{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_49109/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_49109","id":"gutenberg_49109","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49109","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Novels","Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction","Nobel Prizes in Literature","Tales -- Ireland -- Adaptations","Young men -- Ireland -- Fiction"],"text":"CONTENTS\n\n                                          PAGE\n\n  GANCONAGH\u2019S APOLOGY.                       1\n\n  PART I. JOHN SHERMAN LEAVES BALLAH.        3\n      I                                      5\n     II                                     17\n    III                                     27\n     IV                                     39\n\n  PART II. MARGARET LELAND.                 43\n      I                                     45\n     II                                     51\n    III                                     55\n     IV                                     60\n      V                                     67\n     VI                                     70\n    VII                                     72\n   VIII                                     75\n     IX                                     77\n\n  PART III. JOHN SHERMAN REVISITS BALLAH.   83\n      I                                     85\n     II                                     88\n    III                                     91\n\n  PART IV. THE REV. WILLIAM HOWARD.        101\n      I                                    103\n     II                                    111\n    III                                    114\n     IV                                    125\n      V                                    134\n     VI                                    138\n\n  PART V. JOHN SHERMAN RETURNS TO BALLAH.  143\n      I                                    145\n     II                                    149\n    III                                    154\n     IV                                    165\n\n  DHOYA.                                   171\n      I                                    173\n     II                                    182\n    III                                    190\n\n\n\n\nGANCONAGH\n\n  JOHN SHERMAN\n  AND\n  DHOYA\n\n  _SECOND EDITION_\n\n  LONDON\n  T. FISHER UNWIN\n  PATERNOSTER SQUARE\n\n  M DCCC XCI\n\n  _PSEUDONYM LIBRARY_\n\n\n\n\nTHE PSEUDONYM LIBRARY.\n\n_Paper_, 1/6; _cloth_, 2/-.\n\n   1. MLLE. IXE. By LANOE FALCONER. 7th ed.\n\n   2. STORY OF ELEANOR LAMBERT. By MAGDALEN BROOKE. 2nd ed.\n\n   3. MYSTERY OF THE CAMPAGNA. By VON DEGEN. 3rd ed.\n\n   4. THE SCHOOL OF ART. By ISABEL SNOW. 2nd ed.\n\n   5. AMARYLLIS. By \u0393\u0395\u03a9\u03a1\u0393\u0399\u039f\u03a3 \u0394\u03a1\u039f\u03a3\u0399\u039d\u0397\u03a3. 2nd ed.\n\n   6. THE H\u00d4TEL D\u2019ANGLETERRE, and Other Stories. By LANOE\n        FALCONER, 2nd ed.\n\n   7. A RUSSIAN PRIEST. By \u041d. \u041f\u041e\u0422\u0410\u041f\u0415\u041d\u041a\u041e. 2nd ed.\n\n   8. SOME EMOTIONS AND A MORAL. By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.\n\n   9. EUROPEAN RELATIONS: A Tirolese Sketch. By TALMAGE DALIN.\n\n  10. JOHN SHERMAN, and DHOYA. By GANCONAGH.\n\n\n\n\nGANCONAGH\u2019S APOLOGY.\n\n\nThe maker of these stories has been told that he must not bring them to\nyou himself. He has asked me to pretend that I am the author. I am an\nold little Irish spirit, and I sit in the hedges and watch the world\ngo by. I see the boys going to market driving donkeys with creels of\nturf, and the girls carrying baskets of apples. Sometimes I call to\nsome pretty face, and we chat a little in the shadow, the apple basket\nbefore us, for, as my faithful historian O\u2019Kearney has put it in his\nnow yellow manuscript, I care for nothing in the world but love and\nidleness. Will not you, too, sit down under the shade of the bushes\nwhile I read you the stories? The first I do not care for because it\ndeals with dull persons and the world\u2019s affairs, but the second has to\ndo with my own people. If my voice at whiles grows distant and dreamy\nwhen I talk of the world\u2019s affairs, remember that I have seen all from\nmy hole in the hedge. I hear continually the songs of my own people who\ndance upon the hill-side, and am content. I have never carried apples\nor driven turf myself, or if I did it was only in a dream. Nor do my\nkind use any of man\u2019s belongings except the little black pipes which\nthe farmers find now and then when they are turning the sods over with\na plough.\n\n      GANCONAGH.\n\n\n\n\nPART I.\n\n_JOHN SHERMAN LEAVES BALLAH._\n\n\nI.\n\nIn the west of Ireland, on the 9th of December, in the town of Ballah,\nin the Imperial Hotel there was a single guest, clerical and youthful.\nWith the exception of a stray commercial traveller, who stopped once\nfor a night, there had been nobody for a whole month but this guest,\nand now he was thinking of going away. The town, full enough in summer\nof trout and salmon fishers, slept all winter like the bears.\n\nOn the evening of the 9th of December, in the coffee-room of the\nImperial Hotel, there was nobody but this guest. The guest was\nirritated. It had rained all day, and now that it was clearing up\nnight had almost fallen. He had packed his portmanteau: his stockings,\nhis clothes-brush, his razor, his dress shoes were each in their\ncorner, and now he had nothing to do. He had tried the paper that was\nlying on the table. He did not agree with its politics.\n\nThe waiter was playing an accordion in a little room over the stairs.\nThe guest\u2019s irritation increased, for the more he thought about it\nthe more he perceived that the accordion was badly played. There was\na piano in the coffee-room; he sat down at it and played the tune\ncorrectly, as loudly as possible. The waiter took no notice. He did not\nknow that he was being played for. He was wholly absorbed in his own\nplaying, and besides he was old, obstinate, and deaf. The guest could\nstand it no longer. He rang for the waiter, and then, remembering that\nhe did not need anything, went out before he came.\n\nHe went through Martin\u2019s Street, and Peter\u2019s Lane, and turned down\nby the burnt house at the corner of the fish-market, picking his way\ntowards the bridge. The town was dripping, but the rain was almost\nover. The large drops fell seldomer and seldomer into the puddles. It\nwas the hour of ducks. Three or four had squeezed themselves under a\ngate, and were now splashing about in the gutter of the main street.\nThere was scarcely any one abroad. Once or twice a countryman went by\nin yellow gaiters covered with mud and looked at the guest. Once an old\nwoman with a basket of clothes, recognizing the Protestant curate\u2019s\n_locum tenens_, made a low curtsey.\n\nThe clouds gradually drifted away, the twilight deepened and the stars\ncame out. The guest, having bought some cigarettes, had spread his\nwaterproof on the parapet of the bridge and was now leaning his elbows\nupon it, looking at the river and feeling at last quite tranquil.\nHis meditations, he repeated, to himself, were plated with silver by\nthe stars. The water slid noiselessly, and one or two of the larger\nstars made little roadways of fire into the darkness. The light from a\ndistant casement made also its roadway. Once or twice a fish leaped.\nAlong the banks were the vague shadows of houses, seeming like phantoms\ngathering to drink.\n\nYes; he felt now quite contented with the world. Amidst his enjoyment\nof the shadows and the river\u2014a veritable festival of silence\u2014was\nmixed pleasantly the knowledge that, as he leant there with the light\nof a neighbouring gas-jet, flickering faintly on his refined form and\nnervous face and glancing from the little medal of some Anglican order\nthat hung upon his watch-guard, he must have seemed\u2014if there had been\nany to witness\u2014a being of a different kind to the inhabitants\u2014at\nonce rough and conventional\u2014of this half-deserted town. Between these\ntwo feelings the unworldly and the worldly tossed a leaping wave of\nperfect enjoyment. How pleasantly conscious of his own identity it made\nhim when he thought how he and not those whose birthright it was, felt\nmost the beauty of these shadows and this river? To him who had read\nmuch, seen operas and plays, known religious experiences, and written\nverse to a waterfall in Switzerland, and not to those who dwelt upon\nits borders for their whole lives, did this river raise a tumult of\nimages and wonders. What meaning it had for them he could not imagine.\nSome meaning surely it must have!\n\nAs he gazed out into the darkness, spinning a web of thoughts from\nhimself to the river, from the river to himself, he saw, with a corner\nof his eye, a spot of red light moving in the air at the other end\nof the bridge. He turned towards it. It came closer and closer, there\nappearing behind it the while a man and a cigar. The man carried in one\nhand a mass of fishing-line covered with hooks, and in the other a tin\nporringer full of bait.\n\n\u201cGood evening, Howard.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood evening,\u201d answered the guest, taking his elbows off the parapet\nand looking in a preoccupied way at the man with the hooks. It was only\ngradually he remembered that he was in Ballah among the barbarians, for\nhis mind had strayed from the last evening gnats, making circles on\nthe water beneath, to the devil\u2019s song against \u201cthe little spirits\u201d in\n\u201cMefistofele.\u201d Looking down at the stone parapet he considered a moment\nand then burst out\u2014\n\n\u201cSherman, how do you stand this place\u2014you who have thoughts above mere\neating and sleeping and are not always grinding at the stubble mill?\nHere everybody lives in the eighteenth century\u2014the squalid century.\nWell, I am going to-morrow, you know. Thank Heaven, I am done with your\ngrey streets and grey minds! The curate must come home, sick or well.\nI have a religious essay to write, and besides I should die. Think of\nthat old fellow at the corner there, our most important parishioner.\nThere are no more hairs on his head than thoughts in his skull. To\nmerely look at him is to rob life of its dignity. Then there is nothing\nin the shops but school-books and Sunday-school prizes. Excellent, no\ndoubt, for any one who has not had to read as many as I have. Such a\nchoir! such rain!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou need some occupation peculiar to the place,\u201d said the other,\nbaiting his hooks with worms out of the little porringer. \u201cI catch\neels. You should set some night-lines too. You bait them with worms in\nthis way, and put them among the weeds at the edge of the river. In the\nmorning you find an eel or two, if you have good fortune, turning round\nand round and making the weeds sway. I shall catch a great many after\nthis rain.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat a suggestion! Do you mean to stay here,\u201d said Howard, \u201ctill your\nmind rots like our most important parishioner\u2019s?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no! To be quite frank with you,\u201d replied the other, \u201cI have some\ngood looks and shall try to turn them to account by going away from\nhere pretty soon and trying to persuade some girl with money to fall in\nlove with me. I shall not be altogether a bad match, you see, because\nafter she has made me a little prosperous my uncle will die and make\nme much more so. I wish to be able always to remain a lounger. Yes, I\nshall marry money. My mother has set her heart on it, and I am not,\nyou see, the kind of person who falls in love inconveniently. For the\npresent\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are vegetating,\u201d interrupted the other.\n\n\u201cNo, I am seeing the world. In your big towns a man finds his minority\nand knows nothing outside its border. He knows only the people like\nhimself. But here one chats with the whole world in a day\u2019s walk, for\nevery man one meets is a class. The knowledge I am picking up may be\nuseful to me when I enter the great cities and their ignorance. But I\nhave lines to set. Come with me. I would ask you home, but you and my\nmother, you know, do not get on well.\u201d\n\n\u201cI could not live with any one I did not believe in,\u201d said Howard; \u201cyou\nare so different from me. You can live with mere facts, and that is\nwhy, I suppose, your schemes are so mercenary. Before this beautiful\nriver, these stars, these great purple shadows, do you not feel like\nan insect in a flower? As for me, I also have planned my future.\nNot too near or too far from a great city I see myself in a cottage\nwith diamond panes, sitting by the fire. There are books everywhere\nand etchings on the wall; on the table is a manuscript essay on some\nreligious matter. Perhaps I shall marry some day. Probably not, for I\nshall ask so much. Certainly I shall not marry for money, for I hold\nthe directness and sincerity of the nature to be its compass. If we\nonce break it the world grows trackless.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye,\u201d said Sherman, briskly; \u201cI have baited the last hook. Your\nschemes suit you, but a sluggish fellow like me, poor devil, who wishes\nto lounge through the world, would find them expensive.\u201d\n\nThey parted; Sherman to set his lines and Howard to his hotel in high\nspirits, for it seemed to him he had been eloquent. The billiard-room,\nwhich opened on the street, was lighted up. A few young men came round\nto play sometimes. He went in, for among these provincial youths he\nfelt _recherch\u00e9_; besides, he was a really good player. As he came\nin one of the players missed and swore. Howard reproved him with a\nlook. He joined the play for a time, and then catching sight through a\ndistant door of the hotel-keeper\u2019s wife putting a kettle on the hob he\nhurried off, and, drawing a chair to the fire, began one of those long\ngossips about everybody\u2019s affairs peculiar to the cloth.\n\nAs Sherman, having set his lines, returned home, he passed a\ntobacconist\u2019s\u2014a sweet-shop and tobacconist\u2019s in one\u2014the only shop\nin town, except public-houses, that remained open. The tobacconist\nwas standing in his door, and, recognizing one who dealt consistently\nwith a rival at the other end of the town, muttered: \u201cThere goes that\n_gluggerabunthaun_ and Jack o\u2019 Dreams; been fishing most likely.\nUgh!\u201d Sherman paused for a moment as he repassed the bridge and looked\nat the water, on which now a new-risen and crescent moon was shining\ndimly. How full of memories it was to him! what playmates and boyish\nadventures did it not bring to mind! To him it seemed to say, \u201cStay\nnear to me,\u201d as to Howard it had said, \u201cGo yonder, to those other joys\nand other sceneries I have told you of.\u201d It bade him who loved stay\nstill and dream, and gave flying feet to him who imagined.\n\n\nII.\n\nThe house where Sherman and his mother lived was one of those bare\nhouses so common in country towns. Their dashed fronts mounting above\nempty pavements have a kind of dignity in their utilitarianism. They\nseem to say, \u201cFashion has not made us, nor ever do its caprices pass\nour sand-cleaned doorsteps.\u201d On every basement window is the same dingy\nwire blind; on every door the same brass knocker. Custom everywhere!\n\u201cSo much the longer,\u201d the blinds seem to say, \u201chave eyes glanced\nthrough us\u201d; and the knockers to murmur, \u201cAnd fingers lifted us.\u201d\n\nNo. 15, Stephens\u2019 Row, was in no manner peculiar among its twenty\nfellows. The chairs in the drawing-room facing the street were of heavy\nmahogany with horsehair cushions worn at the corners. On the round\ntable was somebody\u2019s commentary on the New Testament laid like the\nspokes of a wheel on a table-cover of American oilcloth with stamped\nJapanese figures half worn away. The room was seldom used, for Mrs.\nSherman was solitary because silent. In this room the dressmaker sat\ntwice a year, and here the rector\u2019s wife used every month or so to\ndrink a cup of tea. It was quite clean. There was not a fly-mark on the\nmirror, and all summer the fern in the grate was constantly changed.\nBehind this room and overlooking the garden was the parlour, where\ncane-bottomed chairs took the place of mahogany. Sherman had lived here\nwith his mother all his life, and their old servant hardly remembered\nhaving lived anywhere else; and soon she would absolutely cease to\nremember the world she knew before she saw the four walls of this\nhouse, for every day she forgot something fresh. The son was almost\nthirty, the mother fifty, and the servant near seventy. Every year they\nhad two hundred pounds among them, and once a year the son got a new\nsuit of clothes and went into the drawing-room to look at himself in\nthe mirror.\n\nOn the morning of the 20th of December Mrs. Sherman was down before her\nson. A spare, delicate-featured woman, with somewhat thin lips tightly\nclosed as with silent people, and eyes at once gentle and distrustful,\ntempering the hardness of the lips. She helped the servant to set the\ntable, and then, for her old-fashioned ideas would not allow her to\nrest, began to knit, often interrupting her knitting to go into the\nkitchen or to listen at the foot of the stairs. At last, hearing a\nsound upstairs, she put the eggs down to boil, muttering the while,\nand began again to knit. When her son appeared she received him with a\nsmile.\n\n\u201cLate again, mother,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cThe young should sleep,\u201d she answered, for to her he seemed still a\nboy.\n\nShe had finished her breakfast some time before the young man, and\nbecause it would have appeared very wrong to her to leave the table,\nshe sat on knitting behind the tea-urn: an industry the benefit of\nwhich was felt by many poor children\u2014almost the only neighbours she\nhad a good word for.\n\n\u201cMother,\u201d said the young man, presently, \u201cyour friend the _locum\ntenens_ is off to-morrow.\u201d\n\n\u201cA good riddance.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy are you so hard on him? He talked intelligently when here, I\nthought,\u201d answered her son.\n\n\u201cI do not like his theology,\u201d she replied, \u201cnor his way of running\nabout and flirting with this body and that body, nor his way of\nchattering while he buttons and unbuttons his gloves.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou forget he is a man of the great world, and has about him a manner\nthat must seem strange to us.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, he might do very well,\u201d she answered, \u201cfor one of those Carton\ngirls at the rectory.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat eldest girl is a good girl,\u201d replied her son.\n\n\u201cShe looks down on us all, and thinks herself intellectual,\u201d she\nwent on. \u201cI remember when girls were content with their Catechism\nand their Bibles and a little practice at the piano, maybe, for an\naccomplishment. What does any one want more? It is all pride.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou used to like her as a child,\u201d said the young man.\n\n\u201cI like all children.\u201d\n\nSherman having finished his breakfast, took a book of travels in one\nhand and a trowel in the other and went out into the garden. Having\nlooked under the parlour window for the first tulip shoots, he went\ndown to the further end and began covering some sea-kale for forcing.\nHe had not been long at work when the servant brought him a letter.\nThere was a stone roller at one side of the grass plot. He sat down\nupon it, and taking the letter between his finger and thumb began\nlooking at it with an air that said: \u201cWell! I know what you mean.\u201d He\nremained long thus without opening it, the book lying beside him on the\nroller.\n\nThe garden\u2014the letter\u2014the book! You have there the three symbols of\nhis life. Every morning he worked in that garden among the sights and\nsounds of nature. Month by month he planted and hoed and dug there. In\nthe middle he had set a hedge that divided the garden in two. Above the\nhedge were flowers; below it, vegetables. At the furthest end from\nthe house, lapping broken masonry full of wallflowers, the river said,\nmonth after month to all upon its banks, \u201cHush!\u201d He dined at two with\nperfect regularity, and in the afternoon went out to shoot or walk. At\ntwilight he set night-lines. Later on he read. He had not many books\u2014a\nShakespeare, Mungo Park\u2019s travels, a few two-shilling novels, \u201cPercy\u2019s\nReliques,\u201d and a volume on etiquette. He seldom varied his occupations.\nHe had no profession. The town talked of it. They said: \u201cHe lives upon\nhis mother,\u201d and were very angry. They never let him see this, however,\nfor it was generally understood he would be a dangerous fellow to\nrouse; but there was an uncle from whom Sherman had expectations who\nsometimes wrote remonstrating. Mrs. Sherman resented these letters,\nfor she was afraid of her son going away to seek his fortune\u2014perhaps\neven in America. Now this matter preyed somewhat on Sherman. For three\nyears or so he had been trying to make his mind up and come to some\ndecision. Sometimes when reading he would start and press his lips\ntogether and knit his brows for a moment.\n\nIt will now be seen why the garden, the book, and the letter were\nthe three symbols of his life, summing up as they did his love of\nout-of-door doings, his meditations, his anxieties. His life in the\ngarden had granted serenity to his forehead, the reading of his few\nbooks had filled his eyes with reverie, and the feeling that he was not\nquite a good citizen had given a slight and occasional trembling to his\nlips.\n\nHe opened the letter. Its contents were what he had long expected.\nHis uncle offered to take him into his office. He laid it spread out\nbefore him\u2014a foot on each margin, right and left\u2014and looked at it,\nturning the matter over and over in his mind. Would he go? would\nhe stay? He did not like the idea much. The lounger in him did not\nenjoy the thought of London. Gradually his mind wandered away into\nscheming\u2014infinite scheming\u2014what he would do if he went, what he would\ndo if he did not go.\n\nA beetle, attracted by the faint sunlight, had crawled out of his hole.\nIt saw the paper and crept on to it, the better to catch the sunlight.\nSherman saw the beetle but his mind was not occupied with it. \u201cShall I\ntell Mary Carton?\u201d he was thinking. Mary had long been his adviser and\nfriend. She was, indeed, everybody\u2019s adviser. Yes, he would ask her\nwhat to do. Then again he thought\u2014no, he would decide for himself. The\nbeetle began to move. \u201cIf it goes off the paper by the top I will ask\nher\u2014if by the bottom I will not.\u201d\n\nThe beetle went off by the top. He got up with an air of decision\nand went into the tool-house and began sorting seeds and picking out\nthe light ones, sometimes stopping to watch a spider; for he knew he\nmust wait till the afternoon to see Mary Carton. The tool-house was a\nfavourite place with him. He often read there and watched the spiders\nin the corners.\n\nAt dinner he was preoccupied.\n\n\u201cMother,\u201d he said, \u201cwould you much mind if we went away from this?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have often told you,\u201d she answered, \u201cI do not like one place better\nthan another. I like them all equally little.\u201d\n\nAfter dinner he went again into the tool-house. This time he did not\nsort seeds\u2014only watched the spiders.\n\n\nIII.\n\nTowards evening he went out. The pale sunshine of winter flickered\non his path. The wind blew the straws about. He grew more and more\nmelancholy. A dog of his acquaintance was chasing rabbits in a field.\nHe had never been known to catch one, and since his youth had never\nseen one for he was almost wholly blind. They were his form of the\neternal chimera. The dog left the field and followed with a friendly\nsniff.\n\nThey came together to the rectory. Mary Carton was not in. There was a\nchildren\u2019s practice in the school-house. They went thither.\n\nA child of four or five with a swelling on its face was sitting\nunder a wall opposite the school door, waiting to make faces at the\nProtestant children as they came out. Catching sight of the dog she\nseemed to debate in her mind whether to throw a stone at it or call\nit to her. She threw the stone and made it run. In after times he\nremembered all these things as though they were of importance.\n\nHe opened the latched green door and went in. About twenty children\nwere singing in shrill voices standing in a row at the further end. At\nthe harmonium he recognized Mary Carton, who nodded to him and went\non with her playing. The white-washed walls were covered with glazed\nprints of animals; at the further end was a large map of Europe; by a\nfire at the near end was a table with the remains of tea. This tea was\nan idea of Mary\u2019s. They had tea and cake first, afterwards the singing.\nThe floor was covered with crumbs. The fire was burning brightly.\nSherman sat down beside it. A child with a great deal of oil in her\nhair was sitting on the end of a form at the other side.\n\n\u201cLook,\u201d she whispered, \u201cI have been sent away. At any rate they are\nfurther from the fire. They have to be near the harmonium. I would not\nsing. Do you like hymns? I don\u2019t. Will you have a cup of tea? I can\nmake it quite well. See, I did not spill a drop. Have you enough milk?\u201d\nIt was a cup full of milk\u2014children\u2019s tea. \u201cLook, there is a mouse\ncarrying away a crumb. Hush!\u201d\n\nThey sat there, the child watching the mouse, Sherman pondering on his\nletter, until the music ceased and the children came tramping down the\nroom. The mouse having fled, Sherman\u2019s self-appointed hostess got up\nwith a sigh and went out with the others.\n\nMary Carton closed the harmonium and came towards Sherman. Her face\nand all her movements showed a gentle decision of character. Her glance\nwas serene, her features regular, her figure at the same time ample and\nbeautifully moulded; her dress plain yet not without a certain air of\ndistinction. In a different society she would have had many suitors.\nBut she was of a type that in country towns does not get married\nat all. Its beauty is too lacking in pink and white, its nature in\nthat small assertiveness admired for character by the uninstructed.\nElsewhere she would have known her own beauty\u2014as it is right that all\nthe beautiful should\u2014and have learnt how to display it, to add gesture\nto her calm and more of mirth and smiles to her grave cheerfulness. As\nit was, her manner was much older than herself.\n\nShe sat down by Sherman with the air of an old friend. They had long\nbeen accustomed to consult together on every matter. They were such\ngood friends they had never fallen in love with each other. Perfect\nlove and perfect friendship are indeed incompatible; for the one is a\nbattlefield where shadows war beside the combatants, and the other a\nplacid country where Consultation has her dwelling.\n\nThese two were such good friends that the most gossiping townspeople\nhad given them up with a sigh. The doctor\u2019s wife, a faded beauty and\ndevoted romance reader, said one day, as they passed, \u201cThey are such\ncold creatures.\u201d The old maid who kept the Berlin-wool shop remarked,\n\u201cThey are not of the marrying sort,\u201d and now their comings and goings\nwere no longer noticed. Nothing had ever come to break in on their\nquiet companionship and give obscurity as a dwelling-place for the\nneeded illusions. Had one been weak and the other strong, one plain and\nthe other handsome, one guide and the other guided, one wise and the\nother foolish, love might have found them out in a moment, for love is\nbased on inequality as friendship is on equality.\n\n\u201cJohn,\u201d said Mary Carton, warming her hands at the fire, \u201cI have had a\ntroublesome day. Did you come to help me teach the children to sing? It\nwas good of you: you were just too late.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d he answered, \u201cI have come to be your pupil. I am always your\npupil.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, and a most disobedient one.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, advise me this time at any rate. My uncle has written, offering\nme \u00a3100 a year to begin with in his London office. Am I to go?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know quite well my answer,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cIndeed I do not. Why should I go? I am contented here. I am now making\nmy garden ready for spring. Later on there will be trout fishing and\nsaunters by the edge of the river in the evening when the bats are\nflickering about. In July there will be races. I enjoy the bustle. I\nenjoy life here. When anything annoys me I keep away from it, that is\nall. You know I am always busy. I have occupation and friends and am\nquite contented.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is a great loss to many of us, but you must go, John,\u201d she said.\n\u201cFor you know you will be old some day, and perhaps when the vitality\nof youth is gone you will feel that your life is empty and find that\nyou are too old to change it; and you will give up, perhaps, trying\nto be happy and likeable and become as the rest are. I think I can\nsee you,\u201d she said, with a laugh, \u201ca hypochondriac, like Gorman, the\nretired excise officer, or with a red nose like Dr. Stephens, or\ngrowing like Peters, the elderly cattle merchant, who starves his\nhorse.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey were bad material to begin with,\u201d he answered, \u201cand besides, I\ncannot take my mother away with me at her age, and I cannot leave her\nalone.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat annoyance it may be,\u201d she answered, \u201cwill soon be forgotten. You\nwill be able to give her many more comforts. We women\u2014we all like to\nbe dressed well and have pleasant rooms to sit in, and a young man at\nyour age should not be idle. You must go away from this little backward\nplace. We shall miss you, but you are clever and must go and work with\nother men and have your talents admitted.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow emulous you would have me. Perhaps I shall be well-to-do some day;\nmeanwhile I only wish to stay here with my friends.\u201d\n\nShe went over to the window and looked out with her face turned from\nhim. The evening light cast a long shadow behind her on the floor.\nAfter some moments, she said, \u201cI see people ploughing on the slope of\nthe hill. There are people working on a house to the right. Everywhere\nthere are people busy,\u201d and, with a slight tremble in her voice, she\nadded, \u201cand, John, nowhere are there any doing what they wish. One has\nto think of so many things\u2014of duty and God.\u201d\n\n\u201cMary, I didn\u2019t know you were so religious.\u201d\n\nComing towards him with a smile, she said, \u201cNo more did I, perhaps.\nBut sometimes the self in one is very strong. One has to think a great\ndeal and reason with it. Yet I try hard to lose myself in things about\nme. These children now\u2014I often lie awake thinking about them. That\nchild who was talking to you is often on my mind. I do not know what\nwill happen to her. She makes me unhappy. I am afraid she is not a good\nchild at all. I am afraid she is not taught well at home. I try hard to\nbe gentle and patient with her. I am a little displeased with myself\nto-day; so I have lectured you. There! I have made my confession. But,\u201d\nshe added, taking one of his hands in both hers and reddening, \u201cyou\nmust go away. You must not be idle. You will gain everything.\u201d\n\nAs she stood there with bright eyes, the light of evening about her,\nSherman for perhaps the first time saw how beautiful she was, and was\nflattered by her interest. For the first time also her presence did not\nmake him at peace with the world.\n\n\u201cWill you be an obedient pupil?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know so much more than I do,\u201d he answered, \u201cand are so much wiser.\nI will write to my uncle and agree to his offer.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow you must go home,\u201d she said. \u201cYou must not keep your mother\nwaiting for her tea. There! I have raked the fire out. We must not\nforget to lock the door behind us.\u201d\n\nAs they stood on the doorstep the wind blew a whirl of dead leaves\nabout them.\n\n\u201cThey are my old thoughts,\u201d he said; \u201csee, they are all withered.\u201d\n\nThey walked together silently. At the vicarage he left her and went\nhomeward.\n\nThe deserted flour store at the corner of two roads, the house that\nhad been burnt hollow ten years before and still lifted its blackened\nbeams, the straggling and leafless fruit-trees rising above garden\nwalls, the church where he was christened\u2014these foster-mothers of his\ninfancy seemed to nod and shake their heads over him.\n\n\u201cMother,\u201d he said, hurriedly entering the room, \u201cwe are going to\nLondon.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs you wish. I always knew you would be a rolling stone,\u201d she\nanswered, and went out to tell the servant that as soon as she had\nfinished the week\u2019s washing they must pack up everything, for they\nwere going to London.\n\n\u201cYes, we must pack up,\u201d said the old peasant; she did not stop peeling\nthe onion in her hand\u2014she had not comprehended. In the middle of the\nnight she suddenly started up in bed with a pale face and a prayer to\nthe Virgin whose image hung over her head\u2014she had now comprehended.\n\n\nIV.\n\nOn January the 5th about two in the afternoon, Sherman sat on the\ndeck of the steamer _Lavinia_ enjoying a period of sunshine between\ntwo showers. The steamer _Lavinia_ was a cattle boat. It had been his\nwish to travel by some more expensive route, but his mother, with\nher old-fashioned ideas of duty, would not hear of it, and now, as\nhe foresaw, was extremely uncomfortable below, while he, who was a\ngood sailor, was pretty happy on deck, and would have been quite so\nif the pigs would only tire of their continual squealing. With the\nexception of a very dirty old woman sitting by a crate of geese, all\nthe passengers but himself were below. This old woman made the journey\nmonthly with geese for the Liverpool market.\n\nSherman was dreaming. He began to feel very desolate, and commenced\na letter to Mary Carton in his notebook to state this fact. He was\na laborious and unpractised writer, and found it helped him to make\na pencil copy. Sometimes he stopped and watched the puffin sleeping\non the waves. Each one of them had its head tucked in in a somewhat\ndifferent way.\n\n\u201cThat is because their characters are different,\u201d he thought.\n\nGradually he began to notice a great many corks floating by, one after\nthe other. The old woman saw them too, and said, waking out of a half\nsleep\u2014\n\n\u201cMisther John Sherman, we will be in the Mersey before evening. Why are\nye goin\u2019 among them savages in London, Misther John? Why don\u2019t ye stay\namong your own people\u2014for what have we in this life but a mouthful of\nair?\u201d\n\n\n\n\nPART II.\n\n_MARGARET LELAND._\n\n\nI.\n\nSherman and his mother rented a small house on the north side of St.\nPeter\u2019s Square, Hammersmith. The front windows looked out on to the\nold rank and green square, the windows behind on to a little patch\nof garden round which the houses gathered and pressed as though they\nalready longed to trample it out. In this garden was a single tall\npear-tree that never bore fruit.\n\nThree years passed by without any notable event. Sherman went every day\nto his office in Tower Hill Street, abused his work a great deal, and\nwas not unhappy perhaps. He was probably a bad clerk, but then nobody\nwas very exacting with the nephew of the head of the firm.\n\nThe firm of Sherman and Saunders, ship brokers, was a long-established,\nold-fashioned house. Saunders had been dead some years and old Michael\nSherman ruled alone\u2014an old bachelor full of family pride and pride\nin his wealth. He lived, for all that, in a very simple fashion. His\nmahogany furniture was a little solider than other people\u2019s perhaps.\nHe did not understand display. Display finds its excuse in some taste\ngood or bad, and in a long industrious life Michael Sherman had never\nfound leisure to form one. He seemed to live only from habit. Year by\nyear he grew more silent, gradually ceasing to regard anything but his\nfamily and his ships. His family were represented by his nephew and his\nnephew\u2019s mother. He did not feel much affection for them. He believed\nin his family\u2014that was all. To remind him of the other goal of his\nthoughts hung round his private office pictures with such inscriptions\nas \u201cS.S. _Indus_ at the Cape of Good Hope,\u201d \u201cThe barque _Mary_ in the\nMozambique Channel,\u201d \u201cThe barque _Livingstone_ at Port Said,\u201d and\nmany more. Every rope was drawn accurately with a ruler, and here and\nthere were added distant vessels sailing proudly by with all that\nindifference to perspective peculiar to the drawings of sailors. On\nevery ship was the flag of the firm spread out to show the letters.\n\nNo man cared for old Michael Sherman. Every one liked John. Both were\nsilent, but the young man had sometimes a talkative fit. The old man\nlived for his ledger, the young man for his dreams.\n\nIn spite of all these differences, the uncle was on the whole pleased\nwith the nephew. He noticed a certain stolidity that was of the family.\nIt sometimes irritated others. It pleased him. He saw a hundred\nindications besides that made him say, \u201cHe is a true Sherman. We\nShermans begin that way and give up frivolity as we grow old. We are\nall the same in the end.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMrs. Sherman and her son had but a small round of acquaintances\u2014a few\nrich people, clients of the house of Sherman and Saunders for the most\npart. Among these was a Miss Margaret Leland who lived with her mother,\nthe widow of the late Henry Leland, ship-broker, on the eastern side\nof St. Peter\u2019s Square. Their house was larger than the Shermans, and\nnoticeable among its fellows by the newly-painted hall door. Within\non every side were bronzes and china vases and heavy curtains. In\nall were displayed the curious and vagrant taste of Margaret Leland.\nThe rich Italian and medi\u00e6val draperies of the pre-Raphaelites\njostling the brightest and vulgarest products of more native and Saxon\nschools. Vases of the most artistic shape and colour side by side\nwith artificial flowers and stuffed birds. This house belonged to the\nLelands. They had bought it in less prosperous days, and having altered\nit according to their taste and the need of their growing welfare could\nnot decide to leave it.\n\nSherman was an occasional caller at the Lelands, and had certainly a\nliking, though not a very deep one, for Margaret. As yet he knew little\nmore about her than that she wore the most fascinating hats, that the\nlate Lord Lytton was her favourite author, and that she hated frogs. It\nis clear that she did not know that a French writer on magic says the\nluxurious and extravagant hate frogs because they are cold, solitary,\nand dreary. Had she done so, she would have been more circumspect about\nrevealing her tastes.\n\nFor the rest John Sherman was forgetting the town of Ballah. He\ncorresponded indeed with Mary Carton, but his laborious letter writing\nmade his letters fewer and fewer. Sometimes, too, he heard from Howard,\nwho had a curacy in Glasgow and was on indifferent terms with his\nparishioners. They objected to his way of conducting the services.\nHis letters were full of it. He would not give in, he said, whatever\nhappened. His conscience was involved.\n\n\nII.\n\nOne afternoon Mrs. Leland called on Mrs. Sherman. She very often\ncalled\u2014this fat, sentimental woman, moving in the midst of a cloud\nof scent. The day was warm, and she carried her too elaborate and\nheavy dress as a large caddis-fly drags its case with much labour\nand patience. She sat down on the sofa with obvious relief, leaning\nso heavily among the cushions that a clothes-moth in an antimacassar\nthought the end of the world had come and fluttered out only to be\nknocked down and crushed by Mrs. Sherman, who was very quick in her\nmovements.\n\nAs soon as she found her breath, Mrs. Leland began a long history of\nher sorrows. Her daughter Margaret, had been jilted and was in despair,\nhad taken to her bed with every resolution to die, and was growing\npaler and paler. The hard-hearted man, though she knew he had heard,\ndid not relent. She knew he had heard because her daughter had told his\nsister all about it, and his sister had no heart, because she said it\nwas temper that ailed Margaret, and she was a little vixen, and that if\nshe had not flirted with everybody the engagement would never have been\nbroken off. But Mr. Sims had no heart clearly, as Miss Marriot and Mrs.\nEliza Taylor, her daughter\u2019s friends, said, when they heard, and Lock,\nthe butler, said the same too, and Mary Young, the housemaid, said so\ntoo\u2014and she knew all about it, for Margaret used to read his letters\nto her often when having her hair brushed.\n\n\u201cShe must have been very fond of him,\u201d said Mrs. Sherman.\n\n\u201cShe is so romantic, my dear,\u201d answered Mrs. Leland, with a sigh. \u201cI\nam afraid she takes after an uncle on her father\u2019s side, who wrote\npoetry and wore a velvet jacket and ran away with an Italian countess\nwho used to get drunk. When I married Mr. Leland people said he was not\nworthy of me, and that I was throwing myself away\u2014and he in business,\ntoo! But Margaret is so romantic. There was Mr. Walters, the gentleman\nfarmer, and Simpson who had a jeweller\u2019s shop\u2014I never approved of\nhim!\u2014and Mr. Samuelson, and the Hon. William Scott. She tired of them\nall except the Hon. William Scott, who tired of her because some one\ntold him she put belladonna in her eyes\u2014and it is not true; and now\nthere is Mr. Sims!\u201d She then cried a little, and allowed herself to be\nconsoled by Mrs. Sherman.\n\n\u201cYou talk so intelligently and are so well informed,\u201d she said at\nparting. \u201cI have made a very pleasant call,\u201d and the caddis-worm toiled\nupon its way, arriving in due course at other cups of tea.\n\n\nIII.\n\nThe day after Mrs. Leland\u2019s call upon his mother, John Sherman,\nreturning home after his not very lengthy day in the office, saw\nMargaret coming towards him. She had a lawn tennis racket under her\narm, and was walking slowly on the shady side of the road. She was a\npretty girl with quite irregular features, who though really not more\nthan pretty, had so much manner, so much of an air, that every one\ncalled her a beauty: a trefoil with the fragrance of a rose.\n\n\u201cMr. Sherman,\u201d she cried, coming smiling to meet him, \u201cI have been\nill, but could not stand the house any longer. I am going to the Square\nto play tennis. Will you come with me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am a bad player,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cOf course you are,\u201d she answered; \u201cbut you are the only person under a\nhundred to be found this afternoon. How dull life is!\u201d she continued,\nwith a sigh. \u201cYou heard how ill I have been? What do you do all day?\u201d\n\n\u201cI sit at a desk, sometimes writing, and sometimes, when I get lazy,\nlooking up at the flies. There are fourteen on the plaster of the\nceiling over my head. They died two winters ago. I sometimes think to\nhave them brushed off, but they have been there so long now I hardly\nlike to.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! you like them,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause you are accustomed to them. In\nmost cases there is not much more to be said for our family affections,\nI think.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn a room close at hand,\u201d he went on, \u201cthere is, you know, Uncle\nMichael, who never speaks.\u201d\n\n\u201cPrecisely. You have an uncle who never speaks; I have a mother who\nnever is silent. She went to see Mrs. Sherman the other day. What did\nshe say to her?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally. What a dull thing existence is!\u201d\u2014this with a great sigh.\n\u201cWhen the Fates are weaving our web of life some mischievous goblin\nalways runs off with the dye-pot. Everything is dull and grey. Am I\nlooking a little pale? I have been so very ill.\u201d\n\n\u201cA little bit pale, perhaps,\u201d he said, doubtfully.\n\nThe Square gate brought them to a stop. It was locked, but she had the\nkey. The lock was stiff, but turned easily for John Sherman.\n\n\u201cHow strong you are,\u201d she said.\n\nIt was an iridescent evening of spring. The leaves of the bushes had\nstill their faint green. As Margaret darted about at the tennis, a red\nfeather in her cap seemed to rejoice with its wearer. Everything was at\nonce gay and tranquil. The whole world had that unreal air it assumes\nat beautiful moments, as though it might vanish at a touch like an\niridescent soap-bubble.\n\nAfter a little Margaret said she was tired, and, sitting on a garden\nseat among the bushes, began telling him the plots of novels lately\nread by her. Suddenly she cried\u2014\n\n\u201cThe novel-writers were all serious people like you. They are so hard\non people like me. They always make us come to a bad end. They _say_ we\nare always acting, acting, acting; and what else do you serious people\ndo? You act before the world. I think, do you know, _we_ act before\nourselves. All the old foolish kings and queens in history were like\nus. They laughed and beckoned and went to the block for no very good\npurpose. I dare say the headsmen were like you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe would never cut off so pretty a head.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, you would\u2014you would cut off mine to-morrow.\u201d All this she\nsaid vehemently, piercing him with her bright eyes. \u201cYou would cut off\nmy head to-morrow,\u201d she repeated, almost fiercely; \u201cI tell you you\nwould.\u201d\n\nHer departure was always unexpected, her moods changed with so much\nrapidity. \u201cLook!\u201d she said, pointing where the clock on St. Peter\u2019s\nchurch showed above the bushes. \u201cFive minutes to five. In five minutes\nmy mother\u2019s tea-hour. It is like growing old. I go to gossip. Good-bye.\u201d\n\nThe red feather shone for a moment among the bushes and was gone.\n\n\nIV.\n\nThe next day and the day after, Sherman was followed by those bright\neyes. When he opened a letter at his desk they seemed to gaze at him\nfrom the open paper, and to watch him from the flies upon the ceiling.\nHe was even a worse clerk than usual.\n\nOne evening he said to his mother, \u201cMiss Leland has beautiful eyes.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear, she puts belladonna in them.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat a thing to say!\u201d\n\n\u201cI know she does, though her mother denies it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, she is certainly beautiful,\u201d he answered.\n\n\u201cMy dear, if she has an attraction for you, I don\u2019t want to discourage\nit. She is rich as girls go nowadays; and one woman has one fault,\nanother another: one\u2019s untidy, one fights with her servants, one fights\nwith her friends, another has a crabbed tongue when she talks of them.\u201d\n\nSherman became again silent, finding no fragment of romance in such\ndiscourse.\n\nIn the next week or two he saw much of Miss Leland. He met her almost\nevery evening on his return from the office, walking slowly, her racket\nunder her arm. They played tennis much and talked more. Sherman began\nto play tennis in his dreams. Miss Leland told him all about herself,\nher friends, her inmost feelings; and yet every day he knew less about\nher. It was not merely that saying everything she said nothing, but\nthat continually there came through her wild words the sound of the\nmysterious flutes and viols of that unconscious nature which dwells\nso much nearer to woman than to man. How often do we not endow the\nbeautiful and candid with depth and mystery not their own? We do not\nknow that we but hear in their voices those flutes and viols playing to\nus of the alluring secret of the world.\n\nSherman had never known in early life what is called first love, and\nnow, when he had passed thirty, it came to him that love more of the\nimagination than of either the senses or affections: it was mainly the\neyes that followed him.\n\nIt is not to be denied that as this love grew serious it grew\nmercenary. Now active, now latent, the notion had long been in\nSherman\u2019s mind, as we know, that he should marry money. A born\nlounger, riches tempted him greatly. When those eyes haunted him from\nthe fourteen flies on the ceiling, he would say, \u201cI should be rich;\nI should have a house in the country; I should hunt and shoot, and\nhave a garden and three gardeners; I should leave this abominable\noffice.\u201d Then the eyes became even more beautiful. It was a new kind of\nbelladonna.\n\nHe shrank a little, however, from choosing even this pleasant pathway.\nHe had planned many futures for himself and learnt to love them all. It\nwas this that had made him linger on at Ballah for so long, and it was\nthis that now kept him undecided. He would have to give up the universe\nfor a garden and three gardeners. How sad it was to make substantial\neven the best of his dreams. How hard it was to submit to that\ndecree which compels every step we take in life to be a death in the\nimagination. How difficult it was to be so enwrapped in this one new\nhope as not to hear the lamentations that were going on in dim corners\nof his mind.\n\nOne day he resolved to propose. He examined himself in the glass in\nthe morning; and for the first time in his life smiled to see how\ngood-looking he was. In the evening before leaving the office he\npeered at himself in the mirror over the mantlepiece in the room where\ncustomers were received. The sun was blazing through the window full on\nhis face. He did not look so well. Immediately all courage left him.\n\nThat evening he went out after his mother had gone to bed and walked\nfar along the towing-path of the Thames. A faint mist half covered\naway the houses and factory chimneys on the further side; beside him\na band of osiers swayed softly, the deserted and full river lapping\ntheir stems. He looked on all these things with foreign eyes. He had no\nsense of possession. Indeed it seemed to him that everything in London\nwas owned by too many to be owned by any one. Another river that he\ndid seem to possess flowed through his memory with all its familiar\nsights\u2014boys riding in the stream to the saddle-girths, fish leaping,\nwater-flies raising their small ripples, a swan asleep, the wallflowers\ngrowing on the red brick of the margin. He grew very sad. Suddenly\na shooting star, fiery and vagabond, leaped from the darkness. It\nbrought his mind again in a moment to Margaret Leland. To marry her, he\nthought, was to separate himself from the old life he loved so well.\n\nCrossing the river at Putney, he hurried homewards among the market\ngardens. Nearing home, the streets were deserted, the shops closed.\nWhere King Street joins the Broadway, entirely alone with itself, in\nthe very centre of the road a little black cat was leaping after its\nshadow.\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d he thought, \u201cit would be a good thing to be a little black cat.\nTo leap about in the moonlight and sleep in the sunlight, and catch\nflies, to have no hard tasks to do or hard decisions to come to, to be\nsimple and full of animal spirits.\u201d\n\nAt the corner of Bridge Road was a coffee-stall, the only sign of human\nlife. He bought some cold meat and flung it to the little black cat.\n\n\nV.\n\nSome more days went by. At last, one day, arriving at the Square\nsomewhat earlier than usual, and sitting down to wait for Margaret on\nthe seat among the bushes, he noticed the pieces of a torn-up letter\nlying about. Beside him on the seat was a pencil, as though some one\nhad been writing there and left it behind them. The pencil-lead was\nworn very short. The letter had been torn up, perhaps, in a fit of\nimpatience.\n\nIn a half-mechanical way he glanced over the scraps. On one of them he\nread: \u201cMY DEAR ELIZA,\u2014What an incurable gossip my mother is.\nYou heard of my misfortune. I nearly died\u2014\u2014\u201d Here he had to search\namong the scraps; at last he found one that seemed to follow. \u201cPerhaps\nyou will hear news from me soon. There is a handsome young man who pays\nme attention, and\u2014\u2014\u201d Here another piece had to be found. \u201cI would\ntake him though he had a face like the man in the moon, and limped like\nthe devil at the theatre. Perhaps I am a little in love. Oh! friend of\nmy heart\u2014\u2014\u201d Here it broke off again. He was interested, and searched\nthe grass and the bushes for fragments. Some had been blown to quite\na distance. He got together several sentences now. \u201cI will not spend\nanother winter with my mother for anything. All this is, of course, a\nsecret. I had to tell somebody; secrets are bad for my health. Perhaps\nit will all come to nothing.\u201d Then the letter went off into dress, the\nlast novel the writer had read, and so forth. A Miss Sims, too, was\nmentioned, who had said some unkind thing of the writer.\n\nSherman was greatly amused. It did not seem to him wrong to read\u2014we do\nnot mind spying on one of the crowd, any more than on the personages of\nliterature. It never occurred to him that he, or any friend of his, was\nconcerned in these pencil scribblings.\n\nSuddenly he saw this sentence: \u201cHeigho! your poor Margaret is falling\nin love again; condole with her, my dear.\u201d\n\nHe started. The name \u201cMargaret,\u201d the mention of Miss Sims, the style\nof the whole letter, all made plain the authorship. Very desperately\nashamed of himself, he got up and tore each scrap of paper into still\nsmaller fragments and scattered them far apart.\n\nThat evening he proposed, and was accepted.\n\n\nVI.\n\nFor several days there was a new heaven and a new earth. Miss Leland\nseemed suddenly impressed with the seriousness of life. She was\ngentleness itself; and as Sherman sat on Sunday mornings in his\npocket-handkerchief of a garden under the one tree, with its smoky\nstem, watching the little circles of sunlight falling from the leaves\nlike a shower of new sovereigns, he gazed at them with a longer and\nkeener joy than heretofore\u2014a new heaven and a new earth, surely!\n\nSherman planted and dug and raked this pocket-handkerchief of a garden\nmost diligently, rooting out the docks and dandelions and mouse-ear\nand the patches of untimely grass. It was the point of contact between\nhis new life and the old. It was far too small and unfertile and shaded\nin to satisfy his love of gardener\u2019s experiments and early vegetables.\n\nPerforce this husbandry was too little complex for his affections to\ngather much round plant and bed. His garden in Ballah used to touch him\nlike the growth of a young family.\n\nNow he was content to satisfy his barbaric sense of colour; right\nround were planted alternate holyhock and sunflower, and behind them\nscarlet-runners showed their inch-high cloven shoots.\n\nOne Sunday it occurred to him to write to his friends on the matter\nof his engagement. He numbered them over. Howard, one or two less\nintimate, and Mary Carton. At that name he paused; he would not write\njust yet.\n\n\nVII.\n\nOne Saturday there was a tennis party. Miss Leland devoted herself all\nday to a young Foreign Office clerk. She played tennis with him, talked\nwith him, drank lemonade with him, had neither thoughts nor words for\nany one else. John Sherman was quite happy. Tennis was always a bore,\nand now he was not called upon to play. It had not struck him there was\noccasion for jealousy.\n\nAs the guests were dispersing, his betrothed came to him. Her manner\nseemed strange.\n\n\u201cDoes anything ail you, Margaret?\u201d he asked, as they left the Square.\n\n\u201cEverything,\u201d she answered, looking about her with ostentatious\nsecrecy. \u201cYou are a most annoying person. You have no feeling; you\nhave no temperament; you are quite the most stupid creature I was ever\nengaged to.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is wrong with you?\u201d he asked, in bewilderment.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you see,\u201d she replied, with a broken voice, \u201cI flirted all day\nwith that young clerk? You should have nearly killed me with jealousy.\nYou do not love me a bit! There is no knowing what I might do!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, you know,\u201d he said, \u201cit was not right of you. People might say,\n\u2018Look at John Sherman; how furious he must be!\u2019 To be sure I wouldn\u2019t\nbe furious a bit; but then they\u2019d go about saying I was. It would not\nmatter, of course; but you know it is not right of you.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is no use pretending you have feeling. It is all that miserable\nlittle town you come from, with its sleepy old shops and its sleepy\nold society. I would give up loving you this minute,\u201d she added, with\na caressing look, \u201cif you had not that beautiful bronzed face. I will\nimprove you. To-morrow evening you must come to the opera.\u201d Suddenly\nshe changed the subject. \u201cDo you see that little fat man coming out of\nthe Square and staring at me? I was engaged to him once. Look at the\nfour old ladies behind him, shaking their bonnets at me. Each has some\nstory about me, and it will be all the same in a hundred years.\u201d\n\nAfter this he had hardly a moment\u2019s peace. She kept him continually\ngoing to theatres, operas, parties. These last were an especial\ntrouble; for it was her wont to gather about her an admiring circle to\nlisten to her extravagancies, and he was no longer at the age when we\nenjoy audacity for its own sake.\n\n\nVIII.\n\nGradually those bright eyes of his imagination, watching him from\nletters and from among the fourteen flies on the ceiling, had ceased to\nbe centres of peace. They seemed like two whirlpools, wherein the order\nand quiet of his life were absorbed hourly and daily.\n\nHe still thought sometimes of the country house of his dreams and of\nthe garden and the three gardeners, but somehow they had lost half\ntheir charm.\n\nHe had written to Howard and some others, and commenced, at last, a\nletter to Mary Carton. It lay unfinished on his desk; a thin coating of\ndust was gathering upon it.\n\nMrs. Leland called continually on Mrs. Sherman. She sentimentalized\nover the lovers, and even wept over them; each visit supplied the\nhousehold with conversation for a week.\n\nEvery Sunday morning\u2014his letter-writing time\u2014Sherman looked at his\nuncompleted letter. Gradually it became plain to him he could not\nfinish it. It had never seemed to him he had more than friendship\nfor Mary Carton, yet somehow it was not possible to tell her of this\nlove-affair.\n\nThe more his betrothed troubled him the more he thought about the\nunfinished letter. He was a man standing at the cross-roads.\n\nWhenever the wind blew from the south he remembered his friend, for\nthat is the wind that fills the heart with memory.\n\nOne Sunday he removed the dust from the face of the letter almost\nreverently, as though it were the dust from the wheels of destiny. But\nthe letter remained unfinished.\n\n\nIX.\n\nOne Wednesday in June Sherman arrived home an hour earlier than usual\nfrom his office, as his wont was the first Wednesday in every month,\non which day his mother was at home to her friends. They had not many\ncallers. To-day there was no one as yet but a badly-dressed old lady\nhis mother had picked up he knew not where. She had been looking at his\nphotograph album, and recalling names and dates from her own prosperous\ntimes. As she went out Miss Leland came in. She gave the old lady in\npassing a critical look that made the poor creature very conscious of\na threadbare mantle, and went over to Mrs. Sherman, holding out both\nhands. Sherman, who knew all his mother\u2019s peculiarities, noticed on\nher side a slight coldness; perhaps she did not altogether like this\nbeautiful dragon-fly.\n\n\u201cI have come,\u201d said Miss Leland, \u201cto tell John that he must learn to\npaint. Music and society are not enough. There is nothing like art to\ngive refinement.\u201d Then turning to John Sherman\u2014\u201cMy dear, I will make\nyou quite different. You are a dreadful barbarian, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat ails me, Margaret?\u201d\n\n\u201cJust look at that necktie! Nothing shows a man\u2019s cultivation like\nhis necktie. Then your reading! You never read anything but old books\nnobody wants to talk about. I will lend you three every one has read\nthis month. You really must acquire small talk and change your necktie.\u201d\n\nPresently she noticed the photograph-book lying open on a chair.\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d she cried, \u201cI must have another look at John\u2019s beauties.\u201d\n\nIt was a habit of his to gather all manner of pretty faces. It came\nfrom incipient old bachelorhood, perhaps.\n\nMargaret criticized each photo in turn with, \u201cAh! she looks as if she\nhad some life in her!\u201d or, \u201cI do not like your sleepy eyelids,\u201d or some\nsuch phrase. The mere relations were passed by without a word. One face\noccurred several times\u2014a quiet face. As Margaret came on this one\nfor the third time, Mrs. Sherman, who seemed a little resentful about\nsomething, said\u2014\n\n\u201cThat is his friend, Mary Carton.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe told me about her. He has a book she gave him. So that is she? How\ninteresting! I pity these poor country people. It must be hard to keep\nfrom getting stupid.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy friend is not at all stupid,\u201d said Sherman.\n\n\u201cDoes she speak with a brogue? I remember you told me she was very\ngood. It must be difficult to keep from talking platitudes when one is\nvery good.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are quite wrong about her. You would like her very much,\u201d he\nreplied.\n\n\u201cShe is one of those people, I suppose, who can only talk about their\nrelatives, or their families, or about their friends\u2019 children: how\nthis one has got the hooping-cough, and this one is getting well of the\nmeasles!\u201d She kept swaying one of the leaves between her finger and\nthumb impatiently. \u201cWhat a strange way she does her hair; and what an\nugly dress!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must not talk that way about her\u2014she is my great friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cFriend! friend!\u201d she burst out. \u201cHe thinks I will believe in\nfriendship between a man and a woman.\u201d\n\nShe got up, and said, turning round with an air of changing the\nsubject, \u201cHave you written to your friends about our engagement? You\nhad not done so when I asked you lately.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, not all.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour great friend, Miss\u2014\u2014what do you call her?\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Carton. I have not written to her.\u201d\n\nShe tapped impatiently with her foot.\n\n\u201cThey were really old companions\u2014that is all,\u201d said Mrs. Sherman,\nwishing to mend matters. \u201cThey were both readers; that brought them\ntogether. I never much fancied her. Yet she was well enough as a\nfriend, and helped, maybe, with reading, and the gardening, and\nhis good bringing-up, to keep him from the idle young men of the\nneighbourhood.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must make him write and tell her at once\u2014you must, you must!\u201d\nalmost sobbed out Miss Leland.\n\n\u201cI promise,\u201d he answered.\n\nImmediately returning to herself, she cried, \u201cIf I were in her place\nI know what I would like to do when I got the letter. I know who I\nwould like to kill!\u201d\u2014this with a laugh as she went over, and looked at\nherself in the mirror over the mantlepiece.\n\n\n\n\nPART III.\n\n_JOHN SHERMAN REVISITS BALLAH._\n\n\nI.\n\nThe others had gone, and Sherman was alone in the drawing-room by\nhimself, looking through the window. Never had London seemed to him so\nlike a reef whereon he was cast away. In the Square the bushes were\ncovered with dust; some sparrows were ruffling their feathers on the\nside-walk; people passed, continually disturbing them. The sky was full\nof smoke. A terrible feeling of solitude in the midst of a multitude\noppressed him. A portion of his life was ending. He thought that soon\nhe would be no longer a young man, and now, at the period when the\ndesire of novelty grows less, was coming the great change of his life.\nHe felt he was of those whose granaries are in the past. And now this\npast would never renew itself. He was going out into the distance as\nthough with strange sailors in a strange ship.\n\nHe longed to see again the town where he had spent his childhood: to\nsee the narrow roads and mean little shops. And perhaps it would be\neasier to tell her who had been the friend of so many years of this\nengagement in his own person than by letter. He wondered why it was so\nhard to write so simple a thing.\n\nIt was his custom to act suddenly on his decisions. He had not made\nmany in his life. The next day he announced at the office that he would\nbe absent for three or four days. He told his mother he had business in\nthe country.\n\nHis betrothed met him on the way to the terminus, as he was walking,\nbag in hand, and asked where he was going. \u201cI am going on business to\nthe country,\u201d he said, and blushed. He was creeping away like a thief.\n\n\nII.\n\nHe arrived in the town of Ballah by rail, for he had avoided the slow\ncattle steamer and gone by Dublin.\n\nIt was the forenoon, and he made for the Imperial Hotel to wait till\nfour in the evening, when he would find Mary Carton in the schoolhouse,\nfor he had timed his journey so as to arrive on Thursday, the day of\nthe children\u2019s practice.\n\nAs he went through the streets his heart went out to every familiar\nplace and sight: the rows of tumble-down thatched cottages; the slated\nroofs of the shops; the women selling gooseberries; the river bridge;\nthe high walls of the garden where it was said the gardener used to see\nthe ghost of a former owner in the shape of a rabbit; the street corner\nno child would pass at nightfall for fear of the headless soldier;\nthe deserted flour store; the wharves covered with grass. All these\nhe watched with Celtic devotion, that devotion carried to the ends of\nthe world by the Celtic exiles, and since old time surrounding their\njourneyings with rumour of plaintive songs.\n\nHe sat in the window of the Imperial Hotel, now full of guests. He\ndid not notice any of them. He sat there meditating, meditating. Grey\nclouds covering the town with flying shadows rushed by like the old\nand dishevelled eagles that Maeldune saw hurrying towards the waters\nof life. Below in the street passed by country people, townspeople,\ntravellers, women with baskets, boys driving donkeys, old men with\nsticks; sometimes he recognized a face or was recognized himself, and\nwelcomed by some familiar voice.\n\n\u201cYou have come home a handsomer gentleman than your father, Misther\nJohn, and he was a neat figure of a man, God bless him!\u201d said the\nwaiter, bringing him his lunch; and in truth Sherman had grown\nhandsomer for these years away. His face and gesture had more of\ndignity, for on the centre of his nature life had dropped a pinch of\nexperience.\n\nAt four he left the hotel and waited near the schoolhouse till the\nchildren came running out. One or two of the elder ones he recognized\nbut turned away.\n\n\nIII.\n\nMary Carton was locking the harmonium as he went in. She came to meet\nhim with a surprised and joyful air.\n\n\u201cHow often I have wished to see you. When did you come? How well you\nremembered my habits to know where to find me. My dear John, how glad I\nam to see you.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are the same as when I left, and this room is the same, too.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d she answered, \u201cthe same, only I have had some new prints hung\nup\u2014prints of fruits and leaves and bird-nests. It was only done last\nweek. When people choose pictures and poems for children they choose\nout such domestic ones. I would not have any of the kind; children are\nsuch undomestic animals. But, John, I am so glad to see you in this old\nschoolhouse again. So little has changed with us here. Some have died\nand some have been married, and we are all a little older and the trees\na little taller.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have come to tell you I am going to be married.\u201d\n\nShe became in a moment perfectly white, and sat down as though attacked\nwith faintness. Her hand on the edge of the chair trembled.\n\nSherman looked at her, and went on in a bewildered, mechanical way\u2014\u201cMy\nbetrothed is a Miss Leland. She has a good deal of money. You know my\nmother always wished me to marry some one with money. Her father, when\nalive, was an old client of Sherman and Saunders. She is much admired\nin society.\u201d Gradually his voice became a mere murmur. He did not seem\nto know that he was speaking. He stopped entirely. He was looking at\nMary Carton.\n\nEverything around him was as it had been some three years before. The\ntable was covered with cups and the floor with crumbs. Perhaps the\nmouse pulling at a crumb under the table was the same mouse as on that\nother evening. The only difference was the brooding daylight of summer\nand the ceaseless chirruping of the sparrows in the ivy outside. He had\na confused sense of having lost his way. It was just the same feeling\nhe had known as a child, when one dark night he had taken a wrong\nturning, and instead of arriving at his own house, found himself at a\nlandmark he knew was miles from home.\n\nA moment earlier, however difficult his life, the issues were always\ndefinite; now suddenly had entered the obscurity of another\u2019s interest.\n\nBefore this it had not occurred to him that Mary Carton had any\nstronger feeling for him than warm friendship.\n\nHe began again, speaking in the same mechanical way\u2014\u201cMiss Leland\nlives with her mother near us. She is very well educated and very well\nconnected, though she has lived always among business people.\u201d\n\nMiss Carton, with a great effort, had recovered her composure.\n\n\u201cI congratulate you,\u201d she said. \u201cI hope you will be always happy. You\ncame here on some business for your firm, I suppose? I believe they\nhave some connection with the town still.\u201d\n\n\u201cI only came here to tell you I was going to be married.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you not think it would have been better to have written?\u201d she\nsaid, beginning to put away the children\u2019s tea-things in a cupboard by\nthe fireplace.\n\n\u201cIt would have been better,\u201d he answered, drooping his head.\n\nWithout a word, locking the door behind them, they went out. Without\na word they walked the grey streets. Now and then a woman or a child\ncurtseyed as they passed. Some wondered, perhaps, to see these old\nfriends so silent. At the rectory they bade each other good-bye.\n\n\u201cI hope you will be always happy,\u201d she said. \u201cI will pray for you and\nyour wife. I am very busy with the children and old people, but I shall\nalways find a moment to wish you well in. Good-bye now.\u201d\n\nThey parted; the gate in the wall closed behind her. He stayed for a\nfew moments looking up at the tops of the trees and bushes showing over\nthe wall, and at the house a little way beyond. He stood considering\nhis problem\u2014her life, his life. His, at any rate, would have incident\nand change; hers would be the narrow existence of a woman who, failing\nto fulfil the only abiding wish she has ever formed, seeks to lose\nherself in routine\u2014mournfulest of things on this old planet.\n\nThis had been revealed: he loved Mary Carton, she loved him. He\nremembered Margaret Leland, and murmured she did well to be jealous.\nThen all her contemptuous words about the town and its inhabitants came\ninto his mind. Once they made no impression on him, but now the sense\nof personal identity having been disturbed by this sudden revelation,\nalien as they were to his way of thinking, they began to press in on\nhim. Mary, too, would have agreed with them, he thought; and might it\nbe that at some distant time weary monotony in abandonment would have\nso weighed down the spirit of Mary Carton, that she would be merely\none of the old and sleepy whose dulness filled the place like a cloud?\n\nHe went sadly towards the hotel; everything about him, the road, the\nsky, the feet wherewith he walked seeming phantasmal and without\nmeaning.\n\nHe told the waiter he would leave by the first train in the morning.\n\u201cWhat! and you only just come home?\u201d the man answered. He ordered\ncoffee and could not drink it. He went out and came in again\nimmediately. He went down into the kitchen and talked to the servants.\nThey told him of everything that had happened since he had gone. He was\nnot interested, and went up to his room. \u201cI must go home and do what\npeople expect of me; one must be careful to do that.\u201d\n\nThrough all the journey home his problem troubled him. He saw the\nfigure of Mary Carton perpetually passing through a round of\nmonotonous duties. He saw his own life among aliens going on endlessly,\nwearily.\n\nFrom Holyhead to London his fellow-travellers were a lady and her three\nyoung daughters, the eldest about twelve. The smooth faces shining with\nwell-being became to him ominous symbols. He hated them. They were\nsymbolic of the indifferent world about to absorb him, and of the vague\nsomething that was dragging him inch by inch from the nook he had made\nfor himself in the chimney corner. He was at one of those dangerous\nmoments when the sense of personal identity is shaken, when one\u2019s past\nand present seem about to dissolve partnership. He sought refuge in\nmemory, and counted over every word of Mary\u2019s he could remember. He\nforgot the present and the future. \u201cWithout love,\u201d he said to himself,\n\u201cwe would be either gods or vegetables.\u201d\n\nThe rain beat on the window of the carriage. He began to listen;\nthought and memory became a blank; his mind was full of the sound of\nrain-drops.\n\n\n\n\nPART IV.\n\n_THE REV. WILLIAM HOWARD._\n\n\nI.\n\nAfter his return to London Sherman for a time kept to himself, going\nstraight home from his office, moody and self-absorbed, trying not to\nconsider his problem\u2014her life, his life. He often repeated to himself,\n\u201cI must do what people expect of me. It does not rest with me now\u2014my\nchoosing time is over.\u201d He felt that whatever way he turned he would do\na great evil to himself and others. To his nature all sudden decisions\nwere difficult, and so he kept to the groove he had entered upon.\nIt did not even occur to him to do otherwise. He never thought of\nbreaking this engagement off and letting people say what they would. He\nwas bound in hopelessly by a chain of congratulations.\n\nA week passed slowly as a month. The wheels of the cabs and carriages\nseemed to be rolling through his mind. He often remembered the quiet\nriver at the end of his garden in the town of Ballah. How the weeds\nswayed there, and the salmon leaped! At the week\u2019s end came a note from\nMiss Leland, complaining of his neglecting her so many days. He sent\na rather formal answer, promising to call soon. To add to his other\ntroubles a cold east wind arose and made him shiver continually.\n\nOne evening he and his mother were sitting silent, the one knitting,\nthe other half-asleep. He had been writing letters and was now in a\nreverie. Round the walls were one or two drawings, done by him at\nschool. His mother had got them framed. His eyes were fixed on a\ndrawing of a stream and some astonishing cows.\n\nA few days ago he had found an old sketch-book for children among some\nforgotten papers, which taught how to draw a horse by making three\novals for the basis of his body, one lying down in the middle, two\nstanding up at each end for flank and chest, and how to draw a cow by\nbasing its body on a square. He kept trying to fit squares into the\ncows. He was half inclined to take them out of their frames and retouch\non this new principle. Then he began somehow to remember the child with\nthe swollen face who threw a stone at the dog the day he resolved to\nleave home first. Then some other image came. His problem moved before\nhim in a disjointed way. He was dropping asleep. Through his reverie\ncame the click, click of his mother\u2019s needles. She had found some\nLondon children to knit for. He was at that marchland between waking\nand dreaming where our thoughts begin to have a life of their own\u2014the\nregion where art is nurtured and inspiration born.\n\nHe started, hearing something sliding and rustling, and looked up to\nsee a piece of cardboard fall from one end of the mantlepiece, and,\ndriven by a slight gust of air, circle into the ashes under the grate.\n\n\u201cOh,\u201d said his mother, \u201cthat is the portrait of the _locum tenens_.\u201d\nShe still spoke of the Rev. William Howard by the name she had first\nknown him by. \u201cHe is always being photographed. They are all over the\nhouse, and I, an old woman, have not had one taken all my life. Take\nit out with the tongs.\u201d Her son after some poking in the ashes, for it\nhad fallen far back, brought out a somewhat dusty photograph. \u201cThat,\u201d\nshe continued, \u201cis one he sent us two or three months ago. It has been\nlying in the letter-rack since.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is not so spick and span looking as usual,\u201d said Sherman, rubbing\nthe ashes off the photograph with his sleeve.\n\n\u201cBy the by,\u201d his mother replied, \u201che has lost his parish, I hear. He\nis very medi\u00e6val, you know, and he lately preached a sermon to prove\nthat children who die unbaptized are lost. He had been reading up the\nsubject and was full of it. The mothers turned against him, not being\nso familiar with St. Augustine as he was. There were other reasons in\nplenty too. I wonder that any one can stand that monkeyish fantastic\nfamily.\u201d\n\nAs the way is with so many country-bred people, the world for her was\ndivided up into families rather than individuals.\n\nWhile she was talking, Sherman, who had returned to his chair, leant\nover the table and began to write hurriedly. She was continuing her\ndenunciation when he interrupted with\u2014\u201cMother, I have just written\nthis letter to him:\u2014\n\n  \u201c\u2018MY DEAR HOWARD:\n   \u201c\u2018Will you come and spend the autumn with us? I hear you are\n  unoccupied just now. I am engaged to be married, as you know;\n  it will be a long engagement. You will like my betrothed. I\n  hope you will be great friends.\n                          \u201c\u2018Yours expectantly,\n                             \u201c\u2018JOHN SHERMAN.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cYou rather take me aback,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cI really like him,\u201d he answered. \u201cYou were always prejudiced against\nthe Howards. Forgive me, but I really want very much to have him here.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, if you like him, I suppose I have no objection.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do like him. He is very clever,\u201d said her son, \u201cand knows a great\ndeal. I wonder he does not marry. Do you not think he would make a\ngood husband?\u2014for you must admit he is sympathetic.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not difficult to sympathize with every one if you have no true\nprinciples and convictions.\u201d\n\nPrinciples and convictions were her names for that strenuous\nconsistency attained without trouble by men and women of few ideas.\n\n\u201cI am sure you will like him better,\u201d said the other, \u201cwhen you see\nmore of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs that photograph quite spoilt?\u201d she answered.\n\n\u201cNo; there was nothing on it but ashes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is a pity, for one less would be something.\u201d\n\nAfter this they both became silent, she knitting, he gazing at the cows\nbrowsing at the edge of their stream, and trying to fit squares into\ntheir bodies; but now a smile played about his lips.\n\nMrs. Sherman looked a little troubled. She would not object to any\nvisitor of her son\u2019s, but quite made up her mind in no manner to put\nherself out to entertain the Rev. William Howard. She was puzzled as\nwell. She did not understand the suddenness of this invitation. They\nusually talked over things for weeks.\n\n\nII.\n\nNext day his fellow-clerks noticed a decided improvement in Sherman\u2019s\nspirits. He had a lark-like cheerfulness and alacrity breaking out at\nodd moments. When evening came he called, for the first time since his\nreturn, on Miss Leland. She scolded him roundly for having answered her\nnote in such a formal way, but was sincerely glad to see him return\nto his allegiance. We have said he had sometimes, though rarely, a\ntalkative fit. He had one this evening. The last play they had been to,\nthe last party, the picture of the year, all in turn he glanced at.\nShe was delighted. Her training had not been in vain. Her barbarian was\nlearning to chatter. This flattered her a deal.\n\n\u201cI was never engaged,\u201d she thought, \u201cto a more interesting creature.\u201d\n\nWhen he had risen to go Sherman said\u2014\u201cI have a friend coming to visit\nme in a few days; you will suit each other delightfully. He is very\nmedi\u00e6val.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo tell me about him; I like everything medi\u00e6val.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh,\u201d he cried, with a laugh, \u201chis medi\u00e6valism is not in your line. He\nis neither a gay troubadour nor a wicked knight. He is a High Church\ncurate.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo not tell me anything more about him,\u201d she answered; \u201cI will try to\nbe civil to him, but you know I never liked curates. I have been an\nagnostic for many years. You, I believe, are orthodox.\u201d\n\nAs Sherman was on his way home he met a fellow-clerk, and stopped him\nwith\u2014\n\n\u201cAre you an agnostic?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. Why, what is that?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, nothing! Good-bye,\u201d he made answer, and hurried on his way.\n\n\nIII.\n\nThe letter reached the Rev. William Howard at the right moment,\narriving as it did in the midst of a crisis in his fortunes. In the\ncourse of a short life he had lost many parishes. He considered himself\na martyr, but was considered by his enemies a clerical coxcomb. He\nhad a habit of getting his mind possessed with some strange opinion,\nor what seemed so to his parishioners, and of preaching it while the\nnotion lasted in the most startling way. The sermon on unbaptized\nchildren was an instance. It was not so much that he thought it true as\nthat it possessed him for a day. It was not so much the thought as his\nown relation to it that allured him. Then, too, he loved what appeared\nto his parishioners to be the most unusual and dangerous practices. He\nput candles on the altar and crosses in unexpected places. He delighted\nin the intricacies of High Church costume, and was known to recommend\nconfession and prayers for the dead.\n\nGradually the anger of his parishioners would increase. The rector,\nthe washerwoman, the labourers, the squire, the doctor, the school\nteachers, the shoemakers, the butchers, the seamstresses, the local\njournalist, the master of the hounds, the innkeeper, the veterinary\nsurgeon, the magistrate, the children making mud pies, all would be\nfilled with one dread\u2014popery. Then he would fly for consolation to\nhis little circle of the faithful, the younger ladies, who still\nrepeated his fine sentiments and saw him in their imaginations\nstanding perpetually before a wall covered with tapestry and holding\na crucifix in some constrained and ancient attitude. At last he would\nhave to go, feeling for his parishioners a gay and lofty disdain, and\nfor himself that reverend approbation one gives to the captains who\nlead the crusade of ideas against those who merely sleep and eat. An\nefficient crusader he certainly was\u2014too efficient, indeed, for his\nefficiency gave to all his thoughts a certain over-completeness and\nisolation, and a kind of hardness to his mind. His intellect was like a\nmusician\u2019s instrument with no sounding-board. He could think carefully\nand cleverly, and even with originality, but never in such a way as to\nmake his thoughts an allusion to something deeper than themselves. In\nthis he was the reverse of poetical, for poetry is essentially a touch\nfrom behind a curtain.\n\nThis conformation of his mind helped to lead him into all manner\nof needless contests and to the loss of this last parish among much\nelse. Did not the world exist for the sake of these hard, crystalline\nthoughts, with which he played as with so many bone _spilikins_,\ndelighting in his own skill? and were not all who disliked them\nmerely\u2014the many?\n\nIn this way it came about that Sherman\u2019s letter reached Howard at the\nright moment. Now, next to a new parish, he loved a new friend. A visit\nto London meant many. He had found he was, on the whole, a success at\nthe beginning of friendships.\n\nHe at once wrote an acceptance in his small and beautiful handwriting,\nand arrived shortly after his letter. Sherman, on receiving him,\nglanced at his neat and shining boots, the little medal at the\nwatch-chain and the well-brushed hat, and nodded as though in answer to\nan inner query. He smiled approval at the slight, elegant figure in its\nblack clothes, at the satiny hair, and at the face, mobile as moving\nwaters.\n\nFor several days the Shermans saw little of their guest. He had friends\neverywhere to turn into enemies and acquaintances to turn into friends.\nHis days passed in visiting, visiting, visiting. Then there were\ntheatres and churches to see, and new clothes to be bought, over which\nhe was as anxious as a woman. Finally he settled down.\n\nHe passed his mornings in the smoking-room. He asked Sherman\u2019s leave\nto hang on the walls one or two religious pictures, without which he\nwas not happy, and to place over the mantlepiece, under the pipe-rack,\nan ebony crucifix. In one corner of the room he laid a rug neatly\nfolded for covering his knees on chilly days, and on the table a\nsmall collection of favourite books\u2014a curious and carefully-chosen\ncollection, in which Cardinal Newman and Bourget, St. Chrysostom and\nFlaubert, lived together in perfect friendship.\n\nEarly in his visit Sherman brought him to the Lelands. He was a\nsuccess. The three\u2014Margaret, Sherman, and Howard\u2014played tennis in the\nSquare. Howard was a good player, and seemed to admire Margaret. On\nthe way home Sherman once or twice laughed to himself. It was like the\nclucking of a hen with a brood of chickens. He told Howard, too, how\nwealthy Margaret was said to be.\n\nAfter this Howard always joined Sherman and Margaret at the tennis.\nSometimes, too, after a little, on days when the study seemed dull and\nlonely, and the unfinished essay on St. Chrysostom more than usually\nlaborious, he would saunter towards the Square before his friend\u2019s\narrival, to find Margaret now alone, now with an acquaintance or two.\nAbout this time also press of work, an unusual thing with him, began\nto delay Sherman in town half an hour after his usual time. In the\nevenings they often talked of Margaret\u2014Sherman frankly and carefully,\nas though in all anxiety to describe her as she was; and Howard with\nsome enthusiasm: \u201cShe has a religious vocation,\u201d he said once, with a\nslight sigh.\n\nSometimes they played chess\u2014a game that Sherman had recently become\ndevoted to, for he found it drew him out of himself more than anything\nelse.\n\nHoward now began to notice a curious thing. Sherman grew shabbier and\nshabbier, and at the same time more and more cheerful. This puzzled\nhim, for he had noticed that he himself was not cheerful when shabby,\nand did not even feel upright and clever when his hat was getting old.\nHe also noticed that when Sherman was talking to him he seemed to be\nkeeping some thought to himself. When he first came to know him long\nago in Ballah he had noticed occasionally the same thing, and set it\ndown to a kind of suspiciousness and over-caution, natural to one who\nlived in such an out-of-the-way place. It seemed more persistent now,\nhowever. \u201cHe is not well trained,\u201d he thought; \u201che is half a peasant.\nHe has not the brilliant candour of the man of the world.\u201d\n\nAll this while the mind of Sherman was clucking continually over its\nbrood of thoughts. Ballah was being constantly suggested to him. The\ngrey corner of a cloud slanting its rain upon Cheapside called to mind\nby some remote suggestion the clouds rushing and falling in cloven surf\non the seaward steep of a mountain north of Ballah. A certain street\ncorner made him remember an angle of the Ballah fish-market. At night\na lantern, marking where the road was fenced off for mending, made him\nthink of a tinker\u2019s cart, with its swing can of burning coals, that\nused to stop on market days at the corner of Peter\u2019s Lane at Ballah.\nDelayed by a crush in the Strand, he heard a faint trickling of water\nnear by; it came from a shop window where a little water-jet balanced a\nwooden ball upon its point. The sound suggested a cataract with a long\nGaelic name, that leaped crying into the Gate of the Winds at Ballah.\nWandering among these memories a footstep went to and fro continually\nand the figure of Mary Carton moved among them like a phantom. He\nwas set dreaming a whole day by walking down one Sunday morning to\nthe border of the Thames\u2014a few hundred yards from his house\u2014and\nlooking at the osier-covered Chiswick eyot. It made him remember an\nold day-dream of his. The source of the river that passed his garden\nat home was a certain wood-bordered and islanded lake, whither in\nchildhood he had often gone blackberry-gathering. At the further end\nwas a little islet called Inniscrewin. Its rocky centre, covered with\nmany bushes, rose some forty feet above the lake. Often when life and\nits difficulties had seemed to him like the lessons of some elder boy\ngiven to a younger by mistake, it had seemed good to dream of going\naway to that islet and building a wooden hut there and burning a few\nyears out, rowing to and fro, fishing, or lying on the island slopes\nby day, and listening at night to the ripple of the water and the\nquivering of the bushes\u2014full always of unknown creatures\u2014and going\nout at morning to see the island\u2019s edge marked by the feet of birds.\n\nThese pictures became so vivid to him that the world about him\u2014that\nHoward, Margaret, his mother even\u2014began to seem far off. He hardly\nseemed aware of anything they were thinking and feeling. The light that\ndazzled him flowed from the vague and refracting regions of hope and\nmemory; the light that made Howard\u2019s feet unsteady was ever the too\nglaring lustre of life itself.\n\n\nIV.\n\nOn the evening of the 20th of June, after the blinds had been\npulled down and the gas lighted, Sherman was playing chess in the\nsmoking-room, right hand against left. Howard had gone out with a\nmessage to the Lelands. He would often say, \u201cIs there any message I\ncan deliver for you? I know how lazy you are, and will save you the\ntrouble.\u201d A message was always found for him. A pile of books lent for\nSherman\u2019s improvement went home one by one.\n\n\u201cLook here,\u201d said Howard\u2019s voice in the doorway, \u201cI have been watching\nyou for some time. You are cheating the red men most villainously. You\nare forcing them to make mistakes that the white men may win. Why, a\nfew such games would ruin any man\u2019s moral nature.\u201d\n\nHe was leaning against the doorway, looking, to Sherman\u2019s not too\ncritical eyes, an embodiment of all that was self-possessed and\nbrilliant. The great care with which he was dressed and his whole\nmanner seemed to say, \u201cLook at me; do I not combine perfectly the\nzealot with the man of the world?\u201d He seemed excited to-night. He had\nbeen talking at the Lelands, and talking well, and felt that elation\nwhich brings us many thoughts.\n\n\u201cMy dear Sherman,\u201d he went on, \u201cdo cease that game. It is very bad for\nyou. There is nobody alive who is honest enough to play a game of chess\nfairly out\u2014right hand against left. We are so radically dishonest that\nwe even cheat ourselves. We can no more play chess than we can think\naltogether by ourselves with security. You had much better play with\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, but you will beat me; I have not much practice,\u201d replied\nthe other.\n\nThey reset the men and began to play. Sherman relied most upon his\nbishops and queen. Howard was fondest of the knights. At first Sherman\nwas the attacking party, but in his characteristic desire to scheme\nout his game many moves ahead, kept making slips, and at last had to\ngive up, with his men nearly all gone and his king hopelessly cornered.\nHoward seemed to let nothing escape him. When the game was finished he\nleant back in his chair and said, as he rolled a cigarette\u2014\n\n\u201cYou do not play well.\u201d It gave him satisfaction to feel his\nproficiency in many small arts. \u201cYou do not do any of these things at\nall well,\u201d he went on, with an insolence peculiar to him when excited.\n\u201cYou have been really very badly brought up and stupidly educated in\nthat intolerable Ballah. They do not understand there any, even the\nleast, of the arts of life; they only believe in information. Men who\nare compelled to move in the great world, and who are also cultivated,\nonly value the personal acquirements\u2014self-possession, adaptability,\nhow to dress well, how even to play tennis decently\u2014you would be not\nso bad at that, by the by, if you practised\u2014or how to paint or write\neffectively. They know that it is better to smoke one\u2019s cigarette with\na certain charm of gesture than to have by heart all the encyclopedias.\nI say this not merely as a man of the world, but as a teacher of\nreligion. A man when he rises from the grave will take with him only\nthe things that he is in himself. He will leave behind the things that\nhe merely possesses, learning and information not less than money and\nhigh estate. They will stay behind with his house and his clothes and\nhis body. A collection of facts will no more help him than a collection\nof stamps. The learned will not get into heaven as readily as the\nflute-player, or even as the man who smokes a cigarette gracefully. Now\nyou are not learned, but you have been brought up almost as badly as\nif you were. In that wretched town they told you that education was to\nknow that Russia is bounded on the north by the Arctic Sea, and on the\nwest by the Baltic Ocean, and that Vienna is situated on the Danube,\nand that William the Third came to the throne in the year 1688. They\nhave never taught you any personal art. Even chess-playing might have\nhelped you at the day of judgment.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am really not a worse chess-player than you. I am only more\ncareless.\u201d\n\nThere was a slight resentment in Sherman\u2019s voice. The other noticed it,\nand said, changing his manner from the insolent air of a young beauty\nto a self-depreciatory one, which was wont to give him at times a very\ngenuine charm\u2014\n\n\u201cIt is really a great pity, for you Shermans are a deep people, much\ndeeper than we Howards. We are like moths or butterflies on rather\nrapid rivulets, while you and yours are deep pools in the forest where\nthe beasts go to drink. No! I have a better metaphor. Your mind and\nmine are two arrows. Yours has got no feathers, and mine has no metal\non the point. I don\u2019t know which is most needed for right conduct. I\nwonder where we are going to strike earth. I suppose it will be all\nright some day when the world has gone by and they have collected all\nthe arrows into one quiver.\u201d\n\nHe went over to the mantlepiece to hunt for a match, as his cigarette\nhad gone out. Sherman had lifted a corner of the blind and was gazing\nover the roofs shining from a recent shower, and thinking how on such a\nnight as this he had sat with Mary Carton by the rectory fire listening\nto the rain without and talking of the future and of the training of\nvillage children.\n\n\u201cHave you seen Miss Leland in her last new dress from Paris?\u201d said\nHoward, making one of his rapid transitions. \u201cIt is very rich in\ncolour, and makes her look a little pale, like St. Cecilia. She is\nwonderful as she stands by the piano, a silver cross round her neck.\nWe have been talking about you. She complains to me. She says you are\na little barbarous; you seem to look down on style, and sometimes\u2014you\nmust forgive me\u2014even on manners, and you are quite without small talk.\nYou must really try and be worthy of that beautiful girl, with her\ngreat soul and religious genius. She told me quite sadly, too, that\nyou are not improving.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Sherman, \u201cI am not going forward; I am at present trying to\ngo sideways like the crabs.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe serious,\u201d answered the other. \u201cShe told me these things with the\nmost sad and touching voice. She makes me her confidant, you know, in\nmany matters, because of my wide religious experience. You must really\nimprove yourself. You must paint or something.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I will paint or something.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am quite serious, Sherman. Try and be worthy of her, a soul as\ngentle as St. Cecilia\u2019s.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is very wealthy,\u201d said Sherman. \u201cIf she were engaged to you and\nnot to me you might hope to die a bishop.\u201d\n\nHoward looked at him in a mystified way and the conversation dropped.\nPresently Howard got up and went to his room, and Sherman, resetting\nthe chess-board, began to play again, and, letting longer and longer\npauses of reverie come between his moves, played far into the morning,\ncheating now in favour of the red men now in favour of the white.\n\n\nV.\n\nThe next afternoon Howard found Miss Leland sitting, reading in an\nalcove in her drawing-room, between a stuffed paroquet and a blue De\nMorgan jar. As he was shown in he noticed, with a momentary shock, that\nher features were quite commonplace. Then she saw him, and at once\nseemed to vanish wrapped in an exulting flame of life. She stood up,\nflinging the book on to the seat with some violence.\n\n\u201cI have been reading that sweet \u2018Imitation of Christ,\u2019 and was just\nfeeling that I should have to become a theosophist or a socialist, or\ngo and join the Catholic Church, or do something. How delightful it is\nto see you again! How is my savage getting on? It is so good of you to\ntry and help me to reform him.\u201d\n\nThey talked on about Sherman, and Howard did his best to console her\nfor his shortcomings. Time would certainly improve her savage. Several\ntimes she gazed at him with those large dark eyes of hers, of which the\npupils to-day seemed larger than usual. They made him feel dizzy and\nclutch tightly the arm of his chair. Then she began to talk about her\nlife since childhood\u2014how they got to the subject he never knew\u2014and\nmade a number of those confidences which are so dangerous because so\nflattering. To love\u2014there is nothing else worth living for; but then\nmen are so shallow. She had never found a nature deep as her own.\nShe would not pretend that she had not often been in love, but never\nhad any heart rung back to her the true note. As she spoke her face\nquivered with excitement. The exulting flame of life seemed spreading\nfrom her to the other things in the room. To Howard\u2019s eyes it seemed\nas though the bright pots and stuffed birds and plush curtains began\nto glow with a light not of this world\u2014to glimmer like the strange\nand chaotic colours the mystic Blake imagined upon the scaled serpent\nof Eden. The light seemed gradually to dim his past and future, and to\nmake pale his good resolves. Was it not in itself that which all men\nare seeking, and for which all else exists?\n\nHe leant forward and took her hand, timidly and doubtingly. She did\nnot draw it away. He leant nearer and kissed her on the forehead. She\ngave a joyful cry, and, casting her arms round his neck, burst out,\n\u201cAh! you\u2014and I. We were made for each other. I hate Sherman. He is\nan egotist. He is a beast. He is selfish and foolish.\u201d Releasing one\nof her arms she struck the seat with her hand, excitedly, and went\non, \u201cHow angry he will be! But it serves him right! How badly he is\ndressing. He does not know anything about anything. But you\u2014you\u2014I\nknew you were meant for me the moment I saw you.\u201d\n\nThat evening Howard flung himself into a chair in the empty\nsmoking-room. He lighted a cigarette; it went out. Again he lighted\nit; again it went out. \u201cI am a traitor\u2014and that good, stupid fellow,\nSherman, never to be jealous!\u201d he thought. \u201cBut then, how could I\nhelp it? And, besides, it cannot be a bad action to save her from a\nman she is so much above in refinement and feeling.\u201d He was getting\ninto good-humour with himself. He got up and went over and looked\nat the photograph of Raphael\u2019s Madonna, which he had hung over the\nmantlepiece. \u201cHow like Margaret\u2019s are her big eyes!\u201d\n\n\nVI.\n\nThe next day when Sherman came home from his office he saw an envelope\nlying on the smoking-room table. It contained a letter from Howard,\nsaying that he had gone away, and that he hoped Sherman would forgive\nhis treachery, but that he was hopelessly in love with Miss Leland, and\nthat she returned his love.\n\nSherman went downstairs. His mother was helping the servant to set the\ntable.\n\n\u201cYou will never guess what has happened,\u201d he said. \u201cMy affair with\nMargaret is over.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot pretend to be sorry, John,\u201d she replied. She had long\nconsidered Miss Leland among accepted things, like the chimney-pots on\nthe roof, and submitted, as we do, to any unalterable fact, but had\nnever praised her or expressed liking in any way. \u201cShe puts belladonna\nin her eyes, and is a vixen and a flirt, and I dare say her wealth is\nall talk. But how did it happen?\u201d\n\nHer son was, however, too excited to listen.\n\nHe went upstairs and wrote the following note\u2014\n\n  \u201cMY DEAR MARGARET:\n    \u201cI congratulate you on a new conquest. There is no end to your\n  victories. As for me, I bow myself out with many sincere wishes\n  for your happiness, and remain,\n                               \u201cYour friend,\n                                   \u201cJOHN SHERMAN.\u201d\n\nHaving posted this letter he sat down with Howard\u2019s note spread\nout before him, and wondered whether there was anything mean and\nsmall-minded in neatness\u2014he himself was somewhat untidy. He had\noften thought so before, for their strong friendship was founded in a\ngreat measure on mutual contempt, but now immediately added, being in\ngood-humour with the world, \u201cHe is much cleverer than I am. He must\nhave been very industrious at school.\u201d\n\nA week went by. He made up his mind to put an end to his London life.\nHe broke to his mother his resolve to return to Ballah. She was\ndelighted, and at once began to pack. Her old home had long seemed to\nher a kind of lost Eden, wherewith she was accustomed to contrast the\npresent. When, in time, this present had grown into the past it became\nan Eden in turn. She was always ready for a change, if the change came\nto her in the form of a return to something old. Others place their\nideals in the future; she laid hers in the past.\n\nThe only one this momentous resolution seemed to surprise was the old\nand deaf servant. She waited with ever-growing impatience. She would\nsit by the hour wool-gathering on the corner of a chair with a look\nof bewildered delight. As the hour of departure came near she sang\ncontinually in a cracked voice.\n\nSherman, a few days before leaving, was returning for the last time\nfrom his office when he saw, to his surprise, Howard and Miss Leland\ncarrying each a brown paper bundle. He nodded good-humouredly, meaning\nto pass on.\n\n\u201cJohn,\u201d she said, \u201clook at this brooch William gave me\u2014a ladder\nleaning against the moon and a butterfly climbing up it. Is it not\nsweet? We are going to visit the poor.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I,\u201d he said, \u201cam going to catch eels. I am leaving town.\u201d\n\nHe made his excuses, saying he had no time to wait, and hurried off.\nShe looked after him with a mournful glance, strange in anybody who had\nexchanged one lover for another more favoured.\n\n\u201cPoor fellow,\u201d murmured Howard, \u201che is broken-hearted.\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense,\u201d answered Miss Leland, somewhat snappishly.\n\n\n\n\nPART V.\n\n_JOHN SHERMAN RETURNS TO BALLAH._\n\n\nI.\n\nThis being the homeward trip, SS. _Lavinia_ carried no cattle, but many\npassengers. As the sea was smooth and the voyage near its end, they\nlounged about the deck in groups. Two cattle merchants were leaning\nover the taffrail smoking. In appearance they were something between\nbetting men and commercial travellers. For years they had done all\ntheir sleeping in steamers and trains. A short distance from them a\nclerk from Liverpool, with a consumptive cough, walked to and fro, a\nlittle child holding his hand. Shortly he would be landed in a boat\nputting off from the shore for the purpose. He had come hoping that\nhis native air of Teeling Head would restore him. The little child\nwas a strange contrast\u2014her cheeks ruddy with perfect health. Further\nforward, talking to one of the crew, was a man with a red face and\nslightly unsteady step. In the companion house was a governess, past\nher first youth, very much afraid of seasickness. She had brought her\nluggage up and heaped it round her to be ready for landing. Sherman\nsat on a pile of cable looking out over the sea. It was just noon;\nSS. _Lavinia_, having passed by Tory and Rathlin, was approaching the\nDonegal cliffs. They were covered by a faint mist, which made them loom\neven vaster than they were. To westward the sun shone on a perfectly\nblue sea. Seagulls come out of the mist and plunged into the sunlight,\nand out of the sunlight and plunged into the mist. To the westward\ngannets were striking continually, and a porpoise showed now and then,\nhis fin and back gleaming in the sun. Sherman was more perfectly happy\nthan he had been for many a day, and more ardently thinking. All\nnature seemed full of a Divine fulfilment. Everything fulfilled its\nlaw\u2014fulfilment that is peace, whether it be for good or for evil, for\nevil also has its peace, the peace of the birds of prey. Sherman looked\nfrom the sea to the ship and grew sad. Upon this thing, crawling slowly\nalong the sea, moved to and fro many mournful and slouching figures.\nHe looked from the ship to himself and his eyes filled with tears. On\nhimself, on these moving figures, hope and memory fed like flames.\n\nAgain his eyes gladdened, for he knew he had found his present. He\nwould live in his love and the day as it passed. He would live that his\nlaw might be fulfilled. Now, was he sure of this truth?\u2014the saints\non the one hand, the animals on the other, live in the moment as it\npasses. Thitherward had his days brought him. This was the one grain\nthey had ground. To grind one grain is sufficient for a lifetime.\n\n\nII.\n\nA few days later Sherman was hurrying through the town of Ballah. It\nwas Saturday, and he passed down through the marketing country people,\nand the old women with baskets of cakes and gooseberries and long\npieces of sugarstick shaped like walking-sticks, and called by children\n\u201cPeggie\u2019s leg.\u201d\n\nNow, as two months earlier he was occasionally recognized and greeted,\nand, as before, went on without knowing, his eyes full of unintelligent\nsadness because the mind was making merry afar. They had the look we\nsee in the eyes of animals and dreamers. Everything had grown simple,\nhis problem had taken itself away. He was thinking what he would say\nto Mary Carton. Now they would be married, they would live in a small\nhouse with a green door and new thatch, and a row of beehives under\na hedge. He knew where just such a house stood empty. The day before\nhe and his mother had discussed, with their host of the Imperial\nHotel, this question of houses. They knew the peculiarities of every\nhouse in the neighbourhood, except two or three built while they were\naway. All day Sherman and his mother had gone over the merits of the\nfew they were told were empty. She wondered why her son had grown so\nunpractical. Once he was so easily pleased\u2014the row of beehives and the\nnew thatch did not for her settle the question. She set it all down to\nMiss Leland and the plays, and the singing, and the belladonna, and\nremembered with pleasure how many miles of uneasy water lay between\nthe town of Ballah and these things.\n\nShe did not know what else beside the row of beehives and the new\nthatch her son\u2019s mind ran on as he walked among the marketing country\npeople, and the gooseberry sellers, and the merchants of \u201cPeggie\u2019s\nleg,\u201d and the boys playing marbles in odd corners, and the men in\nwaistcoats with flannel sleeves driving carts, and the women driving\ndonkeys with creels of turf or churns of milk. Just now she was trying\nto remember whether she used to buy her wool for knitting at Miss\nPeters\u2019s or from Mrs. Macallough\u2019s at the bridge. One or other sold\nit a halfpenny a skein cheaper. She never knew what went on inside\nher son\u2019s mind, she had always her own fish to fry. Blessed are the\nunsympathetic. They preserve their characters in an iron safe while the\nmost of us poor mortals are going about the planet vainly searching\nfor any kind of a shell to contain us, and evaporating the while.\n\nSherman began to mount the hill to the vicarage. He was happy. Because\nhe was happy he began to run. Soon the steepness of the hill made him\nwalk. He thought about his love for Mary Carton. Seen by the light of\nthis love everything that had happened to him was plain now. He had\nfound his centre of unity. His childhood had prepared him for this\nlove. He had been solitary, fond of favourite corners of fields, fond\nof going about alone, unhuman like the birds and the leaves, his heart\nempty. How clearly he remembered his first meeting with Mary. They were\nboth children. At a school treat they watched the fire balloon ascend,\nand followed it a little way over the fields together. What friends\nthey became, growing up together, reading the same books, thinking the\nsame thoughts.\n\nAs he came to the door and pulled at the great hanging iron bell\nhandle, the fire balloon reascended in his heart, surrounded with\ncheers and laughter.\n\n\nIII.\n\nHe kept the servant talking for a moment or two before she went for\nMiss Carton. The old rector, she told him, was getting less and less\nable to do much work. Old age had come almost suddenly upon him.\nHe seldom moved from the fireside. He was getting more and more\nabsent-minded. Once lately he had brought his umbrella into the\nreading-desk. More and more did he leave all things to his children\u2014to\nMary Carton and her younger sisters.\n\nWhen the servant had gone Sherman looked round the somewhat gloomy\nroom. In the window hung a canary in a painted cage. Outside was a\nnarrow piece of shaded ground between the window and the rectory wall.\nThe laurel and holly bushes darkened the window a good deal. On a\ntable in the centre of the room were evangelistic books with gilded\ncovers. Round the mirror over the mantlepiece were stuck various parish\nannouncements, thrust between the glass and the gilding. On a small\nside table was a copper ear-trumpet.\n\nHow familiar everything seemed to Sherman. Only the room seemed smaller\nthan it did three years before, and close to the table with the\near-trumpet, at one side of the fireplace before the arm-chair, was a\nnew threadbare patch in the carpet.\n\nSherman recalled how in this room he and Mary Carton had sat in winter\nby the fire, building castles in the air for each other. So deeply\nmeditating was he that she came in and stood unnoticed beside him.\n\n\u201cJohn,\u201d she said at last, \u201cit is a great pleasure to see you so soon\nagain. Are you doing well in London?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have left London.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you married, then? You must introduce me to your wife.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall never be married to Miss Leland.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe has preferred another\u2014my friend William Howard. I have come here\nto tell you something, Mary.\u201d He went and stood close to her and took\nher hand tenderly. \u201cI have always been very fond of you. Often in\nLondon, when I was trying to think of another kind of life, I used to\nsee this fireside and you sitting beside it, where we used to sit and\ntalk about the future. Mary\u2014Mary,\u201d he held her hand in both his\u2014\u201cyou\nwill be my wife?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou do not love me, John,\u201d she answered, drawing herself away. \u201cYou\nhave come to me because you think it your duty. I have had nothing but\nduty all my life.\u201d\n\n\u201cListen,\u201d he said. \u201cI was very miserable; I invited Howard to stay with\nus. One morning I found a note on the smoking-room table to say that\nMargaret had accepted him, and I have come here to ask you to marry me.\nI never cared for any one else.\u201d\n\nHe found himself speaking hurriedly, as though anxious to get the\nwords said and done with. It now seemed to him that he had done ill\nin this matter of Miss Leland. He had not before thought of it\u2014his\nmind had always been busy with other things. Mary Carton looked at him\nwonderingly.\n\n\u201cJohn,\u201d she said at last, \u201cdid you ask Mr. Howard to stay with you on\npurpose to get him to fall in love with Miss Leland, or to give you an\nexcuse for breaking off your engagement, as you knew he flirted with\nevery one?\u201d\n\n\u201cMargaret seems very fond of him. I think they are made for each\nother,\u201d he answered.\n\n\u201cDid you ask him to London on purpose?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I will tell you,\u201d he faltered. \u201cI was very miserable. I had\ndrifted into this engagement I don\u2019t know how. Margaret glitters and\nglitters and glitters, but she is not of my kind. I suppose I thought,\nlike a fool, I should marry some one who was rich. I found out soon\nthat I loved nobody but you. I got to be always thinking of you and\nof this town. Then I heard that Howard had lost his curacy, and asked\nhim up. I just left them alone and did not go near Margaret much. I\nknew they were made for each other. Do not let us talk of them,\u201d he\ncontinued, eagerly. \u201cLet us talk about the future. I will take a farm\nand turn farmer. I dare say my uncle will not give me anything when he\ndies because I have left his office. He will call me a ne\u2019er-do-weel,\nand say I would squander it. But you and I\u2014we will get married, will\nwe not? We will be very happy,\u201d he went on, pleadingly. \u201cYou will still\nhave your charities, and I shall be busy with my farm. We will surround\nourselves with a wall. The world will be on the outside, and on the\ninside we and our peaceful lives.\u201d\n\n\u201cWait,\u201d she said; \u201cI will give you your answer,\u201d and going into the\nnext room returned with several bundles of letters. She laid them on\nthe table; some were white and new, some slightly yellow with time.\n\n\u201cJohn,\u201d she said, growing very pale, \u201chere are all the letters you\never wrote me from your earliest boyhood.\u201d She took one of the large\ncandles from the mantlepiece, and, lighting it, placed it on the\nhearth. Sherman wondered what she was going to do with it. \u201cI will tell\nyou,\u201d she went on, \u201cwhat I had thought to carry to the grave unspoken.\nI have loved you for a long time. When you came and told me you were\ngoing to be married to another I forgave you, for man\u2019s love is like\nthe wind, and I prayed that God might bless you both.\u201d She leant down\nover the candle, her face pale and contorted with emotion. \u201cAll these\nletters after that grew very sacred. Since we were never to be married\nthey grew a portion of my life, separated from everything and every\none\u2014a something apart and holy. I re-read them all, and arranged them\nin little bundles according to their dates, and tied them with thread.\nNow I and you\u2014we have nothing to do with each other any more.\u201d\n\nShe held the bundle of letters in the flame. He got up from his\nseat. She motioned him away imperiously. He looked at the flame in a\nbewildered way. The letters fell in little burning fragments about the\nhearth. It was all like a terrible dream. He watched those steady\nfingers hold letter after letter in the candle flame, and watched the\ncandle burning on like a passion in the grey daylight of universal\nexistence. A draught from under the door began blowing the ash about\nthe room. The voice said\u2014\n\n\u201cYou tried to marry a rich girl. You did not love her, but knew she was\nrich. You tired of her as you tire of so many things, and behaved to\nher most wrongly, most wickedly and treacherously. When you were jilted\nyou came again to me and to the idleness of this little town. We had\nall hoped great things of you. You seemed good and honest.\u201d\n\n\u201cI loved you all along,\u201d he cried. \u201cIf you would marry me we would\nbe very happy. I loved you all along,\u201d he repeated\u2014this helplessly,\nseveral times over. The bird shook a shower of seed on his shoulder. He\npicked one of them from the collar of his coat and turned it over in\nhis fingers mechanically. \u201cI loved you all along.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have done no duty that came to you. You have tired of everything\nyou should cling to; and now you have come to this little town because\nhere is idleness and irresponsibility.\u201d\n\nThe last letter lay in ashes on the hearth. She blew out the candle,\nand replaced it among the photographs on the mantlepiece, and stood\nthere as calm as a portion of the marble.\n\n\u201cJohn, our friendship is over\u2014it has been burnt in the candle.\u201d\n\nHe started forward, his mind full of appeals half-stifled with despair,\non his lips gathered incoherent words: \u201cShe will be happy with Howard.\nThey were made for each other. I slipped into it. I always thought I\nshould marry some one who was rich. I never loved any one but you. I\ndid not know I loved you at first. I thought about you always. You are\nthe root of my life.\u201d\n\nSteps were heard outside the door at the end of a passage. Mary Carton\nwent to the door and called. The steps turned and came nearer. With a\ngreat effort Sherman controlled himself. The door opened, and a tall,\nslight girl of twelve came into the room. A strong smell of garden\nmould rose from a basket in her hands. Sherman recognized the child who\nhad given him tea that evening in the schoolhouse three years before.\n\n\u201cHave you finished weeding the carrots?\u201d said Mary Carton.\n\n\u201cYes, Miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you are to weed the small bed under the pear-tree by the\ntool-house. Do not go yet, child. This is Mr. Sherman. Sit down a\nlittle.\u201d\n\nThe child sat down on the corner of a chair with a scared look in her\neyes. Suddenly she said\u2014\n\n\u201cOh, what a lot of burnt paper!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes; I have been burning some old letters.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think,\u201d said John, \u201cI will go now.\u201d Without a word of farewell he\nwent out, almost groping his way.\n\nHe had lost the best of all the things he held dear. Twice he had gone\nthrough the fire. The first time worldly ambition left him, on the\nsecond love. An hour before the air had been full of singing and peace\nthat was resonant like joy. Now he saw standing before his Eden the\nangel with the flaming sword. All the hope he had ever gathered about\nhim had taken itself off, and the naked soul shivered.\n\n\nIV.\n\nThe road under his feet felt gritty and barren. He hurried away from\nthe town. It was late afternoon. Trees cast bands of shadow across the\nroad. He walked rapidly as if pursued. About a mile to the south of\nthe town he came on a large wood bordering the road and surrounding\na deserted house. Some local rich man once lived there, now it was\ngiven over to a caretaker who lived in two rooms in the back part. Men\nwere at work cutting down trees in two or three parts of the wood.\nMany places were quite bare. A mass of ruins\u2014a covered well, and\nthe wreckage of castle wall\u2014that that had been roofed with green\nfor centuries lifted themselves up, bare as anatomies. The sight\nintensified, by some strange sympathy, his sorrow, and he hurried away\nas from a thing accursed of God.\n\nThe road led to the foot of a mountain, topped by a cairn supposed\nin popular belief to be the grave of Maeve, Mab of the fairies, and\nconsidered by antiquarians to mark the place where certain prisoners\nwere executed in legendary times as sacrifices to the moon.\n\nHe began to climb the mountain. The sun was on the rim of the sea. It\nstayed there without moving, for as he ascended he saw an ever-widening\ncircle of water.\n\nHe threw himself down upon the cairn. The sun sank under the sea. The\nDonegal headlands mixed with the surrounding blue. The stars grew out\nof heaven.\n\nSometimes he got up and walked to and fro. Hours passed. The stars,\nthe streams down in the valley, the wind moving among the boulders,\nthe various unknown creatures rustling in the silence\u2014all these were\ncontained within themselves, fulfilling their law, content to be alone,\ncontent to be with others, having the peace of God or the peace of the\nbirds of prey. He only did not fulfil his law; something that was not\nhe, that was not nature, that was not God, had made him and her he\nloved its tools. Hope, memory, tradition, conformity, had been laying\nwaste their lives. As he thought this the night seemed to crush him\nwith its purple foot. Hour followed hour. At midnight he started up,\nhearing a faint murmur of clocks striking the hour in the distant town.\nHis face and hands were wet with tears, his clothes saturated with dew.\n\nHe turned homeward, hurriedly flying from the terrible firmament.\nWhat had this glimmering and silence to do with him\u2014this luxurious\npresent? He belonged to the past and the future. With pace somewhat\nslackened, because of the furze, he came down into the valley. Along\nthe northern horizon moved a perpetual dawn, travelling eastward as the\nnight advanced. Once, as he passed a marsh near a lime-kiln, a number\nof small birds rose chirruping from where they had been clinging among\nthe reeds. Once, standing still for a moment where two roads crossed on\na hill-side, he looked out over the dark fields. A white stone rose in\nthe middle of a field, a score of yards in front of him. He knew the\nplace well; it was an ancient burying-ground. He looked at the stone,\nand suddenly filled by that terror of the darkness children feel, began\nagain his hurried walk.\n\nHe re-entered Ballah by the southern side. In passing he looked at the\nrectory. To his surprise a light burned in the drawing-room. He stood\nstill. The dawn was brightening towards the east, but all round him\nwas darkness, seeming the more intense to his eyes for their being\nfresh from the unshaded fields. In the midst of this darkness shone\nthe lighted window. He went over to the gate and looked in. The room\nwas empty. He was about to turn away when he noticed a white figure\nstanding close to the gate. The latch creaked and the gate moved slowly\non its hinges.\n\n\u201cJohn,\u201d said a trembling voice, \u201cI have been praying, and a light has\ncome to me. I wished you to be ambitious\u2014to go away and do something\nin the world. You did badly, and my poor pride was wounded. You do not\nknow how much I had hoped from you; but it was all pride\u2014all pride and\nfoolishness. You love me. I ask no more. We need each other; the rest\nis with God.\u201d\n\nShe took his hand in hers, and began caressing it. \u201cWe have been\nshipwrecked. Our goods have been cast into the sea.\u201d Something in her\nvoice told of the emotion that divides the love of woman from the love\nof man. She looked upon him whom she loved as full of a helplessness\nthat needed protection, a reverberation of the feeling of the mother\nfor the child at the breast.\n\n\n\n\nDHOYA.\n\n\nI.\n\nLong ago, before the earliest stone of the pyramids was laid, before\nthe Bo tree of Buddha unrolled its first leaf, before a Japanese had\npainted on a temple wall the horse that every evening descended and\ntrampled the rice-fields, before the ravens of Thor had eaten their\nfirst worm together, there lived a man of giant stature and of giant\nstrength named Dhoya. One evening Fomorian galleys had entered the Bay\nof the Red Cataract, now the Bay of Ballah, and there deserted him.\nThough he rushed into the water and hurled great stones after them\nthey were out of reach. From earliest childhood the Fomorians had held\nhim captive and compelled him to toil at the oar, but when his strength\nhad come his fits of passion made him a terror to all on board.\nSometimes he would tear the seats of the galley from their places, at\nothers drive the rowers to some corner where, trembling, they would\nwatch him pacing to and fro till the passion left him. \u201cThe demons,\u201d\nthey said, \u201chave made him their own.\u201d So they enticed him on shore,\nhe having on his head a mighty stone pitcher to fill with water, and\ndeserted him.\n\nWhen the last sail had dropped over the rim of the world he rose from\nwhere he had flung himself down on the sands and paced through the\nforests eastward. After a time he reached that lake among the mountains\nwhere in later times Dermot drove down four stakes and made thereon a\nplatform with four flags in the centre for a hearth, and placed over\nall a roof of wicker and skins, and hid his Grania, islanded thereon.\nStill eastward he went, what is now Bulban on one side, Cope\u2019s mountain\non the other, until at last he threw himself at full length in a deep\ncavern and slept. Henceforward he made this cavern his lair, issuing\nforth to hunt the deer or the bears or the mountain oxen. Slowly the\nyears went by, his fits of fury growing more and more frequent, though\nthere was no one but his own shadow to rave against. When his fury was\non him even the bats and owls, and the brown toads that crept out of\nthe grass at twilight would hide themselves\u2014even the bats and owls and\nthe brown toads. These he had made his friends, and let them crawl and\nperch about him, for at times he would be very gentle, and they too\nwere sullen and silent\u2014the outcasts from they knew not what. But most\nof all, things placid and beautiful feared him. He would watch for\nhours, hidden in the leaves, to reach his hand out slowly and carefully\nat last, and seize and crush some glittering halcyon.\n\nSlowly the years went by and human face he never saw, but sometimes,\nwhen the gentle mood was on him and it was twilight, a presence seemed\nto float invisibly by him and sigh softly, and once or twice he awoke\nfrom sleep with the sensation of a finger having rested for a moment\non his forehead, and would mutter a prayer to the moon before turning\nto sleep again\u2014the moon that glimmered through the door of his cave.\n\u201cO moon,\u201d he would say, \u201cthat wandereth in the blue cave, more white\nthan the beard of Partholan, whose years were five hundred, sullen and\nsolitary, sleeping only on the floor of the sea: keep me from the evil\nspirits of the islands of the lake southward beyond the mountains, and\nthe evil spirits of the caves northward beyond the mountains, and the\nevil spirits who wave their torches by the mouth of the river eastward\nbeyond the valley, and the evil spirits of the pools westward beyond\nthe mountains, and I will offer you a bear and a deer in full horn,\nO solitary of the cave divine, and if any have done you wrong I will\navenge you.\u201d\n\nGradually, however, he began to long for this mysterious touch.\n\nAt times he would make journeys into distant parts, and once the\nmountain oxen gathered together, proud of their overwhelming numbers\nand their white horns, and followed him with great bellowing westward,\nhe being laden with their tallest, well-nigh to his cave, and would\nhave gored him, but, pacing into a pool of the sea to his shoulders, he\nsaw them thunder away, losing him in the darkness. The place where he\nstood is called Pooldhoya to this day.\n\nSo the years went slowly by, and ever deeper and deeper came his\nmoodiness, and more often his fits of wrath. Once in his gloom he paced\nthe forests for miles, now this way now that, until, returning in the\ntwilight, he found himself standing on a cliff southward of the lake\nthat was southward of the mountains. The moon was rising. The sound\nof the swaying of reeds floated from beneath, and the twittering of\nthe flocks of reed-wrens who love to cling on the moving stems. It was\nthe hour of votaries. He turned to the moon, then hurriedly gathered\na pile of leaves and branches, and making a fire cast thereon wild\nstrawberries and the fruit of the quicken tree. As the smoke floated\nupwards a bar of faint purple clouds drifted over the moon\u2019s face\u2014a\nrefusal of the sacrifice. Hurrying through the surrounding woods he\nfound an owl sleeping in the hollow of a tree, and returning cast him\non the fire. Still the clouds gathered. Again he searched the woods.\nThis time a badger was uselessly cast among the flames. Time after\ntime he came and went, sometimes returning immediately with some live\nthing, at others not till the fire had almost burnt itself out. Deer,\nwild swine, birds, all to no purpose. Higher and higher he piled the\nburning branches, the flames and the smoke waved and circled like\nthe lash of a giant\u2019s whip. Gradually the nearer islands passed the\nrosy colour on to their more distant brethren. The reed-wrens of the\nfurthest reed beds disturbed amid their sleep must have wondered at\nthe red gleam reflected in each other\u2019s eyes. Useless his night-long\ntoil; the clouds covered the moon\u2019s face more and more, until, when the\nlong fire lash was at its brightest, they drowned her completely in a\nsurge of unbroken mist. Raging against the fire he scattered with his\nstaff the burning branches, and trampled in his fury the sacrificial\nembers beneath his feet. Suddenly a voice in the surrounding darkness\ncalled him softly by name. He turned. For years no articulate voice had\nsounded in his ears. It seemed to rise from the air just beneath the\nverge of the precipice. Holding by a hazel bush he leaned out, and for\na moment it seemed to him the form of a beautiful woman floated faintly\nbefore him, but changed as he watched to a little cloud of vapour;\nand from the nearest of the haunted islands there came assuredly a\nwhiff of music. Then behind him in the forest said the voice, \u201cDhoya,\nmy beloved.\u201d He rushed in pursuit; something white was moving before\nhim. He stretched out his hand; it was only a mass of white campion\ntrembling in the morning breeze, for an ashen morning was just touching\nthe mists on the eastern mountains. Beginning suddenly to tremble with\nsupernatural fear Dhoya paced homewards. Everything was changed; dark\nshadows seemed to come and go, and elfin chatter to pass upon the\nbreeze. But when he reached the shelter of the pine woods all was still\nas of old. He slackened his speed. Those solemn pine-trees soothed him\nwith their vast unsociability\u2014many and yet each one alone. Once or\ntwice, when in some glade further than usual from its kind arose some\npine-tree larger than the rest, he paused with bowed head to mutter an\nuncouth prayer to that dark outlaw. But when issuing once more, as he\nneared his cave, into the region of mountain ash and hazel the voices\nseemed again to come and go, and the shadows to circle round him, and\nonce a voice said, he imagined, in accents faint and soft as falling\ndew, \u201cDhoya, my beloved.\u201d But a few yards from the cave all grew\nsuddenly silent.\n\n\nII.\n\nSlower and slower he went, with his eyes on the ground, bewildered\nby all that was happening. A few feet from the cave he stood still,\ncounting aimlessly the round spots of light made by the beams slanting\nthrough trees that hid with their greenness, as in the centre of the\nsea, that hollow rock. As over and over he counted them, he heard,\nfirst with the ear only, then with the mind also, a footstep going\nto and fro within the cave. Lifting his eyes he saw the same figure\nseen on the cliff\u2014the figure of a woman, beautiful and young. Her\ndress was white, save for a border of feathers dyed the fatal red of\nthe spirits. She had arranged in one corner the spears, and in the\nother the brushwood and branches used for the fire, and spread upon\nthe ground the skins, and now began pulling vainly at the great stone\npitcher of the Fomorians.\n\nSuddenly she saw him, and with a burst of wild laughter flung her arms\naround his neck, crying, \u201cDhoya, I have left my world far off. My\npeople\u2014on the floor of the lake they are dancing and singing, and on\nthe islands of the lake; always happy, always young, always without\nchange. I have left them for thee, Dhoya, for they cannot love. Only\nthe changing, and moody, and angry, and weary can love. I am beautiful;\nlove me, Dhoya. Do you hear me? I left the places where they dance,\nDhoya, for thee!\u201d For long she poured out a tide of words, he answering\nat first little, then more and more as she melted away the silence of\nso many inarticulate years; and all the while she gazed on him with\neyes, no ardour could rob of the mild and mysterious melancholy that\nwatches us from the eyes of animals\u2014sign of unhuman reveries.\n\nMany days passed over these strangely wedded ones. Sometimes when he\nasked her, \u201cDo you love me?\u201d she would answer, \u201cI do not know, but\nI long for your love endlessly.\u201d Often at twilight, returning from\nhunting, he would find her bending over a stream that flowed near to\nthe cave, decking her hair with feathers and reddening her lips with\nthe juice of a wild berry.\n\nHe was very happy secluded in that deep forest. Hearing the faint\nmurmurs of the western sea, they seemed to have outlived change. But\nChange is everywhere, with the tides and the stars fastened to her\nwheel. Every blood drop in their lips, every cloud in the sky, every\nleaf in the world changed a little, while they brushed back their hair\nand kissed. All things change save only the fear of change. And yet\nfor his hour Dhoya was happy and as full of dreams as an old man or an\ninfant\u2014for dreams wander nearest to the grave and the cradle.\n\nOnce, as he was returning home from hunting, by the northern edge of\nthe lake, at the hour when the owls cry to each other, \u201cIt is time to\nbe abroad,\u201d and the last flutter of the wind has died away, leaving\nunder every haunted island an image legible to the least hazel branch,\nthere suddenly stood before him a slight figure, at the edge of the\nnarrow sand-line, dark against the glowing water. Dhoya drew nearer.\nIt was a man leaning on his spear-staff, on his head a small red cap.\nHis spear was slender and tipped with shining metal; the spear of Dhoya\nof wood, one end pointed and hardened in the fire. The red-capped\nstranger silently raised that slender spear and thrust at Dhoya, who\nparried with his pointed staff.\n\nFor a long while they fought. The last vestige of sunset passed away\nand the stars came out. Underneath them the feet of Dhoya beat up the\nground, but the feet of the other as he rushed hither and thither,\nmatching his agility with the mortal\u2019s mighty strength, made neither\nshadow nor footstep on the sands. Dhoya was wounded, and growing weary\na little, when the other leaped away, and, crouching down by the water,\nbegan\u2014\u201cYou have carried away by some spell unknown the most beautiful\nof our bands\u2014you who have neither laughter nor singing. Restore her,\nDhoya, and go free.\u201d Dhoya answered him no word, and the other rose\nand again thrust at him with the spear. They fought to and fro upon\nthe sands until the dawn touched with olive the distant sky, and then\nhis anger fit, long absent, fell on Dhoya, and he closed with his\nenemy and threw him, and put his knee on his chest and his hands on his\nthroat, and would have crushed all life out of him, when lo! he held\nbeneath his knee no more than a bundle of reeds.\n\nNearing home in the early morning he heard the voice he loved, singing\u2014\n\n  \u201cFull moody is my love and sad,\n     His moods bow low his sombre crest,\n   I hold him dearer than the glad,\n     And he shall slumber on my breast.\n\n  \u201cMy love hath many an evil mood\n     Ill words for all things soft and fair,\n   I hold him dearer than the good,\n     My fingers feel his amber hair.\n\n  \u201cNo tender wisdom floods the eyes\n     That watch me with their suppliant light\u2014\n   I hold him dearer than the wise,\n     And for him make me wise and bright.\u201d\n\nAnd when she saw him she cried, \u201cAn old mortal song heard\nfloating from a tent of skin, as we rode, I and mine, through a\ncamping-place at night.\u201d From that day she was always either singing\nwild and melancholy songs or else watching him with that gaze of animal\nreverie.\n\nOnce he asked, \u201cHow old are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cA thousand years, for I am young.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am so little to you,\u201d he went on, \u201cand you are so much to me\u2014dawn,\nand sunset, tranquility, and speech, and solitude.\u201d\n\n\u201cAm I so much?\u201d she said; \u201csay it many times!\u201d and her eyes seemed to\nbrighten and her breast heaved with joy.\n\nOften he would bring her the beautiful skins of animals, and she would\nwalk to and fro on them, laughing to feel their softness under her\nfeet. Sometimes she would pause and ask suddenly, \u201cWill you weep for me\nwhen we have parted?\u201d and he would answer, \u201cI will die then;\u201d and she\nwould go on rubbing her feet to and fro in the soft skin.\n\nAnd so Dhoya grew tranquil and gentle, and Change seemed still to\nhave forgotten them, having so much on her hands. The stars rose and\nset watching them smiling together, and the tides ebbed and flowed,\nbringing mutability to all save them. But always everything changes,\nsave only the fear of Change.\n\n\nIII.\n\nOne evening as they sat in the inner portion of the cave, watching\nthrough the opening the paling of the sky and the darkening of the\nleaves, and counting the budding stars, Dhoya suddenly saw stand before\nhim the dark outline of him he fought on the lake sand, and heard at\nthe same instant his companion sigh.\n\nThe stranger approached a little, and said, \u201cDhoya we have fought\nheretofore, and now I have come to play chess against thee, for well\nthou knowest, dear to the perfect warrior after war is chess.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it,\u201d answered Dhoya.\n\n\u201cAnd when we have played, Dhoya, we will name the stake.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo not play,\u201d whispered his companion at his side.\n\nBut Dhoya, being filled with his anger fit at the sight of his enemy,\nanswered, \u201cI will play, and I know well the stake you mean, and I name\nthis for mine, that I may again have my knee on your chest and my hands\non your throat, and that you will not again change into a bundle of wet\nreeds.\u201d His companion lay down on a skin and began to cry a little.\n\nDhoya felt sure of winning. He had often played in his boyhood, before\nthe time of his anger fits, with his masters of the galley; and\nbesides, he could always return to his hands and his weapons once more.\n\nNow the floor of the cave was of smooth, white sand, brought from\nthe sea-shore in his great Fomorian pitcher, to make it soft for his\nbeloved to walk upon; before it had been, as it now is, of rough clay.\nOn this sand the red-capped stranger marked out with his spear-point\na chess-board, and marked with rushes, crossed and recrossed each\nalternate square, fixing each end of the rush in the sand, until a\ncomplete board was finished of white and green squares, and then drew\nfrom a bag large chess-men of mingled wood and silver. Two or three\nwould have made an armful for a child. Standing each at his end they\nbegan to play. The game did not last long. No matter how carefully\nDhoya played, each move went against him. At last, leaping back from\nthe board he cried, \u201cI have lost!\u201d The two spirits were standing\ntogether at the entrance. Dhoya seized his spear, but slowly the\nfigures began to fade, first a star and then the leaves showed through\ntheir forms. Soon all had vanished away.\n\nThen, realizing his loss, he threw himself on the ground, and rolling\nhither and thither, roared like a wild beast. All night long he lay on\nthe ground, and all the next day till nightfall. He had crumbled his\nstaff unconsciously between his fingers into small pieces, and now,\nfull of dull rage, arose and went forth westward. In a ravine of the\nnorthern mountain he came on the tracks of wild horses. Soon one passed\nhim fearlessly, knowing nothing of man. The pointed end of his staff\nhe still carried. He drove it deep in the flank, making a long wound,\nsending the horse rushing with short screams down the mountain. Other\nhorses passed him one by one, driven southward by a cold wind laden\nwith mist, arisen in the night-time. Towards the end of the ravine\nstood one black and huge, the leader of the herd. Dhoya leaped on his\nback with a loud cry that sent a raven circling from the neighbouring\ncliff, and the horse, after vainly seeking to throw him, rushed off\ntowards the north-west, over the heights of the mountains where the\nmists floated. The moon, clear sometimes of the flying clouds, from low\ndown in the south-east, cast a pale and mutable light, making their\nshadow rise before them on the mists, as though they pursued some\ncolossal demon, sombre on his black charger. Then leaving the heights\nthey rushed wildly down that valley where, in far later times, Dermot\nhid in a deep cavern his Grania, and passed the stream where Muadhan,\ntheir savage servant, caught fish for them on a hook baited with a\nquicken berry. On over the plains, on northward, mile after mile, the\nwild gigantic horse leaping cliff and chasm in his terrible race; on\nuntil the mountains of what is now Donegal rose before them\u2014over these\namong the clouds, driving rain blowing in their faces from the sea,\nDhoya knowing not whither he went, or why he rode. On\u2014the stones\nloosened by the hoofs rumbling down into the valleys\u2014till far in\nthe distance he saw the sea, a thousand feet below him; then, fixing\nhis eyes thereon, and using the spear-point as a goad, he roused his\nblack horse into redoubled speed, and with a wild leap horse and rider\nplunged headlong into the Western Sea.\n\nSometimes the cotters on the mountains of Donegal hear on windy nights\na sudden sound of horses\u2019 hoofs, and say to each other, \u201cThere goes\nDhoya.\u201d And at the same hour men say if any be abroad in the valleys\nthey see a huge shadow rushing along the mountain.\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n\n  The Gresham Press,\n  UNWIN BROTHERS\n  CHILWORTH AND LONDON.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Note:\n\nThe table of contents has been added by the transcriber.","title":"John Sherman; and, Dhoya","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":24728}