The Chapters

She did not know that she had slept a long time. She awakened because Mrs. Medlock shook her shoulder and spoke in a loud voice which seemed to belong to a dream she was having of quarrelling children in India.

"We are here," Mrs. Medlock was saying. "Wake up. It is time to get out."

Mary sat up and tried to rub the sleep from her eyes with her thin little black-gloved hands. The railway carriage was quite still and the gray light from the window had grown dim and blue. The rain no longer splashed and streamed against the panes. It had left off and a cold damp air came in when Mrs. Medlock let the window down to call to a porter.

Mary shivered and felt cross and strange. She had never been so far and so cold, and everything looked bare and unfriendly. The small station in which the train had stopped seemed to be out in the open country. There was no crowd upon the platform and no bright lights and bustle such as she had seen in London. There was only a lamp or two burning, and a wind blowing which made her black crêpe hat feel thin and chill.

She stood close to Mrs. Medlock while their boxes were lifted out, and she looked about her with her stony little face. She was very tired and hungry and she did not want to be polite to any one, and so she stared.

A tall gentleman dressed in black was standing quite near them. He stood apart from the porter and from the few people who had got out, and he was looking at Mary. Mrs. Medlock gave a start when she saw him, and her very red cheeks grew redder and her sharp black eyes widened.

"Mr. Craven!" she exclaimed. "Sir! I did not expect—"

The gentleman did not hold out his hand and he did not look as if he meant to speak to Mary. He was a man with a black beard and black hair touched with gray, and his shoulders were high and uneven. One of them seemed to lift itself above the other, and this made him stand crooked when he moved. His face was pale and unhappy and his black eyes looked down at Mary from under heavy brows as if he scarcely saw her.

Mrs. Medlock dropped a curtsy and seemed made nervous and awkward by the sight of him, as if she had not thought he would trouble himself to come.

"This is the child," she said. "Miss Mary Lennox."

Mr. Archibald Craven looked at Mary for a moment and Mary looked back at him. She thought he was a very disagreeable man to look at, with his pale face and his crooked shoulder and his silence. She did not curtsy and she did not hold out her hand. She only stared because she remembered what Basil had said and what Mrs. Medlock had told her in the train.

"Put her in the carriage," he said to Mrs. Medlock in his short cold way. "I am going to Misselthwaite."

That was all he said to Mary. He said nothing at all that sounded like welcome or like kindness. He turned and walked away toward a closed carriage which stood waiting by the road, and the driver stood by the horses with his hat in his hand.

Mrs. Medlock followed with Mary, and she was so flustered that she talked fast under her breath.

"Eh! to think of his coming himself," she muttered. "I never knew him to do such a thing before. It is not his way to meet any one. He must have been passing and taken the notion. It is not his way."

Mary said nothing. She allowed herself to be helped into the carriage and she sat in her corner and folded her hands. Mr. Craven got in after her and sat opposite, and Mrs. Medlock sat beside Mary. The door was shut and the horses started. For a little while no one spoke.

Mary thought Mr. Craven would perhaps ask her something about the voyage or about India, but he did not. He leaned back in his corner with his hat pulled low and his arms folded, and he looked out of the window at the falling dusk and seemed to have forgotten that she was there. His silence made the carriage feel very large and very still. Once or twice Mrs. Medlock coughed in a nervous manner, as if she wished to speak and dared not.

Outside the carriage the country grew wilder and darker at every mile. Mary pressed her face to the cold glass and tried to see. At first there had been hedges and cottages and a village church with lights beginning to show, but presently these were left behind and there was nothing but a great rolling darkness stretching on every side. The road ran straight and lonely through it, and the wind came sweeping over it with a low rushing sound which was new to her and which made her feel small and far away.

"What is that place?" she asked Mrs. Medlock at last, because she could bear the silence no longer.

"That is the moor," said Mrs. Medlock in a low voice, and she glanced at Mr. Craven as if she feared he would be displeased by talk. "It is the moor."

Mary did not know what a moor was. She thought it must be a sort of sea made of land, for it went on and on and met the sky in the dark, and no trees grew upon it and no houses stood upon it. It looked lonely and purple and brown under the last of the light, and strange tufts of grass trembled in the wind.

She was still looking when the horses suddenly stopped with a jerk and the carriage swayed. Mrs. Medlock gave a little exclamation and Mr. Craven lifted his head.

"What is the matter?" Mrs. Medlock asked, putting her head from the window.

The driver answered from his seat, and the wind carried half his words away.

"Something i' t' road, sir," he said. "A sheep strayed, likely. I'll get down and move it."

The carriage stood quite still upon the narrow road with the moor on either hand. Mary could hear the horses breathing and the harness jingling and the wind blowing past her ears. She felt a sudden wish to be outside for a moment and to stand upon that strange dark ground which stretched so far.

"May I get out?" she said in her sharp disagreeable voice. "I want to stand a minute."

Mrs. Medlock began to say that she must sit still, but Mr. Craven said nothing and did not forbid her, and before any one could stop her Mary had pushed open the door upon her side and scrambled down the step.

For one minute she stood upon the moor in the dark. Her thin shoes sank a little into the wet spongy earth and the cold wind caught her black dress and lifted the limp ends of her hair. All about her was space and silence and the smell of damp heather and peat. The sky hung low and heavy and a few early stars pricked through the clouds. She heard the driver speaking softly to the frightened sheep in the road and the patter of its feet as it was driven aside into the gloom.

It was only for a minute that she stood there, but in that minute she felt as if she had been taken quite out of the world she knew. In India the air had been hot and still and full of the chatter of servants and the buzz of insects. Here the air was cold and keen and empty, and it seemed to rush past her as if it were going somewhere and would not wait. She did not like it, and yet she stared and breathed it because it was new.

"Come back," Mrs. Medlock called sharply from the carriage. "Thou'lt catch thy death o' cold."

Mary climbed back and pulled her dress close about her knees. Her hands were cold through her gloves. The driver mounted to his seat again and the horses went on. Mr. Craven had not moved and had not looked at her. He seemed not to have noticed that she had been gone.

They drove a long way after that without speaking. The darkness grew thicker and Mary grew very tired. Her head nodded and then jerked up again. She was glad when at last lights appeared far ahead and grew larger, and the carriage turned from the road and passed between tall stone pillars and went rumbling up a long drive.

Misselthwaite Manor stood at the end of the drive with a few of its lower windows lighted. It was a great long house built of gray stone, with many roofs and chimneys, and it looked stern and secret in the night. Mary thought it looked like a house which kept its mouth shut.

Mr. Craven got out first and went up the broad steps without waiting. A tall footman opened the great door and stood back. Mr. Craven passed him with a brief word which Mary did not hear, and went at once down a long dim passage and out of sight. He did not say good night to Mary and he did not look back.

Mrs. Medlock led Mary into a vast hall where a fire burned low and old portraits stared from the dimness. There was a carved staircase and suits of armor and heavy oaken seats, and everything smelled of age and polish and peat smoke. Mary stood and looked while Mrs. Medlock gave orders to a housemaid who curtsied and hurried away.

"Come," said Mrs. Medlock. "You are tired and hungry. You shall have your supper in your own rooms."

She took Mary up the broad stairs and along a corridor so long that it seemed to have no end. Their footsteps echoed and the lamps set at intervals made pools of yellow light which left deep shadows between. Twice they turned and went up shorter stairs and through other passages. Mrs. Medlock unlocked a door and led her into a sitting room with a fire, and beyond it a bedroom, both furnished in heavy old fashion with dark wood and faded hangings.

A table was laid by the fire with a white cloth and a covered dish and bread and milk. Mary was staring at it with hungry eyes when the door opened and an old manservant came in carrying a tray with something hot.

He was a very old man with a wrinkled face and bent shoulders and white hair, and he wore a dark livery which made him look solemn. He set the tray down and spoke to Mrs. Medlock in a broad slow tongue which Mary had never heard before.

"Eh, Mrs. Medlock," he said, "t' fire's low i' t' west rooms an' t' wind's getten oop. Mun I bring moor coal up afore mester wants owt?"

Mrs. Medlock answered him quickly, and then he turned his dim old eyes upon Mary and spoke to her as if to be friendly.

"Tha'rt t' little lass fro' Injy, aren't tha'?" he said. "Tha' looks peaky enow. Sup tha' broth while it's hot an' it'll do thee good."

Mary frowned and drew back. She understood scarcely one word in three, and his manner of speaking sounded rough and strange after the soft speech of her Ayah and the servants in India.

"I do not understand what you say," she said in her stiff disagreeable way. "I cannot understand you at all."

The old man stared at her a moment and then gave a short chuckle which was not unkind.

"Ay," he said to Mrs. Medlock, "she'll learn. Yorkshire's plain enow when tha'rt used to it."

He went out and shut the door softly behind him, and Mary sat down to her supper. She was too tired and too hungry to be as disagreeable as she meant to be. The broth was hot and good and the bread was fresh, and after she had eaten she felt less cross though still very strange and lonely. Mrs. Medlock watched her and talked a little about the house and about what she must do and must not do.

"You'll be waited on proper," she said. "You must ring when you want anything. You must keep to your own rooms and not go wandering. Mr. Craven won't have questioning and prying. Many rooms are locked and you are to keep out of them."

Mary listened with her lips pinched together. She did not mean to promise anything, and Mrs. Medlock saw it and shook her head.

When supper was done Mrs. Medlock helped her to undress and put on a plain white nightgown which had been laid out upon the bed. Mary stood small and sallow in the firelight with her thin hair hanging about her shoulders, and she looked a plain little piece of goods indeed. She was glad to creep between the cold linen sheets and to lay her head upon the pillow.

Mrs. Medlock mended the fire and drew the curtains close. The room grew warm and quiet except for the ticking of a small clock and the sighing of the wind outside. Mary was beginning to feel drowsy when she heard it.

It was a sound far off in the house, faint and strange through the thickness of stone and passage. It rose and fell upon the wind like a low moaning mingled with a whistling. Once it seemed to come nearer and then it died away again. Mary lifted her head and listened.

"What is that?" she asked. "What is that sound?"

Mrs. Medlock paused with her hand upon the lamp and listened too, but her face did not change.

"It is the wind," she said briskly. "It blows round this great old place till it finds every crack and corner. On the moor it wails and whistles. You will hear it many a night. It is only the wind."

Mary lay back and looked at her with doubtful eyes.

"It sounded different from wind," she said. "It sounded far away inside the house."

"It travels along the passages," said Mrs. Medlock. "And the chimneys make noises. There is nothing to be afraid of. Go to sleep."

She took the lamp and went to the door. "I shall leave a candle," she said, "because this is a strange place to you. Ring if you want me."

When she was gone Mary lay in bed in the dark and stared at the faint flicker of the candle upon the heavy hangings. The fire had sunk to red and the wind pressed against the windows with a restless rushing. Again that faint far sound came, so low that she could scarcely be sure she heard it, and then was gone.

She was wide awake now. She was no longer sleepy at all. She put her hands under her head and thought of the long corridors she had passed through and the locked rooms Mrs. Medlock had spoken of and the old manservant with his strange speech and Mr. Craven sitting silent in the carriage. She thought of the minute she had stood upon the moor and how vast and secret the darkness had been.

Mrs. Medlock had said it was only the wind, but Mary did not believe that the wind alone could make a sound so like a voice calling through a house. She lay and listened and listened, and the more she listened the more certain she grew that she had not heard all there was to hear. She was a self-willed child and she had always been used to having her own way and finding out things when she chose.

She turned upon her side in the dark and made up her mind. To-morrow she would not ask questions, because questions were answered with short words and sharp looks, but she would keep her eyes open and her ears sharp, and she would find out for herself what the sound was.

I closed the medical book softly and sat for a moment with my hands pressed together before my face in the grey light of the library.

What I had read had turned my uneasiness to a cold certainty. The convulsions, the terrible violence of them, the peculiar arching of the body until the poor soul appeared to rest upon her head and her heels, the tetanic character which had so struck Dr. Bauerstein — all were set down there in plain print under the heading of strychnine. I am not a medical man, but Lawrence is, and Bauerstein is a specialist, and I felt that my own small talent for deduction had not led me astray upon the stairs.

The house was very still. Through the long windows I could see a pale, washed brightness spreading over the park. The storm that had threatened in the hot stillness of the night must have broken and passed while we stood helpless about the bed, for the gravel was dark with rain and the air that came in at the cracked casement was cool and sweet. The clock over the mantelpiece pointed to a little after six.

I went to the dining-room. John was there, still in his dressing-gown, his face drawn and grey. Lawrence sat with his elbows upon the table, staring before him. A cup of tea stood untasted at his hand. No one had thought to clear the supper things, and the room had the cheerless look of a place that has been lit too long into the morning.

John looked up.

“Well?” he said. “What have you found?”

“Nothing that alters my opinion,” I said quietly. “I am more than ever convinced that we ought to lose no time in calling in Poirot.”

Lawrence moved impatiently, but before he could speak we heard the rattle of the side door and a step in the hall, firm and quick, and Alfred Inglethorp came in.

He looked a strange figure. His black beard was disordered, his collar was limp with damp, and his boots were thick with road dust to the ankle, though the upper leather was darkened as if with rain. In his hand he carried his hat. He stopped short at the sight of us, and I saw his eyes go from one face to the other.

“What is it?” he said sharply. “What has happened?”

John rose. His manner was stiff, almost formal.

“My mother died this morning a little after five,” he said. “There was a seizure. Bauerstein was here. Wilkins has been. There will have to be a post-mortem.”

Inglethorp stared. The colour went out of his dark face slowly, leaving it sallow.

“Dead?” he repeated. “Emily dead? Impossible. I left her well enough last night.”

“Where were you?” asked Lawrence, looking up suddenly.

Inglethorp turned upon him with something of his old pomposity, though his hand shook as he laid his hat upon a chair.

“I walked with Dr. Bauerstein as far as the village last evening, as you all know. The night was close, and I had no mind for bed after — after the painful scene at dinner. At the cross-roads I parted from the doctor and walked on, for the air, as far as the Three Crowns, where I was known, and there I took a bed for the night. I walked back early this morning and let myself in by the side door with the latch-key not twenty minutes since, intending to go to my room without disturbing any one.”

No one spoke. In the silence Dorcas came in with a fresh pot of tea. She set it down and stood hesitating, her eyes red with weeping, glancing from her master to the black-bearded man by the chair.

“Did you unbolt the side door, Dorcas?” asked John absently.

Dorcas drew herself up.

“Axing your pardon, sir, but the side door was bolted on the inside when Annie went to unbolt it at six o’clock this morning, same as always, and the latch-key, sir, is hanging now upon its hook in the hall, where it has hung all night, for I saw it there myself when I came down.”

There was a pause that seemed to fill the whole room. Inglethorp flushed a dull red.

“You are mistaken, woman,” he said loudly. “I tell you I came in that way.”

Dorcas did not answer, but her mouth set in a firm line, and she looked at John as if for protection. John frowned and passed his hand across his forehead.

“There must be some misunderstanding,” he said wearily. “We will go into it later. For the present — Hastings, you spoke of going for your friend.”

“Yes,” I said, rising with an eagerness I could not conceal. “With your leave I will go at once to the village. Every hour counts.”

“Go, then,” said John. “Tell him — tell him I shall be grateful for any help he can give us. We would avoid scandal if we can, but the truth must come first.”

Lawrence said nothing. Inglethorp had turned to the window and stood with his back to us, pulling at his beard. I left them without further words, found my cap and a stout stick, and set out down the drive in the fresh morning.

The rain had laid the dust, and larks were singing high over the fields beyond Styles St. Mary. After the horrors of the night the ordinary sweetness of the lane, the hedges wet and glittering, the cottage gardens with their stocks and wallflowers, struck me almost to tears. I walked quickly, for I was afraid of my own thoughts, and in some twenty minutes I came to the little row of cottages where the Belgian refugees had been housed by Mrs. Inglethorp’s charity.

Poirot lodged at the end cottage, with its green gate and its neat patch of garden. I had hardly lifted my hand to the knocker when the door opened and my little friend stood before me, dressed, brushed, and twinkling, with a cup of chocolate in his hand.

“Ah, mon ami Hastings,” he cried. “I expected you. Enter, I pray.”

I stared at him in amazement.

“You expected me? Then you have heard?”

“But certainly I have heard,” said Poirot gravely, setting down his cup. “Poor Madame Inglethorp, so good, so generous. It is a calamity. Baily stopped his car at my gate a little after six as he came back from fetching Dr. Wilkins, and told me she had passed away in the night in a fit. I dressed at once. I said to myself, my friend Hastings will without doubt come to consult Papa Poirot.”

“Baily told you?” I said. “Then you know as much as I do — which is next to nothing.”

“Patience,” said Poirot, patting my arm. “We will go to Styles together, and you shall tell me all upon the way. One moment while I take my little case of instruments.”

He disappeared upstairs and returned with a small black bag and his neat patent boots already dusty for walking. As we set out up the lane he questioned me closely, and I told him everything in order — the quarrel overheard, the coffee carried untasted to the boudoir, the despatch-case, the walk to the village with Bauerstein, the latch-key, the locked doors, the overturned table by the bed, the flushed face of Cynthia and her heavy sleep, Mary Cavendish in her land smock, the dying cry of “Alfred,” the artificial respiration, the locking of the rooms and the handing of the keys to John.

Poirot listened without interruption, his head a little on one side, his eyes green and watchful in the morning light.

“And Mr. Inglethorp, he is returned, you say?” he asked at last.

“He returned not half an hour ago,” I said. “He declares he lay at the Three Crowns and came in by the side door with the latch-key. Dorcas denies it flatly. She says the door was bolted till six and the key hung upon its hook all night.”

“Ah,” said Poirot. “It is interesting. We must see.”

We found John waiting for us upon the steps. He shook Poirot warmly by the hand.

“Monsieur Poirot, this is very kind of you. Hastings has told you — ?”

“He has told me the facts,” said Poirot. “For the rest, I observe for myself. If you will entrust me with the keys of the rooms that the doctors have locked, I would wish to see the poor lady’s chamber before it is disturbed.”

John drew the two keys from his pocket without hesitation.

“I leave everything in your hands, and in Hastings’s,” he said. “Do what you must, but as quietly as you can.”

We went up by the great staircase and along the gallery to the right wing. The corridor smelt faintly of burnt gas and of brandy. Poirot paused before the doors and tried each handle softly, nodding to himself, then unlocked with John’s key the door that gave from the passage into Mrs. Inglethorp’s room.

The shutters had been thrown back, and the room was full of daylight. The bed, with its tumbled sheets, stood as we had left it. Beside it the small bedside table lay upon its side where it had been overturned in the convulsions, its drawer half open. Upon the mantelpiece the row of prim ornaments — two china dogs, a shepherdess, a clock stopped, I think, at an early hour — stood in exact order above the grate where a little heap of feebly flickering ashes still showed grey and red. The gas bracket by the bed had been turned down but not fully out, and there hung in the air a close, medicinal smell. The despatch-case stood upon the writing-table, closed. The communicating door into Mr. Inglethorp’s room gaped where we had burst it in, the splintered wood showing pale against the dark stain. The further door, that into Cynthia’s room, was shut fast, the bolt shot.

Poirot stood for a long time upon the threshold, his hands folded, his head bent. Then he moved, very lightly and quickly for so small a man, from place to place. He examined the bed, without touching the coverlet more than was needful. He knelt by the overturned table and peered beneath it. He went to the mantelpiece and bent over the ornaments one by one. He sifted the ashes in the grate with a pair of small tweezers from his case, and peered into the fender. Twice he shook his head and muttered to himself in Flemish.

At last, near the leg of the overturned table, almost hidden by the fringe of the rug, he stooped with a quick exclamation. When he rose he held between finger and thumb something so small that at first I could not see it. He beckoned me to the window.

“Look, Hastings.”

Upon the palm of his neat gloved hand lay a single small bead of dark green wax, no bigger than a pea, flattened upon one side as if it had fallen hot and been pressed.

“What is it?” I whispered.

Poirot closed his fingers over it and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. His eyes met mine with a curious bright gravity.

“Ah, mon ami,” he said. “For the moment, not that. Later, perhaps. Now we arrange our ideas. We must be methodical.”

I was burning to question him further, but his manner forbade it, and at that moment we heard a light step in the corridor. Cynthia Murdoch stood in the doorway, very pale, her fair hair pushed back from her forehead, her Red Cross dress exchanged for a plain dark frock. She looked tired and ill, and her eyes were heavy as if with want of sleep.

“Oh,” she said, startled. “I did not know — Mr. Cavendish said — ”

Poirot bowed low.

“Mademoiselle Cynthia,” he said gently. “Did you sleep soundly last night?”

She stared at him, then answered frankly enough.

“I never woke at all till Mrs. Cavendish shook me and shook me. I must have slept like a log. I work so hard at the hospital, you know, and last evening I was dead tired. This morning I feel horrid and headachy, as if I had taken something.”

Poirot bowed again and said no more to her. She glanced at the bed and shivered, and went away down the passage. I would have followed her with questions of my own, for her dazed yawning terror of the morning was still vivid in my mind, but Poirot detained me with a touch upon the sleeve.

He spent the next hour in moving about the house as silent as a cat. He looked into Mr. Inglethorp’s empty room, with its unslept bed turned down for the night and never occupied. He paced the corridor and tried the bolt of Cynthia’s door from either side. He stood long in the gallery looking down into the hall where Dorcas passed with her duster, and once he took John aside for five minutes in the boudoir and spoke earnestly, though what passed I did not hear, for I remained without by his express desire.

It must have been half-past eleven, and the household had settled into a hushed coming and going, when Poirot came to me where I waited upon the landing and said that he would be obliged if all would withdraw from Mrs. Inglethorp’s room and leave it to him and to me. John gave the order at once. Mary Cavendish, who had been sitting white-faced by the window of her own room, Lawrence, who smoked incessantly upon the stairs, the whispering servants — all drew away. Poirot and I entered together, and Poirot turned the key in the lock behind us.

The room was as we had left it an hour before, bright and terrible in the late morning sun. Poirot drew two chairs to the little writing-table and motioned me to sit. Then, from his waistcoat pocket, he took the small bead of green wax and set it carefully upon the polished wood between us, where it caught the light.

He folded his hands and regarded me solemnly over his moustaches.

“Eh bien, Hastings,” he said softly. “The door that was bolted, it has spoken. Now we must listen to the wax that did not burn.”

The sand was already burning through the soles of their shoes when Robert turned with Madame Ratignolle into the long path that led back from the beach. She walked slowly, with a little dragging step, and rested her hand heavily upon his sleeve. She complained still of a stiffness in the knees and a cramp in the left leg that had seized her as she rose from the low pillows on the gallery of the bath-house.

The path was narrow and the sand loose. On either side the tangled growth pressed inward, and beyond it stretched the acres of yellow camomile, quivering in the heat. Further off the vegetable gardens lay in dark squares, and the small plantations of orange trees glistened with a hard green light under the white sun. The wind that had whipped the water into froth at the shore came broken and hot through the low bushes, lifting the ruffles of Madame Ratignolle's white dress and fluttering the gauze veil which she had again drawn about her head.

Robert walked with his head bent a little, watching where she set her feet among the roots and hollows. He had been very gay among the children on the beach, carrying little Marie on his shoulder and ordering the troop like a general, but he was quiet now. After a while he looked back over his shoulder toward the sea, which was already hidden by the rise of the dunes, though its sound still came faintly.

"Mrs. Pontellier looked this morning as if she had waked from a dream and was still half in it," he said.

Madame Ratignolle laughed a little, breathing shortly from the walk. She shifted the roll of needlework in her pocket, which incommoded her.

"And what dream do you suppose she has been dreaming, Robert? The dream of her new sketch, which she tore up on the porch? You are fanciful this morning."

"I do not know," he said. "But she did not hear the children when they called. She kept looking out where the sails were motionless, as if she wanted to follow them."

They went on without speaking further. The heat settled between the bushes and made the air tremulous. When they came to the open ground before Madame Lebrun's house, Madame Ratignolle withdrew her hand from his sleeve and stood fanning herself with the fan that hung by its long ribbon from her waist. Her face was flushed and moist, and a few damp rings of hair clung to her forehead beneath the veil.

At the beach Mrs. Pontellier remained for some time after they had gone, standing beside the children's tent with the sun beating upon her straw hat. The two young lovers had wandered away with their sighs to another shelter, and the children had taken noisy possession, the two little Pontelliers with the rest, disputing for the best place in the shade. The quadroon nurse and the two nurse-maids stood apart, resigned and disagreeable, with folded arms. The lady in black sat motionless on the porch of the neighboring bath-house, her small prayer-book open upon her knees, her eyes fixed upon its page.

Edna felt the hot wind beat against her throat where she had opened her dress. She watched the lateen sail in the direction of Cat Island, which seemed not to move, and the white clouds suspended idly over the horizon. A lassitude had come upon her after the talk of the morning, after the unaccustomed taste of candor which still muddled her like wine. She did not call the children to order. She let them scream and quarrel in the tent while she stood with her hands hanging loose, thinking of nothing, or thinking of the meadow in Kentucky which had seemed as big as the ocean to the little girl walking through grass higher than her waist.

When at last the sun stood high and the glare upon the water grew intolerable, she gathered the party together. She locked the door of her compartment after thrusting the rug and the huge hair pillows covered with crash inside, and slipped the key into her pocket with the habit of the summer. The walk back was dusty and bright. The children ran ahead, chasing one another among the camomile, and were scolded without effect by the nurses. Edna carried her white sunshade furled, and her muslin dress, white with its waving vertical line of brown, clung damp between her shoulders.

At the cottage there was a little stir of midday life. The gallery was in shade, and the rooms behind it cool and dim after the blaze without. The boys, heated and sandy, clamored for water and for bread. The quadroon settled them with practiced patience. Edna removed her collar altogether and loosened her hair beneath the straw hat, which she threw upon a chair. She stood a moment fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan left upon the table, listening to the familiar creak of the rockers and the distant clatter from the main house where dinner was preparing.

A boy came up the steps with a yellow envelope in his hand. He was one of the lads employed about Lebrun's to run errands to the village and to bring the telegrams that were telephoned over from the town office. Mrs. Pontellier took the envelope and opened it with her hat-pin, standing in the shade of the gallery.

It was from Léonce. Business detains me in the city, it ran. Impossible to leave Saturday as expected. Heat very great. Take care of yourself and the children and do not expose yourself to the sun. All well. Léonce.

She read it twice. The words were plain and kind and gave no cause for disappointment, yet she felt a lightness as she folded the thin sheet and slipped it into the pocket of her dress. Saturday had stood before her all the week as a fixed stone, the day of his return, of shoes to be dusted and talk of the city and inquiries concerning Raoul's fever, which had already passed from her mind. Now the stone was lifted. The week stretched unbroken, empty and bright, before her. She was not sorry. She was not glad. She was merely relieved of a small weight which she had not known she carried, and the relief left her singularly free to notice the humming of the bees in the cape jessamine by the steps and the blue shimmer of the Gulf between the trees.

She ate her dinner with the children at the cottage, as was often done when Monsieur Pontellier was absent, and afterward lay down for a while in the dim room with a damp handkerchief over her eyes while the boys slept heavily in the next room, their sandy feet washed, their mouths open. She could not sleep. The remark which Robert had let fall upon the walk came back to her, though she had not heard it, for Madame Ratignolle came over in the afternoon to sit a little while upon the gallery and brought it with her.

Adèle came without her children, which was unusual, and sank into the rocking chair with her needlework unrolled upon her lap, though she did not sew. She had recovered her color and her ease. She spoke of the cramp, of the heat, of the sketch which Edna had destroyed upon the porch the day before and which she regretted, for she had thought the likeness agreeable.

"Robert walked home with me like a good boy," she said, smiling and rocking gently. "He is always good, that Robert. He said a pretty thing about you this morning, ma chère. He said you looked as if you had waked from a dream and were still half in it."

Edna, who was leaning against the gallery post with her arms folded loosely, felt the blood rise to her face. It was nothing, a speech of Robert's idle gallantry, such as he scattered among them all summer, and Adèle repeated it without art, as one repeats a compliment that has pleased her. Yet it moved her out of proportion, as the touch upon her hand that morning upon the beach had moved her, and the sound of her own voice telling of Kentucky.

"What dream should I have been dreaming?" she asked, trying to laugh.

Adèle shook her head, her eyes warm with affectionate amusement.

"That is what I asked him. He said you kept looking after the sails as if you wanted to follow them. I told him he was fanciful."

Edna said nothing further. She looked away toward the oleanders that grew beside the cottage, whose pink blossoms trembled in the still air. She felt herself suddenly self-conscious, as if she had been observed in solitude doing something secret. The phrase repeated itself in her inward ear with a persistence she could not check.

Adèle stayed but a short time. The children would be waking from their naps and requiring her. When she was gone, Edna remained upon the gallery, fanning herself slowly and thinking of the long afternoon before her, unclaimed by any duty. The boys were still asleep. The house was silent except for the soft movements of the nurse within. A resolve, idle and aimless like the morning's thought of walking forever through green grass, took shape in her mind to go down alone to the water.

She changed without haste into her bathing dress in the dim bedroom, conscious of the novelty of acting without consultation or excuse. The hour was not the usual hour for bathing. The beach would be empty. The thought pleased her. She took a large towel and her straw hat and went out by the back path that led through the gardens, avoiding the main house where Madame Lebrun dozed over her accounts and Victor whistled in the yard.

The beach was indeed deserted. The bath-houses stood in a white row, their little galleries facing the sea, their doors closed. The children's tent sagged emptily in the heat. Far down the sand a single figure moved slowly at the water's edge, stooping at intervals, seeking shells. The water was choppy still from the morning wind, blue-green and glittering, breaking in short white curls upon the sand. The lateen sails had vanished. The sky was clear except for a few high clouds that did not move.

Mrs. Pontellier unlocked her compartment, which smelled of damp wood and salt and the crash pillows piled within. She left her hat and towel upon the gallery and walked down to the edge in her bare feet, lifting her skirts. No one was near to watch her timidity. She had never learned to swim. Year after year the Gulf had beaten before her eyes and she had stood upon its edge and let the water take her weight for a moment and set her back, afraid of its power, distrustful of her own strength. The other women laughed and plunged and came out dripping, and she had remained among the waders, holding up her arms, screaming a little at the shock of cold.

Now she went in deliberately. The water was warm as milk at the edge and cooler as she advanced, lifting and pulling at her limbs. She struck out awkwardly, as she had been taught in trials of other summers, lifting her head too high, beating the water with stiff hands. Fear seized her throat. Then suddenly her body found its balance. Her feet left the sand without panic. She moved forward a few strokes, her mouth firm, her eyes fixed upon the empty horizon. The water bore her. She turned, gasping, and regained her footing, her heart hammering against her ribs.

She stood breast-high, alone, trembling with exultation. She had managed a few strokes, for the first time. The achievement seemed enormous, out of proportion to its length, a new power discovered in herself. She wanted to laugh aloud and to cry. She looked about to see if any one had witnessed her, and saw only the empty galleries and the distant stooping figure, too far to have noticed. She resolved at once to tell no one. The secret seemed to belong to her inward life, which questioned, and not to the outward existence which conformed. She bathed a little longer, practicing the movement quietly, feeling the water lift her again and again, until her limbs were tired.

When she came out at last and sat upon the lower step of her gallery, wringing the water from the skirt of her bathing dress, she became aware that the lady in black was sitting upon the porch of the neighboring house, not reading now, but looking toward the sea with her prayer-book closed upon her knees. Edna had seen her every day since her arrival at Grand Isle, a small woman always in black, with white hair drawn tightly back and a thin gold chain at her throat, walking to early mass or sitting apart with her devotions, speaking to no one. She had never before addressed a word to Mrs. Pontellier.

Now, as Edna shook out her towel, the old woman turned her head. Her face was pale and lined, with eyes that had faded to the color of the shallow water.

"The water is restless this afternoon," she said. Her voice was low and dry, with the accent of the Creole of an older generation.

Edna started, and answered with a politeness that covered her confusion.

"Yes, madame, but it is warm. It bears one up."

The lady in black nodded slowly, as if weighing the remark.

"You go in alone," she said. "Most ladies do not like to go alone."

"I like to be alone," Edna said, before she could check herself. "For a little while."

The old woman looked at her steadily for a moment longer, then opened her prayer-book again, though she did not at once lower her eyes.

"Solitude is a prayer that is not always answered," she said.

Edna did not know what reply to make. She bowed her head slightly and went into her compartment to dry herself, her heart still beating high from the swim and now from the strangeness of being spoken to at last by one who had seemed a mere shadow upon the beach. When she emerged, dressed again in her muslin, with her wet bathing dress rolled in the towel, the porch next door was empty. The lady in black was walking slowly away down the beach toward the distant point, her black skirts lifting a little in the wind, her figure small and upright against the glitter.

Supper at Lebrun's was early and gay with children's chatter. Robert sat at the far end of the long table, between Victor and one of the Farival girls, telling stories that made them laugh. He looked at Edna across the dishes only once, with the frank, smiling regard of their summer comradeship, and asked if she had rested through the heat. She answered that she had, and turned to help Raoul cut his bread. Adèle, with her little ones about her, was absorbed and shining, breaking crusts and wiping mouths. No word passed concerning the morning.

The evening fell soft and blue. The lamps were lit upon the galleries. The children, tired with the sun and the sand, were put early to bed in the cottage, and slept at once heavily, without dreams, their brown limbs sprawled across the sheets. The nurse went to sit with the other servants upon the back steps. Edna brought a chair out upon the gallery and sat alone.

The night was warm and still, except for the incessant murmur of the Gulf, which sounded nearer in the dark, and the shrill intermittence of the insects in the grass. Between the trees the water showed as a broad band of paler darkness, moving and whispering. Her muslin dress felt cool upon her shoulders. The telegram lay folded in her pocket, forgotten. The few strokes in the afternoon water lived in her limbs like a new memory that had not yet found words. She thought of the lady in black moving upright against the glitter, and of the words about solitude which she did not understand and yet retained.

Above all there remained, returning with each wash of the sea, what Adèle had repeated in the afternoon rocking chair. He said you looked as if you had waked from a dream and were still half in it. She sat with her hands in her lap, her head resting against the post, listening, waking, wondering if it were true, and if waking were always so like sleep when one looked long at the water.

It was on the night after that walk with my wife that the first of the missiles fell.

I had been sitting late over my papers upon moral progress, for the heat of the day still hung in the little study of the house we had taken at Maybury, near Ottershaw, and made sleep impossible. My wife had gone up some hour before, and I heard her moving softly overhead, and then all was still. The window was open to the warm darkness, and through it there came no sound but the occasional faint sighing of the wind among the pines and the distant, drowsy clank of a goods train shunting upon the Chertsey line. I laid down my pen at last and went out upon the lawn to cool my head, as I had done a hundred times before, with no thought in my mind but of the work I had left unfinished.

It was a clear and starry night, though the air was heavy, and the Milky Way lay like a drift of luminous dust across the zenith. Mars was high, a steady red spark, a little to the southward, and about it the smaller stars shone with that peculiar keenness that comes before autumn. I stood looking at it, idly recalling Ogilvy's confident talk of meteor showers and volcanoes, and trying, I remember, to picture to myself those grey fluctuating patches he had described upon the planet's disc as mere clouds of dust.

Then, as I watched, there came a sudden streak of greenish light across the sky.

It was swift and silent and strangely bright, brighter than any falling star I had ever seen, leaving behind it a broad phosphorescent line that endured for some seconds after the head itself had vanished. It seemed to start almost from the very neighbourhood of Mars and to fall obliquely westward, towards the dark mass of the pines beyond Ottershaw, growing larger and greener as it fell until it vanished behind the low ridge that hides the Chertsey road. There was a momentary glare, as of distant summer lightning very low upon the horizon, and then nothing but the familiar stars.

I stood for some time with my hands upon the garden gate, expecting some sound, some concussion, that never came. The night remained profoundly still. A dog barked once, far away towards Chertsey, and ceased. I looked again at Mars, which twinkled serenely as before, and laughed at my own nervousness. My bicycle leaned against the veranda, and for a moment I had a mind to ride out in the direction of the fall and see what, if anything, had come to earth. But the lanes were black and unfamiliar by night, and I told myself that it was doubtless only an ordinary meteor, larger than common, whose apparent nearness to Mars was the merest accident of perspective.

My wife called softly from the upper window, asking what I was about, and I told her of the green flash and made light of it. We agreed that it must have fallen miles away, perhaps over Staines or Windsor, and after a little talk we went to bed. I dreamed, I recall, confusedly of great guns firing in a red twilight, and woke once with the fancy still upon me, to hear only the wind stirring in the ivy.

In the morning I thought no more of it until Ogilvy came.

He came down to breakfast with us unannounced, in a state of suppressed excitement very unlike his usual dry precision, with his hat awry and his pockets stuffed with notes. He had been up half the night, it seemed, watching Mars, and had himself seen the falling star, a little before midnight, through the observatory telescope, as a tiny tongue of flame projected for an instant against the black.

“A fine bolide,” he said, rubbing his hands as my wife poured his tea. “I make the direction to have been over Ripley way, or perhaps nearer. Some farmer will be picking up a lump of extra-terrestrial iron for the British Museum, and thinking himself ill-used because it is not gold.”

I asked him if he did not think it strange that such brilliant meteors should come so thickly just now, while Mars was in opposition and those disturbances still reported upon its surface. He smiled in that superior fashion he had when the talk turned upon his one heresy, the plurality of inhabited worlds.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “you will be building castles upon Mars next. The heavens are full of stray stones. The earth is ploughing through a meteor swarm. What could be more natural than a fireball or two? The chances against its having anything to do with Mars are a million to one.”

We argued the matter good-humouredly enough, while my wife listened and put in, now and then, a shrewd question that showed she had not forgotten our talk of the Zodiac. I urged that ten successive outbursts upon Mars, followed within a few days by ten such meteors falling earthward, made a coincidence too remarkable to be dismissed, and that Lavelle's spectroscope had shown hydrogen rushing earthward with planetary velocity. He replied that coincidence was the commonest snare of the unscientific mind, that stones fell every night of the year unremarked, and that no mass thrown from Mars could by any conceivable gun retain such velocity as to reach us, to say nothing of surviving the passage through our atmosphere. I remember feeling, even as I pressed him, how slender my own physics was against his, and yet I could not shake off the impression left by that silent green flight.

It was while we were still at table that Henderson, the journalist who lodged at Chertsey, came hurrying up the drive with the news that had already run through the village like fire through stubble. A cottager on the Chertsey road, going out at dawn to his work in the water-meadows, had seen a great smoking heap lying in the old gravel-pit upon the common between Ottershaw and Chertsey, where the autumn rains had left a broad shallow pool. Others had seen the glare in the night and taken it for lightning. A bargee upon the Wey had heard a rushing hiss and felt, he swore, the heat of its passage. By nine o'clock half a dozen labourers were standing staring at it from the edge of the pit, afraid to go nearer.

Ogilvy was upon his feet at once.

“A meteorite, you see,” he said triumphantly, catching up his hat. “Come along and convince yourself. I will show youExtra-terrestrial iron, with perhaps a crust of fused silicate. Nothing more alarming.”

My wife would not be left behind. She had that quick curiosity, unspoilt by any pretence of scientific indifference, which she had brought with her from her school-days, and she declared that if a stone had indeed fallen out of heaven within a mile of our garden she must see it with her own eyes. I demurred at first, for the morning was already hot and the common glaring, but she fetched her broad straw hat and her parasol while Ogilvy fidgeted upon the step, and together we set out across the fields towards the Chertsey road, talking all the way of falling stars and of the strange possibilities they suggested.

The common lies low and marshy there, broken by clumps of gorse and fir, and pitted in places where gravel has been dug time out of mind. The particular pit of which Henderson spoke was one of the largest, perhaps a hundred yards across, with steep banks of sand and gravel grown over with heather at the brim, and at the bottom, fed by the winter rains and by a sluice from the meadows, a sheet of brownish water some two feet deep, much frequented by moorhens. As we drew near we saw a thin column of white vapour rising steadily into the still air and a crowd of some twenty or thirty people gathered upon the nearer bank, mostly labourers and boys from Ottershaw and Chertsey, with one or two better-dressed excursionists who had bicycled over from Weybridge upon hearing the rumour.

I shall never forget the first sight of that Thing as we pushed through the gorse to the edge.

It lay almost in the centre of the pool, half-submerged in water and half-buried in the soft blue clay and gravel that the violence of its fall had churned up about it. The water hissed and seethed about it on every side, sending up wreaths of steam that drifted slowly across the pit and stung the eyes with a faint metallic tang, and from the wet earth beyond the margin a thin mist rose as from a kettle. The object itself was huge and cylindrical, perhaps thirty yards in diameter, though fully a third of it was hidden, and its exposed surface, where the clay had slipped from it, shone with a dull leaden lustre, streaked and mottled as if it had been intensely heated and then cooled unevenly. In places the outer skin had scaled off in great flakes, showing beneath a dark, almost blackened metal that glistened damply in the sun. It was so unlike any stone I had ever conceived that for a moment I stood speechless.

Ogilvy stood beside me, breathing hard, his eyes bright behind his spectacles.

“Well?” I said at last. “Is this your ordinary meteorite?”

“Undoubtedly a meteorite,” he answered stoutly, though his voice had lost something of its breakfast-table certainty. “An extraordinary one, I grant you. Quite extraordinary. But a stone from interplanetary space, none the less. Observe the fused crust. No terrestrial furnace could produce such heat.”

“But the form,” I said. “When did you ever hear of a meteorite falling as a perfect cylinder? This is manufactured as surely as this parasol is manufactured.”

“My dear Smith,” he said — for in those days I still went among my neighbours by my own plain name — “you mistake the effects of atmospheric friction. The spinning of the mass in its flight would round it, polish it. And the soft clay has moulded it. Besides, it is half under water. You do not see it whole.”

We argued there upon the brink, with the steam curling between us and the crowd pressing closer to listen, more hotly than we had argued at breakfast. I pointed to the uniformity of its curvature, to the absence of any irregular fracture, to the strange flaking of the surface, which seemed to me more like hammered scale from wrought iron than any natural fusion. I reminded him of Lavelle's jet of hydrogen, of the ten successive flares, of the green light I had myself seen travelling from the direction of Mars. He shook his head and fell back upon densities and velocities and the million-to-one chances against organic evolution having taken the same turn upon two planets, until my wife laid her hand upon my sleeve to restrain me, whispering that the people were staring.

She was right to check me, for the crowd had grown and was in a queer, excited humour, half fearful and half facetious, as English crowds will be before an unfamiliar wonder. Boys threw stones that fell short with a hiss into the steaming water, and laughed when the steam puffed. A sharp-faced woman from Chertsey declared it was a message from the devil and would breed a fever. Two cyclists disputed loudly whether it had fallen at midnight or at half-past twelve. Among them moved a sandy-haired labourer, one of those handy, sceptical fellows who will test everything with their hands, who maintained amid general laughter that the Thing was stone cold by now and that all this talk of heat was nonsense.

“You’ll burn your fingers, Jim,” cried some one, and there was a coarse laugh.

As if stung by the laugh, the man scrambled down the crumbling bank to the water's edge, amid cries of warning from Ogilvy and myself, and, leaning far out over the hissing pool, stretched his hand towards the sloping metal shoulder that rose nearest the shore. My wife caught her breath. I saw his palm light for an instant upon the dark surface — and then he snatched it back with a yell that silenced every jest.

He came scrambling up the bank nursing his hand against his breast, white and cursing, with a broad livid blister already rising across his fingers and palm, while his mates crowded round him with exclamations of pity and dismay. My wife, who had some simple knowledge of nursing, was at his side in a moment, bidding him plunge his hand in the cool ditch-water, and reproving the boys who still tittered. Ogilvy examined the burn with professional interest, and admitted, reluctantly, that the exterior must still retain a considerable temperature, a thing, he explained loudly for the benefit of the crowd, by no means inconsistent with a meteoric origin, since a large mass would cool but slowly, the outer crust insulating the interior heat.

“But, Ogilvy,” I said quietly, as we stood a little apart while my wife bound up the man's hand with her handkerchief, “did ever a cold stone of heaven blister a man’s flesh hours after its fall, and still boil water about it like a furnace?”

He wiped his spectacles and would not meet my eye.

“Give it a day,” he said. “Give it a day to cool. You will see. It is our atmosphere that has heated it, not any diabolical artifice within. By to-morrow it will be no more than a nine days’ wonder for the newspapers, and Markham will have his photograph for his illustrated paper, and we shall all laugh at our midnight fancies.”

By this time the sun stood high and the heat in the pit was oppressive, the steam and the smell of hot clay and scorched turf hanging heavily. More people came every minute along the footpath from Ottershaw and down the lane from Chertsey, farm-hands with their dinners in handkerchiefs, clerks who had bicycled out in their collars, women with children clinging to their skirts, until the banks were lined two and three deep and the murmur of talk rose like the humming of bees. A constable from Chertsey had arrived and was endeavouring, without much success, to keep the crowd from pressing too near the crumbling edge. Henderson had gone off to telegraph his paper. The wounded man sat sullenly upon the grass displaying his bandaged hand as evidence.

My wife stood beside me under her parasol, flushed and weary, yet unwilling to leave the strange spectacle. I saw with concern how the sun told upon her and how the vapour irritated her throat, and I begged her at last, as the morning wore towards noon, to return home and rest and take food, promising that I would follow presently when Ogilvy and I had made our measurements. She protested that she would not leave me to any danger, glancing timidly at the steaming cylinder, but I laughed her fears away and assured her that since the Thing showed no sign but of sullen heat we ran no risk in watching it from the bank, and that she would do better to send the doctor to the burnt man than to stand longer in the glare.

At a little after twelve, therefore, I prevailed upon her to go. She went reluctantly down the sandy path towards Ottershaw, turning once to wave her parasol, with the constable's wife, who had come to stare and stayed to gossip, bearing her company for the lane, while I remained upon the heath with Ogilvy and the ever-thickening crowd about the pit, the sun beating vertically upon the vapour and the great dull cylinder hissing sullenly in the midst of its shallow steaming lake.

Dr. Seward's Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

27 May.-- Low spirits again to-day, and little appetite for breakfast, so I turned to work as the surest remedy. I went round the wards early, before the house was fairly astir, and found all quiet except in Renfield's room, where the attendant told me he had been restless in the night and had refused his supper, but was now calm and sitting by the window watching the sparrows in the courtyard.

I entered and bade him good morning, to which he answered civilly enough, though with that air of abstraction which I have learned to mark as the prelude to one of his fixed ideas. He is greatly improved in bodily health; his eye is clear, his hand steady, and his memory for small details of routine most exact. I did not lead him in any direction, for I have found of late that pressure only shuts him up, and I wished to observe what course his own thoughts would take if left quite free.

We spoke for some time of indifferent matters, of the weather, which is mild for the season, and of his flies and spiders, of which he keeps a small store in a box by his sill, noting their habits with a patience which would do credit to a naturalist. He reasoned clearly and without excitement, and I began to hope that the gloom which has hung over him is lifting.

Then, without any word from me to suggest the subject, and without pause or connection with what had gone before, he looked up suddenly and fixed his eyes upon me in that straight, inquiring manner which Morris once noted in another connection, and said, Doctor, tell me truly, is Miss Westenra quite well? I hope she is happy?

The question startled me, for I had never named her to him in my life, nor had any attendant, to my knowledge, ever spoken of her within his hearing. I asked him, as quietly as I could, what put Miss Westenra into his head. He smiled in a sly, self-satisfied way and tapped his forehead with his finger. Ladies and gentlemen come here in my thoughts, he said, though I do not see them with my eyes. I hear much through the walls when I am still. A fine young lady, with golden hair, soon to be married. I wish her joy. I would not have her unhappy for the world.

I pressed him further, but he would add nothing more, and presently returned to his spiders, as if the matter were closed. I cannot tell how he has learned the name, unless it be from some chance word caught in the hall when visitors have called, though visitors are few and are never taken near his corridor. It is strange, and I note it here accurately that I may consider it hereafter at leisure. He seemed gentle rather than excited, and when I left him he bade me good day with perfect propriety and asked that I would send him paper that he might put down his observations on the feeding of flies.

Letter, Julius Berger to Miss Mina Murray.

Bistritz, in Transylvania, 18 May.

Dear Madam,

I take the liberty to write to you at the earnest wish of Mr. Jonathan Harker, English solicitor from Exeter, who lodged for two nights in my house, the Golden Crown, upon his journey into the mountains upon legal business.

Mr. Harker desired me to send word to you, as posts from the interior are uncertain and his own hand is much engaged with papers, that he is well in health and in good spirits, but that he finds himself delayed beyond his first intention. The deeds relating to the purchase of a property in England are not yet made complete, and he is obliged to travel to Klausenburg to meet with other men of law, where signatures must be obtained and copies compared. This business will detain him for eight or ten days more, perhaps a little longer, and during that time he fears that no letters from him can reach you with regularity.

He begged me to tell you that you should feel no anxiety upon his behalf, for he is well lodged and well cared for, and that you should explain his silence to his employer, Mr. Hawkins, whom he holds in the highest respect. He left in my keeping a small portmanteau and a great coat, which I shall keep safe till his return through Bistritz.

Trusting you will pardon the freedom of a stranger in addressing you upon so private a matter, and hoping this assurance will relieve your mind, I remain, dear Madam, with much respect, your most obedient servant,

JULIUS BERGER, Landlord of the Golden Crown.

Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.

Exeter, 28 May.

My dearest Lucy,

Your sweet letter of the 24th reached me safely, and I have read it three times over, with laughter and with tears, for it is just like you to be so merry and so tender in the same page. Three proposals in one day! My dear, you ought to be very proud, and I am very proud of you, though I grieve for poor Dr. Seward and for Mr. Morris, who both seem to have borne themselves like true gentlemen. I shall tell Jonathan, as you bid me, for a woman ought to have no secrets from her husband, and I know he will rejoice with me that our dear Lucy has found such happiness with Arthur.

I write in some anxiety, which you will forgive when you know the cause. When I last wrote on the 9th, I had received a few hurried lines from Jonathan, well and in good spirits, and looking to return in about a week. That week has long passed, my dearest, and no further letter has come to me, though I have watched for the post each morning with a beating heart. Mr. Hawkins is kindness itself and tells me that business abroad is often subject to hindrance from forms and stamps and the slowness of foreign posts, and that I must not fret. I try to keep up with my school duties and with my shorthand, into which I copy the leaders from the daily papers to keep my hand in readiness against Jonathan's return, that I may be useful to him, and with my typewriting, at which I practise very hard. But in the night I lie awake and imagine all manner of delays and difficulties.

This morning, to my great relief and yet to my fresh uneasiness, I received the letter which I have copied out above from a stranger, a landlord at Bistritz, written on the 18th, but delayed in the post. It is the first tidings I have had, and you may fancy how eagerly I broke the seal. That Jonathan should have asked a stranger to write for him shows, does it not, that he was pressed for time and thought of me even in his haste? And yet to be delayed eight or ten days more, with posts uncertain, and with no date fixed for his home-coming, leaves me still in suspense. I have written at once to Mr. Hawkins to show him the letter, that he may know Jonathan is well, though detained.

Pray write soon and tell me all your news. How is your dear mamma? Does she bear the heat well? And is Arthur still in town? Give him my warmest congratulations, though I have not yet the honour of his acquaintance. I think of you constantly, and long for the day when we may sit together and talk freely, as in old times. Till then, believe me, ever your loving

MINA.

Letter, Hon. Arthur Holmwood to Miss Lucy Westenra.

Albemarle Street, 28 May.

My dearest Lucy,

I snatch a few minutes before going down to Richmond to see my father, to tell you what a pleasant evening I passed yesterday with our two friends, for I know you will be glad to hear that all ill feeling is at an end and that we are the best of comrades.

According to his kind invitation, Quincey Morris entertained Jack Seward and myself at supper at his chambers in the Albany at seven o'clock on the 26th. You would have laughed to see us, three men of such different habits, gathered round his table, which he had spread with plain roast and claret, as he said, after the fashion of a camp supper, with no ceremony to hamper us. The rooms are small but most comfortable, hung with skins and horns brought from Texas and from South America, and with photographs of friends from many parts of the world, among which I was pleased to see my own college likeness in a place of honour.

We were very merry. Quincey was in his best humour and kept us diverted with stories of life in the prairies and of a landing in the Marquesas, which he tells with great spirit but without boastfulness. Jack, whom I had feared to find low after his disappointment, of which you have told me in confidence, bore himself admirably. He laughed heartily, ate with a better appetite than he has shown of late, and spoke with much interest of his work in the hospital, and of the care he bestows upon those unhappy persons entrusted to him. I was rejoiced to see him so much himself again.

After supper Quincey filled our glasses and proposed, standing, the health of the happiest man in all the wide world, and of the noblest heart that God has made, in which you will readily guess that he meant you and myself, though he was too generous to name names before us both. We drank it with all our hearts, and Jack wrung my hand till I thought he would never let it go, and declared that he would be a true friend to us both for life. There was no constraint, no bitterness, only honest affection, such as men feel who have passed through danger together in distant lands. We parted at near midnight with many promises of another meeting, and Quincey walked with me to the corner of the street, where he told me how sincerely he wishes for our happiness.

I tell you all this at length, my dearest, because I know your tender heart was troubled at the thought of pain given to such kind friends, and I would have you set your mind at rest. Both are resolved to be our faithful friends, and nothing could have been more manly or more delicate than their conduct. Ever, my dearest Lucy, your devoted

ARTHUR.

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

17, Chatham Street, 29 May.

My dearest Mina,

Thank you, and thank you again, for your dear letter, which came by the first post this morning and which I have just finished reading in my own room, with the door locked, that mamma might not see my tears. My dear, I am so sorry for your anxiety, and yet so thankful that you have at last had tidings. A stranger's letter is but a poor substitute for one in Jonathan's own hand, I know, but it tells you that he is well and thinks of you, and that his delay is from business and not from any other cause. Mr. Hawkins is quite right. Foreign posts are so slow and uncertain, and lawyers' papers take so long with stamps and signatures. I am sure he will soon be with you, and then all this weary waiting will seem but a little cloud passed over.

You must not let your fancies run away with you in the night, dearest. Keep to your shorthand and your typewriting, as you say, and think how useful you will be to Jonathan when he returns and wishes to dictate his notes. I practise my own little accomplishments too, though they are of a very different sort, for mamma wishes me to play better upon the piano before the autumn, and Arthur is to bring some new songs when he comes to-morrow.

Arthur has written me a charming account of his supper with Mr. Morris and Dr. Seward. I am so pleased that they are all friends together, for it weighed upon my conscience that I should have caused pain to two such noble gentlemen. Arthur says Dr. Seward is quite himself again and spoke cheerfully of his patients, and that Mr. Morris was full of fun and kindness. Mamma was much touched when I read her a part of the letter, for she has a great regard for Mr. Holmwood and often talks with him of common friends in the country. We go a good deal for walks in the Park in the forenoon, when the air is fresh and the flowers are beautiful, and to picture-galleries in the afternoon. I am quite well and in excellent spirits, though I miss you sadly and wish you were here to share our happiness.

Do write the moment you hear more from Jonathan or from Mr. Hawkins, for I think of you hourly. Mamma joins me in kindest love. Ever your loving

LUCY.

Telegram from Peter Hawkins to Miss Mina Murray.

30 May. Jonathan safe at Klausenburg leaves for London Thursday. Do not fret. Hawkins.

I put the thin check book back in the drawer and shut it and left the Lewis girl straightening the things we had pulled out of order.

There was nothing more to be got out of the Herald building. The dead man had kept his mouth shut and his paper had not helped him keep it. The switchboard girls knew when he came and when he went and nothing in between. The city editors knew what he wrote and nothing about what he did. An hour of it left me with nothing except the check stub and the twenty minutes out of the office a little before three.

I walked down Broadway toward the middle of town. It was past two o'clock and the wind coming down off the slag heaps was raw enough to turn coat collars up. Personville was going about its business as if nobody had been killed in Hurricane Street the night before.

The First National Bank was a squat stone building with brass that needed polishing. Inside it was dark and close and smelled of ink and steam heat. A rail split the lobby down the middle. Behind it three barred windows faced out, with a fourth at the side marked Assistant Cashier in flaked gilt on the glass.

I got to that window after a wait and showed the man behind it my agency card and asked for a quiet word. He was a round little man of fifty with white cuffs and a black alpaca coat and a bald head that shone in the desk light. The name plate on his desk said J. M. Porter.

He read the card twice, front and back, and said, "Certainly," and came out from behind the rail and took me into a side room with a frosted glass door and a table covered with green blotters. He shut the door.

"Mr. Porter," I said, "Donald Willsson drew a check for five thousand dollars yesterday afternoon. I want to know what you can tell me about it."

He frowned and rubbed the shine off the top of his head with the palm of his hand.

"Mr. Donald Willsson is dead," he said.

"I know it. That is why I am here."

"Do you represent the estate?"

"I represent the Continental Detective Agency. Willsson sent for me before he was killed. I am trying to find out what he was doing yesterday."

Porter shook his head.

"I could not give out information about a depositor except to properly authorized persons," he said. "It would be irregular."

"This is a murder," I said. "You can be regular at the trial. Just now you can talk to me."

He did not like it, but he did not like the look of a holdout either. He went out and was gone five minutes. When he came back he shut the door again before he spoke.

"Mr. Donald Willsson carried a commercial account with us," he said. "Yesterday afternoon, shortly after three o'clock, he drew a check to cash for five thousand dollars."

"Certified?"

"No. It was not certified."

"Has it been presented?"

"It has not been presented. No check of Mr. Donald Willsson's for that amount has come through our books, either yesterday or today."

"Could it have gone through another bank?"

"It could have been cashed elsewhere and come back through the clearing house this morning. It did not. Nothing of that description has been presented for payment."

"How was the balance to cover it?"

"Ample. Quite ample."

"Did he get the money here?"

"He did not. The check was not cashed at this bank. If it had been we would have a record."

"Then he walked out of here with a five-thousand-dollar check to cash in his pocket and it hasn't shown since."

"That is correct," Porter said. "Unless it has been destroyed or is being held."

"Who handled him here? You?"

"I did not. One of the paying tellers did. Mr. Willsson came in, asked if his balance would stand a five-thousand-dollar draft, was told that it would, and said he would draw it later at his office. He wrote nothing here."

"Did he say what it was for?"

"No."

"Did he seem upset? In a hurry?"

"He seemed in haste," Porter said. "That is all I was told."

I thanked him and left him polishing his head and worrying about his regularity. Outside the wind had teeth in it.

The five thousand was walking around loose somewhere. A man does not draw five thousand to cash on the afternoon before he is killed and have it vanish without somebody knowing why. The stub in his desk said he had written it. The bank said it had never come back. Somebody had it, or somebody had stopped it, or it was lying in a gutter between the bank and wherever he went in those twenty minutes.

I cut back to Broadway and caught a car to the Great Western. The lobby was empty except for the clerk behind the desk and a drummer dozing over a cigar. I got my key and went up. I had a room on the third floor facing the alley, with a bed that sagged in the middle, a bureau with a cracked mirror, and a chair that did not match anything.

I washed my face and sat down to put the pieces together. The phone call to Willsson's office at two o'clock from a woman setting ten o'clock for something he had to hurry away from. The check a little before three. The twenty minutes out. Dinner with old Elihu's secretary. Ten o'clock at his house for me. Ten-twenty his wife out in the Buick. Ten-forty him dead in Hurricane Street with a man and a woman bending over him. Eleven-five his wife back with something on her green slipper that could have been blood. And Max Thaler going through his front door this morning.

The knock came at a little after four.

I opened the door and she was there.

She had on a dark gray coat with a fur collar and a small dark hat pulled low. Under it her hair showed pale yellow. She was the slender blonde from Mountain Boulevard, Donald Willsson's widow. She was alone. I had not asked her to come. I had not told her where I was stopping.

"May I come in?" she asked.

Her voice had the slight accent I remembered. It was low and careful, as if she picked each word before she let it go.

I stood aside and she went past me into the room and stood in the middle of it looking at the sagged bed and the cracked mirror without seeing them. She kept her gloves on. Her face was white and drawn tight around the mouth.

"You are the detective from San Francisco," she said. It was not a question.

"Yes."

"You came to my house last night."

"Yes."

"You talked to my father-in-law this morning."

"News travels fast."

"In Personville everything travels fast," she said. "What did you tell him about me?"

"I told him what I saw."

"What did you see?"

"You got a phone call at ten-twenty and went out in the Buick coupe. You came back at eleven-five and said your husband would not be home tonight. There was something on your left slipper that looked like it could have been blood."

She sat down in the unmatched chair without being asked. She crossed her ankles and put her bag in her lap and held it with both hands.

"Do you think I killed my husband, monsieur?"

"I don't think anything yet."

"The old man thinks it. He has always thought the worst of me. He told the police, did he not?"

"Not that I know."

"He will. He hates me because Donald married me in Paris against his wish. He hates me because Donald tried to be honest. You must believe me, I did not kill him."

"Where did you go last night?"

She looked at the bag in her lap.

"I received a telephone message that Donald was with a woman in Hurricane Street. A woman's voice. I do not know whose. I drove there. I did not find him. I drove up and down. Then I came home."

"What time did you get there?"

"I do not know. Perhaps half past ten. Perhaps later. The street was dark. There was no one. I was afraid to get out and ask. I came home."

"Did you see anything on your shoe?"

"No. If there was blood it must have come— I do not know. I did not see it."

"You didn't tell me last night you had gone out looking for him."

"I was frightened. I did not know he was dead. I thought— I thought if I said nothing it would be better."

"Who would phone you a thing like that?"

"I do not know. It was a woman. That is all I know."

"Why come to me now?"

"Because you are not the police," she said simply. "The police are Noonan's. Noonan hates Donald. You were sent for by Donald. You will find who killed him. I did not want you to think it was I."

Before I could answer there was another knock, two sharp raps. The widow stiffened. I went to the door and opened it four inches.

A boy in a bellhop's jacket stood there with an envelope in his hand. He was fourteen or fifteen, freckled, out of breath from the stairs.

"For you," he said, and shoved the envelope at me. "A man downstairs said to bring it right up."

"What man?"

"A thin guy in brown. He give me a dollar. He didn't come in. He was outside in a car."

I took the envelope and shut the door. The widow watched me with her hands tight on her bag.

The envelope was plain and unsealed. Inside was a single sheet of hotel paper, folded once, with five lines written in pencil in a small neat hand.

It said:

You are getting in everybody's way. Personville is not Frisco. You will do yourself a favor by catching tonight's train. M. T.

I put it in my pocket.

"From Max Thaler," I said.

Her face did not change, but her knuckles went white on the bag.

"He was at your house this morning," I said.

"I know. He came to offer his sympathy. That is what he said."

"What did he want?"

"To know what Donald had told me. Nothing. Donald told me nothing. He did not trust me with his work. Ask Miss Lewis if you do not believe me. He did not trust anyone."

"Did Thaler believe you?"

"He smiled. He is always smiling. I am afraid of him."

"You have reason to be," I said. "So have I."

She stood up. She was shaking a little, but her voice held steady.

"You will not tell the police about my shoe?"

"I will tell what I have to tell when I have to tell it. If you did not kill him you have nothing to worry about from me."

"I did not kill him," she said. "I swear it on my mother's grave."

She went out and shut the door softly behind her. I heard her heels go down the hall toward the stairs.

I sat on the edge of the bed and took the note out again. Thaler had not come in himself. He had stayed outside in his car and sent the boy. That was his way, Quint had said, like dynamite. A warning was cheap. It meant I was beginning to be noticed.

At five o'clock I went down to the desk and wrote out a wire. The girl at the telegraph counter counted the words and took my money without looking up.

The wire was to the Old Man of the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco. It said:

OLD MAN CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY SAN FRANCISCO STOP CLIENT DONALD WILLSSON PUBLISHER MORNING HERALD KILLED TEN FORTY LAST NIGHT ELEVEN HUNDRED HURRICANE STREET SIX SHOTS THIRTY TWO STOP HIRED ME BY LETTER TO COME HERE WORK UNKNOWN STOP WIDOW ADMITS OUT TEN TWENTY TO ELEVEN FIVE IN HUSBANDS CAR CLAIMS JEALOUS CALL STOP BANK SHOWS HE DREW FIVE THOUSAND CASH YESTERDAY AFTERNOON NEVER PRESENTED STOP FATHER ELIHU CLAIMS WIDOW DID IT DENIES REFORM FIGHT CAUSED DEATH STOP THALER IN CASE WARNS ME LEAVE TOWN STOP REQUEST AUTHORITY REMAIN INVESTIGATE STOP

I signed it with my branch number and went back upstairs.

Night came down early with the wind rattling the alley window. The room got cold and then hot when the steam came up. Downstairs the lobby filled and emptied. A car backfired in the street and for a second my hand went to my hip.

I sat alone in the room with my shoes off and the wire sent and my notes spread on the bureau under the cracked mirror. The widow's story might be true and might be a lie made up after she learned what I told the old man. Thaler's warning might mean I was close or only that he wanted no strange detectives in his town.

One thing held still through it all. Yesterday afternoon Donald Willsson wrote five thousand dollars to cash, walked out for twenty minutes, and came back without it. The bank had never seen it since. No one at the paper knew where it went. No one in his house said what it bought.

Where the check went was still open.

The counsel thus solicited was not long in presenting itself at Kellynch Hall, for Lady Russell, who never kept a neighbour waiting when duty called, came over from the Lodge on foot the very same morning, and Mr Shepherd, who had business in the village, followed her within half an hour in his gig, with his papers in his pocket and every appearance of a man prepared to be useful. Sir Walter received them in the breakfast parlour with that grave civility which became a gentleman conscious of conferring an honour by the mere act of asking advice, and Elizabeth took her place beside the tea urn with an air of suffering resignation, as if to signify that a Miss Elliot of Kellynch might endure poverty, but could not be expected to talk of it. Anne, who was already at her work in the window, laid down her needle and prepared to listen, though nobody had thought of inviting her opinion, and indeed nobody, except Lady Russell, had seemed to recollect that she was in the room.

Lady Russell spoke first, as became her intimacy and her sex, and she spoke with the earnestness of a friend who had long foreseen the evil and had already weighed the remedy. Her plan, formed upon much reflection and upon a sincere knowledge of the family, was for retrenchment without removal, for dignity preserved by prudence at home. She proposed that the London journey of the ensuing spring should be wholly given up, that the number of horses in the stable should be reduced to what was strictly necessary for exercise and for the carriage of the neighbourhood, that the establishment of servants should be diminished by three, that the table should be furnished with less ostentatious plenty, and that the parties given at Kellynch during the winter should be confined to the occasional dining of a few old friends instead of the general hospitality which had of late been attempted without spirit and supported without means. By such measures, steadily pursued for two or three years, and aided by the sale of some useless plate and the shutting up of half the sleeping rooms, she conceived that the debts might by degrees be discharged, and Kellynch be retained without dishonour and without further embarrassment. She urged it with all the affection of a woman addressing those she loved, and concluded with entreating Sir Walter to consider how much more eligible it was to retrench in time, by his own choice, than to be compelled to retrench hereafter by necessity.

Sir Walter heard her to the end with a politeness which cost him a visible effort, and answered without a moment of hesitation. He thanked her, as he was sure a man of his breeding must thank a lady for any interference, however uncalled for, but he owned himself wholly incapable of comprehending how a scheme so composed of vulgar privations could ever have suggested itself to a person of Lady Russell's understanding. To give up London, to be seen in the country through a whole winter without company, to diminish his servants, to curtail his table, to shut up his rooms, what was this but to proclaim to all Somersetshire that the Elliots were ruined? He had not deserved such a counsel. He was not a man to make himself ridiculous in the eyes of his neighbours for the sake of a few hundred pounds. The plan was impossible. He would rather suffer any present inconvenience than submit to an obscurity so unworthy of his station. Lady Russell's judgment, excellent as it generally was, had for once mistaken both his character and his circumstances, and he must beg leave to reject her proposal entirely.

Elizabeth coloured and looked down, as if her father's dignity had sufficiently asserted itself, and Mr Shepherd, after clearing his throat with professional solemnity, was invited to produce his own nostrum. His plan differed in form, though it tended to the same mortifying end. Being a man of business, he thought less of dinners and horses than of interest and mortgages. He proposed that Sir Walter should compound openly with his principal creditors by granting fresh securities upon the Hinton farm, that a small detached meadow beyond the village, which could be spared without injury to the beauty of the park, should be sold for ready money, that the timber in the lower coppice, which was now at its full growth, should be felled in the autumn, and that the whole expenditure of the house should in the meantime be placed under a fixed allowance, to be administered by Elizabeth with monthly accounts rendered to himself. It was, he acknowledged, a temporary expedient, but it would stop the present clamour, restore credit, and enable Sir Walter to continue at Kellynch with only a few subordinate sacrifices, such as the discharge of a footman and the discontinuance of the annual present of game to every petty farmer in the parish.

Sir Walter's countenance darkened as the attorney proceeded, for though the words were smoother, the indignity appeared to him scarcely less. To sell land, though it were but a meadow, to cut down his own trees for sale, to live upon an allowance like a minor or a spendthrift heir, to render accounts to an attorney, these were degradations to which no Elliot of Kellynch had ever submitted, and to which he never would submit. He desired Mr Shepherd to understand that the Kellynch estate had descended whole from father to son for three generations, and should descend whole to his successor, whoever that successor might prove. He would not mutilate his property to satisfy a parcel of tradesmen. He would not have his woods disfigured and his park curtailed for the inspection of all the country. The plan was as inadmissible as the former. He rejected it outright, and with a coldness which seemed intended to remind Mr Shepherd that an agent might advise, but a baronet must decide.

There was a short and painful silence, during which Elizabeth appeared to struggle between mortification and relief, mortification that such proposals should have been offered, relief that they had been so properly refused, and Lady Russell looked with anxious affection towards Anne, as if apprehensive that so much folly must afflict a sensible mind. It was then, to the astonishment of every person present, that Anne herself spoke, and spoke aloud, with a steadiness which she had seldom before exerted in company at Kellynch.

She asked permission, in a low but distinct voice, to observe that both the schemes which had been mentioned appeared to her to leave the evil nearly where they found it, because they attempted to preserve indulgences which the income could no longer support. If retrenchment were necessary at all, it ought, she thought, to be prompt and effectual, and not frittered away in small savings which mortified vanity without relieving distress. She would propose, if she might be allowed to propose anything, a stricter economy than either Lady Russell or Mr Shepherd had ventured to recommend. Let the carriage horses be sold at once, and only a pair of carriage horses retained for Mrs Clay's convenience, let the shooting lodge be shut up, let every useless servant be discharged together, instead of by lingering degrees, let the family dine without a second course when alone, let the house in Rivers Street, if taken for the spring, be given up entirely, let no new furniture be thought of, no presents made, no parties attempted, and let Elizabeth and herself undertake, without repining, those lesser offices of domestic management which hired hands performed ill and extravagantly. Such a system, severely adhered to for a few years, would, she believed, do what partial measures could not do, and would at least prove that the family was in earnest in its desire to be just.

She ceased, blushing deeply at having said so much, and expecting, as she had always hitherto experienced, to have her words pass unnoticed or be gently set aside as the romance of a young lady who knew nothing of the world. But on this occasion a very different reception awaited her. Elizabeth, who had listened at first with an air of condescending surprise, suddenly laid down her teaspoon and declared, to the infinite amazement of Lady Russell and of Mr Shepherd, and not less of Sir Walter himself, that Anne was perfectly in the right, and that for her part she approved the scheme entirely. She was sure, she said, that half measures would only expose them to ridicule without doing them any good. If they were to retrench at all, let it be handsomely and decidedly, as Anne had described. She would rather give up her own riding horse tomorrow, and walk about Kellynch like any farmer's daughter, than consent to a paltry, creeping reform which left them neither rich nor respectable. She had no notion of selling a meadow here and cutting down a tree there to patch up a reputation. Anne's plan had at least the merit of spirit, and while it preserved Kellynch itself inviolate, she was willing to support it, however severe upon her own comforts.

Lady Russell turned her eyes upon Elizabeth with a mixture of pleasure and incredulity, for in thirteen years of acquaintance she had never before heard the eldest sister second the youngest in anything, and Sir Walter himself stared as if he doubted whether he had heard aright. That Elizabeth should unite with Anne, that the daughter on whom he doted should echo the daughter whom he disregarded, was a phenomenon for which his philosophy had not prepared him, and for a moment it threatened to shake his resolution more than all the arguments of friendship or of law.

Mr Shepherd, who perceived the advantage and was too practised a man of business to suffer sentiment to obstruct utility, hastened to interpose before the impression could subside. He allowed, with a bow to Miss Anne, that her spirit did her honour, and that Miss Elliot's concurrence did them both honour, but he ventured to doubt whether even such sacrifices, however handsomely borne, would satisfy the present urgency of the demands. Young ladies, he observed with a smile, did not always know the extent of a landed gentleman's engagements. If retrenchment within doors were found insufficient, and he feared it would be found so, there remained one other resource, which he had hitherto forborne to name, but which, as a faithful servant of the family, he felt bound at last to mention. It was possible, and in some cases it was customary, for a gentleman of embarrassed fortune to let his principal residence for a term of years to a responsible tenant, and to retire himself to a smaller house, either in the neighbourhood or elsewhere, until his affairs were retrieved. The rental of Kellynch Hall, furnished as it now stood, would be considerable. A tenant of unexceptionable character might soon be found. He threw out the hint with deference, and trusted Sir Walter would forgive the liberty.

The effect was instantaneous and terrible. Sir Walter rose from his chair with a dignity which seemed to add inches to his stature, and with a countenance in which wounded pride and personal insult were equally legible. Tenant! He repeated the word as if it had been an obscenity. Had he lived to hear his own agent propose to him, in his own house, to let Kellynch Hall to a tenant, to admit strangers to pollute his hall, to gaze upon his ancestors, to usurp his place in the parish? He would have Mr Shepherd understand, once and for all, that Kellynch was not a farm to be let, but the seat of an ancient family, consecrated by blood and rank, and never to be prostituted by such traffic while he breathed. He forbade the subject to be ever resumed. Let the word tenant never again be pronounced in his presence. He would rather quit England altogether, he would rather suffer imprisonment for debt, than submit to an expedient so degrading, so unworthy of the name of Elliot. Elizabeth echoed the sentiment with becoming spirit, declaring that she would rather earn her bread as a governess than live to see unknown people established at Kellynch, and even Lady Russell, though she disapproved the violence of the language, shook her head at Mr Shepherd as if he had indeed gone too far.

Mr Shepherd bowed submissively and folded his papers, murmuring something about duty and pardon, and Anne, whose momentary triumph had thus vanished, felt her cheeks burn with the consciousness of having spoken in vain. Her stricter plan, though so strangely supported, was already forgotten in the storm which the other proposal had excited, and Sir Walter, still agitated, walked to the window to compose himself by contemplating his own park, as if to assure himself that it was still his own and unprofaned.

It was at this crisis, when no one seemed inclined to renew the discussion, that the sound of a horse at a rapid trot was heard upon the gravel, and presently a servant entered with a letter, sealed and directed in a hurried hand, which he presented to Anne. The direction was in the well known characters of her sister Mary, Mrs Charles Musgrove of Uppercross, and the contents, upon which Anne's eyes ran with increasing uneasiness while the rest of the party regarded her in silence, were of a nature to divert attention, though not to relieve anxiety. Mary wrote in great haste, and in evident ill humour, to complain that she had been very unwell for three days past with a cold and sore throat, attended with much feverish agitation, that Mr Musgrove and Charles were gone to a petty sessions at Taunton and left her alone with the children, that the servants were inattentive, that Mrs Musgrove the elder interfered too much and yet did nothing to amuse her, and that altogether she found herself so low and so neglected that nothing but the company of one of her own sisters could do her any good. Elizabeth, she knew, could not be spared from Kellynch, but Anne, who was never of any consequence at home, might surely come to Uppercross without inconvenience, and she entreated, she insisted, that Anne would come immediately, if she had any affection for her, and remain as long as she could be wanted.

Anne folded the letter with a countenance in which vexation and tenderness were contendng, for though accustomed to Mary's querulous style and to being always summoned when anybody was sick or out of spirits, she could not hear of real indisposition, however exaggerated, without a desire to be useful. Elizabeth laughed and observed that Mary was always ill when she wanted company, Lady Russell inquired with grave concern whether the complaint seemed serious, and Sir Walter, who had recovered his composure sufficiently to despise a son-in-law's household, remarked that Mrs Charles Musgrove might be better employed in attending to her children than in writing letters to disturb Kellynch.

No resolution was taken respecting the debts. Sir Walter, having rejected Lady Russell, rejected Mr Shepherd, and silently rejected even Anne, seemed to consider the conference at an end, and to resume, with Elizabeth's assistance, the agreeable occupation of lamenting their misfortunes without providing a remedy. Mr Shepherd took his leave with promises to call again when his advice should be more welcome, Lady Russell remained to dinner with a heavy heart, foreboding many evils from pride thus obstinate, and the afternoon wore away in desultory conversation, in which economy was carefully avoided as a subject too coarse for repetition.

It was evening before Anne found herself alone. The drawing room was deserted, the candles were lighted, the rain which had threatened all day pattered gently against the windows of Kellynch Hall, and the house was as quiet as if no debts intruded upon its elegance. Anne sat for some time by the window with Mary's letter open upon her lap, reflecting upon all that had passed, upon Lady Russell's prudent kindness so haughtily refused, upon Mr Shepherd's prudent servility so justly yet so imprudently punished, upon her own unwonted boldness and Elizabeth's unwonted support, upon the forbidden word which had excited such horror, and upon the impossibility, as it now appeared, of prevailing upon her father to submit to any sacrifice while Kellynch remained to flatter his vanity. The question of the family's debts was still entirely unsettled, not a step advanced, not a guinea secured, pride arrayed against necessity and necessity left to shift for itself. Yet amidst this perplexity her determination with regard to Uppercross became clear. Mary was ill, or fancied herself ill, which with Mary was nearly the same thing, and wanted her. No one else would go. Elizabeth would not stir, Lady Russell could not be expected to nurse fancied colds, and Charles Musgrove, however kind, was absent and a man. Anne resolved, with a sigh in which duty and a secret longing for a change of scene were mingled, that go she must and go she would, and that on the morrow, if a conveyance could be procured, she would quit Kellynch, for a time at least, for Uppercross, leaving her father and sister to the undisturbed possession of their difficulties.

If ever a man had his breath taken neatly out of his body, I had mine taken then. Mr. Franklin kept his arm round my neck, and laughed like a boy let out of school, while I sat gaping at him on the sand with my mouth open and my stick gone the Lord knows where.

“You know me now, Betteredge, eh?” says he.

“I know you, Mr. Franklin,” says I, when I had got my wind again. “And thankful I am, sir, to see you back in the old place, though four good hours before your time. But as for the seven-and-sixpence, if you please, sir, we will call that debt settled out of regard for your poor father’s memory. You borrowed it to buy me a present when you was a boy and went to Germany, and you never paid me back, and there it may rest.”

“There it shall not rest,” says Mr. Franklin, helping me with both his hands to get upon my legs, which, on the slope of a beach, and at my time of life, is, you will please to remember, no such easy business as it looks. “I have come home to be an Englishman again, and an Englishman pays his debts. There is your seven-and-sixpence, Betteredge,” says he, putting a bright new half-sovereign into my hand, “and the sixpence for luck, and the interest for long credit, and my love into the bargain.”

I put the money back into his hand, and shook my head. I was fond of him already, ladies and gentlemen, though he had half choked me, and though his foreign varnish, as I had called it, glittered all over him from his hat to his boots. When you have nursed a gentleman in his pinafores, as I had nursed Mr. Franklin, a new suit of fawn-colour, with gloves to match and a rose in the button-hole, does not keep your heart from warming to him.

“Keep your money, sir,” I said. “I owe you the welcome, and not you me the seven-and-sixpence. But in the name of wonder, Mr. Franklin, how came you here on the sands, and why four hours before we looked for you?”

“That is fairly asked,” says he, “and I will answer fairly. I came because of a letter that reached me in London yesterday morning. See for yourself, Betteredge, and say if I could do any less than take the earlier train.”

With that he whipped out his pocket-book, foreign fashion, all clasps and colours, and took from it a letter in a lady’s hand, which he put into my hands without more ado. I am no great scholar in reading, at my age, out in the glare of the sun, with my spectacles left at home in my sitting-room. Mr. Franklin stood looking out at the Shivering Sand while I spelled it through, and I hereby set it down for you to spell through after me, word for word, as follows:

“MY DEAR FRANKLIN, — Your kind letter of Tuesday last has this moment reached me. I write a line in haste to say that it will be more convenient for all the household if you will take the mid-day train on Thursday, instead of the evening train which you propose. The carriage is engaged to meet Miss Rachel in the afternoon, on a visit of shopping at Frizinghall, and can thus bring you back from the station on its return without sending a second carriage for you in the evening. Cook, moreover, desires me to say that the dinner for your arrival, being game, will keep cold better if you dine earlier. Pray excuse this household detail, and believe me, with kind love, your affectionate Aunt, JULIA VERINDER. P.S. The dog-cart will meet the 2.30 train. Come by it, without fail.”

There was the whole of it, dated from our own house, the day before, and directed to Mr. Franklin Blake, at his lodgings in London. A plain letter, you will say, and a fussy reason enough for changing a journey. I thought so myself. But Mr. Franklin, when I gave it back to him, folded it up again as carefully as if it had been a bank-note.

“My aunt does not often trouble herself with household details,” says he, a little seriously. “I take the hint, Betteredge, and I obey orders. Here I am by the 2.30 train, and not by the 6.45, as we settled. Have I done right?”

“Right, sir, beyond all doubt,” I answered, picking up my stick, which the young gentleman had found for me among the sand. “My lady knows her own business best. Only I wish she had given us a day’s more notice, that we might have had the house a little smarter for you. Not but what you find us in good order for Miss Rachel’s birthday next month, thanks be to Providence, and not to me.”

We turned our faces then from the sea, and took the path back through the sandhills towards the fir plantation. I walked first, being the guide, and Mr. Franklin came after, whistling a foreign tune under his breath, and switching at the bent-grass with his cane. After a few steps he stopped me.

“Betteredge,” says he, “who was that odd girl who ran away from us just now?”

I told him, as shortly as I could, that she was our second housemaid, Rosanna Spearman, and that my lady had taken her out of a Reformatory, to give her a fresh chance in honest service. I added, what I have already told you, that none of the servants knew her story except Penelope and me, and that she did her work well, though she kept herself to herself and took her walks alone upon the sands.

“She blushed up to the eyes when she saw me,” says Mr. Franklin, with that pleasant vanity of his which made him, to my mind, the most agreeable young gentleman in England. “Have I got anything on my face?”

I told him he had nothing on his face but his own good looks, which, as head of the servants, I am bound to say, was flattery, and not truth. But flattery sits easily on an old tongue, when a young gentleman smiles at you out of the past, and your heart is glad to see him home again.

“It is my foreign coat, then,” says he, laughing, and looking down at his fawn-colour suit with great satisfaction. “The girl never saw such a coat before. Well, well, poor soul, I bear her no malice. Let us hope she will get over her shyness before I have done with Yorkshire.”

Take my word for it, good reader, if I had known then what I know now, I should have taken that coat off his back the moment he set foot in my lady’s house, and burned it on the kitchen fire. But who is wise beforehand in this world? Neither Mr. Franklin with his foreign training, nor I with my English experience, thought any more of Rosanna Spearman from that minute. We jogged on together through the melancholy plantation, talking of old times when he was a boy, and of his father and mother, both dead, and of my lady’s goodness to him since he was left an orphan, till we came out upon the open ground at the back of the house.

There, running towards us down the garden path with her cap-strings flying, was my daughter Penelope, flushed and out of breath. She dropped Mr. Franklin a curtsey that did my paternal heart good to see, for Penelope had been his playfellow when they were children, and was fond of him in her respectful way still. Mr. Franklin shook her by the hand kindly, and asked after her health, and if she was still the prettiest girl in Yorkshire, at which Penelope blushed like Rosanna before her, but answered sensibly enough.

“Oh, Mr. Franklin, have you seen anything of Rosanna?” says she, turning to me. “I have been to the servants’ hall, father, and Nancy says you went to fetch her. Dinner was half an hour ago, and she has never come in.”

“She left me on the sands, my dear, near an hour since,” I said. “She took fright, as it were, at Mr. Franklin here, and ran off without a word. What has become of her now?”

Penelope looked at Mr. Franklin, and then looked at me, as if she did not quite like to speak before a gentleman. “I have just been to the back door to look for her,” she says, “and Limping Lucy passed, on her way from Cobb’s Hole with fish. Lucy says she met Rosanna on the footpath, going the other way, with her bonnet and cloak on, walking fast towards Cobb’s Hole. She has not come back to the house, father, but has gone on to Cobb’s Hole.”

Cobb’s Hole, I must tell you, is our fishing village, a mile or more from the house, where Rosanna had, as I have hinted, the only friend she possessed in our parts, a deformed girl, daughter of a fisherman, to whom she paid visits now and then on her out-days. That she should go there now, with her dinner uneaten, and without leave asked, was unlike her, and, to my mind as head of the servants, not to be passed over without notice.

“Did Lucy say if she spoke to her?” I asked.

“She spoke, but Rosanna seemed not to heed her,” says Penelope. “She went straight on, with her head down, as if she was in trouble. Lucy thought her rude, and was offended. Oh, father, I am afraid something has upset her!”

Mr. Franklin, who had been listening with more attention than I should have expected from a young gentleman thinking of his dinner, put in a word here to relieve Penelope’s mind.

“Pray don’t be uneasy,” says he kindly. “It was my fault, I daresay. I came on your father and Rosanna a little suddenly, and startled her. She will come back when she has had her walk, and had her cry out, and will be the better for the fresh air.”

Penelope thanked him, but looked not quite satisfied for all that. I bade her tell the cook to keep Rosanna’s dinner hot in the kitchen, and to say nothing to the other servants that might set their tongues wagging against the girl. Penelope promised, and ran back to the house, leaving Mr. Franklin and me to follow at our leisure.

We were crossing the court-yard on our way to the front door, when Mr. Franklin stopped, and laid his hand suddenly on my arm.

“Betteredge,” says he, lowering his voice, though there was not a soul near us but the pigeons on the roof, “I have a favour to ask of you before I see my aunt. Here is a small sealed packet which I brought from London. It is of value, and I don’t want to carry it about on me while I am dressing for dinner, and my room is being got ready. Will you lock it up for me in a safe place till to-morrow morning?”

With those words he put into my hand a little parcel, not above four inches long, tied with string and sealed in two places with black wax, and with no writing upon it outside. It was light in weight, and gave no rattle, shake it as I might without his seeing me afterwards, to tell of what was inside. Whether it was jewels or papers, or money, or what else, I neither knew then, nor have I ever known since. And this I will say, in justice to myself as an honest servant, that I never once asked Mr. Franklin what was in it, and that he never once told me of his own accord. It was committed to me as a trust, and as a trust I took it.

“You shall have it back, sir, to-morrow morning, safe and sound, on my word as a Christian man,” I said. “Where would you wish me to put it? My strong box in my sitting-room has but a poor lock. The plate-room is the place, if you approve, under my own key, along with my lady’s silver.”

“The very place,” says Mr. Franklin. “Lock it up, Betteredge, and say nothing about it to anybody. I will ask you for it again when I want it.”

I promised secrecy, as in duty bound, and slipped the packet into the breast-pocket of my coat, where it lay snug against my heart all through the rest of that afternoon. I tell you this particularly, because you might otherwise suppose that I looked at it, or weighed it in my mind, or did anything unbecoming an old servant with a treasure in his charge. I did nothing of the kind. The packet went into my pocket, and there it stayed, as silent as Rosanna herself, till I could put it under lock and key.

My lady was waiting to receive Mr. Franklin in the morning-room, where she commonly sat to do her correspondence and to overlook the household accounts. She rose with a cry of pleasure when he came in, and kissed him on both cheeks, foreign fashion, after his schooling abroad, which she, good lady, bore with like a Christian, though I saw it startled her. I followed with his portmanteau, which had come up by the cart from the station, and set it down inside the door, being unwilling to leave them till I had seen the meeting fairly begun.

“Well, Aunt, here I am before my time, you see, in obedience to orders,” says Mr. Franklin, giving her the letter again, with his bright smile. “Betteredge has it all down in evidence against you, if you deny it.”

My lady glanced at the letter, and then looked hard at her nephew, with a fondness in her face that it did me good to witness, though there was, as I thought, a shade of anxiety under it as well.

“You are welcome, Franklin, at any hour,” she says. “But since you are come early, and since we have a quiet minute before Rachel is down from dressing, there is one thing I must say to you, and have done with it, for as long as you are under my roof.”

Mr. Franklin drew a chair close to her, and took her hand. “Say it, Aunt, and I will obey you before I hear it.”

My lady kept her eyes upon him steadily, and spoke plainly, as her way was when she meant to be obeyed.

“It is about your uncle, Colonel Herncastle,” she says. “I desire, Franklin, that his name shall not be mentioned in this house. Not in jest, not in earnest, not before the servants, not before Rachel, not before me. I forbid the subject, once for all, under my roof. Do you agree?”

There was a silence of a moment, during which I busied myself, mighty particular, with the straps of the portmanteau, as if I had heard nothing. Mr. Franklin’s bright face clouded a little, but he answered without hesitation, and kissed his aunt’s hand into the bargain.

“I agree, Aunt,” says he. “Whatever my reasons may be for thinking of him at this time, I will keep them to myself while I am your guest. The forbidden subject shall never pass my lips in this house.”

“That is enough,” says my lady, satisfied, and patting his cheek. “Now go and dress for dinner, you careless boy, and let Betteredge show you your room. Rachel will be down presently, and will scold me for keeping you to myself.”

Miss Rachel, I must observe, did not then appear in person, being still upstairs with her maid, engaged, as Penelope afterwards told me, in choosing a dress for dinner in honour of Mr. Franklin’s arrival. Nor did she come down till long after Mr. Franklin had gone upstairs himself, so that these two, whose names were soon to be so strangely joined together, did not meet that afternoon under my lady’s roof.

I showed Mr. Franklin to the blue bedroom, which had been got ready for him, and left him to his servant, who had come on with the luggage, to dress. I then went myself, first locking the door behind me, into the plate-room, which opens out of the pantry, and is secured with a stout door and a patent lock, the key of which never leaves my possession night or day. There, among my lady’s silver dishes and christening cups, all bright and orderly upon the shelves, I laid Mr. Franklin’s small sealed packet, with the black seals uppermost, far back in a corner where no careless hand could disturb it. I turned the key upon it with a click that was music to my honesty, and put the key into my waistcoat pocket, and kept my hand upon it all the way back to my own sitting-room, to make sure that it was safe.

The rest of the evening passed as evenings do pass in a well-ordered house when there is company expected and a young gentleman come home. There was dressing, and there was dinner, with Miss Rachel (of whom I say nothing, as she never came my way that night) doing the honours after my lady, and Mr. Franklin telling foreign stories that made the servants laugh behind the door. I waited at table as usual, in my black coat and waistcoat, and had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Franklin eat like an Englishman again, which comforted me greatly after his French kickshaws abroad.

Late that evening, when the family had gone upstairs, and the servants were gone to bed, all except the cook, who sat up for Rosanna, I took my candle and my Robinson Crusoe, and settled myself, as is my custom, in my beehive chair in my own sitting-room, for half an hour’s reading before sleep. The house was quiet, the key of the plate-room was safe in my waistcoat, and the small sealed packet lay locked away among the silver, untouched and unopened, even as I had promised.

But for all that comfort, my mind was uneasy. For Rosanna Spearman was still not back in the house.

Eve stepped out into Shaftesbury Avenue with the umbrella still neatly furled under her arm and the curious light-headed feeling of one who has been lent a fortune by a fairy godmother and does not quite know what to do with it.

The rain had stopped. That sudden shower which had driven her under the awning of Messrs. Thorpe and Briscoe had blown over as suddenly as it had come, and Shaftesbury Avenue glittered in that watery sunshine which London puts on, like a cleaned shirt-front, to pretend that the morning has been fine all along. Cabs splashed, omnibuses rumbled, and the pavements were full of people who looked as if they had never heard of rain. Eve stood for a moment at the top of the short stair, adjusting the famous hat, and regarded the umbrella with affectionate embarrassment.

It was a very good umbrella. Even her feminine eye, untrained in such matters, could see that. It had a stout silver band and a handle of the sort which suggests a prosperous owner, a man who orders hock without looking at the price and tips waiters from principle rather than policy. To keep such an object would be theft. To post it nowhere would be folly, for she had no address. There remained only the decent course, the course which her father, that most impractical of men, had always insisted upon in matters of borrowing, to take it back at once and say thank you prettily.

Not that the prospect allured her. She had a vivid recollection of the gloomy building opposite the coal shop, with its endless procession of men, and she had no desire to march into what was evidently a club and demand speech with a hatless young man in a monocle of whom she knew nothing except that he had beautiful manners and long legs. But then she reflected that clubs had porters, and that porters existed for just such emergencies, stout, fatherly men in uniforms who took charge of parcels and messages and shielded shy young women from the gaze of members. She would go back to Dover Street that very day, restore the umbrella, and leave a note of thanks. Having settled this, she felt better, and set off toward Piccadilly with a light step, twirling the umbrella in a manner which would have caused its owner, had he seen her, a pang of apprehension for the ferrule.

It was a little after twelve when she reached Dover Street. The front of Thorpe and Briscoe looked decorous and unmemorable in the sunshine, giving no hint that it had so lately served as sanctuary. Opposite, the Drones Club frowned in brick and stone, impassive and club-like, with a porter at the door who seemed to have been poured into his uniform and left to set.

Eve approached him with the mingled boldness and timidity of youth addressing gold braid.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I believe a gentleman who belongs here lent me this umbrella this morning.”

The porter looked at the umbrella without enthusiasm, as one who has seen many umbrellas and liked none of them.

“Indeed, miss?” he said.

“He was very kind. He was hatless and he had a monocle, and he just put it into my hand under Mr. Thorpe’s awning and ran across the road in the rain. I want to give it back, please, and would you give him this note?”

She had written the note on the bus, in pencil, on a leaf torn from her bag-book, propping the book against the umbrella handle while the bus jolted round Hyde Park Corner. It was a little smudged, but sincere.

The porter took the umbrella and the folded paper, and his manner softened a trifle. The hat, which had impressed Enquiries at the Bureau, did not fail with him.

“Very good, miss. What name shall I say, miss?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Eve hastily. She had a schoolgirl’s dislike of leaving names at strange doors. “Just say the young lady in the rain. I’ve thanked him in the note.”

“Very good, miss,” said the porter, and Eve, feeling that honour was satisfied, smiled at him dazzlingly and walked away toward Piccadilly, unconscious that she had set in motion a train of events which would have interested a student of human nature.

The note, couched in the writer’s best style, ran as follows.

“Dear Kind Rescuer, Thank you a thousand times for the umbrella. It kept my hat perfectly dry, which is more than any of my own umbrellas ever do. I am giving it back to the porter, because I know how miserable gentlemen are when they lose umbrellas. Yours gratefully, E. H.”

Psmith, meanwhile, had returned to the smoking-room window after his act of gallantry and was improving his mind with a study of the street. He had dried his hair, which the rain had somewhat disordered, and was feeling that quiet satisfaction which comes to a man who has done a generous deed at somebody else’s expense. The umbrella, he recalled, had belonged to the Honourable Mr. Walderwick, a recent addition to the Drones, a earnest youth with a pink face and ideals about the Empire. Psmith had no remorse. He held the views of a philosopher on the subject of umbrellas, regarding them as property held in common by the human race, like air and conversation.

At half-past twelve these meditations were interrupted by the arrival in the smoking-room of the Honourable Mr. Walderwick himself, pinker than usual and plainly agitated. He looked about him, espied Psmith, and bore down upon him with the air of a man who has a grievance and a club membership to back it.

“I say,” said Mr. Walderwick without preamble, “have you seen my umbrella? I left it in the cloak-room. New silk, silver band. Some blighter’s pinched it.”

Psmith regarded him through his monocle with grave sympathy. He had hoped that the loss might pass unnoticed until the evening, when the cloak-room would disgorge other umbrellas and the matter become academic. This prompt inquiry was inconvenient.

“An umbrella?” he murmured. “A silver-banded umbrella? Let me think.”

“There’s nothing to think about,” said Mr. Walderwick warmly. “I asked Simmons. Simmons says you took an umbrella out about eleven. He says you asked whose it was and he told you it was mine, and you said ‘Ah!’ and walked off with it. I call that a bit thick.”

Psmith waved a long hand deprecatingly.

“Your warmth does you credit, Comrade Walderwick, but your language pains me. Pinched is a harsh word. Borrowed, if you will. Requisitioned in a good cause.”

“What cause?”

“The cause of Beauty in distress. Shall I tell you the story? No,” said Psmith, reflecting that explanation would involve long sentences and possibly disbelief, “on the whole, no. Explanation is a wearing business. Let us cut to the practical side. You have lost an umbrella. I have, in a sense, found one. What is your umbrella worth to you in hard cash?”

Mr. Walderwick stared.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Psmith, producing a notecase of alligator skin, “that I am prepared to buy this umbrella from you outright, here and now, without haggling or appeals to the committee. Name your price. Shall we say twenty pounds?”

Mr. Walderwick’s mouth opened. So did his eyes. Twenty pounds for an umbrella which had cost him two guineas in Bond Street was a proposition which altered the whole moral aspect of the affair.

“Twenty pounds?” he repeated faintly.

“Twenty pounds,” said Psmith firmly. “I do not haggle. I am a man of large and impulsive gestures. Simmons will bear witness that the transaction was honourable on both sides.”

“But where is the umbrella?”

“For the moment,” admitted Psmith, “it is not on the premises. It is sheltering, if I may coin a phrase, a deserving head. It will return in due course, like a homing pigeon. In the meantime, take the money and buy yourself two umbrellas, three if you are economical. One for sun, one for rain, one for show.”

He counted out four crisp five-pound notes, which he had that morning drawn for the purpose of resigning in style from his uncle’s fish business, and pressed them upon the dazed Walderwick. The Honourable Mr. Walderwick looked at the notes, looked at Psmith, and decided that the Drones contained stranger fish than he had supposed.

“Well,” he said, pocketing the fortune, “it’s your money. But I think you’re off your rocker.”

“A sane and balanced observer,” said Psmith, bowing him out, “would probably say the same. Farewell, Comrade Walderwick. Spend it wisely.”

He resumed his seat, well pleased. The incident was closed, the umbrella was his by right of purchase, and his conscience was as spotless as his spats.

At half-past three that afternoon the sky, which had behaved all day with the indecision of a committee, produced another shower, sharp and business-like, and Eve, who was walking back along Piccadilly after a frugal lunch at a bun-shop, took refuge in the doorway of a print-seller’s. She was already late in spirit for what lay before her, and the rain completed her depression. She shook the drops from her frock and sighed.

In the same doorway, smoking a cigarette with the air of one who has all eternity before him, stood a tall young man in a soft hat, with a monocle in his right eye. He removed his hat politely as she entered, shook the rain from it, and made room for her with a courteous sidestep.

“London weather,” he observed, “is like a divorced wife. It keeps turning up when you thought you had seen the last of it.”

Eve laughed in spite of herself. There was something in his solemn face that invited confidence.

“Isn’t it dreadful?” she said. “I was caught this morning too. I had to hide under a coal-shop.”

“A coal-shop is nature’s umbrella,” said Psmith. “Did no gallant cavalier come to your aid?”

Eve’s eyes sparkled. The adventure of the morning, which had seemed embarrassing in retrospect, now assumed the proportions of a good story.

“He did, as a matter of fact. The most extraordinary thing. A young man with no hat dashed out of a club and thrust an umbrella into my hand and vanished. I never even thanked him properly. I took it back this morning and left a note with the porter.”

“Indeed?” said Psmith, deeply interested. “A hatless young man? You surprise me. I should have thought hatless young men spent their time borrowing umbrellas, not lending them.”

“Oh, he was very nice. Very tall and grave. I only saw him for a second, but I shall always remember him as the Man with the Umbrella. Don’t you think London is full of unexpected kindnesses?”

“It is its chief charm,” agreed Psmith. “That and the buses. May I ask, as a student of human nature, what you did with the afternoon after this romantic episode?”

“I wasted it,” said Eve ruefully. “I went to see an old schoolmistress, and now I have to go and be interviewed about work, and I am terrified.”

“Interviews,” said Psmith, “are like dentists. Unpleasant, but seldom fatal. What is the post, if one may inquire without impertinence?”

“Cataloguing a library in the country. I know nothing about cataloguing, except that you put cards in drawers. But I must get it. My friend Phyllis is in trouble, and if I get settled I might be able to help her. Besides, I need the money myself. Hats,” said Eve, touching the bird of Paradise feather tenderly, “are so expensive.”

Psmith nodded gravely, as one who understands the economics of feathers.

“Be of good cheer,” he said. “Employers are usually short-sighted and easily flattered. Talk about their hobbies and you are safe. If all else fails, sneeze. It creates a diversion.”

The rain had thinned to a drizzle. Eve peered out and gathered her bag.

“I think I can dash it now. Thank you so much for cheering me up.”

“The pleasure,” said Psmith, raising his hat, “was entirely mine.”

They parted without names, without introductions, as strangers part in London doorways a hundred times a day. Eve hurried toward Dover Street, quite unaware that she had been talking to her rescuer, and Psmith strolled westward, reflecting that the young woman under the awning improved on acquaintance and that Providence, though eccentric in its methods, occasionally knew its business.

At a quarter to four Eve presented herself at the hotel in Dover Street where the Earl of Emsworth was staying during his brief visit to town, and was shown by a waiter into a sitting-room which smelt of cigar-smoke and furniture-polish. The Earl, a tall, thin, elderly gentleman with a vague beard and an expression of gentle bewilderment, was standing by the window looking at the rain. Beside him, neat and alert as a terrier, stood his secretary, Rupert Baxter.

Baxter, who conducted most of the business of life for his employer, took charge at once.

“Miss Halliday?” he said. “Miss Halliday about the library catalogue? Lord Emsworth will see you now. His lordship has very kindly consented to spare you a few minutes before his other engagements.”

Lord Emsworth turned, peered vaguely in Eve’s direction, and smiled kindly. He had mislaid his pince-nez again that morning, after Baxter had so cleverly recovered it from the small of his back, and without it the world was a pleasant blur.

“Ah, yes, yes,” he said. “The catalogue. Very important. Must have the library in order. Mr. McTodd was saying only this morning — or was it Baxter saying Mr. McTodd was saying? — that poetry cannot flourish without system. You are fond of poetry, Miss — ah — ?”

“Halliday,” said Baxter crisply. “Miss Eve Halliday. Recommended by Miss Clarkson. She has testimonials.”

“To be sure, to be sure. Let me see them.”

Eve produced two letters, one from Miss Clarkson and one from a clergyman who had once employed her to arrange parish magazines. Lord Emsworth took them, held them upside down, fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and frowned.

“Baxter, my pince-nez.”

“You left them in the bathroom, your lordship. I will fetch them.”

Baxter withdrew with silent efficiency. There followed one of those pauses which try the soul of an applicant. Lord Emsworth, left alone with a blurred young woman in a large hat, endeavoured to make conversation.

“You have come from — ah — Canada, Miss Halliday?” he asked hopefully.

“No, Lord Emsworth. From London. From West Kensington.”

“Ah? I thought you were connected with Mr. McTodd. Ralston McTodd, the poet. He is lunching with me tomorrow. A very gifted man, I understand. From Canada. My sister Constance admires him greatly.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know Mr. McTodd,” said Eve, bewildered. She thought of poor Cynthia, deserted by that very McTodd, and wondered if this was the moment to mention her. She decided it was not.

“Odd,” said Lord Emsworth. “I was under the impression — Baxter attends to these things — I was under the impression you were his secretary or typewriter or something. No matter, no matter. The library, of course. You understand books? Large books with — ah — covers?”

Eve, suppressing a wild desire to laugh, said she was fond of books. Her father had been a writer.

“A writer?” said Lord Emsworth, brightening. “Did he write about flowers? I am much interested in flowers. And drainage. Baxter says drainage is the soul of gardening.”

At this moment Baxter returned, bearing the pince-nez triumphantly, only to find that Lord Emsworth, in reaching for Eve’s testimonials, had knocked them with his elbow into the waste-paper basket, on top of a morning paper and an empty matchbox. What followed was painful for all concerned. The Earl, Baxter, and Eve all stooped at once, the table rocked, a vase of roses tottered, and Eve’s hat, with its bird of Paradise feather, collided smartly with Lord Emsworth’s forehead.

“My dear young lady, I am extremely sorry,” gasped the Earl, retrieving a testimonial which was now decorated with cigar-ash. “This is most unfortunate. I cannot read a word without — where — Baxter, where are my glasses?”

“They are in your hand, your lordship.”

“So they are, so they are. Well, well. This requires thought. Careful thought. Miss Clarkson speaks highly of you, very highly, but my sister Constance — Baxter, what did Lady Constance say about the catalogue?”

“Her ladyship wished the matter held over until your lordship returns to Blandings, with Miss Halliday’s testimonials to be kept on file.”

“Exactly, exactly. Held over. A wise suggestion. We will hold it over, Miss Halliday. Nothing decided, nothing refused. You shall hear from us very shortly. Baxter will write.”

Eve rose, flushed, amused, and by no means cast down. It had gone wrong, dreadfully wrong, in the way interviews do when pince-nez meet waste-paper baskets, but she had distinctly not been refused. Baxter, efficient to the last, bowed her out with a promise that his lordship would communicate, and she walked down the hotel steps into the cool of the late afternoon feeling that, feather and all, she had survived.

The evening found the Drones Club wrapped in that comfortable gloom which descends upon institutions devoted to the avoidance of fresh air. In the smoking-room, almost empty at the dinner hour, Psmith sat in his favourite window-seat with a coffee at his elbow, turning over the pages of an evening paper without reading them. His mind was elsewhere, occupied with doorways and print-shops and a black crêpe frock glimpsed twice in one day.

The door opened and the porter appeared, bearing, like a sceptre, a silk umbrella with a silver band.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “The umbrella you inquired about, sir. A young lady left it this afternoon with a note for the gentleman. Simmons said it was your affair, sir. Mr. Walderwick said the umbrella was yours now, sir.”

Psmith took the umbrella tenderly, as a father receives a lost child. It was damp at the ferrule but otherwise unharmed.

“And the note?” he asked.

“The young lady took the note back, sir, to add a postscript, she said, and then she left in a hurry. But she left a message of thanks. A very nice young lady, sir, in a large hat with a feather. She gave her name for the book, sir.”

“What,” asked Psmith idly, balancing the umbrella across his knees, “was her name?”

“Miss Eve Halliday, sir. Friend of a Miss Clarkson, she said.”

“Thank you,” said Psmith. “Thank you very much.”

The porter withdrew, closing the door softly behind him. The smoking-room was silent save for the ticking of the clock and the distant clatter of plates. Psmith sat alone in the lamplight, the purchased umbrella across his knees, and repeated the name to himself under his breath.

“Eve Halliday,” he said.

She kept her eyes shut and leaned back in the corner of the taxi and the cab gave a jerk forward and then settled into the slow run down the dark street.

"Oh, darling, I've been so miserable," Brett said.

"Don't talk," I said. "Let it go."

"The driver doesn't know where to go," she said. She did not open her eyes. "Tell him to go somewhere."

"I told him the Parc Montsouris."

"Rot the Parc Montsouris," she said. "Take me to the Select in Montparnasse. I want to sit somewhere quiet where they know me. Tell him the Select."

I leaned forward and tapped on the glass. The driver slowed and turned his head.

"Au Select, Boulevard du Montparnasse," I said.

"Bien, monsieur."

He turned the cab around in the narrow street and we came back past the lights of the bal and up toward the Pantheon. Brett sat up and pulled her small felt hat forward and looked out at the street.

"That's better," she said. "I felt beastly in there with all that noise."

"It was hot," I said.

"It was more than hot." She put her hand on my sleeve for a minute and then took it away. "Jake, I'm not going up to Montmartre tonight. Let them go without me. I want to sit quiet with you."

"Good," I said. "We'll sit at the Select."

"You don't mind?"

"No," I said. "I like the Select at night."

The cab climbed the hill and came out on the broad Boulevard Saint Michel and turned south. The street was almost empty and the lamps made pools on the pavement. A bus went by with its lights on and no one in it. We passed the Cluny and the long wall of the Luxembourg garden, dark behind the railings, and crossed into Montparnasse where the cafes were still bright on the boulevard.

The driver pulled up in front of the Select. The terrace was half full although it was late. The light from inside fell out on the tables and on the faces of the people sitting there. We got out and I paid the driver and we sat down at a table a little back from the street where it was not so light.

"A brandy and soda," Brett said to the waiter. "Jake?"

"A beer," I said. "A big beer."

"You always drink beer when you're solemn," Brett said. She smiled at me. She looked tired and very lovely in the light.

"No," I said. "I drink beer when I'm thirsty."

"You're thirsty now?"

"Yes."

The waiter brought the brandy and soda and the beer. Brett held her glass with both hands and drank half of it.

"Ah," she said. "That's better."

"It's good brandy," I said.

"It's not the brandy. It's getting out of that place." She looked across the boulevard at the Dome and the Rotonde with the people sitting out in front. "I hate those fairies," she said. "I took them up to be amusing and now I can't get rid of them."

"They were amusing enough at first," I said.

"They're rotten," she said. "They make me feel rotten too."

We sat and drank. The night was warm and there was a wind that moved a little now and then and cooled the terrace. Taxis came and went and people got out and went into the cafes. Two girls went by arm in arm looking in at the tables as they passed.

"I saw Charlie Whitmore at Zelli's last week," Brett said. "He had a table with champagne for everybody and a jazz band that wouldn't stop."

"Charlie Whitmore?" I said.

"You wouldn't know him," she said. "Nobody knew him last week. He's just come over from London with pots of money. Mines in Chile or something. He kept asking me to dance and asking about everybody in Paris."

"I never heard of him," I said. I had never heard the name before and I tried to place it and could not.

"No one had last week," Brett said. "Now everybody knows him. He pays for everything and remembers your Christian name. He's going to last a month."

"Does he dance well?" I said.

"Beautifully," she said. "They all dance beautifully when they've money."

She laughed and finished her brandy and soda and motioned to the waiter for another.

"Don't get tight," I said.

"I'm never going to get tight any more," she said. "Didn't I tell you? One brandy and soda is nothing. It only makes me feel decent."

"You feel decent now?"

"Almost," she said. "Are you having a good time?"

"Oh, topping," I said.

"That's good," she said.

"Are you?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "I'm having a topping time."

"Good," I said.

We both knew we were lying and we sat and looked at each other over the table and did not say it. I felt hollow and tired and in love with her.

The waiter brought the second brandy and soda and another beer. I was not thirsty any more but I drank the beer cold and bitter and watched Brett's hands on the glass. She had fine hands and she held the glass steady.

"We ought to eat something," I said.

"No," she said. "I couldn't eat. I had dinner somewhere with those people and I don't remember it. Let's just sit."

"All right," I said. "We'll sit."

A man and a woman came out of the Select and got into a taxi and drove away toward the Dome. The woman laughed as she got in and the man put his arm around her to help her. Brett watched them.

"Nice," she said. "Very nice."

"You're tired," I said.

"Dead," she said. "Dead tired."

We were quiet for a while. The boulevard was thinning out. The waiters were stacking chairs on the terrace of the Dome across the street. A horse-cab went by with the driver asleep on the box and the horse knowing the way.

"Jake," Brett said. "What about the girl you brought?"

"Georgette," I said.

"Yes. What about her?"

"I left an envelope for her at the bal," I said. "Fifty francs. I told the patronne to give it to her if she asked for me, and to keep it for me if she went off."

"Will she ask for you?" Brett said.

"I don't know," I said. "She might."

"You ought to go back and see," Brett said. "It's rotten to leave her like that. She's a decent sort."

"She's all right," I said. "But I ought to close it up. I don't want to lose the money and I don't want her waiting."

"Then let's go back," Brett said. "I don't want to sit here all night. I want to move."

"You don't have to come," I said.

"I'm coming," she said. "I want to see it's all decent. Besides, I'm with you tonight."

I called the waiter and paid. We got into a taxi at the rank in front of the Rotonde. I gave the driver the address in the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Genevieve. He nodded and turned up the Boulevard Raspail and then up toward the Pantheon through the dark narrow streets.

The bal was still open when we got there but the crowd was thinner. The policeman was gone from the door. Inside the accordion was still playing and the proprietor was still up on his high stool with the bells on his ankle beating time. The air was thick and hot and smelled of wine and sweat and sawdust. A few couples were dancing. At one of the long tables the group of young men were sitting with drinks, talking and laughing, and at the same table, a little apart, Georgette was sitting with her hat off in front of her on the table. She had a glass of beer in front of her and she was watching the dancers.

She saw us come in and her face brightened.

"Eh bien, Jacob," she called. "You came back."

"Yes," I said. "I came back to see you got home all right."

Brett stood beside me and smiled at Georgette.

"Hello," Brett said.

"Hello," Georgette said. She looked at Brett's sweater and skirt and then at me. "You have nice friends," she said.

The patronne came over from behind the zinc bar wiping her hands on her apron.

"Monsieur," she said. "I have kept your envelope. Mademoiselle did not ask. She has stayed here with these gentlemen who have been very correct."

She took the sealed envelope from the pocket of her apron and handed it to me. I felt the thin fifty-franc note inside. I tore it open and took the note out.

"Georgette," I said. "This is for the dinner and the cab. And thank you for the evening."

She took the note and put it in her bag and snapped the bag shut.

"You are chic," she said. "You come back. Most men would not come back."

"I said I would," I said.

One of the young men with wavy hair leaned over the table.

"Oh, Jake, don't take her away," he said. "We're having a lovely party. Lett is going to see her home in a taxi."

"Shut up," Brett said pleasantly. She sat down at the table and asked the daughter for a brandy and soda. The daughter brought it and a beer for me.

"We're only sitting a minute," I said to the patronne. "What do we owe for what mademoiselle has had?"

"Two beers and a fine," the patronne said.

I paid her and left money for our drinks. Georgette put her hat on and pinned it. She looked better with the hat on. The tall dark one they called Lett got up and bowed very formally.

"We have taken the greatest care of her," he said. "She is a charming girl."

"You're all charming," Brett said. "Jake, we must go."

Georgette stood up and shook hands with Brett.

"Au revoir, madame," she said.

"Good night and good luck," Brett said.

"Good night, Jacob," Georgette said. "You are a good type. Come and find me at the Napolitain some night."

"All right," I said. "Good night."

We went out into the steep street. It was cooler outside and the air felt clean after the heat of the dancing-room. The street was empty and dark except for the light that came out of the door of the bal and the bar next door. Our taxi was waiting where we had left it.

"Where now?" the driver said.

Brett stood on the pavement with her coat over her arm. She looked up the hill toward the Pantheon and then down toward the river where the lights were.

"Let's drive down to the river," she said. "I want to see the water. Then I'll go to bed. I'm dead."

We got in and the driver coasted down the hill in low gear, turning and turning through the sleeping streets, and came out on the Quai de Montebello opposite Notre Dame. The river was dark and smooth and the cathedral stood square and massive against the sky. The driver slowed along the quay.

"Stop a minute," Brett said. She let the window down and leaned out. "Look at it. Isn't it lovely?"

The Seine lay flat under the bridges and the lamps along the quays made long yellow lines in the water. A barge loaded with coal was tied up below the bridge, dark and silent. On the far bank a street-cleaner with a hose was washing the pavement and the water ran shining in the light.

"It's lovely," I said.

"It's too lovely to go to bed," Brett said. "But I must. I'm finished."

She gave the driver the address of the hotel up in Montmartre where she was staying. He nodded and turned off the quay and up through the dark streets behind the Halles where the market carts were already moving and men were unloading vegetables under the electric lights. The smell of coffee and fresh bread came in through the window. Brett leaned back with her eyes open now, looking at nothing.

At the hotel the porter was asleep in his box and the light burned small over the door. I got out and opened the door for Brett and paid the driver and told him to wait. The street was silent except for a cat that crossed from one doorway to another.

"Well," Brett said. She stood with her hand on the door. "Good night, darling."

"Good night," I said. "Sleep well."

"I'll sleep like a log," she said. "Are you all right for getting home?"

"I'll walk," I said. "It's coming light and I want to walk."

"You're a brick," she said. "Good night, Jake."

"Good night," I said.

She went in and the door closed behind her. I told the driver he could go and he drove off empty down the hill. I turned my collar up and started back toward the river on foot.

Dawn was coming gray over the roofs and the street lamps were still on but pale. I walked down through the empty market streets and out on the Pont Neuf and stood a minute looking up and down the river. The sky was lightening behind Notre Dame and the water was turning gray and then silver. The barges were still moored and a tug moved slow downstream with no wake. A man was fishing from the quay in the half light and did not look up.

I started home along the river, walking on the upper quay where the bookstalls were shuttered and locked, alone in the early light with my hands in my pockets and the stones damp under my shoes, while behind me the taxi carrying Brett climbed away toward Montmartre in the dawn.