Scribner's Magazine, Volume 26, September 1899

by Various

SARANAC LAKE:—WINTER, 1887-1888

During the two years and nine months of Stevenson's residence at Bournemouth preceding the date of his father's death, he had made no apparent progress toward recovery. Every period of respite had been quickly followed by a relapse, and all his work, brilliant and varied as it was, had been done under conditions which would have reduced almost any other man to inactivity. The close and frequently recurring struggles against the danger of death from hemorrhage and exhaustion, which he had been used, when they first occurred, to find exciting, grew in the long run merely irksome, and even his persistent high courage and gayety, sustained as they were by the devoted affection of his family and many friends, began occasionally, for the first time, to fail him. Accordingly when in May, 1887, the death of his father severed the strongest of the ties which bound him to the old country, he was very ready to listen to the advice of his physicians, who were unanimous in thinking his case not hopeless, but urged him to try some complete change of climate, surroundings, and mode of life. His wife's connections pointing to the West, he thought of the mountain health-resorts of Colorado, and of their growing reputation for the cure of lung patients. Having let his house at Bournemouth, he accordingly took passage on board the steamship Ludgate Hill, sailing for New York from London on August 17, 1887, with his whole party, consisting of his wife, his widowed mother, whom they had persuaded to join them, his young stepson, and a trusted servant, Valentine.

It was the moment when his reputation had first reached its height in the United States, owing especially to the immense impression made by the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He experienced consequently—for the first time—the pleasures, such as they were, of celebrity, and also its inconveniences; found the most hospitable of refuges in the house of his kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild, of Newport; and quickly made many other friends, including the owner and the editor of this Magazine, from whom he immediately received and accepted very advantageous offers of work. Having been dissuaded from braving, for the present, the fatigue of the long journey to Colorado and the extreme rigors of its winter climate, he determined to try instead a season at the mountain station of Saranac Lake, in the Adirondack Mountains, New York State, which had lately been coming into reputation as a place of cure. There, under the care of the well-known resident physician, Dr. Trudeau, he spent nearly seven months, from the end of September, 1887, to the end of April, 1888, with results on the whole favorable to his own health, though not to that of his wife, who at these high altitudes was never well. His work during the winter consisted of the twelve papers published in the course of 1888 in Scribner's Magazine, including, perhaps, the most striking of all his essays, A Chapter on Dreams, Pulvis et Umbra, Beggars, The Lantern Bearers, Random Memories, etc.; as well as the greater part of the Master of Ballantrae and The Wrong Box—the last originally conceived and drafted by Mr. Lloyd Osbourne—and the ballad of Ticonderoga.

Lloyd Osbourne. Mrs. Stevenson. R. L. Stevenson.
On the Porch of the Cottage at Saranac, in the Adirondacks, U. S. A.
(From a Photograph.)

The following letters are extracted from those which tell of his voyage to New York and his reception there at this date, and of his winter's life and work at Saranac:

Newport, R. I., U. S. A. [September, 1887].

My dear Colvin,—So long it went excellent well, and I had a time I am glad to have had; really enjoying my life. There is nothing like being at sea, after all. And O why have I allowed myself to rot so long on land? But on the Banks I caught a cold, and I have not yet got over it. My reception here was idiotic to the last degree.... It is very silly, and not pleasant, except where humor enters; and I confess the poor interviewer lads pleased me. They are too good for their trade; avoided anything I asked them to avoid, and were no more vulgar in their reports than they could help. I liked the lads.

O, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of stallions. She rolled heartily, rolled some of the fittings out of our state-room, and I think a more dangerous cruise (except that it was summer) it would be hard to imagine. But we enjoyed it to the masthead, all but Fanny; and even she perhaps a little. When we got in, we had run out of beer, stout, cocoa, soda-water, water, fresh meat, and (almost) of biscuit. But it was a thousandfold pleasanter than a great big Birmingham liner like a new hotel; and we liked the officers, and made friends with the quartermasters, and I (at least) made a friend of a baboon (for we carried a cargo of apes), whose embraces have pretty near cost me a coat. The passengers improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no drunkard, no gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than one would have asked of poor human nature. Apes, stallions, cows, matches, hay, and poor men-folk all or almost all came successfully to land—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

Drawn from a photograph by Jules Guérin.

The Cottage at Saranac Occupied by Robert Louis Stevenson.

[Newport, U. S. A., September, 1887.]

My dear James,—Here we are at Newport in the house of the good Fairchilds; and a sad burthen we have laid upon their shoulders. I have been in bed practically ever since I came. I caught a cold on the Banks after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our strange floating menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the ports at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown overboard like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates; and the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed. Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our stateroom, and you have the voyage of the Ludgate Hill. She arrived in the port of New York, without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret her.

My wife is a good deal run down, and I am no great shakes.

America is, as I remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great place for kindness; but, Lord, what a silly thing is popularity; I envy the cool obscurity of Skerryvore. If it even paid, said Meanness! and was abashed at himself.—Yours most sincerely,

R. L. S.

[New York; end of September, 1887.]

My dear S. C.,—Your delightful letter has just come, and finds me in a New York Hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (St. Gaudens) who is making a medallion of yours truly and who is (to boot) one of the handsomest and nicest fellows I have often seen. I caught a cold on the Banks; fog is not for me; nearly died of interviewers and visitors, during twenty-four hours in New York; cut for Newport with Lloyd and Valentine, a journey like a fairy-land for the most engaging beauties, one little rocky and pine-shaded cove after another, each with a house and a boat at anchor, so that I left my heart in each and marvelled why American authors had been so unjust to their country; caught another cold on the train; arrived at Newport to go to bed and grow worse, and to stay in bed until I left again; the Fairchilds proving during this time kindness itself; Mr. Fairchild simply one of the most engaging men in the world, and one of the children, Blair, aet. ten, a great joy and amusement in his solemn adoring attitude to the author of Treasure Island.

Here I was interrupted by the arrival of my sculptor. I have begged him to make a medallion of himself and give me a copy. I will not take up the sentence in which I was wandering so long, but begin fresh. I was ten or twelve days at Newport; then came back convalescent to New York. Fanny and Lloyd are off to the Adirondacks to see if that will suit; and the rest of us leave Monday (this is Saturday) to follow them up. I hope we may manage to stay there all winter. I have a splendid appetite and have on the whole recovered well after a mighty sharp attack. I am now on a salary of £500 a year for twelve articles in Scribner's Magazine on what I like; it is more than £500 but I cannot calculate more precisely [it was £700]. You have no idea how much is made of me here; I was offered £2000 for a weekly article—eh heh! how is that? but I refused that lucrative job. They would drive even an honest man into being a mere lucre-hunter in three weeks; to make me gober is I think more difficult; I have my own views on that point and stick to them. The success of Underwoods is gratifying. You see, the verses are sane, that is their strong point, and it seems is strong enough to carry them.

A thousand thanks for your grand letter, ever yours,

R. L. S.

Saranac Lake, Adirondacks,
New York, U. S. A.
[October, 1887.]

My dear Bob,

The cold [of Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I could not risk the long railway voyage, and the season was too late to risk the Eastern, Cape Hatteras side of the steamer one; so here we stuck and stick. We have a wooden house on a hill top, overlooking a river, and a village about a quarter of a mile away, and very wooded hills; the whole scene is very Highland, bar want of heather and wooden houses.

I have got one good thing of my sea voyage; it is proved the sea agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any better, or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month or so in summer. Good Lord! what fun! Wealth is only useful for two things; a yacht and a string quartette. For these two I will sell my soul. Except for these I hold that £700 a year is as much as anybody can possibly want; and I have had more, so I know, for the extry coins were of no use excepting for illness, which damns everything.

I was so happy on board that ship, I could not have believed it possible; we had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea. And truly there is nothing else. I had literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind—full of external and physical things, not full of cares and labours and rot about a fellow's behaviour. My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so much as for that. We took so North a course that we saw Newfoundland; no-one in the ship had ever seen it before.

It was beyond belief to me how she rolled; in seemingly smooth water, the bell striking, the fittings bounding out of our stateroom. It is worth having lived these last years, partly because I have written some better books, which is always pleasant, but chiefly to have had the joy of this voyage. I have been made a lot of here, and it is sometimes pleasant, sometimes the reverse; but I could give it all up, and agree that — was the author of my works, for a good seventy ton schooner and the coins to keep her on. And to think there are parties with yachts who would make the exchange! I know a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a yacht; and anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame; to cross the Atlantic and come to anchor in Newport (say) with the Union Jack, and go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier, among the holiday yachtsmen—that's fame, that's glory—and nobody can take it away; they can't say your book is bad; you have crossed the Atlantic. I should do it South by the West Indies, to avoid the damned banks; and probably come home by steamer, and leave the skipper to bring the yacht home.

Well, if all goes well, we shall maybe sail out of Southampton water some of these days and take a run to Havre, and try the Baltic, or somewhere.

Love to you all
Ever your afft.
Robert Louis Stevenson.

Low was delightful as always. St. Gaudens, a very nice fellow too, has done a medallion of me.

[The following refers to a review by Mr. Gosse of Stevenson's volume of verse called "Underwoods." The book had been published a few weeks previously, and is dedicated, as readers will remember, to a number of physicians who had attended him at sundry times and places.]

Saranac Lake, Oct. 8th, 1887.

My dear Gosse,—I have just read your article twice, with cheers of approving laughter; I do not believe you ever wrote anything so funny; Tyndall's 'shell,' the passage on the Davos press and its invaluable issues, and that on V. Hugo and Swinburne, are exquisite; so, I say it more ruefully, is the touch about the doctors. For the rest, I am very glad you like my verses so well; and the qualities you ascribe to them seem to me well found and well named. I own to that kind of candour you attribute to me; when I am frankly interested, I suppose I fancy the public will be so too—and when I am moved, I am sure of it. It has been my luck hitherto to meet with no staggering disillusion. 'Before' and 'After' may be two; and yet I believe the habit is now too thoroughly ingrained to be altered. About the doctors, you were right, that dedication has been the subject of some pleasantries that made me grind, and of your happily touched reproof which made me blush. And to miscarry in a dedication is an abominable form of book-wreck; I am a good captain, I would rather lose the tent and save my dedication.

I am at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, I suppose for the winter; it seems a first-rate place; we have a house in the eye of many winds, with a view of a piece of running water—Highland, all but the dear hue of peat—and of many hills—Highland also, but for the lack of heather. Soon the snow will close on us; we are here some twenty miles—twenty-seven they say, but this I profoundly disbelieve—in the woods; communication by letter is slow and (let me be consistent) aleatory; by telegram is as near as may be impossible.

I had some experience of American appreciation; I liked a little of it, but there is too much; a little of that would go a long way to spoil a man; and I like myself better in the woods. I am so damned candid and ingenuous (for a cynic), and so much of a 'cweatu' of impulse—aw' (if you remember that admirable Leech), that I begin to shirk any more taffy; I think I begin to like it too well. But let us trust the Gods; they have a rod in pickle; reverently I doff my trousers, and with screwed eyes await the amari aliquid of the great God Busby.

I thank you for the article in all ways, and remain yours affectionately,

R. L. S.

Saranac, October, 1887.

[To W. H. Low.]

Sir,—I have to trouble you with the following paroles bien senties. We are here at a first-rate place. 'Baker's' is the name of our house; but we don't address there, we prefer the tender care of the Post-Office, as more aristocratic (it is no use to telegraph even to the care of the Post-Office, who does not give a single damn). Baker's has a prophet's chamber, which the hypercritical might describe as a garret with a hole in the floor; in that garret, sir, I have to trouble you and your wife to come and slumber. Not now, however: with manly hospitality, I choke off any sudden impulse. Because first, my wife and my mother are gone (a note for the latter, strongly suspected to be in the hand of your talented wife, now sits silent on the mantel shelf), one to Niagara and t' other to Indianapolis. Because, second, we are not yet installed. And because, third, I won't have you till I have a buffalo robe and leggings, lest you should want to paint me as a plain man, which I am not, but a rank Saranacker and wild man of the woods.

Yours,
Robert Louis Stevenson.

I am well.

[The Wondrous Tale referred to in the following is Stevenson's Black Arrow, which had been through Mr. Archer's hands in proof.]

Saranac Lake, October, 1887.

Dear Archer,—Many thanks for the Wondrous Tale. It is scarcely a work of genius, as I believe you felt. Thanks also for your pencillings; though I defend 'shrew,' or at least many of the shrews.

We are here (I suppose) for the winter in the Adirondacks, a hill and forest country on the Canadian border of New York State, very unsettled and primitive and cold, and healthful, or we are the more bitterly deceived. I believe it will do well for me; but must not boast.

My wife is away to Indiana to see her family; my mother, Lloyd, and I remain here in the cold, which has been exceeding sharp, and the hill air, which is inimitably fine. We all eat bravely, and sleep well, and make great fires, and get along like one o'clock.

I am now a salaried party; I am a bourgeois now; I am to write a monthly paper for Scribner's, at a scale of payment which makes my teeth ache for shame and diffidence. The editor is, I believe, to apply to you; for we were talking over likely men, and when I instanced you, he said he had had his eye upon you from the first. It is worth while, perhaps, to get in tow with the Scribners; they are such thorough gentle-folk in all ways that it is always a pleasure to deal with them. I am like to be a millionaire if this goes on, and be publicly hanged at the social revolution; well, I would prefer that to dying in my bed; and it would be a godsend to my biographer, if ever I have one. What are you about? I hope you are all well and in good case and spirits, as I am now, after a most nefast experience of despondency before I left; but indeed I was quite run down. Remember me to Mrs. Archer, and give my respects to Tom—Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[The lady to whom the following letter is addressed, as well as a good many others to come, had been a close friend of the Stevenson family at Bournemouth, and on their departure had been trusted to keep an eye on their interests in connection with their house (which had been let) and other matters, and to report thereon from time to time. In their correspondence Stevenson is generally referred to as the Squire and the lady as the Gamekeeper.]

[Saranac Lake, December, 1887.]

My dear Miss Boodle,—I am so much afraid, our gamekeeper may weary of unacknowledged reports! Hence, in the midst of a perfect horror of detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and with less desire for correspondence than—well, than—well, with no desire for correspondence, behold me dash into the breach. Do keep up your letters. They are most delightful to this exiled backwoods family; and in your next, we shall hope somehow or other to hear better news of you and yours—that, in the first place—and to hear more news of our beasts and birds and kindly fruits of the earth and those human tenants who are (truly) too much with us.

I am very well; better than for years: that is for good. But then my wife is no great shakes; the place does not suit her—it is my private opinion that no place does—and she is now away down to New York for a change, which (as Lloyd is in Boston) leaves my mother and me and Valentine alone in our wind-beleaguered hilltop hatbox of a house. You should hear the cows butt against the walls in the early morning while they feed; you should also see our back log when the thermometer goes (as it does go) away—away below zero, till it can be seen no more by the eye of man—not the thermometer, which is still perfectly visible, but the mercury, which curls up into the bulb like a hibernating bear; you should also see the lad who "does chores" for us, with his red stockings and his thirteen year old face, and his highly manly tramp into the room; and his two alternative answers to all questions about the weather; either "Cold," or with a really lyrical movement of the voice, "Lovely—raining!"

Will you take this miserable scrap for what it is worth? Will you also understand that I am the man to blame, and my wife is really almost too much out of health to write—or at least doesn't write?—And believe me, with kind remembrances to Mrs. Boodle and your sister, very sincerely yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Saranac Lake, Winter, 1887-8.

My dear Henry James,—It may please you to know how our family has been employed. In the silence of the snow the afternoon lamp has lighted an eager fireside group; my mother reading, Fanny, Lloyd, and I devoted listeners; and the work was really one of the best works I ever heard; and its author is to be praised and honoured; and what do you suppose is the name of it? and have you ever read it yourself? and (I am bound I will get to the bottom of the page before I blow the gaff, if I have to fight it out on this line all summer; for if you have not to turn a leaf, there can be no suspense, the conspectory eye being swift to pick out proper names; and without suspense, there can be little pleasure in this world, to my mind at least), and, in short, the name of it is Roderick Hudson, if you please. My dear James, it is very spirited, and very sound, and very noble too. Hudson, Mrs. Hudson, Rowland, O, all first-rate: Rowland a very fine fellow; Hudson as good as he can stick (did you know Hudson? I suspect you did), Mrs. H. his real born mother, a thing rarely managed in fiction.

We are all keeping pretty fit and pretty hearty; but this letter is not from me to you, it is from a reader of R. H. to the author of the same, and it says nothing, and has nothing to say but thank you.

We are going to re-read Casamassima as a proper pendant. Sir, I think these two are your best, and care not who knows it.

May I beg you, the next time Roderick is printed off, to go over the sheets of the last few chapters, and strike out 'immense' and 'tremendous'? You have simply dropped them there like your pocket-handkerchief; all you have to do is to pick them up and pouch them, and your room—what do I say?—your cathedral! will be swept and garnished.—I am, dear sir, your delighted reader,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—Perhaps it is a pang of causeless honesty, perhaps I hope it will set a value on my praise of Roderick, perhaps it's a burst of the diabolic, but I must break out with the news that I can't bear the Portrait of a Lady. I read it all, and I wept too; but I can't stand your having written it; and I beg you will write no more of the like. Infra, sir; Below you: I can't help it—it may be your favourite work, but in my eyes it's BELOW YOU to write and me to read. I thought Roderick was going to be another such at the beginning; and I cannot describe my pleasure as I found it taking bones and blood, and looking out at me with a moved and human countenance, whose lineaments are written in my memory until my last of days.

R. L. S.

My wife begs your forgiveness; I believe for her silence.

[The following narrates the beginning of the author's labours on the Master of Ballantrae. An unfinished paper written some years later in Samoa, and intended for Scribner's Magazine, tells how the story first took in his mind. See Ed. ed. Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 297.]

[Saranac, December 24, 1887-8.]

My dear Colvin,—Thank you for your explanations. I have done no more Virgil since I finished the seventh book, for I have first been eaten up with Taine, and next have fallen head over heels into a new tale, The Master of Ballantrae. No thought have I now apart from it, and I have got along up to page ninety-two of the draught with great interest. It is to me a most seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements, the most is a dead genuine human problem—human tragedy, I should say rather. It will be about as long, I imagine, as Kidnapped.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

• (1) My old Lord Durrisdeer.
• (2) The Master of Ballantrae, and
• (3) Henry Durie, his sons.
• (4) Clementina, engaged to the first, married to the second.
• (5) Ephraim Mackellar, land steward at Durrisdeer and narrator of the most of the book.
• (6) Francis Burke, Chevalier de St. Louis, one of the Prince Charlie's Irishmen and narrator of the rest.

Besides these many instant figures, most of them dumb or nearly so: Jessie Brown, the whore, Captain Crail, Captain McCombie, our old friend Alan Breck, our old friend Riach (both only for an instant), Teach the pirate (vulgarly Blackbeard), John Paul and Macconochie, servants at Durrisdeer. The date is from 1745 to '65 (about). The scene near Kirkcudbright, in the States, and for a little moment in the French East Indies. I have done most of the big work, the quarrel, duel between the brothers, and announcement of the death to Clementina and my Lord—Clementina, Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to attend to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry. Here come my visitors ... and have now gone, or the first relay of them; and I hope no more may come. For mark you, sir, this is our 'day'—Saturday, as ever was; and here we sit, my mother and I, before a large wood fire and await the enemy with the most steadfast courage; and without snow and greyness: and the woman Fanny in New York, for her health which is far from good; and the lad Lloyd at the inn in the village because he has a cold; and the handmaid Valentine abroad in a sleigh upon her messages; and to-morrow Christmas and no mistake. Such is human life: la carrière humaine. I will enclose, if I remember, the required autograph.

I will do better, put it on the back of this page. Love to all, and mostly, my very dear Colvin, to yourself. For whatever I say or do, or don't say or do, you may be very sure I am,—Yours always affectionately,

R. L. S.

Saranac, February, 1888.

Raw Haste Half Sister to Delay.

Dear Mr. Burlingame,—1. Enclosed please find another paper.

2. There will be another severe engagement over the Master; a large part will have to be rehandled. I am very sorry; but you see what comes of my trying to hurry. As soon as I have got a bit ahead again with the papers I shall tackle this job. I am better; my wife also.—Yours sincerely,

R. L. S.

P.S., and a P.S. with a vengeance.—Pray send me the tale of the proof if already printed—if not, then the tale of the MS.—and—throw the type down. I will of course bear the expense. I am going to recast the whole thing in the third person; this version is one large error. Keep standing, however, the Chevalier's narration, as I may leave that in the first person.

R. L. S.

Monday.

To yesterday's two barrels I add two requests. 1st. Will you let the cost of the printing stand over against the Master, as otherwise I may be involved in 'pecuniary embarrassments'? And that, sir, is no joke. 2nd. Will you send me (from the library) some of the works of my dear old G. P. R. James. With the following specially I desire to make or to renew acquaintance: The Songster, The Gypsy, The Convict, The Stepmother, The Gentleman of the Old School, The Robber.

Excusez du peu.

This sudden return to an ancient favorite hangs upon an accident. The 'Franklin County Library' contains two works of his, The Cavalier and Morley Einstein. I read the first with indescribable amusement—it was worse than I feared, and yet somehow engaging; the second (to my surprise) was better than I dared to hope: a good, honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine old-fashioned talent in the invention when not strained; and a genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English language. This experience awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps to stay it.

R. L. S.

Saranac, February, 1888.

Dear Mr. Burlingame,—1. Of course then don't use it. Dear Man, I write these to please you, not myself, and you know a main sight better than I do what is good. In that case, however, I enclose another paper, and return the corrected proof of Pulvis et Umbra, so that we may be afloat.

2. I want to say a word as to the Master. (The Master of Ballantrae shall be the name by all means.) If you like and want it, I leave it to you to make an offer. You may remember I thought the offer you made when I was still in England too small; by which I did not at all mean, I thought it less than it was worth, but too little to tempt me to undergo the disagreeables of serial publication. This tale (if you want it) you are to have; for it is the least I can do for you; and you are to observe that the sum you pay me for my articles going far to meet my wants, I am quite open to be satisfied with less than formerly. I tell you I do dislike this battle of the dollars. I feel sure you all pay too much here in America; and I beg you not to spoil me any more. For I am getting spoiled; I do not want wealth, and I feel these big sums demoralize me.

My wife came here pretty ill, she had a dreadful bad night; to-day she is better. But now Valentine is ill; and Lloyd and I have got breakfast, and my hand somewhat shakes after washing-dishes.—Yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—Please order me the Evening Post for two months. My subscription is run out. The Mutiny and Edwardes to hand.

Saranac, March, 1888.

My dear Colvin,—Fanny has been very unwell. She is not long home, has been ill again since her return, but is now better again to a degree. You must not blame her for not writing, as she is not allowed to write at all, not even a letter. To add to our misfortunes, Valentine is quite ill and in bed. Lloyd and I get breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes washed and the kitchen all clear, and sit down to give you as much news as I have spirit for, after such an engagement. Glass is a thing that really breaks my spirit: I do not like to fail, and with glass I cannot reach the work of my high calling—the artist's.

I am, as you may gather from this, wonderfully better: this harsh, grey, glum, doleful climate has done me good. You cannot fancy how sad a climate it is. When the thermometer stays all day below 10°, it is really cold; and when the wind blows, O commend me to the result. Pleasure in life is all delete; there is no red spot left, fires do not radiate, you burn your hands all the time on what seem to be cold stones. It is odd, zero is like summer heat to us now; and we like, when the thermometer outside is really low, a room at about 48°: 60° we find oppressive. Yet the natives keep their holes at 90° or even 100°.

This was interrupted days ago by household labors. Since then I have had and (I tremble to write it, but it does seem as if I had) beaten off an influenza. The cold is exquisite. Valentine still in bed. The proofs of the first part of the Master of Ballantrae begin to come in; soon you shall have it in the pamphlet form; and I hope you will like it. The second part will not be near so good; but there—we can but do as it'll do with us. I have every reason to believe this winter has done me real good, so far as it has gone; and if I carry out my scheme for next winter, and succeeding years, I should end by being a tower of strength. I want you to save a good holiday for next winter; I hope we shall be able to help you to some larks. Is there any Greek isle you would like to explore? or any creek in Asia Minor?—Yours ever affectionately,

R. L. S.

Saranac Lake, March, 1888.

My dear, delightful James,—To quote your heading to my wife, I think no man writes so elegant a letter, I am sure none so kind, unless it be Colvin, and there is more of the stern parent about him. I was vexed at your account of my admired Meredith; I wish I could go and see him, as it is I will try to write. I read with indescribable admiration your Emerson. I begin to long for the day when these portraits of yours shall be collected; do put me in. But Emerson is a higher flight. Have you a Tourgueneff? You have told me many interesting things of him, and I seem to see them written, and forming a graceful and bildend sketch. My novel is a tragedy, four parts out of six or seven are written, and gone to Burlingame. Five parts of it are sound, human tragedy; the last one or two, I regret to say, are not so soundly designed; I almost hesitate to write them; they are very picturesque, but they are fantastic; they shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning. I wish I knew; that was how the tale came to me however. I got the situation; it was an old taste of mine: The older brother goes out in the '45, the younger stays; the younger, of course, gets title and estate and marries the bride designate of the elder—a family match, but he (the younger) had always loved her, and she had really loved the elder. Do you see the situation? Then the devil and Saranac suggested this dénouement, and I joined the two ends in a day or two of constant feverish thought, and began to write. And now—I wonder if I have not gone too far with the fantastic. The elder brother is an Incubus; supposed to be killed at Culloden, he turns up again and bleeds the family of money; on that stopping he comes and lives with them, whence flows the real tragedy, the nocturnal duel of the brothers (very naturally, and indeed, I think, inevitably arising), and second supposed death of the elder. Husband and wife now really make up, and then the cloven hoof appears. For the third supposed death and the manner of the third reappearance is steep; steep, sir. It is even very steep, and I fear it shames the honest stuff so far; but then it is highly pictorial, and it leads up to death of the elder brother at the hands of the younger in a perfectly cold-blooded murder, of which I wish (and mean) the reader to approve. You see how daring is the design. There are really but six characters, and one of these episodic, and yet it covers eighteen years, and will be, I imagine, the longest of my works.—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

Read Gosse's Raleigh.

First rate,—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

To S. R. Crockett

[Saranac Lake, Spring, 1888.]

Dear Minister of the Free Kirk at Penicuik,—For O, man, I cannae read your name!—That I have been so long in answering your delightful letter sits on my conscience badly. The fact is I let my correspondence accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and then I pitch in, overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might be heard a mile about. Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated letters; conceive the state of my conscience, above all the Sins of Omission (see boyhood's guide, the Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only serious ones; I call it my view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also Christ's. However, all that is not to the purpose, which is to thank you for the sincere pleasure afforded by your charming letter. I get a good few such; how few that please me at all, you would be surprised to learn—or have a singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how few that please me as yours did, I can tell you in one word—None. I am no great kirkgoer, for many reasons—and the sermon's one of them, and the first prayer another, but the chief and effectual reason is the stuffiness. I am no great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read yon letter of yours, I thought I would like to sit under ye. And then I saw ye were to send me a bit buik, and says I, I'll wait for the bit buik, and then I'll mebbe can read the man's name, and anyway I'll can kill twa birds wi' ae stane. And, man! the buik was ne'er heard tell o'!

That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.

And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your difficult labors, and a blessing on your life.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

(No just so young sae young's he was, though—I'm awfae near forty, man).

Address c/o Charles Scribner's Sons,
743 Broadway, New York.

Don't put "N.B." in your paper, put Scotland, and be done with it. Alas, that I should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends! The name of my native land is not North Britain, whatever may be the name of yours.

R. L. S.

[Saranac], April 9th!! 1888.

My dear Colvin,—I have been long without writing to you, but am not to blame. I had some little annoyances quite for a private eye, but they ran me so hard that I could not write without lugging them in, which (for several reasons) I did not choose to do. Fanny is off to San Francisco, and next week I myself flit to New York: address Scribners. Where we shall go I know not, nor (I was going to say) care; so bald and bad is my frame of mind. Do you know our—ahem!—fellow clubman, Colonel Majendie? I had such an interesting letter from him. Did you see my sermon? [Pulvis et Umbra] It has evoked the worst feeling: I fear people don't care for the truth, or else I don't tell it. Suffer me to wander without purpose. I have sent off twenty letters to-day, and begun and stuck over a twenty-first, and taken a copy of one which was on business, and corrected several galleys of proof, and sorted about a bushel of old letters; so if any one has a right to be romantically stupid it is I—and I am. Really deeply stupid, and at that stage when in old days I used to pour out words without any meaning whatever and with my mind taking no part in the performance. I suspect that is now the case. I am reading with extraordinary pleasure the life of Lord Lawrence: Lloyd and I have a mutiny novel—

(Next morning, after twelve other letters)—mutiny novel on hand—The White Nigger—a tremendous work—so we are all at Indian books. The idea of the novel is Lloyd's: I call it a novel. 'Tis a tragic romance, of the most tragic sort: I believe the end will be almost too much for human endurance—when the White Nigger was thrown to the ground with one of his own (Sepoy) soldier's knees upon his chest, and the cries begin in the Beebeeghar. Oh, truly, you know it is a howler! The whole last part is—well the difficulty is that, short of resuscitating Shakespeare, I don't know who is to write it.

I still keep wonderful. I am a great performer before the Lord on a penny whistle. Dear sir, sincerely yours,

Andrew Jackson.

[Saranac Lake, April, 1888.]

My dear Gamekeeper,—Your p. c. (proving you a good student of Micawber) has just arrived, and it paves the way to something I am anxious to say. I wrote a paper the other day—Pulvis et Umbra;—I wrote it with great feeling and conviction; to me it seemed bracing and healthful; it is in such a world (so seen by me), that I am very glad to fight out my battle, and see some fine sunsets, and hear some excellent jests between whiles round the camp fire. But I find that to some people this vision of mine is a nightmare, and extinguishes all ground of faith in God or pleasure in man. Truth I think not so much of; for I do not know it. And I could wish in my heart that I had not published this paper, if it troubles folks too much: all have not the same digestion, nor the same sight of things. And it came over to me with special pain that perhaps this article (which I was at the pains to send to her) might give dismalness to my Gamekeeper at Home. Well, I cannot take back what I have said; but yet I may add this. If my view be everything but the nonsense that it may be—to me it seems self-evident and blinding truth—surely of all things it makes this world holier. There is nothing in it but the moral side—but the great battle and the breathing-times with their refreshments. I see no more and no less. And if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled with promise.

Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology. My wife is away off to the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself. I shall be off, I hope, in a week; but where? Ah! that I know not. I keep wonderful, and my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing. We now perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make the bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you would correct....

I may be said to live for these instrumental labours now; but I have always some childishness on hand.—I am, dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent, but intemperate Squire,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[On the 16th of April Stevenson and his party left Saranac. After spending a fortnight in New York, where, as always in cities, his health quickly flagged again, he went for the month of May into seaside quarters at Union House, Manasquan, on the New Jersey coast, for the sake of fresh air and boating. Here he enjoyed the society of some of his New York friends, including Mr. St. Gaudens and Mr. W. H. Low, and was initiated in the congenial craft of cat-boat sailing. In the meantime Mrs. Stevenson had gone to San Francisco, to see whether a sailing yacht was to be found available for a few months' cruise in the Pacific. The Casco, Captain Otis, was found accordingly; Stevenson signified by telegraph his assent to the arrangement; determined to risk in the adventure the sum of £2,000, of which his father's death had put him in possession, hoping to recoup himself by a book of Letters recounting his experiences; and on the 2d of June started with his mother and stepson for San Francisco, and thence for that island cruise from which he was never to return.]

Union House, Manasquan, N. J., but address to Scribner's.
May 11, 1888.

My dear Charles,—I have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch for seven months. If I cannot get my health back (more or less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will play big.... If this business fails to set me up, well, £2,000 is gone, and I know I can't get better. We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the yacht Casco.—With a million thanks for all your dear friendliness, ever yours affectionately,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[The following is addressed from Manasquan to a boy, the son of the writer's friend, the sculptor St. Gaudens; for the rest, it explains itself.]

Manasquan, New Jersey,
27th May, 1888.

Dear Homer St. Gaudens,—Your father has brought you this day to see me, and he tells me it is his hope he may remember the occasion. I am going to do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also (I use the past tense, with a view to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when I am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked, what restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the common inheritance of human youth. But you may perhaps like to know that the lean flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant: harassed with work which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of savage and of desert islands.—Your father's friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

---

THE VEERY-THRUSH
By J. Russell Taylor

Blow softly, thrush, upon the hush

That makes the least leaf loud,

Blow, wild of heart, remote, apart

From all the vocal crowd,

Apart, remote, a spirit note

That dances meltingly afloat,

Blow faintly, thrush!

And build the green-hill waterfall

I hated for its beauty, and all

The unloved vernal rapture and flush,

The old forgotten lonely time,

Delicate thrush!

Spring's at the prime, the world's in chime,

And my love is listening nearly,

O lightly blow the ancient woe,

Flute of the wood, blow clearly!

Blow, she is here, and the world all dear,

Melting flute of the hush,

Old sorrow estranged, enriched, sea-changed,

Breathe it, veery-thrush!

THE SHIP OF STARS
By A. T. Quiller-Couch
(Q.)

XXI
HONORIA'S LETTERS

1

Carwithiel, October 25, 18—.

My dear Taffy:

Your letter was full of news, and I read it over twice—once to myself, and again after dinner to George and Sir Harry. We pictured you dining in the college hall. Thanks to your description, it was not very difficult: the long tables, the silver tankards, the dark panels and the dark pictures above, and the dons on the dais, aloof and very sedate. It reminded me of Ivanhoe—I don't know why; and no doubt if ever I see Magdalen, it will not be like my fancy in the least. But that's how I see it; and you at a table near the bottom of the hall, like the youthful squire in the story-books—the one, you know, who sits at the feast below the salt until he is recognized and forced to step up and take his seat with honor at the high table. I began to explain all this to George, but found that he had dropped asleep in his chair. He was tired out after a long day with the pheasants.

I shall stay here for a week or two yet, perhaps. You know how I hate Tredinnis. On my way over, I called at the Parsonage and saw your mother. She was writing that very day, she said, and promised to send my remembrances, which I hope duly reached you. The Vicar was away at the church, of course. There is great talk of the Bishop coming in February, when all will be ready. George sends his love; I saw him for a few minutes at breakfast this morning, before he started for another day with the pheasants.

Your friend,
Honoria.

2

Carwithiel, November 19, 18—.

My dear Taffy:

Still here, you see! I am slipping this into a parcel containing a fire-screen which I have worked with my very own hands; and I trust you will be able to recognize the shield upon it and the Magdalen lilies. I send it, first, as a birthday present; and I chose a shield—well, I daresay that going in for a demy-ship is a matter-of-fact affair to you, who have grown so exceedingly matter-of-fact; but to me it seems a tremendous adventure; and so I chose a shield—for I suppose the dons would frown if you wore a cockade in your college cap. I return to Tredinnis to-morrow; so your news, whatever it is, must be addressed to me there. But it is safe to be good news.

Your friend,
Honoria.

3

Tredinnis, November 27, 18—.

Most Honored Scholar:

Behold me, an hour ago, a great lady, seated in lonely grandeur at the head of my own ancestral table. This is the first time I have used the dining-room; usually I take all my meals in the morning-room, at a small table beside the fire. But to-night I had the great table spread, and the plate set out, and wore my best gown, and solemnly took my grandfather's chair and glowered at the ghost of a small girl shivering at the far end of the long white cloth. When I had enough of this (which was pretty soon) I ordered up some champagne and drank the health of Theophilus John Raymond, Demy of Magdalen College, Oxford. I graciously poured out a second glass for the small ghost at the other end of the table; and it gave her the courage to confess that she, too, in a timid way, had taken an interest in you for years, and hoped you were going to be a great man. Having thus discovered a bond between us, we grew very friendly; and we talked a great deal about you afterward, in the drawing-room, where I lost her for a few minutes and found her hiding in the great mirror over the fire-place—a habit of hers.

It is time for me to practise ceremony, for it seems that George and I are to be married some time in the spring. For my part, I think my lord would be content to wait longer; for so long as he is happy and sees others cheerful, he is not one to hurry or worry. But Sir Harry is the impatient one, and has begun to talk of his decease. He doesn't believe in it a bit, and at times when he composes his features and attempts to be lugubrious I have to take up a book and hide my smiles. But he is clever enough to see that it bothers George.

I saw both your father and mother this morning. Mr. Raymond has been kept to the house by a chill; nothing serious; but he is fretting to be out again and at work in that draughty church. He will accept no help; and the mistress of Tredinnis has no right to press it on him. I shall never understand men and how they fight. I supposed that the war lay between him and my grandfather. But it seems he was fighting an idea all the while; for here is my grandfather beaten and dead and gone; and still the Vicar will give no quarter. If you had not assured me that your demy-ship means eighty pounds a year, I could believe that men fight for shadows only. Your mother and grandmother are both well....

It was a raw December afternoon—within a week of the end of term—and Taffy had returned from skating in Christ Church meadow, when he found a telegram lying on his table. There was just time to see the Dean, to pack, and to snatch a meal in hall, before rattling off to his train. At Didcot he had the best part of an hour to wait for the night-mail westward.

"Your father dangerously ill. Come at once."

There was no signature. Yet Taffy knew who had ridden to the office with that telegram. The flying darkness held visions of her, and the express throbbed westward to the beat of Aide-de-camp's gallop. Nor was he surprised at all to find her on the platform at Truro station. The Tredinnis phaeton was waiting outside.

He seemed to her but a boy after all, as he stepped out of the train in the chill dawn; a wan-faced boy and sorely in need of comfort.

"You must be brave," said she, gathering up the reins as he climbed to the seat beside her.

Surely yes; he had been telling himself this very thing all night. The groom hoisted in his portmanteau, and with a slam of the door they were off. The cold air sang past Taffy's ears. It put vigor into him, and his courage rose as he faced his shattered prospects, shattered dreams. He must be strong now, for his mother's sake; a man to work and be leant upon.

And so it was that whereas Honoria had found him a boy, Humility found him a man. As her arms went about him in her grief, she felt his body, that it was taller, broader; and knew, in the midst of her tears, that this was not the child she had parted from seven short weeks ago, but a man to act and give orders and be relied upon.

"He called for you ... many times," was all she could say.

For Taffy had come too late. Mr. Raymond was dead. He had aggravated a slight chill by going back to his work too soon, and the bitter draughts of the church had cut him down within sight of his goal. A year before, he might have been less impatient. The chill struck into his lungs. On December 1st he had taken to his bed, and he never rallied.

"He called for me?"

"Many times."

They went up the stairs together and stood beside the bed. The thought uppermost in Taffy's mind was—"He called for me. He wanted me. He was my father, and I never knew him."

But Humility in her sorrow groped amid such questions as these: "What has happened? Who am I? Am I she who yesterday had a husband, and a child? To-day my husband is gone, and my child is no longer the same child."

In her room old Mrs. Venning remembered the first days of her own widowhood; and life seemed to her a very short affair, after all.

Honoria saw Taffy beside the grave. It was no season for out-of-door flowers and she had rifled her hot-houses for a wreath. The exotics shivered in the northwesterly wind; they looked meaningless, impertinent, in the gusty churchyard. Humility, before the coffin left the house, had brought the dead man's old blue working-blouse and spread it for a pall. No flowers grew in the parsonage garden; but pressed in her Bible lay a very little bunch gathered, years ago, in the meadows by Honiton. This she divided and, unseen by anyone, pinned the half upon the breast of the patched garment.

On the evening after the funeral and for the next day or two she was strangely quiet, and seemed to be waiting for Taffy to make some sign. Dearly as mother and son loved one another, they had to find their new positions, each toward each. Now Taffy had known nothing of his parents' income. He assumed that it was little enough, and that he must now leave Oxford and work to support the household. He knew some Latin and Greek; but without a degree he had little chance of teaching what he knew. He was a fair carpenter, and a more than passable smith.... He revolved many schemes, but chiefly found himself wondering what it would cost to enter an architect's office.

"I suppose," said he, "father left no will?"

"Oh, yes, he did," said Humility, and produced it—a single sheet of foolscap signed on her wedding-day. It gave her all her husband's property absolutely—whatever it might be.

"Well," said Taffy, "I'm glad. I suppose there's enough for you to rent a small cottage, while I look about for work?"

"Who talks about your finding work? You will go back to Oxford, of course."

"Oh, shall I?" said Taffy, taken aback.

"Certainly; it was your father's wish."

"But the money?"

"With your scholarship there's enough to keep you there for the four years. After that, no doubt, you will be earning a good income."

"But—" He remembered what had been said about the lace-money, and could not help wondering.

"Taffy," said his mother, touching his hand, "leave all this to me until your degree is taken. You have a race to run and must not start unprepared. If you could have seen his joy when the news came of the demy-ship!"

Taffy kissed her and went up to his room. He found his books laid out on the little table there.

4

Tredinnis, February 13, 18—.

My dear Taffy:

I have a valentine for you, if you care to accept it; but I don't suppose you will, and indeed I hope in my heart that you will not. But I must offer it. Your father's living is vacant, and my trustees (that is to say, Sir Harry; for the other, a second cousin of mine, who lives in London, never interferes) can put in someone as a stop-gap, thus allowing me to present you to it, when the time comes, if you have any thought of Holy Orders. You will understand exactly why I offer it; and also, I hope, you will know that I think it wholly unworthy of you. But turn it over in your mind and give me your answer.

George and I are to be married at the end of April. May is an unlucky month. It shall be a week—even a fortnight—earlier, if that fits in with your vacation, and you care to come. See how obliging I am! I yield to you what I have refused to Sir Harry. We shall try to persuade the Bishop to come and open the church on the same day.

Always your friend,
Honoria.

5

Tredinnis, February 21st.

My dear Taffy:

No, I am not offended in the least; but very glad. I do not think you are fitted for the priesthood; but my doubts have nothing to do with your doubts, which I don't understand, though you tried to explain them so carefully. You will come through them, I expect. I don't know that I have any reasons that could be put on paper; only, somehow, I cannot see you in a black coat and clerical hat.

You complain that I never write about George. You don't deserve to hear, since you refuse to come to our wedding. But would you talk, if you happened to be in love? There, I have told you more than ever I've told George, whose quiet conceit has to be kept down. Let this console you.

Our new Parson, when he comes, is to lodge down in Innis Village. Your mother—but no doubt she has told you—stays in the Parsonage while she pleases. She and your grandmother are both well. I see her every day. I have so much to learn and she is so wise. Her beautiful eyes—but oh, Taffy, it must be terrible to be a widow! She smiles and is always cheerful; but the look in them! How can I describe it? When I find her alone, with her lace-work, or sometimes (but it is not often) with her hands in her lap, she seems to come out of her silence with an effort, as others withdraw themselves from talk. I wonder if she does talk, in those silences of hers. Another thing—it is only a few weeks now since she put on a widow's cap, and yet I cannot remember her—can scarcely picture her—without it. I am sure that if I happened to call one day when she had laid it aside, I should begin to talk quite as if we were strangers.

Believe me, yours sincerely,
Honoria.

But the wedding, after all, did not take place until the beginning of October, a week before the close of the Long Vacation; and Taffy, after all, was present. The postponement had been enforced by many delays in building and furnishing the new wing at Carwithiel; for Sir Harry insisted that the young couple must live under one roof with him, and Honoria (as we know) hated the very stones of Tredinnis.

The Bishop came to spend a week in the neighborhood, the first three days as Honoria's guest. On the Saturday he consecrated the work of restoration in the Church and, in the afternoon, held a confirmation service. Taffy and Honoria knelt together to receive his blessing. It was the girl's wish. The shadow of her responsibility to God and man lay heavy on her during the few months before her marriage, and Taffy, already weary and dispirited with his early doubtings, suffered her mood of exaltation to overcome him like a wave and sweep him back to rest for a while on the still waters of faith. Together they listened while the Bishop discoursed on the dead Vicar's labors with fluency and feeling; with so much feeling, indeed, that Taffy could not help wondering why his father had been left to fight the battle alone.

On the Sunday and Monday two near parishes claimed the Bishop. On the Tuesday he sent his luggage over to Carwithiel, whither he was to follow after the wedding service, to spend a day or two with Sir Harry. It had been Honoria's wish that George should choose Taffy for his best man; but George had already invited one of his sporting friends, a young Squire Philpotts from the eastern side of the Duchy; and as the date fell at the beginning of the hunting season, he insisted on a "pink" wedding. Honoria consulted the Bishop by letter. "Did he approve of a 'pink' wedding so soon after the bride's confirmation?" The Bishop saw no harm in it.

So a "pink" wedding it was, and the scarlet coats made a lively patch of color in the gray churchyard; but it gave Taffy a feeling that he was left out in the cold. He escorted his mother to the church, and left her for a few minutes in the Vicarage pew. The bridegroom and his friends were gathered in a showy cluster by the chancel step, but the bride had not arrived, and he stepped out to help in marshalling the crowd of miners and mine-girls, fishermen, and mothers with unruly children—a hundred or so in all, lining the path or straggling among the graves.

Close by the gate he came on a girl who stood alone.

"Hullo, Lizzie—you here?"

"Why not?" she asked, looking at him sullenly.

"Oh, no reason at all."

"There might ha' been a reason," said she, speaking low and hurriedly. "You might ha' saved me from this, Mr. Raymond; and her too; one time, you might."

"Why, what on earth is the matter?" He looked up. The Tredinnis carriage and pair of grays came over the knoll at a smart trot and drew up before the gate.

"Matter?" Lizzie echoed with a short laugh. "Oh, nuthin'. I'm goin' to lay the curse on her, that's all."

"You shall not!" There was no time to lose. Honoria's trustee—the second cousin from London—a tall, clean-shaven man with a shiny, bald head, and a shiny hat in his hand—had stepped out and was helping the bride to alight. What Lizzie meant Taffy could not tell; but there must be no scene. He caught her hand. "Mind—I say you shall not!" he whispered.

"Lemme go—you're creamin' my fingers."

"Be quiet, then."

At that moment Honoria passed up the path. Her wedding gown almost brushed him as he stood wringing Lizzie's hand. She did not appear to see him; but he saw her face beneath the bridal veil, and it was hard and white.

"The proud toad!" said Lizzie. "I'm no better'n dirt, I suppose, though from the start she wasn' above robbin' me. Aw, she's sly.... Mr. Raymond, I'll curse her as she comes out, see if I don't!"

"And I swear you shall not," said Taffy. The scent of Honoria's orange-blossom seemed to cling about them as they stood.

Lizzie looked at him vindictively. "You wanted her yourself, I know. You weren't good enough, neither. Let go my fingers!"

"Go home, now. See, the people have all gone in."

"Go'st way in, too, then, and leave me here to wait for her."

Taffy shut his teeth, let go her hand, and taking her by the shoulders swung her round, face toward the gate.

"March!" he commanded, and she moved off whimpering. Once she looked back. "March!" he repeated, and followed her down the road as one follows and threatens a mutinous dog.

The scene by the church gate had puzzled Honoria, and in her first letter (written from Italy) she came straight to the point, as her custom was. "I hope there is nothing between you and that girl who used to be at Joll's. I say nothing about our hopes for you, but you have your own career to look to; and as I know you are too honorable to flatter an ignorant girl when you mean nothing, so I trust you are too wise to be caught by a foolish fancy. Forgive a staid matron (of one week's standing) for writing so plainly; but what I saw made me uneasy; without cause, no doubt. Your future, remember, is not yours only. And now I shall trust you, and never come back to this subject.

"We are like children abroad," she went on. "George's French is wonderful, but not so wonderful as his Italian. When he goes to take a ticket, he first of all shouts the name of the station he wishes to arrive at (for some reason he believes all foreigners to be deaf); then he begins counting down francs one by one, very slowly, watching the clerk's face. When the clerk's face tells him he has doled out enough, he shouts 'Hold hard!' and clutches the ticket. It takes time; but all the people here are friends with him at once—especially the children, whom he punches in the ribs and tells to 'buck up.' Their mothers nod and smile and openly admire him; and I—well, I am happy, and want everyone else to be happy!"

XXII
MEN AS TOWERS

It was May morning, and Taffy made one of the group gathered on the roof of Magdalen Tower. In the groves below and across the river-meadows all the birds were singing together. Beyond the glimmering suburbs, St. Clement's and Cowley St. John, over the dark rise by Bullingdon Green, the waning moon seemed to stand still and wait poised on her nether horn. Below her the morning sky waited, clean and virginal, letting her veil of mist slip lower and lower until it rested in folds upon the high woodlands and pastures. While it dropped, a shaft of light tore through it and smote flashing on the vane high above Taffy's head, turning the dark side of the turrets to purple and casting lilac shadows on the surplices of the choir. For a moment the whole dewy shadow of the tower trembled on the western sky, and melted and was gone as a flood of gold broke on the eastward-turned faces. The clock below struck five, and ceased. There was a sudden baring of heads; a hush; and gently, borne aloft on boys' voices, clear and strong, rose the first notes of the hymn—

Te Deum Patrem colimus,

Te laudibus prosequimur,

Qui corpus cibo reficis,

Coelesti mentem gratia.

In the pauses Taffy heard, faint and far below, the noise of cowhorns blown by the street boys gathered at the foot of the tower and beyond the bridge. Close beside him a small urchin of a chorister was singing away with the face of an ecstatic seraph; whence that ecstasy arose the urchin would have been puzzled to tell. There flashed into Taffy's brain the vision of the whole earth lauding and adoring—sun-worshippers and Christians, priests and small children; nation after nation prostrating itself and arising to join the chant—"the differing world's agreeing sacrifice." Yes; it was Praise that made men brothers; praise, the creature's first and last act of homage to his Creator; praise that made him kin with the angels. Praise had lifted this tower; had expressed itself in its soaring pinnacles; and he for the moment was incorporate with the tower and part of its builder's purpose. "Lord, make men as towers!"—he remembered his father's prayer in the field by Tewkesbury; and at last he understood. "All towers carry a lamp of some kind"—why, of course they did. He looked about him. The small chorister's face was glowing—

Triune Deus, hominum

Salutis auctor optime,

Immensum hoc mysterium

Ovante lingua canimus!

Silence—and then with a shout the tunable bells broke forth, rocking the tower. Someone seized Taffy's college-cap and sent it spinning over the battlements. Caps? For a second or two they darkened the sky like a flock of birds. A few gowns followed, expanding as they dropped, like clumsy parachutes. The company—all but a few severe dons and their friends—tumbled laughing down the ladder, down the winding stair, and out into sunshine. The world was pagan after all.

At breakfast Taffy found a letter on his table, addressed in his mother's hand. As a rule she wrote twice a week, and this was not one of the usual days for hearing from her. But nothing was too good to happen that morning. He snatched up the letter and broke the seal.

"My dearest boy," it ran, "I want you home at once to consult with me. Something has happened (forgive me, dear, for not preparing you; but the blow fell on me yesterday so suddenly)—something which makes it doubtful, and more than doubtful, that you can continue at Oxford. And something else they say has happened which I will never believe in unless I hear it from my boy's lips. I have this comfort, at any rate, that he will never tell me a falsehood. This is a matter which cannot be explained by letter, and cannot wait until the end of term. Come home quickly, dear; for until you are here I can have no peace of mind."

So once again Taffy travelled homeward by the night mail.

"Mother, it's a lie!"

Taffy's face was hot, but he looked straight into his mother's eyes. She, too, was rosy-red, being ever a shamefast woman. And to speak of these things to her own boy—

"Thank God!" she murmured, and her fingers gripped the arms of her chair.

"It's a lie! Where is the girl?"

"She is in the workhouse. I don't know who spread it, or how many have heard. But Honoria believes it."

"Honoria! She cannot—" He came to a sudden halt. "But, mother, even supposing Honoria believes it, I don't see—"

He was looking straight at her. Her eyes sank. Light began to break in on him.

"Mother!"

Humility did not look up.

"Mother! Don't tell me that she—that Honoria—"

"She made us promise—your father and me.... God knows it did no more than repay what your father had suffered.... Your future was everything to us...."

"And I have been maintained at Oxford by her money," he said, pausing in his bitterness on every word.

"Not by that only, Taffy! There was your scholarship ... and it was true about my savings on the lace-work...."

But he brushed her feeble explanations away with a little gesture of impatience. "Oh, why, mother? Oh, why?"

She heard him groan and stretched out her arms.

"Taffy, forgive me—forgive us! We did wrongly, I see—I see it as plain now as you. But we did it for your sake."

"You should have told me. I was not a child. Yes, yes, you should have told me."

Yes; there lay the truth. They had treated him as a child when he was no longer a child. They had swathed him round with love, forgetting that boys grow and demand to see with their own eyes and walk on their own feet. To every mother of sons there comes sooner or later the sharp lesson which came to Humility that morning; and few can find any defence but that which Humility stammered, sitting in her chair and gazing piteously up at the tall youth confronting her: "I did it for your sake." Be pitiful, O accusing sons, in that hour! For, terrible as your case may be against them, your mothers are speaking the simple truth.

Taffy took her hand "The money must be paid back, every penny of it."

"Yes, dear."

"How much?"

Humility kept a small account-book in the work-box beside her. She opened the pages, but, seeing his outstretched hand, gave it obediently to Taffy, who took it to the window.

"Almost two hundred pounds." He knit his brows and began to drum with his fingers on the window-pane. "And we must put the interest at five per cent.... With my first in moderations I might find some post as an usher in a small school.... There's an agency which puts you in the way of such things; I must look up the address.... We will leave this house, of course."

"Must we?"

"Why, of course, we must. We are living here by her favor. A cottage will do—only it must have four rooms, because of grandmother.... I will step over and talk with Mendarva. He may be able to give me a job. It will keep me going, at any rate, until I hear from the agency."

"You forget that I have over forty pounds a year—or, rather, mother has. The capital came from the sale of her farm, years ago."

"Did it?" said Taffy, grimly. "You forget that I have never been told. Well, that's good, so far as it goes. But now I'll step over and see Mendarva. If only I could catch this cowardly lie somewhere, on my way!"

He kissed his mother, caught up his cap, and flung out of the house. The sea-breeze came humming across the sandhills. He opened his lungs to it, and it was wine to his blood; he felt fit and strong enough to slay dragons. "But who could the liar be? Not Lizzie herself, surely? Not—"

He pulled up short, in a hollow of the towans.

"Not—George?"

Treachery is a hideous thing, and to youth so incomprehensibly hideous that it darkens the sun. Yet every trusting man must be betrayed. That was one of the lessons of Christ's life on earth. It is the last and severest test; it kills many, morally, and no man who has once met and looked it in the face departs the same man, though he may be a stronger one.

"Not George?"

Taffy stood there so still that the rabbits crept out and, catching sight of him, paused in the mouths of their burrows. When at length he moved on, it was to take, not the path which wound inland to Mendarva's, but the one which led straight over the higher moors to Carwithiel.

It was between one and two o'clock when he reached the house and asked to see Mr. or Mrs. George Vyell. They were not at home, the footman said; had left for Falmouth, the evening before, to join some friends on a yachting cruise. Sir Harry was at home; was, indeed, lunching at that moment; but would no doubt be pleased to see Mr. Raymond.

Sir Harry had finished his lunch and sat sipping his claret and tossing scraps of biscuit to the dogs.

"Hullo, Raymond!—thought you were in Oxford. Sit down, my boy; delighted to see you. Thomas, a knife and fork for Mr. Raymond. The cutlets are cold, I'm afraid, but I can recommend the cold saddle, and the ham—it's a York ham. Go to the sideboard and forage for yourself. I wanted company. My boy and Honoria are at Falmouth, yachting, and have left me alone. What, you won't eat? A glass of claret then, at any rate."

"To tell the truth, Sir Harry," Taffy began, awkwardly, "I've come on a disagreeable business."

Sir Harry's face fell. He hated disagreeable business. He flipped a piece of biscuit at his spaniel's nose and sat back, crossing his legs.

"Won't it keep?"

"To me it's important."

"Oh, fire away then; only help yourself to the claret first."

"A girl—Lizzie Pezzack, living over at Langona—has had a child born—"

"Stop a moment. Do I know her?—Ah, to be sure—daughter of old Pezzack, the light-keeper—a brown-colored girl with her hair over her eyes. Well, I'm not surprised. Wants money, I suppose? Who's the father?"

"I don't know."

"Well, but—damn it all!—somebody knows." Sir Harry reached for the bottle and refilled his glass.

"The one thing I know is that Honoria—Mrs. George, I mean—has heard about it, and suspects me."

Sir Harry lifted his glass and glanced at him over the rim. "That's the devil. Does she, now?" He sipped. "She hasn't been herself for a day or two—this explains it. I thought it was change of air she wanted. She's in the deuce of a rage, you bet."

"She is," said Taffy, grimly.

"There's no prude like your young married woman. But it'll blow over, my boy. My advice to you is to keep out of the way for a while."

"But—but it's a lie!" broke in the indignant Taffy. "As far as I am concerned there's not a grain of truth in it!"

"Oh—I beg your pardon, I'm sure." Here Honoria's terrier (the one which George had bought for her at Plymouth) interrupted by begging for a biscuit, and Sir Harry balanced one carefully on its nose. "On trust—good dog! What does the girl say herself?"

"I don't know. I've not seen her."

"Then, my dear fellow—it's awkward, I admit—but I'm dashed if I see what you expect me to do." The baronet pulled out a handkerchief and began flicking the crumbs off his knees.

Taffy watched him for a minute in silence. He was asking himself why he had come. Well, he had come in a hot fit of indignation, meaning to face Honoria and force her to take back the insult of her suspicion. But after all—suppose George were at the bottom of it? Clearly Sir Harry knew nothing, and in any case could not be asked to expose his own son. And Honoria? Let be that she would never believe—that he had no proof, no evidence even—this were a pretty way of beginning to discharge his debt to her! The terrier thrust a cold muzzle against his hand. The room was very still. Sir Harry poured out another glassful and held out the decanter. "Come, you must drink; I insist!"

Taffy looked up. "Thank you, I will."

He could now and with a clear conscience. In those quiet moments he had taken the great resolution. The debt should be paid back, and with interest; not at five per cent., but at a rate beyond the creditor's power of reckoning. For the interest to be guarded for her should be her continued belief in the man she loved. Yes, but if George were innocent? Why, then, the sacrifice would be idle; that was all.

He swallowed the wine, and stood up.

"Must you be going? I wanted a chat with you about Oxford," grumbled Sir Harry; but noting the lad's face, how white and drawn it was, he relented and put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't take it too seriously, my boy. It'll blow over—it'll blow over. Honoria likes you, I know. We'll see what the trollop says; and if I get a chance of putting in a good word, you may depend on me."

He walked with Taffy to the door—good, easy man—and waved a hand from the porch. On the whole he was rather glad than not to see his young friend's back.

From his smithy window Mendarva spied Taffy coming along the road, and stepped out on the green to shake hands with him.

"Pleased to see your face, my son! You'll excuse my not askin' 'ee inside; but the fact is"—he jerked his thumb toward the smithy—"we've a-got our troubles in there."

It came on our youth with something of a shock, that the world had room for any trouble beside his own.

"'Tis the Dane. He went over to Truro yesterday to the wrastlin', an' got thrawed. I tell'n there's no need to be shamed. 'Twas Luke the Wendron fella did it—in the treble play—inside lock backward, and as pretty a chip as ever I see." Mendarva began to illustrate it with foot and ankle, but checked himself and glanced nervously over his shoulder. "Isn' lookin', I hope? He's in a terrible pore about it. Won't trust hissel' to spake and don't want to see nobody. But, as I tell'n, there's no need to be shamed; the fella took the belt in the las' round and turned his man over like a tab. He's a proper angletwitch, that Wendron fella. Stank 'pon en both ends, and he'll rise up in the middle and look at 'ee. There was no one a patch on en but the Dane; and I'll back the Dane next time they clinch. 'Tis a nuisance, though, to have'n like this—with a big job coming on, too, over to the light-house."

Taffy looked steadily at the smith. "What's doing at the light-house?"

"Ha'n't 'ee heerd?" Mendarva began a long tale, the sum of which was that the light-house had begun of late to show signs of age, to rock at times in an ominous manner. The Trinity House surveyor had been down, and reported, and Mendarva had the contract for some immediate repairs. "But 'tis patching an old kettle, my son. The foundations be clamped down to the rock, and the clamps have worked loose. The whole thing'll have to come down in the end; you mark my words."

"But, these repairs?" Taffy interrupted. "You'll be wanting hands."

"Why, o' course."

"And a foreman—a clerk of the works—"

While Mendarva was telling his tale, over a hill two miles to the westward a small donkey-cart crawled for a minute against the skyline and disappeared beyond the ridge which hid the towans. An old man trudged at the donkey's head; and a young woman sat in the cart with a bundle in her arms.

The old man trudged along so deep in thought that when the donkey without rhyme or reason came to a halt, half-way down the hill, he, too, halted, and stood pulling a wisp of gray side-whiskers.

"Look here," he said. "You ent goin' to tell? That's your las' word, is it?"

The young woman looked down on the bundle and nodded her head.

"There, that'll do. If you weant, you weant; I've tek'n 'ee back, an' us must fit and make the best o't. The cheeld'll never be fit for much—born lame like that. But 'twas to be, I s'pose."

Lizzie sat dumb, but hugged the bundle closer.

"'Tis like a judgment. If your mother'd been spared, 'twudn' have happened. But 'twas to be, I s'pose. The Lord's ways be past findin' out."

He woke up and struck the donkey across the rump.

"Gwan you! Gee up! What d'ee mean by stoppin' like that?"

XXIII
THE SERVICE OF THE LAMP

The Chief Engineer of the Trinity House was a man of few words. He and Taffy had spent the afternoon clambering about the rocks below the light-house, peering into its foundations. Here and there, where weed coated the rocks and made foothold slippery, he took the hand which Taffy held out. Now and then he paused for a pinch of snuff. The round of inspection finished, he took an extraordinarily long pinch.

"What's your opinion?" he asked, cocking his head on one side and examining the young man much as he had examined the light-house. "You have one, I suppose."

"Yes, sir; but of course it doesn't count for much."

"I asked for it."

"Well, then, I think, sir, we have wasted a year's work; and if we go on tinkering, we shall waste more."

"Pull it down and rebuild, you say?"

"Yes, sir; but not on the same rock."

"Why?"

"This rock was ill-chosen. You see, sir, just here a ridge of elvan crops up through the slate; the rock, out yonder, is good elvan, and that is why the sea has made an island of it, wearing away the softer stuff inshore. The mischief here lies in the rock, not in the light-house."

"The sea has weakened our base?"

"Partly; but the light-house has done more. In a strong gale the foundations begin to work, and in the chafing the bed of rock gets the worst of it."

"What about concrete?"

"You might fill up the sockets with concrete; but I doubt, sir, if the case would hold for any time. The rock is a mere shell in places, especially on the northwestern side."

"H'm. You were at Oxford for a time, were you not?"

"Yes, sir," Taffy answered, wondering.

"I've heard about you. Where do you live?"

Taffy pointed to the last of a line of three whitewashed cottages behind the light-house.

"Alone?"

"No, sir; with my mother and my grandmother. She is an invalid."

"I wonder if your mother would be kind enough to offer me a cup of tea?"

In the small kitchen, on the walls of which, and even on the dresser, Taffy's books fought for room with Humility's plates and tin-ware, the Chief Engineer proved to be a most courteous old gentleman. Toward Humility he bore himself with an antique politeness which flattered her considerably. And when he praised her tea, she almost forgave him for his detestable habit of snuff-taking.

He had heard something (it appeared) from the President of Taffy's college, and also from — (he named Taffy's old friend in the velvet college-cap). In later days Taffy maintained not only that every man must try to stand alone, but that he ought to try the harder because of its impossibility; for in fact it was impossible to escape from men's helpfulness. And though his work lay in lonely places where in the end fame came out to seek him, he remained the same boy who, waking in the dark, had heard the bugles speaking comfort.

As a matter of fact his college had generously offered him a chance, which would have cost him nothing or next to nothing, of continuing to read for his degree. But he had chosen his line, and against Humility's entreaties he stuck to it. The Chief Engineer took a ceremonious leave. He had to drive back to his hotel, and Taffy escorted him to his carriage.

"I shall run over again to-morrow," he said at parting; "and we'll have a look at that island rock." He was driven off, secretly a little puzzled.

Well, it puzzled Taffy at times why he should be working here with Mendarva's men for twenty shillings a week (it had been eighteen to begin with) when he might be reading for his degree and a fellowship. Yet in his heart he knew the reason. That would be building, after all, on the foundations which Honoria had laid.

Pride had helped chance to bring him here, to the very spot where Lizzie Pezzack lived. He met her daily, and several times a day. She, and his mother and grandmother, were all the womanfolk in the hamlet—if three cottages deserve that name. In the first cottage Lizzie lived with her father, who was chief lighthouse-man, and her crippled child; two under-keepers, unmarried men, managed together in the second; and this accident allowed Taffy to rent the third from the Brethren of the Trinity House and live close to his daily work. Unless brought by business, no one visited that windy peninsula; no one passed within sight of it; no tree grew upon it or could be seen from it. At daybreak Taffy's workmen came trudging along the track where the short turf and gentians grew between the wheel-ruts; and in the evening went trudging back, the level sun flashing on their empty dinner-cans. The eight souls left behind had one common gospel—Cleanliness. Very little dust found its way thither; but the salt, spray-laden air kept them constantly polishing window-panes and brass-work. To wash, to scour, to polish, grew into the one absorbing business of life. They had no gossip; even in their own dwellings they spoke but little; their speech shrank and dwindled away in the continuous roar of the sea. But from morning to night, mechanically, they washed and scoured and polished. Paper was not whiter than the deal table and dresser which Humility scrubbed daily with soap and water, and once a week with lemon-juice as well. Never was cleaner linen to sight and smell than that which she pegged out by the furze-brake on the ridge. All the life of the small colony, though lonely, grew wholesome as it was simple of purpose in cottages thus sweetened and kept sweet by lime-wash and the salt wind.

And through it moved the forlorn figure of Lizzie Pezzack's child. Somehow Lizzie had taught the boy to walk, with the help of a crutch, as early as most children; but the wind made cruel sport with his first efforts in the open, knocking the crutch from under him at every third step, and laying him flat. The child had pluck, however, and when autumn came round again, could face a fairly stiff breeze.

It was about this time that word came of the Trinity Board's intention to replace the old light-house with one upon the outer rock. For the Chief Engineer had visited it and decided that Taffy was right. To be sure no mention was made of Taffy in his report; but the great man took the first opportunity to offer him the post of foreman of the works, so there was certainly nothing to be grumbled at. The work did not actually start until the following spring; for the rock, to receive the foundations, had to be bored some feet below high-water level, and this could only be attempted on calm days or when a southerly wind blew from the high land well over the workmen's heads, leaving the inshore water smooth. On such days Taffy, looking up from his work, would catch sight of a small figure on the cliff-top leaning aslant to the wind and watching.

For the child was adventurous and took no account of his lameness. Perhaps if he thought of it at all, having no chance to compare himself with other children, he accepted his lameness as a condition of childhood—something he would grow out of. His mother could not keep him indoors; he fidgetted continually. But he would sit or stand quiet by the hour on the cliff-top, watching the men as they drilled and fixed the dynamite, and waiting for the bang of it. Best of all, however, were the days when his grandfather allowed him inside the lighthouse, to clamber about the staircase and ladders, to watch the oiling and trimming of the great lantern and the ships moving slowly on the horizon. He asked a thousand questions about them.

"I think," said he, one day before he was three years old, "that my father is in one of those ships."

"Bless the child!" exclaimed old Pezzack. "Who says you have a father?"

"Everybody has a father. Dicky Tregenza has one; they both work down at the rock. I asked Dicky and he told me."

"Told 'ee what?"

"That everybody has a father. I asked him if mine was out in one of those ships, and he said very likely. I asked mother, too, but she was washing-up and wouldn't listen."

Old Pezzack regarded the child grimly. "'Twas to be, I s'pose," he muttered.

Lizzie Pezzack had never set foot inside the Raymonds' cottage. Humility, gentle soul as she was, could on some points be as unchristian as other women. As time went on, it seemed that not a soul beside herself and Taffy knew of Honoria's suspicion. She even doubted, and Taffy doubted, too, if Lizzie herself knew such an accusation had been made. Certainly never by word or look had Lizzie hinted at it. Yet Humility could not find it in her heart to forgive her. "She may be innocent," was the thought; "but through her came the injury to my son." Taffy by this time had no doubt at all. It was George who poisoned Honoria's ear; George's shame and Honoria's pride would explain why the whisper had never gone further; and nothing else would explain.

Did his mother guess this? He believed so at times; but they never spoke of it.

The lame child was often in the Raymonds' kitchen. Lizzie did not forbid or resent this. And he liked Humility and would talk to her at length while he nibbled one of her dripping-cakes. "People don't tell the truth," he observed, sagely, on one of these occasions. (He pronounced it "troof," by the way.) "I know why we live here. It's because we're near the sea. My father's on the sea somewhere, looking for us; and grandfather lights the lamp every night to tell him where we are. One night he'll see it and bring his ship in and take us all off together."

"Who told you all this?"

"Nobody. People won't tell me nothing (nofing). I has to make it out in my head."

At times, when his small limbs grew weary (though he never acknowledged this), he would stretch himself on the short turf of the headland and lie staring up at the white gulls. No one ever came near enough to surprise the look which then crept over the child's face. But Taffy, passing him at a distance, remembered another small boy, and shivered to remember and compare—

A boy's will is the wind's will

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

—but how, when the boy is a cripple?

One afternoon he was stooping to inspect an obstinate piece of boring when the man at his elbow said:

"Hullo! edn' that young Joey Pezzack in difficulties up there? Blest if the cheeld won't break his neck wan of these days!"

Taffy caught up a coil of rope, sprang into a boat, and pushed across to land. "Don't move!" he shouted. At the foot of the cliff he picked up Joey's crutch, and ran at full speed up the path worn by the workmen. This led him round to the verge, ten feet above the ledge where the child clung white and silent. He looped the rope in a running noose and lowered it.

"Slip this under your arms. Can you manage, or shall I come down? I'll come if you're hurt."

"I've twisted my foot. It's all right, now you're come," said the little man, bravely; and slid the rope round himself in the most businesslike way.

"The grass was slipper—" he began, as soon as his feet touched firm earth; and with that he broke down and fell to sobbing in Taffy's arms.

Taffy carried him—a featherweight—to the cottage where Lizzie stood by her table washing up. She saw them at the gate and came running out.

"It's all right. He slipped—out on the cliff. Nothing more than a scratch or two and perhaps a sprained ankle."

He watched while she set Joey in a chair and began to pull off his stockings. He had never seen the child's foot naked. She turned suddenly, caught him looking, and pulled the stocking back over the deformity.

"Have you heard?" she asked.

"What?"

"She has a boy! Ah!" she laughed, harshly, "I thought that would hurt you. Well, you have been a silly!"

"I don't think I understand."

"You don't think you understand!" she mimicked. "And you're not fond of her, eh? Never were fond of her, eh? You silly—to let him take her, and never tell!"

"Tell?"

She faced him, hardening her gaze. "Yes, tell—" She nodded slowly; while Joey, unobserved by either, looked up with wide, round eyes.

"Men don't fight like that." The words were out before it struck him that one man had, almost certainly, fought like that. Her face, however, told him nothing. She could not know. "You have never told," he added.

"Because—" she began, but could not tell him the whole truth. And yet what she said was true. "Because you would not let me," she muttered.

"In the churchyard, you mean—on her wedding-day?"

"Before that."

"But before that I never guessed."

"All the same, I knew what you were. You wouldn't have let me. It came to the same thing. And if I had told—Oh, you make it hard for me!" she wailed.

He stared at her, understanding this only—that somehow he could control her will.

"I will never let you tell," he said, gravely.

"I hate her!"

"You shall not tell."

"Listen"—she drew close and touched his arm. "He never cared for her; it's not his way to care. She cares for him now, I dessay—not as she might have cared for you—but she's his wife, and some women are like that. There's her pride, anyway. Suppose—suppose he came back to me?"

"If I caught him—" Taffy began; but the poor child, who for two minutes had been twisting his face heroically, interrupted with a wail:

"Oh, mother! my foot—it hurts so!"

(To be continued.)

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