The Man Who Understood Women and Other Stories/The Laurels and the Lady

by Leonard Merrick

 

THE LAURELS AND THE LADY

I

When Willy Childers was sent to the Cape, he went to the last country on the face of the habitable globe to which he was suited. It is certainly a question whether he would have made a success of life anywhere, but at the Cape he was so much out of place that he became conspicuous. In Paris, when he had learnt the language, he would at least have felt at home; he would have drifted by slow degrees into a congenial set in London. But on the Diamond Fields, a young man who hoped to be a poet, and who already wrote verse, was an incongruity that defies comparison.

To give him his due, he was conscious that his presence was absurd there and justified the chaff that it received, and he loathed the "Fields" with a deeper loathing than any other member of its perspiring population. But he could not go to the length of altering his nature and becoming brisk and enterprising, nor did he want to do that. It was not with his nature, but with his environment that he found fault. "Lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share," and he was full of confidence that his "mellow metres" were going to make him celebrated one day. He would rather have been left in peace with plenty of stationery than have had the business of any broker in the Market.

It was as a broker that he began. His uncle, Blake Somerset, was the manager of the Fortunatus Mining Company in Bultfontein; and when Willy came down from Oxford, Somerset wrote, to the Dulwich villa, that, "now all that damned University foolishness was over, the boy had better buckle to and try to make a living."

It must be conceded that Willy had not distinguished himself at Oxford, and displayed no ability for any of the recognised professions.

All the same, the suggestion that he should buckle to in South Africa sounded to him preposterous. Dimly he had had visions of being called to the Bar and obtaining pleasant chambers where he could write poetry all day without being disturbed. But he had reckoned without his mother, without her faith in her brother's judgment. The letter had made a strong impression on her mind, and at the idea of its being scouted she both showed temper and shed tears. The lady's antecedents and sympathies were commercial. She, too, had felt Brasenose to be foolishness—indeed, she had felt the adjective which she might not use; and the possession of a son who seemed content to roam about the garden with a book of Rossetti's, or Walter Pater's, and who confessed that he didn't know the multiplication-table, was causing her considerable disquietude. She wondered if there had been any eccentricity in the past "on poor dear Robert's side."

Yes, the maternal view was different from Willy's. She retracted her suggestion that he should read for the Bar—it had been but a half-hearted compromise when she made it—and declared that the Cape offered far finer prospects. She decided that it was just the plan "to take the nonsense out of him"; and she answered her brother to the effect that his nephew would sail in two or three weeks' time, though she refrained from explaining to him what kind of young man his nephew was.

Somerset was not long in finding it out. He himself looked like a farmer—or as one expects a farmer to look. He had a big red face, and a loud laugh, and was powerfully framed. His biceps might have been a gymnast's. Willy was a disappointment the moment he alighted from the train, being slightly built and consumptive-looking. And he had no conception of business: that was evident in their initial conversation. Without a suspicion as yet of the young fellow's tendencies, Somerset felt instinctively there was something wrong with him. The ignorance of things that he ought to have known might be excused in remembering the kind of training that he had had; but there was something worse than ignorance; there seemed to be a hint of incapacity. Not only had he no ideas about making money, he didn't appear interested or intelligent in the matter—a fact which promised no brilliant future for him, considering that all he would have at the widow's death was three or four hundred a year,

Nevertheless, being responsible for his coming, Blake Somerset did his best for his relative, in a rough way.

"Look here," he said, after a few days, "I think broking will be about your mark here, youngster. You ought to earn ten or twelve pounds a week at it, if you're smart. I'll take you round the Market to-morrow and introduce you."

Willy replied that he was much obliged.

"What do I do?" he inquired.

"Do? You sell the stones! You go into the dealers' offices every morning and ask for parcels, and then you cut about into all the other dealers' and show 'em. It's a pity you don't know anything about a diamond, but you'll soon pick a smattering up. And you're always safe to say 'I've a nice little lot that will just suit you.’"

The description was not very attractive to the Oxford man; but being already uncomfortably conscious that his uncle did not think much of him, he made a gallant attempt to simulate an alacrity that he couldn't feel.

The introductions were duly effected, and, having procured a licence, Willy embarked on his career as a diamond broker without delay. He was equipped with a morocco-leather satchel, furnished with many pockets and designed to carry all the "parcels" that were to be entrusted to him.

But he did not get any. He hadn't effrontery enough. When he made his applications he asked as briefly as possible if there was anything for him, and slunk out mortified as soon as the man said "no." This though he did not fail to observe that his more experienced competitors entered with a cheery greeting, an air of confidence, and sometimes "Such a good story! I must tell you, Mr. Meyerstein!" which proved much more effectual. Half an hour after the Market opened he had repeated his dreary formula vainly in every doorway in the street. Then he returned to his hotel, and dreamed of fame and England. His uncle, hearing of his speedy withdrawal, told him that it wouldn't do. If he wished to succeed, he must remain on the scene and manage to look as if he were succeeding. Willy, with a heavy heart, took the hint; and from ten o'clock till four henceforward, with the thermometer at a hundred degrees in the shade, he bustled round and round the crooked little flaring road, vaunting his empty satchel as if he were very busy indeed. But the pretence did not seem to impress any of the dealers, who sat in their shirt-sleeves, behind the wide windows, weighing diamonds in lack-lustre scales; and when he called, they always replied that they "weren't sending anything out this morning," just the same.

At last Somerset wrote to his sister that her boy had better return to Dulwich. He said wittily that there was "no opening on the Fields for poets"—he had discovered Willy's bent by this time—and warned her that living was expensive there; the future Laureate would loaf more cheaply at home. Mrs. Childers replied that she felt such surroundings to be desirable for the formation of her son's character. He had no father, and a young man who did not seem to have any proper ambition would be a great responsibility for her to cope with alone. Perhaps by-and-by Blake might be able to put him into "a clerkship or something" that would enable him to keep himself decently? In the meanwhile, the extra expense would not amount to so much as his passage would cost! Somerset, who had lost all interest in his nephew, accordingly looked about, and presently contrived to obtain a post for him; and Willy went into the Magistrate's Court at Du Toit's Pan, to keep the Criminal Record, and take affidavits of assault and other offences, at a salary of three pounds a week.

That had been two years ago; and, as if to justify his uncle's poor opinion of him, he was a clerk in the same place still.

This afternoon he sat idly before his desk in the sweltering office, and gazed through the bars of the open window at two or three Kaffir prisoners in charge of a police serjeant, waiting till their names were called. They had their backs against a wall, and their feet in the thick, hot dust. Through the door that communicated with the shed-like court, he could hear the droning tones of the assistant magistrate disposing of the case in hand.

Presently the voice of the interpreter, shouting "Jan Sixpence! Piccanini! Tom Fool!" proclaimed the turn of the negroes outside. The Serjeant gave them a push, and they moved forward apathetically, drawing their blankets closer about their skinny thighs. The baking wall and the glare of dust were all that was left to see. Childers closed his eyes wearily—his sight had been troubling him of late—and leant back in his chair, wondering if life had any surprise in store for him—if anybody else on earth was so entirely wretched.

His faith in himself had deserted him by now, and he no longer foresaw himself a celebrity. He was very young indeed for confidence to have gone, but he was not naturally self-reliant, and it had been chaffed out of him. He was sick with a longing for sympathy—quite the last thing attainable here. In truth, he presented one of the most pathetic figures that the world displays, though he was regarded in the camp as cutting a ludicrous one, for while he experienced all the emotions of genius, his Vesuvius brought forth a mouse; he was in temperament an artist, and in destiny a clerk. His verse was disgraceful; at times—much more rarely than he knew—there was a flash of something better than grace in it; but in the force to set him free from the environment that crushed him it was lacking. He flapped feeble wings, like Sterne's starling in its cage, crying, "I can't get out!"

The interpreter brought in the list, for the misdemeanours and sentences to be entered in the record.

"Good-afternoon, Massa Childers; I'm gwine home."

"Good-afternoon, Mukasa."

II

It was a quarter to five. Mr. Shepherd, the assistant magistrate—a young man with a pink-and-white complexion, who had grown a beard in order to make himself look older—consulted his watch and yawned.

"Heigho, poet!"

"Tired, sir?"

"Tired and dry. Well have a liquor as soon as we shut the shop. By the bye, the mail's in."

The assistant magistrate was always among the first to know when the mail was in, being engaged to a girl in England. Later on she would make her home here, and cry to be back in Clapham.

Childers was also interested in the arrival of the mail. He had submitted his volume of poems four months since to perhaps the only firm of publishers left for it to go to, and it was within the bounds of possibility that there might be a line by this time conveying their "regrets."

"Are they delivering yet?" he asked.

"I didn't hear," said Mr. Shepherd; "my letters always come to the Club. I say, are you going to the theatre to-night?"

"Not to-night. Of course I shall go some evening or other. But I expect all to-night's seats are gone."

"No, they say there are still some left to fight for at the doors. All the best ones are gone, you bet—two pounds each!"

"Great Scott! Better than clerking—eh?"

"Better than trying niggers in the Pan, too," said the assistant magistrate. "Did you ever see her at home?"

Willy shook his head.

"Have you?"

"I saw her once, yes—in my last holiday. I don't know French, but I shall never forget it as long as I live—no kid! She is the greatest actress in the world; she turns you inside out."

"I wish she played in English," said Willy, firing his pipe; "she might just as well—they say she speaks it fluently. Have you got a match, baas?

Rose Duchêne had been tempted to Kimberley. There had been an excited rumour of her coming the year previous, but the negotiations fell through, and there was nothing better than a prize-fight on the border of the Orange Free State, ow the famous actress had actually arrived. The local papers had been teeming for weeks with all the anecdotes of her that had been worn threadbare in Paris and London a decade and more ago. Her eccentricities, her extravagance, her pet tiger-cub, and her eighty thousand pounds' worth of dresses—the public read the stories all over again, and enjoyed them. Such of the stores as sold photographs had crowded their windows with her likenesses, and the walls of the corrugated-iron theatre, and the bar beside it were placarded with the name of Rosa Duchêne in letters five feet long. Every editor on the Fields had rushed in person to interview her; and this morning's Independent detailed her "impressions" of the place, which she had artlessly declared seemed to her to contain a larger number of handsome men and pretty women than any other city of its size that she had seen. Even Rosa Duchênes cannot afford to neglect such "impressions."

Willy lit his pipe, and puffed at it with a sudden sense of pleasure. Yes, he would go this evening, if he could get in! It would be an emotion tasted earlier than he had expected it. Did Mr. Shepherd mean to go?

Ted Shepherd said that he did. The five-shilling seats were quite good enough for him, and they would go together if Willy liked. He glanced at his watch again, and started.

"The devil!" he exclaimed, "we've stopped five minutes too long. Come on, poet, we'll go and have that drink."

They picked up their wideawakes hurriedly, and strolled into the Club.

The boy behind the bar had fallen asleep and was dozing as peacefully as the flies allowed, for work in the mines did not conclude till "sundown" and the Club was almost deserted at this hour. The only members visible were a digger, whose enterprise had terminated by reason of exhausted capital, and a law-agent without any clients, and a medical man who had many patients but rarely received his fees.

The civil servants had brandy-and-soda, and the assistant magistrate played with the dice-box.

"I'll shake you who pays for both to-night, if you like, poet," he said,

Willy nodded, and won, and ordered fresh brandy-and-soda to celebrate his victory.

They had scarcely swallowed it when they became aware of an angry mutter, mingling with the whir of the buckets and the throbbing of engines across the road—a clamour of impatient voices. The digger, who was looking at a picture of Hyde Park Corner in the Illustrated London News, and wondering how long it would be before he saw the original again, became aware of it also, and he dropped the paper with apprehension.

"I'm afraid that's about me," he said, turning rather pale.

"What's wrong, Johnny?" asked Shepherd.

"It's the Boys, I expect I You see, I couldn't pay 'em this morning; they'll go for me if they get the chance."

Willy went to the door, followed by everybody excepting Johnny Teale. A gang of some fifty niggers, Zulus, Kaffirs, and Basutos, of all ages, had surged to the foot of the stoep—a low, gravelled veranda before the club—and were demanding their wages, or Mr. Teale's blood.

"It is the Boys," said Willy.

"I thought so. Well, tip 'em some of your verses, poet, and calm 'em down!"

"Why don't you pay the beggars?" said the law-agent.

"Pay 'em?" echoed the ex-lessee of the Mooi Klip Mining Company. "That cursed ground hasn't yielded working expenses for weeks. Pay 'em? Do you think I'm the Standard Bank?"

The doctor exhorted him to come forward, and he came gingerly. His appearance was greeted with loud yells, and a hundred naked arms were lifted in execration and appeal. In the instinctive way that the negroes lifted their arms, there was a touch of dignity, even of tragedy, that would have gladdened a London super-master's heart. Presently, however, by dint of fervid promises which he had no prospect of being able to fulfill, Teale succeeded in inducing the posse to depart. And, this consummation attained, he dragged his supporters jubilantly to the bar.

Childers was not among them. He made his way, through the dust and ox-wagons on the Market Square, to the post-office, only to find the publishers had not written; and then, retracing his steps, he went into his room to lie down. His eyes ached badly, and he was sure that he saw less clearly still. The doctor had told him that the trouble was caused by his "general condition" and advised him to rest his sight as much as possible. But rest had not improved it, nor had the lotion and the tonic done any good.

Soon afterwards the piercing shrieks of engines announced that work in the mines was over for the day; and now men poured up in shoals, to wash, and dine, and to exchange—to-night—their Bedford-cords for dress-suits that were relics of a European past.

In Kimberley, dress-suits were worn more frequently, but Kimberley was three miles from Du Toit's Pan and, by comparison, fashionable. There were even men in Kimberley who wore stiff collars every day. And the theatre was there. Du Toit's Pan had nothing but the Club, and an hotel, and a corrugated-iron church.

It was early when Childers and his chief met again and drove into the larger township. But a crowd had already collected under the electric lamps of Main Street. And when the doors were opened, and the pair at last gained seats, they squeezed into them breathless.

A long procession of "carts" sped over the bare connecting road in the next half-hour. The "Rush" hummed with "carts." Comparatively small as was the theatre, it appeared to those in it to contain the population of all the camps. When the orchestra came in, the house looked like a hill of white arms and bosoms, and shining shirt-fronts. A novel and agreeable flutter of suspense stole through the audience; women glanced and smiled towards one another with little, excited nods. Many had forgotten, for the instant, where they were and, in fancy, were transported to the Français or the Gaiety, where they had seen Duchêne last.

Some touch of the excitement below communicated itself to Childers upstairs. As the three foreign knocks sounded, he leant forward eagerly. The play was La Dame Aux Camélias. It began with a few lines between de Varville, seated by the mantelpiece, and Nanine, the maid. Willy strained in vain to distinguish what was said; he had never read the piece, though he knew the plot.

There was the entrance of Nichette; she spoke briefly to Nanine, and left. And then followed an exhausting conversation between the man and the girl, during which the audience suppressed their impatience as best they could; few understood more than a word here and there, though many assumed an air of keen appreciation. There was the peal at the bell; there was the servant's exclamation, "C'est madame!" …

She came on in her best style—while the women caught their breath at her gown; she affected unconsciousness that an audience was criticising her. But they would not have it—they were too grateful to her. The applause broke out, vociferous and sustained. The Diamond Fields were welcoming the only important actress that had then come to bless them, and it was nearly a minute before she could speak.

As the act proceeded, Childers found his throat tightening queerly. The story has been as much abused as any that was ever written; but sickly, unhealthy, morbid, or not, it is a story that appeals to almost every imaginative young man. It fascinates him strongly as it develops; perhaps he, too, may one day meet a Marguerite? In secret he has often wished to do so; and he identifies himself with its hero, who, on the stage, is so splendid in his romance and passion, and in the book, by his own confession, as arrant a cad as ever escaped having his head punched. From a theatrical point of view it has a greater recommendation: it provides a leading actress with an opportunity which few modern dramas equal. And to-night Duchêne, who had carefully selected it for her opening performance, availed herself of the opportunity to the fullest.

She was at this time nearly forty years of age, but behind the footlights she did not look a day more than twenty-five. Her grace, her power, the tricks—which in their apparent spontaneity concealed such cleverness that it demanded a fellow-player to appreciate them as they deserved—took one novice among the spectators by storm. At the end of the second act he felt that he was in the presence of a revelation. During the fifth act, tears rolled down his face, and he tried furtively to hide them with his programme, afraid that Shepherd would ridicule him.

The result of Willy Childers' going to see Rosa Duchêne was really a foregone conclusion; gun-powder had met the spark and only one thing could happen,. A poet—that he was a pseudo poet matters very little—who had been eating his heart out on the Diamond Fields was confronted, for the first time in his life, with a beautiful woman who was a genius. When the curtain fell and the people rose and screamed at her, Willy did not scream; he kept his seat, quivering hysterically. He was wrenched by the death-scene that he had witnessed; the agony of the lover's cry was in his own soul. He wanted to walk away somewhere alone. The companionship of Shepherd was torture to him, and he thought that he would have given anything that could be named to have the right to go to her and stammer what she had made him feel.

Such exaltation sounds very absurd, but, closely examined, it is not so absurd as it sounds. After the illusion of intimate confidence that is created by sympathising with a great actress through the range of emotions that she represents—laughing with her laughter, and grieving with her when she grieves—one leaves the theatre having seen nothing at all of her real nature. But how much has one seen of the young girl's with whom one may, more conventionally, fall in love at a dance? Both have uttered things that were not natural to them during the evening; and, to say the least of it, the actress's pretence has been as attractive as the girl's. One man would like to take her out to supper; another would make of her an ideal and an inspiration. She has charmed them both; and the fact that suppers may be more in her line than inspiration is irrelevant.

He escaped from Shepherd, and taking up a position by the stage-door, waited there in the hope of obtaining a glimpse of her when she left. The hope was not fulfilled; she must have come out by another exit.

The intense dry heat and the sun's blinding glare had been succeeded by a faint breeze, and as he drove home his mind spun more quickly for its freshness, and the rapid motion of the "cart." He thought again of his volume of verse at the London publishers', and saw it accepted and triumphant. An unfamiliar exhilaration throbbed in his veins, and fancy mounted beyond control, playing all sorts of pranks, unexpected and delightful, till it seemed lifting him into heaven.

It was only when the horses stopped that he returned to reality. From the stagnant pan came the croaking of frogs, and the howling of innumerable stray curs. The mine yawned deeply in the night, and, with the suggestion of gigantic gallows, the structures of the hauling gear round the reef rose blackly against a luminous sky. From the Club, there was the click of billiard balls and a jingle of glasses. But he did not go in.

III

Shepherd was the first to suspect what was the matter. Probably because he saw more of Childers than anybody else did; possibly because incriminating compositions on the Government stationery fell under his notice. Indeed, it is said that the girl at Clapham received a tribute in verse from the assistant magistrate about this date. Anyhow suspicion arose; and Willy's reception of the tentative chaff was as damning as plain acknowledgement—and much more comical. Altogether it was voted the most comical thing that "the poet" could have done. "Childers in love," pure and simple, would have been an amusing object, but Willy Childers in love with Rosa Duchêne was a situation that tickled Du Toit's Pan uncontrollably. It became the favourite pastime to lure him into the smoking-room and invent anecdotes about his enchantress. He was old enough to have forgotten how to blush, but he blushed still, and his face, while the stories were told, supplied them with a superfluous sauce piquante.

And cartoons were made of him, and pasted on the wall. In one he sang—

 

"Ask nothing more of me, sweet.
All I can give you, I give";

 

and was depicted on his knees to the actress, with an ode in one hand and a child's money-box in the other. Life was made in various ways a burden to him, though no one meant any harm. "Good-morning; have you been to the theatre, Childers?" became the stock joke, a catch-phrase with which he was greeted by everybody; and when he did go to the theatre now, he slunk in late, and hid himself at the back of the gallery from shame.

It was when half of Duchêne's season of six weeks had expired that the chaff stopped; and it stopped abruptly. For the first time men spoke of Willy Childers in a tone of gravity. One morning he had not appeared at the Magistrate's Court; he had sent a few lines in a painful, sprawling hand, to say that his sight was much worse—that he was "afraid it was serious"; and a few days after that, the news circulated that he was blind.

In improving tales, when the misunderstood boy loses his sight, all his acquaintances reproach themselves for their cruelty towards him and flock to his simple parlour to listen to him talking like a tract and derive a lasting moral from the patience he displays. It did not happen like that in Willy Childers' case, because the men had no idea that they had shown any cruelty. Excepting for Ted Shepherd, and one or two other very occasional visitors, he passed his time in unbroken solitude.

Of course it was useless for him to remain on the Fields any longer. Somerset, who in a few months' time was going to England for a brief holiday, had arranged to take him home; in London a specialist was to be consulted, and perhaps an operation might be performed. Meanwhile Willy was removed to the manager's cottage on the Fortunatus works. His uncle came there to sleep, between the hour of the Club's closing and "sun-up" each morning; during the day a Kaffir fetched his meals from the Carnarvon Hotel. He had no one to talk to; he knew none of the pursuits by which the blind contrive, after years, to occupy themselves. He could do nothing but think, and compose verse in his head; he sat helpless in the blazing iron shanty, listening to the clamour of machinery, throughout the day, or the crooning of Kaffirs, crouched round their bonfires, when the moon rose. And in this fashion a fortnight wore itself past.

Johnny Teale was the man! Others participated, and so were guilty—among them Blake Somerset—but Johnny Teale was the man that suggested the trick; let it be stated! There was a girl in the "Rush" in those days referred to as "Poll Patchouli"—she had opened a shop, at the back of the Diamond Market, for the sale of bad scent, after she left the ladies' orchestra, with which she had come from Natal. Her real name was not known. She called herself "Olive Esmond," but that has nothing to do with it. She was not considered pretty; she was, in fact, thought very plain, even in a spot where men were not exacting in the matter of feminine attractions and a little comeliness went a long way. She was, however, an amusing girl, not wholly uneducated; and a fortnight after Willy's retirement to the cottage opposite the Fortunatus tailings-heap, it transpired that she had a singular accomplishment: she could imitate Rose Duchêne to the life. She did it so well, according to an enthusiast who had heard her, that she might have got an engagement at Home at a music-hall. He said you "could have shut your eyes and sworn Duchêne was speaking."

It was precisely this criticism that gave Johnny Teale his idea. If you could shut your eyes and think Duchêne was speaking, she might be presented to a blind man as Duchêne herself.

Some of the group to which he propounded it certainly demurred. They said it would be blackguardly to play tricks with Childers now and objected a good deal in an irresolute way. But Teale set himself to argue their scruples into air. For Childers to have a conversation with Polly under the impression she was the actress "wouldn't do the poor chap any harm," he insisted—"on the contrary, it'd give him immense pleasure." And as to the humour of the sell, it would be one of the best practical jokes ever perpetrated in the camp.

That was true, and a strong temptation.

Reiterating that the victim need never know; that no disappointment was entailed; that the scene would be no less delightful to Childers, because the happiness was illusory, he had his way at last. And Polly was interviewed and coached. A deputation went up to Kimberley to see her.

"We want you to help us in a tremendous spoof, Polly," they said. "You've heard of Willy Childers?"

No, she had not heard of him; who was he?

"Well, he thinks he's a poet, and he has lost his sight, and he's in love with Duchêne," explained Teale. "Now, we want to tell him we're going to introduce him to her, and then bring him to you—d'ye see? He'll make love to you as violently as he knows how, and you're to pretend to be awfully taken with him, and kid him on—d'ye see? Of course you'll talk all the time like Duchêne, and end by vowing he's the only man in the world for you! And we—two or three of us—'ll be hidden about the place somewhere, watching the game—d'ye see? You know! D'ye think you can do it?"

The girl laughed. She was not disgusted by the infamous taste of the project; it struck her as being an uncommonly funny one.

"You may bet all you've got I can do it," she said. "Rather! What a lark! When'll you bring him, boys?"

"Well, it's got to be carried out carefully," said Teale; "one of us must go and say that he has met her; and then, very kindly, say he'll try to get permission to present Childers to her. He's as green as they make 'em, but it won't do to rush the thing through as if it were as easy as ordering a drink. Say Thursday, eh?"

"Right," said Polly. "Thursday. Is he really crazy for her, or just spoons?"

"Shouldn't wonder if he knelt down and kissed your boots."

She threw back her head and laughed again.

"I shall enjoy this," she exclaimed. "It's something I like!"

No time was lost in acquainting Willy with the privilege that might be in store for him; and for a moment the expressions of gratitude into which he broke made the conspirators feel almost as despicable as they were.

They left him in a fever of suspense for a couple of days. And then he was told that Teale and Ted Shepherd were to take him to Duchêne on the following afternoon.

"I let her know you wrote poetry," said Teale; "I cracked you up a lot before I asked permission to bring you. It wanted a bit of nerve to do it, considering I'd only met her once, myself, but I knew how keen on it you were!"

Willy, who was trembling, groped for his hand, and pressed it.

Indeed, he could hardly realise that the bewildering thing had happened. It was actual! he had to repeat it. The prospect of sitting by Rosa Duchêne and hearing her talk, though he wouldn't see her, dizzied him. At night he could not sleep; and he passed the long morning praying to hear each hour strike on the little American clock that he had bought to let him know how the time went since his watch became useless. When Teale and the assistant magistrate arrived, and guided him up into the "cart," the effort of replying to them was pain. He thanked God when he could be silent. His breathing apparatus was playing the same tricks that it had played in the theatre, and the clip-clop sound of the horses' hoofs seemed to be vibrating in his inside.

The hotel to which they were bound was not the Queen's, where Duchêne was really staying, but a third-rate hotel called the Royal, and his companions had misgivings lest he should detect the difference. On reaching Kimberley, Teale began to talk again eagerly, to distract his attention; but it was taking unnecessary trouble. His affliction was too recent, and his excitement too great, for the dupe to have such acuteness of perception.

The driver stopped; and Shepherd, who had agreed to come, less because he looked forward to being amused by the deception than because he wished to see that it was not carried too far, helped the blind man down, his pink-and-white complexion pinker than usual.

They were met in the hall by a Kaffir servant, who had been carefully rehearsed in his part. He showed his teeth in a grin of appreciation.

"Is Madame Duchêne in?" said Teale. "We're expected."

The negro disappeared, and after a few minutes returned to conduct them to a poor, ground floor room that opened on to a stoep and a back yard. At one end was a small bedstead, with a washhand-stand at the foot. The rest of the furniture consisted of a chest-of-drawers, a chintz-covered couch, and a couple of basket-chairs. A few coloured plates from the summer numbers of the English illustrated papers had been pasted on the walls.

"Madame Duchêne soon come," he said respectfully; "madame says, the baas please wait!" Then he grinned more widely still, and pointed to the window. Behind it, half a dozen bearded faces were pressed; half a dozen arms waved gay salutes.

"Great Scott!" exclaimed Teale, as the Kaffir retired. "We're in a drawing-room again, eh?" He gave a soft whistle, expressive of admiration and astonishment. "What do you think of this?"

"It's all right," said Shepherd, confusedly.

Teale nudged him and frowned.

"‘All right'?" he echoed. "Well, I don't know what you were used to, my lord, but it's about as fine as anything I ever struck. Look at that tapestry, and those bally idols over there, and—why, the woman must be mad to carry such things about with her!"

"What's it like?" asked Willy in a reverent voice.

"It's Oriental," said Teale; "shouldn't you call it 'Oriental,' Shepherd? By Gum! I should like to see her flat in Paris, if this is the sort of thing she goes in for for six weeks. What's the Eastern smell; don't you notice it?"

It was a pastille that had been set burning in the soap-dish. He affected to explore for it among countless treasures.

"This is it," he said; "in this Pagoda affair. What does she keep her rooms so dark for; a bit mystic, ain't it? Take care! don't move, Childers, or you'll tumble over a tiger's head. Hullo!"

There was a woman's step in the passage, and as they caught it, Willy turned a dead white. The group outside, who could see but not hear, puffed their cigarettes and continued to stare in curiously.

"Here she is," murmured Shepherd. "Stand up, boy!"

Willy obeyed as the door opened; and Poll Patchouli came in.

IV

"Good-afternoon gentlemen," she said languidly. "Ah, monsieur! be seated, I beg."

Her "monsieur" was the only false note, and of that he was no judge. Every pulse in his body leapt at her entrance; every nerve in him quickened at the rustle of her cheap little frock across the floor. To him it was brocade of a mysterious rose tint and there was old lace on her bosom.

She sank into one of the basket-chairs, and looked towards his companions for approval, with her tongue in her cheek.

"I am very pleased to see you," she said; "your friends have spoken about you to me."

"You see one of your most ardent admirers, madame," said Teale, "and a poet. I'm afraid Mr. Shepherd and I are in the way at the meeting of two artists."

Willy lifted his hand in discomfiture.

"Don't make me absurd," he stammered; "don't laugh at me, madame! I'm not an artist, I only hoped to be one. But I'm grateful—ever so grateful—for your letting me come here. To have spoken to you will be something to remember all my life."

The girl smiled almost as broadly as the negro had done.

"You are very—very—what is the word in English?—complimentary," she drawled. "You must not make me vain, you know! And you are too modest also—is it not, Mr. Teale? I am told that your poems are quite charming."

Even Shepherd was amused; she was doing it very well. The spectators at the window pushed against one another inquiringly.

"Will you not recite one to me?" she asked.

"Bravo," said Teale, "the very thing! Go on, Childers; let madame hear something you've done."

"I couldn't," said Willy. "Forgive me, madame; I couldn't, indeed!"

"In Paris," said Polly, "many poets recite their verses to me. Yes, truly, you are too modest, monsieur. Well, as you please; then let us talk! You are fond of the theatre, eh?"

He bowed. "Passionately of late!" he answered awkwardly.

"Aha! but he can make pretty speeches, too, our modest poet. You, Mr. Teale, have not said anything so nice to me. But perhaps you do not feel it, either?"

"Everybody raves about madame Duchêne," said Shepherd; "Mr. Teale and I are very honoured to be—er—very honoured indeed."

He caught signals from the onlookers, and drew Teale's attention to them. They were growing impatient out there. The dialogue was lost upon them, and viewed as a pantomime the scene was dull. Polly saw the gestures, too, and shook her fist at the crowd joyously.

"To-night," she resumed, "I play one of my favourite rôles—Marguerite."

In point of fact she was mistaken: Duchêne was to play Frou-Frou. But Willy could not read the newspapers any more.

"I've seen you in it," he said eagerly. "I was at your first performance. I shall never see you in it again."

"Why?"

He flushed.

"I said 'see'—I can't see you at all."

"How long have you been like this?" asked the girl, deprecatingly.

"Nearly three weeks. It seems——"

"It seems a year, I suppose? It must!"

"Yes," said Childers, "it seems much longer than it is. I daresay I shall get used to it by-and-by, but a day's a long time at first; I'm all alone, and there's nothing to do."

"It must be awful," she murmured.

"Mr. Childers is going Home very soon," said Shepherd, "and then all of us poor beggars'll be jealous of him."

"You and he may meet in London, madame," added Teale. "You'll go to the theatre next time madame Duchêne plays in London, won't you, Childers? Perhaps she'll let you call on her there, too?"

Polly shifted her chair irritably.

"Will you be able to go about in London, Mr. Childers?"

"I don't know many people in England," he said; "I'm afraid not. I shall be in Dulwich, with my mother."

"But you will make friends," she urged; "won't you? You won't be tied to the house always?"

"I shan't be very lively company; I don't suppose many men'll be anxious to be my friends."

"Ah, well," exclaimed Teale, "‘a boy's best friend is his mother!" Ain't she, madame?"

"Gentlemen," said Polly, springing up, "I'm sure you two would like a cigar on the stoep! Don't move, Mr. Childers. They'll come back to you."

Johnny Teale stared.

"You would like a cigar on the stoep," she repeated. And as it was evident that she meant to be obeyed, they said that it was a very kind suggestion, and withdrew. Teale consoled himself with the idea that they were to be afforded a view of Willy on his knees.

She did not speak for some moments after the door closed. She sat in the chair that Teale had vacated, with her back to the window. Her expression had changed and her face was quite soft.

"Are you pleased they've gone?" she asked.

"Yes," answered Willy, simply.

"So'm I. I want to talk to you—I like you. Do you know, I never was so sorry for anybody in the world before?"

"You make me feel almost glad I'm blind.—I've prayed that I might talk to you one day. I used to pray to see you, too. But that's impossible now. That night——" He paused, afraid.

"What night?" said the girl.

"Your first night here. You know, I wasn't blind then, and—— Oh, it's like a dream! Is it really you I'm telling it to?"

"It's me," said Poll Patchouli, her eyes shining. "And what?"

"I came away praying to be great, just to have the right to meet you. I've always wanted to succeed, of course—ever since I was a child; but that night it was different. It was to know you … to hear you say you had read my verse … to feel there was a sort of—a sort of sympathy between us. Are you laughing at me?"

She put out her hand and touched him. She had given her hand to many men, but never quite like that. Willy had a wild impulse to lift it to his lips, but did not do so—afraid again. She had hoped that he would.

"Do you like me as much as you thought you were going to?" she asked, after a silence.

"Yes," said Willy; "you're just what I was sure you must be."

"Really?"

"Really!"

"That's good!" she said, smearing a tear off her cheek with the hand that was not resting on him. "Shall you come again—I mean alone?"

"May I?" he cried. "Do you mean it? Oh, but how can I—I forgot! I can't go anywhere alone any more. This is the first time I've been out since I lost my sight—Teale and Ted Shepherd offered to bring me."

"The beasts!" said Poll Patchouli in her throat.

"If I may come again with them——?"

"No, don't do that! Where do you live? Perhaps one day, as you're all by yourself, I'll come and see you. But I don't want you to talk about it, if I do. I—— No, I never shall come!"

"Why? Why not? I won't speak a word of it to a soul if you don't wish me to; but it would be a charity—I'm sure you'd have no need to mind. Oh, I'd bless you, madame! Please!"

"Why do you like me?" she said sullenly. "You must be an awful fool to like a woman you don't know!"

"I do know you now," he faltered, shrinking. "And besides——"

"Besides—what?" said Polly.

"I had seen you on the stage; is that nothing?"

"Never mind the stage. Imagine you've only seen me here to-day."

"Well?"

"You want me to come?"

"I implore you to!"

"Oh, yes, because I'm Duchêne! If I weren't a great actress, you wouldn't care a button whether I was sorry for you or not. Well, what is the address?"

"I'm in the manager's cottage—Mr. Somerset's cottage—on the works of the Fortunatus Mining Company," he gasped. "Any driver'll take you to it; it's in Bultfontein."

"I know," she said.

"You know?"

"I mean I have heard the name. No, my acquaintance with the Diamond Fields is not so extensive as all that, monsieur! But I will find it, and I will come."

Her accent was much more marked in the last sentence than it had been a few moments ago, but its resumption was unnecessary; the first impression had been all-powerful, and he was drunk with delight.

Indeed, when the entertainment was over, he was the only one who was entirely satisfied with it. Johnny Teale and his party felt that the hoax had "panned out less brilliantly than it had promised"; and Polly, alone in her room, threw herself on the bed and cried miserably, without knowing why.

V

It was significant that she did not call upon him for three days, though she wanted to do so very much. It was significant also that, when she did go, she put on her prettiest hat and frock and made herself look as dainty as she could, though her host would not be able to see her. Her visit intensified that strange emotion to her, pity for a man. And the step, once taken, she went again—without vacillating. And Bad Shilling was despatched for meals for two from the Carnarvon; and their afternoons were so pleasant that sometimes before they parted, stars were in the sky.

There was now demanded of the girl an infinitely more difficult achievement than that required of her at the Royal Hotel; she found herself expected to realise, and respond to an artist's aspirations. She could not do it, quite. But if she simulated more comprehension of them than she could feel, she did, by degrees, come to gain a glimmer of the blaze within him, too. She had to strain for it hard at first—so hard that she was surprised at her own patience; many of his confidences were meaningless to her, foreign. Why should he await an answer from the publishers with such suspense, when he didn't expect much money even if they took the book? But during those long afternoons and evenings, while Willy talked to "Rosa Duchêne" as he had never thought to find himself talking to anyone, Polly sat opposite him in the rocking-chair, with attentive eyes, learning a lesson.

Once, just as she was leaving, Blake Somerset came in. He had heard that his nephew was receiving visits from a "lady" in the cottage, and guessing who the lady must be, intended to put a stop to them. He was rather ashamed of himself for having allowed the joke to be played at all, and the discovery of the lengths to which it had been carried annoyed him.

Polly started in alarm, but Childers, who had no cause to be embarrassed, performed what he believed to be the ceremony of introduction with perfect calmness.

"I don't think you have met my uncle," he said; "have you? Mr. Somerset—Madame Duchêne."

Somerset was about to answer with a brutal laugh, but a gesture from the girl checked him.

When they were outside, and out of earshot, she stopped and looked at him appealingly.

"Are you going to give me away?" she said. "Are you going to tell him? Don't! I'm not doing any harm. Please don't tell him!"

"This is damned nonsense!" exclaimed Somerset. "The boy's an ass, but you've no right to have a game like this with him, you know; it won't do!"

"I'm not doing any harm," she insisted, "really! Of course it's a beastly shame in one way, but—but it does cheer him up. You must see for yourself how much brighter he is. And—and if you tell him, you'll break his heart."

"Rats!" said Somerset. "Don't talk such piffle!"

"You'll break his heart!" she flared out. "Not that you'd mind much, I suppose, if you did. Well, go back and do it. Go in and say, 'That isn't Rosa Duchêne who comes to see you; it's a girl they call "Poll Patchouli" and everybody's been kidding you.' Go on! Then you won't have to take him to England—because he'll be buried here before you start; and it'll be you who'll have killed him, as sure as a gun!"

"D'ye mean to tell me," said Somerset blankly, "that you think he'll never find out? You must be as daft as he is, you little fool. … Oh, well, I don't care; do as you like—it can't last long, that's one thing! When are you coming again?"

"I'm coming to-morrow," said Polly. "And if you think it all so shocking, I wonder you let those swine bring him to my room. At all events, I don't guy him, as you meant me to."

Then she jumped up into the "cart" and drove away. And Somerset dropped into the Club and told Teale that, "funny as it sounded, he believed that girl was mashed on the boy"; and the posse of conspirators sat and viewed the development of their plot with open mouths.

She meant her deception to conclude with the actress's departure; and it was only when the time came that she perceived how strange a hold the deception had established on her—how much she liked the young man who talked to her of things that she had never heard talked of before. The temptation was too strong to be resisted; and, prompted by the fact that Duchêne's season had been extended for a week, she told him, when she went on the morrow, that it had been extended for six weeks.

Childers' joy was pitiful to behold. He had been happier of late, in his blindness, than he had ever been when he had sight; the sudden news that his paradise would endure, when the groan of its closing gates was already in his soul, was a relief so intense that its outcome frightened her.

From the beginning she had been aware that he was in love with her; but now she saw how wildly he was in love, and she was aghast. Her life had not accustomed her to regard sexual attraction as a serious matter. Though she had not continued to view her imposture lightly, she had not grasped the full responsibility of it till then.

She gazed at him wildly, with trembling lips, like a child who has smashed something.

"Are you so glad," she faltered—"so glad as all that?"

The consciousness crept through her, as she asked it, that she, too, was glad—not in the frivolous way that she had thought, hut as a woman is glad to remain with a man who has grown dear to her. She moved slowly over to him, and took his hands down from his face, and dropped on her knees before him—wondering at them both.

"Willy," she whispered, "say something—I love you!"

He couldn't answer. But she felt what she had done. And she forgot then that the whole thing was a lie—forgot what an exclamation would burst from him if he could see her. It was her own kisses that he was returning; it was her own clasp that made him shake like that!

The deception had gone further still, and there began for the blind man a period in which he tasted all the triumphant rapture of possessing a beautiful and celebrated woman whom he adored. When he embraced Polly, his delusion gave him Rosa Duchêne in his arms; when Polly clung about him it was Duchêne's touch that thrilled his blood and Duchêne's lips that burned. He lavished on Polly the madness of the passion that Duchêne had inspired; he saw with his brain the form of the famous woman that intoxicated him, while Polly the insignificant was lying on his heart.

The ecstasy of the delusion dizzied him. Rosa Duchêne was his own; visited him daily; vowed she was wretched when they were apart! She, a genius, renowned all the world over, discussed with him the prospects of his poems' acceptance and entered into his hopes and fears! Why was he a nonentity? If only he could climb nearer to worthiness!

One afternoon, a fortnight later, when Polly went to the post-office to inquire if there was any-thing for him, she found that the publishers' reply had at last arrived. She saw their name on the envelope; and a roll of manuscript, which the clerk handed to her also, showed that the work was declined. She took the things, almost as disconsolate as her lover would be, and wondered, on her way to the cottage, how she was to break the news to him, how she could be gentle enough.

He had come out on the stoep to listen for her. He knew where she had been, and the eagerness on his face made the words that she had to speak more difficult to her still.

"Dearest!" said Childers—and waited.

"There's a letter," said Polly, reluctantly; "I haven't opened it yet." The rejected manuscript oppressed her; she put it down on the table with her sunshade.

"From them?"

"Yes."

"Read it," he begged, breathlessly. "Read it, Rosa, for Heaven's sake!"

She opened the envelope, looking not at it, but at him. It was hateful that it should be she who had to bring the disappointment! The colour was fluttering in his cheeks, and the thin hands held out towards her quivered. Suppose she told him a fib? Suppose she said——? He couldn't see the answer! As the notion flashed into her mind she caught her breath; and Willy heard her.

"They've taken it?" he exclaimed.

She was trying confusedly to discern what difficulties such a falsehood would entail, but his question decided her—she could not crush him with the truth after that!

"Yes," she said in a low voice, "they have taken it."

"Rosa, Rosa! Oh, my God! Read it to me! What do they say?"

"They say. … Oh, darling, I am so glad for you, so glad! Willy, aren't you happy? I told you it'd be all right, now didn't I?"

"What do they say?"

"They say—— How can I see, if you hold me so tight, silly boy? It's only a line. 'Dear Sir, we shall be pleased to publish the poems you have submitted. They will be …' What is it? 'They will be brought out soon.' That's all. So—so perhaps they aren't going to pay you for them; but you won't mind that, will you? They'll publish them! And they say 'pleased.' They might have said 'willing,' but they say 'pleased'!"

To her the communication that she had invented sounded very meagre; but she need not have striven to apologise for it. To him the bare fact was more than enough. They were going to bring out his book. He would hold it—hug it—and "soon"! He had been craving all his life, and on an instant Fortune rained favours on him with both hands. Balzac's expression of every artist's prayer recurred to him, "To be celebrated! To be loved!" He marvelled—giddy with exultation—that he could be so calm in the face of miracles. He was Rosa Duchêne's lover and now his Reveries was to be given to the world! Then a frightful misgiving seized him.

"You haven't deceived me—it's true?" he gasped.

"It's quite true!" cried Polly. "How could you think such a thing?"

They embraced again, and he told her how proud she should be of him by-and-by.

"You'll 'make' me!" he panted. "If I have written these before I knew you, what shall I do now? I shall be great; Rosa, I shall be great. The man you love'll be known, too—you'll have done it for me. What a beautiful world we live in; and it's the same world that was so ugly the other day! O darling Life, it blows kisses back to me! You fill me with emotions and ideas that tumble over one another. I shall pour them out in my work—my mind and heart are bursting sometimes, too small to hold all you make me feel. I'll dedicate every book to you—you who'll have inspired them all. Oh, thank God I'm a poet! To worship you as I do and be able to lay nothing at your feet would have been torture."

He wandered about the room, with her arm round him, while her troubled gaze turned from time to time to the roll of manuscript on the table.

"Did you believe I was an artist when we first met," he broke out again, "or was it only pity? Did you feel we had something in common different from the others? Oh, how vain of me that sounds! But you know—you know how I mean it!"

"I know," she said.

"And you did—you did feel there was a bond between us? Tell me. I want so much of you, dearest! I want more, and more, and more every day. I want more than I can tell you, and more than the utmost. It's as if nature hadn't provided for such a love."

"What can I do?"

"You know your thoughts before you speak them! I'm jealous of that."

"You're mad!"

He nodded. "I daresay. Nothing satisfies me. But I can't see you—if you knew how I strain! I'd give my right arm to see you now. Turn your face up, and let me try. Great God! it's a wonderful thing to be a woman—and somehow it doesn't seem enough to be a man. One day I'll try to tell you all I feel for you. If I could do it, it'd be the finest poem ever written. And what a relief!"

When she left, the moon was shining. She slipped the manuscript up under her dust cloak, and, reaching home, hid it away remorsefully at the bottom of her box. What would be the result of the lie she had told? She upbraided herself bitterly for her cowardice. But now for him to learn that his work was rejected would be a blow unbearable! Now, whatever happened, he must not know; he would curse her!

VI

In the night the remembrance struck her that she had left the note in his possession; she was seized with the terror that he might show it to Somerset and discover the truth with the rudest shock possible. She lay tossing restlessly, and the sun had scarcely risen when she drove to Bultfontein, with a face of ashes.

Willy was not visible. He was dressing, with the aid of the Kaffir who attended on him. She sank on to the first chair inside the door and tried to gather voice to call to him.

He entered from the bedroom almost at the same moment, and his appearance suggested that the catastrophe had occurred.

His greeting, however, dispelled her fear.

"I've had news about my mother," he murmured; "she's dead."

The mail carrying Childers' poems had also brought a letter to Somerset. Mrs. Childers had opportunely died of pneumonia—avoiding the arrival of a son who had had no proper ambition, and who was now blind besides. Somerset had had a long talk with him the previous night, after Polly's departure. The widow's death put difficulties in the way of the young man's return to England. The manager was going with the object of enjoying himself; moreover in three or four months he was to be back on the Fortunatus works. He had pointed out that there would now be nobody to take charge of Willy in London. It was an awkward thing to determine what was to become of him. Seldom had a young man who had inherited about three hundred and fifty a year been such an encumbrance.

All these facts Childers imparted to Polly.

"We haven't decided what I'm to do," he went on. "I couldn't stop here permanently, even if I wanted to; I'm bound to be a nuisance, you see. It wouldn't be fair for a fellow like me to plump himself on an uncle for life."

"Have you told him about your book?"

"No, it wouldn't interest him—and we talked about my mother's death. No, I didn't say anything about it."

"And I wouldn't, if I were you!" she exclaimed. "I wouldn't say anything to a soul till it is printed. Let it be a secret between us two till the right time comes."

"That's what I thought, darling," he said; "yes."

She passed the day between relief and dismay. It was piteous to think of the loneliness of his situation. She could not have loved him more tenderly if she had been his wife; the further complication that had arisen to harass her appeared, temporarily, graver than anything else.

Willy was no less dismayed; his grief for the loss of his mother was not all. He longed for Duchêne to propose his travelling to England by the same boat as herself, to say that she would be his constant companion till they had ascertained whether an operation was feasible. This way out of the difficulty must have presented itself to her, he thought; but she had not suggested it. And for him to do so was impossible.

A little constraint crept into his conversations with the girl now; and while she inwardly commented on the difference, he was tremulously waiting, in every pause, for her to make the offer that had never entered her head. Their dream might have continued in England, more deliciously than he had ever dared to hope, and, instead, they were to be divided entirely, by her own choice! He was bitterly wounded, and not even the anticipated arrival of his book—the subject on which he chiefly talked with her—was potent to banish his mortification.

His allusions to his book were, indeed, often perfunctory; but their effect on his listener was disquieting enough. The first of the consequences of her lie was already at hand to worry her. She repented that she had said "soon" in her improvised acceptance, and wondered how soon a publisher's "soon" might mean. Childers was equally ignorant on the point, and in answer to her nervous queries he said that the copies might reach him any week.

She could do no less, after this, than pretend every mail day to go to the post-office to inquire for them, and affect to be disappointed when she informed him that nothing had come. She groped, perplexed, in the labyrinth that she had created, questioning helplessly how to sustain it. If the truth were exposed at this stage she would have done him the cruellest, the most cowardly wrong imaginable, and she'd make away with herself! Her only excuse for the deception was that, so far, it had been successful. If the truth came out, after all, it would be the end of her: she'd be like that girl in Bultfontein Road who had taken carbolic acid the other day and been found in a blue heap on the floor!

After each mail she gave thanks for another respite. But when four mails had been delivered, she feared that a longer delay would excite his suspicions. And, facing the inevitable with the courage of despair, she nerved herself to contemplate the boldest stroke that she had planned yet.

While she was perpending it, the prospect of Willy's making the voyage with his uncle was extinguished definitely. Somerset was starting at once, at a couple of days' notice, for a very brief trip indeed. His subordinate on the Fortunatus had been offered a better appointment, and it was necessary for the manager's vacation to be taken while the other was still on the works. In the circumstances, Willy would be more than ever a burden.

Somerset explained that he would make time to see the solicitor to the estate and endeavour to arrange for the boy to be looked after in London; there were always fellows going over, and he could travel with someone else later on. That he himself should take him was impossible.

Willy did not remonstrate. But the end of the imaginary extension of Rosa's season was terribly near now; Rosa Duchêne, as a matter of fact, was at this time at Monte Carlo, dropping some of the Diamond Fields' money at the tables; and he felt hopelessly that the woman he loved was fading out of his life for ever. He could have cried with the pain of it.

He sat in the slip of a sitting-room the night before the departure, while Somerset banged his portmanteaux about and made cheerful remarks. Somerset was wondering whether he should drop a hint to the lad about Polly; he decided that he would ask Ted Shepherd to keep an eye on him, instead. Willy was longing for him to be gone—longing to be free to abandon himself, unseen, to his misery.

In the morning he felt his forlornness less when the sound of the "cart" wheels had died away, leaving him to the mercies of Bad Shilling for the next two months, than he had done while the preparations were going forward. But the consciousness that they all found him an incubus was bad to bear.

His welcome to Polly when she appeared was the outcome of the consciousness and alarmed her. Having taken off her dust coat and hat, and tried vainly to make him talk, she began to prepare their tea.

At last, glancing at him, she said diffidently:

"Has anything happened—you have not much to say? What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing particular. My uncle has gone, that's all."

"‘Gone'? Gone where?"

"To England. It was settled two days ago; didn't I mention it?"

"No," she said, "you didn't. It's strange you forgot to! … Then you're quite alone here now—all night, too?"

"Yes," he answered; "all night, too."

But he did not say any more; and with a stare of puzzlement, and her face a little paler, she stood silent. The kettle had been filled, and the wick of the spirit-lamp was lighted; she stood waiting for the water to boil.

"It's boiling, Rosa," said Willy; "I can hear it."

"I was thinking of something else," she said, starting. … "There!"

After a moment's struggle with himself he asked, "What were you thinking of?"

"What's the difference?" said the girl.

"I was thinking, too."

"I know!" She ran to him impulsively and bent over the chair. "We aren't the same to each other! What is it? Tell me!"

He laughed—or sobbed: "It's you!"

"Me?"

"Oh! don't make me say it! You know as well as I do that I shall be alone in this Heaven-forsaken hole—that, for all one can see, I may end my life in it. He's gone, and you're going. Picture me sometimes—you'll always be able to think of me just as you left me. That's the advantage of knowing a log!"

"Willy!" she cried. "What do you mean? Why do you——?"

"I shall see more of Bad Shilling after you're gone—if he's kind. I shall learn to look forward to his remembering me and listen for his black feet on the boards, as I used to listen for you. Has 'anything happened'? My God!"

"Why do you talk to me like this?" she exclaimed. "Don't you think I'm sorry enough for you? You talk as if I could help it; how can I help it? If I can, tell me the way! I'll do it. I'd love to do it! You reproach me for nothing!"

The boy's eyebrows were raised significantly, and she flung herself on him in a whirlwind.

"If I can help it, tell me the way! You shall tell me. I don't know what you mean—I swear I don't. I won't let you go till you tell."

"You—haven't thought?"

She shook her head vehemently.

"So why don't you say? Oh, I forgot—I was shaking my head! No, no, no; I don't know, Will!"

"You'll refuse if you want to?"

"Answer! Yes, I'll refuse if I want to. Answer!"

"We—you and I—might go to England together."

Her clasp on his neck loosened and she lay in his arms limp with dismay. This, the natural course in the rôle that she was assuming, was a complication utterly unforeseen by her.

"Go together?" she gasped.

"You don't wish it?"

"Yes, yes! I do! I do! But how?"

"It'd be quite easy. Let your company go on ahead, and we can follow by another boat! I've thought of everything. In that drawer, there's my money—you'd take it and get our tickets to Cape Town. I don't know exactly how much money there is, but it's nothing like enough for our passages, and when we got down to the Colony I should wire to the lawyer, and he could cable me out a hundred or two."

"Go on, Will," muttered Polly feverishly, "go on!"

The blessed revelation that she was not expected to pay for her own passage—a thing that would have been as impossible for her as to buy the Kimberley Mine—had brought the colour to her cheeks again. The one question that dizzied her now was, how could she sustain his belief that she was the actress if they travelled on a steamer full of people?

"Well, when we were Home, we would go to a great oculist—somebody who sits in his consulting-room and charges a guinea a minute; somebody with a strange manner that we don't like at first, and who doesn't look like an oculist a bit, but is marvellously clever, like the one in Poor Miss Finch. And he'd give me back my sight—my sight! my sight! and I could see you when we kiss!"

She yearned at him, pitiful and afraid.

"To think it should never have struck you! Rosa, I've been breaking my heart because you didn't suggest it; I thought you didn't care for me any more, that you had grown tired. Won't it be glorious? I shall see your beautiful face close, at last, and it'll be you who helped me to do it. Sweetest, tell me we are going! It seems too wonderful to be true."

"We're going," she said. She put her hand through the open window and pulled at the water-bag. Roughly made of canvas, with the neck of a beer-bottle inserted for a spout, it hung there to render the mawkish, lukewarm water fit to drink. The iciness of its contact with her forehead now cleared her brain.

VII

Compared with this new and stupendous difficulty, the dreaded need for meeting his demand for the copies of his Reveries appeared a simple matter enough. When she came next, she placed a parcel on his knees with so little misgiving that she was surprised at herself.

The poet gave a cry of delight. "My book! It's my book!"

She told him to cut the string; but his fingers shook and he couldn't manage it.

"Oh, I can't! … You!"

She took the penknife from him; and then let him unfold the wrappings himself. Six volumes met his touch with an electric thrill—all alike, but each to be caressed apart from the others, each of them lovable and delicious. How delicate was the surface that he stroked! He was holding his firstborn—and he thanked God. The emotion was the true emotion, though it was conjured up by fraud; it was the bliss of ignorance, but, none the less, bliss. He was holding his firstborn, and Polly had given him a joy no meaner than Heaven would have given had it granted him the power that he fancied he had displayed. Six copies of another work, and imagination were as potent as reality.

"Tell me what it's like," he whispered.

"It is," she said, "a pale, curious fawn. The edges are stained a deeper shade, and the name of 'William Childers' is at the bottom of the cover, a little to the right, in dark, antique lettering."

"Let me trace it! Show me!"

She obeyed, terrified, watching his efforts breathlessly.

"I can't make it out. But it looks well, eh—it looks well?"

"It looks beautiful," she said.

"The paper's thin," he murmured; "I hoped they'd give me better paper."

"It's thin," she confessed, remorsefully, "but very good looking. I think it looks more uncommon than if it had been thick."

"And the type—big? Is there a wide margin?

"There's a very wide margin," asserted Polly. "Give me your finger again—there, all that is margin. And the type's splendid! I can read it from here." She could; she could read: "The Norman Conquest. Edward was not a vigorous king; he had little authority, while——"

He cuddled the book, with a long-drawn sigh of content.

"Perhaps soon I shall be able to see it! Rosa, when do we go—need we wait long? I'm on fire! But, oh, I'm happy, too—happy, happy! I'm happier than I ever hoped to be, although I've no eyes. Since I knew you my whole life has changed. How can I repay you?"

Suddenly a passionate desire seized him. "Read me the first poem," he prayed. "Read me Sic Itur ad Astra; let me hear Rosa Duchêne speak my verse!"

She stood speechless. Her head was swimming.

"Rosa!"

"Wait!" she stammered; "it's new to me. You are a poet, and it's new to me. Wait till I know them, Willy—I have a reputation to lose."

She thanked her guiding star she had retained the manuscript; and he, his disappointment passing, thought how sweet was this timidity in such a woman. He told her his thought, with triumphant tenderness. She resolved that he should have plenty of opportunities for the triumph in future.

She had proposed that, on the journey before them, she should adopt his surname. To explain the unavoidable suggestion, she had urged that, while Duchêne's features might be familiar to many, Duchêne's name would be known to all and entail perpetual embarrassment. In agreeing with this, he had removed her initial anxiety from her mind.

Freed from it, she made the needful preparations with less of fright in her soul. And now, since they were to go, she was sometimes eager for them to be gone soon. There was the contingency that a man might drop in on him and at the final instant destroy the whole fabric of the deception that she had weaved. She strove to persuade herself that she might preserve her lover's delusion more securely where she had only strangers to fear than she could have done on the Diamond Fields. But then her reason mocked her for the hope. So many things might happen! She dared not look ahead. Alternately she longed and trembled for the hour that was to see them start. She was fighting pluckily, but in moments the enormity of the undertaking to which she had set her hand paralysed her, and at every step she seemed called upon to vanquish a further obstacle that had not been suspected till it barred the way.

When the morning broke at last, her predominant sensation was pleasure. Her own luggage was ready, and while Bad Shilling went for their breakfast she was busy packing the remaining things of Willy's. She was still on her knees, endeavouring to fasten the box, while Willy sat on it, when the Boy returned. His additional weight—for he was a "boy" of about forty years of age, weighing twelve stones—disposed of the matter; and they sat down to the coffee and steaks at the untidy table gaily, reminding each other that it was for the last time.

The negro had come back with a "cart"; and, the meal concluded, they made haste to leave. As they mounted to their seats, the doors of the cottage, and of all the sheds about the works, banged violently; the long, low swishing sound was heard that heralded a dust-storm. In another minute the air was dark, and they hid their faces to shield them from the hissing, stinging grit. Such dust-storms were of constant occurrence, but in this one the little Hottentot driver appeared to read a warning, for he lashed forward the horses furiously. They gained the station before the rain that he had foreseen began to fall; but it did fall, in floods—sweeping less fortunate animals off their feet; and Polly's cheerfulness deserted her as she glanced back into the deluge. Superstitiously she felt that the adventure had opened under ominous conditions.

VIII

However, the thirty odd hours in the train were uneventful, and they reached Cape Town safely. Again both were exhilarated. The comparative freshness of the atmosphere; to her, the sparkle of the sea beyond the jetty; and to him, the scent of it; the odour of flowers, and the rustle of trees, were delicious after the desert that they had left.

And he drove in a hansom again—a white hansom, with a coloured driver truly, but a hansom! They went straight to a little inn, of which Polly had heard, outside the town. It seemed to her to be almost at the foot of the mountain whose squareness broke off so sharply against the intense blue sky; and, obtaining rooms, they sat down and smiled at each other in delight.

"How clean everything feels," said Willy—"the towels, and the chair-covers. It's jolly."

She had been thinking so, too. Inside, it was clean, and outside it was green and tranquil. The road that the hostel overlooked was, at this part, an avenue of firs, glinting here and there with branches of the silver-leaves that are sent to England as birthday cards, with stiff little views, or sentiments painted on them. Presently a Malay maidservant—a starched, white triangle from the arm-pits down, with a bright silk fez upon her head—came in with their dinner, and they tasted fruit once more; not fruit as it was procurable in Kimberley, but luscious peaches, and purple figs, and a watermelon plucked since an hour. They sat dawdling over their coffee by the window while the moon rose, and now and again the thrum of a banjo was borne to them on the stillness. And Childers smoked a cigarette, because the situation seemed to call for one, though he enjoyed it only with his fingers now.

In the morning they took one of the trains that pottered between the suburbs and Cape Town, and sent the cablegram to the solicitor. But they were not impatient for the money to arrive. They contemplated with fortitude the two or three days that they would have to pass here.

When the answer came and they left the bank with a roll of notes in Polly's pocket, they went to the office of the company that had a boat sailing next, to engage their passages; and here they met with their first disappointment. All the berths were booked, and it was necessary for them to wait for the Union steamer, which left a week later.

It was disconcerting, but it couldn't be helped- After all, they were comfortable at the inn, and though Childers experienced more regret than Polly, he was not very seriously chagrined, either. They walked home talking, for it was an agreeable walk after one had passed the smell of the tannery at Papendorp. He spoke of the suspense in which he waited to learn how the critics received Reveries—the humiliation he would feel if they sneered at it. And then the girl told him how the scene about them looked; of the fields of arum lilies despised like buttercups in England; of the clusters of maidenhair-fern fluttering in every hedge.

"Look!" she exclaimed. "Oh! I'm sorry. … I mean how sweet this is, Will, this villa. Those high cactuses—cacti, what is it?—divide us from the garden, but here, at the gate, one can see in. The lawn is yellow with loquat trees, and crimson with japonicas. It's all patches of colour, and shadow. And it's got a perfect duck of a stoep, and—— Oh, a lovely old negress with white hair, who's coming down to us! Let's go on—she'd bother us to go over it, perhaps—it's to let."

"We shall find a difference when we get to London, shan't we?" he said. "Fancy it! January! The cold, the wet; the bustling crowds in the foggy streets, and the mud-carts, slopping over. What a contrast!"

"London has got suburbs, too. Dulwich, where you lived, is a suburb, isn't it? It wouldn't be like that if we went to Dulwich?"

"No," he said, "we shouldn't find crowds in Dulwich, because the people who live there never go out; and there'd be no mud-carts, because in deadly Dulwich the mud is never cleared away. But its long, dreary, desolate roads aren't like this one in the least."

Cape Town appeared to him, in spite of his affliction, much more attractive now than it had done eighteen months before, when he saw it. The thought occurred to him that he might turn their enforced delay to account by consulting one of its medical men and obtaining a second and more authoritative opinion. He mentioned the idea to Polly, and she ascertained that the best man to whom he could go was an Englishman—Dr. Eben Drysdale.

They heard very encouraging accounts of his ability. Though not a specialist he had effected some remarkable cures in ophthalmic cases, it was said; and after Polly had written for an appointment, Willy grew more and more excited at the prospect of the visit.

The girl herself did not know what to desire. As they mounted the steps of the house, her knees knocked together. To hope the man might say that no operation would succeed sounded so heartless that she was ashamed to look at Willy while her struggle with the hope was going on; yet for his sight to be restored would mean a tragedy for them both. She often prayed, though to many it may sound improbable; and she shaped an inward, irresolute prayer as they stood waiting to be admitted. She said, "O God, You know all about it—help me to want the thing that he'll like best!"

In appearance Dr. Drysdale was not impressive.

When Willy had finished explaining, he said:

"Yes, yes, to be sure! And you're on your way back to the old country, eh? Well, let's see, let's have a look." He put on a strange contrivance and examined the eyes through a peephole in it. … "And how long is it since the trouble began?"

"My sight has been weak for a long while. It's been getting very bad for the last eight months; and about nine weeks ago it failed altogether. At least, I wore a shade for a few days, and then——"

"Yes, yes," said Dr. Drysdale.

"Can anything be done?" asked Polly.

The doctor pondered. "Well, I wouldn't say that no one over there would advise an operation. You might go to Pholett, or to MacIntyre—I daresay MacIntyre might do it—and it's possible it might be partially successful. But … Your husband?"

She bowed.

"The question is whether it's good enough for him to go to England on the chance. Anyhow, I shouldn't recommend him to live there."

"I don't understand," said Willy, heavily.

"It wouldn't do your lungs any good, you know. Here, you've everything in your favour. My advice to you's to stay where you are. … Let's tap you about a bit; you might take off your coat and waistcoat … yes, and your shirt,, too. Now then, draw a deep breath. … Again."

"My lungs aren't strong," stammered Willy. "I know; they never have been. But what you're implying's news to me."

Polly rose in consternation.

"Do you mean that he's ill, doctor—very ill?"

"I mean," said Dr. Drysdale, suddenly evasive, "that I wouldn't recommend England for him, that's all. It isn't a climate that we choose when there's a tendency to any pulmonary complaint, and—and, as your husband says, his lungs aren't exactly strong."

There was a pause that lasted some time.

"We may as well go," said Childers, at last; "I'm glad to have had your opinion. Good-morning."

But as Polly went to the head of the stairs, he turned and spoke to the doctor hurriedly on the threshold.

"I want it straight, please!" he said in a low voice. "If I live in England, how long shall I last?"

"One can't say," said the other, deprecatingly; "Nature at times——"

"Roughly? I'm not a child! How long?"

"So far as I can judge, from a cursory examination, I should give you about two years."

"Good God! And here?"

"Here? With care, and if you avoid excitement, you may live for ten. More! But you must avoid excitement, mind!"

The girl was coming back, eager to miss nothing; Willy heard the frou-frou of her skirt.

"If I can't avoid excitement," he questioned, desperately—"if that's impossible?"

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"You won't live so long."

IX

Willy and Poll Patchouli left the house silently. She could not express her comprehension in words, and she loathed the passers-by that prevented her taking him to her heart. To him the shock was awful. Now he knew the meaning of various sensations that he had set down to "lassitude" and "depression"!

She squeezed the hand that rested on her arm.

"My poor boy!" she said.

"It's—it's rather hard lines, isn't it?"

She noted absently the brutal blue of the sky, the fierceness with which the bay sparkled. The noise of a little traffic in the road was deafening.

"You must stop in Cape Town and get well," she murmured. … "Are we going back by train?"

"Yes," he said, drearily. … "I suppose so."

His thought was, not that his sight was lost for ever; not that England would never now be anything to him but a memory. It was, that she and he must separate. She would go—perhaps a little later than they were to have gone together; perhaps much later. But she would go!

"It seems that it was fated," he said.

"What was fated?"

He had taken it for granted that she must be thinking of the same thing. But she was suffering with her own identity and had not remembered to view the situation as Duchêne.

"Why, that you were to leave me out here, after all."

"Leave you?" Then realising the position, she was staggered. Would Duchêne leave him? Or would she stay, regardless of everything else? She didn't know! It looked to her impossible that Rosa Duchêne would renounce her career and become the jest of Europe, in order to remain with Willy in Cape Town. … But mightn't it look impossible because Rosa Duchêne was nothing but a great name to her? She was a woman, too. If a great woman loved him just as much, wouldn't she now be suffering just as much—wouldn't she ache to stay with him just as much as she herself was aching? … It was so difficult! "We must think about it," she said.

Would consent entail discovery—or was his belief in the actress's devotion equal to accepting such a sacrifice without suspicion? As the train bore them homeward, she sat staring from the window, asking herself the question. She was now grateful for the presence of strangers; she did not want to speak.

On the platform Willy exclaimed:

"What do I care—we'll go together all the same! I'd rather be with you and die, Rosa, than be left alone and live. Don't let's think about it any more; we'll go as we'd arranged!"

"Are you mad?" she cried.

He persisted, but she would not listen to him. And all the afternoon she waited—trying to perceive whether he was ready to receive the suggestion that she craved to make.

During the evening both were very quiet. She had wheeled her armchair to the sofa where he lay, and stooped from time to time to kiss him. But her sympathy seemed empty to him without the words that he was yearning to hear; and to herself, till the words were spoken, the caresses that she could not restrain seemed almost an insult.

"When shall you sail?" he asked, breaking a long silence.

"When you are tired of me," she answered.

"Ah! You'll go before then!"

"Really?"

Coquetry appeared heartless to him. He wondered at her.

"For the first time I wish you were a nobody; I've been too vain, perhaps, of being loved by Rosa Duchêne. Now I'm punished for it—it's your position that comes between us. Her lover, or her career—what woman would hesitate?"

He did not know it, but in his tone was the reproach that was her clue. She shivered with joy before she spoke.

"I can't tell you what woman would hesitate," she said, with a laugh.

"What do you mean?" he faltered.

"Supposing——" she said, twisting a piece of his hair round her finger.

"‘Supposing'?" he echoed, breathlessly.

"Supposing that once upon a time there was an actress who came to South Africa and met a man she was fool enough to like very much—to love very much—to love as I love you! Suppose they had meant to go to London together, and then,—one morning, learnt that the boy was too ill—that the woman must give up everything to stay with him, or go away alone and give up him? If through that first dreadful day she wasn't able to decide—if just at first she did hesitate; if she tried to stamp her love out, only to find that it was worth more to her than the stage, than her Paris, than her life; if she cried to him 'Willy, I'm ashamed! Forgive me, and let me stop!'—what do you think the man would say?"

"Rosa!" he gasped.

"I love you! I love you! I love you!" she muttered, straining him to her.

"You won't have so long to wait as you think—I shan't last more than three or four years, even here!"

"You shall live for ever," she swore; "you shall be immortal!"

They went, the following day, to view the little house that had delighted her so much. It was to be let furnished, and the old, white-haired negress that she had seen in the garden was prepared to remain as servant. The settled to take it then and there; and less than a week later they were installed.

The afternoon that they moved in, Polly went into town alone. She explained that there was something she wanted to buy—a shade for the parlour lamp; and Willy, who was vividly interested in the arrangement of their home although he could not see it, said, "Let it be a pretty colour, darling, something that'll make the room nice to look at in the evening!"

She left him on the stoep, where she would see him at the moment she reached the gate on her return. But when her purchase was made, she, did not hasten to rejoin him there. She turned up Adderley Street, instead, into an avenue. Near the foot there was a big building. It was the Public Library, and she entered it.

"Please," she said nervously to a gentleman who was standing behind the counter, "I want a criticism of a book of poems. It doesn't matter who wrote them, but they must be fine poems, and the critic must say that the poet's a genius. … Could you help me?"

The gentleman was taken aback.

"What kind of poet?" he inquired. "There have been many fine poets. … Do you mean a poet who is still living?"

"I really don't mind at all whether he's living or dead," said Polly, impartially, "so long as he's good enough."

"Well, we have just received a work that might suit you. … How would this do?" He handed her "Victorian Poets," by Stedman. "If you go into the reading-room you can look through it."

She clutched the fat green volume thankfully; and, taking a chair at one of the tables where there were pens and ink, hurriedly skimmed the contents.

The names looked promising. Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne—a host met her eye, including dozens of whom she had never heard. To her impatience, however, it soon seemed that the author found more faults than merits in even the best of them; nowhere could she come across exactly what she sought.

At last, after infinite pains, she selected a lot of appreciative paragraphs and managed to dovetail them into a fairly consistent whole. But a panegyric on Byron, which she saw too late for it to be inserted satisfactorily, without her omitting a eulogy of Keats, detracted from her satisfaction.

"I'm very much obliged," she said to the librarian.

"Did you find what you wanted?" he asked curiously.

"Yes, thank you," she said; "at least, it'll do to go on with. But I shall often have to come again."

She now proceeded to the station, and she reached the garden as the sun was setting. Willy was still where she had left him. In her hand was a copy of a London paper—a paper that he had often referred to with awe and anticipation. She put her sheet of foolscap on the rustic table, and gave him the paper.

"Sweetheart," she said, "I've brought you your first review I"

He turned very pale; his voice was tremulous:

"What do they say? What's it in?"

She told him the paper's name. "I'll read it to you."

She took a seat by the table, and read.

"‘The minor poetry of the last few years,' she began, 'is of a strangely composite order. We can see that the long-popular Browning at length has become a potent force as the pioneer of a half-dramatic, half psychological method, whose adherents seek a change from the idyllic repose of Tennyson and his followers. With this intent, and with a strong leaning towards the art studies and convictions of the Rossetti group, a Neo-Romantic School has arisen, in which Mr. William Childers, whose Reveries is now under our consideration, leaps at a bound into the fore- most place. His songs resemble those of Rossetti in terseness and beauty, while with Browning they escape at times to that stronghold whither science and materialism are not prepared to follow. Art so complex as Mr. Childers' was not possible until centuries of literature had passed, and an artist could overlook the field, essay each style, and evolve a metrical result which should be to that of earlier periods what the music of Meyerbeer and Rossini is to the narrower range of Piccini or Gluck. All must acknowledge that Sic Itur ad Astra is perfect of its kind. Take this and that exquisite ode, To a Memory, or My Soul and I! We call them poetry; poetry of the lasting sort, and attractive to successive generations. We believe that they will be read when many years have passed away; that they will be picked out and treasured by future compilers.’"

She paused, that he might breathe. Half an acre of Heaven had fallen into the Rondebosch garden and its glory was flooding him.

After a few seconds she bent again over her manuscript and read on, for several minutes, to the end.

When she had finished they did not speak. She lay her head on his breast, while his soul uttered thanksgiving on the heights to which her lie had lifted him. He had touched the pinnacle. He was thrilled with an intenser joy than comes to one man among millions—a joy so vast that few of us have the imagination to conceive it.

"Happy?"

"‘Happy'? You, and Fame! Could life give any more?"

The brief Cape twilight was beginning to fall, and she guided him inside. She led him into a chair, and kissed him—his lips, and his sightless eyes.

"Your chair in our home," she murmured. "Oh, and the lamp-shade! Here it is."

"What colour did you choose, Rosa?"

"It's couleur de rose!" said Polly. And she put it on.

 

Some months later, on the border of Mowbray and Rondebosch, there lingered, in the last weeks of his life, a famous poet. He had never spoken with his publishers, but from time to time they wrote to him—in terms of respectful admiration; and then the celebrated actress, who shared his exile and acted as his amanuensis, read their letters to him, and cashed the very small drafts that they apologetically enclosed. At the primitive shops from which the villa was supplied, its tenants were known as "Mr. and Mrs. Childers." But as they had not been seen at church, none of the neighbours had called on them, nor, in fact, did anyone suspect their great importance; and as the poet, being blind, was always attended by the actress, he made no acquaintance when he was out. He had just published his second work, which had enhanced the reputation won by his first. The volumes were beloved belongings; from the shelf on which they were kept he often took them down and fondled them. To a stranger, parting the expensive covers, the contents might have been startling in view of so much pride; he might, indeed, have been pardoned the impression that he was looking at Mavor's Spelling Book, and a child's History of England; but the poet held them with rejoicing. To clasp them was rapture, second only to clasping his companion—a plain young woman whom he addressed by another woman's name, and passionately believed most beautiful.