Chapter I: Part I: I (1)

All her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number of impecunious cousins, using her bank balance like the scorpions of Rehoboam to chastise them; and, like many another pious creature, for their souls’ good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured in the Evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her connections should seek salvation according to her own lights, and with harsh tongue and with bitter gibe made it her constant business to persuade them of their extreme unworthiness. She arranged lives as she thought fit, and ventured not only to order the costume and habits, but even the inner thought of those about her; the Last Judgment could have no terrors for any that had faced her searching examination. She invited to stay with her in succession various poor ladies who presumed on a distant tie to call her Aunt Eliza, and they accepted her summons, more imperious than a royal command, with gratitude by no means unmixed with fear, bearing the servitude meekly as a cross which in the future would meet due testamentary reward.

Miss Dwarris loved to feel her power. During these long visits—for in a way the old lady was very hospitable—she made it her especial object to break the spirit of her guests, and it entertained her hugely to see the mildness with which were borne her extravagant demands, the humility with which every inclination was crushed. She took a malicious pleasure in publicly affronting persons, ostensibly to bend a sinful pride, or in obliging them to do things which they peculiarly disliked. With a singular quickness for discovering the points on which they were most sensitive, she attacked every weakness with blunt invective till the sufferer writhed before her raw and bleeding; no defect, physical or mental, was protected from her raillery, and she could pardon as little an excess of avoirdupois as a want of memory. Yet with all her heart she despised her victims, she flung in their face insolently their mercenary spirit, vowing that she would never leave a penny to such a pack of weak fools; it delighted her to ask for advice in the distribution of her property among charitable societies, and she heard with unconcealed hilarity their unwilling and confused suggestions.

With one of her relations only Miss Dwarris found it needful to observe a certain restraint—for Miss Ley, perhaps the most distant of her cousins, was as plain-spoken as herself, and had besides, a far keener wit, whereby she could turn rash statements to the utter ridicule of the speaker. Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent spirit; she looked upon her, in fact, with a certain degree of affection and not a little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee, appeared really to enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her greater urbanity, readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged victorious; it confounded, but at the same time almost amused, the elder lady that a woman so much poorer than herself, with no smaller claim than others to the coveted inheritance, should venture not only to be facetious at her expense, but even to carry war into her very camp. Miss Ley, really not grieved to find someone to whom without prickings of conscience she could speak her whole mind, took a grim pleasure in pointing out to her cousin the poor logic of her observations or the foolish unreason of her acts. No cherished opinion of Miss Dwarris was safe from satire; even her Evangelicism was laughed at, and the rich old woman, unused to argument, was easily driven to self-contradiction; and then—for the victor took no pains to conceal her triumph—she grew pale and speechless with rage. The quarrels were frequent, but Miss Dwarris, though it was a sharp thorn in her flesh that the first advances must be made by her, in the end always forgave. Yet at last it was inevitable that a final breach should occur. The cause thereof, characteristically enough, was very trivial.

Miss Ley, accustomed, when she went abroad for the winter to let her little flat in Chelsea, had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to return to England while her tenants were still in possession, and had asked Miss Dwarris whether she might stay with her in Old Queen Street. The old tyrant, much as she hated her relatives, hated still more to live alone; she needed someone on whom to vent her temper, and through the illness of a niece, due to spend March and April with her, had been forced to pass a month of solitude. She wrote back, in the peremptory fashion which even with Miss Ley she could not refrain from using, that she expected her on such and such a day by such and such a train. It is not clear whether there was in the letter anything to excite in Miss Ley a contradictory spirit, or whether her engagements really prevented it, but at all events she answered that her plans made it more convenient to arrive on the day following and by a different train. Miss Dwarris telegraphed that unless her guest came on the day and at the hour mentioned in her letter she could not send the carriage to meet her, to which the younger lady replied concisely: “Don’t!”

“She’s as obstinate as a pig,” muttered Miss Dwarris, reading the telegram, and she saw in her mind’s eye the thin smile on her cousin’s mouth when she wrote that one indifferent word. “I suppose she thinks she’s very clever.”

Her hostess greeted Miss Ley, notwithstanding, with a certain grim affability reserved only for her; she was at all events the least detestable of her relations, and, though neither docile nor polite, at least was never tedious. Her conversation braced Miss Dwarris, so that with her she was usually at her best, and sometimes, forgetting her overbearing habit, showed herself a sensible and entertaining woman of not altogether unamiable disposition.

“You’re growing old, my dear,” said Miss Dwarris when they sat down to dinner, looking at her guest with eyes keen to detect wrinkles and crow’s-feet.

“You flatter me,” Miss Ley retorted; “antiquity is the only excuse for a woman who has determined on a single life.”

“I suppose, like the rest of them, you would have married if anyone had asked you.”

Miss Ley smiled.

“Two months ago an Italian Prince offered me his hand and heart, Eliza.”

“A Papist would do anything,” replied Miss Dwarris. “I suppose you told him your income and he found he’d misjudged the strength of his affections.”

“I refused him because he was so virtuous.”

“I shouldn’t have thought at your age you could afford to pick and choose, Polly.”

“Allow me to observe that you have an amiable faculty for thinking of one subject at one time in two diametrically opposed ways.”

Miss Ley was a slender woman of middle size; her hair, very plainly arranged, beginning to turn gray, and her face, already much wrinkled, by its clear precision of feature indicating a comfortable strength of character; her lips, thin but expressive, mobile, added to this appearance of determination. She was by no means handsome, and had certainly never been pretty, but her carriage was not without grace nor her manner without fascination. Her eyes were very bright, and so shrewd as sometimes to be almost disconcerting: without words they could make pretentiousness absurd; and most affectations, under that searching glance, part contemptuous, part amused, willingly hid themselves. Yet, as Miss Dwarris took care to remind her, she was not without her own especial pose, but it was carried out so admirably, with such a restrained, comely decorum, that few observed it, and such as did found not the heart to condemn: it was the perfect art that concealed itself. To execute this æsthetic gesture, it pleased Miss Ley to dress with the greatest possible simplicity, usually in black, and her only ornament was a Renaissance jewel of such exquisite beauty that no museum would have disdained to possess it: this she wore around her neck attached to a long gold chain, and she fingered it with pleasure, to show, according to her plain-spoken relative, the undoubted beauty of her hands. Her well-fitting shoes and the elaborate open-work of her silk stockings suggested also a not unreasonable pride in a shapely foot, small and high of instep. Thus attired, when she had visitors, Miss Ley sat in an Italian straight-backed chair of oak, and delicately carved, which was placed between two windows against the wall; and she cultivated already a certain primness of manner which made very effective the audacious criticism of life wherewith she was used to entertain her friends.

Two mornings after her arrival in Old Queen Street, Miss Ley announced her intention to go out. She came downstairs with a very fashionable parasol, a purchase on her way through Paris.

“You’re not going out with that thing?” cried Miss Dwarris, scornfully.

“I am indeed.”

“Nonsense; you must take an umbrella. It’s going to rain.”

“I have a new sunshade and an old umbrella, Eliza. I feel certain it will be fine.”

“My dear, you know nothing about the English climate. I tell you it will pour cats and dogs.”

“Fiddlesticks, Eliza!”

“Polly,” answered Miss Dwarris, her temper rising, “I wish you to take an umbrella. The barometer is going down, and I have a tingling in my feet, which is a sure sign of wet. It’s very irreligious of you to presume to say what the weather is going to be.”

“I venture to think that meteorologically I am no less acquainted with the ways of Providence than you.”

“That, I think, is not funny, but blasphemous, Polly. In my house I expect people to do as I tell them, and I insist on your taking an umbrella.”

“Don’t be absurd, Eliza!”

Miss Dwarris rang the bell, and when the butler appeared ordered him to fetch her own umbrella for Miss Ley.

“I absolutely refuse to use it,” said the younger lady, smiling.

“Pray remember that you are my guest, Polly.”

“And therefore entitled to do exactly as I like.”

Miss Dwarris rose to her feet, a massive old woman of commanding presence, and stretched out a threatening hand.

“If you leave this house without an umbrella, you shall not come into it again. You shall never cross this threshold so long as I am alive.”

Miss Ley cannot have been in the best of humours that morning, for she pursed her lips in the manner already characteristic of her, and looked at her elderly cousin with a cold scorn most difficult to bear.

“My dear Eliza, you have a singularly exaggerated idea of your importance. Are there no hotels in London? You appear to think I stay with you for pleasure rather than to mortify my flesh. And really the cross is growing too heavy for me, for I think you must have quite the worst cook in the Metropolis.”

“She’s been with me for five-and-twenty years,” answered Miss Dwarris, two red spots appearing on her cheeks, “and no one has ventured to complain of the cooking before. If any of my guests had done so, I should have answered that what was good enough for me was a great deal too good for anyone else. I know that you’re obstinate, Polly, and quick-tempered, and this impertinence I am willing to overlook. Do you still refuse to do as I wish?”

“Yes.”

Miss Dwarris rang the bell violently.

“Tell Martha to pack Miss Ley’s boxes at once, and call a four-wheeler,” she cried, in tones of thunder.

“Very well, Madam,” answered the butler, used to his mistress’ vagaries.

Then Miss Dwarris turned to her guest, who observed her with irritating good-humour.

“I hope you realize, Polly, that I fully mean what I say.”

“All is over between us,” answered Miss Ley mockingly, “and shall I return your letters and your photographs?”

Miss Dwarris sat for a while in silent anger, watching her cousin, who took up the _Morning Post_ and with great calmness read the fashionable intelligence. Presently the butler announced that the four-wheeler was at the door.

“Well, Polly, so you’re really going?”

“I can hardly stay when you’ve had my boxes packed and sent for a cab,” replied Miss Ley mildly.

“It’s your own doing; I don’t wish you to go. If you’ll confess that you were headstrong and obstinate, and if you’ll take an umbrella, I am willing to let bygones be bygones.”

“Look at the sun,” answered Miss Ley.

And, as if actually to annoy the tyrannous old woman, the shining rays danced into the room and made importunate patterns on the carpet.

“I think I should tell you, Polly, that it was my intention to leave you ten thousand pounds in my will. This intention I shall, of course, not now carry out.”

“You’d far better leave your money to the Dwarris people. Upon my word, considering that they’ve been related to you for over sixty years, I think they thoroughly deserve it.”

“I shall leave my money to whom I choose,” cried Miss Dwarris, beside herself; “and if I want to, I shall leave every penny of it in charity. You’re very independent because you have a beggarly five hundred a year, but apparently it isn’t enough for you to live without letting your flat when you go away. Remember that no one has any claims upon me, and I can make you a rich woman.”

Miss Ley replied with great deliberation.

“My dear, I have a firm conviction that you will live for another thirty years to plague the human race in general, and your relations in particular. It is not worth my while, on the chance of surviving you, to submit to the caprices of a very ignorant old woman, presumptuous and overbearing, dull and pretentious.”

Miss Dwarris gasped and shook with rage, but the other proceeded without mercy.

“You have plenty of poor relations—bully them. Vent your spite and ill-temper on those wretched sycophants, but, pray, in future spare _me_ the infinite tediousness of your conversation.”

Miss Ley had ever a discreet passion for the rhetorical, and there was a certain grandiloquence about the phrase which entertained her hugely. She felt that it was unanswerable, and with great dignity walked out. No communication passed between the two ladies, though Miss Dwarris, peremptory, stern, and Evangelical to the end, lived in full possession of her faculties for nearly twenty years. She died at last in a passion occasioned by some trifling misdemeanour of her maid; and, as though a heavy yoke were removed from their shoulders, her family heaved a deep and unanimous sigh of relief.

They attended her funeral with dry eyes, looking still with silent terror at the leaden coffin which contained the remains of that harsh, strong, domineering old woman; then, nervously expectant, begged the family solicitor to disclose her will. Written with her own hand, and witnessed by two servants, it was in these terms:

“I, Elizabeth Ann Dwarris, of 79 Old Queen Street, Westminster, spinster, hereby revoke all former wills and testamentary dispositions, made by me, and declare this to be my last will and testament. I appoint Mary Ley, of 72 Eliot Mansions, Chelsea, to be the executrix of this my will, and I give all my real and personal property whatsoever to the said Mary Ley. To my great-nephews and great-nieces, to my cousins near and remote, I give my blessing, and I beseech them to bear in mind the example and advice which for many years I have given them. I recommend them to cultivate in future strength of character and an independent spirit. I venture to remind them that the humble will never inherit this earth, for their reward is to be awaited in the life to come, and I desire them to continue the subscriptions which, at my request, they have so long and generously made to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews and to the Additional Curates Fund. “In witness whereof, I have set my hand to this my will the 4th day of April, 1883.

“Elizabeth Ann Dwarris.”

To her amazement, Miss Ley found herself at the age of fifty-seven in possession of nearly three thousand pounds a year, the lease of a pleasant old house in Westminster, and a great quantity of early Victorian furniture. The will was written two days after her quarrel with the eccentric old woman, and the terms of it certainly achieved the three purposes for which it was designed: it occasioned the utmost surprise to all concerned; it heaped coals of fire on Miss Ley’s indifferent head; and caused the bitterest disappointment and vexation to all that bore the name of Dwarris.

II

It did not take Miss Ley very long to settle in her house. To its new owner, who hated modernity with all her heart, part of the charm lay in its quaint old fashion: built in the reign of Queen Anne, it had the leisurely, spacious comfort of dwelling-places in that period, with a hood over the door that was a pattern of elegance, wrought-iron railings, and, to Miss Ley’s especial delight, extinguishers for the link-boys’ torches.

The rooms were large, somewhat low-pitched, with wide windows overlooking the most consciously beautiful of all the London parks. Miss Ley made no great alterations. An epicurean to her finger-tips, for many years the passion for liberty had alone disturbed the equanimity of her indolent temper. But to secure freedom, entire and absolute freedom, she was ever ready to make any sacrifice: ties affected her with a discomfort that seemed really akin to physical pain, and she avoided them—ties of family or of affection, ties of habit or of thought—with all the strenuousness of which she was capable. She had taken care never in the course of her life to cumber herself with chattels, and once, with a courage in which there was surely something heroic, feeling that she became too much attached to her belongings—cabinets and exquisite fans brought from Spain, Florentine frames of gilded wood and English mezzotints, Neapolitan bronzes, tables and settees discovered in out-of-the-way parts of France—she had sold everything. She would not risk to grow so fond of her home that it was a pain to leave it; she preferred to remain a wayfarer, sauntering through life with a heart keen to detect beauty, and a mind, open and unbiassed, ready to laugh at the absurd. So it fitted her humour to move with the few goods which she possessed into her cousin’s house as though it were but a furnished lodging, remaining there still unfettered; and when Death came—a pagan youth, twin brother to Sleep, rather than the grim and bony skeleton of Christian faith—ready to depart like a sated reveller, smiling dauntlessly and without regret. A new and personal ordering, the exclusion of many pieces of clumsy taste, gave Miss Ley’s drawing-room quickly a more graceful and characteristic air: the _objets d’art_ collected since the memorable sale added a certain grave delicacy to the arrangement; and her friends noticed without surprise that, as in her own flat, the straight, carved chair was set between two windows, and the furniture deliberately placed so that from it the mistress of the house, herself part of the æsthetic scheme, could command and manipulate her guests.

No sooner was Miss Ley comfortably settled than she wrote to an old friend and distant cousin, Algernon Langton, Dean of Tercanbury, asking him to bring his daughter to visit her new house; and Miss Langton replied that they would be pleased to come, fixing a certain Thursday morning for their arrival. Miss Ley greeted her relatives without effusion, for it was her whim to discourage manifestations of affection; but notwithstanding the good-humoured, polite contempt with which it was her practice to treat the clergy in general, she looked upon her cousin Algernon with real esteem.

He was a tall old man, spare and bent, with very white and a pallid, almost transparent, skin; his eyes cold and blue, but his expression singularly gentle. There was a dignity in his bearing, and at the same time an infinite graciousness which reminded you of those famous old ecclesiastics whose names have cast for ever a certain magnificent renown upon the English Church; he had a good deal of the polished breeding which made them, whatever their origin, gentlemen and courtiers, and, like theirs, his Biblical erudition was perhaps less noteworthy than his classical attainments. And if he was a little narrow, unwilling to consider seriously modern ways of thought, there was an æsthetic quality about him and a truly Christian urbanity which attracted admiration, and even love. Miss Ley, a student of men, who could observe with interest the most diverse tendencies, (for to her sceptical mind no way of life nor method of thought was intrinsically more valuable than another,) was pleased with his stately, candid simplicity, and used with him a forbearance which was not customary to her.

“Well, Polly,” said the Dean, “I suppose now you are a woman of property you will give up your wild-goose chase after the unattainable. You will settle down and become a respectable member of society.”

“You need not insist that my hair is grayer than when last you saw me, and my wrinkles more apparent.”

At this time Miss Ley, who had altered little in the last twenty years, resembled extraordinarily the portrait-statue of Agrippina in the museum at Naples. She had the same lined face, with its look of rather scornful indifference for mundane affairs, and that well-bred distinction of manner which the Empress had acquired through the command of multitudes, but Miss Ley, more finely, through the command of herself.

“But you’re right, Algernon,” she added, “I am growing old, and I doubt whether I should have again the courage to sell all my belongings. I do not think I could face the utter loneliness in which I rejoiced when I felt I had nothing I could call my own but the clothes on my back.”

“You had quite a respectable income.”

“For which the saints be praised! No one can think of freedom who has less than five hundred a year; without that, life is a mere sordid struggle for daily bread.”

The Dean, hearing that luncheon would not be ready till two, went out, and Miss Ley was left alone with his daughter. Bella Langton had reached that age when she could by no stretch of courtesy be described as a girl, and her father but lately, somewhat to her dismay, had composed a set of Latin verses on her fortieth birthday. She was not pretty, nor had she the graceful dignity which made the Dean so becoming a figure in the cathedral chapter: somewhat squarely built, her hair, of a pleasant brown, was severely arranged; her features were too broad and her complexion rather oddly weather-beaten, but her gray eyes were very kindly, and her expression singularly good-humoured. Following provincial fashions in somewhat costly materials, she dressed with the serviceable plainness affected by the pious virgins who congregate in cathedral cities, and the result was an impression of very expensive dowdiness. She was obviously a capable woman who could be depended upon in any emergency. Charitable in an unimaginative, practical way, she was a fit and competent leader for the philanthropy of Tercanbury, and, fully conscious of her importance in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, ruled her little clerical circle with a firm but not unkindly hand. Notwithstanding her warm heart and truly Christian humility, Miss Langton had an intimate conviction of her own value; for not only did her father hold a stately office, but he came from good county stock of no small distinction, whereas it was notorious that the Bishop was a man of no family, and his wife had been a governess. Miss Langton would have given her last penny to relieve the sick wife of some poor curate, but would have thought twice before asking her to call at the Deanery; her charitable kindness was bestowed on all and sundry, but the ceremonies of polite society she practised only with persons of quality.

“I’ve asked various people to meet you at dinner to-night,” said Miss Ley.

“Are they nice?”

“They’re not positively disagreeable. Mrs. Barlow-Bassett is bringing her son, who pleases me because he’s so beautiful. Basil Kent is coming, a barrister; I like him because he has the face of a knight in an early Italian picture.”

“You always had a weakness for good-looking men, Mary,” answered Miss Langton, smiling.

“Beauty is quite the most important thing in the world, my dear. People say that the masculine appearance is immaterial, but that is because they are foolish. I know men who have gained all the honour and glory of the earth merely through a fine pair of eyes or a well-shaped mouth. . . . Then I have asked Mr. and Mrs. Castillyon; he is a member of Parliament and very dull and pompous, but just the sort of creature who would amuse you.”

While Miss Ley spoke a note was brought in.

“How tiresome!” she cried, having read. “Mr. Castillyon writes to say he cannot leave the House to-night till late. I wish they wouldn’t have autumn sessions. It’s just like him to think such a nonentity as himself is indispensable. Now I must ask someone to take his place.”

She sat down and hurriedly wrote a few words.

“My dear Frank,
“I beseech you to come to dinner to-night at eight, and since when
you arrive your keen intelligence will probably suggest to you that
I have not asked nine people on the spur of the moment, I will
confess that I invite you merely because Mr. Castillyon has put me
off at the last minute. But if you don’t come I will never speak to
you again.

“Yours ever, “Mary Ley.”

She rang the bell, and told a servant to take the letter immediately to Harley Street.

“I’ve asked Frank Hurrell,” she explained to Miss Langton. “He’s a nice boy—people remain boys till they’re forty now, and he’s ten years less than that. He’s a doctor, and by way of being rather distinguished; they’ve lately made him assistant-physician at St. Luke’s Hospital, and he’s set up in Harley Street waiting for patients.”

“Is he handsome?” asked Miss Langton, smiling.

“Not at all, but he’s one of the few persons I know who really amuses me. You’ll think him very disagreeable, and you’ll probably bore him to extinction.”

With this remark, calculated to put the younger woman entirely at her ease, Miss Ley sat down again at the window. The day was warm and sunny, but the trees, yellow and red with the first autumnal glow, were heavy still with the rain that had fallen in the night. There was a grave, sensuous passion about St. James’s Park, with its cool, smooth water just seen among the heavy foliage, and its well-tended lawns; and Miss Ley observed it in silence, with a vague feeling of self-satisfaction, for prosperity was a comfortable thing.

“What would be a suitable present for a poet?” asked Miss Langton suddenly.

“Surely a rhyming dictionary,” answered her friend, smiling. “Or a Bradshaw’s Guide to indicate the æsthetic value of common-sense.”

“Don’t be absurd, Mary, I really want your advice. I know a young man in Tercanbury who writes poetry,”

“I never knew a young man who didn’t. You’re not in love with a pale, passionate curate, Bella?”

“I’m in love with no one,” answered Miss Langton, with the shadow of a blush. “At my age it would be ridiculous. But I should like to tell you about this boy. He’s only twenty, and he’s a clerk in the bank there.”

“Bella!” cried Miss Ley, with mock horror. “Don’t tell me you’re philandering with a person who isn’t _county_. What would the Dean say? And for heaven’s sake take care of poetical boys; at your age a woman should offer daily prayers to her Maker to prevent her from falling in love with a man twenty years younger than herself. That is one of the most prevalent diseases of the day.”

“His father was a linen-draper at Blackstable, who sent him to Regis School, Tercanbury. And there he took every possible scholarship. He was going to Cambridge, but his people died, and to earn his living he was obliged to go into the bank. He’s had a very hard time.”

“But how on earth did you make his acquaintance? No society is so rigidly exclusive as that of a cathedral town, and I know you refuse to be introduced to anyone till you have looked him out in the _Landed Gentry._

Miss Ley, singularly unprejudiced, ridiculed her cousin hugely for this veneration of the county family; and though her own name figured in Burke’s portentous she concealed the fact as something rather discreditable. To her mind the only advantage of a respectable ancestry was that with a whole heart she could ridicule the claims of blood.

“He was never introduced to me,” answered Bella unwillingly. “I made friends with him by accident.”

“My dear, that sounds very improper. I hope at least he rescued you in a carriage accident, which appears to be one of Cupid’s favourite devices. He always was an unimaginative god, and his methods are dreadfully commonplace. . . . Don’t say the young man accosted you in the street!”

Bella Langton could not have told Miss Ley the whole story of her acquaintance with Herbert Field, for the point of it lay to some extent in her own state of mind, and that she but vaguely understood. She had arrived at that embarrassment which comes to most unmarried women, when youth is already passed and the monotonous length of middle age looms drearily before them. For some time her round of duties had lost its savour, and she seemed to have done everything too often: the days exasperated her in their similarity. She was seized with that restlessness which has sent so many, nameless or renowned, sailing like stout Cortez across unknown seas, and others, no fewer, on hazardous adventures of the spirit. She looked with envy now at the friends, her contemporaries, who were mothers of fair children, and not without difficulty overcame a nascent regret that for her father’s sake, alone in the world and in all practical concerns very helpless, she had foregone the natural joys of women. These feelings much distressed her, for she had dwelt always in a world of limited horizon, occupied with piety and with good works; the emotions that tore her heart-strings seemed temptations of the devil, and she turned to her God for a solace that came not. She sought to distract her mind by unceasing labour, and with double zeal administered her benevolent institutions; books left her listless, but setting her teeth with a sort of angry determination, she began to learn Greek. Nothing served. Against her will new thoughts forced themselves upon her; and she was terrified, for it seemed to her no woman had ever been tormented by such wild, unlawful fancies. She reminded herself in vain that the name of which she was so proud constrained her to self-command, and her position in Tercanbury made it a duty, even in her inmost heart, to serve as an example to lesser folk.

And now Miss Langton took no pleasure in the quiet close where before she had delighted to linger; the old cathedral, weather-beaten, gray and lovely, no longer gave its accustomed message of resignation and of hope. She took to walking far into the country, but the meadows, bespangled with buttercups in spring, the woods, with their autumnal russet, but increased her uneasiness; and most willingly she went to a hill from which at no great distance could be seen the shining sea, and for a moment its immensity comforted her restless heart. Sometimes at sundown over the slate gray of the western clouds was spread a great dust of red gold that swept down upon the silent water like the train of a goddess of fire; and presently, thrusting through sombre cumuli, like a Titan breaking his prison walls, the sun shone forth, a giant sphere of copper. With almost a material effort it seemed to push aside the thronging darkness, filling the whole sky with brilliancy; and then over the placid sea was stretched a broad roadway of unearthly fire, upon which might travel the mystical, passionate souls of men, endlessly, to the source of the deathless light, Bella Langton turned away with a sob and walked back slowly the way she came. Before her in the valley the gray houses of Tercanbury clustered about the tall cathedral, but its ancient beauty pressed her heart with bands of pain.

Then came the spring: the fields were gay with flowers, a vernal carpet whereon with delicate feet might walk the angels of Messer Perugino, and she could bear the agony no longer; in every hedgerow, on every tree, the birds sang with infinite variety, singing the joy of life and the beauty of the rain and the glorious sunshine. They told her one and all that the world was young and beautiful, but the time of man so short that every hour of it must be lived as though it were the last.

When a friend asked her to spend a month in Brittany, sick of her inaction, she accepted eagerly. To travel might ease her aching heart, and the fatigue of the journey allay that springing of the limbs which made her feel apt for hazardous undertakings. Alone the two ladies wandered along that rugged coast. They stayed at Carnac, but the mysterious antique stones suggested only the nothingness of life; man came and went, with hope and longing, and left the signs of his dim faith to be a mystery to succeeding ages; they went to Le Faouet, where the painted windows of the ruined church of Saint Fiacre gleam like precious stones: but the restful charm of these scenes had no message for a heart thirsting for life and the love that quickens. They passed to the famous calvaries of Plougastel and Saint Thégonnec; and those grim crosses, with their stone processions, (the effort at beauty of a race bowed down by the sense of sin), oppressed her under that gray western sky with dismay: they suggested only death and the grave’s despair, but she was full of expectation, of longing for she knew not what. It seemed to her as though, she knew not how, she were sailing on that dark silent sea of which the mystics speak, where the common rules of life availed not. Travel gave her nothing that she sought, but increased rather her unquiet; her hands itched for work to do, and she went back to Tercanbury.

III

At last, one afternoon of that very summer, after the vesper service in the cathedral. Miss Langton, wandering listlessly towards the door, saw a young man seated at the back of the nave; it was late, so that he and she seemed to possess that vast building by themselves. With glowing eyes he stared into vacancy, as though his own thoughts blinded him to the Gothic loveliness about him, and his eyes were singularly dark. His hair was fair, and his face, womanlike in its transparent delicacy of skin, was thin and oval. Presently a verger went to him saying that the attention cathedral would be closed, and as he rose, paying no other attention to the man’s words, he passed within a yard of Bella, but in his abstraction saw her not. She thought no more of him, but on the following Saturday, going, as her habit, to the afternoon service, she saw the youth again, seated as before in the furthermost part of the nave, well away both from sightseers and from devout. A curiosity she did not understand impelled her to remain there rather than go into the choir, separated from the nave by an elaborate screen, where by right of her dignity a seat was reserved for her not far from her father’s decanal stall.

The boy, for he was little more, this time was reading a book, which she noticed was written in verse; now and again, with a smile, he threw back his head, and she imagined he repeated to himself a line that pleased him.

The service began, softened by distance so that the well-known forms gained a new mystery; the long notes of the organ pealed reverberating along the vaulted roof, or wailed softly, like the voice of a young child, among the lofty columns. At intervals the choir gave a richer depth to the organ music, and it was so broken and deadened by obstructing stone that it sounded vaguely like the surging of the sea. Presently this ceased, and a tenor’s voice, the pride of the cathedral, rang out alone; and as though the magic sound had power over all material obstacles, the melody of the old-fashioned anthem—her father loved the undecorated music of a past age—rose towards heaven in a sobbing prayer. The book fell from the young man’s hand, and an eager look came into his face as he drank in the silver harmonies; his face was transfigured with ecstasy so that it resembled the face of some pictured saint glorified by a mystic vision of the celestial light. And then, falling on his knees, he buried his face in his hands, and Bella saw that with all his soul he prayed to a God that gave men ears to hear and eyes to see the beauty of the world. What was there in the sight that made her own heart beat with a new emotion?

And when he sat once more on his chair there was a look in his face of exquisite content, and a smile of happiness trembled on his lips, so that Bella turned sick with envy. What power was there in his soul that gave a magic colour to things that left her, for all her striving, still untouched? She waited till he walked slowly out, and, seeing him nod to the verger at the door, asked who he was.

“I don’t know, miss,” was the answer; “he comes here every Saturday and Sunday regular. But he never goes into the choir. He just sits there in the corner where no one can see him, and reads a book. I don’t interfere with him, because he’s very quiet and respectful.”

Bella could not tell why she thought so often of the fair-haired youth who had never so much as noticed her presence, nor why, on the Sunday that followed, she went again to the nave awaiting his appearance. Observing him more closely, she noticed the slimness of his figure and the shapely length of his hands, which seemed to touch things with a curious delicacy; once their eyes met, and his were blue like the summer sea in Italy, and deep. A somewhat nervous woman, she would never have ventured to address a stranger, but the candid simplicity of his expression, in which strangely there was also a certain appealing pathos, overcame her shyness, overcame also her sense of the impropriety of making friends with a person about whom she knew nothing. Some hidden intuition told her that she was arrived at a turning-point in her life, and courage now was needed to seize with both hands a new happiness; and as though the very stars were favourable there had occurred to her a way to scrape acquaintance. Excited, for it seemed very adventurous, she waited impatiently for Saturday, and then, asking her favourite verger for his keys, after the service went boldly to the youth whose name even she did not know.

“Would you like me to take you over the cathedral?” she asked without a word of introduction. “We can go round alone, and it’s very pleasant without the chatter of vergers and the hurry of a crowd.”

He blushed to the very roots of his hair when she spoke, but then smiled charmingly.

“It’s very kind of you,” he answered; “I’ve wanted to do that always.”

His voice was pleasant and low, and he showed no surprise whatever; but all the same Bella, now somewhat startled by her own audacity, thought it needful to explain why she ventured the suggestion.

“I’ve seen you here very often, and it struck me that you would like to see the cathedral at its best. But I’m afraid you must put up with me.”

He smiled again, and appeared now to take note of her for the first time. Bella, looking straight in front of her, felt his eyes rest thoughtfully on her face, and suddenly she seemed to herself old and lined and dowdy.

“What book is that you have?” she asked, to break the silence.

Without speaking he gave it her, and she saw it was a little collection, evidently much read, for the binding scarcely held the leaves together, of Shelley’s lyrical poems.

Bella unlocked the gate that led into the apse, and locked it again behind her.

“Isn’t it delightful to feel one’s self alone here?” he cried, and with springing step and smiling eyes walked forwards.

At first he was a little shy, but presently the spirit of the place, with its dark chapels and stone knights recumbent, the tracery of its jewelled windows, loosened his tongue, and he poured forth his boyish enthusiasm with a passion that astonished Bella. His delight communicated itself to her so that she found a new enchantment in the things she knew so well; his glowing poetic fervour seemed to gild the old walls with magic sunshine; and, as if those prisoned stones were strangely thrown open to heaven, they gained something of the outer freshness of green lawns and flowers and leafy trees: the warm breath of the west wind stole among the Gothic columns, lending a new splendour to the ancient glass, and to the groinery a more living charm. The boy’s cheeks were flushed with excitement, and Bella’s heart beat as she listened, enchanted with his pleasure; he gesticulated a good deal, and under the movements of his long exquisite hands, (her own, for all her well-bred ancestry, were short, thick-set and ungraceful,) the past of the mighty church rose before her, so that she heard the clank of steel when knights in armour marched over the still flags, and saw with vivid eyes that historic scene when the gentlemen of Kent in gally hose and doublet, the ladies with ruff and farthingale, assembled to praise the God of storm and battle because Howard of Effingham had scattered the armada of King Philip.

“Now let’s go into the cloister,” he said eagerly.

They sat on a stone parapet looking out on the cool green sward where in time past Augustine monks had wandered meditative; there was a dainty gracefulness about the arcade, with the slender columns, their capitals delicately carved, recalling somewhat the cloisters of Italy, which, notwithstanding their cypress-trees and their crumbling decay, suggest a peaceful happiness rather than the Northern sense of stricken sin. The boy, though he knew the magic of the South only from books and pictures, was quick to catch the impression, and his face expressed a rather pitiful longing. When Bella told him she had travelled in Italy, he questioned her eagerly, and his young enthusiasm gave a warmth to her answers which with any other, fearing to be ridiculous, she would carefully have suppressed. But the scene before them was very lovely; in massive splendour the tall central tower looked down upon them, and its stately beauty entered their souls, so that the youth, though he had never seen the monasteries of Tuscany, was comforted. They sat for a while in silence.

“You must be a very important person,” he said at last, turning to her, “or we should never be allowed to remain so long.”

“I dare say to a verger I am,” she answered, smiling. “It must be late.”

“Won’t you come and have tea with me?” he asked. “I have rooms just opposite the cathedral gate.” Then, catching Bella’s look, he added with a smile: “My name is Herbert Field, and I’m eminently respectable.”

She hesitated, for it seemed odd to drink tea with a youth whom she had never seen before, but she was mortally afraid of seeming prudish; and a visit to his rooms, whereby she might learn more about him, would add a finish to the adventure. Finally her sense decided her that living life, not mere existence, for once lay under her hand.

“Do come,’ he said; “I want to show you my books.”

And with a little persuasive motion he touched her hand.

“I should like it very much.”

He took her to a tiny room over a chemist’s shop, simply furnished as a study, with a low ceiling and panelled walls: these were decorated with a few photographs of pictures by Pietro Perugino, and there were a good many books.

“It’s rather poky, I’m afraid, but I live here, so that I can always see the gateway. I think it’s one of the finest things in Tercanbury.”

He made her sit down while he boiled water and cut bread-and-butter. Bella, at first somewhat intimidated by the novelty of the affair, was a little formal; but the boy’s manifest delight in her presence affected her so that she became gay and light-hearted. Then he displayed a new side of his character: the rather strenuous passion for the beautiful was momentarily put aside and he showed himself quite absurdly boyish. His laughter rang out joyously, and, feeling less shy now that Miss Langton was his guest, he talked unrestrainedly of a hundred topics that sprang up one after another in his mind.

“Will you have a cigarette?” he asked when they had finished their tea, and, on Bella’s laughing refusal: “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you? I can talk better.”

He drew their chairs to the open window, so that they could look at the massive masonry before them, and, as though he had known Bella all his life, chattered on. But when at last she rose to go, his eyes grew suddenly grave and sad.

“I shall see you again, shan’t I? I don’t want to lose you now I’ve found you so strangely.”

Really he was asking Miss Langton to make an assignation, but by now the Dean’s daughter had thrown all caution to the winds.

“I dare say we shall meet sometime in the cathedral.”

Womanlike, though she meant to grant all he desired, she would not give in too quickly.”

“Oh, that won’t do,” he insisted. “I can’t wait a week before seeing you again.”

Bella smiled at him while he looked eagerly into her eyes, holding her hand very firmly, as though till she made promise he would never let it go.

“Let’s take a walk in the country to-morrow,” he said.

“Very well,’ she replied, telling herself that there could be no harm in going with a boy twenty years younger than herself, “I shall be at the Westgate at half-past five.”

But the evening brought counsels of prudence, and Miss Langton wrote a note to say that she had forgotten an engagement, and was afraid she could not come. Yet it left her irresolute, and more than once she reproached herself because from sheer timidity she would cause Herbert Field the keenest disappointment. She told herself sophistically that perhaps, owing to the Sunday delivery, the letter had not reached him, and, fearing he would go to the Westgate and not understand her absence, persuaded herself that it was needful to go there and explain in person why she could not take the promised walk.

The Westgate was an ancient, handsome pile of masonry which in the old days had marked the outer wall of Tercanbury, and even now, though on one side houses had been built, a road to the left led directly into the country. When Bella arrived, somewhat early, Herbert was already waiting for her, and he looked peculiarly young in his straw hat.

“Didn’t you get a note from me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling. “Then why did you come?”

“Because I thought you might change your mind. I didn’t altogether believe in the engagement. I wanted you so badly that I fancied you couldn’t help yourself. I felt you must come.”

“And if I hadn’t?”

“Well, I should have waited. . . . Don’t be horrid. Look at the sunshine calling us. Yesterday we had the gray stones of the cathedral; to-day we’ve got the green fields and the trees. Don’t you feel the west wind murmuring delicious things?”

Bella looked at him, and could not resist the passionate appeal of his eyes.

“I suppose I must do as you choose,” she answered.

And together they set off. Miss Langton, convinced that her interest was no less maternal than when she gave jellies to some motherless child, knew not that Dan Cupid, laughing at her subterfuge, danced gleefully about them and shot his silver arrows. They sauntered by a gentle stream that ran northward to the sea, shaded by leafy willows; and the country on that July afternoon was fresh and scented: the cut hay, drying, gave out an exquisite perfume, and the birds were hushed.

“I’m glad you live in the Deanery,” he said; “I shall like to think of you seated in that beautiful garden.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

“No; but I can imagine what it is like behind that old wall, the shady lawns and the roses. There must be masses of roses now.”

The Dean was known as an enthusiast for that royal flower, and his blossoms at the local show were the wonder of the town. They went on, and soon, half unconsciously, as though he sought protection from the hard world, Herbert put his arm in hers, Bella blushed a little, but had not the heart to withdraw; she was strangely flattered at the confidence he showed. Very discreetly she questioned him, and with perfect simplicity he told of his parents’ long struggle to give him an education above their state.

“But, after all,” he said “I’m not nearly so wretched as I thought I would be. The bank leaves me plenty of time, and I have my books and I have my hopes.”

“What are they?”

“Sometimes I write verse,” he answered, blushing shyly.

“I suppose it’s ridiculous, but it gives me great happiness; and who knows?—someday I may do something that the world will not willingly let die.”

Later on, when Bella rested on a stile and Herbert stood by her side, he looked up at her, hesitating.

“I want to say something to you, Miss Langton, but I’m rather afraid. . . . You won’t drop me now, will you? Now that I’ve found a friend, I can’t afford to lose her. You don’t know what it means to me having someone to talk to, someone who’s kind to me. Often I feel dreadfully alone. And you make all the difference in my life; this last week everything has seemed changed.”

She looked at him earnestly. Did he think he made no difference in hers? She could not tell what stirred her when those blue appealing eyes asked so irresistibly for what she was most willing to give.

“My father is going into Leanham on Wednesday,” she answered presently. “When your work is over, will you come and have tea in the Deanery garden?”

She felt herself ten times rewarded by the look of pleasure that flashed across his face.

“I shall think of nothing else till then.”

And Miss Langton found that her restless anxiety had strangely vanished; life now was no longer monotonous, but sparkled with magic colour, for an absorbing interest had arisen which made the daily round a pleasure rather than a duty. She repeated to herself all the charming inconsequent things the boy had said, finding his conversation agreeably different from the clerical debates to which she was used. They cultivated a refined taste in the chapter, and the Archdeacon’s second wife had written a novel, which only her exalted station and an obvious moral purpose saved from excessive indecency. The Minor Canons talked with gusto of the Royal Academy. But Herbert spoke of books and pictures as though art were a living thing, needful as bread and water to his existence; and Bella, feeling that her culture, somewhat ostentatiously pursued as an element of polite breeding, was very formal and insipid, listened with complete humility to his simple ardour.

On Wednesday, almost handsome in summer muslin and a large hat, she went into the garden, where the tea-things were laid under a leafy tree. Miss Ley would have smiled cruelly to notice the care with which the Dean’s daughter arranged her position to appear at her best. The privacy, the garden’s restful beauty, brought out all Herbert’s boyishness, and his pleasant laughter rang across the lawns, rang like silver music into Bella’s heart. Watching the shadows lengthen, they talked of Italy and Greece, of poets and of flowers; and presently, weary of seriousness, they talked sheer light-hearted nonsense.

“You know, I can’t call you Mr. Field,” said Bella, smiling. “I must call you Herbert.”

“If you do I shall call you Bella.”