Front matter (continued 2)

No lady was ever allowed to set foot in Mrs. Cushion's hospitable house in May or June or the first part of July. Those months were sacred to the fishers; but as a favour to one of the references she would sometimes consent to take a lady in August.

The vicar, my old friend, was my reference, and he stood surety for my general "peaceableness." He assured Mrs. Cushion that so long as I might sleep with my back to the light that I would not want to alter everything in my bedroom (one lady lodger had done this, and Mrs. Cushion never forgot or forgave the "'ubbub" that ensued), that I was in search of perfect quiet in which to finish a book, and lastly he got at Mrs. Cushion through her kind heart—declaring that I was a delicate, muddly, incapable sort of person who required looking after.

So at the beginning of a singularly sunny August I went down to Redmarley to take possession of two rooms in "Snig's Cottage." The cottage stands about half a mile from Redmarley itself, high above a bend of the river known as "Snig's Ferry," and the villagers always call it "Snig's."

Who Snig was no one knows, for the cottage was built "nigh up on three 'undred year ago." The vicar, who is something of an antiquarian, says even earlier. In the memory of man "Snig's" has never been bought, it is always "left," and the heritor, so far, has never been willing to sell, though, as Mrs. Cushion remarked scornfully, "Artises an' sich do often come after it, an' one, an American gentleman 'e was, wanted to buy 'un and build out at the back all over my bit o' garden and kip the old 'ouse just as a' be for a curiositee. I let 'im talk, but, bless you, my uncle left it to me in 'is will and I shall leave it the same in mine; and so it'll always be, so long as there's one stone to another. 'Ouses is 'ouses in these parts."

Solid and grey and gabled, the little six-roomed house still stood in its trim garden, outwardly the same as when the untraceable Snig first named it. Inside, its furniture was a jumble of periods, but there were no aspidistras, nor did any ornament cling to a plush bracket on the walls. Jacob and Rachel were there, and the infant Samuel, and on either side of the clock was a red-and-white china spaniel and a Toby jug. Mrs. Cushion frankly owned that she had preferred her own "bits of things" to some of her uncle's that were there when she came. To make room for her mahogany sideboard she had sold an old oak chest to the American gentleman, who was glad to give a good price for it.

"A hoak chest," said Mrs. Cushion, "is an on'andy thing to keep the gentlemen's beverages in. One always 'as to lift everything off the top to get inside. Now, my sideboard 'as doors and shelves all convenient one side, and a reg'lar cellar for beverages on the other. Not but as what folks 'ud be much better without them."

Mrs. Cushion was, herself, strong for the temperance cause, but she was too tolerant a woman and too excellent a landlady to do more than hint her disapproval. And by calling every form of alcohol "a beverage" I'm certain she felt that in some inexplicable way she so rendered it more or less innocuous. She never spoke of either wines or spirits by their names, only collectively as "beverages."

And I speedily learned that although indulgence in such pleasures of the table was to be tolerated, even condoned, in men, women were expected to be of sterner stuff; and I believe my modest half-flagon of Burgundy, reposing in meek solitude in all the roomy glory of the "cellaret," grieved her far more than when that same cellaret was filled by the varied and much stronger "beverages" of her male guests. Yet she never failed to remind me when there was only, as she put it, "one more dose," that I might order a fresh supply from the grocer.

Men she regarded as children. Her mental attitude towards them was that of "boys will be boys," and they might be bald and stout, Generals or Viceroys or Secretaries of State in their public capacity—but did such an one become Mrs. Cushion's lodger she instantly felt called upon to stand between him and every discomfort, to condone his vagaries, and to give him, so far as was humanly possible, every mortal thing he wanted. Small wonder that her "fishing-gentlemen" took her rooms months before-hand and year after year.

"I don't suppose as you've noticed, miss, being, so to speak, unmarried yourself—but there's something in men-folk as seems to stop growin' when they be about ten year old. It crops up different in different sorts, but it's there all the same in all of 'em. And when it crops up—no matter if 'e be hever so majestical an' say nothing to nobody, the seein' eye can figure 'im out in tore knickerbockers an' a dirty face same as if he stood in front of you—more especially if you've 'ad little boys of your own."

"I suppose," I said—perhaps a bit wistfully, for Mrs. Cushion was rather fond of referring to my spinsterhood—"it does make a great difference.... First you know your husband so well, and then your sons.... By the way, what was your husband, Mrs. Cushion?"

Mrs. Cushion turned very red and was manifestly uncomfortable. "I'd rather not talk about 'im, miss," she said hastily. "He weren't an overly good 'usban' to me ... but the children..." Here Mrs. Cushion beamed, and with restored tranquillity continued, "The children 'ave made it all up to me over and over."

Yet from an outsider's point of view, especially from that of one who was "so to speak unmarried," Mrs. Cushion didn't seem to get any great benefit from her two sons. One was in Australia and one in Canada, and though she had been living in Redmarley some six years, I could not discover that either had ever been home. They were not, I gathered, particularly good correspondents, nor did they seem to assist their mother in any way financially, or send presents home. All the same, they were a source of pride and joy to Mrs. Cushion, and a never-failing topic of conversation. In fact, I think that one of the things that caused her to tolerate my sex and my spinsterhood was the real interest I took in Arty and Bert, and my readiness to talk about either or both at all times.

They were never quite clear to me, and this was odd, because Mrs. Cushion was certainly graphic and vivid in her descriptions as a rule. She would never show me their portraits because she said they "took badly," both of them.

By my third August I could have passed a stiff examination in her "gentlemen." I felt that I knew them intimately, both as to their appearance, manners, and taste both in viands and beverages.

There was Mr. Lancaster, who ate meat only once a day, drank white wine, and was that gentle and considerate you'd never know he was there except that he did lose his things so, and had a habit of putting his coffee-cup and pipes and newspapers under the valance of the sofa.

"Faithful-'earted, I calls 'im!" said Mrs. Cushion. "Every Saturday reg'lar he sends me the Times newspaper, and it is gratifying to see a 'igh-class newspaper like that once a week. It do make me feel like a real lady just to read the rents of them 'ouses on the back page, and it does me no end of good to know who's preaching at St. Paul's Cathedral—all the churches, in fact; it's almost as good as being there."

"Wouldn't you rather have a picture paper?" I asked.

"Certainly not, miss," Mrs. Cushion replied with dignified asperity. "I much prefer what Mr. Lancaster reads his-self, an' it's the kind thought I values far more than the amusingness of the paper. It seems to keep him an' me in mind of one another."

"Do your boys often send you papers, Mrs. Cushion?"

"Well ... not so to speak often.... It's difficult for them, and I dare say the papers in those parts ain't like ours. Perhaps they wouldn't be suitable——"

"Is Mr. Lancaster married?"

"Not to my knowledge, miss," answered the cautious Mrs. Cushion. "He don't behave like a married man.... Not"—she added hastily, eager to give no wrong impression—"not that 'e's ever anything but most conformable; only there's a difference between them as is married and them as isn't. I'm sure you see it yourself, miss, though, to be sure, you're nothing like so set in your ways as some. If I was you, miss," said Mrs. Cushion, suddenly beaming upon me like a rosy sun in spectacles, "I shouldn't give up hope. Mr. Right may come along for you even yet. I 'ad a friend who married when she were fifty-nine.... To be sure, 'er 'usban' was bedridden, but 'e's living to this day, an' it's a good fifteen years ago."

"I don't think I should like a bedridden husband, Mrs. Cushion."

"You'll like whatever you gets, my dear, never you fear." And Mrs. Cushion bustled out with the tray, leaving me to the rather rueful reflection that her last speech was more complimentary to my stoicism than to my matrimonial prospects.

"Snig's" was an ideal place to work in: quiet without being lonely; fresh and bracing, yet seldom cold; beautiful with the homely, tender grace of pastoral England. The doctor and his wife "over to Winstone" were hospitable and kind, the villagers were friendly as only peasant folk in the remote Cotswolds still are; the vicar I always look upon as one of the most understanding and delightful people I've ever met. That autumn the squire and his large lively family were up in Scotland, but this only increased possibilities of work, and I stayed on at Snig's into October.

One day the vicar summoned me to luncheon. A friend from a distance had motored over, bringing with him his guests, a visiting parson and his wife, to see the church and the village, and he implored my presence "to keep Mrs. Robinson in countenance."

Not that anything of the kind was needed, for Mrs. Robinson turned out to be a most self-sufficient and didactic lady, with "clergyman's wife" writ large all over her. Her husband was of the conscientious, mentally mediocre type of parson, with much energy and no imagination; and luncheon seemed a very long meal. There appeared a curious dearth of topics of conversation, and for lack of something better the vicar explained my presence in Redmarley, mentioning that I had been living for the last two months with the excellent Mrs. Cushion—"who comes, I believe," he added, "from your part of the world."

"Caroline Cushion?" Mrs. Robinson demanded, with that air of cross-questioning a witness which made small-talk so difficult. "If it's Caroline Cushion, she did live in our parish, and she certainly wasn't 'Mrs.' then, but a middle-aged single woman. She left soon after my husband got the living, but I remember her quite well—she came into a house, or something, and went away to live in it."

"It's a curious coincidence," said the vicar easily, "but it can't be our Mrs. Cushion, for not only is she married, but she has grown-up sons to whom she is absolutely devoted."

"It's unlikely," said Mrs. Robinson, "that there could be two Caroline Cushions both coming from the same village, and both inheriting property at a distance. The matter should be looked into, for certainly with us she passed always as a single woman, and to the best of my belief had spent almost her whole life in the village. Is she a fairish woman, stout, with red cheeks?"

"She is very pleasant and fresh-looking," said the vicar, looking at me for help. "But I am quite sure she can't be the one you mean."

"I'm not at all sure of anything of the kind," Mrs. Robinson snapped. "She may have been living a double life all these years. As I said before, the matter should be looked into. I'd know her again if I saw her. I never forget a face."

I don't know why it was, but I suddenly felt most uncomfortable, and was surprised at my own passionate determination that Mrs. Robinson should not see Mrs. Cushion. We had reached the walnut stage, and I suggested to her that she and I might go and sit in the drawing-room and leave the gentlemen to smoke.

"My husband doesn't smoke," she said severely as we crossed the hall; "he doesn't think it becoming in a clergyman, and I must say I agree with him. But then he is rector of the parish, and one of those—too few, alas! in these lax days—who acts up to his convictions.... Now, about this Mrs. Cushion...." Mrs. Robinson by this time was seated beside me on the vicar's chesterfield. "I feel quite anxious. What can be her reason for masquerading as a married woman here? Even if she had married since she left her old home, it's most unlikely that her name would still be Cushion, and it's impossible that she should have grown-up sons. Have you seen them?"

"They are both abroad," I answered, "and isn't Cushion quite a common name in Gloucestershire?"

"Not at all; it's a very uncommon name, that's why I remember it so distinctly—and to think she always passed for a most respectable woman!"

"So she is," I interrupted with some heat. "A most kind and admirable woman in every possible way. Every one here has the greatest respect for her. She's probably a cousin of your one—who doubtless was quite excellent also. Would you care to go out and look at the dahlias? The vicar has quite a show."

Never did I spend a more trying half-hour than the one that followed. Mrs. Robinson kept returning to the subject of Mrs. Cushion with a persistency worthy of a better cause; and I, for no reason that I could formulate, kept heading her off and trying to turn her thoughts down other paths. It was Mrs. Cushion's sons that seemed to annoy her most, and I had the queer, wholly illogical feeling that Mrs. Robinson would, unless prevented, snatch them away from Mrs. Cushion, and that it was up to me to prevent anything of the kind. So nervous did I feel that I accompanied the party to see the church and the village, and only breathed freely again when Mr. Vernon's car had borne Mr. and Mrs. Robinson away in a direction wholly opposite to Snig's.

As his guests vanished over the bridge in the direction of Marlehouse, the vicar sighed deeply. "Now, why," he demanded, "should Vernon have brought those people to me? I suppose he was so bored himself he had to do something. She's his cousin, I believe, and what a trying lady!"

"Did you 'ave a nice party, miss?" asked Mrs. Cushion an hour or so later, as she brought in my tea.

"Curiously enough, there was a clergyman and his wife from your old home, Mrs. Cushion. I wonder if you remember them? A Mr. and Mrs. Robinson."

"I suppose you didn't happen to name me, miss?" Mrs. Cushion asked—I thought a trifle nervously.

"Well, I didn't, but the vicar did."

"Yes, miss, and did Mrs. Robinson seem to remember me?"

"She remembered some one of your name, Mrs. Cushion, but it couldn't have been you—perhaps you have relations in her parish?"

"May I make so bold, miss, as to ask exactly what she did say?"

"That it was a Miss Cushion she knew, who left soon after her husband got the living."

"I dare say she did," said Mrs. Cushion grimly; "and there was many as would have gone, too, if they'd had the chanst. If it's not taking a liberty, miss, was you exactly draw'd to Mrs. Robinson?"

"Certainly not," I replied. "I couldn't get on with her at all. Are they popular in the parish?"

"It's not for me to say, miss. I left two months after they did come. They was new brooms, you see, and swep' away a lot of old customs. They wasn't like the Reverend 'ere—he's all for 'live and let live'—but they was all for making every one live as they thought proper. I don't say they was wrong, and I don't say they was right, but whichever it was, it weren't peaceable.

"But," concluded Mrs. Cushion, "I've no business gossiping here, and you wanting your tea."

So she left me to my tea and the reflection that she had neither contradicted nor confirmed Mrs. Robinson's statement.

During the next couple of days I was conscious of a certain constraint in our, hitherto, completely cordial relationship. Mrs. Cushion was just as careful as ever for my comfort—everything was just as well done, and meals as punctual, and rooms spick and span as before; but I missed something. I missed the interest she used to take in me and the interest she allowed me to take in her. She was still the perfect landlady, but I grievously missed the frank and genial human being.

I had lunched with the vicar and his guests on Tuesday. On Friday afternoon Mrs. Cushion got a lift into "Ziren" to do some shopping, and I had to take my own letters to the post office. I met the vicar on his way to call on me, and he turned back and walked with me, and I speedily perceived that something worried him. The vicar is stout and gouty, and walks but slowly. We only just caught the post, and then he asked me to go with him to the vicarage to look at a black dahlia in his garden before the first frosts took it.

In the garden he stopped long before we came to the dahlias and exclaimed, "I've heard from that vexatious woman."

"Mrs. Robinson?"

"Yes; just read her letter."

"DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX," it ran, "I feel it is my duty to tell you that I have been making inquiries about Caroline Cushion, and there is no question whatever that she is the same person who was living here when my husband and I first came to the parish. It happens that Mrs. Bayley, widow of the former incumbent, is at present staying with Lady Moreland at the Manor, and I called upon her the day I returned from Mr. Vernon's, that I might make searching inquiries as to where Caroline Cushion had lived before she left for Redmarley, where I understand she was left a cottage by her uncle, her mother's brother. Mrs. Bayley remembered her perfectly well, and, I must say, spoke highly of her. But she was as astonished as I was to hear she was posing as a married woman with a family, for she had lived in this parish from her youth up. I grieve much that I should have to bring this life of duplicity to light; and I feel it is only right to let you know, that you may take steps to sift the matter and bring the woman to a proper sense of her wrong-doing. For if during the years she lived here she really possessed a husband and children, she shamefully neglected them; and if she is unmarried the case is infinitely worse. Please let me know the result of your investigations.

"Yours sincerely,

"ELAINE M. ROBINSON."

In silence I gave back the letter to the vicar and involuntarily I shivered, for the wind was very cold.

"Well?" he asked impatiently, "what do you make of it?"

"I can't make anything of it. The whole thing's a mystery."

Then I told him of my tea-time conversation with Mrs. Cushion, and of the curious constraint in her manner ever since: of how unhappy it made me, and how cordially I detested Mrs. Robinson and wished her far further than the Forest of Dean—though to the Redmarley folk the Forest of Dean is indeed as the ends of the earth.

"If I know anything of human nature," said the vicar, punctuating his remarks with vicious flicks of the finger upon Mrs. Robinson's envelope, "Mrs. Cushion is as honest and straightforward a woman as ever stepped, a good woman, a kindly woman. Has she never said anything to you about her husband?"

"Only once. I asked about him, and I saw it was a painful subject, so I never mentioned him again. I fear he was an unsatisfactory person."

"But what am I to say to this pestiferous woman? If I don't answer her, she's capable of coming over here and setting the whole village by the ears.... I should like," he added vindictively, "to throw a stone through her window." As he spoke I was reminded of Mrs. Cushion's remark, "There's something in men-folks as seems to stop growin' when they be about ten year old": for although the vicar is stout and bald, and his close-cropped beard and moustache quite white, yet there and then I seemed to see "a little boy in tore knickerbockers and a dirty face same as if 'e stood in front of me."

"Wait a day or two," I suggested; "she won't expect an answer by return because you've got to make your 'investigations,' you know."

He groaned. "How can I? If there's one thing I wholeheartedly abhor it's poking and prying into another person's affairs—it's so ... ungentlemanly. I wouldn't do it to my worst enemy, but when it's a decent, kindly body who has been my right hand in every good thing that's been done in this village ever since she came.... Look here, my dear. Perhaps you—without hurting her feelings—could find out something to satisfy Mrs. Robinson. It would come better from you."

I doubted this, but I promised the poor worried vicar to do my best. I walked back to Snig's as fast as I could, for I was chilled to the bone. It certainly was a very cold east wind.

Mrs. Cushion was back when I arrived. A bright fire blazed on my hearth and hot muffins awaited me for tea. She looked cold and depressed, and she had no news for me either of the fashions in the "Ziren" shop windows or of acquaintances she had met. Even references to her beloved boys failed to elicit more than monosyllables.

Next morning she began to cough. For a day and a half she struggled on doing her household work as usual. Through the night I heard her coughing so incessantly that I got up and went across to her room. It had turned very cold, and in spite of her protests, I lit a fire and did what I could to relieve her, in the shape of hot black-currant tea and rubbing her with embrocation. I also took her temperature, which was 104°!

In the morning she was so ill that she consented to stay in bed, and I sent a note to the doctor by the boy that brought the milk.

When he came he declared Mrs. Cushion to be down with influenza, and that she must be very careful. He would send in the parish nurse that morning and a woman to do for me. If a trained nurse should be necessary, he'd get one, but he thought if I could stay for a day or two to superintend things we could manage. Warmth, rest, and quiet in bed till her temperature went down were all that was necessary.

Everything went smoothly. The parish nurse was a personal friend of Mrs. Cushion. The woman sent in "mornings" was most attentive and efficient, and the fact that she was no cook did not seem to matter, for so much more than Mrs. Cushion could eat was sent in by sympathetic neighbours that we lived on the fat of the land on the surplus. If there had ever been any question as to Mrs. Cushion's popularity in Redmarley, it was answered now, and in the most emphatic way.

Anxious inquirers came at all hours, and I spent most of my time watching the garden that I might open the door, front or back, before the visitor could rap—you rap with your knuckles in Redmarley, whether the door happens to be open or shut: the latter only occurs in cold weather or on washing-days.

One thing did strike me, and that was the number of young men and boys who came, not only to inquire, but to bring offerings of all sorts. It seemed to me that every male being under thirty that I had ever seen in Redmarley, man or boy, or hobbledehoy, came to get news of Mrs. Cushion—and I was always careful to ask their names and write them down, for I soon discovered that their solicitude gave her pleasure.

It was the only thing that did seem to give her pleasure just then. When the cough was easier and her temperature went down, she remained heartrendingly weak, and at the end of six days the doctor asked me if I thought "she had anything on her mind," for, if so, it must be got at and lifted; for she'd never get well at this rate.

Now that she was, of necessity, rather dependent on me in a good many small ways, Mrs. Cushion had become less reserved, more like her former self, in fact—but yet, I always felt that there was something between us. Her blue eyes, sometimes without the spectacles now, would follow me about with a wistful, weighing expression that was full of dumb pain and pathos; but naturally all exciting topics were taboo, and I had never again, since that first afternoon, referred to Mrs. Robinson and her disturbing revelations. One evening about nine o'clock, when Mrs. Cushion had been in bed eight whole days, when the nurse had gone for the night, and I was left in charge, when I had made up her fire, lit the night-light, and arranged the hand-bell and all her possible wants on a table by her bed—I was going back to mine, but she stopped me as I reached the door with a faintly whispered "Miss!"

I went back to the side of the bed and looked down at her. She was very pale, and had put on the spectacles as though to see me better in the dim light.

"Miss," she repeated, "I can't kip it to myself no longer; that there Mrs. Robinson was right—I wasn't never married an' I never 'ad no children."

Mrs. Cushion's hands were picking nervously at the sheet, though her eyes never left my face for a single minute. I seized one of the weak, cold hands, and held it in both mine—but I could not speak.

"You'd better sit down, miss, while I tell 'ee.... All my life long I've loved children—more especially boys. When I was a young 'ooman, I 'ad my chanst same as most. One was a school-teacher, most respectable 'e were—but I couldn't seem to fancy 'im: and t'other, 'e were a hundertaker, and I couldn't fancy 'is trade—so there it was. An' as time went on I did get thinkin' about the little boys as I should like to 'ave 'ad; and they did seem to get realler and realler—Arty and Bert did—till I sorter felt I couldn't get along without 'em.... Do it seem very queer to you, miss?"

"Not a bit, dear Mrs. Cushion."

"Now, I ast you, miss—do I look like a hold maid, or do I look like a comfortable married woman with a family?"

"I think you look very married," I exclaimed quite truthfully—"very motherly."

"Well, so do I think—and when I came 'ere where no one knowed anything about me excepting I was Uncle's niece, I says to myself, says I, 'You act up to your looks, Caroline Cushion—an' then you can talk about your children same as the rest.' I didn't trouble my 'ead about a 'usban'—I 'adn't never thought about 'im. So when folks asked me—like you yourself, miss—I just prims up my mouth and shakes my 'ead, and they sees as 'e weren't up to much, and they says no more. Sometimes I've thought as it were a bit onfair on 'im, pore chap, an' 'im never done me no 'arm—but—there.... I couldn't stop to think about 'im. 'Twere the boys as I wanted—an' they did comfort me so, miss, an' I don't know 'ow as I can ever give 'em up."

"But I see no reason why you should."

"Ah, miss, you speaks so kind because you do think, 'She's ill, poor thing, and we must yumour 'er,' but what'd the Reverend say? You may depend as that there Mrs. Robinson 'll never let it alone. What'll 'e say? An' if 'e says as I've got to tell every one I ain't no married woman an' never 'ad no children, I'd rather not get well. I couldn't face it, miss. Because I can't feel as the Lard's very angry with me—I can't."

"Mrs. Cushion, will you let me tell Mr. Molyneux, and see what he says?"

Mrs. Cushion sighed. "I suppose 'e'll 'ave to be told, an' you'd tell him more straight-forward nor I could. It's all so mixed up like. You see, them boys ain't never done no 'arm to any one—they so far off and all—an' I will say this, miss, they've give me a sort of 'old over young growin' chaps I wouldn't 'ave 'ad without 'em. Many's the young chap as 'ave listened to a word from me about drink and the like, because 'e's thought, 'There, she knows as it's only natural—she's got some of 'er own—she won't be too 'ard on me'—and they did like me, I knows they did—they did indeed, miss."

I thought of the hobbledehoys and the shy, furtive presents of eggs and honey and tight little bunches of flowers, and an occasional rabbit—how come by it were perhaps better not to inquire—and the inarticulate lingering, the waiting for intelligence they were too shy to ask for—I thought of these things, and I knew that Mrs. Cushion spoke the truth.

"Now, you, miss," the tired, whispering voice went on, "if I may say so, you looks unmarried; and yet, I do believe as you understands."

"I do, I do, Mrs. Cushion."

"It seemed some'ow as if it 'ad to be, and yet there's no one 'ates lies and bedanglements more than me. An' there I've been and gone and done it myself. But I ain't going to own it!" Mrs. Cushion added almost fiercely. "Not if I 'ad to let Snig's an' leave these parts. I'd far rather die."

By this time she was as flushed as she had been pale before, and I had to tell her she mustn't talk any more, but leave it all till the morning, when we'd consult the vicar.

For about an hour I sat by her bed, till her more regular breathing showed me she had dropped off into the sleep of sheer exhaustion.

In the morning I sent a note to the vicar by one of the solicitous young men, and by ten o'clock he was in my sitting-room, while the parish nurse was getting Mrs. Cushion's room ready upstairs.

I told the story very briefly, and as far as possible in her own words; and the vicar, who had been sitting at the table facing the light, suddenly got up and stood by the fireplace, his elbow on the mantel-shelf, shading his eyes with his hand and almost turning his back upon me.

"And if she can't keep her children, she won't get well," I concluded.

"Of course she must keep her children," he muttered hoarsely.

"But what about Mrs. Robinson?"

He blew his nose, with his handkerchief all over his face, and then turned on me triumphantly, handing me a letter.

"I was coming to you this morning in any case, to show you this. I suddenly decided what to say and thought you'd like to see it. I'm glad I wrote before you told me this. There's a decisive vagueness about it that will, I know, command your literary respect—if nothing else."

This is what he had written:

"DEAR MRS. ROBINSON,—Of course you are right. The Caroline Cushion you knew never was married nor had she any children; and she always was, as you charitably supposed, an entirely respectable woman. The confusion arose with Miss Legh and me, and I apologise for the trouble we have inadvertently caused you. Thanking you for so satisfactorily clearing up the matter, I am yours faithfully,

"G. W. MOLYNEUX."

The parish nurse knocked at the door. "I've put her quite straight, Miss Legh, and the doctor said yesterday she can have anything she fancies for her dinner."

Up the steep stairs the vicar climbed, pausing at the top to get his breath. Mrs. Cushion was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows. She had on her best cap and the gold-rimmed spectacles sacred to Sundays.

"Peace be to this house, and all that dwell in it," said the vicar from the threshold.

I shut the bedroom door and left them.

When the vicar had creaked heavily downstairs again, I went and opened the front door for him.

"Poor soul!" he said, "poor, hungry-hearted, loving soul! Do you remember Elia?" And more to himself than to me he murmured, "And yet they are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. They are only what might have been."

VII

SANCTUARY

The Reverend Grantley Molyneux hobbled down to the church for the first time for some weeks. An attack of gout, unusually severe, had kept him veritably "tied by the leg" during the best of the June weather. Now that he was about again there were but gleams of watery sunshine to tempt him out of doors. However, the sunshine if watery was warm, and by the time the "old vicar"—for so he loved to be called—had reached the church he was glad to enter and rest in its cool grey shadows.

From sunrise to sunset Redmarley Church stood open. There were no week-day services—the worthy yeomen who formed the bulk of the congregation would have looked with great suspicion on any such innovation; but none the less would they have been indignant had the church been shut.

For nearly forty years the present incumbent had ministered to the people of Redmarley. He was, on the whole, decidedly popular—indeed, rumour had it that in his slim youth he had been over-popular—with the fair, being in the matter of susceptibility to their attractions something of a Burns. But, unlike Burns, he attempted no explanation, no vindication of his conduct, if such were needed, and it is surprising how short-lived are rumours when there is no one to contradict them.

The old vicar had ruled his life according to the maxim given by an exceedingly wise man to a young politician, "Never quarrel, never explain, never fear." He found it to answer wonderfully well on the whole, and for the last ten years had placidly increased in bulk, untroubled by any enemy other than the gout.

A courteous scholarly man, of a somewhat florid old-world politeness, he seemed strangely out of place in this remote Gloucestershire village, but he suited the people, and the people suited him. Gallio himself was not more careless of doctrine than is the average Cotswold peasant, whose highest praise of "passun" lies in the phrase, "'e don't never interfere with oi." The old vicar never interfered, not even in so far as to appoint a curate when disabled himself by gout.

Had he worn a ruff instead of the orthodox "choker," he might have passed for one of his own Elizabethan ancestors, as he rested in the squire's pew, his head leaning against the high oak back.

A long face, with high narrow forehead and pointed beard, cheeks heavy and creased, straight nose, with strongly marked sensitive nostrils. The mouth full-lipped and shutting firmly under the grey moustache cut straight across the upper lip. Truly a fine old face, deeply lined and sorrowful, bearing upon it the tragic impress of great possibilities, that had remained—possibilities.

The grey coolness of the little Norman church was restful. The vicar sighed and closed his eyes—those full blue eyes that had once been bold and winsome, that were still keen. The old live mostly in the past, they are not often dull or lonely. At will they can summon a whole pageantry of love, and friendship, and eager strife. The vicar of Redmarley was much given to warming his hands at the fires of recollection. His memory was excellent, and he had much to remember, for he had lived strenuously. Age had not dimmed his faculties, his hearing being particularly acute.

Presently his good dream was disturbed, and he began to be annoyed by a strange little scraping noise for which he could not account.

It was almost continuous.

He leant forward and listened, frowned, then looked interested, and finally rose from his seat.

The noise ceased.

He sat down again and waited. Sure enough the sound began, again, and it was for all the world like the scratch of a quill pen in the hand of a rapid writer. He decided that it came from a chapel on the right side of the altar—the chapel in which his wife was buried. A square sarcophagus stood in the centre, but there were no seats, as the chapel was quite small. Hobbling up the three steps that led to it from the body of the church, the vicar looked about him but could see nothing, and the silence was unbroken.

Suddenly it occurred to him to look over the tomb which filled the centre vacant space. What he discovered caused him to exclaim, more surprisedly than piously:

"God bless my soul!"

Seated on the floor, in the narrow space which separated the side of the tomb from the church wall, was a young man. A card blotting-book lay on his knees, a leather ink-bottle was stuck into the tracery of the tomb, and scattered round him were closely written sheets of manuscript. He looked up at the vicar's exclamation, but made no attempt to rise.

"Sir! What are you doing here?"

The vicar's voice was low, but in the "Sir!" there was infinite rebuke.

The intruder lifted his gaunt face the better to observe his questioner. Then he pointed to the scattered papers, saying:

"It is not difficult to see."

"But why do you write in my church?" persisted the vicar, peering over the side of the tomb at this strange sacrilegious person, with a curiosity that almost mastered his annoyance.

"Because there was nowhere else. I have done no harm to your church—besides, how is it more your church than mine?"

"Do you think you could come and converse with me in the porch upon this subject? I am old-fashioned, and your action strikes me as incongruous. Moreover, it tires me to stand."

The young man scrambled to his feet. Laying his hands upon the tomb's flat top he vaulted lightly over, and stood beside the vicar on the wider side of the tiny chapel.

The vicar frowned, demanding:

"Would you like me to jump over your wife's grave?"

A momentary gleam of amusement lighted up the stranger's tragic black eyes as he noted the vicar's cumbrous figure and swathed foot. Then his expression changed, and he said gently:

"I beg your pardon."

Often in these last days he had found himself wondering with a sort of tender curiosity about the Lady Cicely Molyneux, "aged twenty-one years," who had lain there so long.

When they reached the porch the vicar sat down, and, pointing to a place beside him, said:

"Sit down, and tell me what you mean when you say there is nowhere else?"

The young man obeyed, saying wearily:

"It is the simple truth. I am lodging at Eliza Heaven's, in the village, and you probably know that there is no living-room except the kitchen. I share a bedroom with three of the boys, and the rain comes down in torrents every day. I can't tramp about the country—I only get wet through and fall ill. My holiday lasts ten days—how could I spend it better? The church was quiet; I was under cover. No one has ever come in before."

The vicar stared silently at this strange youth clad in threadbare black, with flannel shirt open at his lean throat. He felt attracted to him in spite of his square grim jaw and Nihilistic-looking crop of thick black hair. His voice was not uncultivated and the vicar recognised, with a little thrill of pleasure, the soft guttural "r" which proclaimed the stranger to be Welsh. Lady Cicely was Welsh, and for her sake the vicar loved well that courteous fiery little people.

"I am sorry you should have had such a wet holiday. In fine weather the country round here is very beautiful, and you look as though long days out of doors would be better for you than literary work—anywhere."

The young man looked rather surprised at the urbanity of this speech but it is difficult for the Welsh to be other than courteous, even when they meet with churls. It was easy, therefore, to explain the position of affairs to this gouty but amiable old gentleman. The hunted look left the stranger's eyes, the tense lines round his mouth relaxed as he said, "I work at a cloth factory at Stroud. One of my mates told me his mother would lodge me for my holiday—I could not afford to go home—so I came here. I am a Socialist, but my father was a Wesleyan minister. I speak at Labour meetings in Stroud—that is my next speech I was writing—it is nearly finished."

The musical voice ceased; the vicar gave a little start; he had been gazing out on the sunlit grass in the churchyard. Then he turned and faced his new acquaintance: "Will you let me read your speech? It would interest me greatly. It is long since I took any active interest in politics. I am glad I found you instead of Daniel Long the clerk. He would, with the best intentions in life, have been rude. I can understand your seeking sanctuary in the church, and, as you say, She belongs to all of us; but—perhaps it is prejudice—I had rather you didn't write political speeches there. Will you come and write at the vicarage instead? You shall be quite undisturbed."

The young man cleared his throat, and when he spoke his voice was rather husky: "How do you know I should not steal your spoons?"

"My good friend," the vicar answered cheerfully, "though I know but little of politics, I know this much, that it is nothing less than my whole possessions you Socialists want. Spoons, indeed! that's but a small part of it; and you don't want to steal them either, but to take them, boldly and in the light of day, that every one may see and admire the redistribution.—I believe that is the word—of property."

As he spoke the vicar rose, and, leaning heavily on his stick, prepared to fare forth into the sunshine again. The little Welshman made no answer, so the vicar turned and put his hand on his shoulder, saying kindly: "But as you write, you probably read. I have plenty of books. You must come and see them. Come now!"

"May I collect my papers, sir? I won't be a minute." The voice was eager, with a deference in the tone which had been lacking at first. The vicar smiled—that pleasant smile, which had won him so much goodwill. "I like these Welshmen," he thought to himself, "always so much in earnest, always responsive." Then he sighed and frowned as his gouty foot gave a warning twinge.

He and his strange acquaintance walked through the churchyard together. At the vicarage door the old man stopped, and, rubbing his hands delightedly, exclaimed, "Now you are going to enjoy yourself."

"I am bewildered; Fortune is not usually kind to me," murmured the stranger, as he followed his host into a room walled round with books. The vicar sank wearily into an armchair, while his servant arranged his gouty foot upon the rest. As the door closed behind the man, the little Welshman clasped his hands, and, standing before the vicar with flushed cheeks and shining eyes, cried breathlessly: "Do you mean that I may take them down—handle them—read them?"

The vicar laughed. "Sesame," said he, and waved his hand towards the largest bookcase.

What "Sesame" meant the other knew not, nor cared. It was a permission, that was enough. He held out his work-worn hands, palms upwards, to the vicar, saying simply: "They are clean."

The vicar leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, quoting softly, as if to himself: "These are all at your choice; and life is short." But the stranger did not hear him, for he found himself amidst a company "wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty, of every place and time."

VIII

A COTSWOLD BARMAID

It seemed an odd name for an elderly woman, even when, as in this case, she happened to be a barmaid: but some one with an eye for likenesses christened her "Bobby" because of a really striking resemblance to the statesman at that time familiarly known as "Bobby Lowe." Anyway the name expressed her, and Bobby she remained to the end. Let it not be imagined that disrespect was so much as suggested by the title: she was the best respected woman in our town, and certainly one of the most influential.

There was a college, of a sort, near the town where Bobby lived, and generations of students and the whole hunting youth of the countryside passed through her kind hands, and every man amongst them will acknowledge that he was the better for having known Bobby.

It is to be supposed that at one time she was slim, instead of round-about, that her abundant white hair was once brown or golden, that she had a story of her own apart from the "Moonstone" and her "boys"; but we took her for granted none the less thankfully that we were apt to forget how unique she was, till we were far from Bobby and the Moonstone Bar.

Youthful new-comers were her especial care. She not infrequently confiscated their money if she thought they were going to "play the giddy," only restoring it when she considered they were capable of using it with some discretion. And how carefully she looked after the digestions of such as were inexperienced in the matter of drinks! "What?" she would exclaim, "green chartreuse, sir, and you just bin 'avin' beer! You really mustn't, sir, you'd be that bad" ... and the best of it was that nobody was ever foolish enough to resent her interference.

"If a holdish man likes to take too much," she would say sorrowfully, "it isn't me that can stop 'im, but with these young chaps just fresh from school, I must do my best according to my lights."

What becomes of the young chaps fresh from school where there is no Bobby to take care of them I wonder.

"As you know, sir," she continued, "I don't hold with drinkin' for drinkin's sake, but I do think that a gentleman should be able to take his glass sociable-like, and friendly. There don't seem no good fellowship in them there aereated waters, and I'm sure they ain't no good to a body's inside, by theirselves."

She had a healthy crop of prejudices this Bobby of ours. Any sort of blasphemy or loose talk she could not away with. "It's sort of natural for a man to swear if he's a bit taken to or astonished," she would say in lenient mood, "but when they goes breaking the third commandment like as if it was a hold chipped plate, it gives me cold shivers down my back—that it do."

She never expostulated, but her square, rosy face got less square and less rosy if, in her presence, the conversation waxed too forcible and free. At such times the offender would be warned by one of Bobby's old friends who respected what he probably called her "fads." If the new-comer profited by the warning all went well, but if he offended a second time he was forcibly ejected and found himself in the dark and draughty covered way leading to the Moonstone stables, with the explanation, "you can pile on the adjectives here, old chap, but she doesn't like it."

Bobby was a sincere believer in good works, and many were the "boxes" benefited by winnings at billiards or otherwise: and every Sunday saw her slowly taking her decorous way to church, seemly and satin-clad, bearing the very portliest of prayer books.

For man in the abstract, she had the greatest respect, but taken individually, she looked upon him as singularly gullible, and as requiring much maternal supervision, both digestively and morally. "Law! They may talk about their science and their chemistry and that, but bless you! Just let one of them minxes come along, and they're no better than imbeciles, that they're not."

The one human creature for whom Bobby's kind heart could find no toleration, was a "minx." And by "minx" she meant such pretty girls of the shop and dressmaker class, as she imagined cherished hopes of "marrying a gentleman." The idea that one of her boys (anybody under thirty was a "boy" to Bobby) should get entangled in the meshes of a minx, or more dreadful still, "marry beneath him" roused Bobby as did nothing else. How she got her information no one could ever imagine, but she always knew when anything of the kind was afoot, and Machiavellian were her methods of preventing such a catastrophe. More than one "county family" has Bobby to thank that no undesirable daughter-in-law has been added to its ranks. People under twenty she considered her especial charge. She gave them much homely and excellent advice, and only such drinks as she deemed suitable to their tender years.

When one of Bobby's old favourites came back from foreign parts the very first place he would hasten to was Bobby's bar. He would lounge in, after the fashion of a stranger, and ask, in a feigned voice, for what had been his favourite drink in the old days. But Bobby's ears were very quick, one sharp glance at the stranger, a little cry of recognition ... and over the counter he leaps and fast in his embrace is the old barmaid's stout, comfortable, little figure, and for a minute or two neither she nor the stranger can see each other very clearly. And then, what a talking over of old days there would be! What asking after old chums! At such times Bobby would even give us news of the minxes. Poor pretty minxes, did any of you ever marry gentlemen I wonder? They were really very nice those minxes! But we don't remember them as we remember Bobby—Bobby of the silver hair and little dumpy figure, who by sheer force of strong and kindly character held sway over several generations of hot-blooded young England. She was not beautiful; she was not, as the world accounts it, clever: but she was of the type of the eternal mother-woman. "Bless you," she would say with her broad, confident smile, "it's easy enough to manage 'em if only you lets 'em think as they're managin' you."

IX

FUZZY WUZZY'S WATCH

He was Billy's little brother, and we called him "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" because his abundant yellow hair stuck out straight and bushy all over his head. Moreover, at tennis parties he was sometimes allowed to "squeege" the soda water into the tall glasses held out for that purpose by thirsty friends; and they would say "Here's to you, Fuzzy Wuzzy!"

This, however, is not a story of Fuzzy Wuzzy, but of a man to whom Fortune had not been kind, whereas Fuzzy Wuzzy was.

"He is the rowdiest chap in the college, he goes on the drunk for days together; and yet he's a perfect gentleman, even when he's drunk."

We were all of us sitting on the lawn. Fuzzy's mother looked up as Mr. Calcraft spoke, asking, "Who is this unhappy person?"

"Oh, the 'Bookie' you know, that chap who's got Vereker's old rooms. Riddell is his name—the professor knows him."

Mr. Calcraft waited for the professor to give further information, but he said nothing. Then a small voice remarked: "I know Mr. Riddell. He's got the beautifullest big dog, and he gave me a ride on its back—I like him."

Fuzzy was sitting on my knee—after a moment's silence his mother asked, "Do you like him, Hugh? Is it true that he is so wild?"

The professor took his pipe out of his mouth. He was not given to discussing the students, we all knew that—but this time he said, "I like Riddell. He's a very clever fellow, and most good-natured. I think his little weaknesses are much exaggerated. I have seen no sign of rowdiness."

Mr. Calcraft laughed. "If you'd been at 'The Moonstone' the other evening, sir, you would have seen more than a sign. He broke every cue in the billiard room, and nearly threw the marker out of the window!"

"Did he frow a man out of the window?" exclaimed Fuzzy ecstatically. "Oh, Mr. Bookie is strong."

There was a horror-stricken pause. They had forgotten Fuzzy. His mother looked reproachfully at Mr. Calcraft, and somebody murmured something about virginibus puerisque.

"If only the 'Bookie' could be kept sober," Mr. Calcraft remarked apologetically, "he would be a splendid chap. He is all right for weeks together, and is as hard as nails; then he goes off and makes an ass of himself down town, and it makes people cut him. He told me the other day that he doesn't know a lady in the place."

"He is going to know one!" said Fuzzy's mother, "he's going to know me. I think it is too bad. You all say he is foolish, yet not one of you has the courage to tell him so, I think it is a shame."

"He would be an awkward chap to tackle," murmured Mr. Calcraft. "He'd throw you out of the window as soon as look at you."

"He can't throw me out of the window," said Fuzzy's mother, "and I shall talk to him. You must ask him to lunch, Hugh!"

Then we all went to eat gooseberries in the kitchen garden and played at horses with Fuzzy.

The first day of the horse show Riddell was with Mrs. Ainger all the time. As usual he was untidy. His tie was over his collar, his collar frayed; he wore a terrible old cap, and the front of his coat was smothered in dust from Fuzzy's boots, for that gentleman spent the greater part of the afternoon perched on Riddell's shoulder.

"The Bookie" looked radiant, and carried off his lady to tea in the tent; I followed, sitting with friends at the next table. They looked a little surprised at Mrs. Ainger's cavalier, for that lady was known to be particular as to the men she admitted to intimacy.

Afterwards I heard all about it. It seems that the professor had asked Riddell to lunch, and that he had behaved beautifully. He was a cultivated man, and talked well, in the softest, most musical voice in the world. His knowledge of swear-words was the widest and most far-reaching; when with men his conversation was so garnished with oaths, that one had to pick one's steps, as it were, to discover what he was talking about. But with ladies, he was the most courtly and careful of men. At the horse show he had discovered Mrs. Ainger trying to lift Fuzzy to see over the heads of some yokels who obstructed the view. In a moment Riddell had relieved her of her burden, and devoted himself to her for the rest of the day. The professor was counting marks and could not come.

Then ensued a time of peace and quiet for the Bookie. He followed Mrs. Ainger like a big dog, constituted himself head nurse to Fuzzy, and he was sober, absolutely sober, for six months. When other ladies met him constantly at the Aingers', and found him to be not only harmless but charming, they also asked him to lunch and to dine. Thus "The Bookie" who had plenty of money, and was of unexceptional family, became something of a personage. He bought new clothes, and wore a clean straw hat. His linen was no longer frayed, and he shaved twice a day.

Mrs. Ainger sang his praises wherever she went, and openly declared that she believed all the stories of his rowdiness to be slanders; she had not seen his bill for billiard cues from the "Moonstone."

At the end of April came the "Point to Point" steeplechase, a day fatal to the Bookie, who was "well on" by five o'clock in the afternoon. Mrs. Ainger was not at the races, so she was spared the spectacle of her protégé, swaying gracefully on the seat of his dogcart as he drove off the course. He had not brought his man, and as he was, his friends considered, quite capable of getting home in safety, they preferred not to be seen with him. He pressed them courteously to accompany him, offering to stand them a dinner at the "Moonstone." But they stood in awe of Mrs. Ainger, and not considering themselves in any way called upon to act as keeper for the Bookie, they let him alone.

Fuzzy's Nana was of a literary turn, spending a large proportion of the salary she received for her attentions to Fuzzy on the lighter kinds of fiction. On this particular afternoon, having wheeled him in his go-cart some distance along the high road, "she sat her down upon a green bank," and bidding him "Play about, there's a good boy, and pick some pretty flowers for mama!" she was soon immersed in a periodical, bearing a bloodcurdling device upon the cover.

Fuzzy gathered a bunch of celandines, and with them clasped tightly in his hot, fat hand, set off at a run down the road, giggling delightedly when he discovered that Nana neither called him nor yet started in pursuit.

Trotting gleefully along for some little distance he turned off into an inviting-looking lane. He kept close to the hedge for there was a sound of galloping hoofs, and Fuzzy was an extremely sensible small boy. Then there passed him a horse and dogcart, the horse going at a hand gallop, the dogcart empty. This struck Fuzzy as strange, but then strange things do happen when one sets forth to seek adventures. So he girded up his stocking which had become uncomfortably wrinkly and trudged on.

Presently he saw a man lying by the side of the road. Now Fuzzy had a large acquaintance among road men, and for tramps he felt a real affection. Had they not sometimes got white rats in their pockets? Nay, those of a superior sort even carried ferrets! He and his mother were wont to bestow pence on tramps, and on the road men, boots and the professor's old coats. In fact the professor was often heard to complain that he met his favourite coat by a heap of stones every time he went out. Fuzzy advanced fearlessly to inspect this weary man, who was lying on his face, with one arm doubled up under him in the strangest fashion. The man did not move as Fuzzy came up, and the little boy went and stood by the prostrate form, saying, with a comical imitation of his father:—"Thirsty weather, eh?" but the usual "It be that, Master!" did not follow.

The afternoon was very still. The sound of galloping hoofs and bumping wheels had died away in the distance. Suddenly Fuzzy gave a little cry—"Bookie! Bookie dear! are you hurted? Why do you lie in the road? gentlemens don't lie in the road—O Bookie! your foot is bad, it's all bleedy and dreadful!"

The Bookie did not answer, "he kind of snored" as Fuzzy afterwards described it. The child tried to turn him over on his back, but the Bookie being six foot two, and proportionately broad, and Fuzzy by no means tall for his age, this proved an impossible feat.

"I'm afraid he's hurted very bad, his face is so red and dirty," said Fuzzy to himself. Then, with Herculean efforts, he succeeded in inserting his own legs under the Bookie's head, so that it rested on his clean holland smock. He stroked the tumbled hair, and laid his soft little face upon the Bookie's hot, prickly cheek. They remained thus for what seemed to Fuzzy an interminable time. He began to grow sleepy himself. His head nodded, and finally he too fell over on to his back sound asleep.

When the Bookie came to himself he lay still for a few minutes collecting his thoughts. He discovered that his arm was certainly broken, that a wheel had gone over his ankle, that his face was resting on something soft, and that not ten inches from his face was a pair of small, dusty strap-shoes.

This last discovery completely sobered him. He raised himself on his good arm and looked down at the something which had been supporting him. A golden head, resting on two plump arms crossed behind it; sturdy legs, crushed by his weight, which now drew themselves up stretching out again as if relieved ... and then the Bookie realised that Fuzzy had found him, and had stayed to keep guard.

"God help me for a drunken beast! and I can't carry him for my arm's broken," he ejaculated. He got up on to his knees feeling very giddy. The movement woke Fuzzy. He too was puzzled for a moment as to where he could be, then, he saw the Bookie, and, his brains not being muddled by various "drinks" and a heavy fall, he sat up, saying in his tender little voice: "Are you hurted much, my poor dear? I stayed with you till you woked up."

The Bookie looked at Fuzzy and tried to speak, but somehow he couldn't. Fuzzy was on his feet in a moment and held out his grubby hands: "Shall I pull you up? I can pull dad up."

The Bookie took one of the little hands and carried it to his lips, saying brokenly, "Why do you love me, Fuzzy? I'm not worth it."

Fuzzy took no notice of this remark, it was just one of those foolish and irrelevant things that grown-up people have a habit of saying, so he said, "Aren't you tired of sitting in the road? Hadn't we better go home? I'm very hungry."

The Bookie tried again to get up on to his feet, but something had gone wrong with his leg, as well as his arm, and after a few excruciating efforts he gave it up.

"I'm afraid it's no go, Fuzzy, I can't walk; you see I was pitched out of the dog-cart, and I'm all smashed up—whatever is to be done?"

"Shall you be very lonely if I go home and tell them?" asked Fuzzy with his arms round the Bookie's neck, "and then they could bring a carriage for you; you're too big to go in my mail cart, or I'd lend it to you. It's in a field wiv Nana."

"How on earth I got into this lane I can't think, it's right off the high road. O Fuzzy Wuzzy, what an ass I've been!" The Bookie groaned, and Fuzzy clasped his arms tighter round his neck. Then he wiped his friend's dirty face with the crumpled smock, remarking: "Your poor face is so grubby, and you've lost your hat!"

"Where's yours?" asked the Bookie.

"I think it felled into the ditch!" Fuzzy answered composedly, "but there's no sun to sun-stroke us."

"You must be got home, old chap; it's getting ever so late and they will be anxious; do you think you could go by yourself, and tell them where you left me?"—"a pretty tale, truly," thought the Bookie to himself.

Fuzzy was torn by conflicting desires. He hated to leave his wounded friend, and he wanted his mother. Finally, having embraced the Bookie several times, he trotted off down the lane and into the high road once more. When he got home it was nearly eight o'clock. His father and mother, white-faced and anxious, were standing at the drive gate, straining their eyes in the twilight. Nana, having searched vainly herself, had only just come back to confess that Fuzzy was lost. He hardly waited to receive his mother's caresses, but seizing her by the hand, dragged her down the road, crying excitedly: "Come quick! the Bookie's hurted and he's all alone."

By dint of much questioning, the Bookie's whereabouts and the extent of his misfortunes were arrived at. The dogcart and horse were captured in an adjacent village, and the Bookie spent a month indoors. Fuzzy went to see him every day, so did they all, but they never spoke of the accident. They played Poker and Nap round his sick-bed, and the beggar constantly won.

The night before he went down he told them about Fuzzy. He forgot to swear at all during the narrative, but at the end he said: "And I'm damned if those dusty strap-shoes wouldn't get between me and too much of the best champagne ever bottled!"

X

THE DARK LADY

Nobody knew her—that is to say, none of the other ladies knew her. She was staying at the "Moonstone" for the hunting, accompanied by a maid, a couple of grooms, and six horses. The hotel people called her "the Baroness." Billy always spoke of her as "that pretty lady"; but then it is possible that admiration for her daring horsemanship coloured Billy's views.

On this particular afternoon Billy and the unknown lady found themselves at the same gate, in the gathering gloom of a November afternoon, six good miles from home. She was trying to lift a refractory latch with her hunting-crop when Billy rode up on his shaggy sheltie, dismounted cap in hand, and opened the gate for her.

"We seem to have lost the others, you and I. Shall we jog home together?" she asked, as Billy, having carefully fastened the gate, followed her down the rutty lane. "I'm not very sure where we are; but I suppose this lane leads somewhere," she continued.

"I know the way," answered the little boy cheerfully. "I shall be very glad of your company. Jackson—that's our man—lamed the cob early in the day and had to go home, and it's lonely riding by one's self."

"I am often lonely," said the lady, more to herself than to Billy.

"Are you? So am I. I'm the only one who hunts, you see; but I'm going to school at Easter, then I shan't be lonely any more."

"Are you glad to be going to school?"

"Oh, yes! I shall like being with the other chaps awfully; but, of course, I shall miss my people ... and the dogs, and the pony."

"Your people don't hunt, do they?"

"No; we've only the cob and my pony. Mother doesn't hunt, she's too nervous; and father doesn't care for it. Mother drives to the near meets sometimes, but when it is a long way she likes Jackson to come with me for the day. Not that he's any mortal use," added Billy with a gleeful chuckle. "He's a potterer, and my brother is too little."

"I wonder," the lady began, then stopped suddenly. Billy turned his rosy face towards her, but she did not speak. The child, because he knew one woman so well, divined that this woman was tired and sad. So he, too, was silent. The horses' hoofs went thud, swish, thud, swish, through the foot-deep decaying beech leaves. A delicate silver mist gathered round the roots of the great trees; like the bridal veil of a rosy girl, it spread itself over the stretches of ruddy space. They had turned into the grass-carpeted main avenue of the Earl's famous park, and Billy sniffed delightedly at what he called "the good smell of Christmas." Happy Billy! to whom the death of summer brought no sad thoughts.

"I'm afraid you are very tired!" he said suddenly, in his kind boyish voice. "Would you like to stop a bit?"

The lady started. Not, indeed, that she had forgotten Billy; she was in a subconscious way basking in the warmth that radiates from all simple and kindly people. Her rebellious mood of the last weeks had passed. That mood in which she loved to assert her fascination for men; mentally snapping her fingers in the faces of her sister women so ready to think evil of her. Certain kinds of men come to heel easily and she felt her triumph to be but a poor one. This half-hour's companionship of a friendly little boy had altered everything; at the moment she no longer felt herself to be the sport of circumstance; but her heart ached and her voice was weariful as she said:—"No, we won't stop. I am tired, but we are only about three miles from home. You live just outside the town, don't you?"

"Yes! at that tall grey gabled house where the cross roads meet!"

"I have seen you go into the drive. Do you do lessons—who teaches you?"

"Partly Mother, partly Dad. I am not clever at lessons." Billy flushed as he spoke; he was fully aware that his small love for books was something of a reproach. People expect so much from the child of clever parents. He did not know that his strongly developed sporting instincts were the pride of his bookish father's heart; nor how cheerfully that father had forgone many a rare edition, that Billy might ride to hounds. "A modest lad, a good lad; let him play about in the sunshine—the rest will come." So Billy's father, who would relate with glee how successfully Billy had vetoed one topic of conversation. On an evening, not so very long ago, Billy had put his head round the drawing-room door, demanding, "Is Dad going to talk about 'The Dark Lady of the Sonnets?' 'cause, if he is, I'm not coming in. I've had enough of hearing about her."

So Dad vowed he would talk of her no more, and discussed the habits of "Pug" with a learning that astonished and charmed Billy beyond telling.

The much-vexed question of Mary Fitton's identity with the "Dark Lady of the Sonnets" had raged with violence in Billy's house. His father had written many articles upon the subject—articles appearing in those fat, uninteresting magazines which littered drawing-room and study; in whose closely printed pages Billy sought in vain for "pictures and conversations." He did wish that Dad wrote for the Strand.

Curiously enough, as they rode home in the gathering eventide, the thought jumped into Billy's head that the dark lady of the sonnets must have been exactly like the Baroness. With the inconsequent aptness of childhood he proceeded to quote aloud lines learned to please his father:

"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."

The lady pulled up short and, turning in her saddle, asked with a catch in her voice, "Why do you say that? What is it? Where is it from?"

"Oh, it's those sonnets, you know—I've learnt lots of 'em to please my dad."

"But what made you quote that just then?" persisted the Baroness, her eyes dark and tragic with some nameless fear: "What made you quote it then? Were you thinking of me?"

Billy blushed and took off his cap that he might rumple his hair, a thing he always did when perplexed.

"I was thinking of you," he said at last, "yet that has nothing to do with you. This has though"—and, blushing more than ever, Billy repeated:

"Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,

Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain;

Have put on black, and loving mourners be,

Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain:

And truly not the morning sun of heaven

Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,

Nor that full star that ushers in the even,

Than those two mourning eyes become thy face.

Billy stopped breathless, but confident that he had said the right thing this time.

"It is very pretty!" said the lady with a sigh—"but the other is true. What a queer little boy you are to repeat poetry like that! How old are you?"

"I shall be nine at Easter. Then I go to school. Where are you going when the hunting is over? It ends early here; we never kill a May fox—the crops, you know."

"I don't know where I shall go, probably to London, or to Paris, or——" here she murmured something in a language Billy did not understand, then, turning to him, said dreamily:

"'That is my home of love: if I have ranged,

Like him that travels, I return again.'

You see I know something of your poetry too! But, wherever I go, I shall be lonely—lonely and sad."

There was a sound of tears in her voice. Billy, infinitely distressed, felt that this melancholy lady must be cheered and encouraged, so he said stoutly:

"I've never seen you alone before. You've generally got Mr. Rigby Folaire, or Captain Garth, or Lord Edward, or all of them."

"That's just it," said the Baroness, and Billy was more puzzled than ever. Feeling that he must get on to more comprehensible ground, he asked,

"How did you lose the others?"

"Probably very much as you did. Anyhow, here we are together, and I am very glad. I have enjoyed your society extremely. I shall remember our afternoon."

The Baroness was destined to remember, for at that moment Billy's pony put his foot in a rabbit hole and came down, throwing the child with some violence against the trunk of a tree. They were riding at the edge of the wood.

The pony scrambled up and galloped off; but Billy lay quite still in a pathetic heap. The Baroness had pulled up her tall horse almost on to his haunches, for Billy had been thrown right in front of her. Now, with the reins over her arm, she was stooping over the prostrate Billy, while the nervous thoroughbred trembled and curvetted beside her.

The Baroness was noted for the speed and grace with which she could mount or dismount.

She lifted Billy in her arms. There was a big bruise on his temple, and he seemed stunned by the fall. His head rolled on to her shoulder, lying there heavily. Reaching for her flask from the pocket of her saddle, and with the reins still round her wrist, she sat down on the ground with Billy in her arms. She soaked her handkerchief in brandy, and dabbed his forehead, and, as if to aid her, there pattered down upon his upturned face the first drops of a cold November shower.

The Baroness had faced many dangers in her time. To "scenes" of various kinds she was quite inured; but she trembled as Billy's face touched her neck, and there was a look in her eyes that neither Mr. Rigby Folaire nor Lord Edward had ever seen there. Presently Billy stirred and opened his eyes, saying eagerly, "I'm all right, mother! It wasn't Dalgo's fault I fell off. It's all right."

Sitting up suddenly, he saw the Baroness, and knew where he was. But he had clung to her—she always remembered that.

He scrambled to his feet, exclaiming, "I beg your pardon. Did I frighten you? I am so sorry"; then, turning very giddy, sat down again amongst the wet leaves.

"I wonder if I ought to give him brandy," murmured the Baroness. She put her free arm round him, while the tall horse sniffed inquiringly at them both.

The white mist crept higher among the trees and the rain grew heavier. Billy shivered.

"We can't sit here," said the Baroness decidedly. "You'll have to ride Frivolity in front of me. I don't know where your pony is, and if he has galloped home they will be in a dreadful state. So we must hurry.

"How strong you are!" said Billy, admiringly, as she swung him up to the saddle in front of her—"and how kind!" He put his hand on hers that held the reins, her other arm was round him. Thus they rode home in the cold gloom of that November afternoon.

* * * * *

"Billy's late!" said his mother nervously as she poked the study fire. "I am always worried when he is out without Jackson; he is so reckless, and Jackson came home just before lunch, you know." Billy's father pushed his papers away from him, and came and stood beside her at the fire.

"There he is!" he said, "there's the drive gate."

"That's a horse; besides, Billy always goes straight to the yard—Oh, can he be hurt? and some one has come to tell us. Go down quick and see."

On no occasion did Billy ever go hunting but his mother pictured every possible mishap. Had the child ever realised her agony of apprehension he would never have gone; but she loved him too well to interfere with his pleasures. "He's such a manly little fellow," she would say when he came safely back, forgetting her dread in her pride of him—until next hunting day.

She followed her husband into the fire-lit hall. The door stood open. The well-loved little figure was silhouetted against the gloom, and the kind young voice was persuading some one to come in. "Do come and have some tea," she heard him say; then, as he saw his mother: "It's the dark lady, dear; she has been so kind to me. Has Dalgo come home?"

The mother went out on to the steps beside her husband. The unknown lady had already turned her horse preparatory to departure, but waited just to say in short, jerky sentences:

"Your little boy was thrown, and the pony ran away. I thought it best to bring him home without looking for the pony. He fell with some force against a tree, but I don't think——!"

"Won't you come in?" asked Billy's mother, going down into the rain beside her guest. A great many considerations flashed into her mind, but—"and let me thank you."

The soft voice was so like Billy's. For a moment the Baroness wavered. She looked somewhat wistfully into the hall where the ruddy firelight danced on the old oak furniture, but she gave a little wriggle on her saddle and said lightly and in the voice that jarred, "Thanks! but I'm far too wet. I must go home and change. The boy is wet. I hope the pony will turn up all right," and with that she rode out of the drive.

Billy spent some days in bed with concussion of the brain. He talked constantly of his "dark lady" to the bewilderment of his mother, who had no idea how firmly he was imbued with the notion that his dark lady was the dark lady—"of the sonnets," as he always piously concluded.

As for the lady—when Billy's father went down to the "Moonstone" that very evening in the pouring rain, to thank her for her kindness to his little son, she was declared to be engaged and would see no one.

When Billy's mother went next morning she was told that the Baroness had gone to town the night before. Her servants and her horses followed her, and the hunt knew her no more. She left no address. Mr. Rigby Folaire and Lord Edward inquired her whereabouts in vain. But Billy knew she had "gone back into the sonnets"; for had she not said, as they rode home in the rain that afternoon,

"That is my home of love: if I have ranged

Like him that travels, I return again"?

Billy was sure; and even Billy's father has given up talking about Mary Fitton.

XI

HER FIRST APPEARANCE

Somehow or other it got noised abroad in the town that Lady Valeria was coming to church the very next Sunday.

The town was much interested. There are people who speak of our town as a "village." Such people are lacking in all sense of proportion. We pity them, and try to ignore the insult.

But to return to Lady Valeria. For nearly four years we have had her in our midst. At first she was known as "the Earl's baby"; but her appearance and character were such that she speedily achieved a distinct entity, and now her doings are chronicled with extreme minuteness.

"Mammy dear! Mammy dear!" said Lady Valeria, "what does God do in church?"

Her mother looked puzzled for a moment, then she said, "He listens to our prayers, and to the psalms and hymns we sing."

"Will He speak to me, mammy dear? Will He want to kiss me?"

Most people wanted to kiss Lady Valeria; she was quite used to it.

"We cannot see God," answered the Countess gravely.

"Why, mammy dear?" asked the persistent treble voice, "what does He hide for?"

The Countess looked beseechingly at her husband, but he would not come to her assistance; he went and looked out of the window, and his shoulders shook. He gave her no help in these matters—no help at all—and, really, there never was a more inquiring child than Lady Valeria.

"I'd like to see God, mammy dear! why can't I?"

"We can none of us see God—yet," said her mother, gently; "we shall see Him some day if we are good. Now listen, sweetheart, you must be perfectly quiet in church, and not talk at all; you must do whatever I do. Remember, it is God's House, and we go there to thank Him for all He gives us, and to pray to Him for help to do right."

Lady Valeria's face was very solemn, and she held it up to be kissed, and she made many protestations with regard to the extreme decorum of her conduct when Sunday should come. Then the head nurse appeared and carried her off to nursery tea.

Her parents had misgivings as to the sobriety of her behaviour in church. The Countess felt nervous and said so; as for the Earl, he laughed and loved her, but he said that nothing would induce him to accompany his daughter to church next Sunday afternoon. Hers was a character of much originality. She acted with decision, and always unexpectedly; and the little Countess, who was only nineteen years older than her daughter, often felt that the baby girl was the stronger of the two.

There was a pleasant flutter of expectation among the Sunday-school children, and, indeed, among the congregation generally, at the children's service on that memorable Sunday when Lady Valeria first came to church. Since her own christening, and that of her small brother, nothing so exciting had occurred. The Earl's seat was high up in the centre aisle, in full view of the congregation. As the young Countess walked in, leading her little daughter by the hand, she had to run the gauntlet of the kindly inquisitive eyes of the entire congregation, an unusually large one. She blushed very much, for she was a shy little lady, who loved to go her gracious way quietly and unobserved. Not so Lady Valeria—from her earliest infancy she had been taught to give pleasure by her pretty smiles, and that to "notice people" was one of the most binding of her obligations. Though certainly no Pharisee, she dearly loved "greetings in the market-place," and as she trotted up the aisle she nodded gaily to her acquaintances, who were there in large numbers. She waved her fat hand to the curate as he took his seat in the choir, much to his confusion.

In the choir were two of the lodge-keeper's sons. Their white garments had for the nonce concealed their identity; but presently Lady Valeria recognised them, and, mounting a high hassock, she nodded and waved ecstatically—she felt so sure they would be delighted to see her in church. She wondered why they looked so red, and why they did not pull their front locks and grin, as they were wont to do when she passed them in the pony carriage. She felt chilled and disappointed at this lack of responsiveness on the part of so many of her friends.

The service began. Lady Valeria carefully copied her mother and made no sound. That lady, who had not noticed "the nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles" which marked her daughter's entrance, felt her cheeks begin to cool and was conscious of a hope upspringing that her temerity in bringing Lady Valeria to church was to be triumphantly vindicated.

Suddenly, however, in the middle of the psalms, which were read in alternate verses by vicar and congregation, she noticed that, in the congregation's verse, somebody was saying in a triumphant sing-song:

"There was a lady loved a swine.

'Honey!' said she,

'Pighog, wilt thou be mine?'

'Hunc!' said he."

The final "hunc" was a life-like imitation of one of the Earl's prize pigs. The verse in question happened to be shorter than Lady Valeria's, and she finished after the congregation.

The curate turned purple, and the vicar's voice trembled. The Countess blushed redder than before, and, stooping down, whispered, "You mustn't say anything, darling!"

Lady Valeria looked up in pained surprise.

"Every one else is talking, mammy dear. I'm sure God wouldn't mind."

Her mother shook her head again, and Lady Valeria relapsed into a wondering and somewhat injured silence. Why should those Sunday-school children be allowed to bawl out all sorts of seemingly irrelevant remarks, while she was checked for one little tiny rhyme? Truly, church was a puzzling place. She sighed, and pulled off her gloves, then she rolled them into a neat ball and played catch with them. But she was no hand at catch, and the gloves fell with a soft "plop" into the aisle. Her mother looked up at the little sound and again shook her head. Lady Valeria yawned.

Then something happened. There was a scuffling at the back, and the vicar's wife, who is a strict disciplinarian, marched up the aisle propelling a small boy in front of her—the very small boy who was the cause of the disturbance. Lady Valeria nearly fell off her stool in her excitement. The procession of two, the pusher and the pushed, passed the Earl's pew, and reached the big brass bird, whose classification had been puzzling Lady Valeria for the last ten minutes. The vicar's wife left the small boy just beside the big bird, and marched down the aisle again. The hymn finished, the vicar went into the pulpit and gave out the text. Thomas Beames, the culprit, stuffed his fists into his eyes, and wept copiously, but silently. There he would have to stand, publicly disgraced, with his back in full view of the congregation for the rest of the service.

"I'll turn dissenter, I will!" vowed Thomas, in his miserable soul. "I'll vote yallow when I be growed a man. I won't cap she, when I do meet her in the street."

The vicar's voice exhorting the children to industry, sobriety, and universal charity fell on deaf ears as far as Thomas was concerned. But what he did hear was the soft patter of little feet behind him, then came a pull at his arm by two small impatient hands. He took his fists out of his eyes, and looked down to see Lady Valeria standing beside him. Her blue eyes were full of pity, and she said very softly and distinctly, "Don't ky, little boy! there's plenty of room in our seat!" and before the astonished Thomas could demur, one of the imperative little hands had seized his, and pulled him into the Earl's pew, where he sat crimson and desperately uncomfortable for the rest of the service; but he was not quite so sure that he would vote "yallow when he were growed a man." The sermon was long. The vicar felt this flying in the face of law and order must be lived or preached down.

Lady Valeria yawned again. Heedless of the precepts of St. Paul, she removed her hat. Then she leaned her head against her mother's shoulder and slept.

She slept all through the sermon; even the singing of the closing hymn did not awake her.

The school children, including the now repentant Thomas Beames, had clattered out, and still the Lady Valeria slept.

Her mother kissed and woke her, and as they walked across the sunny market-place, Lady Valeria remarked cheerfully, "Mammy dear, mammy dear! I like church, you feels so nice and fresh when you comes out!"

XII

"OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US"

Ridgeway came in with the morning paper while Johnny was still at breakfast. Johnny was late, but at the beginning of the holidays he generally was late unless it happened to be a hunting morning.

Something had evidently stirred Ridgeway out of his usual stately calm, for instead of bringing in the paper neatly folded upon a salver, he held it open in his hand, and his hands were shaking.

"It's all here, Master Johnny!" he cried. "Bobs 'e spoke and Lord Curzon 'e spoke, and the King and the Viceroy sent messages and no end of nobs besides: and to think of it! the General was there to 'ear it all. An' that gentleman wot writes the books you're so fond of, he was there an' 'e wrote a hymn 'specially for the occasion."

Johnny snatched the paper and Ridgeway retired to the sideboard, where he stood with his back to Johnny, blowing his nose and clearing his throat in a highly unprofessional fashion.

"I'm glad grandfather was there," Johnny said presently. "Don't you wish you'd been there, Ridgeway? But I suppose you were born a bit too late ... you were born after the Mutiny, weren't you?"

"Bless you, yes, Master Johnny. Why, 'owever old do you think I am?"

"Everybody seems rather old in this house after school, you know," Johnny explained apologetically. "At school there's fifty chaps, and Hatton Major's the eldest and he's just fourteen and seven months. He's leaving this term. I shall be leaving at midsummer, you know, for then I shall be fourteen. When'll grandfather be back, Ridgeway?"

"The General said 'e'd telegraph this morning. I expect 'e's a bit tired after that dinner. My word! it must have been a fine sight—all those old chaps, and the officers, all with their medals and their orders on. Somethin' like a Tamash that was. They've seen a deal, they 'ave."

Johnny rose from table with the paper still in his hand. "I think," he said, "that grandfather would wish all the servants to hear what's in this paper, and I'd like to read it to them. Please tell them to come here at once, Ridgeway."

The long line of servants filed into the room just as they did when the General was at home to read prayers. And Johnny, fair-haired, round-faced, and ever so serious, stood up before them all to read aloud about the dinner that the proprietors of a great newspaper had given to the survivors of the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

Everybody was impressed; and the cook, who was fat and full of sensibility, wept audibly.

Johnny's voice did not falter except when he stumbled over one or two of the long words in some of the speeches, till he came to what Ridgeway called "the hymn" written by Mr. Rudyard Kipling.

"One service more we dare to ask:

Pray for us, heroes, pray,

That when Fate lays on us our task,

We do not shame the day."

As he reached this last verse his voice broke.

"That's all," he said hastily, "and thank you very much for listening." Then he fled to the stables, bearing the precious newspaper with him that he might read it all over again to the General's groom and the stable boys.

Johnny was the youngest of a long line of soldiers and civilians who had served our Indian Empire. Father and mother were still in India, though they were coming home before the hot weather and mother would probably not go out again. Johnny, himself, always talked of "going back" when he should be through Sandhurst; although he had left India for good at four years old. Yet he heard "the East a-calling" with the same loud imperative call that all his race had so ungrudgingly obeyed.

Johnny adored the works of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. His nursery days had been enriched and enchanted by the Jungle Books and Just So Stories; and as he grew older he chose out for enthusiastic admiration certain heroes from among the short stories, heroes who were to him a never-failing inspiration and example. He was sure, of course, that Mr. Kipling was "a real person," but he was infinitely more confident that Bobby Wicks and John Chinn and Georgie Cottar had actually existed, did actually exist, except poor Bobby Wicks who died of cholera. They were, in fact, far more manifest to the mind of Johnny than the man privileged to chronicle their doings. It was beastly bad luck that Bobby Wicks had died: it always made him want to kick his best friend for at least an hour afterwards when he read that story. All the same, Bobby had not died in vain, for his cheery, unconscious heroism had kindled in the breast of at least one small boy a steady flame of patriotism and the passionate hope that when his time should come he, too, might serve and suffer with the men he hoped one day to lead.

That mild December morning, as he rode alone along the muddy lanes, Johnny's mind was full of the Mutiny, and his heart grew big within him as he thought of the men whose dangers his grandfather had been privileged to share.

When he got back to lunch he found a long telegram from the General saying that certain old friends who had come up for the Mutiny dinner had persuaded him to stay one more night in town, but that he would motor back very early on Christmas morning in plenty of time for church. Johnny felt a bit disappointed, but he went to tea with some cheery neighbours where there was assembled a large and youthful party, and he dined in solemn state with Ridgeway in attendance. After dinner he arranged his gifts for grandfather and the servants and was quite ready for bed when bed-time came. He said his prayers with his usual precipitation: but when he had finally besought blessings upon "father and mother and grandfather and all my kind friends" he found himself still upon his knees repeating: