*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62084 ***

THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER,

AND

MY BEAUTIFUL NEIGHBOUR.

_IN THREE VOLUMES._

VOL. III.

[Illustration: Logo]

LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY & SON,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1874.

The Right of Translation is reserved.




MY BEAUTIFUL NEIGHBOUR.




CHAPTER I.


I found Martelli to be more useful to me than I could have expected.
He had called himself practical, and he was practical. He was used to
the punctilious regularity of schools, to the difficult inattention of
pupils; and the habits these experiences had engendered well qualified
him in one sense for the post I had offered. In one sense I say: by
which I mean my need of an influence to direct my studies and keep me
to them. But in him I missed what I had sought, and would have taken
in preference, could I have found. Sympathies he had in abundance, but
they were commonplace. He shone indeed; but rather with the borrowed
light of letters than the luminous atmosphere of imagination. He could
not comprehend me, though he would never appear puzzled. He would
miss a delicate implication. In taste he was a sensualist, esteeming
the full-blooded, florid, and passionate conceptions of art above her
chaste aerial hints and tender moonlit beauties. Yet he was a good
and sound scholar. His knowledge of Greek and Latin was singularly
exact. He was deeply read in modern literature; and his surprising
memory enabled him to display to the utmost advantage the various and
carefully stored treasures of his mind. But though his erudition might
have enabled him to have edited with accuracy the most obscure work in
the whole range of ancient literature, his imagination would not have
yielded him five lines of poetry.

When together in the library, he would often extort a smile from
me by the recollection he excited of my school days. Brisk in his
movements, energetic in his actions, pungent and austere in his
resolute directions, he recalled to me a French tutor, whom, of all my
early tutors, I most hated for his severity. But the task conned, the
subject discussed, the book closed, his manner would change; he would
be ceremoniously courteous, with almost a hint of obsequiousness in
his behaviour, as though he wished me to understand that his sturdy
discharge of his duty did not prevent him from appreciating the
difference of position between us.

I should have benefited more from his counsels had my thoughts been
less preoccupied with the subject which was hardly ever absent from my
mind.

But I found it impossible wholly to surrender my attention to my tasks.
Memory persistently reverted to the strange and beautiful apparition
that had startled me in my midnight saunter. Every day, nay, every
hour, was increasing my desire to know her. Yet I could hit upon no
means of introduction. To have hung about her house, to have loitered
near her garden, even had the absence of my companion rendered such
a device practicable, would have been unwise; since, if now from no
apparent cause she shunned intrusion or inspection, greater would be
her efforts to maintain her privacy when she discovered a stranger
sought to violate it.

One thing I could not hide from myself--I was in love with her. I am
well aware that under the circumstances the feeling was most absurd;
but I could not help it. The memory of her beauty took shape before me
at all hours, in all moods. And my love was illustrated and confirmed
by my wish to meet, to know, to speak with her.

Martelli noticed my abstraction. More than once I had remarked his
dusky eyes glowing on me with a gaze of interrogative inspection. But
he carefully repressed his curiosity. No observation ever escaped him
to hint his perception of inattentive moods.

Once, meeting his eyes, it occurred to me to take him into my
confidence.

"The Italians," I mused, "are famous for their handling of love
matters. They at least bear the reputation of being subtle and secret
in such adventures. They wind into the most tortuous intrigues like a
snake through the intricacies of a forest. Why not tell him my story?
A young man in love with a woman whom he has seen but once, is an
object neither remarkable nor unique. He might aid me by procuring an
introduction, at all events; and if he can do this, he has my full
consent to think what he likes of the business."

It was evening. We were seated at a table in the library, near the
window, which was wide open to admit the still and sultry air. There
was no moon; but the stars, large, full and liquid, lent a pale
radiance to the gloom. I rose, took a cigar from the mantel-piece and
lighted it.

"Let us close these books for to-night," I said. "The air is
oppressive; and those sweet stars seem to chide us for preferring the
inspiration of other things to theirs."

He smiled, drew a meerschaum from his pocket, and began to smoke. I
pushed the table aside that I might seat myself more fully in the
window.

"There is a line in one of Keats's poems--'Hyperion,'" I said.

"I know it," he interrupted. "A noble poem."

"Noble, indeed. There is a line in that poem which I do not think I
ever thoroughly understood until now. I refer to the line in which he
speaks of


    --'tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars.'


Look at those round, moony orbs, tremulous like tears wept by the gods;
the trees yonder seem spell-bound beneath them."

"Truly," he answered.

"Surely theirs is a magical repose: a deeper calm than that of sleep.
Oh, I can forgive much to the superstition of astrology. Those planets
deserve to be influences if they are not. The malignant heart would of
course make their shine sinister; but a generous nature must deem those
clear rays benignant. I do. But it is the common effect of Beauty on
me. I warm, I dilate in her presence. She is a glorious spirit."

"Ay, to a man of taste."

"Beauty of course is a spirit interpenetrating all that delights and
elevates. But she is incarnate too, sometimes; falling, I suppose, from
the heavens like that meteor there," I said, pointing to an exhalation
that rushed with yellow tresses streaming through the dark; "and taking
the shape of a woman when she touches the earth."

"But is not innocence a condition of beauty?" he inquired, turning his
dusky gaze upon me.

"It should be."

"Then do not make your spirit take the shape of woman."

I laughed. "What shape would you have her?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I hardly know," he answered: "unless you
make her a new-born babe."

"I fear you have the scholar's contempt for the _tendre passion_," said
I. "But listen now to a strange story. Do you see those trees yonder?"

"Yes, Sir."

"One night--it was clear with moonlight--I strolled out to breathe
the air. My excursion extended to those fields you can see from your
bedroom window. There I lingered. The village clock struck two. Hardly
had the silvery notes died, when----"

I paused.

"You returned home, Sir?"

"No. But looking, I perceived the Spirit of Beauty walking beneath the
starlight, draped in white, with eyes deep and beautiful, in which the
moon hid itself for love, with a face of marble, passionless as the
feature of the mother of Paphus ere the sculptor's adoration made her
rosy with life."

He showed his gleaming teeth in a smile of which he thought the gloom
would hide the contempt.

"Sir," he said, "you are talking the language of the romancist."

"I am talking the language of truth."

"At two o'clock in the morning," he exclaimed, blowing a white cloud on
the air, "the female shapes one meets abroad are seldom spiritual. How
they may look in the country, and by starlight, I do not know; but by
gaslight their cadaverous complexion is commonly cloaked with paint;
and if their eyes are bright, it is rather with a spirituous than a
spiritual ray."

"Ah, Martelli, you are a cynic--by which I mean, a practical, astute
man, who makes the root and not the flower of fact or fancy his
business. A commendable quality! All the same, I would not part with
my love of illusion. This essential difference of character will make
us get on well together; though, to be plain, before I knew you, my
opinion was that if I hoped to please or be pleased, my comrade must be
a man of sympathies identical with my own."

"A common and generous error," he replied; "but time corrects those
crudities."

"As a proof, I like you none the worse for the misanthropic pleasure
you take in extinguishing the candle in the magic-lantern of fancy--at
the moment when the panoramic reflections most delight me. But
respecting this apparition--here is no illusion; for I have found out
who she is."

He smoked in silence.

"Her name is Mrs. Fraser. She is a widow. She lives in that house
yonder, where the light shines through the trees. I have only seen
her once, and the circumstances of that meeting may have served to
exaggerate my impression of her. But the recollection I carried away
with me is that of a woman of a beauty whose mysteriousness defies
description."

"If you desire to be disenchanted, Mr. Thorburn, you should get to know
her."

"I should be happy to risk my idealism; but how am I to procure an
introduction? Her house is a cloister--she a nun, secret and exclusive
as the austerest of the flannelled sisterhood."

"Were we in Italy, I should advise you to serenade her. There love
is studied as a fine art. It is different here. Yet were I in your
straits--for, Mr. Thorburn, are you not in love with this beautiful
phantom of yours?"

"I confess it."

"If I were in your straits, I say, I should do something hardy; go to
her home, procure admittance at any sacrifice of politeness, and leave
the rest to chance."

"That would be practicable to a man with a temperate pulse and trained
nerves," I replied; "but I believe I could much more easily jump off
the cliff than place myself in the position you suggest."

"But you say you met her, Sir. Did she not see you?"

"No. She stood some yards from me tranquil and statuesque, quite
unconscious of my presence--_that_ I could swear."

"Surely she must have seen you--the moon, you said, was bright."

"She did _not_ see me. It is true I uttered an exclamation of surprise
when I found her so close to me; for I thought she had vanished. She
may have heard that cry."

"But what should this lady be doing in the fields at two o'clock in the
morning?" he asked, with a light smile.

"That is precisely what I wish to know."

He slowly filled another pipe, with his lips moving as though in the
process of rehearsal.

"Mr. Thorburn," said he, "I am sure you will excuse my freedom. I
really think you should banish this subject from your mind. You have
settled here for the purpose of prosecuting a good and lofty purpose,
and you should suffer nothing to seduce you from devoting your whole
energies to its accomplishment. No man can serve two mistresses. And
knowledge, Sir, let me assure you, is a mistress who, if she does not
receive your whole heart, will give you little in return."

"Your candour requires no apology, Martelli," I answered. "I am sure
you speak for my good, and I am grateful for the interest you take
in me. But I must tell you that this woman has occupied my thoughts
so long, that it is become a positive necessity to know her. Don't
smile at what I am about to say--I protest, for my part, I was never
more in earnest--I believe," I said solemnly, "that this woman is to
be an influence on my life--though whether baneful or benignant is
still the secret of the future. Why do you shrug your shoulders? Don't
you believe in presentiments--in the power of the soul to foreshadow
destiny? A few hours before I met her--this lady--she presented
herself to me in a dream. Your sceptical mind would pronounce this
a coincidence--the very dream, you think, might have generated the
subsequent vision. But it was no coincidence. It was the operation of
some mystic agency, to be credited without questioning; an agency as
definite, though inscrutable, as the soul which informs our being with
the knowledge of its existence, but ridicules our efforts to give that
knowledge shape."

"Have you ever sought to meet her again?"

"I have not dared."

"Not _dared_!"

"You are surprised. But I had not Hamlet's resolution:


    "'Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
    Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
    Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
    Thou comest in such questionable shape,
    I _dare not_ speak to thee!'


Martelli, had I met her close again, as I met her that night, I should
have gone mad. Her steady supernatural gaze, her rigid mien, her shape,
which united the two extremes of spectral beauty and human sweetness,
were shocking."

"Would you fear to meet her if you had a companion."

"I hardly know. Pray applaud my candour; you see I confess myself a
coward."

"It is no proof of cowardice. A brave man might reasonably recoil from
encountering such an airy horror as enlivened your midnight ramble. As
for me, I have no fear of ghost or goblin. A questionable shape would
make me curious, not timid. Here, however, we should be dealing with no
shadow. A phantom might, indeed, be a widow, though, it is said, that
owing to the scarcity of priests, there are no marriages in Heaven.
But it would hardly bear the name of 'Mrs. Fraser,' when it has a
magnificent mythology to choose from. At what time did you say you met
her?"

"It was two o'clock in the morning."

"A rather inconvenient hour," he exclaimed with a laugh. "Would not ten
or eleven o'clock suit her as well? But it is enough that she should be
a woman to be perverse. If you think that there is any chance of our
meeting her to-night, I should be glad to accompany you. Two heads are
better than one in a business of this kind."

"I am willing to go. Yet there is no reason why she should be there."

"We shall have the moon with us, at all events," he said; "for there
she is, crawling up yonder, though with a sinister disc."

He pointed to the trees, above which the moon, large, red, and dim,
like a cloud shone on by the expiring sun, was slowly sailing up.

"It is now half-past ten," I remarked. "It may prove after all a fool's
errand. However we can sip our grog and stroll out afterwards, if you
like--go, at all events, to the fields, and linger in the cool till you
shall think proper to return."

He consented, though assuring me it would be no inconvenience to him
to sit through the night. He was anxious, he added, that I should have
my mind cleared of the odd fancies that encumbered it; and very proud
and happy would it make him to believe that he had been instrumental in
solving any problem that perplexed, or helping forward any desires that
agitated me.

I did not doubt, though he was cautious not to suggest, that he
thought me a very odd, fanciful, even half-crazy being. A downright
practical intrigue, a transparent love-affair, he could very readily
have understood; but a passion excited by meeting a woman under
circumstances so strange, a love inflamed by superstition and yet
made imbecile by timidity, it was not in his nature to comprehend. It
was fortunate perhaps that his polite incredulity curbed my natural
tendency to rhapsodise, or I might have written myself down a greater
ass in his eyes than he was disposed to think me.

We left the house at an hour considerably past the appointed time.
Sitting over our brandy-and-water we had fallen into an argument, and
had prosecuted it with an industry and enthusiasm that had made us
forgetful of the clock. He was the first to recall our scheme.

"See!" he exclaimed, "it is twenty minutes to twelve; close upon the
hour when churchyards yawn."

"Come, then," said I; "but lest we encounter more than our nerves--_my_
nerves at all events--are prepared to meet, let us take one glass more."

He refused with a smile. I brimmed a tumbler.

"_Ai mali extremi, extremi remedi_," said he, laughing.

"You may need the remedy yourself yet," I retorted, as I led the way
into the garden.

The air was so silent that, as we marched with soundless tread upon the
velvet lawn, I could hear the rustle of an occasional leaf falling from
the branches. Among the trees the moon threw level beams, that lay like
fallen marble columns. The shadows were swart and stirless.

I was kept silent by my thoughts. He was loquacious. We gained the end
of the grounds, passed through the gate, and entered the fields.

"What an oppressive night!" he exclaimed, removing his hat and fanning
himself with it. "The moon seems hardly able to pierce her light
through the sultry air. I should have thought such a temperature
impossible in fifty-five degrees north."

"It must end in a storm. The stars look white and sick with the heat.
Perhaps they are paling their ineffectual fires before the brilliance
of the lightning which they can see but we cannot."

We had gained the summit of the hillock whereon I had before stood. I
seated myself.

"There is her house, or rather there is its position," said I, pointing
to the trees. "Do you see that hedge? She was gliding alongside it
when I saw her. Martelli, picture yourself alone here; disposed by the
drowsy moonlight and vague murmurs in the air to unpleasant thoughts.
Suddenly a white dim shape flits upon the gloom, pauses, vanishes, to
reappear at your elbow--would you not use your legs?"

His white teeth shone beneath his black moustache.

"No. It would probably be the other who would use its legs. I should
seize it--man or woman, angel or goblin!"

"Then your nerves must be of galvanised wire, your muscles iron, your
spirit something more surprising than the timid essence that vitalises
such a lower order of being as I."

He smoked the cheroot I had given him, without response.

I lay back with my head reposing on my arm, my eyes fixed on the stars.

"Look!" he suddenly cried; "there is your spirit!"

I started--rose to my feet at once. She stood, habited as I had before
seen her, at the gate of the garden, motionless.

Martelli advanced, paused, beckoned. I went to him.

"Shall we go to her?" he whispered. "If she sees us she will withdraw."

"She will not see us."

He laughed low.

"She must be blind if she doesn't. But now is your opportunity to speak
with her. Come with me--be bold, Sir. This is a rare chance. Should she
not see us until we are near, and then attempt to withdraw, accost her
bravely. Tell her you have met her here before--acquaint her with your
alarm. The rest is easy."

He moved forward; I followed. The moon gave us sharp, short shadows. I
breathed quickly. He heard my pantings, and took my arm.

She stood confronting us; but she did not stir. We drew near. I who
knew her face, could shape from the countenance, whose lineaments
were yet too dim to discern, the sorrowful sovereign eyes and immobile
beauty.

Suddenly Martelli stopped short. I looked at him. He was staring and
trembling. His breath seemed to die. His eyes were round and lively
with an expression that seemed to me akin to horror. I heard him gasp
"_Dio mio! Dio mio!_" several times.

Somehow the failure of his courage was the renewal of mine. Much of
her mystery had at least fallen from this woman. I knew who she was,
at all events. But how strange, how startling was it to see her gazing
steadfastly in our direction, and not offering to move.

I whispered to Martelli: "Come, come! where are your nerves?" He could
not answer me. There he stood, rooted to the ground, with his face in
the moonlight blanched to the colour of a corpse.

At this moment the figure turned, made a gesture with her right hand
and withdrew.

"I will follow you!" I said, setting my teeth, for the undertaking
was a mighty one to me. Yes! I was mastered now by a resolution
uncontrollable as superstition and passion could make it, to speak to
her. I left Martelli and advanced to the gate. I pushed it open, and
passed up the garden walk. Her white shape floated in front. I trod on
tiptoe, gained her side, and whispered:

"I saw your summons. I am, indeed, grateful to you for this privilege.
I have long wished for an interview, but respected too much your
obvious desire of solitude"----

But here I broke off; for though I spoke in her ear she did not turn.
Had she been a statue, she could not have been more heedless. I was
abreast of her; a stride took me in advance. I looked into her face.
Her eyes were fixed. In their wonderful depth the moon was mirrored;
but they were uninformed and expressionless. They stared from beneath
her brow of ivory, soulless and blank.

I halted abruptly, as Martelli had done. She swept forward, mounted the
steps leading into the house, and vanished. I returned to my friend. I
found him leaning against the gate. When he saw me he stood erect. His
face was still blanched; but he had mastered himself so far as to speak
in a firm voice and to smile.

"She is no ghost," he said briefly.

"I knew that," I replied.

"She was very ghostly though. I can understand your alarm."

"I am glad you can. Your own behaviour justifies mine. But I thought
you were afraid of neither ghost nor goblin?"

"I thought she would move--I thought she would move," he replied. "Her
stillness was fearful--it was unexpected--I found it terrible."

"But the mystery of her is at an end."

"I know what you mean, Sir. Your ghost is nothing more than a
somnambulist. I should have guessed it from the beginning--guessed
either that she was asleep or that she was mad. Anyone in his senses
would have hit upon this."

"I didn't. But perhaps I am not in my senses."

"Remember, Sir, you are in love!" he exclaimed, with a hard laugh.

"Who could help being in love with such a creature? Did you remark her
beauty?"

"As well as I could by the light. She did not strike me as possessing
the charms your enthusiasm would have suggested. To be sure I saw her
at a disadvantage. But I do not admire red-haired women; or if they be
red-haired, let them have at least blue eyes. Beauty should always be
harmonious. And then she walks in her sleep--a qualification I for one
could dispense with."

"Let us go in," I said. "The issue of this adventure has satisfied me.
To-morrow I will introduce myself to her."




CHAPTER II.


The resolution I had made over night was stronger by the morning. When
I met Martelli I told him there would be no use in sitting down to work.

"I foresaw this," he replied. "Perhaps it will be better to defer your
studies until you are out of this mysterious complication," smiling.

"It will hardly be optional," I said. "My mind is too active in a very
different direction from books to make me profit from reading. The
labour would only be mechanical."

"I wish, Sir, you would direct me to employ the interval in some way
useful to yourself. I shall be eating the bread of idleness--a food I
have little relish for."

"You will be doing nothing of the sort," I answered; "your society
gives me pleasure, and besides, we may take a holiday now and then, may
we not? We have done very well. In the time you have been here, you
have advanced me further than I could have done alone in twelve months."

He bowed, thanking me for my assurance, and expressed his gratitude for
the unfailing politeness and liberal hospitality he had enjoyed during
his residence.

He had recovered from his surprise or shock of the preceding night.
Yet there was upon his manners and in his expression a shadow whose
presence I could mark, though whose meaning I could not read. The
subtle alteration would have been inappreciable to one who had
watched him less closely than I, and who had been less often in his
company. There was a light now in his eye which had not been there
before. His energy, the swift gesture, the sharp vanishing smile, the
quick contraction of the brow, were moderated, sobered, by a stealthy
composure. I attributed the change, vague and slight as it was, to the
fright he had received. "This hint of unfamiliar repose," I said to
myself, "may be the effect of repressed irritability, excited by his
last night's involuntary confession of weakness or cowardice."

I had a part to play, however, which gave my thoughts full employment.

I left Martelli and strolled about the grounds until lunch-time. I then
returned, despatched a light meal, took my hat, and left the house.
Elmore Cottage was not above five minutes' walk from my house by the
road. I could have wished it ten times the distance. I approached it
timorously, and gazed bashfully under the concealment of the hedge. It
was an exquisitely clean little place: the walls white, the windows
burnished and draped with snowy muslin. The lower windows were veiled
with flowers. I hoped its mistress would not see me enter. I rather
prayed that she might be in the garden. I pushed open the gate with a
quick hand and gained the door. My thin and doubtful appeal with the
knocker was promptly answered by a young woman, tidy, grave, and comely.

I asked for Mrs. Fraser. I was answered that she was out.

"She will not be out to me," said I, "if you will say that I am come to
speak with her on a matter of great consequence to herself."

The servant eyed me shrewdly, though not disrespectfully. "But Mrs.
Fraser is out, Sir," said she.

"Mrs. Fraser is not out," I exclaimed in a steady voice. "Come, allow
me to walk in. Must I repeat that I have come to see Mrs. Fraser on
very important business?"

She was too well-trained to keep me on the doorstep or even in the
passage, though I daresay she would have preferred that I remained
in the road whilst she went to hold a council with her mistress. She
slightly smiled as she said, "What name, Sir?"

"Never mind my name," I replied. "Simply say a gentleman has called to
see her."

She left the room. The apartment into which she had conducted me
was close, though the windows were open. The furniture was old, but
tasteful enough. A piano stood in a corner, and on a chair was a pile
of music. I thought of my bouquet as my eye rested on some flowers in a
vase on the table. On either side the mirror, over the chimney-piece,
was a pencil drawing, skilfully done, representing, the one on the
left, a calm at sea, an iceberg on the horizon, an albatross suspended
over the wreck of a vessel, whose broken masts, trailing ropes and
vacant decks were full of the poetry of desolation: the one on the
right, a woman seated at a table, with her face buried in her hands,
a crucifix before her. I drew near, and read at the corner of each
drawing the word "Geraldine."

A longer interval than what I had anticipated elapsed before Mrs.
Fraser presented herself. I was eyeing a little gilt dial with some
degree of impatience, when I heard a sound behind me. I turned rapidly.

Mrs. Fraser stood at the table, her black eyes fixed on me with a
look half of alarm, half of embarrassment. Their startled beauty was
smiting. Her yellow hair was combed high, but silken threads strayed
over her brow and behind her ears. Her lips were compressed.

I rose and made her a bow.

"Pray be seated," she said in a low voice. "My servant tells me you
have called on a matter of business."

"Not exactly _business_," I answered. "But first, you must allow me to
introduce myself to you as Mr. Thorburn, your neighbour."

She regarded me earnestly. I paused: another moment's silence would
have embarrassed me, so I said hardily:

"I shall wholly depend on your kindness not to make me feel more
painfully the trying position in which I have placed myself. The
intrusion," continued I, nervousness making my apology elaborate, "will
only seem all the more unwarrantable when I tell you that I am fully
aware of your love of solitude and your aversion to intruders. But"----

She interrupted me, turning her back to the window, the better to see
me, and not to be seen:

"You sent me a bouquet the other day?"

"I ventured to take the liberty."

"You must have thought my rejection rude. It was meant to be rude. How,
Sir, knowing my aversion to intruders, _could_ you have taken that
liberty? Did you think it would lead to an introduction?"

Her language gave me confidence. Had she sweetly thanked me for my
attention or apologised for her rudeness, she would, I think, have
confounded me too much for my wits. But this tone of hers brought her
down to my level. I could meet her on equal ground.

"I sent you that bouquet," I answered, "because I judged by your
love of gardening that you were fond of flowers. The action was not
designed as a rudeness. It was a mere neighbourly act"----

She seemed too impatient to hear me out.

"How can I believe you? People never act without design."

"I have explained my design," I said, repressing a smile with
difficulty.

Her eyes were incensed. Their beauty made them almost unreal.

"You are still standing!" she exclaimed. "I beg that you will be
seated. Pray do not mind me. I am of an excitable temperament, and when
I converse it is difficult for me to keep still."

She left the window, went to the end of the room, and gazed at me
thence, like some beautiful savage, untamed, startled, exquisitely
unconventional.

I borrowed her tone; she was free-spoken; she would like free-speaking.

"My apology--if apology it were--does not contain the whole truth. But
your goodness will not allow you to think me so great a culprit as I
appear. I had met you once; your appearance piqued me; I desired to
make your acquaintance and have tried an experiment which I beseech you
not to render ignominious."

"Piqued, Sir! How were you piqued?"

"Piqued is not the word. But I dare not substitute the right
expression. I will not be so rude as to utilise the privilege your own
candour confers."

She came over and stood opposite me.

"You say, Mr. Thorburn, you have met me. That is impossible."

"If I prevaricated before, I am truthful now."

"I have not been out of this house for a month. Oh! I suppose you saw
me from your grounds."

"The thick hedge and the trees that divide us would prevent that."

"You may have found the means of looking over?"

I smiled.

"No, indeed. Great as my curiosity may have been, my politeness, I am
sure, is vigorous enough to keep it well disciplined."

"Curiosity! what should there be in me to excite curiosity?"

"Curiosity is the daughter of admiration."

"I am a widow," she continued vehemently. "I lead a sequestered life. I
visit nowhere. I receive no visits. Is it because I am a Roman Catholic
that you are curious?"

"Do you take me for a missionary, Mrs. Fraser? I assure you I was
ignorant of your faith. Of your habits I know only from the information
of my housekeeper. A fellow-feeling makes us kind. I, too, am a
recluse, loving solitude as well as yourself."

"Impossible!" she exclaimed impetuously, "or you would not have called
here."

I could have told her that I loved beauty more than solitude. But I
held my tongue.

"Where did you meet me?" she asked.

"I met you in the fields outside our respective grounds."

"Never!" she cried. "Never have I passed the gate that leads into those
fields."

There was something singular in her vehemence. But it made her beauty
more remarkable by the life it imparted to it.

"But this has been told me before," she continued rapidly. "Yes, I
remember. Your housekeeper asked my servant if I were not in the habit
of taking midnight rambles. Oh, how can you justify the rudeness of
such questions?"

"They were asked unknown to myself. Be sure, I should never have
sanctioned them, if I had questions to ask, I should be bold, and
interrogate you, not your domestic."

"Questions to ask! What are you to me that you should question me?"

"Nothing. I am to you no more than your servant is to me. But you are
something to me. Is it possible, do you think, that I could look upon
your face without interest?"

"How should I know--why should I care?" she replied, her nostrils
dilated, her lips curved, her eyes radiant with the light of anger
qualified by surprise--of resentment tempered by curiosity. "You say
you met me--you are long in telling your story."

"It was one moonlight night. I walked to the fields, and had seated
myself, when I saw you pacing the walk by the hedge. Twice you went the
length of it--then disappeared."

She seated herself in a chair facing mine, leaned her chin upon her
small white hand, and gazed at me with a look of earnestness that was
embarrassing in its intensity. The pressure upon her chin made her
speak through her teeth as she said,

"You must have dreamed this?"

"Indeed I did not. But I own I dreamt of you before. I dreamt that
you looked upon me in a vision. I saw your eyes. They were not more
wonderful in that vision than they are in life. Your face was paler
than it is now."

She did not alter her position.

"A few hours after this dream I saw you. The spirit I had seen in my
sleep stood before me in the flesh. This singular realisation of my
vision made a deep impression. Its natural consequence was a great
eagerness to know you. But how could I intrude? under what pretext
could I force myself upon you? Last night I found an excuse--I met you
again."

"How strange!" she muttered. She had dropped her forehead upon her
hand and her deep eyes shone upon me through their long lashes.

"When I met you last night," I continued, "I was not alone. A companion
was with me. You appeared to us as you had appeared to me. He saw you,
and if you doubt the truth of what I say, will bear testimony. You
stood at the gate; your eyes were fixed and your countenance turned
towards us."

A look of distress entered her face.

"I did not know that I still walked in my sleep," she said.

"It is a dangerous habit, Mrs. Fraser."

"I will give directions to my servant. I am grateful to you _now_ for
your visit. I see you did not design to do me a rudeness. I should have
received you more courteously; but I am not always my own mistress."

"Indeed?" I answered; "your candour is too charming to require
excuses. You must believe that such ingenuousness is very refreshing
to one who, like myself, has wasted the best part of his days amid
sophisticated and conventional society, where truth is never possible
because it must always be offensive."

"Don't you find it dull at Elmore Court?"

"No; I spend the greater portion of my time in reading. Besides, I have
a companion--a gentleman accomplished enough to be of great use to me
in my studies."

"You are a young man," she said, eyeing me intently, "and it is unusual
for young men to banish themselves from life and its pleasures,
especially if they have money."

"I admire your incredulity," I answered, laughing, "for it gives me an
excuse to tell you more of myself than I could otherwise have done. I
mean, that a voluntary confession would have smacked rather egotistic."

She left her chair and began to pace up and down the room. I was
fascinated by her form, the beautiful curve of her breast, the
proportioned waist, her erect stature, and the unconscious grace of her
movements. When her face was towards me her eyes were invariably on
mine; there was in them an unsmiling sparkle, a grave glow, that gave
unreality to their gaze, a spectral beauty to their depths.

"I took Elmore Court," I continued, "not because I was tired of, but
because I wanted to enjoy, life."

"You thought that abstinence would create appetite?"

"I wished to learn the art of living; and this, I saw, was only to be
accomplished by study, by thought, and by awakening aspirations which
should be lofty enough to make their achievement laborious."

"What do you hope to do?"

"Much."

"You will do little. Ah! you think I mean that you have no talent? I
have not said so. How should I know your gifts and deficiencies? But
life itself is one huge disappointment. The more laborious the effort
the more dreadful the failure. Pray don't fancy I think only of books,
or art, or science. I know nothing of these things; and they make but a
very small portion of life. I have the passions in my mind--love, hope,
patience and the like--all these things end in regret."

"Your logic is very dispiriting," said I, watching her with increasing
admiration. "It would leave life nerveless, and make death its only
aspiration."

"Do you think life ends in death?"

"The life of the flesh, certainly."

"The flesh has nothing to do with life. It is the spirit that lives. My
flesh might have been dead last night when you saw me: for I heard and
felt nothing. No! it was all as blank to me as my sight when I shut my
eyes so;" she closed her eyes like a child would have done. "I might
have been dead, and to myself was as dead as ever I shall be when I am
in the grave."

I was about to speak, when she suddenly said, "Mr. Thorburn, you are
making a long call."

"I must plead you as my excuse," I answered, rising, hardly knowing
whether to look grave or smile, so bewildered was I by her manners
and conversation: her brusquerie, of which her beauty qualified the
rudeness; her severity, tempered by a childishness which made all her
moods but new points of view of her charms.

I took my hat: she opened the door.

"I hope, Mrs. Fraser," said I, "that you will not deny me the pleasure
of meeting you again?"

"I have not come to Cliffegate for society, Mr. Thorburn."

"Nor I. But a single individual does not make society. Besides, would
not my having met you twice under circumstances so uncommon justify my
claiming a privilege to which no one else in this place could pretend?"

"What privilege?"

"The privilege of knowing you and meeting you. It was, at least,
promised me in a dream. You will not set aside a promise so mysterious?"

"Are you a fatalist? I am. If you are not, you will ridicule my
_weakness_, as you will call it. But much may be forgiven to persons
who lead such self-contained lives as I. So, if we are to become
friends, our friendship is preordained, and my rebelling against it
would be foolish."

"If we are to be friends, I shall become a fatalist. A creed made
tempting by such a reward is irresistible. I have your permission to
call again?"

"You are your own master."

The reply was sufficient. I extended my hand; she gave me hers. I held
it for a moment, and we separated.




CHAPTER III.


Martelli was in the library when I entered. He sat deep in an
arm-chair, his legs crossed, his face hid behind a folio.

"I have seen my apparition," said I cheerfully.

"I guessed so by the time you were absent," he answered, looking at the
clock.

"I hope my resolute behaviour vindicates my courage, or at least
excuses my former fears."

"You have renewed the pretty ancient legend, and have changed your
shape of marble into a breathing woman. It certainly shows some
hardihood and much tact to have penetrated into her presence. She
seems, by your account, to have taken the white veil of solitude, and
is dead to all the world."

"After an interview with a beautiful woman," I cried effusively,
looking round upon the bookshelves, "how flat, stale, weary, and
unprofitable appears everything else! The dead are all very well in
their way--_nil nisi bonum_--but there is something in the large black
eye of a woman--a divinity, a power, an inspiration--that makes poetry,
philosophy and the fine arts very second-rate, somehow."

"No, Sir; the rate is not changed; it is a only temporary eclipse--a
shadow dimming a light."

"Well," said I, "for my part, I adore black eyes; I refer particularly
to Mrs. Fraser's. If I were called upon to name the most harmonious
contrast in the world, I should say black eyes and yellow hair. Oh!
she is the loveliest, the most fascinating, the wildest, sweetest,
strangest woman in the wide world!"

"Your interview has been satisfactory, I presume?" he remarked drily.
"She must have been prepared for your visit and met you with the most
polished and facile of her arts.

"There was nothing polished or facile about her. On the contrary, she
was rude."

"Indeed!"

"Yes--what would be called rude were I to write it down. But you know
I am a bit of a gourmand and relish pungent condiments. Her manner is
indeed the only _sauce piquante_ that would suit her beauty."

"'We forgive in proportion as we love,' says Rochefoucauld, a man of
the world."

"There is nothing to forgive--but there is much to love. There is a
shrewd sweetness about her that took me mightily. Solitude has made
her primitive. Had Byron met her we should have had a poem on the
beautiful savage, with her coy and mutinous manners, with the light of
golden sands upon her hair and the shine of torrid suns upon her eyes.
Hear me now, Martelli, and marvel!" I continued, striking a heroic
attitude. "When she speaks she looks like liberty incarnate; there
is freedom in her royal gestures; pliancy and power in her step; her
exquisite form undulates to her thoughts like the shadow of a dryad
seen in a breezy pool!"

"This, Sir, is love. Your language has about it the poetic ambiguity
that no other passion would dictate."

"It is love! I avow it. I am in love with this woman."

"I think I can understand you, Sir. You have cultivated this emotion
for the purpose of utilising it. You are giving it full licence that
you may properly observe its operation. When fully developed, you
will anatomise it, study its conformation, and having enlarged your
knowledge of human nature by the examination, bury the corpse of the
passion as the doctors bury the subjects they have dissected."

"No, this is not my intention," I answered, laughing heartily; "emotion
is too valuable to be wasted in the pursuit of knowledge."

"Pardon me, Sir, but--do you propose to marry her?"

"If she will have me."

"She is to be congratulated on her beauty. It must be of a rare and
powerful kind to strike love at one blow into a heart which I thought
was surfeited with this sort of thing."

"Her beauty is rare and powerful too."

"It must be, to achieve such a victory over the experience that had
driven you into the cool and calm dominion of intellectual love."

"Can I not occupy both dominions? Must intellect be denied me because
I fall in love?" I asked, attributing the sarcastic emphasis of his
language to a fear that my marriage would lose him his situation.

"I think not," he answered. "My experience of knowledge is, that it
is a jealous god. Surely, Sir, your resolution is abrupt! You have
declared your intention only to excite my wonder!"

"On the contrary, I am quite sincere when I tell you that I am head
over heels in love with this woman, and that I would marry her
to-morrow if I thought she would accept me."

He rose, went to the window, stared out for some moments, and then
approached me.

"If I understood you aright, Mr. Thorburn, your object in residing here
was to enable you to lay in such a stock of knowledge as would enable
you to contest for fame with a good promise of success?"

I nodded.

"You even went, Sir, to the expense of furnishing this house, that you
might burden yourself with obligations which should not be got rid of
without inconvenience and loss."

"True."

"That you did, that your resolution, should it grow impaired by fatigue
or caprice, would still be hampered with difficulties enough to make
its decay slow or even impossible."

"Well?" said I, wondering at his solemnity and long preamble.

"Is it possible, Sir, I ask respectfully, that you will abandon your
large and dignified enterprise for a lady of whom you know nothing?"

"You only make me sensible of the capriciousness of my character," I
answered, laughing; "but you could not shake the love this lady has
inspired."

"Sir," he said courteously, "nothing would justify the freedom of my
language but the knowledge that one of the duties you desired me to
discharge, was to stimulate your energies when I found them flagging.
But as you have determined to alter your views, I shall of course
consider those duties at an end."

"Why?" I asked. "What avenues in life would be closed to me as a
married man that are opened to me as a bachelor? A man is not bound
to be idle, is not prohibited from meditating as ambitiously as he
chooses, because he gives his name to a woman."

"I do not say, Sir, that you may not recur hereafter to your schemes;
but you may reckon on being very indisposed for study for a good time
now. This lady will occupy your thoughts to the exclusion of all things
else, before marriage and for long after. Love-making is an absorbing
occupation. To a poor man it may be a stimulus, for he may have to work
in order to wed; but to a rich man it is usually a soporific."

"My good friend," I exclaimed, "you speak as though my marriage were
a fixed matter. Let us look at the truth. I am in love with this
lady, it is true--but she is not in love with me. I may have to be
importunate to procure her consent--should she ever vouchsafe her
consent, which, between you and me, I have no earthly reason to suppose
likely; and importunities, to be successful, must be often delayed and
never vehement. I should regret your leaving me; and should regret it
the more if you resolve to go before my future takes a more definite
character. My wishes will of course impel me to bring this love of
mine to an issue as speedily as she will let me; but I really like your
company too well to wish you to regulate your conduct by a contingency
which, I fear, may prove the reverse of inevitable."

He paced the room, eyeing me from time to time with a gaze uncertain
and agitated. His brow was clouded.

"I am very grateful to you for your kindness to me," he said, "and I
will avail myself of it to think a little before I decide. I shall be
selfish enough to hope that your marriage will not happen. We have been
going on well--very well. It would be a pity that this pleasant life
should be disturbed. I am much obliged to you for your courtesy," he
repeated, "and you are very kind to have listened to my plain-speaking
so good-naturedly."

To this I made some reply, and the subject dropped.

"Here," thought I, "is an illustration of the genuine southern
character: the warm and sudden humours; the irritable pets and fumes;
the querulous misgivings; the effusive gratitude; the morbid distrust.
Here too, is a living example of the penalty of thought. The brain of
this smart little man has been playing so long and so remorselessly
on his nerves, that they have at last grown unfit for use. Coffee and
tobacco, too, have done their part, and have converted this sallow
being into a bundle of shuddering sensibilities. Because I talk of
being in love, because I dare to dream of marrying, he believes that I
wish him to be gone. He transforms my hopes into hints; and fearful,
perhaps, of a direct dismissal which would convulse his dignity with
mortification, and leave his nerves flabby and toneless for ever, he
bids me understand that he considers his duties at an end. But he'll
get over this pique. Those keen eyes, that pungent tongue, are the
harbingers of no silly spirit. He will contrast this house with his
attic in Berners Street, this sweet air with the yellow element of
London, his meagre meals with his present bountiful repasts, and will
discover no urgent necessity to depart. For myself, I doubt if I could
better him. Use has fathered one or two angularities, and I find him
now not only agreeable, but necessary."

But, to be candid, these thoughts did not long trouble me. I had my
beautiful neighbour to muse on, and she was an inspiration that fully
filled my mind.

Three days passed before I saw her again.

Martelli had gone to Cliffegate for a walk: I amused myself in the
garden. The grounds were now in complete order. In the front the
fountain had been repaired and redecorated, and now tossed its
pearl-shower in the sun, circling the cool and brimming basin with a
rainbow. In the back, the trees hung heavy with fruit. The beds were
draped with flowers. The lawn, shorn and trimmed to velvet smoothness,
offered a pleasant relief to the eye.

I strolled to the end of the grounds and inspected the brilliant
_coup d'oeil_. My thoughts went further than I: I wished I could have
followed them!

"She who loves flowers so well, what would she think of this brilliant
show? Were I to ask her to come and see my grounds, would she come?"

At that moment I heard her voice calling to the servant from the
garden. An idea struck me. I pushed open the gate and entered the
fields. Through the gate of her own garden I could see her. She was
raking a bed of geraniums. Her fair face was shadowed by a hat,
broad-brimmed and high-crowned; inelegant it would have looked on many
a woman; but the most fastidious taste would have been ravished by its
becoming elegance on her. The skirt of her dress, pinned up, disclosed
a foot matchless in its turn and shape. What grace was in the movement
of her arms! how delicate the outline of her inclined form! A long
curl of gold had slipped from the blue ribbon that bound her hair and
reposed like a sunbeam on her back. I stood watching her with all my
soul in my gaze. A lark rose shrilling from the fields, and soared,
pouring its throat in a strain chastened by the nimble air. She drew
herself erect, and protecting her eyes, sought the bird in the blue.
Her full and shapely form, her black and luminous eyes, shaded by her
hand of snow, her yellow hair, her looped skirt, her firm small feet,
made, as she stood among the flowers, such a picture of colour, beauty,
and sunshine as I must never hope to see again.

I drew to the gate.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Fraser," I said gently.

She started, and seeing me, stared without speaking.

"I hope I have not alarmed you," I said, observing the startled
expression of her eyes to brighten with a sudden angry light: "I was
attracted by the sound of your voice, and would not miss this chance of
seeing you."

She let fall the rake and came to the gate.

"How long have you been there?" she asked.

"Some minutes," I replied.

"Watching! watching! Mr. Thorburn, I am sorry you ever took Elmore
Court. Before you came, my privacy here was as sacred as though this
garden had been cloisters."

"Have I violated it?"

"Of course you have. Have you not been watching me?"

"I must offer you no apology. If I desire to win your approbation, I
must not cloud or varnish my meaning."

"It would not be worth while."

"So I will admit that I came here not only with the intention of
seeing, but of speaking to you. Now is my crime very grave?"

"Are you beginning to feel dull?" she asked, eyeing me with
embarrassing earnestness. "Are your beginning to grow weary of books
and thoughts, and to discover that the most tiresome and indiscreet
companion a man can choose is himself? If so, why do you not return to
London? You must have the means to purchase the distractions which are
called pleasures."

"Indeed"--I began.

"Or," she went on with odd imperturbability, "if you can't conveniently
leave Elmore Court, there are, I believe, people here whom you might
easily get to know. Why me, Mr. Thorburn? why _me_?" she exclaimed,
with a little stamp of her foot.

"Who are the people, Mrs. Fraser?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said wearily, "I have never inquired. I have
shunned them always. Some of them called. I have their cards by me
somewhere. But I never returned their visits."

"And I have some of their cards by me too; and I have never returned
their calls. Such society as they offer does not suit me. Besides, I
didn't come here for society."

"But you seek mine."

"I cannot help it," I said.

She left the gate. I thought she was going away. She picked a flower--a
white rose, half budded--and brought it me.

"This is of my own planting," said she, applying the pearly petals to
her delicate nostrils: "all the flowers that you see here are of my
own planting."

"That bud should symbolise your life, Mrs. Fraser."

She opened wide her eyes.

"Why?" she asked.

"It is unfolding its beauty and sweetness to other eyes than its own.
So should you."

She flung it from her. Her under lip pouted as though she were about to
cry.

"If I had thought that flower would have provoked so silly a remark, I
would not have picked it," she said.

She retired a step. Fearful that I had offended and that she would
leave me, I said boldly, "I wish you would allow me to see your
flowers. I may learn some hints for my own garden from yours. I
faithfully promise not to be poetical again."

"You may come in," she answered, curving her mouth into a childish
smile; "Shall I open the gate?"

"Thank you, I can open it."

I entered.

"Please don't notice anything from where you stand," she exclaimed,
picking up the rake; "come with me to those steps. My flowers look best
from there."

She stepped forward with a light bounding gait. I could observe nothing
but her exquisite shape, her yellow hair and alabaster neck. I think,
had I held a pair of scissors, that not thrice the number of sylphs
and gnomes which protected the perfumed locks of the matchless Belinda
could have prevented me from ravishing the amber curl that floated on
her back.

She stood on the steps of the door.

"There," cried she, looking up at me with the prettiest smile in the
world, "now you will see that all the tints are meant to blend. The
roses are not blown yet; but you can guess how pretty they will look
next to that bed of lilies. My garden will be a rainbow of colours next
month. All the hues meet and melt into one another--from that bed down
there to the hedge."

"Beautiful!" I murmured, thinking of her eyes.

"If it were not for my flowers," said she, with a sudden gravity, which
did not surprise me, for I was prepared now for any change of mood
in this capricious, strange and fascinating woman, "I think I should
go mad. You can't tell how I hate the winter. I lie listening to the
complaining winds until they become human shapes craving admittance
and shelter from the piercing cold. There is a winter's wind that
blows here with a strange cry!... Do you think the winds spirits? I do
sometimes, Mr. Thorburn; nothing else, you see, sobs and cries like
they do. But who would not scream to be pierced through and through
with hail, wrapped in the burning lightning, and shattered by the
hateful thunder?"

She paused, lifting her luminous eyes to me. "You have read a good
deal," said she, "and will know more than I. Do, please, tell me what
spirits do in winter, when the air is so frozen it cannot blow, and
when the stars have gone out under the clouds."

"I assure you," I said, puzzling myself to reconcile her language with
her eyes, which seemed to me brilliant with intelligence, "I have
never studied these matters. I know nothing of them. They are idle
speculations, and you should not indulge in them. They will make your
solitude very oppressive."

"They make my solitude more than oppressive at times. But if the winds
are tormented spirits, those flowers are good angels. They give me as
much pleasure as the winds give me pain. All those flowers have souls.
I am quite sure of that. But it is not pleasant to think, for I fear
one morning I shall find them all dead through their souls having taken
wing."

She pushed some transparent hairs behind her ear.

"I wish, Mrs. Fraser," I said, "you would do me the favour to inspect
my garden. I employ two gardeners; but the three of us do not approach
you in the delicacy of your taste."

"When do you want me to come?"

"Now, if you will."

"Not now. I must have time to consider. I hardly ever leave my house,
and then only for a short walk. And did not I tell you that I visit no
one?"

"But you will oblige me in this?"

"I am not sure. You have no claims on me that I should favour you more
than any one else. I will think over it, and tell you to-morrow. Will
you come to watch me again at the gate?"

"If I may?"

"Oh, you _may_. The fields are not mine; and I have no right to forbid
trespassers."

"I will come to the gate at the hour I met you to-day."

"Yes."

"And you will accompany me over my grounds."

"I shall see. Now I must go in."

She held out her hand, I took and retained it.

"Before I leave you, Mrs. Fraser, will you tell me that my society is
not distasteful--that you no longer look upon me as an intruder?"

She did not offer to withdraw her hand. It seemed to me, indeed, that
she hardly knew I held it.

"No. I am disposed to like you," she replied. "You weren't frank at
first; but you have become frank since, and that makes you a pleasant
companion. Oh! you will never know my abhorrence of the cant which
politeness makes men and women talk. They treat each other like
cats--stroke, and stroke, until truth is lost in a general purring.
I like truthful people. They need not be insulting: they can always
keep back unpleasant knowledge; but they need not _lie_. Polite people
_must_ lie."

I would not argue. It pleased me better to watch the varying
expressions of her beautiful face, the soft curvings of her lips, the
graceful gestures of her hands, than to contradict.

"Good-bye," she said.

"Until to-morrow," I answered.

Near the gate I halted to pick up the rose-bud she had thrown from her,
and pressed it to my lips. Peeping furtively toward the house, I saw
she watched me from the window.




CHAPTER IV.


I said next day to Martelli, "You will see Mrs. Fraser this afternoon,
I hope. She has half promised to come and look at my flowers."

"What have I to do with Mrs. Fraser?" he exclaimed with a shrug. "My
business is with books, not women. I can understand the one, but not
the other."

"But I want to justify my love. Her beauty will do this for me."

"Have I not seen her?" he asked, stretching out his arms.

"Yes, by moonlight--with blank eyes and expressionless face. Her
beauty by noon is somewhat different from her beauty by night."

"Sir, yellow hair and black eyes make no charm for me."

"You are a Goth."

"When I was a young man I fell in love once a week. That proves a
catholic taste, at all events, for my Hebes must have varied."

"But you will let me introduce you to Mrs. Fraser? You can know and
like without admiring her. You will be struck with her conversation."

"Does she talk well?"

"She talks strangely--what Shakespeare calls 'matter and impertinency
mixed.' Her shrewd discursiveness pleases me."

"Ah, Sir, you are willing to be pleased."

"I cannot help being pleased. Her musical prattle is very different
from the sort of entertainment I am used to in other women. Dull
decorous reason I can get anywhere. _Her_ talk is rare as her beauty."

"A kind of mad talk, Sir."

"Mad, indeed! You shall hear her yourself and judge."

"Pray excuse me. I will take my pipe, and while you enjoy your
_tête-à-tête_ will search for curious objects on the beach."

"Be it so, then," said I, somewhat chagrined: for I wanted to witness
this chilly sceptic melting into admiration before my beautiful
neighbour's eyes.

There goes a disappointed man (thought I, as I watched him enter the
house). His austerity cloaks some odd experience, I dare swear. Could
I but see into his memory I might witness a strange drama being played
in that little theatre. Some unconscionable jilt has soured the ripe
juices of his nature; and now he spits venom at the whole sex. Yet he
makes wry faces over his cynicism. I don't think he relishes it much.
He argues, I suppose, that the coming of a wife will prove the going
of his occupation. He has a rich young fellow under his charge and has
no wish to surrender him to the keeping of a woman. So he directs his
forked tongue at her in the hope that I shall be influenced. My little
signor, you will be disappointed, if you hope this!

He left the house after lunch.

At the proper hour I stood at the gate in the fields and peeped over.
The garden was empty. I looked at my watch. It was past the time at
which I had met her the day before. Twenty minutes passed. I walked to
and fro, staring at the windows in the hope of catching a glimpse of
her face. Believing she would disappoint me, I grew irritable. "Her
conduct," I thought, "is unladylike, to say the least. She promised
to meet me, and should come. If she is making a fool of me how will
that Martelli exult! But it is my own fault. Am I not an independent
man? If I want to marry, have I not but to open my arms to have them
filled without the trouble of wooing? For how many women are there who
would not cheerfully do all the courting for two thousand pounds a
year? Then what do I here, in a hot field, tormented by that accursed
gnat" (and here I aimed a prodigious but idle blow at the insect)
"worrying my mind with conjectures, a spectacle for the pert eye of
the widow's maid, who probably sits watching me from the ambush of a
window-curtain?" And I was positively in the act of walking away, when
suddenly, from amid a row of lilac trees close to the gate, stepped
forth--Mrs. Fraser.

"Shall I tell you your thoughts?" she exclaimed, approaching me,
without returning my salutation by smile or bow.

"If you please," I answered, my mood clearing in her presence as the
cloudy heavens clear when the sun shines out.

"Stoop your ear then."

I inclined my head. She leaned across the gate and whispered, "Mrs.
Fraser---- Oh!" she cried, springing back, and clapping her hands,
"there are some words that are coarse and burning in the mouth as
radishes. This is one. But it's true--and truth must be pungent."

"But before I can tell whether it is true or not, let me know what you
think."

"Don't you think me--a humbug?"

"No, no!" I exclaimed with a laugh.

"Why do you say no?" with sudden earnestness.

"But I may tell you I was annoyed," I continued, "because I feared you
would not come."

"I expected you would be, and so I determined to watch you. _You_
watched me yesterday. It was not fair. When one is alone one indulges
in all kinds of moods; and you might have seen me make myself ugly and
foolish by pouting, grimacing, frowning, or smiling, just as the mood
obliged me. I don't like to be caught unawares. I choose to smooth
my face down so," looking gravely, "when I am watched. There is an
expression I wear as a vizor; it's this."

As a three-year old child looks, who, being told not to smile, frowns,
that it may appear grave, so looked she. Then, breaking into a sudden
smile:

"I watched you frown. You stared at my poor little house as though you
could have burnt it up with your eyes. How you flung your impatience
at the tiny fly that annoyed you! 'Oh this treacherous woman!' you
thought; 'how glibly she made the word of promise to the ear to break
it to the hope!' Did you not think all this and as much more as would
take me twenty minutes to tell? I watched you just as steadily as you
watched me yesterday. I saw your weakness. Did you see mine? No--my hat
hid my face. You couldn't see my eyes. And unless you see the eyes you
can't tell what is going on in the mind."

"No, nor when you see the eyes can you always tell what is going on. It
would be a delightful privilege," said I, looking steadily at her, "to
be able to interpret those fiery hieroglyphics in which the soul writes
her thoughts upon the eyes."

"I don't think so," she replied. "There would be little pleasure in
life if we could read one another's thoughts."

"There would be no hypocrisy, at all events; we should have to speak
the truth."

"And would you like that?" she asked. "Would the plain heiress like to
hear her lover declare that his only motive in offering her marriage
was to get her money? Would the father like to hear that the reason of
his son's affection is that he may not be forgotten in his will? Life
is a great mirage. Let it alone--pray, let it alone. Don't pour the
light of truth on it, or it will vanish like a rainbow when the storm
is over."

"I thought, Mrs. Fraser, you were so enamoured of truth?"

"Yes, among my friends. It pleases me to speak the truth, and I choose
to hear the truth spoken. I hate compliments, and fine language, and
the gingerbread splendour of _politeness_, as it is called. But it is
not because I love truth that I would rob the world, which I hate, of
the pleasure of telling lies."

"You spoke of my weakness just now. What weakness did my face or
behaviour illustrate?"

"Impatience."

"Nothing worse?"

"If I had remarked anything worse, I should have let you go away."

"Allow me to open this gate. You will come and see my flowers?"

"It would not be fair in me to refuse you after keeping you waiting so
long."

I held the gate open. She passed from her garden into mine.

"These grounds present no such pretty _coup d'oeil_ as yours," I said.
"I am new at this sort of work, and for all I know my taste may be a
little cockneyfied."

"Oh, but the garden is in beautiful order! Pray do not speak to me
of my poor little slip of ground. That lawn is larger." We paced
through the walks. I could hardly remove my eyes from her face. She
had replaced her hat of yesterday by one resembling that worn by Peg
Woffington in Reynolds's picture. Her dress was black silk, with a
muslin body. A carved ivory cross hung on her bosom by a chain of white
coral.

"Your presence here gives me great happiness," I exclaimed; "and it
makes me proud to think that I should have been the first to cause you
to break through your rule of solitude."

"I have lived here a long time now, and you are the only person I
know," she answered.

"But you must have felt dull sometimes?"

"Often. How should I help feeling dull? I have no one to speak to."

"But this must be your own fault," I said gently. "You might easily
have made acquaintances."

"Yes, but I would not risk it. I might not like them, and in a small
place like this it is embarrassing to withdraw from society after one
has mingled in it. Besides, people are apt to be impertinent when
they have nothing to do. A widow is always an object of curiosity,
especially to elderly spinsters--and there are many here. Now I will
let any one discuss me to her heart's content--on one condition: that
we remain strangers. Oh, what a glorious rose, Mr. Thorburn!"

I separated it from the tree and gave it to her.

"You should have offered it more timidly," she exclaimed, looking at
me over the flower; "how did you know I would not reject it like I did
your bouquet?"

"I didn't think. But you recall my wish to send you some flowers. Will
you let me order the gardener to make you a bouquet?"

"If you please."

I called to one of the men and gave him the instructions. We got upon
the lawn.

"What a pretty house!" she said, looking up. "It stands so cool and
white from the road. What made you take it?"

"I got tired of London. I wanted to study."

"Oh, I remember--you told me. Do you study now?"

"Not much, I fear."

"Where do you study?"

"In my library there," said I, pointing to the window.

"You ought to be there now. I am keeping you from your books," she
exclaimed, with a certain grave archness.

"You would be keeping me from my books, whether you were absent or
present."

"Should I? How?"

"By making me think of you."

"And do you really think of me, Mr. Thorburn?"

"You have never been out of my mind since the evening I dreamt of you."

"It was curious you should have dreamed of me," she said, putting her
hands behind her and leaning against the back of a garden-seat.

"It was mysterious," I answered gravely.

"And was my face in your dream exactly like it is here?" she asked,
looking up that I might see her fully.

"It was more sad. You had a brokenhearted look in your eyes. What I
saw in my dream was more like your face in your sleep, when I met you
afterwards."

"What made you dream of me?"

"I cannot tell."

"Had you ever seen me?"

"Never."

"Nor heard me described?"

"No."

"How quickly the swallows fly!" she exclaimed, pointing in the air.
"What would you give to be able to live all day long in that pure blue?
This is a beautiful rose you have given me. How can the thick, ugly,
common earth yield such lovely things?"

"You were questioning me, Mrs. Fraser. Do continue your examination."

"Questioning you? What about?" she asked, looking at me with a little
bewildered air.

"About my dream. I have often wanted to discuss it with you, that I may
understand it. You who inspired it should know what it means."

"I cannot tell you, indeed. I did not inspire it. I had never seen you
nor heard of you."

"In the olden times it was the custom to examine dreams, in the belief
that they were prophecies. I would like to revive the custom, to see
what my dream forebodes."

"What should it forebode? Sadness, perhaps, since my eyes were so sad."

"Dreams go by contraries, they say."

"Then they are useless as prophecies."

"But I am by no means disposed to let my dream slip by so easily. I
choose to think it significant in some sense which I wish explained."

"It was a prophecy, perhaps, that you should meet me: and you did."

"It was a prophecy perhaps, that our lives were to mingle, and they
may."

"Nothing is impossible," she answered quietly.

She did not say this consciously. It was an answer obviously made
without the slightest reference to its implication.

"How beautiful these grounds of yours look under the blue sky," she
continued gaily. "I wish you had not made me see them. They will spoil
me for my narrow garden."

"Why will you not use them as your own? Those gates were made for
communication. You can always be alone by naming the hours it may suit
you to come. I can dismiss the gardeners for that time, and hide myself
in my study."

"Your offer is very polite, but I will not accept it. I shouldn't care
to wander about a place that doesn't belong to me; for there is little
real satisfaction in admiring the possessions of others. Besides,
my fingers would itch to be at the flowers. I should be picking the
choicest. That is my way."

"You would be welcome to pick them all."

"Yet were I to come I would not wish you to hide yourself. Your company
does me good. I have felt more cheerful since I knew you."

"You give me great pleasure in saying this, Mrs. Fraser."

"I mean it. I find you frank and easy and kind. You are not in the
least tiresome. When you first spoke to me I saw your face set out with
compliments and _mots_, like any other man's might have been. But I
swept this sugary French repast away and made you substitute hearty
nourishing solids. This makes you agreeable."

Her grave innocent look forbade me to smile; yet it was not easy to
preserve my gravity. I felt like a big boy lectured by some pretty
little girl.

She stood looking pensively at her foot, which she waved to and fro on
the heel; then exclaimed,

"I am going now."

I had no wish to part with her.

"Pray don't go yet. We have not been long together."

"No, not very long. But taste is refined by abstinence."

"Yes, but this sort of refinement is fretting. Your company is like
that sweet wine, mentioned by a Persian poet, of which the more you
drank the thirstier you became."

"Oh! here comes the gardener with my bouquet!" she cried.

The man presented it to her, cap in hand.

"Thank you, thank you," she exclaimed, inclining her sweet face over
the flowers. And when the man had withdrawn, she drew close to me, and
pointing with a white finger to the bouquet, said:

"Have you ever imagined what shapes and expressions the spirits of
flowers take? The spirit of the lily would be a languid floating shape,
with meek eyes and hands crossed on her bosom: but of course very, very
small--smaller than the fairies. The violet would be a little baby boy
with round blue eyes and a wee red mouth. The rose would be a young
girl with a rich complexion. Her beautiful limbs would be tinted with
a delicate pink like the shadow of the red rose in water. She would be
haughty, with a glowing eye; and her hair would be bound by a circle of
gold."

"And what flower," I asked, "should, at its death, take the form of
a woman exquisitely modelled, with black eyes melting from one sweet
expression into another, sometimes startled, sometimes pleading, always
luminous with bright but tender alternations of thought"----

"I see," she interrupted gravely; "you agree with me; you believe in
the resurrection of the flowers."

"I think you could make me believe in anything."

She uttered a laugh; its abruptness made it discordant.

"Good-bye," she exclaimed, "I will come and see your flowers again some
day."

"May I not show you over my house?"

"What is there to be seen?"

"Come and judge."

I held the door open; she paused, entered, and returned.

"I'll not look over your house to-day. You have had enough of my
company. You may walk with me to the gate."

She moved away, I followed her.

"How long do you think my bouquet will last, Mr. Thorburn?"

"Some days."

"I wonder that people who like one another should make presents of
flowers. When a young man presents a bouquet to the girl he is in
love with, do either of them think that the gift exactly typifies
their passion--all human passion--which is bright to-day and withered
to-morrow?"

"They would hardly think this. I can understand love seeking for
expression in the most lovely and fragrant symbols the world has to
offer. But the real truth is, the majority of lovers don't think at
all. They imitate. They give what others give."

"Now that is the way I like to hear people talk," she exclaimed with a
merry laugh; "I am quite sure that the only way to be truthful is to be
cynical."

"I am afraid so."

"If I were a young and inexperienced girl, the person on whose judgment
I should most depend would be the one who most sincerely disbelieved in
the existence of virtue."

"No, no. Such an infidel would make a bad guide."

"An infallible guide, you mean. How could he err?"

"He would err by not being able to grasp the full character of the
world's wickedness. He would underrate its depravity by allowing it no
virtue whatever."

"I don't understand. This is a paradox," said she stopping, for we had
reached the gate. "Would you increase the world's wickedness by making
it virtuous?"

"Yes, up to a certain point. I speak in the sense of Dean Swift, who
said we had all of us Christianity enough to make us hate one another.
Virtue has a very fructifying power, and vice springs richly from
its soil. A totally wicked world is an impossibility. That dreadful
place to which we are told sinners will be consigned cannot be utterly
wicked, or it could not exist."

"I almost catch your meaning, but you don't express yourself well, Mr.
Thorburn."

"You are quite right. I am given, I am sorry to say, to walking round
my thoughts too much." I could have added that such eyes as hers were
not calculated to make a man logical or even disputatious, save in a
love argument.

"I am then to believe that there is enough good in the world to make it
more wicked than it would be were there no good?"

"Why, having advanced my position, I am bound to stick to it. You have
said indeed what I think, but what I would not preach."

She stood lost in thought for some moments.

"Mr. Thorburn," she presently said, "I think the world very, very bad;
it is cold-hearted, selfish, and dishonourable and mean and pitiless.
I see now that it could not be all this if it had not what it calls
virtue and religion to prompt it; for the virtue of the world teaches
us to hate those whom it pronounces corrupt; and its religion"----she
stopped with a bewildered look; "what does its religion teach?"

"History will answer that better than I. But what have we to do
with the world, Mrs. Fraser? Here, under that tender sky, amid these
flowers, fanned by this soft air, we should not let thoughts of its
wrongs and treacheries trouble us."

"If one could throw memory upon the air and bid the breeze bear its
burden a thousand miles away, then would it be well. But the afternoon
is passing. Good-bye, Mr. Thorburn."

"When may I see you again?"

"Oh, you will find a time," she answered with a little demure laugh;
and so saying she passed through the gate.




CHAPTER V.


Her manners, her moods, her beauty had fascinated me. My love for
her was become a passion. I determined before long to declare it.
But before doing so, I resolved to see more of her. I wanted to be
sure that she loved me before I proposed. I felt my happiness would
be staked on the issue of the offer, and dreaded the result of hasty
action.

You may believe I thought very hard over the problem of her nature; but
I could arrive at no solution that satisfied me. She had affirmed that
she liked my company; but the assurance had been too much qualified by
the _naïveté_ of the declaration to be pleasing. A better illustration,
at least a more satisfactory indication, lay in her not avoiding me.

But what an odd character was hers! How inadequate is language to
represent her! I can only give you the bare uncoloured outline. It is
beyond my power to fill it up with the details which must be accurately
painted, before you can have before you, as I knew her, my beautiful,
wayward, fantastical, child-like neighbour.

I suppose my love blinded me, or I should have attached more importance
to the various little perplexing points of character which stole out
during our conversations. Her candour was made too piquant by her eyes,
her downright utterances too musical by her voice, her rapid divergence
from one topic to another too pretty by the infantine air that
accompanied it, to suffer me to note any other meaning than that which
met the eye and ear.

I laid aside my books and my ambitions in my pursuit of her. Compared
with winning her, all other pleasures and hopes were poor and small
indeed. My love engrossed my thoughts, held me absent; and made me
altogether more foolish than my sense of self-respect will suffer me to
recall.

She was right when she told me I should find a time to meet her. I
met her the next day. I met her the day after; and upon succeeding
days again. Once I prevailed upon her to accompany me in a walk to
the cliffs, by an unfrequented road leading to a spot where we stood
in little danger of being intruded on. It was on this occasion that I
witnessed in her more constrained air, in her speech more suave than
usual, in her eyes which were sometimes shyly averted, the presence of
an emotion I had waited for and sought to excite. The breakers creamed
at our feet; a west wind cooled the air; the white gulls swept by on
curved and steady wings; the sun reared an unbroken silver pillar in
the sea. The scene, the sounds, the solitude were propitious to love;
but I would not speak my feelings yet. I felt that the memory of this
calm and tender hour we were passing together would do more for me than
I could do for myself.

During the week Martelli and I had been little together. My mind had
been too much employed with hopes and fears of its own to suffer me to
remark him attentively; but I had noticed that he had been to the full
as abstracted as I. But his abstraction was of a gloomy order. His dark
eyes, his contracted brow, his set lips, proclaimed the sullenness of
his thoughts.

I attributed his manner to my neglect of him, and to his resentment at
being invited to a position which had been despoiled of its duties. I
must confess my love may have impaired my politeness. I was no longer
the attentive host, solicitous of his comfort, and on the _qui vive_ to
remove any unpleasant thoughts which his position would inspire, and
which his language, indeed, would sometimes hint. But I could easily
excuse my neglect, if neglect it were. It was not to be supposed that I
could regard him altogether in the light of a guest. Or granting that
I chose to do so, his long stay in my house would have justified a
mitigation of the severe politeness which it would have been proper to
extend to a man whose sojourn was brief. "Surely," I remember thinking,
"under the circumstances, he should have sense enough at this time
of day not to expect from me the anxious attention which I readily
practised at the beginning of our acquaintance. I have fulfilled
conditions which he could not have anticipated. I have suffered him to
share my home as though he were a joint proprietor; and I have tacitly
conceded every privilege which I could with justice to myself yield to
him. I cannot consider him ill-used because I choose to absent myself
in the company of Mrs. Fraser, in preference to spending my time with
him. He no doubt frets and fumes at my love as indiscreet--as menacing
his situation, and as illustrative of weakness in a nature that had
at the onset promised a vigorous adherence to its original schemes.
But surely," I thought, "it will be time enough for him to manifest
anger when he shall have been told that I have abandoned my ambitious
resolutions and no longer require his counsels."

On reaching home after that walk I have told you of with Mrs. Fraser,
I found Martelli seated on the lawn. I joined him. He rose at my
approach. His politeness was punctilious in proportion to his temper.

"Pray keep your seat," said I. "How have you been passing the
afternoon?"

"In reading," he answered with a shrug.

"You say that reproachfully. You think I should be reading too?"

"Are you not master of your own actions, Sir?"

"Undoubtedly. I shall resume my reading by-and-by."

"I hope so, for your own sake. You are abandoning a fine future."

"Why do you say that? My future is still mine. I have not abandoned it.
I have still my schemes and my hopes. I shall try to realise them."

"You will never realise them, Sir, if you allow your mind to be
diverted by the first small attraction that happens to rise.

"Small attraction! But I can forgive you. You are a scholar, a student,
a recluse--what should you know of love?"

His eyes shone.

"Nothing! nothing! I am ignorant of the passion," he exclaimed,
flourishing his hand.

"Yet I should have taken you to be too wise a man to have neglected
cultivating your sympathies in the direction where the most provocation
lies. Love is so human a passion, its consequences are so manifold, its
influences so remarkable, that were you anything of a philosopher you
would have made it a study. How can you hope to understand men, when
you are ignorant of the great master-passion of humanity?"

"How do you know I am so ignorant as you think me?"

"I judge so by the sneers you are disposed to level at love, and by the
light contemptuous manner with which you treat it."

"May not that prove that I know too much?"

"I don't see how. Cynicism is of superficial growth. Deep knowledge
makes one grave and compassionate. The painter knew life who gave a
smirk to the fool and sadness to the sage."

"But it is to be expected of a man who has sounded this passion to its
bottom that he should ridicule the belief in its depth, when he knows
it to be shallow."

"Give me leave to push your metaphor. If you speak of yourself, you
probably got among the shoals, and inferred from your soundings that
the deep was everywhere shallow."

He gave one of his shrugs and sat silent. I took out my cigar-case and
held it open to him. He declined with a wave of his hand. I glanced at
his face; it was hard and angry.

"Martelli," said I, "you are too sensitive. What has vexed you?"

"How am I sensitive, Sir?" he asked, growing a shade pale.

"I cannot tell you _how_ you are sensitive," I replied, stirred a
little by the suppressed irritation of his voice; "but I think I can
guess the cause of your vexation."

"Pray tell me, Sir."

"You think I am neglecting you for Mrs. Fraser?"

He gave a fierce nod.

"And you are disposed to resent my placing you in so anomalous a
position as that which you now occupy?"

"Sir, never mind that. I admit you have disappointed me."

"I am sorry I cannot see how."

"How should you see? You are blinded by love."

"Signor Martelli, I must beg you to calm yourself. I cannot suffer such
language as this."

"But, Sir, you provoke me!" he exclaimed, gesticulating and growing yet
paler. "You raise expectations to disappoint them. When I came here, I
secretly pledged myself to carry you through any schemes you had a mind
to indulge. All my diligence, my time, my knowledge, my patience, I
meant to give to you. I liked you, Sir. Your manners pleased me. It was
charming to attend one so acute and so humble--so quick to perceive and
so eager to be taught. And I too had my ambitions! They are gone."

"They are not gone, Martelli," I said, softened.

"They are, Sir!" he cried, clenching both fists. "It is a blow. I am a
poor man. Had you let me do for you what I could have done, you would
have requited me. Of that I am sure. Yes, Sir; I am not so ignorant
of human nature as not to tell generosity when I see it; and yours is
a generous mind. It made me this promise: it said, 'Martelli, serve
me well, advance my schemes, impart the knowledge and the power your
experience and learning can inspire, and when I have achieved the ends
I covet I will reward you.' That is what you told me, Sir."

"But what did you expect?"

"As much as it was in your power to confer. You would not have
forgotten the man who gave you help when you needed it. You might have
made me your secretary--your agent--your amanuensis. You would have
invented some post for me to fill--you would, at least, have rescued
me from a life of drudgery. But now, I am forced back again upon my
pitiful calling--teaching at schools, soliciting pupils, and starving
as a teacher!"

"I see no necessity. Have I dismissed you?"

"I dismiss myself!" he cried, standing up and striking his chest with
his fist.

I was impressed by his vehemence; at once pained and made curious by
his manner.

"At all events," I said, "if you go, you go of your own accord."

"Of course," he replied sarcastically.

"But at the same time you will allow me to say that I think you foolish
for exhibiting so much impatience."

"Impatience!" he exclaimed, with a sharp laugh. "Oh, no! I am not
impatient. But, Sir, it is not pleasant to be given to drink of a wine
that is dashed from your lips after you have tasted enough to like its
sweetness."

"But, my dear fellow, nobody _has_ dashed the wine away, that I can
see."

"You have! you have!" he cried, with a grin of anger.

"I? You are dreaming."

"_Sacramento!_ don't tell me I dream!"

"I shall have to tell you something worse," said I, getting up; "if you
don't moderate your temper, I shall have to tell you that you are mad."

"That it should come to this!" he muttered, looking up, as though he
apostrophised the air.

"You speak English fluently," said I; "let me entreat you to express
yourself intelligibly that I may understand your grievance."

He left me; walked to the edge of the lawn, returned, approached close
to me, and said,

"It is your intention, Sir, to marry, is it not?"

"What of that?"

"When, Sir, do you marry?"

"I shall probably make the lady an offer to-morrow," I answered,
compressing my lips to disguise a smile.

"Ah!" He nodded fiercely, walked once more to the edge of the lawn, and
returned. "You are serious, Sir? You really mean to marry?"

I could not help laughing out, as I answered, "Yes."

"Then, Sir, pay me what you owe me, and let me go."

"Do you wish to leave at once?"

"At once!" he cried.

"Very well; come with me to the library. I will reckon what I am in
your debt and pay you."

He followed me into the house. I seated myself at the writing-table.
But hardly believing it possible he could be in earnest, or wishing at
least to make one more effort to conciliate him, I said,

"Will you not defer this matter until to-morrow? Take to-night to think
over your resolution. This kind of separation is very ungracious and
unpleasant. I really do not wish you to go. I have told you before I
like your company, and have found you most valuable. I repeat it now."

"But you are going to marry?"

"What of that? After my marriage we will continue our reading."

"But you are going to marry?" he repeated.

"Good heaven! Do you think Mrs. Fraser an ogress? Do you think she
will eat you? When you know her you will like her." He shook his head
furiously, and violently waved his hand before his face.

"Pay me, Sir, pay me, and let me go!" he exclaimed.

Disgusted by his irritable perversity, I drew out my cheque-book.

"Can you not pay me in gold?" he asked.

"Certainly, if you prefer it. But first let me see what I owe you."

I took a slip of paper and made my calculations; then went to an iron
safe, drew out a cash-box and gave him the money.

"There," said I, "is the discharge of your proper claims. But I owe you
something for the interest you have taken in me and the hearty industry
you have employed on my behalf. This will perhaps make my gratitude
more significant than were I to express it in words only."

And I handed a bank note for twenty pounds.

He took, folded, and put it in his pocket.

"I am obliged to you, Sir," he said, with a low bow, "but in taking it,
it is 'my poverty, but not my will, consents.'"

"Shall my servant carry your portmanteau?"

"Thank you, no; it is not heavy. I can carry it myself."

"The phaeton is at your service, if you wish to drive to Cornpool."

"I will walk, Sir."

I held out my hand, but pretending not to notice the action he gave me
another low bow and left the room. In less than twenty minutes I saw
him walk, portmanteau in hand, down the front garden.

Thus ended my connection with this singular little man.




CHAPTER VI.


Had I had nothing else to do but to read and muse I should have greatly
missed Martelli. As it was, I felt his absence on the evening that
followed his departure. I missed his dark face, his glowing eye, his
rapid speech, his tart questions. His arm-chair looked very empty
without him. My supper too was somewhat tasteless, wanting the sharp
condiment of his tongue and gestures. But how should I feel his absence
very sensibly with Mrs. Fraser to comfort me? I only wonder I felt
it at all. Our parting had not been calculated to sharpen regret.
I had no notion he was such a passionate man. There was no doubt he
had been insulting. But what in the world could have provoked such an
outbreak? He would have had me believe it was my resolution to marry
Mrs. Fraser that angered him. But what was Mrs. Fraser to him? Was he a
monomaniac--mad on the subject of women? We know that there are people
born with antipathies which nothing can shake. Lady Heneage would faint
at the sight of a rose; the Marquis de la Rochejacquelin would turn
white with fear before a squirrel; and I have read in some author of a
man whose antipathy to old women was such, that once when his friends,
by way of joke, introduced an elderly female into his presence, he
fell in a fit and died. I do not say that I quite believed this to
be Martelli's disease: but I was strongly disposed to think that he
had some eccentric aversion to living in a house where there was a
mistress.

I did not pass a quiet night. I had resolved to propose next day to
my beautiful neighbour, and my resolution rather agitated me. A man
may do in a moment of impulse what he would fear to attempt in cold
blood. I was rather sorry I had not proposed that afternoon. I had been
surrounded by conditions highly favourable to a declaration. It would
have been over now, and I should have been able to sleep the sleep of
the accepted.

I had told her I would call in the morning. At another time she
might have asked me in her odd sweet way "Why?" but her silence was
auspicious. She had lowered her beautiful eyes, and the conscious curve
of her mouth gave me reason to believe she had guessed my mission.

So at about eleven o'clock, when the sun stood high and the land lay
hot and still beneath its fiery gaze, I took my hat and stepped over to
Elmore Cottage. There was no need of ceremony now to gain admittance.
The girl knew I was a privileged visitor and admitted me with a smile.

I entered the little drawing-room. It was empty. The blinds were
half drawn, and the window stood wide open. Signs of her recent
presence were visible in the garden hat upon the sofa, in some drawing
materials on the table, above all, in the soft peculiar perfume which
I associated with her. She was such a strange woman that I thought she
might have hidden on hearing my knock; and I looked behind the sofa,
and the door, and in the corner protected by the piano, for her. Then
I drew to the table to see what she was drawing. It was a man's head,
unfinished though complete enough to offer a good likeness. The hair
was dark, the nose straight, the mouth firm, the eye sufficiently
large. The slight line of whisker was not shaded. This sketch
dissipated all my nervousness. I looked up with a smile, and met her
eyes peering at me from the door.

"If I had known it was you I should have hid that," said she, coming
forward in a somewhat defiant manner, but with a delicate pink on her
cheek.

"Did you not want me to see it?"

"No."

"Why? It is charmingly done--the very image of me."

She came round to where I stood.

"Go and stand opposite," she said, "and then I shall be able to tell."

I did as she bade me.

"Hold your face in profile."

I looked at the wall. She was silent for some moments.

"Yes. It is not bad. My memory must be good."

"Mrs. Fraser," said I, "what made you take my face for a subject?"

"Are you annoyed?"

"No; and you don't think me annoyed?"

"Oh, I fancied you would think I had not flattered you enough."

"But what made you take my face?"

"Because it suited me."

I placed a chair for her and seated myself at her side.

"Mrs. Fraser, I know your Christian name--it is Geraldine. May I call
you Geraldine?"

"How did you know that?" she asked suddenly.

"I read it at the corner of those drawings there."

She laughed.

"May I call you Geraldine?"

"If you like. Do you think it a pretty name?"

"A sweet name. Now, Geraldine, will you tell me what made you take my
face for a sketch?"

The utterance of her name pleased her. She looked up at me with lighted
eyes.

"Have I not told you?"

"No. Your answer was evasive. I want the truth."

"I wished to see if I could hit off its expression with my pencil."

"And you have drawn a good likeness. But I miss one thing."

"What is that?" she asked, getting up and looking at the drawing.

"Look at those eyes," I answered, bending over her and pointing.

"Well; they are bold--do you mean they are not large enough?"

"Oh, they are large enough. But they do not tell the truth."

"What should they tell?"

"My love, Geraldine."

She did not answer. I passed my arm round her waist.

"Do you see what I mean?"

She raised her eyes to my face. I searched them; they were calm, and
pensive and soft, but radiant too, with a light that was new to them.

"I understand," she whispered.

I led her to a chair and knelt by her that I might see her face,
holding her hand in both mine.

"Geraldine, you knew that I loved you?"

"No, I did not know it."

"But you suspected it."

"Yes, I could not help suspecting it."

"And do you love me, Geraldine?"

"Yes."

"Well enough to be my wife?"

"Yes."

I kissed her forehead. "How am I to thank you for your love?"

"By always, always, loving me."

"I will always love you, Geraldine."

"I am sure you will," she answered fondly, smoothing my cheek; "and
your name is Arthur. May I call you Arthur?"

"Of course you may."

"Arthur," she said, looking earnestly into my eyes, "what makes you
want me to be your wife?"

"My love."

"And what makes you love me?"

"Your sweetness--your waywardness--and all the little points and
lights, the colour and shadow, which make up your character and your
beauty."

"But would you like my character if I were not pretty?"

"Certainly I should."

"You would think me rude. My face is like charity to my character--it
hides my multitude of sins."

"Your face is like music to poetry--it turns your character to song."

"Arthur, you may compliment me now if you like; I shall love to hear
your praise."

"Dearest," I exclaimed, rising, "how proud and happy your love makes me
feel! Finding you here in this solitude and taking you from it, makes
me resemble one of those knights of old who rescued beautiful damsels
from the guardianship of the horrible dragons which then flourished.
Your dragon is more matter-of-fact than the scaly brutes the poets sing
of; but let me tell you it is quite as formidable. _Ennui_ is its name."

"Come into the garden," she exclaimed, springing up; "I prefer talking
in the sunshine."

"Come into my garden," I answered; "there are trees there and we shall
like the cool shade." And she tied on her hat before the looking-glass,
regarding me with her black eyes, though she seemed to regard herself.
I said, "Would you like to live at Elmore Court when we are married?"

"Oh, yes!" she answered, turning quickly round, "I would not choose to
live anywhere else."

"But will you not find it dull?"

"Not with you," she replied.

I kissed her hand. "At all events," I said, "we can live there until
the term I have taken it for is expired."

"We will live there always," she exclaimed earnestly. "But come into
the garden. You can tell how much I care for the world by living here,"
she continued, as we left the house; "indeed I never wish to see the
world again. I will make you promise always to live at Elmore Court,
for there we shall be alone. I shall want you all to myself, Arthur.
Indeed you will find me jealous, dear--would you like me to be jealous?"

"It is the most genuine test of love. You will find me jealous too."

"Shall I?" she cried, clapping her hands. "And it will be very proper
that you should. But I doubt if you'll have occasion."

We passed through the gate and entered the grounds of Elmore Court.

"How could you think I should be dull here?" she asked, prettily
folding her hands, whilst she paused to look at the building and the
brilliant _coup d'oeil_ of the garden. "All day long I should be busy
with my flowers, and in the evening you should read to me, and teach me
all you know, that I may become as wise as you."

"I will show you over the house presently, Geraldine. Meanwhile let us
seat ourselves under those trees. Dearest," I said, taking her hand, "I
have been so long looking forward to this time, when I may call you and
think of you as my own, that now it is come I cannot believe it here."

"You have not had to wait very long. Did you expect to win me so
easily?"

"I don't know; but I felt you would become my wife."

"But I was not destined for you, or I should have married you first. Is
it here we are to sit?"

"We are in the shade here."

She passed her hand through my arm and pressed her shoulder against
mine.

"Do you feel happy, Arthur?"

"Perfectly happy."

"Do you wish to ask me any questions about my past, dearest?"

"No. If there is anything I should know you will tell me."

She sighed and pressed her cheek against my shoulder.

"Arthur," she whispered, "my marriage was not a happy one."

"I should have thought that, Geraldine, by your eyes."

"Are they so very mournful?"

"Sometimes. But mournful does not so well define their expression as
pensive. Your heart is sometimes troubled."

"With the past," she rejoined quickly and eagerly. "My husband did not
love me. He left me. When I became a widow I resolved to bury my sorrow
and my life in some quiet obscure corner like Cliffegate. I have a
little income, Arthur--why do you not ask me about it? Other men would."

"I hope you will not find me altogether like other men; though I hope
I am no Pharisee."

"I have two hundred a year. It was left me by grandmamma. Her solicitor
sends me fifty pounds every quarter. You may have it all, Arthur."

"Thanks, dear; and in return you shall have two thousand a year to
spend with me."

"Is that your fortune?" she asked, opening her eyes.

I nodded, with a smile.

"How rich you are! But it is nice to have plenty of money, and I shan't
love you the less for having it. No; many women would pretend that they
would much rather have found you poor, that they might feel sure you
knew you were loved only for yourself. Now I am glad you are rich; not
because I care for your money, but because I know that such a fortune
as yours must have enabled you to see life, and that your choice of me
comes after an experience of the world. It will be a matured choice, so
that I shall not be likely to lose you."

"Geraldine, you talk the language of wisdom, as the Turks say. I _have_
seen life, and can promise you that my love is not the caprice of a
greenhorn."

"Now you shall show me over your house," she said, jumping up.

I conducted her in by the balcony, and when we were in the library I
said, "This is the room in which I first saw you."

"Here?"

"Yes; I fell asleep, and in that sleep I saw your face."

"Were you frightened, Arthur?"

"It was only a dream. But I was frightened when I saw you afterwards."

"What a quantity of books you have!" she exclaimed, standing on tiptoe
to read the backs of the volumes on the upper shelves. "Have you read
them all?"

"I wish I had. I should be a wiser man."

"Too wise to marry me, perhaps?"

"The wisdom that would prohibit that would be very closely allied to
insanity. I have had little reason during my life to flatter myself on
my judgment; but I think I may boast of my wisdom now."

"This room is very pretty, and those grounds look lovely from the
window; yet you must have felt dull here."

"I confess I did--in spite of the entertainment provided for me by a
sharp sinister little foreigner named Martelli, whom I hired to keep me
company--a little man--humorous, passionate, and I daresay vengeful."

"I dislike foreigners," she said, with a shudder. "Why did you not
employ an Englishman?"

"The fact was, I wished to learn Italian."

"Was he an Italian?" she asked quickly.

"Yes. Don't you like Italians?"

"I hate them!" she exclaimed, her face flushing with sudden passion
while her eyes flashed irefully.

"Then it was fortunate he resolved to leave me. You and he would hardly
have got on. Perhaps," I said, laughing, "his subtle sagacity pierced
the marble of your face when he saw you, and discerned your aversion to
his compatriots."

"I thought you were alone?"

"On the first night I was. On the second night I hadn't positively
spirit enough to risk a second encounter. But, dearest, I have come to
show you over the house."

"I am ready," she exclaimed, her face and manner changing in one of
those abrupt alternations that made so curious a feature of her
character.

"But first," said I, touching the bell, "there is an imposing
ceremony to be gone through. I must introduce you to Mrs. Williams,
my housekeeper; a very worthy woman, whom you will find a most useful
minister to help you in the government of this little kingdom."

When Mrs. Williams entered I said, "This is my housekeeper, Geraldine;"
and then to the other, "Mrs. Williams, this lady, I hope, will shortly
come here to take possession of Elmore Court as its mistress. I wished
her to become acquainted with you."

She curtseyed without any expression of surprise. Geraldine took her
hand.

"I am sure I shall like you, Mrs. Williams. The appearance of this
house, so far as I have seen, tells me how valuable you will be to me."

"I am grateful for your kind opinion, ma'am," said Mrs. Williams.

"Are you not surprised to hear of Mr. Thornburn's resolution to marry
me?" asked Geraldine, in her pretty downright way.

Mrs. Williams smiled quietly.

"I didn't think it would happen so soon," she replied; "but I guessed
it would end in his marrying you, ma'am."

"There, Geraldine," I said, "you see Mrs. Williams knows how I have
thought of you."

"Did I want Mrs. Williams to tell me?"

"At all events it is well to have a witness."

She slipped her soft little hand into mine as we left the room; and
so, conducted by Mrs. Williams, we passed from one room to another. My
darling's delight was genuine. Her child-like pleasure at all she saw
was delicious to me to watch. She was incessant in her praises of Mrs.
Williams' taste and orderliness; and to do that good woman justice, she
deserved all the admiration she received. She listened complacently
to Geraldine's prattle; and when she found that she was no longer
required, slipped quietly away.

We stood at the drawing-room window. She had thrown aside her hat, and
the sunlight made gold of her beautiful hair.

"Do you like Elmore Court?" I asked.

"It is a sweet home."

"And do you think you will be happy here?"

"Cannot you guess? I feel perfectly happy now, Arthur; and that implies
great trust in you--if I did not think you loved me with all your
strength I could not be happy. Yet there was a time when I thought I
could never be happy again--never happy again," she repeated, with a
little sigh. "It was winter with me then, but it is summer now. It is
sweet to be loved. There are women who say they could live without
love; but I do not believe them. Women were born to be loved."

"Some women were," I answered, toying with her hand.

"I have been very lonely, Arthur. Sometimes I thought I should go mad.
It is bad for the mind to feed upon itself. The longer its abstinence
the more painful grows its craving; and to satisfy itself at last, it
invents strange fancies and dreadful thoughts--and that is how people
become crazy. Your face and voice are a new life to me. I feel that
I am not dead now. But there have been times when I thought myself a
ghost. Did you ever have that feeling? It always brought a pain here;"
she touched her forehead. "See there!" she suddenly exclaimed, "what
a beautiful butterfly! If I were a little girl I should love to chase
it. But I would not now," she added, shaking her head; "those who have
suffered much are always merciful."

"Now, Geraldine, I want to speak to you of our marriage."

"Yes." She looked up.

"Are you not a Roman Catholic?"

"I am. Do you like Roman Catholics?"

"Quite as well as Protestants, though I am a stanch Protestant."

"After all we are agreed upon the chief points of religion?"

"Very nearly. Toleration is the most material point in which we differ.
But Christianity is the religion of love; and love is large and can
find room for many sects. But to revert to our wedding--we shall have
to be married in two churches."

"I know."

"Is there a Roman Catholic church here?"

"No. But there is one at Cornpool. I know Father John; he is my
confessor."

"How often do you confess?"

"I do not like to say," she replied, timidly; "it is not often enough."

"Once a year?"

"Oh, Arthur, no! Once a month."

"So often?"

"So often! I should confess by right once a week. Would you mind me
going to Father John?"

"No."

Let me say this concession was only an act of policy. I determined to
try to convert her.

"The want of a church," she continued, "was a great drawback to
Cliffegate. But I knew there was one at Cornpool. Yet the little
cottage suited me so well, and the place was so secluded, I could not
resist taking it."

"Then, Geraldine, we shall have to be married at Cornpool. And now,
dearest, when?"

"When you wish, Arthur."

"I want to possess you, dearest. This life is so full of uncertainty
that, now you have accepted me, I should not be happy until we are
married. Will the end of the month be too soon?"

"Impatient Arthur!" she said, pressing my hand to her cheek.




CHAPTER VII.


We were married at the end of the month, and when I brought my
beautiful bride back to Elmore Court, I thought myself the happiest
man in the world. I had reason indeed to think so; for I had marked in
Geraldine a depth and earnestness of passion which I felt time would
deepen and make still more earnest. And yet what was there about her
that forced me into light musings, of which I was hardly conscious of
the tenor? Of course, I deemed her love genuine, and I knew afterwards
that it was genuine. Yet there was about it a suggestion of oddness,
a hint of some sombre presence, which my instincts surely felt, if my
heart did not at first recognise.

But her beauty was of the radiant type that sheds a universal lustre on
the character. It transfigured her in my eyes. It threw a veil of light
over her nature, and hid from my sight those features which a lesser
grace must have discovered. My love was apt to give names of its own to
the qualities it detected. To me, there seemed no violation of reason
in calling her artless, wayward, childlike. I found her capricious
conversation fascinating, not perplexing. Her habit of breaking off
in her grave speech to chase some irrelevant and simple fancy charmed
me. Her composite character suggested the two extremes of womanly
sense and childlike innocence, and her beauty filled with light the
void that divided them. So that I took no notice of the want of those
connecting links, those pauses and gradations of mind, which in reality
are as needful to the intellectual character as the middle keys of an
instrument are essential to its capacity for producing harmony.

I had proposed that we should spend our honeymoon abroad; but she
would not listen to our leaving Elmore Court. She said it was now in
the fulness of its beauty, and where should we find abroad so lovely
and quiet an abode? "Did I not tell you, naughty boy, that I would not
leave this house?" she had said. "It is the very perfection of a home,
in my eyes. We know no one. We can have all the long days to ourselves.
I can work in the garden without minding my dress. I should hate to
have to keep myself tidy to receive callers--stupid people, who would
come to envy and go away to tell stories. Look at my hair now--if I
were anywhere else I should have to keep it dressed."

And she pointed at her reflection in the glass, which showed her yellow
hair negligently looped behind with a piece of blue ribbon, with stray
curls sunning over her white forehead, and streaming down her back.

She seemed, and she was, I am sure, perfectly happy. The gardeners
took to her at once; and I would often see one or the other of them
following her about to listen to her directions, touching his cap so
often as he received her wishes; and yet, spite of his respectful
manner, hinting by his behaviour that he thought her rather more of a
child than a woman.

She had wanted to bring her own maid Lucy along with her, but the two
servants and Mrs. Williams were enough for our wants. So Lucy returned
to the village with the promise of filling the next vacancy in Elmore
Court.

I purchased a phaeton and a smart little mare, and would drive
Geraldine long excursions into the country. The memory of those days
is very fresh. She seems to be at my side while I write, her large
luminous eyes fixed on my face, her small white hand on my neck,
interrupting me with the musical lilt of her voice to tell me of a
bright-plumed bird that is drinking at the fountain.

You do not ask me what had become of the fine resolutions that had
brought me to Cliffegate. You know, for you have doubtless experienced,
that love is too absorbing a business to admit of any other occupation.
The living freshness of my wife's society made my library a kind of
mausoleum; and if I preferred basking in the luxury of her beauty
to handling the dusty skeletons which lined the shelves, you will
not be surprised. At the time of forming my resolutions I had never
contemplated marrying; and now that I _had_ married, my wife, for the
time being at all events, fully satisfied the craving for occupation,
for something to live for, which I had hoped ambition might have
appeased. Yet I did not despair of waking one morning with a strong
impulse to study. The fact of my life being no longer companionless
would disarm the fears of ambition; and I felt that, should I fail in
the attempt to distinguish myself hereafter, disappointment would be
qualified, if indeed not obviated, by the knowledge that I had always
by my side some one to love and who loved me, and whose happiness it
would be a joyous occupation to minister to.

Her dislike of society had at first surprised me; but it made me love
her the more. It argued, I thought, her ignorance of her fascination;
for I could not doubt, had she known her powers of delighting, that she
would never have buried them in so dead a retreat as Cliffegate. She
was twenty-seven, a period of a woman's life when her love of pleasure
and admiration is strong; though, it must be owned, that this love
very often strengthens in proportion as time makes its gratification
more difficult. Marrying her as I had, without a deep knowledge of her
character, it would not have surprised me had she expressed a desire
to change her solitude for a life of pleasure. The dull time she had
passed would certainly have justified the wish. Her eagerness therefore
to remain hidden from the world pleased me. It illustrated a nature
pure and unsophisticated; a heart innocent and sincere. And it made me
happy to believe I could always think of her as my own, without having
the calmness of my devotion sullied by those breezes of jealousy which
society sometimes brings with it, and which one's particular friends
generally take care shall increase to gales.

We passed our time almost wholly together. She did not like that I
should ever be from her side. She would call me from a book or a
letter, to come and watch her watering some favourite plants, or any
other work she might be at. And when such an excuse would be wanting,
she would sit by me, take my hand, and so remain quiet, rubbing her
cheek against my shoulder, and by her action and eloquent breathing
suggesting the grace and purring of a kitten.

It was strange that I should have inspired such a love. This narrative
has, I fear, given you but an imperfect conception of my character; yet
you may infer enough from the crude sketch to make you wonder that
any one so commonplace as I, should have given such life and movement
to the deepest and most latent instincts of this beautiful creature's
nature.

She had well said she was born to be loved. Her sensibilities were
singularly acute; her nature warm and sudden; her sympathies too
powerful; for they agitated her with more joy and grief than the
occasion that bred the emotion justified. Her spirit, made tameless by
solitude, desired the corrective of love; her fancies needed sobering;
her longings wanted interpreting; her whole nature demanded the warmth
of imparted passion to give life to slumbering powers, nourishment to
sickly instincts, sap and vigour to the drooping qualities which had
developed in loneliness and blossomed in sorrow.

Such were the speculations on her character I _then_ indulged in;
and from the standpoint I occupied they were just. But when some time
had passed, and I got to penetrate her character more deeply, the
undefinable feeling about her I have before spoken of became more
definite.

I remember well the pain and horror that accompanied the suspicion when
it first flashed upon me. I endeavoured to reason the conjecture away;
but the very arguments I brought to bear against it turned traitor
and marshalled themselves on the other side. I reviewed her conduct;
I recalled her actions, her language, her moods. They increased my
apprehension.

Now that love no longer consented to blind me, now that I suffered
myself to be possessed with suspicion, I knew that the truest
confirmation of my fear was to be sought and found in her eyes. The
light that sometimes leaped from their depths, the vacant dullness
that sometimes made them lustreless, were not always the sparkle or the
shadow of the mood then on her.

I was alone when I first fell into this train of thinking. She had not
left me long; and I heard her singing in the drawing-room as she sought
in her portfolio for a sketch which she announced her intention to
finish. I threw down the book I held and went to the library. My mood
was a strange one: a curiosity and a despair--a feverish wish to know
the truth, with a terror of that truth. I strode to and fro, dreading
that my face (which I could never force to mask my feelings) would
provoke her questioning, and striving to master the miserable doubts
that had seized me. But she soon missed me and came to the library,
peeping in as was her wont, and then, bounding forward with a movement
graceful as a child's.

"You shall not read," said she, taking my hand and pulling me to the
door. "I want you to watch me finish my drawing of our home."

"Leave me a little, Geraldine; I will be with you soon."

"Why not now?" she asked, pouting her under lip. And then, coming in
front of me, she looked right up in my face.

"Arthur," she whispered, "you look now as you look when you are asleep."

"What kind of look is that, Geraldine?" I said, forcing a smile.

"Come with me and I will tell you."

When we were in the parlour she took a penknife and began to sharpen a
pencil. She frowned over her task and then laughed, but so quietly that
the sound died in a breath.

"Now, tell me how I look in my sleep."

She laid knife and pencil on the table, and knelt before me, resting
her hands on my knees.

"Did you ever know I watched you in your sleep, Arthur?"

"No."

"Not by moonlight-though the moon shines bright sometimes; but never
bright enough for me to see you. But when you are sleeping soundly
I steal out of bed, and light the candle and watch you. But first I
listen to your breathing. If it is calm then I watch; but if it is
disturbed I go to sleep. Shall I tell you why?"

"Yes."

"Because I never know whether you are dreaming of me or not. If you
breathe short and troubled, the expression of your face might give me
pain--it would be troubled, too; and if I were to think at such a time
that you were dreaming of me it would make me wretched." She sighed.

"And when I breathe calmly?"

"Then I love to look at you; for you may be dreaming of me. I watch you
much longer than you can tell; but I do not look at you too long at a
time for fear my eyes should awaken you."

"But what makes you do this?"

"Do I not tell you? Besides," and she averted her face and gave me a
sweet shy look, "my watching might make you dream of me."

"But could not I dream of you as well when you are by my side?"

She shook her head. "No. You can make people dream of you by looking at
them in their sleep."

"Nonsense, Geraldine," I exclaimed, a little warmly; "this is some
crazy old woman's belief: you must not think such things."

I saw her upturned eyes slowly cloud with tears. Her beauty, too,
suddenly took the same intensely plaintive and piteous expression I had
marked in her when I had seen her walking in her sleep.

"You are angry with me, Arthur."

"No, dearest," I answered, kissing the tears from her eyes, "I am
not angry with you. I only think you should not indulge such foolish
fancies."

She smiled. It was like an April sunbeam shining after a shower.
Springing from her knees, "Now for my drawing!" she exclaimed. She drew
a chair to the table and went to work at once.

Some time after this, in going upstairs I met Mrs. Williams. She
stepped aside to let me pass, but I paused on the landing. I had an
idea that she was a much shrewder woman than her calm, pleasant, but
not highly intelligent countenance would have suggested. I called
her to the window on the landing and pointed to the front garden.
Geraldine stood at the fountain making a cup of her hands to receive
one of the silver threads of water which fell into the brimming basin.

"She seems as happy as a child here, does she not?" I said.

"She is like a child, Sir; innocent and gay as any little girl of five."

"And yet she is very womanly too; and it is this combination of gravity
and simplicity that makes her so fascinating. Do you often talk with
her, Mrs. Williams?"

"Sometimes, Sir."

"What do you talk about?"

"Oh, of different things."

"I dare say she puzzles your plain understanding?" I said, with a
laugh, whose artificiality made it worse than my gravity. "She has
a way of breaking off in her speech, of jumping from one idea to
another, that must make her sometimes difficult for you to understand,
eh?"

She glanced at me and quickly averted her eyes to the garden.

"Mistress," she said, "doesn't always talk quite collectedly."

"You have hit it exactly. She is sometimes a little incoherent."

"She is, Sir; but that comes, I am sure, from too much good spirits.
She's as bright and brisk as a bird which the eye can't always follow."

"Do you really think this way of hers comes from her good spirits?"

"I beg you'll excuse me, Sir," she remarked, folding her hands, "but I
should like to know what you think."

"No, Mrs. Williams, I question you. Pray be perfectly frank with me.
You must see I have a motive in asking you these questions. I have
faith in your judgment, and I am anxious to hear your opinion of Mrs.
Thorburn."

Her fingers worked nervously, and something like an expression of
distress entered her face. She remained silent. I looked through the
window; Geraldine was gone.

"Mrs. Williams, I am going to ask you a question. The fact of my asking
it will convince you of the high opinion I have of your character
and how much I appreciate your conduct since you have been in my
service. It will imply also the confidence I possess in your truth and
secrecy--in your truth to give me an honest downright answer, and in
your secrecy to conceal whatever discovery you may make. Do you think
my wife sane?"

The answer came reluctantly: "No, Sir."

"What makes you doubt her sanity?"

"Her manners, Sir, and her behaviour, and sometimes a look she has in
her eyes; but her conversation, principally."

"Have you had any experience of mad people?"

"Yes, Sir. Father once took charge of a niece of his that was mad."

"What form did her madness take?"

"She was very cunning. Her mind was full of crazy thoughts; but she
seemed to know that if she spoke them she would be thought mad. But she
couldn't always hide them. And she was very artful. She would steal
things and hide them so that nobody could find them. She was taken
worse after she had been with us a year, and we had to send her to an
asylum over at Barnstock, where she died raving."

"You would be more likely, after such an experience, to know madness
when you saw it than I?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And do you seriously and truly think Mrs. Thorburn mad?"

"You ask me, Sir--it's painful to say--but I would swear there is
madness in her."

"When did you make the discovery?"

"I didn't make it suddenly. I had my suspicions after she had been in
the house two or three days. But I became sure when, not long after she
had been here, she came to me and told me she had seen a shadow in the
air of a hand holding a knife."

"She told you this?" I exclaimed, with a start.

"Yes, Sir. She spoke in a whisper, looking around her, like one who
tells a great secret. Her eyes were all alight, but her cheeks were
pale. She told me not to tell you."

"And you kept your promise?" I said, bitterly. "Why did you not tell
me?"

"I hadn't the heart, Sir. I saw how you loved her--how you loved each
other--and I couldn't speak. Besides, I thought it might be some wild
notion she had brought away with her from her home. She led a dull
life, and I guessed all sorts of strange fancies might have taken her
in her loneliness. And to speak the truth, Sir, though I feared that
her mind was not right, I thought your company would bring her back to
herself."

"And do you think she has improved?"

"I am afraid not, Sir."

"What am I to do, Mrs. Williams? how do you advise me to act?"

Just then I heard my wife singing as she mounted the stairs, and we
broke off our conversation. I put on a cheerful look; and when she saw
me she came bounding up, with lighted eyes and outstretched hands,
her face brilliant with a smile. Mrs. Williams had left the landing
before Geraldine reached me; and for my part, I appeared in the act of
descending. She caught my hand and kissed it, a frequent action with
her, but she did it with an exquisite grace, as one would do who had
learnt her attitudes from nature.

She had a little story to tell me; how, deep in the shadows of the
orchard, she had been watching a green and purple insect crawl from a
hole in a tree to a stone, under which it vanished; and when she turned
the stone over with a stick a thousand strange things wriggled away.
"It taught me something! it taught me something!" she cried.

I asked her what.

"I said to myself," she answered gravely, "that green and purple insect
is a lie, and I who follow it am the world; for its colours please
me and I can't help pursuing it. And the stone it has crept under is
corruption, where a thousand other falsehoods, some pretty and some
very ugly, lie hid; and when I turn it over, I am like a reformer, who
floods corruption with the blaze of heaven, and all the foul things
rush from the light of truth. Is not that pretty, Arthur?"

"Yes, dearest; but do you know what your little fable typifies?"

"What?"

"The Reformation. You were Luther, the stone was Rome, the wriggling
insects the priests."

"No, no! There never was a Reformation; there was a wicked schism."

"Well, don't let us argue," I said, with a cheerless laugh.

She had descended the stairs with me, forgetting the purpose for which
she had mounted them. The harshness of my laugh struck her.

"What is the matter, Arthur?"

"Nothing, darling."

"You do not look as you used. You look frightened."

"Of what should I be frightened?"

"You are; your eyes are scared. Now am I not sharp, to read your face
so quickly? Oh, but I know every line in it! I can see the slightest
shadow pass over it. It lies quite transparent. It is like the water
in the marble basin. I was watching the water not long ago. I saw
the tiniest bird, mirrored deep, deep down. Do you know, Arthur, I
sometimes think I could fly? I feel so light--so light--I am sure I
should only have to put out my arms to rise."

"You would become an angel before your time, Geraldine."

"But I would never fly away from you, Arthur."

"I hope not, for I don't know how I should be able to pursue you."

She laughed. I passed my arm through hers, and we entered the garden.




CHAPTER VIII.


Day after day I watched her closely. Fear made observation keen. I had
fondly hoped that both Mrs. Williams and I had been mistaken--that our
commonplace minds had confounded the brisk and illogical expression of
an agile intellect with madness. But conviction came at last: I could
doubt no longer; her strange speech, her wild ways, her eyes sometimes
startling me with their brilliancy, sometimes paining me with their
sadness, admitted only of one interpretation.

My pen is powerless to describe the feeling of misery that took
possession of me. The stern necessity of self-control made the
suffering more sharp. I dared not by word or look hint my suspicion,
lest the avowal, however vague, might precipitate the fruition of her
madness. My apprehensions exaggerated the results of observation,
and gave to her actions and language a greater importance than they
probably deserved.

And all the long days were filled for me with a weird and tearful
pathos. For her love grew greater and greater, grew to a wildness
and depth that marked her derangement more plainly than any other
illustration. She followed me from room to room, into the garden,
sometimes at a distance, sometimes at my side. She would throw herself
at my feet, rest her cheek on my knee and look up at me with her large
and wonderful eyes, of which the beauty became more startling as her
insanity grew more vigorous.

I once fancied that her past held some sorrow which might contribute
to mature, if it did not actually feed her madness. I had little faith
in my power of winning confession; and her exquisite sensibilities and
my own clumsy judgment alike prohibited the ordeal of examination. Yet
I resolved to question her, and did, at wide intervals, and rather by
implication than by direct interrogation; but won no more from her
than she had before told me. She said that her married life had been
miserable, but that its misery now was forgotten in my love. She never
recurred to it. She dared not. She felt that she had been destined
for me, and she thought there was something menacing to her future in
remembering that another one occupied the position that should have
been always mine. The task of questioning was sadly embarrassed by her
inconsequential language. Day by day her speech grew more incoherent.
Instinct, so far as her passions were concerned, supplied the place
of memory; her memory grew visibly impaired. She could discuss with
pertinent consistency the first portion of a topic; but the rest
slipped from her, and she fell with strange abruptness into another
subject, without manifesting the slightest uneasiness at the sharp
departures of her mind.

I took counsel of Mrs. Williams, who implored me to conceal my fears
from my wife.

"She is young, Sir," she said, "and her reason may get the upper hand
yet. It is not as if she was utterly wild. If there's much strangeness
there's likewise much sense in what she says. This proves she's capable
of reasoning; and there's no telling at her time of life what nature
mayn't do for her."

"My position is terrible," I said. "This kind of existence is life in
death. It is hard--it is hard to see one I love so well, who loves me
with so pure and rare a love, slowly succumbing to this most awful of
human diseases. Cannot I save her? Would a change benefit her, do you
think?"

"I doubt it, Sir. It is not always thought wise to change the
residences of people so afflicted. Their feelings will reason for them
when they are surrounded with familiar things. If you bring them among
strangers and into strange places their poor faculties haven't the
power to grasp what they hear and see. It's like cutting the thread
that supports them."

"But it is impossible that I can sit quietly by and see her decaying,
as it were, before me. I must do something."

"Would you like to have a doctor to see her, Sir?"

"I have thought of that. I have thought of taking her to London. But
what excuse could I make--what would she think?"

"Wouldn't it be better to have a doctor down here, Sir?"

"To be sure it would," I replied, grasping the idea at once. "I could
pretend he was a friend."

"Yes, Sir; and he wouldn't require to stop longer than two or three
days."

"Perhaps not. He would see her in all her moods and come to a
conclusion on which he would base his advice."

I was turning from her when she said,

"I believe, Sir, Mr. Martelli is at Cliffegate."

"Martelli?" I exclaimed, stopping short.

"Why, Sir, so Sarah says," (Sarah was the housemaid). "She was that way
yesterday, and says she saw him sitting on the beach."

"I can hardly believe it. What should Martelli do here?--unless,
indeed, he has taken a situation at a school--but you have no schools
here, have you?"

"No, Sir. But it is quite likely Sarah was mistaken. She was in a
hurry, and the gentleman she saw might well happen to be a stranger.
Yet she declares the person she saw was Mr. Martelli."

"Perhaps he has returned to Cliffegate wishing to return to me: but it
is out of the question that I could receive him now."

I retreated to the library and wrote a letter to an old medical
gentleman who was long my mother's adviser and mine. I set my position
before him with the bluntness I knew he relished, and asked him if he
could oblige me with the name of any medical man who he thought would
have leisure and skill enough to carry out my stratagem. He sent me a
long reply, saying he had spoken to a friend who had made the treatment
of insanity his study, who would be happy to carry out my wishes. To
obviate all chance of exciting my wife's suspicions he advised me to
come to London and settle the programme; "for," he continued, "madness
is often subtle enough to mislead the most practised observer, and it
would therefore be absolutely necessary that Dr. F----'s visit to your
house should be so contrived as to seem perfectly consistent with the
excuse for his visit which you will contrive."

I saw the wisdom of this and determined to go to London.

As some pretence for my absence was needful, I pretended that I had
received a letter on a business matter of great urgency. A large sum,
I said, was at stake, and my presence in town was imperative. Geraldine
was very reluctant to let me go. Her large eyes filled, and her beauty
became mournful, as though some great sorrow had entered her heart.

"I shall be counting the hours, day and night, until you return," she
said. "But how blank the time will be without you! I shall not care to
eat or drink, or go into the garden. Is it not you who make all those
flowers beautiful, and this home dear and sweet to me as heaven?"

"But I will not be long gone, Geraldine. And do you not know that
little separations like these sweeten love, as the clouds in the sky
make the sunshine more brilliant when their shadows pass?"

"Our love does not want brightening," she answered, with a sob. "But
since you must go, I will pray to the Blessed Virgin to watch over you
and bring you safe back to me; for though you do not love her as I do,
she loves you and will never forsake you."

I kissed her, and in a few hours after we parted.

I reached London late at night, and next morning drove to the house
of my friend. He received me very cordially. I learned to my regret
that Dr. F---- had been suddenly summoned to the death-bed of a near
relation, and was not likely to return for three days. I thought more
of Geraldine than myself. But my friend consoled me by saying that my
absence might benefit her; anxiety for my return would give definite
occupation to her mind; the longer indeed my absence was protracted the
better, for fear and hope would steady by their weight the vibrations
of her reason, while expectancy would serve as a leader to her
thoughts, marshal them and keep them in a kind of logical order.

I wrote to her, saying that my return was unavoidably delayed, but
promised I would do my utmost to be with her on Wednesday. I added that
in all probability I should return with a friend, and desired her to
tell Mrs. Williams to get the spare room ready.

On the Tuesday afternoon I met Dr. F---- by appointment at the house
of my friend. I found him reserved, but gentlemanly. He asked me many
questions about my wife, to all which I replied as fully as I could. He
announced his willingness to return with me and to give his opinion;
and in reply to my inquiry named a fee which I thought sufficiently
moderate.

We left London next morning by an early train and reached Cornpool at
about three in the afternoon. I had telegraphed for my phaeton to be in
waiting and a little after four we halted at the gate of Elmore Court.

Mrs. Williams received us. I asked anxiously after Geraldine. Dr. F----
drew near to hear the reply.

"I cannot tell what has come over her, Sir. Since yesterday she has
been as changed as though she had been suddenly taken with illness.
She fretted a little after you left, but she cleared up before long,
and got talking with me on the pleasure it gave her to think of your
return. I couldn't help taking notice that she talked much more
rationally than she used, and I thought that the health of her mind
might be coming back to her. But yesterday morning, when she came down
to breakfast, I was shocked by her looks. She was white as a sheet;
her eyes rolled, and she talked so wildly and quick I couldn't follow
her. My fear was that something had happened to you, Sir. But when I
asked her if she had heard bad news from master, she clutched me by the
arm and cried out piteously, 'Is there bad news? is there bad news?'
I answered, 'Not that I know of.' On which she left me, and stood
muttering to herself."

"But where is she now?" I asked.

"She should be in the drawing-room, Sir."

I did not stop to ask if she had expected me; but directing Mrs.
Williams to conduct Dr. F---- to his bedroom ran to the drawing-room.

I found her walking to and fro with her hands behind her. Mrs. Williams
was right. An extraordinary change had come over her since we parted.
Her face was ashen pale; beneath her eyes the flesh had fallen and
turned dark; her eyes flashed, but a look of fear came into her face
when she saw me.

"Geraldine--dear Geraldine!" I cried, approaching her with outstretched
arms.

She stood stock still, then all at once bounded forward with a sharp
cry.

"It is my darling boy!" she said, throwing her arms around my neck.

I kissed her; but I felt her tremble in my embrace. I led her to a sofa.

"Did you not expect me, Geraldine?"

"Yes, I knew you would come."

"And you would not receive me at the door?"

"Have you not come to me?"

"Of course I have. But, dearest, you look ill. Has anything happened
since we parted?"

"What should happen?" she said, pushing my hair off my forehead. "But I
am sick--I am sick for wanting you."

"I could not come before, as I told you. But now that you have me, will
you brighten up? I do not like your worn air. Those white cheeks do
not become you."

"You will give me health, Arthur."

"If God permits me!" I said fervently, pained by the great pathos of
her eyes and the troubled frightened expression of her face. "I have
brought a friend with me, Geraldine. Perhaps he will help me to make
you well."

"What friend?"

"Did not I tell you of my intention to bring a friend from London?"

"Did you?" she asked, with a bewildered look. Then feeling in her
pocket she produced my letter. "How often have I kissed it!" she said,
as though to herself; "but I do not want it, now that I have him with
me."

"There," said I, opening the letter and pointing to the passage in it:
"do you not remember reading those lines?"

She knitted her brow like one in deep reflection; and looking up, with
her face softened with rather the shadow of a smile than a smile,
answered, "Yes--I ran with it to Mrs. Williams and told her to get the
spare room ready."

Just then the door opened and a servant ushered in Dr. F----. I rose
and introduced him to Geraldine. He bowed with polite reserve. She
inclined her head and sat watching him as a child might.

He appeared to take no notice of her. He began a light conversation
with me, wandering from topic to topic, evidently with the design of
engaging her attention and inducing her to speak. Now and then I caught
him looking at her.

She rose after a little, as if his presence made her uneasy, and went
to the window; but soon returned and resumed her seat by my side. All
at once she asked:

"Are you an old friend of my husband?"

"We have known each other some time."

"How came you to meet?"

"We met at the house of a common friend."

"Were you _very_ pleased to see him?"

He answered with a smile, "It is always pleasing to meet with one's
friends."

"Arthur," she said, turning to me, "it is not fair in you to call
anyone 'friend' but me. 'Acquaintance' is what you should call
everybody but Geraldine."

"I call you my wife, dearest; and that is a higher name than all."

"Mr. Fenton," she said, addressing him by the name I had introduced him
by, "do you think Arthur has any friend who would mourn if he left him
for only a day?"

"He is fortunate if he has, Mrs. Thorburn."

"I did, Mr. Fenton. And has he a friend who, if he were lying ill,
would wish to be ill too? who, if he were dying would wish to be dying?
who, if he were dead, would kill himself, if he could not die for
grief, that he might be by his side in the grave?" Her eyes sparkled,
her nostrils dilated; she added proudly: "He has only one friend who
would wish all this for his dear sake, and she is his wife."

"I am sure he is very sensible of your devotion," he answered, gravely.

She again left my side. So restless was she that even when she was
seated her form swayed like one who is ever about to rise. Dr. F----
and I exchanged looks. She abruptly called from the window, "Mr.
Fenton, have you seen the garden?"

"Not yet, Mrs. Thorburn," he answered, approaching her.

"Come, Arthur," she called, "we will show Mr. Fenton our flowers."

I wished them to be alone, so I answered that I would change my coat
and then join them. Saying which I left the room.

But I was hardly in the hall before she came running after me. She took
my hand and kissed it, saying, "Do you think I can be away from you?"

"But you should not leave our guest alone, Geraldine. I will join you
in a few minutes."

"What is our guest compared to you, Arthur? Have you not been away
from me? It was cruel to bring that man here; he comes between us; you
are not _all_ my own now. He will require your attention, and I shall
_hate_ him because you give it. I will ask him to go away."

I detained her by the hand, fearing she would actually carry out her
threat.

"If you love me, darling," I said, "you will be courteous to this
gentleman. You will not refuse me this favour."

"If you asked me to love him, I would try to love him," she answered
submissively, her lips tremulous, her eyes downcast.

"That would make me jealous. I only want you to be courteous. Return to
him now, show him over the grounds, and justify my great love for you
by letting him see how sweet you can be."

She gave me a long look and returned to the drawing-room.

When afterwards I went downstairs I stood at the window watching them
before I entered the grounds. They were traversing a broad walk. She
looked incessantly towards the house; but sometimes she would loiter
with an air of strange _abandon_, or bend to pick a flower and follow
her companion with a bound.

Alas! I did not need Dr. F---- to confirm my fears. There was not a
look, a remark, even an attitude of hers, that did not now insinuate
derangement. How she loved me! Those earnest glances at the house were
for me. Pitiful it was to think on such a passion corrupted by madness.
What a sorrowful pageant her beauty, her devotion, her innocence made!
It was the Dance of Death; the graces marshalled by a skeleton. Was I
worthy of her love? Yes, for I loved her well, too. She must have known
it, to have been so fond of me. Instinct in this stood her in the place
of reason. She loved me with her spirit; she recognised my love by the
faculties of her spirit. Had her brain interpreted her experiences her
devotion must have been less deep.




CHAPTER IX.


That night Dr. F---- and I sat in the library. Geraldine had retired to
rest. Up to that moment we had found no opportunity for conversation,
for she was always near, always at my side.

I had marked his incessant study of her. I had admired the skill with
which he directed her attention--as a steersman directs his bark;
provoking her into speech, perplexing her views to ascertain the
consistency of her mind, then helping her thoughts, to witness whether
her incoherence were due to normal weakness of intellect or to disease.

He had lighted a cigar and sat smoking in silence--a silence I feared
to question. From time to time he looked at me, with pity rather than
embarrassment, and at last he spoke.

"Mr. Thorburn, I should be intruding upon your hospitality were I to
remain over to-morrow."

"I understand. You have no doubt?"

"No doubt."

I mastered an emotion with a struggle.

"Will you give me your opinion?" I said.

"My opinion is that your wife is insane. It is impossible that I
should pronounce upon the degree of her insanity from the short time I
have been with her. The conditions with which she is surrounded must
necessarily retard the growth of her madness. Her love for you and
your presence here exercise a a restraining influence. Yet I am not
satisfied that her mind is free from anxiety."

"What makes you think this?"

"I judge more from her aspect than her manners or language. Her
physical condition implies the presence of some active mental pain,
which is not due to insanity, though it would aggravate it."

"But what could pain her? She is perfectly happy in my love. She will
not suffer me to remove her from this house. Would society benefit her?"

"I think not. If she objects to it she has her reason, and it would
distress her."

"Would a change of air, would a change of scene, be of use? I am rich,
doctor; do not scruple to prescribe. If my fortune would benefit her,
it should be spent."

"I can prescribe only one thing--will you surrender her to my care?"

"No. I could not part with her."

"I am not surprised. Even if I took charge of her, I could not
guarantee her recovery."

"I will take charge of her myself. She would never bear being separated
from me."

"In one sense," he replied, "you would make a better guardian than I.
But the duty of watching the mad is very painful--especially when the
insane person is one we love."

"But you do not think she requires watching yet?"

"Not yet. I mean that there is no need of vigilant scrutiny, though I
should advise you to keep her well in view. Her madness has not yet
emphatically pronounced itself--but it may do so any day. You must
humour her. Her love gives you an influence which no one else could
easily possess. I predict, that when her insane moods are most vehement
she will prove docile to you." He added, after a pause, "you should
procure some woman whom you can trust to watch her. But not yet. Give
her perfect freedom now. But when you find it needful to restrain
her--and that time I fear will come--appoint some keeper of whose
humanity and patience you can have proofs."

"Have you no hope that she will recover?"

"It is impossible for me to pronounce. From the character of the
disease in her, I should say it would grow; but its culmination may
not be intense. Neither good health nor good spirits will much profit
her. Illness, indeed, is sometimes beneficial to madness. I once had
a patient under my charge whom I considered incurable. He was seized
with scarlet fever, which was within an ace of killing him. He escaped
death by a miracle, and when the delirium passed, I found he had
recovered his mind."

"But in the case of my wife, should you think her madness hereditary or
acquired?"

"There again you puzzle me. It would be necessary for me to hear Mrs.
Thorburn's history before I could hazard a conjecture."

"Her history is brief. She married a man who ill-treated her. Her
sufferings must have been great, for it has made her detest the world
and shun society like a plague. But I can discern no madness in this.
It would be the natural attitude of a young mind embittered by wrong.

"As you say, her attitude is no proof of madness, but the cause that
forced her into that attitude may have induced madness."

"You would attribute her derangement to her first husband's
ill-treatment?"

"Her ill-treatment may have been one cause. If there were a previous
disposition to madness a very painful experience would hardly fail to
excite it. In my own mind, I have little doubt that she is oppressed
with some recollection, of which the removal would benefit, if it did
not cure her."

"Surely, I should be able to ascertain it?"

"Better than any one else. But you will have to be very cautious in
your approaches. Yet you will hardly need tuition in such a matter.
Your knowledge of her character will teach you better how to act than
any suggestions from a stranger. With respect to myself, I do not see
that I can be of any further use to you. Indeed, I doubt if my stay
here would be advisable. My presence irritates her; and it must be your
business to keep her mind as composed and tranquil as possible."

"I am perfectly in your hands, doctor; and however you may act, I am
sure it will be for the best."

We remained together until after twelve. Our conversation was entirely
restricted to the one subject. He had had much experience of madness
and illustrated the information I gave him respecting my wife's
derangement by anecdotes of corresponding peculiarities in other cases
he had met with. On separating, I conducted him to his room, and then
returned to see after the house for the night, as was my custom. At the
bottom of the staircase I met Mrs. Williams, candle in hand, going to
bed.

"I am afraid we have kept you up rather late," I said.

"Oh! never mention that, Sir. I only trust and pray that the doctor's
visit here may be of use."

"Of no use, I fear," I replied, "except to confirm my sorrow. He does
not doubt that she is insane."

"I feared so, I feared so," she said, shaking her head.

"He will leave to-morrow, for he can be of no further service here; and
he thinks his presence irritates her."

"He is right, Sir. Mistress came to me this evening, and told me it was
as much as she could do to speak civilly to him. 'What does he want in
this house?' she said. 'Mr. Thorburn can't be with me as he used before
this man came. And he vexes me so, Mrs. Williams. He asks me questions
it pains my head to answer; and I don't like his eyes;' and here she
began to cry."

"Well, he leaves us in the morning. He is keen-sighted and honourable,
and sees that his presence can do no good. I have been troubling myself
to guess what could have worked such a change in Mrs. Thorburn during
my absence. The alteration is too sudden to be due to illness. Nor is
she ill."

"It all came at once, Sir. She was well over night, and next morning,
as I told you, I met her looking downright changed."

"Did she not seem suffering at all the night before?"

"No, Sir, I went to bed at about half-past ten, and left her in the
library. I thought she might be writing to you."

"Am I to believe," I said, "that a sudden access of insanity would
effect such a change? It is possible. Some horror may have seized her
in the night. God only knows what dreadful fancies the diseased mind
will generate to craze the brain. Dr. F---- has told me I must expect
her madness to increase, and that it will be necessary to procure some
one to watch her. Mrs. Williams, would you undertake such a duty?"

"I would not object, Sir. I would do it from pity. She is so delicate
and sweet with all her strangeness, that I could not have the heart to
see her in anybody else's charge."

"By doing this you would be bestowing on me an obligation I could not
repay. It would almost mitigate my grief to think she was tended by
one so worthy and kind as you. Rest assured I shall do my utmost to
recompense you for the trying position you will be placed in."

She curtesied.

"I only beg you will keep the secret. I shall continue residing here
until I see what form her madness takes. Where else could I secure such
privacy--such perfect security from intrusion? From my heart of hearts
I humbly pray God to avert from her and me this most terrible calamity.
But if it be His will that her madness should strengthen, then we will
watch over her as we would over some stricken infant. I may expect
tenderness and love for her from you, Mrs. Williams. You will think
of my devotion, and will take my place when I am from her side; and
cherish, and bear with her; for she deserves it--she deserves it! So
young, so beautiful, so fond--to be blighted like this!"

I buried my face in my hands and burst into tears.

"I will do for her, Sir, as if she was my own child," said Mrs.
Williams in a tremulous tone, moved by my grief. "She shall never want
for love while she is with me."

I took and pressed the kind creature's hand, and passed into the
library. The window stood open as I had left it, for the night, though
it was the autumn, was close. I entered the balcony. The air was dark;
there was no moon; the stars were few and faint. The wind stole through
the trees which towered above the house with a hollow plaining.

The gloom and stillness were friendly to thought and melancholy. Away
down there among those black shadows I had first met her, walking with
a queenly air, her face made marble by sleep, her eyes made sightless
by the slumbering of her soul. Into what a life had her beauty led me!
The intelligence of my spirit had not deceived me. Had it not inspired
me with prophetic forebodings of some such commingling of mine and
this fair creature's destinies as was now realised? Of what sin had I
been guilty to merit this dread expiation? My love was pure; why was it
made a misery?

I was in the act of leaving the balcony when I heard a cry--a human
cry, as of some one in pain or distress. It smote my ear--faint but
defined; but whence it had come, whether from right or left of me, or
from the deep black shadows of the trees beyond, I knew not. I stood
straining my hearing to catch the cry again, but it was not repeated.

Was it a human voice? I might have been mistaken. It might have been
the dull note of some wakeful bird, humanised by my imagination. It
might have been the moan of some homeless dog. I waited wondering.

All at once my thoughts rushed to Geraldine. The cry might have come
from her room; its passage through the open window making it sound as
though uttered in the garden.

I mounted the stairs gently and opened the bedroom door. A candle burnt
on the toilet-table. I glanced at the bed; it was empty, yet her form
had pressed it, and the clothes were disordered.

I hastened downstairs, possessed with a strange belief; I entered the
balcony, passed down the steps, and gained the garden. I walked forward
cautiously, peering to right and left, pausing at intervals to listen,
then advancing noiselessly as before. Half-way down the grounds I
stopped; I heard the sound of footsteps. In a few minutes a figure in
white came out of the gloom and flitted rapidly by me.

I called "Geraldine!" She halted. I went up to her.

"My darling, what are you doing in the garden at this hour? The grass
is wet, and you are thinly clad."

"Who are you?" she asked in a hard whisper.

"Your husband--Arthur."

"Let me feel you."

I took her hand and led her to the house. She did not speak until we
had gained the library. By the light of the candle I saw that her eyes
were dilated, her face quite bloodless, her lips thin, white and rigid.

"Great God, Geraldine! Speak! What is the matter with you?" I cried.

"Let me get to bed--I am weary, weary," she answered.

I closed the window and accompanied her to our bedroom. She moaned like
one under the influence of a narcotic. Her face was almost deformed by
the harshness of its expression. Her fingers worked incessantly, like
those of an infant in a sick slumber.

"Were you walking in your sleep Geraldine?" I asked.

She answered with extraordinary quickness, "Yes, I have been walking in
my sleep."

"I heard a cry; did you utter it?"

She laughed quietly, but without the least change of expression.

"Who else?--who else?" she replied.

"But did you hurt yourself, that you cried out?"

A shrewd light shone in her eyes as she answered:

"I stumbled; the fall awoke me, and in my fear I cried out."

She began to play with her hair, suddenly desisted, and asked
querulously,

"What makes this room red?"

"It is not red, dearest."

"I say it is!" she exclaimed, irritably. "The flame of the candle is
red--the walls are red--your face is red!"

"Your nerves are excited. The shock of awakening has been too great.
Lie down, dearest; you will rise refreshed in the morning."

She seated herself on the edge of the bed, looking at her fingers and
turning them about. Presently she began to cry, but very quietly. I
went to her and kissed her, clasping her in my arms for she trembled
as though she were cold. And indeed she was; her hands and cheeks
were like ice; but her forehead burned. After a little I succeeded in
coaxing her into bed, where she lay sighing as though her heart would
break. I watched by her for half an hour, when the regular respiration
told me she was asleep.

When she rose next morning she looked very very ill. I was greatly
distressed by her appearance and entreated her to remain in bed. But
she declared she must get up; what could she do in bed? She had some
work in the garden, and must go to it. I could not help taking notice
of her constrained manner, as though she addressed me under compulsion.
She appeared to have difficulty in articulating her words; and her
eyes, which the sickness of her body seemed to make more brilliant,
were restless, startled, and impatient. Before leaving the room she
said:

"I do not like your friend, Arthur; when will he go?"

"He is going to-day, love."

"Why did he come?"

Bound to be consistent, I repeated my story of his being a friend whom
I had asked to spend a week at Elmore Court, but who now found he
would have to return to London that day.

"What time will he leave?"

"In the early part of the afternoon, I think."

"I do not mean to see him. I'll go into the garden and hide myself. Do
you know, when he looks at me his eyes give me a pain in the head?"

"I am sure he does not wish to pain you."

"But he does, or he would not look at me like that. And he asks me
questions which trouble me to reply to. I won't meet him."

"Very well," I answered, recollecting Dr. F----'s advice that she
should be humoured.

"And do not bring him near me," she continued, "and do not come and
look for me, for I shall hide myself until he is gone."

"But you are not strong enough to work in the garden. Why will you not
remain indoors? Let Mrs. Williams nurse you a little. You need repose
after what happened last night."

"What happened last night?" she cried, looking sharply up.

If the memory of it had passed, I thought it best not to recall it. So
I answered:

"I am sure, dearest, you need a little nursing. And should you fatigue
yourself in the garden"----

"Tell me of last night," she whispered, creeping close to me.

"Why," I replied, marking her resolution to be answered, "do you not
remember finding yourself walking in your sleep?"

She tossed her hands and laughed out.

"Oh, yes, I remember! But go you downstairs and detain your friend
while I pass. I will breakfast in the housekeeper's room. Tell him I
am ill and cannot be seen."

"Very well," I answered, reluctantly. It did not please me to leave her
to herself. Her face looked wax-like, so delicate and transparent was
the white of her skin, and her eyes actually trembled with the light in
them, as though they reflected the rays of some flickering flame.

I found Dr. F---- in the breakfast-room. I gave him a brief account of
what had happened on the previous night, and of her condition. I also
acquainted him with the aversion he had inspired her with. He replied
that her aversion was an illustration of his influence over insane
persons. The first operation of this influence was hate and distrust;
but fear soon followed. The motto of the mad doctor, he added, was the
expression of the Roman emperor--_oderint dum metuant_.

"She refuses to meet you," I said, "and has gone to hide herself among
the trees. You will require no apology for this behaviour," I added,
with a mournful smile.

"You do right to let her have her own way. Yet you see how necessary
her dislike makes my departure?"

"Yes. It is not wholly impossible that her cunning may have conjectured
the truth, and that she has guessed your mission."

"I should hardly think that; though you are right in accrediting
insanity with a power of perception which is often far beyond the reach
of intellect. The decay of the brain seems to bring the functions of
the spirit into activity. But this perception does not always refer to
material things. Its proper dominion is the immaterial. Where reason
sees order, insanity witnesses disorder; but, on the other hand,
insanity riots in the chaos that lies without the limits of normal
thought, and delights in constructing theories and forms from the
thrice-confounded abstractions it seems to contemplate."

"This would account for many of its delusions."

"After a fashion. But it is hard to reason on the reasonless. The
worst form of madness is the total subversion of the intellectual
faculties; when the mind represents everything totally opposite to
what it is. I remember hearing of two lovers who went mad through a
cruel separation. When they were brought together they recognised each
other, but each denied the other to be the beloved one. A distinguished
mathematician went mad through mistaking the number 6 for an 0 in all
his calculations."

"We can appreciate the horror of madness when it is brought home to us.
Much surely may be done by tenderness and sympathy?"

"They are both severely taxed. I do not utterly despair of your wife,
though she will have to be worse before she is better. My parting
advice, Mr. Thorburn, is to endeavour to ascertain if she is at
all troubled in her mind. If a real sorrow lies there it should be
uprooted; if an imaginary woe it must be reasoned away. You must have
patience; watch her narrowly; sound her persistently, though with
delicacy, and keep her as cheerful as opportunity will allow."

A reference to the time-tables showed a train to be leaving Cornpool at
twelve. Having ordered the phaeton to be in readiness, we went for a
walk towards the sea. It was his own wish to keep away from the house.
The walk was hardly agreeable; my mood was sombre and melancholy, and
all my thoughts were with Geraldine. On our return we found the phaeton
waiting, and having pressed a cheque into his hand, I bade him farewell.




CHAPTER X.


When Dr. F---- was gone I went in search of Geraldine. I met a servant
and asked for Mrs. Thorburn; she answered that her mistress had just
come in from the garden and had gone upstairs. I mounted to the
bedroom, and found the door locked. I rapped and called to her to admit
me. The key was turned, the door opened, and Geraldine stood before me,
with the skirt of her dress off, her arms bared to the elbows, and her
hair wild. "Come in," she said; and when I was in she locked the door
again.

I noticed that her hands and arms were covered with soil; there were
fragments of dry leaves in her hair, and on the carpet, from the door
to the toilet-table, were marks of her muddy boots. There was a keen
look of triumph on her white face; and sharp curves at the extremity of
her lips made the expression of her mouth malevolent.

I pretended to take no notice of her appearance. She went to the
washstand, brimmed the basin and began to wash.

"My friend is gone," said I; "you will have me now all to yourself."

She looked over her shoulder and nodded.

"I rather fancy he guessed you did not like him," I continued; "for he
expressed no surprise at your absence, nor did he desire to bid you
good-bye."

"There was a little devil in each of his eyes," she replied; "mocking
imps, that made mouths at me and frightened me."

"That is strange. It appeared to me that he had a kind eye."

She splashed the water violently over her arms, and sponged her face,
repeating this many times. I waited until her ablutions were ended, and
asked, "Where have you been, Geraldine?"

"In the garden, digging, until my arms are tired; and now my head
aches."

"But what is there to dig, dear? The beds are in order."

"I wanted exercise, and so I took a spade and dug. I was in a mood for
digging. It pleased me to drive the sharp spade into the soft earth and
fling it up all quivering. I was in a passion; and I dug a grave for my
passion."

"Have you been resting under the trees? There are fragments of leaves
in your hair?"

"I don't know how they came there. Perhaps I dashed the leaves about
with my spade. Will you brush my hair out?"

She seated herself before the toilet-glass. How pallid and deadly was
the reflection of her face! I loosened her yellow tresses; they flowed
over my arm like silk. From time to time I caught sight of her black
and glittering eyes watching me; but their lashes veiled them each time
I met their gaze.

"I wish I could put a little colour into your marble cheeks, Geraldine.
It makes me very sad to see you so pale."

"I would not make my boy sad for much," she answered.

"You were well when I left you; there must be some reason for this
change."

"No reason, no reason," she answered, sighing.

"If there is any cause for your illness or for this change, if your
heart is oppressed with any trouble or misgiving, if you are not
perfectly happy in your mind--why will you not take me into your
confidence? Is it not my privilege to share your sorrows? If you
are sad and will not tell me the cause of your sadness, must I not
fear that you do not think I love you well enough to deserve your
confidence?"

"Do I distrust your love? I do not. I am happy in your love."

"If you know how well I love you you must be happy; for no one was ever
loved more truly than you."

"Do not talk so, Arthur. Let me feel your love, not hear it."

"Is there anything in the past that grieves you to remember, Geraldine?"

"Hush!" she raised her hand solemnly. "I have buried the past. It will
grieve me no more."

"But its ghost may walk," I said, hoping to make myself more
intelligible by adopting her tone. "Tell me how I may find it, that I
may bid it depart and leave you in peace."

"Should it come, it will not go for you," she said, shaking her head.
"Ghosts are deaf, and heed no prayers. They are spirits and have no
fears. The air is full of them sometimes. I hear their voices, and when
the room is dark I see their shapes. They are more white than that
face," pointing to her reflection; "and they have steady un-winking
eyes and long shadowy hands. Do you never see them? They often stand at
the foot of the bed and watch us."

"These are foolish fancies, Geraldine. See, I have brushed your hair
well. Will you do it up?"

She took the tresses in her hands mechanically and bound them in the
fashion she wore them.

"You do not play the piano as you used, Geraldine. I have heard that
ghosts hate music as much as they hate sunshine or anything else that
is cheerful. When you have got on your dress, come down-stairs and play
me something, and you shall hear me sing. I had a voice once."

"I do not care to play," she answered wearily.

"You have tired yourself with digging. Lie down a little and I will
fetch a book and read you to sleep."

"I could not lie down. How strong the light is! Draw the curtains."

I did as she bade me, and took a chair at the window.

"Do not watch me so, Arthur," she said peevishly. "You have learned
that trick from your friend. Your eyes seem as sharp as his."

I averted my face, leaning my cheek on my hand.

"When you dig the earth how the horrible worms crawl out! I cut one
into four pieces yesterday, and not one piece was dead when I left.
When I die, do not bury me in the ground, but throw me as I am in the
sea. The ground is dark and rotting, but the sea is fresh. I can shut
my eyes so, and feel myself there. There," pointing in the air, "is
a huge black shadow floating over me like a cloud. Great eyes, each
with a hundred circles, stare at me through the green water. There
goes a great outline, brilliant as a rainbow, white, yellow, black,
blue----oh! how horrible it is to die!" she suddenly screamed, clasping
her hands and staring at me wildly.

I passed my arm round her neck, kissed her cold cheek, and tried to
soothe her. She turned in her chair, burying her face in my breast and
trembling from hand to foot. She disengaged herself presently, walked
with uncertain steps to the bed, and put on her skirt.

"Is there nothing you can do, my poor wife, to clear your mind of these
distressing fancies?" I asked. "If you would try to fix your mind upon
something, however unimportant, it might create an interest and give
you food for thought."

"Are not other people haunted like I am?"

"Many, I dare say. We all should be, if we did not resolve not to be.
Why, were I to encourage superstitious feelings, I could make myself
the most unhappy wretch in the world in less than a week. Will was
given us expressly that we might control our humours, and passions, and
weaknesses. You have the will; you only want the resolution to exercise
it."

"What can my will do for me? If I were to grind my teeth and clench my
hands, and declare I _would_ not think, could I stop thinking? Oh! it
is enough to drive me mad!"

She began to talk to herself and moved about the room, prowling rather
than walking; looking uneasily above, then staring at herself in the
glass, shaking her head and catching at the fingers of her left hand.
Suddenly she stopped, and called out. "Why will you look at me, Arthur?
You are growing unkind. You used not to look at me before like that."
And she began to sob.

"It is my love that makes me look at you; but I will not look if it
gives you pain;" and I turned to the window, and stared out with as
heavy a heart as ever a man had.

She fell to singing to herself a little melodious air with Italian
words, of which I caught only the first line;


    "Ben veggio che'l mio fin consenti e vuoi,"


and breaking suddenly off, she stole up to me, threw her arms around my
neck, and whispered:

"Will you be glad when I am dead?"

"I should wish to die too."

"I wish," she continued, in a half-chanting dreamy voice, "we could
pass into heaven as we are, without dying. I would take your hand, and
we would float to the stars, up through the still air, and on and on,
until we came to the City of God. There we should be met by the Angel
of Peace, who would lead us to the thrones of the Blessed Virgin and
her dear Son, and in their holy presence----look!" she cried, pointing
over my shoulder to the garden, "there is a white form rising--do you
see it? I can see the trees through its body--how steadily it soars!
yet it has no wings. I follow it. Look, Arthur."

Hitherto I had not been looking at her as she had desired. Now I
turned. Her eyes were wide open, with a fixed stare on the sky; her
lips were parted, and she breathed with deep respirations. Presently,
she bowed her head, made a gesture with her hand, and crossing herself,
muttered, "It is gone."

"Come," said I, taking her hand, "let us go downstairs."

That night, whilst I was pacing the balcony, pondering my position, and
less lamenting it than deploring my powerlessness to save my wife from
the calamity whose shadow was now on her, it entered my head to search
her boxes or trunks for any papers or letters that might throw some
light on her past.

Under any other circumstances, I should have dismissed such a
resolution from my mind. A wife may have secrets, and her husband
should respect them. But Dr. F---- had intimated his fear that her
madness was being fed by some sorrow. To have discovered, that I might
remove, her sorrow, I would have been guilty of any mean act. I did not
love myself so well as I loved her.

I pretty well knew I had not been born with the detective faculty,
and apprehended that my search would be defeated by clumsiness. Still
I resolved to attempt it. My wife had several trunks ranged in my
dressing-room, and one of those large boxes draped with chintz, called
ottomans.

It was midnight before I retired to rest. I had other things to think
of besides this search. The titles of my books, as they looked down
from the shelves, had preached a solemn homily on the vanity of human
wishes: and my own experience capped the moral by presenting me with
a picture of the life I was leading, done in colours as sombre as
fancy and reality could supply. When I got upstairs I found Geraldine
asleep. I bent over her, and studied her features. The complexion was
so white that the outline of her cheek was hardly perceptible upon the
pillow. Her beauty had a pinched, worn air. All its calm and freshness
were gone; her brow was knitted, her lip curled in a sneer; she lay
quite still, breathing deeply. The general expression of her face was
wretchedness. It was pitiful to witness such a look on lineaments so
beautiful.

I took the candle with me into the dressing-room, and tried the lids
of the boxes. They were open. That of the ottoman only was locked.
I sought for her keys in the pockets of some dresses hanging in the
wardrobe and found them in a green silk skirt. I turned the ottoman
inside out, but found nothing. I applied myself to the trunks, but
they were as barren of information as the ottoman. I closed the lid
of the last trunk and was about passing from the room, when I heard
the sound of a door opened. I listened, then pushed the dressing-room
door, and looked out. The bed was empty, the door of the chamber open.
I caught a light sound of feet, and stealing to the landing, perceived
Geraldine descending the stairs.

I followed her. She gained the hall; I drew near. A lamp that was kept
burning all night diffused a sufficient light. I looked at her face,
and by the expression saw that she walked in her sleep.

I did not dare arouse her. I had read of the danger of awakening
persons from such trances, and Dr. F---- had particularly cautioned me
against doing so with my wife. I could do no more than follow her; and
this I resolved to do to preserve her from harm. She walked steadily
to the door leading to the back grounds, unbolted it, and passed out.
The night air blew chill, for autumn was advanced and the approach of
winter could be tasted in the night winds. The moon lay over the trees,
slowly brightening, but shedding little light as yet. But the grounds
and shadows were defined. She seemed sensible of the chill; for she
crossed her hands upon her bosom and huddled her shoulders. She was
habited only in her nightgown and her feet were naked. The dew was
heavy; the gravelled walks sharp; yet I dared not wake her.

She passed down the lawn, got on to a side walk, and marched with slow
but steady step towards the orchard. Soon she entered it. The shadows
were deep, but the moonlight fell through the openings and faintly
illuminated the obscurity. The grass stood knee deep. My feet crunched
the dead leaves and snapped the rotten twigs. It was a portion of the
grounds left untouched by the gardeners at my own request. The contrast
between the trimmed gardens and the wild luxuriant orchard pleased me.

Sometimes the shadows and the intervening trunks of the trees made it
difficult for me to follow her. I wondered whither she was leading me.
How utterly still was the place! Her naked feet made no noise as she
advanced. Her form flitted and floated before me in the gloom like a
spectre. She wound her way in and out among the trees with precision,
while I blundered forward, sometimes stumbling with my shoulder against
a black trunk, sometimes kicking and nearly falling over long iron-hard
roots.

Before long she gained the extremity of the orchard. The hedge
that intersected her former house from the grounds rose thick and
black. She stood motionless awhile, then knelt and began to scrape
the earth with her hands, throwing the dried leaves furiously about
her. Presently she desisted, rose, and went through a pantomime,
the significance of which the gloom forbade me to interpret; but it
appeared to me as though she struggled with some invisible object. She
breathed heavily and chokingly, and sometimes faint cries escaped her.
Then down she dropped on her knees again, and fell to sweeping back
the leaves in the same violent way she had before scattered them. This
done, she left the place, passing me so close that I had to shrink lest
she should touch me.

She went towards the house fleetly. I had to walk quickly to keep up
with her. At times she almost ran. As I feared she would shut the door
upon me if I were behind, and so prevent me from entering, for the
other doors and the windows were bolted and closed, I ran by her and
stood in the passage until she entered. It happened as I expected. She
closed the door at once and bolted it precisely as she had found it. I
followed her upstairs, saw her get into bed and lie as motionless as
when I had first bent over her.

I seated myself and watched her. I found nothing strange in her actions
in the orchard. The mere fact of walking in her sleep was sufficient
to render consistent any extraordinary behaviour. But I dreaded the
consequence of her exposure to the night air. I could not doubt the
wonderful providence that watched over the actions of the somnambulist;
but supernatural as might be the regulation of her conduct, I knew that
her flesh would still be susceptible of ill, and that there could be no
provision made against the dangers of sickness and disease.

There was to be no sleep for me that night. I felt so wide awake
that I saw it would be useless getting to bed. I was agitated and
superstitious. The house was so still that I could hear the ticking of
the clock in the hall. The wind swept past the windows at intervals and
faintly rattled the casements.

How calmly she slept! I could not reconcile her profound slumber
with the misery in her face. Was there a sorrow there, or was it her
madness that made her face so plaintive? If a sorrow, why should it
be undiscoverable? I had searched her boxes; what else remained to be
searched? I went to the wardrobe, noiselessly pulled out the drawers
and examined them. In the top drawer was her jewel case. It was open.
I raised the tray; there was nothing there beyond a few articles of
jewelry. I inspected the middle drawer. Here was her desk; a large
old-fashioned rosewood box, at which I had once or twice found her
writing in the dressing-room. It was locked. I took the keys, fitted
the right one, and opened the desk. There were papers here, at all
events; bundles of letters, some of them yellow and faded, connected by
bits of elastic.

Eager as I was to know the truth _for her sake_, I found my curiosity
strongly repelled by my sense of delicacy and honour. Before I could
force myself to open the bundle I held, I had to subdue my aversion
to the task by recalling the benefit she would derive by my knowing
her past. That the rustling of the papers should not disturb her, I
retreated with the desk to the dressing-room, leaving the door ajar,
that I might hear if she moved. I then trimmed the light and addressed
myself to my necessary but odious task.

The letters were numerous. I read them all. Some of them were addressed
to her by her grandmother. Some were written in a foreign hand and
signed Luigi. They told me only a portion of her story--that she had
married against her grandmother's will and that her husband had been an
Italian. The first batch of her grandmother's letters comprised those
which had been addressed to her at school. They spoke of her holidays;
how glad the writer would be to have her granddaughter with her again.
These were full of wise if rather trite counsels. The next batch were
those addressed to her at London. These were full of reproaches and
threats. There were only five of these letters, and some of them were
smudged as with tears. Luigi's letters were addressed to her at school,
to Miss Geraldine Dormer, Gore House Academy. They were full of violent
protestations of endless love. Some of them began, _Carissima mia_;
others, _Bella figlia mia_. One of them contained this passage: "The
south is yellow with sunlight, but more splendid is the yellow of your
hair. The dark skies of my native land tremble with gems; but more
beautiful is the gloom of your eye, which gleams with the light of your
soul!" They were mostly written in this strain, diversified here and
there with practical questions to which answers were humbly supplicated.

I learnt nothing from them. I returned them to the desk and went to
look at Geraldine. She lay perfectly still. I resumed my seat and
fell into thought. I wondered whether it was the loss of her husband
that had made her crazy. Her marriage with him had been a love match;
that was plain from the grandmother's reproaches. Passion, I thought,
might easily work disastrous changes in such a nature as hers. But she
had told me her husband had ill-treated her; and her secluded life,
her consistent language on this subject, confirmed the truth of her
assurance. In my reverie I stretched forth my hand to toy with a ring
that hung from the desk. Accidentally jerking it, a drawer started out.
I bent forward, and I saw that this drawer contained a flat long MS.
volume, together with a couple of rings, a Catholic medal, and a silver
crucifix.

I extracted the manuscript and opened it. On the first page was
inscribed the word "Diary." The opening entry was dated 185-.




CHAPTER XI.


The Diary opened thus:

"Here am I in London. I don't know whether to be frightened or glad.
Luigi is very kind, but he did not tell me he would bring me to such
miserable lodgings as this. Would it not have been better had we never
met? I should have known that a teacher cannot be rich. Yet I _do_
think him handsome, and he makes love so meltingly that I would rather
live in a garret than not have married him. No letter from grandmamma.
She is very unkind. Mamma would not have treated me so had she been
alive. But what is an orphan to expect but unkindness?"

A few days later: "To-day I heard from Miss Cowley" (this was the
schoolmistress, as I knew from reference in the grandmother's letters).
"She says I have acted wickedly and have forfeited all happiness in
this world by marrying a beggarly Italian teacher. How my eyes flashed
when I read '_beggarly Italian teacher_!' The cold-hearted thing would
have cried with fear had she seen me. Luigi is out all day and he comes
in tired, and to-night I thought he received my kiss coldly. But it
must be my fancy. Oh, what a fancy I have! I think I shall go mad some
of these days."

The chronicle continued much in this strain through many entries. It
recorded from time to time a letter from her grandmother inclosing
five pounds, but repeating her assurance that she would have nothing
more to do with her. Then the tone of the diarist grew more querulous;
though her love for her husband deepened, so it seemed, in proportion
as his fell off.

"How can I help being jealous?" she wrote in one entry; "he is all
day long away from me teaching other girls, any one of whom he may
admire far above me and secretly love. When I told him this he seemed
to shrink away from my look; and indeed it was passionate enough; and
he cried out, half in Italian and half in English, 'God of mine! you
will go mad if you do not keep that devil of a spirit of yours down!' I
threw myself on his neck, and asked him never, never to cease to love
me. His beautiful eye melted, and he fondled me with his exquisite
grace. So I go to bed happy."

If her husband earned money she seemed to benefit little from it; for
some of her records ran, that she had to sit in the dark till he
came home, for there was no candle in the house, she had no money to
buy one, and the stingy landlady did not offer to lend her a lamp.
"To-day I dined on bread-and-cheese and some of the potatoes left
from yesterday, fried. If grandmamma knew this she would send me some
money. But I'll not write to her about it. No, she shall think I am
flourishing; and if I were dying with hunger I would just wish her to
think I had plenty to eat."

Up to a certain entry she continued writing of her husband in warm
terms. She avowed her belief that she must be somewhat crazy to find
him so fascinating. "Sometimes I think him more so than at other
times," she wrote; but added, "if I am to regain my reason at the
sacrifice of my love I would rather be mad." There was a good deal of
pungent writing in these entries. I could find nothing to illustrate
the slightest mental derangement. But her language was curiously
characteristic, and the exhibition of a nature made up of warm and
sudden passions, impulsive and generous, but vengeful and arbitrary
too, was absolutely complete.

Before long her entries grew somewhat incoherent. She is racked with
jealousy. She is certain that her husband has ceased to love her. "I
have been married now six months," she says; "how dare I humour such
misgivings? But what is it that tells me of Luigi's indifference? Not
my bodily eyes, for his behaviour is not altered. The spirit sees
farther than the reason. If I loved him with my _mind_ I should not
have these presentiments; but I love him with my _soul_. It is my soul
that is jealous; and the soul is endowed with the vision of immortality
and can make the future present.

"To-day is my birthday. I am twenty-two years old. It has rained
steadily since the morning. I watched the muddy water in the gutter
boiling round the grating near the lamp-post until I fell asleep. A
cheerful birthday! There was a little piece of boiled beef for dinner,
hard as my shoe, and the potatoes were not cooked. Yet when Luigi
comes home, he never asks me if I am hungry. Does he care? He would if
he knew. But how should he know? I I am always pale, so that he sees
nothing unusual in my white face. I sometimes think he is afraid of me.
He said last night, 'Your eyes flash like a madwoman's.' I answered,
'It is with love!'"

There were no records of any hours of pleasure. Sometimes she
chronicled a short walk. The place of her abode was not named; but I
judged from some references to the locality that they must have lodged
in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. The landlady was a German,
and the diarist complained of the atmosphere of the house having been
made all day long nauseating and tepid with the smell of cooking.

"I asked Luigi before he left for Hammersmith to take me away from this
dirty house. But he shrugged his shoulders and said he was too poor to
move. I told him that the bad smell of the cooking made me sick, and
that the landlady entertained foreigners, who came tramping in at all
hours of the day, jabbering and singing like savages, and poisoning
the place with the rank fumes of tobacco. 'You should write to your
grandmother to send you some money,' said he, 'and then we will seek
better apartments.' I told him I would not write to grandmamma again
after her last letter, no, not if I were dying. 'Then I am too poor to
help you,' he said, stroking his moustache and humming a tune, with
an air of such cruel indifference that my eyes filled with tears,
though my breast heaved with a passion I could not keep down. 'We
have been married a little more than six months,' I said, 'and you
are already tired of me.' 'And you of me,' said he. 'It is false!' I
cried, in a rage; 'but I suppose you want an excuse for your increasing
indifference, and would tell a lie rather than not have one.' 'You did
not bring me any money,' he replied, 'and yet you are always grumbling
at our poverty. Don't I work like a slave for what I get? 'Tis a pity
you are not more educated, for you might go out as a governess, and
together we could earn a competence.' 'I did not marry to become a
governess,' I said, 'and if you love me as you once professed, you
could not name such a scheme.' He made a gesture of impatience, and
uttered something in Italian. 'What do you say?' I exclaimed. He gave
a shrug and left the room. And this is what my dream of love has come
to! O how could I moralise if I were not the text! Patience? Yes, I
could be patient if I had something solid to hold. But can I be patient
holding sand, and watching the grains slipping through my fingers?
Oh! my weariness of heart! and my head aches so I can hardly see this
paper."

Here there was a leaf torn out. The next entry was dated exactly a
year after. The records now became rhapsodical. Strange dreams were
chronicled, and conversations which she had held in her sleep.

The first entry spoke of her delight with Elmore cottage. What followed
was full of brief references to the past, especially to the events of
the year she had omitted to record. Yet brief as they were I could
gather the story.

Her husband had deserted her, possibly on the very date of the last
entry I have transcribed. By her allusions to her feelings, the shock
of his leaving her must have driven her almost mad. "I would thrust
him deep, deep into the _hell_ he has lighted in my heart against him;
but he comes before me in the night when I am numbed by sleep and am
powerless to thrust him off. O what a hate his face drives into me!"

"To-day I came across mamma's emerald ring. It reminded me of that
day of hunger when I had to pledge it. I paid the odious German her
rent, and went across to the little cook-shop at the corner and bought
some cold meat. Do I not remember how delicious it tasted! How did I
live through those days? I do not know. I sometimes look at my body
and wonder how it could have held together under the pressure of so
much utter, utter misery. It is bitter to have trusted nobly and to
be betrayed remorselessly. It is bitter to feel hunger and poverty
and the cruelties of the cold and selfish world. But when these
bitternesses are combined, must not the heart be made of steel not to
crack and burst?"

How long she remained in this state of destitution I could not gather.
But in one entry she recorded her amazement on receiving a letter
from her grandmother's solicitor, saying that the old lady had died
suddenly, intestate, and that, as the next of kin, she inherited the
property. In the same memorandum she referred to the number of names
she went over before she hit on one to assume. It was her evident fear
that her husband would claim her, should he hear of her whereabouts,
now that she had come into property. Under the pseudonym of Mrs.
Fraser, and hidden in the obscurity of Cliffegate, she believed herself
perfectly secure against detection. This at least is my inference, from
one or two passages in the diary; it is probably correct. Some entries
before that which I am about to transcribe, the following notice, cut
from a newspaper, was gummed:

"March 12, at Courtland Street, London, Luigi Forli, aged 35, of
gastric fever."

And beneath it she had written:

"Sent me by Mr. Fells in the letter that enclosed my quarter's money."

Up to a certain point, from this sentence her diary was singularly
rhapsodical. Then a more connected narrative began:

"Why did he send me that bouquet? 'Mr. Thorburn's compliments!' He
does not know what sort of a woman he sends his compliments to. How I
hate compliments! That vile Italian could compliment. Oh! _per Bacco!_
his speech was flowery and sugary as a wedding-cake. What came of it?
My eyes, my hair, my mouth, my skin, soon surfeited him--though he
ransacked heaven and earth for comparisons. If I chose a male friend
he should be blunt and sharp--with a hard tongue that could utter words
as ringing in their tones as sovereigns. Such a one would not send me
flowers.

"Mr. Thorburn called to-day. He must have courage, for he knows my
aversion to society. If I walk in my sleep let him thank me; he dared
not have come without this excuse. I felt my blood tingling in my
forehead and fingers when I looked in and saw that the _gentleman_, as
he had announced himself, was a stranger. But the time _rots_ so with
me--oh! that excellent word just hits the decay of the hours! they
drip, drip away, like sodden wood--I could not be displeased at his
intrusion. There is life in a new face, and I am beginning to think
Lucy too ugly to keep; now that is because she is the only person I
see, and her face comes looking in on me through my ugly thoughts
and takes their deformity. But he is nice-looking. He is thoroughly
English. Oh what a charm there is in a true English face! It is so
manly, so genial, so sterling and courageous!--the very opposite to
those yellow Italian visages with their red-black eyes and lollipop
smirks. I am not sure that I couldn't like this man. He invites
confidence, somehow. And there is a big and ponderous ghost called
Solitude, that drives me towards him. His eye meets mine fearlessly.
He thinks me beautiful. If he were to see me in a passion, with my
hair loose and my eyes on fire, would he shrink like my valiant little
southerner?

"I rated Mr. Thorburn to-day for watching me. I must like him, to have
spoken so smartly. If I could not help meeting a man whom I disliked,
I would serve him as my husband served me, and would betray him with
such sweetness as would make him think me a witch. I have the power.
I think I must be mad at times. Such high thoughts take me that my
body will not hold my spirit, and some day I shall see it glide from
me and vanish, with just such a laugh as I give when I know I shall
not be heard, and when my mood is intoxicating. Let me own here, all
to myself, that Mr. Thorburn pleases me. He reminds me of the picture
of papa in grandmamma's locket. He must be greatly taken with me to
presume as he does. He is too much of a gentleman to force himself upon
me as he does if his courtesy did not fall before my beauty. If he
should fall in love with me--let him. Am I a celestial intelligence,
that I can control a man's heart, and bid it not love, if I choose it
should not love? His dream gives him a claim. If I was asleep at the
time then must that vision have been my soul which slipped from my
body and shone upon him from a cloud. It was possible, and I would have
told him this, but his smile can be ironical; and his nature is not yet
right for the reception of my beliefs. Why did he kiss the rose I flung
away? I can tell; but I will not write it down.

"He was more tender than he was yesterday. His love deepens, and gilds
his smile and fires his eye. When I touched his arm it trembled. He
makes me no more compliments. He relishes my bluntness, but would he
relish it if he knew the sorrow whence it sprang? Sorrow is a rich
soil; flowers grow in it sometimes; but more often grow roots that
prick, weeds that sting, blossoms whose perfume is poison. Shall I
encourage him? If I do, I will not have the heart to say him nay, for
he has brought a new light to my heart and a new hope to my life, and
my gratitude should make me generous.

"My husband came to me last night. He stood at the foot of the bed. His
face was as pale as the dim moon that shone over his shoulder through
the window. I thought he had come from the grave, his eyes were so
hollow and his hands and cheeks so dry. I clapped my hands and cried,
'Now I thank thee, Oh God! for he is dead, and his shadow has passed
from the world.' I awoke. I could not believe it a dream, and crept
to the door to see if he stood outside, and went to the window to see
if his shadow was on the flowers. All was bare and bleak and white in
the eye of that cruel moon, who looks into my brain and chills it with
her frosty glare. Then to bed again I went, and fell a dreaming of Mr.
Thorburn. How palpable are my dreams!"

The following entry was dated some days later:

"He is making me love him. He has an influence over me, and I find
myself listening to his words and cherishing them. He makes me calm.
Shall I forego the blessed peace he transfuses through my being? I
could love him: but memory will not let me go to him, and like a
wrinkled hag casts her long lean arms about me and holds me from him.
My heart is empty--there is room for love. My spirit hungers; shall I
not satisfy her cravings? I weary of this solitude. The air about me is
peopled with spiritual beings; I toss my arms, but they will not leave
me. They make my loneliness horrible. One in the night told me I should
be their queen if I would go with them. But where would they take me?
I prayed to the Blessed Virgin for help; but they would not go. Why
should they haunt me? I do not invoke them. But if I fix my eyes on any
part of the room a shape comes out, and I have to dash my hand to my
head and leap like a child to frighten it off."

From this point there was a blank. When she resumed her diary she was
at Elmore Court:

"How happy I am! The days go by me like a song. I am loved tenderly and
truly; and _my_ love grows deeper and deeper, like an onward-running
river. But the pain in my head increases, and now and then some of my
old horrors return. I stood watching Arthur for an hour last night. He
did not stir. His face was calm and happy, and my eyes took their fill
of its peace. He does not know I keep this record, and he shall not
know. O God! if he knew the past, would not his love fall from him like
a garment? But my memory grows weak; and it is well I preserve these
jottings, for I could not taste all the sweetness of the present if I
had not the past at hand to contrast it with.

"This afternoon I saw a hand that held a knife in the air. I trembled
and cowered. It slowly faded and I went on raking. When I met Mrs.
Williams I told her what I had seen. The way she looked at me pained
me. I saw she did not believe me, though she pretended she did. I do
not wish her to think me a liar. I made her promise not to tell Arthur.
I would not have him think me untruthful for all the treasures the sea
holds."

The character of many entries which followed was akin to this. Some of
them contained passages which would appear absurd and incredible in
print. Then came this record:

"The room swims and I feel sick--so sick that I wish to die. Arthur
went to London this morning, and I cried more bitterly than he will
ever know. He cannot guess what agony our separation causes me. It
must be a cruel necessity that takes him away. After he was gone, the
sunshine drew me into the garden, and I went beyond into the fields,
for my flowers give me no pleasure when he is absent. Before long a
man came towards me, and I saw it was Luigi Forli. I thought he was a
vision, and I tried to waive him away; but he drew near, and laid his
hand on my arm, and turned me into stone. The blood surged up from my
heart and made my ears echo with thunder. He talked, but I did not hear
him. Then he warmed, and cried out that though I was his wife, he would
not take me from Arthur. I said, 'You are dead.' He answered, 'No. I
announced my death to get a living.' And he said I must give him money;
he would keep my secret and go away. He named a large sum. He told
me he knew I could not give it to him all at once. I might pay it in
portions. He would remain at Cliffegate until it was paid. What was it
to him how I should get this money? I had married a rich man, and must
get the money under any pretext I could invent. If I failed he would
call on Arthur. I turned and looked at him, and he sprang a yard away
from me."

A line of writing that followed this was illegible; it broke off
suddenly. The pen seemed to have fallen from her hand, for there was a
smudge across the sheet. A single entry followed:

"He told me I was mad. I said, 'God be praised, for it gives me
courage.' I bade him have no fear. He watched me with glittering eyes;
his face was hard with avarice and pale with misgiving. I put my hand
in my pocket and said, 'When you receive this you should give me
peace.' He shrugged his shoulders, and said: 'I am poor; and since you
are my wife and have money it is fair you should help me to live.' I
pointed to the moon, and whilst he raised his eyes I stabbed him in the
back. He gave a leap in the air, and I jumped away, for I thought he
meant to spring on me. But he suddenly fell on his breast with a cry.
The dew fell like blood. I turned him over and saw he was dead. I took
him by the arm and pulled him under the hedge."

This ended the diary.




CHAPTER XII.


I went to the bed-side to watch her. Her arms lay upon the coverlet;
her lips were apart, and she breathed heavily. Her cheeks were flushed,
and lightly pressing my hand to her forehead I found that it burned. I
marked now that she slumbered no longer peacefully. At intervals her
form twitched, her fingers worked convulsively, and once her breathing
was so oppressive that she started, still slumbering, from her pillow,
fighting for breath.

I could see that she was very ill--very feverish; and if these
twitchings continued must soon awake. As I expected, she suddenly
opened her eyes and sat upright. She looked wildly around the room, and
then stared at me, but without recognition.

"Give me some water," she said.

I filled a tumbler and she drank it eagerly, sank back, and dropped
into a restless sleep again. But in a few minutes she once more started
up and asked for water, adding:

"Give me air. The bed-clothes suffocate me. I am burning."

The fever, indeed, was on her now, and I knew that she must have taken
it from her exposure in the grounds. I hastily left the room, ran
upstairs, and knocked at Mrs. Williams' door. She answered at once. I
told her that my wife was taken dangerously ill, and desired her to
come to her at once. I then hastened back and found that Geraldine had
risen from her bed, had thrown the window wide open, and stood leaning
half out of it.

I took her by the arm, and whilst I entreated her to return to bed
endeavoured gently to lead her away. She resisted me. Fearful of the
consequence of her exposure to the air, I exerted more strength. She
struggled violently, and would not stir. At times she turned her head
and stared at me with angry eyes, radiant with delirium, but totally
void of recognition. Mrs. Williams had now joined me. She at once
perceived the danger my wife stood in; also that she was delirious.

"She must be got to bed, Sir, and kept there," she whispered. "I will
help you to carry her."

I indeed needed her help. Frail and delicate as poor Geraldine was, the
fever made her powerful as a strong man. She cried and moaned piteously
amid her struggles, and when we had laid her down it took our united
strength to keep her from breaking from us and rushing again to the
window.

She grew exhausted at last and lay still, muttering wildly and
clutching at the bed-clothes.

"We must send for a doctor, Mrs. Williams," I said. "Is there one in
Cliffegate?"

"There is only Mr. Jenkinson the apothecary, Sir," she replied. "But I
could rouse up Hewett" (the lad who attended to the phaeton), "and it
wouldn't take him long to fetch Dr. Sandwin from Cornpool."

"Do so; and tell him to drive over as fast as he can."

Geraldine lay back with her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.
Her lips muttered continuously, but the exhaustion consequent upon her
violent struggles seemed to have left her too weak to articulate.

I left her side and paced the room in a mood I must not attempt to
define. What was I to think of her diary? That it was an insane
chronicle from beginning to end? or that it was true? If insane, how
much was she to be pitied! For all that she had recorded as having
witnessed, endured and done, must have been more definite and torturing
than ever the reality could have proved. If true ... I dared not think
it true. Yet though we may barricade reason with illusion, truth will
somehow force an entry. A terror that what she had written was the
truth, that her final record embodied no imaginary tragedy, weighed
upon me like lead. I tried to shake it from my mind.

Mrs. Williams returned. Her presence was grateful. It forced me, so to
speak, to break from my hateful thoughts and to abandon for the time
being speculation for reality.

The two hours that followed passed slowly. Mrs. Williams and I spoke
across the bed in whispers. Sometimes Geraldine would start up and
call for water; sometimes would make violent efforts to leave the
bed--efforts which it took all my strength to resist. As the time went
on she grew worse. She talked incessantly, a mad wild talk, fragmentary
as the mutterings of a dream--at intervals raising her voice to a
shriek then lowering it to a breathless whisper. What visions passed
before those vacant eyes of hers God only knows! But terrible they must
have been; terrible the scenes they enacted; for she plunged wildly,
as seeking to disperse them, then wailed entreaties to them to vanish,
whilst her body shook with strong tremors and the hand which I held
grew wet as though dipped in water.

The morning paled upon the window-blinds and made the candle-flame
sickly. The birds twittered and distant cocks sang to one another
their early defiance. Presently I heard the sound of wheels; Mrs.
Williams left the room, and returned some minutes after, ushering in
Dr. Sandwin.

He was a short spare man, suave but resolute. He found her calm, for
she had worn herself out with her ravings and convulsions. He drew to
the bedside, held her wrist, felt her forehead.

"She is in a bad way, Sir," he said. "The fever rages. I will write a
prescription, and perhaps you will allow one of your servants to run
with it to the chemist at Cliffegate."

Pen and ink were produced and the servant despatched. He looked at
Geraldine curiously for some time and then came round to me.

"There is an expression on the lady's face, Sir, which must be
habitual"----

"Her reason is impaired," I replied.

He bowed his head.

"The fever that is on her, Sir, arises, I should say, from a severe
chill. I judge that her constitution cannot be strong, and she should
have been restrained from exposing herself to the cold."

"She has a habit of walking in her sleep. Last night she left her bed,
and traversed the whole length of the grounds on her bare feet and
habited only in her nightgown. I feared this result, yet I did not dare
awaken her, having been cautioned against doing so. I could only hope
that the same Providence that guided her steps would preserve her from
any ill effects."

He drew to the bed and examined her face carefully. She lay so still
that she looked like a corpse. Her eyes were half closed, and the
whites showing through the lids gave her the ghastly aspect of death.

"You look care-worn and anxious, Sir," he said, turning to me; "your
vigil has been a long and trying one. Can I induce you to lie down for
a little time? Even an hour's sleep would benefit you, and enable you
better to meet the demands which your wife's illness may yet make on
you."

"What is your opinion of her case?" I asked anxiously.

"I can form no opinion as yet. I shall be better able to do so when she
awakens from this stupor. Meanwhile Mrs. Williams" (he evidently knew
her) "and I can keep watch."

"I really would try to get a little rest, Sir," said Mrs. Williams.
"You look to need it very badly. It is well to keep up your strength,
Sir; and I will promise to call you if it should be necessary."

There was wisdom in their advice; I did indeed require sleep. It was
not so much my body as my mind that was exhausted. I said I would lie
down in the adjoining room, and begged them to arouse me should the
slightest alteration appear in her symptoms.

I was chilly. The mornings were cold now, and want of sleep had robbed
me of my natural warmth. I rolled myself in a rug, laid myself on the
bed, and in a few minutes fell fast asleep.

I was awakened from a deep slumber by some one pulling my arm. The
sunshine poured through the blindless windows and filled the room with
light. My eyes, heavy with sleep, were dazzled by the glare; afterwards
I saw Mrs. Williams. I jumped up at once.

The look of white horror on her face gave me such a shock that I could
hardly speak. I heard a whispering going on outside the door. My belief
was that Geraldine was dead, and I pressed my hand to my heart while I
asked Mrs. Williams to tell me what had happened.

"Oh, Sir," she began, "it is too awful! I--I"----she stopped.

"In the name of God tell me--what is it?" I cried, leaping from the bed.

"The----the----I cannot speak it, Sir; the gardener is below----will
you go to him?"

"The gardener! Tell me of my wife; is she dead?"

"No, Sir. But she is raving wildly. She has told the whole story--how
she killed him"----she shook with horror.

Something told me what I had to expect. I calmed myself by a
supernatural effort.

"Where is the gardener?"

"He is in the hall, Sir."

I left the room. I passed the two servants who stood whispering with
pale faces near the door, and ran downstairs. Both gardeners stood in
the hall; and both were white as ghosts.

"Now," said I, "what have you to tell me?"

"Oh zur!" said the man called Farley, "I went into t'orchard this
morning to git soom apples for cook, and--and I zeed zigns anigh th'
hedge of soom 'un having been there i' th' night. The leaves they was
all tossed, and--and the ground fresh dug. Zo I went for my spade,
thinkin' summut amiss, an' begun to dig to zee what they moight ha' bin
oop to. And zur, in diggin' I strook summat zoft, and clearin' away th'
mould, coomed across a hand--a man's hand, zur!"

"A man's hand?"

"Oh, zur! I wur too frighted to dig vurther, but throws down my spade,
and coom runnin' to th' house to tell yer, zur, of what I'd zeen."

"Come with me, both of you," I said.

"Oh, zur!" they began.

"If it be a dead man, of what should you be afraid?" I cried fiercely.
"Come."

I led the way out, and they followed me. I did not want them to conduct
me to the spot; I knew where it was--I knew where she had led me last
night. I entered the orchard, the two men behind me. In a few minutes I
had reached the place.

The soil was broken. Around it the dry leaves and grass lay in heaps,
as though scattered by a high wind. Amid the newly-dug mould I saw the
fingers of a human hand.

"Take that spade and dig," I said.

One of the men took it up reluctantly and began to clear away the
mould. Bit by bit, as he dug the moist earth out of the grave, first
the arm, and then the body of a man completely dressed, appeared. The
gardener stooped, took the arm by the sleeve, and raised the body.

In spite of the soil that obscured the face, I knew it. _The dead man
was Martelli!_

I gazed upon this awful spectacle with fascinated eyes; then my senses
forsook me and I fell to the earth.


For three weeks I lay as one that is dead. The raging fever that
consumed me brought me to the brink of the grave; I was snatched from
the jaws of death by a miracle.

When I awoke from my delirium I was at Elmore Court. The first object
my eyes opened on was Mrs. Williams. With consciousness returned
memory. I inquired for my wife. The entrance of the doctor saved
her from replying. He forbade me to speak, on pain of a relapse.
Nature, utterly weakened by illness, succumbed to sleep. My slumber
was protracted through twenty-four hours; and when I awoke I was
convalescent.

It was then I learnt that my wife was dead. Her death had occurred
three days after I was taken ill.

Towards the end the delirium had left her. Reason had regained its
power, as though the soul, animated by the approach of death and the
promise of liberty, had shaken off the foul hand of madness. She had
asked for me; they told her I was ill. She would not believe them; she
declared that I had left her. They assured her that I was in the next
room; but she remained incredulous. A nurse had been summoned to watch
her, while Mrs. Williams tended me. On the night of her death, the
nurse having fallen asleep, she crept from her bed, stole to my room,
and was found by Mrs. Williams on her knees by my side, with her arm
round my neck, her cheek against mine, dead.

It was remarked, that after consciousness and reason had returned, she
did not speak of the crime she had committed, nor did her conversation
indicate the memory of it. Whence it was concluded that she died not
knowing what, in her madness, she had done.

When my health was restored, my evidence was taken with respect to
Martelli's death. The inquiry was purely formal. During my illness the
police had vigilantly investigated the affair, and from Geraldine's
diary and letters, coupled with the testimony of Mrs. Williams and the
inquiries they had prosecuted into Martelli's career, had established
the necessary evidence. From those inquiries I gathered the following
particulars.

Martelli's real name was Forli. He had been a teacher of Italian at
Gore House Academy, where he had met Geraldine, whom he eventually
induced to elope with him. Her account in her diary of the life she had
led with him was in every respect accurate. But you will remember she
had omitted the events of a year, and that year was now accounted for.
Forli had left her, to live with some abandoned woman, who, after a few
months' intimacy, avenged Geraldine by plundering him of his savings
and leaving him. It was supposed that he had heard of his wife having
inherited her grandmother's property; but his hatred of her, which he
never scrupled to confess, coupled with his conviction that had he
followed her she would not have hesitated to commence proceedings for
divorce, which would have professionally ruined him, effectually served
to keep him from her.

I could comprehend his hate, knowing his character, and guessing
Geraldine's power of exciting hate in those she hated. When she
had found his love decay, when her nature had turned sour under the
corrupting sense of his violated vows and her betrayed confidence, I
could guess the kind of light his presence would fire her eyes with,
the kind of language with which she would lash him into madness.

When he applied again for work he found that his conduct had excited a
prejudice, and that the schools in which he had always found a welcome
reception closed their doors against him. He resolved to change his
name, not knowing how far this prejudice might extend; and the better
to commence his life afresh announced his death in the newspapers.
He found employment; but his means were narrow, his occupation very
limited, when my advertisement met his eye. When he was once with me,
it may be supposed he was not very eager to go. He had recognised his
wife on meeting her in the fields, but had kept his secret well. When
he found that I was resolved to marry her he must have resolved upon
that scheme, of threatening her with exposure unless she purchased his
silence, which cost him his life.

I suspect he had hardly resolution enough to prosecute his plan at
first. He had hung about Cliffegate, so it was ascertained, after he
had left Elmore Court, living upon the money I had paid him.

Some years have elapsed since those days. I still occupy the house
in London which I took after getting rid of Elmore Court, and Mrs.
Williams continues to be my housekeeper. My old dream of senatorial or
literary honour has never recurred. Like Imlac, I am now contented to
be driven along the stream of life without directing my course to any
particular port.

The dead belong to the past, and I will not ravish from the grave in
which she lies that great sorrow of mine which lies buried with her. No
record of my grief shall plead for her; no memorial of my despair shall
be set down to moderate your judgment of her. She is dead. Her beauty,
her love, her madness, are nothing now but a memory and a pang.


THE END.


LONDON:
Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Deceased Wife's Sister, and My
Beautiful Neighbour, v. 3, by William Clark Russell

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 62084 ***