The House of Souls Read online

  A Fragment of Life

  I

  Edward Darnell awoke from a dream of an ancient wood, and of a clearwell rising into grey film and vapour beneath a misty, glimmering heat;and as his eyes opened he saw the sunlight bright in the room, sparklingon the varnish of the new furniture. He turned and found his wife'splace vacant, and with some confusion and wonder of the dream stilllingering in his mind, he rose also, and began hurriedly to set abouthis dressing, for he had overslept a little, and the 'bus passed thecorner at 9.15. He was a tall, thin man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, andin spite of the routine of the City, the counting of coupons, and allthe mechanical drudgery that had lasted for ten years, there stillremained about him the curious hint of a wild grace, as if he had beenborn a creature of the antique wood, and had seen the fountain risingfrom the green moss and the grey rocks.

  The breakfast was laid in the room on the ground floor, the back roomwith the French windows looking on the garden, and before he sat down tohis fried bacon he kissed his wife seriously and dutifully. She hadbrown hair and brown eyes, and though her lovely face was grave andquiet, one would have said that she might have awaited her husband underthe old trees, and bathed in the pool hollowed out of the rocks.

  They had a good deal to talk over while the coffee was poured out andthe bacon eaten, and Darnell's egg brought in by the stupid, staringservant-girl of the dusty face. They had been married for a year, andthey had got on excellently, rarely sitting silent for more than anhour, but for the past few weeks Aunt Marian's present had afforded asubject for conversation which seemed inexhaustible. Mrs. Darnell hadbeen Miss Mary Reynolds, the daughter of an auctioneer and estate agentin Notting Hill, and Aunt Marian was her mother's sister, who wassupposed rather to have lowered herself by marrying a coal merchant, ina small way, at Turnham Green. Marian had felt the family attitude agood deal, and the Reynoldses were sorry for many things that had beensaid, when the coal merchant saved money and took up land on buildingleases in the neighbourhood of Crouch End, greatly to his advantage, asit appeared. Nobody had thought that Nixon could ever do very much; buthe and his wife had been living for years in a beautiful house atBarnet, with bow-windows, shrubs, and a paddock, and the two familiessaw but little of each other, for Mr. Reynolds was not very prosperous.Of course, Aunt Marian and her husband had been asked to Mary's wedding,but they had sent excuses with a nice little set of silver apostlespoons, and it was feared that nothing more was to be looked for.However, on Mary's birthday her aunt had written a most affectionateletter, enclosing a cheque for a hundred pounds from 'Robert' andherself, and ever since the receipt of the money the Darnells haddiscussed the question of its judicious disposal. Mrs. Darnell hadwished to invest the whole sum in Government securities, but Mr. Darnellhad pointed out that the rate of interest was absurdly low, and after agood deal of talk he had persuaded his wife to put ninety pounds of themoney in a safe mine, which was paying five per cent. This was verywell, but the remaining ten pounds, which Mrs. Darnell had insisted onreserving, gave rise to legends and discourses as interminable as thedisputes of the schools.

  At first Mr. Darnell had proposed that they should furnish the 'spare'room. There were four bedrooms in the house: their own room, the smallone for the servant, and two others overlooking the garden, one of whichhad been used for storing boxes, ends of rope, and odd numbers of 'QuietDays' and 'Sunday Evenings,' besides some worn suits belonging to Mr.Darnell which had been carefully wrapped up and laid by, as he scarcelyknew what to do with them. The other room was frankly waste and vacant,and one Saturday afternoon, as he was coming home in the 'bus, and whilehe revolved that difficult question of the ten pounds, the unseemlyemptiness of the spare room suddenly came into his mind, and he glowedwith the idea that now, thanks to Aunt Marian, it could be furnished. Hewas busied with this delightful thought all the way home, but when helet himself in, he said nothing to his wife, since he felt that his ideamust be matured. He told Mrs. Darnell that, having important business,he was obliged to go out again directly, but that he should be backwithout fail for tea at half-past six; and Mary, on her side, was notsorry to be alone, as she was a little behindhand with the householdbooks. The fact was, that Darnell, full of the design of furnishing thespare bedroom, wished to consult his friend Wilson, who lived atFulham, and had often given him judicious advice as to the laying out ofmoney to the very best advantage. Wilson was connected with the Bordeauxwine trade, and Darnell's only anxiety was lest he should not be athome.

  However, it was all right; Darnell took a tram along the Goldhawk Road,and walked the rest of the way, and was delighted to see Wilson in thefront garden of his house, busy amongst his flower-beds.

  'Haven't seen you for an age,' he said cheerily, when he heard Darnell'shand on the gate; 'come in. Oh, I forgot,' he added, as Darnell stillfumbled with the handle, and vainly attempted to enter. 'Of course youcan't get in; I haven't shown it you.'

  It was a hot day in June, and Wilson appeared in a costume which he hadput on in haste as soon as he arrived from the City. He wore a straw hatwith a neat pugaree protecting the back of his neck, and his dress was aNorfolk jacket and knickers in heather mixture.

  'See,' he said, as he let Darnell in; 'see the dodge. You don't _turn_the handle at all. First of all push hard, and then pull. It's a trickof my own, and I shall have it patented. You see, it keeps undesirablecharacters at a distance--such a great thing in the suburbs. I feel Ican leave Mrs. Wilson alone now; and, formerly, you have no idea how sheused to be pestered.'

  'But how about visitors?' said Darnell. 'How do they get in?'

  'Oh, we put them up to it. Besides,' he said vaguely, 'there is sure tobe somebody looking out. Mrs. Wilson is nearly always at the window.She's out now; gone to call on some friends. The Bennetts' At Home day,I think it is. This is the first Saturday, isn't it? You know J. W.Bennett, don't you? Ah, he's in the House; doing very well, I believe.He put me on to a very good thing the other day.'

  'But, I say,' said Wilson, as they turned and strolled towards the frontdoor, 'what do you wear those black things for? You look hot. Look atme. Well, I've been gardening, you know, but I feel as cool as acucumber. I dare say you don't know where to get these things? Very fewmen do. Where do you suppose I got 'em?'

  'In the West End, I suppose,' said Darnell, wishing to be polite.

  'Yes, that's what everybody says. And it is a good cut. Well, I'll tellyou, but you needn't pass it on to everybody. I got the tip fromJameson--you know him, "Jim-Jams," in the China trade, 39 Eastbrook--andhe said he didn't want everybody in the City to know about it. But justgo to Jennings, in Old Wall, and mention my name, and you'll be allright. And what d'you think they cost?'

  'I haven't a notion,' said Darnell, who had never bought such a suit inhis life.

  'Well, have a guess.'

  Darnell regarded Wilson gravely.

  The jacket hung about his body like a sack, the knickerbockers droopedlamentably over his calves, and in prominent positions the bloom of theheather seemed about to fade and disappear.

  'Three pounds, I suppose, at least,' he said at length.

  'Well, I asked Dench, in our place, the other day, and he guessed fourten, and his father's got something to do with a big business in ConduitStreet. But I only gave thirty-five and six. To measure? Of course; lookat the cut, man.'

  Darnell was astonished at so low a price.

  'And, by the way,' Wilson went on, pointing to his new brown boots, 'youknow where to go for shoe-leather? Oh, I thought everybody was up tothat! There's only one place. "Mr. Bill," in Gunning Street,--nine andsix.'

  They were walking round and round the garden, and Wilson pointed out theflowers in the beds and borders. There were hardly any blossoms, buteverything was neatly arranged.

  'Here are the tuberous-rooted Glasgownias,' he said, showing a rigid rowof stunted plants; 'those are Squintaceae; this is a new introduction,Moldavia Semperflorida Andersonii; and this is Prattsia.'

  'When do they come out?' sai
d Darnell.

  'Most of them in the end of August or beginning of September,' saidWilson briefly. He was slightly annoyed with himself for having talkedso much about his plants, since he saw that Darnell cared nothing forflowers; and, indeed, the visitor could hardly dissemble vaguerecollections that came to him; thoughts of an old, wild garden, full ofodours, beneath grey walls, of the fragrance of the meadowsweet besidethe brook.

  'I wanted to consult you about some furniture,' Darnell said at last.'You know we've got a spare room, and I'm thinking of putting a fewthings into it. I haven't exactly made up my mind, but I thought youmight advise me.'

  'Come into my den,' said Wilson. 'No; this way, by the back'; and heshowed Darnell another ingenious arrangement at the side door whereby aviolent high-toned bell was set pealing in the house if one did buttouch the latch. Indeed, Wilson handled it so briskly that the bell ranga wild alarm, and the servant, who was trying on her mistress's thingsin the bedroom, jumped madly to the window and then danced a hystericdance. There was plaster found on the drawing-room table on Sundayafternoon, and Wilson wrote a letter to the 'Fulham Chronicle,'ascribing the phenomenon 'to some disturbance of a seismic nature.'

  For the moment he knew nothing of the great results of his contrivance,and solemnly led the way towards the back of the house. Here there was apatch of turf, beginning to look a little brown, with a background ofshrubs. In the middle of the turf, a boy of nine or ten was standing allalone, with something of an air.

  'The eldest,' said Wilson. 'Havelock. Well, Lockie, what are ye doingnow? And where are your brother and sister?'

  The boy was not at all shy. Indeed, he seemed eager to explain thecourse of events.

  'I'm playing at being Gawd,' he said, with an engaging frankness. 'AndI've sent Fergus and Janet to the bad place. That's in the shrubbery.And they're never to come out any more. And they're burning for ever andever.'

  'What d'you think of that?' said Wilson admiringly. 'Not bad for ayoungster of nine, is it? They think a lot of him at the Sunday-school.But come into my den.'

  The den was an apartment projecting from the back of the house. It hadbeen designed as a back kitchen and washhouse, but Wilson had draped the'copper' in art muslin and had boarded over the sink, so that it servedas a workman's bench.

  'Snug, isn't it?' he said, as he pushed forward one of the two wickerchairs. 'I think out things here, you know; it's quiet. And what aboutthis furnishing? Do you want to do the thing on a grand scale?'

  'Oh, not at all. Quite the reverse. In fact, I don't know whether thesum at our disposal will be sufficient. You see the spare room is tenfeet by twelve, with a western exposure, and I thought if we _could_manage it, that it would seem more cheerful furnished. Besides, it'spleasant to be able to ask a visitor; our aunt, Mrs. Nixon, for example.But she is accustomed to have everything very nice.'

  'And how much do you want to spend?'

  'Well, I hardly think we should be justified in going much beyond tenpounds. That isn't enough, eh?'

  Wilson got up and shut the door of the back kitchen impressively.

  'Look here,' he said, 'I'm glad you came to me in the first place. Nowyou'll just tell me where you thought of going yourself.'

  'Well, I had thought of the Hampstead Road,' said Darnell in ahesitating manner.

  'I just thought you'd say that. But I'll ask you, what is the good ofgoing to those expensive shops in the West End? You don't get a betterarticle for your money. You're merely paying for fashion.'

  'I've seen some nice things in Samuel's, though. They get a brilliantpolish on their goods in those superior shops. We went there when wewere married.'

  'Exactly, and paid ten per cent more than you need have paid. It'sthrowing money away. And how much did you say you had to spend? Tenpounds. Well, I can tell you where to get a beautiful bedroom suite, inthe very highest finish, for six pound ten. What d'you think of that?China included, mind you; and a square of carpet, brilliant colours,will only cost you fifteen and six. Look here, go any Saturday afternoonto Dick's, in the Seven Sisters Road, mention my name, and ask for Mr.Johnston. The suite's in ash, "Elizabethan" they call it. Six pound ten,including the china, with one of their "Orient" carpets, nine by nine,for fifteen and six. Dick's.'

  Wilson spoke with some eloquence on the subject of furnishing. Hepointed out that the times were changed, and that the old heavy stylewas quite out of date.

  'You know,' he said, 'it isn't like it was in the old days, when peopleused to buy things to last hundreds of years. Why, just before the wifeand I were married, an uncle of mine died up in the North and left mehis furniture. I was thinking of furnishing at the time, and I thoughtthe things might come in handy; but I assure you there wasn't a singlearticle that I cared to give house-room to. All dingy, old mahogany; bigbookcases and bureaus, and claw-legged chairs and tables. As I said tothe wife (as she was soon afterwards), "We don't exactly want to set upa chamber of horrors, do we?" So I sold off the lot for what I couldget. I must confess I like a cheerful room.'

  Darnell said he had heard that artists liked the old-fashionedfurniture.

  'Oh, I dare say. The "unclean cult of the sunflower," eh? You saw thatpiece in the "Daily Post"? I hate all that rot myself. It isn't healthy,you know, and I don't believe the English people will stand it. Buttalking of curiosities, I've got something here that's worth a bit ofmoney.'

  He dived into some dusty receptacle in a corner of the room, and showedDarnell a small, worm-eaten Bible, wanting the first five chapters ofGenesis and the last leaf of the Apocalypse. It bore the date of 1753.

  'It's my belief that's worth a lot,' said Wilson. 'Look at theworm-holes. And you see it's "imperfect," as they call it. You'venoticed that some of the most valuable books are "imperfect" at thesales?'

  The interview came to an end soon after, and Darnell went home to histea. He thought seriously of taking Wilson's advice, and after tea hetold Mary of his idea and of what Wilson had said about Dick's.

  Mary was a good deal taken by the plan when she had heard all thedetails. The prices struck her as very moderate. They were sitting oneon each side of the grate (which was concealed by a pretty cardboardscreen, painted with landscapes), and she rested her cheek on her hand,and her beautiful dark eyes seemed to dream and behold strange visions.In reality she was thinking of Darnell's plan.

  'It would be very nice in some ways,' she said at last. 'But we musttalk it over. What I am afraid of is that it will come to much more thanten pounds in the long run. There are so many things to be considered.There's the bed. It would look shabby if we got a common bed withoutbrass mounts. Then the bedding, the mattress, and blankets, and sheets,and counterpane would all cost something.'

  She dreamed again, calculating the cost of all the necessaries, andDarnell stared anxiously; reckoning with her, and wondering what herconclusion would be. For a moment the delicate colouring of her face,the grace of her form, and the brown hair, drooping over her ears andclustering in little curls about her neck, seemed to hint at a languagewhich he had not yet learned; but she spoke again.

  'The bedding would come to a great deal, I am afraid. Even if Dick's areconsiderably cheaper than Boon's or Samuel's. And, my dear, we must havesome ornaments on the mantelpiece. I saw some very nice vases ateleven-three the other day at Wilkin and Dodd's. We should want six atleast, and there ought to be a centre-piece. You see how it mounts up.'

  Darnell was silent. He saw that his wife was summing up against hisscheme, and though he had set his heart on it, he could not resist herarguments.

  'It would be nearer twelve pounds than ten,' she said.

  'The floor would have to be stained round the carpet (nine by nine, yousaid?), and we should want a piece of linoleum to go under thewashstand. And the walls would look very bare without any pictures.'

  'I thought about the pictures,' said Darnell; and he spoke quiteeagerly. He felt that here, at least, he was unassailable. 'You knowthere's the "Derby Day" and the "Railway Station," ready framed,
standing in the corner of the box-room already. They're a bitold-fashioned, perhaps, but that doesn't matter in a bedroom. Andcouldn't we use some photographs? I saw a very neat frame in natural oakin the City, to hold half a dozen, for one and six. We might put in yourfather, and your brother James, and Aunt Marian, and your grandmother,in her widow's cap--and any of the others in the album. And then there'sthat old family picture in the hair-trunk--that might do over themantelpiece.'

  'You mean your great-grandfather in the gilt frame? But that's _very_old-fashioned, isn't it? He looks so queer in his wig. I don't think itwould quite go with the room, somehow.'

  Darnell thought a moment. The portrait was a 'kitcat' of a younggentleman, bravely dressed in the fashion of 1750, and he very faintlyremembered some old tales that his father had told him about thisancestor--tales of the woods and fields, of the deep sunken lanes, andthe forgotten country in the west.

  'No,' he said, 'I suppose it is rather out of date. But I saw some verynice prints in the City, framed and quite cheap.'

  'Yes, but everything counts. Well, we will talk it over, as you say. Youknow we must be careful.'

  The servant came in with the supper, a tin of biscuits, a glass of milkfor the mistress, and a modest pint of beer for the master, with alittle cheese and butter. Afterwards Edward smoked two pipes ofhoneydew, and they went quietly to bed; Mary going first, and herhusband following a quarter of an hour later, according to the ritualestablished from the first days of their marriage. Front and back doorswere locked, the gas was turned off at the meter, and when Darnell gotupstairs he found his wife already in bed, her face turned round on thepillow.

  She spoke softly to him as he came into the room.

  'It would be impossible to buy a presentable bed at anything under onepound eleven, and good sheets are dear, anywhere.'

  He slipped off his clothes and slid gently into bed, putting out thecandle on the table. The blinds were all evenly and duly drawn, but itwas a June night, and beyond the walls, beyond that desolate world andwilderness of grey Shepherd's Bush, a great golden moon had floated upthrough magic films of cloud, above the hill, and the earth was filledwith a wonderful light between red sunset lingering over the mountainand that marvellous glory that shone into the woods from the summit ofthe hill. Darnell seemed to see some reflection of that wizardbrightness in the room; the pale walls and the white bed and his wife'sface lying amidst brown hair upon the pillow were illuminated, andlistening he could almost hear the corncrake in the fields, the fern-owlsounding his strange note from the quiet of the rugged place where thebracken grew, and, like the echo of a magic song, the melody of thenightingale that sang all night in the alder by the little brook. Therewas nothing that he could say, but he slowly stole his arm under hiswife's neck, and played with the ringlets of brown hair. She nevermoved, she lay there gently breathing, looking up to the blank ceilingof the room with her beautiful eyes, thinking also, no doubt, thoughtsthat she could not utter, kissing her husband obediently when he askedher to do so, and he stammered and hesitated as he spoke.

  They were nearly asleep, indeed Darnell was on the very eve of dreaming,when she said very softly--

  'I am afraid, darling, that we could never afford it.' And he heard herwords through the murmur of the water, dripping from the grey rock, andfalling into the clear pool beneath.

  Sunday morning was always an occasion of idleness. Indeed, they wouldnever have got breakfast if Mrs. Darnell, who had the instincts of thehousewife, had not awoke and seen the bright sunshine, and felt that thehouse was too still. She lay quiet for five minutes, while her husbandslept beside her, and listened intently, waiting for the sound of Alicestirring down below. A golden tube of sunlight shone through someopening in the Venetian blinds, and it shone on the brown hair that layabout her head on the pillow, and she looked steadily into the room atthe 'duchesse' toilet-table, the coloured ware of the washstand, and thetwo photogravures in oak frames, 'The Meeting' and 'The Parting,' thathung upon the wall. She was half dreaming as she listened for theservant's footsteps, and the faint shadow of a shade of a thought cameover her, and she imagined dimly, for the quick moment of a dream,another world where rapture was wine, where one wandered in a deep andhappy valley, and the moon was always rising red above the trees. Shewas thinking of Hampstead, which represented to her the vision of theworld beyond the walls, and the thought of the heath led her away toBank Holidays, and then to Alice. There was not a sound in the house; itmight have been midnight for the stillness if the drawling cry of theSunday paper had not suddenly echoed round the corner of Edna Road, andwith it came the warning clank and shriek of the milkman with his pails.

  Mrs. Darnell sat up, and wide awake, listened more intently. The girlwas evidently fast asleep, and must be roused, or all the work of theday would be out of joint, and she remembered how Edward hated any fussor discussion about household matters, more especially on a Sunday,after his long week's work in the City. She gave her husband anaffectionate glance as he slept on, for she was very fond of him, and soshe gently rose from the bed and went in her nightgown to call the maid.

  The servant's room was small and stuffy, the night had been very hot,and Mrs. Darnell paused for a moment at the door, wondering whether thegirl on the bed was really the dusty-faced servant who bustled day byday about the house, or even the strangely bedizened creature, dressedin purple, with a shiny face, who would appear on the Sunday afternoon,bringing in an early tea, because it was her 'evening out.' Alice's hairwas black and her skin was pale, almost of the olive tinge, and she layasleep, her head resting on one arm, reminding Mrs. Darnell of a queerprint of a 'Tired Bacchante' that she had seen long ago in a shop windowin Upper Street, Islington. And a cracked bell was ringing; that meantfive minutes to eight, and nothing done.

  She touched the girl gently on the shoulder, and only smiled when hereyes opened, and waking with a start, she got up in sudden confusion.Mrs. Darnell went back to her room and dressed slowly while her husbandstill slept, and it was only at the last moment, as she fastened hercherry-coloured bodice, that she roused him, telling him that the baconwould be overdone unless he hurried over his dressing.

  Over the breakfast they discussed the question of the spare room allover again. Mrs. Darnell still admitted that the plan of furnishing itattracted her, but she could not see how it could be done for the tenpounds, and as they were prudent people they did not care to encroach ontheir savings. Edward was highly paid, having (with allowances for extrawork in busy weeks) a hundred and forty pounds a year, and Mary hadinherited from an old uncle, her godfather, three hundred pounds, whichhad been judiciously laid out in mortgage at 4-1/2 per cent. Their totalincome, then, counting in Aunt Marian's present, was a hundred andfifty-eight pounds a year, and they were clear of debt, since Darnellhad bought the furniture for the house out of money which he had savedfor five or six years before. In the first few years of his life in theCity his income had, of course, been smaller, and at first he had livedvery freely, without a thought of laying by. The theatres andmusic-halls had attracted him, and scarcely a week passed without hisgoing (in the pit) to one or the other; and he had occasionally boughtphotographs of actresses who pleased him. These he had solemnly burntwhen he became engaged to Mary; he remembered the evening well; hisheart had been so full of joy and wonder, and the landlady hadcomplained bitterly of the mess in the grate when he came home from theCity the next night. Still, the money was lost, as far as he couldrecollect, ten or twelve shillings; and it annoyed him all the more toreflect that if he had put it by, it would have gone far towards thepurchase of an 'Orient' carpet in brilliant colours. Then there had beenother expenses of his youth: he had purchased threepenny and evenfourpenny cigars, the latter rarely, but the former frequently,sometimes singly, and sometimes in bundles of twelve for half-a-crown.Once a meerschaum pipe had haunted him for six weeks; the tobacconisthad drawn it out of a drawer with some air of secrecy as he was buying apacket of 'Lone Star.' Here was another useless expense, these
American-manufactured tobaccos; his 'Lone Star,' 'Long Judge,' 'OldHank,' 'Sultry Clime,' and the rest of them cost from a shilling to oneand six the two-ounce packet; whereas now he got excellent loosehoneydew for threepence halfpenny an ounce. But the crafty tradesman,who had marked him down as a buyer of expensive fancy goods, nodded withhis air of mystery, and, snapping open the case, displayed themeerschaum before the dazzled eyes of Darnell. The bowl was carved inthe likeness of a female figure, showing the head and _torso_, and themouthpiece was of the very best amber--only twelve and six, the mansaid, and the amber alone, he declared, was worth more than that. Heexplained that he felt some delicacy about showing the pipe to any but aregular customer, and was willing to take a little under cost price and'cut the loss.' Darnell resisted for the time, but the pipe troubledhim, and at last he bought it. He was pleased to show it to the youngermen in the office for a while, but it never smoked very well, and hegave it away just before his marriage, as from the nature of the carvingit would have been impossible to use it in his wife's presence. Once,while he was taking his holidays at Hastings, he had purchased a malaccacane--a useless thing that had cost seven shillings--and he reflectedwith sorrow on the innumerable evenings on which he had rejected hislandlady's plain fried chop, and had gone out to _flaner_ among theItalian restaurants in Upper Street, Islington (he lodged in Holloway),pampering himself with expensive delicacies: cutlets and green peas,braised beef with tomato sauce, fillet steak and chipped potatoes,ending the banquet very often with a small wedge of Gruyere, which costtwopence. One night, after receiving a rise in his salary, he hadactually drunk a quarter-flask of Chianti and had added the enormitiesof Benedictine, coffee, and cigarettes to an expenditure alreadydisgraceful, and sixpence to the waiter made the bill amount to fourshillings instead of the shilling that would have provided him with awholesome and sufficient repast at home. Oh, there were many other itemsin this account of extravagance, and Darnell had often regretted his wayof life, thinking that if he had been more careful, five or six pounds ayear might have been added to their income.

  And the question of the spare room brought back these regrets in anexaggerated degree. He persuaded himself that the extra five poundswould have given a sufficient margin for the outlay that he desired tomake; though this was, no doubt, a mistake on his part. But he sawquite clearly that, under the present conditions, there must be nolevies made on the very small sum of money that they had saved. The rentof the house was thirty-five, and rates and taxes added another tenpounds--nearly a quarter of their income for house-room. Mary kept downthe housekeeping bills to the very best of her ability, but meat wasalways dear, and she suspected the maid of cutting surreptitious slicesfrom the joint and eating them in her bedroom with bread and treacle inthe dead of night, for the girl had disordered and eccentric appetites.Mr. Darnell thought no more of restaurants, cheap or dear; he took hislunch with him to the City, and joined his wife in the evening at hightea--chops, a bit of steak, or cold meat from the Sunday's dinner. Mrs.Darnell ate bread and jam and drank a little milk in the middle of theday; but, with the utmost economy, the effort to live within their meansand to save for future contingencies was a very hard one. They haddetermined to do without change of air for at least three years, as thehoneymoon at Walton-on-the-Naze had cost a good deal; and it was on thisground that they had, somewhat illogically, reserved the ten pounds,declaring that as they were not to have any holiday they would spend themoney on something useful.

  And it was this consideration of utility that was finally fatal toDarnell's scheme. They had calculated and recalculated the expense ofthe bed and bedding, the linoleum, and the ornaments, and by a greatdeal of exertion the total expenditure had been made to assume the shapeof 'something very little over ten pounds,' when Mary said quitesuddenly--

  'But, after all, Edward, we don't really _want_ to furnish the room atall. I mean it isn't necessary. And if we did so it might lead to no endof expense. People would hear of it and be sure to fish for invitations.You know we have relatives in the country, and they would be almostcertain, the Mallings, at any rate, to give hints.'

  Darnell saw the force of the argument and gave way. But he was bitterlydisappointed.

  'It would have been very nice, wouldn't it?' he said with a sigh.

  'Never mind, dear,' said Mary, who saw that he was a good deal castdown. 'We must think of some other plan that will be nice and usefultoo.'

  She often spoke to him in that tone of a kind mother, though she was bythree years the younger.

  'And now,' she said, 'I must get ready for church. Are you coming?'

  Darnell said that he thought not. He usually accompanied his wife tomorning service, but that day he felt some bitterness in his heart, andpreferred to lounge under the shade of the big mulberry tree that stoodin the middle of their patch of garden--relic of the spacious lawns thathad once lain smooth and green and sweet, where the dismal streets nowswarmed in a hopeless labyrinth.

  So Mary went quietly and alone to church. St. Paul's stood in aneighbouring street, and its Gothic design would have interested acurious inquirer into the history of a strange revival. Obviously,mechanically, there was nothing amiss. The style chosen was 'geometricaldecorated,' and the tracery of the windows seemed correct. The nave, theaisles, the spacious chancel, were reasonably proportioned; and, to bequite serious, the only feature obviously wrong was the substitution ofa low 'chancel wall' with iron gates for the rood screen with the loftand rood. But this, it might plausibly be contended, was merely anadaptation of the old idea to modern requirements, and it would havebeen quite difficult to explain why the whole building, from the meremortar setting between the stones to the Gothic gas standards, was amysterious and elaborate blasphemy. The canticles were sung to Joll in Bflat, the chants were 'Anglican,' and the sermon was the gospel for theday, amplified and rendered into the more modern and graceful English ofthe preacher. And Mary came away.

  After their dinner (an excellent piece of Australian mutton, bought inthe 'World Wide' Stores, in Hammersmith), they sat for some time in thegarden, partly sheltered by the big mulberry tree from the observationof their neighbours. Edward smoked his honeydew, and Mary looked at himwith placid affection.

  'You never tell me about the men in your office,' she said at length.'Some of them are nice fellows, aren't they?'

  'Oh, yes, they're very decent. I must bring some of them round, one ofthese days.'

  He remembered with a pang that it would be necessary to provide whisky.One couldn't ask the guest to drink table beer at tenpence the gallon.

  'Who are they, though?' said Mary. 'I think they might have given you awedding present.'

  'Well, I don't know. We never have gone in for that sort of thing. Butthey're very decent chaps. Well, there's Harvey; "Sauce" they call himbehind his back. He's mad on bicycling. He went in last year for theTwo Miles Amateur Record. He'd have made it, too, if he could have gotinto better training.

  'Then there's James, a sporting man. You wouldn't care for him. I alwaysthink he smells of the stable.'

  'How horrid!' said Mrs. Darnell, finding her husband a little frank,lowering her eyes as she spoke.

  'Dickenson might amuse you,' Darnell went on. 'He's always got a joke. Aterrible liar, though. When he tells a tale we never know how much tobelieve. He swore the other day he'd seen one of the governors buyingcockles off a barrow near London Bridge, and Jones, who's just come,believed every word of it.'

  Darnell laughed at the humorous recollection of the jest.

  'And that wasn't a bad yarn about Salter's wife,' he went on. 'Salter isthe manager, you know. Dickenson lives close by, in Notting Hill, and hesaid one morning that he had seen Mrs. Salter, in the Portobello Road,in red stockings, dancing to a piano organ.'

  'He's a little coarse, isn't he?' said Mrs. Darnell. 'I don't see muchfun in that.'

  'Well, you know, amongst men it's different. You might like Wallis; he'sa tremendous photographer. He often shows us photos he's taken of hischildren-
-one, a little girl of three, in her bath. I asked him how hethought she'd like it when she was twenty-three.'

  Mrs. Darnell looked down and made no answer.

  There was silence for some minutes while Darnell smoked his pipe. 'Isay, Mary,' he said at length, 'what do you say to our taking a payingguest?'

  'A paying guest! I never thought of it. Where should we put him?'

  'Why, I was thinking of the spare room. The plan would obviate yourobjection, wouldn't it? Lots of men in the City take them, and makemoney of it too. I dare say it would add ten pounds a year to ourincome. Redgrave, the cashier, finds it worth his while to take a largehouse on purpose. They have a regular lawn for tennis and abilliard-room.'

  Mary considered gravely, always with the dream in her eyes. 'I don'tthink we could manage it, Edward,' she said; 'it would be inconvenientin many ways.' She hesitated for a moment. 'And I don't think I shouldcare to have a young man in the house. It is so very small, and ouraccommodation, as you know, is so limited.'

  She blushed slightly, and Edward, a little disappointed as he was,looked at her with a singular longing, as if he were a scholarconfronted with a doubtful hieroglyph, either wholly wonderful oraltogether commonplace. Next door children were playing in the garden,playing shrilly, laughing, crying, quarrelling, racing to and fro.Suddenly a clear, pleasant voice sounded from an upper window.

  'Enid! Charles! Come up to my room at once!'

  There was an instant sudden hush. The children's voices died away.

  'Mrs. Parker is supposed to keep her children in great order,' saidMary. 'Alice was telling me about it the other day. She had been talkingto Mrs. Parker's servant. I listened to her without any remark, as Idon't think it right to encourage servants' gossip; they alwaysexaggerate everything. And I dare say children often require to becorrected.'

  The children were struck silent as if some ghastly terror had seizedthem.

  Darnell fancied that he heard a queer sort of cry from the house, butcould not be quite sure. He turned to the other side, where an elderly,ordinary man with a grey moustache was strolling up and down on thefurther side of his garden. He caught Darnell's eye, and Mrs. Darnelllooking towards him at the same moment, he very politely raised histweed cap. Darnell was surprised to see his wife blushing fiercely.

  'Sayce and I often go into the City by the same 'bus,' he said, 'and asit happens we've sat next to each other two or three times lately. Ibelieve he's a traveller for a leather firm in Bermondsey. He struck meas a pleasant man. Haven't they got rather a good-looking servant?'

  'Alice has spoken to me about her--and the Sayces,' said Mrs. Darnell.'I understand that they are not very well thought of in theneighbourhood. But I must go in and see whether the tea is ready. Alicewill be wanting to go out directly.'

  Darnell looked after his wife as she walked quickly away. He only dimlyunderstood, but he could see the charm of her figure, the delight of thebrown curls clustering about her neck, and he again felt that sense ofthe scholar confronted by the hieroglyphic. He could not have expressedhis emotion, but he wondered whether he would ever find the key, andsomething told him that before she could speak to him his own lips mustbe unclosed. She had gone into the house by the back kitchen door,leaving it open, and he heard her speaking to the girl about the waterbeing 'really boiling.' He was amazed, almost indignant with himself;but the sound of the words came to his ears as strange, heart-piercingmusic, tones from another, wonderful sphere. And yet he was her husband,and they had been married nearly a year; and yet, whenever she spoke, hehad to listen to the sense of what she said, constraining himself, lesthe should believe she was a magic creature, knowing the secrets ofimmeasurable delight.

  He looked out through the leaves of the mulberry tree. Mr. Sayce haddisappeared from his view, but he saw the light-blue fume of the cigarthat he was smoking floating slowly across the shadowed air. He waswondering at his wife's manner when Sayce's name was mentioned, puzzlinghis head as to what could be amiss in the household of a mostrespectable personage, when his wife appeared at the dining-room windowand called him in to tea. She smiled as he looked up, and he rosehastily and walked in, wondering whether he were not a little 'queer,'so strange were the dim emotions and the dimmer impulses that rosewithin him.

  Alice was all shining purple and strong scent, as she brought in theteapot and the jug of hot water. It seemed that a visit to the kitchenhad inspired Mrs. Darnell in her turn with a novel plan for disposing ofthe famous ten pounds. The range had always been a trouble to her, andwhen sometimes she went into the kitchen, and found, as she said, thefire 'roaring halfway up the chimney,' it was in vain that she reprovedthe maid on the ground of extravagance and waste of coal. Alice wasready to admit the absurdity of making up such an enormous fire merelyto bake (they called it 'roast') a bit of beef or mutton, and to boilthe potatoes and the cabbage; but she was able to show Mrs. Darnell thatthe fault lay in the defective contrivance of the range, in an ovenwhich 'would not get hot.' Even with a chop or a steak it was almost asbad; the heat seemed to escape up the chimney or into the room, and Maryhad spoken several times to her husband on the shocking waste of coal,and the cheapest coal procurable was never less than eighteen shillingsthe ton. Mr. Darnell had written to the landlord, a builder, who hadreplied in an illiterate but offensive communication, maintaining theexcellence of the stove and charging all the faults to the account of'your good lady,' which really implied that the Darnells kept noservant, and that Mrs. Darnell did everything. The range, then,remained, a standing annoyance and expense. Every morning, Alice said,she had the greatest difficulty in getting the fire to light at all, andonce lighted it 'seemed as if it fled right up the chimney.' Only a fewnights before Mrs. Darnell had spoken seriously to her husband about it;she had got Alice to weigh the coals expended in cooking a cottage pie,the dish of the evening, and deducting what remained in the scuttleafter the pie was done, it appeared that the wretched thing had consumednearly twice the proper quantity of fuel.

  'You remember what I said the other night about the range?' said Mrs.Darnell, as she poured out the tea and watered the leaves. She thoughtthe introduction a good one, for though her husband was a most amiableman, she guessed that he had been just a little hurt by her decisionagainst his furnishing scheme.

  'The range?' said Darnell. He paused as he helped himself to themarmalade and considered for a moment. 'No, I don't recollect. Whatnight was it?'

  'Tuesday. Don't you remember? You had "overtime," and didn't get hometill quite late.'

  She paused for a moment, blushing slightly; and then began torecapitulate the misdeeds of the range, and the outrageous outlay ofcoal in the preparation of the cottage pie.

  'Oh, I recollect now. That was the night I thought I heard thenightingale (people say there are nightingales in Bedford Park), and thesky was such a wonderful deep blue.'

  He remembered how he had walked from Uxbridge Road Station, where thegreen 'bus stopped, and in spite of the fuming kilns under Acton, adelicate odour of the woods and summer fields was mysteriously in theair, and he had fancied that he smelt the red wild roses, drooping fromthe hedge. As he came to his gate he saw his wife standing in thedoorway, with a light in her hand, and he threw his arms violently abouther as she welcomed him, and whispered something in her ear, kissing herscented hair. He had felt quite abashed a moment afterwards, and he wasafraid that he had frightened her by his nonsense; she seemed tremblingand confused. And then she had told him how they had weighed the coal.

  'Yes, I remember now,' he said. 'It is a great nuisance, isn't it? Ihate to throw away money like that.'

  'Well, what do you think? Suppose we bought a really good range withaunt's money? It would save us a lot, and I expect the things wouldtaste much nicer.'

  Darnell passed the marmalade, and confessed that the idea was brilliant.

  'It's much better than mine, Mary,' he said quite frankly. 'I am so gladyou thought of it. But we must talk it over; it doesn't do to buy in ahurry. There are so man
y makes.'

  Each had seen ranges which looked miraculous inventions; he in theneighbourhood of the City; she in Oxford Street and Regent Street, onvisits to the dentist. They discussed the matter at tea, and afterwardsthey discussed it walking round and round the garden, in the sweet coolof the evening.

  'They say the "Newcastle" will burn anything, coke even,' said Mary.

  'But the "Glow" got the gold medal at the Paris Exhibition,' saidEdward.

  'But what about the "Eutopia" Kitchener? Have you seen it at work inOxford Street?' said Mary. 'They say their plan of ventilating the ovenis quite unique.'

  'I was in Fleet Street the other day,' answered Edward, 'and I waslooking at the "Bliss" Patent Stoves. They burn less fuel than any inthe market--so the makers declare.'

  He put his arm gently round her waist. She did not repel him; shewhispered quite softly--

  'I think Mrs. Parker is at her window,' and he drew his arm back slowly.

  'But we will talk it over,' he said. 'There is no hurry. I might call atsome of the places near the City, and you might do the same thing inOxford Street and Regent Street and Piccadilly, and we could comparenotes.'

  Mary was quite pleased with her husband's good temper. It was so nice ofhim not to find fault with her plan; 'He's so good to me,' she thought,and that was what she often said to her brother, who did not care muchfor Darnell. They sat down on the seat under the mulberry, closetogether, and she let Darnell take her hand, and as she felt his shy,hesitating fingers touch her in the shadow, she pressed them ever sosoftly, and as he fondled her hand, his breath was on her neck, and sheheard his passionate, hesitating voice whisper, 'My dear, my dear,' ashis lips touched her cheek. She trembled a little, and waited. Darnellkissed her gently on the cheek and drew away his hand, and when he spokehe was almost breathless.

  'We had better go in now,' he said. 'There is a heavy dew, and you mightcatch cold.'

  A warm, scented gale came to them from beyond the walls. He longed toask her to stay out with him all night beneath the tree, that they mightwhisper to one another, that the scent of her hair might inebriate him,that he might feel her dress still brushing against his ankles. But hecould not find the words, and it was absurd, and she was so gentle thatshe would do whatever he asked, however foolish it might be, justbecause he asked her. He was not worthy to kiss her lips; he bent downand kissed her silk bodice, and again he felt that she trembled, and hewas ashamed, fearing that he had frightened her.

  They went slowly into the house, side by side, and Darnell lit the gasin the drawing-room, where they always sat on Sunday evenings. Mrs.Darnell felt a little tired and lay down on the sofa, and Darnell tookthe arm-chair opposite. For a while they were silent, and then Darnellsaid suddenly--

  'What's wrong with the Sayces? You seemed to think there was something alittle strange about them. Their maid looks quite quiet.'

  'Oh, I don't know that one ought to pay any attention to servants'gossip. They're not always very truthful.'

  'It was Alice told you, wasn't it?'

  'Yes. She was speaking to me the other day, when I was in the kitchen inthe afternoon.'

  'But what was it?'

  'Oh, I'd rather not tell you, Edward. It's not pleasant. I scolded Alicefor repeating it to me.'

  Darnell got up and took a small, frail chair near the sofa.

  'Tell me,' he said again, with an odd perversity. He did not really careto hear about the household next door, but he remembered how his wife'scheeks flushed in the afternoon, and now he was looking at her eyes.

  'Oh, I really couldn't tell you, dear. I should feel ashamed.'

  'But you're my wife.'

  'Yes, but it doesn't make any difference. A woman doesn't like to talkabout such things.'

  Darnell bent his head down. His heart was beating; he put his ear to hermouth and said, 'Whisper.'

  Mary drew his head down still lower with her gentle hand, and her cheeksburned as she whispered--

  'Alice says that--upstairs--they have only--one room furnished. The maidtold her--herself.'

  With an unconscious gesture she pressed his head to her breast, and hein turn was bending her red lips to his own, when a violent jangleclamoured through the silent house. They sat up, and Mrs. Darnell wenthurriedly to the door.

  'That's Alice,' she said. 'She is always in in time. It has only juststruck ten.'

  Darnell shivered with annoyance. His lips, he knew, had almost beenopened. Mary's pretty handkerchief, delicately scented from a littleflagon that a school friend had given her, lay on the floor, and hepicked it up, and kissed it, and hid it away.

  The question of the range occupied them all through June and far intoJuly. Mrs. Darnell took every opportunity of going to the West End andinvestigating the capacity of the latest makes, gravely viewing the newimprovements and hearing what the shopmen had to say; while Darnell, ashe said, 'kept his eyes open' about the City. They accumulated quite aliterature of the subject, bringing away illustrated pamphlets, and inthe evenings it was an amusement to look at the pictures. They viewedwith reverence and interest the drawings of great ranges for hotels andpublic institutions, mighty contrivances furnished with a series ofovens each for a different use, with wonderful apparatus for grilling,with batteries of accessories which seemed to invest the cook almostwith the dignity of a chief engineer. But when, in one of the lists,they encountered the images of little toy 'cottage' ranges, for fourpounds, and even for three pounds ten, they grew scornful, on thestrength of the eight or ten pound article which they meant topurchase--when the merits of the divers patents had been thoroughlythrashed out.

  The 'Raven' was for a long time Mary's favourite. It promised the utmosteconomy with the highest efficiency, and many times they were on thepoint of giving the order. But the 'Glow' seemed equally seductive, andit was only L8. 5s. as compared with L9. 7s. 6d., and though the 'Raven'was supplied to the Royal Kitchen, the 'Glow' could show more ferventtestimonials from continental potentates.

  It seemed a debate without end, and it endured day after day till thatmorning, when Darnell woke from the dream of the ancient wood, of thefountains rising into grey vapour beneath the heat of the sun. As hedressed, an idea struck him, and he brought it as a shock to the hurriedbreakfast, disturbed by the thought of the City 'bus which passed thecorner of the street at 9.15.

  'I've got an improvement on your plan, Mary,' he said, with triumph.'Look at that,' and he flung a little book on the table.

  He laughed. 'It beats your notion all to fits. After all, the greatexpense is the coal. It's not the stove--at least that's not the realmischief. It's the coal is so dear. And here you are. Look at those oilstoves. They don't burn any coal, but the cheapest fuel in theworld--oil; and for two pounds ten you can get a range that will doeverything you want.'

  'Give me the book,' said Mary, 'and we will talk it over in the evening,when you come home. Must you be going?'

  Darnell cast an anxious glance at the clock.

  'Good-bye,' and they kissed each other seriously and dutifully, andMary's eyes made Darnell think of those lonely water-pools, hidden inthe shadow of the ancient woods.

  So, day after day, he lived in the grey phantasmal world, akin to death,that has, somehow, with most of us, made good its claim to be calledlife. To Darnell the true life would have seemed madness, and when, nowand again, the shadows and vague images reflected from its splendourfell across his path, he was afraid, and took refuge in what he wouldhave called the sane 'reality' of common and usual incidents andinterests. His absurdity was, perhaps, the more evident, inasmuch as'reality' for him was a matter of kitchen ranges, of saving a fewshillings; but in truth the folly would have been greater if it had beenconcerned with racing stables, steam yachts, and the spending of manythousand pounds.

  But so went forth Darnell, day by day, strangely mistaking death forlife, madness for sanity, and purposeless and wandering phantoms fortrue beings. He was sincerely of opinion that he was a City clerk,living in Shepherd's Bush--h
aving forgotten the mysteries and thefar-shining glories of the kingdom which was his by legitimateinheritance.

  II

  All day long a fierce and heavy heat had brooded over the City, and asDarnell neared home he saw the mist lying on all the damp lowlands,wreathed in coils about Bedford Park to the south, and mounting to thewest, so that the tower of Acton Church loomed out of a grey lake. Thegrass in the squares and on the lawns which he overlooked as the 'buslumbered wearily along was burnt to the colour of dust. Shepherd's BushGreen was a wretched desert, trampled brown, bordered with monotonouspoplars, whose leaves hung motionless in air that was still, hot smoke.The foot passengers struggled wearily along the pavements, and the reekof the summer's end mingled with the breath of the brickfields madeDarnell gasp, as if he were inhaling the poison of some foul sick-room.

  He made but a slight inroad into the cold mutton that adorned thetea-table, and confessed that he felt rather 'done up' by the weatherand the day's work.

  'I have had a trying day, too,' said Mary. 'Alice has been very queerand troublesome all day, and I have had to speak to her quite seriously.You know I think her Sunday evenings out have a rather unsettlinginfluence on the girl. But what is one to do?'

  'Has she got a young man?'

  'Of course: a grocer's assistant from the Goldhawk Road--Wilkin's, youknow. I tried them when we settled here, but they were not verysatisfactory.'

  'What do they do with themselves all the evening? They have from five toten, haven't they?'

  'Yes; five, or sometimes half-past, when the water won't boil. Well, Ibelieve they go for walks usually. Once or twice he has taken her to theCity Temple, and the Sunday before last they walked up and down OxfordStreet, and then sat in the Park. But it seems that last Sunday theywent to tea with his mother at Putney. I should like to tell the oldwoman what I really think of her.'

  'Why? What happened? Was she nasty to the girl?'

  'No; that's just it. Before this, she has been very unpleasant onseveral occasions. When the young man first took Alice to see her--thatwas in March--the girl came away crying; she told me so herself. Indeed,she said she never wanted to see old Mrs. Murry again; and I told Alicethat, if she had not exaggerated things, I could hardly blame her forfeeling like that.'

  'Why? What did she cry for?'

  'Well, it seems that the old lady--she lives in quite a small cottage insome Putney back street--was so stately that she would hardly speak. Shehad borrowed a little girl from some neighbour's family, and had managedto dress her up to imitate a servant, and Alice said nothing could besillier than to see that mite opening the door, with her black dress andher white cap and apron, and she hardly able to turn the handle, asAlice said. George (that's the young man's name) had told Alice that itwas a little bit of a house; but he said the kitchen was comfortable,though very plain and old-fashioned. But, instead of going straight tothe back, and sitting by a big fire on the old settle that they hadbrought up from the country, that child asked for their names (did youever hear such nonsense?) and showed them into a little poky parlour,where old Mrs. Murry was sitting "like a duchess," by a fireplace fullof coloured paper, and the room as cold as ice. And she was so grandthat she would hardly speak to Alice.'

  'That must have been very unpleasant.'

  'Oh, the poor girl had a dreadful time. She began with: "Very pleased tomake your acquaintance, Miss Dill. I know so very few persons inservice." Alice imitates her mincing way of talking, but I can't do it.And then she went on to talk about her family, how they had farmed theirown land for five hundred years--such stuff! George had told Alice allabout it: they had had an old cottage with a good strip of garden andtwo fields somewhere in Essex, and that old woman talked almost as ifthey had been country gentry, and boasted about the Rector, Dr.Somebody, coming to see them so often, and of Squire Somebody Elsealways looking them up, as if they didn't visit them out of kindness.Alice told me it was as much as she could do to keep from laughing inMrs. Murry's face, her young man having told her all about the place,and how small it was, and how the Squire had been so kind about buyingit when old Murry died and George was a little boy, and his mother notable to keep things going. However, that silly old woman "laid it onthick," as you say, and the young man got more and more uncomfortable,especially when she went on to speak about marrying in one's own class,and how unhappy she had known young men to be who had married beneaththem, giving some very pointed looks at Alice as she talked. And thensuch an amusing thing happened: Alice had noticed George looking abouthim in a puzzled sort of way, as if he couldn't make out something orother, and at last he burst out and asked his mother if she had beenbuying up the neighbours' ornaments, as he remembered the two greencut-glass vases on the mantelpiece at Mrs. Ellis's, and the wax flowersat Miss Turvey's. He was going on, but his mother scowled at him, andupset some books, which he had to pick up; but Alice quite understoodshe had been borrowing things from her neighbours, just as she hadborrowed the little girl, so as to look grander. And then they hadtea--water bewitched, Alice calls it--and very thin bread and butter,and rubbishy foreign pastry from the Swiss shop in the High Street--allsour froth and rancid fat, Alice declares. And then Mrs. Murry beganboasting again about her family, and snubbing Alice and talking at her,till the girl came away quite furious, and very unhappy, too. I don'twonder at it, do you?'

  'It doesn't sound very enjoyable, certainly,' said Darnell, lookingdreamily at his wife. He had not been attending very carefully to thesubject-matter of her story, but he loved to hear a voice that wasincantation in his ears, tones that summoned before him the vision of amagic world.

  'And has the young man's mother always been like this?' he said after along pause, desiring that the music should continue.

  'Always, till quite lately, till last Sunday in fact. Of course Alicespoke to George Murry at once, and said, like a sensible girl, that shedidn't think it ever answered for a married couple to live with theman's mother, "especially," she went on, "as I can see your motherhasn't taken much of a fancy to me." He told her, in the usual style, itwas only his mother's way, that she didn't really mean anything, and soon; but Alice kept away for a long time, and rather hinted, I think,that it might come to having to choose between her and his mother. Andso affairs went on all through the spring and summer, and then, justbefore the August Bank Holiday, George spoke to Alice again about it,and told her how sorry the thought of any unpleasantness made him, andhow he wanted his mother and her to get on with each other, and how shewas only a bit old-fashioned and queer in her ways, and had spoken verynicely to him about her when there was nobody by. So the long and theshort of it was that Alice said she might come with them on the Monday,when they had settled to go to Hampton Court--the girl was alwaystalking about Hampton Court, and wanting to see it. You remember what abeautiful day it was, don't you?'

  'Let me see,' said Darnell dreamily. 'Oh yes, of course--I sat out underthe mulberry tree all day, and we had our meals there: it was quite apicnic. The caterpillars were a nuisance, but I enjoyed the day verymuch.' His ears were charmed, ravished with the grave, supernal melody,as of antique song, rather of the first made world in which all speechwas descant, and all words were sacraments of might, speaking not to themind but to the soul. He lay back in his chair, and said--

  'Well, what happened to them?'

  'My dear, would you believe it; but that wretched old woman behavedworse than ever. They met as had been arranged, at Kew Bridge, and gotplaces, with a good deal of difficulty, in one of those char-a-bancthings, and Alice thought she was going to enjoy herself tremendously.Nothing of the kind. They had hardly said "Good morning," when old Mrs.Murry began to talk about Kew Gardens, and how beautiful it must bethere, and how much more convenient it was than Hampton, and no expenseat all; just the trouble of walking over the bridge. Then she went onto say, as they were waiting for the char-a-banc, that she had alwaysheard there was nothing to see at Hampton, except a lot of nasty, grimyold pictures, and some of them not fit for any decent wo
man, let alonegirl, to look at, and she wondered why the Queen allowed such things tobe shown, putting all kinds of notions into girls' heads that were lightenough already; and as she said that she looked at Alice sonastily--horrid old thing--that, as she told me afterwards, Alice wouldhave slapped her face if she hadn't been an elderly woman, and George'smother. Then she talked about Kew again, saying how wonderful thehot-houses were, with palms and all sorts of wonderful things, and alily as big as a parlour table, and the view over the river. George wasvery good, Alice told me. He was quite taken aback at first, as the oldwoman had promised faithfully to be as nice as ever she could be; butthen he said, gently but firmly, "Well, mother, we must go to Kew someother day, as Alice has set her heart on Hampton for to-day, and I wantto see it myself!" All Mrs. Murry did was to snort, and look at the girllike vinegar, and just then the char-a-banc came up, and they had toscramble for their seats. Mrs. Murry grumbled to herself in anindistinct sort of voice all the way to Hampton Court. Alice couldn'tvery well make out what she said, but now and then she seemed to hearbits of sentences, like: _Pity to grow old, if sons grow bold_; and_Honour thy father and mother_; and _Lie on the shelf, said thehousewife to the old shoe, and the wicked son to his mother_; and _Igave you milk and you give me the go-by_. Alice thought they must beproverbs (except the Commandment, of course), as George was alwayssaying how old-fashioned his mother is; but she says there were so manyof them, and all pointed at her and George, that she thinks now Mrs.Murry must have made them up as they drove along. She says it would bejust like her to do it, being old-fashioned, and ill-natured too, andfuller of talk than a butcher on Saturday night. Well, they got toHampton at last, and Alice thought the place would please her, perhaps,and they might have some enjoyment. But she did nothing but grumble, andout loud too, so that people looked at them, and a woman said, so thatthey could hear, "Ah well, they'll be old themselves some day," whichmade Alice very angry, for, as she said, they weren't doing anything.When they showed her the chestnut avenue in Bushey Park, she said it wasso long and straight that it made her quite dull to look at it, and shethought the deer (you know how pretty they are, really) looked thin andmiserable, as if they would be all the better for a good feed ofhog-wash, with plenty of meal in it. She said she knew they weren'thappy by the look in their eyes, which seemed to tell her that theirkeepers beat them. It was the same with everything; she said sheremembered market-gardens in Hammersmith and Gunnersbury that had abetter show of flowers, and when they took her to the place where thewater is, under the trees, she burst out with its being rather hard totramp her off her legs to show her a common canal, with not so much as abarge on it to liven it up a bit. She went on like that the whole day,and Alice told me she was only too thankful to get home and get rid ofher. Wasn't it wretched for the girl?'

  'It must have been, indeed. But what happened last Sunday?'

  'That's the most extraordinary thing of all. I noticed that Alice wasrather queer in her manner this morning; she was a longer time washingup the breakfast things, and she answered me quite sharply when I calledto her to ask when she would be ready to help me with the wash; and whenI went into the kitchen to see about something, I noticed that she wasgoing about her work in a sulky sort of way. So I asked her what was thematter, and then it all came out. I could scarcely believe my own earswhen she mumbled out something about Mrs. Murry thinking she could dovery much better for herself; but I asked her one question after anothertill I had it all out of her. It just shows one how foolish andempty-headed these girls are. I told her she was no better than aweather-cock. If you will believe me, that horrid old woman was quiteanother person when Alice went to see her the other night. Why, I can'tthink, but so she was. She told the girl how pretty she was; what a neatfigure she had; how well she walked; and how she'd known many a girl nothalf so clever or well-looking earning her twenty-five or thirty poundsa year, and with good families. She seems to have gone into all sorts ofdetails, and made elaborate calculations as to what she would be able tosave, "with decent folks, who don't screw, and pinch, and lock upeverything in the house," and then she went off into a lot ofhypocritical nonsense about how fond she was of Alice, and how shecould go to her grave in peace, knowing how happy her dear George wouldbe with such a good wife, and about her savings from good wages helpingto set up a little home, ending up with "And, if you take an old woman'sadvice, deary, it won't be long before you hear the marriage bells."'

  'I see,' said Darnell; 'and the upshot of it all is, I suppose, that thegirl is thoroughly dissatisfied?'

  'Yes, she is so young and silly. I talked to her, and reminded her ofhow nasty old Mrs. Murry had been, and told her that she might changeher place and change for the worse. I think I have persuaded her tothink it over quietly, at all events. Do you know what it is, Edward? Ihave an idea. I believe that wicked old woman is trying to get Alice toleave us, that she may tell her son how changeable she is; and I supposeshe would make up some of her stupid old proverbs: "A changeable wife, atroublesome life," or some nonsense of the kind. Horrid old thing!'

  'Well, well,' said Darnell, 'I hope she won't go, for your sake. Itwould be such a bother for you, hunting for a fresh servant.'

  He refilled his pipe and smoked placidly, refreshed somewhat after theemptiness and the burden of the day. The French window was wide open,and now at last there came a breath of quickening air, distilled by thenight from such trees as still wore green in that arid valley. The songto which Darnell had listened in rapture, and now the breeze, which evenin that dry, grim suburb still bore the word of the woodland, hadsummoned the dream to his eyes, and he meditated over matters that hislips could not express.

  'She must, indeed, be a villainous old woman,' he said at length.

  'Old Mrs. Murry? Of course she is; the mischievous old thing! Trying totake the girl from a comfortable place where she is happy.'

  'Yes; and not to like Hampton Court! That shows how bad she must be,more than anything.'

  'It is beautiful, isn't it?'

  'I shall never forget the first time I saw it. It was soon after I wentinto the City; the first year. I had my holidays in July, and I wasgetting such a small salary that I couldn't think of going away to theseaside, or anything like that. I remember one of the other men wantedme to come with him on a walking tour in Kent. I should have liked that,but the money wouldn't run to it. And do you know what I did? I lived inGreat College Street then, and the first day I was off, I stayed in bedtill past dinner-time, and lounged about in an arm-chair with a pipe allthe afternoon. I had got a new kind of tobacco--one and four for thetwo-ounce packet--much dearer than I could afford to smoke, and I wasenjoying it immensely. It was awfully hot, and when I shut the windowand drew down the red blind it grew hotter; at five o'clock the room waslike an oven. But I was so pleased at not having to go into the City,that I didn't mind anything, and now and again I read bits from a queerold book that had belonged to my poor dad. I couldn't make out what alot of it meant, but it fitted in somehow, and I read and smoked tilltea-time. Then I went out for a walk, thinking I should be better for alittle fresh air before I went to bed; and I went wandering away, notmuch noticing where I was going, turning here and there as the fancytook me. I must have gone miles and miles, and a good many of them roundand round, as they say they do in Australia if they lose their way inthe bush; and I am sure I couldn't have gone exactly the same way allover again for any money. Anyhow, I was still in the streets when thetwilight came on, and the lamp-lighters were trotting round from onelamp to another. It was a wonderful night: I wish you had been there, mydear.'

  'I was quite a little girl then.'

  'Yes, I suppose you were. Well, it was a wonderful night. I remember, Iwas walking in a little street of little grey houses all alike, withstucco copings and stucco door-posts; there were brass plates on a lotof the doors, and one had "Maker of Shell Boxes" on it, and I was quitepleased, as I had often wondered where those boxes and things that youbuy at the seaside came from. A few children were
playing about in theroad with some rubbish or other, and men were singing in a smallpublic-house at the corner, and I happened to look up, and I noticedwhat a wonderful colour the sky had turned. I have seen it since, but Idon't think it has ever been quite what it was that night, a dark blue,glowing like a violet, just as they say the sky looks in foreigncountries. I don't know why, but the sky or something made me feel quitequeer; everything seemed changed in a way I couldn't understand. Iremember, I told an old gentleman I knew then--a friend of my poorfather's, he's been dead for five years, if not more--about how I felt,and he looked at me and said something about fairyland; I don't knowwhat he meant, and I dare say I didn't explain myself properly. But, doyou know, for a moment or two I felt as if that little back street wasbeautiful, and the noise of the children and the men in the public-houseseemed to fit in with the sky and become part of it. You know that oldsaying about "treading on air" when one is glad! Well, I really feltlike that as I walked, not exactly like air, you know, but as if thepavement was velvet or some very soft carpet. And then--I suppose it wasall my fancy--the air seemed to smell sweet, like the incense inCatholic churches, and my breath came queer and catchy, as it does whenone gets very excited about anything. I felt altogether stranger thanI've ever felt before or since.'

  Darnell stopped suddenly and looked up at his wife. She was watching himwith parted lips, with eager, wondering eyes.

  'I hope I'm not tiring you, dear, with all this story about nothing. Youhave had a worrying day with that stupid girl; hadn't you better go tobed?'

  'Oh, no, please, Edward. I'm not a bit tired now. I love to hear youtalk like that. Please go on.'

  'Well, after I had walked a bit further, that queer sort of feelingseemed to fade away. I said a bit further, and I really thought I hadbeen walking about five minutes, but I had looked at my watch justbefore I got into that little street, and when I looked at it again itwas eleven o'clock. I must have done about eight miles. I could scarcelybelieve my own eyes, and I thought my watch must have gone mad; but Ifound out afterwards it was perfectly right. I couldn't make it out, andI can't now; I assure you the time passed as if I walked up one side ofEdna Road and down the other. But there I was, right in the opencountry, with a cool wind blowing on me from a wood, and the air full ofsoft rustling sounds, and notes of birds from the bushes, and thesinging noise of a little brook that ran under the road. I was standingon the bridge when I took out my watch and struck a wax light to see thetime; and it came upon me suddenly what a strange evening it had been.It was all so different, you see, to what I had been doing all my life,particularly for the year before, and it almost seemed as if I couldn'tbe the man who had been going into the City every day in the morning andcoming back from it every evening after writing a lot of uninterestingletters. It was like being pitched all of a sudden from one world intoanother. Well, I found my way back somehow or other, and as I went alongI made up my mind how I'd spend my holiday. I said to myself, "I'll havea walking tour as well as Ferrars, only mine is to be a tour of Londonand its environs," and I had got it all settled when I let myself intothe house about four o'clock in the morning, and the sun was shining,and the street almost as still as the wood at midnight!'

  'I think that was a capital idea of yours. Did you have your tour? Didyou buy a map of London?'

  'I had the tour all right. I didn't buy a map; that would have spoiltit, somehow; to see everything plotted out, and named, and measured.What I wanted was to feel that I was going where nobody had been before.That's nonsense, isn't it? as if there could be any such places inLondon, or England either, for the matter of that.'

  'I know what you mean; you wanted to feel as if you were going on a sortof voyage of discovery. Isn't that it?'

  'Exactly, that's what I was trying to tell you. Besides, I didn't wantto buy a map. I made a map.'

  'How do you mean? Did you make a map out of your head?'

  'I'll tell you about it afterwards. But do you really want to hear aboutmy grand tour?'

  'Of course I do; it must have been delightful. I call it a most originalidea.'

  'Well, I was quite full of it, and what you said just now about a voyageof discovery reminds me of how I felt then. When I was a boy I wasawfully fond of reading of great travellers--I suppose all boys are--andof sailors who were driven out of their course and found themselves inlatitudes where no ship had ever sailed before, and of people whodiscovered wonderful cities in strange countries; and all the second dayof my holidays I was feeling just as I used to when I read these books.I didn't get up till pretty late. I was tired to death after all thosemiles I had walked; but when I had finished my breakfast and filled mypipe, I had a grand time of it. It was such nonsense, you know; as ifthere could be anything strange or wonderful in London.'

  'Why shouldn't there be?'

  'Well, I don't know; but I have thought afterwards what a silly lad Imust have been. Anyhow, I had a great day of it, planning what I woulddo, half making-believe--just like a kid--that I didn't know where Imight find myself, or what might happen to me. And I was enormouslypleased to think it was all my secret, that nobody else knew anythingabout it, and that, whatever I might see, I would keep to myself. I hadalways felt like that about the books. Of course, I loved reading them,but it seemed to me that, if I had been a discoverer, I would have keptmy discoveries a secret. If I had been Columbus, and, if it couldpossibly have been managed, I would have found America all by myself,and never have said a word about it to anybody. Fancy! how beautiful itwould be to be walking about in one's own town, and talking to people,and all the while to have the thought that one knew of a great worldbeyond the seas, that nobody else dreamed of. I should have loved that!

  'And that is exactly what I felt about the tour I was going to make. Imade up my mind that nobody should know; and so, from that day to this,nobody has heard a word of it.'

  'But you are going to tell me?'

  'You are different. But I don't think even you will hear everything; notbecause I won't, but because I can't tell many of the things I saw.'

  'Things you saw? Then you really did see wonderful, strange things inLondon?'

  'Well, I did and I didn't. Everything, or pretty nearly everything, thatI saw is standing still, and hundreds of thousands of people have lookedat the same sights--there were many places that the fellows in theoffice knew quite well, I found out afterwards. And then I read a bookcalled "London and its Surroundings." But (I don't know how it is)neither the men at the office nor the writers of the book seem to haveseen the things that I did. That's why I stopped reading the book; itseemed to take the life, the real heart, out of everything, making it asdry and stupid as the stuffed birds in a museum.

  'I thought about what I was going to do all that day, and went to bedearly, so as to be fresh. I knew wonderfully little about London,really; though, except for an odd week now and then, I had spent all mylife in town. Of course I knew the main streets--the Strand, RegentStreet, Oxford Street, and so on--and I knew the way to the school Iused to go to when I was a boy, and the way into the City. But I hadjust kept to a few tracks, as they say the sheep do on the mountains;and that made it all the easier for me to imagine that I was going todiscover a new world.'

  Darnell paused in the stream of his talk. He looked keenly at his wifeto see if he were wearying her, but her eyes gazed at him with unabatedinterest--one would have almost said that they were the eyes of one wholonged and half expected to be initiated into the mysteries, who knewnot what great wonder was to be revealed. She sat with her back to theopen window, framed in the sweet dusk of the night, as if a painter hadmade a curtain of heavy velvet behind her; and the work that she hadbeen doing had fallen to the floor. She supported her head with her twohands placed on each side of her brow, and her eyes were as the wells inthe wood of which Darnell dreamed in the night-time and in the day.

  'And all the strange tales I had ever heard were in my head thatmorning,' he went on, as if continuing the thoughts that had filled hismind while
his lips were silent. 'I had gone to bed early, as I toldyou, to get a thorough rest, and I had set my alarum clock to wake meat three, so that I might set out at an hour that was quite strange forthe beginning of a journey. There was a hush in the world when I awoke,before the clock had rung to arouse me, and then a bird began to singand twitter in the elm tree that grew in the next garden, and I lookedout of the window, and everything was still, and the morning airbreathed in pure and sweet, as I had never known it before. My room wasat the back of the house, and most of the gardens had trees in them, andbeyond these trees I could see the backs of the houses of the nextstreet rising like the wall of an old city; and as I looked the sunrose, and the great light came in at my window, and the day began.

  'And I found that when I was once out of the streets just about me thatI knew, some of the queer feeling that had come to me two days beforecame back again. It was not nearly so strong, the streets no longersmelt of incense, but still there was enough of it to show me what astrange world I passed by. There were things that one may see again andagain in many London streets: a vine or a fig tree on a wall, a larksinging in a cage, a curious shrub blossoming in a garden, an odd shapeof a roof, or a balcony with an uncommon-looking trellis-work in iron.There's scarcely a street, perhaps, where you won't see one or other ofsuch things as these; but that morning they rose to my eyes in a newlight, as if I had on the magic spectacles in the fairy tale, and justlike the man in the fairy tale, I went on and on in the new light. Iremember going through wild land on a high place; there were pools ofwater shining in the sun, and great white houses in the middle of dark,rocking pines, and then on the turn of the height I came to a littlelane that went aside from the main road, a lane that led to a wood, andin the lane was a little old shadowed house, with a bell turret in theroof, and a porch of trellis-work all dim and faded into the colour ofthe sea; and in the garden there were growing tall, white lilies, justas we saw them that day we went to look at the old pictures; they wereshining like silver, and they filled the air with their sweet scent. Itwas from near that house I saw the valley and high places far away inthe sun. So, as I say, I went "on and on," by woods and fields, till Icame to a little town on the top of a hill, a town full of old housesbowing to the ground beneath their years, and the morning was so stillthat the blue smoke rose up straight into the sky from all theroof-tops, so still that I heard far down in the valley the song of aboy who was singing an old song through the streets as he went toschool, and as I passed through the awakening town, beneath the old,grave houses, the church bells began to ring.

  'It was soon after I had left this town behind me that I found theStrange Road. I saw it branching off from the dusty high road, and itlooked so green that I turned aside into it, and soon I felt as if I hadreally come into a new country. I don't know whether it was one of theroads the old Romans made that my father used to tell me about; but itwas covered with deep, soft turf, and the great tall hedges on each sidelooked as if they had not been touched for a hundred years; they hadgrown so broad and high and wild that they met overhead, and I couldonly get glimpses here and there of the country through which I waspassing, as one passes in a dream. The Strange Road led me on and on,up and down hill; sometimes the rose bushes had grown so thick that Icould scarcely make my way between them, and sometimes the roadbroadened out into a green, and in one valley a brook, spanned by an oldwooden bridge, ran across it. I was tired, and I found a soft and shadyplace beneath an ash tree, where I must have slept for many hours, forwhen I woke up it was late in the afternoon. So I went on again, and atlast the green road came out into the highway, and I looked up and sawanother town on a high place with a great church in the middle of it,and when I went up to it there was a great organ sounding from within,and the choir was singing.'

  There was a rapture in Darnell's voice as he spoke, that made his storywell-nigh swell into a song, and he drew a long breath as the wordsended, filled with the thought of that far-off summer day, when someenchantment had informed all common things, transmuting them into agreat sacrament, causing earthly works to glow with the fire and theglory of the everlasting light.

  And some splendour of that light shone on the face of Mary as she satstill against the sweet gloom of the night, her dark hair making herface more radiant. She was silent for a little while, and then shespoke--

  'Oh, my dear, why have you waited so long to tell me these wonderfulthings? I think it is beautiful. Please go on.'

  'I have always been afraid it was all nonsense,' said Darnell. 'And Idon't know how to explain what I feel. I didn't think I could say somuch as I have to-night.'

  'And did you find it the same day after day?'

  'All through the tour? Yes, I think every journey was a success. Ofcourse, I didn't go so far afield every day; I was too tired. Often Irested all day long, and went out in the evening, after the lamps werelit, and then only for a mile or two. I would roam about old, dimsquares, and hear the wind from the hills whispering in the trees; andwhen I knew I was within call of some great glittering street, I wassunk in the silence of ways where I was almost the only passenger, andthe lamps were so few and faint that they seemed to give out shadowsinstead of light. And I would walk slowly, to and fro, perhaps for anhour at a time, in such dark streets, and all the time I felt what Itold you about its being my secret--that the shadow, and the dim lights,and the cool of the evening, and trees that were like dark low cloudswere all mine, and mine alone, that I was living in a world that nobodyelse knew of, into which no one could enter.

  'I remembered one night I had gone farther. It was somewhere in the farwest, where there are orchards and gardens, and great broad lawns thatslope down to trees by the river. A great red moon rose that nightthrough mists of sunset, and thin, filmy clouds, and I wandered by aroad that passed through the orchards, till I came to a little hill,with the moon showing above it glowing like a great rose. Then I sawfigures pass between me and the moon, one by one, in a long line, eachbent double, with great packs upon their shoulders. One of them wassinging, and then in the middle of the song I heard a horrible shrilllaugh, in the thin cracked voice of a very old woman, and theydisappeared into the shadow of the trees. I suppose they were peoplegoing to work, or coming from work in the gardens; but how like it wasto a nightmare!

  'I can't tell you about Hampton; I should never finish talking. I wasthere one evening, not long before they closed the gates, and there werevery few people about. But the grey-red, silent, echoing courts, and theflowers falling into dreamland as the night came on, and the dark yewsand shadowy-looking statues, and the far, still stretches of waterbeneath the avenues; and all melting into a blue mist, all being hiddenfrom one's eyes, slowly, surely, as if veils were dropped, one by one,on a great ceremony! Oh! my dear, what could it mean? Far away, acrossthe river, I heard a soft bell ring three times, and three times, andagain three times, and I turned away, and my eyes were full of tears.

  'I didn't know what it was when I came to it; I only found outafterwards that it must have been Hampton Court. One of the men in theoffice told me he had taken an A. B. C. girl there, and they had greatfun. They got into the maze and couldn't get out again, and then theywent on the river and were nearly drowned. He told me there were somespicy pictures in the galleries; his girl shrieked with laughter, so hesaid.'

  Mary quite disregarded this interlude.

  'But you told me you had made a map. What was it like?'

  'I'll show it you some day, if you want to see it. I marked down all theplaces I had gone to, and made signs--things like queer letters--toremind me of what I had seen. Nobody but myself could understand it. Iwanted to draw pictures, but I never learnt how to draw, so when I triednothing was like what I wanted it to be. I tried to draw a picture ofthat town on the hill that I came to on the evening of the first day; Iwanted to make a steep hill with houses on top, and in the middle, buthigh above them, the great church, all spires and pinnacles, and aboveit, in the air, a cup with rays coming from it. But it wasn't a succes
s.I made a very strange sign for Hampton Court, and gave it a name that Imade up out of my head.'

  The Darnells avoided one another's eyes as they sat at breakfast thenext morning. The air had lightened in the night, for rain had fallen atdawn; and there was a bright blue sky, with vast white clouds rollingacross it from the south-west, and a fresh and joyous wind blew in atthe open window; the mists had vanished. And with the mists there seemedto have vanished also the sense of strange things that had possessedMary and her husband the night before; and as they looked out into theclear light they could scarcely believe that the one had spoken and theother had listened a few hours before to histories very far removed fromthe usual current of their thoughts and of their lives. They glancedshyly at one another, and spoke of common things, of the questionwhether Alice would be corrupted by the insidious Mrs. Murry, or whetherMrs. Darnell would be able to persuade the girl that the old woman mustbe actuated by the worst motives.

  'And I think, if I were you,' said Darnell, as he went out, 'I shouldstep over to the stores and complain of their meat. That last piece ofbeef was very far from being up to the mark--full of sinew.'

  III

  It might have been different in the evening, and Darnell had matured aplan by which he hoped to gain much. He intended to ask his wife if shewould mind having only one gas, and that a good deal lowered, on thepretext that his eyes were tired with work; he thought many things mighthappen if the room were dimly lit, and the window opened, so that theycould sit and watch the night, and listen to the rustling murmur of thetree on the lawn. But his plans were made in vain, for when he got tothe garden gate his wife, in tears, came forth to meet him.

  'Oh, Edward,' she began, 'such a dreadful thing has happened! I neverliked him much, but I didn't think he would ever do such awful things.'

  'What do you mean? Who are you talking about? What has happened? Is itAlice's young man?'

  'No, no. But come in, dear. I can see that woman opposite watching us:she's always on the look out.'

  'Now, what is it?' said Darnell, as they sat down to tea. 'Tell me,quick! you've quite frightened me.'

  'I don't know how to begin, or where to start. Aunt Marian has thoughtthat there was something queer for weeks. And then she found--oh, well,the long and short of it is that Uncle Robert has been carrying ondreadfully with some horrid girl, and aunt has found out everything!'

  'Lord! you don't say so! The old rascal! Why, he must be nearer seventythan sixty!'

  'He's just sixty-five; and the money he has given her----'

  The first shock of surprise over, Darnell turned resolutely to hismince.

  'We'll have it all out after tea,' he said; 'I am not going to have mymeals spoilt by that old fool of a Nixon. Fill up my cup, will you,dear?'

  'Excellent mince this,' he went on, calmly. 'A little lemon juice and abit of ham in it? I thought there was something extra. Alice all rightto-day? That's good. I expect she's getting over all that nonsense.'

  He went on calmly chattering in a manner that astonished Mrs. Darnell,who felt that by the fall of Uncle Robert the natural order had beeninverted, and had scarcely touched food since the intelligence hadarrived by the second post. She had started out to keep the appointmenther aunt had made early in the morning, and had spent most of the day ina first-class waiting-room at Victoria Station, where she had heard allthe story.

  'Now,' said Darnell, when the table had been cleared, 'tell us all aboutit. How long has it been going on?'

  'Aunt thinks now, from little things she remembers, that it must havebeen going on for a year at least. She says there has been a horrid kindof mystery about uncle's behaviour for a long time, and her nerves werequite shaken, as she thought he must be involved with Anarchists, orsomething dreadful of the sort.'

  'What on earth made her think that?'

  'Well, you see, once or twice when she was out walking with her husband,she has been startled by whistles, which seemed to follow themeverywhere. You know there are some nice country walks at Barnet, andone in particular, in the fields near Totteridge, that uncle and auntrather made a point of going to on fine Sunday evenings. Of course, thiswas not the first thing she noticed, but, at the time, it made a greatimpression on her mind; she could hardly get a wink of sleep for weeksand weeks.'

  'Whistling?' said Darnell. 'I don't quite understand. Why should she befrightened by whistling?'

  'I'll tell you. The first time it happened was one Sunday in last May.Aunt had a fancy they were being followed a Sunday or two before, butshe didn't see or hear anything, except a sort of crackling noise in thehedge. But this particular Sunday they had hardly got through the stileinto the fields, when she heard a peculiar kind of low whistle. She tookno notice, thinking it was no concern of hers or her husband's, but asthey went on she heard it again, and then again, and it followed themthe whole walk, and it made her so uncomfortable, because she didn'tknow where it was coming from or who was doing it, or why. Then, just asthey got out of the fields into the lane, uncle said he felt quitefaint, and he thought he would try a little brandy at the "Turpin'sHead," a small public-house there is there. And she looked at him andsaw his face was quite purple--more like apoplexy, as she says, thanfainting fits, which make people look a sort of greenish-white. But shesaid nothing, and thought perhaps uncle had a peculiar way of faintingof his own, as he always was a man to have his own way of doingeverything. So she just waited in the road, and he went ahead andslipped into the public, and aunt says she thought she saw a littlefigure rise out of the dusk and slip in after him, but she couldn't besure. And when uncle came out he looked red instead of purple, and saidhe felt much better; and so they went home quietly together, and nothingmore was said. You see, uncle had said nothing about the whistling, andaunt had been so frightened that she didn't dare speak, for fear theymight be both shot.

  'She wasn't thinking anything more about it, when two Sundays afterwardsthe very same thing happened just as it had before. This time auntplucked up a spirit, and asked uncle what it could be. And what do youthink he said? "Birds, my dear, birds." Of course aunt said to him thatno bird that ever flew with wings made a noise like that: sly, and low,with pauses in between; and then he said that many rare sorts of birdslived in North Middlesex and Hertfordshire. "Nonsense, Robert," saidaunt, "how can you talk so, considering it has followed us all the way,for a mile or more?" And then uncle told her that some birds were soattached to man that they would follow one about for miles sometimes; hesaid he had just been reading about a bird like that in a book oftravels. And do you know that when they got home he actually showed hera piece in the "Hertfordshire Naturalist" which they took in to oblige afriend of theirs, all about rare birds found in the neighbourhood, allthe most outlandish names, aunt says, that she had never heard orthought of, and uncle had the impudence to say that it must have been aPurple Sandpiper, which, the paper said, had "a low shrill note,constantly repeated." And then he took down a book of Siberian Travelsfrom the bookcase and showed her a page which told how a man wasfollowed by a bird all day long through a forest. And that's what AuntMarian says vexes her more than anything almost; to think that he shouldbe so artful and ready with those books, twisting them to his own wickedends. But, at the time, when she was out walking, she simply couldn'tmake out what he meant by talking about birds in that random, silly sortof way, so unlike him, and they went on, that horrible whistlingfollowing them, she looking straight ahead and walking fast, reallyfeeling more huffy and put out than frightened. And when they got to thenext stile, she got over and turned round, and "lo and behold," as shesays, there was no Uncle Robert to be seen! She felt herself go quitewhite with alarm, thinking of that whistle, and making sure he'd beenspirited away or snatched in some way or another, and she had justscreamed out "Robert" like a mad woman, when he came quite slowly roundthe corner, as cool as a cucumber, holding something in his hand. Hesaid there were some flowers he could never pass, and when aunt saw thathe had got a dandelion torn up by the roots, she felt as if
her headwere going round.'

  Mary's story was suddenly interrupted. For ten minutes Darnell had beenwrithing in his chair, suffering tortures in his anxiety to avoidwounding his wife's feelings, but the episode of the dandelion was toomuch for him, and he burst into a long, wild shriek of laughter,aggravated by suppression into the semblance of a Red Indian'swar-whoop. Alice, who was washing-up in the scullery, dropped some threeshillings' worth of china, and the neighbours ran out into their gardenswondering if it were murder. Mary gazed reproachfully at her husband.

  'How can you be so unfeeling, Edward?' she said, at length, whenDarnell had passed into the feebleness of exhaustion. 'If you had seenthe tears rolling down poor Aunt Marian's cheeks as she told me, I don'tthink you would have laughed. I didn't think you were so hard-hearted.'

  'My dear Mary,' said Darnell, faintly, through sobs and catching of thebreath, 'I am awfully sorry. I know it's very sad, really, and I'm notunfeeling; but it is such an odd tale, now, isn't it? The Sandpiper, youknow, and then the dandelion!'

  His face twitched and he ground his teeth together. Mary looked gravelyat him for a moment, and then she put her hands to her face, and Darnellcould see that she also shook with merriment.

  'I am as bad as you,' she said, at last. 'I never thought of it in thatway. I'm glad I didn't, or I should have laughed in Aunt Marian's face,and I wouldn't have done that for the world. Poor old thing; she criedas if her heart would break. I met her at Victoria, as she asked me, andwe had some soup at a confectioner's. I could scarcely touch it; hertears kept dropping into the plate all the time; and then we went to thewaiting-room at the station, and she cried there terribly.'

  'Well,' said Darnell, 'what happened next? I won't laugh any more.'

  'No, we mustn't; it's much too horrible for a joke. Well, of course auntwent home and wondered and wondered what could be the matter, and triedto think it out, but, as she says, she could make nothing of it. Shebegan to be afraid that uncle's brain was giving way through overwork,as he had stopped in the City (as he said) up to all hours lately, andhe had to go to Yorkshire (wicked old story-teller!), about some verytiresome business connected with his leases. But then she reflected thathowever queer he might be getting, even his queerness couldn't makewhistles in the air, though, as she said, he was always a wonderful man.So she had to give that up; and then she wondered if there were anythingthe matter with her, as she had read about people who heard noises whenthere was really nothing at all. But that wouldn't do either, becausethough it might account for the whistling, it wouldn't account for thedandelion or the Sandpiper, or for fainting fits that turned purple, orany of uncle's queerness. So aunt said she could think of nothing but toread the Bible every day from the beginning, and by the time she gotinto Chronicles she felt rather better, especially as nothing hadhappened for three or four Sundays. She noticed uncle seemedabsent-minded, and not as nice to her as he might be, but she put thatdown to too much work, as he never came home before the last train, andhad a hansom twice all the way, getting there between three and four inthe morning. Still, she felt it was no good bothering her head over whatcouldn't be made out or explained anyway, and she was just settlingdown, when one Sunday evening it began all over again, and worse thingshappened. The whistling followed them just as it did before, and pooraunt set her teeth and said nothing to uncle, as she knew he would onlytell her stories, and they were walking on, not saying a word, whensomething made her look back, and there was a horrible boy with redhair, peeping through the hedge just behind, and grinning. She said itwas a dreadful face, with something unnatural about it, as if it hadbeen a dwarf, and before she had time to have a good look, it poppedback like lightning, and aunt all but fainted away.'

  'A red-headed _boy_?' said Darnell. 'I thought----What an extraordinarystory this is. I've never heard of anything so queer. Who was the boy?'

  'You will know in good time,' said Mrs. Darnell. 'It _is_ very strange,isn't it?'

  'Strange!' Darnell ruminated for a while.

  'I know what I think, Mary,' he said at length. 'I don't believe a wordof it. I believe your aunt is going mad, or has gone mad, and that shehas delusions. The whole thing sounds to me like the invention of alunatic.'

  'You are quite wrong. Every word is true, and if you will let me go on,you will understand how it all happened.'

  'Very good, go ahead.'

  'Let me see, where was I? Oh, I know, aunt saw the boy grinning in thehedge. Yes, well, she was dreadfully frightened for a minute or two;there was something so queer about the face, but then she plucked up aspirit and said to herself, "After all, better a boy with red hair thana big man with a gun," and she made up her mind to watch Uncle Robertclosely, as she could see by his look he knew all about it; he seemed asif he were thinking hard and puzzling over something, as if he didn'tknow what to do next, and his mouth kept opening and shutting, like afish's. So she kept her face straight, and didn't say a word, and whenhe said something to her about the fine sunset, she took no notice."Don't you hear what I say, Marian?" he said, speaking quite crossly,and bellowing as if it were to somebody in the next field. So aunt saidshe was very sorry, but her cold made her so deaf, she couldn't hearmuch. She noticed uncle looked quite pleased, and relieved too, and sheknew he thought she hadn't heard the whistling. Suddenly uncle pretendedto see a beautiful spray of honeysuckle high up in the hedge, and hesaid he must get it for aunt, only she must go on ahead, as it made himnervous to be watched. She said she would, but she just stepped asidebehind a bush where there was a sort of cover in the hedge, and foundshe could see him quite well, though she scratched her face terriblywith poking it into a rose bush. And in a minute or two out came the boyfrom behind the hedge, and she saw uncle and him talking, and she knewit was the same boy, as it wasn't dark enough to hide his flaming redhead. And uncle put out his hand as if to catch him, but he just dartedinto the bushes and vanished. Aunt never said a word at the time, butthat night when they got home she charged uncle with what she'd seen andasked him what it all meant. He was quite taken aback at first, andstammered and stuttered and said a spy wasn't his notion of a good wife,but at last he made her swear secrecy, and told her that he was a veryhigh Freemason, and that the boy was an emissary of the order whobrought him messages of the greatest importance. But aunt didn't believea word of it, as an uncle of hers was a mason, and he never behaved likethat. It was then she began to be afraid that it was really Anarchists,or something of the kind, and every time the bell rang she thought thatuncle had been found out, and the police had come for him.'

  'What nonsense! As if a man with house property would be an Anarchist.'

  'Well, she could see there must be some horrible secret, and she didn'tknow what else to think. And then she began to have the things throughthe post.'

  'Things through the post! What do you mean by that?'

  'All sorts of things; bits of broken bottle-glass, packed carefully asif it were jewellery; parcels that unrolled and unrolled worse thanChinese boxes, and then had "cat" in large letters when you came to themiddle; old artificial teeth, a cake of red paint, and at lastcockroaches.'

  'Cockroaches by post! Stuff and nonsense; your aunt's mad.'

  'Edward, she showed me the box; it was made to hold cigarettes, andthere were three dead cockroaches inside. And when she found a box ofexactly the same kind, half-full of cigarettes, in uncle's great-coatpocket, then her head began to turn again.'

  Darnell groaned, and stirred uneasily in his chair, feeling that thetale of Aunt Marian's domestic troubles was putting on the semblance ofan evil dream.

  'Anything else?' he asked.

  'My dear, I haven't repeated half the things poor aunt told me thisafternoon. There was the night she thought she saw a ghost in theshrubbery. She was anxious about some chickens that were just due tohatch out, so she went out after dark with some egg and bread-crumbs, incase they might be out. And just before her she saw a figure gliding bythe rhododendrons. It looked like a short, slim man dressed as theyused to
be hundreds of years ago; she saw the sword by his side, andthe feather in his cap. She thought she should have died, she said, andthough it was gone in a minute, and she tried to make out it was all herfancy, she fainted when she got into the house. Uncle was at home thatnight, and when she came to and told him he ran out, and stayed out forhalf-an-hour or more, and then came in and said he could find nothing;and the next minute aunt heard that low whistle just outside the window,and uncle ran out again.'

  'My dear Mary, do let us come to the point. What on earth does it alllead to?'

  'Haven't you guessed? Why, of course it was that girl all the time.'

  'Girl? I thought you said it was a boy with a red head?'

  'Don't you see? She's an actress, and she dressed up. She won't leaveuncle alone. It wasn't enough that he was with her nearly every eveningin the week, but she must be after him on Sundays too. Aunt found aletter the horrid thing had written, and so it has all come out. EnidVivian she calls herself, though I don't suppose she has any right toone name or the other. And the question is, what is to be done?'

  'Let us talk of that again. I'll have a pipe, and then we'll go to bed.'

  They were almost asleep when Mary said suddenly--

  'Doesn't it seem queer, Edward? Last night you were telling me suchbeautiful things, and to-night I have been talking about thatdisgraceful old man and his goings on.'

  'I don't know,' answered Darnell, dreamily. 'On the walls of that greatchurch upon the hill I saw all kinds of strange grinning monsters,carved in stone.'

  The misdemeanours of Mr. Robert Nixon brought in their trainconsequences strange beyond imagination. It was not that they continuedto develop on the somewhat fantastic lines of these first adventureswhich Mrs. Darnell had related; indeed, when 'Aunt Marian' came over toShepherd's Bush, one Sunday afternoon, Darnell wondered how he had hadthe heart to laugh at the misfortunes of a broken-hearted woman.

  He had never seen his wife's aunt before, and he was strangely surprisedwhen Alice showed her into the garden where they were sitting on thewarm and misty Sunday in September. To him, save during these latterdays, she had always been associated with ideas of splendour andsuccess: his wife had always mentioned the Nixons with a tinge ofreverence; he had heard, many times, the epic of Mr. Nixon's strugglesand of his slow but triumphant rise. Mary had told the story as she hadreceived it from her parents, beginning with the flight to London fromsome small, dull, and unprosperous town in the flattest of the Midlands,long ago, when a young man from the country had great chances offortune. Robert Nixon's father had been a grocer in the High Street, andin after days the successful coal merchant and builder loved to tell ofthat dull provincial life, and while he glorified his own victories, hegave his hearers to understand that he came of a race which had alsoknown how to achieve. That had been long ago, he would explain: in thedays when that rare citizen who desired to go to London or to York wasforced to rise in the dead of night, and make his way, somehow or other,by ten miles of quagmirish, wandering lanes to the Great North Road,there to meet the 'Lightning' coach, a vehicle which stood to all thecountryside as the visible and tangible embodiment of tremendousspeed--'and indeed,' as Nixon would add, 'it was always up to time,which is more than can be said of the Dunham Branch Line nowadays!' Itwas in this ancient Dunham that the Nixons had waged successful tradefor perhaps a hundred years, in a shop with bulging bay windows lookingon the market-place. There was no competition, and the townsfolk, andwell-to-do farmers, the clergy and the country families, looked upon thehouse of Nixon as an institution fixed as the town hall (which stood onRoman pillars) and the parish church. But the change came: the railwaycrept nearer and nearer, the farmers and the country gentry became lesswell-to-do; the tanning, which was the local industry, suffered from agreat business which had been established in a larger town, some twentymiles away, and the profits of the Nixons grew less and less. Hence thehegira of Robert, and he would dilate on the poorness of his beginnings,how he saved, by little and little, from his sorry wage of City clerk,and how he and a fellow clerk, 'who had come into a hundred pounds,' sawan opening in the coal trade--and filled it. It was at this stage ofRobert's fortunes, still far from magnificent, that Miss Marian Reynoldshad encountered him, she being on a visit to friends in Gunnersbury.Afterwards, victory followed victory; Nixon's wharf became a landmark tobargemen; his power stretched abroad, his dusky fleets went outwards tothe sea, and inward by all the far reaches of canals. Lime, cement, andbricks were added to his merchandise, and at last he hit upon the greatstroke--that extensive taking up of land in the north of London. Nixonhimself ascribed this _coup_ to native sagacity, and the possession ofcapital; and there were also obscure rumours to the effect that some oneor other had been 'done' in the course of the transaction. However thatmight be, the Nixons grew wealthy to excess, and Mary had often told herhusband of the state in which they dwelt, of their liveried servants, ofthe glories of their drawing-room, of their broad lawn, shadowed by asplendid and ancient cedar. And so Darnell had somehow been led intoconceiving the lady of this demesne as a personage of no small pomp. Hesaw her, tall, of dignified port and presence, inclining, it might be,to some measure of obesity, such a measure as was not unbefitting in anelderly lady of position, who lived well and lived at ease. He evenimagined a slight ruddiness of complexion, which went very well withhair that was beginning to turn grey, and when he heard the door-bellring, as he sat under the mulberry on the Sunday afternoon, he bentforward to catch sight of this stately figure, clad, of course, in therichest, blackest silk, girt about with heavy chains of gold.

  He started with amazement when he saw the strange presence that followedthe servant into the garden. Mrs. Nixon was a little, thin old woman,who bent as she feebly trotted after Alice; her eyes were on the ground,and she did not lift them when the Darnells rose to greet her. Sheglanced to the right, uneasily, as she shook hands with Darnell, to theleft when Mary kissed her, and when she was placed on the garden seatwith a cushion at her back, she looked away at the back of the houses inthe next street. She was dressed in black, it was true, but even Darnellcould see that her gown was old and shabby, that the fur trimming of hercape and the fur boa which was twisted about her neck were dingy anddisconsolate, and had all the melancholy air which fur wears when it isseen in a second-hand clothes-shop in a back street. And hergloves--they were black kid, wrinkled with much wear, faded to a bluishhue at the finger-tips, which showed signs of painful mending. Her hair,plastered over her forehead, looked dull and colourless, though somegreasy matter had evidently been used with a view of producing abecoming gloss, and on it perched an antique bonnet, adorned with blackpendants that rattled paralytically one against the other.

  And there was nothing in Mrs. Nixon's face to correspond with theimaginary picture that Darnell had made of her. She was sallow,wrinkled, pinched; her nose ran to a sharp point, and her red-rimmedeyes were a queer water-grey, that seemed to shrink alike from the lightand from encounter with the eyes of others. As she sat beside his wifeon the green garden-seat, Darnell, who occupied a wicker-chair broughtout from the drawing-room, could not help feeling that this shadowy andevasive figure, muttering replies to Mary's polite questions, was almostimpossibly remote from his conceptions of the rich and powerful aunt,who could give away a hundred pounds as a mere birthday gift. She wouldsay little at first; yes, she was feeling rather tired, it had been sohot all the way, and she had been afraid to put on lighter things asone never knew at this time of year what it might be like in theevenings; there were apt to be cold mists when the sun went down, andshe didn't care to risk bronchitis.

  'I thought I should never get here,' she went on, raising her voice toan odd querulous pipe. 'I'd no notion it was such an out-of-the-wayplace, it's so many years since I was in this neighbourhood.'

  She wiped her eyes, no doubt thinking of the early days at TurnhamGreen, when she married Nixon; and when the pocket-handkerchief had doneits office she replaced it in a shabby black bag which she clutchedrather
than carried. Darnell noticed, as he watched her, that the bagseemed full, almost to bursting, and he speculated idly as to the natureof its contents: correspondence, perhaps, he thought, further proofs ofUncle Robert's treacherous and wicked dealings. He grew quiteuncomfortable, as he sat and saw her glancing all the while furtivelyaway from his wife and himself, and presently he got up and strolledaway to the other end of the garden, where he lit his pipe and walked toand fro on the gravel walk, still astounded at the gulf between the realand the imagined woman.

  Presently he heard a hissing whisper, and he saw Mrs. Nixon's headinclining to his wife's. Mary rose and came towards him.

  'Would you mind sitting in the drawing-room, Edward?' she murmured.'Aunt says she can't bring herself to discuss such a delicate matterbefore you. I dare say it's quite natural.'

  'Very well, but I don't think I'll go into the drawing-room. I feel asif a walk would do me good. You mustn't be frightened if I am a littlelate,' he said; 'if I don't get back before your aunt goes, say good-byeto her for me.'

  He strolled into the main road, where the trams were humming to and fro.He was still confused and perplexed, and he tried to account for acertain relief he felt in removing himself from the presence of Mrs.Nixon. He told himself that her grief at her husband's ruffianly conductwas worthy of all pitiful respect, but at the same time, to his shame,he had felt a certain physical aversion from her as she sat in hisgarden in her dingy black, dabbing her red-rimmed eyes with a damppocket-handkerchief. He had been to the Zoo when he was a lad, and hestill remembered how he had shrunk with horror at the sight of certainreptiles slowly crawling over one another in their slimy pond. But hewas enraged at the similarity between the two sensations, and he walkedbriskly on that level and monotonous road, looking about him at theunhandsome spectacle of suburban London keeping Sunday.

  There was something in the tinge of antiquity which still exists inActon that soothed his mind and drew it away from those unpleasantcontemplations, and when at last he had penetrated rampart after rampartof brick, and heard no more the harsh shrieks and laughter of the peoplewho were enjoying themselves, he found a way into a little shelteredfield, and sat down in peace beneath a tree, whence he could look out ona pleasant valley. The sun sank down beneath the hills, the cloudschanged into the likeness of blossoming rose-gardens; and he still satthere in the gathering darkness till a cool breeze blew upon him, andhe rose with a sigh, and turned back to the brick ramparts and theglimmering streets, and the noisy idlers sauntering to and fro in theprocession of their dismal festival. But he was murmuring to himselfsome words that seemed a magic song, and it was with uplifted heart thathe let himself into his house.

  Mrs. Nixon had gone an hour and a half before his return, Mary told him.Darnell sighed with relief, and he and his wife strolled out into thegarden and sat down side by side.

  They kept silence for a time, and at last Mary spoke, not without anervous tremor in her voice.

  'I must tell you, Edward,' she began, 'that aunt has made a proposalwhich you ought to hear. I think we should consider it.'

  'A proposal? But how about the whole affair? Is it still going on?'

  'Oh, yes! She told me all about it. Uncle is quite unrepentant. It seemshe has taken a flat somewhere in town for that woman, and furnished itin the most costly manner. He simply laughs at aunt's reproaches, andsays he means to have some fun at last. You saw how broken she was?'

  'Yes; very sad. But won't he give her any money? Wasn't she very badlydressed for a woman in her position?'

  'Aunt has no end of beautiful things, but I fancy she likes to hoardthem; she has a horror of spoiling her dresses. It isn't for want ofmoney, I assure you, as uncle settled a very large sum on her two yearsago, when he was everything that could be desired as a husband. And thatbrings me to what I want to say. Aunt would like to live with us. Shewould pay very liberally. What do you say?'

  'Would like to live with us?' exclaimed Darnell, and his pipe droppedfrom his hand on to the grass. He was stupefied by the thought of AuntMarian as a boarder, and sat staring vacantly before him, wondering whatnew monster the night would next produce.

  'I knew you wouldn't much like the idea,' his wife went on. 'But I dothink, dearest, that we ought not to refuse without very seriousconsideration. I am afraid you did not take to poor aunt very much.'

  Darnell shook his head dumbly.

  'I thought you didn't; she was so upset, poor thing, and you didn't seeher at her best. She is really so good. But listen to me, dear. Do youthink we have the right to refuse her offer? I told you she has money ofher own, and I am sure she would be dreadfully offended if we said wewouldn't have her. And what would become of me if anything happened toyou? You know we have very little saved.'

  Darnell groaned.

  'It seems to me,' he said, 'that it would spoil everything. We are sohappy, Mary dear, by ourselves. Of course I am extremely sorry for youraunt. I think she is very much to be pitied. But when it comes to havingher always here----'

  'I know, dear. Don't think I am looking forward to the prospect; youknow I don't want anybody but you. Still, we ought to think of thefuture, and besides we shall be able to live so very much better. Ishall be able to give you all sorts of nice things that I know you oughtto have after all that hard work in the City. Our income would bedoubled.'

  'Do you mean she would pay us L150 a year?'

  'Certainly. And she would pay for the spare room being furnished, andany extra she might want. She told me, specially, that if a friend ortwo came now and again to see her, she would gladly bear the cost of afire in the drawing-room, and give something towards the gas bill, witha few shillings for the girl for any additional trouble. We shouldcertainly be more than twice as well off as we are now. You see, Edward,dear, it's not the sort of offer we are likely to have again. Besides,we must think of the future, as I said. Do you know aunt took a greatfancy to you?'

  He shuddered and said nothing, and his wife went on with her argument.

  'And, you see, it isn't as if we should see so very much of her. Shewill have her breakfast in bed, and she told me she would often go up toher room in the evening directly after dinner. I thought that very niceand considerate. She quite understands that we shouldn't like to have athird person always with us. Don't you think, Edward, that, consideringeverything, we ought to say we will have her?'

  'Oh, I suppose so,' he groaned. 'As you say, it's a very good offer,financially, and I am afraid it would be very imprudent to refuse. But Idon't like the notion, I confess.'

  'I am so glad you agree with me, dear. Depend upon it, it won't be halfso bad as you think. And putting our own advantage on one side, we shallreally be doing poor aunt a very great kindness. Poor old dear, shecried bitterly after you were gone; she said she had made up her mindnot to stay any longer in Uncle Robert's house, and she didn't knowwhere to go, or what would become of her, if we refused to take her in.She quite broke down.'

  'Well, well; we will try it for a year, anyhow. It may be as you say; weshan't find it quite so bad as it seems now. Shall we go in?'

  He stooped for his pipe, which lay as it had fallen, on the grass. Hecould not find it, and lit a wax match which showed him the pipe, andclose beside it, under the seat, something that looked like a page tornfrom a book. He wondered what it could be, and picked it up.

  The gas was lit in the drawing-room, and Mrs. Darnell, who was arrangingsome notepaper, wished to write at once to Mrs. Nixon, cordiallyaccepting her proposal, when she was startled by an exclamation from herhusband.

  'What is the matter?' she said, startled by the tone of his voice. 'Youhaven't hurt yourself?'

  'Look at this,' he replied, handing her a small leaflet; 'I found itunder the garden seat just now.'

  Mary glanced with bewilderment at her husband and read as follows:--

  THE NEW AND CHOSEN SEED OF ABRAHAM

  PROPHECIES TO BE FULFILLED IN THE PRESENT YEAR

  1. The Sailing of a Fleet of One hundred
and Forty and Four Vessels for Tarshish and the Isles.

  2. Destruction of the Power of the Dog, including all the instruments of anti-Abrahamic legislation.

  3. Return of the Fleet from Tarshish, bearing with it the gold of Arabia, destined to be the Foundation of the New City of Abraham.

  4. The Search for the Bride, and the bestowing of the Seals on the Seventy and Seven.

  5. The Countenance of FATHER to become luminous, but with a greater glory than the face of Moses.

  6. The Pope of Rome to be stoned with stones in the valley called Berek-Zittor.

  7. FATHER to be acknowledged by Three Great Rulers. Two Great Rulers will deny FATHER, and will immediately perish in the Effluvia of FATHER'S Indignation.

  8. Binding of the Beast with the Little Horn, and all Judges cast down.

  9. Finding of the Bride in the Land of Egypt, which has been revealed to FATHER as now existing in the western part of London.

  10. Bestowal of the New Tongue on the Seventy and Seven, and on the One Hundred and Forty and Four. FATHER proceeds to the Bridal Chamber.

  11. Destruction of London and rebuilding of the City called No, which is the New City of Abraham.

  12. FATHER united to the Bride, and the present Earth removed to the Sun for the space of half an hour.

  Mrs. Darnell's brow cleared as she read matter which seemed to herharmless if incoherent. From her husband's voice she had been led tofear something more tangibly unpleasant than a vague catena ofprophecies.

  'Well,' she said, 'what about it?'

  'What about it? Don't you see that your aunt dropped it, and that shemust be a raging lunatic?'

  'Oh, Edward! don't say that. In the first place, how do you know thataunt dropped it at all? It might easily have blown over from any of theother gardens. And, if it were hers, I don't think you should call her alunatic. I don't believe, myself, that there are any real prophets now;but there are many good people who think quite differently. I knew anold lady once who, I am sure, was very good, and she took in a paperevery week that was full of prophecies and things very like this. Nobodycalled her mad, and I have heard father say that she had one of thesharpest heads for business he had ever come across.'

  'Very good; have it as you like. But I believe we shall both be sorry.'

  They sat in silence for some time. Alice came in after her 'eveningout,' and they sat on, till Mrs. Darnell said she was tired and wantedto go to bed.

  Her husband kissed her. 'I don't think I will come up just yet,' hesaid; 'you go to sleep, dearest. I want to think things over. No, no; Iam not going to change my mind: your aunt shall come, as I said. Butthere are one or two things I should like to get settled in my mind.'

  He meditated for a long while, pacing up and down the room. Light afterlight was extinguished in Edna Road, and the people of the suburb sleptall around him, but still the gas was alight in Darnell's drawing-room,and he walked softly up and down the floor. He was thinking that aboutthe life of Mary and himself, which had been so quiet, there seemed tobe gathering on all sides grotesque and fantastic shapes, omens ofconfusion and disorder, threats of madness; a strange company fromanother world. It was as if into the quiet, sleeping streets of somelittle ancient town among the hills there had come from afar the soundof drum and pipe, snatches of wild song, and there had burst into themarket-place the mad company of the players, strangely bedizened,dancing a furious measure to their hurrying music, drawing forth thecitizens from their sheltered homes and peaceful lives, and alluringthem to mingle in the significant figures of their dance.

  Yet afar and near (for it was hidden in his heart) he beheld the glimmerof a sure and constant star. Beneath, darkness came on, and mists andshadows closed about the town. The red, flickering flame of torches waskindled in the midst of it. The song grew louder, with more insistent,magical tones, surging and falling in unearthly modulations, the veryspeech of incantation; and the drum beat madly, and the pipe shrilled toa scream, summoning all to issue forth, to leave their peaceful hearths;for a strange rite was preconized in their midst. The streets that werewont to be so still, so hushed with the cool and tranquil veils ofdarkness, asleep beneath the patronage of the evening star, now dancedwith glimmering lanterns, resounded with the cries of those who hurriedforth, drawn as by a magistral spell; and the songs swelled andtriumphed, the reverberant beating of the drum grew louder, and in themidst of the awakened town the players, fantastically arrayed, performedtheir interlude under the red blaze of torches. He knew not whether theywere players, men that would vanish suddenly as they came, disappearingby the track that climbed the hill; or whether they were indeedmagicians, workers of great and efficacious spells, who knew the secretword by which the earth may be transformed into the hall of Gehenna, sothat they that gazed and listened, as at a passing spectacle, should beentrapped by the sound and the sight presented to them, should be drawninto the elaborated figures of that mystic dance, and so should bewhirled away into those unending mazes on the wild hills that wereabhorred, there to wander for evermore.

  But Darnell was not afraid, because of the Daystar that had risen in hisheart. It had dwelt there all his life, and had slowly shone forth withclearer and clearer light, and he began to see that though his earthlysteps might be in the ways of the ancient town that was beset by theEnchanters, and resounded with their songs and their processions, yet hedwelt also in that serene and secure world of brightness, and from agreat and unutterable height looked on the confusion of the mortalpageant, beholding mysteries in which he was no true actor, hearingmagic songs that could by no means draw him down from the battlements ofthe high and holy city.

  His heart was filled with a great joy and a great peace as he lay downbeside his wife and fell asleep, and in the morning, when he woke up, hewas glad.

  IV

  In a haze as of a dream Darnell's thoughts seemed to move through theopening days of the next week. Perhaps nature had not intended that heshould be practical or much given to that which is usually called 'soundcommon sense,' but his training had made him desirous of good, plainqualities of the mind, and he uneasily strove to account to himself forhis strange mood of the Sunday night, as he had often endeavoured tointerpret the fancies of his boyhood and early manhood. At first he wasannoyed by his want of success; the morning paper, which he alwayssecured as the 'bus delayed at Uxbridge Road Station, fell from hishands unread, while he vainly reasoned, assuring himself that thethreatened incursion of a whimsical old woman, though tiresome enough,was no rational excuse for those curious hours of meditation in whichhis thoughts seemed to have dressed themselves in unfamiliar, fantastichabits, and to parley with him in a strange speech, and yet a speechthat he had understood.

  With such arguments he perplexed his mind on the long, accustomed rideup the steep ascent of Holland Park, past the incongruous hustle ofNotting Hill Gate, where in one direction a road shows the way to thesnug, somewhat faded bowers and retreats of Bayswater, and in anotherone sees the portal of the murky region of the slums. The customarycompanions of his morning's journey were in the seats about him; heheard the hum of their talk, as they disputed concerning politics, andthe man next to him, who came from Acton, asked him what he thought ofthe Government now. There was a discussion, and a loud and excited one,just in front, as to whether rhubarb was a fruit or vegetable, and inhis ear he heard Redman, who was a near neighbour, praising the economyof 'the wife.'

  'I don't know how she does it. Look here; what do you think we hadyesterday? Breakfast: fish-cakes, beautifully fried--rich, you know,lots of herbs, it's a receipt of her aunt's; you should just taste 'em.Coffee, bread, butter, marmalade, and, of course, all the usualetceteras. Dinner: roast beef, Yorkshire, potatoes, greens, andhorse-radish sauce, plum tart, cheese. And where will you get a betterdinner than that? Well, I call it wonderful, I really do.'

  But in spite of these distractions he fell into a dream as the 'busrolled and tos
sed on its way Citywards, and still he strove to solve theenigma of his vigil of the night before, and as the shapes of trees andgreen lawns and houses passed before his eyes, and as he saw theprocession moving on the pavement, and while the murmur of the streetssounded in his ears, all was to him strange and unaccustomed, as if hemoved through the avenues of some city in a foreign land. It was,perhaps, on these mornings, as he rode to his mechanical work, thatvague and floating fancies that must have long haunted his brain beganto shape themselves, and to put on the form of definite conclusions,from which he could no longer escape, even if he had wished it. Darnellhad received what is called a sound commercial education, and wouldtherefore have found very great difficulty in putting into articulatespeech any thought that was worth thinking; but he grew certain on thesemornings that the 'common sense' which he had always heard exalted asman's supremest faculty was, in all probability, the smallest andleast-considered item in the equipment of an ant of averageintelligence. And with this, as an almost necessary corollary, came afirm belief that the whole fabric of life in which he moved was sunken,past all thinking, in the grossest absurdity; that he and all hisfriends and acquaintances and fellow-workers were interested in mattersin which men were never meant to be interested, were pursuing aims whichthey were never meant to pursue, were, indeed, much like fair stones ofan altar serving as a pigsty wall. Life, it seemed to him, was a greatsearch for--he knew not what; and in the process of the ages one by onethe true marks upon the ways had been shattered, or buried, or themeaning of the words had been slowly forgotten; one by one the signs hadbeen turned awry, the true entrances had been thickly overgrown, thevery way itself had been diverted from the heights to the depths, tillat last the race of pilgrims had become hereditary stone-breakers andditch-scourers on a track that led to destruction--if it led anywhere atall. Darnell's heart thrilled with a strange and trembling joy, with asense that was all new, when it came to his mind that this great lossmight not be a hopeless one, that perhaps the difficulties were by nomeans insuperable. It might be, he considered, that the stone-breakerhad merely to throw down his hammer and set out, and the way would beplain before him; and a single step would free the delver in rubbishfrom the foul slime of the ditch.

  It was, of course, with difficulty and slowly that these things becameclear to him. He was an English City clerk, 'flourishing' towards theend of the nineteenth century, and the rubbish heap that had beenaccumulating for some centuries could not be cleared away in an instant.Again and again the spirit of nonsense that had been implanted in him asin his fellows assured him that the true world was the visible andtangible world, the world in which good and faithful letter-copying wasexchangeable for a certain quantum of bread, beef, and house-room, andthat the man who copied letters well, did not beat his wife, nor losemoney foolishly, was a good man, fulfilling the end for which he hadbeen made. But in spite of these arguments, in spite of their acceptanceby all who were about him, he had the grace to perceive the utterfalsity and absurdity of the whole position. He was fortunate in hisentire ignorance of sixpenny 'science,' but if the whole library hadbeen projected into his brain it would not have moved him to 'deny inthe darkness that which he had known in the light.' Darnell knew byexperience that man is made a mystery for mysteries and visions, for therealization in his consciousness of ineffable bliss, for a great joythat transmutes the whole world, for a joy that surpasses all joys andovercomes all sorrows. He knew this certainly, though he knew it dimly;and he was apart from other men, preparing himself for a greatexperiment.

  With such thoughts as these for his secret and concealed treasure, hewas able to bear the threatened invasion of Mrs. Nixon with somethingapproaching indifference. He knew, indeed, that her presence betweenhis wife and himself would be unwelcome to him, and he was not withoutgrave doubts as to the woman's sanity; but after all, what did itmatter? Besides, already a faint glimmering light had risen within himthat showed the profit of self-negation, and in this matter he hadpreferred his wife's will to his own. _Et non sua poma_; to hisastonishment he found a delight in denying himself his own wish, aprocess that he had always regarded as thoroughly detestable. This was astate of things which he could not in the least understand; but, again,though a member of a most hopeless class, living in the most hopelesssurroundings that the world has ever seen, though he knew as much of the_askesis_ as of Chinese metaphysics; again, he had the grace not to denythe light that had begun to glimmer in his soul.

  And he found a present reward in the eyes of Mary, when she welcomed himhome after his foolish labours in the cool of the evening. They sattogether, hand in hand, under the mulberry tree, at the coming of thedusk, and as the ugly walls about them became obscure and vanished intothe formless world of shadows, they seemed to be freed from the bondageof Shepherd's Bush, freed to wander in that undisfigured, undefiledworld that lies beyond the walls. Of this region Mary knew little ornothing by experience, since her relations had always been of one mindwith the modern world, which has for the true country an instinctive andmost significant horror and dread. Mr. Reynolds had also shared inanother odd superstition of these later days--that it is necessary toleave London at least once a year; consequently Mary had some knowledgeof various seaside resorts on the south and east coasts, whereLondoners gather in hordes, turn the sands into one vast, badmusic-hall, and derive, as they say, enormous benefit from the change.But experiences such as these give but little knowledge of the countryin its true and occult sense; and yet Mary, as she sat in the duskbeneath the whispering tree, knew something of the secret of the wood,of the valley shut in by high hills, where the sound of pouring wateralways echoes from the clear brook. And to Darnell these were nights ofgreat dreams; for it was the hour of the work, the time oftransmutation, and he who could not understand the miracle, who couldscarcely believe in it, yet knew, secretly and half consciously, thatthe water was being changed into the wine of a new life. This was everthe inner music of his dreams, and to it he added on these still andsacred nights the far-off memory of that time long ago when, a child,before the world had overwhelmed him, he journeyed down to the old greyhouse in the west, and for a whole month heard the murmur of the forestthrough his bedroom window, and when the wind was hushed, the washing ofthe tides about the reeds; and sometimes awaking very early he had heardthe strange cry of a bird as it rose from its nest among the reeds, andhad looked out and had seen the valley whiten to the dawn, and thewinding river whiten as it swam down to the sea. The memory of all thishad faded and become shadowy as he grew older and the chains of commonlife were riveted firmly about his soul; all the atmosphere by which hewas surrounded was well-nigh fatal to such thoughts, and only now andagain in half-conscious moments or in sleep he had revisited that valleyin the far-off west, where the breath of the wind was an incantation,and every leaf and stream and hill spoke of great and ineffablemysteries. But now the broken vision was in great part restored to him,and looking with love in his wife's eyes he saw the gleam of water-poolsin the still forest, saw the mists rising in the evening, and heard themusic of the winding river.

  They were sitting thus together on the Friday evening of the week thathad begun with that odd and half-forgotten visit of Mrs. Nixon, when, toDarnell's annoyance, the door-bell gave a discordant peal, and Alicewith some disturbance of manner came out and announced that a gentlemanwished to see the master. Darnell went into the drawing-room, whereAlice had lit one gas so that it flared and burnt with a rushing sound,and in this distorting light there waited a stout, elderly gentleman,whose countenance was altogether unknown to him. He stared blankly, andhesitated, about to speak, but the visitor began.

  'You don't know who I am, but I expect you'll know my name. It's Nixon.'

  He did not wait to be interrupted. He sat down and plunged intonarrative, and after the first few words, Darnell, whose mind was notaltogether unprepared, listened without much astonishment.

  'And the long and the short of it is,' Mr. Nixon said at last, 'she'sgone stark, staring mad, and we h
ad to put her away to-day--poor thing.'

  His voice broke a little, and he wiped his eyes hastily, for thoughstout and successful he was not unfeeling, and he was fond of his wife.He had spoken quickly, and had gone lightly over many details whichmight have interested specialists in certain kinds of mania, andDarnell was sorry for his evident distress.

  'I came here,' he went on after a brief pause, 'because I found out shehad been to see you last Sunday, and I knew the sort of story she musthave told.'

  Darnell showed him the prophetic leaflet which Mrs. Nixon had dropped inthe garden. 'Did you know about this?' he said.

  'Oh, _him_,' said the old man, with some approach to cheerfulness; 'ohyes, I thrashed _him_ black and blue the day before yesterday.'

  'Isn't he mad? Who is the man?'

  'He's not mad, he's bad. He's a little Welsh skunk named Richards. He'sbeen running some sort of chapel over at New Barnet for the last fewyears, and my poor wife--she never could find the parish church goodenough for her--had been going to his damned schism shop for the lasttwelve-month. It was all that finished her off. Yes; I thrashed _him_the day before yesterday, and I'm not afraid of a summons either. I knowhim, and he knows I know him.'

  Old Nixon whispered something in Darnell's ear, and chuckled faintly ashe repeated for the third time his formula--

  'I thrashed _him_ black and blue the day before yesterday.'

  Darnell could only murmur condolences and express his hope that Mrs.Nixon might recover.

  The old man shook his head.

  'I'm afraid there's no hope of that,' he said. 'I've had the bestadvice, but they couldn't do anything, and told me so.'

  Presently he asked to see his niece, and Darnell went out and preparedMary as well as he could. She could scarcely take in the news that heraunt was a hopeless maniac, for Mrs. Nixon, having been extremely stupidall her days, had naturally succeeded in passing with her relations astypically sensible. With the Reynolds family, as with the great majorityof us, want of imagination is always equated with sanity, and thoughmany of us have never heard of Lombroso we are his ready-made converts.We have always believed that poets are mad, and if statisticsunfortunately show that few poets have really been inhabitants oflunatic asylums, it is soothing to learn that nearly all poets have hadwhooping-cough, which is doubtless, like intoxication, a minor madness.

  'But is it really true?' she asked at length. 'Are you certain uncle isnot deceiving you? Aunt seemed so sensible always.'

  She was helped at last by recollecting that Aunt Marian used to get upvery early of mornings, and then they went into the drawing-room andtalked to the old man. His evident kindliness and honesty grew uponMary, in spite of a lingering belief in her aunt's fables, and when heleft, it was with a promise to come to see them again.

  Mrs. Darnell said she felt tired, and went to bed; and Darnell returnedto the garden and began to pace to and fro, collecting his thoughts. Hisimmeasurable relief at the intelligence that, after all, Mrs. Nixon wasnot coming to live with them taught him that, despite his submission,his dread of the event had been very great. The weight was removed, andnow he was free to consider his life without reference to the grotesqueintrusion that he had feared. He sighed for joy, and as he paced to andfro he savoured the scent of the night, which, though it came faintlyto him in that brick-bound suburb, summoned to his mind across manyyears the odour of the world at night as he had known it in that shortsojourn of his boyhood; the odour that rose from the earth when theflame of the sun had gone down beyond the mountain, and the afterglowhad paled in the sky and on the fields. And as he recovered as best hecould these lost dreams of an enchanted land, there came to him otherimages of his childhood, forgotten and yet not forgotten, dwellingunheeded in dark places of the memory, but ready to be summoned forth.He remembered one fantasy that had long haunted him. As he lay halfasleep in the forest on one hot afternoon of that memorable visit to thecountry, he had 'made believe' that a little companion had come to himout of the blue mists and the green light beneath the leaves--a whitegirl with long black hair, who had played with him and whispered hersecrets in his ear, as his father lay sleeping under a tree; and fromthat summer afternoon, day by day, she had been beside him; she hadvisited him in the wilderness of London, and even in recent years therehad come to him now and again the sense of her presence, in the midst ofthe heat and turmoil of the City. The last visit he remembered well; itwas a few weeks before he married, and from the depths of some futiletask he had looked up with puzzled eyes, wondering why the close airsuddenly grew scented with green leaves, why the murmur of the trees andthe wash of the river on the reeds came to his ears; and then thatsudden rapture to which he had given a name and an individualitypossessed him utterly. He knew then how the dull flesh of man can belike fire; and now, looking back from a new standpoint on this andother experiences, he realized how all that was real in his life hadbeen unwelcomed, uncherished by him, had come to him, perhaps, in virtueof merely negative qualities on his part. And yet, as he reflected, hesaw that there had been a chain of witnesses all through his life: againand again voices had whispered in his ear words in a strange languagethat he now recognized as his native tongue; the common street had notbeen lacking in visions of the true land of his birth; and in all thepassing and repassing of the world he saw that there had been emissariesready to guide his feet on the way of the great journey.

  A week or two after the visit of Mr. Nixon, Darnell took his annualholiday.

  There was no question of Walton-on-the-Naze, or of anything of the kind,as he quite agreed with his wife's longing for some substantial sum putby against the evil day. But the weather was still fine, and he loungedaway the time in his garden beneath the tree, or he sauntered out onlong aimless walks in the western purlieus of London, not unvisited bythat old sense of some great ineffable beauty, concealed by the dim anddingy veils of grey interminable streets. Once, on a day of heavy rainhe went to the 'box-room,' and began to turn over the papers in the oldhair trunk--scraps and odds and ends of family history, some of them inhis father's handwriting, others in faded ink, and there were a fewancient pocket-books, filled with manuscript of a still earlier time,and in these the ink was glossier and blacker than any writing fluidssupplied by stationers of later days. Darnell had hung up the portraitof the ancestor in this room, and had bought a solid kitchen table anda chair; so that Mrs. Darnell, seeing him looking over his olddocuments, half thought of naming the room 'Mr. Darnell's study.' He hadnot glanced at these relics of his family for many years, but from thehour when the rainy morning sent him to them, he remained constant toresearch till the end of the holidays. It was a new interest, and hebegan to fashion in his mind a faint picture of his forefathers, and oftheir life in that grey old house in the river valley, in the westernland of wells and streams and dark and ancient woods. And there werestranger things than mere notes on family history amongst that oddlitter of old disregarded papers, and when he went back to his work inthe City some of the men fancied that he was in some vague mannerchanged in appearance; but he only laughed when they asked him where hehad been and what he had been doing with himself. But Mary noticed thatevery evening he spent at least an hour in the box-room; she was rathersorry at the waste of time involved in reading old papers about deadpeople. And one afternoon, as they were out together on a somewhatdreary walk towards Acton, Darnell stopped at a hopeless second-handbookshop, and after scanning the rows of shabby books in the window,went in and purchased two volumes. They proved to be a Latin dictionaryand grammar, and she was surprised to hear her husband declare hisintention of acquiring the Latin language.

  But, indeed, all his conduct impressed her as indefinably altered; andshe began to be a little alarmed, though she could scarcely have formedher fears in words. But she knew that in some way that was allindefined and beyond the grasp of her thought their lives had alteredsince the summer, and no single thing wore quite the same aspect asbefore. If she looked out into the dull street with its rare loiterers,it was th
e same and yet it had altered, and if she opened the window inthe early morning the wind that entered came with a changed breath thatspoke some message that she could not understand. And day by day passedby in the old course, and not even the four walls were altogetherfamiliar, and the voices of men and women sounded with strange notes,with the echo, rather, of a music that came over unknown hills. And dayby day as she went about her household work, passing from shop to shopin those dull streets that were a network, a fatal labyrinth of greydesolation on every side, there came to her sense half-seen images ofsome other world, as if she walked in a dream, and every moment mustbring her to light and to awakening, when the grey should fade, andregions long desired should appear in glory. Again and again it seemedas if that which was hidden would be shown even to the sluggishtestimony of sense; and as she went to and fro from street to street ofthat dim and weary suburb, and looked on those grey material walls, theyseemed as if a light glowed behind them, and again and again the mysticfragrance of incense was blown to her nostrils from across the verge ofthat world which is not so much impenetrable as ineffable, and to herears came the dream of a chant that spoke of hidden choirs about all herways. She struggled against these impressions, refusing her assent tothe testimony of them, since all the pressure of credited opinion forthree hundred years has been directed towards stamping out realknowledge, and so effectually has this been accomplished that we canonly recover the truth through much anguish. And so Mary passed the daysin a strange perturbation, clinging to common things and commonthoughts, as if she feared that one morning she would wake up in anunknown world to a changed life. And Edward Darnell went day by day tohis labour and returned in the evening, always with that shining oflight within his eyes and upon his face, with the gaze of wonder thatwas greater day by day, as if for him the veil grew thin and soon woulddisappear.

  From these great matters both in herself and in her husband Mary shrankback, afraid, perhaps, that if she began the question the answer mightbe too wonderful. She rather taught herself to be troubled over littlethings; she asked herself what attraction there could be in the oldrecords over which she supposed Edward to be poring night after night inthe cold room upstairs. She had glanced over the papers at Darnell'sinvitation, and could see but little interest in them; there were one ortwo sketches, roughly done in pen and ink, of the old house in the west:it looked a shapeless and fantastic place, furnished with strangepillars and stranger ornaments on the projecting porch; and on one sidea roof dipped down almost to the earth, and in the centre there wassomething that might almost be a tower rising above the rest of thebuilding. Then there were documents that seemed all names and dates,with here and there a coat of arms done in the margin, and she came upona string of uncouth Welsh names linked together by the word 'ap' in achain that looked endless. There was a paper covered with signs andfigures that meant nothing to her, and then there were the pocket-books,full of old-fashioned writing, and much of it in Latin, as her husbandtold her--it was a collection as void of significance as a treatise onconic sections, so far as Mary was concerned. But night after nightDarnell shut himself up with the musty rolls, and more than ever when herejoined her he bore upon his face the blazonry of some great adventure.And one night she asked him what interested him so much in the papers hehad shown her.

  He was delighted with the question. Somehow they had not talked muchtogether for the last few weeks, and he began to tell her of the recordsof the old race from which he came, of the old strange house of greystone between the forest and the river. The family went back and back,he said, far into the dim past, beyond the Normans, beyond the Saxons,far into the Roman days, and for many hundred years they had been pettykings, with a strong fortress high up on the hill, in the heart of theforest; and even now the great mounds remained, whence one could lookthrough the trees towards the mountain on one side and across the yellowsea on the other. The real name of the family was not Darnell; that wasassumed by one Iolo ap Taliesin ap Iorwerth in the sixteenthcentury--why, Darnell did not seem to understand. And then he told herhow the race had dwindled in prosperity, century by century, till atlast there was nothing left but the grey house and a few acres of landbordering the river.

  'And do you know, Mary,' he said, 'I suppose we shall go and live theresome day or other. My great-uncle, who has the place now, made money inbusiness when he was a young man, and I believe he will leave it all tome. I know I am the only relation he has. How strange it would be. Whata change from the life here.'

  'You never told me that. Don't you think your great-uncle might leavehis house and his money to somebody he knows really well? You haven'tseen him since you were a little boy, have you?'

  'No; but we write once a year. And from what I have heard my father say,I am sure the old man would never leave the house out of the family. Doyou think you would like it?'

  'I don't know. Isn't it very lonely?'

  'I suppose it is. I forget whether there are any other houses in sight,but I don't think there are any at all near. But what a change! No City,no streets, no people passing to and fro; only the sound of the wind andthe sight of the green leaves and the green hills, and the song of thevoices of the earth.'... He checked himself suddenly, as if he fearedthat he was about to tell some secret that must not yet be uttered; andindeed, as he spoke of the change from the little street in Shepherd'sBush to that ancient house in the woods of the far west, a change seemedalready to possess himself, and his voice put on the modulation of anantique chant. Mary looked at him steadily and touched his arm, and hedrew a long breath before he spoke again.

  'It is the old blood calling to the old land,' he said. 'I wasforgetting that I am a clerk in the City.'

  It was, doubtless, the old blood that had suddenly stirred in him; theresurrection of the old spirit that for many centuries had beenfaithful to secrets that are now disregarded by most of us, that now dayby day was quickened more and more in his heart, and grew so strong thatit was hard to conceal. He was indeed almost in the position of the manin the tale, who, by a sudden electric shock, lost the vision of thethings about him in the London streets, and gazed instead upon the seaand shore of an island in the Antipodes; for Darnell only clung with aneffort to the interests and the atmosphere which, till lately, hadseemed all the world to him; and the grey house and the wood and theriver, symbols of the other sphere, intruded as it were into thelandscape of the London suburb.

  But he went on, with more restraint, telling his stories of far-offancestors, how one of them, the most remote of all, was called a saint,and was supposed to possess certain mysterious secrets often alluded toin the papers as the 'Hidden Songs of Iolo Sant.' And then with anabrupt transition he recalled memories of his father and of the strange,shiftless life in dingy lodgings in the backwaters of London, of the dimstucco streets that were his first recollections, of forgotten squaresin North London, and of the figure of his father, a grave bearded manwho seemed always in a dream, as if he too sought for the vision of aland beyond the strong walls, a land where there were deep orchards andmany shining hills, and fountains and water-pools gleaming under theleaves of the wood.

  'I believe my father earned his living,' he went on, 'such a living ashe did earn, at the Record Office and the British Museum. He used tohunt up things for lawyers and country parsons who wanted old deedsinspected. He never made much, and we were always moving from onelodging to another--always to out-of-the-way places where everythingseemed to have run to seed. We never knew our neighbours--we moved toooften for that--but my father had about half a dozen friends, elderlymen like himself, who used to come to see us pretty often; and then, ifthere was any money, the lodging-house servant would go out for beer,and they would sit and smoke far into the night.

  'I never knew much about these friends of his, but they all had the samelook, the look of longing for something hidden. They talked of mysteriesthat I never understood, very little of their own lives, and when theydid speak of ordinary affairs one could tell that they thought suchmatters as
money and the want of it were unimportant trifles. When Igrew up and went into the City, and met other young fellows and heardtheir way of talking, I wondered whether my father and his friends werenot a little queer in their heads; but I know better now.'

  So night after night Darnell talked to his wife, seeming to wanderaimlessly from the dingy lodging-houses, where he had spent his boyhoodin the company of his father and the other seekers, to the old househidden in that far western valley, and the old race that had so longlooked at the setting of the sun over the mountain. But in truth therewas one end in all that he spoke, and Mary felt that beneath his words,however indifferent they might seem, there was hidden a purpose, thatthey were to embark on a great and marvellous adventure.

  So day by day the world became more magical; day by day the work ofseparation was being performed, the gross accidents were being refinedaway. Darnell neglected no instruments that might be useful in the work;and now he neither lounged at home on Sunday mornings, nor did heaccompany his wife to the Gothic blasphemy which pretended to be achurch. They had discovered a little church of another fashion in a backstreet, and Darnell, who had found in one of the old notebooks the maxim_Incredibilia sola Credenda_, soon perceived how high and glorious athing was that service at which he assisted. Our stupid ancestors taughtus that we could become wise by studying books on 'science,' by meddlingwith test-tubes, geological specimens, microscopic preparations, and thelike; but they who have cast off these follies know that they must readnot 'science' books, but mass-books, and that the soul is made wise bythe contemplation of mystic ceremonies and elaborate and curious rites.In such things Darnell found a wonderful mystery language, which spokeat once more secretly and more directly than the formal creeds; and hesaw that, in a sense, the whole world is but a great ceremony orsacrament, which teaches under visible forms a hidden and transcendentdoctrine. It was thus that he found in the ritual of the church aperfect image of the world; an image purged, exalted, and illuminate, aholy house built up of shining and translucent stones, in which theburning torches were more significant than the wheeling stars, and thefuming incense was a more certain token than the rising of the mist. Hissoul went forth with the albed procession in its white and solemn order,the mystic dance that signifies rapture and a joy above all joys, andwhen he beheld Love slain and rise again victorious he knew that hewitnessed, in a figure, the consummation of all things, the Bridal ofall Bridals, the mystery that is beyond all mysteries, accomplished fromthe foundation of the world. So day by day the house of his life becamemore magical.

  And at the same time he began to guess that if in the New Life there arenew and unheard-of joys, there are also new and unheard-of dangers. Inhis manuscript books which professed to deliver the outer sense of thosemysterious 'Hidden Songs of Iolo Sant' there was a little chapter thatbore the heading: _Fons Sacer non in communem Vsum convertendus est_,and by diligence, with much use of the grammar and dictionary, Darnellwas able to construe the by no means complex Latin of his ancestor. Thespecial book which contained the chapter in question was one of the mostsingular in the collection, since it bore the title _Terra de Iolo_, andon the surface, with an ingenious concealment of its real symbolism, itaffected to give an account of the orchards, fields, woods, roads,tenements, and waterways in the possession of Darnell's ancestors. Here,then, he read of the Holy Well, hidden in the Wistman's Wood--_SylvaSapientum_--'a fountain of abundant water, which no heats of summer canever dry, which no flood can ever defile, which is as a water of life,to them that thirst for life, a stream of cleansing to them that wouldbe pure, and a medicine of such healing virtue that by it, through themight of God and the intercession of His saints, the most grievouswounds are made whole.' But the water of this well was to be keptsacred perpetually, it was not to be used for any common purpose, nor tosatisfy any bodily thirst; but ever to be esteemed as holy, 'even as thewater which the priest hath hallowed.' And in the margin a comment in alater hand taught Darnell something of the meaning of theseprohibitions. He was warned not to use the Well of Life as a mere luxuryof mortal life, as a new sensation, as a means of making the insipid cupof everyday existence more palatable. 'For,' said the commentator, 'weare not called to sit as the spectators in a theatre, there to watch theplay performed before us, but we are rather summoned to stand in thevery scene itself, and there fervently to enact our parts in a great andwonderful mystery.'

  Darnell could quite understand the temptation that was thus indicated.Though he had gone but a little way on the path, and had barely testedthe over-runnings of that mystic well, he was already aware of theenchantment that was transmuting all the world about him, informing hislife with a strange significance and romance. London seemed a city ofthe Arabian Nights, and its labyrinths of streets an enchanted maze; itslong avenues of lighted lamps were as starry systems, and its immensitybecame for him an image of the endless universe. He could well imaginehow pleasant it might be to linger in such a world as this, to sit apartand dream, beholding the strange pageant played before him; but theSacred Well was not for common use, it was for the cleansing of thesoul, and the healing of the grievous wounds of the spirit. There mustbe yet another transformation: London had become Bagdad; it must atlast be transmuted to Syon, or in the phrase of one of his olddocuments, the City of the Cup.

  And there were yet darker perils which the Iolo MSS. (as his father hadnamed the collection) hinted at more or less obscurely. There weresuggestions of an awful region which the soul might enter, of atransmutation that was unto death, of evocations which could summon theutmost forces of evil from their dark places--in a word, of that spherewhich is represented to most of us under the crude and somewhat childishsymbolism of Black Magic. And here again he was not altogether without adim comprehension of what was meant. He found himself recalling an oddincident that had happened long ago, which had remained all the years inhis mind unheeded, amongst the many insignificant recollections of hischildhood, and now rose before him, clear and distinct and full ofmeaning. It was on that memorable visit to the old house in the west,and the whole scene returned, with its smallest events, and the voicesseemed to sound in his ears. It was a grey, still day of heavy heat thathe remembered: he had stood on the lawn after breakfast, and wondered atthe great peace and silence of the world. Not a leaf stirred in thetrees on the lawn, not a whisper came from the myriad leaves of thewood; the flowers gave out sweet and heavy odours as if they breathedthe dreams of the summer night; and far down the valley, the windingriver was like dim silver under that dim and silvery sky, and the farhills and woods and fields vanished in the mist. The stillness of theair held him as with a charm; he leant all the morning against the railsthat parted the lawn from the meadow, breathing the mystic breath ofsummer, and watching the fields brighten as with a sudden blossoming ofshining flowers as the high mist grew thin for a moment before thehidden sun. As he watched thus, a man weary with heat, with some glanceof horror in his eyes, passed him on his way to the house; but he stayedat his post till the old bell in the turret rang, and they dined alltogether, masters and servants, in the dark cool room that lookedtowards the still leaves of the wood. He could see that his uncle wasupset about something, and when they had finished dinner he heard himtell his father that there was trouble at a farm; and it was settledthat they should all drive over in the afternoon to some place with astrange name. But when the time came Mr. Darnell was too deep in oldbooks and tobacco smoke to be stirred from his corner, and Edward andhis uncle went alone in the dog-cart. They drove swiftly down the narrowlane, into the road that followed the winding river, and crossed thebridge at Caermaen by the mouldering Roman walls, and then, skirting thedeserted, echoing village, they came out on a broad white turnpike road,and the limestone dust followed them like a cloud. Then, suddenly, theyturned to the north by such a road as Edward had never seen before. Itwas so narrow that there was barely room for the cart to pass, and thefootway was of rock, and the banks rose high above them as they slowlyclimbed the long, steep way, and the untrimmed
hedges on either sideshut out the light. And the ferns grew thick and green upon the banks,and hidden wells dripped down upon them; and the old man told him howthe lane in winter was a torrent of swirling water, so that no onecould pass by it. On they went, ascending and then again descending,always in that deep hollow under the wild woven boughs, and the boywondered vainly what the country was like on either side. And now theair grew darker, and the hedge on one bank was but the verge of a darkand rustling wood, and the grey limestone rocks had changed to dark-redearth flecked with green patches and veins of marl, and suddenly in thestillness from the depths of the wood a bird began to sing a melody thatcharmed the heart into another world, that sang to the child's soul ofthe blessed faery realm beyond the woods of the earth, where the woundsof man are healed. And so at last, after many turnings and windings,they came to a high bare land where the lane broadened out into a kindof common, and along the edge of this place there were scattered threeor four old cottages, and one of them was a little tavern. Here theystopped, and a man came out and tethered the tired horse to a post andgave him water; and old Mr. Darnell took the child's hand and led him bya path across the fields. The boy could see the country now, but it wasall a strange, undiscovered land; they were in the heart of a wildernessof hills and valleys that he had never looked upon, and they were goingdown a wild, steep hillside, where the narrow path wound in and outamidst gorse and towering bracken, and the sun gleaming out for amoment, there was a gleam of white water far below in a narrow valley,where a little brook poured and rippled from stone to stone. They wentdown the hill, and through a brake, and then, hidden in dark-greenorchards, they came upon a long, low whitewashed house, with a stoneroof strangely coloured by the growth of moss and lichens. Mr. Darnellknocked at a heavy oaken door, and they came into a dim room where butlittle light entered through the thick glass in the deep-set window.There were heavy beams in the ceiling, and a great fireplace sent out anodour of burning wood that Darnell never forgot, and the room seemed tohim full of women who talked all together in frightened tones. Mr.Darnell beckoned to a tall, grey old man, who wore corduroyknee-breeches, and the boy, sitting on a high straight-backed chair,could see the old man and his uncle passing to and fro across thewindow-panes, as they walked together on the garden path. The womenstopped their talk for a moment, and one of them brought him a glass ofmilk and an apple from some cold inner chamber; and then, suddenly, froma room above there rang out a shrill and terrible shriek, and then, in ayoung girl's voice, a more terrible song. It was not like anything thechild had ever heard, but as the man recalled it to his memory, he knewto what song it might be compared--to a certain chant indeed thatsummons the angels and archangels to assist in the great Sacrifice. Butas this song chants of the heavenly army, so did that seem to summon allthe hierarchy of evil, the hosts of Lilith and Samael; and the wordsthat rang out with such awful modulations--_neumata inferorum_--were insome unknown tongue that few men have ever heard on earth.

  The women glared at one another with horror in their eyes, and he sawone or two of the oldest of them clumsily making an old sign upon theirbreasts. Then they began to speak again, and he remembered fragments oftheir talk.

  'She has been up there,' said one, pointing vaguely over her shoulder.

  'She'd never know the way,' answered another. 'They be all gone thatwent there.'

  'There be nought there in these days.'

  'How can you tell that, Gwenllian? 'Tis not for us to say that.'

  'My great-grandmother did know some that had been there,' said a veryold woman. 'She told me how they was taken afterwards.'

  And then his uncle appeared at the door, and they went their way as theyhad come. Edward Darnell never heard any more of it, nor whether thegirl died or recovered from her strange attack; but the scene hadhaunted his mind in boyhood, and now the recollection of it came to himwith a certain note of warning, as a symbol of dangers that might be inthe way.

  * * * * *

  It would be impossible to carry on the history of Edward Darnell and ofMary his wife to a greater length, since from this point their legend isfull of impossible events, and seems to put on the semblance of thestories of the Graal. It is certain, indeed, that in this world theychanged their lives, like King Arthur, but this is a work which nochronicler has cared to describe with any amplitude of detail. Darnell,it is true, made a little book, partly consisting of queer verse whichmight have been written by an inspired infant, and partly made up of'notes and exclamations' in an odd dog-Latin which he had picked upfrom the 'Iolo MSS.', but it is to be feared that this work, even ifpublished in its entirety, would cast but little light on a perplexingstory. He called this piece of literature 'In Exitu Israel,' and wroteon the title page the motto, doubtless of his own composition, '_Nunccerte scio quod omnia legenda; omnes historiae, omnes fabulae, omnisScriptura sint de ME narrata_.' It is only too evident that his Latinwas not learnt at the feet of Cicero; but in this dialect he relates thegreat history of the 'New Life' as it was manifested to him. The 'poems'are even stranger. One, headed (with an odd reminiscence ofold-fashioned books) 'Lines written on looking down from a Height inLondon on a Board School suddenly lit up by the Sun' begins thus:--

  One day when I was all alone I found a wondrous little stone, It lay forgotten on the road Far from the ways of man's abode. When on this stone mine eyes I cast I saw my Treasure found at last. I pressed it hard against my face, I covered it with my embrace, I hid it in a secret place. And every day I went to see This stone that was my ecstasy; And worshipped it with flowers rare, And secret words and sayings fair. O stone, so rare and red and wise O fragment of far Paradise, O Star, whose light is life! O Sea, Whose ocean is infinity! Thou art a fire that ever burns, And all the world to wonder turns; And all the dust of the dull day By thee is changed and purged away, So that, where'er I look, I see A world of a Great Majesty. The sullen river rolls all gold, The desert park's a faery wold, When on the trees the wind is borne I hear the sound of Arthur's horn I see no town of grim grey ways, But a great city all ablaze With burning torches, to light up The pinnacles that shrine the Cup. Ever the magic wine is poured, Ever the Feast shines on the board, Ever the song is borne on high That chants the holy Magistry-- Etc. etc. etc.

  From such documents as these it is clearly impossible to gather any verydefinite information. But on the last page Darnell has written--

  'So I awoke from a dream of a London suburb, of daily labour, of weary,useless little things; and as my eyes were opened I saw that I was in anancient wood, where a clear well rose into grey film and vapour beneatha misty, glimmering heat. And a form came towards me from the hiddenplaces of the wood, and my love and I were united by the well.'