June was drawing to an end, and the days, though still free from rain, grew less and less bright. A thin veil of greyish vapour, which never became thick enough or sank low enough to resolve itself into definite clouds, offered a perpetual hindrance to the shining of the sun. The sun was present. Its influence was felt in the warmth of the air; but when it became visible, it was only in the form of a large misty disc, at which the weakest eyes might gaze without distress or discomfort.

On a certain evening when this vaporous obscurity made it impossible to ascertain the exact moment of the sun’s descent and when it might be said that afternoon became twilight before men or cattle realized that the day was over, Mr. Wone was assisting his son Philip in planting geraniums in his back garden.

The Wone house was neither a cottage nor a villa. It was one of those nondescript and modest residences, which, erected in the mid-epoch of Victoria’s reign, when money was circulating freely among the middle-classes, win a kind of gentle secondary mellowness in the twentieth century by reason of something solid and liberal in their original construction. It stood at the corner of the upper end of Nevilton, where, beyond the fountain-square, the road from Yeoborough takes a certain angular turn to the north. The garden at the back of it, as with many of the cottages of the place, was larger than might have been expected, and over the low hedge which separated it from the meadows behind, the long ridge of wooded upland, with its emphatic lines of tall Scotch firs that made the southern boundary of the valley, was pleasantly and reassuringly visible.

Philip Wone worked in Yeoborough. He was a kind of junior partner in a small local firm of tombstone makers—the very firm, in fact, which under the direction of the famous Gideon, had constructed the most remarkable monument in Nevilton churchyard. It was doubtful whether he would ever attain the position of full partner in this concern, for his manner of life was eccentric, and neither his ways nor his appearance were those of a youth who succeeds in business. He was a tall pallid creature. His dark coarse hair fell in a heavy wave over his white forehead, and his hands were thin and delicate as the hands of an invalid.

He was an omnivorous reader and made incessant use of every subscription library that Yeoborough offered. His reading was of two kinds. He read romantic novels of every sort—good, bad, and indifferent—and he read the history of revolutions. There can hardly have been, in any portion of the earth’s surface, a revolution with whose characters and incidents Philip was unacquainted. His chief passion was for the great French Revolution, the personalities of which were more real to him than the majority of his own friends.

Philip was by temperament and conviction an ardent anarchist; not an anarchist of Mr. Quincunx’s mild and speculative type, but of a much more formidable brand. He had also long ago consigned the idea of any Providential interference with the sequence of events upon earth, into the limbo of outworn superstitions.

It was Philip’s notion, this, of planting geraniums in the back-garden. Dressed nearly always in black, and wearing a crimson tie, it was his one luxurious sensuality to place in his button-hole, as long as they were possibly available, some specimen or other of the geranium tribe, with a preference for the most flaming varieties.

The Christian Candidate regarded his son with a mixture of contempt and apprehension. He despised his lack of business ability, and he viewed his intellectual opinions as the wilful caprices of a sulky and disagreeable temper.

It was as a sort of pitying concession to the whim of a lunatic that Mr. Wone was now assisting Philip in planting these absurd geraniums. His own idea was that flower-gardens ought to be abolished altogether. He associated them with gentility and toryism and private property in land. Under the rÉgime he would have liked to have established, all decent householders would have had liberal small holdings, where they would grow nothing but vegetables. Mr. Wone liked vegetables and ate of them very freely in their season. Flowers he regarded as the invention of the upper classes, so that their privately owned world might be decorated with exclusive festoons.

“I shall go round presently,” he said to his son, “and visit all these people. I see no reason why Taxater and Clavering, as well as the two Andersens, should not make themselves of considerable use to me. I am tired of talking to these Leo’s Hill labourers. One day they will strike, and the next they won’t. All they think of is their own quarrel with Lickwit. They have no thought of the general interest of the country.”

“No thought of your interests, you mean,” put in the son.

“With these others it is different,” went on Mr. Wone, oblivious of the interruption. “It would be a real help to me if the more educated people of the place came out definitely on my side. They ought to do it. They know what this Romer is. They are thinking men. They must see that what the country wants is a real representative of the people.”

“What the country wants is a little more honesty and a little less hypocrisy,” remarked the son.

“It is abominable, this suppression of our Social Meeting. You have heard about that, I suppose?” pursued the candidate.

“Putting an end to your appeals to Providence, eh?” said Philip, pressing the earth down round the roots of a brilliant flower.

“I forbid you to talk like that,” cried his father. “I might at least expect that you would do something for me. You have done nothing, since my campaign opened, but make these silly remarks.”

“Why don’t you pray about it?” jeered the irrepressible young man. “Mr Romer has not suppressed prayer, has he, as well as Political Prayer-Meetings?”

“They were not political!” protested the aggrieved parent. “They were profoundly religious. What you young people do not seem to realize nowadays is that the soul of this country is still God-fearing and religious-minded. I should myself have no hope at all for the success of this election, if I were not sure that God was intending to make His hand felt.”

“Why don’t you canvass God, then?” muttered the profane boy.

“I cannot allow you to talk to me in this way, Philip!” cried Mr. Wone, flinging down his trowel. “You know perfectly well that you believe as firmly as I do, in your heart. It is only that you think it impressive and original to make these silly jokes.”

“Thank you, father,” replied Philip. “You certainly remove my doubts with an invincible argument! But I assure you I am quite serious. Nobody with any brain believes in God in these days. God died about the same time as Mr. Gladstone.”

The Christian Candidate lost his temper. “I must beg you,” he said, “to keep your infidel nonsense to yourself. Your mother and I are sick of it! You had better stay in Yeoborough, and not come home at all, if you can’t behave like an ordinary person and keep a civil tongue.”

Philip made no answer to this ultimatum, but smiled sardonically and went on planting geraniums.

But his father was loath to let the matter drop.

“What would the state of the country be like, I wonder,” he continued, “if people lost their faith in the love of a merciful Father? It is only because we feel, in spite of all appearances, the love of God must triumph in the end, that we can go on with our great movement. The love of God, young man, whatever you foolish infidels may say, is at the bottom of all attempts to raise the people to better things. Do you think I would labour as I do in this excellent cause if I did not feel that I had the loving power of a great Heavenly Father behind me? Why do I trouble myself with politics? Because His love constrains me. Why have I brought you up so carefully—though to little profit it seems!—and have been so considerate to your mother—who, as you know, isn’t always very cheerful? Because His love constrains me. Without the knowledge that His love is at the bottom of everything that happens, do you think I could endure to live at all?”

Philip Wone lifted up his head from the flower-border.

“Let me just tell you this, father, it is not the love of God, or of anyone else, that’s at the bottom of our grotesque world. There is nothing at the bottom! The world goes back—without limit or boundary—upwards and downwards, and everywhere. It has no bottom, and no top either! It is all quite mad and we are all quite mad. Love? Who knows anything of love, except lovers and madmen? If these Romers and Lickwits are to be crushed, they must be crushed by force. By force, I tell you! This love of an imaginary Heavenly Father has never done anything for the revolution and never will!”

Mr. Wone, catching at a verbal triumph, regained his placable equanimity.

“Because, dear boy,” he remarked, “it is not revolution that we want, but reconstruction. Force may destroy. It is only love that can rebuild.”

No words can describe the self-satisfied unction with which the Christian Candidate pronounced this oracular saying.

“Well, boy,” he added, “I must be off. I want to see Taxater and Clavering and both the Andersens tonight. I might see Quincunx too. Not that I think he can do very much.”

“There’s only one way you’ll get James Andersen to help you,” remarked Philip, “and I doubt whether you’ll bring yourself to use that.”

“I suppose you mean,” returned his father, “that Traffio girl, up at the House. I have heard that they have been seen together. But I thought she was going to marry John Goring.”

“No, I don’t mean her,” said the son. “She’s all right. She’s a fine girl, and I am sorry for her, whether she marries Goring or not. The person I mean is little Ninsy Lintot, up at Wild Pine. She’s the only one in this place who can get a civil word out of Jim Andersen.”

“Ninsy?” echoed his father, “but I thought Ninsy was dead and buried. There was some one died up at Wild Pine last spring, and I made sure ’twas her.”

“That was her sister Glory,” affirmed Philip. “But Ninsy is delicate, too. A bad heart, they say—too bad for any thoughts of marrying. But she and Jim Andersen have been what you might call sweethearts ever since she was in short frocks.”

“I have never heard of this,” said Mr. Wone.

“Nor have many other people here,” returned Philip, “but ’tis true, none the less. And anyone who wants to get at friend James must go to him through Ninsy Lintot.”

“I am extremely surprised at what you tell me,” said Mr. Wone. “Do you really mean that if I got this sick child to promise me Andersen’s help, he really would give it?”

“Certainly I do,” replied Philip. “And what is more, he would bring his brother with him.”

“But his brother is thick with Miss Romer. All the village is talking about them.”

“Never mind the village—father! You think too much of the village and its talk. I tell you—Miss Romer or no Miss Romer—if you get James to help you, you get Luke. I know something of the ways of those two.”

A look of foxy cunning crossed the countenance of the Christian Candidate.

“Do you happen to have any influence with this poor Ninsy?” he asked abruptly, peering into his son’s face.

Philip’s pale cheeks betrayed no embarrassment.

“I know her,” he said. “I like her. I lend her books. She will die before Christmas.”

“I wish you would go up and see her for me then,” said Mr. Wone eagerly. “It would be an excellent thing if we could secure the Andersens. They must have a lot of influence with the men they work with.”

Philip glanced across the rich sloping meadows which led up to the base of the wooded ridge. From where they stood he could see the gloomy clump of firs and beeches which surrounded the little group of cottages known as Wild Pine.

“Very well,” he said. “I don’t mind. But no more of this nonsense about my not coming home! I prefer for the present”—and he gave vent to rather an ominous laugh—“to live with my dear parents. But, mind—I can’t promise anything. These Andersens are queer fellows. One never knows how things will strike them. However, we shall see. If anyone could persuade our friend James, it would be Ninsy.”

The affair being thus settled, the geraniums were abandoned; and while the father proceeded down the village towards the Gables, the son mounted the slope of the hill in the direction of Wild Pine.

The path Philip followed soon became a narrow lane running between two high sandy banks, overtopped by enormous beeches. At all hours, and on every kind of day, this miniature gorge between the wooded fields was a dark and forlorn spot. On an evening of a day like the present one, it was nothing less than sinister. The sky being doubly dark above, dark with the coming on of night, and dark with the persistent cloud-veil, the accumulated shadows of this sombre road intensified the gloom to a pitch of darkness capable of exciting, in agitated nerves, an emotion bordering upon terror. Though the sun had barely sunk over Leo’s Hill, between these ivy-hung banks it was as obscure as if night had already fallen.

But the obscurity of Root-Thatch Lane was nothing to the sombreness that awaited him when, arrived at the hill-top, he entered Nevil’s Gully. This was a hollow basin of close-growing beech-trees, surrounded on both sides by impenetrable thickets of bramble and elder, and crossed by the path that led to Wild Pine cottages. Every geographical district has its typical and representative centre,—some characteristic spot which sums up, as it were, and focuses, in limited bounds, qualities and attributes that are diffused in diverse proportions through the larger area. Such a centre of the Nevilton district was the place through which Philip Wone now hurried.

Nevil’s Gully, however dry the weather, was never free from an overpowering sense of dampness. The soil under foot was now no longer sand but clay, and clay of a particularly adhesive kind. The beech roots, according to their habit, had created an empty space about them—a sort of blackened floor, spotted with green moss and pallid fungi. Out of this, their cold, smooth trunks emerged, like silent pillars in the crypt of a mausoleum.

The most characteristic thing, as we have noted, in the scenery of Nevilton, is its prevalent weight of heavy oppressive moisture. For some climatic or geographical reason the foliage of the place seems chillier, damper, and more filled with oozy sap, than in other localities of the West of England. Though there may have been no rain for weeks—as there had been none this particular June—the woods in this district always give one the impression of retaining an inordinate reserve of atmospheric moisture. It is this moisture, this ubiquitous dampness, that to a certain type of sun-loving nature makes the region so antipathetic, so disintegrating. Such persons have constantly the feeling of being dragged earthward by some steady centripedal pull, against which they struggle in vain. Earthward they are pulled, and the earth, that seems waiting to receive them, breathes heavy damp breaths of in-drawing voracity, like the mouth of some monster of the slime.

And if this is true of the general conditions of Nevilton geography, it is especially and accumulatively true of Nevil’s Gully, which, for some reason or other, is a very epitome of such sinister gravitation. If one’s latent mortality feels the drag of its clayish affinity in all quarters of this district, in Nevil’s Gully it becomes conscious of such oppression as a definite demonic presence. For above the Gully and above the cottages to which the Gully leads, the umbrageous mass of entangled leafiness hangs, fold upon fold, as if it had not known the woodman’s axe since the foot of man first penetrated these recesses. The beeches, to which reference has been made, are overtopped on the higher ground by ashes and sycamores, and these, in their turn, are surmounted, on the highest level of all, by colossal Scotch firs, whose forlorn grandeur gives the cottages their name.

Philip hurried, in the growing darkness, across the sepulchral gully, and pushed open the gate of the secluded cattle-yard which was the original cause of this human hamlet. The houses of men in rural districts follow the habitations of beasts. Where cattle and the stacks that supply their food can conveniently be located, there must the dwelling be of those whose business it is to tend them. The convenience of Wild Pine as a site for a spacious and protected farm-yard was sufficient reason for the erection of a human shelter for the hands by whose labour such places are maintained.

He crossed the yard with quick steps. A light burned in one of the sheds, throwing a fitful flicker upon the heaps of straw and the pools of dung-coloured water. Some animal, there—a horse or a cow or a pig—was probably giving birth to young.

From the farm-yard he emerged into the cottage-garden, and stumbling across this, he knocked at the first door he reached. There was not the least sound in answer. Dead unbroken stillness reigned, except for an intermittent shuffling and stamping from the watcher or the watched in the farm-yard behind.

He knocked again, and even the sounds in the yard ceased. Only, high up among the trees above him, some large nocturnal bird fluttered heavily from bough to bough.

For the third time he knocked and then the door of the next house opened suddenly, emitting a long stream of light into which several startled moths instantly flew. Following the light came a woman’s figure.

“If thee wants Lintot,” said the voice of this figure, “thee can’t see ’im till along of most an hour. He be tending a terrible sick beast.”

“I want to see Ninsy,” shouted Philip, knocking again on the closed door.

“Then thee must walk in and have done with it,” returned the woman. “The maid be laid up with heart-spasms again and can open no doors this night, not if the Lord his own self were hammering.”

Philip boldly followed her advice and entered the cottage, closing the door behind him. A faint voice from a room at the back asked him what he wanted and who he was.

“It is Philip,” he answered, “may I come in and see you, Ninsy? It is Philip—Philip Wone.”

He gathered from the girl’s low-voiced murmur that he was welcome, and crossing the kitchen he opened the door of the further room.

He found Ninsy dressed and smiling, but lying in complete prostration upon a low horse-hair sofa. He closed the door, and moving a chair to her side, sat down in silence, gazing upon her wistfully with his great melancholy eyes.

“Don’t look so peaked and pining, Philip-boy,” she said, laying her white hand upon his and smiling into his face. “’Tis only the old trouble. ’Tis nothing more than what I expect. I shall be about again tomorrow or the day after. But I be real glad to see ’ee here! Father’s biding down in the yard, and ’tis a lonesome place to be laid-up in, this poor old house.”

Ninsy looked exquisitely fragile and slender, lying back in this tender helplessness, her chestnut-coloured hair all loose over her pillow. Philip was filled with a flood of romantic emotion. The girl had always attracted him but never so much as now. It was one of his ingrained peculiarities to find hurt and unhappy people more engaging than healthy and contented ones. He almost wished Ninsy would stop smiling and chattering so pleasantly. It only needed that she should shed tears, to turn the young man’s commiseration into passion.

But Ninsy did not shed tears. She continued chatting to him in the most cheerful vein. It was only by the faintest shadow that crossed her face at intervals, that one could have known that anything serious was the matter with her. She spoke of the books he had lent her. She spoke of the probable break-up of the weather. She talked of Lacrima Traffio.

“I think,” she said, speaking with extreme earnestness, “the young foreign lady is lovely to look at. I hope she’ll be happy in this marriage. They do say, poor dear, she is being driven to it. But with the gentry you never know. They aren’t like us. Father says they have all their marriages thought out for them, same as royalty. I wonder who Miss Gladys will marry after all! Father has met her several times lately, walking with that American gentleman.”

“Has Jim Andersen been up to see you, Ninsy,” put in Mr. Wone’s emissary, “since this last attack of yours?”

The fact that this question left his lips simultaneously with a rising current of emotion in his heart towards her is a proof of the fantastic complication of feeling in the young anarchist.

He fretted and chafed under the stream of her gentle impersonal talk. He longed to rouse in her some definite agitation, even though it meant the introduction of his rival’s image. The fact that such agitation was likely to be a shock to her did not weigh with him. Objective consideration for people’s bodily health was not one of Philip’s weaknesses. His experiment met with complete success. At the mention of James Andersen’s name a scarlet flush came into the girl’s cheeks.

“No—yes—no!” she answered stammering. “That is—I mean—not since I have been ill. But before—several times—lately. Why do you look at me like that, Philip? You’re not angry with me, are you?”

Philip’s mind was a confused arena of contradictory emotions. Among the rest, two stood out and asserted themselves—this unpardonable and remorseless desire to trouble her, to embarrass her, to make her blush yet more deeply—and a strange wild longing to be himself as ill as she was, and of the same disease, so that they might die together!

“My father wanted me to ask you,” he blurted out, “whether you would use your influence over Jim to get him to help in this election business. I told my father Jim would do anything you asked him.”

The girl’s poor cheeks burned more deeply than ever at this.

“I wish you hadn’t told him that, Philip,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t! You know very well I have no more influence over James than anyone else has. It was unkind of you to tell him that! Now I am afraid he’ll be disappointed. For I shall never dare to worry Jim about a thing like that. You don’t take any interest in this election, Philip, do you?”

From the tone of this last remark the young anarchist gathered the intimation that Andersen had been talking about the affair to his little friend and had been expressing opinions derogatory to Mr. Wone’s campaign. She would hardly have spoken of so lively a local event in such a tone of weary disparagement, if some masculine philosopher had not been “putting ideas into her head.”

“You ought to make him join in,” continued Philip. “He has such influence down at the works. It would be a great help to father. We labouring people ought to stand by one another, you know.”

“But I thought—I thought—,” stammered poor Ninsy, pushing back her hair from her forehead, “that you had quite different opinions from Mr. Wone.”

“Damn my opinions!” cried the excited youth. “What do my opinions matter? We are talking of Jim Andersen. Why doesn’t he join in with the other men and help father in getting up the strike?”

“He—he doesn’t believe in strikes,” murmured the girl feebly.

“Why doesn’t he!” cried the youth. “Does he think himself different, then, from the rest of us, because old Gideon married the daughter of a vicar? He ought to be told that he is a traitor to his class. Yes—a traitor—a turn-coat—a black-leg! That’s what he is—if he won’t come in. A black-leg!”

They were interrupted by a sharp knock at the outer door. The girl raised herself on her elbow and became distressingly agitated.

“Oh, I believe that is Jim,” she cried. “What shall I do? He won’t like to find you here alone with me like this. What a dreadful accident!”

Philip without a moment’s delay went to the door and opened it. Yes, the visitor was James Andersen. The two men looked at one another in silence. James was the first to speak.

“So you are looking after our invalid?” he said. “I only heard this afternoon that she was bad again.”

He did not wait for the other’s response, but pushing past him went straight into Ninsy’s room.

“Poor child!” he said, “Poor dear little girl! Why didn’t you send a message to me? I saw your father in the yard and he told me to come on in. How are you? Why aren’t you in bed? I’m sure you ought to be in bed, and not talking to such an exciting person as our friend Philip.”

“She won’t be talking to me much longer,” threw in that youth, following his rival to the side of the girl’s sofa. “I only came to ask her to do something for us in this election. She will tell you what I mean. Ask her to tell you. Don’t forget! Good-bye Ninsy,” and he held out his hand with a searching look into the girl’s face, a look at once wistfully entreating and fiercely reproachful.

She took his hand. “Good night, Philip,” she said. “Think kindly of me, and think—” this was said in a voice so low that only the young man could hear—“think kindly of Jim. Good night!”

He nodded to Andersen and went off, a sombre dangerous expression clouding the glance he threw upon the clock in the corner.

“You pay late visits, James Andersen,” he called back, as he let himself out of the cottage-door.

Left alone with Ninsy, the stone-carver possessed himself of the seat vacated by the angry youth. The girl remained quiet and motionless, her hands crossed on her lap and her eyes closed.

“Poor child!” he murmured, in a voice of tender and affectionate pity. “I cannot bear to see you like this. It almost gives me a sense of shame—my being so strong and well—and you so delicate. But you will be better soon, won’t you? And we will go for some of our old walks together.”

Ninsy’s mouth twitched a little, and big tears forced their way through her tightly shut eyelids.

“When your father comes in,” he went on, “you must let me help him carry you upstairs. And I am sure you had better have the doctor tomorrow if you are not better. Won’t you let me go to Yeoborough for him tonight?”

Ninsy suddenly struck the side of her sofa with her clenched hand. “I don’t want the doctor!” she burst out, “and I don’t want to get better. I want to end it all—that’s what I want! I want to end it all.”

Andersen made a movement as if to caress her, but she turned her head away.

“I am sick and tired of it all,” she moaned. “I wish I were dead. Oh, I wish I were dead!”

The stone-carver knelt down by her side. “Ninsy,” he murmured, “Ninsy, my child, my friend, what is it? Tell me what it is.”

But the girl only went on, in a low soft wail, “I knew it would come to this. I knew it. I knew it. Oh, why was I ever born! Why wasn’t it me, and not Glory, who died! I shall die. I want to die!”

Andersen rose to his feet. “Ninsy!” he said in a stern altered voice. “Stop this at once—or I shall go straight away and call your father!”

He assumed an air and tone as if quieting a petulant infant. It had its effect upon her. She swallowed down her rising fit of sobs and looked up at him with great frightened tearful eyes.

“Now, child,” he said, once more seating himself, and this time successfully taking possession of a submissive little hand, “tell me what all this is about. Tell me everything.” He bent down and imprinted a kiss upon her cold wet cheek.

“It is—” she stammered, “it is that I think you are fond of that Italian girl.” She hid her face in a fold of her rich auburn hair and went on. “They do tell me you walk with her when your brother goes with Miss Gladys. Don’t be angry with me, Jim. I know I have no right to say these things. I know I have no claim, no power over you. But we did keep company once, Jim, didn’t us? And it do stab my heart,—to hear them tell of you and she!”

James Andersen looked frowningly at the window.

The curtains were not drawn; and a dark ash-branch stretched itself across the casement like an extended threatening arm. Its form was made visible by a gap in the surrounding trees, through which a little cluster of stars faintly twinkled. The cloud veil had melted.

“What a world this is!” the stone-carver thought to himself. His tone when he spoke was irritable and aggrieved.

“How silly you are, Ninsy—with your fancies! A man can’t be civil to a poor lonesome foreign wench, without your girding at him as if he had done something wrong! Of course I speak to Miss Traffio and walk with her too. What else do you expect when the poor thing is left lonesome on my hands, with Luke and Miss Gladys amusing themselves? But you needn’t worry,” he added, with a certain unrestrained bitterness. “It’s only when Luke and his young lady are together that she and I ever meet, and I don’t think they’ll often be together now.”

Ninsy looked at him with questioning eyes.

“He and she have quarrelled,” he said curtly.

“Over the American?” asked the girl.

“Over the American.”

“And you won’t be walking with that foreigner any more?”

“I shan’t be walking with her any more.”

Ninsy sank back on her pillow with a sigh of ineffable relief. Had she been a Catholic she would have crossed herself devoutly. As it was she turned her head smilingly towards him and extended her arms. “Kiss me,” she pleaded. He bent down, and she embraced him with passionate warmth.

“Then we belong to each other again, just the same as before,” she said.

“Just the same as before.”

“Oh, I wish that cruel doctor hadn’t told me I mustn’t marry. He told father it would kill me, and the other one who came said the same thing. But wouldn’t it be lovely if you and I, Jim—”

She stopped suddenly, catching a glimpse of his face. Her happiness was gone in a moment.

“You don’t love me. Oh, you don’t love me! I know it. I have known it for many weeks! That girl has poisoned you against me—the wicked, wicked thing! It’s no use denying it. I know it. I feel it,—oh, how can I bear it! How can I bear it!”

She shut her eyes once more and lay miserable and silent. The wood-carver looked gloomily out of the window. The cluster of stars now assumed a shape well-known to him. It was Orion’s Belt. His thoughts swept sadly over the field of destiny.

“What a world it is!” he said to himself. “There is that boy Philip gone with a tragic heart because his girl loves me. And I—I have to wait and wait in helplessness, and see the other—the one I care for—driven into madness. And she cares not a straw for me, who could help her, and only cares for that poor fool who cannot lift a finger. And meanwhile, Orion’s Belt looks contemptuously down upon us all! Ninsy is pretty well right. The lucky people are the people who are safe out of it—the people that Orion’s Belt cannot vex any more!”

He rose to his feet. “Well, child,” he said, “I think I’ll be going. It’s no use our plaguing one another any further tonight. Things will right themselves, little one. Things will right themselves! It’s a crazy world—but the story isn’t finished yet.

“Don’t you worry about it,” he added gently, bending over her and pushing the hair back from her forehead. “Your old James hasn’t deserted you yet. He loves you better than you think—better than he knows himself perhaps!”

The girl seized the hand that caressed her and pressed it against her lips. Her breast rose and fell in quick troubled breathing.

“Come again soon,” she said, and then, with a wan smile, “if you care to.”

Their eyes met in a long perplexed clinging farewell. He was the first to break the tension.

“Good-night, child,” he said, and turning away, left the room without looking back.

While these events were occurring at Wild Pine, in the diplomatist’s study at the Gables Mr. Wone was expounding to Mr. Taxater the objects and purposes of his political campaign.

Mrs. Wotnot, leaner and more taciturn than ever, had just produced for the refreshment of the visitor a bottle of moderately good burgundy. Mr. Taxater had demanded “a little wine,” in the large general manner which his housekeeper always interpreted as a request for something short of the very best. It was clear that for the treasures of innermost wine-cellars Mr. Wone was not among the privileged.

The defender of the papacy had placed his visitor so that the light of the lamp fell upon his perspiring brow, upon his watery blue eyes, and upon his drooping, sandy-coloured moustache. Mr. Taxater himself was protected by a carefully arranged screen, out of the shadow of which the Mephistophelian sanctity of his patient profile loomed forth, vague and indistinct.

Mr. Wone’s mission was in his own mind tending rapidly to a satisfactory conclusion. The theologian had heard him with so much attention, had asked such searching and practical questions, had shown such sympathetic interest in all the convolutions and entanglements of the political situation, that Mr. Wone began to reproach himself for not having made use of such a capable ally earlier in the day.

“It is,” he was saying, “on the general grounds of common Christian duty that I ask your help. We who recognize the importance of religion would be false to our belief if we did not join together to defeat so ungodly and worldly a candidate as this Romer turns out to be.”

It must be confessed that in his heart of hearts Mr. Wone regarded Roman Catholics as far more dangerous to the community than anarchists or infidels, but he prided himself upon a discretion worthy of apostolic inspiration in thus seeking to divide and set asunder the enemies of evangelical truth. He found the papist so intelligent a listener,—that hardly one secret of his political designs remained unshared between them.

“The socialism,” he finally remarked, “which you and I are interested in, is Christian Socialism. You may be sure that in nothing I do or say there will be found the least tincture of this deplorable modern materialism. My own feeling is that the closer our efforts for the uplifting of the people are founded upon biblical doctrines the more triumphant their success will be. It is the ethical aspect of this great struggle for popular rights which I hold most near my heart. I wish to take my place in Parliament as representing not merely the intelligence of this constituency but its moral and spiritual needs—its soul, in fact, Mr. Taxater. There is no animosity in my campaign. I am scrupulous about that. I am ready, always ready, to do our opponents justice. But when they appeal to the material needs of the country, I appeal to its higher requirements—to its soul, in other words. It is for this reason that I am so glad to welcome really intelligent and highly educated men, like yourself. We who take this loftier view must of course make use of many less admirable methods. I do so myself. But it is for us to keep the higher, the more ethical considerations, always in sight.

“As I was saying to my son, this very evening, the grand thing for us all to remember is that it is only on the assumption of Divine Love being at the bottom of every confusion that we can go to work at all. The Tory party refuse to make this assumption. They refuse to recognize the ethical substratum of the world. They treat politics as if they were a matter of merely imperial or patriotic importance. In my view politics and religion should go hand in hand. In the true democracy which I aim at establishing, all these secular theories—evidently due to the direct action of the Devil—such as Free Love and the destruction of the family—will not be tolerated for a moment.

“Let no one think,”—and Mr. Wone swallowed a mouthful of wine with a gurgling sound,—“that because we attack capitalism and large estates, we have any wish to interfere with the sacredness of the home. There are, I regret to say, among some of our artizans, wild and dangerous theories of this kind, but I have always firmly discountenanced them and I always will. That is why, if I may say so, I am so well adapted to represent this district. I have the support of the large number of Liberal-minded tradesmen who would deeply regret the introduction of such immoral theories into our movement. They hold, as I hold, that this unhappy tendency to atheistic speculation among our working-classes is one of the gravest dangers to the country. They hold, as I hold, that the cynical free thought of the Tory party is best encountered, not by the equally deplorable cynicism of certain labor-leaders, but by the high Christian standards of men like—like ourselves, Mr. Taxater.”

He paused for a moment and drew his hand, which certainly resembled the hand of an ethical-minded dispenser of sugar rather than that of an immoral manual labourer, across his damp forehead. Then he began again.

“Another reason which seems to point to me, in quite a providential manner, as the candidate for this district, is the fact that I was born in Nevilton and that my father was born here before me.

“‘Wone’ is one of the oldest names in the church Register. There were Wones in Nevilton in the days of the Norman Conquest. I love the place—Mr. Taxater—and I believe I may say that the place loves me. I am in harmony with it, you know. I understand its people. I understand their little weaknesses. Some of these, though you may not believe it, I even may say I share.

“I love this beautiful scenery, these luscious fields, these admirable woods. I love to think of them as belonging to us—to the people who live among them—I love the voice of the doves in our dear trees, Mr. Taxater. I love the cattle in the meadows. I love the vegetables in the gardens. And I love to think”—here Mr. Wone finished his glass, and drew the back of his hand across his mouth—“I love to think of these good gifts of the Heavenly Father as being the expression of His divine bounty. Yes, if anywhere in our revered country atheism and immorality are condemned by nature herself, it is in Nevilton. The fields of Nevilton are like the fields of Canaan, they are full of the goodness of the Lord!”

“Your emotions,” said the Papal Apologist at last, as his companion paused breathless, “do you credit, my dear Sir. I certainly hold with you that it is important to counteract the influence of Free-Thinkers.”

“But the love of God, Mr. Taxater!” cried the other, leaning forward and crossing his hands over his knees. “We must not only refute, we must construct.” Mr. Wone had never felt in higher feather. Here was a man capable of really doing him justice. He wished his recalcitrant son were present!

“Construct—that is what I always say,” he repeated. “We must be creative and constructive in our movement, and fix it firmly upon the Only Foundation.”

He surveyed through the window the expansive heavens; and his glance encountered the same prominent constellation, which, at that very moment, but with different emotions, the agitated stone-carver was contemplating from the cottage at Wild Pine.

“You are undoubtedly correct, Mr. Wone,” said his host gravely, using a tone he might have used if his interlocutor had been recommending him to buy cheese. “You are undoubtedly correct in finding the basis of the system of things in love. It is no more than what the Saints have always taught. I am also profoundly at one with you in your objection to Free Love. Love and Free Love are contradictory categories. They might even be called antinomies. There is no synthesis which reconciles them.”

Mr. Wone had not the remotest idea what any of these words meant, but he felt flattered to the depths of his being. It was clear that he had been led to utter some profound philosophical maxim. He once more wished from his heart that his son could hear this conversation!

“Well, Mr. Taxater,” he said, “I must now leave you. I have other distinguished gentlemen to call upon before I retire. But I thank you for your promised support.

“It would be better, perhaps”—here he lowered his voice and looked jocose and crafty—“not to refer to our little conversation. It might be misunderstood. There is a certain prejudice, you know—unjustifiable, of course, but unfortunately, very prevalent, which makes it wiser—but I need say no more. Good-bye, Mr. Taxater—good night, sir, good night!”

And he bowed himself off and proceeded up the street to find the next victim of his evangelical discretion.

As soon as he had gone, Mr. Taxater summoned his housekeeper.

“The next time that person comes,” he said, “will you explain to him, very politely, that I have been called to London? If this seems improbable, or if he has caught a glimpse of me through the window, will you please explain to him that I am engaged upon a very absorbing literary work.”

Mrs. Wotnot nodded. “I kept my eyes open yesterday,” the old woman remarked, in the manner of some veteran conspirator in the service of a Privy Counsellor.

“As you happened to be looking for laurel-leaves, I suppose?” said Mr. Taxater, drawing the red curtains across the window, with his expressive episcopal hand. “For laurel-leaves, Mrs. Wotnot, to flavour that excellent custard?”

The old woman nodded. “And you saw?” pursued her master.

“I saw Mr. Luke Andersen and Miss Gladys Romer.”

“Were they as happy as usual—these young people,” asked the theologian mildly, “or were they—otherwise?”

“They were very much what you are pleased to call otherwise,” answered the old lady.

“Quarrelling in fact?” suggested the diplomat, seating himself deliberately in his arm-chair.

“Miss Gladys was crying and Mr. Luke was laughing.”

The Papal Apologist waved his hand. “Thank you, Mrs. Wotnot, thank you. These things will happen, won’t they—even in Nevilton? Mr. Luke laughing, and Miss Gladys crying? Your laurel-leaves were very well chosen, my friend. Let me have the rest of that custard tonight! I hope you have not brought back your rheumatism, Mrs. Wotnot, by going so far?”

The housekeeper shook her head and retired to prepare supper.

Mr. Taxater took up the book by his side and opened it thoughtfully. It was the final volume of the collected works of Joseph de Maistre.

Mr. Wone had not advanced far in the direction of the church, when he overtook Vennie Seldom walking slowly, with down-cast head, in the same direction.

Vennie had just passed an uncomfortable hour with her mother, who had been growing, during the recent days, more and more fretful and suspicious. It was partly to allay these suspicions and partly to escape from the maternal atmosphere that she had decided to be present that evening at the weekly choir-practice, a function that she had found herself lately beginning to neglect. Mr. Wone had forgotten the choir-practice. It would interfere, he was afraid, with his desired interview with Mr. Clavering. Vennie assured him that the clergyman’s presence was not essential at these times.

“He is not musical, you know. He only walks up and down the aisle and confuses things. Everybody will be glad if you take him away.”

She was a little surprised at herself, even as she spoke. To depreciate her best friend in this flippant way, and to such a person, showed that her nerves were abnormally strained.

Mr. Wone did not miss the unusual tone. He had never been on anything but very distant terms with Miss Seldom, and his vanity was hugely delighted by this new manner.

“I am coming into my own,” he thought to himself. “My abilities are being recognized at last, by all these exclusive people.”

“I hope,” he said, tentatively, “that you and your dear mother are on our side in this great national struggle. I have just been to see Mr. Taxater, and he has promised me his energetic support.”

“Has he?” said Vennie in rather a startled voice. “That surprises me—a little. I know he does not admire Mr. Romer; but I thought——”

“O he is with us—heart and soul with us!” repeated the triumphant Nonconformist. “I am glad I went to him. Many of us would have been too narrow-minded to enter his house, seeing he is a papist. But I am free from such bigotry.”

“And you hope to convert Mr. Clavering, too?”

“Certainly; that is what I intend. But I believe our excellent vicar needs no conversion. I have often heard him speak—at the Social Meeting, you know—and I assure you he is a true friend of the working-classes. I only wish more of his kind were like him.”

“Mr. Clavering is too changeable,” remarked Vennie, hardly knowing what she said. “His moods alter from day to day.”

“But you yourself, dear Miss Seldom,” the candidate went on. “You yourself are, I think, entirely with us?”

“I really don’t know,” she answered. “My interests do not lie in these directions. I sometimes doubt whether it greatly matters, one way or the other.”

“Whether it matters?” cried Mr. Wone, inhaling the night-air with a sigh of protestation. “Surely, you do not take that indifferent and thoughtless attitude? A young lady of your education—of your religious feeling! Surely, you must feel that it matters profoundly! As we walk here together, through this embalmed air, full of so many agreeable scents, surely you must feel that a good and great God is making his power known at last, known and respected, through the poor means of our consecrated efforts? Forgive my speaking so freely to one of your position; but it seems to me that you must—you at least—be on our side, simply because what we are aiming at is in such complete harmony with this wonderful Love of God, diffused through all things.”

It is impossible to describe the shrinking aversion which these words produced upon the agitated nerves of Vennie. Something about the Christian candidate seemed to affect her with an actual sense of physical nausea. She could have screamed, to feel the man so near her—the dragging sound of his feet on the road, the way he breathed and cleared his throat, the manner in which his hat was tilted, all combined to irritate her unendurably. She found herself fantastically thinking how much sooner she would have married even the egregious John Goring—as Lacrima was going to do—than such a one as this. What a pass Nevilton had brought itself to—when the choice lay between a Mr. Romer and a Mr. Wone!

An overpowering wave of disgust with the whole human race swept over her—what wretched creatures they all were—every one of them! She mentally resolved that nothing—nothing on earth—should stop her entering a convent. The man talked of agreeable odours on the air. The air was poisoned, tainted, infected! It choked her to breathe it.

“I am so glad—so deeply glad,” Mr. Wone continued, “to have enjoyed the privilege of this little quiet conversation. I shall never forget it. I feel as though it had brought us wonderfully, beautifully, near each other. It is on such occasions as this, that one feels how closely, how entirely, in harmony, all earnest-minded people are! Here are you, my dear young lady, the descendant of such a noble and ancient house, expressing in mute and tender silence, your sympathy with one who represents the aspirations of the poorest of the people! This is a symbolic moment. I cannot help saying so. A symbolic and consecrated moment!”

“We had better walk a little faster,” remarked Miss Seldom.

“We will. We will walk faster,” agreed Mr. Wone. “But you must let me put on record what this conversation has meant to me! It has made me more certain, more absolutely certain than ever, that without a deep ethical basis our great movement is doomed to hopeless failure.”

The tone in which he used the word “ethical” was so irritating to Vennie, that she felt an insane longing to utter some frightful blasphemy, or even indecency, in his ears, and to rush away with a peal of hysterical laughter.

They were now at the entrance to a narrow little alley or lane which, passing a solitary cottage and an unfrequented spring, led by a short approach directly into the village-square. Half way down this lane a curious block of Leonian stone stood in the middle of the path. What the original purpose of this stone had been it were not easy to tell. The upper portion of it had apparently supported a chain, but this had long ago disappeared. At the moment when Mr. Wone and Miss Seldom reached the lane’s entrance, a soft little scream came from the spot where the stone stood; and dimly, in the shadowy darkness, two forms became visible, engaged in some obscure struggle. The scream was repeated, followed by a series of little gasps and whisperings.

Mr. Wone glanced apprehensively in the direction of these sounds and increased his pace. He was confounded with amazement when he found that Vennie had stopped as if to investigate further. The truth is, he had reduced the girl to such a pitch of unnatural revolt that, for one moment in her life, she felt glad that there were flagrant and lawless pleasures in the world.

Led by an unaccountable impulse she made several steps up the lane. The figures separated as she approached, one of them boldly advancing to meet her, while the other retreated into the shadows. The one who advanced, finding himself alone, turned and called to his companion, “Annie! Where are you? Come on, you silly girl! It’s all right.”

Vennie recognized the voice of Luke Andersen. She greeted him with hysterical gratitude. “I thought it was you, Mr. Andersen; but you did frighten me! I took you for a ghost. Who is that with you?”

The young stone-carver raised his hat politely. “Only our little friend Annie,” he said. “I am escorting her home from Yeoborough. We have been on an errand for her mother. She’s such a baby, you know, Miss Seldom, our little Annie. I love teasing her.”

“I am afraid you love teasing a great many people, Mr. Andersen,” said Vennie, recovering her equanimity and beginning to feel ashamed. “Here is Mr. Wone. No doubt, he will be anxious to talk politics to you. Mr. Wone!” She raised her voice as the astonished Methodist came towards them. “It is only Mr. Andersen. You had better talk to him of your plans. I am afraid I shall be late if I don’t go on.” She slipped aside as she spoke, leaving the two men together, and hurried off towards the church.

Luke Andersen shook hands with the Christian Candidate. “How goes the campaign, the great campaign?” he said. “I wonder you haven’t talked to James about it. James is a hopeless idealist. James is an admirable listener. You really ought to talk to James. I wish you would talk to him; and put a little of your shrewd common-sense into him! He takes the populace seriously—a thing you and I would never be such fools as to do, eh, Mr. Wone?”

“I am afraid we disturbed you,” remarked the Nonconformist, “Miss Seldom and I—I think you had someone with you. Miss Seldom was quite interested. We heard sounds, and she stopped.”

“Oh, only Annie”—returned the young man lightly, “only little Annie. We are old friends you know. Don’t worry about Annie!”

“It is a beautiful night, is it not?” remarked the Methodist, peering down the lane. Luke Andersen laughed.

“Are you by any chance, Mr. Wone, interested in astronomy? If so, perhaps you can tell me the name of that star, over there, between Perseus and Andromeda? No, no; that one—that greenish-coloured one! Do you know what that is?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” confessed the representative of the People. “But I am a great admirer of Nature. My admiration for Nature is one of the chief motives of my life.”

“I believe you,” said Luke. “It is one of my own, too. I admire everything in it, without any exception.”

“I hope,” said Mr. Wone, reverting to the purpose that, with Nature, shared just now his dominant interest, “I hope you are also with us in our struggle against oppression? Mr. Taxater and Miss Seldom are certainly on our side. I sometimes feel as though Nature herself, were on our side, especially on a lovely night like this, full of such balmy odours.”

“I am delighted to see the struggle going on,” returned the young man, emphatically. “And I am thoroughly glad to see a person like yourself at the head of it.”

“Then you, too, will take a part,” cried the candidate, joyfully. “This, indeed, has been a successful evening! I feel sure now that in Nevilton, at any rate, the tide will flow strongly in my favour. Next week, I have to begin a tour of the whole district. I may not be able to return for quite a long time. How happy I shall be to know that I leave the cause in such good hands! The strike is the important thing, Andersen. You and your brother must work hard to bring about the strike. It is coming. I know it is coming. But I want it soon. I want it immediately.”

The stone-carver nodded and hummed a tune. He seemed to intimate with the whole air of his elegant quiescence that the moment had arrived for Mr. Wone’s departure.

The Nonconformist felt the telepathic pressure of this polite dismissal. He waved his arm. “Good night, then; good night! I am afraid I must postpone my talk with Mr. Clavering till another occasion. Remember the strike, Andersen! That is what I leave in your hands. Remember the strike!”

The noise of Mr. Wone’s retreating steps was still audible when Luke returned to the stone in the middle of Splash Lane. The sky was clear now and a faint whitish glimmer, shining on the worn surface of the stone, revealed the two deep holes in it, where the fastenings of the chain had hung. The young man tapped the stone with his stick and gave a low whistle. An amorphous heap of clothes, huddled in the hedge, stirred, and emitted a reproachful sound.

“Oh, you’re there, are you?” he said. “What silly nonsense is this? Get up! Let’s see your face!” He stooped and pulled at the object. After a moment’s struggle the flexible form of a young girl emerged into the light. She held down her head and appeared sulky and angry.

“What’s the matter, Annie?” whispered the youth encircling her with his arms.

The girl shook him away. “How could you tell Miss Seldom who I was!” she murmured. “How could you do it, Luke? If it had been anybody else—but for her to know——”

The stone-carver laughed. “Really, child, you are too ridiculous! Why, on earth, shouldn’t she know, more than anyone else?”

The girl looked fiercely at him. “Because she is good,” she said. “Because she is the only good person in this blasted place!”

The young man showed no astonishment at this outburst. “Come on, darling,” he rejoined. “We must be getting you home. I daresay, Miss Seldom is all you think. It seemed to me, though, that she was different from usual tonight. But I expect that fool had upset her.”

He let the young girl lean for a moment against the shadowy stone while he fumbled for his cigarettes and matches. He observed her make a quick movement with her hands.

“What are you up to now?” he asked.

She gave a fierce little laugh. “There!” she cried. “I have done it!”

“What have you done?” he enquired, emitting a puff of smoke, and throwing the lighted match into the hedge.

She pressed her hands against the stone and looked up at him mischievously and triumphantly. “Look!” she said, holding out her fingers in the darkness. He surveyed her closely. “What is it? Have you scratched yourself?”

“Light a match and see!” she cried. He lit a match and examined the hand she held towards him.

“You have thrown away that ring!”

“Not thrown it away, Luke; not thrown it away! I have pressed it down into this hole. You can’t get it out now! Nobody never can!”

He held the flickering match closely against the stone’s surface. In the narrow darkness of the aperture she indicated, something bright glittered.

“But this is really annoying of you, Annie,” said the stone-carver. “I told you that ring was only lent to me. She’ll be asking for it back tomorrow.”

“Well, you can tell her to come here and get it!”

“But this is really serious,” protested Luke, trying in vain to reach the object with his outstretched fingers.

“And I have twisted my hair round it!” the girl went on, in exulting excitement, “I have twisted it tight around. It will be hard to get it off!”

Luke continued making ineffectual dives into the hole, while she watched him gleefully. He went to the hedge and breaking off a dusty sprig of woundwort prodded the ring with its stalk.

“You can’t do it” she cried, “you can’t do it! You’ll only push it further in!”

“Damn you, Annie!” he muttered. “This is a horrible kind of joke. I tell you, Gladys will want this confounded thing back tomorrow. She’s already asked me twice for it. She only gave it to me for fun.”

The girl leaned across the stone towards him, propping herself on the palms of her hands, and laughing mischievously. “No one in this village can get that ring out of there!” she cried; “no one! And when they does, they’ll find it all twisted up with my hair!” She tossed back her black locks defiantly.

Luke Andersen’s thoughts ran upon scissors, pincers, willow-wands, bramble-thorns, and children’s arms.

“Leave it then!” he said. “After all, I can swear I lost it. Come on, you little demon!”

They moved away; and St. Catharine’s church was only striking the hour of nine, when they separated at her mother’s door.