CHAPTER VI—MOTHS

A week had worked wonders with Grandmother Cardover. She had fallen a victim to Vi’s charm and, in that strange way that old folks have, had warmed her age at the fire of Vi’s youth. There was an unmistakable change in her; the somberness of her dress was lightened here and there with a dash of colored ribbons. As long as I could remember, the only ornaments she had permitted herself were of black jet, as befitted her widowed state. But now the woman’s instinct for self-decoration had come to life. Vi’s exquisite femininity had made her remember that she herself was a woman. She had rummaged through her jewelry and found a large gold-set cameo brooch, which she wore at her throat, and some rings, and a long gold chain, which she now wore about her neck, from which her watch was suspended.

Vi’s vivid physical beauty and intense joy in life had broadened the horizons of everyone in the house, and set them dreaming. Ruthita, coming down from London, had at once become infatuated. From day to day she had prolonged Vi’s visit, now with one excuse, now another. They had brought Dorrie down to stay with Vi at the shop—little Bee’s Knee as my Grannie called her, because she was so tiny and a bee’s knee was the smallest thing she could think of with which to compare her. It was many years since a child’s prattle had been heard about that quiet house. Vi’s comradeship with her little daughter finished the persuading of my grandmother that she was safe and good. All virtuous women believe in the virtue of a woman who is fond of children.

They were sitting down to lunch in the keeping-room when I entered.

“Why, if it isn’t Dante!”

The greeting I received was in welcome contrast to the cold, guarded reserve of the past seven days. A place was made for me at table between my grandmother and Ruthita. It was a gay little party that waited, watching me curiously across the dishes and plates, to hear my news. Just then I preferred the cosiness of my grandmother’s shop to the chilly dignity of Woadley Hall. Outside the sunshine slanted across the courtyard, leaving one half in shadow, the other golden white. The maid, coming in and out from the kitchen in her rustling print-dress, with her smiling country face, was a pleasanter sight than the butler at Woadley. From the shop came the smell of tar and rope and new-made bread. Everything was so frank and kindly, and unashamed of itself. Here in the keeping-room of the ship-chandler’s shop we were humanly intimate—“coxy-loxy” as my grandmother would have expressed it.

I told a sorrowful tale at first, which seemed to foreshadow a sorrowful ending. I spoke of the stiff formality of my reception, the garnished gentility which had marked my intercourse with Sir Charles, the withheld confidence—the fact that my mother’s name was scarcely mentioned. Ruthita’s hand sought mine beneath the table; I could feel the fingers tremble.

“This morning,” I said, “he called me into his study. He told me that I must leave within the hour and that our friendship could go no further.”

“The old rascal!” exclaimed Grandmother Cardover, bringing down her knife and fork on her plate with a clatter. “What was he a-doin’, gettin’ you there to Woadley? He must ‘a’ known what we all expected.”

I tilted back my chair, putting on an expression of long-suffering melancholy. “He wanted to see what I was like, I suppose. His chief reason was that he wanted to make a new will.”

Babel broke loose. Why hadn’t I told them earlier? Why had I harrowed up their feelings for nothing? What were the particulars? I was cruel to have kept them in suspense.

Grandmother Cardover was hysterical with joy. She wanted to run out into the streets and tell everybody. She began with the maid in the kitchen, and would have gone on to the men in the bake-house if I hadn’t stopped her by appealing to her curiosity, saying there was more to tell. As for Ruthita, she just put her arms about me and laid her head on my shoulder, crying for sheer gladness. Little Bee’s Knee looked on open-mouthed, shocked that grownups should behave so foolishly. Vi gazed at me with a far-away stare in her eyes, picturing the might-have-beens, and I gazed back at her across the gulf that widened between us.

Discretion was thrown to the wind. When Vi gathered Dorrie to her and began to excuse herself, she was told that she must stay and make one of the family. Then the story was told again with the new perspective.

With shame and self-reproach I look back and perceive how carelessly I accepted all Ruthita’s admiration. My new good fortune promised nothing for her; yet she could rejoice in it. In her shy girl’s world, had I known it, I figured as something between a faery-prince and a hero. Through me she looked out into a more generous world of glamour than any she had personally experienced.. Poor little Ruthita, with her mouse-like timidity! She had lived all her days in a walled-in garden, treading the dull monotonous round of self-sacrificing duties. No one ever credited her with a career of her own. No one stopped to think that she might have dreams and a will of her own. They told her what to do and let their gratitude be taken for granted. She humored my father when he was discouraged, did the housekeeping, and took shelter behind the superior social grace of the Snow Lady. We all loved her, but we made the mistake of not telling her—we supposed she knew. All the strong things that men and women do together, all love’s comedy and tragedy, were so much hearsay to her.

That afternoon and evening she sat beside me holding my hand with frank affection, making me feel that in loving Vi I was stealing something that belonged to her. More than that, I was feeling for this woman, who had been nothing to me a few weeks ago, a quality of kindness and consideration that I had always withheld from the child-friend who had tiptoed her way up to womanhood beside me.

After tea we mounted to the drawing-room, which was over the shop and faced the street. It was usually occupied only on Sundays and feast-days, or when a visiting Methodist minister had been apportioned to my grandmother for entertainment. Faded engravings of sacred subjects and simpering females elaborately framed, hung upon the walls. On the mantelshelf stood some quaint specimens of Ransby china—red-roofed cottages with grapes ripening above the porch, and a lover coming up the path while his lady watched him from the window. The chairs were upholstered in woolwork on canvas, which my grandmother had done in her youth. In one corner stood a heavy rosewood piano on which all the family portraits were arranged. In this room comfort was sacrificed to appearance—the furniture was sedate rather than genial. Nothing was haphazard or awry. The mats and antimacassars never budged an inch from their places. No smell of beer, or cheese, or baking bread vulgarized the sacred respectability of its atmosphere.

Here, as we sat together talking, the light began to fade. Heavy footsteps of sailors in their sea-boots, passing down the street from the harbor to the cottages, only emphasized the quiet. We watched the sky grow pink behind the masts of shipping, then green, then gray. Cordage and rigging were etched distinctly against the gloom of the oncoming night. At the top of the street a light sprang up, then another, then another. The lamp-lighter with his long pole and ladder passed by. Now with the heavy tread of men’s feet the tip-a-tap of girls’ footsteps began to mingle. Sometimes a snatch of laughter would reach us; then, as if afraid of the sound it made, it died abruptly away. While we talked in subdued voices, it seemed to me that all the sailor-lovers with their lassies had conspired to steal by the house that night. I fell to wondering what it felt like to slip your arm about the waist of a woman you loved, feel her warmth and trust and nearness, feel her head droop back against your shoulder, see her face flash up in the starlight and know that, while your lips were trembling against hers, she was abandoning herself soul and body to you in the summer dusk.

Dorrie had crept into her mother’s lap. Her soft breathing told that she was sleeping. One small hand, with fingers crumpled, rested against her mother’s throat. Someone had called to see Grandmother Cardover, so Vi, Ruth-ita, and I were left alone together. Sitting back in our chairs out of reach of the street-lamp, we could not see the expression on one another’s faces.

“I would give all the world to be you, Mrs. Carpenter,” Ruthita whispered.

“To be me! Why? I sometimes get very tired of it.”

“If I were you I should have Dorrie. It must be very sweet to be a mother. Why is it that she always calls you Vi and never mother?”

“She picked that up from her father. I never corrected her because—well, because somehow I like it. It makes me seem younger.”

“You don’t need to seem young,” I interrupted.

“How old do you think I am?”

“About the same age as myself and Ruthita.”

She laughed. “That couldn’t be; Dorrie is eight.”

“Then I give up guessing.”

“I’m twenty-seven. I was little more than a child, you see, when I married.”

“Mother married early,” said Ruthita, “and my papa was only twenty at the time. She says that early marriages turn out happiest.”

Vi made no answer. The silence grew awkward. We could almost hear one another’s thoughts trying to hide. Why had she explained in that tone of half-apology, “I was little more than a child; you see, when I married.” Why didn’t she say something now? Was it because an early marriage had proved for her disastrous? Then, if it had, what moral obligation separated us? Who was this husband who could dispense with her for a year, and yet had the power to stretch out his arm across the Atlantic and thrust me aside?

She leant forward. The light from the street-lamp kindled her face and smoldered in her hair. She had the wistful, rapt expression of a young girl, ignorant as yet of the bitter-sweet of love, who dreams of an ideal lover. I felt then that her soul was virgin; it had never been a man’s possession. It was almost mine.

Ruthita’s remark about the happiness of early marriages was forgotten, when Vi returned to the subject. “They may be sometimes,” she said, speaking doubtfully.

She caught my eye resting on her. Conscious that her qualification had divulged a secret, she hurried into an implied defense of her husband.

“I had a letter from Mr. Carpenter this morning. He’s lonely. He says he can’t bear to be without me any longer. He wants me to return home at once. He’s not seen Dorrie for nearly a year. He’s afraid she’ll forget him entirely. If I don’t go to him, he says he’ll come and fetch me. It’s been horrid of me to stay away so long. When we left, we only intended to be gone for three months. Somehow the time lengthened. I wanted to see so much. He’s been too easy with me. He’s been awfully kind. He always has been kind. He treats me like a spoilt child.”

She had been speaking so eagerly and hurriedly that she had not heard the creaking of the stairs. Through the darkness I could see my grandmother standing in the doorway. Vi turned to Ruthita with a pretense of gaiety, “No wonder you English don’t understand us. Don’t you think that American husbands are very patient?”

“I’m sure I do,” said Ruthita. “What makes them so different from English husbands?”

“They love their wives.”

It was impossible to tell from the bantering tone in Vi’s voice, whether she spoke the last words in cynicism or sincerity.

Grandmother Cardover took her literally. Her national pride was touched. She believed that an aspersion had been cast on the affection of all married Englishmen. She advanced into the room with suspicions aroused, bristling with morality. “If that’s what they call love in America,” she snorted, “then it’s glad I am that I was born in Ransby. ‘They shall be one flesh’—that’s what the Holy Book says about marriage. And ’ow can you be one flesh if you stay away from one another a twelvemonth at a time? Why, when my Will’am was alive, I never slept a night away from ’im, from the day we was married to the day he died.”

The darkness about her seemed to quiver with indignation. I could see her gray curls bobbing, and hear the keys hanging from her waist jangle, as she trembled. Ruthita cowered close to me, shocked and frightened. Dorrie woke and began to whimper to be taken to bed. We all waited for a natural expression of anger from Vi.

She set Dorrie on to her feet very gently, whispering to her mothering words, telling her not to cry. Drawing herself up, she faced into the darkness. When she spoke there was a sweet, low pleading in her voice.

“Mrs. Cardover, you took me too seriously. I’m sorry. You misunderstood me. I believe all that you have said—a wife ought to be her husband’s companion. There have been reasons for my long absence, which I cannot explain; if I did, you might not understand them. But I want you always to believe well of me. I have never had such kindness from any woman as you have given me.”

I heard my Grannie sniffle. Vi must have heard Her, She left Dorrie and, running across the room, put her arms about her. I heard them blaming themselves, and taking everything back, the way women do when they ask forgiveness. I lifted Dorrie into my arms, and Ruthita and I tiptoed from the room.

Presently they came down to us. Grandmother Cardover was smiling comically, as though she was rather pleased at what had happened. Vi said that she must be going. Ruthita and I volunteered to accompany her back to her lodgings. So the storm in the tea-cup ended, leaving me with new materials for conjecture and reflection.

On the way up the High Street we chatted volubly, trying to overlay what had occurred with a new impression. We talked against time and without sincerity. When we had reached the black flint house and the door had shut, Ruthita snuggled close to me with a relieved little sigh. Ever since my return from Woadley she had been waiting for this moment of privacy. With a sweet sisterly air of proprietorship she slipped her arm through mine. We turned down a score and struck out across the denes to the north beach, where we could be quiet. A wet wind from the sea pattered about our faces, giving Ruthita an excuse to cling yet more closely.

You would not have called Ruthita beautiful in those days. She lacked the fire that goes with beauty. She was too humble in her self-esteem, too self-effacing. But one who had looked closely would have discerned something more lasting than mere physical beauty—the loveliness of a pure spirit looking out from her quiet eyes. She was one of those domestic saints, unaware of their own goodness, that one sometimes finds in middle-class families; women who are never heard of, who live only through their influence on their menfolk’s lives.

Her features were small, but perfect. Her figure slight, and buoyant in its carriage. Her complexion white, but ready to suffuse with color at the least sign of appreciation. Her glory was in her hair, which was black and abundant as night. From a child I had always thought that her feet and hands were most beautiful in their fragile tininess. I never told her any of these flattering observations, which would have meant so much if put into words. Brothers don’t—and I was as good as her brother.

“Don’t you think,” said Ruthita, “that there’s something awfully queer about Mrs. Carpenter’s marriage? I’ve been with her nearly a week now, and I’ve never heard her mention her husband until to-night.”

“And Dorrie doesn’t speak of him either.”

“No, I’ve noticed that.”

Then Ruthita surprised me. “Do you know, Dante, I think to marry the wrong man must be purgatory.”

I was amused at the note of seriousness in her voice.

“Ruthie, to hear you speak one’d suppose you’d been in love. Have you ever thought that you’ll have to marry some day?”

“Of course I have.”

“What’ll he have to be like?”

She held her tongue. My jauntiness had made her shy. “Come, Ruthie,” I said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I hate to own that you’re grown up. I didn’t think you’d given a thought to marriage. Tell me, what’ll he have to be like?”

I halted, swinging her round so she had to look up in my face. She wore a hunted look of cornered perplexity.

“I’ve never spoken of these things even to mother,” she said. “They all treat me as though I were still a child.”

I wondered what was her trouble. The searchlight swept her. I saw the eagerness for confession on her trembling mouth.

The fire which her beauty had always lacked leapt up. I was amazed at the transformation. She looked reckless. The mask of maidenly tranquillity had slipped aside; I saw all the longing of her unnoticed womanhood focused for an instant in her eyes. The search-light traveled out to sea again. I repeated, “What must he be like?”

She reached up to me, so that her lips almost touched mine. “I think he must be like you,” she whispered.

Of all answers that was the last I had expected. I had thought myself on the brink of some great discovery—that she, too, had some secret lover. I slipped my arm about her and we strolled on through the darkness in silence. Ahead the harbor-lights, reflected across the water, drew nearer. We climbed the beach and the sea-wall, and made our way across the denes to the town.

“You’re all wrong,” I said. “Some day, when you do fall in love, you’ll get a better standard.”

We entered the lamp-lit town. For the rest of the evening we did not say much. I was thinking how easy it is for two people to live always together and yet never to understand each other. Who would have guessed that little Ruthita had this hunger to be loved?

While we were seated at breakfast next morning, someone walked across the shop and tapped on the door of the keeping-room. Before any of us could spring up, Lawyer Seagirt entered.

“Keep your seats. Keep your seats,” he said cheerily. “I’m sure you’ll excuse this early call when you hear what I’ve come about.”

With his back to the empty fireplace, he straddled the hearthrug, bowing first to my grandmother, then to Ruthita. Then he settled his gaze on me, with the beaming benevolence of a bachelor uncle. He cleared his throat.

“Ahem! Ahem! Mr. Cardover, I congratulate you. After you left yesterday, Sir Charles spoke of you with considerable feeling. He expressed sentiments concerning you which from him meant much—much more than if uttered by any other man. For many years he has honored me with his confidence, yet on no occasion do I remember him to have displayed so much emotion. Of course all this is strictly between ourselves and must go no further.”

Like three mandarins we nodded.

“It is my pleasant duty to have to inform you, Mr. Cardover, that Sir Charles has been pleased to make you an allowance. It will be paid quarterly on the first day of January, April, July, and October, and will be delivered to you through my hands.”

Again he halted. Grandmother Cardover, losing patience, forgot her manners. “God bless my soul,” she exclaimed, “how the man maunders! How much?”

“Madam,” said Lawyer Seagirt, “the amount is four hundred pounds per annum.”

The good man had never found himself so popular. He was made to sit down to table with us, despite his protests that he had breakfasted already. The money might have been coming out of his own pocket for all the fuss we made of him. Every now and then the fact of my prosperity would strike Grandmother Cardover afresh. Throwing up her hands she would exclaim, “Four ’undred pounds, and he’s got two ’undred already from his fellowship! It’s more than I’ve ever earned in any year with all my wear and tear. Just you wait till his pa ’ears about it!”

That morning I took Ruthita to Norwich. She was puzzled when I told her to get ready to come. All the way over in the train she kept trying to guess my purpose. The truth was I had contrasted her with Vi. Vi was not only exquisite in herself, but as expensively exquisite as fine clothes could make her. Ruthita, on the other hand, had the appearance of making the most genteel impression at the minimum expenditure of money. My father’s means were narrow, and she was not his daughter; therefore the Snow Lady insisted on making most of her own and Ruthita’s dresses. Rigid economies had been exercised; stuffs had been turned, and dyed, and made over again. Now that I could afford it, I was determined to see what fine feathers could do for this shy little sister.

When the gowns came home, even Ruthita was surprised at the prettiness that filmy muslins and French laces accentuated in her.

“My word, Ruthie, you’re a dainty little armful. You won’t have to wait long for that lover now,” I told her, when she came down into the keeping-room to show herself to me.

She pouted and made a face at me like a child. “I don’t want lovers,” she laughed. “I only want my big brother.”

When she had gone upstairs my grandmother turned to me. “You can go too far with her, Dannie.” She only called me Dannie when she was saying something serious or a little wounding. “You can go too far with her, Dannie. I should advise you to be careful.”

“What are you driving at?” I asked bluntly.

“Just this, that however you may pretend to one another, she isn’t your sister and you aren’t her brother. Any day you may wake something up in her that you didn’t mean to.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” I replied. “At heart she’s only a child.”

“All I can say is you’re going the right way to work to make her a woman,” my grandmother said shortly.

That afternoon I persuaded Ruthita to put on all her finery and come for a walk on the esplanade. I wanted her to lose her timidity and to discover for herself that she was as good as anybody. I felt a boyish pride in walking beside her; she was my creation—I had dressed her.

We had passed the pier and entered the long trim walk, lined with sculptured Neptunes, which runs along the seafront from Ransby to Pakewold, when a figure which had a morbid interest for me came in sight. It was that of a buxom broad-hipped woman, handsome in her own bold fashion, leading by the hand an over-dressed, half-witted child. As she drew nearer, the rouge on her face became discernible. She strolled with a swagger through the fashionable crowd, eyeing the men with sly effrontery. She was known in Ransby by the nickname of “Lady Halloway.” She was the bathing-machine man’s daughter, and had been the victim of one of my cousin’s earliest amorous adventures. It was commonly believed that he was the father of her child.

Since the news had got abroad that I had supplanted Halloway in my grandfather’s favor, she had glowered at me, with undisguised hostility, whenever we met.

As we passed, Ruthita’s parasol just touched her. It was the woman’s fault, for she had crowded us purposely. I raised my hat, muttering an apology, and was on the point of moving forward, when she wrenched the parasol from Ruthita’s hand and flung it to the ground. Ruthita stared at her too surprised to say a word. The woman herself, for the moment, was too infuriated to express herself. All the bitterness of a deserted mistress, the pent-up resentment against years of contempt and the false pride with which she had brazened out her shame among her fellow-townsmen, came to the surface and found an excuse for utterance. People nearest to us halted in their promenade and, gathering round, began to form the nucleus of an audience. An audience for her oratory was what “Lady Halloway” most desired. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth and her hands were clenched; anger re-created her into something almost magnificent and wholly brutal. When she spoke, she addressed herself to Ruthita, but her eyes were fixed on mine in vixenish defiance. The over-dressed, top-heavy oddity at her side steadied himself by clinging to her skirts, gazing from one to the other of us with a vacant, wondering expression.

I picked up Ruthita’s parasol and handed it back to her, whispering that she should go on. The woman heard me.

“Yes, go on, my fine lady,” she sneered in savage sarcasm. “Go on. You’re too good ter be zeen a-talkin’ wi’ the likes o’ me. Yer know wot I am. I’m a woman wot’s fallen. I ain’t too bad, ’owsomever, for Mr. Cardover to diddle me out o’ my property. He’s a grand man, Mr. Cardover, wi’ ’is high airs and proud ways. And where do ’e get them from, I ax. From old Cardover’s bake-’ouse around the corner ter be sure, and from ’is mawther, wot ran orf wi’ ’is father and ’ad the good luck ter get married.”

I interrupted her. “I’m very sorry for you,” I said, “but you’ve got to stop this at once. You don’t know what you’re saying, neither does anyone else. Please let us pass.”

She stepped in front of us with her plump arms held up in fighting attitude, blocking our path.

“Zorry for me. Zorry for me,” she laughed, still addressing Ruthita. “I doan’t want ’is zorrow. Your man’s a thief, my gal, and it’s the likes o’ him wot despises me—me as should be Lady Halloway if I ’ad me rights, me as should be livin’ at Woadley ’All as zoon as Sir Charles be dead and gorn. ’E says ’e’s zorry for me, wi’ the lawful heir, the child ’e ’as robbed, a-standin’ in ’is sight. The imperdence of ’im!”

She gave the idiot’s hand a vicious jerk, swinging him in front of her, so that the lawful heir began to holloa. Someone who had newly joined the crowd, inquired what was up.

“Wot’s up, you axed. This gentleman, as ’e calls ’isself, told ’is gal to barge inter me. That’s wot’s up, and I won’t stand it. ’E’s robbed my kid, wot was heir, o’ wot belongs ter ’im. And ’e’s robbed my ’usband, for ’e’s as good as my ’usband in the sight o’ almighty Gawd. ’E treats me like a dorg and tells ’is gal to barge inter me, and ’e thinks I’ll stand it.”

While she had been exploding I had tried to back away from her, but she followed. Now a policeman’s helmet showed above the heads of the spectators. Just then the bathing-machine man strolled up from the beach out of curiosity. Seeing his daughter the center of disturbance, he fought his way to the front and seized her by the wrists with a threatening gesture. “Yer fool, Lottie,” he panted, “when are yer goin’ ter be done a-disgracin’ o’ me?”

For a moment she was cowed. But as he dragged her away to the bathing-machines, she tore one hand free and shook her fist at me. “’E’s comin’ down to-morrer,” she shouted. “I’ve writ and told ’ im wot you’ve been a-doin’ at Woadley.”

Ruthita was trembling all over with disgust and excitement. I took her back to the shop. When I was alone with my grandmother I asked her what kind of a woman Lottie was.

“As nice and kind a little girl as there was in Ransby,” she answered, “until that rascal, Lord Halloway, ruined her.”

Next day I had a chance of judging for myself the worth of Lord Halloway. In the afternoon, just as I was going out, I was told that he was waiting to see me in the shop. I went to meet him prepared for trouble. I found a tall, aristocratic man of about thirty-five, filling up the doorway, looking out into the street with his legs wide apart. He was swinging his cane and whistling softly. The impression one got from his back-view was that he was extremely athletic. When he turned round I saw that he was magnificently proportioned, handsome, high com-plexioned, and graceful to the point of affectation. When he smiled and held out his hand, his manner was so winning that every prejudice was for the moment swamped. He had the instinctive art of charm.

“Awfully sorry to have to meet you like this for the first time,” he said. “We’re second-cousins, aren’t we? Strange how we’ve managed to miss one another, and being members of the same college and all.”

He had removed his hat, and was leaning against the door-jamb, with his legs crossed. I watched him narrowly while he was talking. I had expected to see a cultured degenerate—the worst type of bounder. Instead of being exhausted and nervous with a spurious energy, he was almost military in his upright carriage. He had a daredevil air of careless command, which was so much a part of his breeding that it was impossible to resent it. A man would have summed up his vices and virtues leniently by saying that he was a gay dog. A good woman might well have fallen in love with him, and excused the attraction that his wickedness had for her by saying that she was trying to convert him. The only sign of weakness I could detect was a light inconsequent laugh, strangely out of keeping with the virility of his height and breadth; it was like the vain and meaningless giggle of a silly woman.

I asked him if he would not come inside. He shook his head, saying that this was not a social visit, but that he had come to apologize. Then he faced me with an openness of countenance which impressed me as manly, but which might have been due to shamelessness.

“I want to tell you how sorry I am for the beastly row you had yesterday. Lottie’s not a bad sort, but she gets fancies and they run away with her. I’ve talked with her, and I can promise you it won’t happen again. She’s been writing me angry letters for the past week, ever since you made it up with Sir Charles. I was afraid something like this would happen, so I thought I’d just run down. I wish I’d managed to get here earlier.”

He stopped suddenly, gazing toward the keeping-room door. Ruthita came out and crossed the shop. She had on one of her new dresses and was on her way to tea with Vi.

He followed her with his eyes till she was gone. There was nothing insulting in the gallantry with which he admired her; he seemed rather surprised—that was all. For a minute he continued conversing with me in an absent-minded manner, then he wished me good-by, hoping that we might meet again in Oxford. I walked out on to the pavement and watched him down the street. Then I hurriedly fetched my hat and followed.

It might have been accidental and I may have been over-suspicious, but his path lay in the same direction as Ruthita’s; he never walked so quickly as to overtake her or so slowly as not to keep her well in sight. When she entered the old flint house, he hesitated, as though the purpose of his errand was gone; then, seeing me out of the tail of his eye, he turned leisurely to the left down a score. Next day I heard that he had departed from Ransby.

I could not rid myself for many days of the impression this incident had created. Like a Hogarth canvas, it typified for me the ugly nemesis of illicit passion in all its grotesque nakedness. There was horror in connecting such a man as Halloway with such a woman as Lottie. The horror was emphasized by the child. Yet Lottie had once been “as nice and kind a little girl as there was in Ransby,” until he destroyed her. Doubtless at the time, their sinning had seemed sweet and excusable—much the same as the love of any lover for any lass. Only the result had proved its bitterness.

This thought made me go with a tightened rein. When impulse tempted me to give way, the memory of that woman with her half-witted child, brazening out her shame before a crowd of pleasure-seekers on the sunlit esplanade, sprang into my mind and turned me back like the flame of a sword.