likely.”

“And continue to read railway novels –”

She interposed, impatiently: “Many men do worse than that.”

“But you said just now,” said the Spirit, “that you did not love him.”

“True,” she answered, simply; “but don’t you understand that I
shouldn’t feel at home without him? It is all very well for a week or
two — but for eternity! After all, I never minded the creaking of his
boots, except when my head ached, and I don’t suppose it will ache
here; and he was always so sorry when he had slammed the door, only he
never could remember not to. Besides, no one else would know how to
look after him, he is so helpless. His inkstand would never be filled,
and he would always be out of stamps and visiting-cards. He would never
remember to have his umbrella re-covered, or to ask the price of
anything before he bought it. Why, he wouldn’t even know what novels to
read. I always had to choose the kind he liked, with a murder or a
forgery and a successful detective.”

She turned abruptly to her kindred soul, who stood listening with a
mien of wonder and dismay.

“Don’t you see,” she said, “that I can’t possibly go with you?”

“But what do you intend to do?” asked the Spirit of Life.

“What do I intend to do?” she returned, indignantly. “Why, I mean
to wait for my husband, of course. If he had come here first he would
have waited for me for years and years; and it would break his heart not
to find me here when he comes.” She pointed with a contemptuous gesture
to the magic vision of hill and vale sloping away to the translucent
mountains. “He wouldn’t give a fig for all that,” she said, “if he
didn’t find me here.”

“But consider,” warned the Spirit, “that you are now choosing for
eternity. It is a solemn moment.”

“Choosing!” she said, with a half-sad smile. “Do you still keep up
here that old fiction about choosing? I should have thought that you
knew better than that. How can I help myself? He will expect to find me
here when he comes, and he would never believe you if you told him that
I had gone away with someone else-never, never.”

“So be it,” said the Spirit. “Here, as on earth, each one must
decide for himself.”

She turned to her kindred soul and looked at him gently, almost
wistfully. “I am sorry,” she said. “I should have liked to talk with you
again; but you will understand, I know, and I dare say you will find
someone else a great deal cleverer –”

And without pausing to hear his answer she waved him a swift
farewell and turned back toward the threshold.

“Will my husband come soon?” she asked the Spirit of Life.

“That you are not destined to know,” the Spirit replied.

“No matter,” she said, cheerfully; “I have all eternity to wait in.”

And still seated alone on the threshold, she listens for the
creaking of his boots.

I

“Above all,” the letter ended, “don’t leave Siena without seeing Doctor
Lombard’s Leonardo. Lombard is a queer old Englishman, a mystic or a
madman (if the two are not synonymous), and a devout student of the
Italian Renaissance. He has lived for years in Italy, exploring its
remotest corners, and has lately picked up an undoubted Leonardo, which
came to light in a farmhouse near Bergamo. It is believed to be one of
the missing pictures mentioned by Vasari, and is at any rate, according
to the most competent authorities, a genuine and almost untouched
example of the best period.

“Lombard is a queer stick, and jealous of showing his treasures;
but we struck up a friendship when I was working on the Sodomas in Siena
three years ago, and if you will give him the enclosed line you may get
a peep at the Leonardo. Probably not more than a peep, though, for I
hear he refuses to have it reproduced. I want badly to use it in my
monograph on the Windsor drawings, so please see what you can do for me,
and if you can’t persuade him to let you take a photograph or make a
sketch, at least jot down a detailed description of the picture and get
from him all the facts you can. I hear that the French and Italian
governments have offered him a large advance on his purchase, but that
he refuses to sell at any price, though he certainly can’t afford such
luxuries; in fact, I don’t see where he got enough money to buy the
picture. He lives in the Via Papa Giulio.”

Wyant sat at the table d’hote of his hotel, re-reading his friend’s
letter over a late luncheon. He had been five days in Siena without
having found time to call on Doctor Lombard; not from any indifference
to the opportunity presented, but because it was his first visit to the
strange red city and he was still under the spell of its more
conspicuous wonders — the brick palaces flinging out their wrought-iron
torch-holders with a gesture of arrogant suzerainty; the great
council-chamber emblazoned with civic allegories; the pageant of Pope
Julius on the Library walls; the Sodomas smiling balefully through the
dusk of mouldering chapels — and it was only when his first hunger was
appeased that he remembered that one course in the banquet was still
untasted.

He put the letter in his pocket and turned to leave the room, with
a nod to its only other occupant, an olive-skinned young man with
lustrous eyes and a low collar, who sat on the other side of the table,
perusing the Fanfulla di Domenica. This gentleman, his daily vis-a-vis,
returned the nod with a Latin eloquence of gesture, and Wyant passed on
to the ante-chamber, where he paused to light a cigarette. He was just
restoring the case to his pocket when he heard a hurried step behind
him, and the lustrouseyed young man advanced through the glass doors of
the diningroom.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said in measured English, and with an
intonation of exquisite politeness; “you have let this letter fall.”

Wyant, recognizing his friend’s note of introduction to Doctor
Lombard, took it with a word of thanks, and was about to turn away when
he perceived that the eyes of his fellow diner remained fixed on him
with a gaze of melancholy interrogation.

“Again pardon me,” the young man at length ventured, “but are you
by chance the friend of the illustrious Doctor Lombard?”

“No,” returned Wyant, with the instinctive Anglo-Saxon distrust of
foreign advances. Then, fearing to appear rude, he said with a guarded
politeness: “Perhaps, by the way, you can tell me the number of his
house. I see it is not given here.”

The young man brightened perceptibly. “The number of the house is
thirteen; but any one can indicate it to you — it is well known in
Siena. It is called,” he continued after a moment, “the House of the
Dead Hand.”

Wyant stared. “What a queer name!” he said.

“The name comes from an antique hand of marble which for many
hundred years has been above the door.”

Wyant was turning away with a gesture of thanks, when the other
added: “If you would have the kindness to ring twice.”

“To ring twice?”

“At the doctor’s.” The young man smiled. “It is the custom.”

It was a dazzling March afternoon, with a shower of sun from the
mid-blue, and a marshalling of slaty clouds behind the umbercolored
hills. For nearly an hour Wyant loitered on the Lizza, watching the
shadows race across the naked landscape and the thunder blacken in the
west; then he decided to set out for the House of the Dead Hand. The map
in his guidebook showed him that the Via Papa Giulio was one of the
streets which radiate from the Piazza, and thither he bent his course,
pausing at every other step to fill his eye with some fresh image of
weather-beaten beauty. The clouds had rolled upward, obscuring the
sunshine and hanging like a funereal baldachin above the projecting
cornices of Doctor Lombard’s street, and Wyant walked for some distance
in the shade of the beetling palace fronts before his eye fell on a
doorway surmounted by a sallow marble hand. He stood for a moment
staring up at the strange emblem. The hand was a woman’s — a dead
drooping hand, which hung there convulsed and helpless, as though it had
been thrust forth in denunciation of some evil mystery within the house,
and had sunk struggling into death.

A girl who was drawing water from the well in the court said that
the English doctor lived on the first floor, and Wyant, passing through
a glazed door, mounted the damp degrees of a vaulted stairway with a
plaster AEsculapius mouldering in a niche on the landing. Facing the
AEsculapius was another door, and as Wyant put his hand on the bell-rope
he remembered his unknown friend’s injunction, and rang twice.

His ring was answered by a peasant woman with a low forehead and
small close-set eyes, who, after a prolonged scrutiny of himself, his
card, and his letter of introduction, left him standing in a high, cold
ante-chamber floored with brick. He heard her wooden pattens click down
an interminable corridor, and after some delay she returned and told him
to follow her.

They passed through a long saloon, bare as the ante-chamber, but
loftily vaulted, and frescoed with a seventeenth-century Triumph of
Scipio or Alexander — martial figures following Wyant with the filmed
melancholy gaze of shades in limbo. At the end of this apartment he was
admitted to a smaller room, with the same atmosphere of mortal cold, but
showing more obvious signs of occupancy. The walls were covered with
tapestry which had faded to the gray-brown tints of decaying vegetation,
so that the young man felt as though he were entering a sunless autumn
wood. Against these hangings stood a few tall cabinets on heavy gilt
feet, and at a table in the window three persons were seated: an elderly
lady who was warming her hands over a brazier, a girl bent above a strip
of needle-work, and an old man.

As the latter advanced toward Wyant, the young man was conscious of
staring with unseemly intentness at his small round-backed figure,
dressed with shabby disorder and surmounted by a wonderful head, lean,
vulpine, eagle-beaked as that of some artloving despot of the
Renaissance: a head combining the venerable hair and large prominent
eyes of the humanist with the greedy profile of the adventurer. Wyant,
in musing on the Italian portrait-medals of the fifteenth century, had
often fancied that only in that period of fierce individualism could
types so paradoxical have been produced; yet the subtle craftsmen who
committed them to the bronze had never drawn a face more strangely
stamped with contradictory passions than that of Doctor Lombard.

“I am glad to see you,” he said to Wyant, extending a hand which
seemed a mere framework held together by knotted veins. “We lead a quiet
life here and receive few visitors, but any friend of Professor Clyde’s
is welcome.” Then, with a gesture which included the two women, he added
dryly: “My wife and daughter often talk of Professor Clyde.”

“Oh yes — he used to make me such nice toast; they don’t
understand toast in Italy,” said Mrs. Lombard in a high plaintive voice.

It would have been difficult, from Doctor Lombard’s manner and
appearance to guess his nationality; but his wife was so inconsciently
and ineradicably English that even the silhouette of her cap seemed a
protest against Continental laxities. She was a stout fair woman, with
pale cheeks netted with red lines. A brooch with a miniature portrait
sustained a bogwood watchchain upon her bosom, and at her elbow lay a
heap of knitting and an old copy of The Queen.

The young girl, who had remained standing, was a slim replica of
her mother, with an apple-cheeked face and opaque blue eyes. Her small
head was prodigally laden with braids of dull fair hair, and she might
have had a kind of transient prettiness but for the sullen droop of her
round mouth. It was hard to say whether her expression implied
ill-temper or apathy; but Wyant was struck by the contrast between the
fierce vitality of the doctor’s age and the inanimateness of his
daughter’s youth.

Seating himself in the chair which his host advanced, the young man
tried to open the conversation by addressing to Mrs. Lombard some random
remark on the beauties of Siena. The lady murmured a resigned assent,
and Doctor Lombard interposed with a smile: “My dear sir, my wife
considers Siena a most salubrious spot, and is favorably impressed by
the cheapness of the marketing; but she deplores the total absence of
muffins and cannel coal, and cannot resign herself to the Italian method
of dusting furniture.”

“But they don’t, you know — they don’t dust it!” Mrs. Lombard
protested, without showing any resentment of her husband’s manner.

“Precisely — they don’t dust it. Since we have lived in Siena we
have not once seen the cobwebs removed from the battlements of the
Mangia. Can you conceive of such housekeeping? My wife has never yet
dared to write it home to her aunts at Bonchurch.”

Mrs. Lombard accepted in silence this remarkable statement of her
views, and her husband, with a malicious smile at Wyant’s embarrassment,
planted himself suddenly before the young man.

“And now,” said he, “do you want to see my Leonardo?”

“Do I?” cried Wyant, on his feet in a flash.

The doctor chuckled. “Ah,” he said, with a kind of crooning
deliberation, “that’s the way they all behave — that’s what they all
come for.” He turned to his daughter with another variation of mockery
in his smile. “Don’t fancy it’s for your beaux yeux, my dear; or for the
mature charms of Mrs. Lombard,” he added, glaring suddenly at his wife,
who had taken up her knitting and was softly murmuring over the number
of her stitches.

Neither lady appeared to notice his pleasantries, and he continued,
addressing himself to Wyant: “They all come — they all come; but many
are called and few are chosen.” His voice sank to solemnity. “While I
live,” he said, “no unworthy eye shall desecrate that picture. But I
will not do my friend Clyde the injustice to suppose that he would send
an unworthy representative. He tells me he wishes a description of the
picture for his book; and you shall describe it to him — if you can.”

Wyant hesitated, not knowing whether it was a propitious moment to
put in his appeal for a photograph.

“Well, sir,” he said, “you know Clyde wants me to take away all I
can of it.”

Doctor Lombard eyed him sardonically. “You’re welcome to take away
all you can carry,” he replied; adding, as he turned to his daughter:
“That is, if he has your permission, Sybilla.”

The girl rose without a word, and laying aside her work, took a key
from a secret drawer in one of the cabinets, while the doctor continued
in the same note of grim jocularity: “For you must know that the picture
is not mine — it is my daughter’s.”

He followed with evident amusement the surprised glance which Wyant
turned on the young girl’s impassive figure.

“Sybilla,” he pursued, “is a votary of the arts; she has inherited
her fond father’s passion for the unattainable. Luckily, however, she
also recently inherited a tidy legacy from her grandmother; and having
seen the Leonardo, on which its discoverer had placed a price far beyond
my reach, she took a step which deserves to go down to history: she
invested her whole inheritance in the purchase of the picture, thus
enabling me to spend my closing years in communion with one of the
world’s masterpieces. My dear sir, could Antigone do more?”

The object of this strange eulogy had meanwhile drawn aside one of
the tapestry hangings, and fitted her key into a concealed door.

“Come,” said Doctor Lombard, “let us go before the light fails us.”

Wyant glanced at Mrs. Lombard, who continued to knit impassively.

“No, no,” said his host, “my wife will not come with us. You might
not suspect it from her conversation, but my wife has no feeling for art
– Italian art, that is; for no one is fonder of our early Victorian
school.”

“Frith’s Railway Station, you know,” said Mrs. Lombard, smiling. “I
like an animated picture.”

Miss Lombard, who had unlocked the door, held back the tapestry to
let her father and Wyant pass out; then she followed them down a narrow
stone passage with another door at its end. This door was iron-barred,
and Wyant noticed that it had a complicated patent lock. The girl fitted
another key into the lock, and Doctor Lombard led the way into a small
room. The dark panelling of this apartment was irradiated by streams of
yellow light slanting through the disbanded thunder clouds, and in the
central brightness hung a picture concealed by a curtain of faded velvet.

“A little too bright, Sybilla,” said Doctor Lombard. His face had
grown solemn, and his mouth twitched nervously as his daughter drew a
linen drapery across the upper part of the window.

“That will do — that will do.” He turned impressively to Wyant.
“Do you see the pomegranate bud in this rug? Place yourself there –
keep your left foot on it, please. And now, Sybilla, draw the cord.”

Miss Lombard advanced and placed her hand on a cord hidden behind
the velvet curtain.

“Ah,” said the doctor, “one moment: I should like you, while
looking at the picture, to have in mind a few lines of verse. Sybilla –”

Without the slightest change of countenance, and with a promptness
which proved her to be prepared for the request, Miss Lombard began to
recite, in a full round voice like her mother’s, St. Bernard’s
invocation to the Virgin, in the thirty-third canto of the Paradise.

“Thank you, my dear,” said her father, drawing a deep breath as she
ended. “That unapproachable combination of vowel sounds prepares one
better than anything I know for the contemplation of the picture.”

As he spoke the folds of velvet slowly parted, and the Leonardo
appeared in its frame of tarnished gold:

From the nature of Miss Lombard’s recitation Wyant had expected a
sacred subject, and his surprise was therefore great as the composition
was gradually revealed by the widening division of the curtain.

In the background a steel-colored river wound through a pale
calcareous landscape; while to the left, on a lonely peak, a crucified
Christ hung livid against indigo clouds. The central figure of the
foreground, however, was that of a woman seated in an antique chair of
marble with bas-reliefs of dancing maenads. Her feet rested on a meadow
sprinkled with minute wild-flowers, and her attitude of smiling majesty
recalled that of Dosso Dossi’s Circe. She wore a red robe, flowing in
closely fluted lines from under a fancifully embroidered cloak. Above
her high forehead the crinkled golden hair flowed sideways beneath a
veil; one hand drooped on the arm of her chair; the other held up an
inverted human skull, into which a young Dionysus, smooth, brown and
sidelong as the St. John of the Louvre, poured a stream of wine from a
high-poised flagon. At the lady’s feet lay the symbols of art and
luxury: a flute and a roll of music, a platter heaped with grapes and
roses, the torso of a Greek statuette, and a bowl overflowing with coins
and jewels; behind her, on the chalky hilltop, hung the crucified
Christ. A scroll in a corner of the foreground bore the legend: Lux Mundi.

Wyant, emerging from the first plunge of wonder, turned inquiringly
toward his companions. Neither had moved. Miss Lombard stood with her
hand on the cord, her lids lowered, her mouth drooping; the doctor, his
strange Thoth-like profile turned toward his guest, was still lost in
rapt contemplation of his treasure.

Wyant addressed the young girl.

“You are fortunate,” he said, “to be the possessor of anything so
perfect.”

“It is considered very beautiful,” she said coldly.

“Beautiful — beautiful!” the doctor burst out. “Ah, the poor,
worn out, over-worked word! There are no adjectives in the language
fresh enough to describe such pristine brilliancy; all their brightness
has been worn off by misuse. Think of the things that have been called
beautiful, and then look at that!”

“It is worthy of a new vocabulary,” Wyant agreed.

“Yes,” Doctor Lombard continued, “my daughter is indeed fortunate.
She has chosen what Catholics call the higher life — the counsel of
perfection. What other private person enjoys the same opportunity of
understanding the master? Who else lives under the same roof with an
untouched masterpiece of Leonardo’s? Think of the happiness of being
always under the influence of such a creation; of living into it; of
partaking of it in daily and hourly communion! This room is a chapel;
the sight of that picture is a sacrament. What an atmosphere for a young
life to unfold itself in! My daughter is singularly blessed. Sybilla,
point out some of the details to Mr. Wyant; I see that he will
appreciate them.”

The girl turned her dense blue eyes toward Wyant; then, glancing
away from him, she pointed to the canvas.

“Notice the modeling of the left hand,” she began in a monotonous
voice; “it recalls the hand of the Mona Lisa. The head of the naked
genius will remind you of that of the St. John of the Louvre, but it is
more purely pagan and is turned a little less to the right. The
embroidery on the cloak is symbolic: you will see that the roots of this
plant have burst through the vase. This recalls the famous definition of
Hamlet’s character in Wilhelm Meister. Here are the mystic rose, the
flame, and the serpent, emblem of eternity. Some of the other symbols we
have not yet been able to decipher.”

Wyant watched her curiously; she seemed to be reciting a lesson.

“And the picture itself?” he said. “How do you explain that? Lux
Mundi — what a curious device to connect with such a subject! What can
it mean?”

Miss Lombard dropped her eyes: the answer was evidently not
included in her lesson.

“What, indeed?” the doctor interposed. “What does life mean? As one
may define it in a hundred different ways, so one may find a hundred
different meanings in this picture. Its symbolism is as many-faceted as
a well-cut diamond. Who, for instance, is that divine lady? Is it she
who is the true Lux Mundi — the light reflected from jewels and young
eyes, from polished marble and clear waters and statues of bronze? Or is
that the Light of the World, extinguished on yonder stormy hill, and is
this lady the Pride of Life, feasting blindly on the wine of iniquity,
with her back turned to the light which has shone for her in vain?
Something of both these meanings may be traced in the picture; but to me
it symbolizes rather the central truth of existence: that all that is
raised in incorruption is sown in corruption; art, beauty, love,
religion; that all our wine is drunk out of skulls, and poured for us by
the mysterious genius of a remote and cruel past.”

The doctor’s face blazed: his bent figure seemed to straighten
itself and become taller.

“Ah,” he cried, growing more dithyrambic, “how lightly you ask what
it means! How confidently you expect an answer! Yet here am I who have
given my life to the study of the Renaissance; who have violated its
tomb, laid open its dead body, and traced the course of every muscle,
bone, and artery; who have sucked its very soul from the pages of poets
and humanists; who have wept and believed with Joachim of Flora, smiled
and doubted with AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini; who have patiently followed
to its source the least inspiration of the masters, and groped in
neolithic caverns and Babylonian ruins for the first unfolding tendrils
of the arabesques of Mantegna and Crivelli; and I tell you that I stand
abashed and ignorant before the mystery of this picture. It means
nothing — it means all things. It may represent the period which saw
its creation; it may represent all ages past and to come. There are
volumes of meaning in the tiniest emblem on the lady’s cloak; the
blossoms of its border are rooted in the deepest soil of myth and
tradition. Don’t ask what it means, young man, but bow your head in
thankfulness for having seen it!”

Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm.

“Don’t excite yourself, father,” she said in the detached tone of a
professional nurse.

He answered with a despairing gesture. “Ah, it’s easy for you to
talk. You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old man, and
every moment counts!”

“It’s bad for you,” she repeated with gentle obstinacy.

The doctor’s sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He dropped
into a seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his daughter drew
the curtain across the picture.

Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was
slipping from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde’s wish for a
photograph. He now understood the meaning of the laugh with which Doctor
Lombard had given him leave to carry away all the details he could
remember. The picture was so dazzling, so unexpected, so crossed with
elusive and contradictory suggestions, that the most alert observer,
when placed suddenly before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a
sense of confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a
work would be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of the
master’s thought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy.

The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. His
daughter unlocked it, and Wyant followed them back in silence to the
room in which they had left Mrs. Lombard. That lady was no longer there,
and he could think of no excuse for lingering.

He thanked the doctor, and turned to Miss Lombard, who stood in the
middle of the room as though awaiting farther orders.

“It is very good of you,” he said, “to allow one even a glimpse of
such a treasure.”

She looked at him with her odd directness. “You will come again?”
she said quickly; and turning to her father she added: “You know what
Professor Clyde asked. This gentleman cannot give him any account of the
picture without seeing it again.”

Doctor Lombard glanced at her vaguely; he was still like a person
in a trance.

“Eh?” he said, rousing himself with an effort.

“I said, father, that Mr. Wyant must see the picture again if he is
to tell Professor Clyde about it,” Miss Lombard repeated with
extraordinary precision of tone.

Wyant was silent. He had the puzzled sense that his wishes were
being divined and gratified for reasons with which he was in no way
connected.

“Well, well,” the doctor muttered, “I don’t say no — I don’t say
no. I know what Clyde wants — I don’t refuse to help him.” He turned to
Wyant. “You may come again — you may make notes,” he added with a
sudden effort. “Jot down what occurs to you. I’m willing to concede that.”

Wyant again caught the girl’s eye, but its emphatic message
perplexed him.

“You’re very good,” he said tentatively, “but the fact is the
picture is so mysterious — so full of complicated detail — that I’m
afraid no notes I could make would serve Clyde’s purpose as well as –
as a photograph, say. If you would allow me –”

Miss Lombard’s brow darkened, and her father raised his head
furiously.

“A photograph? A photograph, did you say? Good God, man, not ten
people have been allowed to set foot in that room! A photograph?”

Wyant saw his mistake, but saw also that he had gone too far to
retreat.

“I know, sir, from what Clyde has told me, that you object to
having any reproduction of the picture published; but he hoped you might
let me take a photograph for his personal use — not to be reproduced in
his book, but simply to give him something to work by. I should take the
photograph myself, and the negative would of course be yours. If you
wished it, only one impression would be struck off, and that one Clyde
could return to you when he had done with it.”

Doctor Lombard interrupted him with a snarl. “When he had done with
it? Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been
re-photographed, drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand to
hand, defiled by every ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by the
blundering praise of every art-scribbler in Europe! Bah! I’d as soon
give you the picture itself: why don’t you ask for that?”

“Well, sir,” said Wyant calmly, “if you will trust me with it, I’ll
engage to take it safely to England and back, and to let no eye but
Clyde’s see it while it is out of your keeping.”

The doctor received this remarkable proposal in silence; then he
burst into a laugh.

“Upon my soul!” he said with sardonic good humor.

It was Miss Lombard’s turn to look perplexedly at Wyant. His last
words and her father’s unexpected reply had evidently carried her beyond
her depth.

“Well, sir, am I to take the picture?” Wyant smilingly pursued.

“No, young man; nor a photograph of it. Nor a sketch, either; mind
that, — nothing that can be reproduced. Sybilla,” he cried with sudden
passion, “swear to me that the picture shall never be reproduced! No
photograph, no sketch — now or afterward. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, father,” said the girl quietly.

“The vandals,” he muttered, “the desecrators of beauty; if I
thought it would ever get into their hands I’d burn it first, by God!”
He turned to Wyant, speaking more quietly. “I said you might come back
– I never retract what I say. But you must give me your word that no
one but Clyde shall see the notes you make.”

Wyant was growing warm.

“If you won’t trust me with a photograph I wonder you trust me not
to show my notes!” he exclaimed.

The doctor looked at him with a malicious smile.

“Humph!” he said; “would they be of much use to anybody?”

Wyant saw that he was losing ground and controlled his impatience.

“To Clyde, I hope, at any rate,” he answered, holding out his hand.
The doctor shook it without a trace of resentment, and Wyant added:
“When shall I come, sir?”

“To-morrow — to-morrow morning,” cried Miss Lombard, speaking
suddenly.

She looked fixedly at her father, and he shrugged his shoulders.

“The picture is hers,” he said to Wyant.

In the ante-chamber the young man was met by the woman who had
admitted him. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to unbar the
door. As the bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his arm.

“You have a letter?” she said in a low tone.

“A letter?” He stared. “What letter?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass.

II

As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up at its
scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above the
entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the
passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning.
But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor
Lombard’s house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her
father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did not
look like a person capable of a disinterested passion for the arts; and
there had been moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture.

The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent yellow
light, and the young man turned his steps toward the church of San
Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering brightness on Sodoma’s
St. Catherine.

The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had
to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of
the sunset, the saint’s figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk,
and the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed
to glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the
accidental collaboration of light and color.

Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the
ground at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet of
note-paper, folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter, and bearing
the superscription: –

To the Count Ottaviano Celsi.

Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come from?
He was distinctly conscious of having seen it fall through the air,
close to his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of the chapel; then
he turned and looked about the church. There was only one figure in it,
that of a man who knelt near the high altar.

Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard’s
maidservant. Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been
unconsciously carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who was
Count Ottaviano Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen to act as
that nobleman’s ambulant letter-box?

Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to
explore his pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some clue
to the mystery; but they held nothing which he had not himself put
there, and he was reduced to wondering how the letter, supposing some
unknown hand to have bestowed it on him, had happened to fall out while
he stood motionless before the picture.

At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the aisle,
and turning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the table d’hote.

The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand.

“I do not intrude?” he inquired suavely.

Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel,
glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller.

“I see,” he remarked with a smile, “that you know the hour at which
our saint should be visited.”

Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous.

The stranger stood beamingly before the picture.

“What grace! What poetry!” he murmured, apostrophizing the St.
Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel as he
spoke.

Wyant, detecting the manoeuvre, murmured a brief assent.

“But it is cold here — mortally cold; you do not find it so?” The
intruder put on his hat. “It is permitted at this hour — when the
church is empty. And you, my dear sir — do you not feel the dampness?
You are an artist, are you not? And to artists it is permitted to cover
the head when they are engaged in the study of the paintings.”

He darted suddenly toward the steps and bent over Wyant’s hat.

“Permit me — cover yourself!” he said a moment later, holding out
the hat with an ingratiating gesture.

A light flashed on Wyant.

“Perhaps,” he said, looking straight at the young man, “you will
tell me your name. My own is Wyant.”

The stranger, surprised, but not disconcerted, drew forth a
coroneted card, which he offered with a low bow. On the card was
engraved: –

Il Conte Ottaviano Celsi.

“I am much obliged to you,” said Wyant; “and I may as well tell you
that the letter which you apparently expected to find in the lining of
my hat is not there, but in my pocket.”

He drew it out and handed it to its owner, who had grown very pale.

“And now,” Wyant continued, “you will perhaps be good enough to
tell me what all this means.”

There was no mistaking the effect produced on Count Ottaviano by
this request. His lips moved, but he achieved only an ineffectual smile.

“I suppose you know,” Wyant went on, his anger rising at the sight
of the other’s discomfiture, “that you have taken an unwarrantable
liberty. I don’t yet understand what part I have been made to play, but
it’s evident that you have made use of me to serve some purpose of your
own, and I propose to know the reason why.”

Count Ottaviano advanced with an imploring gesture.

“Sir,” he pleaded, “you permit me to speak?”

“I expect you to,” cried Wyant. “But not here,” he added, hearing
the clank of the verger’s keys. “It is growing dark, and we shall be
turned out in a few minutes.”

He walked across the church, and Count Ottaviano followed him out
into the deserted square.

“Now,” said Wyant, pausing on the steps.

The Count, who had regained some measure of self-possession, began
to speak in a high key, with an accompaniment of conciliatory gesture.

“My dear sir — my dear Mr. Wyant — you find me in an abominable
position — that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I have taken
advantage of you — yes! I have counted on your amiability, your
chivalry — too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I do? It was
to oblige a lady” — he laid a hand on his heart –”a lady whom I would
die to serve!” He went on with increasing volubility, his deliberate
English swept away by a torrent of Italian, through which Wyant, with
some difficulty, struggled to a comprehension of the case.

Count Ottaviano, according to his own statement, had come to Siena
some months previously, on business connected with his mother’s
property; the paternal estate being near Orvieto, of which ancient city
his father was syndic. Soon after his arrival in Siena the young Count
had met the incomparable daughter of Doctor Lombard, and falling deeply
in love with her, had prevailed on his parents to ask her hand in
marriage. Doctor Lombard had not opposed his suit, but when the question
of settlements arose it became known that Miss Lombard, who was
possessed of a small property in her own right, had a short time before
invested the whole amount in the purchase of the Bergamo Leonardo.
Thereupon Count Ottaviano’s parents had politely suggested that she
should sell the picture and thus recover her independence; and this
proposal being met by a curt refusal from Doctor Lombard, they had
withdrawn their consent to their son’s marriage. The young lady’s
attitude had hitherto been one of passive submission; she was horribly
afraid of her father, and would never venture openly to oppose him; but
she had made known to Ottaviano her intention of not giving him up, of
waiting patiently till events should take a more favorable turn. She
seemed hardly aware, the Count said with a sigh, that the means of
escape lay in her own hands; that she was of age, and had a right to
sell the picture, and to marry without asking her father’s consent.
Meanwhile her suitor spared no pains to keep himself before her, to
remind her that he, too, was waiting and would never give her up.

Doctor Lombard, who suspected the young man of trying to persuade
Sybilla to sell the picture, had forbidden the lovers to meet or to
correspond; they were thus driven to clandestine communication, and had
several times, the Count ingenuously avowed, made use of the doctor’s
visitors as a means of exchanging letters.

“And you told the visitors to ring twice?” Wyant interposed.

The young man extended his hands in a deprecating gesture. Could
Mr. Wyant blame him? He was young, he was ardent, he was enamored! The
young lady had done him the supreme honor of avowing her attachment, of
pledging her unalterable fidelity; should he suffer his devotion to be
outdone? But his purpose in writing to her, he admitted, was not merely
to reiterate his fidelity; he was trying by every means in his power to
induce her to sell the picture. He had organized a plan of action; every
detail was complete; if she would but have the courage to carry out his
instructions he would answer for the result. His idea was that she
should secretly retire to a convent of which his aunt was the Mother
Superior, and from that stronghold should transact the sale of the
Leonardo. He had a purchaser ready, who was willing to pay a large sum;
a sum, Count Ottaviano whispered, considerably in excess of the young
lady’s original inheritance; once the picture sold, it could, if
necessary, be removed by force from Doctor Lombard’s house, and his
daughter, being safely in the convent, would be spared the painful
scenes incidental to the removal. Finally, if Doctor Lombard were
vindictive enough to refuse his consent to her marriage, she had only to
make a sommation respectueuse, and at the end of the prescribed delay no
power on earth could prevent her becoming the wife of Count Ottaviano.

Wyant’s anger had fallen at the recital of this simple romance. It
was absurd to be angry with a young man who confided his secrets to the
first stranger he met in the streets, and placed his hand on his heart
whenever he mentioned the name of his betrothed. The easiest way out of
the business was to take it as a joke. Wyant had played the wall to this
new Pyramus and Thisbe, and was philosophic enough to laugh at the part
he had unwittingly performed.

He held out his hand with a smile to Count Ottaviano.

“I won’t deprive you any longer,” he said, “of the pleasure of
reading your letter.”

“Oh, sir, a thousand thanks! And when you return to the casa
Lombard, you will take a message from me — the letter she expected this
afternoon?”

“The letter she expected?” Wyant paused. “No, thank you. I thought
you understood that where I come from we don’t do that kind of thing –
knowingly.”

“But, sir, to serve a young lady!”

“I’m sorry for the young lady, if what you tell me is true” — the
Count’s expressive hands resented the doubt –”but remember that if I am
under obligations to any one in this matter, it is to her father, who
has admitted me to his house and has allowed me to see his picture.”

“His picture? Hers!”

“Well, the house is his, at all events.”

“Unhappily — since to her it is a dungeon!”

“Why doesn’t she leave it, then?” exclaimed Wyant impatiently.

The Count clasped his hands. “Ah, how you say that — with what
force, with what virility! If you would but say it to her in that tone
– you, her countryman! She has no one to advise her; the mother is an
idiot; the father is terrible; she is in his power; it is my belief that
he would kill her if she resisted him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her life
while she remains in that house!”

“Oh, come,” said Wyant lightly, “they seem to understand each other
well enough. But in any case, you must see that I can’t interfere — at
least you would if you were an Englishman,” he added with an escape of
contempt.

III

Wyant’s affiliations in Siena being restricted to an acquaintance with
his land-lady, he was forced to apply to her for the verification of
Count Ottaviano’s story.

The young nobleman had, it appeared, given a perfectly correct
account of his situation. His father, Count Celsi-Mongirone, was a man
of distinguished family and some wealth. He was syndic of Orvieto, and
lived either in that town or on his neighboring estate of Mongirone. His
wife owned a large property near Siena, and Count Ottaviano, who was the
second son, came there from time to time to look into its management.
The eldest son was in the army, the youngest in the Church; and an aunt
of Count Ottaviano’s was Mother Superior of the Visitandine convent in
Siena. At one time it had been said that Count Ottaviano, who was a most
amiable and accomplished young man, was to marry the daughter of the
strange Englishman, Doctor Lombard, but difficulties having arisen as to
the adjustment of the young lady’s dower, Count Celsi-Mongirone had very
properly broken off the match. It was sad for the young man, however,
who was said to be deeply in love, and to find frequent excuses for
coming to Siena to inspect his mother’s estate.

Viewed in the light of Count Ottaviano’s personality the story had
a tinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant mounted the
stairs of the House of the Dead Hand, the situation insensibly assumed
another aspect. It was impossible to take Doctor Lombard lightly; and
there was a suggestion of fatality in the appearance of his gaunt
dwelling. Who could tell amid what tragic records of domestic tyranny
and fluttering broken purposes the little drama of Miss Lombard’s fate
was being played out? Might not the accumulated influences of such a
house modify the lives within it in a manner unguessed by the inmates of
a suburban villa with sanitary plumbing and a telephone?

One person, at least, remained unperturbed by such fanciful
problems; and that was Mrs. Lombard, who, at Wyant’s entrance, raised a
placidly wrinkled brow from her knitting. The morning was mild, and her
chair had been wheeled into a bar of sunshine near the window, so that
she made a cheerful spot of prose in the poetic gloom of her surroundings.

“What a nice morning!” she said; “it must be delightful weather at
Bonchurch.”

Her dull blue glance wandered across the narrow street with its
threatening house fronts, and fluttered back baffled, like a bird with
clipped wings. It was evident, poor lady, that she had never seen beyond
the opposite houses.

Wyant was not sorry to find her alone. Seeing that she was
surprised at his reappearance he said at once: “I have come back to
study Miss Lombard’s picture.”

“Oh, the picture –” Mrs. Lombard’s face expressed a gentle
disappointment, which might have been boredom in a person of acuter
sensibilities. “It’s an original Leonardo, you know,” she said
mechanically.

“And Miss Lombard is very proud of it, I suppose? She seems to have
inherited her father’s love for art.”

Mrs. Lombard counted her stitches, and he went on: “It’s unusual in
so young a girl. Such tastes generally develop later.”

Mrs. Lombard looked up eagerly. “That’s what I say! I was quite
different at her age, you know. I liked dancing, and doing a pretty bit
of fancy-work. Not that I couldn’t sketch, too; I had a master down from
London. My aunts have some of my crayons hung up in their drawing-room
now — I did a view of Kenilworth which was thought pleasing. But I
liked a picnic, too, or a pretty walk through the woods with young
people of my own age. I say it’s more natural, Mr. Wyant; one may have a
feeling for art, and do crayons that are worth framing, and yet not give
up everything else. I was taught that there were other things.”

Wyant, half-ashamed of provoking these innocent confidences, could
not resist another question. “And Miss Lombard cares for nothing else?”

Her mother looked troubled.

“Sybilla is so clever — she says I don’t understand. You know how
self-confident young people are! My husband never said that of me, now
– he knows I had an excellent education. My aunts were very particular;
I was brought up to have opinions, and my husband has always respected
them. He says himself that he wouldn’t for the world miss hearing my
opinion on any subject; you may have noticed that he often refers to my
tastes. He has always respected my preference for living in England; he
likes to hear me give my reasons for it. He is so much interested in my
ideas that he often says he knows just what I am going to say before I
speak. But Sybilla does not care for what I think –”

At this point Doctor Lombard entered. He glanced sharply at Wyant.
“The servant is a fool; she didn’t tell me you were here.” His eye
turned to his wife. “Well, my dear, what have you been telling Mr.
Wyant? About the aunts at Bonchurch, I’ll be bound!”

Mrs. Lombard looked triumphantly at Wyant, and her husband rubbed
his hooked fingers, with a smile.

“Mrs. Lombard’s aunts are very superior women. They subscribe to
the circulating library, and borrow Good Words and the Monthly Packet
from the curate’s wife across the way. They have the rector to tea twice
a year, and keep a page-boy, and are visited by two baronets’ wives.
They devoted themselves to the education of their orphan niece, and I
think I may say without boasting that Mrs. Lombard’s conversation shows
marked traces of the advantages she enjoyed.”

Mrs. Lombard colored with pleasure.

“I was telling Mr. Wyant that my aunts were very particular.”

“Quite so, my dear; and did you mention that they never sleep in
anything but linen, and that Miss Sophia puts away the furs and blankets
every spring with her own hands? Both those facts are interesting to the
student of human nature.” Doctor Lombard glanced at his watch. “But we
are missing an incomparable moment; the light is perfect at this hour.”

Wyant rose, and the doctor led him through the tapestried door and
down the passageway.

The light was, in fact, perfect, and the picture shone with an
inner radiancy, as though a lamp burned behind the soft screen of the
lady’s flesh. Every detail of the foreground detached itself with
jewel-like precision. Wyant noticed a dozen accessories which had
escaped him on the previous day.

He drew out his note-book, and the doctor, who had dropped his
sardonic grin for a look of devout contemplation, pushed a chair
forward, and seated himself on a carved settle against the wall.

“Now, then,” he said, “tell Clyde what you can; but the letter
killeth.”

He sank down, his hands hanging on the arm of the settle like the
claws of a dead bird, his eyes fixed on Wyant’s notebook with the
obvious intention of detecting any attempt at a surreptitious sketch.

Wyant, nettled at this surveillance, and disturbed by the
speculations which Doctor Lombard’s strange household excited, sat
motionless for a few minutes, staring first at the picture and then at
the blank pages of the note-book. The thought that Doctor Lombard was
enjoying his discomfiture at length roused him, and he began to write.

He was interrupted by a knock on the iron door. Doctor Lombard rose
to unlock it, and his daughter entered.

She bowed hurriedly to Wyant, without looking at him.

“Father, had you forgotten that the man from Monte Amiato was to
come back this morning with an answer about the bas-relief? He is here
now; he says he can’t wait.”

“The devil!” cried her father impatiently. “Didn’t you tell him –”

“Yes; but he says he can’t come back. If you want to see him you
must come now.”

“Then you think there’s a chance? –”

She nodded.

He turned and looked at Wyant, who was writing assiduously.

“You will stay here, Sybilla; I shall be back in a moment.”

He hurried out, locking the door behind him.

Wyant had looked up, wondering if Miss Lombard would show any
surprise at being locked in with him; but it was his turn to be
surprised, for hardly had they heard the key withdrawn when she moved
close to him, her small face pale and tumultuous.

“I arranged it — I must speak to you,” she gasped. “He’ll be back
in five minutes.”

Her courage seemed to fail, and she looked at him helplessly.

Wyant had a sense of stepping among explosives. He glanced about
him at the dusky vaulted room, at the haunting smile of the strange
picture overhead, and at the pink-and-white girl whispering of
conspiracies in a voice meant to exchange platitudes with a curate.

“How can I help you?” he said with a rush of compassion.

“Oh, if you would! I never have a chance to speak to any one; it’s
so difficult — he watches me — he’ll be back immediately.”

“Try to tell me what I can do.”

“I don’t dare; I feel as if he were behind me.” She turned away,
fixing her eyes on the picture. A sound startled her. “There he comes,
and I haven’t spoken! It was my only chance; but it bewilders me so to
be hurried.”

“I don’t hear any one,” said Wyant, listening. “Try to tell me.”

“How can I make you understand? It would take so long to explain.”
She drew a deep breath, and then with a plunge –”Will you come here
again this afternoon — at about five?” she whispered.

“Come here again?”

“Yes — you can ask to see the picture, — make some excuse. He
will come with you, of course; I will open the door for you — and –
and lock you both in” — she gasped.

“Lock us in?”

“You see? You understand? It’s the only way for me to leave the
house — if I am ever to do it” — She drew another difficult breath.
“The key will be returned — by a safe person — in half an hour, –
perhaps sooner –”

She trembled so much that she was obliged to lean against the
settle for support.

“Wyant looked at her steadily; he was very sorry for her.

“I can’t, Miss Lombard,” he said at length.

“You can’t?”

“I’m sorry; I must seem cruel; but consider –”

He was stopped by the futility of the word: as well ask a hunted
rabbit to pause in its dash for a hole!

Wyant took her hand; it was cold and nerveless.

“I will serve you in any way I can; but you must see that this way
is impossible. Can’t I talk to you again? Perhaps –”

“Oh,” she cried, starting up, “there he comes!”

Doctor Lombard’s step sounded in the passage.

Wyant held her fast. “Tell me one thing: he won’t let you sell the
picture?”

“No — hush!”

“Make no pledges for the future, then; promise me that.”

“The future?”

“In case he should die: your father is an old man. You haven’t
promised?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t, then; remember that.”

She made no answer, and the key turned in the lock.

As he passed out of the house, its scowling cornice and facade of
ravaged brick looked down on him with the startlingness of a strange
face, seen momentarily in a crowd, and impressing itself on the brain as
part of an inevitable future. Above the doorway, the marble hand reached
out like the cry of an imprisoned anguish.

Wyant turned away impatiently.

“Rubbish!” he said to himself. “She isn’t walled in; she can get
out if she wants to.”

IV

Wyant had any number of plans for coming to Miss Lombard’s aid: he was
elaborating the twentieth when, on the same afternoon, he stepped into
the express train for Florence. By the time the train reached Certaldo
he was convinced that, in thus hastening his departure, he had followed
the only reasonable course; at Empoli, he began to reflect that the
priest and the Levite had probably justified themselves in much the same
manner.

A month later, after his return to England, he was unexpectedly
relieved from these alternatives of extenuation and approval. A
paragraph in the morning paper announced the sudden death of Doctor
Lombard, the distinguished English dilettante who had long resided in
Siena. Wyant’s justification was complete. Our blindest impulses become
evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events.

Wyant could now comfortably speculate on the particular
complications from which his foresight had probably saved him. The
climax was unexpectedly dramatic. Miss Lombard, on the brink of a step
which, whatever its issue, would have burdened her with retrospective
compunction, had been set free before her suitor’s ardor could have had
time to cool, and was now doubtless planning a life of domestic felicity
on the proceeds of the Leonardo. One thing, however, struck Wyant as odd
– he saw no mention of the sale of the picture. He had scanned the
papers for an immediate announcement of its transfer to one of the great
museums; but presently concluding that Miss Lombard, out of filial
piety, had wished to avoid an appearance of unseemly haste in the
disposal of her treasure, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Other
affairs happened to engage him; the months slipped by, and gradually the
lady and the picture dwelt less vividly in his mind.

It was not till five or six years later, when chance took him again
to Siena, that the recollection started from some inner fold of memory.
He found himself, as it happened, at the head of Doctor Lombard’s
street, and glancing down that grim thoroughfare, caught an oblique
glimpse of the doctor’s house front, with the Dead Hand projecting above
its threshold. The sight revived his interest, and that evening, over an
admirable frittata, he questioned his landlady about Miss Lombard’s
marriage.

“The daughter of the English doctor? But she has never married,
signore.”

“Never married? What, then, became of Count Ottaviano?”

“For a long time he waited; but last year he married a noble lady
of the Maremma.”

“But what happened — why was the marriage broken?”

The landlady enacted a pantomime of baffled interrogation.

“And Miss Lombard still lives in her father’s house?”

“Yes, signore; she is still there.”

“And the Leonardo –”

“The Leonardo, also, is still there.”

The next day, as Wyant entered the House of the Dead Hand, he
remembered Count Ottaviano’s injunction to ring twice, and smiled
mournfully to think that so much subtlety had been vain. But what could
have prevented the marriage? If Doctor Lombard’s death had been long
delayed, time might have acted as a dissolvent, or the young lady’s
resolve have failed; but it seemed impossible that the white heat of
ardor in which Wyant had left the lovers should have cooled in a few
short weeks.

As he ascended the vaulted stairway the atmosphere of the place
seemed a reply to his conjectures. The same numbing air fell on him,
like an emanation from some persistent will-power, a something fierce
and imminent which might reduce to impotence

I

“You ought to buy it,” said my host; “it’s just the place for a
solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to
own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead
broke, and it’s going for a song — you ought to buy it.”

It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my
friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my
unsociable exterior I have always had secret yearnings for domesticity)
that I took his hint one autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend
was motoring over to Quimper on business: he dropped me on the way, at a
cross-road on a heath, and said: “First turn to the right and second to
the left. Then straight ahead till you see an avenue. If you meet any
peasants, don’t ask your way. They don’t understand French, and they
would pretend they did and mix you up. I’ll be back for you here by
sunset — and don’t forget the tombs in the chapel.”

I followed Lanrivain’s directions with the hesitation occasioned by
the usual difficulty of remembering whether he had said the first turn
to the right and second to the left, or the contrary. If I had met a
peasant I should certainly have asked, and probably been sent astray;
but I had the desert landscape to myself, and so stumbled on the right
turn and walked on across the heath till I came to an avenue. It was so
unlike any other avenue I have ever seen that I instantly knew it must
be THE avenue. The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great
height and then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long tunnel
through which the autumn light fell faintly. I know most trees by name,
but I haven’t to this day been able to decide what those trees were.
They had the tall curve of elms, the tenuity of poplars, the ashen
colour of olives under a rainy sky; and they stretched ahead of me for
half a mile or more without a break in their arch. If ever I saw an
avenue that unmistakeably led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol.
My heart beat a little as I began to walk down it.

Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a long
wall. Between me and the wall was an open space of grass, with other
grey avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs
mossed with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled
with wild shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had
been replaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I
stood for a long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me,
and letting the influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: “If I
wait long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs –”
and I rather hoped he wouldn’t turn up too soon.

I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done
it, it struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that
great blind house looking down at me, and all the empty avenues
converging on me. It may have been the depth of the silence that made me
so conscious of my gesture. The squeak of my match sounded as loud as
the scraping of a brake, and I almost fancied I heard it fall when I
tossed it onto the grass. But there was more than that: a sense of
irrelevance, of littleness, of childish bravado, in sitting there
puffing my cigarette-smoke into the face of such a past.

I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol — I was new to Brittany,
and Lanrivain had never mentioned the name to me till the day before –
but one couldn’t as much as glance at that pile without feeling in it a
long accumulation of history. What kind of history I was not prepared to
guess: perhaps only the sheer weight of many associated lives and deaths
which gives a kind of majesty to all old houses. But the aspect of
Kerfol suggested something more — a perspective of stern and cruel
memories stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of
darkness.

Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken with
the present. As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and gables to
the sky, it might have been its own funeral monument. “Tombs in the
chapel? The whole place is a tomb!” I reflected. I hoped more and more
that the guardian would not come. The details of the place, however
striking, would seem trivial compared with its collective
impressiveness; and I wanted only to sit there and be penetrated by the
weight of its silence.

“It’s the very place for you!” Lanrivain had said; and I was
overcome by the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living
being that Kerfol was the place for him. “Is it possible that any one
could NOT see — ?” I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I
meant was undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was
beginning to want to know more; not to SEE more — I was by now so sure
it was not a question of seeing — but to feel more: feel all the place
had to communicate. “But to get in one will have to rout out the
keeper,” I thought reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I crossed the
bridge and tried the iron gate. It yielded, and I walked under the
tunnel formed by the thickness of the chemin de ronde. At the farther
end, a wooden barricade had been laid across the entrance, and beyond it
I saw a court enclosed in noble architecture. The main building faced
me; and I now discovered that one half was a mere ruined front, with
gaping windows through which the wild growths of the moat and the trees
of the park were visible. The rest of the house was still in its robust
beauty. One end abutted on the round tower, the other on the small
traceried chapel, and in an angle of the building stood a graceful
well-head adorned with mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls,
and on an upper window-sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias.

My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield to my
architectural interest. The building was so fine that I felt a desire to
explore it for its own sake. I looked about the court, wondering in
which corner the guardian lodged. Then I pushed open the barrier and
went in. As I did so, a little dog barred my way. He was such a
remarkably beautiful little dog that for a moment he made me forget the
splendid place he was defending. I was not sure of his breed at the
time, but have since learned that it was Chinese, and that he was of a
rare variety called the “Sleeve-dog.” He was very small and golden
brown, with large brown eyes and a ruffled throat: he looked rather like
a large tawny chrysanthemum. I said to myself: “These little beasts
always snap and scream, and somebody will be out in a minute.”

The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost menacing:
there was anger in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound, he came
no nearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell back, and I noticed
that another dog, a vague rough brindled thing, had limped up. “There’ll
be a hubbub now,” I thought; for at the same moment a third dog, a
long-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined the
others. All three stood looking at me with grave eyes; but not a sound
came from them. As I advanced they continued to fall back on muffled
paws, still watching me. “At a given point, they’ll all charge at my
ankles: it’s one of the dodges that dogs who live together put up on
one,” I thought. I was not much alarmed, for they were neither large nor
formidable. But they let me wander about the court as I pleased,
following me at a little distance — always the same distance — and
always keeping their eyes on me. Presently I looked across at the ruined
facade, and saw that in one of its window-frames another dog stood: a
large white pointer with one brown ear. He was an old grave dog, much
more experienced than the others; and he seemed to be observing me with
a deeper intentness.

“I’ll hear from HIM,” I said to myself; but he stood in the empty
window-frame, against the trees of the park, and continued to watch me
without moving. I looked back at him for a time, to see if the sense
that he was being watched would not rouse him. Half the width of the
court lay between us, and we stared at each other silently across it.
But he did not stir, and at last I turned away. Behind me I found the
rest of the pack, with a newcomer added: a small black greyhound with
pale agate-coloured eyes. He was shivering a little, and his expression
was more timid than that of the others. I noticed that he kept a little
behind them. And still there was not a sound.

I stood there for fully five minutes, the circle about me –
waiting, as they seemed to be waiting. At last I went up to the little
golden-brown dog and stooped to pat him. As I did so, I heard myself
laugh. The little dog did not start, or growl, or take his eyes from me
– he simply slipped back about a yard, and then paused and continued to
look at me. “Oh, hang it!” I exclaimed aloud, and walked across the
court toward the well.

As I advanced, the dogs separated and slid away into different
corners of the court. I examined the urns on the well, tried a locked
door or two, and up and down the dumb facade; then I faced about toward
the chapel. When I turned I perceived that all the dogs had disappeared
except the old pointer, who still watched me from the empty
window-frame. It was rather a relief to be rid of that cloud of
witnesses; and I began to look about me for a way to the back of the
house. “Perhaps there’ll be somebody in the garden,” I thought. I found
a way across the moat, scrambled over a wall smothered in brambles, and
got into the garden. A few lean hydrangeas and geraniums pined in the
flower-beds, and the ancient house looked down on them indifferently.
Its garden side was plainer and severer than the other: the long granite
front, with its few windows and steep roof, looked like a
fortress-prison. I walked around the farther wing, went up some
disjointed steps, and entered the deep twilight of a narrow and
incredibly old box-walk. The walk was just wide enough for one person to
slip through, and its branches met overhead. It was like the ghost of a
box-walk, its lustrous green all turning to the shadowy greyness of the
avenues. I walked on and on, the branches hitting me in the face and
springing back with a dry rattle; and at length I came out on the grassy
top of the chemin de ronde. I walked along it to the gate-tower, looking
down into the court, which was just below me. Not a human being was in
sight; and neither were the dogs. I found a flight of steps in the
thickness of the wall and went down them; and when I emerged again into
the court, there stood the circle of dogs, the golden- brown one a
little ahead of the others, the black greyhound shivering in the rear.

“Oh, hang it — you uncomfortable beasts, you!” I exclaimed, my
voice startling me with a sudden echo. The dogs stood motionless,
watching me. I knew by this time that they would not try to prevent my
approaching the house, and the knowledge left me free to examine them. I
had a feeling that they must be horribly cowed to be so silent and
inert. Yet they did not look hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were
smooth and they were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was
more as if they had lived a long time with people who never spoke to
them or looked at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually
benumbed their busy inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity,
this almost human lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of
starved and beaten animals. I should have liked to rouse them for a
minute, to coax them into a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked
into their fixed and weary eyes the more preposterous the idea became.
With the windows of that house looking down on us, how could I have
imagined such a thing? The dogs knew better: THEY knew what the house
would tolerate and what it would not. I even fancied that they knew what
was passing through my mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But even
that feeling probably reached them through a thick fog of listlessness.
I had an idea that their distance from me was as nothing to my
remoteness from them. In the last analysis, the impression they produced
was that of having in common one memory so deep and dark that nothing
that had happened since was worth either a growl or a wag.

“I say,” I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb
circle, “do you know what you look like, the whole lot of you? You look
as if you’d seen a ghost — that’s how you look! I wonder if there IS a
ghost here, and nobody but you left for it to appear to?” The dogs
continued to gaze at me without moving. . .

It was dark when I saw Lanrivain’s motor lamps at the cross- roads
– and I wasn’t exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense of having
escaped from the loneliest place in the whole world, and of not liking
loneliness — to that degree — as much as I had imagined I should. My
friend had brought his solicitor back from Quimper for the night, and
seated beside a fat and affable stranger I felt no inclination to talk
of Kerfol. . .

But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted in
the study, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the drawing-room.

“Well — are you going to buy Kerfol?” she asked, tilting up her
gay chin from her embroidery.

“I haven’t decided yet. The fact is, I couldn’t get into the
house,” I said, as if I had simply postponed my decision, and meant to
go back for another look.

“You couldn’t get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to
sell the place, and the old guardian has orders –”

“Very likely. But the old guardian wasn’t there.”

“What a pity! He must have gone to market. But his daughter — ?”

“There was nobody about. At least I saw no one.”

“How extraordinary! Literally nobody?”

“Nobody but a lot of dogs — a whole pack of them — who seemed to
have the place to themselves.”

Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knee and folded
her hands on it. For several minutes she looked at me thoughtfully.

“A pack of dogs — you SAW them?”

“Saw them? I saw nothing else!”

“How many?” She dropped her voice a little. “I’ve always wondered –”

I looked at her with surprise: I had supposed the place to be
familiar to her. “Have you never been to Kerfol?” I asked.

“Oh, yes: often. But never on that day.”

“What day?”

“I’d quite forgotten — and so had Herve, I’m sure. If we’d
remembered, we never should have sent you today — but then, after all,
one doesn’t half believe that sort of thing, does one?”

“What sort of thing?” I asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to
the level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: “I KNEW there was something.
. .”

Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring
smile. “Didn’t Herve tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his
was mixed up in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and
some of them are rather unpleasant.”

“Yes — but those dogs?” I insisted.

“Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants
say there’s one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and
that day the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk.
The women in Brittany drink dreadfully.” She stooped to match a silk;
then she lifted her charming inquisitive Parisian face: “Did you REALLY
see a lot of dogs? There isn’t one at Kerfol,” she said.

II

Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf volume from the back
of an upper shelf of his library.

“Yes — here it is. What does it call itself? A History of the
Assizes of the Duchy of Brittany. Quimper, 1702. The book was written
about a hundred years later than the Kerfol affair; but I believe the
account is transcribed pretty literally from the judicial records.
Anyhow, it’s queer reading. And there’s a Herve de Lanrivain mixed up in
it — not exactly MY style, as you’ll see. But then he’s only a
collateral. Here, take the book up to bed with you. I don’t exactly
remember the details; but after you’ve read it I’ll bet anything you’ll
leave your light burning all night!”

I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it was
chiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my reading. The
account of the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol,
was long and closely printed. It was, as my friend had said, probably an
almost literal transcription of what took place in the court-room; and
the trial lasted nearly a month. Besides, the type of the book was
detestable. . .

At first I thought of translating the old record literally. But it
is full of wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the story are
forever straying off into side issues. So I have tried to disentangle
it, and give it here in a simpler form. At times, however, I have
reverted to the text because no other words could have conveyed so
exactly the sense of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I added
anything of my own.

III

It was in the year 16 — that Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain of
Kerfol, went to the pardon of Locronan to perform his religious duties.
He was a rich and powerful noble, then in his sixty-second year, but
hale and sturdy, a great horseman and hunter and a pious man. So all his
neighbours attested. In appearance he seems to have been short and
broad, with a swarthy face, legs slightly bowed from the saddle, a
hanging nose and broad hands with black hairs on them. He had married
young and lost his wife and son soon after, and since then had lived
alone at Kerfol. Twice a year he went to Morlaix, where he had a
handsome house by the river, and spent a week or ten days there; and
occasionally he rode to Rennes on business. Witnesses were found to
declare that during these absences he led a life different from the one
he was known to lead at Kerfol, where he busied himself with his estate,
attended mass daily, and found his only amusement in hunting the wild
boar and water-fowl. But these rumours are not particularly relevant,
and it is certain that among people of his own class in the
neighbourhood he passed for a stern and even austere man, observant of
his religious obligations, and keeping strictly to himself. There was no
talk of any familiarity with the women on his estate, though at that
time the nobility were very free with their peasants. Some people said
he had never looked at a woman since his wife’s death; but such things
are hard to prove, and the evidence on this point was not worth much.

Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the pardon
at Locronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who had ridden
over pillion behind her father to do her duty to the saint. Her name was
Anne de Barrigan, and she came of good old Breton stock, but much less
great and powerful than that of Yves de Cornault; and her father had
squandered his fortune at cards, and lived almost like a peasant in his
little granite manor on the moors. . . I have said I would add nothing
of my own to this bald statement of a strange case; but I must interrupt
myself here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gate of
Locronan at the very moment when the Baron de Cornault was also
dismounting there. I take my description from a rather rare thing: a
faded drawing in red crayon, sober and truthful enough to be by a late
pupil of the Clouets, which hangs in Lanrivain’s study, and is said to
be a portrait of Anne de Barrigan. It is unsigned and has no mark of
identity but the initials A. B., and the date 16 — , the year after her
marriage. It represents a young woman with a small oval face, almost
pointed, yet wide enough for a full mouth with a tender depression at
the corners. The nose is small, and the eyebrows are set rather high,
far apart, and as lightly pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinese
painting. The forehead is high and serious, and the hair, which one
feels to be fine and thick and fair, drawn off it and lying close like a
cap. The eyes are neither large nor small, hazel probably, with a look
at once shy and steady. A pair of beautiful long hands are crossed below
the lady’s breast. . .

The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred that when the
Baron came back from Locronan he jumped from his horse, ordered another
to be instantly saddled, called to a young page come with him, and rode
away that same evening to the south. His steward followed the next
morning with coffers laden on a pair of pack mules. The following week
Yves de Cornault rode back to Kerfol, sent for his vassals and tenants,
and told them he was to be married at All Saints to Anne de Barrigan of
Douarnenez. And on All Saints’ Day the marriage took place.

As to the next few years, the evidence on both sides seems to show
that they passed happily for the couple. No one was found to say that
Yves de Cornault had been unkind to his wife, and it was plain to all
that he was content with his bargain. Indeed, it was admitted by the
chaplain and other witnesses for the prosecution that the young lady had
a softening influence on her husband, and that he became less exacting
with his tenants, less harsh to peasants and dependents, and less
subject to the fits of gloomy silence which had darkened his widow-hood.
As to his wife, the only grievance her champions could call up in her
behalf was that Kerfol was a lonely place, and that when her husband was
away on business at Rennes or Morlaix — whither she was never taken –
she was not allowed so much as to walk in the park unaccompanied. But no
one asserted that she was unhappy, though one servant-woman said she had
surprised her crying, and had heard her say that she was a woman
accursed to have no child, and nothing in life to call her own. But that
was a natural enough feeling in a wife attached to her husband; and
certainly it must have been a great grief to Yves de Cornault that she
gave him no son. Yet he never made her feel her childlessness as a
reproach — she herself admits this in her evidence — but seemed to try
to make her forget it by showering gifts and favours on her. Rich though
he was, he had never been open-handed; but nothing was too fine for his
wife, in the way of silks or gems or linen, or whatever else she
fancied. Every wandering merchant was welcome at Kerfol, and when the
master was called away he never came back without bringing his wife a
handsome present — something curious and particular — from Morlaix or
Rennes or Quimper. One of the waiting-women gave, in cross-examination,
an interesting list of one year’s gifts, which I copy. From Morlaix, a
carved ivory junk, with Chinamen at the oars, that a strange sailor had
brought back as a votive offering for Notre Dame de la Clarte, above
Ploumanac’h; from Quimper, an embroidered gown, worked by the nuns of
the Assumption; from Rennes, a silver rose that opened and showed an
amber Virgin with a crown of garnets; from Morlaix, again, a length of
Damascus velvet shot with gold, bought of a Jew from Syria; and for
Michaelmas that same year, from Rennes, a necklet or bracelet of round
stones — emeralds and pearls and rubies — strung like beads on a gold
wire. This was the present that pleased the lady best, the woman said.
Later on, as it happened, it was produced at the trial, and appears to
have struck the Judges and the public as a curious and valuable jewel.

The very same winter, the Baron absented himself again, this time
as far as Bordeaux, and on his return he brought his wife something even
odder and prettier than the bracelet. It was a winter evening when he
rode up to Kerfol and, walking into the hall, found her sitting
listlessly by the fire, her chin on her hand, looking into the fire. He
carried a velvet box in his hand and, setting it down on the hearth,
lifted the lid and let out a little golden-brown dog.

Anne de Cornault exclaimed with pleasure as the little creature
bounded toward her. “Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!” she cried
as she picked it up; and the dog put its paws on her shoulders and
looked at her with eyes “like a Christian’s.” After that she would never
have it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been
a child — as indeed it was the nearest thing to a child she was to
know. Yves de Cornault was much pleased with his purchase. The dog had
been brought to him by a sailor from an East India merchantman, and the
sailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolen
it from a nobleman’s wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to do,
since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman a heathen doomed to
hellfire. Yves de Cornault had paid a long price for the dog, for they
were beginning to be in demand at the French court, and the sailor knew
he had got hold of a good thing; but Anne’s pleasure was so great that,
to see her laugh and play with the little animal, her husband would
doubtless have given twice the sum.

So far, all the evidence is at one, and the narrative plain
sailing; but now the steering becomes difficult. I will try to keep as
nearly as possible to Anne’s own statements; though toward the end, poor
thing . . .

Well, to go back. The very year after the little brown dog was
brought to Kerfol, Yves de Cornault, one winter night, was found dead at
the head of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from his wife’s rooms
to a door opening on the court. It was his wife who found him and gave
the alarm, so distracted, poor wretch, with fear and horror — for his
blood was all over her — that at first the roused household could not
make out what she was saying, and thought she had gone suddenly mad. But
there, sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay her husband, stone
dead, and head foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down to the
steps below him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the
face and throat, as if with a dull weapon; and one of his legs had a
deep tear in it which had cut an artery, and probably caused his death.
But how did he come there, and who had murdered him?

His wife declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and hearing
his cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs; but this was
immediately questioned. In the first place, it was proved that from her
room she could not have heard the struggle on the stairs, owing to the
thickness of the walls and the length of the intervening passage; then
it was evident that she had not been in bed and asleep, since she was
dressed when she roused the house, and her bed had not been slept in.
Moreover, the door at the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and the key in
the lock; and it was noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that the
dress she wore was stained with blood about the knees, and that there
were traces of small blood-stained hands low down on the staircase
walls, so that it was conjectured that she had really been at the
postern-door when her husband fell and, feeling her way up to him in the
darkness on her hands and knees, had been stained by his blood dripping
down on her. Of course it was argued on the other side that the
blood-marks on her dress might have been caused by her kneeling down by
her husband when she rushed out of her room; but there was the open door
below, and the fact that the fingermarks in the staircase all pointed
upward.

The accused held to her statement for the first two days, in spite
of its improbability; but on the third day word was brought to her that
Herve de Lanrivain, a young nobleman of the neighbourhood, had been
arrested for complicity in the crime. Two or three witnesses thereupon
came forward to say that it was known throughout the country that
Lanrivain had formerly been on good terms with the lady of Cornault; but
that he had been absent from Brittany for over a year, and people had
ceased to associate their names. The witnesses who made this statement
were not of a very reputable sort. One was an old herb-gatherer
suspected of witch-craft, another a drunken clerk from a neighbouring
parish, the third a half-witted shepherd who could be made to say
anything; and it was clear that the prosecution was not satisfied with
its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof of
Lanrivain’s complicity than the statement of the herb- gatherer, who
swore to having seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night of
the murder. One way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was
to put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person.
It is not clear what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the
third day, when she was brought into court, she “appeared weak and
wandering,” and after being encouraged to collect herself and speak the
truth, on her honour and the wounds of her Blessed Redeemer, she
confessed that she had in fact gone down the stairs to speak with Herve
de Lanrivain (who denied everything), and had been surprised there by
the sound of her husband’s fall. That was better; and the prosecution
rubbed its hands with satisfaction. The satisfaction increased when
various dependents living at Kerfol were induced to say — with apparent
sincerity — that during the year or two preceding his death their
master had once more grown uncertain and irascible, and subject to the
fits of brooding silence which his household had learned to dread before
his second marriage. This seemed to show that things had not been going
well at Kerfol; though no one could be found to say that there had been
any signs of open disagreement between husband and wife.

Anne de Cornault, when questioned as to her reason for going down
at night to open the door to Herve de Lanrivain, made an answer which
must have sent a smile around the court. She said it was because she was
lonely and wanted to talk with the young man. Was this the only reason?
she was asked; and replied: “Yes, by the Cross over your Lordships’
heads.” “But why at midnight?” the court asked. “Because I could see him
in no other way.” I can see the exchange of glances across the ermine
collars under the Crucifix.

Anne de Cornault, further questioned, said that her married life
had been extremely lonely: “desolate” was the word she used. It was true
that her husband seldom spoke harshly to her; but there were days when
he did not speak at all. It was true that he had never struck or
threatened her; but he kept her like a prisoner at Kerfol, and when he
rode away to Morlaix or Quimper or Rennes he set so close a watch on her
that she could not pick a flower in the garden without having a
waiting-woman at her heels. “I am no Queen, to need such honours,” she
once said to him; and he had answered that a man who has a treasure does
not leave the key in the lock when he goes out. “Then take me with you,”
she urged; but to this he said that towns were pernicious places, and
young wives better off at their own firesides.

“But what did you want to say to Herve de Lanrivain?” the court
asked; and she answered: “To ask him to take me away.”

“Ah — you confess that you went down to him with adulterous
thoughts?”

“No.”

“Then why did you want him to take you away?”

“Because I was afraid for my life.”

“Of whom were you afraid?”

“Of my husband.”

“Why were you afraid of your husband?”

“Because he had strangled my little dog.”

Another smile must have passed around the court-room: in days when
any nobleman had a right to hang his peasants — and most of them
exercised it — pinching a pet animal’s wind-pipe was nothing to make a
fuss about.

At this point one of the Judges, who appears to have had a certain
sympathy for the accused, suggested that she should be allowed to
explain herself in her own way; and she thereupon made the following
statement.

The first years of her marriage had been lonely; but her husband
had not been unkind to her. If she had had a child she would not have
been unhappy; but the days were long, and it rained too much.

It was true that her husband, whenever he went away and left her,
brought her a handsome present on his return; but this did not make up
for the loneliness. At least nothing had, till he brought her the little
brown dog from the East: after that she was much less unhappy. Her
husband seemed pleased that she was so fond of the dog; he gave her
leave to put her jewelled bracelet around its neck, and to keep it
always with her.

One day she had fallen asleep in her room, with the dog at her
feet, as his habit was. Her feet were bare and resting on his back.
Suddenly she was waked by her husband: he stood beside her, smiling not
unkindly.

“You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault, lying in
the chapel with her feet on a little dog,” he said.

The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed and answered:
“Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, with
my dog at my feet.”

“Oho — we’ll wait and see,” he said, laughing also, but with his
black brows close together. “The dog is the emblem of fidelity.”

“And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?”

“When I’m in doubt I find out,” he answered. “I am an old man,” he
added, “and people say I make you lead a lonely life. But I swear you
shall have your monument if you earn it.”

“And I swear to be faithful,” she returned, “if only for the sake
of having my little dog at my feet.”

Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes; and
while he was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of the duchy,
came to spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the pardon of Ste. Barbe.
She was a woman of great piety and consequence, and much respected by
Yves de Cornault, and when she proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste.
Barbe no one could object, and even the chaplain declared himself in
favour of the pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for
the first time she talked with Herve de Lanrivain. He had come once or
twice to Kerfol with his father, but she had never before exchanged a
dozen words with him. They did not talk for more than five minutes now:
it was under the chestnuts, as the procession was coming out of the
chapel. He said: “I pity you,” and she was surprised, for she had not
supposed that any one thought her an object of pity. He added: “Call for
me when you need me,” and she smiled a little, but was glad afterward,
and thought often of the meeting.

She confessed to having seen him three times afterward: not more.
How or where she would not say — one had the impression that she feared
to implicate some one. Their meetings had been rare and brief; and at
the last he had told her that he was starting the next day for a foreign
country, on a mission which was not without peril and might keep him for
many months absent. He asked her for a remembrance, and she had none to
give him but the collar about the little dog’s neck. She was sorry
afterward that she had given it, but he was so unhappy at going that she
had not had the courage to refuse.

Her husband was away at the time. When he returned a few days later
he picked up the little dog to pet it, and noticed that its collar was
missing. His wife told him that the dog had lost it in the undergrowth
of the park, and that she and her maids had hunted a whole day for it.
It was true, she explained to the court, that she had made the maids
search for the necklet — they all believed the dog had lost it in the
park. . .

Her husband made no comment, and that evening at supper he was in
his usual mood, between good and bad: you could never tell which. He
talked a good deal, describing what he had seen and done at Rennes; but
now and then he stopped and looked hard at her; and when she went to bed
she found her little dog strangled on her pillow. The little thing was
dead, but still warm; she stooped to lift it, and her distress turned to
horror when she discovered that it had been strangled by twisting twice
round its throat the necklet she had given to Lanrivain.

The next morning at dawn she buried the dog in the garden, and hid
the necklet in her breast. She said nothing to her husband, then or
later, and he said nothing to her; but that day he had a peasant hanged
for stealing a faggot in the park, and the next day he nearly beat to
death a young horse he was breaking.

Winter set in, and the short days passed, and the long nights, one
by one; and she heard nothing of Herve de Lanrivain. It might be that
her husband had killed him; or merely that he had been robbed of the
necklet. Day after day by the hearth among the spinning maids, night
after night alone on her bed, she wondered and trembled. Sometimes at
table her husband looked across at her and smiled; and then she felt
sure that Lanrivain was dead. She dared not try to get news of him, for
she was sure her husband would find out if she did: she had an idea that
he could find out anything. Even when a witch-woman who was a noted
seer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to the
castle for a night’s shelter, and the maids flocked to her, Anne held
back. The winter was long and black and rainy. One day, in Yves de
Cornault’s absence, some gypsies came to Kerfol with a troop of
performing dogs. Anne bought the smallest and cleverest, a white dog
with a feathery coat and one blue and one brown eye. It seemed to have
been ill-treated by the gypsies, and clung to her plaintively when she
took it from them. That evening her husband came back, and when she went
to bed she found the dog strangled on her pillow.

After that she said to herself that she would never have another
dog; but one bitter cold evening a poor lean greyhound was found whining
at the castle-gate, and she took him in and forbade the maids to speak
of him to her husband. She hid him in a room that no one went to,
smuggled food to him from her own plate, made him a warm bed to lie on
and petted him like a child.

Yves de Cornault came home, and the next day she found the
greyhound strangled on her pillow. She wept in secret, but said nothing,
and resolved that even if she met a dog dying of hunger she would never
bring him into the castle; but one day she found a young sheep-dog, a
brindled puppy with good blue eyes, lying with a broken leg in the snow
of the park. Yves de Cornault was at Rennes, and she brought the dog in,
warmed and fed it, tied up its leg and hid it in the castle till her
husband’s return. The day before, she gave it to a peasant woman who
lived a long way off, and paid her handsomely to care for it and say
nothing; but that night she heard a whining and scratching at her door,
and when she opened it the lame puppy, drenched and shivering, jumped up
on her with little sobbing barks. She hid him in her bed, and the next
morning was about to have him taken back to the peasant woman when she
heard her husband ride into the court. She shut the dog in a chest and
went down to receive him. An hour or two later, when she returned to her
room, the puppy lay strangled on her pillow. . .

After that she dared not make a pet of any other dog; and her
loneliness became almost unendurable. Sometimes, when she crossed the
court of the castle, and thought no one was looking, she stopped to pat
the old pointer at the gate. But one day as she was caressing him her
husband came out of the chapel; and the next day the old dog was gone. . .

This curious narrative was not told in one sitting of the court, or
received without impatience and incredulous comment. It was plain that
the Judges were surprised by its puerility, and that it did not help the
accused in the eyes of the public. It was an odd tale, certainly; but
what did it prove? That Yves de Cornault disliked dogs, and that his
wife, to gratify her own fancy, persistently ignored this dislike. As
for pleading this trivial disagreement as an excuse for her relations –
whatever their nature — with her supposed accomplice, the argument was
so absurd that her own lawyer manifestly regretted having let her make
use of it, and tried several times to cut short her story. But she went
on to the end, with a kind of hypnotized insistence, as though the
scenes she evoked were so real to her that she had forgotten where she
was and imagined herself to be re-living them.

At length the Judge who had previously shown a certain kindness to
her said (leaning forward a little, one may suppose, from his row of
dozing colleagues): “Then you would have us believe that you murdered
your husband because he would not let you keep a pet dog?”

“I did not murder my husband.”

“Who did, then? Herve de Lanrivain?”

“No.”

“Who then? Can you tell us?”

“Yes, I can tell you. The dogs –” At that point she was carried
out of the court in a swoon.

It was evident that her lawyer tried to get her to abandon this line of
defense. Possibly her explanation, whatever it was, had seemed
convincing when she poured it out to him in the heat of their first
private colloquy; but now that it was exposed to the cold daylight of
judicial scrutiny, and the banter of the town, he was thoroughly ashamed
of it, and would have sacrificed her without a scruple to save his
professional reputation. But the obstinate Judge — who perhaps, after
all, was more inquisitive than kindly — evidently wanted to hear the
story out, and she was ordered, the next day, to continue her deposition.

She said that after the disappearance of the old watch-dog nothing
particular happened for a month or two. Her husband was much as usual:
she did not remember any special incident. But one evening a pedlar
woman came to the castle and was selling trinkets to the maids. She had
no heart for trinkets, but she stood looking on while the women made
their choice. And then, she did not know how, but the pedlar coaxed her
into buying for herself an odd pear-shaped pomander with a strong scent
in it — she had once seen something of the kind on a gypsy woman. She
had no desire for the pomander, and did not know why she had bought it.
The pedlar said that whoever wore it had the power to read the future;
but she did not really believe that, or care much either. However, she
bought the thing and took it up to her room, where she sat turning it
about in her hand. Then the strange scent attracted her and she began to
wonder what kind of spice was in the box. She opened it and found a grey
bean rolled in a strip of paper; and on the paper she saw a sign she
knew, and a message from Herve de Lanrivain, saying that he was at home
again and would be at the door in the court that night after the moon
had set. . .

She burned the paper and then sat down to think. It was nightfall,
and her husband was at home. . . She had no way of warning Lanrivain,
and there was nothing to do but to wait. . .

At this point I fancy the drowsy courtroom beginning to wake up.
Even to the oldest hand on the bench there must have been a certain
aesthetic relish in picturing the feelings of a woman on receiving such
a message at night-fall from a man living twenty miles away, to whom she
had no means of sending a warning. . .

She was not a clever woman, I imagine; and as the first result of
her cogitation she appears to have made the mistake of being, that
evening, too kind to her husband. She could not ply him with wine,
according to the traditional expedient, for though he drank heavily at
times he had a strong head; and when he drank beyond its strength it was
because he chose to, and not because a woman coaxed him. Not his wife,
at any rate — she was an old story by now. As I read the case, I fancy
there was no feeling for her left in him but the hatred occasioned by
his supposed dishonour.

At any rate, she tried to call up her old graces; but early in the
evening he complained of pains and fever, and left the hall to go up to
his room. His servant carried him a cup of hot wine, and brought back
word that he was sleeping and not to be disturbed; and an hour later,
when Anne lifted the tapestry and listened at his door, she heard his
loud regular breathing. She thought it might be a feint, and stayed a
long time barefooted in the cold passage, her ear to the crack; but the
breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a
man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in
the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky
was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was pitch
black. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past her
husband’s door — where she stopped again to listen to his breathing –
to the top of the stairs. There she paused a moment, and assured herself
that no one was following her; then she began to go down the stairs in
the darkness. They were so steep and winding that she had to go very
slowly, for fear of stumbling. Her one thought was to get the door
unbolted, tell Lanrivain to make his escape, and hasten back to her
room. She had tried the bolt earlier in the evening, and managed to put
a little grease on it; but nevertheless, when she drew it, it gave a
squeak . . . not loud, but it made her heart stop; and the next minute,
overhead, she heard a noise. . .

“What noise?” the prosecution interposed.

“My husband’s voice calling out my name and cursing me.”

“What did you hear after that?”

“A terrible scream and a fall.”

“Where was Herve de Lanrivain at this time?”

“He was standing outside in the court. I just made him out in the
darkness. I told him for God’s sake to go, and then I pushed the door
shut.”

“What did you do next?”

“I stood at the foot of the stairs and listened.”

“What did you hear?”

“I heard dogs snarling and panting.” (Visible discouragement of the
bench, boredom of the public, and exasperation of the lawyer for the
defense. Dogs again — ! But the inquisitive Judge insisted.)

“What dogs?”

She bent her head and spoke so low that she had to be told to
repeat her answer: “I don’t know.”

“How do you mean — you don’t know?”

“I don’t know what dogs. . .”

The Judge again intervened: “Try to tell us exactly what happened.
How long did you remain at the foot of the stairs?”

“Only a few minutes.”

“And what was going on meanwhile overhead?”

“The dogs kept on snarling and panting. Once or twice he cried out.
I think he moaned once. Then he was quiet.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when the wolf is
thrown to them — gulping and lapping.”

(There was a groan of disgust and repulsion through the court, and
another attempted intervention by the distracted lawyer. But the
inquisitive Judge was still inquisitive.)

“And all the while you did not go up?”

“Yes — I went up then — to drive them off.”

“The dogs?”

“Yes.”

“Well — ?”

“When I got there it was quite dark. I found my husband’s flint and
steel and struck a spark. I saw him lying there. He was dead.”

“And the dogs?”

“The dogs were gone.”

“Gone — where to?”

“I don’t know. There was no way out — and there were no dogs at
Kerfol.”

She straightened herself to her full height, threw her arms above
her head, and fell down on the stone floor with a long scream. There was
a moment of confusion in the court-room. Some one on the bench was heard
to say: “This is clearly a case for the ecclesiastical authorities” –
and the prisoner’s lawyer doubtless jumped at the suggestion.

After this, the trial loses itself in a maze of cross-questioning
and squabbling. Every witness who was called corroborated Anne de
Cornault’s statement that there were no dogs at Kerfol: had been none
for several months. The master of the house had taken a dislike to dogs,
there was no denying it. But, on the other hand, at the inquest, there
had been long and bitter discussion as to the nature of the dead man’s
wounds. One of the surgeons called in had spoken of marks that looked
like bites. The suggestion of witchcraft was revived, and the opposing
lawyers hurled tomes of necromancy at each other.

At last Anne de Cornault was brought back into court — at the
instance of the same Judge — and asked if she knew where the dogs she
spoke of could have come from. On the body of her Redeemer she swore
that she did not. Then the Judge put his final question: “If the dogs
you think you heard had been known to you, do you think you would have
recognized them by their barking?”

“Yes.”

“Did you recognize them?”

“Yes.”

“What dogs do you take them to have been?”

“My dead dogs,” she said in a whisper. . . She was taken out of
court, not to reappear there again. There was some kind of
ecclesiastical investigation, and the end of the business was that the
Judges disagreed with each other, and with the ecclesiastical committee,
and that Anne de Cornault was finally handed over to the keeping of her
husband’s family, who shut her up in the keep of Kerfol, where she is
said to have died many years later, a harmless madwoman.

So ends her story. As for that of Herve de Lanrivain, I had only to
apply to his collateral descendant for its subsequent details. The
evidence against the young man being insufficient, and his family
influence in the duchy considerable, he was set free, and left soon
afterward for Paris. He was probably in no mood for a worldly life, and
he appears to have come almost immediately under the influence of the
famous M. Arnauld d’Andilly and the gentlemen of Port Royal. A year or
two later he was received into their Order, and without achieving any
particular distinction he followed its good and evil fortunes till his
death some twenty years later. Lanrivain showed me a portrait of him by
a pupil of Philippe de Champaigne: sad eyes, an impulsive mouth and a
narrow brow. Poor Herve de Lanrivain: it was a grey ending. Yet as I
looked at his stiff and sallow effigy, in the dark dress of the
Jansenists, I almost found myself envying his fate. After all, in the
course of his life two great things had happened to him: he had loved
romantically, and he must have talked with Pascal. . .

The view from Mrs. Manstey’s window was not a striking one, but to her
at least it was full of interest and beauty. Mrs. Manstey occupied the
back room on the third floor of a New York boardinghouse, in a street
where the ash-barrels lingered late on the sidewalk and the gaps in the
pavement would have staggered a Quintus Curtius. She was the widow of a
clerk in a large wholesale house, and his death had left her alone, for
her only daughter had married in California, and could not afford the
long journey to New York to see her mother. Mrs. Manstey, perhaps, might
have joined her daughter in the West, but they had now been so many
years apart that they had ceased to feel any need of each other’s
society, and their intercourse had long been limited to the exchange of
a few perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter,
and with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff
with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter’s
companionship, Mrs. Manstey’s increasing infirmity, which caused her to
dread the three flights of stairs between her room and the street, would
have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey; and
without perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long since accepted
as a matter of course her solitary life in New York.

She was, indeed, not quite lonely, for a few friends still toiled
up now and then to her room; but their visits grew rare as the years
went by. Mrs. Manstey had never been a sociable woman, and during her
husband’s lifetime his companionship had been all-sufficient to her. For
many years she had cherished a desire to live in the country, to have a
hen-house and a garden; but this longing had faded with age, leaving
only in the breast of the uncommunicative old woman a vague tenderness
for plants and animals. It was, perhaps, this tenderness which made her
cling so fervently to her view from her window, a view in which the most
optimistic eye would at first have failed to discover anything admirable.

Mrs. Manstey, from her coign of vantage (a slightly projecting
bow-window where she nursed an ivy and a succession of
unwholesome-looking bulbs), looked out first upon the yard of her own
dwelling, of which, however, she could get but a restricted glimpse.
Still, her gaze took in the topmost boughs of the ailanthus below her
window, and she knew how early each year the clump of dicentra strung
its bending stalk with hearts of pink.

But of greater interest were the yards beyond. Being for the most
part attached to boarding-houses they were in a state of chronic
untidiness and fluttering, on certain days of the week, with
miscellaneous garments and frayed table-cloths. In spite of this Mrs.
Manstey found much to admire in the long vista which she commanded. Some
of the yards were, indeed, but stony wastes, with grass in the cracks of
the pavement and no shade in spring save that afforded by the
intermittent leafage of the clotheslines. These yards Mrs. Manstey
disapproved of, but the others, the green ones, she loved. She had grown
used to their disorder; the broken barrels, the empty bottles and paths
unswept no longer annoyed her; hers was the happy faculty of dwelling on
the pleasanter side of the prospect before her.

In the very next enclosure did not a magnolia open its hard white
flowers against the watery blue of April? And was there not, a little
way down the line, a fence foamed over every May be lilac waves of
wistaria? Farther still, a horse-chestnut lifted its candelabra of buff
and pink blossoms above broad fans of foliage; while in the opposite
yard June was sweet with the breath of a neglected syringa, which
persisted in growing in spite of the countless obstacles opposed to its
welfare.

But if nature occupied the front rank in Mrs. Manstey’s view, there
was much of a more personal character to interest her in the aspect of
the houses and their inmates. She deeply disapproved of the
mustard-colored curtains which had lately been hung in the doctor’s
window opposite; but she glowed with pleasure when the house farther
down had its old bricks washed with a coat of paint. The occupants of
the houses did not often show themselves at the back windows, but the
servants were always in sight. Noisy slatterns, Mrs. Manstey pronounced
the greater number; she knew their ways and hated them. But to the quiet
cook in the newly painted house, whose mistress bullied her, and who
secretly fed the stray cats at nightfall, Mrs. Manstey’s warmest
sympathies were given. On one occasion her feelings were racked by the
neglect of a housemaid, who for two days forgot to feed the parrot
committed to her care. On the third day, Mrs. Manstey, in spite of her
gouty hand, had just penned a letter, beginning: “Madam, it is now three
days since your parrot has been fed,” when the forgetful maid appeared
at the window with a cup of seed in her hand.

But in Mrs. Manstey’s more meditative moods it was the narrowing
perspective of far-off yards which pleased her best. She loved, at
twilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in the fluid
yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories of a trip to
Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her mind’s eye to a pale
phantasmagoria of indistinct steeples and dreamy skies. Perhaps at heart
Mrs. Manstey was an artist; at all events she was sensible of many
changes of color unnoticed by the average eye, and dear to her as the
green of early spring was the black lattice of branches against a cold
sulphur sky at the close of a snowy day. She enjoyed, also, the sunny
thaws of March, when patches of earth showed through the snow, like
inkspots spreading on a sheet of white blotting-paper; and, better
still, the haze of boughs, leafless but swollen, which replaced the
clear-cut tracery of winter. She even watched with a certain interest
the trail of smoke from a far-off factory chimney, and missed a detail
in the landscape when the factory was closed and the smoke disappeared.

Mrs. Manstey, in the long hours which she spent at her window, was
not idle. She read a little, and knitted numberless stockings; but the
view surrounded and shaped her life as the sea does a lonely island.
When her rare callers came it was difficult for her to detach herself
from the contemplation of the opposite window-washing, or the scrutiny
of certain green points in a neighboring flower-bed which might, or
might not, turn into hyacinths, while she feigned an interest in her
visitor’s anecdotes about some unknown grandchild. Mrs. Manstey’s real
friends were the denizens of the yards, the hyacinths, the magnolia, the
green parrot, the maid who fed the cats, the doctor who studied late
behind his mustard-colored curtains; and the confidant of her tenderer
musings was the church-spire floating in the sunset.

One April day, as she sat in her usual place, with knitting cast
aside and eyes fixed on the blue sky mottled with round clouds, a knock
at the door announced the entrance of her landlady. Mrs. Manstey did not
care for her landlady, but she submitted to her visits with ladylike
resignation. To-day, however, it seemed harder than usual to turn from
the blue sky and the blossoming magnolia to Mrs. Sampson’s unsuggestive
face, and Mrs. Manstey was conscious of a distinct effort as she did so.

“The magnolia is out earlier than usual this year, Mrs. Sampson,”
she remarked, yielding to a rare impulse, for she seldom alluded to the
absorbing interest of her life. In the first place it was a topic not
likely to appeal to her visitors and, besides, she lacked the power of
expression and could not have given utterance to her feelings had she
wished to.

“The what, Mrs. Manstey?” inquired the landlady, glancing about the
room as if to find there the explanation of Mrs. Manstey’s statement.

“The magnolia in the next yard — in Mrs. Black’s yard,” Mrs.
Manstey repeated.

“Is it, indeed? I didn’t know there was a magnolia there,” said
Mrs. Sampson, carelessly. Mrs. Manstey looked at her; she did not know
that there was a magnolia in the next yard!

“By the way,” Mrs. Sampson continued, “speaking of Mrs. Black
reminds me that the work on the extension is to begin next week.”

“The what?” it was Mrs. Manstey’s turn to ask.

“The extension,” said Mrs. Sampson, nodding her head in the
direction of the ignored magnolia. “You knew, of course, that Mrs. Black
was going to build an extension to her house? Yes, ma’am. I hear it is
to run right back to the end of the yard. How she can afford to build an
extension in these hard times I don’t see; but she always was crazy
about building. She used to keep a boarding-house in Seventeenth Street,
and she nearly ruined herself then by sticking out bow-windows and what
not; I should have thought that would have cured her of building, but I
guess it’s a disease, like drink. Anyhow, the work is to begin on Monday.”

Mrs. Manstey had grown pale. She always spoke slowly, so the
landlady did not heed the long pause which followed. At last Mrs.
Manstey said: “Do you know how high the extension will be?”

“That’s the most absurd part of it. The extension is to be built
right up to the roof of the main building; now, did you ever?”

“Mrs. Manstey paused again. “Won’t it be a great annoyance to you,
Mrs. Sampson?” she asked.

“I should say it would. But there’s no help for it; if people have
got a mind to build extensions there’s no law to prevent ‘em, that I’m
aware of.” Mrs. Manstey, knowing this, was silent. “There is no help for
it,” Mrs. Sampson repeated, “but if I am a church member, I wouldn’t
be so sorry if it ruined Eliza Black. Well, good-day, Mrs. Manstey; I’m
glad to find you so comfortable.”

So comfortable — so comfortable! Left to herself the old woman
turned once more to the window. How lovely the view was that day! The
blue sky with its round clouds shed a brightness over everything; the
ailanthus had put on a tinge of yellow-green, the hyacinths were
budding, the magnolia flowers looked more than ever like rosettes carved
in alabaster. Soon the wistaria would bloom, then the horse-chestnut;
but not for her. Between her eyes and them a barrier of brick and mortar
would swiftly rise; presently even the spire would disappear, and all
her radiant world be blotted out. Mrs. Manstey sent away untouched the
dinner-tray brought to her that evening. She lingered in the window
until the windy sunset died in bat-colored dusk; then, going to bed, she
lay sleepless all night.

Early the next day she was up and at the window. It was raining,
but even through the slanting gray gauze the scene had its charm-and
then the rain was so good for the trees. She had noticed the day before
that the ailanthus was growing dusty.

“Of course I might move,” said Mrs. Manstey aloud, and turning from
the window she looked about her room. She might move, of course; so
might she be flayed alive; but she was not likely to survive either
operation. The room, though far less important to her happiness than the
view, was as much a part of her existence. She had lived in it seventeen
years. She knew every stain on the wall-paper, every rent in the carpet;
the light fell in a certain way on her engravings, her books had grown
shabby on their shelves, her bulbs and ivy were used to their window and
knew which way to lean to the sun. “We are all too old to move,” she said.

That afternoon it cleared. Wet and radiant the blue reappeared
through torn rags of cloud; the ailanthus sparkled; the earth in the
flower-borders looked rich and warm. It was Thursday, and on Monday the
building of the extension was to begin.

On Sunday afternoon a card was brought to Mrs. Black, as she was
engaged in gathering up the fragments of the boarders’ dinner in the
basement. The card, black-edged, bore Mrs. Manstey’s name.

“One of Mrs. Sampson’s boarders; wants to move, I suppose. Well, I
can give her a room next year in the extension. Dinah,” said Mrs. Black,
“tell the lady I’ll be upstairs in a minute.”

Mrs. Black found Mrs. Manstey standing in the long parlor garnished
with statuettes and antimacassars; in that house she could not sit down.

Stooping hurriedly to open the register, which let out a cloud of
dust, Mrs. Black advanced on her visitor.

“I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Manstey; take a seat, please,” the
landlady remarked in her prosperous voice, the voice of a woman who can
afford to build extensions. There was no help for it; Mrs. Manstey sat
down.

“Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?” Mrs. Black continued.
“My house is full at present, but I am going to build an extension, and –”

“It is about the extension that I wish to speak,” said Mrs.
Manstey, suddenly. “I am a poor woman, Mrs. Black, and I have never been
a happy one. I shall have to talk about myself first to — to make you
understand.”

Mrs. Black, astonished but imperturbable, bowed at this parenthesis.

“I never had what I wanted,” Mrs. Manstey continued. “It was always
one disappointment after another. For years I wanted to live in the
country. I dreamed and dreamed about it; but we never could manage it.
There was no sunny window in our house, and so all my plants died. My
daughter married years ago and went away — besides, she never cared for
the same things. Then my husband died and I was left alone. That was
seventeen years ago. I went to live at Mrs. Sampson’s, and I have been
there ever since. I have grown a little infirm, as you see, and I don’t
get out often; only on fine days, if I am feeling very well. So you can
understand my sitting a great deal in my window — the back window on
the third floor –”

“Well, Mrs. Manstey,” said Mrs. Black, liberally, “I could give you
a back room, I dare say; one of the new rooms in the ex –”

“But I don’t want to move; I can’t move,” said Mrs. Manstey, almost
with a scream. “And I came to tell you that if you build that extension
I shall have no view from my window — no view! Do you understand?”

Mrs. Black thought herself face to face with a lunatic, and she had
always heard that lunatics must be humored.

“Dear me, dear me,” she remarked, pushing her chair back a little
way, “that is too bad, isn’t it? Why, I never thought of that. To be
sure, the extension will interfere with your view, Mrs. Manstey.”

“You do understand?” Mrs. Manstey gasped.

“Of course I do. And I’m real sorry about it, too. But there, don’t
you worry, Mrs. Manstey. I guess we can fix that all right.”

Mrs. Manstey rose from her seat, and Mrs. Black slipped toward the
door.

“What do you mean by fixing it? Do you mean that I can induce you
to change your mind about the extension? Oh, Mrs. Black, listen to me. I
have two thousand dollars in the bank and I could manage, I know I could
manage, to give you a thousand if –” Mrs. Manstey paused; the tears
were rolling down her cheeks.

“There, there, Mrs. Manstey, don’t you worry,” repeated Mrs. Black,
soothingly. “I am sure we can settle it. I am sorry that I can’t stay
and talk about it any longer, but this is such a busy time of day, with
supper to get –”

Her hand was on the door-knob, but with sudden vigor Mrs. Manstey
seized her wrist.

“You are not giving me a definite answer. Do you mean to say that
you accept my proposition?”

“Why, I’ll think it over, Mrs. Manstey, certainly I will. I
wouldn’t annoy you for the world –”

“But the work is to begin to-morrow, I am told,” Mrs. Manstey
persisted.

Mrs. Black hesitated. “It shan’t begin, I promise you that; I’ll
send word to the builder this very night.” Mrs. Manstey tightened her hold.

“You are not deceiving me, are you?” she said.

“No — no,” stammered Mrs. Black. “How can you think such a thing
of me, Mrs. Manstey?”

Slowly Mrs. Manstey’s clutch relaxed, and she passed through the
open door. “One thousand dollars,” she repeated, pausing in the hall;
then she let herself out of the house and hobbled down the steps,
supporting herself on the cast-iron railing.

“My goodness,” exclaimed Mrs. Black, shutting and bolting the
hall-door, “I never knew the old woman was crazy! And she looks so quiet
and ladylike, too.”

Mrs. Manstey slept well that night, but early the next morning she
was awakened by a sound of hammering. She got to her window with what
haste she might and, looking out saw that Mrs. Black’s yard was full of
workmen. Some were carrying loads of brick from the kitchen to the yard,
others beginning to demolish the oldfashioned wooden balcony which
adorned each story of Mrs. Black’s house. Mrs. Manstey saw that she had
been deceived. At first she thought of confiding her trouble to Mrs.
Sampson, but a settled discouragement soon took possession of her and
she went back to bed, not caring to see what was going on.

Toward afternoon, however, feeling that she must know the worst,
she rose and dressed herself. It was a laborious task, for her hands
were stiffer than usual, and the hooks and buttons seemed to evade her.

When she seated herself in the window, she saw that the workmen had
removed the upper part of the balcony, and that the bricks had
multiplied since morning. One of the men, a coarse fellow with a bloated
face, picked a magnolia blossom and, after smelling it, threw it to the
ground; the next man, carrying a load of bricks, trod on the flower in
passing.

“Look out, Jim,” called one of the men to another who was smoking a
pipe, “if you throw matches around near those barrels of paper you’ll
have the old tinder-box burning down before you know it.” And Mrs.
Manstey, leaning forward, perceived that there were several barrels of
paper and rubbish under the wooden balcony.

At length the work ceased and twilight fell. The sunset was perfect
and a roseate light, transfiguring the distant spire, lingered late in
the west. When it grew dark Mrs. Manstey drew down the shades and
proceeded, in her usual methodical manner, to light her lamp. She always
filled and lit it with her own hands, keeping a kettle of kerosene on a
zinc-covered shelf in a closet. As the lamp-light filled the room it
assumed its usual peaceful aspect. The books and pictures and plants
seemed, like their mistress, to settle themselves down for another quiet
evening, and Mrs. Manstey, as was her wont, drew up her armchair to the
table and began to knit.

That night she could not sleep. The weather had changed and a wild
wind was abroad, blotting the stars with close-driven clouds. Mrs.
Manstey rose once or twice and looked out of the window; but of the view
nothing was discernible save a tardy light or two in the opposite
windows. These lights at last went out, and Mrs. Manstey, who had
watched for their extinction, began to dress herself. She was in evident
haste, for she merely flung a thin dressing-gown over her night-dress
and wrapped her head in a scarf; then she opened her closet and
cautiously took out the kettle of kerosene. Having slipped a bundle of
wooden matches into her pocket she proceeded, with increasing
precautions, to unlock her door, and a few moments later she was feeling
her way down the dark staircase, led by a glimmer of gas from the lower
hall. At length she reached the bottom of the stairs and began the more
difficult descent into the utter darkness of the basement. Here,
however, she could move more freely, as there was less danger of being
overheard; and without much delay she contrived to unlock the iron door
leading into the yard. A gust of cold wind smote her as she stepped out
and groped shiveringly under the clothes-lines.

That morning at three o’clock an alarm of fire brought the engines
to Mrs. Black’s door, and also brought Mrs. Sampson’s startled boarders
to their windows. The wooden balcony at the back of Mrs. Black’s house
was ablaze, and among those who watched the progress of the flames was
Mrs. Manstey, leaning in her thin dressing-gown from the open window.

The fire, however, was soon put out, and the frightened occupants
of the house, who had fled in scant attire, reassembled at dawn to find
that little mischief had been done beyond the cracking of window panes
and smoking of ceilings. In fact, the chief sufferer by the fire was
Mrs. Manstey, who was found in the morning gasping with pneumonia, a not
unnatural result, as everyone remarked, of her having hung out of an
open window at her age in a dressing-gown. It was easy to see that she
was very ill, but no one had guessed how grave the doctor’s verdict
would be, and the faces gathered that evening about Mrs. Sampson’s table
were awestruck and disturbed. Not that any of the boarders knew Mrs.
Manstey well; she “kept to herself,” as they said, and seemed to fancy
herself too good for them; but then it is always disagreeable to have
anyone dying in the house and, as one lady observed to another: “It
might just as well have been you or me, my dear.”

But it was only Mrs. Manstey; and she was dying, as she had lived,
lonely if not alone. The doctor had sent a trained nurse, and Mrs.
Sampson, with muffled step, came in from time to time; but both, to Mrs.
Manstey, seemed remote and unsubstantial as the figures in a dream. All
day she said nothing; but when she was asked for her daughter’s address
she shook her head. At times the nurse noticed that she seemed to be
listening attentively for some sound which did not come; then again she
dozed.

The next morning at daylight she was very low. The nurse called
Mrs. Sampson and as the two bent over the old woman they saw her lips move.

“Lift me up — out of bed,” she whispered.

They raised her in their arms, and with her stiff hand she pointed
to the window.

“Oh, the window — she wants to sit in the window. She used to sit
there all day,” Mrs. Sampson explained. “It can do her no harm, I suppose?”

“Nothing matters now,” said the nurse.

They carried Mrs. Manstey to the window and placed her in her
chair. The dawn was abroad, a jubilant spring dawn; the spire had
already caught a golden ray, though the magnolia and horsechestnut still
slumbered in shadow. In Mrs. Black’s yard all was quiet. The charred
timbers of the balcony lay where they had fallen. It was evident that
since the fire the builders had not returned to their work. The magnolia
had unfolded a few more sculptural flowers; the view was undisturbed.

It was hard for Mrs. Manstey to breathe; each moment it grew more
difficult. She tried to make them open the window, but they would not
understand. If she could have tasted the air, sweet with the penetrating
ailanthus savor, it would have eased her; but the view at least was
there — the spire was golden now, the heavens had warmed from pearl to
blue, day was alight from east to west, even the magnolia had caught the
sun.

Mrs. Manstey’s head fell back and smiling she died.

That day the building of the extension was resumed.