^^^//^ 10 
 
 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 a IRovel. 
 
 HELEN MATHERS. 
 
 / Author of 
 
 "COMIN- THRO' THE RYE," "SAM'S SWEETHEART, 
 "MY LADY GREIiN SLEEVES," "CHERRY RIPE ! " 
 " STORY OF A SIN," etc., etc. 
 
 " What will you have ? " quoth God. 
 " Pay for it and take it." 
 
 IN THBEE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDO.X : 
 
 F. V. WHITE .'t Co., 
 14, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. 
 
 1894. 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 KELLY AND CO. LIMITED, 182, 183 AND 184, HIGH HOLBORN, W.C, 
 
 AND MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES. 
 

 TO THE MEMOKY OF 
 
 My D E a It AND H O N R K T) F R I E N D 
 
 MOKELL MACKENZIE. 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive 
 in 2010 witli funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/manoftodaynovel01 matin 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 . — ^ — 
 
 BOOK I.— THE APPLE. 
 
 CHAr. I'AQE 
 
 I. 1 
 
 II. 31 
 
 in 46 
 
 IV. • 64 
 
 V. 82 
 
 VL Ill 
 
 VII 125 
 
 VIII. 136 
 
 IX 158 
 
 X. 162 
 
 XI 199 
 
 XII. ... 218 
 
A M AN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 1600k l—Zbc apple. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 " She was as red as flower in May, 
 Or snow that snoweth on winter's day." 
 
 Everybody at Penroses was dressing for 
 churcli — dressing too with that eye to effect 
 which only the seventh day properly inspires 
 in the female breast, and which originated 
 undoubtedly jn that of our innocent mother 
 Eve. For you may be sure that when, on 
 the day above mentioned, she had modishly 
 arranged her decidedly summer raiment, an 
 instinct even older than herself made her 
 look round Tor 'the " other woman," to be 
 
 VOL. I. 1 
 
2 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 crushed by lier superior grace, and that, how- 
 ever much Adam may have admked her, she 
 felt him to be but a poor substitute for that 
 intelligent, if unwilling, approval, only to be 
 furnished by her own sex. Our wittiest 
 actress roundly asserts that the Serpent was a 
 dressmaker, for that if Eve had not eaten the 
 apple, she would not have required clothes, 
 and if women did not wear clothes, they 
 would not have dressmakers' bills ; ergo the 
 Serpent, otherwise the dressmaker, is solely 
 to blame for women getting into debt. And 
 indeed I think Eve came off uncommonly ill 
 in that little business all round. How was 
 she to know when she offered a nice, juicy 
 fruit to a man, most certainly with a view to 
 his enjoyment, that he would be sneak enough 
 to turn round (when it disagreed with him) 
 and say : " She beguiled me, and I did eat " ? 
 Why did he not put up with the disagreeable 
 results of eating it, and let it be supposed he 
 had gathered it himself? Eve would have 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 been quite justified in flatly contradict- 
 ing the mean tell-tale, but then she would not 
 have been a woman if she had not taken all 
 the blame on her own shoulders, and let the 
 man go free. Her descendants do it to this 
 day — but they won't to-morrow. And her 
 conduct on that occasion is just one of 
 those things that make me proud of my 
 own sex, just as Adam's meanness is a 
 smudge on the whole race of man. 
 
 And so everybody save the Chief, from 
 the Ancient Mariner down to Nan (who 
 wrestled with an ugly bonnet and wept at 
 the unbecomingness thereof), was making 
 the best of the face on her or him ; and a 
 sense of flurry that seemed yet to blend 
 naturally with the peaceful church bells 
 reigned supreme through the house. 
 
 The Whipper-Snapper had tried on all his 
 
 own and Dinkie's waistcoats in turn (with 
 
 some resjretful thoughts thrown to his father's, 
 
 which were too big), and he felt it a trial 
 
 1* 
 
4 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 when at a critical stage of his operations, 
 Nan appeared, looking rather wor.«e than 
 usual, enquiring piteousl}^ : " Do I look so 
 very bad, Snappy dear ? " 
 
 It is to be feared that poor Nan, who on 
 six days of the week was more or less wicked, 
 but on the seventh merely vain, got an 
 affirmative reply, for it was a tragic face 
 that she finally carried to the hall where the 
 Denison family was wont to assemble before 
 starting for church, only to be greeted with : 
 
 " Good Heavens, child ! Where did j^ou 
 get that cocked-up hat ? and where's your 
 mother? " added the Chief with such acerbity 
 that immediately all eyes were anxiously 
 turned to the staircase, but in vain. 
 
 Mrs. Denison was alwaj's a little late ; it 
 was one of those small luxuries well within the 
 latitude of a really good woman that she 
 comfortably allowed herself, though to Tom 
 unpunctuality comprised all the sins of the 
 Decalogue, and now he muttered something 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. & 
 
 inaudible, snatched the hand of the youngest 
 child present, and set out, the procession 
 falling in decorously behind him. 
 
 If he had made the town, his eldest 
 daughter half filled the church, and Tom 
 glanced round with a sardonic twist of the 
 nose as he made his way to the square pew 
 under the pulpit, round which was spread 
 a distinctly male population, through which 
 Easter sent a ripple of life as she passed. 
 
 I suppose we are all born greedy, and 
 when we see deeds done we would have 
 liked to do, and people we would have liked 
 to be, we look at and enjoy them, as if the 
 deeds were our very own, and the people our 
 very selves. 
 
 Talk about the feast of reason, and the flow 
 of soul, it is the feast of colour, and the flow- 
 ing line of beauty that men really worship 
 and revel in. It is to please his own eyes 
 that a man looks at a lovely thing, not to give 
 pleasure to what he gazes on. The pleasure 
 
6 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 is for himself, and he desires to share it with 
 none, but will let time stand still, and duty go 
 to rack and ruin, while he satisfies that 
 craving of his nature for the beautiful, which 
 imperiously cries out for satisfaction even at 
 the cost of all he holds most dear. And God 
 who gives colour to one flower, yet denying 
 it sweetness, bestows both lavishly on another, 
 grants to some few fortunate women that 
 which makes them joys to every soul who 
 approaches them — and such an one was 
 Easter. 
 
 When Tom had quarrelled with his foot- 
 stool, fallen foul of his book - mark, asked 
 Nan in a fierce whisper what she was garping 
 at, and levelled a furious glance at his newly- 
 arrived wife that fell harmless on her pink 
 crepe bonnet (Maria was a woman whom 
 church became}, also let the tail of the sheet- 
 lightning in his eye expend itself on the local 
 grocer, who was peeping at the great man 
 through his fingers, he felt better, and pre- 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 7 
 
 sently glanced complacently round, much as a 
 Turk might on a seraglio that reflected credit 
 upon his taste. 
 
 Nan had snuggled close up to Easter with 
 hat askew, and eyes alight, Dinkie and the 
 Snapper in all their Sunday bravery were 
 divided by Melons, who had already detected 
 certain stolen splendours in her favourite 
 brother's attire, the French and English 
 governesses were divided by Bunkulorum, 
 and round Mrs. Denison the little ones clus- 
 tered thick. She would have liked to put 
 weights on their soft golden heads and keep 
 them as her own little loving children always, 
 for all too well she knew how fast they grew 
 up into selfish, cock-sure boys and girls, who 
 knew everything their parents are not ex- 
 pected to understand, but this also she did not 
 know, that the only thing that will bring 
 them back, with the hearts of little children, 
 to their mothers, is to be alone among 
 strangers, or in a strange land, and to lean 
 
S A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 back and find the arm and the love that has 
 supported them, withdrawn. 
 
 Mrs. Denison would cheerfully have sub- 
 mitted to be cut into pieces for any one of 
 her children, only she would have insisted on 
 the larger pieces being for the benefit of 
 the boys, while Tom preferred his girls, 
 though he was angry with Easter just now, 
 for he could count at least a dozen new 
 popinjays round his pew. Bring up your 
 child, and love and tend her throuo-h lonc^ 
 years, and then when the first young man 
 she fancies, calls to her, and he}', presto! 
 away she goes, can you wonder that a 
 father's heart is made sore by such ingrati- 
 tude ? I don't think a mother ever feels quite 
 the same over such things — she usually keeps 
 her daughter all her life. Frequently her son- 
 in-law wishes she didn't. 
 
 Woman is an affectionate animal — she can't 
 live without something to look after — she has 
 actually been known to love a man — when 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 9 
 
 she has no children. And Maria put the 
 children first — and Tom leagues after. Now 
 this is wrong, because, though I admit that 
 little children are far more interesting and 
 lovable than any contradictious man can ever 
 be, 3^et it is the law of Nature that the young 
 life goes out into the world and forgets, and 
 the old life stays at home, and remembers. 
 Therefore should husband and wife be friends, 
 for they will be left alone face to face, 
 mutually dependent on each other by the 
 once noisy and crowded hearth at last. 
 
 I fear it is a tradition in most families that 
 the person who has to keep order is a bogie. 
 The mother usually slides easily enough into 
 the position of guardian angel to the un- 
 grateful young brats (it is a position that 
 nearly every woman fills with grace, and 
 intense satisfaction to herself^, and tacitly 
 admits tyranny in the father where often 
 there is no tyranny at all, but only an earnest 
 desire for the children's real welfare. All of 
 
10 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 which is obviously unfair to the head of the 
 family, who usually works hard to keep them, 
 while they completely overlook the com- 
 forts he provides, in finding fault with his 
 temper. A child flees naturally to a mother's 
 petticoat, if it be the merest rag even, but it 
 very seldom takes shelter behind a man's 
 coat-tails, and never if the rag be handy. 
 And for my part, I am sorry for the poor old 
 dad, who seldom gets a chance of winning 
 his children's affection till they are grown up, 
 and then it is sometimes too late, for the 
 mother pulls the wires, and can set the child 
 jumping away from, or towards the father, 
 just as she pleases. It is undoubtedly this 
 feeling of injustice, of outraged affection, that 
 provokes many a father into severities of 
 which he would not otherwise be guilty, 
 and when he is constantly expected to ex- 
 plode, why, if you expect a man to do a 
 thing, and let him see that you expect it, 
 he usually gratifies you by doing it, and 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 11 
 
 going one better than you thought him 
 good for. 
 
 And there is this misfortune, that ever the 
 father can dive down into his own memory as 
 a child, and see in what lamentable fashion he 
 failed to his parents, but the child does not 
 know, and only crudely judges the parent by 
 those acts which must sometimes be faultily 
 human, and therefore from the child's 
 inflexible stand-point — inflexible because it 
 can't see the possibility of change — wrong in 
 an elder. Any way, it came to pass that Tom 
 Denison was regarded as something of a 
 tyrant both at home and abroad, while it had 
 been tersely said of him in the hunting-field, 
 where he was conspicuously well known, that 
 he was in the habit of kickim? his men 
 servants, and kissing his maids, also that 
 he owned the best horses, the finest cellar, 
 and the handsomest daughter in the county. 
 
 And if the former impeachment were true, 
 you may be quite sure that the men richly 
 
12 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 deserved it, and that tlie maids were of 
 altofijether uncommon G;ood looks. On one 
 occasion, I know that he forgot himself, but 
 not of set purpose ; he fell indeed the victim 
 of a delicious opportunity. It was at the 
 Works one morning, when everything, from 
 his family at home, down to the pertest factory 
 girl, had driven him wild, that it occurred to 
 his foreman, a man well on in years and 
 respectability, to stoop down and tie his shoe 
 lace right in Mr. Denison's path. The 
 temptation was irresistible, the opportunity 
 unique. Mr. Denison promptly, and with 
 much good sense, kicked his servant soundly, 
 thereby probably saving himself from a fit of 
 apoplexy, or worse. The old servant did not 
 retaliate. He rose, and said with deep feeling 
 and great dignity : " Mr. Denison, sir, I'm 
 ashamed of 'ee, and I wouldn't have thought it 
 of 'ee," and marched stiffly away. It did not 
 occur to him that possibly Mr. Denison had 
 not thous^ht it of himself either. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 13 
 
 Jem Burgliersli's pew was under tlie 
 reading-desk on the other side of the aisle, 
 and across it the young man looked at Hugon, 
 who, beside Easter, showed like a dim and sad 
 silhouette of the past, as contrasted with a 
 vivid, prismatic to-day. 
 
 For a moment the tired blue eyes, and the 
 grey ones, so full of vigorous life and purpose, 
 questioned each other. And it struck Jem 
 then, that there is no more pitiful, sorrowful 
 sight, than faded, young blue eyes. They 
 were meant for love, and laughter, and 
 sunshine, and they have found only tears and 
 disillusion. Of the black and brown, we 
 expect work-a-day things, but the blue — 
 when sunken and weary — touch us with an 
 inexplicable pain and pity. 
 
 Jem thouq^ht " Poor little woman ! " as he 
 looked away, which was not precisely the 
 way in which any one who really knew 
 Hugon would describe her, and it might 
 have surprised him to know the manner 
 
14 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 in wliich she was just then apostrophising 
 him. 
 
 " You are a good sort," she said to herself, 
 "just enough brains to keep you from being 
 a fool, and just the man to be gentle to a 
 woman, and take care of her — yes, and 
 forgive her too, if needs were. To be sure 
 you have made the fatal mistake of going 
 down on your knees at the beginning, and 
 when you want to get up again, probably 
 Easter won't let you. Yet there's a curve 
 about your moustache that flatly contradicts 
 the gentleness of your manners. Odd that 
 a man who should be at his very best when 
 he is love-making, is usually at his very worst, 
 and arouses a woman's strongest contempt 
 when it is absolutely vital that he should 
 compel her to look up to, and own him 
 master — as if he kept his very worst for her, 
 his best for the world. Your masterful man is 
 your indiflerent lover — none the worse for the 
 woman perhaps in the end — but if in love, 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 16 
 
 men were calm, self-reliant, holding their own 
 as they do in crowds, or when together, 
 instead of which, when really and profoundly 
 in love," she paused, and a burning memory 
 whitened her cheeks, " they are like children 
 who beg and cry, and pray, for something to 
 please — us ? No, themselves. When they 
 master their selfish cries and prayers, when 
 they have learned to go hungry, they master 
 us. Still it is the metier of the Briton to 
 be steadfast, of the Russian to be dist'n 
 guished — and dangerous. I wonder what 
 our friend is doing now ? If he has courage, 
 or is sufficiently in love, he will follow her 
 here ; I'm sure of the courage, but I doubt 
 the love." 
 
 JSTan had forgotten her unbecoming bonnet, 
 and because incongruous ideas always came 
 into her head, she was wondering why there 
 should be so many people walking and sitting 
 about the world, and so few lying flat in 
 graveyards? And people take so much 
 
16 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 more room lying down, than standing up- 
 right, with just enough room in great cities 
 for feet to fight on, and people have gone on 
 being born, and dying, for thousands and 
 thousands of years, yet the churchyards are 
 so few that they are scarcely to be seen as 
 specks on Nature's broad breast, and the 
 living give us neither elbow space, or 
 breathing room. Where do they hide them- 
 selves awa}', the poor tired-out dead — do 
 their bodies indeed vanish even as rapidly as 
 our memories of them ? 
 
 And then Nan stopped thinking, to look, 
 as everyone else was looking, at a sud- 
 denly opening door beneath the organ 
 loft, through which, in a blinding burst 
 of sunshine, came a young man, who ad- 
 vanced boldly up the aisle, his eyes search- 
 ing the congregation on either side of him, 
 until he found what he wanted, when he 
 coolly turned in at the nearest pew, 
 taking the only vacant seat — which hap- 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 17 
 
 pened to be next to Daddy Gardner — that 
 was there. 
 
 Mr. Denison looked sharply at his daughter, 
 but she lifted the little black fan she carried 
 in her hand, and hid her face completely. 
 This stranger might be staying in the neigh- 
 bourhood — and it was a common enough 
 thing for young men to journey miles over 
 and back just to see Miss Denison at church, 
 but this was by no means a common young 
 man, and by way of passing on his dis- 
 comfort, Tom smartly touched the foot of 
 Nan who was leaning forward, all her soul 
 in her eyes, and eager interest stamped upon 
 her every feature. 
 
 " Les beaux esprits se rencontreni" and it 
 was at her that the stranger was looking — 
 not at Easter — caught by the absolute 
 sincerity and truth of the little ugly face 
 under its ugly hat ; for this man rated sin- 
 cerity high above every other precious 
 quality on earth, above even loyalty. 
 
 VOL. T. 
 
 2 
 
18 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 ^^ Excuse me," said Daddy in a politely 
 infuriated whisper, " but you are sitting on 
 my hat." 
 
 It was only the brim, but the new 
 comer smiled slightly as he removed himself, 
 and took in all the noble army of Easter's 
 lovers, before he looked across at Easter's 
 now uncovered face, carelessly, keenly, but 
 there are men's looks — and looks. 
 
 Jem's glance revealed Easter to herself in a 
 misty halo of divinity, Basil Strokoffs stripped 
 her clean to her bones — which were ugly and 
 unbecoming, and she hated him for doing it. 
 And it was delightful to her to feel that she 
 could be angry — not flurried, not glad, but 
 simply angry. Indeed, after that jfirst heart- 
 leap which greeted his unexpected appear- 
 ance, Easter sat tight, and behaved as if no 
 such person as Basil were present, whereby 
 Tom was partly deceived, but not quite. 
 
 Nan felt drawn to the man in spite of 
 herself, and fascinated, though she did not in 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 19 
 
 the least know why. He was different to 
 
 anything she had ever seen before in her life, 
 
 the glance of his eyes went through her, and 
 
 when he looked at Easter, the child thrilled 
 
 as if it were herself he loved, and who must 
 
 and did love him, for of course he had come 
 
 here after Easter. 
 
 The villagers looked at him hard, rested 
 
 their hands on their knees, and breathed 
 
 harder still. He wore a coat, waistcoat, tie 
 
 and so on, just like other men. In what 
 
 then did he, or his clothes differ from many 
 
 other young men present ? Even these yokels 
 
 recognised the power — though they knew not 
 
 the name of. Style — that quality which will 
 
 make one man well-dressed in a rag, while 
 
 without it another is mean in cloth of gold. 
 
 As to what the rural beaux thought of him — 
 
 well, they thought principally of their tailors, 
 
 and reviled them, all except Jem, who was 
 
 not wholly unacquainted with Poole. 
 
 And looking at Easter, Basil acknowledged 
 
 2* 
 
20 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 that her clothes too, were all right — and a 
 woman's clothes mean so much more than 
 herself ; an ill-dressed head,'^a veil awry, will 
 make her appear a very derelict. of fate, while 
 attired a quatre epingles,] her heart may be 
 broken, and ruin have overtaken her — but 
 no one will know, or believe it. Thus Basil 
 appreciated the fitness of the gauzy frock and 
 hat that matched Easter's hair and eyes, a 
 sable background against which her skin 
 showed up like the white and rose of azaleas, 
 satiny fine, vividly pure as they — nay, purer, 
 for what shall compare with the infinite 
 possibilities of beautiful young blood ? And 
 best of all was the eager look that only a 
 young face ever wears, with the light of the 
 rising sun upon it, not that over which the 
 day (however good) has passed. 
 
 Hugon had looked at him openly, as at a 
 face that she knew, her glance indeed was 
 almost equivalent to a bow, and expressly 
 intended for Tom's observation. He had been 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 21 
 
 delighted with Hugon hitherto, but now his 
 eye suggested that she had come to Penroses 
 without credentials, and that he had never 
 once heard her speak of her father and mother. 
 She nodded to him slightly as one who says, 
 " Bye-and-bye," then plunged into her Prayer 
 book with its scarlet cross, and shut her senses 
 to the trembling of Easter's knees on the 
 hassock that touched her own. 
 
 Perhaps the new comer did not fall in so 
 readily with the downsittings, and uprisings 
 of his neighbours as he might have done. 
 Twenty years had been bridged in a moment's 
 space — it was just so long, since he had been 
 in a country church, yet, if he had been 
 set here^ deaf and blindfold, the atmosphere 
 must have told him what day it was, and 
 among what manner of people he found 
 himself. 
 
 He listened intently to the singing of old 
 hymns that he remembered, for though his 
 father was a Eussian, he had been born and 
 
22 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 brought up in England, and as a child had 
 sometimes accompanied his English mother 
 to church. 
 
 " ! Paradise ! ! Paradise, the world is 
 growing old," sang the lusty young voices 
 and the quivering old ones ; but it is no such 
 thing, the world is as young as ever, it is 
 only we who grow old and stale, and cease 
 from enjoyment, for as if in defiance of such 
 teaching, through the door he had opened, 
 and that no one else had shut, one could see 
 the slanting tombstones, and hear the rooks 
 calling sleepily to each other in the oak trees 
 overhead, while little vagrant airs suggesting 
 new-mown grass, and running water stole to 
 and fro among the warm, half-sleeping elders 
 of the congregation, and everywhere the 
 quiver of young restless life made itself felt, 
 that youth to which rest means stagnation, 
 and sleep is one of the useless conditions, not 
 joys of existence. 
 
 When the sermon began, Basil glanced 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 23 
 
 round the cliurch. The square pews showed 
 Conservatism, for as a Eadical is known by the 
 evilness of his hat, and the misdirected energy 
 of his manners, so is the true Conservative 
 recognised by the comfort, not to say elegance 
 of his surroundings, and it did not take Basil 
 Strokoff long to discover that the principal 
 person present (in the town's estimation) was 
 Mr. Denison, and that half the prosperity 
 there to-day flowed directly from him, since 
 only a man who owned half the town could 
 afford to unbutton his waistcoat, or with 
 closed eyes make wry faces when the ladylike 
 Vicar made outrageous demands on the 
 common sense, not to say purses of his 
 congreojation. 
 
 Nothing escaped this young man, who took 
 in every phase of Eokehorne life as here 
 represented. He labelled correctly enough 
 the doctor, lawyer, tradesman, poor man, and 
 black sheep penitent o' Sundays, and the 
 rest ; while the existence that Easter must 
 
24 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 necessarily live in such a place moved 
 symmetrically before liim in a panorama 
 which contained among other less useful 
 figures the dominant one of Jem Burghersh. 
 True his back was to' that young man — 
 still, he had observed him, and even found 
 time to note a young woman heavily swathed 
 in crape, of whom he thought : " She looks 
 like a Suttee, and wiU marry again to-morrow, 
 if she gets a chance." 
 
 The sermon was a missionary one. Will 
 anything ever teach us not to interfere with 
 other folks' religions, older by uncounted 
 thousands of years than our own ? It is as 
 unjustifiable as meddling with another 
 person's pockets, and upon my word, when 
 the missionaries get eaten, I say : " Serve 
 them right." And I always thought that the 
 pith of the whole expedition, ay, and the 
 pathos of it, too, lay in that one solitary little 
 Bible which I once saw exhibited as the sole 
 rehc of Mungo Park's expedition. The 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 25 
 
 savages could not eat that — no, nor its spirit, 
 which is indestructible. 
 
 And now the sermon had droned itself to a 
 close, and by way of relief, during the 
 collection, the congregation sang with a will. 
 Basil knew the tune, which was cheerful, 
 though with none of the chirrupy, lirrupy 
 song and prayer combined, peculiar to the 
 Salvation Army, and which seems at one and 
 the same time to satisfy the mirthful desires 
 of human nature, while evincing a very Hvely 
 fear of God. It is not everybody who can 
 set his piety to a dance tune, but those who 
 can and do, are undoubtedly happy and 
 wise. 
 
 Gradually a strange feeling stole over 
 Basil that possibly our greatest joys are those 
 of reminiscence — of things that, lying a long, 
 long way back in our memories, steal upon 
 us softly, like old friends sure of a welcome, 
 . . . but when the collecting plate was 
 brought him, he shook his head in stern 
 
26 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 negative, at the same moment as on the 
 opposite side of the aisle, Mr. Denison, Hke- 
 wise invited, angrily shook his. Perhaps each 
 saw the action of the other, and their mutual 
 hatred of humbug established a point cVappui 
 between them, and made many impossible 
 things possible, afterwards. 
 
 The two opposite pew-doors flew open 
 simultaneously, and Basil Strokoff found 
 himself close to Hugon (who alone of all 
 those present he had been unable to classify), 
 and she bowed gravely and formally to the 
 young man, to Basil's immense surprise. 
 Mr. Denison snatched Easter's hand, and 
 hustled her away, while the French governess, 
 moving abreast of the Eussian, said in a low 
 voice : 
 
 " You are comins: to call ? When ? '' 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " Then why are you here ? " 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "I have friends at Fitzwalters," he said. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 27 
 
 "I took this on my road. There is some 
 good gudgeon-fishing here," I am told. 
 
 Their eyes met, and Hugon smiled. He 
 remained grave. Then the crowd pushed 
 them divergent ways — they melted rather 
 than parted into the surrounding throng. 
 
 Hugon hurried, and overtook Mr. Denison 
 outside the church door. He was fuming, 
 and muttering something about " fellows," 
 when she joined him. 
 
 " I stopped to speak to Mr. Strokoff, an 
 old friend," she said, with a certain hard 
 calmness. " He may call upon me, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " What is he doing here ? " snapped Mr. 
 Denison. 
 
 " He has friends at Fitzwalters " 
 
 " And a pretty set they are over there," 
 said Mr. Denison, shooting a withering glance 
 at Easter, but her face told no tales. 
 
 *'Pray, miss," he said, " do you know him 
 too?" 
 
28 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 " I never spoke to him in my life, father," 
 said Easter, truly enough, but with a haste 
 for which fear was mainly responsible. 
 
 Just behind, Mrs. Denison might be heard 
 remarking with real enjoyment on the 
 deliciousness of the air, and it was a re- 
 markable fact that whenever his wife most 
 acutely felt the beauties of nature, it was 
 invariably at a moment when Tom's natural 
 irascibility was increased by business, or 
 famil}^, or personal worries. 
 
 " Confound the air ! " cried Tom, as he shot 
 ahead, and Hugon, left face to face with 
 Easter, smiled. 
 
 "It was unavoidable. I saved a scandal 
 by seeming to recognise him, for he gave you 
 away by the manner in which he walked up 
 the aisle, and sat down opposite you. And 
 Mr. Denison strikes me as a person who 
 could make himself — unpleasant on occasion." 
 
 "I don't understand you," said Easter 
 indignantly ; " at Fairmile you moved heaven 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 29 
 
 and earth to keep Basil Strokoff and me 
 apart, and now you are throwing me at his 
 head — and I won't be thrown. If he does 
 caU, I shall be out." 
 
 " Calm yourself. He is on his way to 
 Fitzwalters. He is merely paying you — ■ 
 a morning call." 
 
 " How dare he ? " cried Easter, clenching 
 her slender hand with those tears in her 
 eyes that mean temper in the young, " ! if 
 he were really in love with me, Td teach him 
 a lesson he'd never forget ! "' 
 
 Hugon laughed as they turned in at 
 Penroses. 
 
 " He has been teaching women lessons all 
 his life," she said in Easter's ear, as they went 
 up the wide, shallow stairs, " and I don't be- 
 lieve the woman is born who will ever teach 
 him — anjT'thing new. But 'buck up,' as 
 Dinkie says — in these days of nervous, lady- 
 like young men, and manly women, you may 
 congratulate yourself on attracting, if but for 
 
30 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 a moment, two such real masculine person- 
 alities as Jem Burghersh and Basil Strokoff. 
 Though of course it's the page upside down 
 that we all want to read, and we pass the 
 blackboard with the writing chalked up — 
 nose in the air — still, the blackboard's safest." 
 " And dull. I'm tired of blackboards," said 
 Easter with decision, as she tossed her hat 
 with its nodding black plumes on her bed. 
 
 7 r*p O^F^fyr^rr^ «*^ *• 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 " Of pleasures those which occur most rarely give the 
 
 greatest delight." 
 
 — Epictetus. 
 
 It was so early that only the birds were 
 abroad, pattering with light feet on the 
 silvered sheet of lawn that lay before 
 Penroses, for the sun had not yet dispersed 
 the dew, and is not four o'clock of a deepest 
 summer morning, the stillest, the divinest, the 
 most exquisite hour out of aU the twenty-four 
 that a lordly August day and night may think 
 fit to squander on us ? 
 
 Nature does not awaken in the same 
 fashion as her last, and most unhappily-made 
 creation, man — with a stretch, a groan, and 
 usually a longing to relapse again into the 
 nothingness of slumber, and so evade the 
 responsibilities of waking life. She appears 
 
32 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 fresh, smiling, trim — all her forces in admir- 
 able working order, and has always at least 
 an hour or so to herself, in which to enjoy 
 her own company, before that biped, mis- 
 named lord of all, struts upon the scene. 
 
 It is then that like a queen apart she 
 reigns in her own beauty, and will scarcely 
 deign to share it with you, even if you rise 
 betimes to catch her, but is always a little 
 far-off and chilly in her greeting, making you 
 feel how insignificant you are, and how great 
 she is — mysterious too, as if still touched with 
 the secrets and the silence of the night. 
 
 Her flowers will not greet you with a warm 
 breath of voluptuous sweetness as you pass 
 them by — cold in their breasts will lie the 
 dew, and they will yield but a rarefied clean 
 fragrance as you lay them to your lips, asking 
 if indeed but yesterday they were warmed 
 through and through by a scorching mid-day 
 sun? Austerely as strangers they look you 
 in the face, as if marvelling that you linger 
 
A MAX OF TO-DAY. 33 
 
 near, and 3'our hands hesitate to pluck them ; 
 for vaguely you feel that your presence is 
 an intrusion, and that nature was holier and 
 more beautiful without you, 
 
 " For beast and bird have seen and heard 
 That which man knoweth not." 
 
 Wherefore, put thy shoes from off thy feet 
 if thou wouldst enter in with a chance of 
 welcome from her, or read her intimate 
 heart ; forget that thou art human, and 
 remember only that the great Unknown, 
 who breathed into life all this loveliness 
 about thee, made thee also, and that dust 
 indeed thou mayest proudly be, if all this 
 earthly beauty be fashioned out of dust, 
 calling to us in kinship with a thousand voices 
 to which a thousand chords in us respond, 
 and reminding us that when we crumble to 
 earth again, we shall live again as a part of 
 the glory of the Universe. 
 
 " There lives and breathes 
 A soul in all things, 
 And that soul is God." 
 VOL. I. 3 
 
34 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 And what better can we ask than to live on 
 among what we know — to spring in the spear 
 of grass, to breathe in the flower, to steal out 
 into the sunshine in all the exultant freshness of 
 the young leaf, and to throb and tingle with 
 life, warm in the mother breast from which 
 we sprang ? " ! not for us," we cry, " to 
 waken in some far-off alien place, among 
 chilly joys that we may not taste Math human 
 lips, understand with human hearts, where 
 we may not even have the human creatures 
 near us who made our heaven upon earth, 
 for is it not written that there all human ties 
 are broken ? " 
 
 Moreover, if to dust we come, then for us 
 there can be no lasting stain of sin, for the 
 impersonality of nature must be apparent 
 even to the lightest observer. The foulest 
 crime, the utmost human corruption, leaves 
 no mark on our Earth-mother's stainless 
 perfection ; rather her leaves fall over, and 
 hide it, the south wind scatters even its 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 35 
 
 memory, and straightway Nature has done ' 
 with, has forgiven, and forgotten it. Man 
 may grow old and vile, but the youth of the 
 earth is the same yesterday, now and for ever, 
 and makes you knoiv the imperishability of 
 God. 
 
 Nothing was lost on Hugon as she 
 moved, not a tint of the sky, or sharp touch 
 of aigre-doux in the air, or the feel and the 
 sparkle of the crisp dew beneath her feet; 
 she even seemed to hear the white trumpet 
 flowers, and their blue-eyed sisters shouting 
 their welcome to the dawn, yet at the bottom 
 of all she was intensely conscious of that 
 wretched Ego, which dwarfed the very 
 vault of Heaven and the floor of earth, to a 
 puddle just large enough to hold her own 
 frightful reflection. 
 
 " What does it matter ? " she said to 
 
 herself, scornfully, and looking up to the 
 
 pale sky, rarefied as if a mighty pure breath 
 
 had hurried before the sun, and winnowed all 
 
 3* 
 
36 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 the heavens against his coming, sweeping im- 
 periously away the old day and the night, to 
 make room for the new. " AVhy am I not asleep 
 too, like those animals in the house behind 
 me ? They were born asleep — they will live 
 and die asleep ; there is only one waking soul 
 among them, the red-headed child, and when 
 they die, they will only continue their present 
 existence of rust, rust, rust. Is there not 
 time enough to sleep when we die ? Let us 
 work while we have the light . . . ' In the 
 darkness no man can work' — what does that 
 mean but death — not sleep, but death ? " 
 
 She stopped thinking to listen to the 
 Zee-zee of the tit-lark, shrilly clear among 
 other reed-like notes, fine and sweet as are 
 all bird voices above human utterances. 
 What do they not know, these tiny creatures 
 with deathless spirits that are never to be 
 tamed or bought of men? They tell us of 
 what we know not, and make us know them 
 also ... of how the dawn comes up, 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 37 
 
 of what the song means in running water, 
 of the source of sunshine, and the mystery 
 of the fragrance of turf and blossom ; of 
 what the west wind rusthng through long 
 grass breathes in whispers, they being 
 indeed God's interpreters between Him and 
 us. 
 
 A horse was resting his nose on the top of 
 the gate leading into the orchard, and looking 
 at the garden as if thoroughly enjoying 
 himself, till he saw, and shied away from her 
 as an intruder. 
 
 "You are awake of course," said Hugon, 
 who thoroughly knew and hated human 
 nature, but loved animals, thus obeying 
 a natural law. "You live a temperate, 
 clean, hard - working existence, and don't 
 know the meaning of self - indulgence, 
 yet when one man wants to say the 
 most degrading thing possible of another, 
 he calls him a beast. A beast ? AYhat is 
 it ? AVhat harm is there in one ? It has 
 
38 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 healthy instincts, a healthy body, and when 
 it dies, we can eat it without fear. Who 
 could eat one of us ? An animal indeed ! 
 One healthy beast is worth a thousand 
 diseased humans. A man finds it too much 
 trouble to get out of his chair to serve you — ■ 
 a dog, comfortably couched, leaps up if you do 
 but look at him — it is all willing service, willing 
 heart, and limbs, and eyes — where will you 
 find a man so patient, so docile, so affection- 
 ate, so absolutely devoted to you as your 
 dog ? I envy you, oh beasts, and would be 
 one of you — for we should do no wrong, if 
 we did not know it to be wrong, and 
 — you have the sweet of slumber, while 
 of the curse of memory you are blessedly free. 
 You go on producing beautiful, healthy off- 
 spring, while man alone is the author of those 
 miserable beings, that the false conditions 
 of life, and mental trouble, cause unhappy 
 woman to bring forth." 
 
 The current of her thoughts changed. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 39 
 
 "I wonder what you mean," she said, 
 looking across to the belt of trees behind 
 which at the " Eoyal George," Basil Strokoff 
 was presumably sleeping. " You are a man, 
 and you take what you like, and when you 
 like, and how you like — you don't live the 
 one phase of life a woman does — with her heart; 
 you live with heart, and brain, and body — in a 
 word, with the whole physical and spiritual 
 man. ! yes, you live — and no good woman 
 ever lives. It is a sip here, a snippet there, 
 a taste given you for hunger, an ache 
 developed where there was no ache before, 
 but it is not the whole ripe, rich fruit, to 
 be enjoyed through and through, that you 
 take so unthankfuUy — you must be a 
 woman first if you want to appreciate 
 being a man." 
 
 She pushed open the gate, and crossed the 
 stubble that the dew touched so much less 
 beautifully than the smooth turf of the 
 garden, and came presently to the long 
 
40 A MAN OF TO-DAi'. 
 
 apple tree colonnade, that ran parallel with 
 the " George " cabbage garden and straw- 
 berry beds. Early as the hour was, Hugon 
 perceived a man's figure on the other side, 
 and she smiled as he turned towards her. 
 Across the ditch their eyes met, and he 
 glanced questioningly at her hand, as if he 
 expected it to hold a billet-doiLv. 
 
 " Won't you come over ? " she said. 
 
 He leaped the ditch at a place made 
 convenient b}^ Easter's " boys," and strolled 
 beside her. 
 
 " I love these morning hours," she said. 
 *' Nature with her eyes wide open — man with 
 his fast shut." 
 
 " The onl}^ thing is," he said languidly, 
 " that it is apt to make one a Pharisee — to 
 extol oneself at the expense of one's neigh- 
 bours — in itself a very bad exercise for 
 anybody. And who knows but that the 
 very persons whose slimibers we despise, may 
 not later in the day do something infinitely 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 41 
 
 better than our best thoughts have been, 
 however early we got up to think them ? By- 
 the-way," he added, " I like that little girl I 
 saw in church yesterda}^ — I don't know her 
 name." 
 
 " So you noticed Xan," said Hugon, 
 "which is unusual. Miss Easter is the 
 sweet-briar of the family ; do you know that 
 if you put a twig of it among a bunch of 
 flowers, it kills all the rest ? " 
 
 " Why did she not answer my letters ? " 
 enquired the young man, as if the subject 
 interested him very little. 
 
 " And if she had, probably you would not 
 be here," said Hugon. 
 
 He laughed, and his laugh was exhilarating. 
 It was impossible not to observe how delight- 
 fully the morning suited him, and he the- 
 morning. 
 
 " Can one in all the place get away from 
 Penroses ? " he said ; " it seems to me that the 
 w^hole town has been sacrificed to Mr. Denison's 
 
42 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 gardens, and hot-houses, and graperies, and 
 orchards, and meadows. He is in trade, is he 
 not ? " 
 
 " Yes. Do 3-0U know what trade means ? 
 It means morals, taste, education, health, 
 travel, independence — everything in short that 
 makes life worth living, instead of merely 
 lini;jering. Only one ought to begin poor, or 
 one does not get the best value for one's 
 money." 
 
 " Everyone," said Basil, " should be allowed 
 two lives here below — one in which to learn 
 how to enjoy himself, and the other in which 
 to enjoy it." 
 
 "A man might," said Hugon, "but a 
 woman, never. She would take her every 
 thought and memory of the one life into the 
 other, and spoil it. A man keeps his 
 memories in his cigarette case — a woman 
 carries hers about with her in trunks, and 
 never loses them. I don't think a man has 
 enough to fill a trunk." 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 43 
 
 " Is not that the little girl I liked so 
 much ? " 
 
 Hugon turned. It was Nan, sure enough, 
 who had been abroad under the hedgerows, 
 and far afield for hours, and now came timidly 
 over the grass laden with wild flowers, and 
 stockings down at heel, looking, if possible, 
 more disreputable than ever. 
 
 Basil's manner changed altogether as he 
 went to meet her, seeing only the eager 
 welcome in the child's eyes as she hastened 
 towards him. 
 
 " How do you do ? " said Nan politely, for 
 as Dinkie said, she could be extremely well- 
 behaved on occasion (only the occasion 
 rarely lasted very long). " Shall I make you 
 a nosegay ? " 
 
 And while she made it, Basil and she talked 
 together, and Hugon, quite out of it, and 
 murmuring something about wet feet, moved 
 away. 
 
 They were very simple things of which the 
 
44 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 man and child talked, as they crossed the 
 stubble together. Yet before they parted, 
 Nan had thnidly confided to him that she meant 
 to write a great book some day, so that her 
 family might be proud, and not ashamed of 
 her. 
 
 " Then do your work now, while you 
 are young, child," he said sadl3\ "Never 
 believe anyone who tells you that the fruit 
 of experience is best. Do it while you 
 are enthusiastic — full of hopes and ideals, 
 with unbroken health, anrl heart, and un- 
 flagging spirits — it will be worth reading 
 then, and brighten many a soul. God 
 knows we've got enough wretches to preach 
 the gospel of despair to us already " — 
 and he thrust further out of si^ht the 
 volume of Pouschkine that peeped from his 
 pocket. 
 
 But as they neared the house by way of the 
 stables, livel}' fears of her father obtruded 
 themselves on Nan's enjoyment, and presently 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 45 
 
 she stopped short, and looked at Basil very 
 earnestly. 
 
 " You mustn't come any further," she said ; 
 " if the Chief sees you, he'll kick you." 
 
 "I sLall sit down," said Basil. 
 
 " You see it's on account of Easter," said 
 Nan. " Everybody is in love with her ! Are 
 you? 
 
 " Well, I'm blowed," cut in Dinkie's voice, 
 in a fierce aside from the adjacent wash-house 
 window ; " if you re going to be gooseberry- 
 in-chief, please say so, and I'll " 
 
 *' I shall come and call this afternoon," said 
 Basil ; " mind you look out for me, child. 
 Good-bye." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 " What we ought not to do, we should not even think 
 
 of doing." 
 
 — Epictettjs. 
 
 Mr. Denison's acquaintance with his neigh- 
 bours was of the most superficial character, 
 while his hospitality was not unlike that of 
 the Tezzanese whose religion enjoins them to 
 practise hospitality, and who therefore always 
 eat with shut doors. Tom abhorred provincial 
 society, and lived to please himself — and 
 occasionally other people. If the county did 
 not want him, he most assuredly did not 
 want the count}^, and ke^Dt his independence 
 in a way that no man trained to polite fiction 
 in conversation can. He was fond of re- 
 cording how, when on one occasion, Maria 
 mentioned to a caller " The Mill on the Floss " 
 as her favourite work, and George Eliot as her 
 
A MAJT OF TO-DAY. 47 
 
 favourite author, she was met by the crushing 
 rejoinder : " Oh ! she was Nobody, she was 
 a Unitarian'' 
 
 And so it came to pass that when Basil 
 stormed the front door at Penroses, seldom 
 used save on Sundays, he was kept waiting 
 so long, that had he not been a resolute man 
 he would probably have turned round and 
 driven off to Fitzwalters, but when at last 
 Sweet William admitted him to one of the many 
 satisfactory rooms at Penroses, he immediately 
 discovered that Mr. Denison was a man of 
 taste who, while never setting himself up to 
 be a judge, yet possessed the quality of 
 selection to an extraordinary degree, so that 
 there was nothing in his house (saving and 
 excepting the room known as the pig-sty) 
 that anyone could have possibly improved 
 upon, or wished otherwise. 
 
 Pictures were meant to hang up, and china 
 to sit down, he said, so he made his walls 
 rich with that splendour of colouring which 
 
48 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 good pictures alone can give, and kept the 
 best china in pantry cupboards, so that it was 
 onl}^ by accident in later years that the 
 children discovered they had always eaten 
 their gooseberry-fool out of Crown Derby 
 cups without handles, and smashed a few 
 dozen in the eating. 
 
 Basil passed a quarter of an hour very com- 
 fortably with the pictures, then went to the 
 window and looked out, thinking that one 
 might pass his existence pleasantly enough at 
 Penroses, if one had never chanced to live 
 the life of the town. For the most part 
 healthy people do not want, and do not miss, 
 excitement, which is really only a disease of 
 the nerves, and with good health, sufficient 
 occupation, and surrounded by those we 
 love, any vague yearning for change may be 
 quickly stifled, but once bitten by that insane 
 rage for one's species that herds men and 
 women together in masses till the air is thick 
 with their struggling breath, so that they 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 49 
 
 come to prey like wild beasts on one another, 
 you can never go back to the still calm joys 
 that once contented you, and may thank God 
 if you do not become fevered with that desire, 
 death to all honesty of thought, and good 
 work, of outstripping, not excelling, your 
 forbears in the race for life. 
 
 Basil waited, but nobody came — not even 
 Nan, whom he especially wished to see. He 
 had merely asked for the ladies. The open 
 window beckoned him, and he stepped out. 
 
 To the right of the house, an ivy-covered 
 wall, masked by rhododendrons, shut off a 
 variety of outhouses and stables that he 
 already knew, and attracted by a distant sound 
 of voices, Basil passed through a little door in 
 it, emerginj:^ on a cobble-stoned enclosure 
 which led in turn to a courtyard warm with 
 the smell of horses, and lively with the 
 barking of dogs, and inconsequent cackle of 
 cocks atid hens. 
 
 High above these, from what looked like a 
 
 VOL. I. 4 
 
50 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 disused coachman's house, issued William's 
 meek voice in accents of entreaty, to which a 
 fresh, enjoying young female soprano lifted 
 itself in pert reply. 
 
 " I hear. It's the ' Eoosian gent '. Why 
 don't you go and tell your missus ? " 
 
 " Missus is in the kitchen garden, miss, 
 with cook, " said William, " seeing about the 
 pickles, and can't come " — which was a lie, 
 for with the usual sympathy of the lower 
 classes for a love affair he had been searching 
 for Easter only. — " You'll excuse me, miss, 
 but I think he's come to see you.'' 
 
 " Then say I've gone out for the day," said 
 Easter. 
 
 " I understood him, miss, to ask me to 
 fetch you," said William, mendaciously, mind- 
 ful of future tips, for Basil's elegance had 
 sunk deep into his soul. 
 
 " Then tell him I'm cleaning out the fowl- 
 house, and can't be disturbed. So I am — • 
 ain't I, Daddv ? " 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 51 
 
 " Of course, and I'm helping you," said a 
 masculine voice with great authority. 
 
 " And so am I," struck in another, " only 
 don't tell him that, the beggar might want to 
 come out and help, you know." 
 
 " Then say I'm sitting in the ice house, 
 William, trying to get cool. Just fancy, 
 Eeggy, someone in the street put a boiler up, 
 and when the Chief went to look for his ice the 
 other day there was — nothing! He simply 
 danced, and his language was — like the boiler. 
 Where's my preserved citron ? Now then. 
 Daddy, don't you frighten that hen. When 
 those eggs are chickens, they're mine, and I'm 
 going to sell 'em. I want a new frock. 
 WiUiam ! Isn't that idiot gone ? " 
 
 " Yes, miss," said a voice faintly. And 
 then there was a sort of scuffle below stairs, 
 and a sound of retreating footsteps across the 
 gravel. 
 
 " Boys," said Easter, in muffled tones that 
 
 suggested her mouth was full, " which hen do 
 
 4* 
 
52 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 you bet gets her chicks out first, the Cochin 
 China or the black Hamburg ? " 
 
 " It's like his infernal cheek," growled 
 Daddy Gardner, " poking his nose in at Pen- 
 roses ; we don't want any blooming Nihilists 
 here. And I think, Miss Easter," he added, in- 
 sinuatingly, "you mentioned that you had 
 never spoken to him in your life before ? " 
 
 " I never have," said Easter, in the tone 
 that signifies an unwilling blush. 
 
 " And, of course, 3^ou don't want to," said 
 Daddy, with youthful indiscretion. " Haven't 
 you got us ? — and what do you want more ? " 
 
 " Y-e-s." 
 
 Easter's voice sounded flat ; for the time, at 
 least, all the vim seemed to have gone out of 
 her. She put up her hands to loosen the 
 white silk handkerchief tied round her head, 
 and at the same moment a quick decided step 
 sounded on the stair. 
 
 " The Chief ! " she exclaimed, turning pale ; 
 " hide, boys, hide ! " 
 
A MAX OF TO-DAY. [>3 
 
 The two broad-shouldered young men looked 
 comprehensively and wildly around them. 
 
 " The cupboard won't hold one of us, much 
 less two," whispered Dadd}^ breathlessly ; " it 
 was an awfully tight lit last year " 
 
 " It isn't the Chief," said Easter, listening 
 intently; " it's a new step — then " (stiffening at 
 a dreadful thought) " I do believe it is " 
 
 She darted into the adjacent cupboard, and 
 drew the dusty door close, just as Basil 
 appeared on the stairway, looking as entirely 
 at his ease as he always managed to do, 
 whether in a palace or a hovel, and glancing 
 enquiringly at the two flurried and angry 
 young men. In his hand he held a hat that 
 had been crushed into a silk accordion by a 
 spiteful blow that the ceiling had come down 
 to hit him on the stairs, but he appeared quite 
 
 unconscious of the disaster as 
 
 " Miss Denison ? " he said, gravely. 
 " You have the advantage of us, sir," said 
 Eeggy, with extreme bucolic hauteur, " tliis is 
 
54 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 the hen-house, and Miss Denison, as you see, 
 is " 
 
 At that moment came from the cupboard a 
 small, distinctly feminine sneeze. Feminine, 
 because it su^fjested angler, laucjliter, timo- 
 rousness, defiance — all combined in a way 
 quite impossible to be expressed by any male 
 organ, and while the young men turned 
 scarlet, Basil smiled. 
 
 " I never heard a hen sneeze quite like that 
 before," he said, and made a step forward as 
 if to investigate such a natural curiosity, but 
 Daddy, gobbling like a turkey-cock, threw 
 himself between. 
 
 " Sir," he said, " I thought a gentleman 
 never intruded on the privacy of a lady — a 
 hen, sir, I mean — and if you'll come doMm- 
 stairs, we will look for Miss Denison, and let 
 her know you are here." 
 
 " Certainly," said Basil, who had not the 
 slightest intention of pressing the point, when 
 at that moment the cupboard door groaned, 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 53 
 
 opened, and Miss Easter Denison walked 
 lightly and unconcernedly out. 
 
 That he had never really seen her before, 
 or had forgotten her, that was Basil's first 
 impression as she faced him, laughing, the 
 ebon silk of her hair showing under the 
 white, twisted kerchief, the rose-tints of 
 her dimpled cheeks and lips catching all his 
 senses, as it were, in a swift surprise . 
 for there is this about real beauty, that it 
 strikes you like a strong man armed, and you 
 cannot, if you will, say him nay. 
 
 " How do you do ? " she said, but without 
 holding out her hand, possibly because it hid 
 a half-eaten candy. " I thought I heard my 
 name mentioned. . . ." 
 
 Her glance sank from his face to his tele- 
 scoped hat. She struggled with herself for a 
 moment, looked helplessly at Daddy and 
 Eeggy, then being all young, all healthy, and 
 all without rancour, they burst out into a 
 simultaneous fit of laughter that cleared the 
 
56 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 air of explosives, and for the time being made 
 them friends. 
 
 " Mother is in the kitchen garden seeing to 
 the pickles," she said, as she led the way 
 downstairs. " I — I hope the cobble-stones 
 won't hurt your feet," and she looked 
 down at his boots, as if they were patent 
 leather — and he a fop, in a way that was 
 cruelly unfair. 
 
 Neither could he hinder her from opening 
 the door in the wall for him, and, obeying 
 her evident wish, as he usually obeyed all 
 women's, passed through, only to find when it 
 swung to behind him, that he was alone. He 
 retraced his steps, but the yard was empty, 
 though a door close by moved slightly, and 
 from behind it came a soft giggle, school- 
 girlish, thoughtless, and only saved from 
 sheer vulgarity by its naturalness, and pure 
 glee. That was the worst of Penroses, it 
 was not built for matters of a private nature, 
 as there was a door ajar everywhere, and 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 67 
 
 always with somebody very much ahve 
 behind it, as Dinkie liad demonstrated that 
 morning. 
 
 Basil smiled, and decided not to try con- 
 clusions with Easter's stalwart body-guard, 
 while she herself, peeping through a chink, 
 was thinking that a man who could walk 
 bareheaded, and carry a concertina hat with- 
 out looking a fool, most assuredly never had 
 been, or could be, one. It even struck her 
 that he might have worn it without looking 
 ridiculous — and possibly she recognised a 
 subtlety that had counselled him to pay a dis- 
 respectful visit in the most orthodox and 
 respectful attire possible. 
 
 " She is full of sport," he said to himself, 
 as he went in search of Mrs. Denison, while 
 from the upper wash-house windows, Easter 
 admired his back, and upset the boys' tempers 
 by telling them that the man who did not 
 know how to choose a necktie, was not fit to 
 live. 
 
• 58 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Maria, who prided herself on her pickles, 
 and was now selecting with care her vege- 
 tables for the process, received the young 
 Russian with some trepidation, but in less 
 than five minutes had forgotten Tom, and 
 after a prolonged and most agreeable saunter 
 round the premises (Basil made a point of 
 always leaving a woman on better terms with 
 herself than he found her), lost her head so 
 completely as actually to invite him in to tea. 
 This meal was always served in the Pig-sty, 
 which was Tom's comprehensive name for an 
 apartment through which the whole family 
 life flowed with a vigour, and it must be 
 added, a litter, that defied all attempts at 
 respectability, and of which he had long ago 
 washed his hands, with some allusion, only 
 understanded of Bunkulorum, to the purging 
 of the Augean stables. 
 
 Dinkie's fishing-net lay in one corner, the 
 girls' dress-stand stood in another ; a canary 
 shrieked above Maria's sewing-machine, while 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 69 
 
 a squirrel gaily worked his wheel at the rate 
 of a mile a minute on the mantel-shelf, and 
 red-papered, shabby, cosy, looking out on the 
 humours of the town street, it was the most 
 frequented, as it was the most popular apart- 
 ment in the house. Tom occasionally took 
 his tea and toast there, instead of in the 
 stately solitude of the Green-room, knowing, 
 poor man, that he was a damper on the 
 festivities, and a muffler on those clapper- 
 tongues, yet still, so great is sometimes a 
 man's yearning for company, even when he 
 knows himself unwelcome, that he came. If 
 only he should take it into his head to come 
 to-day ! 
 
 Maria fidgeted and looked uneasy when 
 she had seated herself behind the tea-pot, that 
 looked like the mother of a large famil}^, but 
 as the table filled up, she took heart of grace, 
 and made tea with that excellent method which 
 is not to be acquired b}^ anything save long 
 experience, and for extremely large numbers. 
 
60 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Nan came in dejected, but colored up 
 brilliantly at sight of their guest. But for 
 Dinkie, who had thoughtfully sandwiched 
 himself between the governesses on the 
 humane principle of keeping a boa-constrictor 
 and a rabbit apart, she would have sat down 
 in the place beside him so conspicuously left 
 empty, and across which Basil and Hugon 
 had some desultory talk about Fairmile — and 
 gudgeon fishing. 
 
 Tea was half-over when Easter rushed in, 
 wearing a clean white gown, her black hair 
 neatly snooded with scarlet, and without a 
 glance at anybody, made for the only empty 
 chair, and helped herself to toast and butter 
 as if she were starving. 
 
 " I'm awfully sorry to be late, mother," 
 she said, spreading her toast with an emanci- 
 pated school-girl's lavish hand, " but I 
 stopped such a long time in the washhouse 
 to see what would happen — if only the Chief 
 Could have seen him swelling down his lawn ! 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 61 
 
 And ! his hat ! Fancy paying an afternoon 
 call on us in a blue frock coat, and a tile ! " 
 
 A dead silence, coupled with a heavy and 
 weU-meant kick under the table from Dinkie 
 made her blood curdle. What if, as once 
 before, she had overlooked the Chief in those 
 uncounted numbers around ? Her alarmed 
 gaze swept the table, and came to a full 
 stop at her next door neighbour, who was 
 just then eating soda-cake as if it were the 
 only thing in life worth doing thoroughly. 
 
 There is a legend that a very shy man who 
 stuttered greatly, escorted a charming woman 
 into dinner, to whom for some time he did 
 not trust himself to speak. Then he took 
 heart and said : " Who — who is — that sp — p 
 — potted man over there ? " 
 
 " That is my husband," she said smihng. 
 
 " — h ! and is — is he sp — p — potted all 
 over ? " responded the stutterer with the 
 courage of despair. 
 
 It was possibly in emulation of this worthy. 
 
62 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 that Easter, meeting the laughing sunshine of 
 Basil's blue eyes full, enquired gravely : 
 
 " Do you like your cake with soda, or 
 ■without ? " 
 
 Before he could reply to the question, or 
 Dinkie draw in the cheeks that he had blown 
 out in admiration of her " nerve," the door 
 opened, and Mr. Denison, who for once 
 followed, and did not precede a silence, 
 walked in. 
 
 Poor Maria rattled the teacups nervously, 
 as Tom's quick eye took in the interloper, but 
 before his glance of surprise could change 
 into a scowl of angry dismissal, Hugon 
 had started up, and effected an introduction 
 in such fashion, that, short of turning his 
 daughter's guest into the street, he must 
 make some sort of greeting to her friend. 
 
 And by the time Mr. Denison had drunk 
 half a cup of tea, and eaten a piece of toast, 
 assiduously and tremblingly buttered by 
 Melons, the two men found themselves taJk- 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 63 
 
 ing horses, and if that noble beast has the 
 peculiar privilege of making rogues of all 
 who approach him from a business point of 
 view, he assuredly makes them bosom friends 
 for the time being. And when Mr. Denison 
 found a man who suited him, and who was, 
 like himself, a sportsman to the backbone, he 
 was not the sort of person to let fears for the 
 female part of his family make him abjure 
 such pleasant company, so that it was with 
 something said about " a quiet dinner to- 
 morrow " (overheard, as all things were over- 
 heard at Penroses), that an hour or so later 
 after a saunter round the stables, the two 
 men amicably parted. 
 
 " Hugon," said Easter with conviction, " I 
 do believe you are Satan himself! " 
 
 "No, call me Mrs. Satan. Because she 
 knew every one of his tricks — and all her 
 own besides." 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 " From the ' dim dawn of history,' and from the inner- 
 most depths of every soul, the face of our Father Man 
 looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his 
 eyes, and says, ' Before Jehovah was, I am ! ' " 
 
 It must not for a moment be supposed that 
 because a stranger bad dropped in for a 
 morning call at Penroses and stayed, that the 
 family life stood still on his account, or 
 ploughed for itself new channels, quite the 
 contrary indeed — for it went on just as usual. 
 If it could assimilate such a riddle as Hugon 
 without accident, it could support a Strokoff 
 with serenity, and storm and shine alternated 
 with its usual regularity in the domestic 
 atmosphere, where it was a recognised fact 
 that when Tom was expansive, Maria was 
 nippy-like, and the other way round, so that 
 nobody ever got ruined by over praise, or 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 65 
 
 cockered up into the useless belief that life is 
 all beer and skittles — except to the wicked. 
 
 Nan still spent her time regularly 
 between bust-ups and repentances, for even 
 Basil could not rule her life otherwise. 
 Easter divided her thoughts pretty equally 
 between frills (that she loved), and lovers 
 (whom she did not love.) Dinkie vainly tried 
 to combine billiards, and the loose delights 
 of the " town " with punctuality at meal 
 times ; Bunkulorum had occasional back- 
 slidings in the direction of snails, and 
 upward flights into the regions of imagina- 
 tion, while Peggy, aged ten, was detected re- 
 ceiving love-letters from Dicky Langdon, aged 
 eleven. It had been discovered by accident, 
 as most guilty secrets are, and perched on a 
 high chair at the family tea-table, poor Peggy 
 was duly indicted, and having had the 
 very inmost recesses of her heart rudely 
 invaded, received the ironical congratulations 
 of her brothers and sisters on the unrivalled 
 
 VOL. I. 5 
 
66 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 potency of her charms. All of this Peggy 
 bore with a very tolerable stomach, being 
 seasoned to the amenities of family life, but 
 when Dinkie took up the cudgels on her 
 behalf, loudly enquiring whi/Xhe little blue- 
 eyed, red-nosed charmer should not have a 
 sweetheart all to herself, and love-letters of 
 her very own, especially with such an 
 example in the family as she constantly had 
 before her eyes, Peggy burst into an agony 
 of tears, and scrambling down from her high 
 chair, fled, while Maria, after promptly 
 boxing the ears of all who were not too 
 old to be boxed, hurried off to administer 
 comfort to her darling, a careful silence being 
 ever afterwards observed by all parties con- 
 cerned on the subject. 
 
 There were no " ructions " as Dinkie had 
 greedily anticipated between the only two 
 men who were granted the front-door en- 
 trance of Penroses. When Basil came across 
 Jem, which was pretty often, the two met in 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 67 
 
 a thoroughly friendly spirit, that in some odd 
 way curiously exasperated Easter, whose 
 mind just then was more a puzzle to her than 
 if it had belonged to somebody else, for 
 everybody seemed to be in love with Basil 
 save herself. Even Dinkie, after studying 
 him closely, making an exhaustive examina- 
 tion of his clothes, and candidly informing 
 that gentleman it must be " the way he put 
 'em on, as they were cut pretty much like 
 other people's," had formally announced the 
 Muscovite as emphatically of the " right sort," 
 and extended to him the hand of friendship. 
 
 And Basil and Mr. Denison, who had 
 begun well, became the firmest of friends, 
 and often the Russian would go down to the 
 factories, would stand in the midst of the 
 hum and the whirr of machinery, and feel 
 his pulses go quicker, and his heart faster, as 
 if from himself radiated those throbbing 
 arteries of steel — and at such moments, like 
 
 a fierce breath of life in his nostrils, he 
 
 5* 
 
68 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 would feel that work was good, and his 
 own perpetual leisure a thing without salt 
 and savour. His elegant fifjure became a 
 familiar one at the works, moving among 
 the whirling looms, or in the engine-room, 
 watching the iron shafts and wheels revolving, 
 insensible to the infernal heat and smell of 
 oil, and to that deafness which even for a few 
 moments is by most people angrily resented. 
 It was a strange friendship, almost as strange 
 as the one that subsisted between Basil and 
 Nan, but in both instances it throve apace, 
 and left all the rest of the family, Easter 
 included, altogether out of the running. 
 
 It had become the fashion at Penroses, 
 where no privacy of heart was allowed, to 
 speak of Easter and Basil as the Sun and 
 the Moon, because neither at the same time 
 illuminated the social firmament. This mutual 
 avoidance of two such uncommon persons 
 appeared rather to follow the fixed courses of 
 Nature than to arise from any pre-conceived 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 69 
 
 determination of their own, a variety of 
 causes apparently drawing each out of the 
 other's orbit, however much they might 
 have desired to draw nearer. To drop the 
 metaphor of heavenly bodies, with whomso- 
 ever the impulse of avoidance had begun, the 
 other had promptly seconded it, greatly to 
 the satisfaction of Tom Denison who, at odd 
 moments, felt qualms at the ease with which 
 he had admitted an utter stranger to his 
 almost orientally-guarded family life. Anr' 
 he was beginning to resign himself to Jem 
 If Easter were resolved to make a fool of 
 herself by marrying, she might do worse than 
 — Jem — but he swallow^ed the pill, prospec- 
 tively, with an exceedingly bad grace. 
 
 Hugon had niched herself, and actually in- 
 side that charmed circle which Mrs. Denison 
 drew round her own hearth, while she had 
 won Tom's good graces by accompanying him 
 in those constitutionals round the premises that 
 he affected, and listening to his grievances. 
 
70 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Not one of these lolling, lazy creatures, 
 with eyes sharp as needles to everyone's 
 faults but their own, would take any interest 
 in the things that he loved, but only in what 
 immediately concerned themselves, and, as a 
 trifling instance, he could not induce any 
 child of his to love his garden. All the 
 women of Tom's family had been notable 
 gardeners, and it is a fact that let the most 
 discontented, morbid-minded man on earth 
 take earnestly to the gentle art, and his 
 mind and body will begin to be purified, and 
 insensibly he will become wholesome, sound, 
 and happy. Dig in your garden, Mr. or Miss 
 Misanthrope, plant young seedlings, and thrill 
 for joy as you see them growing up ; get the 
 fresh scents of the earth into your stale brain, 
 and the healthy juices of Nature into your 
 blood, and you will come to love the breath 
 of the flower you have reared, and to turn 
 constantly from the disappointing page of 
 human -nature to those simple pleasures that 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 71 
 
 insensibly elevate the soul, and bring a pro- 
 found restfulness and peace not far removed 
 from the ripest philosophy. For such of you 
 there is always a haunt 
 
 ** Full of soft dreams, and health, and quiet breathing," 
 
 Another sore point was, that Tom had 
 come of a family where all the women were 
 born managers, and in his estimation Maria 
 was a Muddler. Unconsciously, I think, the 
 alliteration pleased him — much as if he had 
 found himself talking poetry without having 
 been at any pains to acquire the art. He 
 had very strong opinions about how girls 
 should be brought up, and thought that if 
 they were made to perform house duties, the 
 country would soon be free of the curse and 
 tyranny of servants, but to bring up a lot of 
 boys and girls to dandle round, and order 
 people about, was entirely wrong, for thus 
 they never learned the dignity, the sweetness, 
 and the rest of work. 
 
72 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 He used to tell Maria that a fine ouglit to 
 be inflicted on every 'woman in Great Britain 
 who did not herself know, and teach her 
 daughters, how to cook, and surely he was 
 right. 
 
 Learn, and you can talk to yoiir cook, and 
 she will respect you. Complexions may pale, 
 love may dwindle to vanishing point, hope 
 die of inanition, but a w^ell- cooked meal will 
 bring peace to a man's vexed spirit, and 
 dispose him favourably to the person who has 
 ordered it. 
 
 It takes a good many trifles to make a man 
 address his wife as " my dear " in a tone that 
 suggests she is an3'one's dear rather than his, 
 and it suggests a suspicion, founded on fact, 
 when a wife narrowly scans ever}- female 
 waist that approaches her female circle, lest 
 it prove a temptation to the male eye. Never- 
 theless, as is usual with people who disagree 
 the most, and are utterly incompatible in their 
 habits and tempers, Tom and Maria rejoiced 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 73 
 
 in an immense family that throve with 
 amazing success in a more or less tempestuous 
 domestic atmosphere, and in this breezy, 
 open-air life, Hugon, the stranger woman, 
 throve and expanded like a cellar plant set 
 in the eye of the sun, while the very absence 
 of intellectual or introspective life worked on 
 her like a charm, for at Penroses no one 
 thought of picking his soul to pieces, and 
 spotting every dark corner in it (for even 
 Nan could not be called morbid), and the 
 unselfish action, the kind impulse, the right 
 thought, were not exalted into heroism ; they 
 came naturally, and passed -without comment. 
 In the whole family not a 'poseur was to be 
 found, life there was homogeneous, and not 
 made up of shreds and patches all over- 
 shadowed by the dominant " I." And 
 Hugon had actuall}^ been persuaded by 
 Easter into a white frock, affording in it 
 another striking proof of how impossible it is 
 for anything young to be really ugly, and in- 
 
74 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 deed, away from Easter, she actually achieved 
 distinction. 
 
 To please everybody is a sure sign that you 
 must, at some period of your life, have dis- 
 pleased }^ourself very much, and Basil 
 wondered what manner of man had had the 
 making, or the marring, of her. They were 
 excellent friends, and thoroughly agreed with 
 Solomon that all is vanity, only the man's 
 ungrateful reasons for arriving at this con- 
 clusion were because he had^ had a surfeit 
 of pleasure, while the woman's were the very 
 opposite, because she had never known any 
 at all. 
 
 Hugon had clearly never enjoyed herself — 
 ergo she must be good — and, indeed, she 
 displayed an antagonistic spirit to the male 
 sex that, in these dog-da3^s, often made her 
 refreshingly acid company. 
 
 It is mostly a man who demorahses a 
 woman, because he asks so little of her. She 
 is a "poor little woman," no matter how 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 75 
 
 wrong, or weak, or silly, but to be really 
 approved by a noble sister-woman means 
 much, and is a crown of glory to her who 
 wins it. 
 
 And Easter, whether dodging an insolent 
 Shaver round a tree, or picking currants for 
 preserves, or sitting by her mother's side 
 making those white frills in which her soul 
 delighted, or flouting Jem, or frivoling round 
 with her "Boys," whom she unblushingly 
 hid from the Chief in unlikely places, was 
 alike unapproachable, enchanting, and insult- 
 ingly fancy-free. At Fairmile, it had never 
 occurred to Basil that there might be a soul 
 and spirit betwixt that exquisite skin of hers 
 — but it did occasionally occur to him now. 
 Easter always running away, ]S[an nearly 
 always close at hand — never wearying him, 
 but exhaustless as inspired young things are, 
 who give out their very best when young, 
 eager, with all their ideals and passionate 
 hopes new and lusty upon them, they made a 
 
76 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 perpetual contrast in his eyes, that gave him 
 keenest pleasure — or he had not lingered. 
 
 Yet, if he had known it, the chiefest feeling 
 in Easter's mind was that of smarting, keen 
 humiliation. It is always a ridiculous posi- 
 tion, when having brandished your arm, 
 rehearsed effects, and loaded yourself to the 
 muzzle with, " Sir ! unhand me ! I love you 
 not ! Avaunt ! " the sir mizzles out at the 
 back door, without ever making love to you 
 at all, and a label of *' No Intentions " dis- 
 played on his back. A woman is as jealous 
 of her prerogative of saying "No,"' as a 
 man is of his right to demand " Yes." He 
 knows that in the full ardour of the chase, 
 he is manl}^ admirable, endowed with every 
 possibility of god-ship, but driven into a 
 corner and courted, he is sulky, undignified, 
 and seldom yields as captive with any 
 attempt at grace. And the greatest joy of 
 a woman's life is yielding — or refusing. 
 There is no finer touch in George Eliot's 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 77 
 
 delineation of human character than where 
 Gwendolen, though Grandcourt is personally- 
 displeasing to her, has no idea of making 
 herself undesirable to him, or outraging his 
 fastidious taste, and so is careful to put the 
 scent he prefers on her handkerchief — even 
 if afterwards she lets him drown before her 
 eyes without making an effort to save him. 
 
 Thus Easter, having regarded the right of 
 choice as being solely in her own hands, had 
 been amazed at Basil's tacit withdrawal from 
 his court, and angry that he had not even 
 given her a chance of trjang that old and 
 infallible receipt for keeping a man's heart — 
 first make yourself perfectly sweet, then treat 
 him as badly as j^ou know how. And it's a 
 stabbing thought to a lovely young woman 
 that her charms have failed her — call her 
 wicked, call her mad, but to let her see that 
 she has no power over you is perdition, and 
 though it was true Easter had given him no 
 opportunity, the man who is not his own 
 
78 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Providence in such matters is a fool or — 
 unwilling. 
 
 And often as Basil now dined of evenings 
 at Penroses, Easter, with one of those small 
 feminine slaps that women love to administer 
 to over-bold, or over-backward swains, never 
 appeared on such occasions, nor was she 
 afterwards to be found in that many- 
 windowed drawing-room upstairs, in whose 
 pale chocolate satin cushions she was fond at 
 other times of burying herself. 
 
 And Tom Denison smiled, putting down 
 Easter's eccentricities of conduct to 
 " temper." She was not his child and 
 Maria's for nothing, and the fiery spirit of the 
 one, the gentle obstinacy and grit of the 
 other, united their forces in her, and formed 
 a " kink " by no means easy to unravel. We 
 are all the product of the seeds sown by our 
 ancestors, yet when in our minds or bodies 
 a tendency, a vice, a virtue or a talent 
 appears, we look at it puzzled, and in- 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 79 
 
 credulous, as if Nature were Art, and trying 
 to make fools of us. A hard ache comes into 
 the knee, a darting pain in the breast, 
 rheumatism, cancer — heredity again ; and 
 when some wretched man bursts out into 
 homicidal mania, slaying all upon whom he 
 can lay hands, what is it but the recurring 
 instinct of some fighting ancestor, to whom 
 bloodshed was a trade, and by right of which, 
 every savage, ungovernable instinct of his 
 soul was fully licensed to gratify itself? 
 
 So with talent. A mere child takes pen in 
 hand, and describes with startling lucidity 
 and point what it observes and feels — it has 
 been born with the gift of reproduction or 
 expression ; another infant seizes pencil and 
 sketches some trifle at sight in absolutely 
 true proportions — it is born with the gift 
 of " form " ; some curious difference in its 
 sight to that of others has turned him out an 
 artist whether he will or no. And so on 
 indefinitely, and strong indeed must be the 
 
80 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 will that stands up against taints and ten- 
 dencies as much inwoven with our blood as 
 the freak that is stamped on the butterfly's 
 wing, or the markings in flowers that appear 
 with unswerving fidelity from generation to 
 generation. We cannot alter those markings, 
 but it is in our power to make the evil ones 
 grow fainter, and the strong impulse that may 
 rise in us to crush out all low motives and 
 passions, and live the higher life, may be the 
 original seed of noble deeds and endeavours 
 in our descendants, hundreds of years after 
 we, with all our strusro-les and tears and 
 failures, are dust. Thus may not the 
 prompting thought to do good, the noble 
 ideal lifting itself clear out of the sloth of 
 dull habit, come to us direct from some 
 earnest soul that has sinned and suffered, 
 yet struggled a step nearer to God than 
 did his predecessor, even as some long past 
 sensual life still has power to throw its slime 
 over us, and strive to hold us back from our 
 
A MAN OF TO-I'AY. 81 
 
 better selves ? So in one single human being 
 is represented the influences of the past, the 
 potentialities of the present, and the illimit- 
 able responsibilities of the generations yet 
 unborn. 
 
 
 V(>L. T. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 " That which seems obstinacy in some people may 
 
 appear constancy in others." 
 
 — Cicero. 
 
 " She tells lies," said Melons calmly. " The 
 Chief nearly bowled her out yesterday, and I 
 saw Sweet William, who was handing me the 
 potatoes, give the Snapper a wink." 
 
 " His name is William," remonstrated the 
 Ancient Mariner, from the place where she 
 wielded an imaginary baton of authority, 
 " and I must beg of you. Melons, to remember 
 that Cato advises us to think it the first of 
 duties to restrain the tongue, and says he 
 approaches nearest to God who knows when 
 to be silent." 
 
 "Didn't somebody say that the old gods 
 were nothing but men and wine ? And cer- 
 tainty they did some jolly human things," 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 83 
 
 said Melons, whose memory sometimes pro- 
 vided strictly unorthodox scraps of informa- 
 tion. " Well, from all /'ve seen of men, they 
 are foolish enough without the wine, so I 
 don't think the old boys could have been up 
 to much. And as to the Old Testament 
 worthies, why, ma'am, when I heard you 
 teaching Peggy out of ' Line upon Line ' the 
 other day, your questions and her answers, it 
 curdled my blood. I s'pose when I was 
 3^oung I didn't realize the utter iniquitousness 
 of the doings of the old patriarchs, but now 
 I do, I say it's wicked to hold up such 
 examples to children, and if our kings and 
 queens tried on some of those old patriarchal 
 ways, why, there would be a good many 
 crowns going to avuncular relatives — but 
 they durstn't, and somehow Eevolutions ain't 
 English.'' 
 
 " Girls," said the Ancient Mariner, horrified, 
 " this is a drawing lesson, not a scandalous 
 dissertation on Man." She spoke respectfully 
 
84 A MAN OF TO-DAY', 
 
 of the terrible and dangerous creature — 
 possibly she might have displayed less fear, 
 had not her waist been from early youth 
 horrific to the male eye. 
 
 " And if the Muscovite were not so cool, 
 his eyes so blue, and his manners so melli- 
 fluous," continued Melons, mixing her colours 
 recklessly, "I would back Jem Burghersh in 
 Easter's affections. Jem is much the bigger 
 of the two — and you can always bully a big 
 man, the little man always bullies you. If a 
 little man dared to put his arm round my 
 waist, I'd murder him ! " 
 
 "My dear!" ejaculated the scandalised 
 Ancient Mariner. 
 
 " Do you suppose I go among poor people 
 for nothing ? " enquired Melons ; " all big 
 folks are good-hearted and weak-minded, 
 more or less, and they are all managed by 
 the little ones. I'd rather marry ever such a 
 hulking wretch of a man — if he were yards 
 long, than a strutter. You might reform a 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 85 
 
 big man, tlie little one is certain to try and 
 reform you." 
 
 " Basil is not little," objected Nan, with 
 elbows on her drawing board, and earnest 
 eyes looking out of her tangle of red hair. 
 
 " Five feet eleven at the outside," said 
 Melons, " but he's got an air and looks 
 more. And I don't believe he ever dreamt of 
 falling in love with Easter — there ! " 
 
 "Nor Easter" with him," cried Nan indif]^- 
 nantly. 
 
 "Our female J Narcissus in love?" said 
 Dinkie, who had ^ come in and caught the 
 last words ; " perish the thought ! Some 
 things are made to J be looked at, others to be 
 eaten — Easter and I belong to the former 
 class. You don't seem very well, ma'am," he 
 said, stooping down to look at the Ancient 
 Mariner who had begun to flap up and down 
 like a barn-door fowl when a fox is around ; 
 " hadn't you better rest for an hour ? " 
 
 He opened the door politely as he spoke, 
 
86 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 and the Ancient Mariner took the hint, and 
 dribbled herself out of sight, 
 
 " What is the matter with her ? " he 
 enquired. "I do believe she has fallen in 
 love with Strokoff! If you look at her she 
 totters, and if you sneeze at her she goes 
 into a hundred pieces ! " 
 
 " There are people," said Melons, " who 
 lie down flat on their backs and let the 
 clouds roll by — the Mariner is one of them. 
 She has got a bilious attack, and was longing 
 to give way to it — that's all." 
 
 " Well," said Dinkie, " she's an interesting 
 relic — the sort of thing you girls may come 
 to if you sit up and behave, and forget every- 
 thing you've ever learnt, more especially what 
 Tyb taught 3^ou. Where's Easter ? " 
 
 " Making frills, I expect, after sending 
 Jem off to his Pillow of Consolation. The 
 Pillow means to nobble him, I believe, but he 
 don't see it." 
 
 " Stuff! " said Dinkie robustly. " Can't any 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 87 
 
 fool see she is his Pillow of Consolation upon 
 which to lean comfortably, and say all the 
 things about Easter that Easter won't let him 
 say to herself ? Jem's too meek by half." 
 
 " ' A man, a spaniel, a walnut tree, 
 
 The more you beat 'em the better they be ! "' 
 
 droned Melons. 
 
 "Jealous — jealous again!" said Dinkie 
 aggravatingly, " you'd hke to be a man — and 
 you ain't one — that's about the size of it." 
 
 "And pray," said Melons, witheringly, 
 *' what is there in being a man to be proud 
 of ? " 
 
 " Lots, Don't the Jews go down on their 
 knees every time they enter their synagogues 
 and say fervently : ' 0, Lord God, blessed 
 art thou who has not made me a woman ! ' 
 Nobody ever heard a man wish himself a 
 female. You've got your advantages, 
 though," he added, magnificently ; " you get 
 the wing of a chicken, and the privilege of 
 saying ' No ' tvhen a man asks you ! " 
 
88 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 " Selfisli pigs," said Melons, " you ask 
 us to please yourselves, not us. The only 
 real advantage you have over us is — your 
 clothes. A woman is handicapped all her 
 life long with hers. A wretched man bawls 
 out when he is going to a dance or dinner : 
 ' Have I a clean shirt ? ' It is his sole 
 amount of preparation for the most mo- 
 mentous affair — he may have dozens of shirts, 
 he doesn't know — he's on thorns till he does 
 know, and if there is one — he's happy. While 
 a woman has to think of a thousand things, 
 and perhaps after all looks a fright. I admit 
 that you are great there, but in nothing else 
 And you have your pockets. I grant you 
 those. It's enough to ruin the temper of any 
 woman to see a man a walking store-cupboard, 
 while she, poor wretch, has only one pocket 
 for everything, and obliged to sit down on 
 that. If a Female had made the universe, 
 Dinkie, things would be pleasant er for women, 
 and they'd be made — different." 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 89 
 
 " It would be a sweet world to live in, no 
 doubt," said Dinkie meditatively, " and in 
 that case, Melons, perhaps you'd be born — 
 handsomer." 
 
 Here the conversation became personal, 
 and scurrilous. You must be graphic or die, 
 in a large family, and when you do get a brief 
 innings, you are a fool if 3'ou do not make 
 the most of it. The successful people of the 
 world have mostly, I think, belonged to large 
 families. 
 
 " But, console yourself, my Melons," wound 
 up Dinkie. "There are lots of men who 
 wouldn't dare to ask a good-looking woman 
 to marry them who will very likely find 
 courage to ask you. Odd — ain't it? — that a 
 fraction too much on your nose or lip — a 
 little colour in the wrong place, and it's 
 ugliness ; just the right amount, and in the 
 right place, and it's beaut}'. And there you 
 are. You needn't even grin unless you like. 
 You give so much pleasure that nobody 
 
90 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 wants you to do anything but sit still and 
 be looked at. And you ought to be paid to 
 go out to evening parties, and not even 
 expected to make yourself civil ! " 
 
 "You speak so feelingly," said Melons, 
 "that one would think you were a beauty 
 yourself. Which you ain't." 
 
 Dinkie scowled. He had truculent eye- 
 brows, huge thighs and sinews, and was 
 chiefly remarkable for an agreeable habit of 
 taking his coat off, and asking any male thing 
 he happened to disagree with, to come and 
 have it out round the corner. He was 
 moreover blessed with curly brown hair, and 
 it is just that same curl in the hair which 
 often makes all the difference between an 
 ugly and a pretty girl, or a plain and a good- 
 looking man, though few people know it. 
 
 " Just let me catch you purloining things 
 out of my drawers for the Snapper again," he 
 said, " and you'll hear of it." 
 
 " ' The Lord helps those who help them- 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 91 
 
 selves. Come in and help j^ourself at this 
 store.' That is what an enterprising man 
 posted up outside his shop," said Melons 
 coolly, " and you shouldn't have such a choice 
 assortment of everything if the poor Snapper 
 at a critical period of his career isn't to touch 
 'em ! " 
 
 "Who is the new young woman ? " said 
 Dinkie, grinning broadly, " four times his own 
 size as usual ? Hullo ! What makes Nan so 
 jolly white ? " 
 
 Nan put her hand up to her cheek. 
 " It's — it's chalk. I rubbed my face all over 
 with it before breakfast this morning, just 
 to see if any of you would notice it, and 
 think I looked pale — but nobody even looked 
 at me." 
 
 "It's lucky we ain't a kissing lot," said 
 Dinkie grimacing, " and pray what on earth do 
 you want people to notice you for ? Tm only 
 too thankful to be let alone." 
 
 Nan sighed, and looked down on her ragged 
 
93 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 skirt. There was not a railing in the place 
 that was not adorned by a scrap of her 
 clothing, or a tree she had not climbed, and 
 tumbled out of. Some people are wicked and 
 happy, others are wicked and miserable. Nan 
 belonged to the latter class. 
 
 "Dinkie," suddenly screamed out Melons, 
 " there's smoke coming out of your pocket ! " 
 
 " Must have sat on m}^ lucifers," said Dinkie, 
 turning up the tail of his coat, and calmly 
 crushing its smoking contents. 
 
 " The Chief has forbidden you to smoke," 
 said Melons reproachfull}', " and everybody 
 knows that smokin^f leads to drinkinsf " 
 
 " Ho, ho, ho ! " said Dinkie, roUing about 
 in an ecstacy of mirth. "What do jon 
 think old Shrubsole said to me the other day ? 
 I met him with a blue ribbon in his button- 
 hole and enquired what on earth it meant. 
 He said he had joined the army because he 
 thought it must be so delicious to be tempted 
 — and to fall ! Now, for my part I hate 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 93 
 
 teetotalers, it gives 'em so much more spare 
 limit for getting themselves and other people 
 into mischief. You know he lets out a trap 
 on hire ? I asked how many it held. He 
 said : ' Twelve really, but sixteen — • if 
 intimate.' I say, girls, I believe Bunkulorum's 
 gone a buster on snails again. I found the 
 tool-house door locked just now " — which was 
 a damning fact, as it was here that Bunku- 
 lorum had originally been discovered con- 
 ducting cooking operations over the furnace 
 fire. 
 
 In spite of Bunkulorum's quoting hisory, and 
 urging French precedent, he had been politely 
 sent to Coventry, and endowed with the full 
 baptismal name of Shrompy-Snail-broth ; no 
 one would kiss him at any price, and the 
 family nose curled at his approach. It is 
 true he had before this showed a tendency 
 to other depraved tastes, such as quoting 
 Shakespeare (which was insulting, as none 
 of the others knew anything about that 
 
94 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 gentleman, or wanted to either), and trying 
 superior airs on the strength of his book 
 learning that only came back, like boome- 
 rangs in an unskilled hand, to hit him 
 violently on the head. 
 
 " ! let him alone," said Melons. " Some 
 people like one thing, some another. You 
 may like something worse some day." 
 
 "Precisely, my love. I may even live, 
 when I have made a failure of everything 
 else in life, to make a success of my stomach 
 — as the Ancient Mariner does. Do you 
 observe that Hugon never eats onions ? Now 
 a person can't be healthy who don't like spring- 
 onions — it may be low, but it's human nature, 
 while your refined person who squirms at the 
 sight of 'em — mark my words," he added, 
 oracularly, " if she hasn't got a history, I'll eat 
 her." 
 
 " I'm sorry for her," said Nan. " Her eyes 
 hurt me — somebody must have been awful 
 bad to her to make her look like that.'' 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 95 
 
 "Hurt herself, you mean," said Dinkie, 
 robustly. " It isn't other people's wrong doings 
 cut you up to that extent — it's your own, and 
 when you begin by being very sorry for a 
 person, you usually end by being sorry for 
 yourself. 0! yes, miss, you may scowl, 
 but Hugon's the sort of person you love 
 passionately at a distance — you count up 
 all her good qualities and diligently commit 
 them to memory — and then, the moment 
 you see that person, you go for 'em like a 
 terrier for a rat ! You bet there isn't much she 
 don't know — and hasn't done. Net result — face 
 like an extinct volcano, no friends, and the 
 post of cudgeller-in-chief of youthful wits at 
 Fairmile. There's something wrong some- 
 where — then look at her hands ! What was 
 she before she became a governess ? They're 
 too scarred for even a lady-help — when you're 
 a lady you work so much harder than any 
 servant does — but anyway those hands have 
 a history, and you bet they've done some 
 
96 A MAX OF TO-DAY. 
 
 queer work in tlieir time. And I never could 
 abide an ugly woman." 
 
 " She isn't ugly," said Melons, nodding. 
 " If there is ever any question about a 
 woman's ugliness — not of her being a 
 beauty, you may always decide it in the 
 negative. Ugliness — real ugliness — " (uncon- 
 sciousl}'- she looked at Nan) " is so unmis- 
 takable you can't misname it. Any apology 
 for it even is thankfully accepted. And 
 Hugon is distinctly interesting — Jem certainly 
 finds her so." 
 
 " Jem likes Hugon," said Nan, who always 
 stood up for the absent. " He told me him- 
 self he had a very great respect for her." 
 
 " When a man has a great respect for a 
 female, that same respect removes her from 
 the category of attractive and marriageable 
 persons," said Dinkie. "But come. Melons, 
 do not, like the blacks at Mandeville 
 who when brought into Court hold a pebble 
 in their mouths, being under the impres- 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 97 
 
 sion that, so provided, perjury does not 
 count, put a pebble in yours, but tell us 
 honourably how things stand between 'em 
 all ? " 
 
 But Melons declined to be drawn. 
 
 " I never see Easter speak to Basil," she 
 said, " nor he to her." 
 
 "He certainly keeps most of his conver- 
 sation for JNTan," said Dinkie, ruminatingly, 
 " though even if she were years older nobody 
 could suspect anyone of being in love with 
 Nan ! But I don't think he takes any of us 
 seriousl3^ Penroses is a mere episode to him 
 — no more. And meteors are very beautiful 
 apparitions, no doubt, but the sky stops — 
 and they go. Such men were never intended 
 to marry, my Melons, but to be the j oy of the 
 whole female sex. You don't suppose he 
 got those delightful manners of his for no- 
 thing, do you ? They are a monument raised 
 to the frailty of your sex ! But, 'pon my soul, 
 girls, do you know what he and Easter remind 
 
 VOL. I. 7 
 
98 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 me of? Why" (Dinkie's similes were usually 
 the reverse of elegant) " of two rival stags, 
 equals in beauty, strength and fleetness, who 
 when they meet, toss their heads, paw the 
 ground, snort defiance, then wend their 
 stately way apart, each grandly disdainful 
 of the other. Both Easter and Strokoff want 
 to play first fiddle, and neither means to play 
 second. And woman is a fighting animal, 
 you know — extremely so." 
 
 " Man, you mean," said Melons. 
 
 " No — woman. The world would be an 
 abode of peace but for woman. She is 
 always fighting for something — for new 
 clothes, or a new man, or power, or out of 
 pure cussedness — but she hardly ever stops 
 still." 
 
 " And what about boys ? " said Melons with 
 much contempt, " who are insufferably rude 
 to, and secretly jealous of, girls? Well, time 
 mends that, and later on they come very 
 much under the dominion of — <Arls. At a 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 99 
 
 still later period, they revert to their original 
 
 attitude and despise feminines — but you are 
 
 too young and ignorant, Dinkie, to have got 
 
 any further than the first stage ! And anyway, 
 
 we can get on without you, you can't get 
 
 on without us. And Easter doesn't want 
 
 Basil." 
 
 " Don't you be so sure about that," said 
 
 Dinkie, nodding, " because one's a work of 
 
 art, one's apt to think oneself exempt from 
 
 the common lot, yet the Venus of Milo lost 
 
 her arms, my children, and a sculptor's joy 
 
 has before now been seen without her nose ! 
 
 Therefore may Easter yet have to learn a 
 
 lesson she won't Hke, for though you may 
 
 be a goddess on occasion, you've got to be a 
 
 woman most of your time ! And sooner or 
 
 later, according to the Chiefs temper, or the 
 
 length of time that elapses before she feels the 
 
 joys of our company pall upon her, Easter 
 
 will appear under the heading of 'Hatches, 
 
 Matches and Despatches,' and marry Jem." 
 
 7* 
 
100 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 " Jem isn't half good enough for her," said 
 Nan, with kindling eyes. 
 
 " 0, yes, he is. There'll be cakes and ale 
 for Jem's wife all the way along — and let us 
 be cheerful or die. It's like a painful, 
 beautiful play — we go and weep at it, but we 
 take jolly good care never to go again! Our 
 Muscovite would see clean through a woman 
 in five minutes and find her sawdust, which 
 is an upsetting process to a goddess, you'll 
 admit, and not at all in Easter's line." 
 
 "Basil would make any woman happy 
 whom he loved," cried Nan, in hot indig- 
 nation. 
 
 " And pray, miss," said Dinkie, shooting 
 out his chin aggravatingiy at her, " what do 
 you know of the points of a good husband ? 
 However, in case either of you should ever 
 have a chance of marrying — it isn't likely, 
 but there are some fools going about the 
 world — let me give you a few plain hints on 
 making your selection. For a man's birth, 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 101 
 
 look to his linea and fmcjer nails, and 
 observe the inflections of his voice. For his 
 tastes, study the colour of his ties, the 
 pattern and hang of his trousers, his friends 
 and his rings — if any. For his propensities 
 walk round, and look carefully at the back 
 of his head, and remember, girls, never to 
 marry a man whose neck bulges ever so little 
 over his collar ; a man must be a good 
 animal to do his work well, but not too much 
 of an animal, or he's a beast. If you want 
 a successful man, see that he has a neat 
 foot, he will move quicker, get over obstacles 
 faster than a man who falls over his own 
 toes, and trips up other folks with 'em too. 
 For his breeding, talk sentiment to him 
 when he is starving, and ask him to carry a 
 band-box down the public street when you've 
 just had a row. To test his temper, tell him 
 his nose is a little on one side, and you don't 
 like the way his hair grows — and if that won't 
 fetch him, nothing will." 
 
102 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 " Easter won't have Jem," said Melons 
 sturdily. 
 
 " 0, yes, she will, she'll climb down — she'll 
 climb down ! I defy any girl to live in the 
 country without a lover. How can you look at 
 a blooming old moon all by yourself with 
 nobody to help you count the pimples on it ? 
 And what's the good of a haystack without 
 somebody to sit under it with you ? And a 
 long lane has a deuced lonely look if someone 
 isn't waiting for you at the corner of it ! So 
 you'll see if Easter doesn't out of sheer dul- 
 ness when Basil's gone, take up with Jem." 
 
 " And meanwhile," said Melons, who was 
 nothing if not prosaic, " father has got on his 
 check trousers, and there's a storm in the 
 air." 
 
 " Let it blow," said Dinkie, resignedly. 
 "There is an enormous lot to be said in 
 favour of a good bust-up now and then. You 
 should always boil up when you are ready — 
 then you're nicely skimmed, and quite ready 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 103 
 
 for use wlien really wanted. In fact, I've 
 come to the conclusion that the healthiest 
 people are those who occasionally let them- 
 selves go — they bear no malice — they have 
 pleased themselves, even if they haven't 
 pleased you, cleared the slate of everything in 
 one glorious sweep, and are happy. Now a 
 person stuffed full of silent grievances, and 
 choked indignations, ain't wholesome, he'll get 
 cancer sooner or later if he don't look out — 
 or poison somebody.'-' 
 
 " I say ! " cried the Snapper, rushing in like 
 a whirlwind, "the Sun and the Moon are 
 actually talking! I've seen 'em — and if we 
 hide in the shrubbery we'll be able to hear 
 'em too ! " 
 
 Now Easter, who had been playing croquet 
 with Jem (having indeed so frank a kindness 
 or contempt for him that she never even took 
 the trouble to avoid his company as she did 
 Basil's), had so lost patience at the way her 
 opponent deliberately spooned her ball into 
 
104 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 position, and took all the heart and go out of 
 the game by his pusillanimous neglect of his 
 own interests, and barefaced cheatings on her 
 behalf, that finall}^ she stamped her foot, 
 called him names, and sent him off with that 
 proverbial flea in the ear that all maidens are 
 supposed to keep handy for the lovers who 
 do not please them — even when fleas are not 
 in season — as in March. 
 
 Whereupon she went on playing with much 
 satisfaction by herself, for croquet was a game 
 that commended itself to Easter by reason of 
 its leisurely grace, and pleasant surroundings 
 of cool shadows and heavenly garden scents, 
 just as she loathed lawn tennis for its un- 
 graceful, blowsy ways and extraordinary 
 knack of showing a woman in every respect 
 at her very worst. 
 
 She was sauntering, then, to and fro 
 between the long poplar shadows, pitting 
 White against Eed, and with fme impartiality 
 essaying the impossible problem of making 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 105 
 
 both will, when Basil suddenly appeared 
 beside her, as it were, out ol' the earth, the 
 shrubbery being as bad as a screen from 
 behind which unsuspected and undesired 
 bodies were wont to issue. She shied 
 away from him with a vigour that spoke 
 volumes, but he merely pulled down his 
 waistcoat after the fashion of all well-bred 
 young men when they have a little spare time, 
 and asked if he might have the pleasure of 
 trying to beat her, and looking as if he 
 thoroughly meant it, too. 
 
 Easter had always a curiously detached way 
 of looking at, and speaking to, Basil, and to-day 
 it was more marked than usual as she gave the 
 desired permission, and he went off to fish his 
 ball out of the calceolaria bed in which it 
 reposed, hurrying himself in no wise, while 
 she stood looking after him with that deep 
 sense of indignity, almost of brutal ill-treat- 
 ment that the whole affair had inflicted upon 
 her. For she knew that she was just a bagatelle 
 
106 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 in this man's life, that mere attraction had 
 brought them together — the sort of thing that 
 makes a woman hate being a woman — but that 
 they had never attempted to understand each 
 other as comrades, never met at any one of 
 those thousand points cVappui that make a 
 real friendship between a man and a woman, 
 and which must come before love, or com- 
 prehension even, if love is to be an abiding 
 guest, and not a sordid lodger. There was 
 no dignity, no comfort whatever, in their 
 relation one to another, and the humiliation 
 the mere sight of him caused her was death to 
 any friendly or natural feeling towards him. 
 
 Basil did not play croquet like Jem — quite 
 the reverse. He was so keen on winning, that 
 he never missed a point in his own favour, and 
 croqueted Easter more spitefully, and sent her 
 farther than she had ever been sent before in 
 her life. In hurrying to pay him out in his 
 own coin she presently struck her ankle 
 violently, thereby realizing how purely 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 107 
 
 imaginary most of our joys and sorrows really 
 are, since sharp physical pain will put them, 
 and everything else, clean out of our heads. 
 
 " I shall have that croquet over again," she 
 cried, flashing round on him with smarting 
 tears of pain in her eyes, angry with herself 
 too at losing her temper, though when a 
 woman knows herself in the wrong, she 
 usually does something worse to make herself 
 appear better. 
 
 Basil made no difficulty, he even pressed 
 the two balls together under her slim foot, 
 and laughed up at her as he kneeled to do it. 
 
 " Now don't hit yourself again," he said, 
 with something in his voice that suggested 
 an experience, an ascendancy over women's 
 minds that startled the girl, instantly rousing 
 in her all that was most combative and un- 
 yielding. 
 
 "I won't take it," she said defiantly, 
 throwing back her head, and while he took 
 her at her word, incidentally observed that 
 
108 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 nature had smudged in Easter's eyebrows 
 with brio, and at exactly the right angle for 
 expressing all the emotions, tragic, comic, 
 and all the rest of them that a woman could 
 possibly desire to feel — or a man desire to 
 teach her. 
 
 From this point he progressed gloriously 
 from hoop to hoop, till he finally hit the stick 
 with a healthy whack that expressed the real 
 good-will with which he beat her. So far, 
 the spies, hidden in the shrubbery, had not 
 been refreshed by those flowers of conversa- 
 tion they expected ; but now, as Easter threw 
 down her mallet and moved towards the 
 house, Basil felt a sudden impulse to detain 
 her. She wore a pink-cotton gown, and I 
 don't believe the devil himself is a match for 
 a woman in a pink gown — it isn't the age of 
 the woman that matters, the color is every- 
 thing, and for a moment, at least, Easter's pink 
 gown nearly made a fool of Basil. 
 
 " Don't you think," he said, pushing back 
 
A MAX OF TO-DAY. 109 
 
 liis straw bat, and coming so near her tliat 
 the blueness of his eyes, and the clear brown 
 of his skin positively startled her, " that it is 
 rather — warm — to be so bad-tempered ? " 
 
 It was not warm at all. The delicious 
 coolness of evening was over all, and those 
 scents which refuse to yield themselves to the 
 sun were stealing timidly abroad and falling 
 like benedictions on the air. 
 
 Easter laughed. Full of the delightful 
 quality of youth, its freshness, its irresponsi- 
 bilit}^, above all, its heart-wholeness, was that 
 laugh, and Basil nodded approvingly as he 
 said : 
 
 " That's right. I like to hear you laugh. 
 Standing on your dignity pins doesn't suit 
 your style at all — most unbecoming, I assure 
 you." 
 
 Shades of Jem ! why did not he promptly 
 appear, and trounce this insolent critic ? As 
 Easter trembled between astonishment and 
 mirth, for the first time probably in their 
 
110 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 lives they looked full and long into each 
 other's faces, and possibly for pure pleasure at 
 what they saw there, smiled. 
 
 Maria's voice was heard approaching, 
 the whole garden became suddenly alive, and 
 with a sense of wasted time, and misused 
 energies, Dinkie and the Snapper crawled off 
 their stomachs, and disappeared in the 
 direction of the kitchen garden. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Ah ! dearest friend, in whom the Gods had joined, 
 The mildest manners and the bravest mind." 
 
 It was quite true, as Melons said, that Jem 
 had sought his Pillow, his confidante, the 
 typical person with two ears and one tongue, 
 whom every man in love hung:ers for, but 
 seldom finds. When he does, her price is 
 above whatever may be the most fashion- 
 able stone of the moment — say chrysophrase, 
 and Jem discovered his in the orchard, 
 stretched his loner limbs on the o'rass be- 
 side her, and remained so silent that pre- 
 sently she peeped over, and looked at him. 
 
 " What has Easter done now ? " she en- 
 quired. 
 
 She had so got that young woman by heart 
 lately (through Jem's reminiscences, and 
 
112 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 always eloquent, if somewhat biased, readings 
 of her character) that to talk or think of 
 anything else in his company was almost 
 sacrilegious, and not to be thouc:jht of. 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 The ball of scarlet silk slipped from her 
 knee ; he picked it up and gave it back to 
 her with that gentleness which she had 
 always noted in him, and there is nothing 
 more significant of a man's character than 
 the way in which he takes from, or gives 
 anything to, a woman. Hugon smiled and a 
 dimple shewed in one pale cheek, as though 
 the joy of life in retreating had left a single 
 landmark untouched to show what once 
 liad been, and under favourable conditions, 
 might be again, while into her eyes, by 
 almost imperceptible degrees, the color was 
 coming back, even as the green will steal 
 timidly over the burned and blackened 
 hill-side, for Nature is ever repairing man's 
 ravages, if you will only leave everything 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 113 
 
 to her. When Hugon's eyes met yours, 
 you became aware that they had somehow 
 got the right focus of life, for some eyes 
 look past, over, and to the side of you, 
 others straight through to your very soul, 
 and if you are truly wise, you would rather 
 be severely judged by such eyes than praised 
 by those of a fool. 
 
 "He is very good-looking," said Jem, 
 following his own sequence of ideas. 
 
 " Very. He has du charme, du charme, et 
 toujours die charme. And he has evidently 
 been used to the best — and therefore the 
 worst — society in the world." 
 
 " It is not so much what he says, as what 
 he doesn't say," went on Jem, handsomely, 
 "that makes him interesting, like a book, 
 you know, that is good or bad according to 
 the power of selection possessed by the writer. 
 It only comes out by accident that he has 
 done pretty well everything, and knows every- 
 body worth knowing " 
 
 VOL. I. 8 
 
114 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 " Query," said Hugon, drily, " wliy does 
 he linger at Penroses ? " 
 
 Jem beamed gloriously — all over. 
 
 " It isn't Easter," he said. " She sits upon 
 me, of course, but, bless you, it don't mean 
 anything ! Now, Strokoff she positively hates, 
 and he knows it ! " 
 
 " Trop de zcle^' murmured Hugon to her- 
 self. 
 
 " And he'll be off directly," said Jem, with 
 great cheerfulness. " The whole frisky lot is 
 established at Fitzwalters, and any day Hawk- 
 hurst may find out he's here — gudgeon-fish- 
 ing," added Jem, smiling. " Are you quite 
 sure it isn't you ?* because, away from Easter, 
 you know, you're the most attractive woman 
 I ever saw." 
 
 It was true. The life-spark once more 
 shone through a body that had long been 
 unresponsive as a waxen image to human 
 emotions, and that highest beauty of all 
 which is often denied to the face on which 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY.- 115 
 
 the (lew of youth and color lies — the beauty 
 of expression — had belonged to Hugon all 
 her life. 
 
 "Thank you, Jem," she said, and if you 
 can't call a man by his Christian name when 
 he has been letting daylight into all the 
 chambers of his soul to you for a whole week, 
 why, then you never will, that's all. 
 
 " And you're such a good sort. Easter 
 wouldn't have got 3"ou down here if you 
 hadn't been." 
 
 " I don't know. Most of us are more or 
 less the sport of chance in the objects that 
 interest us, or that we love. Take a toy out 
 of a child's hand, it weeps — but if you replace 
 it with another, the child is happy. The 
 interest or superabundant affection, or what- 
 ever else you may call it that must be used 
 up, is satisfied, the means do not signify in 
 the least. And Easter was homesick, so 
 turned to me." 
 
 She half put out her hand as if to touch 
 
 8* 
 
1]6 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 the nape of his neck, upon which his close-cut 
 curling hair grew in that crinkled point which 
 one never sees in a man who is not nice, and 
 clean, and mostly what a woman loves. 
 
 " Only you're so awfully rough on men," 
 said Jem, wheeling round to look at her, " or 
 perhaps it's because you like one man so 
 much, you hate them in the lump. Lots of 
 women do." 
 
 " Like,'' she said, under her breath, her 
 face changed swiftly, terribly, and she covered 
 it with her hands. 
 
 " 1 wish," he said, " you'd tell me the story 
 of your life — and trust me." 
 
 She took her hands down, and in pity he 
 looked away from what he saw. 
 
 " After all," she said, presently, " what 
 does it amount to, all the heaped-up agony, 
 the cries of souls in pain of the whole world ? 
 At the worst it is only one life, one suffering — 
 all the w^orld can give no more than that — 
 one houseless or well-stalled soul, its satis- 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 117 
 
 faction or its hunger — and in fact you and I, 
 or you and Hodge, represent the whole gamut 
 of human suffering. And when I hear a man 
 is dead, I envy him — he has got his dying 
 over — ours is to come, and the longer you put 
 it off, the worse it is." 
 
 " We must die," said Jem, in strongly 
 objecting tones, "but let us live first. And 
 if our fears, and terrors, and sufferings are 
 looked into, what are they? A dread of 
 Death to which we are predestined, which is 
 our one big payment for the countless plea- 
 sures of life ; the fear of losing our money — 
 or not getting enough — of dishonour, of the 
 condemnation of our friends, who are probably 
 committing worse sins than any we have done, 
 and die in the act of judging us. Then there 
 is the loss of those you love by Death, pre- 
 ordained also, for you always knew that they 
 were only lent to you for a time. And it 
 seems to me that we are brought up wrongly, 
 as if death were not, when we should be 
 
118 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 taught that we are set as on a great battle- 
 field, full indeed, but in which at each 
 moment a saddle is emptied, in which 
 every brow has the mark of Death upon 
 it, though we cannot see it till a name is 
 called, and then the light flares out, and the 
 man is gone." 
 
 Hugon looked down in a strange, absorbed 
 way at her scarred hands. She was thinking 
 that sometimes the life goes out slowly, slowly 
 when it does not want to go. 
 
 " And I would teach a child," went on 
 Jem, " from his birth, not to shrink away from 
 and weep over death. It is the surroundings 
 of death, not death itself, that is horrible. 
 What! when the new-born soul is bursting 
 into life, when with it all is movement and 
 activity, for us to be weeping for it, and 
 sorrowing intensely over its exultant freedom ? 
 Our mourning is a hopeless denial of our faith. 
 Do we weep to see a rose fall and die ? Yet 
 it is death — only it is nature, you say — and is 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 119 
 
 not our death nature ? The very eagerness 
 with which we forget, shews how unnatural 
 such mourning and misery are to us who 
 survive. God meant all his families to be 
 happy," concluded Jem, looking rather 
 ashamed of his peroration, " and if we must 
 suffer occasionally, there is only one thing 
 that hurts permanently, and won't heal, and 
 that's sin. Not merely dreamed of, or at- 
 tempted, but committed — it's the only thing 
 that really Mils — if repentance or reparation 
 are too late," 
 
 " It is too late," she whispered, but he did 
 not hear, her face was grey, but he did not 
 see it. In the distance, and on the higher 
 ground of the garden, he could just see the 
 heads of Basil and Easter passing each other 
 at stately distances in their game, and the 
 phenomenon puzzled him. 
 
 " That's odd," he said uneasily. " I wonder 
 what they are talking about ? " 
 
 "I don't hear them shouting, and they 
 
120 A MAX OF TO-DAY. 
 
 never get near enough to converse. Where 
 are you going ? " 
 
 " To — to see which is winning." 
 
 " Jem, you're a fool ! To have ranged 
 yourself in this short space of time under the 
 heading of the toujours jjerdrix point of view 
 is an imbecility incredible in the man of the 
 world that you ought to be." 
 
 " * For round the world the blade has been 
 To see whatever could be seen, 
 Returning from his finished tour, 
 Grown ten times duller than before ! ' " 
 
 quoted Jem, laughing. 
 
 " Exactly. A man in love is always dull. 
 That is why Basil remains delightful." 
 
 "You seem very fond of him," said Jem 
 grudgingly, " and to have a great deal in 
 common." 
 
 " We have, only it's sometimes hard," she 
 went on with apparent irrelevance, " to dis- 
 tinguish between the purity that nobly steps 
 down to vice, and the easy virtue that makes 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 121 
 
 tlie sin of a sinner a lio-ht tiling" to one — 
 indeed it's almost impossible to know where 
 toleration ceases to be a Christian virtue, and 
 a base subservience to circumstance steps in. 
 In my limited way I suppose I'm as wicked 
 for a woman as Basil is for a man." 
 
 Jem's steadfast eyes met hers full. 
 
 "Why?' do you say these things?" he said 
 coldly. " They are not worthy of you." 
 
 His tone hurt her, tears rose to her eyes, 
 and through them looked, for a moment, a 
 hungry soul, that starved in the midst of 
 plenty. Jem's heart smote him, for he had 
 old-fashioned ideas about women, and thought 
 they were meant to be happy, and that it was 
 a man's duty and pleasure to try and make 
 them so. 
 
 " I'm a brute," he said, " to forget the 
 old precept, * Speak gently,' and yet," he 
 went on, penitently, "it is easy enough, if 
 you only think of it, to spare the unkind 
 word — if you'U just remember those you 
 
122 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 have lost, whom you would give the world 
 to have back, and be kinder to, then you 
 won't repeat your mistake ; but to those 
 who are left, speak gentty. They will have 
 many sorrows to bear — especially the young 
 — and one needn't add to them." 
 
 The thought ran through her mind of how 
 difficult it would be for a woman to do ill 
 with such a man as this always beside her, 
 
 " Jem," she said, " I wish 1 had been 
 your sister. I should have been proud of 
 you." 
 
 " Thank you," he said, then added : " Don't 
 talk to Easter in this way. She is so young, 
 you know — and so happy. And, no matter 
 what the past has been, from prince to 
 peasant, we have all a future, and we can try 
 to live the best that is in us — not taught, not 
 reflected — but horn in us — overcoming the 
 evil — struggling up incessantly to the light — 
 and so we can't go far wrong, can we ? " he 
 added cheerily. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 12S 
 
 But Hugon sat rigid, and made no reply. 
 
 " You'll think I'm turning into a Pote" said 
 Jem, "but I've often thought a human life 
 is just like one of those loosely- tied bunches 
 of flowers and waving grasses, meadow sweet, 
 you know, and so on, that please us so much 
 more than the tightly-packed cluster of hot- 
 house blooms. You see, the other is weed and 
 flower — flower and weed — that's just how they 
 grow when Nature is her own bouquet-maker, 
 and it's the same with human nature, the 
 faults set off the virtues, and vice versa. 
 There is a weak spot in the strongest and 
 noblest character, as there is one intrinsic 
 bit of goodness in the vilest, and there is 
 no such thing as a wholly good or wholly 
 bad man or woman, or human nature would 
 be extinct as the dodo." 
 
 Hugon did not seem to hear him, she was 
 thinking hard and deep. Presently she said, 
 " Do you think one is justified in slaying a 
 body to save one's soul ahve ? " 
 
124 A MAN Of TO-DAY. 
 
 " IsFot if there is any other way out of it." 
 
 *' There was no other way." 
 
 " My God ! " cried Jem in a strong, moved 
 voice. " What have you done ? " 
 
 She made a gesture as of one who brushes 
 aside a fly. 
 
 " Nothing," she said. 
 
CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 " For they can conquer who believe they can." 
 
 They were off at last, Tom and Maria sitting 
 up in state before, Hugon and Easter occupy- 
 ing ignominiously enough behind, the seats in- 
 tended for grooms in the mail phaeton, bound 
 for the Hangingshaw, and pursued by the 
 good wishes of the left-behinds of the family, 
 headed by Dinkie, whose final remark, as 
 applied to Easter, was understood to be 
 " Dossy ! " 
 
 JSTow one may have some little secret fount 
 of happiness within, that wiU make one happy 
 sitting in a ditch in a snow storm, and some 
 teasing grievance that makes life unsupport- 
 able under the most outwardly favourable 
 conditions, and Easter was not enjoying her- 
 self at all as she took the road to that 
 
126 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 establishment, all swept and garnished to 
 receive her, to which, in cold blood, she 
 was expected in the course of nature to 
 remove. To marry the first real man who 
 proposes to you — to be blessed and riced — 
 and installed with keys as head upper- 
 servant — ! the deadly dulness of it all, with- 
 out a spark of originality or devilry in the 
 whole jDrogramme ! 
 
 Tom, too, was irritable (after the manner of 
 fathers and husbands), and crushed Maria's 
 observations, which were well-meant, if devoid 
 of humour, and Tom should have reflected 
 that humour is a two-edged weapon, out of 
 place in the respected mother of a large 
 family. 
 
 Hugon was silent, but observed how the 
 horses' swift feet bore them ever towards 
 scenery that grew more and more precipitous 
 and beautiful, so that at one point they went 
 for three miles along a path barely wide enough 
 for their carriage wheels, one side bordered by 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 127 
 
 rhododendron bushes that, in season, were a 
 blaze of white, and mauve, and vivid rose 
 colour, on the other, by a steep descent that 
 fell sheer aw-ay to a valley, its sides clothed 
 with climbing trees, through which the sun- 
 light struggled, playing enchantingly on the 
 boles and mossy green carpet below. Only to 
 just think of what these miles of bloom 
 must be in due season, too much beauty 
 surely for human eye and soul to contain ! 
 
 They came at last, drawing ever nearer and 
 nearer to the sea, to great wrought iron 
 gates, and saw beyond a lofty archway, a grey 
 old pile nestling at the foot of a cliff, and on 
 the doorstep belonging thereto, Jem Burghersh 
 waiting to receive them. 
 
 " Jem," said Easter, forgetting her ill- 
 humour as he lifted her, a mere feather- 
 weight, to the ground, " how you have grown, 
 and how much cleaner we both are than when 
 we last adorned this doorstep ! " 
 
 He did not see Hugon ; it was a servant 
 
128 A MAN OE TO-DAY. 
 
 who assisted her down, and following the 
 others, she stepped alone through the arched 
 doorway, on the very threshold of which she 
 was met by that old-world perfume which 
 clings to some beautiful old houses which have 
 been dwelt in by generation after generation 
 of gently-born, and gently-nurtured men and 
 women. Is it not permissible to think that their 
 good spirits, their gracious influences, yet 
 linger in the air, giving an atmosphere that 
 the newly - built, heavily - stocked house of 
 riches alone, can never by any possibility 
 acquire ? 
 
 The very servants add their own sober note 
 to the harmony of the. whole, and 3^ou feel, 
 and know, that nor brains nor education, nor 
 riches in a low-born man, can make up for 
 those centuries of gentle breeding and 
 thousand associations of entourage that make 
 the best sort of EnMishman what he is. 
 
 o 
 
 " A place to live in, to die in, to be good 
 in," thought Hugon, as the}^ passed through 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 129 
 
 the ante-rooms that led to a vast apartment 
 ceiled and floored with blackest oak, its 
 crimson walls almost entirely panelled with 
 priceless pictures, broken here and there by 
 treasure-filled cabinets, with great windows 
 looking out on different scenes of loveliness, 
 and everywhere flowers — flowers in bowls, in 
 great cloisonne jars, in the fire-places — an 
 interior so exquisite, that Hugon moved 
 through it as in an enchanted dream. 
 
 Some one had placed an open workbox by 
 a chair that looked like a throne by the 
 hearth, and at which Easter did not even 
 glance, but Hugon's glance embraced every- 
 thing. In one illuminated moment she saw 
 Easter sitting there, Jem Burghersh's adored 
 wife, and herself as the poor governess, 
 toiling for a crust of bread, cursed by the 
 Furies, and for ever with no ownership in self, 
 but only the blind sport of Fate. A burning 
 sense of the injustice of life, of heaven, ay, 
 
 and a deeper hurt than these, but newly- 
 VOL. I. 9 
 
130 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 planted there, pierced her very soul, and 
 hearing Basil's voice, who had just arrived, 
 she turned bhndly, and stumbled out on to the 
 terrace alone. 
 
 " O, what hills are yon, yon pleasant hills, 
 That the sun shines sweetly on ? " 
 " 0, yon are the hills o' heaven," he said, 
 " Where you will never win." 
 
 They rang in her ears, those hopeless 
 words of warning — where had she heard them, 
 were they written especially for her ? And 
 if so, had she not known it all along ? 
 
 Blindly she gazed around her. The Hang- 
 ingshaw sat on a natural plateau with its feet 
 in a forest, backed by a terraced cliff, and 
 crowned by the moor, from which vantage 
 ground you might see a slender foam-line 
 that marked the breaking of the sea upon 
 the coast about half-a-dozen miles away as 
 the crow flies. 
 
 She passed the turning to the trout stream, 
 and by a winding way beneath trees, climbed 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 131 
 
 upwards to the White Pavilion, otherwise 
 known as the Winter Garden, its many- 
 windows open to the air, but guarded by- 
 bright awnings, that jealously kept the sun at 
 bay, closing in deep coolness, and soft rocking 
 chairs where one misfht lie and draw in the 
 voluptuous scent of many flowers, and dream 
 that one had happed on Heaven. 
 
 Behind her she heard ascending voices, and 
 without turning, was able to couple them, 
 those of Easter and Basil, of Jem and Maria 
 — all out of tune, save Maria's. Presently 
 those of the latter receded, evidently Mrs. 
 Denison had diverted Jem to the kitchen- 
 garden, and an insane longing suddenly over- 
 came Hugon to follow them. Even as she 
 sternly asked herself what this meant, as a 
 person sickening for fever is still clear enough 
 in reason to recognize his symptoms, Easter 
 ran past her into the pavilion, and throwing 
 herself into a rocking chair at a distance, 
 
 began to rock herself as if for a wager. 
 
 9* 
 
132 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 • Now, rocking is an insidious, fascinating, 
 greedy sort of occupation, invented by a 
 nation that works harder and lazes harder 
 than any other on earth, and you hate to be 
 disturbed at it, or spoken to, or even looked 
 at, while any attempt to extract an answer 
 from you, begets in your breast an ardent 
 desire to murder that person, and be let alone 
 ever after. Thus Easter, unused to rocking 
 chairs, and in spite of bad temper, began to 
 dream as she swayed softly to and fro, finding 
 nothing to say when the flowers were having 
 their say so deliciously, and being too young 
 to deny herself anything agreeable that offered 
 itself, and lulled by the atmospheric blandish- 
 ments of the moment, glided sweetly and 
 gradually into the ineffable happiness of sleep. 
 Hugon had vanished. When the last tap 
 of Easter's little foot ceased, and her curly 
 black eyelashes were sealed to her cheek, 
 Basil took the nearest chair, leaned his elbow 
 on his knee, and quietly studied her. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 133 
 
 For a long while he perused the little face, 
 whose tints were not to be matched by a flower 
 there, asking himself whose was the fault, 
 hers or his, that the attraction was not made 
 permanent, that at Fairmile had so powerfully 
 drawn him towards her ? Basil knew himself 
 thoroughly ; what he could do, and what he 
 could not, and had no intention of giving 
 himself a chance of folly — though probably 
 no man on earth more fully shared those 
 opinions of the ancients as to Beauty being 
 " a delightful prejudice," " a privilege of 
 Nature " . . . " better than all the letters 
 of recommendation in the world "... 
 " nothing that was more grateful "... 
 while en revanche hen-pecked Socrates (you 
 may be sure he deserved his pecking), calls it 
 " a short-lived t3^ranny " ; dry Theophrastus 
 " a silent cheat," while another points sadly 
 to it as " a solitary kingdom," Whatever it 
 might be, here it did not move him — nor 
 had Easter power to make his heart go one 
 
134 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 beat tlie faster for excess of her cruelty, or 
 kindness, or both. 
 
 Perhaps the girl's coldness had made his — 
 that if he could have seen her a trembling, 
 loving creature, whose life depended on his 
 smile, he would have grown warm, at least 
 for a time, but the touch had been withheld, 
 and as yet the vital selfishness of love had 
 not stirred him. She was outside his life and 
 personality ; she had not hurt him, or pleased 
 him, and a woman must hurt a man deeply, 
 cut into the very quick of him, before she 
 leaves her mark for life and after, upon him. 
 It is impossible to give the highest pleasure 
 where one has not inflicted the keenest 
 sufiering, and the gospel of love is nearly 
 always the gospel of pain. 
 
 Yet, being a man, Basil would have preferred 
 her indifference not to be as genuine as his. A 
 man hates his little privileges to be intruded 
 on, and if he lives by bread alone, a woman 
 may not live at all — save by his favour. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 135 
 
 Yet to Jem, who presently peeped in, there 
 could be no more delectable sight on earth 
 than that of Easter sound asleep, and Basil 
 sitting like a handsome statue of melancholy, 
 looking sadly down at the tesselated pave- 
 ment, and longing ardently for a smoke. 
 Fitzwalters had expected him long enough — 
 he would go thither to-morrow. 
 
CHAPTER Ylll. 
 
 " What dupes we are of our desires. . . . Destiny 
 
 has two ways of crushing us — by refusing our wishes, 
 
 and fulfilling them. But he who only wills wliat God 
 
 wills, escapes both catastrophes. All things work together 
 
 for his good." 
 
 — Amiel. 
 
 The reaping of Squire Hussey's ten-acre field 
 of wheat had drawn all the young people out 
 of Penroses, and now, with Jem, and Daddy, 
 and Eeggy, and half a score more swains in 
 attendance, Easter's white parasol was bob- 
 bing cheerfully along the lanes, the rest ol 
 the contingent tailing in a noisy and rabble 
 rout behind her. 
 
 Hugon, left behind, like most unwanted 
 things, was not missed at all, when on descend- 
 ing the steep path at the back of the Abbey, 
 that ended in pastures intersected by a trout 
 stream, she stood stock-still to listen to the 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 137 
 
 rich, soft-toned bells, golden-voiced legacy of 
 those monks who knew how to gather most 
 pleasant things around them, at that moment 
 striking the hour. Delicious bells were they 
 — from their single deep note as of solemn 
 warning, to the hurrying, tumultuous peal 
 that seemed to fall rioting over itself for jo}^ 
 and clashing and widening till the whole 
 town was full of those echoes — that yet, for 
 all their exultation, breathed a sense of peace 
 and reverence into the quiet air. And yet I 
 never heard that Eokehorne was celebrated 
 for its virtue — only for rack-punch ; while the 
 monks — well, when they gave up the pleasures 
 of love, they merely shifted the seat of emotions, 
 substituting another in its place, and perhaps 
 were right, since love is an illusive thing in a 
 man's life, while his dinner mostly comes 
 every da}^ 
 
 The trout stream, like most shallow things, 
 was lovely, a veritable flash of living water, 
 showinj]^ li<Tht within li^iit, more jjlorious 
 
138 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 than the facets of any earthly diamonds, as it 
 swirled over swaying weeds that looked like 
 flowers in its translucent depths, spreading 
 out their beauties to the water's embrace, as 
 their earthly sisters to the sun, as if they 
 loved it, and apparently Basil loved it too, as 
 he lay, face downward, under the scanty 
 shade of one of those trees that persistently 
 haunt the stream, like lovers the steps of their 
 lady. Indeed it was one of the greatest contra- 
 dictions of this very twentieth century young 
 man, that fishing should be his favourite sport 
 — an odd taste surely, since it required inex- 
 haustible patience, self-control, a serene love 
 of his own company, and every quality, in 
 short, that hot young blood usually has not. 
 
 He was congratulating himself on having 
 escaped the observation of Easter and her 
 merry men, when Hugon came softly, and 
 stood behind him. 
 
 " How goes it with thee, ! thou fisher of 
 women ? " she said. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 139 
 
 He looked up, and did not seem to mind 
 her intrusion on his thoughts. He had 
 indeed, remarked at an early period of their 
 acquaintance, that when talking to her, he 
 always felt he had a bowing acquaintance 
 with the devil, and indeed their conversation 
 was often deficient in clothes, each answer- 
 ing more to the idea that was in the mind of 
 the other, than to the language in which 
 either disguised it. 
 
 " I am growing accomplished in country 
 lore," said Hugon, as she sat down beside 
 him. " I have discovered that the crane 
 points out the right time for sowing, the 
 kite for sheep-shearing, and the swallows the 
 exact hour we should put on our summer 
 clothes! Are you consulting the fish as to 
 when you shall set out for Fitzwalters ? " 
 
 Basil laughed. His voice was delightful, 
 and if indeed it revealed his character, then 
 his mind was to him a kingdom, for by the 
 inflections of a man's voice shall ye know 
 
140 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 him — yea, and his friends also. He seemed 
 in no hurry to talk — perhaps he was waiting 
 till a local Chloe and Strephon, undeterred 
 by the heat, or possibly inspired by it, had 
 passed along the footpath, with all that noise 
 and playful violence absolutely indispensable 
 to courtship in the country. Even an arm 
 cannot in rural places slip noiselessly round 
 a waist — that waist must be taken by assault 
 and battery, or it is not worth having, and 
 in fact the more horse-play there is, the more 
 love, and whispered love-vows are things 
 unregistered, and unknown. When Strephon 
 tries to kiss Chloe, she fetches him a mighty 
 blow with her elbow that sends him stagger- 
 ing, murmuring, " Gul'long do ! " when she 
 yields up a chaste salute, she first batters 
 his hat in, and it is not until they have 
 knocked each other black and blue, that 
 they arrive at a nice comprehension of each 
 other's feelings, and fully enjoy the sweets of 
 the tender passion. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. J 41 
 
 " If only one could feel like that ! " said 
 Basil languidly, as he rolled over on the hot 
 grass, and looked into the water for the 
 shadows — no more — that the lazy fish now 
 and then projected among the flower grasses. 
 
 " Console yourself," she said tartly, " for at 
 the rate you have lived, your second child- 
 hood will soon arrive, and you will once more 
 enjoy yourself, if you have forgotten all you 
 know." 
 
 " Only one can't," said Basil ; " one might, 
 if all the books and newspapers in the world 
 were destroyed, and no new ones written, but 
 that infernal printer's ink splashes itself over 
 everything, and the whole earth is one vast 
 sounding board, echoing with all that it is 
 possible for any dead or living man to say, 
 or think. The world wants to be swept 
 clean of voices for awhile, and it would do 
 each of us good to obliterate his own 
 personality, and become a mere nameless 
 atom in the great scheme of creation " 
 
142 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 " Exit Prince Strokoff — enter Adam," said 
 Hugon sceptically, " your world has been 
 well warmed for you, mon ami, and on a 
 desert island you would be out of drawing." 
 
 " I don't stand out for the island," said 
 Basil, "but I say that the individualism 
 which makes all creation go round self, and 
 stop where we stop, is our curse. We show 
 our faces at a window, and think the whole 
 universe comes out to look at us, and stops 
 till we go in again ; we paint our wretched 
 Ego in great letters across God's sky, we 
 search for it scrawled in hieroglyphics on the 
 very stones at our feet, the very flowers by 
 the wayside, and the pebbles by the sea- 
 shore — " he paused abruptly to gaze down 
 at a trout's shadow, as if it interested him 
 more than his subject. 
 
 " And God," said Hugon below her breath, 
 " what is He doing — should we be looking in 
 the emptiness of our own faces, if we could 
 see His ? If there be a future, why are we 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 143 
 
 not given some encouragement? It is like 
 a school in which no marks are given, where 
 all our efforts are lost, or if recognised, 
 attributed to false motives, and we come 
 at last to a base acquiescence in circum- 
 stances, instead of reaching by sustained and 
 independent upward struggle, the height 
 upon which our hopes are set. Or the 
 world is an ants' nest with all of us hurrying 
 one over one — a hive of drones in which 
 the queen for whom we work is for ever in- 
 visible — and from whom no message of praise 
 ever comes ! ' Give us a sign,' we cry, but 
 there is no sign. We blame those who shirk 
 work — who will not stoop to pick up the pins 
 that lie in their path, but are not these the 
 truly, onl}^ wise who have eyes to see the 
 useless hurly-burly, and how it ends nowhere, 
 and in nothing ? Like good housewives, we 
 begin by sewing hooks on our curtains, and 
 gradually progress to safety pins, then we 
 take to merely skewering them up, and find 
 
144 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 tliey do almost as well, and nobody sees the 
 difference — it is only we who know how hope- 
 lessly we have fallen short. And so," she broke 
 off with a mirthless laugh, " at last one gives 
 up trying to be what one meant to be. It is 
 only by a supreme effort even, that when our 
 grand ones die, we are able to keep the 
 second-rate ones from climbing up, and filling 
 their places. There are those who persuade 
 the world they are great, who dazzle by 
 words, and kindle by their imaginations a 
 flame that very closely resembles the feu 
 sacre, who simulate with the wind of their 
 voices the thunder of those mighty voices 
 that roll down the centuries unsilenced, 
 and it requires courage not to be led away, 
 not to be deceived — to hold to your own 
 beliefs through, and in spite of, everything." 
 
 Basil nodded, propping up his head on his 
 hands. He was thinking what a lot of words 
 women had for everything, and men only two 
 or three. 
 
A MAN OF TO-UAY. 145 
 
 " I suppose you'll often come and stop with 
 them at the Hanfringshaw ? " he said. " I 
 never saw any fellow's future laid out in 
 clearer lines than Burghersh's seems to be — 
 something like a geometrical flower-bed, you 
 know — alniost impossible to go wrong, I 
 should say." 
 
 "I have always wanted to know," said 
 Hugon, " do you mind telling me ? Why you 
 fell in love with Easter at a distance, and out 
 of love with her when you were near ? " 
 
 Basil tilted his straw hat to the back of 
 his head, and seemed to reflect. 
 
 " ! you Eussians ! " burst out Hugon 
 with great contempt, " your capacity for 
 reflection is illimitable, your power for action 
 —nil." 
 
 His face chani^ed to the stern resolved one 
 of a man who can think seriously ; ay, and 
 act too, when occasion serves. 
 
 " You can't unloose the chains of a country 
 in a moment," he said ; " first we must be 
 
 VOL. I. 10 
 
146 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 taught — we are being taught — to feel, some 
 day we shall do more than suffer — some 
 day " 
 
 He ceased abruptly, and for the first time, 
 Hugon realized that he was a Eussian. The 
 flexible curves of his lips fell without effort 
 into rare lines of beauty, and it struck Hugon 
 that Byron had such a mouth when he wab 
 young, and his soul was greater than his 
 desires, and there were other lines in Basil's 
 face, whether carved there by his will, or his 
 passions, that no man of character is without, 
 though in his case they rather made, than 
 marred his face. And as if to leave that 
 soul open to all beholders, Basil's dark clear 
 face was perfectly clean shaven, just like a 
 girl's, as Dinkie, who rose early, and toiled 
 late, after a moustache that he had not yet 
 succeeded in catching, was wont sorrowfully 
 to observe. 
 
 " And you ? " he said abruptly, " what are 
 you, Hugon ? " 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 147 
 
 " ' A breakage of Civilization.' I didn't 
 invent the phrase — a millionaire did. Clever, 
 wasn't it ? And I ought to plump down on 
 my knees, and say my prayers every day 
 because I'm at Penroses — but I don't. Grati- 
 tude ! There's no such thing in Nature, and 
 what Nature doesn't know anything about, isn't 
 much worth knowing. She gives and takes 
 freely, she smiles and forgets, or how could 
 she do her work properly ? To be grateful 
 is to basely surrender one's independence ; it 
 pre-supposes one's dependence on another, 
 and nature revolts at such tyranny ; we must 
 love for love's sake, cling for mere cling- 
 ing's sake, but. we cannot keep alive a stale 
 feeling of regard for a kindness that has 
 possibly been undone by subsequent unkind- 
 nesses. One must hate with all one's heart, if 
 needs be, with no ropes of gratitude to hold 
 one back. Be grateful by all means at the time 
 for a favour bestowed, but having paid the 
 debt, forget it, and let ail sense of obligation 
 
 10* 
 
148 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 cease ; don't let it be like the ticket the 
 omnibus conductor gives you in exchange for 
 your penny, and another man comes to vise — 
 it's such a lot for a penny ! It is with those 
 who never have done, and never will do 
 anything for us, that we are at our very 
 best — our very happiest, and most at ease." 
 
 " I like them," said Basil, abruptly, loudly 
 even, " one and all — I like them. Now those 
 pudding basins " 
 
 " Pudding hasins ? " repeated Ilugon in 
 amazement. 
 
 " Those basins that Mr. Denison fills every 
 day for the poor men and women of the town, 
 before he eats a morsel of dinner himself," said 
 Basil, " they let a whole stream of light into 
 his character. He may have his faults, but 
 to my mind those pudding basins outweigh 
 them all." 
 
 " And so," she said slowly, " you can under- 
 stand and appreciate the humble incident of 
 the poor people's dinners, as well as a character 
 
A MAX OF TO-DAY. 14a 
 
 like Nan's. You keep Pousclikin, Gogol, 
 Belinsky, and Tolstoi for your dessert — you 
 are a man of fashion, a man of pleasure, and 
 you make yourself liappy in a family that to 
 you is bourgeois simply, and you have not 
 fallen in love with Easter though three parts 
 of you is a slave to woman's beauty ! Verily, 
 ! Basil StrokofF, you are a man of parts, and 
 a riddle!" 
 
 She looked at him with all a woman's real 
 admiration for the unknown. Like many 
 another she had taken a segment of a man's 
 life, and thought she knew the whole of it 
 . for, after all, her experiences were 
 severely limited by the mere fact of being a 
 woman. 
 
 But Basil always declined to discuss himself 
 — the subject did not interest him, he said, 
 possibly that is why he interested so many 
 other people. The person with the swelled 
 head disgusts all who approach him, and is the 
 original of the classical saw, that he whom 
 
160 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 tlie gods wish to destroy, they first deprive of 
 reason. Yet, when next Basil spoke, it was 
 on a matter that concerned himself. 
 
 " "Why did she not answer my letters ? " he 
 said. 
 
 " She did." 
 
 Basil started, and a flush showed through 
 his clear brown skin. 
 
 " And did the postman deliver them at the 
 wrong address ? " 
 
 " No. I tore them up. I had — heard of 
 you. 
 
 " What did she say in them ? " 
 
 " Ask her." 
 
 " What did I say in mine ? " 
 
 "Everything that a man of the world 
 should not to a school girl. You have the 
 most immoderate pen, and are the most 
 moderate person in your conduct (at Pen- 
 roses) I ever knew. What did j^ou mean by 
 them?" 
 
 *' I haven't the least idea ! " 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. Ijl 
 
 His voice was alert, his languor had all 
 gone, and over his features had spread those 
 bland signs of satisfaction that only a man 
 displays thus artlessly, for I don't think that 
 in a woman's whole range of expression 
 there is any equivalent to the male " smirk." 
 
 'Arry wears it broadly, openly, pasturing 
 on his every feature, in the creases of his 
 waistcoat, in the very hang of his coat-tails, 
 my Lord Henry in the deepest depths of his 
 innermost consciousness, but in both it is the 
 manifestation of gratified vanity, and produced 
 only by the pleasing knowledge that each has 
 achieved a signal triumph over one of the 
 opposite sex. 
 
 Now a woman may be honestly proud, or 
 honestly angry when a man falls in love with 
 her, but she does not " smirk " — she does not 
 know how. And you never know where a 
 man s " smirk " will end ; it is like a stone 
 thrown into a pool — the eddies ripple and 
 widen till something;' more than a man's 
 
152 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 egregious vanity, his heart is involved, and 
 often the " smirk " is turned to a wry mouth 
 in bitter earnest, and he ends by cursing the 
 complacent vanity that has lured him on to 
 ruin. 
 
 Hugon looked at Basil with pungent con- 
 tempt, at the pleasure expressed in those 
 close curves of his mouth that were so 
 beautiful, and enigmatical. Jem would have 
 gone mad with joy at the idea of Easter's 
 having loved him if but for an hour, but this 
 man was not thinking of her at all, only of 
 her excellent taste. 
 
 "Let us join the merry-makers," he said, 
 jumping up with great alacrity ; " those shouts 
 can't be at any very great distance surely. I 
 am going to ask Miss Easter what she said in 
 those letters " 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " The poetry of earth is never dead ; 
 "When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, 
 And hide in the cooling trees, a voice will run 
 From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead." 
 
 — Keats. 
 
 Nan had wreatlied Easter's swart head with 
 honeysuckle, and of the pink and yellow of 
 the freaked spikes and flowering pollen had 
 made a crown that an Empress might have 
 thrust aside all her jewels to wear, and the 
 reapers paused in their work to look linger- 
 ingly at the small oval of the enchanting face, 
 with all that keen appreciation of beauty 
 which such men usually have, and which will 
 not be put off with make-shifts, or airs of 
 fashion — good looks must be genuine, or they 
 are not good looks at all in their estimation, 
 and a common man's summing up of a woman 
 
154 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 is worth the thousand wire-drawn conclusions 
 come to by a raffi?ie. 
 
 What the latter calls spirituelle, charming, 
 and so on (I once heard somebody remark 
 that when you can't say anything else for a 
 woman, you call her elegant), the untaught 
 one, knowing the rules of beauty instinctively, 
 and finding her wanting, calls in good plain 
 English " homel}"," just as the blindest bat of 
 them all recognises, and is stirred by the sight 
 of real beauty, and is not this love of love- 
 liness, this spontaneous joy in fresh young 
 life, the one scrap of poetr}'- left in us, ever 
 strusffjlino^ after, and seekincf to realize its 
 ideal ? 
 
 Prone at her feet, and all around her, lay 
 those bold invaders of the field, the Norman 
 poppies, whose scarlet heraldry mocks with 
 its insolence the sweet English pimpernels, 
 the pink convolvuli, and here, too, were 
 sainfoin and blue lucerne, blood-red tre- 
 folium, and irreen white clematis, the last 
 
A lilAX OF TO-DAY. . 155 
 
 of tlie gay vagabond troop that had lovingly 
 waited on the corn's first green shoot above 
 ground to its glorious fall, they decked him 
 even in his dying, for did not they love the 
 grain to which they so lavishly gave their 
 beauty, and did not the corn love them ? 
 For the corn is the symbol of stern life, 
 and the flowers and weeds are the lovely 
 frivolities that make the hard reality of 
 existence possible to endure. 
 
 Out have leapt the hares from their hiding 
 places, with a better chance of life than the 
 timid field mice who blindly run hither and 
 thither, and the reaping hooks have brought 
 to light nests of helpless young partridges, 
 while afar off the great army of little singing 
 birds who have had such a glorious innings 
 at that bounteous table, look wistfully on at 
 the removal of their feast. They have dipped 
 their beaks in the milky juice of the green 
 corn, they know accurately its every stage 
 till it has hardened into golden grain, they 
 
156 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 have tasted it all through, and now sorrow- 
 fully, with sad presage of the coming autumn 
 and winter, a shiver runs throucfli their 
 slender bodies even in the sunshine, and 
 Beranger's lines recur involuntarily to the 
 mind, as one watches them flutter restlessly 
 from bous^li to bouo'h. 
 
 All the town seems to have spread itself 
 over the huge field and to find something to 
 do in it, the men to reap, the women to bind, 
 the children and old folks to glean, the oldest 
 Gammer, the youngest toddler, working side 
 by side, being alike in this — to possess just 
 enough strength to pick up a handful of 
 wheat ears with which to totter home ; the 
 Gammer iust e^oingf to learn the srreat 
 mystery of all things, the tiny child but 
 freshly come from, and still a part of it — at 
 one with Nature and with God. 
 
 Into this flood of light and life came 
 Basil and Hugon, and made their way 
 into that corner annexed by the Penroses 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 157 
 
 contingent, where the fun waxed fast and 
 furious, and each ill-used person strove to 
 forget his own smarts and scratches, by 
 inflicting still deeper ones on his neighbour. 
 
 Melons was a sight to behold, so was Nan, 
 the curly red mane of her hair floating out 
 behind like a banner, and shining in the 
 sun like flame. The boys, old and young, 
 Jem included, showing various degrees of 
 injuries, Easter alone displaying no disorder, 
 but only change of colour as Basil ap- 
 proached, while Daddy Gardner, who like 
 most long-nosed people, could be seen laugh- 
 ing or frowning a long way oS', scowled 
 down the whole length of his nose as they 
 drew near. 
 
 Basil, however, saw only the loveliness of 
 that honeysuckled head, and was trying to 
 adjust himself to the idea that this scornful 
 young Bacchante had once actually written 
 him a love letter. . . . Nay, had even 
 persevered, and repeated the performance 
 
158 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 . . . and it is a potent attraction in one 
 who has been invariably cold, to be secretly 
 discovered going to the other extreme, 
 for a man immensely admires in the opposite 
 sex the self-control he so seldom cares to 
 practise himself. 
 
 She gave him even colder greeting than 
 usual, but there was something new in his 
 face as he looked at her — almost as if she 
 were a woman, and not a mere work of art 
 warranted to produce satisfaction in the 
 mind of every person who approached her, 
 and it angered, and made her spring up from 
 the four sheaves of wheat that formed her 
 throne, so that down fell her lapful of llowers, 
 attracting a tiny child whose hand was almost 
 too small to hold the ears of corn it carried, 
 and holding on by her skirts, it threw them 
 away, stooping eagerly to gather up the 
 brighter treasures at its feet. 
 
 Easter smiled, and stroked fondly the 
 sunny curls at her knee. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 159 
 
 " And to think," she said, " that it will 
 grow up into a tiresome Peggy or Bobby one 
 of these days ! " 
 
 The ebon and fair little head got mixed 
 during the process of picking up the spilled 
 flowers, and Jem's expression as he looked 
 at Easter, opened a door of hell in Hugon's 
 heart, and frightened her. Most of us are 
 capable of heroic deeds en bloc ; it is the mean- 
 ness of detail at which we flinch, and few of 
 us can stand slicing to death with the 
 grace and equanimity of a Chinese. 
 
 The reapers had paused for tea, and their 
 voices in the soft, incommunicable dialect of 
 Somersetshire rose and fell on the air. Some 
 scraps of their conversation floated to Basil's 
 ears and made him smile, and in the midst of 
 his pre-occupation, he thought what a mis- 
 take it was to suppose that country bumpkins 
 Avere fools. 
 
 " Where do you spring from ? " said Easter 
 in that natural wav belons-ino- to all the 
 
160 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Denisons, and which, in Basil's eyes, con- 
 stituted their sino-ular charm. 
 
 " Hugon found me meditating on my sins 
 and brought me along," he said, watching 
 her as she put up both hands to remove her 
 wreath. "Don't touch it," he added so 
 abruptly that his voice was unconsciously 
 masterful, and she looked at him, the colour 
 wavering in her face, but her eyes did not 
 waver. The others had fallen away, they 
 were virtually alone. 
 
 " It looks ridiculous," she said, and tried 
 to free herself, while the flash in his eyes told 
 her that for two pins he would snatch her 
 hands and hold them behind her back. 
 
 Involuntaril}^ she drew a sharp breath — 
 there is not a woman alive who does not love 
 to be mastered, but by the right man and in 
 the right way — then she tugged at the honey- 
 suckle and only tore her hair. 
 
 " Temper again," said Basil coolly, " let 
 me do it " — and he did. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 161 
 
 The reapers looked on with a keen sense 
 of satisfaction at the beauty of the picture 
 made by the pair. The factory girls, finger- 
 ing their sham pearl necklaces sighed, and 
 pushed away the Lubins with whom they had 
 been romping. Jem turned aside and Daddy 
 fairly snorted with disgust, but Nan, drawing 
 near, smiled ... if only these two became 
 real friends, she would be utterly happy. 
 
 " Thank you," said Easter as she turned 
 awav. 
 
 It was the first gently-spoken word she had 
 ever given him, and he laid the memory of it 
 Siwaj with the bit of honeysuckle he presently, 
 and quite openly, placed in his breast pocket. 
 
 '<r^^^^ 
 
 VOL. I 11 
 
CHAPTEK X. 
 
 " God comes to us without bell." 
 
 In all Penroses there was only one cool 
 spot, within doors or without, and that was 
 known to only two persons, Dinkie who had 
 originally discovered it, and Nan, to whom 
 he had graciously revealed it under strictest 
 vows of secrecy, and who, so far, had not 
 divulged it. In a large family it does not do 
 to share everything, or there is apt to be 
 very little left for yourself, and Nan was a 
 dangerous sort of person who always wanted 
 to go halves in all pleasures, just as she often 
 refused things she liked, in case somebody 
 else liked them more. But self-sacrifice is the 
 law of some natures, just as it is never even 
 dimly guessed at by others. 
 
 " Whew! " said Dinkie, as he locked a door 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 1G3 
 
 behind them, and brother and sister plunged 
 
 straight down into a delicious coldness that 
 
 was like a deep draught of water to a thirsty 
 
 soul, "only fancy, if the others found this 
 
 out ! Now don't you go littering the place 
 
 up with your poetry and stuff, because if the 
 
 Chief should come down this evening for a 
 
 bottle of Madeira, and see anything about, 
 
 there'll be ructions, and I'll never trust you 
 
 again." 
 
 But Nan had brought nothing but herself 
 
 — chocli full of weeds and good intentions as 
 
 usual, and she sighed as she perched herself 
 
 on one of the portly casks that lined in 
 
 seemingly never-ending perspective Mr. Deni- 
 
 son's vast wine cellar, while Dinkie selected 
 
 another, and thrusting his substantial foot in 
 
 a boot three sizes too big for it through a 
 
 loop of twine, went vigorously to work on 
 
 one of those interminable fishing nets that 
 
 were never known to catch any fish — or so 
 
 his flattering brethren averred. 
 
 11* 
 
164 A MAX OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Nan sat with thin legs dangUng, and having 
 mopped her face with her skirt, looked up 
 through the narrow grating, over which an 
 occasional vagrant step in the street obscured 
 the sunshine that filtered dustily through 
 upon the stone flags below. 
 
 Silence is golden, especially when you are 
 in the habit of only being listened to when 
 you have made yourself hoarse by shrieking 
 everybody else down ; but too much of any- 
 thing is apt to pall, and Dinkie presently 
 took his thoughts off his own rather urgent 
 private affairs and looked at Nan. 
 
 " Hullo," he said, " what's the matter now ? 
 Hatching out a new Pome ? But look here," 
 he added warningly, " none of that rot, you 
 know, about an ivory arm, a velvet cheek, 
 a marble brow, and a steely eye ; I don't 
 admire richly upholstered females myself, and 
 never knew any fellow who did," he added, 
 with the air of one who knew a thinj? or two, 
 and more on to that. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 165 
 
 " N — o," said Nan dejectedly. 
 
 " And I should say," went on Dinkie, " that 
 there is nothing more calculated to give a 
 female writer the jim-jams than to see a man 
 reading one of her books, and grinning. Most 
 females write at the top of their throats, just 
 you keep somewhere near your boots, Nan, 
 if you want to succeed ; only it's so jolly 
 difficult for a woman to be masculine, and if 
 the humour of a book ain't masculine — 
 richly masculine — it's poor stuff, very poor 
 stuff," concluded Dinkie, who never read 
 anybody but Fielding, and whose favourite 
 hero was Tom Jones, while, as a real man, 
 with no nonsense about him, he respected 
 Bobbie Burns. "And I don't know what 
 you want to be a paper-spoiler for," continued 
 Dinkie ; " nearly all the trouble in the world, 
 and half the tragedies, come from trying to 
 square the circle, from folks trying to compass 
 the impossible, and do work for which they 
 are not fitted ; it isn't the worh they hate, it's 
 
166 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 only that particular kind of work — give them 
 something they can do, and they'll do it well 
 and gladly, and be happy. Same with your 
 fancies. Now you want to be a poetess — 
 Melons to be a beauty — Bunkulorum to be a 
 Socrates — Easter burns to make a fool of 
 Basil — Hug on wants Jem — the Chief tries to 
 make Mother punctual — Mother, bless her, for 
 all her long seams, and the babies, would like 
 to be a good manager — and even Cookey has 
 her ambitions, and wants to be a tall woman, 
 and when she's out o' Sundays with Joe 
 Stubbs, paws the earth with a stately strut ; 
 whereas if you'd only make up your minds to 
 stop, and let other people stop, as Nature 
 made you and them, you'd be content and 
 comfortable — like me." 
 
 Nan wriggled uneasily on her iron-cooped 
 seat, then presently unburdened her pressing 
 sorrow. 
 
 " Melons is in an awful wopse because I — I 
 boned a new pair of garters she'd put away — 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 167 
 
 Queen's garters, j^ou know — very grand — 
 pink — and when she went to look for them, 
 they were gone. I'd lost one. Then mother's 
 very upset because I wanted a bit of elastic 
 for a catapult the other day, and cut a piece 
 out of her best bonnet, where it fastens on 
 with a button to her head, you know, and 
 when she went to put it on — Oh!" and 
 language failed Nan. " It's because I've been 
 so happy lately, that I'm worse than usual, I 
 s'pose " 
 
 " And then you go down on your bones, 
 you know, and say your prayers, and eat 
 humble pie, and that's rot," said her stern 
 young mentor, " while if you kept out of 
 scrapes you wouldn't want to go asking any 
 favours of anybody." 
 
 " No," said Nan, meekly. " But oh ! Dinkie, 
 every morning I say to myself : ' Now here's 
 a clean slate, don't you write anything on it 
 that isn't good ' ; but by evening it's all over 
 smudges, and mistakes, and wickedness ! " 
 
168 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Dinkie could not follow her liere. He 
 made smudges himself sometimes, and rubbed 
 them out quickly, and forgot them. That is 
 the great thing — to rub them out quickly 
 before anybody sees them, and vow }ou never 
 made them at all. Only Nan was always too 
 ashamed and sorry to attempt to rub out hers, 
 and so with most of us when we are young, 
 we do wrong, we see the huge blots, colossal 
 to our eyes, that disfigure the white page, it 
 can never be clean again, we cr}' in our 
 agony ; once defaced, it is defaced for ever, 
 and a storm of recklessness miuQ-les with our 
 shame and pain, and what matters another 
 blot or two more or less? So we dash in 
 others, and tell our hearts that we do not 
 care. But time goes on ; other writing 
 comes on the page — some good, some bad — 
 probably there are even larger Ijlots than 
 those early ones over which we broke our 
 hearts in despair, but if we cover them skil- 
 fully, lo ! by degrees you see only the writing, 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 169 
 
 and the blemishes are not so very noticeable 
 after all — and Time, twin-brother with 
 Nature, by degrees obliterates them every 
 one. 
 
 " And then," said Dinkie, who was fond of 
 preaching, as we all are, if we can only get 
 any one to listen to us, " it's very funny how 
 you sit down when you've been particularly 
 bad, and write verses about eternity and all 
 that. You don't copy 'em out of anything, 
 do you ? " he added suspiciously. " Now, 
 that last rhyme : 
 
 " 'Has no strange, beautiful instinct ever 
 
 Strengthened your heart in its fierce endeavour ? 
 Have you not held back your breath to listen, 
 Across your eyes has no earthly glisten ? ' — 
 
 seemed to me jolly fine." 
 
 " As if I'd do anything so mean ! But you 
 don't understand, Dinkie," said poor Nan, 
 secretly overjoyed at his approval. 
 
 Dinkie was glad to say he didn't — and in 
 point of fact Dinkie did not understand Nan 
 at all. Every heart has its own Niagara, its 
 
170 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 stormy rush, its whirlpools and black depths, 
 but Nan's capacity for despair was quite 
 phenomenal, and altogether beyond the com- 
 prehension of Dinkie. Equally so were those 
 fits of crying and passion that were not 
 temper at all, but storms evoked by cruelty, 
 injustice, ridicule, and above all by that un- 
 appeasable desire to be loved that is the hall- 
 mark of some sensitive souls. But alas! we 
 may earn a bad character very early, and on 
 quite insufficient premises, but it is one that 
 we carry with us to the grave, even though 
 through a lifetime we may have given it the 
 lie. 
 
 " You see, Dinkie," said Nan, always 
 anxious to explain, " I think a lot about 
 eternity, because p'raps they won't be as 
 hard on me up top, as you all are down 
 here." 
 
 "Oh, that's nonsense," said Dinkie senten- 
 tiously, " it don't require such a lot of trying, 
 to stick to your garters, and you're so beastly 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 171 
 
 untidy. Nan, always dropping to pieces every- 
 where ; and a person who flops can never do 
 any good work ; their loose bits all come 
 in the way, you know ; you must gird up your 
 loins tight, if you mean business. And 
 always see that your hat's of the shiniest and 
 the best — everybody can see that — but who's 
 to know what's inside your cocoanut ? And 
 remember that you are received accor- 
 ding to your appearance — you are taken 
 leave of according to your deserts. Doesn't 
 some old buffer say that ' Slovenliness is a 
 lazy and beastly negligence of his own person 
 whereby a man becomes so sordid as to be 
 offensive to those about him ' ? " 
 
 " That's a crib," said Nan, indignantly, " a 
 mean crib from Bunkulorum, whom you 
 pretend to despise so much, and I think every 
 tub should stand on its own bottom, and I 
 wouldn't try and sit on Bunkulorum's if I 
 were you. And you ain't any too tidy j^our- 
 self, either, just look at your boots ! Though 
 
nti A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 I s'pose you can'"t help having a hoof like an 
 elephant ! " 
 
 Dinkie coloured violently. The useful size 
 of his feet was a sore point with him ; and 
 what member of a big family does not know 
 how to get another member of it on the raw ? 
 Looking-glasses are superfluous and you need 
 never labour under the smallest doubts as to 
 the shape of your nose, the exact size of your 
 mouth, or the quality of 3^our skin, when 3^ou 
 count your relatives by the dozen. 
 
 " Perhaps so, Miss/' he said vindictively, 
 " but / don't go to bed with all my clothes 
 on, or appropriate other people's goods, or 
 dance with rage, or stand on my head at 
 unseasonable times, or tell lies " 
 
 Nan flushed and winced as at a spear- 
 thrust. 
 
 " I never tell them on my own account," 
 she said, " but only to get somebody else out 
 of scrapes — and of course I get caught " 
 
 " Of course. Now I never tell lies myself 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 173 
 
 — it (loivt pay, and it's too much trouble. A 
 liar wants such a thundering long memory, 
 you know " 
 
 " I've often heard you contradict yourself," 
 cried Nan, indignation entirely upsetting her 
 pacific intentions. 
 
 " There you go, your lip again, and sitting 
 up on your hind-legs preaching to your elders, 
 one would think you were one of those 
 children who bring their parents up now-a- 
 days — but you don't bring up me, miss — not 
 much ! " 
 
 " But you ain't always right yourself, 
 Dinkie. Didn't you and Daddy Gardner 
 spend the whole of one night seeing each 
 other home, because you were both tight, and 
 each of you was firmly convinced that the 
 other could not take care of himself ? And 
 weren't you both found sitting on the same 
 doorstep, arguing it out at five o'clock in the 
 morning, looking regularly deboshed ? " 
 
 " Men can do as they please, Miss," said 
 
174 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Dinkie, with great majesty, "but girls are 
 expected to behave." 
 
 "And nobody expects anything of boys 
 who do nothing, and get everything in this 
 world," said Nan spitefully. "It takes you 
 two hours to learn a punishment chapter in 
 the Bible, I can learn it in five minutes." 
 
 Dinkie turned up the whites of his eyes 
 appealingly to Heaven. That was the worst 
 of Nan. In the deepest depths of her 
 repentance, out would flash that sharp rapier, 
 her tongue, and cut and stab friend and foe 
 indifferently, though the next moment she 
 was weeping over, and binding up their 
 hurts. 
 
 " And pray," he said, looking extremely 
 unpleasant, " how about girls who use bad 
 language ? Girls who get into a rage, and 
 call another person a " 
 
 " Oh, stop," cried Nan, putting both hands 
 before her hot face, " dont repeat it, Dinkie 
 — don't — I only said it because it was the 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 175 
 
 very most awful word I knew, or had ever 
 heard of." 
 
 *' Yes, it was very bad," said Dinkie, with 
 the virtuous air of one who had never done a 
 swear in his hfe, and was proof against being 
 tempted to. "I often wonder what you're 
 saving up for. With that tongue of yours, 
 you're pretty safe to be murdered by anyone 
 who happened to marry you ! " 
 
 Nan flushed. 
 
 " ! Dinkie," she said, " do you think any- 
 body ever would 1 " 
 
 Dinkie grinned, and proceeded with his 
 lecture as though it were a labour of love. 
 
 " And then you're so officious, you know, 
 always wanting to be useful, and getting in 
 everybody's way — you mean well, of course, 
 but it ain't dignified, and makes you look 
 awful small — only you can't see it." 
 
 This also Nan did not contradict, but if 
 she got well snubbed for her eager help- 
 fulness, for creditinsf others with noble 
 
176 A xMAX OF TO-DAY. 
 
 thoughts and ideas of which they were quite 
 innocent, methinks such snubs were more to 
 her soul's health than the cheap triumph of 
 those who have gauged human nature all too 
 well and too truly, and who go out of their 
 way to find what they expect. 
 
 *' And then you're such a profligate — about 
 money, I mean," he added, reflecting that 
 most sinful nouns are masculine in gender. 
 " Why, if you've got a shilling, you chuck it 
 away, and it will be just the same if you ever 
 get thick'uns ! " 
 
 It is astonishino- with what ease we find 
 hard words with which to flagellate other 
 folks' sins, and how squeamishly we select 
 those to characterise our own ; how, when 
 Dinkie fooled his money away, it was only 
 open-handedness, but in Nan it was a horse 
 of quite another colour. 
 
 " I'm very extravagant, and I've got 
 a dreadful temper, I know," began Nan 
 humbly. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 177 
 
 " And want of temper is want of pluck," 
 quoted Dinkie, comfortably. 
 
 " Oh," cried Nan in a frenzy, " I often 
 wish — I do wish I were dead ! " 
 
 " JSTo, you don't ! And your coffin would 
 be sure to be a misfit. Or the last trump 
 would sound directly you had got comfort- 
 ably settled, and you'd have to get up again 
 — or something." 
 
 " Y-e-s. But I should like to be laid out 
 properly. In something becoming, you 
 know, with some flowers in my hands, and 
 in my hair." 
 
 This sudden transition from despair to 
 vanity (one of Nan's strongest characteristics) 
 did not astonish Dinkie ; he was used to 
 Nan's phases, even if he did not understand 
 them. He used to describe her as a creature 
 of moods and tenses — chiefly intense. 
 
 "If you must wear anything out of the 
 
 common," he said, with a grin, " I would 
 
 suggest a fire-proof garment — it might come 
 VOL. I. 12 
 
178 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 in handy. But you ain't so bad after all," lie 
 added encouragingly, " though you'll never be 
 epitaphed as a 'godlie, harmless woman,' 
 you're very forgiving, and that's something. 
 You can't remember injuries, though it's 
 deuced awkward when one has been having 
 an awful row with you one minute, to meet 
 you with hauteur the next, and be asked 
 what you mean — because you've forgotten 
 all about it." 
 
 " Thank you, Dinkie," said Nan, grateful 
 for that small crumb of praise, and she said 
 it so earnestly that Dinkie repented him of 
 pandering to her love of approbation, and 
 promptly let her know it. 
 
 " You're so beastly fond of praise. Nan," he 
 said rebukingly ; " that's the worst of a 
 female. She wants to be praised all along 
 the line, or she'll die. Only give her enough 
 butter, and she'll black your boots, sit at 
 home while you kick up your heels abroad 
 with your step-wife, and even cook your 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 179 
 
 dinner for you if you like at midnight — just 
 for a word of praise. Now, males don't go 
 hungering round for applause and lick it 
 down, and thrive on it, and get downright 
 pretty on it, as a she-thing does. Perhaps it 
 ain't satisfvinoj enouQjh " 
 
 "No," burst out Nan, in spite of herself, 
 " but he'll take a trough-full of flattery, and 
 ask for more ! He'll swallow anything — the 
 very grossest you offer. Praise is too delicate 
 a dish to set before a man ! " 
 
 " Well, of all the impudent, disrespectful 
 little devils," began Dinkie, justly enraged, 
 but Nan had got the bit between her teeth, 
 and there was no stopping her till she had 
 raged through a singularly comprehensive 
 vocabulary of abuse, though when she had 
 quite done, and Dinkie's mind was thoroughly 
 impressed with a villainous photograph, in 
 which all his blemishes, physical and mental, 
 were displayed in high relief, and which he 
 
 was sure did not bear the smallest resemblance 
 
 12* 
 
180 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 to his own distinguished and attractive self, 
 Nan drowned herself in tears, and passionately 
 entreated him to forgive her, which he flatly 
 and not unnaturall}?- altogether declined to do, 
 even repulsing her damp person with much 
 vigour, when she hurled herself upon him. 
 
 " Basil isn't always throwing nasty things 
 up to me, morning, noon and night ! " said 
 Nan, when she had retreated to her cask, 
 feeling that tears were a degradation, when 
 nobody begged you to stop. 
 
 " He doesn't know you," said Dinkie, con- 
 vincingly, " / do ! " 
 
 " And it's so nice for somebody not to think 
 you a perfect devil," said Nan with a gulp. 
 *' It — it makes you one, you know, when 
 everybody says you are. Perhaps that's why 
 I'm not so bad with him as other people," 
 added the child, who already in her gropings 
 after truth had discovered memory to be the 
 real stumbling-block to happiness of the 
 whole human race. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. ISl 
 
 " If 3^oiir conduct," said Dinkie severely, as 
 he prepared to depart, " is always to depend 
 upon that of other people through life, why, I 
 pity you a Uttle, and your family much more. 
 I'm going to play billiards," he added curtly, 
 Nan's remarks about a ' blob nose ' and an 
 upper-lip like a clothes-brush still rankling in 
 his mind, " now are you coming, or shall I 
 lock you in for a couple of hours ? " 
 
 " You'll forget all about me," said Nan. 
 " I'll let you out, and keep the key." 
 
 " Very weU, only don't go dropping your 
 vile rhymes about borrow and sorrow, kiss 
 and bliss, and all that tommy-rot ; remember, 
 if we get bowled out, it'll be your doing, and 
 I'll never tell you anything again as long as 
 you live." 
 
 Nan accompanied him to the top of the 
 stairs, and let him out with great precaution, 
 but he did not speak to her at departing, so 
 she returned heavy-hearted to her barrel, and 
 producing a startlingly green apple from her 
 
182 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 pocket, actually dared to arraign Provi- 
 dence before taking a bite out of it. 
 
 " Ain't you sorry up there, sometimes," she 
 said, looking reproachfully through the grat- 
 ing as if in search of the Final Cause, " to see 
 everything turn out so wrong down here, 
 when everything was meant to be so right ? 
 You must know what I mean to do very well, 
 even if I don't do it, and if you gave me a 
 good mark now and then, just to encourage 
 me, I should get on ever so much better, 
 and I'd be so grateful, only whenever I try to 
 be extra good, I'm sure to burst out, and do 
 something ever so much worse than if I 
 hadn't tried at all, so perhaps it's better 
 not to try, but just be moderately wicked 
 every day — only why do you let me tr}^ if 
 it's always to be no good ? " 
 
 She took a meditative bite out of the apple, 
 which was so virulently sour that it made her 
 eyes water, and morally braced her up. 
 Discipline of any kind, even from a sour 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 183 
 
 apple, is good for us, and Nan felt pounds 
 better as the premonitory pangs of severe 
 stomacli-aclie set in. 
 
 "Now Easter and Basil ain't wicked," she 
 said, doubling herself up in her anguish, 
 "but it's so easy to be good when you're 
 beautiful — it's only ugly people who have 
 ugly feelings — like me." 
 
 A lisfht broke over the child's face, and 
 changed its mien as when the sun with its 
 effulgence strikes into sudden glory some 
 distant, lack-lustre field of grain, transmuting 
 it to gold. Easter was the religion of this 
 young life ; for all that she lacked, all that in 
 her intense love of the beautiful she would 
 have liked to find in herself, she found in 
 Easter, and worshipped accordingly. And 
 one other person she worshipped — Basil — 
 possibly for much the same reasons. And 
 even when her stomach-ache was gone, she 
 did not feel dull, for she liked to be alone 
 with her soul, which she had not yet overlaid 
 
184 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 with swaddlings of millinery, of intrigue, of 
 excitement, and tlie thousand vices to which 
 grown-up people take like ducks to water. 
 Probably when she grew older, she would 
 hate her soul, and flee from it as a ghost, for 
 is not the great secret of our restlessness, of 
 the ache of life, to be found in our terror 
 of being brought face to face with that alter 
 ego which shows so clearly to us its baser one, 
 which we cannot, will not, alter ? " 
 
 In the midst of Nan's soul-searchings, 
 always earnest, and usually lamentable in 
 results, came a ring overhead at the front- 
 door bell. Basil always rang when he came 
 — it could be no one else, and Nan's heart 
 leaped, and she danced up and down in the 
 dusty motes, had he looked down, he must 
 have seen her. 
 
 Sweet William, as usual, lingered, and an 
 idea flashed through Nan's mind. Darting up 
 the stairs, she unlocked the door, and sud- 
 denly appeared before Basil, who smiled 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 185 
 
 down at the little eager face all alive with 
 intelligence in its tangle of bright hair, and 
 laughed when she said in a whisper, drawing 
 him in : 
 
 " I'm down in the cellar, Basil. Will you 
 come too ? " 
 
 He nodded, and she led him carefully 
 through the passage into the darkness. 
 Then, having shut the front door, and 
 guided him down, dusted the top of a cask 
 with her skirt, and spreading out her by no 
 means clean pocket-handkerchief upon it, 
 begged him, in a tone of the greatest hospi- 
 tality, to be seated. 
 
 When he had done so, a lovely pink colour 
 came into Nan's cheeks, and looking at him, 
 so manly and so kind, she felt her heart yearn 
 over him. It is astonishing how soon a 
 woman-child learns this trick of yearning 
 over her brother, her doll, her kitten — any- 
 thini? that fills the clamorous want in her 
 soul. A man may do a yearn occasionally. 
 
186 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 but it is mostly against the grain, and he is 
 always ashamed of it afterwards, and ex- 
 tremely shy of doing it again. A woman 
 thrives on it ; in fact, the more she does, the 
 more she can do — whereas she had far better 
 smash some crockery, or set to work to dig 
 out a back garden, than indulge in so costly 
 a luxury, 
 
 "How cool you are here. Nan," he said, 
 " and what a fine cellar the Chief has," he 
 added, looking down those dim arcades in 
 whose locked recesses were hidden those 
 choice wines scarcely to be matched, 
 certainly not to be beaten, in the county. 
 
 "Yes. You won't mind stopping a little 
 bit with me, will you, Basil ? " she said 
 timidly, "or hiding behind a barrel if the 
 Chief should come down ? because he doesn't 
 know Dinkie's got a key — and if he caught 
 us, there would be a row." 
 
 " I'll hide," he said. "Dear little girl," he 
 added heartily, "I always enjoy a talk with 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 187 
 
 you. Wliat do you do down here all by 
 yourself? " 
 
 " Oh, I think, you know." 
 " And what do you think about ? " 
 She had climbed to up an adjacent barrel, 
 and was gazing at him with intensest apprecia- 
 tion. He was her hero — not like Jem, a mere 
 hourly, every-day article of use like herself, 
 but something out of a book, not to be 
 judged by any common standard, or loved in 
 any way, and she never looked at him without 
 feeling a blessing. 
 
 She paused awhile before she said : 
 " 0, about all sorts of things. Souls, you 
 know, and dead people. Basil," she added 
 earnestly, " can you tell me why people look 
 so beautiful and good when they're dead — 
 when the spirit is gone, and so wicked and 
 tired, and cross, when they're alive, and the 
 soul is somewhere inside them ? It beats me. 
 A flower doesn't behave like that. All its 
 beauty — but not its scent, which is its 
 
188 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 memory, you know — goes when it dies. And 
 I've often thought," she added wistfully (for 
 she had got into the habit of saying things 
 to Basil, things which she never said to any- 
 body else, perhaps because no one would 
 listen to them), " that people's bodies should 
 be able to show the soul shininf? throuo;h — 
 like a tulip, you know, or a buttercup when 
 you hold it up to the light. 0, they're both 
 such glories ! But I've come to the conclusion 
 that bodies and souls don't work properly 
 together, but nearly alwa3's say different 
 things. Mine do. Don't yours, too, some- 
 times .? " 
 
 Basil nodded. He thought Nan had hit 
 the right nail on the head, as she nearly 
 always did. Mechanically he felt in his 
 breast-pocket for his cigarette case, and un- 
 observed by Nan in her absorption, lit his 
 cigarette, as he signed encouragingly to her 
 to proceed. 
 
 " And it's a wonderful thing, Basil," she 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 189 
 
 went on, dreamily, " that one flower should 
 be so sweet, and another look just as sweet, 
 and have no scent at all. That you and 
 Easter should be so beautiful, and me so ugly, 
 seems as if God had his favourites, somehow, 
 doesn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, but I'm not one of them, child." 
 But Nan knew better. Nan, whose whole 
 being went out in perception, found beauty 
 everywhere, even in ugly human beings 
 where loveliness was not — for the recognition 
 of it was in herself, and turn where she 
 would, it went with her. Upon whatsoever 
 she looked, she saw the good, not the evil — 
 and lo ! the dry rock gushed, and the one 
 speck of goodness in that soul or thing 
 appeared — because she believed it to be there. 
 And if to her was given to see the suffering 
 soul, to know what other people only dimly 
 guessed, to read sign^ of character intuitively, 
 who shall say that such power was a blessing, 
 for is it not usually the lot of those who pour 
 
190 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 balm into other folk's wounds to go them- 
 selves untended when most utterly in need of 
 cherishing ? 
 
 She was looking eagerly upwards through 
 the grating, and in this little figure, straining 
 as it were towards the dusty light, there was, 
 to this man of the world, who had known 
 and forgotten so much, something infinitely 
 moving, and even tragic. 
 
 This child, always seeking, never finding, 
 always in trouble, more or less misunderstood, 
 a torment to her mother, a riddle to those 
 she most longed to please, had from the first 
 unriddled herself into something beautiful to 
 Basil, perchance as finding in her those same 
 ideals that had haunted his youth, and over 
 paths to which he had lost the route, she had 
 led him back — if but for an hour and day, 
 and made him a better man. 
 
 A Eussian, for all his English looks, to the 
 core, dreamy, subtle, ardent, religious, and, 
 above all things, receptive, he met and 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 191 
 
 clasped hands with this child on many points, 
 but most of all in her despair. Only hers 
 was passionately alive, his of that unutterable 
 melancholy which, with the stifled groans of 
 millions of human creatures too courageous 
 to cry out, is breathed into the still air, and 
 over the limitless plains and steppes so un- 
 utterably dear and beautiful to the Muscovite 
 soul. 
 
 His bent of mind was fatalistic, his religion 
 that of sacrifice and pain, lie was pessimist to 
 his finger tips, but outwardly he had not a 
 care, and wore the garment of life so care- 
 lessly and well, that none took him for 
 anything but what he appeared — a typical 
 Man of To-day. 
 
 But long ago Nan's eyes had pierced the 
 disguise of a mere man of fashion, and what 
 she found beneath the veil she loved, and, in 
 her own way, understood. For dumbly, 
 gropingly, Nan touched the human springs of 
 life, of the heart, even while she left her own 
 
192 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 bare and undefended to the careless thrusts 
 of an ignorant world. 
 
 "Poor Nan!" he said gently, "your 
 powerful imagination will never let you see 
 people as they really are — only as you wish 
 them to be — and you will suffer horribly 
 before you've done. Try and think of your- 
 self as better, and the rest of us as worse 
 than you suppose us to be." 
 
 " Oh, you don't know how bad I am," 
 said Nan mournfully. " Just you ask 
 Dinkie ! And if you only heard the Words 
 I use " 
 
 " And some day," said Basil, blowing rings 
 of smoke upwards, " you'll look back, and 
 try as you will, you won't be able to recall 
 even an echo of what you feel now. But 
 you won't be the same Nan," he added 
 regretfully, " young, earnest, and believing 
 implicitly in even a rascal like me." 
 
 *' You mustn't talk like that," she said, 
 looking deeply pained. " If you are not 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 193 
 
 good, then no one is, or I don't want them to 
 be, either ! " 
 
 *' Nan ! " exclaimed Basil quickly, the blood 
 showing through his brown skin, " you make 
 a great mistake about me, I am a regular bad 
 lot. If there is ever any real question of 
 choosing between good and evil, I invariably 
 choose the evil. If I want a thing " — he 
 paused — " really want it, I mean, not merely 
 pretend to (and it's wonderful how often 
 disinclination wears the garb of virtue), I will 
 have it, even though I destroy it the next 
 minute." 
 
 His eyes flashed with an unholy light, his 
 expression altered entirely, he did not look 
 good at all, even to this child's eyes, and her 
 heart sank. 
 
 " I know you are very wilful, Basil," she 
 said sadly. 
 
 '•No. Unprincipled. I do things that 
 
 your sister's lover, Burghersh, could never 
 
 think of doing. The mere thinking of them 
 VOL. I. 13 
 
194 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 proves tliem wrong. And when the turning 
 point of life comes, I shall take the wrong 
 one. It is such a mistake to think a man 
 will be any different, just because you wish 
 it — what he was, he will be ; habit is 
 stronger than enthusiasm with selfish people 
 like me. I'm glad you brought me down 
 here," he added, abruptly, then paused, 
 tormented by Easter. He was in the mood 
 when a man does not know what he wants, 
 and is restless and dissatisfied accordingly. 
 Confound that honeysuckle wreath, he 
 could see and smell it now as Easter bent 
 her head before him, and he disengaged 
 it with swift, firm touches, like a man 
 used to assisting at a woman's toilette. 
 Only there were very few women of his 
 acquaintance. Math whose locks he would 
 have dared to meddle. And somehow 
 her submission had mocked him, it was a 
 rebel at heart who dropped him that gentle 
 " Thank you," and turned aside to laugh in 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 195 
 
 her sleeve, with Daddy for company. And 
 he could not make her look at him. If she 
 had, he would have looked away, that was 
 certain, still 
 
 He shook his head impatiently, and 
 watched the rings of smoke that curled 
 upwards, while Nan, suddenly realizing what 
 they involved, with fascinated eyes, watched 
 them too. The Chief, who was his own 
 butler, would be sure to visit the cellar that 
 evening, and he would smell the smoke, and 
 it would all come out, how Dinkie had found 
 the key, had let her into the secret, who had 
 betrayed it, and — everything. 
 
 He glanced at his watch, and threw away 
 his cigarette. " I must be off now. Nan," he 
 said. 
 
 " Dinkie says you're going away altogether 
 very soon," said the child wistfully. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And when will you come back ? " Her 
 
 little face had grown suddenly wan, only now 
 
 13* 
 
196 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 that he was going, did she realize the amount 
 of happiness, of companionship, he had 
 brought into her Hfe. 
 
 " Wherever you are, child," he said, taking 
 the little freckled face in his brown palm, 
 " all your life long, if I'm alive, I will always 
 come to see you." 
 
 " And Easter ? " she said with some trouble 
 in her voice, that he could not quite under- 
 stand. 
 
 *^ Mrs. Burghersh will have no time to 
 remember me," he said. 
 
 " You lia^e not been very kind to her," 
 said Nan sadly, " and I hoped you would be 
 such friends. When she let you take her 
 wreath off the other day, I thought " 
 
 "WeU?" 
 
 Nan paused. It was so much easier to feel 
 than to speak, 
 
 " And you've never come near since, not to 
 speak to her." 
 
 " Nan," he said, " if you have found out 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 197 
 
 anything about me, you've discovered that 
 I'm a coward. When in danger I always — 
 run away." 
 
 " Who from ? " 
 
 "Myself." 
 
 " Where to ? " 
 
 " This time to Fitzwalters." 
 
 Nan's face brightened. 
 
 "Then you'll come back ? " she said, and 
 hugged herself for joy. 
 
 " I don't know. ' L'homme propose^ et 
 femme disjjose' " 
 
 He turned to go, but Nan stood stock still, 
 looking earnestly at him, that secret " flair " 
 of hers for all human secrets guidin*? her to 
 the truth — yet not altogether the truth. 
 
 •' 0, Basil," she said with a sort of cry, 
 " why didn't you let Easter alone ? You're 
 married, and it's your ivife you didn't want 
 to go to at Fitzwalters ! " 
 
 But Basil had passed up the dark stair- 
 way, and, opening the door left unlocked in 
 
198 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 her excitement by Nan, walked out by that 
 side-exit sacred to tradespeople, postmen, 
 and the unlawful appearances and disappear- 
 ances incidental to a large family, and 
 vanished. 
 
 Whereupon Nan resumed her seat on the 
 top of the cask, covered her head with her 
 skirt, and howled. 
 
 It is only the imaginative who troubles to 
 weave ropes out of sand — but when the sand 
 falls in little cones at his feet, the imagi- 
 nation returns, not the poorer, but the richer, 
 to its owner, who begins the whole toil over 
 again — because he must. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " Ye'll sleep mair in the night, master, 
 And wake mair in the day ; 
 Gae sooner down to Broomfield Hill, 
 "When yeVe sic pranks to play." 
 
 The time was supper. Mrs. Denison Lad lost 
 her keys, and the domestic weather-chart was 
 marked " stormy." These keys were a per- 
 fect farce, being never known to lock up 
 anything that could not be found in great 
 profusion everywhere else (as witness the lost 
 cellar key), but the Chief insisted on them 
 as outward symbols of thrift that when 
 wanted were invariably missing, till, when 
 the house had been thoroughly ransacked, 
 and everybody strung up to a pitch of agony, 
 they were usually found at the bottom of 
 Maria's pocket, to her own perennial astonish- 
 ment. Whereupon she would heave a sigh of 
 
200 A MAN OF TQ-DAY. 
 
 content, and pursue the even tenor of her 
 way — through her plate. 
 
 To-night the Chief was especially out of 
 humour, and a man's temper is a ticklish 
 thing, and once set thoroughly going does 
 not stop in a hurry, as a woman's, from mere 
 force of circumstances, must. Hespectable 
 woman is not, in a general way, th3 destruc- 
 tive animal, man is. She knows tlie cost of 
 smashed crockery and damaged furniture, and 
 dares not indulge herself ; he probably does 
 not know, and certainly does not care, and 
 has a high old time generally as he goes on 
 his devastating way, his family looking on, a 
 mere pulp of quaking apprehension, only too 
 thankful if out of the ruin of everything the 
 domestic tyrant, really pleased with himself, 
 emerges, smiling. A woman wouldn't smile 
 if she had done all these tliini:!:s — she would 
 weep, but it is one of the enormous pulls the 
 male sex has over the female one, that never, 
 under any circumstances, does it Iiang its 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 201 
 
 head, or display sliame of itself, however 
 flagitious may have been its conduct. 
 
 Mr. Denison, then, having helped his 
 family to squalls, also to cold roast beef, 
 was about to attack a slice on his own 
 plate, when a shabby little figure stole 
 out of the shadows, and came close up 
 to her father's side, with the courage of 
 despair. 
 
 "Father," she said, in a voice that 
 trembled, " if you should go into the cellar 
 to-night, and smell tobacco-smoke, don't be 
 frightened — it hasn't been burgled — it's — it's 
 only me." 
 
 Mr. Denison, who in addition to being an 
 angry man, was also a hungry one, glared at 
 the child, whose ugliness was always a direct 
 reflection on himself, then at the Ancient 
 Mariner, who looked about to sink under the 
 table. 
 
 " So this is the way you look after your 
 pupils, ma'am," he flashed out the more 
 
202 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 furiously that to liim her meekness was like a 
 red rag to a bull. 
 
 " It isn't her fault, father," cried Nan 
 eagerly, " it's only that I'm so wicked . . 
 I found a key tliat fitted the cellar door, and 
 I go and sit down there sometimes — it's so 
 cool . . and . . and I think . . and 
 smoke." 
 
 Dinkie's face was a study, while visions of 
 a door unlocked to all comers, of half- 
 emptied casks, and rifled recesses, flitted before 
 Tom's mind. 
 
 *' CanH you keep a key of any kind, 
 Maria ? " he began irritably, and then he 
 happened to look at Nan, and something in 
 her face touched him, and appeased his anger. 
 It occurred to him that she was telling a lie 
 to save Dinkie, of whose little propensities he 
 was well aware, so promptly asked that 
 gentleman why he sat there like a great stuck 
 pig, and let his sister take the blame of his 
 misconduct ? 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 20B 
 
 But Dinkie truly enough denied the soft 
 impeachment — he was not such a fool as to 
 smoke in the cellar — no, not he. 
 
 " It is nothing to do with Dinkie, father," 
 said Nan, trembling more than ever. "He 
 wasn't there, and he didn't know anything 
 about it — really and truly." 
 
 The ring of her voice was sincerity itself, 
 and Dinkie looked at her almost with respect. 
 What a limb she was ! And she didn't look 
 a bit sick ! She had certainly on this occasion 
 proved her rights to be classed as a superior 
 criminal, and he would find it hard work now 
 to keep the upper hand of her. 
 
 " There, there," said Mr. Denison, not un- 
 kindly, " go to bed," then as she turned away, 
 he drew her towards him, put his arm round 
 her shoulder, and kissed her. After all, she 
 had come straight to him and told the truth ; 
 she had not kept him at the polite distance 
 his children usually did — and something 
 tugged at Tom's heart, and brought un- 
 
204 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 wonted moisture to his eyes, as he helped 
 himself to pickles with that slice of roast 
 beef from which she had diverted him. 
 
 Nan went away on air. The Chief had 
 been kind to her for the first time in her 
 life — and her face still shone radiantly, when 
 some time later Dinkie discovered her, having 
 made quite a toilette, in bed. 
 
 " You little idiot," he said, sitting down on 
 her toes, " why didn't you clean up the ashes, 
 and hold your tongue ? That was what you 
 were bursting to tell me, I s'pose, on the 
 barrel. Were you sick ? " 
 
 " N — not very," murmured Nan. 
 
 "And just after I'd been talking to you, 
 and encouraizino' you to be better ! " said 
 Dinkie. 
 
 " You don't encourage me much, Dinkie," 
 said Nan with a gulp. " I often think you 
 are like the man who administered the last 
 consolations of religion to the other man who 
 was dying— don't 3^ou remember ? " 
 
A BIAIM OF TO-DAY. 205 
 
 " No," said Dinkie, " I don't. One of your 
 old Joe Millers, I s'pose." 
 
 " It isn't a Joe anything. It was only a 
 colonel who missed one of his men on parade, 
 and asked the sergeant why he was absent. 
 
 * Jones, sir, is dead, sir,' said the sergeant. 
 
 * Indeed, and when did that happen ? ' ' Last 
 night, sir. I was with him, and administered 
 the last consolations of religion.' ' Indeed. 
 What were those ? ' ' Well, sir, it was this 
 way: "Jones," sez I, "you're wery hill." 
 " Yes," sez 'e. " And Jones," sez I, " you 'as 
 been a wery bad man." " Yes," sez 'e, sorter 
 groanin' like. " And, Jones," sez I, " you're 
 goin' to die." " Yes!''' sez 'e, groanin' again. 
 "And, Jones," sez I, "you're goin' to 'ell." 
 " Yes!'' sez ' e, M'ery 'ang - dog. "And, 
 Jones," sez I, " you ought to be wery 
 pleased, and proud to 'ave a sitivation pro- 
 vided for you free of charge." " Yes," sez 
 'e, "and then 'e died." And I often think 
 Dinkie, that your encouragements to me 
 
206 A MAX OF TO-DAY. 
 
 are something like that sergeant's consola- 
 tions to Jones." 
 
 " Well ! " said Dinkie, drawing a deep 
 breath, "what with smoking tobacco, and 
 telling ribald stories, and rebuking your 
 elders, I think you're getting along pretty 
 fast for a young woman who is trying above 
 a bit to improve her soul. But what I want 
 to know is — where you got that cigarette ? 
 The artfulness of keeping it up your sleeve all 
 that time, and pretending you wanted to stop 
 down there to think ! Mean, 1 call it ! " 
 
 But Nan screwed up her mouth tight, and 
 shook her head to signify that horses would 
 not draw a word out of her. 
 
 " I don't believe you'd got it when I left," 
 said Dinkie, as he began to unlace his boots 
 preparatory to retiring, " you'd have told me 
 what you were going to do, or bust." 
 
 But Nan containing herself by supremest 
 effort, Dinkie tried strategy. 
 
 "What might you happen to be talking 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 207 
 
 about?" lie said insinuating!}", "when you 
 committed such a suicidal act as smoking in 
 the cellar, of all earthly places ? " 
 
 " Souls," said Nan abstractedly, and quite 
 off her guard. 
 
 " So exactly like you," said Dinkie, " gasing 
 about your immortal soul, and getting your 
 vile body into trouble all the time. And 
 pray, who were you talking to ? Now, if it 
 had been Peggy, it might have been a beau — 
 but nobody could suspect you'' 
 
 But Nan was on the alert now, and not to 
 be drawn. 
 
 " Well," said Dinkie, decidedly huffed, 
 " I'm glad you had the grace to keep me out 
 of it, anj^way," and picking up his boots, he 
 departed with an ostentatious absence of 
 leave-taking that, under the circumstances, 
 Nan felt to be the height of cruelty. 
 
 After the Ancient Mariner had flapped 
 round, and rebuked her after what Dinkie 
 called a tadpole fashion (he had finally 
 
208 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 decided that slie was a tadpole, not an oj'ster, 
 as an oyster, if no joy to himself, gives 
 pleasure to somebody else), Easter came and 
 sat down, a slim, young shape in a black 
 grenadine gown with only the white of her 
 neck and arms showing through. Black, for 
 the black-velvet-eyed, black-haired women, 
 white or the nearest colours to white for the 
 fair-skinned ones, thus have Nature and Art 
 decreed, no matter how the mantua-makers 
 may step in to spoil their dictates. 
 
 " Nan," said Easter without preamble, " it 
 was Basil Strokoff who smoked in the cellar 
 this afternoon. Did he talk about me ? " 
 
 " Not much. You — you ain't in love with 
 Basil, are you ? " 
 
 "No. Why?" 
 
 " Because I think he's married." 
 
 Easter turned her face away. Nan could 
 make nothing of her attitude, but thought 
 she suffered. 
 
 " Did he come to tell you that ? " 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 209 
 
 " He didn't tell me, I guessed it. You see 
 a man like Basil wouldn't be let stop single, 
 so of course " (Nan lowered her voice), " he 
 didn't dare to fall in love with you." 
 
 " I didn't know that being married made 
 much difference to men of that sort." 
 
 " Oh, Easter ! " 
 
 " And he is too well-behaved for a married 
 man. And too original and unbroken — he is 
 no more married than I am. Good-night, 
 child, I'm going — out for a walk." 
 
 " The garden, you mean ? " 
 
 " Too small. I'm going over the hills and 
 far away. The house stifles me to-night, and 
 everybody is duU as ditch-water, and there 
 are too many of us. We want a plague to 
 take away half the people, then the other half 
 could breathe." 
 
 " God bless you, Easter," cried Nan after 
 her as she went out. 
 
 " That's a queer child," Mr. Denison was 
 saying as he and Maria sat alone in the 
 
 VOL. I. 14 
 
210 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 Green-room together. Tobacco is soothing, 
 so is whisky and water, when taken in 
 quantities of neither too much, nor too little, 
 and having, like most hasty-tempered men, a 
 blessedly short memory, Tom had by now 
 quite forgotten his recent irritation, and that 
 good old blister, Maria's keys. " It's my 
 belief she's got all the brains of the family." 
 
 Maria sniffed. She was not imaginative — 
 women who brins^ larsfe families into the 
 M^orld seldom are, and if she could have 
 seen Nan's shivering, naked, inner self, with 
 its many needs and sorrows, she would have 
 tried to make it comfortable as assiduously as 
 she did Nan's body, but she did not see it, 
 only the child's wild ways, and impossible 
 temperament. She was, moreover, pre- 
 occupied, having just before supper dis- 
 covered a gallon jar that should have been 
 full of pickled walnuts, empty, and her 
 faculties were now fully employed in trying 
 to fix on the thief, to such trifles may souls 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 211 
 
 sink (so remote) when pickled walnuts vanish 
 (that were so near). And when, putting 
 aside the subject that interested Tom, Mrs. 
 Denison unfolded her grievance, Tom briefly 
 consigned the stolen walnuts and the villain 
 who stole them to a warm place, this, as 
 Maria justly and indignantly observed, did 
 not restore the walnuts to the person who had 
 been at the trouble of pickling them. 
 
 Easter heard their dissenting voices as she 
 stole past the open windows, quite unseen, 
 for it was one of those few dark nights of full 
 summer, when the sickle-shaped moon has 
 little power, and a soft, almost impenetrable 
 gloom prevailed in which it was more easy to 
 feel than to see anything very clearly. 
 
 Her spirits rose as she left the garden 
 
 behind, and plunged into the orchard, for 
 
 Nature ever bears the full half of every 
 
 burden you take to her, and a wild sense of 
 
 freedom, of belonging only to herself, made 
 
 the girl's feet light as air, and so swift that she 
 
 14* 
 
212 A MAN OF TO.DAY. 
 
 passed like a soft rush of wind someone in 
 the very act of striking a match whose light 
 flashed on her face, her beauty seeming to 
 divide the darkness as she went by. 
 
 "Daddy," she said to herself angrily, for 
 Daddy had been a nuisance lately, and now 
 he had turned up to spoil her pleasure, for 
 she felt rather than heard him tracking her, 
 and resolved to lead him a real good dance, 
 and then the thought of that long promontory, 
 his nose, colliding with a tree tickled her, and 
 she laughed, laughed almost into the ear of 
 someone who was nearer than she supposed, 
 and who took that smothered laughter as a 
 recognition of his identity, and a direct chal- 
 lenge to go on pursuing, until he caught her. 
 
 And if she wanted a game of Bo-peep, well, 
 she should have it. Still this was a new 
 reading of her character, though he knew 
 that it is only the unexpected that happens — 
 with a woman. 
 
 The game proceeded on both sides with 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 213 
 
 verve and subtlety. To the girl it was a 
 frolic, to the man it shewed as an indiscretion, 
 and in the worst possible taste, but soon he 
 warmed to his work, and gradually there 
 woke in him that instinct of the hunter which 
 is the most dominant of all instincts in the 
 male breast, and that once kindled will not be 
 turned aside, or quenched, tiU gratified, though 
 when he has caught it, when he has seized 
 the bleeding, still quivering thing, what then ? 
 His rage, his lust for it is appeased — it goes 
 into his bag, and is forgotten. 
 
 Still, for the quarry that escapes, there is 
 pastime, too ; and who shall say that it does 
 not enjoy something of the excitement, the 
 hazards, above all, the life that beyond any 
 other is comprised in the thing we call sport ? 
 Be sure that the hunted exults in confound- 
 ing the hunter, and mocks at the futile efforts 
 made to seize it, and that when at last it 
 creeps trembling into safety, it yet tingles 
 with the thought of those fierce, burning 
 
214 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 moments of pursuit, in which it realised what 
 life was, and clung to, and saved it. 
 
 Once a fold of Easter's gown slipped through 
 Basil's fingers, anon his hand touched hers, and 
 occasionally he heard her laughing softly, as 
 in purest enjoyment at his expense, and if he 
 were light of foot, and keen of ear, as all 
 born hunters are, she was quicker, moreover, 
 she was on her own ground, and knew every 
 yard of the place, which he did not. 
 
 More than once they felt each other's 
 breath upon their faces, and occasionally she 
 stood motionless, and he passed her for a 
 tree ; again, he clasped a slender trunk 
 thinking that he had her, and once she 
 dropped like a stone when he must have seized 
 her, and he fell head foremost over her body, 
 but she was up and away before he had even 
 regained his feet, and he struck himself more 
 than one blow, but did not pause to heed 
 them. The timid night animals were all as 
 still as mice, they knew well enough when 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 215 
 
 their enemy, man, was abroad, and hid 
 themselves away, and listened, and wondered 
 what it all meant, and did their nibbling 
 furtively. 
 
 Presently Basil stumbled over some small 
 thing — surely put there on purpose to trip 
 him up — it was a black satin slipper, and 
 as he hurled it from him, he swore, and 
 that swear nearly lost Easter the game, for 
 the voice was not Daddy's, and a cold chill 
 ran through her as she realised that she had 
 been playing a housemaid's game of Touch- 
 last with — Basil. 
 
 "Where was her courage that she could not 
 shout out, " Fen ! I thought you were Daddy 
 Gardner " ? Instead, she escaped barely in 
 time, for the fever was now in her blood ; 
 some of his fury had communicated itself to 
 her, and she would die before he should catch 
 her, and then she could have killed him, he did 
 so mean a thing. He struck a match, and so 
 revealed her — no angel, but a creature full of 
 
216 A MAN OF TQ-DAY. 
 
 the wine of life, of scorn, of provocation, her 
 dazzling bloom painted on the darkness of 
 the night, and the next moment swallowed up 
 in it, as she fiercely struck the light from 
 his hand, and was gone. 
 
 She had been gradually drawing him off 
 towards that end of the orchard which 
 terminated in a wall in which was a postern 
 door, usually kept locked by the gardener 
 against little marauders, and what if it were 
 locked to-night ? A dash across the open, 
 a door-handle that — thank God ! — turned, 
 and Easter was inside it, and had dashed 
 it in the face of her pursuer before he 
 was even aware that she had escaped him. 
 
 Quivering, breathless, less triumphant 
 perhaps than she had expected to be, Easter 
 drew the bolt and fell in a heap on the ground, 
 while on the other side, baffled and furious, 
 Basil listened to his own thundering heart- 
 beats, and cursed all women great and small. 
 He might easily have climbed the wall, 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 217 
 
 aided by the walnut tree's friendly bough, but 
 he did not, and Easter going laggingly away 
 thought, with a curious fear and longing, 
 how sweet it would be if he had come over — 
 and made her — made her — love him. 
 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " Wouldst thou run 
 And tempt a fate which prudence bids thee shun ? " 
 
 It requires some nerve to call on a young 
 woman whom you have chivied round her 
 own orchard like any housemaid overnight, 
 but Basil did not seem to find it a difficult 
 feat, his only trouble was to catch the person 
 to whom he desired to make his apology, and 
 who declined to be caught, so that now, after 
 lingering to the last moment, he had departed. 
 " He's a silent chap ! " said Dinkie, who had 
 come up to tell Easter the coast was clear. 
 " I asked him the other day why he'd got a 
 prince's crown on the backs of his hair- 
 brushes and all that sort of thing — 0, Lord ! 
 his dressing-table is like what a woman's 
 ought to be — and he just stared at me, and lit 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 219 
 
 a cigar. While as to his bags — it's sinful, 
 just sinful, to see half a hundred pair wasting 
 their sweetness on hooks, while Fve only got 
 three, and all their seats more or less gone 
 wrong ! I've found out who the swell was 
 that came with him, and convulsed the town 
 by his elegance and strict incognito — it was 
 Strokoffs valet, and he packed him back to 
 Town the Monda}^ after he came. But the 
 cat's out of the bag, at last, and I doubt if 
 you see much more of His Serene Highness, 
 Prince Strokoff. He's bowled out, caught, 
 nobbled, and he don't like it either, or dumb 
 swearing's gone out of fashion." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " cried Easter, facing 
 round abruptly. 
 
 " Well, Strokoff and I were toddling down 
 the street yesterday afternoon when Lord 
 Hawkhurst drove past, and when he saw 
 Strokoff, he pulled up so sharp as nearly to 
 upset the apple-cart, and said, just as if he 
 saw a Spook : 
 
220 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 *' ' Good God ! Strokoff, where do you 
 spring from ? We've been expecting you 
 this fortnight ! ' 
 
 " Basil said he was coming over in a few 
 days, just then he was busy gudgeon-fishing. 
 Hawkhurst stared, winked, thought a bit, 
 then asked who he knew in this God- 
 forsaken hole ? Basil mentioned the Chief. 
 
 " ' Denison ? ' said Hawkhurst, ' the hardest 
 rider in the county, has the prettiest 
 daughter, and who makes a big fortune out 
 of chair-bottoms ? ' 
 
 " ' Just so,' said Basil, in his cool way. 
 * Let me introduce his son.' And he did. 
 
 " ' You'll excuse me, m' lud,' I said, making 
 my best bow " — and Dinkie tilted his impu- 
 dent nose to its highest point of impudence — 
 " ' but it's 'oss-'air chair bottoms, not cane. 
 Father's keeping the re-seating of old chairs 
 by the wayside for the luxury of his old 
 age ! ' Strokoff laughed, and I bolted, but 
 I saw Strokoff shake his head, and look riled, 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 221 
 
 and Hawkhurst passed me afterwards looking 
 disgusted. Shouldn't wonder if there's a 
 petticoat in the case," added Dinkie shrewdly, 
 as he rummaged in Easter's work-basket for 
 a bit of wax he wanted. " There's some other 
 attraction, you bet, besides Hawkhurst at Fitz- 
 wallers, and just you see, if she don't turn up 
 here pretty soon." 
 
 " His wife, perhaps," said Easter, thinking 
 of Nan's words. 
 
 "Fudge! Basil ain't a marrying sort. 
 Look at his waistcoats ! Did you ever see a 
 married man's waistcoats sit like his ? And 
 there ain't a blooming wrinkle in his fore- 
 head, that's where marriage as a failure 
 scores. I expect," added Dinkie, with a grin, 
 " there'll be some pretty deep ones in Jem's 
 before he's many years older ! " And with this 
 parting compliment to his sister, vanished. 
 
 Easter walked up to her looking-glass, and 
 studied what she saw there. 
 
 Sometimes nature only whispers, and you 
 
222 A MAN OF TO.DAY. 
 
 may feign not to hear her, sometimes she 
 shouts, and you must hearken, ay, and obey 
 her too. She was only whispering to Easter 
 now, who knew well enough that to fall in 
 love with Basil would be utter madness, and 
 that she must escape swiftly before the fire 
 had seized, and shrivelled her into nothing. 
 . . . she would not abandon herself to the 
 warmth, the thrill, the delicious intoxication 
 which was beginning to steal over her — to 
 this new, sweet fever that was creeping 
 through her veins — and if she had power to 
 subdue it, if she could reason thus over it, 
 had love the divine really touched her ? I 
 trow not. He takes us unawares, and 
 strikes us mute, helpless, for we cannot flee 
 away from him, however much we would, and 
 if but the fluttering of his wings warn us of 
 his approach, then he is not love, but love's 
 step-brother, yet will the mime show often 
 like reality, when jealousy of " the other 
 woman " skewers a proud heart through and 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 223 
 
 through, inflicting as deep a wound and 
 harder of healing, as if love himself had 
 done his very worst and best. 
 
 What was she like, this Fitzwalters 
 woman — to whom Basil had been on his way 
 when for a mere whim he had dropped in to 
 pay a morning call at Penroses, and stayed ? 
 
 The Hawkhurst set was notorious in the 
 county for its fast London contingent, in 
 which the only recognised duty in life was 
 — to conjugate the verb "to amuse" in 
 its every tense, always forgetting the past 
 participle, and never pulling up short for 
 anything but that one colossal mistake in the 
 human world's creation — pain. 
 
 Basil belonged to that set. His manners, his 
 ways, the nothings that go to make up a man 
 of style and note — all pointed to a world to 
 which he would drift naturally, and Penroses 
 would know him no more. 
 
 She turned angrily away from her own 
 reflection, and went downstairs, and out into 
 
224 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 the garden, where she presently stumbled 
 upon Hugon, sitting under the copper beech, 
 doing some plain needlework for Maria, and 
 for awhile lay flat on her back, her eyes 
 mounting, and seemingly bent on exploring 
 the endless vistas of leaves overhead. 
 
 " Why can't we have pointed roofs instead 
 of ugly flat white ceilings to our houses ? " 
 she said discontentedly, " like the old English 
 folk, who, if they could not get arched roofs, 
 loved to make them pointed, with polished 
 timber beams on which their eyes rested, as if 
 looking upwards through a tree ? It was 
 about the only comfort they had got, when 
 they left their beloved forests, and were 
 obliged to suflbcate within four walls. Do 
 you know, Hugon, I often wish I had been 
 born a gipsy, and had to steal my supper, 
 before eating and cooking it ? It would give 
 it such a flavour ! " 
 
 " You would make some one else steal it 
 for you," said Hugon. 
 
A :MAN of TO-DAY. 225 
 
 "Can you tell me," said Easter, abruptly, 
 " why good-looking people mostly make such 
 muddles of their lives ? Why having a face 
 that should bring love, usually makes you 
 signally unlucky ? " 
 
 "I suppose because the prettiest woman 
 usually attracts the worst type of man. He 
 loves her for her beauty — he wants that, and 
 no more — her heart, her understanding, her 
 charms of character go for nothing ; he has 
 not looked for, he does not even want to see 
 them. So when he has got tired of the pretty 
 face, naturally he deserts it, and it's a fact 
 that men with ugly wives are invariably more 
 moral than those with handsome ones. The 
 man who never looks beyond the tip 
 of his wife's unsatisfactory nose is safe, 
 beauty won't tempt him an inch, indeed, 
 beauty rather shocks him, and he averts his 
 eyes when he meets it as something danger- 
 ous, he has got used to his homely food, 
 and can't properly assimilate a more tempting 
 
 VOL. I. 15 
 
226 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 diet. It's the men with ffood-lookinor wives 
 who are always getting into scrapes ; they've 
 got their e3^e in for beauty, and the more 
 they have, the more they want ; so that the 
 every-day companionship of beauty enervates 
 and makes them e^ood for nothins^. And 
 taking it all round, it's the plain women 
 who get the plums of life, not the beauties. 
 Your dowdy woman is usually much more 
 devotedly loved than your fresh one, and 
 why? Because she's better - tempered — 
 because she doesn't flirt — and a man likes 
 to fill all a woman's horizon with his own ugly 
 phiz ; because beauty is an elegant super- 
 fluity, while ugliness populates at least three 
 parts of the world ! " 
 
 " It's very rough on the pretty ones," said 
 Easter, gravely. " You seem to know a lot 
 about men, Hugon, and I think you've been 
 the victim of one of them — or you wouldn't 
 be so wise. It's only those who have worn 
 the thumbscrew who know how to fit it on 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 227 
 
 Other people's thumbs ! And talk about find- 
 ing a woman at the top of every staircase ; it 
 strikes me there's always a man at the 
 bottom ! What was he like ? " 
 
 Hugon closed her eyes. She saw a bearded 
 face, warm with the warmth of a sleek animal 
 that exhaled health and vigour, bland with 
 the pagan sensuousness of an easy humanity, 
 and a luxury-loving nature that denied itself 
 nothing, and for whom in its desires, the 
 barriers between right and wrong simply did 
 not exist. A man to envelope a woman with 
 his big, strong personality, to be gentle with 
 her, to make her like unto himself, and drag 
 her soul down unto hell. 
 
 "I understand now why you were so 
 snippy about those letters at Fairmile," said 
 Easter, sitting erect. " I wish I'd got Basil's. 
 Oh ! " she drew in her breath sharply, " he 
 would be a demon lover, and make all others 
 tame — it would be like pla3dng with tiger-pups, 
 and then putting up with spaniels " 
 
Zi8 A MAN OF TQ-DAY. 
 
 "I shouldn't exactly compare Jem to a 
 spaniel," said Hugon drily, " or Basil to a 
 tiger-pup. His play would be of a sterner 
 kind — more like liis full-grown 2')apa's, for 
 instance — and I should say his heart was 
 one of man}^ chambers, and that they are 
 mostly fuU." 
 
 " Very likel}^ But no woman wants what 
 no other woman wants. Some men are 
 costly — like women — but one doesn't grudge 
 the price. I hate cheap things. But there 
 is no price that would buy Basil Strokoflf." 
 
 Hugon looked up. 
 
 " So you have found that out," she said. 
 " Yet you were angry with me at Fairmile." 
 
 "How did you come to understand him so 
 well ? " said Easter. 
 
 "I don't understand him now. A man 
 can thoroughly understand a man, and a 
 woman a woman, but not a man a woman, or 
 a woman a man. A male child of two will 
 understand his father better than his mother 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 229 
 
 ever can, and a girl child knows what her 
 mother feels, without a word being spoken. 
 I think it's beautiful — the silent comprehen- 
 sion and sympathy between men — without a 
 word, scarcely a look even — it is given and 
 received in silence, but each knows." 
 
 " The man who controls himself, controls 
 others," said Easter, following her own train of 
 thought, " and I should like to be mastered." 
 
 " But not broken," said Hugon. " It 
 would not suit you at all, Essie. And Basil 
 will never break any woman— for he will 
 never marry. He is too sensible of the 
 powder in the jam, too profoundly versed in 
 his own character to commit such suicide. 
 As a good citizen, he ought, of course, to 
 scorn other people's experience, and make a 
 fool of himself, and suffer as severely as the 
 rest ; but he has gone round to the other side 
 of the hedge, examined it well, returned to 
 the front, and never found courage — to leap. 
 Now Jem " 
 
230 A MAN OF TO-DAY. 
 
 "Jem," said Easter tartly, "had far better 
 take a leaf out of Basil's book. He thinks 
 he has only got to marry a woman to make 
 her happy — doubts on that point don't in- 
 commode him in the least. Basil has 
 qualms." " ^' 
 
 " Jem is sure of himself — Basil isn't." 
 " Oh ! how dull — how deadly dull," burst 
 out Easter passionately, " to live with a man 
 who is always sure of himself — and of — of 
 you ! Does Nature produce one flower, one 
 fruit, then become barren ? Each one bears 
 in it the seeds of another — and you will go on 
 loving, if the power of love be in you, till 
 you die. The real English of a woman's life- 
 long faithfulness to one man is that no second 
 man has come aloni? strong and resolute 
 enough to efface that first impression with his 
 own, and dislodge that lifeless fetish from her 
 bosom — she has never loved at all, if she is 
 not able to love again — and better. Why do 
 you stare at me ? I am eighteen years old. 
 
A MAN OF TO-DAY. 231 
 
 Do you suppose I have never thought f And 
 I can feel too. And I say it's the law of all 
 healthy humans to constantly change their 
 opinions — and their hearts too — as circum- 
 stances compel them." 
 
 " I should advise you, Easter, not to 
 marry." 
 
 " I wouldn't — if I were a man. What is 
 marriage ? Because you long for a draught 
 of water on a hot day, do you always want 
 water ? — or you are famishing, your life 
 depends on a crust of bread, but will you 
 always be hungry ? You say yourself that no 
 man should marry — and I say that all women 
 must." 
 
 " Poor Jem ! " said Hugon bitterly. 
 
 " Yes — he'll want all your pit3^ But he'll 
 be very happy all the same ! " 
 
 END OF VOL I. 
 
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