I--APOSTLE SPOONS

Miss Macleod passed the newspaper to her nephew. "Look at that," she said. She had her finger on an advertisement. He looked at it. This is what he read:--

"A clergyman, having a large family entirely dependent on him, is compelled to sacrifice a unique set of apostle spoons. Twelve large, twelve small, silver-gilt, in handsome case. Being in urgent want of money, a trifle will be accepted. Quite new. Would make a handsome present. Approval willingly. Letters only, Pomona Villa, Ladbroke Grove, W."

"What do you think of it?" inquired the lady.

The Rev. Alan smoothed the paper with his hand.

"Not much," he ventured to remark.

"Put on your hat and come with me. I'm going to buy them."

"My dear aunt!"

"They will do for a wedding present for Clara Leach. Other people can marry, if you can't."

The Rev. Alan sighed. He had been having a bad quarter of an hour. He was a little, freckled, sandy-haired, short-sighted man: one of those short-sighted men whose spectacles require continually settling in their place on the bridge of the nose. Such as he was, he was the only hope of an ancient race--the only male hope, that is.

The Macleods of Pittenquhair predated the first of the Scottish kings. Fortunately for themselves they postdated them as well.

For a considerable portion of their history, the members of that time-honoured family had been compelled, in the Sidney-Smithian phrase, to cultivate their greatness on a little oatmeal--for want of cash to enable them to indulge in any other form of cultivation. But in these latter days they had grown rich, owing to a fortunate matrimonial speculation with a Chicago young lady whose father had something to do with hogs. The lady's name was Biggins--Cornelia P. Biggins--the P. stood for Pollie, which was her mother's name, the "front" name came from history. The particular Macleod who had married her had been christened David. He devoted a considerable portion of his wife's fortune to buying up the ancient lands of the Macleods, in the neighbourhood of Pittenquhair and thereabouts. In his person he resolved that the ancient family glories should reappear--and more. But in these cases it is notorious that man only proposes--his wife never bore him a child. To make matters worse, he only outlived Mrs Macleod six months, so that he never had a decent chance to try his luck again.

David had a brother. Being a childless man, and desirous to restore the ancestral grandeur, one would have thought that he would have left his wealth to his brother, who wanted it if ever a man did yet. But, unfortunately, Alan was not only an irredeemable scamp--which might have been forgiven him, for David was by no means spotless--but also the two brothers hated each other with a truly enduring brotherly hatred. Nor had Alan improved matters by making public and unpleasant allusions to hogs and swine, not only on the occasion of David's marriage, but on many occasions afterwards. So it came to pass that when David was gathered to his fathers, his brother's name was not even mentioned in his will. All his wealth was left to his sister Janet.

In course of time Alan died abroad--very much abroad, and in more senses than one. Then, for the first time, Janet appeared upon the scene. She paid for her brother's funeral, and took his only child, a boy, back with her to England. The child's mother, who was nothing and nobody, had died--charitable people said, murdered by her husband--soon after her infant's birth. So his aunt was the only relation the youngster had.

Janet was a spinster. She had ideas of her own, and plenty of them. Her dominant idea was that in her nephew the family sun should rise again in splendour. But alas for the perversity of fate! The boy passed from a public school to the university, and from the university--after a struggle, in which he showed himself, in a lymphatic sort of way, as obstinate as one of Mrs David's father's pigs--into the church. This was bad enough for a son of his father, and the heir to Pittenquhair and ten thousand pounds a year, but what followed was infinitely worse. He became a ritualist of the ritualists--more Roman than the Romans--and the motto which he nailed to the mast was "Celibacy of the clergy"!

Her nephew's conduct almost drove Miss Janet mad. Two wives she might have forgiven--but none! In season and out of season she preached to him the duty of marriage; but what she regarded as a duty he regarded as a crime. She spoke of an heir for Pittenquhair; his thoughts were of something very different indeed. To speak of disinheriting him was to pander to his tastes. The income from his curacy was seventy pounds a year--and he lived on it. The money sent him by his aunt he surrendered to the Church and to the poor. What availed it to preach of disinheritance to a man who behaved like that?

And yet, in his own peculiar way, he was a good nephew to his aunt. He was the meekest, ugliest, shyest, awkwardest of men. His curacy was at a place on the Suffolk coast called Swaffham-on-Sea. From these wilds he was perpetually being summoned by his aunt to attend on her in her house in town. Although--possibly because he was that kind of man--these visits were anything but occasions of pleasure, he generally obeyed the summons. On the present occasion it was the second day of his stay under his aunt's hospitable roof in Cadogan Place. From the moment of his arrival she had continually reviled him. She had suggested as wives some two-score eligible young women, from earls' daughters to confectioners' assistants. She had arrived at that state of mind in which, if he would only marry, she would have welcomed a cook. In his awkward, stammering way, he had vetoed them all. Then she had rated him for an hour and three-quarters by the clock. Finally, exhausted by her efforts, she had caught up the paper in a rage. The Rev. Alan watched her in silence as she read it, fingering a little book of prayers he had in his waistcoat pocket.

All at once she had thrust the advertisement sheet of the paper underneath his nose, with the exclamation--

"Look at that!"

He looked at it, and had read the advertisement reproduced above.

"Don't sit there like a stuck dummy," observed Miss Macleod, whose English, in her moments of excitement, was more than peculiar. "Go and get the thing that you call a hat! Hat!" Miss Macleod sniffed; "if you had appeared in the streets in my days with such a thing on your head, people would have thought that Guy Fawkes's day was come again."

The Rev. Alan was still studying the paper.

"But, my dear aunt, you are not seriously thinking of paying any attention to such an advertisement as that?"

"And why not? Isn't the man a clergyman?"

"I can't think that a priest--"

"A priest!" cried Miss Macleod, to whom the word was as a red rag to a bull. "Who spoke about a priest?"

The Rev. Alan went placidly on--

"--under any circumstances would advertise apostle spoons for sale."

"Who asks you what you think? Put on your hat and come with me."

"There is another point. The advertisement says 'letters only'; there is evidently an objection to a personal call."

As Miss Macleod grasped her nephew by the shoulder with a sufficiently muscular grasp, the Rev. Alan put on his hat and went with her.

II--UNDER THE SPELL

They walked all the way--it is some distance from Cadogan Place to Ladbroke Grove. There was not much conversation--what there was was not of a particularly cheerful kind. The day was warm. The lady was tall, the gentleman short. Miss Macleod was a first-rate pedestrian; the Rev. Alan was not good at any kind of exercise. By the time they reached their journey's end he was in quite a pitiable plight. He was bedewed with perspiration, and agitated beyond measure by the rather better than four miles-an-hour pace which his aunt would persist in keeping up.

Pomona Villa proved to be a little house which stood back at some distance from the road. Just as they reached it the door was opened, shut again with a bang, and a gentleman came hastening out of the house as though he were pressed for time. He was a tall, portly person, with very red whiskers, and a complexion which was even more vivid than his whiskers. He was attired in what might be called recollections of clerical costume, and was without a hat. He appeared to be very much distressed either in body or in mind. Just as he laid his hand on the handle on one side of the gate, Miss Macleod grasped it on the other. Brought in this way unexpectedly face to face, he stared at the lady, and the lady stared at him.

"She's at it again!" he cried.

"Sir!" exclaimed Miss Macleod. She drew herself up.

"I beg your pardon." The gentleman on the other side of the gate produced a very dirty pocket-handkerchief, and mopped his head and face with it. "I thought it was a friend of mine."

"Is this Pomona Villa?" asked Miss Macleod.

The bare-headed man looked up and down, and round about, and seemed as though he were more than half disposed to say it wasn't. But as the name was painted over the top bar of the wooden gate, within twelve inches of the lady's nose, he perhaps deemed it wiser to dissemble.

"What--what name?" he stammered.

"I've come about the apostle spoons."

"The apostle spoons! Oh!" The bare-headed man looked blank. He added in a sort of stage aside--"Letters only."

"Perhaps you will allow me to enter."

Miss Macleod did not wait for the required permission, but pushed the gate open, and entered. Her nephew followed at her heels. The bare-headed man stared at the Rev. Alan, and the Rev. Alan at him--one seemed quite as confused as the other.

"Can I see the spoons?" continued Miss Macleod.

"Eh--the fact is--eh--owing to distressing family circumstances--eh--it is impossible--"

What was impossible will never be known, for at that moment the door was opened, and a woman appeared.

"If you please, mum, Miss Vesey says, will you walk in? She's upstairs."

Miss Macleod walked in, her nephew always at her heels. The bare-headed man stared after them, as though he did not understand this mode of procedure in the least.

"Up the stairs, first door to the right," continued the woman who had bade them enter. As, in accordance with these directions, Miss Macleod proceeded to mount the stairs, the woman, who still stood at the open door, addressed herself to the bare-headed man at the gate. Her words were sufficiently audible.

"You brute!" she said, and banged the door in his face.

Seemingly unconscious of there being anything peculiar about the house or its inhabitants, Miss Macleod strode up the stairs. The Rev. Alan, conscious for himself and his aunt as well, crept uncomfortably after. The first door on the right stood wide open. Miss Macleod unceremoniously entered the room. Her nephew followed sheepishly in the rear.

The room was a good-sized one, and was scantily furnished. One striking piece of furniture, however, it did contain, and that was a grand piano. At the moment of their entrance the instrument stood wide open, and at the keyboard was seated a young lady.

"I am Miss Vesey," she observed, without troubling herself to rise as the visitors entered.

Miss Macleod bowed. She appeared about to make some remark, possibly with reference to the apostle spoons; but before she could speak, Miss Vesey went on,--

"That is my father you saw outside--the Rev. George Vesey. He's a dipsomaniac."

Miss Macleod started, which, under the circumstances, was not unnatural. Her nephew stared with all his eyes and spectacles. Miss Vesey was a fine young woman, about nineteen years of age. The most prominent feature in her really intellectual countenance was a pair of large and radiant black eyes.

"I'm engaged in his cure," she added.

"I have called," remarked Miss Macleod, perhaps deeming it wiser to ignore the young lady's candid allusion to her father's weakness, "with reference to an advertisement about some apostle spoons."

Miss Vesey, still seated on the music-stool, clasped her hands behind her head.

"Oh, that's one of his swindles," she said.

"One of his swindles!" echoed Miss Macleod.

"He's agent for a Birmingham firm. He finds it a good dodge to put in advertisements like that. Each person who buys thinks she gets the only set he has to sell; but he sells dozens every week. It's drink has brought him to it. But I'm engaged in curing him all round. The worst of it is that when I begin to cure him, he runs away. He was just going to run away when you came to the gate."

"If what you say is correct," said Miss Macleod grimly, "I should say the case was incurable--save by the police."

"Ah, that's because you don't understand my means of cure: I'm a magician."

"A magician!"

There was a pause. Miss Macleod eyed Miss Vesey keenly, Miss Vesey returning the compliment by eyeing her.

Miss Macleod was a woman of the day. Openly expressing unbelief in all the faiths that are old, she was continually on the look-out for a faith that was new. She had tried spiritualism and theosophy. She had sworn by all sorts of rogues and humbugs--until she found them out to be rogues and humbugs, which, to her credit be it said, it did not take her long to do. Just at that moment she was without a fetish. So that when Miss Vesey calmly announced that she was a magician, she did not do what, for instance, that very much more weak-minded person than herself, her nephew, would have done--she did not promptly laugh her to scorn.

"What do you mean by saying you're a magician?" she inquired.

"I mean what I say. I have my magic here."

Miss Vesey laid her hand on the piano.

"I suppose you mean that you're a fine pianist."

"More than that. With my music I can do with men and women what I will. I can drive the desire for drink out of my father for days together; I can make him keep sober against his will."

Miss Macleod turned towards her nephew.

"This is my nephew. Exercise your power upon him."

"Aunt!" cried the Rev. Alan.

Miss Vesey laughed.

"Shall I?" she asked.

"You have my permission. You say you can do with men and women what you will. He will be a rich man one of these fine days. Make him marry you."

The curate's distress was piteous.

"Aunt! Have you any sense of shame?"

"Suppose I try," observed Miss Vesey, her face alive with laughter. "I'm sure I'm poor enough, and I'm already connected with the clergy."

"Aunt, I entreat you, come away. If you will not come, then I must go alone. I cannot stay to see the Church insulted."

Miss Macleod turned to Miss Vesey.

"Will you let him go?"

"Certainly not," laughed the young lady. "If only to pay him out for being so ungallant."

The Rev. Alan--literally--wrung his hands.

"This--this is intolerable. Aunt, it is impossible for me to stay. You--you'll find me there when you get home."

The Rev. Alan, in a state of quite indescribable confusion, turned towards the door. But before he could move a step, Miss Vesey struck a chord on the piano.

"Stay!" she said.

The curate seemed to hesitate for a moment, then turned to her again. He seemed to be under the impression that he owed an apology to the pianist. "I--I must apologise for--for my seeming rudeness. I know that my--my aunt only meant what she said as--as a joke; but, at the same time, my respect for my sacred office"--at this point the little man drew himself up--"compels me, after what has passed, to go."

Miss Vesey struck a second chord.

"Stay!" she said again.

Before the agitated believer in the propriety of the unmarried state for clergymen could say her yea or nay, she cast her spells--and her hands--upon the keyboard of the instrument, so that it burst out into a concourse of sweet sounds. The Rev. Alan was, in his way a born musician. The only dissipation he allowed himself was music. The soul of the mean-looking, wrong-headed little man was attuned to harmony. Good music had on him the effect which Orpheus with his lute had on more stubborn materials than curates--it bewitched him. Miss Vesey had not played ten seconds before he realised that here was a dispenser of the food which his soul loved--a mistress of melody. What it was she played he did not know--it seemed to him an improvisation. He stood listening--entranced. Suddenly the musician's mood changed. The notes of triumph ceased, and there came instead a strain of languorous music which set all the curate's pulses throbbing.

"Come here!"

Miss Vesey whispered. The curate settled his spectacles upon his nose. He looked around him as though he were not sure that he had heard aright. And the command was uttered in such half-tones that he might be excused for supposing that his ears had played him false.

"Come here!"

The command again. Again the Rev. Alan settled his spectacles upon his nose. He gazed at the musician as if still in doubt.

"I--I beg your pardon? Did you speak to me?"

"Come here!"

A third time the command--this time clearer and louder too. As if unconsciously he advanced towards the pianist, hat in one hand, handkerchief in another, his whole bearing eloquent of a state of mental indecision. He went quite close to her--so close that there would be no excuse for saying that he could not hear her if she whispered again.

Again the musician's theme was changed. The languorous melody faded. There came a succession of wild sounds, as of souls in pain. The curate's organisation was a sensitive one--the cries were almost more than he could bear.

"Pity me!"

The voice was corporal enough. It was Miss Vesey, once more indulging in a whisper. Again the curate was at a nonplus. Again he went through the mechanical action of settling his spectacles upon his nose.

"I--I beg your pardon?" It seemed to be a stereotyped form of words with him.

"Pity me! Pity me! Do!"

The words were a cry of anguish--quite as anguished as the music was. The Rev. Alan looked round the room, perhaps for succour and relief. He saw his aunt, but at that moment her face happened to be turned another way.

"If you need my pity, it is yours."

The words, like the lady's, were spoken, doubtless unintentionally, in a whisper.

"If you pity me, then help me too!"

"If I can, I--I will!"

"You promise?"

"Certainly."

Although the word was a tolerably bold one, it was by no means boldly spoken; probably that was owing to the state of confusion existing in the speaker's mind.

The theme was changed again. The piano ceased to wail. A tumult of sound came from it which was positively deafening. The effect was most bewildering, especially as it concerned the Rev. Alan. For in the midst of all the tumult he was conscious of these words being addressed to him by Miss Vesey.

"Help me with your love!"

The instant the words were spoken the tumult died away, there was the languorous strain again. The curate was speechless, which, all things considered, was perhaps excusable. An idea was taking root in his brain that the musician was mad, at least mad enough to be irresponsible for the words she used. If that were so, then, unlike the generality of lunatics, she had a curious aptitude for sticking to the point.

"Love me, or I die!"

"My--my dear young lady!" stammered the curate.

"You will be my murderer!"

The accent with which these words were spoken was indescribable, as indescribable as the music which accompanied them. It may be doubted if, as he heard them, it was not the Rev. Alan himself who was going mad. The heat and agitation brought on by the pace at which his aunt had marched him from Cadogan Place, the extraordinary manner of his reception at Pomona Villa, the still more extraordinary things which had happened to him since he had got inside; all these, put together, were quite enough to make him uncertain as to whether he were standing on his head or his heels. And then, for him, a staunch believer in the theory, and the practice, of the celibate priest, to have such language addressed to him, after five minutes' acquaintance, by a total stranger! and such a pianist! and a fine young woman! No wonder the Rev. Alan put his hand up to his head under the impression that that portion of his frame was leaving him.

"If you do not marry me," continued this extraordinary young woman, in tones which harrowed his heart--and yet which were not so harrowing as her music, by a very great deal, "I shall die before your eyes."

The Rev. Alan still had his hand to his head. He looked round him with bewildered, short-sighted eyes. Curiously enough his aunt still had her face turned in the opposite direction.

"I--I'm sure--" he stammered.

"Of what?"

"I--I shall be happy--"

"Happy!"

The music ceased, and that for the sufficiently good reason that the pianist rose from her seat and flung her arms about the curate's neck. He said something, but what it was was lost in the ample expanses of Miss Vesey's breast.

"Madam," she cried, addressing Miss Macleod, "your nephew has promised to marry me! He has said that he will be happy."

Miss Macleod, who did not happen just then to be looking in the opposite direction, smiled grimly. Owing to the peculiarity of her physical configuration everything about her was grim--even her smile.

"I am glad to hear it," she observed.

The Rev. Alan struggled himself free from the lady's powerful embrace. His distress was tragic in its intensity.

"This--this is some extraordinary--"

"Happiness!" cried the lady, and again she clasped him in her arms. "Your happiness is mine! It has been my life-long dream to be married to a clergyman; is not my father one already?"

At that moment the father referred to entered the room.

"What's this?" he cried, as a father naturally would cry on seeing his daughter with a stranger in her arms.

The young lady, however, promptly relieved his mind.

"Father, let me present to you my future husband."

"I--I do protest," screamed the frenzied curate.

"You do protest, sir! What do you protest?" The father's voice was terrible, so was his manner. Apparently all his paternal instincts had not been destroyed by dipsomania. "You come to this house, sir, a perfect stranger, sir; you assault my daughter, sir; you take her in your arms."

This was, perhaps, strictly speaking, a perversion of the truth; but at this moment Miss Macleod offered her interposition.

"You need be under no concern. My nephew is a gentleman. I was a witness of his proposal. If he behaves as a dastard to your daughter, I will deliver him to your righteous vengeance then. In the meantime, perhaps you and your daughter will accompany us home to luncheon. We can arrange the preliminaries of the marriage during the course of the meal."

III.--A CURIOUS COURTSHIP

"Miss Bayley, I am in a position of the extremest difficulty."

Miss Bayley was not only the Rev. Alan Macleod's parishioner; she was, so to speak, his co-curate, at Swaffham-on-Sea. That delightful village boasted of a rector who found that the local air did not agree with him, so he spent most of his time in the South of France. The Rev. Alan was, therefore, to all intents and purposes, the head and front of all Church matters in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately the greater part of the population--what there was of it--was dissenting, and that part of it which was not dissenting was even worse--it was Episcopalian!--the lowest of the low! The curate, therefore, found himself in the position of the sower who sows his seed in barren soil. His congregation not unfrequently consisted of two--the verger and Miss Bayley.

The curate had returned to Swaffham, and it was this faithful feminine flower of his flock he was addressing now.

"Oh, Mr Macleod, I am so sorry! Can I help you? Is it spiritual?"

The curate shook his head. He had not fallen quite so low as that. The idea of his coming to a person in petticoats for help in spiritual matters struck him as too absurd. He could scarcely excuse Miss Bayley.

"Can you think that I, your priest, should come to learn of you?"

Miss Bayley looked down.

"I was wrong," she murmured. She told herself that she ought to have remembered that none of the curates ever was half so cocksure about that kind of thing as the Rev. Alan. But then, she was so anxious to lend him a hand in anything.

"An error owned is half atoned."

He meant this for a little pleasantry--but he was an awkward man, even when he trifled. He hesitated. He was conscious that he had come for assistance in a matter quite as delicate as anything which appertained to Church government.

"Miss Bayley." He cleared his throat. "I--I have an aunt." The abashed Miss Bayley signified that she had heard him mention that fact before--which she had, about half a dozen times a day. "She is not one of us." Miss Bayley sighed; she felt that she was expected to sigh. "She is of the world worldly. Her thoughts are fixed on temporalities. Being possessed of great riches, to which I am the natural heir, the continual desire of her life is that I--I should marry."

The Rev. Alan stammered a little at the end. Miss Bayley perceptibly started. That was the continual desire of her life too. She wondered if it was going to be gratified at last.

"That you should marry? Oh, Mr Macleod!"

"I need not tell you that, in such a matter, her desire would not weigh with me in the least. The true priest is celibate."

Miss Bayley's heart fluttered--she did not go with him so far as that.

"But--if she were to disinherit you?"

"Do you know me so little as that? Nothing would please me better than that she should."

He clasped his hands in a kind of ecstasy. The lady, whose father was the parish doctor, and who knew what it was to have to dress on nothing a year, was almost tempted to think that the curate was a fool. But as she could scarcely express the thought aloud, she was wise enough to hold her peace. The gentleman went on rather awkwardly. The travelling was getting difficult, in fact.

"To--eh--such lengths has--eh--she--she--allowed her desire to--eh--carry her, that--eh--it--it has resulted in--eh--involving me in--eh--complications of an excessively disagreeable kind."

Miss Bayley's imagination realised the worst at once.

"Are you engaged?" she cried.

"She--she says I am."

"She says you are!" The lady was on the verge of tears--the blow was sudden. "Mr Macleod, I have something which I have to do upstairs."

She felt that if she stayed in the room she might disgrace herself by crying before his face. The Rev. Alan was dismayed at the idea of her leaving him.

"Miss Bayley, I do entreat you not to go. You do not understand me in the least. I do not say I am engaged; quite--quite the other way."

"Oh, Mr Macleod!"

The affair might have its comic side for a looker-on, but it was tragic enough for her. If she did not get this man, whom could she get? At Swaffham-on-Sea eligible bachelors were as rare as snow in summer. Besides--women attach themselves to poodle dogs!--she really liked the man.

The curate continued:

"The--the circumstances really are, I think, the most extraordinary I ever heard of. I should be almost induced to believe that it had all happened in a dream were it not for a letter that I have in my pocket."

"From whom is the letter?"

"From--from Miss Vesey."

"Is that the lady you are engaged to?"

"En--engaged to? I hadn't made her acquaintance ten minutes before she said I had proposed to her."

"She would not have said so unless you had."

"Miss Bayley, do you not know me better than that? Nothing was further from my mind! The proposal came from her."

"I have heard of women proposing to men! And I suppose you accepted her?" She was strongly tempted to add, "You are imbecile enough for anything!" But even in that hour of her trial she refrained.

"I can only assure you that I had no such intention in any words. I may have used words which came from me unawares, owing to the state of confusion I was in on receiving such a proposition from a total stranger."

Miss Bayley turned away. She thought she saw exactly how it was.

"I can only offer you my congratulations. I do not know why you enter into all these details. When is the marriage to be?"

"Marriage!"

"Yes, marriage! I hope you will send me a piece of cake! Oh, Mr Macleod, I never thought you would behave to me like this!"

Miss Bayley fairly succumbed. She buried her face in her hands and ran crying from the room. Mr Macleod, left behind, was thunderstruck. He realised what any man, with even a little knowledge of the world, would have seen from the first.

"She loves me! What have I done?" He sank in a chair and he too buried his face in his hands. Presently he rose again. "Poor, pure soul! She is the best woman in the world!" He twisted his hands together with a nervousness which was peculiarly his. "I have done wrong in the sight of God and man!"

How he got out of the house he never knew; but he did get out, and through the front door too. He set off walking towards the rectory, where in the absence of the rector, he lived rent free. He had not gone twenty yards from the house when a gloved hand slapped him smartly on the shoulder.

"Alan!"

He turned. There was Miss Vesey and her father. He could hardly believe that it was, but it was. The lady was brilliantly attired, perhaps as a set-off to her father. That worthy gentleman resembled nothing so much as what, in former days, they would have called a broken-down hedge parson. He was evidently meant for a clergyman, sartorially. That is, the conception was clear enough, it was the result which was unsatisfactory.

"Your hand, my son!"

He held out his hand after the manner of the fathers in old comedy. But unfortunately he did not wait for the curate to give him his hand, he seized it, and shook it up and down--pump-handle fashion. And while the father was engaged in this edifying performance, the daughter flung her arms about the curate's neck.

"My beloved!" she cried.

If there was any there to behold, they beheld what they had never seen before--the curate embraced as a curate never had been embraced in public, at Swaffham-on-Sea.

"Let me go!" he stammered.

And in due time the lady let him go. Under the circumstances he kept his presence of mind very well--for him.

"You--you'll find the rectory about a quarter of a mile in front of you, just round the bend in the road. If--if you'll excuse me, I have a most important visit I must make."

Miss Vesey's father slapped him heartily--too heartily!--upon the back, again after the fashion of the comedy fathers.

"Don't put yourself out for us, my boy! Don't neglect your duties, as is too often the case with the young. Tell us where the bottles are, and we'll make ourselves snug till you come in."

The curate did not tell them where the bottles were; in fact, there was only a solitary bottle of cod-liver oil in the house, and probably the speaker's thoughts did not incline that way; but they went on to the rectory alone. Miss Vesey waved her parasol, and kissed her glove to him so long as she was in sight. He stood watching them till they were round the bend in the road, then he re-entered the doctor's house.

This time he passed through the back door, straight into the kitchen. "Lauk, sir!" cried the maid-of-all-work; "who'd a thought of seeing you?"

The Rev. Alan addressed her in a fever of excitement.

"Tell Miss Ellen I must speak to her at once."

He went into the parlour, and the maid-of-all-work went upstairs. Presently she returned with a message.

"If you please, sir, Miss Ellen's compliments, and she's got a headache."

Mr Macleod was pacing up and down the room, very much in the manner of the carnivora about feeding time at the Zoo.

"A headache!"

He took his note-book from his pocket. Tearing out a page he scribbled on it these two or three strongly-worded lines.

"I entreat you to see me, if you ever called yourself my friend. It is a matter of life or death; almost, I would venture to say, of heaven or hell.--A. M."

The maid-of-all-work bore these winged words above. The result was presently visible in the form of the lady herself. She entered with the air of a martyr, conscious of her crown.

"You are my priest. I have come."

"It is not as a priest I have summoned you, Ellen, but as a friend."

The use of the Christian name was perhaps unintentional, but the lady marked her sense of the familiarity at once.

"Sir!"

Her lip curled, possibly with scorn. His answer was sufficiently startling. "Ellen, I entreat you to be my wife."

"Your wife, Mr Macleod! Are you mad?"

"I am--nearly! I shall be quite if you don't accede to my request at once."

"I think you are mad now. How dare you insult me! when from my bedroom window I just saw you kissing that creature in the street."

"I kissed her!--She kissed me."

"It's the same thing."

"It's not!" Which was true enough--it was a different thing entirely. "Ellen, can you not see that I was never more in earnest in my life. If you do not marry me, something tells me that that woman will, and for all I know that wretched parent of hers may be the occupant of a dissenting pulpit; he looks disreputable enough for anything. What with her and her father, and my aunt, I am as a reed in their hands. I do entreat you--be my wife."

The offer was not put in the most flattering form. Still, it was an offer.

"If you really want me--" began Miss Bayley.

"Want you! I want nothing so much in all the world."

"And if you think I can be of use to you in the parish--"

"Parish! it's not the parish I'm thinking of, it's--it's that wretched woman."

Miss Bayley did not like this way of putting it at all.

"I will consider what you say, Mr Macleod, and will let you have an answer--say in a month."

"In a month!" the curate was aghast. "I want your answer now. Ellen, I do entreat you, if you do not wish to see me disgraced in the face of all the world, promise to be my wife."

"But, Mr Macleod, you do not even pretend to care for me."

"Care for you! I care for you more than I ever cared for any woman yet."

"Then in that case"--the lady was a little coy--"it shall be just as you will."

At this point the ordinary lover would have taken her in his arms, and here would follow a number of crosses denoting what we have seen termed "osculatory concussions." But the Rev. Alan was not an ordinary lover at all. He continued his frenzied pacing round the room.

"It is not enough to promise to be my wife, you must be my wife."

"Mr Macleod, what do you mean?"

"Miss Bayley--Ellen--those two persons are at the rectory, awaiting my arrival at this moment. She is a disreputable woman, he is a ruffianly man. They are quite capable of coercing me into some dreadful entanglement from which I may find it impossible to release myself. My only hope lies in an immediate marriage."

"I do not understand you in the least."

"Then let me endeavour to make myself quite plain. I will not return to the rectory; you will put on your hat and jacket and come up at once with me to town. I will get a special licence. And we will be married before anyone has an inkling of what it is that we intend."

"Mr Macleod, is it an elopement you propose?"

"Ellen, it is."

The little man was shaking like a leaf.

"I never heard of such a thing in my life."

"Nor did I dream that I should make such a proposition to a living woman--but needs must when the devil drives."

The lady began to cry.

"Alan, I must say you have not a flattering way of putting things."

"What avails flattery at such a moment as this. For Heaven's sake, don't cry. I have heard you say yourself that you don't believe in long engagements."

"Yes--but when one has not been engaged five minutes!"

"What matters five minutes or five years, when one has once resolved? It seems to me that when there is nothing to gain by waiting--but everything to lose--the sooner one marries the better."

There was something in this; she told herself that he was not such a nincompoop after all when he was driven to bay--poor, dear little man! Amidst her tears she thought of other things. A regular marriage would involve a trousseau. She was quite sure that she should get no money out of her father for that--for the best of reasons, he had none to give. And then she knew her curate. She thought it quite possible that if that other woman--the brazen hussy!--did once get him in her hands, he might at any rate be lost to her. Better a good deal than to run the risk of such an end to all her hopes as that!

The end of it was that the Rev. Alan Macleod and Miss Bayley went up together by the next train which left the neighbouring station--eight miles off--for town.

IV.--HIS AUNT EXPLAINS

Shortly after his marriage Alan Macleod received the following curious letter from his aunt,--

"Nephew Alan,--Don't talk fiddlesticks about giving up the Church because you're married, though I never could understand why you ever became a parson, unless it was because your father was the devil's own.

"I meant all along that you should marry the doctor's daughter. Of course, as a Macleod of Pittenquhair, you might have had the best in the land, but then--what a Macleod you are! Have you ever heard of the Irishman's pig? They pull him by the tail when they want him to follow his snout. That is what I have done with you. I heard all about the girl and about your philanderings together, and how you thought it was the Church she worshipped, when the curate was the object of her adoration. Don't you ever believe about single young women worshipping the Church when there's a bachelor inside it! I heard she was a decent body, so I said that, sooner than leave you, the last of the Macleods of Pittenquhair, a barren stock, the girl should have you.

"The thing was how--with you and your 'celibate-priest' stuff and nonsense. But Providence helps those who help themselves--so 'Miss Vesey' tumbled from the skies.

"I saw her first at a thought-reading sÉance. She did some very funny things, and she plays the piano like an angel. She certainly had a gift that way, for, with the aid of her music, she played all sorts of tricks on the fools who were there. I thought to myself, what tricks she might play on you if you came within her range! Then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was hatched in my brain. I made her acquaintance. I took her home to supper. Afterwards, inspired by the largest quantity of champagne I ever saw a woman drink, she told me all about herself. She was the most candid young woman I ever met.

"She was married--to an unfrocked parson. But, according to her own account, she was more than his match. A perfect limb! And as clever as she was wicked--one of those wicked women who are born, not made, for she was not yet twenty-one. I told her all about you. I said that if, through her, you married the doctor's daughter at Swaffham-on-Sea, she should have five hundred pounds upon your wedding-day. She came into the scheme at once. So we arranged it all together.

"Among other things, her husband was one of those scamps who pose, in the advertisement sheets, as distressed clergymen whose large families depend for sustenance on their being able to dispose of some article or other at one-third of its cost price. Just then his line was apostle spoons--which he bought for five shillings and sold for twenty. I was to summon you up to town. I was to bully you about your marriage. And then, when I had thoroughly upset you--which, I explained to her, it was the easiest thing in the world to do--I was to call your attention to his advertisement of the apostle spoons. I was to march you off then and there to buy them. When I had got you into her house I was to leave the rest to her.

"She was to pose as her husband's daughter, which she was young enough to be--in years, at any rate. She said that if I brought you to her in a state of agitation and confusion bordering on imbecility--which I undertook to do--and if you were the sort of man I had described to her, within half an hour she would induce you to use language which might be construed into an offer of marriage. Then, with her husband's aid, she would so drive you to distraction as to send you flying into Miss Bayley's arms as into a harbour of refuge.

"I need not describe to you how she succeeded--though we had neither of us bargained that you would be quite the fool you were. When I heard of your eloping with the doctor's daughter the instant 'Miss Vesey' put in an appearance on the scene, I owned that I had at last attained to one article of faith--an implicit belief in the infinite capacity for folly to be found in the human animal in trousers.

"It is unnecessary, under these circumstances, to say that I congratulate you upon your marriage. I hope that your wife will be a sensible woman, and present you, without loss of time, with a son--or, better still, with half a dozen, so that I may have an opportunity of finding at least one among them who shall not be quite such a fool as his father.--Your affectionate aunt,

"JANET MACLEOD (of Pittenquhair)."

When Miss Macleod's nephew had finished reading this letter, he wiped the perspiration from his brow. Then he wiped his glasses. Then he sat thinking, not too pleasantly. Such a letter was a bitter pill to swallow. Then, not desirous that his aunt's epistle should be read by his wife, he tore it into strips, and burned them one by one. He told himself that he would never forgive his aunt--never! and that, willingly, he would never look upon her face again.

But to so resolve was only to add another to his list of follies. Within twenty-four hours of his marriage--fortunately for him--his wife had proved that the grey mare was once more the better horse. Now she had got her man, at last, the strong vein of common sense that was in her came to the front. When Miss Macleod came to see her, she received her with open arms; and, as a matter of course, where she led her husband followed.

To one thing Alan had been constant--to the doctrine of the "celibate priest." According to him, a "priest" married was not a "priest" at all. Immediately after his marriage, therefore, nobody offering the least objection, he quitted the "priesthood." He is now a gentleman of leisure. Probably with a view of providing him with some occupation his wife bids fair to come up to his aunt's standard of a sensible woman, and to present him with half a dozen sons.

There is, therefore, no fear of the Macleods of Pittenquhair becoming--like certain volcanoes--extinct, at least in the present generation.