  During ten years my story remained at that, with a fictitious appearance of completion. Then I received a letter which, without further preamble, I here transcribe:— “... I laugh to myself when I think of you receiving this letter, surely the most formidable letter ever penned by mortal man to mortal man, a letter one hundred and fifty pages long; who ever heard of such a thing? You will stare dismayed at the bundle, and, having forgotten the sight of my writing, will turn to the end for the signature; which finding, you will continue to stare bewildered at the name of Malory until light breaks upon you as faint and feeble as a winter dawn. Let me help you by reminding you of Sampiero first, and of Pennistans’ farm later. You see, I am not vain, and am perfectly prepared to believe that the little set of your “Are they gradually reviving as I write? and do you, as they one by one sit up in the coffins to which you had prematurely relegated them, greet them with a smile? Oh, I don’t blame you, my dear fellow, for having put us away, myself included, in those premature graves. I should have done as much myself. I will go further: I should have buried the lot that day I left you at Sampiero; yes, I am sure I should not have displayed your energy in seeking out the birds in their very nest. “I had better warn you at the start that you will find it hard to believe the things I am going to tell you. You know already of two crises in the lives of my Hispano-Kentish yeomen, two crises which I think have puzzled you sufficiently—though in the first case I suspect that you were more clear-sighted than I—but in this third crisis with which I deal you will probably refuse to believe altogether. I do not pretend to explain it myself. I only know that it happened, and therefore that it is true. Were it not true, I would not dare to foist its relation on any living man, however “Ours has been a queer friendship, but one which has held great value for me; I think many people would be better for such a friendship in their lives. Of course, to make it ideal, I should never have seen you; picked your name and address out of a telephone directory, and written; I am sure you would have answered. Then I should have had no reserve towards you, not that I have much now, but you see I never can be certain that I am not going to meet you in a train or in the street, when my ideally unknown correspondent and I could pass by without recognition, but when you and I would have to stop, and shake hands, and a host of intimate, remembered phrases would come crowding up to people our silence. I dislike such embarrassments. I find that solitude, like leprosy, grows upon one with age, for I observe myself physically wincing from the idea that I “You will be surprised, after this, to hear that I no longer live alone. But I shall not give you the pleasure of anticipating the end of what I have set out to tell you; I am going to roll my story off my pen for my own delectation far more than for yours, and to see whether in the telling I cannot chance upon the explanation of various points which are still obscure. “I was never a man who thought life simple; I had not a five-hundred word vocabulary wherewith I explained the primitive emotions of birth, hunger, adolescence, love, and death; no, life was always difficult and involved to me, but now in the evening of my own existence, serene and ordered as that evening turns out to be, it appears as a labyrinth beyond conception, with not one, but a thousand centres into which we successively stray. Difficult, difficult and heavy to shift are the blocks of which our mansion is built. Nor am I now speaking of social-political creeds which are to govern the world; I am speaking only of poor, elementary human beings, for, “Oh, the humility of me! I cross my arms over my eyes and bow myself down to the ground like a Mussulman at prayer. There’s nothing like life for teaching humility to a man, nothing like life for shouting ‘Fool! fool! fool!’ at him till he puts his hands over his ears. It buzzes round our heads like a mosquito inside mosquito-curtains. Humility isn’t the gift of youth—thank God—for it takes a deal of buffeting to drive it into us. The war should have taught us a lesson in humility; a wider lesson, I mean, than the accident of defeat or victory, efficiency or non-efficiency. Let us ignore those superficial aspects of the war. What we are concerned with, is the underlying forces, the courage, the endurance, the loyalty, the development of a great heart by little mean men; all this, abstract but undeniable, unrivalled, the broadest river of human excellence that ever flowed. “There, my dear fellow, I profoundly apologise; if I oughtn’t to say these things to my century I oughtn’t to say them to you either, not that you are narrow enough to condemn me, but because I shall bore you. I promised you, too, that my letter was to deal with our little corner of Kent, and on that understanding I have induced you to read thus far. I reflect, moreover, that I have no right to speak thus and thus to a man who has lost much of his activity in his country’s service. Mrs. Pennistan has drawn “At present Mrs. Pennistan’s mind must be in chaos, but it is happy chaos, and so she accepts it without disproportionate bewilderment. Besides, she has come by now to a fortunate state of resignation, in which she is determined to be surprised at nothing. I have questioned her on the subject. She is so profoundly unanalytical that I had some difficulty in getting her to understand at all what I was driving at, let alone getting her to “‘Ruth was my own girl, and a quiet girl at that, but Rawdon isn’t my boy, and we all knew that Rawdon was queer (this is the adjective she invariably applies, I find, to anything a little bit beyond her), so we got into the way of not being surprised when Rawdon did queer things. Though, I must say, this beats all. After ten years!... And he no coward either, I’ll say that for him. He was always a reckless boy, and if you’d seen the things he did you’d wonder, like I do, that he ever lived to grow up.’ “That, of course, is where her lack of imagination leaves her so much at fault. She has seen Rawdon climb into the tops of spindly trees after jackdaws’ nests, and has trembled lest he should fall and break his head, and has marvelled at his daring; but she cannot imagine, because she cannot with her physical eyes behold the torments he endured of late because his moral imaginative cowardice was so much greater than his physical courage. She cannot understand that the force of his imagination was such as to drive him away from all that he most desired. She cannot “I look back over what I have already written, and am bound to confess that I have set down hitherto the incoherent thoughts that came into my head, simply because I have been afraid of tackling my settled duty. To deal with ten years—for it is now ten years since the period of our correspondence ceased with the ceasing of the war—is a very alarming task for any man to undertake. I could, of course, acquaint you in a dozen lines with the salient happenings of those years. But it amuses me to cast them into the form of a narrative, and you will forgive me if I should slip into elaborating scenes in which I played no part. “What a free man I was! I enjoyed paying the full fare for my ticket, and no longer travelling by warrant. You and I both know that journey to Penshurst, but you don’t know the freedom that was mine in those fields; I shouted, I ran, I jumped the brooks, I was like a lamb in May, forgetful of my middle-age. And then I was suddenly lonely, wanting, for the first time in my life, a companion to share my light-heartedness. I wished that you were with me, for I couldn’t think of anybody else. Home from the war; free indeed, but no welcome anywhere. Not even a dog. And as for a woman!... “Westmacott had come home, and I knew that he had found his children grown, and his wife, perhaps, temporarily happy to see him. At least he could turn to watch her beauty as she slept.... I cursed my instinct for following people into their private lives, a damnable trick, and nothing more than a trick, but one which made me lower my eyes in shame when next I met them. Peeping through keyholes. I had done it all my life. “How queerly things work out sometimes, for no sooner had I emerged from the fields on to the cross-roads, where the finger-post says ‘Edenbridge, Leigh, Cowden,’ still wrapped in my loneliness as in a cloak, I came upon Mrs. Pennistan walking slowly up and down, waiting, I presumed, for Amos. At the sight of me she stopped and stared, till we simultaneously cried one another’s names. I was filled with real warm gladness on seeing her there unchanged, unchangeable, and I went forward with my hands outstretched to clasp her fat, soft hands—do you remember her hands? they spoke of innumerable kneadings of dough, and she had no knuckles, only dimples where the knuckles should have been. And then, before I knew what had happened, that good woman’s arms were round my neck and her soft, jolly face was against mine, and she kissed me and I kissed her, and I swear there were tears in her eyes, which, for that matter, she didn’t trouble to conceal. “Presently Amos came along. I had intended returning to London that night, but “We talked, naturally, of you, for after the manner of old friends we travelled from one to the other of persons we had known. The sons, who were there solemnly munching, lent a certain constraint to the evening. And I missed so poignantly, so unexpectedly, the figure of the old woman by the fire. I had not realised until then what a prominent figure it had been, although so tiny and so silent, bent over the eternal chestnuts, the great-great grandmother of the little Westmacotts. Will you smile if I tell you that I took the diary up to bed with me, and read myself again into the underworld of Spain? “Was it you, by the way, that drew a charcoal “I got up and dressed the next morning still uncertain as to whether I should or should not go over to Westmacotts’. I do not exactly know why I was uncertain, but perhaps my loneliness on the previous day had more to do with it than my self-offered pretext, that my acquaintance with Ruth had better be left where it was at our last meeting. Remember, I had not seen her since she stood distraught but resolute in the cowshed with the Hunter’s moon as a halo behind her head. What could one say to people in greeting when one’s last words had been full of dark mystery and of things which don’t come very often to the surface of life? In a word, I was afraid. Afraid of embarrassment, afraid of the comfort of her home, afraid of her. Afraid of my own self as a companion through lonely years afterwards. I dressed very slowly because I wanted to put off the inevitable moment of making up my mind. And after all it was Mrs. Pennistan who made it up for me, for such was her surprise when I mentioned catching a train which “I realised then that I was glad. When I was a boy and couldn’t make up my mind whether I wanted to do a thing or not, I used to toss a coin, not necessarily abiding by the coin’s decision, but my own predominant feeling of relief or disappointment. I found the system invaluable. In this case Mrs. Pennistan had spun herself as a coin for me. “Westmacott, I knew, would be out. Would Ruth be out, too? and my problem thus resolved by, as it were, another spin of the coin? She was not out; she was in her kitchen rolling a white paste with a rolling-pin, the sleeves of her blue linen dress turned back, and as she rolled she sang to the baby which lay in a low cradle in the corner. The baby lay on its back waving a piece of red coral which it occasionally chewed. I stood for quite a long time in the doorway watching them, and then Ruth looked up and saw me. “I suppose I had remembered her blush as the most vivid thing about her, for I had waited there fully expecting her to look up and colour as she always did when surprised in any way, but instead of this she stood there “‘Ruth,’ I said, ‘aren’t you glad to see me?’ “I went forward into the kitchen, standing close to her by the table, and light was all around us, light, and the song of the bird. Everything was light, white, and dazzling; a flood of light, and bright colours. Revelation, like an archangel, was in that room. “She asked,— “‘Where have you come from?’ “‘From your father’s house.’ “‘You’re living there?’ “‘Only for to-day.’ “‘And then you’re going...?’ “‘Away.’ “‘Away?’ “‘Yes.’ “‘For good?’ “‘To travel....’ “I saw her face, and her beauty began to “‘Ruth! Ruth! you must come with me.’ “‘Come with you?’ “‘Yes, now, at once. Before your husband comes back. Get your things. I give you five minutes.’ “She cried,— “‘Oh, but the baby?’ “‘I’ll look after it while you go upstairs.’ “‘No, no,’ she said, ‘not now; afterwards?’ “I understood. “‘Take it with you.’ “‘But, my dear, I’ve three children!’ “The divinity was vanishing from the room, the sunlight grew flat and cold. We stared at one another. I heard Westmacott’s voice out in the yard. I said desperately,— “‘Let me tell him!’ “‘Oh, no!’ she cried shrinking, ‘no, no, no.’ “‘You’re afraid,’ I taunted her. “‘What if I am? Please go.’ “‘Alone?’ “‘Please, please go.’ II“You want to know if I went? I did, and in the yard I met Westmacott, who discussed with me the prospects of the season. He was particularly affable, and I did my utmost not to appear absent-minded. I suppose that I succeeded, for his affability increased, culminating in an invitation to join him in a glass of ale within the house. I was dismayed, and protested that I had no time, also—quite untruthfully—that since the war I had given up drink of all kinds. He urged me. “‘You’ll not refuse to taste my wife’s cider?’ “I thought that I cried out,— “‘Man alive, I come straight from imploring your wife to come away with me,’ but as his expression remained the same, and neither glazed into horror nor blazed into fury, I suppose that the words, though they screamed in my head, never materialised on my lips. “I was helpless. He led me back, odious and hospitable, into the kitchen where Ruth “Westmacott stood outside, stamping the clay from his boots, and calling to his wife for cider. I winced from his heartiness, and from the tragic absurdity of my position. If only tragedy could be our lot, we should at least enjoy the consolation of the heroic, but in the comic tragedy to which Providence so delights in exposing us, there is no consolation. I was thankful that Westmacott did not know what a fool he was successfully making of me. “Ruth took down from the dresser an earthenware jug, and went through into the little back hall of the place. I watched her through the door which she had left open. She filled the jug at a great wooden barrel; the golden cider streamed out from the tap, and she held the jug with a precision and a steadiness of hand that made me marvel. Returning, she set it with two glasses on the table. “I thought that the cider must surely spill from my glass as I raised it from the table, or that it must bubble and choke in my throat as I drank with her eyes upon me. I felt trapped and prisoned, but in Westmacott’s face there was nothing sinister, no trace of suspicion. He was not playing a game with me. Perversely enough, I should have preferred an outburst of fury on his part, to have felt his fist in my face, and to roll with him, body grappling with body, on the floor. But this could not be, and I must sit, drinking cider, between those two, a husband and wife whom the flash of a revolver had so nearly separated not many weeks beforehand, a revolver fired in anger and hatred, and in a desire for freedom; I must sit there, near a woman between whom and myself unforgettable words had been suddenly illuminatingly spoken. I laughed; Westmacott had just made some remark to which my laugh came as an inappropriate answer; he looked a little surprised, and I was hunting about for some phrase to cover my lapse, when Ruth said,— “‘Here are the boys.’ “‘There’s a mother for you,’ he said. “I could make no reply to his hideous jocularity; if I had spoken, I should have screamed. “I felt that I should never escape, that the situation would last for ever. I was, naturally enough, not very clear in my mind just then, but already I seemed to see my recent scene with Ruth as a sunlit peak bursting out of the dreariness and blindness of days, as brief as the tick of a clock, but as vibrant as a trumpet-call, while the present scene was long, interminable, flat as a level plain. Yes, that was my impression: the peak and the plain. I longed to get “Nor was this all. Creeping over me came again the humiliating sensation which I had more than once experienced in the presence of Ruth and Westmacott, the sensation that they were alien to me, bound together by some tie more mysterious than mere cousinship, a tie which, I believed, held them joined in spite of the hatred that existed between them. I won’t go into this now. It is a mystery which lies at the very “She set herself deliberately to increase my misery and discomfort by every trick within her power. She must have been aware of what I was enduring, and you would have thought, however indifferent to me in the emotional sense, that she would have tried, in ordinary human pity and charity, to help me to escape as soon as possible from my wretched position, and to make that position less wretched while it still lasted. You would have thought this. Any man would have thought it. But apparently women are different. “She took, then, my misery and played with it, setting herself to intensify it by every ruse at her disposal. She contrived, with diabolical subtlety, to separate us into two groups, one consisting of herself, her husband, and her children, the other consisting of me, isolated and alone. To this day I do not know whether she wanted to punish me “I realised then that the calm with which she had received me, and had drawn my cider, the matter-of-fact way in which she had told me it was of her own brewing, were all part of her scheme, as was her present conversation, standing by the table, and her occasional demonstrations of affection towards her boys. You will remember perhaps that I once told you of a walk she and I had taken to Penshurst. Well, I dimly felt that her behaviour on that occasion and upon this were first-cousins. I don’t know why I felt this; I only record it for you without comment. “So she stood there talking, a hard devil behind all her commonplace words. I hated her; I wished myself dead. My one consolation, “The next thing I knew was that I was walking at an extraordinary pace across the fields, gasping in the air, and that strong shudders like the shudders of a fever were “I had only one desire: to get away, to think. I was as impatient for solitude as the thirsty man is for water. I resented every one in my surroundings and my delay in London much as I had resented Westmacott “Finally I escaped from England, and as I lay sleepless, buffeted all night in the train, one thought persisted like music in my brain, ‘To-morrow I shall be alone, I shall be rid of nightmare, I shall be able to dwell luxuriously upon the magical moment, and all that it means, all that it entails. Yes! I shall be alone with it, for weeks, months, years if I like. I shall no longer be forced to grant undue proportion to the nightmare; until now it has made black night of my days, but to-morrow it will recede like a fog before the sun, and I shall dwell in the crystal light of the mountain-tops.’ “My destination was—I wonder if you have guessed it already?—Sampiero. I knew that there I was certain of peace, hospitality, familiar rooms. Besides, it was there that I had spoken to you for so many hours of the opening chapters of this story, and I had a fancy that if I took my dreamings up “I recovered myself then, realising that I had been a fool, as I dare say you are thinking me at this moment. A delicious peace came stealing over me, the peace of things “So there I was, at length, at peace, and I stretched myself out on the ground beneath the pines, pulling idly at a tuft of wild thyme, and rubbing it between my hands till the whole evening was filled with its curious aromatic scent, that came at me in gusts like a tropical evening comes at one in gusts of warmth. I had not yet begun to think, for, knowing that the moment when thought first consciously began to well up in my spirit would take its place in the perspective of my life not far short of that other moment on whose sacredness I scarcely dared to dwell, I put it off, even now, when it had become inevitable, torturing myself with the Epicureanism of my refinement. I was thirsty, thirsty, thirsty, and though the water stood there, sparkling and clear, I still “And then it came. Slowly and from afar, almost like pain running obscurely and exquisitely down my limbs, reflection returned to me like light out of darkness. I lay there absolutely motionless, while in my head music began to play, and I was transported to palaces where the fountains rose in jets of living water. Light crept all round me, and music, music ... a great chorus, now, singing in unison; swelling and bursting music, swelling and bursting light, louder and louder, brighter and more dazzling; a deafening crash of music, a blinding vision of light. “I stood at last on the sunlit peak. “All around me, but infinitely below, stretched the valleys and plains of darkness where I had dragged out my interminable days. I looked down upon them from my height, knowing that I should never return. I knew that I now stood aloft, at liberty to examine the truth which had come to me, turning it over and over in my hands like a jewel, playing with it, luxuriating in its possession. It was to be mine, to take at “What a lunatic you must think me after this rhapsody! What! you will say, does the man really mean that he wouldn’t exchange the recollection of a moment for the living, material presence of the woman concerned? Well, it is very natural that you should think me a lunatic, but have patience; take into consideration my life, which has been lived, as you know, alone; always in unusual places, with no one near my heart. Living, material presences come to have comparatively little significance after twenty or thirty years of solitude. Try it, and you will see. One drifts into a more visionary world, peopled by shadowy and ideal forms; memories assume incredible proportions and acquire an unbelievable value; one browses off them like a camel off his hump. Do you begin to understand now that this great, shining, resplendent moment should rush in to fill a “And hence, I might say, a great many other things which practical men barely acknowledge. I find myself straying off down paths of thought which may lead me into swamps of digression. Hence religion, hence poetry, hence art, hence love itself—the spiritual side of love. All these things, unpractical, inconvenient, unimportant things, all sprung from a craving in man’s nature! A craving for what? Hasn’t he been given strength, health, bodily well-being, hunger and thirst, fellow-men to fight, and fists to fight them with? What more does the creature want? He wants a thing called Beauty, but what it is he can’t tell you, and what he wants to do with it when he’s got it he can’t tell you; but he wants it. Something that he calls his soul wants it. A desire to worship.... Beauty, a purely arbitrary thing. All men strive after it, some men so little that they are themselves unconscious of the desire, other men so passionately “Here am I, then, a man of irregular and spasmodic occupation, an unsatisfactory, useless member of society, I’ll admit, useless, but quite harmless; an educated man, what you would call an intellectual, not endowed with a brain of the good, sound type, but with a rambling, untidy sort of brain that is a curse to himself and a blessing to nobody. Here am I, without one responsibility in the world, with nothing to do unless I go out and forage for it, living alone with books, dabbling in this and that, and necessarily thrown for a certain number of hours each day on my own resources. You cannot wonder that my life of the imagination—as I will call it—becomes of supreme importance to me as my only companion. It had been a singularly blank life, so blank that when I went out for walks alone I used to fall back on repeating verse aloud, so you see it was a life of books, and man wants more than that. He wants something that shall be at once ideal and personal. There is only one thing which fulfils those two conditions: “And now I had got this new, precious, incredible thing to think over. I am afraid to tell you how long I stayed at Sampiero, doing nothing, lapped in my thoughts as in a bath of warm water. My conversation with Ruth had been brief, and I knew every word of it by heart; my hour started from when I had come up to her house and had stolen surreptitiously to the doorway to take her unawares, and had stood there with a smile on my lips, waiting for her to look up. I saw again the light and the flowers and the baby in the cradle. I felt again the swimming in my head as I looked, for the “But I told you all that before; why do I repeat it? Because I lived through it all an infinitude of times myself. I thought I couldn’t exhaust the richness of my treasure. Nor could I, but after a while I found that my perfect contentment was being gradually replaced by a hunger for something more; I was human; the imagination wasn’t enough. “I began to want Ruth, Ruth herself, warm and living, and when I made this discovery I took a step I had long since prepared in my mind, foreseeing the day when dissatisfaction would overcome me: I left Sampiero and joined a party that was going into Central Africa after ivory. III“The change in my existence was two-fold; I was now busy instead of idle, and in my thoughts I was unhappy instead of happy. At moments, indeed, I was so acutely unhappy that I welcomed desperately the preparations of our expedition, which gave me plenty to do. I looked back to my months at Sampiero as one of the best periods of my life. One of my new companions asked me what I had been doing since the end of the war. I replied,— “‘I’ve been on a honeymoon with a thought,’ and he stared at me as though I were mad, and never quite trusted me for the rest of the expedition. “I was busy before we started, and that took my mind off my own affairs, but on the ship I was again unoccupied; I used to lean my arms on the rail and stare down into the churning water, and feel my heart being eaten out as though by scores of rats with pointed teeth. I longed, I longed madly, for Ruth. In those days I used to “Apart from this, I enjoyed my African experience; the men I was with were all good, dull fellows; I didn’t make friends with any of them, beyond the comradeship of every day. What I enjoyed were the days of hunting, and the nights of waiting under such stars as I’d never seen; well, I suppose it is all lying there now as I write, just as I used to think of the untroubled Weald lying there spread under an English sky. It’s funny to think of places you’ve been to, existing just the same when you aren’t there. Yes, I liked Africa, and I tried to live in the present, but when the expedition was over, and I found myself landed alone at Naples, I realised with a shock that I had only succeeded in putting ten months of my life away behind me, and “I was sitting outside my hotel after luncheon, smoking, and looking over that most obvious and panoramic of bays. I hated Naples, I hated Italy; I thought it a blatant, superficial country, with no mystery, therefore no charm. I had almost made up my mind to take ship for Gibraltar, when a voice beside me said,— “‘You look pretty blue.’ “I turned round and saw a long, leggy creature stretched out on a deck-chair beside me; he was squinting up at me from under a straw hat. “‘I feel it,’ I replied; ‘about as blue as that sea.’ “‘What are you going to do?’ he went on. “I told him that I had just been thinking of going to Gibraltar. “‘And what’ll you do when you get there?’ “‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ I answered. “‘On a holiday?’ he inquired. “‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t work; I lead an aimless sort of life.’ “‘Great mistake,’ said he. “I agreed. “Somehow I found myself telling him. “‘When I was young—that is to say, after I had left Oxford—I thought I’d like to see the world, so I started; I travelled, stopping sometimes for six months or two if I liked the place. Then when I got tired of that, I took to specialising in different subjects, giving a year, two years, three, to each. So I drifted on till the war, and here I am.’ “‘I see,’ he said. ‘And now you’re bored.’ “‘Yes,’ I said, adding, ‘and worse.’ “He made no comment on that; I don’t know whether he heard. He said presently, in the same tone as he would have used to remark on current politics,— “‘I’m going to Ephesus to-morrow, you’d better come with me. My name’s MacPherson.’ “‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll come. My name’s Malory. What are you going to do at Ephesus?’ “He replied, ‘Excavate.’ “That will tell you what MacPherson was like; an eccentric, laconic sort of fellow; he “He let me off on Sundays, ungraciously, grudgingly, if silence can be grudging. I insisted upon it. At Pennistans’ I had had a half-holiday on Sunday, and at Ephesus I would have it too. But here my hours of freedom were spent in loneliness. Lonely I You will admit, I think, that the quotation is singularly apposite. Or, as with Ruth I had climbed the hills above the Weald, I would climb alone the heights of Mount Coressus, where the golden angelica surged about me, or the heights of Prion, which showed me, across the plain of Ephesus, the flatter plain of deep blue sea, broken by the summits of Samos—the very sea, the very Samos, where Polycrates flung forth his ring in defiance of the gods. “A certain number of travellers came to Ephesus, whom MacPherson regarded with a patient disdain, but whom I welcomed as messengers of the outside world. I wanted to question them, but they were always so eager to question me, making me into a sort of guide, and inveigling me into doing them the honours of the place. This used to annoy “MacPherson had evidently never thought of making the place less dreary than it naturally was; I have no great idea of comfort myself, but I can’t live without flowers, and so my instinct, which began in a garden, produced itself into other improvements; I bought a mongrel puppy off a shepherd, and its jolly little bark of welcome used to cheer our home-coming in the evening; then I made MacPherson bring back some chickens from Smyrna, a suggestion which seemed to horrify him, but to which he made no objection; finally I grew some flowers in pots and stood them in the windows. Oh, I won’t disguise my real purpose from you: I was trying to make that rickety Turkish house as like a Kentish cottage as possible. I even paved a garden path—MacPherson examined every stone with the minutest care before I was allowed to lay it down—and “I tell you, the more the resemblance grew, the more and the less homesick I got. It was at once a pain and a consolation. There were times when I almost regretted my enterprise, and wanted to tear up the path, destroy the garden, strangle the puppy, and throw away the flowers, letting the whole place return to the bleakness from which I had rescued it. I wanted to do this, because my efforts had been too successful, and as a consequence I expected to see Ruth appear in that doorway, white sewing in her hands, and a smile of welcome to me—to me!—in her eyes. I have often come home pleasantly tired from my day’s work, fully though sub-consciously confident that I should see her as I have described.... “That garden of mine had many narrow escapes. But I kept it, and I went on with my pretence, perfecting it here and there: I got a kennel for the puppy, and I got “‘Why,’ he said, stopping one evening, ‘it looks quite English.’ “‘Do you think so?’ I replied. “‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I tell you what, those flowers are wrong. An English cottage garden doesn’t have orchids; it has mignonette. How can we get some mignonette?’ “‘I might write home for some,’ I said slowly. “It was true: I might write home for some. To whom? Mrs. Pennistan would send it me. Then it would have a sentimental value which it would lack coming from a seedsman. But I knew quite well that it was not to Mrs. Pennistan that I intended to write. “After dinner I brought out a little folding table and set it by the door. MacPherson was there already, playing Patience as was his invariable habit. “‘Going to write letters?’ he asked, seeing my inkpot. “‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m going to write for the mignonette.’ “‘My Dear Ruth,—I am writing to you from a hill-side in Turkey to ask you if you will send me some seeds of mignonette for my garden; it is very easy to grow, and I think would do well in this soil. You would laugh if you could see my house, it is not like anything you have ever seen before. Please send me the mignonette soon, and a line with it to tell me if you are well.’ “I addressed it, ‘Mrs. Rawdon Westmacott, Vale Farm, Weald, Kent, England,’ and there it lay on my table grinning and mocking at me, knowing that it would presently cross the threshold I was dying to cross, and be taken in the hands I was dying to hold again. “‘Done?’ said MacPherson. ‘Where have you ordered the seeds from? Carter’s?’ “‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve asked a friend for them,’ and some odd impulse made me show him the address on the envelope. “He read it, nodded, and said nothing. I was disappointed, though really I don’t know what I should have answered had he questioned me. “‘Feel ill?’ he asked. “‘No, thanks,’ I said, annoyed. “‘No, I tell you; I’m perfectly well.’ “‘Glad of that,’ he said, but I told myself peevishly that his gladness was based entirely on considerations of his own convenience. “Ten days passed; a fortnight; three weeks; I was in despair. Then one morning, as I came out of our door with a basket in my hand to pick up a couple of eggs for breakfast, I saw a large magenta patch down below, on the hilly pathway which led from our house to the village. This, I knew, must be the old negro woman who brought our rare letters. I watched her; the morning was slightly misty, for it was very early, not long after sunrise, and I saw her black face emerge from the plum-coloured mashlak she wore. I started off to meet her. She came toiling up the hill, panting and blowing, for she was enormously fat, but an indestructibly good-humoured grin parted her lips over her gleaming teeth, and suddenly I fancied a grotesque resemblance to Mrs. Pennistan, and I laughed aloud as though a good omen had come to speed me. “I came up to her. Her black skin was “I summoned my Turkish to thank her; this called forth a deluge of conversation on her part, with much shining of teeth and clattering of bangles, but I shook my head regretfully, and she, heaving her huge shoulders and displaying her palms in equivalent regret, turned herself round and started on the easier downward road to Ayasalouk. Could Ruth but have seen this voluminous magenta emissary! for the packet I held was indeed from Ruth and bore the Weald postmark. “I sat down by the roadside to open it. The seeds were there, and a letter, written in a round, Board-school hand, accompanied them. I was suddenly unable to read; it was the first word, remember, that had come to me from her since that memorable day. I was more than moved; I was shaken, like a tree in the wind. “‘Vale Farm, Weald, “‘15 IV. 22. “‘Dear Mr. Malory—Yours to hand, and enclosed please find mignonette seeds as requested. I hope they will do well in your garden. Our garden was baked hard in the drowt last summer, but hope we will have more favourable weather this year. My husband and the boys are well, and send their respects. Well, must stop now as have no more news. Hoping this finds you well, I am, “‘Yours obediently, “‘R. Westmacott,’” “That was her letter—I have it here to copy, old and worn and torn—and in its stiff conventionality, its pathetically absurd phraseology, it seemed to tear my heart into little fluttering ribbons. Anything less like her I couldn’t conceive, yet she was indescribably revived to me; I saw her bending, square-elbowed, over that bit of paper, hesitating when she came to the word ‘drought,’ deciding wrong, tipping up the octagonal, penny bottle of ink which hadn’t much ink left in it; I saw her getting the seeds, making up the parcel, copying ‘Ephesus’ conscientiously from my letter. You may think me sentimental; it was the only tangible thing I had of hers. “‘Letters?’ he said. “‘Not for you, but I’ve got the mignonette seed.’ “He looked puzzled. “‘The what?’ Heavens! the man has forgotten! ‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ he said; ‘let’s go and put it in.’ “I had got ready a prepared seed-bed, where I think I had broken up every lump of earth, however insignificant, with my own fingers, and here I sowed Ruth’s packet of seed. I sowed it with the solemnity of a priest sacrificing at the altar. MacPherson looked on as was his wont, unaware of anything special in the occasion, and rather impatient to get to breakfast. “In a few weeks’ time the plants began to show; I watered them, and cherished them, thinned them out, put wire round them, treated them as never was hardy annual treated before. Soon the fragrant thing was all round our doorstep. I felt like a prisoner tending the plant between the flag-stones of his prison, or like Isabella with her pot of Basil. I laughed at myself, but still I continued my cult, and the nightly “You used to call me a pagan; that’s as it may be, but anyway I dedicated my whole garden to Ruth, growing my flowers in her honour, enlarging my plot, planting the hill-side outside the fence with broom and wild things, till the whole place was rich and blooming. This labour gave me the greatest satisfaction. My dreadful hungry craving for her living presence was momentarily lulled and I returned to that happier frame of mind when, as I described to you, I was content to live in the imagination. I could set her up now as a kind of idealised vision of all that was beautiful, all that was desirable. She was the deity of my garden, almost the deity of the great temple where I laboured. I should think MacPherson would have half killed me had I hinted this to him. “I was happy again, and in the next spring I got Ruth to send me out some more seeds from her own garden. With them came another stilted little note, but this time there was a postscript: was I ever coming back to England? That disturbed me terribly; I knew it contained no double “‘I am afraid I must go away.’ “He said, ‘Oh?’ less in a tone of dismay than of polite inquiry, and, as usual, of acceptance. “‘I am getting restless here,’ I said, ‘but if I go and stretch my limbs a bit I shall be better; I will come back.’ “‘All right,’ he answered, as though there were no more to be said on the matter. “‘That is, if you want me,’ I added, provoked. “‘Naturally I shall be glad to see you whenever you choose to come back,’ he said, without a trace of emotion or cordiality in his tone. IV“Before I left I made arrangements with the Albanian to look after my garden during my absence; much as I hated leaving it to other hands I felt that I must get away or I should begin to scream upon the hills of Ephesus. I went down to Smyrna without much idea of what I should do after that, but when I got there I found a ship bound for Baku, so, thinking I might as well go there as anywhere else, I got on board and we sailed that night. I don’t want to give you a tedious account of my journey; I will only tell you that it did me all the good in the world, and that I walked up to Ephesus one evening in the late autumn with my toothbrush in my pocket and real home-coming excitement in my heart. There was the little house; there was my garden, showing quite a fair amount of colour for the time of year; there was MacPherson sitting outside, gravely playing his interminable Patience. The puppy—puppy no longer, but “‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘Evening.’ “‘Evening,’ I replied, and sat down. “‘I believe this Patience is coming out,’ he said presently. “‘Is it?’ I answered, vastly amused. “‘Yes,’ said MacPherson, ‘if I could only get the three I should do it. Ah!’ and he made a little pounce, and shifted some cards. ‘Done it,’ he announced in a tone of mild triumph, adding regretfully, ‘now it won’t come out again for at least a week.’ “‘That’s a pity,’ I said. “‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I reckon it comes out about once in every hundred times. Garden’s all right, isn’t it?’ “‘Splendid,’ I said; ‘I was just looking at it. How’s your digging?’ “‘That’s all right, too. Glad you’re back.’ “I was surprised at this and gratified, but my gratification was damped when his obvious train of thought had occurred to me. “‘Ready to work to-morrow?’ he asked, confirming my suspicion. “‘That’s all right,’ he said again. “He did not ask me where I had been, and I thought I would not volunteer it, but after a day or two I did. “‘I went to the Caucasus,’ I said. “He answered, ‘Oh.’ I was not offended, only greatly amused; he was a perpetual joy to me, that man. “I took up my life again very much where I had left it, and now again a change came about in my thoughts; they were constantly occupied with Ruth and with that examination I had so long put off, of her relations with her husband. As the story which I shall presently tell you will make them quite clear to you—if anything so involved can ever be made quite clear—I shall not bore you now with my own conjectures. It is quite bad enough that I should bore you with my own life, but you will agree that I couldn’t say to you, ‘Now ten years passed,’ without giving you the slightest idea of my movements during those ten years. Those ten years, you see, are my little Odyssey; I look back on them now, and I see them in that light, but while they lasted “‘I am afraid I shall have to go away to-morrow,’ and he replied invariably,— “‘Oh? All right.’ “I went to all manner of places, but never to England, and always in the autumn I returned to Ephesus to find MacPherson there unchanged, always glad to see me because of my help in his work, and in all those years he never once asked me where I had been to. I forget now myself where I went, except that I never once went anywhere near England, much as I wanted to go, because I knew the temptation would be too strong for me. This journey of mine became thus an annual institution. There was another annual institution of which MacPherson knew only the outer and less important part; this was the arrival of seeds from England, with Ruth’s little letter attached; I came to know all her phrases, which revolved with the years in a cycle: she hoped the seeds would do well with me; her garden “I came to look for this letter in my year as the devout man looks for a feast-day; it was, so to speak, my Easter. My little packet grew, that much-travelled little packet, which went with me on all my pilgrimages. I wondered whether she cherished my letters, over in England, as I cherished hers at Ephesus? In the meantime she was there, in the house I knew, living through these years in a calm monotony which was a consolation to me, because I could so well imagine it; I could call up a picture of her, in fact, at practically any moment of the day, for what variation could there be to her quotidian round of cooking, housework, washing, sewing? This was, I say, a pleasant “MacPherson never spared me my share of the work, and a hard taskmaster he was, as hard to himself as to me. In the summer we breakfasted soon after the dawn had begun to creep into the sky, then with pick and mattock we trudged to the ruins, there to toil until the heat of the sun glaring upon the quantities of white marble which lay about drove us indoors until evening. MacPherson was always very grudging and resentful with regard to this enforced siesta. In fact he would not admit it as a siesta, but affected to consider it merely as a variation of work, and would remain below in our little sitting-room, turning over for the thousandth time his scraps and fragments of glass, pottery, and other rubbish, while I lay on my bed upstairs damning the mosquitoes and trying to go to sleep. No sooner had I dozed off than I would be “It was July, and my annual restlessness had been creeping over me for some time; besides, it was getting unpleasantly hot at Ephesus, and I panted for the cold air of the mountains. So I said to MacPherson at breakfast,— “‘I think the time for my yearly flitting has come round again; in fact, I think I’ll be off to-day.’ “I waited for the, ‘Oh? All right,’ but it “‘I wonder if you would put off going until to-morrow?’ “It was the first time I had ever heard him raise an objection to any suggestion of mine, and I was faintly surprised, but I said,— “‘Of course I will. One day’s just as good as another. Got a special job for me?’ “‘No,’ he said, ‘it isn’t that.’ “I did not question him; I had long since followed his lead, and we never questioned one another. “Still, I wondered to myself, as one cannot help wondering when anything unusual, however slight, occurs to break a regularity such as ours. A stone thrown in a rough sea falls unperceived, but thrown into a pond of mirror-like surface it creates a real disturbance. So all the morning I observed MacPherson as closely as I dared; I saw him go to get his things, and I detected a slight weariness in his walk; still he said nothing. It was glaringly hot at the ruins. I thought of suggesting that we should go home earlier than usual, and, turning round “‘I say, aren’t you feeling well?’ “He raised to me a livid face. “‘I shall be all right presently.... A touch of the sun.’ “‘You must come indoors at once,’ I said firmly. ‘You must be mad to sit here in this heat. Can you walk?’ “He rose with infinite weariness, but without a word of complaint, and attempted to lift his pick. “‘I’ll take that,’ I said, taking it from him, and he gave it up without a word. ‘Is there anything else to bring?’ “He shook his head, and began to stumble off in the direction of the house. Long before we had reached home, I knew what was the matter with my companion. The sun was not responsible. He was in the grip of cholera. “The Albanian, who was splashing cold water from a bucket over the tiled floor of our little sitting-room when we arrived, stared at us in astonishment. MacPherson, “I drew Marco out on to the landing. I bade him saddle the mule and ride straight to the station, where he must take the train for Smyrna and return without delay with the English doctor. I did not think, in my private mind, that the doctor could arrive in time, or that he could do more than I could, who had some experience of cholera, but still I was bound to send for him. Marco nodded violently all the time I was speaking. I knew I could trust him; he was an honest man. I went back to MacPherson. “I had never been into his bedroom before. The Venetian blinds were lowered outside the windows, and the floor and walls were barred with the resulting stripes of shade “He was lying where I had left him, still breathing heavily; his skin was icy cold, so I covered him over with the quilt from my own room, knowing that it was no use attempting to get him into bed, and feeling, in a sympathetic way, that he would prefer to be left alone. I went to get what remedies I could from our medicine-chest downstairs, and as I was doing this my eye fell on his little cupboard where behind glass doors he kept his precious shards, all labelled and docketed in his inhumanly neat handwriting, and I wondered whether, in a week or so, I should see him sitting down there, fingering his treasures with hands that, always thin, would surely be shrunken then to the claws of a skeleton. “It’s bad enough to see any man in extreme agonies of pain, but when the man is an uncommunicative, efficient, self-reliant “I knew that this stage of the disease would probably continue for two or three hours, when the man would collapse, and when the pain might or might not be relieved. The sun was high in the heavens when I noticed the first signs of exhaustion. MacPherson sank rapidly, and the deadly cold for which I was watching overcame him; I covered him with blankets—this he feebly resisted—and banked him round with hot water bottles, of which we always kept a supply in case of emergency. It was now midday, and I had continually to wipe the sweat from my face, but I could not succeed in bringing much warmth to poor MacPherson. He lay quiet and silent now, save when the fearful sickness returned, as it did at short intervals. I sat beside him, ready with the water for which he was continually asking. “He was, as I have said, always thin, but by this time his face was cavernous; I could have hidden my knuckles in the depression over his temples, and my fist in the hollow under his cheek-bones. His scant, reddish “When the merciless sun was beginning to disappear round the corner of the house, MacPherson, who had been lying for the last hour or so in a state of coma, spoke to me in a low voice. I was staring in a melancholy way from my chair by his side, across the bed, between a chink of the Venetian blind; I don’t know what I was thinking of, probably my mind was a blank. I started when I heard him whisper my name, and bent towards him. He whispered,— “‘I don’t think I’m going to recover.’ “Neither did I, and seeing that he had made the remark as a statement of fact, in his usual tone, though low-pitched, I waited for what he should say next. He said,— “‘I am sorry to be a bore.’ “This was a hard remark to answer, but I murmured something. He went on, still in that hoarse whisper,— “I saw that he was perfectly lucid in his mind, and thinking that he wanted to give me some necessary instructions I encouraged him to go on, but he only shook his head, and I saw that he had fallen back into the characteristic apathy. I sat on, expecting the arrival of Marco and the doctor at any moment. “Towards night, MacPherson roused himself again. He was so much weaker that I could barely make out the words he breathed. “‘It is time you went to water your garden.’ “I shook my head. A distressed look came over his face, and to comfort him I said,— “‘Marco has promised to do it for me.’ “He was content with that, and lay quiet with his long, long arms and thin hands outside the coverlet. I thought that he wanted to speak again, but had not the energy to begin, so, to help him, I suggested,— “‘Was there anything you wanted to say to me?’ “He nodded, more with his eyelids than “‘You won’t stay on here?’ “I answered, ‘No,’ feeling that to adopt a reassuring, hearty attitude would be an insult to the man. “After a long pause he said,— “‘I want to be buried up here. By the ruins. I don’t care about consecrated ground.’ “An appalling attack of sickness interrupted him, after which he lay in such complete exhaustion that I thought he would never speak again. But after about half an hour, he resumed,— “‘Give me your word of honour. They will try to prevent you.’ “I swore it—poor devil. “‘Bury me deep,’ he said with a grim, twisted smile, ‘or some one will excavate me.’ “He seemed a little stronger, but I knew the recovery could only be fictitious. Then he went on,— “‘Will you do something else for me?’ “‘Of course I will,’ I answered, ‘anything you ask.’ “‘My wife ...’ he murmured. “‘Your wife?’ I said. “In London! Even in that dim room, with the dying man there beneath my hand, I felt my heart bound with a physical sensation. “‘Just tell her,’ he added; ‘she won’t mind. She won’t make you a scene.’ “He was silent then, but drank a great draught of water. “‘Is there any one else?’ I asked. “His head moved very feebly in the negative on the pillow. “‘And what am I to do with your things?’ I asked lastly. “‘Look through them,’ he breathed; ‘nothing private. Give the fragments to the British Museum. I’ve made a will about money.’ “‘And your personal things? Would you like me to give them to your wife?’ “‘Oh, no,’ he said wearily, ‘’tisn’t worth while.’ Then after a long pause in which he seemed to be meditating, he said, with evidently unconscious pathos, ‘I don’t know.... Better throw them away.’ V“MacPherson died that night about an hour before the doctor came; Marco and the doctor had missed each other, and had missed the trains, but the doctor reassured me that I had done all that was possible, and that had he arrived by midday he could not have saved MacPherson’s life. “‘I suppose you will want to bring him down to the English cemetery at Smyrna?’ he said, with an offer of help tripping on the heels of his remark. He looked horrified when I told him of MacPherson’s wish and of my intention of carrying it out. “‘But no priest, I am afraid, will consent to read the burial service over him under those conditions,’ he said primly. “‘Then I will read it myself,’ I replied in a firm voice. “‘You must please yourself about that,’ said the doctor, giving it up. His attitude towards me, which had started by being sympathetic, was now changing subtly to a slight impatience. He took out his watch. ‘I am “I said that I should be much obliged to him, and, accompanying him as far as the front door, I watched him go with Marco and a lantern, the little parallelogram of yellow light criss-crossed with black lines, swaying to and fro in the night. “I could not go to bed, and as I was anxious to leave Ephesus as soon as possible, I thought I would employ my time in going through poor MacPherson’s few possessions. As he said, there was nothing private. I sat downstairs in the sitting-room we had shared, with his tin box open on the table before me, shiny black, and the inside of the lid painted sky-blue. It was pitifully empty. His will was in a long envelope, a will making provision for his wife, and bequeathing the remainder of his income to an archÆological society; there was also a codicil directing “I sat there staring at the bleak little collection when Marco came in to say that he had returned with the layer-out. I went into the passage, and there I found our old negro post-woman, grinning as usual in her magenta wrapper; it seemed that she combined several village functions in her own person. I felt an instinctive horror at the thought of those black hands pawing poor MacPherson, but the thing was unavoidable, so I took her upstairs to where he lay in a repose that appeared to me enviable after the brief but terrible suffering he had undergone, and left her there, bending over him, the softer parts of her huge body quivering as usual under her mashlak. I went downstairs again, and “Next day two men in baggy trousers and red sashes came up to the house carrying the hastily-made coffin. Then we set out, Marco, myself, and the two men with the coffin and MacPherson inside it. Providentially there were no tourists that day at Ephesus. Marco and I had been hard at work all the morning digging the grave, and as I drove my pick I reflected that this was, humanly speaking, the last time I should ever break up the flinty ground of Ephesus. After ten years! With regard to myself and my future, I dared not think; my present preoccupation was to have finished with MacPherson and his widow. “Well, I buried him up there, and may I be hanged if I don’t think the man was better and more happily buried in the place he had loved, than stuck down in a corner of some unfriendly cemetery he had never seen. For myself—such is the egoism of our nature—I was thinking all the while that I would “A week later I was in London, on a blazing August day which seemed strangely misty to me, accustomed as I was to the direct, unmitigated rays of the sun on the Ephesian hills. I still hadn’t thought about my future, and I was resolved not to do so until, my interview with Mrs. MacPherson over, I could look upon the whole of the last ten years as an episode of the past. I had tried to forget that I was in the same country as Ruth; but this had been difficult, for the train from Dover had carried me through the heart of Ruth’s own county, a cruel, unforeseen prank “Hildenborough! After ten years, during which I had consistently kept at least fifteen hundred miles between us, I was at last within two miles of her home. I nearly sprang out of the train at the thought. But I resolutely put it away, so resolutely that I found myself pushing with my hands and with all my force against the side of the railway carriage. “It was too late, when I reached London, to do anything that day. I slept at my old club, where everybody started at the sight of me as of a ghost, and the following morning I went to the address MacPherson had given me. It was in a block of flats, a long way up. I was left stranded upon the tiny landing by the lift-boy, who, with his lift, fell rapidly down through the floor as though pulled from below by a giant’s hand. I rang “‘Can I see Mrs. MacPherson?’ I asked. “She stared at me. “‘There’s no Mrs. MacPherson here.’ “I heard a man’s voice from inside the flat,— “‘What is it, Belle?’ “She called back over her shoulder,— “‘Here’s a party asking to see Mrs. MacPherson.’ “‘Who is it?’ asked the voice. “‘Who are you, anyway?’ said Belle to me. “‘I have been sent here by Mr. MacPherson, Mr. Angus MacPherson, with a message for his wife,’ I said, ‘but as I have evidently made a mistake I had better apologise and go away.’ “She looked suddenly thoughtful—or was it apprehensive? “‘No, don’t go away,’ she said. ‘You haven’t made a mistake. Come in.’ “I went in, and she closed the door behind “‘Now,’ said Belle, ‘let’s hear your news of Mr. Angus MacPherson?’ “‘First of all,’ I answered, ‘may I know who I am talking to?’ “Belle and the man exchanged glances. “‘Oh, well,’ she said then, I am Mrs. MacPherson all right enough. If you have really got a message for me, let’s hear it.’ “There was anxiety in her tone, and she edged nearer to the handsome man, and surreptitiously took possession of his hand. “I did not think that the news of MacPherson’s death was likely to cause much grief to his widow. I therefore said without preamble,— “I have come to tell you that he died a week ago of cholera. I was with him at the time, and I have brought you the certificate of his death, also his will. He left no other papers.’ “‘Angus dead?’ said Angus’s widow. ‘You don’t say! Poor old Angus!’ “‘He’s left me five hundred a year,’ she said abruptly, ‘and the rest to some archi—what is it? society. Five hundred a year, and he had a thousand!’ “‘Oh, come, Belle,’ said the handsome man, ‘that’s better than nothing.’ “She let her eyes dwell on his face with real affection, real kindliness. “‘Let’s have a look at that will,’ he murmured lazily. “She passed it across to him, sat down on a stool, clasped her knees, and became meditative. “‘Poor old Angus!’ she repeated. ‘Fancy that! Well, he was rare fun in his day, wasn’t he, Dick?’ “‘No end of a dog,’ replied Dick without removing his eyes from the will. “‘Perhaps, if there are no questions you want to ask me, I had better be going now,’ I began. I was bewildered, for MacPherson, in spite of his eccentricities, had undoubtedly been a scholar and a man of refinement. “‘I suppose it is quite certain,’ he said, ‘that there is no mistake? I mean, it’s quite certain he’s dead?’ “‘Quite,’ I answered rather grimly, as certain visions rose before my eyes. ‘I buried him myself;’ and the flat with its dirty lace, its cheap pretension, melted away into the quiet beauty of Ephesus. “I walked away from the building with an inexpressible loneliness at heart, faced with my own immediate and remoter future, a problem I had hitherto refused to consider, but which now rushed at me like the oncoming wave rushes at the failing swimmer and overwhelms him. I had finished with Ephesus and MacPherson, and with MacPherson’s wife, and to say that I felt depressed would give you no idea of my feelings: an immense desolation took possession of me, an immense desolation, and more: an immense, soul-destroying disgust and weariness at the cruelty of things, a lassitude such as I had never conceived, so that I envied MacPherson lying for ever at peace, away from strife and difficulties and things that would not go right, among beautiful and untroubled hills, with “And as I walked I met two men I had known, who spoke to me by my name and stopped me. “‘Why, it’s Malory,’ said one of them. ‘I haven’t seen you lately. Somebody told me you had gone to Scotland?’ “‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I went to Scotland.’ “He asked me, ‘What part of Scotland?’ “‘To Aberdeen,’ I cried, ‘to Aberdeen!’ and laughed, and left them. “I had been prepared to pass unrecognised after ten years, but for this friendliness, which had not ‘seen me lately,’ I was unprepared. I turned into a park, longing instinctively for the country as the only palliative for my loneliness and melancholy. In all London that day I think there was no lonelier soul than I. I would have sought you out, but in such crisis of world-sorrow as was mine, I could desire only one presence—a presence I might not have. She could have annihilated my sorrow by a word, could have made me forget the dirt, and the irony; all that hurt me so profoundly—though I don’t think myself a sentimentalist. For I was hurt “I sat for a long time under the trees, gazing immovably at the ground between my feet, and then I got up mechanically, without any plan in my head, and wandered as mechanically home towards my club. My club burst incongruously enough on my dreams of a beautiful gulf; that, again, was part of the irony on this most cruel of days. But I had nowhere else to go to. “I began to write to MacPherson’s solicitors to inform them of their client’s death; the new life was so empty that I clung for as long as I was able to the old. As I wrote, the hall-boy came and stood at my elbow. “‘Please, sir, there’s a young woman asking to see you.’ “A young woman? Could it be Belle? so equipped for the day’s battle as to pass for young? “‘What’s her name? what does she want?’ “‘She won’t say, sir; she wants to see you.’ “I looked at her incredulously, and all the world stood still. “She began, shyly and hurriedly,— “‘Oh, I don’t want to bother you if you are busy....’ “That made me laugh. “‘I am not busy,’ I told her. “‘Oh, then perhaps I could speak to you for a few minutes? somewhere just quietly, and alone?’ “I glanced round. The porter was standing there with a face carved in stone. “‘You can’t come in here,’ I said. ‘Where can I take you? Will you come to an hotel?’ “‘Oh, no!’ she said, shrinking, and I noticed her little gray cotton gloves. “‘At any rate, let us get away from here. Then we can think where to go.’ “We went down the steps, across Piccadilly, and passed into the Green Park. There I stopped, but she would not sit on the chair I suggested. She stood before me, her eyes downcast, and her gloved fingers twisting the stems of her roses. I bethought myself to ask her,— “‘I came to ask,’ she answered, still in that shy, hurried tone, ‘whether they knew when you would be coming to London.’ “‘And they told you I was there?’ “‘Yes.’ “‘You came up from the Weald on purpose to ask that?’ “‘Yes.’ “‘But why?’ “She was silent. “‘Why, Ruth?’ “‘Because I wanted to see you.’ “‘To see me?’ “‘To tell you something,’ “‘What is it?’ “‘I can’t tell you here,’ she murmured. “‘Come to an hotel,’ I said again, ‘we can get a private sitting-room; we can talk.’ “‘Oh, no, not that. I suppose ... I suppose you wouldn’t ... I am sure you are busy.’ “‘No, no, on my honour, Ruth, I have absolutely nothing to do either to-day, or to-morrow, or the next day, or any day after that.’ “‘Quite sure.’ “‘Then,’ with sudden boldness, ‘will you come down to the Weald with me? now? at once?’ “‘To the Weald? Of course I will, I’ll do anything you like. We’ll go straight to Charing Cross, shall we?’ “‘Oh, yes, please, you are very good. And please, don’t ask me any questions till we get there.’ “My ten years’ training with MacPherson proved invaluable to me now, and I can say with pride that neither by direct nor indirect means did I seek to extract any information from Ruth. Indeed, I was content to observe her as she sat by me in the cab, no longer the girl I remembered, but a woman of ripe beauty, and yet in her confused manner there was a remnant of girlishness, in her lowered eyes, and her tremulous lips. I saw that she sat there full of suppressed emotion, buoyed up by some intense determination which carried her over her shyness and confusion as a barque carries its passenger over high waves. “At Charing Cross she produced the return half of her third-class ticket from her little purse, refusing to let me pay the excess fare which would allow us to travel first. I think she was afraid of being shut alone with me into a first-class carriage, knowing that in the humbler compartment she could reckon on the security of company. So we sat on the hard wooden benches, opposite one another, rocking and swaying with the train, and trying to shrink away in our respective corners from the contact of the fruit-pickers who crowded us unpleasantly: Ruth sat staring out over the fields of Kent, her hands in their neat gray cotton gloves lying on her lap, and the tired roses drooping listlessly between her fingers; she looked a little pale, a little thin, but that subtle warmth of her personality was there as of old, whether it lay, as I never could decide, in the glow under her skin or in the tender curves of her features. She looked up to catch me gazing at her, and we both turned to the landscape to hide our confusion. “Ah! I could look out over that flying landscape now, with no need to pull down “It was then about five o’clock of a perfect August day. Little white clouds stretched in a broken bank along the sky. Dorothy Perkins bloomed in masses on the palings of the wayside station. The railway seemed foreign to the country, the English country which lay there immovable, regardless of trains that hurried restless mankind to and fro, between London and the sea. “‘Let us go,’ I said to Ruth. “We set out walking across the fields, infinitely green and tender to my eyes, accustomed to the brown stoniness of Ephesus. We walked in silence, but I, for one, walked happy in the present, and feeling the aridity of my being soaked and permeated with repose and beauty. Ruth took off her jacket, which I carried for her, walking cool and slender in a white muslin shirt. In this soft garment she looked eighteen, as I remembered her. “We took the short cut to Westmacotts’. “‘Where ...’ I began, but changed my question. ‘Where are the children?’ “‘I left them over with mother before I came away this morning,’ she answered. “We went into the house, into the kitchen, the same kitchen, unchanged. “She took refuge in practical matters. “‘Will you wait there while I take off my things and get the tea?’ “I sat down like a man in a dream while she disappeared upstairs. I was quite incapable of reflection, but dimly I recognised the difference between this clean, happy room of bright colours and shining brasses, and the tawdry, musty flat I had penetrated that morning, and the contrast spread itself like ointment over a wound. “Ruth returned; she had taken off her hat and had covered her London clothes by a “‘You’ll want your tea,’ she said briskly. “I had had nothing to eat since breakfast. “You told me once in a letter that you had been to tea with Ruth, so you know the kind of meal she provides: bread, honey, scones, big cups, and tea in an enormous teapot. She laid two places only, moving about, severely practical, but still quivering with that suppressed excitement, still tense with that unfaltering determination. “‘It’s ready,’ she said at length, summoning me. “I couldn’t eat, for the emotion of that meal alone with her was too strong for me. I sat absently stirring the sugar in my cup. She tried to coax me to eat, but her solicitude exasperated my overstrained nerves, and I got up abruptly. “‘It’s no good,’ I said, ‘I must know. What is it, Ruth? What had you to tell me?’ “The moment had rushed at her unawares; “I went over to her and stood before her. “‘What is it, Ruth?’ I said again. ‘You haven’t brought me down here for nothing. Hadn’t you better tell me before your husband comes in?’ “‘He won’t come in,’ she said, hanging her head so that I could only see the wealth of her hair and her little figure in the big blue apron. “‘How do you know?’ I asked. “‘He isn’t here.’ “‘Where is he, then?’ “She raised her head and looked me full in the face, no longer frightened, but steady, resolute. “‘He has left me,’ she said. “‘Left you? What do you mean? For good?’ “‘Yes. He’s left me, the farm, and the children; he’s never coming back.’ “‘But why? Good Heavens, why?’ “‘He was afraid,’ she said in a low voice. “‘Afraid?’ “‘Yes. Of me. Oh,’ she broke off, ‘sit down and I will tell you all about it.’ “And then she unfolded to me the extraordinary story which, as I warned you at the very beginning of my letter, you will probably not believe. Nevertheless I offer it to you as a fact, so tangible a fact that it has driven a man—no chicken-hearted man—to abandon his home and source of wealth, his wife, and his children, and to fly, without stopping to pack up his closest possessions, to America. I will not attempt to give you the story in Ruth’s own words, because they came confusedly, transposing the order of events, dealing only with effects, ignoring the examination of causes. I will tell it you as I see it myself, after piecing together all my scraps of narrative and evidence. I only hope that, in dragging you away with me to Ephesus, and in giving you the events of my own life, you have not forgotten those who, in the Weald of Kent, are, after all, far more essential characters than I myself. Please try now to forget the MacPhersons, “And, again like a kind, accommodating audience, put ready at your elbow a little heap of your credulity, that you may draw on it from time to time, like a man taking a pinch of snuff. “I do not know how far I should go back, perhaps even to the day when Ruth, in a wild state of reckless misery, ran away with Rawdon Westmacott. At once, you see, I am up against the question of their relationship, and you will understand that, situated as I now am with regard to Ruth, it isn’t a question I like to dwell upon. There is a certain fellowship, however, between us, Ruth, Rawdon, and I, and when I consider that fellowship, my resentment—I will go further than that, and call it my loathing, my disgust—bends down like a springing stick and lies flat to the ground. By fellowship I mean, in myself, the restless spirit which drove me onward until, blinded by the habit of constant movement, I couldn’t see the riches that lay close to my hand. In Ruth and Rawdon, I mean “Seeing her in this light, I am overcome, not only with my stupidity and blindness, but with my guilt. Yet she was not altogether unhappy. It is true that Rawdon ill-treated “What am I to believe? that she is cursed with a dual nature, the one coarse and unbridled, the other delicate, conventional, practical, motherly, refined? Have I hit the nail on the head? And is it, can it be, the result of the separate, antagonistic strains in her blood, the southern and the northern legacy? Did she love Westmacott with the one, and me with the other? I am afraid to pry deeper into this mystery, for who can tell what taint of his blood may not appear suddenly to stain the clear waters of his life? “Once, as you know, she rebelled, but I do not think you know what drove her to it. Westmacott had brought another woman home to the farm, and had ordered his wife to draw cider for them both. When she “But to come down to the day I went to the farm and asked her to come away with me. Westmacott suspected nothing at the time. About a week later he came home slightly drunk, and began to bully one of the children. Ruth cried out,— “‘Hands off my children, Rawdon!’ “‘You can’t stop me,’ he jeered. “She said,— “‘I can. I nearly stopped you for ever once, and what’s to prevent my doing it again?’ “He looked at her blankly, and his jaw dropped. “For a week after that he was civil to her; their rÔles were reversed, and she held the upper hand. Then he started shouting at her, but, brave in her previous success, she defied him,— “‘Stop swearing at me, Rawdon, or I’ll go away and leave you.’ “‘Go away? Where to?’ “She says that she was wild, and did not care for the rashness of her words,— “‘I shall go to Mr. Malory.’ “‘He wouldn’t have you!’ said Rawdon. “‘He would!’ she cried. ‘He came here—you never knew—and tried to get me to go with him. And I’d have gone, but for the children. So there!’ “After this there was a pause; Rawdon was taken aback, Ruth was appalled by her indiscretion. Then Rawdon burst out into oaths, ‘which fouled the kitchen,’ said Ruth, ‘as though the lamp had been flaring.’ At this time, I suppose, I was at Sampiero. “Of course, these and similar scenes could not go on perpetually. Their married life, although long in years, had been interrupted by over four years of war and absence, but now they found that they must settle down to life on a workable basis. They were married, therefore they must live together and make the best of it. Ruth tells me that they talked it out seriously together. A strange conversation! She undertook not to resent his infidelities if he, on his side, would “There was apparently no reason why this should not go on for ever. It did, indeed, let me tell you at once, go on for nearly ten years. They were quite tolerably happy; their children grew; their farm prospered; they were able to keep a servant. And then she saw a change coming over her husband. “This is the thing which I do not expect you to believe. “It began with his suggestion that Ruth should occupy the larger bedroom with the younger children, while he himself moved up to an attic at the top of the house, next to the boys’ attic. She was astonished at this suggestion, and naturally asked him for his reasons. He could give none, except that it would be ‘more convenient.’ He shuffled uneasily as he said it. For the sake of peace, she agreed. “But, suspicious now, she watched him “This left her indifferent; she had long since made her life independent of his, and the possible gossip of neighbours did not touch her as it would have touched a woman of commoner fibre. She had quite made up her mind that Rawdon spent all his nights “She was surprised to notice that his boots were never soaked through, as she logically expected to find them. “One night she lay awake, thinking over all these things, when an impulse came to her, to go and look in his room. She got up quietly, slipping on her shoes and dressing gown, and stole out on to the landing. The house was dark and silent. She crept upstairs, and turned the handle of his door, confident that she would find the room empty. By the light of the moon, which poured down unimpeded by any curtain through the little oblong window in the sloping roof, she saw her husband’s dark, beautiful head on the white pillow. He was sleeping profoundly. His clothes lay scattered “So surprised was she—a surprise amounting, not to relief, but almost to dismay—that she stood gazing at him, holding the door open with her hand. Sensitive people and children will often wake under the influence of a prolonged gaze. Westmacott, who was a sensitive man beneath his brutality, and who further was living just then, I imagine, in a state of considerable nerve tension, woke abruptly with an involuntary cry as from a nightmare. He sat up in bed, flinging back the clothes—sat up, Ruth says, with staring eyes and the signs of terror stamped on all his features. “‘You! you!’ he said wildly, ‘what do you want with me? in God’s name what do you want?’ “She thought him still half-asleep, and replied in a soothing voice,— “‘It’s all right, Rawdon; I don’t want anything; I couldn’t sleep, that’s all; I’m going away now.’ “But he continued to stare at her as though she had been an apparition, muttering “‘What’s the matter, Rawdon?’ she said, genuinely puzzled. “At that he cried out,— “‘Oh, go away, leave me alone, for God’s sake leave me alone!’ and he began to sob hysterically, hiding his face in his sheets. “Afraid that he would wake the children, she backed hastily out, shutting the door, and flying downstairs to her own room. “He did not come to breakfast, but at midday he appeared, white and hollow-eyed, and climbed to his room, where he spent an hour screwing a bolt on to the inside of his door. When he came down again, he tried to slip furtively out of the house, but she stopped him in the passage. “‘Look here, Rawdon,’ she said, taking him by the shoulders, ‘what’s the matter with you?’ “He shrank miserably under her touch. “‘There’s nothing the matter,’ he mumbled. “Then he spoke in a tone she had never heard since the days before their marriage, a cringing, whining tone. “‘Let me be, Ruth, my pretty little Ruth; “But instantly with his servility she regained her disdain of him. She pushed him roughly from her. “‘Get out then; don’t bother me.’ “He went, swiftly, thankfully. “The furtiveness which she had already noticed clung to him; he slunk about like a Jew, watching her covertly, answering her, when she spoke, in his low, propitiatory voice. She had lost all fear of him now. She ordered him about in a peremptory way, and he obeyed her, sulkily, surlily, when she was not looking, but with obsequious alacrity when her eyes were on him. His chief desire seemed to be to get out of her sight, out of her company. He moved noiselessly about the house, seeking to conceal his presence; ‘pussy-footed,’ was the word she used. Their relations were entirely reversed. With the acquiescent philosophy of the poor, she had almost ceased to wonder at the new state of affairs thus mysteriously come about. She dated it from the day he had first taken to the attic, realising also that a great “This, then, was the position at Westmacotts’ while I toiled at Ephesus and received with such wide-spaced regularity little packets of seed from Ruth. The situation developed rapidly at a date corresponding to the time when MacPherson fell ill with cholera. It was then three months since Westmacott, by going to the attic, had made the first concession to his creeping cowardice. He was looking ill, Ruth told me; his eyes were bright, and she thought he slept badly at night. Her questioning him on this subject precipitated the crisis. “‘Rawdon, you’re looking feverish.’ “‘Ay, dad,’ said the eldest boy, ‘I heard you tossing about last night.’ “Ruth turned on him with that bullying instinct that she could not control, and asked roughly,— “‘What do you mean by keeping the children awake?’ “He cowered away, and she went on, her voice rising,— “‘I won’t have it, do you hear? If you can’t sleep quietly here, you can go and sleep elsewhere—in the stable, for all I care.’ “He didn’t answer, he only watched her, huddled in his chair—yes, huddled, that tall, lithe figure—watched her with a sidelong glance of his almond eyes. “She went on storming at him; she says she felt like a person speaking the words dictated to her by somebody else, and indeed you know Ruth well enough to know that this description doesn’t tally with your impression of her. “He was fingering a tea-spoon all the while, now looking down at it, now stealing “‘Let that spoon alone, can’t you?’ and as she spoke she stretched out her hand to take it from him. He bent swiftly forward and snapped at her hand like a hungry wolf. “The children screamed, and Ruth sprang to her feet. Rawdon was already on his feet, over in the corner, holding a chair, reversed, in front of him. “‘Don’t you come near me,’ he gibbered, ‘don’t you dare to come near me. You said you nearly stopped me once’—oh little seed sown ten years ago!—‘but by Hell you shan’t do it again. I’ll kill you first, ay, and all your children with you, cursed brats! how am I to know they’re mine?’ and a stream of foul language followed. “Ruth had recovered herself, she stood on the other side of the room, with all her frightened children clinging round her. “‘I think you must be mad, Rawdon,’ she said, as coldly as she could. “‘And if I am,’ he cried, ‘who’s driven me to it? Isn’t it you? making my life a hell, spying on me, chasing me even to my bed at night, ready to pounce on me the “The eldest boy darted across the room at his father, but Rawdon warded him off with the chair. “‘Keep the brat off me!’ he cried to Ruth. ‘I won’t be answerable, I’ll do him a mischief.’ “He cried suddenly,— “‘This is what I’ll do if you try to lay hands on me, you and all your brood.’ “He was near the window, he took the pots of geranium one by one off the sill, crying, ‘This! and this! and this!’ and flung them with all possible violence on the tiled floor, where the brittle terra-cotta smashed into fragments, and the plants rolled with a scattering of earth under the furniture. “His eye fell on the cage of mice, left standing exposed on the window-sill. At the sight of these his rage redoubled. “‘He gave you these,’ he shouted, and hurled the cage from him into the farthest corner of the room. “He was left quivering in the midst of his devastation, quivering, panting, like some slim, wild animal at bay. “The storm that had swept across him was too much for his nerves; the expression on his face changed; he sank down in the corner, letting the chair fall, and hiding his face in his hands. “‘There, it’s over,’ he wailed, ‘don’t be afraid, Ruth, I won’t touch you. Only let me go away now; it’s this life has done for me. I can’t live with you. You can keep the children, you can keep the farm; I’m going away, right away, where you’ll never hear of me again. Only let me go.’ “It seemed to be his dominating idea. “She moved across to him, but he leaped up and to one side before she could touch him. “He reached the door; paused there one brief, intense moment. “‘You’ll hear from me from London,’ he uttered. “He seemed to her exactly like a swift animal, scared and untamed, checked for one instant in its flight. “‘I’ll never trouble you more.’ “Then he was gone; had he bounded away? had he flown? she could not have said, she could only remain pressed against the wall, the children crying, and her hands clasped over her heart. “There, what do you think of that for the story of a Kentish farm-house? What a train of dynamite, isn’t it, laid in the arena of Cadiz? What a heritage to transmit even to the third generation! You don’t believe it? I thought you wouldn’t. But it is true. “Ruth told me the whole of this amazing story in a low voice, playing all the while with her two faded roses. She showed me a lawyer’s letter which she had received next day, formalising the agreement about the farm, stipulating that she should pay rent; “‘I see you’ve replaced the geraniums,’ I said rather irrelevantly. “‘Yes.’ “‘What about the mice?’ “‘They all died.’ “So that chapter was closed? “‘At any rate, Ruth, you need not worry now about your children.’ “She looked puzzled. “‘Never mind, I was only joking.’ “Then we were quite silent, faced with the future. I said slowly. “‘And you brought me down here to tell me all this?’ “‘Yes. I am sorry if you are annoyed.’ “‘I am not annoyed, but it is late and I must go back to London to-night.’ “She came a little closer to me, and my pulses began to race. “‘Why?’ “‘Well, my dear, I can’t stop here, can I?’ “She whispered,— “‘Because you’re here alone, even the children are away.’ “‘Does that matter?’ she said. “A ray from the setting sun slanted in at the window, firing the red geraniums, and the canary incontinently began to sing. “‘You came here once,’ said Ruth, ‘and you asked me to go away and live with you. Do you remember?’ “‘My dear,’ I said, ‘I have lived on that remembrance for the last ten years.’ “I waited for her to speak again, but she remained silent, yet her meaning was clearer to me than the spoken word. We stood silent in the presence of her invitation and of my acquiescence. We stood in the warm, quiet kitchen, where all things glowed as in the splendour of a mellow sunset: the crimson flowers, the sinking fire, the rounded copper of utensils, the tiled floor rosy as a pippin. In the distance I heard the lowing of cattle, rich and melodious as the tones within the room. I saw and heard these English things, but, as a man who, looking into a mirror, beholds his own expected image in an unexpected setting, I had a sudden “Ever yours, “Christopher Malory.” |
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