I had engaged to accompany one of Charley’s barrister-friends, in whose society I had found considerable satisfaction, to his father’s house—to spend the evening with some friends of the family. The gathering was chiefly for talk, and was a kind of thing I disliked, finding its aimlessness and flicker depressing. Indeed, partly from the peculiar circumstances of my childhood, partly from what I had suffered, I always found my spirits highest when alone. Still, the study of humanity apart, I felt that I ought not to shut myself out from my kind, but endure some little irksomeness, if only for the sake of keeping alive that surface friendliness which has its value in the nourishment of the deeper affections. On this particular occasion, however, I yielded the more willingly that, in the revival of various memories of Charley, it had occurred to me that I once heard him say that his sister had a regard for one of the ladies of the family.

There were not many people in the drawing-room when we arrived, and my friend’s mother alone was there to entertain them. With her I was chatting when one of her daughters entered, accompanied by a lady in mourning. For one moment I felt as if on the borders of insanity. My brain seemed to surge like the waves of a wind-tormented tide, so that I dared not make a single step forward lest my limbs should disobey me. It was indeed Mary Osborne; but oh, how changed! The rather full face had grown delicate and thin, and the fine pure complexion if possible finer and purer, but certainly more ethereal and evanescent. It was as if suffering had removed some substance unapt, {Footnote: Spenser’s ‘Hymne in Honour of Beautie.‘} and rendered her body a better-fitting garment for her soul. Her face, which had before required the softening influences of sleep and dreams to give it the plasticity necessary for complete expression, was now full of a repressed expression, if I may be allowed the phrase—a latent something ever on the tremble, ever on the point of breaking forth. It was as if the nerves had grown finer, more tremulous, or, rather, more vibrative. Touched to finer issues they could never have been, but suffering had given them a more responsive thrill. In a word, she was the Athanasia of my dream, not the Mary Osborne of the Moldwarp library.

Conquering myself at last, and seeing a favourable opportunity, I approached her. I think the fear lest her father should enter gave me the final impulse; otherwise I could have been contented to gaze on her for hours in motionless silence.

‘May I speak to you, Mary?’ I said.

She lifted her eyes and her whole face towards mine, without a smile, without a word. Her features remained perfectly still, but, like the outbreak of a fountain, the tears rushed into her eyes and overflowed in silent weeping. Not a sob, not a convulsive movement, accompanied their flow.

‘Is your father here?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘I thought you were abroad somewhere—I did not know where.’

Again she shook her head. She dared not speak, knowing that if she made the attempt she must break down.

‘I will go away till you can bear the sight of me,’ I said. She half-stretched out a thin white hand, but whether to detain me or bid me farewell I do not know, for it dropped again on her knee.

{Illustration: “I will come to you by and by,” I said.}

‘I will come to you by-and-by,’ I said, and moved away. The rooms rapidly filled, and in a few minutes I could not see the corner where I had left her. I endured everything for awhile, and then made my way back to it; but she was gone, and I could find her nowhere. A lady began to sing. When the applause which followed her performance was over, my friend, who happened to be near me, turned abruptly and said,

‘Now, Cumbermede, you sing.’

The truth was that, since I had loved Mary Osborne, I had attempted to cultivate a certain small gift of song which I thought I possessed. I dared not touch any existent music, for I was certain I should break down; but having a faculty—somewhat thin, I fear—for writing songs, and finding that a shadowy air always accompanied the birth of the words, I had presumed to study music a little, in the hope of becoming able to fix the melody—the twin sister of the song. I had made some progress, and had grown able to write down a simple thought. There was little presumption, then, in venturing my voice, limited as was its scope, upon a trifle of my own. Tempted by the opportunity of realizing hopes consciously wild, I obeyed my friend, and, sitting down to the instrument in some trepidation, sang the following verses—

I could not have sung this in public, but that no one would suspect it was my own, or was in the least likely to understand a word of it—except her for whose ears and heart it was intended.

As soon as I had finished, I rose, and once more went searching for Mary. But as I looked, sadly fearing she was gone, I heard her voice close behind me.

‘Are those verses your own, Mr Cumbermede?’ she asked, almost in a whisper.

I turned trembling. Her lovely face was looking up at me.

‘Yes,’ I answered—‘as much my own as that I believe they are not to be found anywhere. But they were given to me rather than made by me.’

‘Would you let me have them? I am not sure that I understand them.’

‘I am not sure that I understand them myself. They are for the heart rather than the mind. Of course you shall have them. They were written for you. All I have, all I am, is yours.’

Her face flushed, and grew pale again instantly.

‘You must not talk so,’ she said. ‘Remember.’

‘I can never forget. I do not know why you say remember.’

‘On second thoughts, I must not have the verses. I beg your pardon.’

‘Mary, you bewilder me. I have no right to ask you to explain, except that you speak as if I must understand. What have they been telling you about me?’

‘Nothing—at least nothing that—’

She paused.

‘I try to live innocently, and were it only for your sake, shall never stop searching for the thread of life in its ravelled skein.’

‘Do not say for my sake, Mr Cumbermede. That means nothing. Say for your own sake, if not for God’s.’

‘If you are going to turn away from me, I don’t mind how soon I follow Charley.’

All this was said in a half-whisper, I bending towards her where she sat, a little sheltered by one of a pair of folding doors. My heart was like to break—or rather it seemed to have vanished out of me altogether, lost in a gulf of emptiness. Was this all? Was this the end of my dreaming? To be thus pushed aside by the angel of my resurrection?

‘Hush! hush!’ she said kindly. ‘You must have many friends. But—’

‘But you will be my friend no more? Is that it, Mary? Oh, if you knew all! And you are never, never to know it!’

Her still face was once more streaming with tears. I choked mine back, terrified at the thought of being observed; and without even offering my hand, left her and made my way through the crowd to the stair. On the landing I met Geoffrey Brotherton. We stared each other in the face and passed.

I did not sleep much that night, and when I did sleep, woke from one wretched dream after another, now crying aloud, and now weeping. What could I have done? or rather, what could any one have told her I had done to make her behave thus to me? She did not look angry—or even displeased—only sorrowful, very sorrowful; and she seemed to take it for granted I knew what it meant. When at length I finally woke after an hour of less troubled sleep, I found some difficulty in convincing myself that the real occurrences of the night before had not been one of the many troubled dreams that had scared my repose. Even after the dreams had all vanished, and the facts remained, they still appeared more like a dim dream of the dead—the vision of Mary was so wan and hopeless, memory alone looking out from her worn countenance. There had been no warmth in her greeting, no resentment in her aspect; we met as if we had parted but an hour before, only that an open grave was between us, across which we talked in the voice of dreamers. She had sought to raise no barrier between us, just because we could not meet, save as one of the dead and one of the living. What could it mean? But with the growing day awoke a little courage. I would at least try to find out what it meant. Surely all my dreams were not to vanish like the mist of the morning! To lose my dreams would be far worse than to lose the so-called realities of life. What were these to me? What value lay in such reality? Even God was as yet so dim and far off as to seem rather in the region of dreams—of those true dreams, I hoped, that shadowed forth the real—than in the actual visible present. ‘Still,’ I said to myself, ‘she had not cast me off; she did not refuse to know me; she did ask for my song, and I will send it.’

I wrote it out, adding a stanza to the verses:—

I then sought my friend’s chambers.

‘I was not aware you knew the Osbornes,’ I said. ‘I wonder you never told me, seeing Charley and you were such friends.’

‘I never saw one of them till last night. My sister and she knew each other some time ago, and have met again of late. What a lovely creature she is! But what became of you last night? You must have left before any one else.’

‘I didn’t feel well.’

‘You don’t look the thing.’

‘I confess meeting Miss Osborne rather upset me.’

‘It had the same effect on her. She was quite ill, my sister said, this morning. No wonder! Poor Charley! I always had a painful feeling that he would come to grief somehow.’

‘Let’s hope he’s come to something else by this time, Marston,’ I said.

‘Amen,’ he returned.

‘Is her father or mother with her?’

‘No. They are to fetch her away—next week, I think it is.’ I had now no fear of my communication falling into other hands, and therefore sent the song by post, with a note, in which I begged her to let me know if I had done anything to offend her. Next morning I received the following reply:

‘No, Wilfrid—for Charley’s sake, I must call you by your name—you have done nothing to offend me. Thank you for the song. I did not want you to send it, but I will keep it. You must not write to me again. Do not forget what we used to write about. God’s ways are not ours. Your friend, Mary Osborne.’

I rose and went out, not knowing whither. Half-stunned, I roamed the streets. I ate nothing that day, and when towards night I found myself near my chambers, I walked in as I had come out, having no intent, no future. I felt very sick, and threw myself on my bed. There I passed the night, half in sleep, half in helpless prostration. When I look back, it seems as if some spiritual narcotic must have been given me, else how should the terrible time have passed and left me alive? When I came to myself, I found I was ill, and I longed to hide my head in the nest of my childhood. I had always looked on the Moat as my refuge at the last; now it seemed the only desirable thing—a lonely nook, in which to lie down and end the dream there begun—either, as it now seemed, in an eternal sleep, or the inburst of a dreary light. After the last refuge it could afford me it must pass from my hold; but I was yet able to determine whither. I rose and went to Marston.

‘Marston,’ I said, ‘I want to make my will.’

‘All right!’ he returned; ‘but you look as if you meant to register it as well. You’ve got a feverish cold; I see it in your eyes. Come along. I’ll go home with you, and fetch a friend of mine, who will give you something to do you good.’

‘I can’t rest till I have made my will,’ I persisted.

‘Well, there’s no harm in that,’ he rejoined. ‘It won’t take long, I dare say.’

‘It needn’t anyhow. I only want to leave the small real property I have to Miss Osborne, and the still smaller-personal property to yourself.’

He laughed.

‘All right, old boy! I haven’t the slightest objection to your willing your traps to me, but every objection in the world to your leaving them. To be sure, every man, with anything to leave, ought to make his will betimes;—so fire away.’

In a little while the draught was finished.

‘I shall have it ready for your signature by to-morrow,’ he said.

I insisted it should be done at once. I was going home, I said. He yielded. The will was engrossed, signed, and witnessed that same morning; and in the afternoon I set out, the first part of the journey by rail, for the Moat.