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Miss Flotsam and Mr Jetsam

HE had scarcely closed the door of her room when the electric lights went out. She was, however, prepared for this emergency, which was not rare; in fact she had caused it to happen once or twice herself while adjusting little devices for cooking and laundering. She groped her way to the bureau and lighted a candle always ready there, and instead of feeling annoyed, she was at heart innocently pleased by the diversion and by the flickering candle light. Then, just as she would hurry to the window at any unusual sound in the street, or would join any crowd, she went out into the passage, to lean over the balustrade. It was not curiosity that impelled her, but the terrible desire of her lonely and forgotten spirit to plunge into life. She wanted to see, to hear any one, anything.

Looking down the well of the staircase, she saw all the lodging house black and still. With a little sigh she turned back, and noticed that the door of the room next her own was open, showing in the dark interior the glowing end of a cigarette; she hesitated, struggling with one of those impulses which had given her so much trouble. Often as she had been rebuffed, hurt, derided, she could not stifle that violent longing to approach other human beings.

“No, I won't!” she said. “I won't...”

But it was too strong for her. Half reluctant, she approached the open door.

“Would you like a candle?” she asked.

A suave and weary voice replied, amiably.

“Thank you. But unless this is going to be more or less permanent, it doesn't matter.”

“Well, you never know...” she said, mendaciously, for she did know well enough that a new fuse would promptly be installed. “I've got a lot of extra candles....”

Decency compelled the man to say that he would like a candle, and she went off to fetch it. When she returned, he was standing in his doorway, a slender young fellow with a fastidious and melancholy air. He watched her coming; the light she carried lent to her face something long gone by daylight; she was lamentably thin and haggard; in a few years she would be grotesque, but youth still lingered with her now.

He took the candle from her with a word of thanks, but he could not turn away from her pitiable eagerness.

“I suppose this sort of thing's a serious inconvenience to some people,” he observed.

“Well,” she answered, with a nervous little giggle, “it is to me, I must say. I know I'm not supposed to, but just the same, I do cook my dinners in my room. And now I guess I'll have to wait.”

“Too bad!” he said. And still he hadn't the heart to go, even to discourage her. “Poor little devil!” he thought. “Famished for talk.” And aloud he said—“Won't you come in and sit down until the lights are on again?”

Her hollow cheeks grew scarlet.

“Well ... I don't think I'd better...” she said. “I'd like to, only...”

He didn't press the point; if necessary he could stand in the doorway until the candle burnt out in his hand, anything rather than drive away this poor creature.

“It's queer, isn't it?” she said. “A big house, all full of people, and nobody ever talking to anybody else.... And if you do try to be friendly, why ... they think you're after something.”

“I suppose they do,” he said, thoughtfully.

“There was a woman up on this floor last year,” she went on. “She looked so kind of miserable that one night when I'd fixed up a nice little supper, I knocked at her door and asked her to come in and eat with me. But she was so disagreeable about it, you'd have thought I was offering her poison. And then a little later she turned on the gas. It didn't kill her. They took her off to the hospital, and I saw in the paper that she said she'd done it because she was so lonely.... That's why they haven't any gas now. I guess a lot of people are lonely, like that.... Only, if they'd be more friendly, and not so suspicious about people, they wouldn't need to be.”

“Oh, you poor little devil!” he thought, so moved that he could not speak.

She misinterpreted his silence.

“Well, I'll be going, I guess—” she said, and her smile was intolerable.

“Please don't!' he said, hastily.

She looked at him, incredulous and delighted.

“I don't want to bother you—” she began, but he interrupted, vehemently.

“You're not. Not in the least.... Look here! If you can't cook your dinner, won't you come out somewhere with me? I'd appreciate it very much.”

“Oh! I couldn't!” she cried.

He knew that she could and would, but that whatever pride she had left required some urging on his part, and he made a creditable attempt to do what she wished. Her perfunctory little denials went down, one after the other.

“All right, then, I will!” she said, resolutely. “It's nice of you to ask me, I must say.”

“No; it's nice of you to come,” he retorted. “It's very—friendly.”

She went back into her room to get ready. That did not take her long, for she had lost interest in herself; she dressed her body as if it had been a doll which must be made neat and presentable for the street. But the magic of the candlelight still wrought its charm; looking at herself in the mirror she remembered how pretty she had been.

As she was adjusting her hat, the lights came on.

“Oh!” she cried, terribly grieved. “Now I can't go!” And she went out into the hall, to forestall his saying that she could very well cook her own meal now. But he was waiting for her, hat in hand, and she decided to say nothing.

“If he really wants me to come...” she thought. She could not quite believe that he did, but if he would pretend, so would she. And if he wished to pretend that he was not in all ways superior to her, but was her equal in misfortune, she would do that, too.

He asked her no questions, but nevertheless she told him lies. Sitting across the table from him in the chop house, she grew garrulous and she told him those things about herself which she had often dreamed were true. With now and then a fact; she was really cashier in a dairy, as she said, and she really had come from Seattle.

“That's a long way,” he remarked, smiling. “Aren't you ever homesick?”

Again her thin face grew scarlet. He wouldn't have asked that if he had known what her home or her life there had been.

“Well ... it was lovely there,” she said, and, so that he should not suspect, she invented still more wildly, an impossible past existence; she tried to make him see a delicately brought-up young girl leaving a home of marvellous luxury—

“Because I—I wanted to be independent,” she said.

“Quite right!” said he, absently. Didn't she know that all her history was written plain on her haggard little face? Weren't there thousands like her, everywhere, no mystery to any man? Independent! Perhaps a ball in flight from one careless hand to another might feel independent for a little moment, in mid-air.

Later on, when she fancied she had made the favourable impression she intended to make, she grew more candid.

“I haven't got on so very well,” she admitted. “I learned millinery back home, and I thought I'd do fine with that. But—” She paused. “I don't know,” she said, with a sigh. “I seem to have just sort of drifted.”

A bit of flotsam, he reflected, helplessly adrift on a swift and most merciless tide. Looking back, she could no longer see the ship from whence she had come; looking forward, not discern the shore toward which she was being carried; no use for her to struggle.

“If her life's flotsam,” he thought, “mine is jetsam—something that's been deliberately thrown overboard. Anyhow we're in the same current, and bound for the same rocks in the end.”

He pursued the fancy while she talked.

“I could swim back and climb on board the ship again, if I wanted. But I don't. I'd be one of the crew, helping to take her into God knows what port. Nobody'd care where I wanted to go. I'd rather float along alone.”

It was a pain to watch her, for beneath her uneasily dainty manners, her nervous little laugh, her strained vivacity, he could perceive an immeasurable lassitude. She had given up; even her vanity was gone, her finger nails neglected, her hair uncurled. She was anxious enough to please—not as a woman, only as a comrade.

“It's either despair or repentance,” he decided.

He wished with all his heart that she would go, for he had become weary beyond endurance. The quality of mercy is not strained, but pity is another and a more fragile thing. He was that tired of the pity she aroused in him; he wanted to be rid of her and to forget her.

“I can't help her,” he thought. “And I can't stand the sight of the poor little devil. I'm not capable of an impersonal interest in misery.”

But as surely as if she clung round his neck she held him with her chatter. He saw clearly enough a monstrous claim being made upon him, extending into an indefinite future. And he had already paid so dear to be free of claims! In moody silence he brought her back to the door of her room and said “good-night,” knowing well that he could not avoid her, that he would have to endure the most profound weariness and even unhappiness, not because of any faintest liking for her, but because he was by nature unable to hurt her.

The next evening she knocked at his door.

“I brought you a nice little bit of supper I just cooked,” she whispered, glancing round like a conspirator. With profuse thanks he retired into the room, and locking the door, slid the stuff off the plate into a paper bag.

“This must end!” he thought, scowling. Nevertheless, he had not the courage to go out to dinner for hours, until he was nearly famished, and when he returned, the certainty that she was waiting and longing to speak to him was too much for him.

She opened her door instantly.

“Here's your plate,” he said, “and thanks very much.”

His air of polite finality was only too successful; the look in her eyes was terrible.

“Oh, that's all right!” she said, airily, and turned away to hide her tears.

“No!” he said, hastily. “I— Look here! Please!”

“Oh, that's all right!” she repeated, still more gaily, and he saw her shoulders twitch in a sob like a shudder. It was unendurable. He came a step or two nearer and lightly touched her arm.

“You know we're neighbours,” he said, inanely.

She turned back then, with tears in her eyes, but smiling radiantly.

“I've got so silly, she explained. “I'm so afraid of being a nuisance....”

He assured her that she wasn't that; he went on to say a good many things which he didn't mean, and in the end, he asked her to come out for a walk. She took up her hat at once and pinned it on without even a glance in the mirror; her eyes on his face, garrulous and happy again now.

As they descended through the silent house, her light voice seemed to flutter like a scrap of paper in the wind—a lost voice, that was never to alight in any heart.

It was a cold night and she was thinly dressed, but what did she care for that? She would have walked on for ever, anywhere, in any weather, so that he walked beside her. Without a word, she made him aware of that, and it hurt and angered him.

“This can't go on!” he thought. “It's the worst sort of folly. She's got to be made to see....”

He began to talk a little at random.

“I shan't stop here long,” he said. “I'm old enough to know that one place is very like another, and still I'm always looking for one that won't be.”

“Oh! You're going away?” she asked, with a little gasp.

“Yes. There's nothing to keep me here,” he answered.

They went on in silence for some time; now that he had made her see, he had a very uncomfortable consciousness that she was seeing very clearly in the dark at that moment.

“Well ... of course ... you've got such a lot ahead of you” she said at last, in a trembling voice.

“Only what everyone else has,” he answered, impatiently.

“You mean—dying?”

“Ending,” he said.

“Maybe it isn't ending,” she said, with an unconcealed sob. “I hope it isn't.”

“Good Lord! Haven't you had enough?” he demanded.

“No, no! I just wish I could have another chance....”

“But have you ever had a chance?”

“Yes, I did! Oh, I could have been different!” she cried. “You don't know... I could have been... Now, you see, I haven't anything.... Not anything. When I think how different I could have been!...”

Pitiable illusion!

“No, you couldn't have been,” he said, suddenly gentle. “Don't think that.... And you're very sweet and dear as you are.”

“I? I?” she asked, with a sort of terror.

He was now utterly defeated, committed to the endless assuagement of this hapless creature.

“Very well!” he said to himself, resigned and weary. “Apparently I haven't the moral courage to drown Miss Flotsam. And there's no point in half-drowning her. I shall have to be humane—to breaking point.”

He suggested turning back, and his docile companion assented at once.

“But is there a breaking point?” he reflected. “I rather think there's not. Of all extraordinary things, the most extraordinary is the endurance of human beings. There's nothing imaginable we won't suffer without mutiny. Nothing! I'll take on the burden of this very tiresome Miss Flotsam, for no reason at all. I don't like her, certainly I don't admire her. I'm not even sure that I'm especially sorry for her. Simply, she makes a claim on my sympathy, and I'm obliged to acknowledge the claim. I can't help her; I've nothing to give. But I'll be the illusion she wants. I'll be the carrot in front of the donkey's nose....”

His long silence frightened her; she waited terribly anxious, for his next words. She sweet and dear? Oh, no!

“You didn't mean that, did you?” she asked, and her effort to sound careless and gay was a shocking failure.

“Yes!” he almost shouted. “Yes! I did!”

“Oh, but why?” she asked. “What makes you think that?”

To save his life, he could invent nothing plausible, and she kept on, desperate for reassurance, for a repetition of those words incredible and exquisite.

“I'd just like to know what you think is nice about me,” she entreated.

“Nothing!” he thought, ready to laugh at the insufferable farce. And, in lieu of spoken words, laid a hand on her arm. To his consternation, both her hands clasped his, she was trembling and cold.

“I can be a friend...” she said. “I know—I know what it means to be lonely and—I'll be the best friend you ever had.”

He was shaken with bitter mirth, grinning to himself in the dark, moved by pity that transcended human limitations, that had grown monstrous. It was what one feels at the sight of a butterfly, still fluttering, but mangled beyond remedy; the overmastering impulse is to destroy it quickly, to end its anguish—and one's own. But this creature was human, and beyond such mercy.

They returned to the house, and on the landing he wished her good night. But she did not go.

“You're so—so quiet she said, faintly. “I'm afraid—I hope you haven't anything very bad to worry you?...”

He was so mortally weary of this that he could no longer respond.

“No, thanks, I haven't,” he answered, stiff and unsmiling. “Good-night!”

He shut himself into his room with a sigh of relief. But through the thin wall he heard her stirring, and it exasperated him; he imagined that she moved feebly, like a stricken animal; he imagined her stumbling about because her eyes were blind with tears. He couldn't sleep, couldn't rest, with that going on; he walked up and down, angry, yet interested.

“Where's the line between cruelty and pity?” he thought. “I'm not sure that they aren't sometimes manifestations of the same emotion—the wish to get rid of what you don't like—”

He was interrupted by a knock at the door which he knew to be hers.

“Good God!” he exclaimed, half aloud. “Can't you let me alone?” And he flung open the door with a crash. The light from his room was full upon her, and he was appalled at her face. But she was without shame, utterly abandoned to her anguish, tears running down her cheeks in streams.

“I can't help it” she stammered. “I—oh, I heard you walking up and down.... I was afraid—you—you were—like me.... All alone—and—and suffering so....”

He said nothing at all; there was a shocking relief in being silent, in making no attempt at consolation. He looked at her with calm indifference.

“This must end,” he reflected. “If I don't speak, she'll have to go away.”

But apparently she didn't notice his silence; she came nearer and caught his passive hand in both of hers.

“I want you to know there's someone who's thinking of you,” she said. “Someone who cares.... Don't feel lonely! Don't!”

“No, I won't,” he assured her, a little dazed. “There's nothing wrong with me, I promise you. I'm not 'suffering.'”

“But I'm sorry for you! I am! I am!” she cried, with a great tearing sob like a hiccough. “You told me I—I was dear and sweet... Nobody else—for years and years... I want—to help you...”

“You do,” he answered, looking with profound apprehension at all the other closed doors. “Please don't cry! You do help me—very much. I don't know what I'd do without you.”

His insincerity seemed to him so patent and so brutal that he would not have felt surprised if she had struck him. All he wanted was to make her keep quiet at any cost. He was by no means so far gone in pessimism as to be indifferent to the possibility of other people observing or hearing this scene. The only thing he would not do was to let her set foot in his room; that was his last stronghold, his one refuge, and she should never, never pass that threshold. Otherwise, he was quite reckless; he would go to any lengths to tranquillize—and to get rid of her.

She had grasped his hand tighter, and on her disfigured and piteous face, still streaming tears, there was a strange light.

“Do I?” she asked. “Really? Does it comfort you to think—to think—there's someone near you?”

“It does,” he said solemnly. “It's a blessing.”

She dropped his hand, and stepped back, staring at him with dilated eyes. “You think that?” she said, so low he could scarcely hear her. “Then you don't know—about me.”

“I don't care,” he interposed hastily, in terror of a confession then and there. “I can see what you are—altogether gentle and good and kind.”

“No, no!” she cried.

“Don't spoil everything!” he said, in a tone of sad entreaty. “Only say good-night to me now, and let me think—what I like.”

She took a step forward and a step back, in an odd, mincing way, as if she were dancing. Then she rushed toward him and flung her arms about his neck, her wet cheek was against his, her fine, dry hair in his mouth and eyes.

“Good-night! Good-night, you dear boy! Oh, don't be sad! Just you remember—I'm here...” Her quavering voice broke. “And thinking of you!” she ended in a gasp.

He stood like a stone, amazed, a little affronted. She drew back, but her trembling hand lingered on his head, and her anxious, troubled glance could not leave him.

“Will you try not to be sad?” she asked.

“I'm not sad,” he answered, mildly.

“That's right!” she said, patting his head, and smiling weakly. “That's right.”

At last she went, and he was closing the door, when she came back, in great haste.

“I've got something that's wonderful for making you sleep!” she whispered.

But the door was closed, and he leaned against it, grimly resolute.

“No, thanks!” he said.

Then he forgot her; not that he consciously repudiated thinking of her, but because this thing was so incredible and nebulous that it eluded him. If she wasn't before his eyes, she didn't, she couldn't exist.

He waked the next morning with more energy than he had had for a long time. He made up his mind to escape Miss Flotsam, to give up his room at once, and to be gone when she returned that evening.

“Without a word,” he decided. “That's the kindest way. Then she can invent any sort of romance she likes to account for it. Poor little devil!”

But he was not to be let off so easily. Under his door was a note. In an infantile rage he put his foot on it.

“I won't read it!” he said.

Impossible! He had to read it, just as he was obliged to listen to all that she said. He picked up the envelope with a mental apology for the boot mark that sullied it, and, with a sigh, tore it open.

Like every appeal she made, it was too long. The words that might have touched him were repeated until they could only exasperate; she was not content with a simple explanation of her tormented life; she had felt obliged to lie a little, to ornament, and to cheapen every detail. A sickening letter, as if she were grovelling at his feet.... He had known at the first glance that she had suffered; that was enough to know of any human creature.

“You can't think what it means to me to write this letter. I know it may be the end of everything. But I couldn't let you go on thinking I was different and better than I really am. You said I was gentle and good and kind. You said it was a blessing to have me near you. But if I deceived you, and you found out, it would be a curse. I know what it is to be deceived in people. I wouldn't do that to you. I want you to know all about me.

“I think you know how hard life is for some people, and may be you can still go on being friends with me. I'm not trying to excuse any of the wrong things I have done, but some of it was not my fault. I am not going to work to-day. I shall stay in my room and wait to see how you feel about it. If you don't come by noon, I shall know that you feel you can't be friends any more. I won't blame you. I promise you I won't blame you, not one bit. Only, if you can't, I don't think I can go on any longer. I won't mind not going on.”

She had signed this “Elaine,” and after the signature there was a postscript:

“Please believe that I won't mind not going on. I am pretty much discouraged anyhow and I know a very easy way.”

His hand was raised to knock at her door when he stopped.

“But what am I to say?” he thought, in a panic. “What am I to do? Friends! It's not quite that with her, poor little devil. What can I do but go on hurting her for a little while longer? I couldn't keep it up. She'd know....”

He turned back into his own room and walked up and down, in anguish, in intolerable longing to be free.

“I couldn't keep it up.... If I don't go to her, she'll think that I loved her and that her letter overwhelmed me.... She'll think it's a tragedy.... O God! Isn't it better to make it a tragedy, instead of playing out the farce? Go and tell her the letter doesn't make any difference and I'm still her friend? Then if she puts her arms around me—if she touches me again, I'll hate her. And she'll see.... I can't do it.”

Then a thought came to him of such exquisite relief that he sank into a chair, suddenly grown weak.

“She doesn't mean it.... I'll put the letter under the door again, where she'll see it from the hall. She's sure to come out after me. And I won't answer; then she'll think I never got it.”

So he replaced the letter and sat down to wait.

What was she doing in there? Not a sound came through the thin partition. What was she doing? What could she do? Think? Her thoughts would be unendurable; he fancied that they were drifting in through the wall in little invisible clouds, acrid, bitter with tears, of no form or substance.

But if he went to her now, and set this right for a day, a month, there would be the rest of her life to be passed in there, thinking.

“No! She'll come,” he thought. “She'll take her letter away again, and nothing will happen. She'll simply go on. And I'll go on ... the natural course of events.”

The phrase was soothing until he analysed it and recalled instances of the natural course of events in certain cases he had observed. He was ready to believe that a humane man might well occupy his life in deflecting the natural course of events.

The clock in the Metropolitan tower struck eleven. What was she doing?

“She's dropped asleep.... Or she's forgotten. She's capable of forgetting anything, losing anything in that incredibly muddled brain of hers. And last night she was—distinctly exaltée.... Very much so!”

For a moment he was able to see something amusing in this thing.

“It's a compliment,” he observed, with a faint grin. “A lady to threaten to die for me. That's something, after all.”

Then he remembered her face. He sprang up, overturning the chair and the crash it made seemed a new affront to her august and terrible silence. He wanted to hurry to her and apologize. Apologize for pity?

“If I make a row, she'll come out,” he thought. “She'll want to know whether I'm 'sad.'”

He moved about noisily, angrily, for a time, but she did not come.

“It's a cheap, silly trick ...” he muttered. “Nothing more. She thought that would fetch me, that old, old tale about 'ending it all.' It won't though. It's despicable.”

On the fitful wind came the sound of the chimes ringing the half hour, faint at first, and ending in a clear ringing note as a strong gust blew. It chilled him. He stood still in the centre of the room, everything so quiet, his watch and his heart racing together, like nature and civilization in a laughable competition. And then behind the wall came a little sound, something indistinct, a rustle or a tiny sigh.

“This must be ended!” he said, aloud, and took a step toward the door. There at his feet was the letter. “'Friends'... 'Go on being friends!'” To go on—to go on—to keep the fluttering tormented thing alive a little longer, only to meet the same end. He could not keep it up; very soon she would see... A farce, or a tragedy?

He flung himself into a chair and covered his face with his hands—a mechanical and self-conscious gesture, done only out of regard for the situation. He was not able even to think of her now; he was lost in contemplation of a procession of doleful images, all the brothers and sisters of Miss Flotsam, from the beginning of time, all floating helpless in the current, their perishing faces turned without hope, without reproach, toward those others who did not drift, who were aboard their ship and bound for an unimaginable port.

The clock struck twelve. It was the most tremendous clamour he had ever heard, it rang in his own body with violent vibrations. After the actual sound had died away, the waves still beat on his ears with the brutal excitement of a tocsin. The terror, the ecstacy [sic], it must be for her! But for her it would end, and for him it would go on ringing....

He got up when he could, when the deafening and sublime clangour had grown fainter in his heart. He went out and knocked upon her door. He waited, and knocked again, but there was no answer.

He tore up the letter and left the house, not to return, without advising any one of what had happened under that roof. Miss Flotsam was washed up on the beach now, out of reach of the sea; let her lie there in peace.

title: Miss Flotsam and Mr Jetsam


text: Talk:Miss Flotsam and Mr Jetsam

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 country girls. But he himself, though he could play so many instruments and pass judgment in so many fields of art, remained an amateur. It is not given to any one so keenly to enjoy, without some greater power to understand. That he did not like Shakespeare as an artist for the stage may be a fault, but it is not without either parallel or excuse. He certainly admired him as a poet; he was the first beyond mere actors on the rolls of that innumerable army who have got "To be or not to be" by heart. Nor was he content with that; it haunted his mind; he quoted it to himself in the pages of the Diary, and, rushing in where angels fear to tread, he set it to music. Nothing, indeed, is more notable than the heroic quality of the verses that our little sensualist in a periwig chose out to marry with his own mortal strains. Some gust from brave Elizabethan times must have warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning his sublime theorbo. "To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler"—"Beauty retire, thou dost my pity move"—"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O Rome;"—open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in the sentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit that selected such a range of themes. Of "Gaze not on Swans," I know no more than these four words; yet that also seems to promise


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 "Ane! what ane? Has he nae name? Ye speak as if I kept a shop, and was to come at every body's whistle."

"Yes, he has a name," answered John, "but your Leddyship likes ill to hear't."

"What is it, you fool?"

"It's Calf-Gibbie, my Leddy," said John, in a tone rather above the pitch of decorous respect, on which he occasionally trespassed, confiding in his merit as an ancient servant of the family, and a faithful follower of their humble fortunes—"It's Calf-Gibbie, an' your Leddyship will hae't, that keeps Edie Henshaw's kye down yonder at the Brigg-end—that's him that was Guse-Gibbie at Tillietudlem, and gaed to the wappinshaw, and that"

"Hold your peace, John; you are very insolent to think I wad speak wi' a person like that. Let him tell his business to you or Mrs Headrigg."

"He'll no hear o' that, my Leddy; he says, them that sent him bade him gi'e the thing to your Leddyship's ain hand direct,


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 or to Lord Evandale's, he wots na whilk. But, to say the truth, he's far frae fresh, and he's but an idiot an' he were."

"Then turn him out," said Lady Margaret, "and tell him to come back to-morrow when he is sober. I suppose he comes to crave some benevolence, as an ancient follower o' the house."

"Like eneugh, my Leddy, for he's a' in rags, poor creature."

Gudyill made another attempt to get at Gibbie's commission, which was indeed of the last importance, being a few lines from Morton to Lord Evandale, acquainting him. with the danger in which he stood from the practices of Olifant, and exhorting him either to instant flight, or else to come to Glasgow and surrender himself, where he could assure him of protection. This billet, hastily written, he entrusted to Gibbie, whom he saw feeding his herd beside the bridge, and backed with a couple of dollars his desire that it might instantly be delivered into the hand to which it was addressed.


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 But it was decreed that Goose-Gibbie's intermediation, whether as an emissary or as a man-at-arms, should be unfortunate to the family of Tillietudlem. He unluckily tarried so long at the ale-house; to prove if his employer's coin was good, that, when he appeared at Fairy-knowe, the little sense: which nature had given him was effectually drowned in ale and brandy, and instead of asking for Lord Evandale, he demanded to speak with Lady Margaret, whose name was more familiar to his ear. Being refused admittance to her presence, he staggered away with the letter undelivered, perversely faithful to Morton's instructions. in the only point in which it would have been well had he departed from them.

A few minutes after he was gone Edith entered the apartment. Lord Evandale and she met with mutual embarrassment, which Lady Margaret, who only knew in general that their union had been postponed by her grand-daughter's indisposition, set down to the bashfulness of a bride


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 well. It was, however, on a probable suspicion, the work of his master, Mr. Berkenshaw—as the drawings that figure at the breaking up of a young ladies' seminary are the work of the professor attached to the establishment. Mr. Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil. The amateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some leaven of the world still clogging him; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank to the man who taught him composition. In relation to the stage, which he so warmly loved and understood, he was not only more hearty, but more generous to others. Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, "a man," says he, "who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for it." And again, when he and his wife had seen a most ridiculous insipid piece, "Glad we were," he writes, "that Betterton had no part in it." It is by such a zeal and loyalty to those who labour for his delight that the amateur grows worthy of the artist. And it should be kept in mind that, not only in art, but in morals, Pepys rejoiced to recognise his betters. There was not one speck of envy in the whole human-hearted egotist.

When writers inveigh against respectability, in


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The Long Night (Holding)

HE summer day was coming to an end; the sun was low, and the last level rays shone through the windows of the dining room, where Emily was setting the table for dinner. All the room was glowing and flaming with the sunset light; the mirror glinted like rippling water, the baby's silver mug was a blur of intolerable brightness. And it seemed to her, in her fatigue, that this great light had its own sound, a ringing, tremendous music, without form, without end. It confused her; she hesitated in her work, closed her eyes.

And immediately that letter came before her, perfectly clear and vivid. She opened her eyes hastily. “No,” she thought. “No; not now. I can't—I mustn't think about it now.”

All the afternoon she had told herself that; she had gone about her interminable duties with the letter tucked inside her blouse, and stifled in her heart the sickening pain she hadn't time to feel yet—not yet. She couldn't begin even to suffer until her day was done and she could be alone.

Only three places at the table.

“Be sure to come sharp at six, Tony! So that we can have a little music before the others come. Oh, Anthony, aren't 'others' a nuisance? But all day yesterday I was practicing that Tschaikowsky barcarolle, and now it's as smooth and clear and lovely as my dear lake must be, up in the hills, these summer days. And I want you to hear that, Anthony. There'll be other things for the other people.”

T WAS a little after six; he must be there now with Mrs. Morey, in her cool, charming room, listening to her music. Just those two alone, before the tiresome “others” came. Even with no time for thinking, Emily could reconstruct the scene; she knew that room of Mrs. Morey's.

Hadn't she spent an evening there only a month ago with Anthony—had sat there, quiet, faintly amused, watching the fascinating Nina Morey industriously engaged in the process of fascinating Anthony?

“And I suppose I was one of the 'others,'” she thought. “Oh, if I could be alone, just for an hour!”

But even now she could hear Aunt Josie coming up the front steps with Willa-baby, come home from their daily walk. They were wrangling as usual in that absurd, distressing way. “You're a very naughty little girl,” said Aunt Josie sternly.

“Why?” asked Willa-baby. “What did I do? What did I do, Aunt Josie? Aunt Josie! What did I do? Why are I naughty? Aunt Josie! What did”

“Hush!” said Aunt Josie. “Don't presume to argue with me, miss!”

“Why hush?” demanded Willa in an aggrieved whine. “Can't I even talk? Why hush?”

Emily's heart sank. She was so tired, and there was so much before her that she couldn't evade, so many little tasks, so many futile words she must speak before her quiet hour came. “I can't,” she thought. “I'll say I have a headache, and go and lie down. There's no reason why Aunt Josie shouldn't manage without me for one evening.”

But she knew this to be impossible; even in her own room with the door locked, she would have no peace; they would all come to her, always to her, with their questions, their quarrels, their perplexities. Anthony kept up the obstinate pretense that Aunt Josie was a help to Emily; but she wasn't; she was only another burden, and perhaps the worst of them all. She was Anthony's aunt, Anthony's responsibility—and he had presented her to Emily as if she were an undisguised blessing. She couldn't smile when the old lady came into the room; she was always civil to Aunt Josie, but she couldn't always be cordial; there were times when mortal weariness and resentment kept her dangerously smiling and silent.

“Willa's a very naughty little girl,” said Aunt Josie. She spoke severely, with that air of offended majesty that so exasperated Emily. A thin little old lady she was, incredibly neat, in a starched white blouse and high collar, and a black skirt, her gray hair in a queer little frizzed bang over her querulous brow. A queen in exile, Aunt Josie was, perpetually mourning for her old home in England.

NTHONY, born and brought up in the United States, had been taken over to see Aunt Josie in his childhood, and he had given Emily a humorous description of that awful little house in Brighton; but Aunt Josie, after fifteen years in this country, still clung stubbornly and resentfully to her past glories. She wasn't grateful to Anthony, who had sent for her when her husband died; she wasn't grateful to Emily, who had accepted her when she accepted Anthony; on the contrary, she had the manner of one patiently enduring unmerited afflictions.

“I'll fetch Willa's porridge,” she said.

“Cereal,” said Willa-baby in an undertone.

“Porridge,” said Aunt Josie. “At home no one would understand a little girl who asked for 'cereal.'”

“I wouldn't never ask for it,” said Willa. “I hate it.”

“It's wicked to hate good, wholesome food,” declared Aunt Josie indignantly. “You ought to be thankful to have any supper at all.”

“Well, I aren't,” said Willa. “I don't want any.”

“Shame on you, miss. Some day you'll”

“Excuse me, Aunt Josie,” Emily intervened. “Willa-baby, run upstairs and wash. And hurry down again to mother.”

“Aw' wight!” said Willa. “I love you, mother!”

That was her almost invariable formula, tacked on to everything, a hurried, expressionless “I love you, mother!” But she meant it; little naughty, troublesome baby, she meant it with all her loyal heart. In the doorway she turned to throw a kiss to Emily, and Emily, returning it, felt a cruel stab of pain.

“I knew all the time that it was going to happen,” she thought. “Even on our wedding day I knew it was going to happen sometime. Nothing could hold him—nothing in the world.”

Aunt Josie came in from the kitchen with Willa's bowl of oatmeal. She disapproved strongly of this notion of letting Willa begin to eat before anyone else.

“If she were given a definite time in which to eat her porridge,” she said, “and at the end of that time it was taken away from her, she'd soon stop this dawdling.”

She did dawdle, though. She hadn't half finished when dinner was ready to serve, and, as usual, she and the highchair remained at the table.

“I'll call Dick,” said Aunt Josie.

But Dick came in without being called. He went upstairs and washed and brushed his hair without being told, too; not because of any notable urge of duty, but because he had lately developed a strange distaste for being told anything. He wished to be let alone.

Aunt Josie and Emily kept up the conversation, without which the meal could not be endured. They spoke of the plumber, and how long he had taken to stop the leak in the kitchen; they spoke of the laundress and her inordinate demands; of the possibilities of getting a new general houseworker, of the price of vegetables, the lack of rain. As if in conspiracy, no one mentioned the absent husband and father.

“Wouldn't Mrs. Morey feel sorry for him if she could hear this!” thought Emily when she and Aunt Josie had thoroughly exhausted the topic of laundresses. And suddenly a bitter tide of anger rose in her heart. “Very well!” she thought. “I'm sorry for him too—and sorry for myself, and for Dick, and Willa-baby and Aunt Josie—for all of us. We're all prisoners, shut up here together. But he can get away. Just a casual little lie, and he's free for a whole evening.”

Aunt Josie and Willa-baby had begun an argument and, to end it, Emily sat down beside the child and fed her the rest of her supper. Then, hand in hand, she and Willa went upstairs.

She could hear Aunt Josie downstairs washing the dishes and talking to Dick, who was drying them.

“And when I go down I'll say, 'Oh, Aunt Josie, you shouldn't have bothered!' And she'll say, 'Well, Emily, someone has to do the necessary work in this world.' I cannot stand it! I can't—not all alone. If I had Anthony! But he's gone. He's lied to me. He's deserted me. He lied to me—pretending he had to work late in the office; that old, old, unutterably cheap lie, the lie that's a joke. I suppose hes done it before... Only this time he made a mistake. When he comes home he'll go on lying—until I show him the letter.”

Willa-baby had climbed into her crib, and lay there, neat and straight, only her toes showing beneath the long nightdress.

Emily tucked in the sheet over her and kissed her peachlike cheek. “Good night, mother's baby!” she said softly. But there was no softness in her heart even for Willa—not just now. She could not feel at all; she could only think, and her thinking was strangely without bitterness.

“Because I've always known this would happen,” she said to herself. “I knew when Anthony first wanted me to marry him that he couldn't stand a life like this. I told him so. I begged him to wait. And he told me I was 'afraid of life!'”

The words ran through her head as she went slowly down the stairs. “Afraid of life.” Was she? “I don't know,” she reflected. “Perhaps I am—for Dick and Willa-baby; not for myself though. I don't care now what happens to me—after this. This was the very worst thing; and it's happened.”

OW her quiet hour had come. She went out on the veranda and stood for a moment looking over the dark fields. It was lonely here, very lonely, very quiet. The little insects chirped valiantly in the immense silence; the long grass fluttered now and then when the light breeze ran across the meadow; overhead the clouds floated easily in a pale sky.

The children were asleep, and Aunt Josie had retired early, complaining of a headache. And it seemed to Emily that they had all withdrawn, gone infinitely far away, leaving her starkly alone with her pain. She was surrounded by blank indifference.

“I'm so tired,' she thought, “I wish” For what did she wish? Nothing. Nothing. Her eyes closed; she sighed faintly. Now she was going to think of Anthony—and Mrs. Morey—of the letter....

“Emi-lee! Emi-lee-ee!”

She sat up, inordinately startled by the weak, mournful little cry. Then in an instant her mind, trained to respond a hundred times a day to a hundred calls upon her, was fully awake.

She hurried up the stairs to Aunt Josie's room. “Did you call me, Aunt Josie?” she asked.

The old lady was sitting up in bed, one hand pressed against her side, her sharp-featured face flushed and drawn. “I ” she began, but ended with a gasp and mutely shook her head.

And in the quiet room, so neat, so austere, dimly lit by a green-shaded lamp on the bedside table, Emily could hear her drawing breath with terrible reluctance, pressing her shrunken lips together to keep back her groans.

O YOU think it's pleurisy again, Aunt Josie?” she asked, trying to speak easily and pleasantly to conceal her dismay. She had seen the poor old lady endure one such attack and her heart quailed at the thought of witnessing it again. “I'll telephone to Doctor Crowley, dear,” she said. ” And then I'll come back and make you comfortable.”

The old lady had dropped into a doze, breathing short and fast, her face terribly anxious as if she were trying in desperate haste to escape a relentless enemy. And Emily, sitting beside her, was filled with the same sense of hurry; her thoughts flew to meet Doctor Crowley, driving along the country lanes; she strained her ears to catch the distant sound of his motor, but heard only the rustle of the leaves. It was ten o'clock. Why didn't he come?

“O God! Oh, please, please, God, let her get well!” said Emily over and over again.

Aunt Josie stirred in her sleep; her thin brows drew together in a frown, and suddenly she cried out in an amazingly loud, clear voice: “Anthony! My dear, dear boy! You've been—good—good”—and then her voice trailed away—“goo-oo-ood to me-ee”

She was awake now, looking up at Emily, her hand clutching her side again. But her cry had awakened Willa-baby.

“Mother!” came a lusty shout. “Mother! Come here!”

Impossible to leave Aunt Josie now alone, while her enemy so harried her.

“Wait, Willa-baby,” Emily called softly.

But Willa, the tyrant, would not wait.

“I'm fwightened,” the child shouted. “Mother, I'm fwightened.”

A chill ran down Emily's spine; she fancied that Aunt Josie's enemy had crept into the house.

“Attend—to your—child,” gasped Aunt Josie, with the shadow of her old austerity.

So Emily rose and went into the nursery. Willa-baby was sitting up in her crib. As her mother entered she stood up, holding out her arms, like a little white flying spirit in the dark. “Take me, mother,” she cried. “I'm fwightened.”

“Where's daddy?” It was Dick's voice from the doorway.

E SPOKE in that new, casual, aloof tone of his, but to Emily his words came with appalling significance. She had not once thought of Anthony; she had tried to shoulder this burden alone, while he, the husband and father, the natural protector and helper of all the little household, was not there.

“Father's away, Dick, on business,” she answered.

And in her heart was a wish that shocked her; a wish that someone knew, that some one of these persons who idolized Anthony knew where he was. She struggled in vain against it. “Nobody ever will know,” she said to herself. “If poor little Aunt Josie dies”

If Aunt Josie died Anthony would never forgive himself, never forget that he had been away enjoying himself.... Remorse swept over her. “Heaven forgive me!” she thought. “I didn't think I could feel like that. He ought to be here; he ought to have his chance. Dick, dear,” she said aloud, “stay here with little Willa. I'll turn on the light, and you can look at pictures; but be quiet, very quiet, both of you, not to disturb Aunt Josie.”

She lowered the side of the crib and Dick sat down there, scornfully forbearing, explaining the pictures in one of his sister's unutterably silly books. As she went downstairs she could hear his valiant little voice: “It's a enchanted bird and a witch out in the woods. Aw' right! Turn over! That's a ogre. Hold the book still.”

First she telephoned again to Doctor Crowley.

“Hasn't he come yet?” asked his wife anxiously.... “He started nearly an hour ago. He must have had a breakdown. Is it another attack of pleurisy, Mrs. Cane?... Then I'll tell you what to do until he comes. Heat cloths in very hot water and wring them dry” And so on.

HEN the brisk, cheerful voice had stopped, Emily lifted the receiver again, and asked for Mrs. Morey's number. She couldn't keep from smiling coldly as she did so.

Poor Anthony! He would be more than a little disconcerted. Perhaps the charming, well-poised Mrs. Morey would be just a trifle perturbed herself. Here was her soft, drawling voice now.

“Will you please tell Mr. Cane that his aunt is very ill?” said Emily—only that. She gave no name, offered no salutation, and before Mrs. Morey could answer, she had hung up the receiver. HE kitchen fire was out, and the boiler was scarcely warm. Emily got down on her knees, clearing out the ashes in nervous haste. Hot water was needed for Aunt Josie—now—at once. And Dick had forgotten to bring in kindling wood, and the coal scuttle was empty. She must hurry, she must hurry. She fancied that even down here in the kitchen she could hear Aunt Josie's tormented breathing.

“Mother! Mother!” came a shrill little voice.

Emily hurried to the foot of the stairs, and there stood Willa and Dick, hand in hand, halfway down. Willa descended the rest of the flight with a wild rush and flung her arms about her mother's knees; she was trembling pitiably, her eyes wide and terror-stricken.

“I can't do anything with her,” said Dick with quiet scorn.

“Run up” Emily began; but after all she couldn't send this very little son to sit with Aunt Josie; he was only a baby himself, so very slight and little in his frogged pajamas, with his fair hair all ruffled, and his grim little mouth. He was frightened himself; she could see it in his resolute stare.

She held out her hand, smiling, and he came leisurely down. And in the very act of comforting the little creatures a chill dread crept over the mother, a bleak, sorrowful fear—of nothing, of everything, of the monstrous hazards of life. She wanted to gather both her children into her arms; she wanted to hurry with them into some safe corner, outside of the relentless currents of life; she felt abandoned, unutterably forlorn and desolate. The house was terribly still—and every human creature in that house waited for her, looked only to her for assuagement and support.

“Stay here with Dickie, my dearie,” she said. “I want to go up to see Aunt Josie for a minute.”

But Willa would not stay. She began to sob, and her sobs were unbearable in the silent house. In despair Emily picked her up and started toward the door, leaving the valiant little Dickie alone in the kitchen.

“I'll go down in the cellar and get the coal,” he said in a shaking voice.

MILY was about to protest, for ever since he was a baby he had been afraid of that dark region where the kitten had died. But looking at him, their eyes met, and a thrill of pride ran through her. He had conquered himself, this son of hers; he was still frightened, but he meant to play a man's part.

He picked up the empty scuttle, opened the cellar door and, barefooted, descended into the black depths.

With Willa clinging round her neck Emily went out into the hall toward the stairs. And just then there was a step on the veranda, a key turned in the lock, and Anthony entered.

They faced each other in silence for a moment.

A handsome man Anthony was, with a fastidious sort of elegance in spite of his rather shabby suit, his far from new shoes. No man on earth liked better to be well dressed, yet he had never made the least complaint because he could not be so. She knew how he flinched inwardly at having to wear darned socks and mended gloves; yet she had only to mention that the children needed anything, had only to appear herself in something obviously outworn, and he would turn over to her every penny he had with that nonchalant air that concealed his embarrassment at being thanked.

“He's not selfish in that way,” she thought. “He'd go without anything—for us.” And she was glad that this thought had come to her, glad that, as she held his child in her arms, she could think of something good in him.

“Emily,” he said—his dark-browed, fine-featured face did not change its expression of cool reserve, but a slow flush crept over it; he wanted to speak, but the words stuck in his throat—“I”—he said—“I'm sorry. How's Aunt Josie?”

“You'd better go up and see,” said Emily dryly. “I sent for Doctor Crowley long ago, but he must have broken down on the way. I want hot water for her, but the fire's out—and the children both waked up.”

He stood before her, neat, slender and tall in his dark suit; he had, she thought, a curiously formal air, as if he didn't belong there in this little house. Hadn't she always known that he couldn't endure this sort of life? She could, she must endure everything, but not he; he had to escape, to run away—to Mrs. Morey and her Tschaikowsky barcarolle.

“I'll take Willa,” he said.

ITH regal indifference Willa went from her mother's arms to his; her eyes were heavy; she rested her bright head on her father's shoulder, looking back with a drowsy smile at Emily, who followed them up the stairs. They entered Aunt Josie's room.

And a little miracle took place. The dread shadow of fear and doubt lifted. It seemed to Emily that the room grew actually brighter, that the lamplight had a new and reassuring mellowness. Aunt Josie, propped up against the pillows, had lost that look of terrible aloofness, and was once more a familiar figure.

Anthony sat down on a chair beside the bed, with Willa on his knee. And he and Aunt Josie began to talk. She was still in great pain, able only to gasp a few broken phrases; but it was somehow a comprehensible, almost an ordinary sort of pain now. She and Anthony both took it for granted, in that stoic fashion of theirs; Aunt Josie had an attack of pleurisy, that was all, and she would simply have to make the best of it. It was not possible for him to speak to her tenderly, cheerfully as Emily did; he said briefly that it was “too bad,” he gave her frail old hand a hasty squeeze, asked her a few questions. And all the doctors on earth couldn't have helped her as this did; they understood each other, these two. Her drawn face had resumed its usual expression of affronted severity. Anthony understood how one ought to behave with pleurisy, and she intended to live up to his ideal.

“We'll see about these hot cloths,” he said at last, rising. “Emily'll stay with you.” And off he went with Willa.

Aunt Josie had no wish to talk any more, and again that blank silence fell—a different silence now though; the clock ticked briskly; the leaves rustled soothingly outside the window.

“He's so good to Aunt Josie,” she thought. She struggled for a moment against a sharp resentment. She, too, was good to Aunt Josie, and she had her all day and every day; easy enough for Anthony to be good to her.

UT he did things for the old lady which were not easy. It wasn't only that he had taken care of her for years and years; almost any man would have done that. It was his unostentatious and tireless generosity, his genuine sympathy and understanding which were so rare. When Aunt Josie made a remark for the hundredth time, he didn't simply endure in silence; he made a response. He watched her; he found out for himself when she was suffering with a martyr's patience for lack of a new pair of slippers; he got for her those little things she sternly protested she didn't want, yet secretly longed for—an electric flashlight, a hot-water bottle, a wonderful set of scissors, graduated from tremendous shears down to buttonhole size. And what he did for Aunt Josie was not so much less done for the children; it was his own personal deprivation. No wonder Aunt Josie loved him so; no wonder!

She was surprised to feel tears stealing down her cheeks, tears quiet and effortless, curiously assuaging. OCTOR CROWLEY had come and gone. Aunt Josie was resting in comparative comfort now. And still Emily sat beside her in the quiet room, while the brisk little clock ticked out the minutes of that endless night. She could hear Anthony's quiet voice in another room. A singularly agreeable voice he had, level, inexpressive, yet always with a hint of warmth, of fervor in it. She remembered once, long ago, at a dance, accidentally overhearing him speaking of her to an old friend; she remembered how he had spoken her name—“Emily.” That had been no cool, matter-of-fact love he had felt for her; he had worshiped her, idolized her for her innocent young dignity, her graciousness, her fresh loveliness. All gone now, weren't they? She was tired, worn out, her bright color dimmed, her grave gayety stifled by responsibilities, by anxiety—by grief. For it was grief she felt now, not anger; it was an immeasurable sorrow for her immeasurable loss. He had lied to her—because he wanted to get away.

She rose softly and, after a glance at Aunt Josie, went on tiptoe out of the room. She wanted to see what Anthony was doing.

A light was burning in the nursery, and the door was ajar. She stopped outside and looked in. Willa was asleep in her crib, one hand fast in her father's. Dick sat beside him on the floor, his head resting against his father's knee; his eyes were closed, his face wore no longer that expression of manly indifference; it was serene, infantile, lighted by dreamy contentment. Tight in one hand he grasped that model sailboat, the making of which had engrossed him for days. No doubt he had been explaining it to Anthony; Anthony encouraged him in his ridiculous passion for all things maritime; read him sea stories, found items and pictures for him in the newspapers. He had been a purser himself, years ago, on a P. and O. steamer—before he had Aunt Josie and a wife and children. And Emily knew how his spirit flew back to the sea for refuge; he never forgot his old, free days.

BORN rover Anthony was, restless, adventurous, curious. This routine domestic life was sometimes very hard for her, but she had her blessed compensations—her hours with the children, her delight in the order and security of her little domain. And what had he? So little, so very little. He hadn't her quiet, simple tastes; he wanted a lively and varied existence; he loved good talk, hearty laughter, stir and activity about him.

And night after night he came home—to Aunt Josie, to his children, to herself. Night after night he sat at the dinner table, making his kindly replies to the old lady, so unfailingly good-tempered with his children, so interested in her small affairs, in plumbers, laundresses, neighbors. So generous, so kindly always to these his own people. He made an honest effort to understand each one, to meet them halfway—and who understood him?

Suddenly, with a strange contraction of the heart, she did understand. She looked at his worn, handsome face, his gray eyes staring blankly before him, and she did understand. He had wanted only one little gay hour, one little interval; no matter what had happened, he had not been unfaithful to his own people. One lie, one deflection could in no way affect his illimitable fidelity. Always, as long as he lived, he would stand by them, willingly and gladly give for them the very breath of his life. He hadn't really gone away—only turned his weary glance aside for a moment. He was here, always would be here when any one of them needed him.

No matter what had happened, he had not been unfaithful to his own people.

T SEEMED to her this thought was too great for her heart to contain, that this knowledge, this revelation had all in an instant transformed her and ennobled her. All that had so troubled and wounded her fell away; they were the little things, and this was the great thing, the invaluable, beautiful vision that must not be veiled.

“Tony!” she whispered. He turned sharply, smiled as he saw her, and got up cautiously, letting Dick's fair head rest upon the cushion of the chair. “Everything all right?” he asked.

They stood side by side in the dim hall; all the others were asleep, safe and comforted now, because he was here.

“Everything,” she answered.

He looked at her bright face with a shadow of bewilderment. Then he flushed and turned his head. “Emily, old girl,” he said very low, “I—don't know what to say”

“Then don't say anything!” she interrupted. “It's—finished with, Anthony.”

“It's not. I—I'm not trying to excuse myself, Emily—only it's not so bad as it looks. There never could be anyone but you; never! It was just her music, you know. I wanted”

Her arm was round his neck, her cheek against his. “Oh, Tony, my own dear boy!” she said. “What does it matter?”

He held her away a little, to see her face. “But—Emily!” he said. “I—do you mean you can forgive me for that mean, beastly little lie that”

“No!” she cried with a sob. “There's no 'forgiving' between us. Only forgetting—and loving—and understanding.”

They clung to each other alone in their little world, her tears wet on his face, his arms holding her fast. The high moment of life, the moment the divine light of which would never quite fade out. UNT JOSIE waked up with a cough. She felt better, considerably better. The lamp was still burning, but the room was filled with the clear, pale light of dawn. The birds were awake out in the trees; she liked to hear them. She turned her head; there was her nephew sitting bolt upright on the sofa, his head against the wall, and Emily beside him, leaning on his shoulder, both of them sound asleep.

She was sorry, but she couldn't stop coughing. Emily opened her eyes. The sun was up now, over the hill; the first gleam of it dazzled her drowsy eyes.

The long night was ended.

title: The Long Night (Holding)


text: Talk:The Long Night (Holding)

title: Talk:The Long Night (Holding)


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 the present degraded meaning of the word, they are usually suspected of a taste for clay pipes and beer cellars; and their performances are thought to hail from the Owl's Nest of the comedy. They have something more, however, in their eye than the dulness of a round million dinner parties that sit down yearly in old England. For to do anything because others do it, and not because the thing is good, or kind, or honest in its own right, is to resign all moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and go post-haste to the devil with the greater number. We smile over the ascendency of priests; but I had rather follow a priest than what they call the leaders of society. No life can better than that of Pepys illustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of living. For what can be more untoward than the occurrence, at a critical period and while the habits are still pliable, of such a sweeping transformation as the return of Charles the Second? Round went the whole fleet of England on the other tack; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still sailed a lonely course by the stars and their own private compass, the cock-boat, Pepys, must go about with the majority among "the stupid starers and the loud huzzas."

The respectable are not led so much by any desire of applause as by a positive need for


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 and bridegroom, and, to place them at ease, began to talk to Lady Emily on indifferent topics. At this moment Edith, with a countenance as pale. as death, muttered, rather than whispered, to Lord Evandale a request to speak with him. He offered his arm, and supported her into the small anti-room, which, as we have noticed before, opened from the parlour. He placed her in a chair, and, taking one himself, awaited the opening of the conversation.

"I am distressed, my Lord," were the first words she was able to articulate, and those with difficulty; "I scarce know what I would say, nor how to speak it."

"If I have any share in occasioning your uneasiness," said Lord Evandale mildly, "you will soon, Edith, be released from it."

"You are determined then, my Lord, to run this desperate course with desperate men, in spite of your own better reason—in spite of your friends? entreaties—in


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 spite of the almost inevitable ruin which yawns before you?"

"Forgive me, Miss Bellenden; even your solicitude on my account must not detain me when my honour calls. My horses stand ready saddled, my servants are prepared, the signal for rising will be given so soon as I reach Kilsythe—If it is my fate that calls me, I will not shun meeting it. It will be something," he said, taking her hand, "to die deserving your compassion, since I cannot gain your love."

"O, my lord, remain," said Edith, in a tone which went to his heart; "time may explain the strange circumstance which has shocked me so much; my agitated nerves may recover their tranquillity. O do not rush on death and ruin! remain to be our prop and stay, and hope every thing from time!"

"It is too late, Edith; and I were most ungenerous could I practise on the warmth and kindliness of your feelings towards


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 countenance. The weaker and the tamer the man, the more will he require this support; and any positive quality relieves him, by just so much, of this dependence. In a dozen ways, Pepys was quite strong enough to please himself without regard for others; but his positive qualities were not co-extensive with the field of conduct; and in many parts of life he followed, with gleeful precision, in the footprints of the contemporary Mrs. Grundy. In morals, particularly, he lived by the countenance of others; felt a slight from another more keenly than a meanness in himself; and then first repented when he was found out. You could talk of religion or morality to such a man; and by the artist side of him, by his lively sympathy and apprehension, he could rise, as it were dramatically, to the significance of what you said. All that matter in religion which has been nicknamed other-worldliness was strictly in his gamut; but a rule of life that should make a man rudely virtuous, following right in good report and ill report, was foolishness and a stumbling-block to Pepys. He was much thrown across the Friends; and nothing can be more instructive than his attitude towards these most interesting people of that age. I have mentioned how he conversed with one as he rode; when he saw some brought from a meeting under arrest, "I