BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME PROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF X891 J/./.A2:t09^ ^/h./....Lcf.a^ 5474 Cornell University Library PR 4525.065L8 London idylls. 3 1924 013 469 766 B Cornell University B) Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013469766 LONDON IDYLLS Jondon Jdylls W^ J. DAWSON Instead of shores where ocean beats I hear the ebb and flow of streets NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 46 EAST FOURTEENTH STREET 1895 PROEM This monstrous realm of smoke, This congregated, hungry, hurrying life, This streaming roar of avaricious tides Beating their human foam, on iron shores. "I ^HESE be tales of a City like unto no other city which is to be found upon the earth. In some cities men sing at their work, and the streets are, on most days, abrim with sunlight, and at night, when they are washed with moonshine, there is the sound of song in the air. But in this City labour is very laborious, and the pulse of energy knows no slackening. Its great, grey armies come and go in the great, grey streets, fighting each hour battles that have no record, making no truce with time, and regardless of those interludes which men call pleasure. This City never rests. It is the heart frotn which the whole earth is fed. It is the gang- lion in which the fibres of a world are knotted up. To the careless and impatient eye this City pre- sents no beauty that men should desire it. It lies monstrous and huddled beside its stained river, PROEM pushing its sordid arms out into the green country and sprawling like some invertebrate deformity against the doors of England. The very sky Jiangs low above it, as though eager to cover it from sight. Its own children defame it, and, such as can, flee from it. Yet it has aspects of pathos, loveliness, and even majesty. A thousand domes and spires paint themselves on its olive-tinted haze. There are moments when it puts on a bewitched apparel, and its children, seeing it soar and swim, suddenly in a sky of pearl, rub their eyes, and inarticulately feel that in its own way it is beautiful. And then the white outlines of sunnier cities seem gewgaw and insipid, and we recognise in London a certain Titanic grandeur of outline, as we feel in the music of Wagner a Titanic discord which touches a supi-emer height of harmony. In this City there are more and deeper tragedies of love, heroism, sacrifice, hate, and crime transacted in a month than elsewhere on any other segment of the earth's round in a year or a century. It is the Golgotha of the world. Some would say that it is the Golgotha not of the Christ but of the impeni- tent thief: but these see only the sordid raiment, and not the space and dignity of the marred brows. Its life is the true epic of the modern world. The next great poet, when he comes, will be nourished on PROEM vii the breasts of London, and he will sing her glory, and build in immortal words the monument of her tragedy. But it is not tragedy alone which enacts its passions under the flattened dome of these opccque skies. If there is little sign of pleasure, there is clearly a spirit of heroic comedy visible at intervals; and, because life itself is at heart humorous, here also a colossal laughter sometimes throbs at the heart of things. There is a silent invincibility, half akin to cheerfulness, about her men and women. They endure as no other people ever yet endured, and smile discouragingly on those who would persuade them to revolt. The spectacle of little children dancing in Bacchic abandonment round a barrel-organ, amid the garbage of the gutter, may or may not be, as philanthropic persons assure us, a sight to make the angels weep ; but it is typical of the grim resolve wherewith , this City's older children contrive ironic mirth beneath mirthless heavens. Yet is there w.ore of sweet and honest happiness in this City than can be lightly reckoned, and we who think much of her aggregate tragedy sometimes forget the aggregate of her joys. There are here some millions of men and women who know the kisses of the lips of love; love which is neither shallow nor venal, but is the love of heroes which viii PROEM many waters, and even those foulest waters of the mud-river of monotonous drudgery, cannot quench. Is there any higher love than that which, being denied Jieroic occasions, still remains heroic ? In the dreary brick rabbit-hutches of urban and suburban streets human hearts beat, souls suffer and aspire, little children sweeten the air with laughter. In these unlikeliest of temples the bright god has never- theless furled his purple wings, and lit his undying lamp. Unseen, or seen of few, the spirit of Fantasy also claims this City. All that Greece felt and Rome thought, all the hopes and mysticisms of Occident and Orient, are tangled in the imagery of her dreams. Here are adventures for the adventurous, such as the good Haroun Alraschid never found, and battles for the chivalrous, such as Galaliad and Arthur never fought. There are hours when the stucco streets fade away by no communicable alchemy, and we see frail pennons tossed against sunset skies, and behold Iter citizens crowding beleaguered heights of Time, fighting bewildered battles, with obstinate banners ever surging onward to what issue or award no man knows ; but the eye judges the spectacle magnificent, and the heart applauds some- thing splendid in its passion. In truth, the meanest street opens on the infinite, and from the window PROEM ix niggardliest of light we may command the shores of old romance. No human eye has ever adequately seen this City as it is, and none ever will. A sketch, a?i impres- sion, the record of some rare and excellent 7noment — tliat is all which Art can grasp and signalise. The epic artist of the future will doubtless know his theme as we do not, but not even he will know it in its fulness. He cannot know it thus, because the infinite exceeds the finite ; and this City shares with seas and open skies a certain spaciousness which is symbolic of infinity. Gradually, since that far-off hour of boyhood, when first her m.agnificent disarray touched the soul with wonder, the enchantment of this City has drawn me closer, until at last the heart-beat of London has grown motherly to me. In the early (fawns I have watched the veil of mist lifted from the face of the tired City, and at midnight have stood upon the bridges, trying to overhear what the river said as it passed to the sea. Humblest of her children, T also love her; and, for the love I bear, would fain be forgiven, if I have in aught written of tier unworthily. CONTENTS I PAGE JIM AND HIS SOUL : A STREET IDYLL ... I II THE CHILLED HEART ...... 29 III THE MUSIC OF THE GODS 55 IV THE THIRD MAN 97 V THE SHADOW BETWEEN THEM . . , • H? xii CONTENTS VI PAGE THE TRANSFORMATION OF JOHN LOXLEY . .145 VII THE MADNESS OF 'lTZA . . , . . 179 VIII AN HISTORIC INCIDENT . . . . -199 IX THE FOOTFALL . , . . . . .255 X SISTER LYDIA 29 1 JIM AND HIS SOUL H Street 5&BU And the bluebells and the cowslips Join their slender hands together, And deep in hollows of the woods Dance with the windy weather. And the pulse of men beats faster Even in cities mirk and grey, For the swallows back are flying, " Violets are cheap to-day." JIM AND HIS SOUL H Street 5&gH I T T E was called Jim because his parents were ■■- A deficient in imagination. " It's as good a name as any other for the little beggar," said his father. " It's wot I'm called." He then banged the door and went out. Jim's mother lay quiet under the sloping ceiling of the attic which she called home, and thought over things. She had known a woman once who called her child Gustavus, but it had proved a poor speculation. Gustavus had been shortened to Gus, and from that it had degenerated to Buster, by which name "the Street" made up its mind to know him. It was no use explaining matters to the Street ; when the Street had made up its mind it was irreconcilable. " Buster " tickled its fancy, and punching Buster's head became a favourite amusement. When Buster was run over by a dray the gaiety of that particular section of the nation was eclipsed. A distinct element of 4 LONDON IDYLLS humour had passed out of its life, and the Street sorrowed. She had known a woman once who had eleven children, and had found a Bible name for each of them. That was a long while ago, however, when she had lived in the country, where Bibles are sometimes found. There were no Bibles in Para- dise Street. She closed her eyes and thought quietly, and a surprising vision slid under the closed eyelids. She saw cornfields, bordered by hedges in which blackberries grew thick, and a little river with brown pebbles, and tall elm-trees, and cresting the hill, like plumes, a plantation of tasselled larches. She heard a lark singing, and the little river seemed to sing also as it flowed. The sky was so big that it frightened her, and it was so blue you seemed to look right into it, and through it, and yet never came to the end. Then she remembered the woman with the biblical chil- dren again, and recollected that when the eleventh was born it took a week to find a name, and folks said they had given the boy a girl's name after all. It was clear that the Bible was not much good for naming children. She felt very tired and weak, as well she might. There had been very little work to be had lately, and little work meant little food. She felt that she ought to be up and about ; it was a dreadful waste of time to be there doing nothing. But JIM AND HIS SOUL 5 when she tried to sit up her head fell back heavily, and her hands trembled. Then she lay quite still again, enjoying rather guiltily the sense of absolute inactivity. The only time she had ever had any rest in her life was when her children had been born. She had had five, and they were all dead. " Insufficient nourishment," the doctor said, which was no doubt a very true remark, but not a helpful one. That made her think of little Jim. She unconsciously drew the small bundle of humanity closer to her bosom, and the warmth of the child's body soothed her, and sent a little pulse of motherhood thrilling with a live joy through her nerves. Then she thought again of the five who had died of insufficient nourishment, and she remembered that little Jim was a Mouth. If children were self-supporting creatures, if, for ex- ample, you could turn them out to browse at once like new-born lambs. Paradise Street would not have objected to their presence. That not being the case, and there being nothing particular to browse upon in Paradise Street, the accepted doctrine was that children were calamities. In the meantime the newly arrived calamity slept, with little red fists doubled up pugnaciously, and as his mother gathered her thin arms around him she forgot he was a Mouth. Toward evening something happened. Jim the elder had been out several hours, but that was not 6 LONDON IDYLLS unusual. When the darkness set in, and he had not returned, however, his wife began to grow uneasy, for he had promised to be back in an hour or two. She had had nothing to eat since the early morning. She heard doors banging below, and wheels in the street, and the shouts of the costers, and she knew what hour it was by the lighting of the street lamps. Suddenly she was conscious of heavy feet upon the stairs, and loud whisperings at the door. Then the door opened, and she made out the figure of a man standing sheepishly on the threshold. Two or three women stood behind him engaged in the task of pushing him forward. " Go on in, and get it done. Bill," murmured a hoarse voice. " You've got to say it, and wot is, is," w&s the next remark, which was undoubtedly philo- sophic. " We've chose you, and you must," the voices murmured in chorus. Thus adjured, the man entered the room, and stood within a yard of the bed. He had a greasy cap in his hand, which appeared also to be soaked with water. He held it out meditatively. " I thought as 'ow you might like to 'ave this 'ere," he said huskily. "Just a relict, you know — a relict of your old man ! " He had accomplished his task, and smiled to JIM AND HIS SOUL J himself at his success. He believed he had been sympathetic. " Wot ! " cried Jim's wife, as she sat up in the bed. " Wot do you say ? " "A relict— just a relict, you know; thought as 'ow you might like to 'ave it," repeated the man. " Oh, get away, you fool, and leave her to me ! " cried a woman's voice. " Your Jim's been drownded, and that's his 'at. That's wot it is, God love ye ! " " Fell inter the dock ! " cried the women in chorus. " They're a-grapplin' for 'im," they added by way of imparting vividness to the picture. " And this 'ere's 'is 'at," said the man again, determined not to be left out. "Thought you might like to 'ave it as a relict." It was thus little Jim's mother knew that Jim was all she had left to her in the world. II When Jim began to grow up he found himself very much alone. His mother went out to work in the early morning, and usually did not come home till late at night. When he was very little, she used to put the fire out before she went, and she left him to amuse himself as he could in the lonely attic. His amusements were strictly limited. 8 LONDON IDYLLS Sometimes he got a piece of lovely black coal and played with it, asking it many questions, till he grew angry because it would not keep up the conversation, and then he threw it away. Some- times he climbed up to the window and watched for hours the smoke curling from an endless wilderness of chimney-pots, and the dirty sparrows twittering and jigging along the gutters of the roof. He tried hard to get them to play with him, but whenever he tapped the window-pane they winked their little beady eyes at him, and hopped further away, with an indignant shake of sooty feathers. Sometimes, in the late winter afternoons, he saw certain small points of light like pinholes in the smoke-haze overhead, but he did not know they were stars. Once the full moon stopped and looked into the window, and then he cried with fright. It was like a great pale face, and, like everything he knew, it was dumb. He liked the gas-lamps better, for he knew that when they were lit his mother would soon come. Thus he lived the day out after his own fashion, and when he was tired he crept into the bed and went to sleep. His only wish was that he might sleep all the time. When he was six years old he took up his abode permanently in the streets. They were his nurseiy, his restaurant, his church, his school, his university. He graduated with honours. He was perfectly happy, because he had no sense of sin or desire JIM AND HIS SOUL 9 for better things to trouble him. He was content with the gutter. He would have enjoyed the husks which the swine do eat, and have quarrelled with the pigs for a larger share. There is very little doubt that the pigs would have come off second best in such a struggle. Likewise he had never heard of God, though he often heard of the devil. Of course he knew the word God well enough, but his notions of its meaning were hazy. The policeman served for a convenient incarnation of both the good and evil principles of the world. When he marched down the street majestic in bright uniform, and was good-humoured, Jim thought that he was God ; when he was surly on wet days, and drove the boys out of the gutter, Jim thought he was the devil, and, indeed, told him so. It made no difference to the policeman what Jim thought, anyway. Their spheres were too far apart. Up to this time it is doubtful if Jim had a soul ; at all events, he was not conscious of it. Then it happened 'lebone. Its history had been curious. Within less than twenty years it had been twice deserted, and twice crowded. When Stephen Clark became its incumbent it was in its second period of desolation. It was possessed of the smallest possible endowment, and it manifestly proclaimed that he who was daring enough to accept its opportunities must succeed or starve. When it was offered to Stephen Clark he spent a week in studying its strategic position. He visited every church within a mile's radius, and ascer- tained that none presented a serious rival. He made careful note of the fact that it was near enough the fashionable quarters to become a fashionable church under careful management Of the slums which were more contiguous to it THE FOOTFALL 261 he took no account ; he persuaded himself that he had already done all that God or man could demand for the poor in a two years' East End curacy, and he had arrived at the opinion that the rich need preaching to as much as the poor. The unshepherded rich ! What a thought ! With no one to tell them their duties, to meet their needs ; was not this a providential sphere for a man of his ability ? Besides, a church that can only be sustained by pew-rents was obviously meant to be a church for those who could pay them. At the end of the week Stephen made up his mind to accept St. Barnabas. By that time he had ascer- tained that his parish contained a large number of wealthy persons, whose addresses were carefully tabulated in his pocket-book. Considering that Stephen had been born in a cottage, and had entered the church by one of those few side-doors which it leaves conveniently ajar for genius nourished in obscurity, he really showed an imperial amplitude of conception in his method of establishing himself at St. Barnabas. His first act was to rent a large and expensive house which was noted in literary and artistic circles as having recently belonged to a celebrated man, who came near being buried in Westminster Abbey. This immediately gave him position and notoriety, which he carefully cultivated by a system of admirably arranged At Homes, at which a great 262 LONDON IDYLLS many interesting persons gathered in order to meet other interesting persons. Naturally the wealthy contingent of his parishioners, who had almost forgotten the existence of St. Barnabas, began to realise that the new incumbent was a social force, and therefore worth cultivation. Doors through which no clergyman had passed for many years were thrown open to him in rapid succession. St. Barnabas was thronged, and Stephen became famous. It was, after all, an easy triumph. Human nature being what it is, and Stephen what he was, there was a mathematical certainty of success from the first. It is at this point that the tragedy of Stephen Clark commences. I offer no opinion upon it, but simply tell the story as it occurred. The only opinion I insist upon is that Clark was no hypocrite, but merely a man with a singular gift of detachment, which enabled him to live vividly in the moment, but rendered him incapable of seeing his life as a whole. Certainly he had no power of measuring the full reach of that hand of Consequence, which smites us most sorely in the least expected hour and often confronts our later yeeirs with the merciless harvest of our earliest Now among other gifts which Clark possessed was an undoubted power of hypnotism. He often declared that the effect of his preaching upon THE FOOTFALL 263 his congregation was really a form of hypnotism, which was true. He certainly could produce some remarkable effects by mere power of will, especially upon those who entertained an affection for him and were often in his company. It happened one warm summer evening in July that he was in the rooms of his friend Dalrymple, when suddenly the subject of hypnotism sprang into discussion. Dalrymple, who was a rising solicitor, with the cautious agnosticism of his class refused altogether to believe in anything of the kind. " Of course there's such a thing as charm, as fascination, as personal magnetism," he said. " We speak of a great man's magnetic presence, and we use a fairly accurate word. A man of strong character ahvays bears a weaker man down by sheer mental mass. But your precious tales of hypnotism — faugh ! One half is fraud and the other half coincidence." " Very well," said Clark, " I will give you a test. We both know Mrs. Severn. I have seen a good deal of her lately, and the other night, for the sake of experiment, she let me partially hypnotise her. Once hypnotised, always hypnotised, you know. Now listen. Neither you nor I have any idea what she is doing at the present moment. She may be dining out, or dressing for the theatre, or doing a hundred other things. At all events, her house is a good half-mile away. I will that 264 LONDON IDYLLS she shall come to me, and I undertake that within half an hour she shall knock at this door." " Wait a bit," said Dalrymple. " Does she know where you are ? " " Certainly not It is a week since I saw her. Mind, I don't want to make this experiment. It's hard on the woman. I rarely use this power, because I am conscious of its peril. Say the word, and I won't go any further.'' " Oh, go on," said Dalrymple. " It can't do any considerable harm, and it seems a tolerably fair test." " Very good," said Clark. The windows were open, and the dusk was falling in a grey film over the garden of the Square. It was very quiet, and a footfall could be heard at a considerable distance. For a quarter of an hour both men sat in a sort of vibrating silence. Dalrymple put his pipe down and drew his chair close to the window-curtain. Clark sat a little back from the window, his face pale and slightly strained, his long thin hands clasped upon his knee. The ticking of the watch that lay upon the table could be distinctly heard. As the ^^'atch marked t^\'enty-three minutes, a sharp footfall, the unmistakable click of a high-heeled shoe, echoed from the farther side of the Square. A minute later a slight figure, with a grey cloak drawn over a white dinner-dress, came along the east side of THE FOOTFALL 265 the Square. There could be no mistake. The high green light from the west reflected in the long line of windows made the least object visible, and both men instantly recognised Mrs. Severn. She came on, passed the door, stood a moment as if irresolute, walked back, and finally rung the bell. " Good heavens ! " cried Dalrymple, " it is she ! What shall we do?" " Nothing," said Clark. " She does not know why she has come, and will probably have some excuse to offer you, which will be confusing to us all. Say you are not at home." A moment later the door closed, and Mrs. Severn glided out into the dusk again. Dalrymple drew a long breath, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "That's quite enough, for one night," he said half angrily. " And look here, I advise you to be careful what you are doing. Once hypnotised, always hypnotised, you know. It would be con- foundedly awkward if your lady friends came to you when they weren't wanted, wouldn't it ? " Clark gave no answer. He only smiled a little ironically at the suggestion, and said " Good- night." The fact was, he himself was a little frightened at the success of his experiment. Now no man can lend himself to an experiment such as this without a certain definite injury to his 266 LONDON IDYLLS nerves. Force, or " virtue," has gone out of him, and for a time he is nervously exhausted. It may have been the reaction from this enormous nervous compulsion which accounted for what now occurred ; at all events, he eagerly snatched at this explanation, and held to it, till other circumstances made it untenable. The night, as I have said, was very still — one of those breathless July nights which stifle the roar of distant streets, and, by way of compensation, give a sharp ring and emphasis to every stir and movement in the grey squares which lie remote from the great arteries of traffic. The slow rubbing together of the leaves in the garden of the Square was audible and irritating. The closing of a door clashed like a report of artillery. The more subdued thunder of the streets at regular intervals seemed to gather itself into one swollen enormous wave, which broke like a falling sea, and left a silence of desolation and suspense. Clark was keenly conscious of all this, for he was in that morbidly sensitive condition when the least impression of the outside world is acute and definite. He stood a moment at Dalrymple's door, and bared his head, and looked up to the sky, which was now a mere grey blur. Then he walked slowly towards the east side of the Square, still holding his hat in his hand. But he had scarcely gone a dozen yards when he heard something that made THE FOOTFALL 267 him quicken his pace. It was the unmistakable click, click, of a woman's high-heeled shoe. He looked back, and saw the outline of a woman's figure sharply etched upon the grey air by the yellow rays that streamed from one of the lighted windows of the Square. Naturally his thoughts went at once to Mrs. Severn, and she was precisely the last person he wished to meet. He was already ashamed of the part he had compelled her to play, and knew that his conduct was unjustifiable. Clearly, if she overtook him now, and insisted on walking with him, as she probably would — for it was easy to suppose that the hypnotic influence was far from spent — it would be a very embarrass- ing position. He at once quickened his pace, and shot out of the Square almost at a run. His house was a good mile away, and was reached by a succession of squares and residential streets as quiet as that which he had left. Through all the footfall followed him. Its rate of progress ■was exactly measured by his own. The eternal click, click, grew portentous. It swallowed up all other sound ; it rang out like a menace, a challenge, on the stillness. He went out of his way, doubling back through squares already traversed, but still the chase went on. The only clear idea he had was, that it would never do to arrive at his own door with Mrs. Severn on his heels ; better walk all night till he had worn her out. His first 268 LONDON IDYLLS ashamed and half-amazed annoyance now began to give way to positive fear. Once hypnotised, always hypnotised. There would be a pretty kettle of fish to cook if his axiom were to work out in this fashion. He tried to bring his will to bear again, but knew at once that he was far too excited and unstrung to do so with any effect. He now actually ran, but he could not outrun the footfall. It came on steadily, relentlessly. The dim London night seemed drained of all other sound save that weariless click, click, of a woman's shoe. It seemed to vibrate and rebound out of the hollow heavens themselves with a maddening iteration. It was now past eleven o'clock, and the chase had gone on for more than an hour. After all it was too ridiculous to spend the night in running up and down London squares. He resolved to go no farther, and see what would happen. He stepped hastily into the shadows, and stood perfectly still. For five minutes — it seemed an hour — the footfall stopped too. Then once more it began, and came nearer. From the shadows where he stood he could command a long stretch of gaslit pavement. As he watched, he saw a slender figure approach, and in that instant the footfall ceased. The figure seemed now to glide along, silently and without effort, as though it were part of the grey air. At last it stopped, THE FOOTFALL 269 precisely opposite the place where he stood. He saw distinctly the long cloak, the white dress, but in the same instant he knew that it was not Mrs. Severn. The white dress — the dark cloak — where had he seen these things before ? What, what was it, that was familiar in that figure ? The height, the grace, the very curve of neck and droop of head, even that strange gliding motion, soft and smooth as the movement of a cloud — far back in some remote chamber of the brain, the palimpsest records of the past were slowly quickening into life, like secret writings made plain by the searchings of fire. Then, with what seemed a calculated slowness, the figure lifted its head, and the gaslight fell upon the face. God ! he knew it. He might well know it. This woman whom he had wronged — here — this sin of a forgotten youth masquerading in the very realm of his success, on the threshold of his home, within a stone's throw of his church — it was too horrible ! He had imagined that an impassable gulf of years lay between him and that ; and there, at the breadth of a street, it stood, distinct, unappeased, invincible. With a cry he turned and fled. This time he ran in tortured earnest, and did not rest till he had put the door of his own house between himself and that dreadful vision of the street. The light was turned low in the hall, and the 270 LONDON IDYLLS house was oppressively quiet. It was midnight, and his young wife had gone to bed. But to his excited brain the quietness was tremulous with sound. The house was an old one, and had many fantastic idiosyncrasies of creaking joists and rafters. Who has not noticed how old houses, in the stillness of midnight, seem to become animate with strange movement, so that it needs little fancy to suppose that ghostly feet are passing in slow procession up and down the dark staircases, and are busy in the void of unused rooms ? Creak, creak, then a snap as of a closed lock, then a sharp rattle of glass, then a silence full of heavy breathing, and the chirp of the cricket mufHed in subterranean depths. Clark had noticed these things many times before when he had sat late at work, and had smiled at them. But now the mystery closed round him like a tide. It overflowed and drowned his senses in horror, and the sweat stood upon his brow. And was it fancy — was it reality — among these common sounds of cracking timbers, and doors gently shaken by mysterious draughts, there was the softened click of a footfall moving down the heavily carpeted stairs ? He could bear it no longer. He dared not climb those darkened stairs. There rushed upon his memory forgotten facts in the history of the house, of which he was aware — the strange life lived there in the earlier days of the last tenant ; the story of a suicide committed THE FOOTFALL 271 by a disappointed politician and broken gambler in one of the upper rooms in the time of the Regency— and he felt that other tenants than those of his own household still stirred beneath the roof Yet the fear was accompanied rather than suggested b)' these thoughts. It was really concentrated in that single haunting footfall, which came momentarily nearer. It clicked upon the stone stairs leading to the kitchens ; it thudded on the thick carpet of the balustraded landings, and it did both at once. It filled the house, as it had seemed to fill the silent street. His heart swelled monstrously, and his scalp began to lift. His breath gurgled in his throat ; he would have shrieked, but could not. He rallied himself, how- ever, and reached his library. Then he locked the door, and flung himself upon a couch, and sank into a sleep which was three parts the stupor of exhaustion. But even in sleep the torture was not ended. He dreamed that he was still pursued — charging down cloven cloud-vallej's, stumbling up enormous cloud- summits; for a moment lost in deep hollows where the mists lay dead and heavy, then emerging on sharp peaks, against whose sides the stars hung, and from which he looked dizzily upon a world that rushed past like a lighted train, with flaring cities and empty wastes of gloom. Through the immense silence of this ghostly cloud-world that 272 LONDON IDYLLS one insistent footfall still beat its way. Upon the moving mists that one pursuing figii-e was painted for an instant ominous and gigantic. He stopped to drink, but the very^ water that had oozed soundlessly from a cloud-crag till he came, began to tinkle as he stooped, and the tinkle of the falling drops frightened him. The very stars, like golden beads strung upon a viewless wire, clicked together, with a hateful vehemence. He sunk through infinite depths, soft and dense as snow ; was lifted by invisible winds to heights that overtopped the very heavens ; but still he heard the pursuer, and at last, upon a jagged peak that rose sheer among the stars, he saw that still grey figure stand, with outstretched hands, and pale face, obdurately claiming him. And at that he woke. It was the Sabbath, and the light was struggling through the closed blinds, and a servant was knocking at the door. With the active stir of day dreams usually recede into the shadows from which they sprung, until we almost dream we never dreamed them. Clark did not indeed forget his dream, but his habitual casuistry soon discovered the means of explaining it and dismissing it. Naturally, he put it all down to his experiment in hypnotism, and the abnormal excitement of the brain which it had set up. Besides, Sunday was his busiest day, and there was little time to think. As the day wore on THE FOOTFALL 273 he completely recovered his spirits. He resolved that nothing should tempt him to any further experiments in hypnotism. He even introduced a passage, and a very effective one, into his evening sermon, on the peril which \\-as involved in meddling with the mysteries of nature out of mere morbid curiosity. Dalrymple, who heard it, smiled sardonically. It did not surprise him, however. Clark had always been almost cynically honest in self-analysis, and in his many conversations with him had displayed his inner thoughts and motives with great freedom. He had once said to him, — "Whenever you hear a preacher vehemently denouncing a \'ice j-ou may be sure he has been guilty of it." " Which is hypocrisy," bluntly answered Dalrymple. " Which is honesty," retorted Clark ; " honesty triumphing over self-interest. The man can't help himself. All that is best and worst swims to the surface in the man who preaches. The strongest sermons against avarice are always preached by the men who know they love money, and despise themselves for doing it; and the most vigorous denunciations of impurity are usually found on the lips of those who fear their own passions, or recollect their own sins." Dalrymple recalled the conversation as he listened 18 274 LONDON IDYLLS to Clark's eloquence that night. For a moment he saw his friend in a new light, and felt for him a genuine sympathy. He guessed dimly what Clark's passionate appeals to men to cast away doubt meant — that he doubted ; what his still more passionate praise of purity implied — that he had been impure. He was a man who had stood in the full tides of life, and had felt their stress. * Perhaps it was this that constituted the real charm of his preaching. It gave it that strange note of passionate reality which moved the hearer in spite of himself But what a price to pay for it — the intimate knowledge of all the sins by which men suffer, not by hearsay, but through some vivid contact with temptation, and perhaps some ruinous defeat of soul ! Well, he would try to think of him with a broader charity in future. He would use his own stolid common-sense as a defence for this sensitive and impressionable nature. As his eyes once more sought the face of the preacher, he seemed to see what he had never observed before, a certain worn look that implied secret conflict. It was perhaps the effect of the lowered lights in the great church, but unmistakably there were purple shadows round the eyes, and the pale intellectual face had a certain wasted look, that was accentuated rather than disguised by the glow and animation of speech. Clark's voice was a remarkable one, full of delicate and unexpected THE FOOTFALL 275 modulations, but it had never affected Dalrymple so strangely as to-night. It vibrated like a cry, and there was a long breath of relief when the sermon closed. Many beside Dalrymple felt that night an uneasy sense of having surreptitiously looked into the secret of a soul. The service was over, and the lights were being rapidly extinguished in the church. Clark had disrobed, and was exchanging a few cheerful words with the verger. The terror of the previous night, if not forgotten, was now finally dismissed. His very allusion to hypnotism in his sermon had had the effect upon him of a recantation, an absolution. It had always been one of his failings to mistake the confession of folly for the reparation of wrong. To own that he was wrong meant with him a sponge passed over the memory, and an instant recovery of his natural buoyancy. Throughout the day, almost unconsciously, he had been thinking over the strange phenomenon of the footfall, until it now appeared perfectly explicable. He had doubtless been a fool to experiment in hypnotism at all, and he had paid the penalty in a bad attack of nerves. It should not happen again. For Dalrymple and Mrs. Severn who had both heard his sermon, the words which he had used were a virtual pledge to that effect. He had already turned to leave the vestry, and his hand was on the door. It was his custom after 276 LONDON IDYLLS a service to pass through the church, for no very defined reason, unless it were an obscure pleasure derived from the contrast between the empty gloom and the crowd and stir that had preceded it. He said " Good-night " to the verger, and stepped into the darkened church, passing down the steps of the chancel towards the middle aisle. And there he stopped with a throb of paralysing fear, for once more he heard the footfall. It was absolutely ridiculous, incredible ; it must be one of the younger vergers moving about in the semi-darkness ; surely he must be ill, and his nerves must be far more badly shaken than he had supposed. He passed his hand over his eyes, and made a strong effort to control himself The throbbing of the blood in his ears for a moment dulled all other sound, and he persuaded himself that the footfall had ceased. He took advantage of the moment to go back to the vestry. Making an excuse that he wanted some forgotten papers, he said to the old verger, in as careless a tone as he could command, — " Oh, Johnson, by the way, will you just go into the church and see if there's anybody there ? Some- times people wait for me in the porch ; in fact, I thought I heard some one just now." The old man shambled off, coming back in a few minutes to say that there was no one. "The church is empty, sir. Even that young Wilkins (the junior verger) have gone 'ome, though THE FOOTFALL 277 he didn't oughter till I give him leave. An', if you'll excuse me, sir, you see we are rather later than usual to-night, an' I'm quite ready to lock up when you are, sir." Clark rose wearily. After all, then, it had been imagination. Brain-fag, probably ; he should be ill if he didn't take care. It would be a good plan to go down to Brighton next morning for a week's change. He passed into the church again, and had almost reached the front door, when suddenly the sharp click of that persistent footfall began once more. It was impossible to say from what direction it came ; it was an eddy of sound, sweeping round walls and roof, rebounding at diverse angles, softened for an instant into remoteness, then sharpened into emphasis, as if close at one's elbow. And was it fancy, was it the work of a brain on the verge of mania ? But surely, there, at the altar, stood a tall grey figure — a woman's figure, with a thin line of white drawn down the sad-coloured cloak, as of a dress, a virginal dress, partially hidden by the sombre cloak. Yes ; he saw it. One light still burned in the chancel, and its slender shaft fell clear upon the altar and the woman. And now the woman knelt before the altar, her head lying on the altar-cloth, her hands spread out, so that they touched the great brass cross, her grey cloak falling round her like a shroud. For a moment, even in the thick of his terror, he managed to think 278 LONDON IDYLLS that perhaps after all it was Mrs. Severn, playing some trick upon him, but the thought perished in its birth. He knew who it was. He knew before the woman rose from that strange obeisance at the altar, and stood with pale face and outstretched hands confronting him across the darkened church. And it was because he knew that he turned and fled, with the big drops upon his brow, and unspeakable terror in his heart. Again, with the morning, there came relief to his misery. He rose wearily, and immediately after breakfast shut himself up in his library. About ten o'clock Dalrymple called. "By George," said he bluntly, "you look bad. Done up, eh ? " He had intended saying something about hypno- tism, but he could not. He had rehearsed one or two nice little flashes of badinage on the way to Clark's house, but the look upon his friend's face silenced him. He was startled by the change in Clark. He looked attenuated, and the purple shadows under the eyes had widened. " I'm always tired out on Monday," said Clark. " I'm thinking of running down to Brighton for a day or two's change.'' "The best thing you can do. This sort of life on the crest of the wave is telling on you." The conversation halted, and flickered out THE FOOTFALL 279 Dalrymple had an uneasy sense that he was intruding. Clark suddenly looked up, however, and began to speak with more animation. It had occurred to him that he might make one more attempt to unravel the mystery that was torturing him. His mind still obstinately clung to the theory that he had been the victim of a trick, or a coincidence. " By the way, Dalrymple, that little affair of Mrs. Severn was distinctly disconcerting, wasn't it ? Was she at church last night ? " " Why, of course. You must have seen her. I walked home with her." Clark sank back in his chair, and the flash of animation died out. His mind rapidly analysed the position. If Dalrymple had walked home with Mrs. Severn it was clear that the figure he had seen at the altar was not hers. Her house was a mile from the church, and even supposing she had come back to play a trick upon him, she could not have done it in the time. He had known from the first that it was a feeble theory ; but even had he been prepared to cling to it never so desperately, Dalrymple's next words destroyed the hope. " 1 went in with the Severns for half an hour, and it's curious, but she was complaining of a strange feel at the back of the brain. Severn laughed at her, and said it was a good thing to get some sort of evid'^nce that one possessed a 28a LONDON IDYLLS brain at all. You know his way. I guessed what it meant. It's the result of your little experiment, I suppose ; and if you'll be advised by me you'll drop that sort of thing altogether.'' " I mean to," he replied. " I'm sorry I ever tried it. For God's sake don't talk about it any more." Dalrymple flushed at the passionate petulance of the speech. " My dear fellow, you've got the nerves, and you've got 'em badly. Go off to Brighton by the one-fifty and get cured. Depend upon it, that's the best thing for you. Good-bye." Brighton — no. This was not the sort of trouble to be cured by a band and a parade, or even the solitude and diapason of the sea. At last he was face to face with himself The past, which for years he had thrust into forgetfulness, had finally struggled into focus. This woman was no picture of the brain. A shadow cast across the brain, as a shape is drawn upon the bosom of a sunlit mist, she might be ; but behind the shadow was the indubitable substance. The whole record of his youth came surging up ; at an invisible signal the curtain rose, and in the theatre of his mind the drama of the past arrayed itself. The actors fell into groups, the stage was set, the play began. Words, gestures, actions — all were familiar. The scenes were the room, with its scattered books THE FOOTFALL 281 and scent of tobacco, where his manhood came to him ; the rookery by the ruined church, black against the sunset light ; the woods all dewy with the spring ; and through all the one supreme figure moved. A girl, fair and vivid with the first hues of womanhood ; a youth, swept away by a passion that filled even sleep with its happiness — these two, always together, lip to lip in the gloaming by the rookery, hand in hand in the green pathways of the woods. And then, as with a clash of diabolic music, the idyll passed into tragedy, and the girl stood alone with wild eyes, and far away, etched against a stormy winter sunset, the man's figure crept away, and disappeared. A sudden impulse moved him to disinter the relics of this emerging past. He left the library, and stole upstairs to a large room which was unfurnished. He shuddered as he entered it, for this, as he well knew, was the room where that suicide of the Regency had met his doom. It was for this reason that the room had not been furnished. It was piled with lumber, old books and locked boxes, the disorganised impedimenta cast aside in the rapid march of life. One small brown painted box caught his eye at once ; it had been made for him by his father when he first left home. An anchor was rudely cut upon the lid — he remembered doing it in the days when he had the boy's itch to be a sailor. In the box were 282 LONDON IDYLLS dusty bundles of paper, old school and college exercises preserved for no intelligible reason, torn books of poetry, a blue belt which he had worn in his first cricketing days. At the bottom of all was a battered mahogany writing-desk, his first con- siderable possession. He unlocked it, and began to turn over the contents. There were letters in clumsy handwriting from his father; he remem- bered that he had been ashamed of them at school. There were letters from his sister ; better written on somewhat more fashionable paper, but full of painful lapses and misspellings. An aroma of home clung about them all the same, a sweet pungency of love and affectionate pride. He saw the cottage where these simple lives had been lived ; the plain deal table on which the clumsy hand of his father had painfully indited these despised epistles. For a moment the pathos of the thought moved him, and he recalled the exul- tation he had felt when that school-box was duly finished, and in the spring dawn he had sat beside it in the carrier's cart which took him on the first considerable stage of his journey into the world. Ah, if he could begin again ; or better still, if he could have remained what his father was, and worked on beside him, and earned at last honour- able rest in that quiet beneath the broad chesnut- tree where his mother had been buried ! At the very bottom of the desk lay a small THE FOOTFALL 2S3 bundle of letters, tied together with a faded ribbon. In the middle of the bundle was a photograph. He drew it out, and looked at it long and earnestly. The white dress, the grey cloak, the oval of the fair face — he remembered how and when it had been taken. On the back was the name of the photo- grapher — SmitJison : Venmouth. Yes ; they had gone to Venmouth that day. It was an October day, about a month after that fatal hour which had poisoned the life of each. It was chill, and an easterly mist moved on the water, and she had worn a cloak. The white dress — ah ! that was her confirmation dress, and she had worn it in his honour. They had not gone together. She had come to see an aunt. And he had met her there. He remembered how he stood waiting for her beneath the low cliffs, and had seen her coming toward him on the sands, with her white dress and grey cloak. The mist came up from the sea, and the place was solitary. They had spoken little, for already his passion had \\'aned, and silence was easier than speech. In the falling light they had walked back together through the quiet town, and he had noticed how her shoe clicked on the asphalt of the parade, and had smiled at the girlish vanity which desired the high-heels of town ladyhood. And that had been almost their last meeting. A week later he had woke to the folly of his position. On the very day that she had 284 LONDON IDYLLS given him the photograph he had made arrange- ments for flight. He slipped the letters and photograph into his pocket, re-locked the desk, and left the room. His courage began to come back in faint pulses. His actual contact with the past through these faded memorials of it had done something to scatter the cloud that lay upon his brain. They had at least assured him that they belonged to a life closed twenty years ago. If she still lived, it was not likely that she would again cross his path ; every year lessened the probability. If she were dead — but the suggestion was too absurd. Yet Once more the horror seized him. He had passed down the stairs, he stood in the hall, and the July light filled the house. What was happen- ing now was no trick of darkness and of midnight. In the dra^A'ing-room he could hear some early caller talking with his wife ; in the kitchen he could hear the movements of the servants. But high on the upper landing he heard also the door of the room which he had just left opened quietly and closed again. He heard the footfall cross the landing, and begin to descend the stairs. On the square of parquet outside the doors of the small conservatory which was built dbove the porch he heard it click and pass. He drew a long stifling sigh, and waited, knowing what he would see ! Ah ! — there it stood, that same grey figure, the figure THE FOOTFALL 285 pictured on her photograph which he had slipped into his pocket, and against which his heart now beat. It stood there on the turn of the stairs, and beckoned. It seemed suddenly to have emerged out of a mist, as it had done that day upon the sands at Venmouth, and the cloak itself was a wavering stain of mist, through which there shone the whiteness of a girl's confirmation dress. The lips were parted, as if to speak ; the eyes were infinitely sad. So it stood an instant, and beckoned ; then once more moved up the stairs, the footfall dying away slowly, and ceasing as the door of the suicide-chamber closed with a sharp report. And yet the July sunlight lay upon the stairs all the time, and the dust-motes twinkled in it, and the smell of freshly watered flowers was blown down the stairs from the open doors of the small con- servatory above the porch. There are hours in a man's life when not merely his mental attitudes undergo rapid transformation, but when the whole structure of his moral nature suffers startling change. It is as though a long submerged city rose again from the depths, and the waters flowed away, leaving spires and walls clear and distinct in the light of day. Such a shock passed through Stephen Clark. For twenty years he had lived a false life ; he had covered up the past under waters of forgetfulness ; at a word they flowed away, and left him face to face with himself. 286 LONDON IDYLLS He went quietly back to his library. For a long time he sat absolutely still. His whole life began to march before him. What a spectral army of days, and hours, and deeds, enfilading in endless columns, coming with the sound of beating feet out the abyss of Time, presenting arms to him, their master, and dwindling off again into the infinite perspective of the future. It was like the farewell of an army to its General — a last review at the end of a campaign. An overwhelming weariness pos- sessed him. All that he had struggled for, all that he had gained, seemed absolutely worthless. The conviction grew upon him that his life was over. The zest and piquancy of living, by which alone he could contrive to live, were gone. The rupture in his life was complete ; he seemed to see the very blood of life draining away, and lying in crimson confusion at his feet Preach again? It was an intolerable thought. He could face his fellow-men no more. He was cis one already dead, to whom the outer world has neither attraction nor signifi- cance. He would simply drop out of life. Men did it every day, prosperous men and seemingly happy men, compelled by some secret urgency, some mystery of inexplicable fear, to relinquish in a moment all that they had lived for, and turn their faces to the great darkness. Ah ! now he under- stood these things ; these strange disappearances and causeless self-murders with which the papers THE FOOTFALL 287 teemed. They were caused by sudden ruptures of the life, by terrors such as his, by sins like his, too. A certain calmness came upon him. He even smiled to think how curious it was that a man should rise in the morning with all his life before him, and his interest in the world strong and vivid, and yet know at noon that he would die before night. He made no attempt to disguise the naked- ness of the thought. He had no defined purpose in his mind ; he was merely conscious that a web of doom was closing round him, and that the last thread would soon be shot home. About one o'clock his wife came to him. She was about to pay a long-deferred visit to some friends in a distant suburb, and would not return until the next morning. She looked bright and charming in her summer costume, and for a moment his eye withdrew itself from the dark world within, to notice it. But already his sense of earthly things was dead. She was no more to him than a bright cloud swimming past, high in the firmament. She passed into the room, passed out again, with a touch of caress, a little shower of laughter and light words, and was gone. It never occurred to him that he had seen her for the last time. He ate his lunch, and wandered out aimlessly into the sunny streets. He drifted from point to point without volition ; strolled into Christie's, and 288 LONDON IDYLLS examined a reputed Rubens with careful eye ; turned over a pile of new books in a Piccadilly bookseller's ; stared at the portraits of celebrities in a shop-window, and found himself confronted with his own face ; drifted down to Chelsea, and stood watching the flow of the brown river, and the confusion of form and colour in the long array of wharves and crowded gables. It was all insub- stantial as a picture painted on the clouds. The crowd streamed past him vaguely like a mist peopled with faces. The very sounds of all this multitudinous life left no impression on the ear ; it was an endless march of spectres in a city of the dead. Hours passed, but still he drifted up and down the streets. A saffron sunset hung long over the trees of the Park, and burned upon the mirror- ing windows, and made the Serpentine a shimmer- ing plaque of gold. Beggars passed him, and he dropped coins into their hands ; the harpy daughters of the pavement, and he smiled sadly on them. He sat with sleeping out-o'-works in Trafalgar Square, and saw the great light flash upon the Tower at Westminster. It was not until the deep boom of Big Ben reported midnight, and the light went out upon the clock-tower, that he turned homeward. He let himself in with his latch-key, and went straight to the library. The house was very still, and the servants had gone to bed. THE FOOTFALL 289 From his pocket he took the photograph and the bundle of letters. He untied the ribbon, and began to read the letters slowly. As each was read he sighed, and dropped it into the grate. Last of all he added the photograph to the pile of letters, and set all burning. The flame shot up clear and ruddy, words and letters stood out red for a moment, then all fell into quiet ashes. He rose, opened the door wide, turned out the light, and waited. The darkness rushed in like an obliterating tide. Still he waited, breathing fast, with his hand upon his heart. He knew that it must come, that once more that pursuing shape would meet him, and only once. At last the signal sounded. Far up, in the gloom of the silent house, he heard a door open, and a footfall on the stairs. He stood in the doorway of the library, waiting. Nearer came the sound ; then, out of the darkness a grey shape grew, a mere shadow, yet distinct, as though fringed with soft light. It stood at the exact point where it had stood in the morning sunlight, and beckoned. He followed slowly drawn by a compulsion out of which all mere human terror had passed. His heart, from rapid beating, was sinking into deadly quiet; his breath came in long diiificult sighs. Up, up, to the suicide- chamber, moved the shadow and the man. They passed in together, and the door closed with a click. Complete silence fell upon the house, and 19 290 LONDON IDYLLS even the cricket on the kitchen hearth was dumb. And not only silence, but coldness filled the house, a deadly chill that oozed beneath the door of that disused chamber, and crept subtly into every room, and grew slowly into an odour of corruption and mortality. For in that room Stephen Clark, late incumbent of St. Barnabas, lay dead, his shoulders propped against the old school-box which his father had made for him thirty years before, when he took his first journey on the highway of ambition. SISTER LYDIA 291 The cause of the Peoples I serve To-day in impatience and sorrow^ Once more is defeated — and yet 'Twill be won — the day after To-morrow, And for me, with spirit elate The mire and the fog I press thorough, For Heaven shines under the cloud Of the day that is after To-morrow, 292 SISTER LYDIA I T^^HEN Lydia Grey married, all her friends * » were agreed that she had thrown herself away. She had been elaborately educated, had more than an amateur's interest in science, and was a musician of remarkably fine technique and inspiration. Her rendering of Chopin was specially memorable, which was not surprising, since her mother had been a friend of Chopin's in his last years, and had made his name pathetically sacred to Lydia by her description of the hectic, dark- eyed, sensitive poet-musician, to whom she had rendered many acts of kindness, such as his proud spirit permitted, in the evening of his brief life. Lydia had grown up in the very atmosphere of culture. An air of refinement, remote and subtle, had lain upon her life from its earliest days. She had grown up in a wide still house, where every room witnessed of fine taste — a house in which the wash of the great waves of the world was scarcely 293 294 LONDON IDYLLS audible, or, if heard at all, was only heard in soft and distant diapason, as of an unseen sea. The house stood on the outskirts of Winchester, not far from the pleasant road that led to the quiet almshouses of St. Faith's, and the green downs over which a footpath ran to Hursley — Keble's Hursley. It was an old Queen Anne house of red brick, with low panelled hall, and spacious rooms ; broad lawns lay round it, with here a clump of beech-trees, here a group of Scotch firs, and near the entrance-porch a stately cedar. One could not pass the lodge-gates without being conscious of that exquisite stillness which seemed as much a part of the domain as the Scotch firs and the cedar. The very atmosphere seemed untroubled by those rougher winds which blew across the downs and shook the elms which guarded the busy road leading to St. Faith's. High in air, but soft and mellow, throbbed the music of cathedral bells — a subtle melody which seemed to drop from the white clouds which moved in slow processions to the Hursley downs ; and thrushes answered from the leafy beeches, and a little trout stream, rippling over a chalk bed, replied also from the sloping paddock beyond the lawns. It was a place to dream in, a spot of virginal freshness, where an imaginative girl might absorb the finest influences of the world, and reproduce them in a nature of unusual depth and SISTER LYDIA 295 calmness. Nothing happened there. The very wheels of time were muffled on the velvet sward, and left no trace. Once, in twenty years, there had been a change of gardeners ; now and then a stable-boy sought another place. These were the events which alone called forth a ripple in the uritroken serenity of years. The household servants were unlike those of any other household in the neighbourhood. Perhaps they also had absorbed some subtle essence of the prevailing calm, and had not been wholly insensible to those finer influences which infect the air of a house where every room has its array of books, its cabinet of precious china, its rare print, or its costlier picture. They moved with precision, sedateness, soft-shod as though with wool. They were parts of a perfect mechanism, whose action was timed to the fraction of a second. They had come to the house in some remote past as girls, and had never wished to leave it. In them the servant's natural desire for inde- pendence had been subdued and finally obliterated. A curious eye would have noticed in them some- thing of the nun's quietness of demeanour, a touch of common likeness, the serene, methodic air of those who are separated from the world, and no longer feel or desire its evil perturbations or unquiet vanities. In this house Lydia Grey passed the bright and 296 LONDON IDYLLS full hours of a studious girlhood. She received the best instruction which wealth and wise discrimina- tion could contrive, and proved worthy of it. She read much, was the delighted comrade of her father in his art-studies, and was more than amateur in her handling of the microscope. But it was in music that she found the highest expression of herself, or rather, something that answered best to that secret self which waited for expression. She could not have told exactly what music was to her — can any one ? — but she knew that the vague dissatisfactions of her soul found relief in it, and, in a way, a form of utterance. A delightful shudder ran through her when her fingers struck out the first slow chords of some fantasy of Chopin's or some fantastic dance of Greig's ; and, in certain moods, Greig spoke with a still more intimate voice to her imagination than even Chopin. In such moments her eyes widened and darkened with emotion, and her bosom ached with the sti'ess of feelings alike intense and unformulated. When she came back to her normal serenity of nature she remembered these intense moments with a kind of shy rapture. It was as though a life had quickened in her heart, of which she was both glad and afraid. It was hateful to be discontented, she told herself ; so she passed her hand hastily over her young eager eyes, as if to shut out illicit visions, and betook herself to the fresh air and the green SISTER LYDIA 297 downs, or found comfort in the kind, tranquil face of her mother, with its touch of fine distinction, its softness of age and of passions long since resolved into rest. What was it that the music made her want ? What was the meaning of this innermost stirring of spirit which it begot in her ? She could not tell ; but she felt, although with all the vague- ness of inexperience, that in some way it was her link with that large world of human sorrows and passions of which she knew nothing. She lived in a little sheltered valley ; music was the voice of the world, that came crying over the mountains, a voice heard in the still weather of the soul, whole- somely dissonant, and full of strange alarm and thrilling presage. As she passed into womanhood more than one suitor made timorous advances, but quite in vain. She was not beautiful, but she had the rarer element of charm, which is so much more than beauty, and certainly has more power to stir and trouble the masculine heart Young officers from the barracks sought introduction to her, and obtained it, and were puzzled what to do next. She did not even meet them halfway in their stammering attempts at conversation, and her silence was deeply discomfiting. She had no small talk, they com- plained, and this was true. They tugged their mous- taches, and exhausted every topic of conversation they could think of, but they got little but mono- 298 LONDON IDYLLS syllables for their pains. Young clergymen, with indefinite prospects and extravagant hopes, got on a little better with her, but not much. They could talk of books, of art, of music indeed ; but mostly in a rudimentary sort of way, and with little real enthusiasm. They suffered from that constriction of brain which afflicts the priest, and which is almost more obvious in the budding curate than the middle-aged rector. There were other direc- tions in which she might have chosen. John Trevor, for example, was as fine a specimen of the landed gentleman with a slowly disappearing flavour of Oxford in his mind as one could wish to see ; but the truth was she had no wish to choose. Nor did her parents urge her to do so. They were content that she should wait until her heart gave full consent, and her grace and charm were of a nature on which years inflict little change or injury. So it happened that she drew near her twenty-fifth birthday, and was still Miss Lydia Grey of the Red House. The officers had ceased from troubling, and the curates were at rest. A tradition, founded on sorrowful conviction, had passed from one to the other, that she disdained men, was a charming prig, and would never marry. Then there happened that inexplicable thing — her engagement to Herbert Tinling. The news was buzzed over Winchester that Lydia Grey was about to marry a man of no family, of no means, SISTEJi LYDIA 299 and of most uncertain expectations. The general feeling, especially among the officers and curates, was that it served her right, and was a just punish- ment for her contumacy in the face of infinite golden opportunities. The curates were somewhat consoled, however, by another piece of news which followed hard upon the first — ^viz., that old Mr. Grey had suffered serious financial reverses, and that it was even questionable whether the Red House would not have to be sold. Her feminine critics said \\'ith suave malice that no doubt her engagement was the direct result of her father's altered position. Twenty-five with a fortune of twenty- thousand pounds may do as it likes, but twenty-five with nothing must do as it can. No doubt she regretted now that she had not made hay while the sun shone, and her frightful fate afforded a fresh and even vehement stimulus to the exertions of a considerable section of the fast- aging spinsterhood of Winchester to secure John Trevor while it was called to-day. Besides, who was this Herbert Tinling? Report said he had once been a curate, and was now a Socialist. At the latter word a shudder ran through the still air of the Cathedral close, and its vibration was felt for at least a month in a score or two of drawing- rooms sacred to stagnant respectability. She might as well have married a grocer ; better, in fact, if he had been a grocer of sound Church principles and 30O LONDON IDYLLS decent politics. One of the curates also professed to recollect some unauthenticated story of Tinling having been rusticated for misdemeanours in his college days, and this fluent cad became quite popular for a week as the vendor of a piece of piquant scandal. It was somewhat remarkable that he was a curate who had never been to either University ; but still, as the Dean's wife observed, no doubt he had means of knowing the truth, which he could reveal if he would. At all events, there was strong presumptive evidence that any person who was a Socialist must have done many things deserving rustication, or worse, and feminine logic required no further argument. And Lydia Grey was about to marry a Socialist ! Nor was this all. It was further rumoured that she and her lover were pledged to some species of wild social experiment, and actually meant to live among the poor ! Altogether her misdemeanour was of a gravity quite beyond pity. II Herbert Tinling was not an altogether pre- possessing youth, but he had a certain bright eagerness of manner and a gift of picturesque speech which made him noticeable. He had fought his way to Oxford from a London Board School, and had had a creditable, if not brilliant university SISTER LYDIA 301 career, the story of his rustication being, of course, a pure invention. He had taken orders, had held a curacy in the East End of London for a few months, had joined the Fabian Society, had harangued the dockers in the great strike, and having thus made his relations with his rector as unpleasant as possible, had finally decided to " throw up " the Church, as he termed it. An intimate student of Tinling's life would have remarked that this was not the first career he had " thrown up.'' He had, at various times, written poems and essays with the hope of literary fame ; he had been for a few months on the staff of a newspaper, and had for nearly a year studied architecture with a view to a profession ; each of which occupations had been suddenly relinquished, on a conviction that success in either was more difficult than he had imagined. Versatility of mind no doubt gives a pleasant piquancy to life, but its pleasures are perilous. Tinling had enjoyed the pleasures, and had been quite insensible to the perils. He had the feeling that there were very few things which he could not do if he tried, and he intended one day to try. He was fond of mapping out his life in contradictory segments- five years for art, five for the production of poetry, ten for the writing of a series of great novels ; then, perhaps. Parliament, with the rapid rise which is ensured to the real expert in life, and 302 LONDON IDYLLS as a final reward the labours and dignity of the Treasury bench. There was nothing, he told himself, impossible to the able man in days like ours. The only question was to what pursuit such a man could most profitably apply his abilities. This was an anxious question, and could only be really answered by a series of exhaustive experiments on life itself. He was now thirty ; and ever since he was eighteen he had been con- ducting his experiments on life. Upon the whole, it had been a delightful process. From such a description it might be assumed that Tinling was a mere priggish egoist ; but this would not be true. Most youths of versatile and eager minds have dreams such as these, although they rarely confess them. Tinling's egoism was of that vivid and buoyant variety which is purely charming, and was too frank and boyish to be priggish. Besides, it was sustained by really great ability ; and any man who had met him for a few hours, when the stream of his talk ran brightest, would have said that he would go far, and be widely heard of some day. His conversion to socialism had been wholly sincere. It did not alter the fact of his sincerity that he also thought that he saw in socialism the force of the future. He congratulated himself that his convictions had led him to what he judged the winning side ; but if his reason had convinced him that it was the SISTER LYDIA 303 side of the forlorn hope, he would still have taken it. Perhaps the real attraction of socialism was that it excited him. It painted on the clouds enormous and thrilling visions. It touched his imagination and his sympathies. It was the poem of action, the only propaganda of modern times in \\hich poetry joined hands with practical life. At first it was the mere originality of Tinling's character that had been attractive to Lydia Grey, and had excited her attention. Compared with John Trevor, or the young officers and curates of her acquaintance, he was what a vivid sketch in oils is to a dull and much stippled pencil drawing. Yes, he was vivid, she told herself, vehemently alive in all his motions, all his thoughts. Other people sav/ in him simply a spare youth, careless and even slightly eccentric in his dress, with a face almost ugly in its strength of feature, and redeemed only by a pair of singularly dark and eager eyes. Lydia saw in him the only live man she had ever met. He had no automatic drawing-room talk, could speak without tugging a moustache and haw-haw-ing, and above all was a citizen of a large world of ideas and emotions. He excited her much as Greig's music did ; he was in truth the voice of that great music she had heard calling to her from the world which lay beyond the quiet Eden of her sweet and reticent girlhood. When he spoke something 304 LONDON IDYLLS vibrated in her ; and in her heart that unborn life of which she had so long been shyly conscious began to stir. Tinling had come to Winchester in connection with some social inquiries he was pursuing, and had met Lydia in the course of certain charitable activities among the poor, to which she devoted two afternoons a week. Toward anybody else, under similar circumstances, she would have manifested reserve and indifference, but before she had time to be upon her guard Tinling had broken down her defences, and engaged her in conversa- tion. The first assault gained, the rest was comparatively easy. With no appearance of intention on his part, he was constantly in her way, and she could not have avoided him, even had she wished. He instructed her in the glowing programmes of the Fabian Society, and found her an apt disciple. They met, by deliberate accident, at the afternoon services in the Cathedral, and lingered in the shadowy aisles, lost in eager talk. Had they purposely sought the best possible place for love-making, they could not have chosen better. It was so easy to be found in interested admiration of this or that monument, and so natural, and interruption by any one who knew them so nearly impossible. Those devoted elderly ladies who frequented the Evensong had little interest in the monumental glories of the place, and marched in SISTER LYDIA 305 and out of the Cathedral with the precision of a file of soldiers. At the back of the choir were deep sanctuaries of quietness and shadow, rarely invaded save by the shuffling feet of the vergers or some country visitor ; and here they met and talked. Was there something in the very quietness of the place that helped the birth of love, that gave these illicit meetings a touch of sanctity, of spiritual justification .' Perhaps so. It is certain that Lydia in these delicious hours was blind to any suggestion of the irregular, the surreptitious. When, one afternoon, Tinling gently drew her face to his, and kissed her, she made no resistance, and felt none. She was conscious only of a sacred glow of heart, a subtle gladness that diffused itself through all her blood. She asked for no words of love, nor did he offer them. She timidly put out her hand to find his, and so they sat for many minutes in that exquisite silence which is the true speech of the soul. She dared not look at him. She sat with her fair head gently drooped and averted, while he held her hand, and each could hear the deep breathing of the other. When they rose at length, and sought each other's eyes, each perceived the pallor of the other, that rare pallor of intense emotion which is known but once or twice in a hfetime. Through the long nave there throbbed slowly the last music of the organ— a slow and solemn music, which seemed fashioned 20 3o6 LONDON IDYLLS for the celebration of such invisible nuptials as theirs. In the after years of life that dying rapture of heavenly harmony often came back to her soul, and was to her restraint and impulse. She never forgot when the wine of life was soured and spilt that once it had been sacramental, and had been drunk from a celestial chalice. It would have been quite natural if her parents had opposed her marriage with Tinling, but they had never been of the world worldly ; and it had been a maxim with them for many years that no restraint should be put on Lydia's choice. There were reasons in their own lives for this decision. Each had known that wearing agony of conflict with parents, which is so often the bitter pre- liminary of a love-marriage. And in their case there had been ample justification in thirty years of the happiest wedded life. Her mother sighed in secret over her child's choice, and wished it had been different ; but no trace of any such feeling appeared either in her words or manner. Once only, when the knowledge of their altered means was fresh, did she venture to discuss with Lydia the worldly aspects of the approaching marriage. " We shall not be able to do what we had hoped," she said. " Things may mend ultimately, but for a few years it will be all that we can do to make ends meet, if we are to go on living here. SISTER LYDIA 307 I fear that you will be poor, very poor, my darling." " I am not afraid of poverty," she replied proudly. " Indeed, I am tired of comfort. Life has been made so very easy and luxurious for me for so long, that it is only right I should know something of its sterner side." "Small rooms, plain dresses, perhaps scanty meals," smiled her mother, through her tears. " It grieves me to picture you thus." The girl knelt at her mother's side, and taking her soft wrinkled hands in her own, kissed them gently. " Mother, dear," she said, " you and I have never lived for dress and dinners, have we ? We have had other pleasures, and I shall have them still. There will be my music, my books, my thoughts — and," she added in a whisper, " my love. Besides, Herbert has taught me what a joy it is to turn my thoughts away from myself to the service of others. I have always felt that my life has been too self-centred. I have always wanted something to do — something real and earnest, that does not find its end in mere self- culture. I have never yet fulfilled myself; I have always felt myself an outsider, only looking at life, but not a part of it. Isn't poverty a cheap price to pay for being a part of life itself, a real element in the growth and stress of things ? " 3o8 LONDON IDYLLS The mother softly withdrew her hands from her child's lips, and began to pass them over the fair head that lay on her lap. " Yes, dear," she said slowly, " to live is the great thing. I used to feel as you feel, that I wanted to express myself in some definite action, and sometimes I have told myself that I have been mistaken in making self-culture the end of life, instead of the means of helping others to live better. But we women are so rarely fitted for real action. We can enjoy art and music, but cannot create them. We can absorb the influences that make life beautiful, but cannot impart them — on any large scale, I mean. So the end is that we are content to make one house in the world perfect, and that is our own. . . . What I fear is, that when you know the reality of what it is to live in a small London house on small means, you may suffer more than you suppose, more than you will dare confess, and then I shall be unhappy indeed." She did not express another thought that moved in her mind, like a painful pulse — a fear that Tinling had not that constancy of soul which guaranteed a perfectly adjusted life under difficult conditions. She did not agree with his social views, and she thought she perceived that in him ambition — personal and restless ambition— was the really dominant motive. She had felt the charm SISTER LYDIA 309 of his vivid force, and had known a pleasure in his conversation which she had not felt since those distant years when she was the friend of Chopin. He had conquered her by the charm of his mind, as he had conquered others, but her heart stub- bornly doubted him. The doubt was instinctive rather than reasoned, which is always the most stubborn form of doubt. She hesitated, and then said tremulously, as if stating a conviction that was alien to her, — " But you will have Herbert, dear, and no doubt all will be well." " Of course I shall," the daughter replied with a quick inflexion of gladness in her voice, and the mother could not resist that confident note of love. She would have liked to express her fears, but she hesitated, and while she hesitated the moment passed, and never came again. She reflected that after all it was best to be silent. She could do no good by speaking. Things had gone too far for revocation, and one could only trust for the issue. So it came about that in the close of October Lydia Grey was married, and the second week in November found her the mistress of a small house — one in a terrace of twenty, within a mile of the " Angel," Islington. 310 LONDON IDYLLS III How strange was that world in which Lydia Grey found herself! how phantasmagoric the rapid and enormous unfolding of visions never dreamed of in that old surrendered life of uneventful peace ! This world beyond the mountains, this infinite clanging turbulence of vast elements, and rushing of thick turbid streams of life, and throbbing of innumerable bugle-calls over an immeasurable field of battle, the sky itself but a grey echoing dome multiplying the universal terrestrial uproar— con- ceive how it would all strike upon the ear and eye of a girl bred in country air, and nourished on rural quiet ! Up and down a vast chromatic scale ran the great Niagara-music of this multitudinous life, and the very earth seemed to vibrate with the tremor. It was an astonishment, a pain to her, at first, to find that here, even behind closed doors, entire quietness was impossible. The doors shook, the floors vibrated, the china jarred with this seis- mic uproar of man's invention. Nay, the very beds trembled, so that it were easy to imagine that an Atlantic throbbed beneath them, and the houses were but so many tall ships shaken on the heave of monstrous seas. It is curious to note how rapidly and completely London absorbs the newcomer. At first it ex- hilarates, then it revolts, then it mingles exhilara- SISTER LYDIA 311 tion and revulsion ; lastly, it proceeds elaborately to deaden natural instincts, to force truant feet into the time-step which it ordains, until in a few months the newcomer has become part of the great machine, and the thoughts themselves are no longer truant. The horizon of grey crowded roofs — yes, no doubt we once saw the horizon like an azure sword's edge glittering along the sea — but this is better. And what to us henceforth are New Forests, rolling downs, smooth rivers glassing poplared meads ? We have the parks, and infinite vistas of life from the garden-seats of penny 'buses, and the Thames in which red sails, and tall masts, and a whole Babylon hangs reflected ; or, if it be not precisely reflected in that turbid mirror, it at least stands watching — tower, and dome, and palace, and monument, and warehouse, like giants, with fingers laid upon the lip, watching, always watch- ing the drift of things toward the ocean of eternity. And dimness, and mystery, and glamour hover in the enchanted streets ; and just at a stride beyond the crowded courses where these rivers of human life rush turbulent, are quiet eyots where two centuries have altered nothing ; and the centuries themselves go marching in ghostly panoplies and processions from St. Paul's to Westminster, so that on moonlit midnights the instructed eye can dis- cern steel-clad Crusaders in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross, and Roundheads at Whitehall, and 312 LONDON IDYLLS perhaps the black shadow of that scaffold outside the Banqueting-hall where the axe rang with the note of a new history. And there are red sunsets, and strange glories of light and shadow on the dome of Wren, and pathos and splendour in the humblest street — all of which Lydia felt ; and straightway forgetting the Hursley downs and the beautiful quiet of Winchester, where all things were asleep, became a Londoner without a pang. Lydia felt all this — for the first month, let us say ; and that first month in London was pure delight. The great social experiment had not yet begun, and Herbert seemed in no hurry to begin it. She knew vaguely what his plan of action was — that they should live among the poor, and set a type of finer manners which would no doubt be widely copied, and teach working-men the ethics of a peaceful revolution, and shed a dew of general kindness on sterile lives ; and hence the small house, one in a terrace of twenty, not far from the " Angel," Islington. But, for the first month, life was too full of exquisite sensation to spare time for the study of social problems. So they went hither and thither on the democratic 'bus, but balanced matters by extremely aristocratic little lunches at the Caf6 Monico ; and for a son of the people, and a prophet with a message of high thinking and plain living, Mr. Herbert Tinling showed a SISTER LYDIA 313 really remarkable knowledge of those epicurean resorts where luxury is to be found at its ripest and at a corresponding price. And there were theatres and music, and after the theatre still more delightful visits to the Caf6 Monico, followed by the delicious movement of a hansom, swinging through the deserted streets to the " Angel," Islington. And on those after-midnight journeys they would hold each other's hands, and wonder if there were any two people in the world so perilously happy. And, above all, there were little dinners at home on wet evenings, when Herbert laid the table himself, and produced from an old oak cabinet certain rare glass, for which he had a passion, and quaint silver which he had picked up for a song. So that they had a far prettier table than the Caf6 Monico could afford them, and a meal quite as dainty and much better flavoured. For it seemed that among the new social ethics of Mr. Herbert Tinling was the consoling doctrine that daintiness and beauty should have no quarrel with poverty ; that because }'ou live in a poor street it is no reason why you should eat a poor dinner in a shabby room ; that, in fact, there is a double reason why you should cultivate loveliness of environment, since you yourself need it to pre- serve you from the sordid pressure of the general meanness ; and, moreover, the unhappy victims of SM LONDON IDYLLS the said general meanness, seeing your elegant foot- prints on the sands of time, may take heart again, and feel the animating pain of your superiority — which is a well-known doctrine of the poets. And Lydia, being very innocent and deeply in love, laughed gaily, and thought that if this were poverty, what a pleasant thing it was to be poor, and how little her mother need have dreaded it. Why, after all, this little room, with its warm paper (Herbert had papered it) and its fine prints, and its charming oak mantel ingeniously fashioned of quaint carvings which Herbert had collected, was as pretty as any room in the Red House itself; and when the man next door wasn't en- gaged in throwing his wife against the party-wall (a circumstance which accounted for divers alarm- ing noises, the reason of which Lydia never suspected) it was quite possible to forget that the house was after all rented at ;^22 per annum, and was one in a terrace of twenty. Altogether, poverty seemed a most delightful invention of Providence, and Lydia no longer wondered that Herbert was in love with it. That first month in London always stood out in Lydia's memory with sharp vividness of outline. It had, in after years, the pathos and the sweetness of a remembered lost delight, and was like the picture of some rich sunset which hangs in the innermost chamber of the imagination, to which SISTER LYDIA 315 we turn with stilled hearts when we are weary, finding a strange joy in assuring ourselves how joyous we once were, in that recollected hour of the fair and fortunate past. But it was not till some six months after her marriage that the light of this enchanted London quite faded out, and the hard grey light of the real London fell upon her heart. It came one morning, just as the veritable grey dawn began to fill the room. She heard half a mile away the hoot of the steam-whistle at a great factory, proclaiming for some four hundred men and women the advent of another laborious day, and there was banging of doors in the street, and the loud scuffle of feet passing on the run. It had been one of those sleepless nights when all the sounds of the streets had filled her ears and beaten on her senses with maddening insistence. How well she knew those sounds ! At half-past twelve the passing of the last tram, and then for another hour the clamant rattle of hansoms, each with its strayed reveller ; and then the water-carts drawn up at the neigh- bouring hydrant, with the stamping of horses, and the bumping of wheels, and woa-^\'oa-ing of men ; and the policemen, who seemed shod in shoes of iron ; and the shrieks at the corner where the gin- shop \\as, and the stealthy trot past of thief or assassin beneath the window, breathing stertorously 3i6 LONDON IDYLLS as he ran ; and tipsy songs and yells of animal madness in the distance ; and then, for just half an hour, a silence so deep that you could almost hear it breathe like a living thing against the walls ; and then the distant crash and roar of huge lorries and laden market-carts, coming nearer, and passing in a thunderous crescendo which shook the house ; nd more lorries and more market- carts, an infinite procession, coming faster and thicker each instant, as though all the warehouses and granaries of the world were marching bodily on London in a vast unwieldy host ; and then at last the hooting of the steam-whistle, and the grey dawn. Suddenly the meaning of it all rushed upon her mind — the immense labour of this immense city! The labour, and the poverty, the fierce stampede for bread, and the sorrow and the agony of it all ! This millionfold revolution of wheels, a vision beyond all imagination ; cab-wheels, lorry-wheels, engine-wheels, carriage-wheels, factory-wheels — spinning, whirling, flashing in a stellar system built of steel and brass ; rolling endlessly down street and bycway, dulled on wood pavements, vibrant on smooth asphalt, crashing heavily on slippery stone and mud — a thousand-templed car of Juggernaut reared high as heaven, with some perched smiling in golden niches, who clapped their hands and swore that life was good, and SISTER LYDIA 317 many more pounded into human mire beneath the wheels, who knew not the shining of the sun, and cursed God as they died, because life was very evil. This was London — the real London — an abyss, a maelstrom of unimaginable toil. On these few square miles of earth all the volcanic energies of man found vent. A volcano — yes, with every atom of earth, each particle of air, for ever trembling in violent percussion ; and the flame of it filling the heavens like a Hekla, and the nations watching the age-long terrific splendour and combustion in amaze. Well for those — nay, for ever ill for those who saw it only with the aesthetic eye, keen to recognise the splendour. Was it not a flame for ever fed with the bodies and the souls of men ? And at that Lydia shuddered, and the grey dawn filled her soul with fear. Her thought paused a long time on these visions, because she instinctively knew what her next thought would be. She would have given worlds to avoid that next thought, but she knew it to be inevitable. At last it came, like a whisper in the mind, but more distinct and alarming than a voice of thunder. Did he — the man she loved — did he really feel these things ? Six months had passed, and the great social experiment had borne no fruit ; indeed, it seemed not to have begun. He had written much, had spoken much, had been much at the National Liberal Club, but had never 3i8 LONDON IDYLLS once come into real contact with this dingy crowd of workers at his very door. And the little dinners had gone on every night — nothing luxurious indeed, but all elegant, delicately served, as in a palace. Many things began silently to piece themselves together as she lay quite still and thought. During those long absences of his at the Club she had been diligent in exploring her environment. She had found out the causes of those alarming noises on the party-wall, and had stepped like an angry angel one day between the woman who stood panting with the blood pouring from her mouth, and the brute husband who had struck her. She had made jellies for another many-childed woman in the street, whose history was punctuated by her family misfortunes — as for instance that the spring of '85 was the spring of the scarlet-fever, and the winter of '84 the winter of her man's broken leg. But when she had reported these acts to her husband, he had not seemed over-pleased. He had not been able to understand the feeling that made it impossible for her to eat that delicate little dinner because the thought of the horrors of starvation which she had witnessed in the morning choked her. Nor could he sympathise with the strange notion which had begun to possess her, that the pretty dining-room with its fine prints and warm colouring was a sort of insult to the tragic sordidness of the street, something that SISTER LYDIA 319 ought not to be possessed, and therefore could not be enjoyed with a serene conscience. It was quite in vain that he had explained to her his favourite theory, that you did much to set a finer fashion of life by living as they did among the poor ; her keener apprehension assured her that the poor really resented, in sullen irritation, this specimen of a finer life obtruded at their doors. A great wave of that beautiful motherliness, which exists in all good women, swept through her heart as she thought. She wished that she could take to her bosom all these little thin-legged anaemic children of the street, all these half-fed women, and kiss them till their sullenness was melted in the warmth of love. And it puzzled and pained her beyond measure to know that Herbert felt nothing of this ; that he would have disapproved it ; that his ideal of the regeneration of society was by writing, and speaking, and getting the applause which his brightness of mind never failed to win ; and that, however famine swept the street, he would still want that delicate little dinner, and would eat it with excellent appetite. Poor Lydia! She did not know it, but she belonged to that order of finely unreasonable souls whose sincerity always begets suffering— the St. Theresas, the St. Catherines, with whom to feel is to do, and in whose deep and noble natures throbs the perpetual hunger for self-sacrifice. 320 LONDON IDYLLS Through the silences and secret enthusiasms of her girlhood she had been unconsciously nourished into this temper of sainthood. The hunger of self-sacrifice — is there any hunger of the heart so noble, so unappeasable as this? It is a diviner form of the hunger of love itself — love that passes over the personal and finally reaches the universal. Her marriage with Tinling had really been governed by this spiritual passion. She had loved him, but it was with the sense that through him she was loving the race, and was finding a means of expressing her own latent, half-discovered self in a surrender to universal needs and sorrows. His had been the power to touch this deeper fibre in her. In doing so had he called into birth a nature higher than his own, which overtopped his, and was beyond his control ? Her humility would have forbidden such a thought ; yet nevertheless it was true, and in some vague way she appre- hended it. She looked at him as he lay asleep, her whole mind in a tumult of bitter ecstasy. Oh, if she could but give her soul for his, and die with her lips to his, breathing into him that immense passion of pity which she felt! She kissed him gently, so gently that he did not stir, and she slipped out of bed. Her fair hair fell round her shoulders, her eyes swam in tears. He had not stirred ; was he never to stir at her touch? Would he never SISTER LYDIA 321 share with her this intense need for doing, for giving, for pouring life out in aims that lay beyond self, for taking to her heart all these poor drudges, and harlots, and drunkards, and unclean children of the gutter, and holding them there till the soul revived and blossomed, and the stains of evil faded out of them ? She drew up the blind softly, and looked out on the long sordid street. And the Grey Dawn came in, and put his cold arms around her — the Grey Dawn, who is the angel of the reality of things. IV It was not until nearly a year later that the Social Experiment came to its conclusion. During that year things had moved rapidly, and with unexpected results for Mr. Herbert Tinling. His gift of speech had arrested public attention ; and amid the general break-up of old political traditions which was going on at that time, it had been possible for him to find his way into notoriety with little difficulty. When the General Election, came, a small band of some half-a-dozen young men of no means or position, but of brilliant gifts forced their way to the front ; and in the dearth of candidates of the old-fashioned well-to-do type, the alarmed party-managers were glad to avail themselves of the services of these apostles of 21 322 LONDON IDYLLS the New Radicalism. The upshot of the struggle was that Tinling found himself elected as Radical member for a London labour constituency. The London press, which is conspicuously fair even to political opponents, commented generously on Tinling's sudden rise ; and those who disagreed absolutely with his opinions nevertheless admitted his remarkable abilities. Lydia had watched this surprising success of her husband with a curious conflict of feeling. She could not but feel a pride in it ; but pride is a poor substitute for happiness, and she was far from happy. If she could have convinced herself that the real reinedy for such human ills as she witnessed daily was to be found in any species of Parliamentary action, she might have been happy ; but she found such a conclusion impossible. Her woman's mind, simple and yet subtle, fixed itself upon the plain fact that the only effectual way of helping the poor was by direct personal service. She saw also, that in proportion to the growth of her husband's interest in politics was the decline of his human sympathies. He had never shown much interest in the sort of work she did with such passionate pity — he had even disapproved it ; but as time had gone on his interest became fainter, and, his censure more pronounced. His entire mind was absorbed in the great political game which he was playing. There were wires SISTER LYDIA 323 to be pulled, paragraphs to be circulated, inter- views to be arranged, astute compromises to be effected, important individuals to be conciliated ; for no sudden rise in politics is quite the simple process which it appears to the outsider, but is the climax of an immense deal of delicate manipu- lation. She knew this. He took no pains to conceal it from her. He was too elated by his success to notice the pained surprise with which she listened. He could not even have imagined that she would have seen anything dishonourable in these manceuvres. But she did ; and her more delicate sense of honour was deeply wounded. She could not understand how any man of ordinary self-respect could write paragraphs about himself, and get them circulated through the papers ; could take pains to win over the very reporters that he might obtain a better hearing for his views. To him this was part of the necessary business of the rising public man. He did not particularly like it, but it had to be done, and there was an end of it. You had to lay your foundations in the mire if the edifice of your reputation was ever to glitter in the sun. Things were to be judged by the result ; and if the result were to add M.P. to his name, that was a sufficient justification of those disagreeable preliminaries to which the epidermis of the public man becomes hardened. So it had happened that as Lydia became sadder 324 LONDON IDYLLS with the sense of the tragedy of life, he became gayer, elated by the wine of success which he had drunk. His eyes flashed with a new eagerness, his smile had a practised readiness. He was always in a hurry, and seemed to enjoy the speed of his life. It throbbed through him like a magnetic current He was always kind, always bright ; and what more could a wife want? But that very light-hearted gaiety of his hurt her. If he saw what she saw daily — but he neither saw nor wished to see. Once she had told him a particularly tragic story of that tragic street, and he had listened attentively, and had taken notes. The next day she knew to what use the notes were put. They re-appeared in an article, brilliant and incisive of course, for which he promptly received three guineas. She waited to see if he would suggest that these guineas should be given to " the case " he had so vividly depicted. To her simple mind this was the only honourable use to which the money could be put But beyond a kindly little jest that it was she who had really earned this money, and that he must buy her a present with it when he had time, he never said another word upon the subject. When he hurried away that morning with the cheque in his pocket she sat down and wept in uncontrollable grief. She saw, as she had never seen before, the immeasurable breadth of that chasm which lay between herself SISTER LYDIA 325 and him. It seemed to her a black abyss ; and while she watched, dumb and impotent, a hand groped about her heart, and tore asunder the curtains of its innermost shrine, and plucked out the image of her love, and flung it into the abyss. And from that hour she never again mentioned to him the miseries of the street. She knew that he would exploit them for guineas, and perhaps buy her presents with the money. It \\as a fortnight after the General Election, and for a wonder Tinling had a spare evening, and was dining at home. The little dining-room had never looked prettier. The warm evening sun struck the flat window slantwise, and diff"used a pleasant golden haze throughout the room. There were flowers on the table, and the quaint glass sparkled, and the whole effect was one of extreme daintiness and charm. Dinner was over, and Tinling threw himself back in the low lounge chair, and, lighting a cigarette, said meditatively, — " After all, it will be a pity to give up this little house, won't it ? " Lydia's face turned pale, and she said slowly, " Give it up ! I never knew you had such a thought." " W'h}', of course, dear," he said with one of his quick, eager smiles. "You forget 1 am an M.P. now ; and this is not exactly the end of the town 326 LONDON IDYLLS in which M.P.'s usually reside. I haven't told you, because I've had no time, but last week I made arrangements with one or two papers, by which I think I can see my way to nearly a thousand a year. It's not much for a man in my position, but it's a great improvement on four hundred, and I think it will serve. Of course one can't exactly take a house in Mayfair on such a sum, but what I thought of was a nice flat somewhere in Westminster or Kensington. Young Storrington is doing this — you remember he got in for Lime- house — and it seems a good idea. One must at least live on the fringe of fashion, if fashion is to take any notice of you, and I rather anticipate that this winter a good many big doors will be open to me." He blew a little blue cloud from his cigarette, and smiled. He was too entranced in his vision of society successes to notice the strange silence of his wife. For the few moments during which she had sat silent her pallor had increased. Now she rose with a swift movement, and crossing the room laid her hand on his shoulder. "You do not mean that, Herbert? Please say you do not mean it," she said softly. " Mean what ? " he answered sharply. " That I am going to move out of this abominable street ? Indeed I am, and at once. In fact, I gave notice to the landlord this morning." SISTER LYDIA 327 " You gave notice, and never told me?" she said slowly. " And after all that you have said about the duty of living among the poor, you forsake them at the first opportunity? And you want to live in Westminster, or Kensington, because the rich people live there ? You — you " Her indignation choked her. She unconsciously averted her face, as if the very sight of her husband pained her. She had borne much, had tried to explain, to apologise for, a hundred things in him which had hurt her past belief. She had found him unsympathetic, had suspected him to be shallow, but up to this moment she had never given up a certain desperate faith in his sincerity. And now this must go too. The last prop broke, and her life \\as falling round her. But he had no suspicion of the agony she suffered. He was incapable of recognising anything in his speech which was lowering to him, or offensive to her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that, having stepped into publicity, he should at once leave the mean and narrow street of his obscurity. It was a pretty experiment in its way ; it had even served his political ambitions by creating round his head the nimbus of the en- thusiast ; but events had put a summary end to it. Circumstances altered cases. The struggling journalist might do many things not la\\'ful or expedient for the rising politician. So Httle did 328 LONDON IDYLLS he guess the moral depths which he had stirred in his wife that he smiled at what seemed her charming burst of petulance, and serenely blew a perfect smoke -ring before replying to her, " Why, you cannot mean that you disagree with so sensible a course? Surely you will be glad to get back to an atmosphere slightly less depressing than this of Theobald Street ? You don't mean to tell me that you prefer Theobald Street to a charming little flat in Westminster, overlooking St. James's Park ? " "I do ! " she cried passionately. " I prefer it a thousand times. You brought me here ; you told me my work was here, and I was glad to do it. I have forgotten that I ever lived in the country. I have forgotten that I ever rode, and danced, and lived for my own pleasure. I have found a better pleasure in helping these miserable pariahs at our doors. I will not, I dare not exchange it for such a life as that which you propose to me. For you the social experiment may be over ; for me it is only beginning." " Oh, hang the social experiment ! " he retorted roughly. It was tlie first time that his wife's will had come into direct conflict with his. He had had an uneasy sense, for a long time, that in some way or other she was slipping out of his control. If he had been less busy he would have ascertained the fact with SISTER LYDIA 329 greater clearness, and faced it long ago. Now the knowledge came upon him with a shock. He threw his cigarette away, and for a moment was as pale as she. His instinct told him that he nntust win this battle at once, or lose her for ever. " Forgive me," he said. " I did not mean that. You know that I am as interested in social ques- tions as you are. It was I who taught you to be interested in tlaem." "But your way of being interested is not mine." She drew herself up to her height, and again laying her hand on his shoulder, said gently, — " Oh, my dear, don't think I judge you ; I have tried not to do so. Don't make me do it. It may be that for you your way is right. But I am sure that for me my way is right. There are many men and women who do no wrong in leading their own lives. They have children, and ambitions for them, and they have never felt the . . . anguish of things. If I were one of these women I would gladly go with you anywhere. I know that it was a kind thought for me you had when you suggested a flat at Kensington. Many women — those with children, I mean, and social ambitions — would jump at the chance. I should have done so once. But that day is past. I could not live the life you want me to live. I could not touch luxury — it hurts me even to be comfortable — with this un- 330 LONDON IDYLLS healed misery of Theobald Street always naked to my eyes. If you had wanted me to live the other sort of life you should never have brought me here. It is too late to turn to it now. Oh, I cannot, I cannot leave these poor people ! I should never have another peaceful moment if I thus preferred pleasure to duty.'' She held out both her arms with a beautiful gesture as she spoke. It was as though the bosom where no child had lain, or would lie, ached with that larger passion of maternity which embraced all the alien suffering of the world. He looked at her with a curious mixture of pride, resentment, humiliation. How beautiful she was ! He had never before seen her look like this. What a help she could be to him in his new career ! And yet she was slipping from him ; and at that thought his will hardened again, and only resentment was left in his heart. It must be a mere fit of heroics. Women talked like this in excitement, but they always came round to the sensible view of things in the long run. '' But listen, dear," he said, measuring his words carefully as he spoke. " I do not ask you to give up your work for the poor. You shall do anything you wish. But you must know that there are many women who don't fail in their compassion for the poor, even though they do happen to live in Kensington. Surety it's possible to take your SISTER LYDIA 331 proper place in society, and yet be a good angel to the poor." " Not for me," she answered. " I know what that sort of thing means. Don't forget that I have been through that experience. When I lived at -Winchester I lived that life. There are one hun- dred and sixty-eight hours in a week. One hundred and sixty-four of those hours I allotted to myself, and thought myself highly charitable because I gave the other four to district-visiting. Oh, I am bitterly ashamed ^^■hen I think of it ! And I see things differently now. I see that if one is to do any good for the poor you must live with them, you must be with them always, you must mother their forlorn babies, and sit up with their sick husbands, and give your life for theirs. Your life — not four hours out of one hundred and sixty-eight ! " " But this is mere madness," he retorted, his anger once more rising. " Have you no duty to me? You see a great career opening before me. Have you no responsibility in helping me to live it?" " Ah, if you only would live it, as it might be lived ! " she answered sadly. " And how would you have me live it ? " he asked scornfully. " Live it here," she said. " You want to be a tribune of the people ; be one by living among 332 LONDON IDYLLS the people. Do you think it will do you any good— politically, I mean — to forsake the people? Do you think it will help your career to hang about the doors of the rich ? " " I shall begin to think presently that you never loved me," he said sullenly. " You know that is unjust," she said. " It is because I love you that I want to see you live in honourable adherence to the convictions you have expressed. Do you suppose any one would think the worse of you because he knew that you, who profess to speak for labour, lived where labour lives and suffers? Don't you see that nothing would help you so much among those whose opinion is worth having? And what sort of people are they who would think the better of you because your postal address was King's Cross instead of Charing Cross ? " It was she who spoke with scorn now, and yet her eyes were soft with tears as she spoke. Her scorn hurt him all the more because he knew that it was barbed with truth. But he did not choose to yield. His face darkened, and his eyes began to have an evil light in them. " Oh, I see," he said. " You love these drunken blackguards of the street more than me ! You care nothing for my future. God knows I have worked hard enough for it, and always with a thought for you. 1 wanted to put you in the SISTER LYDIA 333 social position you had before I married you. 1 made up my mind to do it, and now you refuse it." " Love, what is love ? " she said sadly. " Surely it does not mean doing just what is pleasantest to yourself? It can't mean that a man and a woman are to be so absorbed in each other that they have no eyes or hearts for the suffering of the world ? Oh, I don't say that it might not have been so once with me. If, when we first came to London, we had gone to the West End, and lived for our own desires, I might perhaps have been content. I might have found the sufficing aim of life in helping you to succeed. But you willed otherwise, and I thank you for it. You helped me to find myself. I can't think of love any more as a mere personal thing. I can't satisfy my heart with kisses and embraces. That is not love ; it is only selfishness. Love was surely given us for some better use than that. Oh, Herbert, you must know it ; you must feel it ! Let me think that you do, let me believe the best of you." He felt himself wavering. But he was a man who never yet had failed to get his own way. Opposition roused all the worst elements of his nature. He had set his heart on a great political career, and his worldly wisdom taught him that the world had nothing to give to the man who had no faculty for compromise, and who was obstinate in his fads. It might forgive an extreme political 334 LONDON IDYLLS creed, but it would never forgive an act of social stupidity. And his worldly wisdom conquered. " Very well," he said stubbornly. " We won't discuss the matter further. At the end of this month I leave Theobald Street. That is settled. The worst of you women is that you can only feel ; you can't reason. If you would only condescend to reason the matter out you would see that I am right." " Ar'n't you a little inconsistent, dear ? " she said, with a sad smile. " You say I can't reason, and can only feel ; yet you ask me to reason things out. It is because you reason and don't feel, that you want to go away. It is because I feel that I know that I must not go." She turned away with a sigh, and went upstairs to her own room. The stagnant dusk filled it, and the clamour of the streets came in at the open window. She listened a moment, with every nerve trembling. Then the pure woman prevailed over the enthusiast, and falling on her knees beside the bed, she burst into an agony of tears. It was a great night at St James's Hall. A famous German pianist was expected, a renowned operatic singer who seldom visited the concert- platform was to sing, and a matchless orchestra SISTER LYDIA 335 was to perform Greig's marvellous Peer Gynt music. Since the conversation about leaving Theobald Street rather more than three \\'eeks had elapsed, and the subject had never again been named. Tinling had really been assiduous in his kindness toward his wife. He had exerted all his charm upon her. It was not in his nature to be sullen, and any form of anger was specially abhorrent to him, because its wave was slow to subside, and as long as its agitation remained he was incapable of satisfactory brain-work. It had pleased him immensely that Lydia had consented to come to this concert. He took it as a sign that her indiffer- ence to the pleasures of the world was thawing, and he was resolved to help the thaw by every means in his power. As they sat together over their exquisitely served little dinner at the Caf6 Mohico before the concert, all the happiness of their first month in London came back upon his heart with a warm rush. What a mistake it was to be righteous overmuch ! Life after all was good, very good. What fools men were to spoil it by being miserable over things which they could not help ! He looked round the gay room, and told himself proudly that there was no woman there who was lovelier than his wife. There was a glow in her eyes that he had not seen for many months. He had been to blame that he had 336 LONDON IDYLLS allowed her instinct of pleasure to be starved for so long in the grey monotonies of Theobald Street. But in the soft glow of this happy hour it was visibly reviving, and her face had a delicate tinge of colour, her eyes a bright animation. He already began to see the flat over St. James's Park as an accomplished fact. The Caf6 Monico would no doubt prove an excellent antidote to Theobald Street If he could have read her thoughts he would have been amazed to discover how entirely his judgment erred. But it is tragically possible for men and women to live together in the closest union and yet fail to discern more than a few surface facts about each other. The vestibule of the woman's heart is open to the man, but he does not even perceive those cunningly fitted doors which, like the secret doors in old panelled walls, open on noiseless hinges, and lead to unsuspected chambers. He mistakes the vestibule for the central chamber of the house of life. This was the state of affairs with Tinling. Behind the clear eyes of his wife a whole drama was being played, of which he saw nothing, sus- pected nothing. There was in her a certain still obstinacy, which remained unvanquished, an in- domitable quality of resistance which was really immovable. She still loved him, but it was with a totally different love from that which she had once SISTER LYDIA 337 felt. Once — in that hour, for instance, when they first kissed behind the choir-stalls in the shadowy Cathedral — it had been love touched with reverence, thrilled by noble hope ; now it was love touched with pity. She had discerned the secret doors of his heart, and had opened them only to find that they led into darkness. There was nothing in him left for her discovery. She knew now that all enthusiasms moved him lightly, save the supreme enthusiasm of his own success in life ; that even though he desired to be sincere in his social sympathies, real sincerity was denied him, because depth of conviction was impossible to him. In a sense her pity had increased her love for him. It had given that tone of softness to her voice which he had mistaken for submission. It had made her pliant to his wishes as long as her own fixed mtention was not threatened. It had permitted her this brief taste of pleasure, for she was by no means indifferent to pleasure, especially if it gave pleasure to others. But in her heart she knew that this night celebrated her farewell to pleasure. And now there came the music, that divinest of arts, through which the soul of man breathes most freely. She followed it with delighted ani- mation. Her face was suffused with a tender spiritual glow, and more than once one and another turned to look at her, and thought how fair she 22 338 LONDON IDYLLS was. The great pianist played, as only the great pianist can. From that instrument, which under common hands means so little, he drew infinite surprises of unexpected harmony. The keys leapt and thrilled to his touch ; the chords softened, soared, and sobbed ; far-off echoes came floating down, as from invisible heights ; the music thundered now, as with the roll of drums and march of armies, but always those fainter, sweeter echoes, those divine flute-notes, went vibrating through the crash and grandeur of the sound ; and hearts vibrated to them, and the great audience held its breath, and the walls of the long gas-lit hall seemed to melt away into infinity, and a sense of high and immeasurable things possessed her soul, as though it were the orchestra of eternity that played, and the hour of supreme destinies that held the heart reverent and hushed, in a pleasure that was almost pain. And then the great singer sang, but to her the heart did not thrill as it had done to that strange little man, with the lion-head, who sat alone at the instrument, and seemed less a man than some magical incarnation of supreme harmony. Hers was art, but his was miracle. Yet once or twice in her voice also there was heard that strange thrilling flute-note that shook the heart — a sort of wail, in which the sighing and crying of all the world was gathered up, and which sent a shiver SISTER LYDIA 339 through the nerves, and brought sudden tears into the eyes. And then, at last, came the music of Greig. Lydia knew it well, and had always loved it. She had long ago recognised in it a note that no other music possessed — a wildness, and a wizardry, and a charm, half angelic and half diabolic ; a sweet- ness and a freshness as of green glassy fiords, and purpling ice-peaks ; and yet, too, an element of terror, a daring of fantasy and depth of feeling, which in some incommunicable way filled the heart with exultation and sadness, and made it tremu- lously conscious of all the tragedy and evil of the world. It began with those slow, exquisite movements by which the sense of morning on the fiords and mountains is conveyed to the mind. One sees the slow-lifting mists, and the torch of light carried from mountain to mountain, and the brown boat of the fisherman far below on the motionless opaque of water, and one hears the faint tinkle of the cow-bells, and the dark pine-trees talking to each other in the shadowy glens, and the wind that comes like the sigh of an awakening sleeper when the world rouses from the dreams of night. And then the death of Ase ! All this brightness of the new day, and here, beside the white death- bed, the arch-Terror. Is life, then, always like this — sadness always running at the heels -of joy — 340 LONDON IDYLLS and no clear daybreak which does not shine into anguished eyes that watch the dead, and does not fall on other eyes that will never see the day again ? Suddenly the whole meaning of this immortal music of Greig's took possession of her mind. It seemed an absolutely, even ridiculously, incon- gruous thing, but it brought before her eyes afresh all the sordid miseries of Theobald Street. There was a poor consumptive girl she knew, who per- haps at that very hour was dying in one of those mean tenements. The day, that same fair day which shone over the sweet-scented pine-woods and still depths of green water, would presently look through the grimy window of that dismal room. There would be no soft wind, to breathe gently on that dying girl, no scarlet daybreak over white snow-peaks to console her closing eyes. Flowers did not grow there, beauty was not known_ She would lie there in no soft-woven silken shroud, but in the poor, frayed, discoloured linen she had worn in life. She was only a servant-girl, and for her no great musician would write an immortal requiem, and her grave would be in the over- crowded feculent soil of one of those frightful metropolitan cemeteries, where the poor must needs be buried, piled one upon the other in irreverent, immodest promiscuity. And yet there was a mother who had borne her, a man who had loved SISTER LYDIA 341 her, and her soul was white as the soul of Ase, and she too might have felt the joy of daybreak in those still heights and fragrant valleys where the soul can breathe, and thrive and blossom with the flowers. The heart of Lydia ached now, less with the strain and stress of the music than with that immense passion of pity which had so often overflowed it. If she could but bring one touch of brightness into such a life as this ! If she could but fashion some sweet music of hope to soothe the ear of this dying daughter of the people ! After this the dance of Anitra, the still more wonderful dance in the hall of the Mountain Kings, took no hold upon her. She felt in some vague way that what it meant was a recall from the vision of death and tragedy to the sensuous, the voluptuous joys of life. All the whirl, and throb, and passion of that great music failed to move her ; it seemed to her a thing almost unholy, for her eyes were still fixed upon the white pinched face of that dying girl. The landscape was clouded, the dawn had passed into greyness. Over fiord and glacier rolled the thunder, and the dance was a witches' revel of ferocious, untamed, unthinking elements, fire and wind and hail, powers to whom the death of Ase was but as the snapping of a single lily's stalk, the falling of but one broken- winged bird into a shoreless sea. It was with a sense of revulsion that she heard the clapping 342 LONDON IDYLLS of the people as the music ended. Her eyes were full of tears, and those sacrilegious plaudits seemed like the clapping of hands beside a death-bed. " That was magnificent," said Tinling eagerly. " If heart-break can be magnificent," she whispered. He looked at her curiously, but said nothing. Presently he spoke again. "What a pleasure it is to see you enjoying yourself again ! This is like the old days. To- night you return to your proper world. It is your re-entry." But she made no reply. Her thoughts were far away, and were hovering over the quiet fields of birth and girlhood. She was thinking of that familiar picture which had often haunted her girlish imagination— the picture of herself listening to that throb of world-music which seemed at intervals to come across the hills of life, invading her seclusion and calling her to her part in the great march of the world, the infinite rhythm of action. And, as she thought, many things became clear to her. She knew that she had found her work, herself, her true place in life. All the " still sad music of humanity " was voiced for her in those slow solemn wailing chords that told the death of Ase. It seemed to her that her youth passed from her in that moment. The mere animal sense of buoyant SISTER LYDIA 343 joy in the voluptuous fact of life was dead. There was nothing in her that responded any longer to that vibrant dance-music of Greig's, that tumult and clash of sound which appealed less to the spiritual senses than the physical. But her whole soul responded to the subtle call of that music of sad- ness and compassion which celebrated the death of Ase. She was passing over the hills at last, and coming down into the crowded plains of struggle. She was like Buddha, when he saw the leper, and the old man dying by the wayside, and the corpse carried out for burial, and knew that the palace was no more a place for him. She had no blame for those who still clung to the pleasant things of life, none for him whom she had loved and still loved, but who was no longer the comrade of her soul. With her the story of Buddha was reversed : it was she who stole forth in the faint dawn, and renounced the world ; it was he who remained asleep and satisfied under the golden palace roofs. Her youth was passing from her ; it exhaled like a mist, but in the same hour she found the true light, and her soul came to its maturity. That passion of self-renunciation, which is the divinest quality of elect and noble souls, claimed her, and she knew that she was only losing her life that she might save it. She sat quite still, lost in the depth of her visions. Her face was slightly uplifted, her eyes 344 LONDON IDYLLS shone. It was so that Joan of Arc, that Catherine of Sienna might have looked, when they heard the heavenly voices. Presently Tinling spoke again. He laid his hand on hers, and again whispered how glad he was to see her enjoying the music so much. She clasped his hand closely for a second and whispered back, — ■' No, not enjoying it, dear ; only feeling it, understanding it at last. It is my adieu to pleasure. To-night the ways part ; to-night my lot is cast." He stared at her silently, half-knowing, half- dreading what she meant. And the words " my adieu to pleasure " went echoing through his mind, jarring miserably on his self-love and ambitious hopes. " I shall always love you, dear, always and always," she whispered. " But our ways lie apart. Our lives will be different." And as he looked into her eyes his own shrank. He saw in them the strength and sadness of the irrevocable. Tinling is still a member of Parliament, and is still rising. He is much pitied in club-rooms, and sometimes cynically congratulated, on the curious and abnormal condition of his domestic affairs. For while Lydia is still occasionally seen SISTER LYDIA 345 at those social functions which are the pleasant fringe of political life, it is well known that she does not share her husband's artistic flat in West- minster, but, for some eccentric reason of her own, prefers to live in an obscure quarter of the metropolis, not far from the " Angel," Islington But in that dark and grimy region there are many who bless her, and some who dimly comprehend her motives ; for there she is not known as the wife of Herbert Tinling, M.P., but by the sweeter and simpler name of Sister Lydia.