INTRODUCTORY (continued 2)

At last, taking a road high above a little village bowered in trees, we turned between beautiful scrolled gates into a drive that seemed to me to pierce gardens as enchanting as the hanging ones of Babylon. There were soft lawns and placid groves of timber, with lofty rookeries. There were vivid parterres, and terraces stooping to blue depths, wheredown a little silver brook bubbled through mists of foliage. There were rose bowers, and great jars, like Plenty’s horn, brimming petunias. There was a mossy fountain, with lilies and goldfish, and a baby Triton in the midst spurting a jet to heaven. There were grassy walks, and beyond their vistas the eternal solace of distance. And, dominating all, there was the house.

At least it seemed less to command than to partake of the serenity of which it was the habitable nucleus—the human nest in the garden. It stood before us, not suddenly, but in quiet revelation, a simple old structure of red brick, unlaboured with ornament, unweighted of stone, a pleasant home for happiness set on a wide level platform of grass and gravel. My eyes had hardly accepted it before my heart.

We alighted into a fragrant hall, and madam led me at once into a large low room with windows bent upon a heavenly prospect of woods and meadows; and there, bidding me await her until she could come and talk with me, shut me in, and withdrew.

I had not stood many minutes, in a silent dream of wonder and expectation, when the door opened softly again, and a little girl stole in. She was about my own age, or somewhat older, and very dark and pretty, but with foolish large eyes like a dog’s. For some moments she stared at me, wondering, without a smile, then came and touched my hand.

“Madam sent me,” she said. “I live here. I am her adoption child. Are you come to stay?”

I shook my head, bewildered.

“O,” she whispered, “I hope so. I have no little friend at all, and you are so pretty.”

“I have golden hair,” I said. “We can’t all be the same. But yours at least is very curly. What is your name?”

“Patience Grant,” she said. “My mother died in the convent, and I have no father. I am not allowed to play with the village children. What is your name?”

I told her “Diana Please.”

“It is a nice name,” she said. “Did your mother too die in the convent? I am very happy here, but I shall be happier if you come.”

Lady Sophia had entered softly while she spoke.

“Hush, Patty!” said she, with a smile. “And run away now.”

The child went, looking wistfully back. Ah, mignonnette, ma petite à jamais mémorable, toi que j’aime sans discontinuer! How wert thou to me from the first the most attached of little dogs!

Madam drew me into a window, and looked earnestly into my eyes. As she held me, Father Pope entered and stood near, my morose and baleful inquisitor.

“Do you like my home?” she said, in her level, toneless voice. The labour of lifting it seemed always constitutionally beyond her.

I clasped my hands. “O, madam,” I said, “I could be a very good Catholic here!”

She smiled, in a surprised way, then looked grave. I waited in a fever of expectation for her to speak again. I had already decided that I would wish to be adopted like Patience, in whom I seemed to foresee a little adoring vassal, so welcome after my own long slavery, and that I must be adroit to gain my point. Brighthelmston, with its questionable potentialities, had darkened in contrast with this paradise. I felt even that it would not be good for me to return there; that I was destined for a virtuous, if not a devout life. It is no contradiction that I had not thought so an hour before. Our moral development is intermittent. Its phases of growth are inspirations of adaptation to circumstance. A fever made of Francis of Assisi a saint out of a profligate. These high lawns had revealed to me the pit from which I had escaped.

Lady Sophia looked very sweet and grave.

“Or anywhere, I hope,” she said. “Faith is not a question of surroundings.”

I was not so sure of that; but I held my tongue, hanging my head.

“Let me see your face,” she insisted, and put her thin hand under my chin.

“It is a pretty and an innocent one,” she declared. “How came you, child, in the position in which Father Pope found you?”

I told her how I had been stolen by the sweep, and had escaped from him rather than seem to concur in the violence offered to my religion.

“It was an ingenious and a courageous act,” she said, gently kindling; “was it not, Father?”

The bear snorted, dissent or commendation—it was all one.

“Ask her about her mother,” he growled.

“True,” said the lady, with a gesture of involuntary repulsion, for which she the moment after atoned with a caress.

“She had been a Sister in the Hospital of St. Magdalen, Father Pope tells me,” she said very low. “She had returned there to expiate her—her”—

“No,” I broke in.

“You told me so,” roared the priest.

“I didn’t,” I said, half crying. “You were looking at your book all the time I confessed.”

Madame Sophia could not restrain a smile.

“Fie, Father!” she said. “I admit it does not sound the least probable part of the child’s experiences.”

But she sobered again in a moment.

“She did not return?” she asked. “Then”—

“She is dead,” I whispered.

After all, I believed it was true; that she could not have survived the wreck of all things which my abduction must have meant to her. The gentlewoman gave a gasp of pity and self-rebuke, and enfolded me in her arms.

“Forgive me!” she cried. “O, I was cruel! The poor lost lamb! So white, so helpless, so delivered to the wolves! But”—she bethought herself—“where was this?— And your unhappy father?”

“He had taken me to Brighthelmston,” I stammered; “he was not of our religion—of any. He made me dance before the pretty prince, and would have given me to him, but that the sweep whom he fought stole me out of revenge first.”

The priest and the lady exchanged looks.

“Am I justified?” she asked. “The peril, the iniquity! O, surely, Father—surely!”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Write to the Magdalens first,” said he, “and verify it.”

She thought a little, then addressed me again.

“And if I do, would you like to make your home here in the meantime, Diana?”

The strain had been very severe. I fell on my knees before her, weeping. I knew, from what my governess had once told me, that les Madelonnettes must confirm the worst of my story.

“O, madam,” I cried, “if you would train me in goodness and piety!”

She kissed me, then looked up, her immobile face quite transfigured.

“Perhaps,” she thrilled, “some day, perhaps some day to fill the place and vindicate the vows of the poor weak apostate who gave you life!”

“Write to the Magdalens,” growled Father Pope.

VII. I AM PUT AWAY IN CAMPHOR

I cannot hold Lady Sophia altogether irresponsible for the loss to the Calendar of a very promising saint. I entered Wellcot enthusiastic to devote the rest of my days to the practices of piety and self-renunciation, and I was moved to this resolve not least by the example my benefactress seemed to offer me of the most perfect detachment from the world. Alas! I was too soon to realise how the chaste aloofness of a mind may mean only a vanity so sensitive, and an irritability so nervous, as for ever to be on their defence against unwarranted approaches. I had thought her serenely above the littlenesses of life; and all the time she only sat on a level with them, but apart, in alarm lest her moral distinction should be held to justify familiarities with her social. The folded wings of piety may be used to conceal some uncelestial humours. I had supposed, at least, that passion was the remotest from her temperament; and there even I was wrong, as you shall learn.

She wrote, in accordance with Father Pope’s advice, to the Superioress of the sisterhood to which my mother had belonged. I confess, for all my confidence, I awaited the answer in some trepidation. It fulfilled, however, when it came, my best expectations. The charitable Mother confirmed the story of her former postulant’s recreancy and flight with a profligate man of fashion—whither, she had never concerned herself to inquire. The woman, in leaving the convent gates, she said, had died to her—to all, save the lord of hell, who, she was rejoiced now to hear, had so soon claimed and secured his own. She would command a Magnificat that night in praise of the eternal chastity; and there her interest in the matter ended. She wrote in French, with much Pharisaic unction, which betrayed, nevertheless, its underlying gall. Madam quoted to me only so much (I found an opportunity later to read the whole) as appeared to justify her in the course upon which she was resolved—my present adoption, that was to say, by her, for the sake of my soul. I was becomingly meek and grateful in placing myself unreservedly in her hands; and in this manner began my self-obliterating martyrdom of five long years in the placid nunnery of Wellcot.

For a time I was very happy, until a ripening intelligence revealed to me by degrees the limitations of my moral and material surroundings. I have no intention to detail the processes of that growth. I can hardly, indeed, claim an independent life until detached from its dull experiences. It is enough here briefly to review them.

My first warning disillusionment was the knowledge, to my infinite disgust, that Father Pope was to remain a permanency in the asylum to which accident had translated him. Whether his former patrons seized this opportunity—in the first reactionary days after riot—to rid themselves of an ungainly incubus, or whether—which is more probable—he himself manœuvred for transference to new hunting-grounds, not of souls, but grubs, I do not know. Anyhow, his baggage being his book, the change was easy, and at Wellcot he remained, titular chaplain to the Lady Sophia, but positive to a community of nuns across the valley, who were her most cherished protégées, and to whose ranks I, in the first blind fervour of my redemption, unprovisionally dedicated myself.

I had not been long settled before, speculating on the relationship between Shole and Wellcot-Herring, I began to wonder if I was destined ever to see again the young gentleman who had so insulted me. Perhaps, I thought, I might help by my example, and even persuasion, to wean him from his evil courses. However, the opportunity was not to be given me, as it appeared he was not sufficiently in love with his aunt’s ways to pay her even the periodic courtesy of a visit. But his father the earl came occasionally, and from him I was bent upon discovering whether or not my image was entirely effaced from the son’s remembrance.

Happening to meet him alone in the gardens one day, I was actually emboldened to beg him to convey a message from me to the viscount that I forgave him.

He stopped, and looked at me with admiration; then took my chin in his hand.

“I shall do nothing of the sort, Miss Presumption,” he said, in his thin, ironic voice. “But I’m not so particular for myself. You shall give me all of your confidences that you like.”

“Thank you,” I said saucily; “I will choose a handsomer to fill the place of my papa.”

“Was he so handsome?” says he, grinning.

“He was the most beautiful man in the world,” I answered.

“Well, I can believe it,” he said. “But not so handsome as my brother George, hey?”

“Fifty thousand times,” I said.

“And fifty thousand times better?”

“I don’t know. He was good enough for me.”

“That I can well believe,” he chuckled; then took a turn or two and came back.

“Harkee, missy,” says he, “I’m not going to peach on you, whatever you say, so you can be as free as air with me. Only promise not to make me jealous of my own son, and we’ll be fast friends some day.” And with a laugh, he left me.

I hated him instinctively, and longed for the time when I could set my wits to discompose him. He was a widower, and socially and politically a man of bad character; and it should have been madam’s duty to see that we were not brought into contact. But she could conceive no evil of the head of her house.

The brother, the good one, came near us no more than the viscount; which, nevertheless, did not trouble me, because I owed him a debt, and he was too poor in purse and reputation to expect me to liquidate it. Little Patty, after her manner, loved this unfortunate, whom she had seen often in former days, before his character went over some racing transaction, which ruined him and made him shy of his familiars. Her loyalty was proof against the worst. Where she was pledged, she never dropped away, and her heart had the truest instinct for finding and attaching itself to what was lovable in another. She adored nobility of mind, and was always my most faithful little adherent. I came early to discover that her origin was none of the most select, and on this account, perhaps, condescended to her more than I should. She repaid me with a blind devotion and admiration which were sometimes more affecting than diplomatic; and, before I had been at Wellcot a year, would have followed me at a word to shame or death, in very despite of her duty to her patroness. But by then, I think, she was coming with me to recognise certain flaws in the character of her former divinity.

It was from her in the first instance that I learned all that she knew of the family history: How my lord was a brute and libertine, who had done his wife to death, and was hated and feared of all, unless, perhaps, by the old dirty astrologer on the hill, who was his kinsman and Naboth and defier in one, holding the “Folly” in fee simple, as he did, from a scientific ancestor, and persistently refusing to be coaxed or bought out of it. How my lady, as pious as her brother was worldly, had embraced the Romish doctrine many years before, and had not scrupled, on the Jesuit principle, to procure herself through his most questionable political relations a virtual exemption from the penalties which attached to the open exercise of her religion. How, trading on this connection, she had planted in Wellcot-Herring a community of the “Sisters of Perpetual Invocation,” whose munificent patroness and dupe (Heaven forgive me! They were certainly very plausible little sybarites) she had constituted herself. How the honourable Mr. Rowe, his lordship’s younger brother, was suspected of royal blood in his veins, and was only spared the scandal of proof so long as his nephew, the Viscount Salted, kept him out of the succession. How, in fine,—and this was where my interest was most intimately engaged,—her ladyship had once had an affaire de cœur with a Mr. de Crespigny, an artist, who came to paint her portrait, and who left it on the canvas half finished, being given, it was whispered, his congé in reluctant return for his insensibility to the proselytising advances of his sitter.

From little Patty I extracted all this chronique scandaleuse, and if she enlightened me in her own inimitable bashful way, blundering prettily on the truth out of innocence, I was not so backward even then as to be imposed upon by half-revelations, or to refrain from construing them on my own account into the language of experience.

And so I entered on my new life, having, to endear its strangeness, and soon, alas! its monotony to me, the most loving, simple-minded little comrade one might imagine. From the first my position, like my friend’s, was undefined. We were not adopted daughters, or servants, or companions to madam, but a sort of pious pensioners on her bounty. She claimed some personal menial duties of us, which might be likened to those exacted of ladies of a royal bed-chamber. As was befitting with so great a princess, we might approach and handle her, but reverently as one might uncover a reliquary of sanctified bones. And, indeed, she was little else. For myself, I did not much care. My eyes and ears served me for all her case, howsoever little of her intimacy was vouchsafed me.

I often put her to bed after supper and prayers, when she would love to engage me in little drony dialectics on faith. We had amicable contests of wit, God save me! on the qualities which endeared our favourite saints to us. I observed that the male beatitudes were her choice. Her room was hung with as many “Fathers” as a fribble’s is with Madonnas of the opera-house. The ways of piety are strange. I was no dévote, alas! like madam, yet I should have been abashed to go to bed in such company.

But, indeed, there was no disputing with her principles. Faith was her covering argument in everything. She wore it like a garment, high-necked and impenetrable; only, to my taste, it was none the more becoming for being fitted over broken stay-bones. Then, too, she moved so stately by faith, that I had often speculated why her heels should be trodden over, until I discovered that she had bandy legs. Truly faith, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. I attribute it to her that mine came so soon to be in myself. I have never had reason to be ashamed of anything it hid; only instinct tells me to be more particular about my garters than my scapular. If the Lady Susannah Rowe had found herself being spied upon by the Elders, she would have snatched and donned the latter, and had complete faith in its shelter. That may be grace, but it is not graceful, I think. Since the first mother started the fashions, there has been every obligation on us to consult appearances; and I at least, though never more worldly than the most, have persistently declined to let Faith make an ostrich of me.

She used often to send me to the convent across the valley with messages to the nuns; and I was early in discovering that I was the more welcomed by them when a little offering of fowls or hothouse grapes accompanied me. Then I could gain indulgences as many as I wanted for my peccadilloes—up to twenty at least for a couple of fat gallinas—and perhaps rather presumed upon my purgatory in consequence.

This community was a praying order and eternally vowed from washing, as a personal indelicacy; or from stepping beyond its convent gates, as a first faux pas into the world; or from ministering to any needs but its own; or, in short, from being of any practical use on the earth whatever, save as an authorised agency for the distribution of “indulgences.” A natural consequence of all of which was that it grew to be a very pot-bellied little community, as tight-skinned and ruddy as the pears on its own south wall, and, through its Superioress, as knowing a judge as any of old port and early asparagus. The bell that prostrated it on its fat little knees to Angelus was the same that rang it to dinner. The throat of the thing was hoarse with the steam of rich pasties and salmis of game that rose from the convent kitchen hard by. It had mushroom pits and a peach-hung pleasaunce, and, indeed, by the help of my lady, was altogether as epicurean a little company for saints’ feast days as could be gathered. The devil, it is certain, sets up his tent in an empty stomach. He would have found close quarters, as was proper, in the Convent of Perpetual Invocation. I will say for the Sisters that I never heard a cross word among them.

Now, to have the command of indulgences, for feast days, and for dispensations from fast, in such a neat little paradise as theirs, seemed to me at the first a very desirable thing. Only I hoped that by the time I was ripe for the novitiate, the chaplain would have been replaced by one more personable. The Mother had, in common decency, to undertake to instruct me and Patty by and by in the articles of our creed, and Father Pope, complete gentleman, to conduct our secular finishing. We never saw any other man, except village chawbacons and, at rare intervals, the foxy earl. It was a deadly life. I could not have endured it but for the society of my sweet little adoratrice. She grew up the dearest thing, with the face of a Christian shepherdess. One saw lambs, not babies, in her eyes. Holding her little kind hand in memory, I pass over four years of this self-obliteration, until I awaken to find myself in my seventeenth year.

VIII. I MEET MR. NOEL DE CRESPIGNY

Life without the male element is worse than being limited to shop windows for the fashions. We can read with patience in a nunnery of the modes, but not of marrying and giving in marriage. Still, I will ask any candid critic to judge if an utmost desperation could have induced me to a conduct, with an accusation of which madam inaugurated the series of misunderstandings which came to arise between us—an attempted corruption of Father Pope, to wit! The whole truth of this fantastic invention is as follows.

When I was near fifteen I had begun to grow troubled in my conscience as to my Confirmation. How could I face the cloister, an uncertified soldier of my creed? The chaplain had seemed kinder to me of late; or perhaps it would be truer to say, less bearishly unapproachable. To be sure, he could not always be adamant to the natural graces it was his business to help adorn. And, in proportion as he relaxed, I was moved to conciliate him with fifty little winning attentions, to which he could not be altogether insensible. I found plausible excuses for his confounding entomology with theology, citing the “little Bedesman of Christ” in vindication of the Nature God. I learned to rear clammy grubs in pots of earth, that I might surprise him with the results—beautiful winged creatures which I likened to the souls emancipated under his tutelage. I discovered, or invented, a hundred symbols for his hagiology. I sewed buttons on his coat, and brushed his great hat, with actual reverence for the moth which had settled in it from the brain below. Was it my fault if the ridiculous creature misconstrued all these little wistful égards? I sought my way only by him, as one might propitiate a surly but indispensable guide, and in my utter innocence took his morose silences, and the scowling suspicion which grew in his eyes, for some late dawn of sympathy, some increased consideration, if not tenderness, towards the pupil whom he was conscious of his heart having maligned. How cruelly my trust was abused, will show in an interview to which madam unexpectedly summoned me.

“Diana,” she said—she was seated knitting a comforter for the monster himself, and her lips, as she bent over her work, had a mechanical but rather shaky smile on them—“have you a daughter’s regard for our good chaplain?”

“O yes, madam!” I answered, wondering what was to come.

“Yet it is not a daughter’s part to indite love sonnets to her Father,” she said steadily, without looking up.

I stared, and flushed, and burst into tears. She also reddened, and produced a paper from her pocket.

“Is this yours?” she demanded. “He found it slipped into his breviary. It appears to me to bear only one construction.”

“And what is that, madam?” I asked coldly. My little outbreak had been mastered as soon as vented. My heart blazed with anger over this outrageous Cymon in a cassock.

“I put the question to you,” she said, her thin bosom heaving a little. “If it is as I suspect, I should blush to name it.”

“Blush rather for yourself,” I said, in the same chill tone, “to plant the slander in a young girl’s soul. I will be a Catholic no more.”

She rose, pale and agitated.

“Do you know what you say?” she breathed in fear. “You! self-dedicated to the cloister!”

“I renounce the pledge!” I cried, in a sudden burst of passion. “I will no longer believe what Father Pope believes, or confess again to him anything but lies, since those are what he likes to trade in.”

“Hush!” she said, aghast at my fury. Her hands trembled, fluttering the paper. “Hush! Be calm! You say things you cannot mean. God forgive you the threat of such apostasy!”

“And you,” I cried, still stormily, “such a witness against a poor child’s character.”

“No, no,” she entreated, almost abjectly, “I wish only the truth. Father Pope wishes only the truth. Tell me frankly, do you recognise these lines?”

With a great effort I subdued my emotion, and took the paper frigidly from her hand. It was folded at the following verse, which I had to bite my lips, pretending to read:—

“Thrice happy she who from thy kindling eye

Shall draw some spark to illuminate her breast,

A wistful wanderer between earth and sky,

With doubts of love’s true haven sore oppressed.”

“Do you recognise them?” she repeated.

“Yes, madam,” I acknowledged, looking up between reserve and defiance.

“You do?” she murmured, taken aback. “And it is your hand?”

“No, madam,” I answered quietly. “It is Miss Grant’s, but disguised.”

She echoed the word, at once incredulous, and fearful of exciting another outbreak by appearing so.

“Disguised! For what purpose? And to whom addressed?”

“To me,” I answered. “It was part of a game between us; but we will play it no more.”

She echoed in amazement, “A game!” Then asked faintly, “What game?”

“I was the Hermit of the Rocks,” I said, “and Miss Grant the Princess Camilla, who wrote to consult me as to her vocation, whether for the cloister or for marriage with a pious young gentleman.”

It was an inspiration, which I had no sooner uttered than I feared for my rashness. But I need not have. Madam, as her slow perceptives kindled, grew one shine of happy intelligence.

“A game!” she repeated, smiling holy-motherly over the decorous innocence of our inventions. “Well, I will say it was a very proper one, though a little ambiguous in the articles of love to be addressed to a hermit. But how came it in the chaplain’s book, child?”

I confessed that I had had the curiosity to read in the Father’s breviary, and must unwittingly have left the paper there for a marker. She kissed me then, and, while deprecating my inquisitiveness in matters which did not concern me, apologised very handsomely, I will say, for having so traduced me on a shred of evidence.

“It shall be a lesson to me, and a penance,” she said. “But, child, go now and retract your wicked recantation, before perhaps the devil shall claim you to your sin.”

“It was very hard, madam,” I said, still rebellious. “Why, being disguised, should Father Pope have decided as of course that the verses were mine?”

“Ah!” she said, blushing and embarrassed. “That I do not know—I think; but little Patty is no genius.”

The moment I was free, I hurried palpitating to my friend, and confessed all, and implored her, by the love between us, to play her part in the little innocent deception I had practised. She gazed at me with her sweet shocked eyes, as if I were inviting her to murder.

“You really meant them for him, for Father Pope?” she whispered, half choking. “O, Diana! It was blasphemy!”

“It was,” I said, “to waste the Princess Camilla on such a block.”

Then, as my friend still cried out, I knelt, and took her waist prisoner in my arms, and begged to her.

“I am not like you, darling. I pine and pinch in this cold air. If it was not for you, you little warm thing, I should run away with Giles, the handsome stable-boy.”

“Don’t,” she wept. “You don’t mean it. Say you only intended it for a joke!”

“Of course I only meant it for a joke,” I said, urging her; “though it’s true I believed the creature was expecting it of me. But ’tis a joke that will cost me dear if you don’t back me.”

“O!” she cried, despairing, “I do, I will. But how can I ever pretend to have wrote them, when that cat rhymes with lap is the best I know of verse.”

“You little dear,” I said, laughing in sheer love of her artlessness. “Pretend nothing, but hold your tongue.”

That she would have done for me, I think, though they racked her to confess; and all might yet have gone well, had not the Lady Sophia, meddlesome like most self-righteous consciences, sent for her to question if, after all, her simple verses might not have been the instinctive expression of her leaning towards the cloister. My poor transparent angel managed to articulate a panic denial of any such tendency; though, indeed, there was no need to, to any but a blindworm. If ever little maid was built for loving, or to lay her pretty hair in a puddle for some rogue to reach heaven by, it was she. The sense of guilt would confound her, however; and, what between her duty to madam and her loyalty to me, she must have answered her examination so ambiguously as to raise some new doubts and suspicions in the minds of her inquisitors.

She flew back to me with very red eyes, and a fresh horror of the imposition she was forced to practise.

“I will never, never tell,” she sobbed, “though they tear me to pieces. But O, Diana! I don’t want to be a nun.”

I comforted her, though furious with the others for their Jesuitical practices on her innocence.

“Wait,” I cried, “and I will pay them both out! What right had they, after what I said, to try and torture a lie out of you? Don’t fear for the convent, child. I pledge my word you shall have a husband and fifty children, nun or no nun.”

“I want no husband,” she answered, blushing and clinging to me, “and no lover but you.”

I have taken pains to record her fond little reply, in view of an odious charge, once concocted to my injury, of my having traded upon my friend’s faith in me to rob her heart of its dearest possession. That, indeed, was, then and always, no less than her loved Diana, of whom none was ever permitted by her to take precedence. Any sacrifice which was designed to maintain those mutual relations she thought too cheap for discussion.

One result, however, of her “questioning” was that madam’s attitude towards me was thenceforth marked by a reserve and jealousy which, inasmuch as I was unconscious of having done anything to merit it, served only to prejudice me against a religion which could be used for a cloak to so much hypocrisy. I grew quickly disenamoured of my supposed vocation, and decided that faith, which seemed largely a matter of digestion, could be better realised through independence. In short, in the world I could reach beatitude through twenty self-indulgences to one in the convent; and, such being the case, and my constitution perfect, it seemed folly to take the short way.

Madam seized an early opportunity after this to inquire into my plans for retiring from the world and taking the veil. I confessed to her, in reply, that her late suspicions had engendered in me thoughts, a sense of grievance, inimical to my right contemplation of so momentous a sacrifice. She was very much shocked and troubled, and recommended me a stricter observance of all those self-obliterating virtues which are such a comfort to those who don’t practise them. She rebuked my pride; she prescribed fasting and discipline and maceration—tortures which would have killed a dray-man—in order to lower and submit my system to its final severance from the world. She would have had me at her mercy before she drove in the knife; only, unluckily for her, my constitution was impregnable. It flourished equally whether on bread and water or vol au vent; and, finally, she surrendered to it. I rather liked a little pious game we played, called the Moral Lotto, in which the discs were sins, and those left uncovered at the end entailed an obligation on the losers to maintain a particular guard against the temptations they expressed. Though we all, in the end, must have been warned through the calendar, from simony to powder-puffs, I believe the contest was so sanctified to her by intention that she read a design of Heaven in every missing counter; and the fact that I generally won, did more than many assurances to convince her that I was perhaps after all not so black as she had painted me.

But, between me and Father Pope, after that little malentendu, there was no quarter asked or given. He treated me with a persistent coarse rudeness, and I retaliated with all the interest of wit I dared. I dropped blobs of wax on his spectacles; left his Hagiology open under a drip from the ceiling; put crumbs of cheese in his cabinets of moth to tempt the mice in; and confessed his own most obvious sins to him as mine, for which I accepted furious penances as meekly as a lamb. He hated me, and I contrived at least to give him a substantial reason for such an abuse of his cloth.

Now, I will mention one only other little incident before I pass on to the subject of this chapter. I was playing in Wellcot attics on a certain wet afternoon with Patty, when I discovered a locked Bluebeard chamber.

“What is it?” I said; but she did not know. I tried the handle; I peered vainly into the keyhole; finally, I took a pin from my hair, and contrived a little pick of it.

“O, what are you going to do?” whispered the child, quite scared.

“Get in, if I can,” said I.

“Don’t!” she said, horrified. “If we are shut out, ’tis for a reason.”

“Of course,” I answered. “And it’s no good looking for it on this side of the door.”

She clasped her hands in a little paralysis of curiosity while I worked. It was a simple lock, and I was successful. As the door swung open, we saw before us a sky-lit room, wedged under the slope of the roof, and quite empty save for a framed picture, which leaned to the wall back outwards. Patty uttered a tiny cry—

“O, Diana! It’s the portrait!”

In a moment, all excitement, we stole in a-tiptoe. The place was very still and ghostly. Only on the dusty canvas itself lay a melancholy grid of light. Palpitating in our sense of guilt, we turned the frame round, let it drop softly back again; and there, before our eyes, bloomed a smiling, wistful face. The light, which had saddened it in reverse, was quickened now to an illuminating glory. It greeted and dimpled to us—the face of a dead woman risen.

A dead woman. Had she ever lived? I could not believe it, thinking of that unsympathetic dévote downstairs.

“Was she ever like that?” I whispered.

“She was beautiful,” murmured Patty fervently. “I remember him painting this.”

“And going away, and leaving it unfinished?” said I: for, indeed, the portrait was but sketched in, though masterly in its promise.

“Yes,” said the little girl, gulping. “And I never supposed what had become of it till now.”

It seemed incredible, the change that but a few envious years had wrought. Had love done this thing before me? Or could love forsaken so warp the loveliness which Love himself had created? It gave me a new little thrill of respect for the humanised Sophia; because, whatever the truth of her face, a man had been found to see this beauty in it.

“She was St. Cecilia,” whispered Patty. “There is the harp in her lap.”

It was without strings—an unborn music. Perhaps the Christian lady had declined to accept a pagan Muse for midwife, and had temporised with her would-be deliverer, hoping to convert him. If so, she had played her cards badly. I wondered if the man had been a fortune-hunter. But in that event Madame Sophia would certainly be Madame de Crespigny.

Whatever the case, however, the picture made a deep impression on me, and from my first moment of seeing it I was haunted by the desire to become myself the subject of such a master’s devotion. Ma vue et mes minauderies firent tout-à-coup tourner la girouette. For the first time I felt myself a woman, encumbered with the heavy responsibilities of her sex.

One day—it was some eighteen months later—returning from a commission to the convent, I walked straight into the presence of the original of the picture and its painter. Yes, that is the truth. He had run faith at last to earth, it seemed, and, armed with it, was returned to add the strings to the abortive harp, and perfect the ancient harmony. I could have thought that, to do so, he had need of faith indeed; until, looking at madam, I started in sheer wonder. She was transfigured—rejuvenated. The happiest light—bashful, coy, defiant, and surrendering its defiance—was in her eyes. She was more like a wife in the first wonder of motherhood than the starved religieuse of yesterday.

And the cause! Ah, my Alcide! The creature rose upon my entrance, and I could have laughed in the face of my own befooled ideal. I had thought of Raphael and the Fornarina; and, behold! a slack, half-drowned-looking figure, with an expression, and conduct of its limbs, as if it were just risen gasping from a pond—there he stood, no sort of natural fowl at all, but a freak of genius like a five-legged calf at a fair.

“He! he!” giggled he, and held himself as if he were waiting to be told what to do next.

He was tall, it is true; and there was a good deal of him, mostly gnarled bone, if that counted to his credit. His forehead, streaked with dark hair turning grey, was strong and ample, and in itself something of a feature; but, mercy! the loose indetermination of his lower lip, and the way it overhung, foolish and disproportionate as an elephant’s, the little folded chin! As I stared, too mortified for manners, he returned my gaze, suddenly startled, it seemed, into a speechlessness so stertorous that little Patty, who had entered with and stood behind me, fell back a step in confusion.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at that, chuckling, “and is hee-ar the little girl I knew?”

He spoke, when he did at last, drawlingly, and ended, as was his way, by wrinkling his thin hooked nose and hee-hawing a little laugh through it.

“She is grown, is she not?” said madam, answering for Patty, to whom he had referred, though indeed his eyes were all the time on me. Her voice was so changed and soft, I hardly recognised it.

“She is grown,” he said. “She is become, it appears, a double cherry.”

“No,” said madam seriously, “the other is a second little foundling of my care, and destined to God’s—our God’s” (she added coyly)—“service, de Crespigny.”

She had no sense of humour, the dear creature. The next moment, noticing the direction of his gaze, with a little frown she bade us begone to our books.

We fled, and, once remote, I turned, with a tragi-hysteric stamp, upon my companion.

“Patience! And is that donkey him?”

“It is Mr. Noel de Crespigny,” she said, amazed. “He is not— O, Diana, do you really think him”—

“Hee-haw!” I broke in, with a little passion of laughter; and then fury overcame me.

“How dared she,” I stormed, “how dared she tell him that lie about me?”

“What lie?” said poor Patty.

“Why, to claim me to her worship of a golden ass,” I cried.

“It was a calf,” said my friend, bewildered.

I screamed with laughter.

“O, don’t!” Patty implored. “It really was, Diana.”

“You dear!” I gasped. “I daresay it was. But he was so badly made, I couldn’t tell.”

She followed me upstairs, utterly bewildered. On the landing above we encountered a strange sight. The picture—the picture—was already on its way down from the attics. A groom and maid bore it, and the oddest creature stood above, superintending its resurrection.

“Gogo!” whispered Patty; “it’s Gogo!”

I could well believe it of such a monster.

He was a man, and a huge one, down to his mid-thighs; and there he ended in a couple of wooden stumps. His face, lapped in a very mask of red bristle, was as savage as sin; and he growled and rumbled like an interdicted volcano.

“Ay,” he thundered, “I’m Gogo, the Dutch tumbler. Who calls me by my name?”

Holding with one hand by the banisters, he struck with the strong stick he carried at the stairs, missed the tread, and was within an inch of falling. The stick rattled down, and he swung and clung with both hands to the rail. In an instant, some whimsical impulse sent me tripping lightly up to help him.

“Take my arm,” I said, “down to the landing.”

The giggling servants paused in their task to stare up; but the monster himself laboured round, with quite a stunned look.

“To help—me,” he whispered hoarsely; “the little scented rush to prop the oak!”

I was in love with his changed voice at once. It was something to meet only two-thirds of a man.

“No, no,” he said, touching my arm as if it were a relic. “I’m Gogo, the colour-grinder, the bottle-washer—not worthy to latch your ladyship’s little shoe. I’ll go down—I’ll go down. Ho-ho! it’s easy. I’ve done it all my life.”

While he spoke, the odd creature had descended unaided, and, recovering his stick, struck his wooden limbs fiercely with it.

“Do you see?” he cried. “A stiff-kneed dog as ever limped after Fortune!”

He flounced upon the servants, and roared them into care of their charge; then turned again to me, where I stood with my friend, who had run trembling to my shelter.

“’Tis our market, ladies,” he said in apology. “I must be particular in its custody. We deal in new lamps for old; in”—

He descended a few steps, then turned again.

“Ah!” he groaned, tragic and comical in one. “Pity the poor genii who has to serve; pity him—pity him.”

He heaved a sigh that would have turned a windmill, and followed the picture, and disappeared.

“Patty!” I whispered, when he was gone—“Patty! Lord, Patty! who is the creature?”

“I’m terrified of him,” she gulped. “He’s Mr. de Crespigny’s dog, he calls himself, and follows his master everywhere, loving and growling at him. He used to say there was no such painter in the world, if he could be kept to it; but he always frightened me dreadfully. I do hope they won’t stop long.”

“H’m!” I said. “And is that queer name all he’s got?”

“I never heard of another,” she answered. “But anyhow, it suits him.”

“Yes,” I said—and sighed—“if he only had legs!”

IX. I AM COMMITTED TO THE ——

I learned, as you shall understand, to readjust my first impression of de Crespigny. It is certain one must not judge the quality of the wine by the vessel. He was a great artist, who ran quickly to waste in the passions evoked of his own conceptions. From the mouth downwards he was a sensualist, and not fit to trust himself with a fair model. Shut into a monastery, he would have been a Fra Angelico.

At the first he captured me, when once I was familiarised with the ungainly exterior of the creature. To see him work—ardent, engrossed, unerring in the early enthusiasm of a subject—was a revelation. He stood so slack, he ran so to moral exhaustion when delivered of his inspiration, it was impossible to recognise the master of a moment ago in this invertebrate body with the loose wrists and silly laugh. If he could only have been kept always at the high pressure of his conceptions! Sometimes I wondered if it was in me to make him great and hold him. It would have been splendid to be the Hamilton to this Romney. Yet in the end I found the game not worth the candle. He was soft wax, indeed, for seven-eighths of his length, and the littlest puff from red lips could blow all the flame out of his head.

Still, while it lasted, his influence over me was an education. His portfolios were the very minutes of inspiration—suggestions, impressions of loveliness, caught and recorded and passed by for others. He finished little, and perhaps would have been a lesser artist and a stronger man if he could have laboured to consolidate his dreams. He taught me that not facts, but shadows of facts—the reflections, most moving, most intimate which they cast—are the real appeals to the emotions; that there is no landscape so beautiful as its reflection in a mirror, no chord so pathetic as its silent vibration in one’s heart. Perhaps the heavens are an eternity of echoes, of spectral perfumes, of dreams derived from experience, and we the authors of our own immortality. If so, we should live passionately who would dream well.

What this man lacked in nerve and backbone, his strange servant and comrade supplied, and many times over. He was the oddest monstrosity—savage in criticism, caustic in humour, a Caliban bellowing grief and tenderness through hairy lungs. How he could ever have come to attach himself, and passionately, to so flaccid a bear-leader, was a problem pure for psychology. Now, at least, the two were inseparable as— Ah, my friend! I was on the point of saying as Valentine and Proteus, but the analogy, I protest, is too poignant; for have not I too been cruelly declared the Sylvia who divided them?

The portrait, on that first afternoon, was carried down to a convenient closet on the ground floor; and there de Crespigny worked on it, always alone, or in the sole company of his henchman. When finished for the day, he would invariably lock the canvas into a press, and none, not even I (there is virtue in that parenthesis), was permitted to see it. The room was held sacred to him; and madam herself refrained so religiously from intruding on its privacy as to evoke, in her guileless trust of the singleness of his conversion, the very hypocrisy which to her faith was inconceivable. For, indeed, he converted this closet—which stood safely remote and approached by a back-stair way—into a sanctuary for deceit. Often, to confess the whole truth, when she supposed me engrossed in books or the construction of celestial samplers, was I closeted with de Crespigny and Gogo, learning to handle a brush, or inspire one, while Patty, with a code of signals, kept panic watch on the stairs.

Madam’s exclusion, no doubt, cost her many a patient sigh. She wondered over the idiosyncrasies of genius, which preferred, or professed to prefer, to labour its mental impressions rather than toil to record the living and mechanical pose. Still, it was true, the Sophia of to-day, however rejuvenated, was scarcely the model of that older time; and that he could finish that beautiful inspiration from her staider personality was what it was folly, perhaps, in her to expect.

Poor woman! Though I had my grudge, and no taste or reason to commiserate such vanity, I suffered some qualms of remorse for the part I was led to play. It is natural, after all, for the sex to see itself never so immortal as through the eyes of love; and, when a man has once praised its complexion, to claim for itself an eternity of roses.

Father Pope, the old spiritual curmudgeon, never quite credited, I think, the genuineness of this late conversion. I daresay, from his experience in the confessional box, he knew his man pretty well, and the value of such emotional abjurations. The sick devil turned monk was not to his taste; and, if he ventured to intimate as much, the coldness which certainly befell between madam and him at this time was easily to be accounted for. It all amused me hugely; and I felt delightfully wicked while the fun lasted. But retribution, my friend, was to overtake your naughty little Diana.

One day, stealing into the studio, I found Gogo alone, grinding colours into a little mortar.

“God ye good e’en, little serpent,” said he. “You can sit and beguile me for practice till my master comes.”

“Gogo,” I said, shocked. “Why do you call me by such a name?”

“Because you are as like Eve as two peas,” growled he.

“Eve was not a serpent, but a beautiful woman,” I answered, pouting.

“And so was Lamia; and yet she was a serpent,” he grunted.

“I don’t know what you mean. You said Eve.”

“Well, why not?” he replied, turning his red, morose-looking eyes on me. “Eve accused the serpent of beguilement, didn’t she? and Adam Eve? But Eve was made out of the man, therefore Adam accused himself. But Eve accused the serpent; therefore Adam accused the serpent. Yet he accused Eve; therefore Eve was the serpent, which is what she would, and will, never understand. O, God bless her! God bless her! Which, if He would do, blessing the serpent, might unriddle this sinful problem of life!”

He set to pounding vigorously with his pestle, and for a minute I watched him in a bewildered silence. There was always something in this shorn Cyclops which oddly attracted me.

“Gogo,” I said quite softly.

He threw down his pestle at once, and faced round, writhing his hands together, and glaring at me.

“Who spoke?” he said, in hoarse, trembling tones. “A voice from the garden making me in love with my own clown name. O, always so, always so, thou spirit of Eve; and, though it lost the world to God, I’d take the apple from thy hand.”

I laughed a little tremulously, as he stumped across the floor and stood close before me. The vision of this great storm of a creature, condemned to play the “comic relief” in the tragedy of his own manhood, came as near my heart as anything.

“Look!” he cried, his rugged chest heaving; “I can’t kneel to you, and I’m your slave. I walk open-eyed, hating and adoring you, into the toils you spread for our feet. Feet!” he groaned, looking down, with a despairing gesture. “Perhaps—who knows?—having them, I might have escaped.”

“How did you lose them, poor Gogo?” I said.

“Hating and adoring,” he groaned, unheeding my question, “hating and adoring. Look, little serpent: I could crush your slender throat for what you do, and hold on, and sob my soul away to see you die. Why have you come between us? United, we were strong, he and I. I drove his genius on, and loved the poor ape for its spark of divinity, and propped the weak spirit while it wrought. You knock the prop away, you knock the prop away, and we both fall; and where is my compensation for the injury?” He clasped his great hands to me: “Give me back my genius,” he cried in pain, “and let us go.”

I rose to my feet, half moved and half resentful.

“It is not I who take him or want him. I will not come here again.”

As I turned, he barred my way.

“No,” he said, near sobbing, “I lied. Do what you will with us: make us angels or swine—I am content, so long as I may serve you.”

As he spoke, the door opened, and de Crespigny entered. He greeted me with a rather shifty look, I thought, and his manner seemed too distraught to affect any particular notice of his servant’s obvious emotion.

“O, well, ma bella Unanina,” said he; “but a little sitting for this afternoon, please.”

I flushed, and was about to refuse to remain at all, when an imploring scowl from Gogo softened me. With plenty of hauteur, I stalked into a little curtained-off alcove which was consecrated to me for tiring-room, and there dressed for model. When I emerged again, my feet and arms were bare, my hair loose in a golden fillet, and, for the rest, I wore a kind of seraph smock, in which les convenances had been constrained to clothe me for the peerless Una.

For as Una I was being painted. Looking one day through de Crespigny’s portfolios, I had come upon some “impressions,” royal, strenuous, of lions in the Tower menagerie, and was admiring the lithe, strong darlings, when his voice breathed behind me, with that little eternal foolish giggle.

“Have you decided, naughty?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I will be the fairy lady whom the lion came to devour, and remained to serve and protect, because she was so pure and innocent.”

He did not know who I meant; so I found him the book and place.

“Ah, to be sure!” said he, reading eagerly. “She laid her stole aside, did she? Yes, it is an inspiration. It will suit me, if it does you.”

So I was painted wonderfully as Una, making my own “stole” from one of Patty’s bedgowns, and glorying, out of my very shamefacedness, to feed the inspiration, while it lasted, of this impassioned art. Now, for days it had wrought without slackening, so that it was an offence to me to find it suddenly become, it seemed, without apparent cause or reason, out of tune with its subject. He worked fitfully, dully, almost, as it were, disregarding my presence, and drawling commonplaces the while to Gogo, who had returned to his pestle and mortar, and was grinding away sullenly.

“Gogo,” he yawned presently, after an idle, preoccupied silence, “which would you rather marry, a woman of wit or virtue?”

“Neither, you blattering genius!” cried the other, turning round with such an instant roar that I was almost frightened off my perch.

The master, accustomed to his strange fellow’s moods, only laughed, and leaned back indolent.

“Why, you old dear?” said he.

Gogo thundered.

“She’s a rotten fish at best, shining the more the more corrupt she is.”

“But if she don’t shine?” said de Crespigny coolly.

“Then she’s a dull fish,” said Gogo, “but a fish still.”

The other mused, and sniggered.

“—Who’s for ever playing to be caught,” added Gogo, grumbling. “She loves the angle. Play her what you like, man, only throw her back when hooked.”

“Mr. Gogo!” I exclaimed.

“Ay, Mistress Una,” said he, “you’re all pretty players, from miss to my lady dowager. Don’t tell me. You all love to excite the emotions you don’t understand, and then off with you from the stage, sweet ethereals, to the suppers of steak and porter which you do, while Jack and my lord are wetting their pillows with tears over your sensibility.”

“Thank you,” I said, rising, highly offended. “As I, for one, am not playing to be hooked, I’ll take your warning in time.”

I had expected de Crespigny to strike in, in angry protest over his servant’s insolence; but, to my astonishment, he did not move or interfere. A little pregnant silence ensued, and the tears were already rising to my eyes, when, to my horror, I heard madam’s voice at the door.

“De Crespigny,” she said, “may I come in for once?”

He stumbled to his feet, and stood paralysed a moment, before he answered—

“A minute. You know the conditions: I must hide it away, and then”—

When she entered a little later, there was he standing to receive her with a spasmodic grin; his easel was empty, Gogo pounded at his mortar, and I—I was shrunk behind the curtain, peeping in a very shiver of terror.

She looked at him with a little shaky propitiating smile. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. She tried to speak, and could not. He understood so far, the poor clown, and bade his servant withdraw. When they were alone, she turned upon him with a little appealing motion of her hands.

“Am I never to be allowed to see it?” she asked.

He frowned, and bit his trembling lip.

“No, no,” she said, “I know the sensitiveness of your beautiful art. Only, O, Noel! I cannot rest where we ended just now. Believe me, it was so far from my wish to offend or alarm you. But time goes on, and the pledge this finished picture was to redeem is withheld, until I am at a loss how to explain.”

“To whom?” he muttered sullenly, “to that priest? O, I know. What right has he, a grudging Churchman, and you a saint?”

“O, indeed, I am but a weak woman!” she said, with a faint smile, “and he an anointed Father. He does right—dear, he does—to be jealous for his daughter. It is only that he would ask you, that I would ask you, what period”—

“Art is not to be forced,” he interrupted her peevishly. “I made the finishing of this picture, as it was begun—as it was begun, mind—the condition of my being received into your Church. Didn’t I, now?”

“Yes,” she sighed; “but there are some vows better broken.”

“A bad recommendation to what you call the truth,” he sneered.

“But, Noel, it is the truth,” she cried. “O, say you are convinced that it is!”

“Well, I don’t know,” he answered, “since you bid me to a lie.”

“I will take the burden,” she cried, her eyes streaming, “to save the soul I love.”

She hardly breathed the final word. For a wonder, the poor creature she entreated found enough in it to move him.

“There,” he said, “don’t distress yourself, Sophia. I’ll work hot-handed on the picture to-morrow. There, I promise I will.”

“Thank you, Noel,” she whispered, so kindling, so grateful, that de Crespigny shrunk before her. “I—I won’t interrupt you any longer. It was like you, kind and considerate, not to blame me for breaking your rule.”

The room remained so still after her going that I thought he too had followed, until, stealing out presently in a panic, I found him seated in a corner, biting his nails.

“I had better go now, hadn’t I?” I whispered, half choking.

“Yes,” he growled, “to the devil!”

X. I BEWITCH A MONSTER

On the following morning, going indifferently by the studio, where was a back way into the grounds, I encountered Gogo.

“He’s at work on the portrait,” he said, standing moodily against the room door. “He’ll be at it all day. It’s no good your coming.”

I tossed my head, vouchsafing no reply, and, singing to myself, passed on and out.

The day after, descending the stairs, I observed that the studio door was left ajar. I laughed, taking no other notice, and went my way into the garden.

On the third day, seeing de Crespigny walk out with his Sophia, I borrowed the opportunity to slip down and investigate. The truth was, I was devoured with curiosity to learn how madam’s little explosion had stimulated the artistic verve, and to obtain a glimpse of the portrait, even, if necessary, by bending myself to the corruption of my poor infatuated Gogo. But I was to be disappointed, for the room was empty, and the canvas locked into its press.

Peering here and there, considerably chagrined, in the hope of discovering the key, I came, in the alcove, upon the full-sleeved waistcoat in which the artist usually worked, and, diving eagerly into the pockets thereof, found, not the key indeed, but some scraps of paper, much scribbled over, which instantly aroused my curiosity, and, presently, my amusement.

“Ho-ho!” thought I, “you are inspired in other than the pictured arts, are you, my gentleman? A poet, and fainting in the perfume of some little naughty Mignonette!”

So he had fancy-named the subject of his agonised Muse; and, indeed, why should I prevaricate to myself about the application? I blushed a little, making myself merry over these suffering scrawls and scratches, of which, I was sure, my own poor little person must be the victim. I had a face, it seemed, the calendar of innocence; une bonne poitrine; a sweetest little double chin, like a robin’s throat swelled with song. I put my hand to my neck. I could not but admit that the poor man had taken a poetic licence; but, in truth, it was a very example of the licence that was wont to drug his art. The flesh held his fine imagination in thrall, and laboured his first spiritual conceptions into Parisian models. He was divine only in his sketches—impressions. When he wrought to improve upon them, he became transubstantiated.

So this was his repentance! He had spent the brief period of it in painting me in verse, since he was debarred my presence in actuality. I smiled, reading—

“Mignonette, Mignonette,

Of all flowers the pet.”

and “Indeed!” thought I, tossing my head; “but not yours as yet, sir!”

While I studied to disentangle the scribble, I heard breathing near me, and started to find Gogo regarding me with a cynical, half-diverted scowl. The creature walked like a cat on carpet. He had no creaking leather to betray him.

“So-ho!” growled he; “you can yet blush to be found out by your dog?”

I laughed, vexed, and a little embarrassed.

“O,” said he, “never mind! I am honoured in even that little rose of shame. You won’t grow it long.”

“Gogo,” I said, “how dare you?”

“Why,” said he, “as dogs dare, who love without respect, and see no more harm to serve a thief than a prince.”

I looked at him a moment, between tears and defiance.

“You are very unkind,” I said. “What is the good of my confessing anything to you, if you so distrust me?”

“Confessing?” said he, “the good? Why, because I have no legs to run away, and a man’s better judgment is always in his legs. My foolish heart is nearer the ground than most. Tread on it, thou Circe; and prove me less than half Ulysses. Confess to me—confess; and I will stay, and smile—and believe.”

“No,” I said, recovering my confidence. “I swear not to, unless you confess first. I asked you the other day how—how you came to lose them; and you put my question by, sir, and were dreadfully rude into the bargain. Very well, I am waiting to have you atone by answering it.”

I dropped into a chair, and he followed me, and squatted himself on the floor, a very abortion of passion, yet moving somehow in his grotesqueness. I kicked off my slippers, and put my feet into his hands—

“There,” I said, “they are tired, Gogo. Soothe them while you talk.”

He caressed the weariness from them, as gentle as a woman.

“I am at odds,” he said, in a low great voice, full of emotion, “I am at odds with what remains of myself. How can I reconcile this with my loyalty to the poor inspired ape I serve, and love through serving?”

“How did you come to serve him?” I whispered, half drugged by the creature’s touch. “You are cleverer than he, better educated, and all that.”

“I love,” he groaned, “I have always loved, to find romantic excuses for the material uglinesses of life; to get a little salt out of its offences. Who are those who say the visible form is but an expression of the individual spirit—an internal autocracy shaping itself on the surface? Poor atomists who cannot feel the pressure of all eternity moulding them from without! Amidst sordid functions they go groping for the essence, turning blank faces to the sweet air, the sun in the trees, the far-drawn winds, the song of birds and scent of flowers, all the spirit influences which really shape us. The soul ceases at the portals of the senses. The dross it carries with it alone goes on and in. We are but so many obstructions in the vast harmony—foreign bodies which it is for ever striving to penetrate and decompose. It focuses its burning light upon us; it takes the swimming heavens for its lens; and we die and are dissolved into it. Only in rare instances does the process wring from us a fine frenzy, or melt us into song; and then we see genius—genius, which fools call self-issuing, but which is really spirit reflected, like heat cast back from a wall.”

“You odd creature,” I murmured. “You may go on, though I don’t understand you a bit. Has Mr. de Crespigny been half melted into song? I shouldn’t be surprised, by his appearance.”

“Nor do I understand,” he said. “I can find romance in everything external to man, but I can’t pursue it into his organic tissues. Can you be so penetrated by it, and yet not perish, or even show one scar? I think you are immortal, woman; unless it is the genius of human beauty which you reflect, and which will presently destroy and annihilate you. Why, then, I would give my own soul to keep you soulless, you wretched, adorable child.”

“Gogo!” I protested, too languid to be resentful.

“Ay!” he said, his voice hoarse with miserable passion. “Let me speak. It is all the licence I ask. I know my place, if I have grown confused about my service. What I don’t know is why I, a free spirit, who have never before truckled to the flesh, should suddenly find myself bound to it, soul and honour.”

He bent and kissed the foot he was caressing; then quickly sat up, and set his strong teeth.

“You ask me how I came by my hurts,” he said. “Well, listen to the story of this most laughable butt of Fortune. It is soon told.”

He passed his hand across his forehead.

“It has been my doom to serve Nature; to worship her through those visible concentrations of her light upon individuals whom we call geniuses. How I discovered too late that her preferences were arbitrary, fanciful, often unworthy; that her signal gifts could be used to stultify her own creed of natural faith, natural justice, natural order, let these witness and call me fool.”

He jerked up his poor stumps so comically that I could not help laughing.

“Ay,” he said, “a tragic prolegomena to the history of a Dutch tumbler, isn’t it? Well, for the text. It was at Oxford that I met and worshipped my first genius. He was a man of great family, an inspired naturalist, an unerring shot and rare sportsman. In those early days we had already planned an expedition together to the unexplored North Western ‘Rockies,’ for the purpose of making such a collection of their flora and fauna as should bring us wealth and reputation. Though the world of Nature seemed even too cramped a stage for my boundless lust of life, the prospect of those unspeakable teeming solitudes, inviting all that was most strenuous in me to conquer, was a certain solace in itself. My soul sought territory; it seeks it still; and, though I be what I am, the stars, this poor earth once subdued, still enter into my plan of campaign.

“I was not rich. When the time came, I had to realise all my capital to sail with my friend. We reached, after considerable hardships, the Athabasca territory, and thence started on our exploration westwards. I soon found that my comrade, though a genius in comparative analysis and definition, lacked the physique necessary to the task we had set ourselves. He was often ailing and querulous, and the gathering of the specimens practically devolved upon me. Still, we had garnered and classified a considerable harvest in one of the little settlements of the Fur Company, before the accident befell which was to deprive me for ever of the fruits of my devotion. We were one day duck-shooting over a lake, when the ice broke and my friend was plunged in frozen water to the knees. His frantic cries brought me hurriedly to his assistance. By the greatest good fortune a little gravelly shallow had received us; but, inasmuch as this shelved away acutely on every side, our desperate scrambles to escape only let us into deeper water. There was nothing for it but to stay where we were till rescue could reach us from the shore, and so we set ourselves to endure. Not long, on my companion’s part. He soon complained that he must die unless relieved. He was frail and spare, and I only something less than a giant. I took him first into my arms, then upon my shoulders, designing to hold him so until succour came. It reached us in the shape of some Indians from the shore, who pushed a canoe towards us over the ice. But by then I was stark frozen, and my legs to the knees insensible. By chance there was an ex-medical student in the settlement, who turned what rough knowledge of surgery was his to the best account he was able. One of my legs was mortified beyond recovery; and this he amputated. The other, after incredible suffering, was saved to me. For weeks, however, I was kept knocking at death’s door; and, when at length I could creep from under the shadow, it was to the knowledge of an anguish more cruel than the other. This man, this genius, whom I had given so much to save, had deserted me while I lay stricken, and, carrying with him all the rare accumulations of our enterprise, had gone south to Vancouver. There was no message left, no consideration for me in all his vile philosophy of self-interest. It was just a case of treacherous abandonment.

“When I was sufficiently recovered, I pursued him by tedious heart-breaking stages, long months in their accomplishment. I will not weary you, you thing of thoughtless life, with their particulars. I was sustained, and only sustained, through all by the thought of wresting from this scientific egoist an acknowledgment of my share in the practical success of our expedition. At last, poor, friendless, crippled, I ran him to earth in London. I found him there, his name writ famous in the annals of the Royal Society; himself the honoured recipient of its gold medal; his collection—our collection—already on view in the hallowed precincts of Crane Street.

“I faced, and upbraided him with his treachery. He retorted coldly that he had never considered me but as the servant of his enterprise, useless to it when once, through my own folly, disabled. I found a friend, and the affair made a little stir. To my accusations he answered that he had employed, but had been forced to discard me, through the irregularity of my habits. Outraged beyond words, I challenged him; he accepted, and we met at Richmond. His first shot, aimed with diabolical ingenuity, shattered the bones of my sound knee; and, in the result, the limb had to be amputated above. When I was discharged from the hospital, it was to find the exhibition closed, the town empty, and myself thrust upon it, a helpless, destitute hulk.

“The friend I have mentioned, humorous and good-natured, came to my assistance. He commanded some pale interest at Court. By means of it, he procured me, as an expert naturalist, the post of Royal Ratcatcher, in succession to a Mr. Gower, who had lately filled the office at a yearly salary of one hundred pounds. The royal economy, however, docked me, as only two-thirds of a man, of a third of the sum. I wore a uniform of scarlet and yellow worsted, with emblematic figures of rats destroying wheat-sheaves embroidered on it; and in this I stood, the laughing-stock of the maids of honour, for three years.

“At the end of that time, having had the misfortune to overlook a rat which had made its nest in a pair of the Duke of Cumberland’s state breeches, I was dismissed without a character. Again I applied to my friend, and was recommended by him, for my scientific attainments, to a French nobleman, who was troubled by the croaking of frogs in his ponds, and employed me to whip the water all night with a long wand of willow that his rest might be undisturbed. But the constant immersion rotting my stumps, and he refusing to supply me with others, I was obliged to resign my post, and returned to England.

“In the meantime, my friend had died of a humour, and I was stranded entirely without resources. For some time I earned a precarious livelihood, in my naturalist character, by worming dogs; and again, one still more precarious, by cleansing ladies’ toupées of the vermin which long usage engendered in them. It was here, while serving my master, a wig-maker, that chance brought me acquainted with my present manner of service.

“During all this time, I will say, I had never ceased to regard soul as external to form, or to scout that introspection which is the real unhappiness. What did it concern me, if I was destroying rats, or picking fleas out of a poodle? In any case, I was helping Nature to its freer manifestations on matter, and, in my constant communion with it, prepared to welcome such rare accidents of genius as might come my way. My master’s business brought him into frequent relations with the theatre; and it was thus that I first encountered de Crespigny, who was at the time acting scene-painter to the new house at Sadler’s Wells. I had no sooner had the chance to see his work than I recognised genius, glaring and manifest. He did wonders in a few touches, that he might idle for an hour. My opportunity was come, and I entreated him to employ me, in however menial a capacity. He was touched by my enthusiasm; flattered, perhaps, by my admiration; persuaded by my strength. He engaged me, first as his assistant; soon as his nurse and mentor. For years I have helped to direct his career, have goaded his inspirations, cossetted his weaknesses. Ah, child! He is my child, made glorious by my faith in him. Do not seduce me from my allegiance to my child, and for the first time make me out of love with Nature!”

He ended with a groan, and flung himself prostrate on the floor, beating, I think, his forehead against it.

“Poor Gogo!” I said. “You have confessed; and so will I now. He is my child too. I adore him, and am so ravished by his art that I could not rest with thinking what he had made of the portrait. Do you know, Gogo? I will tell you the truth. I was hunting for the key of the press when you came in and caught me.”

He lay, without answering.

“Won’t you lend it me, Gogo?” I coaxed softly.

“Thank God,” he muttered, raising his head, “I am tied from the temptress. It is not in my power, thou Circe. He always carries it with him.”

XI. I ADD THE LAST TOUCH TO A PORTRAIT

That same night, while undressing, with my room door open for the heat, I suddenly thought I distinguished an unwonted footstep on the landing below me, from which Patty’s little chamber led. I listened, quite still, for some moments; then, the stealthy sounds seeming to recede into the hall and thence die away, descended cat-footed to the landing, and, after hearkening an instant, opened her door swiftly and noiselessly upon my friend. Instantly I knew that the amazed suspicion which had sprung upon my heart was justified. The child stood before me, terror in her startled eyes, her dark hair falling upon her shoulders, a brush in one hand, a paper in the other.

“Diana!” she gasped, in a whisper. “What do you want?”

“Has he been with you?” I asked instantly, leaving her no time to prevaricate.

“With me!” she exclaimed, so scandalised and incredulous that the worst of my qualm was laid on the spot.

Without another word I held out my hand. Without a word she put the paper into it. I took it, and read—

“Mignonette, Mignonette,

Of all flowers the pet,”—

(“O, shameful!” I whispered, and set my lips.)

“O, beautiful, beautiful, sweet Mignonette!

Dear, kind little blossom,

Soft, soft in the bosom,

Who gives to thee, takes from thee, sweet Mignonette?

Was it thou at her ear that shed sweets passing by me?

Is it thou in her shape, or herself that doth fly me?

Is it thou, is it she, Mignonette, Mignonette,

That I follow, must follow,

As the Summer the Spring,

Who hides warm in the wing

Of its darling the swallow?

As love chases the swallow

To the eaves and the leaves

High up under the roof,

Mignonette, so I follow.

Ah! to whose little chamber,

Sweetheart?

As I clamber,

I trow not, I know not

What dream flew before to the room high aloof.

But my heart pants delight

In the thought, half a fright,

Half delirious sweetness,

That the spirit of the flower,

That the spirit of the hour

Shall reveal love’s completeness.”

She was as pale as death and trembling all over as I looked up. For the moment my heart withered to her. The shock, the outrage was unendurable.

“Who wrote this?” I demanded, in a hoarse whisper.

She did not answer.

“Speak,” I said. “How did it come to you?”

“I heard it slipped under the door,” she muttered.

“By him? O, you little traitor and wanton!”

She fell on her knees, sobbing and clinging to me in a soft anguish of desperation.

“O, my dear, don’t look at me so! I’m not untrue to you. I never imagined it was me—no, not for one moment—till to-night.”

“And you are shocked, no doubt, to find your precious virtue at fault. O, you little serpent that I have trusted and warmed in my bosom!”

“Diana!” she wept, in a very frenzy of despair. “O, what can I say or do? I thought it was you. It shall be you, Diana!”

“Yes, it shall be me,” I answered, “but no thanks to you. Don’t think that this is anything but a passing mood of his, played upon you for my delectation because I have been cold to him of late.”

“I think it is, I know it is,” she said, brightening.

“And you hope it is, I daresay,” I said scornfully.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered. “There is no love in the world but yours that I care for, Diana!”

“Love!” I exclaimed. “Don’t flatter this poor half-breeched makeshift with the sentiment.”

But I looked down on her more kindly, with a vexed laugh. My good-humour was returning to me. It seemed too comical, the way we three pious spinsters were scrambling for the favour of a sheep’s-eyes. A pair of small-clothes flung into our nunnery had been worse than an apple of discord. Skirts were so de rigueur with us, that I think even Gogo’s wooden legs seemed a little outrés.

“I do believe you were innocent, in everything but your cuddlesome looks,” I said, relenting.

“O yes, Diana!” she answered eagerly. “And I can’t help them.”

“Would you if you could?” I questioned doubtfully. “I don’t know. There is a good deal of method in artlessness. It can always plead itself in excuse for enjoying the pleasures which we sinners must take at the expense of our consciences.”

She knelt at my feet, silently fondling and kissing my hands.

“Are you sure you don’t regret giving him up?” I asked.

“Quite—sure,” she answered, so faintly as to set me off laughing.

“There, Patty mia,” I said; “you are not to be sacrificed to a self-indulgent vapours. You will see some day how kind I am being to you; and you shall have a large family yet.” And with that I kissed and left her, taking the paper with me.

I will admit that the shock to my vanity was for the moment acute, until reflection came to convince me that this rickety light-o’-love, wearying of his one day’s abstinence, and finding me inaccessible, had only palmed off on my friend the reversion of sentiments inspired by me. On further reflection, too, I was not the more angry upon realising that I had acquired a useful weapon for goading him to a definite decision upon an action long deferred—our flight together, that is to say, and, when once emancipated from the stunting influences of Wellcot, the union which, it was understood, was to be conditional on his satisfying me that his ambitions and mine were mutually accommodating partners. But now, if for no other reason, I felt that I owed it to my affection for my poor little friend to precipitate this step, lest she should be led, through her natural incapacity for denying anyone, to making herself miserable for life; and so, armed with my pièce de conviction, I ended by sleeping very soundly and comfortably.

I did not even hesitate the next morning, but, about noon, singing very cheerfully to myself, descended to Mr. de Crespigny’s studio. The door was locked. “Open, please,” I said.

“Go away,” he answered crossly. “I’m at work on the portrait.”

“Yes?” I said; “but I want to come in.”

Perhaps there was something in my tone. Anyhow, after a short interval, during which I heard him wheeling his easel about, he unlocked the door himself. I marched straight in, and, quite radiant, nodded to Gogo, who, busy in a corner, gazed at me with a sort of gloomy alarm.

“Mayn’t I look?” I said, smiling.

“No!” said de Crespigny sharply.

I went and held the paper under his nose.

“Didn’t you slip this under the wrong door last night?” I asked calmly.

“There!” growled Gogo, and throwing down his tools faced about furiously.

De Crespigny’s face went mottled, and he began to shake all over. Then suddenly he rallied, and flamed on me, stuttering.

“Wha-what right have you to ask? I may address whom I like, without requesting your leave. My-my lady shall be informed what spies she’s got in her house.”

“You ass!” roared Gogo.

“From me—yes,” I said. “I’m going straight to tell her.”

Gogo stumped fiercely, and put himself between me and the door. His master collapsed like a pricked bladder.

“You’ll ruin yourself,” he gasped, between tears and bullying. “If you ruin me, you come down too—don’t forget that.”

“O, in a noble cause!” I said mockingly: “to open the eyes of my mistress and my friend.”

He stamped about in a little impotent frenzy, then came and almost prostrated himself before me.

“I—I thought you’d forsaken me,” he cried; “I swear I did, Di; and—and I was as miserable as a dog, and wanted sympathy, I did, in this cursed strait-laced nunnery. Don’t tell on me—don’t; and I’ll go on with your picture here and now.”

In a fever of trepidation, he hurried from me, calling on me not to go, and fetched the canvas from the press and brought it to me.

“See,” he said, “you little injured innocent—yes, you was quite right to be hurt; but—but it’s you I love, Di—it really is—and”—

The canvas fell from his hand. He stood, gaping, as if in the first shock of a stroke. And I turned; and there was madam standing in our midst, every atom of colour gone from her face.

There are some situations, my Alcide, that can only be ended brutally. I don’t know what deadly instinct drove me to the portrait; but to it I ran, and turned it with the easel about. Then, I declare, I felt as if I had committed murder. The wretch, with what fatal purpose I could not tell, had done nothing less than mutilate his own inspiration. In place of the lovely roses of yesterday was the worn, haggard woman of to-day, and the harp in her lap was a tangle of broken strings.

I felt for her. Looking in her face, I almost repented my part. There was a dreadful smile on it, as she went very quiet and breathless, and lifted the “Una” from the ground.

“It is very pretty,” she said, “but hardly proper to a child of the Good Shepherd.”

Then I hated her as I had never done before, and rejoiced in her downfall.

“I was looking for you, Diana,” she said, in her straitened tones, “and heard your voice here. Will you come with me, please?”

And so she went out, deigning not one look at that insult of her own face, nor one word to the hangdog perpetrator of it. She went out, as cold as ice, and I saw Gogo, standing by the door, droop his head as she passed. Tingling with the joy of battle, I followed her. I knew that my long martyrdom was nearing its end.

Outside in the hall she turned to me, quite stiff—I wondered how her limp corsets could support so much dignity—and bade me retire to my room till she should send for me.

“And if it is to find you on your knees,” she said, “why, by so much will the duty I have to perform be made the easier.”

Well, to do her justice, I believe that her heart was as near broken as one can be.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I answered. “Do you want to flog me? ’Twould scarce improve your case, I think, with Mr. de Crespigny.”

I ran up lightly, humming to myself. I heard her give a little gasp, and then go on her way to the parlour. Nobody came near me while I waited, until, in a little while, a servant knocked, to summon me. I went down at once, as jaunty as you please. Father Pope was with her, I saw, as I entered the room.

“I wonder how much of the truth she has told him?” I thought.

She was seated, perfectly colourless, while her companion stood, lowering and uneasy, by a table hard by. She bent a little forward, drawing her breath, I fancied, with difficulty, and addressed me at once.

“You have asked pardon of God, I hope?”

I tossed my head.

“For what, madam? What have I done?”

She appealed to the priest, with a little momentary helpless gesture; then bit her thin lips, as if stung by his silent perversity to resolution.

“For the deceit you have long practised on us,” she said.

“O, madam,” I answered, “do you refer to the gentleman’s attentions to me? I could hardly be so immodest as to confess of them to you, when I did not even know to what end they were advanced.”

She held up her hand dully.

“I allude to your privately sitting to him for—for that—for his model,” she said.

“Why, I had my respected example, madam,” said I. “I didn’t know but what we were expected to accommodate the gentleman, seeing you yourself gave us the lead.”

She rose quickly, striking her hand on the table.

“To make of yourself, pledged to Heaven, a shame and a wanton in his eyes! O, ’twas infamous!—Not that,” she checked herself hurriedly, “I blame him—not altogether. Art is a strange creditor, that makes demands, scarce comprehensible to us, upon those who practise it. But, you”—

“Are you blaming me, madam,” I cried, “because he has not paid you to your liking?”

She turned away, as if quite sick. Father Pope took up the tale.

“Silence!” he roared, “you little dirty liar and trollop!”

“O, no doubt!” I piped him back, “because I rejected your attentions.”

He took a step forward, his great fist clenched, his glasses blazing. I don’t know how he might not have forgotten himself, had not Lady Sophia come quickly between.

“Hush!” she said. “It is all to end here, Father.” She turned quietly on me. “Father Pope is, I am sorry to say, justified. You have deceived us in more things than one, Diana. It is not so long, I must tell you, since I heard from the Sisters of les Madelonnettes that your original story of your unhappy mother’s death was false, she having but a few months ago returned penitent and broken to die in the very convent she had so shamed and disgraced.”

I gazed at her, bewildered, for an instant, and then, as the truth penetrated me, with a horror and passion beyond control.

“O,” I cried, “this is too much! And I believed her long dead of grief; and you never told me—never let me see her: and I think you are the wickedest woman in the world!”

She stood staring at me, silent, as if stricken.

“Cave anguem!” sneered the priest, with a brutal laugh.

I turned upon the pale woman with a furious stamp.

“Why did you never let me know? How dared you keep it from me? I will go to law about it and have you hanged!”

“If I could have thought”—she began, in a whisper; “if I have by chance done wrong”—

“Wrong!” I cried violently, “you have done me nothing but wrong since I came here. You have always misunderstood and disbelieved in me; and now, it seems, you had no right to adopt me at all.”

I ended with a torrent of tears.

“I want to leave you,” I sobbed; “I want to go away into the convent, and be at peace where no one can hate and slander me.”

“Ha!” said Father Pope, moving, and hunching his shoulders, “then there our wishes jump, and no time like the present. So go collect your duds.”

“Diana!” whispered madam again, in her stunned way, and made a little movement towards me. But I shrunk from her, shivering.

“No, don’t touch me—please,” I said. “I’ll go to the Sisters, who’ll be kind to me. I’ll do anything you want—only not stop here.”

I saw her put her hand to her heart as I tottered from the room. Then I ran upstairs, and hurried to put some little properties together.

I quite acquiesced in the movement—was eager to hasten it, in fact. The truth is, that, of Wellcot and the convent, the latter appeared to me by far the less formidable as a present asylum. Any further meeting here between me and Noel was rendered virtually impossible; nor was it likely that the outraged spinster would prove so accommodating to our purposes as the artless little fatties across the valley. One need have no fear of being buried alive in a dovecot.

While I was hastily collecting a few necessaries, my sweet girl crept in, and made a little sweet nuisance of herself, distressing and impeding me.

“There, dearest,” I said, as I wrought preoccupied, “you are the best of loving chickens, and I shall have plenty of use for you by and by. Only at present—there, don’t pout—I am too jubilant in the prospect of escape to cling and kiss and cry with you. I’m not going to Land’s End, only across the way; and mind, no more communications from a certain gentleman, miss, unless on my behalf.”

She promised, with new floods of tears.

“Then,” I said, pushing her playfully away, “find me my vinaigrette, child. Father Pope is going to convey me in the carriage.”

XII. I AM INFAMOUSLY RETALIATED ON

I remember once dining in Sorrento with the Marquis de P——, a most exclusive sybarite and dilettante. The table was spread with a flesh silk damask, whose very touch was a caress. Before each of the company—a small and appreciative one—was placed one iridescent Venetian goblet, and a bunch of lavender in a floss silk napkin—nothing else whatever. The room—vaulted into Moorish arabesques, and swimming with a slumberous half-penetrable light, in which the crusted gold of stalactites, high in the groining, alloyed and confused itself with the stain from purple windows—gave upon a dusky pillared court, where zithers and the plash of a fountain wedded in soft music, and the breath of orange blossoms made us a dim impalpable barrier against the world. The plates were served each ready charged, and each with a golden spoon only; for knives were not to be allowed to sever this dream of sensuous rumination. There was but a single wine—the Château Yquem, which is reserved for the nobility of its district, and which never goes beyond but in a few favoured directions. We talked but little and idly, with a mingling of delicious sighs and happy low laughter. Towards the end the zithers ceased; the remote fountain tinkled alone; and a girl, a ghost of loveliness, danced and wreathed herself without in a flood of moonlight. It was all perfect satisfaction without surfeit. Of such is the kingdom of heaven. And yet there are times when I wonder if my host has gone to join Lazarus or Dives. Mon ami, I am often full of such wonders; and then sometimes—when, perhaps, I have not kept the perfect proportion, and my head aches—I think I will end my days in a convent, and purify my wicked digestion on lentils and spring water. Only, where is the convent? I have seen some in my day, and in not one have they cultivated their little paradise on cabbages. I find myself standing aghast on that neutral ground between the world and the Church; and, alas! there are so many other nice people standing there to keep me company. With such, this desert itself becomes an Eden, and on either side I cannot escape from it but into another.

The Convent of Perpetual Invocation received me with open arms from my morose jailer. It conducted me, in the person of its Mother, to the sunny parlour, and there sleeked and patted me fondly.

“You dear,” she said. “I am so glad we have got you at last.”

Her coif looked as if she had slept in it, and her plump hands were by no means over clean. She was a stumpy, beaming little woman, moist with good living. Her skin worked so freely, and in such prosperous folds, it might have made a dyspeptic sigh with envy. I felt at home with her directly.

“There, dear,” she said, “you have brought us many good things in your time, but none so good as yourself; and now we take you in pledge of better.”