L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UN IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 825
 
 A WAKING.
 
 A WAKING. 
 
 "Xe'er was a dream so like a waking. 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 MRS. JOHN KENT SPENDER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'MR. XOBODY," — "GODWYX'S ORDEAL," — "BOTH IN THE WRONT-," — "HER OWN 
 FAL-LT," — 'kept SECRET,"— "LADY HAZLETOX's CONFESSION," 
 
 •Sic. &c. 
 
 IX THREE VOLUMES. 
 V O L T. 
 
 
 WITH \ 
 
 HUTCHINSON & CIS 
 COMPUMEN rS ) 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 HUTCHIXSOX & CO., 
 
 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 i8q2.
 
 PRINTED AT NIMEGUEN (HOLLAXD) 
 
 BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) 
 
 AND 
 
 14 BILLITER SQUARE BUILDINGS, 
 
 LONDON, E.C.
 
 ^.5 3 
 ^•1 
 
 TO 
 
 THE SON, 
 
 WHO WAS WITH ME IX THE AUTUMN OF 1 887, 
 
 IN A LITTLE HOTEL ON THE SALVAN PASS. 
 
 WHERE THE FOLLOWING STORY WAS PLANNED, 
 
 TO BE WRITTEN SOON AFTERWARDS 
 
 IN ANOTHER MOUNTAIN RETREAT.
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/waking01spen
 
 CONTEXTS. 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 Chapter. Page. 
 
 I. A DIXXER-PARTY IX CHESTER-SQUARE . . 4 
 
 II. A TIRED BREADWIXXER 1 7 
 
 III. STEPHEX IS TAKEX BY SURPRISE . . . . 3I 
 
 IV. STUART NEWBOLT SPEAKS HIS MIXD ... 48 
 
 V. ZIXA HAS IDEAS OF HER OWX 6 1 
 
 VI. A SUDDEX ILLXESS 75 
 
 VII. UXEXPECTED GOSSIP 87 
 
 VIII. MORBID FEARS lOI 
 
 IX. OVER- WROUGHT IO9 
 
 X. IX THE SICKROOM 1 19 
 
 XI. TOO LATE 129 
 
 XII. CAX HE DISTRUST HER ? 143 
 
 XIII. A FRIEXD IX XEED 1 66 
 
 XIV. THE "COMMOX ROUXD " I90 
 
 XV. THE AXDREA DEL SARTO 204 
 
 XVI. A MEETIXG AT SAAS-FEE 219
 
 BOOK I.
 
 A WAKING. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A DINNER-PARTY IN CHESTER-SQUARE. 
 
 A WARM summer evening in the heart of the Lon- 
 don season. 
 
 Stuart Xewbolt seemed perfectly happy. Hand- 
 some, young-looking, reputed to be rich, and of a 
 singular charm of manner, he made a very graceful 
 host at the little dinners which he gave twice a 
 week to an odd mixture of fashionable and literary 
 folk. He well knew how to guide the conversation, 
 how to interest everybody, and how to send the 
 guests away at the end of the evening, feeling as
 
 4 A Waking. 
 
 if for once they had been really brilliant, since 
 Mr. Newbolt had been so interested in all they said 
 and had laughed so heartily at all their little wit- 
 ticisms. And then, as Lady Catering had afterwards 
 told her intimate friend — whom she mentioned every 
 two minutes in her conversation as " the dear 
 Duchess" — "there never was anything so perfect as 
 his table decoration; my dear, it was simply a 
 dream; the Avhole table covered with some blue 
 gauzy material so waved and puckered as to look 
 just like a lake, with white water-lilies peeping out 
 in every direction, and then groups of Salviati vases 
 filled with orchids, and two large wSalviati candelabra 
 — it was too lovely 1 " 
 
 It was Stuart Newbolt's only child, Zina, who 
 arranged the table herself, often spending many 
 hours over it, and each time trying to find some new 
 combination of colour and flow^ers, and it was she 
 who had suggested the white panelling which wdth 
 ca/e au lait brocade hangings and Venetian glass
 
 A Din7ier-party m Chester-Square. 5 
 
 was considered so unique and, as Lady Catering 
 said, " so becoming, which is much more impor- 
 tant." 
 
 Zina was not so popular as her father, but every- 
 one admitted that Stuart Newbolt had a splendid 
 coadjutor in his well- trained daughter, who presided 
 at the head of the table, possessing that special 
 knowledge which could make her society agreeable 
 to literary or political men whenever she chose to 
 exert herself, and who could on other occasions be 
 not only discreet, but silent and enigmatical as the 
 Sphinx, and beautiful as the room which was semi- 
 darkened and flower-laden, with the balconies all 
 ablaze with blossoms, shining in the westering sun 
 — a medley of scents, colours, pictures, and china, 
 in which the sights and sounds of London were 
 effectually excluded. 
 
 No one could have guessed that Mr. Newbolt was 
 feeling unwell that evening, or that he had 
 recently had occasion to consult his family physi-
 
 6 A IVaking. 
 
 cian, for he was looking his very best. And though 
 there were some gossips who did not hesitate to 
 accuse him of wearing a belt to diminish the size 
 of his figure, or of using cosmetics to soften a skin 
 growing a little wrinkled and rigid with advancing 
 years, there was nothing affected or foppish about 
 him. Nothing could be more free from artifice than 
 his manner that evening as he laughed gaily at some 
 sally made by his pretty ward, Eva Capern, who, 
 although only lately married, was already becoming 
 well-known for her good looks and vivacity, her 
 smart toilettes from La Ferriere or Janet, and her 
 Sunday evening poker parties. 
 
 "Society may be rotten," she was saying; "but 
 what would you have ? We are the products of 
 society, and if you reform it you must kill us off. 
 For instance, would you really have us dress dow- 
 dily and give to the poor?" 
 
 "Beauty unadorned," Mr. Newbolt laughed back. 
 
 "A thousand thanks !" she replied ; "but then you
 
 A Dinner-party in Chester-Square. 7 
 
 would at once find me out, and know that it is my 
 art to deceive you and make you think that I am 
 pretty, when really it is only my gowns. Besides, 
 to dress out of the fashion is to become declassee ; 
 and in London, this ' 'Xiobe' of nations,' one can't 
 be too particular. " 
 
 " A woman should be like a diamond ; the more 
 beautiful the less conspicuous the setting, " said a 
 voice from the other side of the table. 
 
 "Yes, and those that need a setting should be 
 killed off. One of the problems of the age is to 
 find out an ahas for all sorts of infanticide, " laughed 
 another. 
 
 " It is these wicked ideas which make a nation 
 -ripe for revolution, " remonstrated the other voice, 
 which belonged to a faded middle-aged and quietly- 
 dressed woman who, with her white-headed husband 
 of melancholy, expressive face, and a length of 
 beard which Aaron could not have surpassed, were 
 somewhat unwonted figures at Stuart Newbolt's table.
 
 8 A Waking. 
 
 The faintest, politest, delicatest frown passed over 
 the brow of the host. He prided himself on the 
 diplomatic talents often brought into play in eluding 
 that gravity which he considered to be fatal to the 
 digestion. " The Radicals call it evolution rather 
 than revolution, rehabilitation rather than dilapidation ; 
 they are enthusiasts, " he said lightly. 
 
 But Mary Carruthers and her husband, the " retired 
 Scotch professor, " as his w^fe vaguely phrased it' — 
 whom Zina had insisted on inviting — were not to be so 
 easily put down. Apparently they thought they had a 
 mission to perform, and Stuart Newbolt winced when 
 they went on to discourse of the decadence of the 
 Romans and the frivolity of the second Empire. 
 
 The lady had a nervous way of speaking which 
 Stuart Newbolt could not have tolerated even from 
 the lips of the pretty, loveless, self-indulgent creature 
 who had been confided to his care in her orphanhood, 
 and whom his system of education had rendered 
 so fascinating that everyone forgot her selfishness
 
 A Dinner-party in Chester-Square. g 
 
 and admired her the more for her fragiUty. 
 
 He was too critical to be sympathetic, and had 
 no such thing as a broad comprehension of human 
 beings different from himself And that the guests 
 at his table should have any more ultimate object 
 than that of toying in dinner-party fashion Avith 
 those 'imps of ideas' which flit from one mind to 
 another in rapid converse, was sure to be annoying 
 to him. It mattered little if this rapid converse 
 involved a certain amount of iconoclasm in which 
 the idols of one's neighbours happened to be bat- 
 tered, but it mattered a good deal if anything like 
 a skeleton intruded at the feast. 
 
 Yet not only did the Carruthers discourse of a 
 sort of socialism which was hateful to him, and jar- 
 red on his nerves like a false note, but other things 
 grated on him. An old Canadian whom he had 
 come across in some of his travels and who had 
 impressed him by his weather-beaten face, huge Bar- 
 dolph nose, and bushy eyebrows meeting like pent-
 
 lo A Waking, 
 
 houses over eyes which were singularly mild and 
 grey, as well as by his large store of anecdotes — 
 seemed inclined to turn the talk on still more seri- 
 ous matters. The Canadian had come to London 
 to sell a new patent in connection with photography, 
 and vStuart Newbolt cursed his own folly for his 
 haste in inviting him, when he found him irrelevantly 
 boasting of the power which photography would 
 bring to bear on the recent discoveries in astronomy. 
 It was worse still that Mrs. Carruthers should try 
 to give a religious turn to the conversation, naively 
 quoting Dr. Chalmers in a middle-class sort of fash- 
 ion. A woman, as he thought to himself, might talk 
 commonplace sentiment. It was the speciality of 
 the sex to do so, the only hope being to draw 
 such women into a stream of chatter that fortun- 
 ately kept them from dwelling too much on the 
 troubles of existence. But Mrs. Carruthers, who had 
 her own public, was not to be so arrested, and 
 Stuart Newbolt did not quite know what to do with
 
 A Dinner-party in Chester-Square. 1 1 
 
 her, when, determining not to come to closer quar- 
 ters on questions of this sort, he contented himself 
 with remarking quietly that Dr. Chalmers was "a 
 little out of date." 
 
 He said this with an urbane smile, and that polite 
 intentness which, as a master of deportment, he 
 plumed himself on never losing. One might have 
 noticed that he kept an extra degree of politeness 
 for middle-aged women, and a look which somehow 
 told them their day was over. But whether it was 
 that Mary Carruthers gathered courage from her 
 desperation, or whether she resented the attempt which 
 had been made to repress her, she quoted, in a tone 
 
 of enthusiasm, 
 
 f 
 
 "Though worlds on worlds in myriad myriads roll. 
 What know we greater than the soul ?" 
 
 The quotation was made in a highly-pitched voice. 
 It arrested the attention, so that everyone was lis- 
 tening. The voice was not only highly-pitched, but
 
 12 A Waking. 
 
 there was a sort of thrill in it which made Mr. 
 Newbolt wince as if he were listening to some dis- 
 sonant sound. Was it not well known that he hated 
 anything like religious discussions, considering them 
 bad form at the table, and here was a little woman, 
 with opinions in direct opposition to his own, ven- 
 turing to come into collision with him? 
 
 Lady Catering smiled slightly as the host, keep- 
 ing his self-command, looked at his guest surprised, 
 and then tried to be satirically amused at the groove 
 into which the conversation was settling itself Mrs. 
 Carruthers had evidently intended to enlarge on her 
 quotation, but the rest of her words sank into a 
 sort of frightened whisper as she became aware, 
 not only that her host was waiting with some fruit 
 on his uplifted fork, but that there was a sudden hush 
 of other voices, and that all his guests were also 
 listening. 
 
 Her cheeks were suddenly dyed with colour. 
 Could the observant Lady Catering have made a
 
 A Dinner-party in Chester-Square. 13 
 
 mistake when she imagined that a fair-haired man 
 who sat on the left side of the hostess — a deep-eyed, 
 dreamy-looking young fellow, who had not yet 
 found his vocation in life, but had made some little 
 reputation as a musician and amateur artist — was 
 answering an appealing look in Zina Newbolt's face, 
 when he came to the rescue, and said lightly — 
 
 " Who knows that we are not deceived by our 
 senses — if the stars themselves may not be an illu- 
 sion ? " And then he backed Mrs. Carruthers' quota- 
 tion by asking sentimentally, " What is our waking 
 but a dream?" 
 
 Mr. Newbolt's ward tittered audibly as she gazed 
 down at her beautifully modelled, diamond be-ringed 
 fingers. These, at leasts seemed to her no illusion, 
 and she was quite of opinion that they might 
 have served -as models for a Canova or a 
 Thorwaldsen. 
 
 " And if you could argue these questions till the 
 stars burnt out, you would never settle them,"
 
 14 A Waking. 
 
 responded the host, in the hght tone he generally 
 adopted — a tone of half-ironical entreaty — when 
 he wished to protest against our gravity as a 
 race. 
 
 "Those so-called musicians have a great opinion 
 of themselves," he Avas thinking, as he flashed 
 back an amused, comprehensive glance at his 
 ward. 
 
 But Stephen Dewe's voice did not persist. 
 It was sufficient for him that the jarred look on 
 Mr. Newbolt's usually impassable clean-shaven face 
 was lessened. He knew him well enough to be 
 perfectly sure that a long story or a philosophical 
 speech from a young man who should have known 
 better would be sure to prove boring, something 
 like having to listen to folks reciting poetry. He 
 knew also perfectly well that though Stuart Newbolt 
 would be likely to give his daughter a piece of his 
 mind about her absurd obstinacy in wishing to 
 invite this tactless woman, he prided himself on
 
 A Dinner-party in Chester-Square. 15 
 
 being cosmopolitan, on making excuses for everyone 
 and would have no intention of being found fault with 
 for belabouring the popular superstitions. It mat- 
 tered little to Stephen Dewe if his host should be 
 like Archimedes, who wanted to reduce this little 
 earth to the standing-point from which he could 
 move the whole. Nothing mattered but that he 
 should be able to "keep in" with him, and at the same 
 time to obey the behests of the beautiful creature 
 who was sitting by his side. Then the conversation 
 slid back into the ordinary topics — the last singer 
 who was making any sensation in the fashionable 
 world, the last good picture, or even the last ball 
 at Avhich some well-known beauties had appeared, 
 as well as the last stormy debate in the House. 
 If much of this chatter about actors and actresses, 
 singers at the opera, and the latest fashions Avas a 
 little more banal and trivial than Stuart Xewbolt 
 generally liked, he at least had ceased to beat an 
 impatient tattoo with his feet beneath the table, and
 
 1 6 A Waking. 
 
 had probably to thank himself, for the party 
 was not large enough to indulge in that sudden 
 gabble and gallop of tongues which might have 
 covered the universal resolution to seek a change 
 of topic.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A TIRED BREAD WIXXER. 
 
 " You see, my dear, I told you it would be a 
 mistake for me to accept your father's invitations. 
 I could not even afford the dress," said Mary 
 Carruthers with a despondent sigh, when Zina 
 Xewbolt visited her a few days afterwards in the 
 ill-furnished lodgings in Great Coram Street, which 
 told an eloquent tale of the hard struggle for exist- 
 ence carried on in them from day to day. 
 
 By daylight she wore an ill-fitting serge dress and 
 her hair was tightly gathered up in a knot at the 
 
 2
 
 1 8 A Wakmg. 
 
 back of her head. There were downward lines of 
 patient endurance about the nose and the mouth, 
 but there was a look in the steady eyes which 
 contradicted the mouth, telling you that the meek- 
 ness had not been hers by choice. 
 
 She was in a state of depression which was not 
 usual to her. 
 
 " Do you think they were so very bad — the 
 deficiencies in my attire?" she asked as if aware 
 thcit in some way her appearance had not been a 
 success; and Zina could not tell her that the 
 deficiencies in her conversation were worse. Stuart 
 Newbolt did not often allow himself to show his 
 irrepressible impatience with everything which was 
 old-fashioned or commonplace; but those who knew 
 him intimately were well aware that his fastidious 
 nature was continually disgusting him with the 
 ill-chosen wording of a sentence, the infliction of 
 a hackneyed quotation or twice-repeated anecdote. 
 Unconsciously to herself his daughter had fallen
 
 A tired Breadwinner. 19 
 
 into the habit of watching him furtively, being con- 
 stantly aware of that something in the attitude of 
 her father's mind which made him acutely sensitive 
 to the deficiencies of his neighbours. She knew 
 that woman's talk as a general rule was condemned 
 by him as " trumpery, " and that he complained of 
 the perpetual jabber and clatter of their tongues. 
 Zina adapted herself perfectly to his idiosyncrasy 
 in this respect, knowing when to be silent and 
 when to speak in few words. He prided himself 
 on having educated a very unusual woman. In 
 the case of his ward — Eva Capem — the triumph 
 had not been so great, though Eva was shrewd 
 enough to know also how to humour her guardian's 
 peculiar fancy. 
 
 But jMary Carruthers ! Her very vocation was to 
 pander to the tastes of her own sex, consequently 
 to make a trade of what Stuart Xewbolt condemned 
 as commonplace chatter. 
 
 " ' It's such a comfort to have no intellect,' as Jack
 
 2 o A Waking. 
 
 Poyntz says in the play, " answered Mary good-tem- 
 peredly, when the Professor nervously protested 
 against such 'trash' as the 'Family Sympathiser 
 lying openly on his table and took care to clear it 
 out of the way. Zina's experiment at transplanting 
 her had only proved a failure. If ^lary had been 
 a person of no views the experiment might have 
 been more successful. But Mrs. Carruthers had very 
 strong 'views,' and though she spoke just now in 
 a deprecating tone that was not natural to her, she 
 was secretly conscious of the existence of her ow^n 
 httle circle of admirers. 
 
 "Do you know, I can remember when I was 
 young, and when I had golden dreams and thought 
 that I could do something better— but that w^as long 
 ago — I am content now with the lowest rung- 
 of the ladder. I have my boys and girls to think 
 of, and I have to put up with these London lodg- 
 ings — a dingy sort of den isn't this? It seems 
 to me a thousand times more dismal after your
 
 A tired Breadwinner. 21 
 
 beautiful and artistic surroundings, but you know 
 I could not write in a house like yours; I should 
 be looking about me all the time. Heigh-ho; I 
 am hard up just now for a plot," she said with a 
 sigh. 
 
 " 'The moving accident is not my trade, 
 
 To freeze the blood I have no ready art.' " 
 
 And then she added, with a half-hysterical laugh, 
 as if she \\'Ould otherwise have broken into sobs, 
 " I am not so very clever, though I do write books." 
 
 The dignified Zina, who so rarely unbent to the 
 world, answered by kissing her friend affectionately. 
 " You are better than clever, " she said, " you are 
 charming. I should like to know what your husband 
 and children would do without you; it is you, after 
 all, who are the breadwinner of your family. 
 
 " Forced to be so by accident, but not by nature," 
 rejoined the other woman, glancing at a table, covered
 
 22 A Waking. 
 
 as usual with untidy papers. " I am translating now, 
 always translating : but I should have been happier 
 if I had not been called upon to fill a place, even 
 as a translator, in my generation. " 
 
 " You are not your bright self when you talk like 
 that — you are not the ' Liebes Milttcrlein' whom I 
 have learned to honour, when you insist on running 
 yourself down. AVhat matter if your intuitions are 
 keener and finer than your intellect? That is the 
 way with most of us. " 
 
 Mary Carruthers shook her head. " I am mediocre, 
 and it is my duty to protect the world from the 
 fatal spread of mediocrity. When I succeed and do 
 my best, I am only — according to your father — ' one 
 of the fools who are the prophets of Philistia. ' That 
 is my trade. I succeed best when I take it up ; there 
 is one chord common to the largest mass of readers 
 which vibrates when you touch it, and that is — 
 vulgarity. " 
 
 * You judge yourself hardly when you talk so
 
 A tired Breadwinner. 23 
 
 sadly. And it is your sense of humour, " said her friend, 
 " which saves you from being too sentimental. " 
 
 Another heartfelt sigh. " Yet I am one of the 
 folk whose trade it is to revel in the aroma of deli- 
 cately-scented sorrows, shutting themselves away 
 from their kind, and hugging sorrow to their souls. " 
 
 She began to laugh, and then came the truth of 
 the matter in the revelation of a little womanly 
 vanity, and a good deal of personal soreness. 
 
 " You mustn't ask me any more, dear — you can't 
 expect me to talk as they talk at your father's 
 table. I never believe in conversation as a fine art 
 and doubt if it ever existed. The brilliant wit does 
 not look very brilliant when it is put down on 
 paper, and as to the jests of professional jesters, if 
 they could be repeated in the present days, we 
 should think them — horrid. I must be in earnest in 
 what I say, but I have no time to read— no time 
 even to think. All I have to do is to keep spinning 
 my own brains for the sort of stories which will
 
 24 ^ Waking. 
 
 please the 'Family Sympathiser.' I have my suspi- 
 cions that James would tell me the writing is 
 slipshod because I have to write so fast at times. 
 But it must be enriched with a few luscious patches 
 of tall talk, and I must always choose plots which 
 catch. At one time the run was on gover- 
 nesses who married lords, poor girls adopted by 
 great ladies, and ushers at school who were peers 
 in disguise — the next run was on burglars, magni- 
 ficent Dick Turpins who stood six feet two in 
 their stockings — and now even ghosts are getting 
 hackneyed. My editor says, ' Try Doppelganger ' — he 
 means 'doubles,' but 'Doppelganger' sounds grand- 
 er — and how do I know, " said Mary in her self- 
 mockery, "whether I am equal to phantasms of the 
 living, when I can't paint the Hving themselves ? 
 Meanwhile I must keep the wolf from the door— 
 .so I am doing a little translating. " 
 But Zina was ready with her comfort. 
 ^' After all you are writing for the largest class
 
 A tired Breadwinner. 25 
 
 of readers — a class which is constantly increasing, 
 and which must be supplied with innocent food. You 
 may number your readers by millions — think of 
 the numbers educated in the elementary schools." 
 
 " Yes," said Mary, laughing still, though tears were 
 in her eyes, as she blushed like a girl, eager for 
 praiscr— when do we cease to care for it? — 
 
 " If one could hope to keep personal touch with 
 them — if one could lift them up ,a little — only 
 a step or two at a time — without pretending to 
 be superior. What is it someone says, 
 
 " ' Speak to the h eart ! for that alone is sweet ; 
 
 Weak words are mighty that with heartblood beat?'" 
 
 "But when an editor says to me that he must 
 have something 'racy' that I must not even speak 
 about the things I care about for fear my readers 
 should think it 'slow', when you have to give them 
 such diet as is generally required by the 'Family
 
 2 6 A Wakiiip: 
 
 '<b' 
 
 Sympathiser'" — and Mary quoted in mock-tragic 
 tones, from a writer on the same stuff, " ' The 
 Duchess made tea for all the little titled ones sitting 
 around,'" till the tears rolled down her cheeks from 
 her excessive laughter. 
 
 Then relapsing into a sort of mock gravity, she 
 exclaimed, 
 
 "They say that observation is nearly the whole 
 of human genius. But how in the world I should 
 hke to know am I to observe^ shut up between the 
 four walls of this room, and how am I to know 
 about — detectives — for instance? " 
 
 There was a drollery of absolute despair in the 
 solemn intonation of the last few words, but before 
 Zina could answer that she had better try to put 
 herself into connection w^ith Scotland yard, she had 
 forgotten herself and w^as descanting on the merits 
 of her husband. 
 
 "Now, dear, he has a mind if you like, a mind 
 which fills me with the profoundest veneration — a
 
 A tired Breadwinner. 27 
 
 mind far above pot-boilers — you remember his book 
 on Schopenhauer ? " 
 
 Zina shrugged : she did remember it, and how the 
 expenses of publishing it had reduced his family 
 nearly to destitution. She had no great admiration 
 for the professor, who condescended, in spite of his 
 high ideals, to let himself be mainly supported by 
 the labours of his w4fe. 
 
 She did not like to hurt jNIary's feelings, and she 
 had never had courage to ask "professor of^vhatf' 
 wShe had to content herself with a vague idea that 
 Dr. Carruthers had been a professor of Oriental 
 languages, or perhaps of philosophy — she did not 
 exactly know which — at Glasgow or Aberdeen — 
 here again her ideas were misty. She owed the 
 'professor' a grudge from the various occasions on 
 which she had had to parry her father's facetious 
 inquiries on the subject. 
 
 In her secret heart she looked upon the self-con- 
 tented old man as a petulant and wayward child,
 
 28 A IVakine. 
 
 s 
 
 whose luxuries had to be pandered to at the expense 
 of other people, and who was one of the most 
 troublesome of all the little ones belonging to this 
 poor, persevering woman, whose energy and deter- 
 mination endeared her to the few friends who knew 
 her as intimately as Zina did. But before she could 
 give utterance to the irrational irritation, which 
 she felt whenever the Professor and his power- 
 ful intellect were referred to, there came a patter 
 of footsteps, and a whirlwind of petticoats and knick- 
 erbockers, through the door, which was burst open 
 without any ceremony. 
 
 "Tell us a story, mammy, you promised us one 
 when we had done our lessons/' cried three or four 
 squeaky and eager little voices, the noisy inter- 
 lopers falling agressively upon their mother before 
 they saw that she had a visitor. 
 
 " Hush, darlings, be quiet. Father is sleeping 
 downstairs," responded the mother, all her sweet 
 homeliness and natural liveliness of manner return-
 
 A tired Breadwmner. 29 
 
 ing to her, as she gazed proudly at these little in- 
 centives to her unwilling literary labour. 
 
 " Go on, let me hear you," cried Zina, though she 
 could not help feeling rather out of it, as the 
 " ^lutterlein " began telling racy stories to her chil- 
 dren, her eyes glittering with merriment, till laugh- 
 ter ensued, in which mother and little ones fell 
 together on the sofa in a heap, avoiding the floor for 
 fear of making a noise for the professor. The 
 merriment was infectious, and Zina laughed too, 
 as she took leave of Mary Carruthers, whose efforts 
 to rise were made impossible, in consequence of the 
 little legs twined in inextricable confusion about hen 
 
 " Go on, tell us more, mammy, more," the voices 
 were still imploring, as Miss Newbolt went her 
 way, thinking that if Mrs. Carruthers could only 
 write as she could talk with her one or two intimate 
 friends or her own children, easily and brightly, her 
 w^ork would have been worth a good deal more in 
 the literary market. But Mary's play of mirth was
 
 30 A Waking. 
 
 will-o'-the-wispish ; it needed the turn of the still 
 pretty neck, and the flash of the merry eyes, to in- 
 terpret it properly, and when she came to set it 
 down on paper the iridescence was gone. 
 
 " There you see," she whispered, as she said 
 goodbye to her friend " I have more than golden com- 
 pensations in this dingy den where everything is so 
 shabby, " and she laughed again, parodying the litany 
 of a brother of the pen, "From dulness and low- 
 ness of spirits ; from brooding over fancied miser- 
 ies. Good Lord deliver us."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 STEPHEN IS TAKEN BY SURPRISE. 
 
 " And that selfish professor — who could not 
 even work hard enough at his professorship to 
 make it a monetary success — I have no patience 
 with him for turning that true, sympathetic, and 
 merry-hearted woman into the demure and deco- 
 rous creature who figures in society, and who 
 trembles when she tries to assert herself about the 
 sHghtest thing. Oh how difficult it is for women 
 who have to Avork for their bread, with this struggle 
 for life becoming harder and harder — this highwater
 
 32 A Waking. 
 
 pressure driving poor humanity into all sorts of odd 
 nooks and crevices for which it was never intended. 
 I can never give Mary up whether my father likes 
 her or not ; I can do little enough for anyone that 
 is of any use — and I mean to keep to her. Why 
 are lots so unequally divided? And yet, she has 
 one thing in her life which I have not— she has 
 domestic love — love in the home surrounding her 
 day and night. I wonder how it feels " mused the 
 girl, who had known nothing- nearer to an embrace 
 than the cold peck, night and morning, upon the 
 cheek which she had to present to her father to 
 salute. She could not help pondering over the inequal- 
 ities in human lots as she got into her brougham, 
 and told the coachman to drive her home to Chester- 
 square. "Poor Mary is one of the women who 
 would face starvation and even Death just to live 
 for the sake of bringing up those children, and 
 her husband — in spite of all his boasted learning — is 
 as big a child as the rest."
 
 Stephen is taken by Surprise. 33 
 
 'The contrast between her own London home and 
 that of the Carruthers struck her more forcibly than 
 usual as she stood at the drawing-room Avindow 
 and surveyed the still luxuria.nt greenness of the 
 foliage in the square outside, the white lace and 
 rose-coloured blinds of the windows, the decorated 
 walls, the Sevres-china, the white and gold furniture, 
 with Persian tiles in the fireplace, the brilliant 
 colours of the petunias, the pelargoniums, lobelias, 
 and calceolarias in the window-gardens, and the 
 portfolio of engravings open on the table, with hand- 
 painted copies from Florence of the most celebrated 
 pictures by Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico 
 and Andrea del Sarto. 
 
 To an unprejudiced observer, not so used to the 
 luxuries of this world as Zina Xewbolt had always 
 been, it might have seemed like a Paradise though 
 it was in the heart of London. But she only thought 
 of Mary Carruthers, and pitied her for her meagre 
 lot. She was not much accustomed to quote 
 
 3
 
 34 A Waking. 
 
 St. Paul, but it occurred to her at that moment to think 
 how truly Paul had said that those who married 
 should have trouble in the flesh. How could Mary 
 tolerate the double annoyance of those noisy, teasing 
 children, and the idle husband who so impressed 
 her with his intellectual superiority? How could 
 a woman so sensitive, so shrinking, and yet so 
 industrious, endure to have the coarse hands of 
 the daily press laid upon her; how was it she could 
 tolerate the brow-beating of publishers? 
 
 That evening the Newbolts had another gathering 
 at their house. 
 
 " Can you give us a little music ? " said one of 
 the guests to his hostess in that interval after dinner 
 w^hen some of the people were tired of talking, or 
 when those men who had talked and eaten till they 
 were ready to yaw^n, w^ere reclining on the lounges 
 which were one of Zina Newbolt's secrets for 
 making people comfortable. 
 
 " I am not accomplished, " w^as Zina's answer.
 
 StcpJicn is taken by Surprise. 35 
 
 " Except a thing could be excellent it had better 
 not be attempted at all, " was a rule of Stuart Xew- 
 bolts which had effectually damped his daughter's 
 enthusiasms. " In the whole world, " he was accustomed 
 to say, " there -was nothing more dreary and 
 desolating than the domestic infliction which most 
 people dignified by the name of 'a little music.'" 
 
 But the want had been anticipated; any hitch 
 was rendered impossible in the arrangements. It 
 was possibly for this reason, as cynics sometimes 
 hinted, that Stephen Dewe was so much of an 
 Jiahitiie in Mr. Xewbolt's house. He was a young 
 fellow clever in his generation, not only ready with 
 neat retorts, playing from his own bat and imitat- 
 ing no one else, but never recalcitrant when asked 
 to be obliging, ready to evoke deep and tender 
 tones from the violin, or to play the piano with a 
 delicacy and finish of touch and a dexterity of 
 manipulation which made that instrument enjoyable. 
 
 If he were not a genius, he was at least a man
 
 36 A Waking. 
 
 of talent; the only question being whether he had 
 the originality which would enable him to rise to 
 a foremost place in the profession of music. One 
 of the charms of his music was its thorough spon- 
 taneity. He had a fertility of improvisation, and 
 though the passages which he played would fre- 
 quently recall similar passages in the works of 
 Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, or Bach, he played 
 them in his own fashion. Nothing could be more 
 mysteriously melancholy than this improvisation, if 
 Dewe was in the mood for melancholy, as he proved 
 to be to-night. 
 
 One after another the guests fell off. A political 
 lion, jolly, bluff, and middle-aged, who could not 
 distinguish the Old Hundredth from Mendelssohn's 
 Wedding March, suddenly found that his presence 
 would be necessary in 'the House.' A caricaturist 
 for one of the humorous papers, a stumpy young 
 man with short cropped hair, ugly as one of his own 
 caricatures, gazed for some time at the pianist and
 
 Stephen is taken by Stir prise. 37 
 
 the hostess sitting by his side, with an owUsh 
 stare from eyes which seemed glazed with indif- 
 ference, and then hurried home to jot down the 
 hnes, such as he could still remember, for one of his 
 etchings. Pity that he was not a more celebrated 
 painter, or the picture before him would have 
 furnished a companion study to Dicksee's celebrated 
 picture of ' Harmony. ' The young man had 
 fair hair, which clustered in short curls over his 
 well-developed brow, an aquiline nose, and a com- 
 plexion which, if it had not been constantly exposed 
 to the action of sun and wind, might have been 
 accused of effeminacy. This impression was cor- 
 rected by the nervous strength of the athletic 
 figure, whilst the dreamy, deep-set eyes again 
 seemed to contradict in some strange way the 
 idea conveyed by the muscular form, capable hands, 
 and broad shoulders. 
 
 Nothing could have contrasted better with him 
 than the graceful outlines of the woman, belonging
 
 38 A Waking. 
 
 altogether to another type. Her forehead was broad 
 and low, but the arch of the eyebrows was vigo- 
 rous, and beneath the strongly-marked brows 
 gleamed star-like eyes, with dark pupils encircled by 
 irises in which tawny tints were blended with the 
 brown. Her skin, olive by daylight, and ivory- 
 tinted by candlelight, told of the passionate blood 
 inherited from a foreign mother, whilst the bronze- 
 gold of the hair, the depth of the eyes when in 
 repose, the almost perfect line from the forehead to 
 the nose, the full lips, the delicate nostrils, and 
 the firm short chin w^ere further indications of this 
 mixed blood. " Unfathomable, " Stephen Dewe had 
 called those eyes, such an impassable sphinxlike 
 look was there sometimes in the somewhat cold 
 beauty of her face, when Zina Newbolt did not 
 choose that others should pry into her affairs. But 
 he had already learnt that they could flash in 
 moments of excitement, and that, under the influence 
 of music, tears could stand in them.
 
 Stephe7i IS taken by Surprise. 39 
 
 He chuckled secretly to himself when the other 
 guests dropped out one by one, and when Stuart 
 Newbolt, asserting the prerogative of his sixty 
 summers, dropped into a doze in his armchair. 
 
 The last to take his leave was the old Canadian, 
 who had been twice invited to the friendly board 
 in consideration of his shortened stay in London. 
 It mattered little to this good-natured egotist to have 
 only himself for a listener, and he was meandering 
 on in a sort of monologue whilst Dew^e (who 
 by this time was wandering into modern music) 
 was interpreting one of Rubinstein's most delicious 
 morsels. 
 
 Not content with enlarging on a dream of his own 
 for guiding balloons in a novel way which had occur- 
 red to no one else, by throwing out ropes with 
 anchors attached to them, he went on to tell the 
 story of a 'cracked' friend who wrote to all the 
 heads of the Governments in Europe to predict a 
 terrific storm, foretelling that no ship could live at
 
 40 A Waking. 
 
 sea at a certain date. The storm had actually taken 
 place, though it had not been so bad as the predic- 
 tion, and the cracked friend set to work to foretell 
 another. "What is your secret?" the Canadian had 
 asked. " Well, " he answered, " if yovi won't tell 
 anyone, it all turns upon the existence of an invisi- 
 ble moon." Then finding that his hostess was not 
 listening, the owner of the Bardolph nose disap- 
 peared, making a sign that the sleeping occupant 
 of the armchair, whose repose had become audible, 
 was not to be disturbed. 
 
 "He would make a capital subject for your friend 
 Mrs. Carruthers, who is always on the lookout for 
 fresh types, and pitying herself because she has no 
 long-er the old-world models of Jane Austen, or the 
 peasants of George Eliot to study from, " said Dewe, 
 waiting with his finger suspended over the keys. 
 "I expect she is delighted with herself when she has 
 unearthed something less stale than usual." 
 
 " To know Mary Carruthers you must know her
 
 Stephen is taken by Surprise. 41 
 
 in her own family. It is the sweet homeliness about 
 her which makes her really lovable," answered Zina 
 in the low tones in which they were accustomed to 
 discourse to each other, when nobody else happened 
 to be listening. 
 
 " I have no patience with the husband. Has she 
 ever told you how he " 
 
 The sentence remained unfinished, for Zina an- 
 swered a little coldly, " She is not given to discussing 
 her domestic affairs with me, even though I count 
 myself amongst her intimate friends." 
 
 The young man did not answer that her friends 
 made him jealous. He relieved himself instead by 
 playing a melody of Grieg's. He played it softly 
 and sympathetically; the harmonious chords appeal- 
 ing to her as no language could have done. 
 
 Then she added in a softened voice. " You meant 
 to be kind and tolerant, but you were hurting me 
 just now. I was ungrateful ; I should have remem- 
 bered how you almost always fulfil your promise
 
 42 A Waking. 
 
 of helping me, and standing by my friends." 
 Once more he did not answer, but his hands still 
 wandered over the keys of the piano. He knew 
 that this apparently calm and self-contained woman 
 was in reality very susceptible to emotional influ- 
 ences. He was no match for her in speech, but as 
 she was catholic in her tastes, caring for Offen- 
 bach and wStrauss, vSchubert and Wagner, he had 
 plenty of methods for adapting himself to her varying 
 moods. He found his language in this music which 
 could interpret the restless modern spirit or deal 
 with the mysterious secrets of human life, expressing 
 himself now in tender waiting chords, now in pas- 
 sionate appeals leaping like sparks of living fire 
 from the instrument, and now in the scherzo with 
 its Midsummer night's madness. vSometimes he played 
 • familiar ' bits/ but his interpretation of well-knoAvn 
 passages was certainly original; and she could 
 never admire it sufficiently as it brought out grand and 
 wonderful new meanings. Apart from his art he
 
 Stephen is taken by Surprise. 43 
 
 might be comparatively weak, but when he dis- 
 coursed to her in this fashion, he was powerful. Bitter 
 grief, abiding joy- -aye and a tender affection— the 
 girl knew it— would be revealed to her with a 
 glimpse of the hidden depths unsuspected in her 
 own being, whenever he wielded the sorcerer's wand. 
 
 Suddenly he ceased to play, and began to sing 
 in a subdued voice. 
 
 It was one of Jensen's songs, full of delicate, 
 tender feeling. It had been chosen to interpret 
 certain ideas, and it expressed the anguish of waiting 
 like the cry of a spirit in despair. It was not only 
 by intention that Dewe's voice was modulated to 
 a low key, for in spite of his strength of frame he 
 had little power of filling a room, and could seldom 
 or ever be persuaded to sing in company. But what 
 he missed in strength he more than supplied by 
 expression. It seemed to be less a voice than 
 a soul in distress ; he knew its influence over 
 women.
 
 44 ^ Waking. 
 
 When the last vibrating sound had died away, 
 he glanced at Zina. Her face was turned away. 
 He could only see the undercurve of the cheek, 
 and the neck like the stalk of a lily. 
 
 But he knew that her eyes were moist, as they 
 often were when these melodies were wandering 
 over the strings of her heart, causing the high 
 and low notes of her own nature to vibrate in 
 sympathy. 
 
 " No one knows but you, " she said, " how dif- 
 ficult things are for me at times, " and he guessed 
 from the agitated tone that the face which was 
 turned away from him was bathed in tears. 
 
 "And if / know, why then will you not allow 
 me to share these — difficulties?" said Dewe with 
 his hands no longer on the piano, but strained 
 tightly together, as he asked this question. " Am 
 I to tell you for the hundredth time that I believe 
 you would be happy with me ? " 
 
 " Every man sa3's that ; every man promises us
 
 Stephen is taken by Surprise. 45 
 
 happiness, and ends by being tired of us — if n ot in 
 weariness and disgust," she said passionately and 
 almost scornfully, still hiding her tearful face, as 
 she thought of the struggle for the mere necessaries 
 of existence which she had seen in Mrs. Carruthers' 
 household, and reminded herself that she could never 
 attempt to emulate that maternal unselfishness, and 
 that she had been right, years before, in deter- 
 mining never to descend to the petty details which 
 to so many married women were the essentials of 
 existence. 
 
 " You can wait longer ; but, by Heaven ! / 
 cannot. The coldness of perpetual analysis, and the 
 weak affections which so often go hand in hand 
 with intellectual force, will be all you will have 
 left to you, if I do not try to rescue you. But I 
 tell you I will sacrifice everything to the one task 
 of making you happy," cried the young man 
 as he seized her hand and pressed it against his 
 heart.
 
 46 A Waking. 
 
 Before she had time to draAv it away from him 
 she uttered an astonished cry. Stephen Dewe turned 
 his head, and saw that the man whom they had 
 supposed to be sleeping was no longer reposing in 
 his armchair. Neither of the two, who had been 
 so keenly absorbed in their music, had thought of 
 Stuart Newbolt for the last few minutes. 
 
 He must have slipped away from his comfortable 
 lounge and crossed the room when they were not 
 looking. Possibly the siesta had been only a ruse. 
 For the man who stood over them w^as no longer 
 the self-contained man of the world, the somewhat 
 apathetic Maecenas, whose dominant idea was never 
 to allow himself to degenerate into vulgar excite- 
 ment. It Avas as if a mask had suddenly fallen 
 from the Roman-like face, for fire flashed from his 
 eyes, and his features were distorted not only with 
 anger but with a sudden and violent rage. 
 
 "You forget it is growing late," he said sternly 
 to his daughter, keeping his eye on her while she
 
 Steve?t is taken by Surprise. 47 
 
 rose and went slowly towards the door, for she 
 was overstrung and never dreamt of resisting his 
 will. 
 
 Then finding himself alone Avith her lover he 
 raved like one of unsound mind.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 STUART NEWBOLT SPEAKS HIS MIND. 
 
 Stephen Dewe had been taken by surprise. He 
 had spoken out though he had scarcely meant to 
 do so. In a moment he had told Zina what was 
 passing in his heart, though immediately afterwards 
 he was inclined to blame himself for impulsiveness. 
 He was of a high, fastidious spirit, liable to jealousy 
 because it was sensitive, yet too proud to admit 
 the jealousy even to itself. To see the woman he 
 loved constantly surrounded by other men who 
 admired her, to have a horror of the sort of influ-
 
 Shear I Neivbolt speaks his Mind. 49 
 
 ence to which she was continually subjected, and 
 yet to submit patiently to the role of waiting- for 
 the crumbs of sympathy which she might choose 
 to fling to him as to a faithful dog, Avas becoming 
 odious to him. Years ago he had taken a vow 
 against marriage, but he had set himself to save her 
 from being one of those " book-worm sort of women, * 
 who according to him — a lover of painting and 
 music — had no soft places in their hearts for chil- 
 dren, no tenderness for the weaknesses of their 
 own sex, and no power of returning the affection 
 of the men who loved them. He had secretly tri- 
 umphed when he saw her softening under the 
 influence of ^lary Carruthers, but it was usual to 
 him to reconnoitre the ground before he brought up 
 his forces. 
 
 His heart leaped within him even at the thought 
 of winning the woman, whom so many other men 
 had failed to win, and whom he had watched 
 develop from the girl, fragile and willowy in her 
 
 4
 
 50 A Waking. 
 
 teens, to the woman upright as a palm, superb, 
 apparently reserved, and somewhat cold to outsiders. 
 He had not been sure that he approved her father's 
 system of education, and yet for some years he had 
 worshipped her as one of the " blessed Damosels, " 
 so long shut in behind the golden bars of their 
 homes, and now sharing the educational advantages 
 of their brothers. 
 
 Stuart Newbolt had perceived from the first that 
 the reform in women's education was one which 
 would go down to the roots of our social and 
 domestic life. He had aimed at making his daughter 
 ambitious, and had allowed her but one accom- 
 plishment, and that she had studied thoroughly at 
 Rome and Florence, as well as in the Slade vSchool 
 in London. Whereas Stephen had covered yards 
 Cind yards of canvas, and thrown up one art for 
 another in disgust at his own futility, Zina Newbolt 
 had toiled in silence and had little to shew as a 
 result.
 
 Stuart Nezi'bolt speaks Jiis Alind. 51 
 
 A friendship, which at first had been purely Pla- 
 tonic, had grown up by slow degrees between the 
 woman who was now six-and-twenty, and the man 
 who — looking younger than he was — had just 
 entered his thirty-first year. That Zina should have 
 encouraged him, seemed to Her more calculating 
 father one of those inexplicable riddles which the 
 unsolved mystery of a woman's nature is continu- 
 ally offering to the men who believe themselves to 
 be experienced students of life. He blamed himself 
 now for not having anticipated this terrible ending ; 
 he told himself he might have foreseen that when 
 he attempted to reverse the proper order of things, 
 Nature, outraged, would take her revenge. And the 
 motherless daughter, debarred from the proper out- 
 lets for her affection ; the daughter whom he had 
 so moulded by his teaching that he intended her to 
 combine the attractions of both sexes — the strength 
 and reason of the man with the fascinations of the 
 woman — had fallen into the snare of Titania, and 

 
 52 A Waking. 
 
 become enamoured of an — ass. Something of this 
 sort he said in his ravings, reproaching Dewe with 
 being a dandy and a dilettante — a fool who had 
 not even the manliness of a Bottom, but who prided 
 himself on his yellow moustachios, his handsome 
 face, and the devices of his tailor. He hinted with 
 withering contempt that his daughter had made the 
 same mistake which was made by so many men 
 of sense, in imagining that beauty of mind must 
 necessarily be allied to that of mere external form. 
 He reminded the astonished suitor that society might 
 be divided, as Goethe had divided it, into the strong 
 men who lead it, the knaves who temporise, and 
 the feeble hangers-on ; and that he, Stephen Dewe 
 — a fellow who had changed his profession from 
 time to time and decided on nothing — was one of 
 the feeblest of hangers-on. A hanger-on who had not 
 even sufficient industry to succeed in the profession 
 of music, but only knew how to make tender im- 
 provisings on the piano, to steal aw^ay a woman's heart.
 
 Stuart Nezvbolt speaks his Mind. 53 
 
 The younger man's face was white as ashes, but 
 he stood quite still, only moving once, to close the 
 door behind him, while, statue-like, he listened to 
 the angry torrent of words, never once removing 
 his eyes from Stuart Newbolt's face. These eyes, 
 which were generally of a dreamy blue, had taken 
 a deeper tint under the influence of emotion, and 
 glittered like steel. He made no attempt to defend 
 himself, and only once it crossed his mind to wish 
 that the slight tyranny in Zina's manner — a man- 
 ner which intoxicated him — had not come uppermost 
 to his memory, bearing a faint resemblance to the 
 overbearing savagery so suddenly revealed in her 
 father. Love had exercised its usual poAver of ex- 
 orcisim — leaving little scope for any other passion 
 — and, though in the midst of his astonishment he 
 found himself wandering off into one of his specu- 
 lations as to the very small differences which really 
 existed between the civilised and uncivilised man, 
 and the slight varnish supplied by the culture of
 
 54 ^ IVakiJig. 
 
 generations, which was after all but the merest 
 crust over the fire and smoke beneath it — he was 
 tempted to no furious rejoinder. 
 
 Reserve w^as one of the qualities which he had 
 in common with the woman he loved. And when 
 vStuart Newbolt (making an attempt to repress the 
 loud and harsh tones into which he, whose caprices 
 were so seldom thwarted, had been betrayed to his 
 own shame) demanded in the softer tones habitual 
 to him on what grounds he dared to propose him- 
 self as a possible future husband for such a woman 
 as Zina, he twice essayed to speak, and twice found 
 that the words died away in his throat. 
 
 " wShall I ring for a glass of water ? " asked his 
 host, as he impatiently paced the room. 
 
 And still the curse of silence seemed to have fal- 
 len on Stephen. He was a man rather given to 
 canvassing the possibilities of his future. Often and 
 often had he canv^assed his opportunities with Zina, 
 and yet there had been nothing offensive or egotis-
 
 Stuart Newbolt speaks his Mind. 55 
 
 tical in his self-consciousness ; he was rather inclined 
 to run himself down, assessing the capital of his 
 mental stock at the lowest possible figure. Xo one 
 kncAV better than he did that the gifts which lead 
 to a greatness likely to be recognised by a man's 
 contemporaries had not fallen to his share. Neither 
 would his pride allow him to plead that he had a 
 little private property, for — the introspective faculty 
 being strong in his case — he was perfectly well 
 aware that it was the possession of this private pro- 
 perty which had proved his greatest snare. He 
 only answered in a low tone, when at last he could 
 control his voice. 
 
 " I believe you must have taken leave of your 
 senses. I should be a coward to endure such 
 violence from any other man, but for Zina's sake — " 
 
 He was interrupted once more. 
 
 " Don't mention that name, " said Stuart Newbolt 
 with emphasis, as once more he turned and faced 
 him. " You must never see my daughter again. "
 
 56 A Waking. 
 
 His eyeballs were still injected with blood, but 
 it struck Stephen at once that his manner had greatly 
 changed. His voice had become once more low and 
 distinct as he motioned Stephen to a chair, and 
 sat down with something of his old dignity on 
 another. 
 
 "You are right. I am not well, and this sudden 
 discovery was too much for me. Let us discuss this 
 thing calmly." And then he said, with something 
 of an unholy chuckle, laying his hand familiarly 
 upon the other's shoulder, "I never before ventured 
 to intrude upon such a delicate subject as your 
 marriage. But let me give you some advice. I saw 
 you paying attention the other day to that pretty 
 little heiress, Laura Xewton. The girl is head over 
 ears in love with you ; there will be no difficulty on 
 hej' side. Xow don't throw her over for a magnifi- 
 cent-looking person like my daughter, who will not 
 have a penny from me if she marries yon. Don't 
 go forgetting Laura Xewton — ^the other little girl —
 
 Stuart New bo It speaks his Mind. 57 
 
 she is your real triumph, and she is a lovely little 
 creature, perfect whether in turquoise blue, or in 
 porphyrian green, and ready to afford any number 
 of toilettes." 
 
 Stephen winced at this chaffi.ng tone. It suited 
 Stuart Xewbolt even less than his passionate rage, 
 and the rapid alternation from one style of address 
 to the other, without any " middle distance " to 
 blend them together, was startling and bewildering. 
 
 The little heiress who could not succeed in hid- 
 ing her infatuation for Stephen Dewe was fragile 
 and delicate in constitution as in artistic tastes. 
 Stephen's instinct was to defend her and protect 
 her from her own weaknesses; but in a certain 
 sense he despised her and could not bear to hear 
 her compared to his goddess Egeria, the sight of 
 whom might inspire a poet to make sonnets, an 
 artist to paint pictures, or a musician to write music. 
 All these varying forms of incense he had offered 
 secretly at Zina's shrine, and he could not beheve
 
 58 A Wakijig. 
 
 that ^Ir. Newbolt was as ignorant as he pretended 
 to be of these years of devotion. He contented 
 himself with moving his hand in a deprecating way, 
 as in the same Hght mocking tone wStuart Newbolt 
 continued — 
 
 " My daughter is another matter — are you not 
 afraid? She is capable, for aught you know, of 
 good or evil to any extent. A splendid match 
 should be hers. For my own part the reason why 
 I have so long consented to her remaining single 
 is because I have not yet seen the man, titled or 
 millionaire, whom I should consider to be good 
 enough for her." 
 
 By this time the younger man realised that the 
 'chaff' was taking a form with which it would be 
 difficult to contend. No open enemy was worse 
 than a mocker. The beads of perspiration stood on 
 his brow. He was not to be easily daunted, or 
 reasoned with, as if he were a child to be shaken 
 out of a passing fancy. But there were times when
 
 Stuart Neivbolt speaks his Mind. 59 
 
 Zina's father alarmed him— times when he Avas 
 inclined to believe the strange stories which were 
 afloat as to a sort of devilry in the family. What 
 sort of man was this who seemed to enjoy giving 
 swordthrusts and putting another into confusion by 
 reminding him of his disabilities? 
 
 " It would be a pity if your talents were allowed 
 to rust unused, " sneered Xewbolt, " but there are 
 plenty of other people to appreciate them; they 
 will enable you to occupy a creditable position as 
 a drawing-room knight." 
 
 The flush deepened on Stephen's face. "Your 
 daughter — " he began, but the words were taken 
 out of his mouth. 
 
 "Allow me to hear of my daughter's feelings 
 from her own lips; it is difficult for me to believe 
 she has been more communicative \.o you than to me." 
 
 The perspiration again stood on the younger 
 man's face. The difficulty of controlling himself 
 was great, but he reminded himself that he had
 
 6o A Waking. 
 
 had his 'good time' for a few bhssful seconds of 
 that chequered evening. Yet the hide of the 
 rhinoceros had seemed as if it would be a gift 
 worth having, as he had faced the storm of shot 
 with which he had been pounded since. 
 
 " If that is your last word I have only to wait/' 
 he said coldly as he rose to leave the room. 
 
 And then it was Stuart Newbolt's turn to lock 
 himself in his study, and sink exhausted on the 
 sofa. He had sent aw^ay the man, and he thought — 
 with a repetition of the disagreeable chuckle which 
 was by no means natural to him— of the bitter in- 
 sults which he had forced him to swallow with 
 WTithing lips. But the w^oman had still to be dealt 
 with and she had alarmed him lately.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ZINA HAS IDEAS OF HER OWN. 
 
 Stuart Newbolt had honestly believed that he was 
 doing the best for his only child in educating her 
 out of superstition and the weak womanly emotions 
 which he had deliberately discouraged, bringing her 
 up to secularism and what he called 'common-sense ' 
 from her infancy. Accomplishments were out of 
 court, but his first cause for alarm had been in her 
 early girlhood when he found that she was strongly 
 moved by both music and painting; that the same 
 emotional temperament which made her love the
 
 62 A Waking. 
 
 study of Shelley led her to condemn both Pope and 
 Dryden, and that — later on — the pathos and finish 
 of young Dewe's songs could stir her into emotion, 
 and wake her into feelings of which — if her father 
 could have moulded her completely — she never should 
 have known the existence. Her ideals and enthu- 
 siasms were continually surprising him, and it was 
 no comfort to him to be compelled to look upon 
 them as a part of the hereditary weakness of her 
 emotional womanhood. He made excuses for her; 
 but there were times when in spite of her dignified 
 manners, and proud reserve amongst strangers, he 
 thought her wanting in judgment. 
 
 Her obstinacy had vexed him more than once 
 lately ; as Avhen in her liking for IMary Carruthers, 
 and her determination in choosing her for her most 
 intimate friend, she had given one of the first signs 
 of an independent will, and of the strug-gle which 
 might be waged in the future between his own 
 determination and that of an originally fine and
 
 Zina has Ideas of her 07v/i. 63 
 
 fervid nature which had more or less taken the 
 impress of his. 
 
 She had from the first taken a violent fancy to 
 a woman whose life seemed to be led on quite 
 another plane of existence from that of all the other 
 people whom she was accustomed to meet. jMary 
 w^as like a dweller in another planet. vShe had talked 
 a little sadly during their last interview, but in 
 reality the quaint motherly woman was singularly 
 free from that curse of the century, that habit of 
 melancholy rhapsody which she left to the professor. 
 She refused to look long on the dark side of things. 
 
 " I take it all higher, " as she once said mysteri- 
 ously to Zina. " If one pretends to be a Christian one 
 must not be over-careful, and then it is astonishing 
 the openings which come in answer to prayer?" 
 
 Miss Xewbolt had smiled a little patronismgly ; 
 she thought of quoting Huxley, and then desisted. 
 This new experience of a woman making herself 
 happy when she had only — as Zina phrased it —
 
 64 A Waking. 
 
 " twopence in her pocket," was piquant and original, 
 and so was the thought of a helpless little body 
 like Mary fighting so hard to wrest fortune and hap- 
 piness for those whom she loved. 
 
 Nothing had persuaded Zina to abandon her friend, 
 not even her father's sneers. In vain had he quoted 
 Dr. Johnson, who never wished to meet a fool in 
 Heaven, adding drily that " the majority of people 
 who thought themselves safe for it were fools, and 
 Airs. Carruthers as great a fool as the rest." She 
 had only vehemently defended Mary from the 
 sw^eeping aspersion of foolishness. 
 
 So long as the purveyor for the "Family Sym- 
 pathiser" had not appeared at any of Stuart New- 
 bolt's dinner-parties — to which, as he explained, he 
 might admit a few lions, but no jackals or hyenas, 
 and certainly no donkeys — he had managed to treat 
 his daughter's friendship for Mrs. Carruthers as a 
 matter of supreme indifference. vStill that friendship 
 was somewhat ominous as betokening a weakness
 
 Ztna has Ideas of her oivn. 65 
 
 of sex. A straw might show in which way the 
 wind sat, and it would be painful if Zina's tastes, which 
 were generally good, should betoken the inconsistency 
 which he considered to be characteristic of women. 
 
 It was possible she might show the same obstinate 
 determination in the case of this musician . 
 
 An eager desire to know the worst and settle the 
 question once for all tormented Stuart Newbolt 
 when he determined, before he slept that night, to 
 summon his daughter and let her know that he 
 wished this acquaintance to be discontinued. He 
 had thought it possible he should have to argue 
 with her, but he had not counted on the steady 
 temerity of her opposition. Seating herself on one 
 of the easiest chairs, and leaning back against the 
 soft cushions, with no signs of agitation or of haste, 
 she asserted her intention of never giving up Ste- 
 phen Dewe. 
 
 "You need not trouble yourself to be annoyed 
 about it — we can wait — I am in no hurry to be 
 
 5
 
 66 A Waking. 
 
 married," she said in her melodious voice, even 
 ending with a little laugh. 
 
 Her character inclined to gratitude, and she had 
 no intention of vexing her father. To live her life 
 as she was living it, with all the resources of wealth 
 at her command— wealth which did not bore her — to 
 have just the amount of amusement which she enjoyed, 
 to associate occasionally with people of world-wide 
 reputation, and to keep Stephen as a delightful 
 accessory to the other pleasures of existence, without 
 any thought of separating herself from her father — 
 apparently this was her programme. 
 
 It seemed to Stuart Newbolt childish and weak. 
 He lost his patience as he had lost it before. 
 
 " Anyone might infer from your attitude that you 
 were absurdly in love with this apology for a man," 
 he said in his most sarcastic tones," but how often 
 have I told you what it means to be in love. It 
 means to make a fool of yourself — to expect things 
 from life which you cannot possibly get — Take the
 
 Zina has Ideas of her own. 67 
 
 experiences of nineteen out of every twenty girls 
 who marry for what they call — love. Expect nothing, 
 and be properly matter of fact — treat marriage like 
 every other business contract — and you will save 
 yourself from heart-r endings and despair — the lot 
 of most sentimental w^eaklings, w^ho lay up for 
 themselves a heritage of disgust and wretchedness. " 
 She did not answer. There seemed to be nothing 
 for her to say, and she was evidently determined 
 not to be drawn into a discussion. 
 
 Her silence and something in the expression of 
 her face irritated him. "If you think I am to be 
 turned from my resolution by the foolish caprice of 
 a woman, you are mistaken, " he cried v/ith an oath, 
 dashing his hand on the table before him with such 
 vehemence that a delicate specimen of Viennese 
 china fell on the parquet floor, and broke into 
 fragments. 
 
 Zina rose, and made as if she would have picked 
 up some of the largest pieces. Then — as if she had
 
 68 A Waking. 
 
 changed her purpose, she advanced slowly towards 
 him, and looked straight into his eyes. Her own 
 were dark almost to blackness, and there w^as 
 something in their expression which made him 
 recognise how he had broken in that moment of 
 fury something more valuable than the Viennese 
 vase. 
 
 " The vase can be put together with china cement 
 and will be almost as valuable to the dealers, it 
 would be a good thing if other fractures were 
 always as easily mended " she remarked in her 
 coldest way, "let us bid each other good night." 
 
 The tone w^as no longer filial; it was imperative 
 as his own. He had heard her use it once or twice 
 in her life when some young suppliant for her 
 favour had to be put in his proper place, or when 
 some fulsome compliment from another had roused 
 her indignation. On those occasions he had admired 
 her for it, wondering a little at the stateliness into 
 which she had grow^n, but feeling amused by her
 
 Zma has Ideas of her oztm. • 69 
 
 queenly graciousness, for she had spoken in her usual 
 quiet way and dismissed them in a manner which 
 was almost friendly. Did she think he was to be 
 patronised in the same regal fashion? — he who was 
 used to rule everyone, but who had always gnessed 
 that the time might come when their wills would 
 be in collision. Stuart Xewbolt felt at that moment 
 as if he had foreknown the interview, or as if it 
 had taken place in some previous state of existence, 
 so familiar did it seem to him with all its details. 
 He had called Dewe an ass, but he saw now that 
 he had been the fool in not perceiving the incon- 
 gruity between the actual and potential position occupied 
 in his house by this queenly woman. Had he not 
 educated her himself to be his match in philosophy 
 and logic; had he not rejoiced when he had found 
 her ready to reason that if her father made researches 
 it should be a part of her duty to keep up with 
 them, that she might never be behind in filial sym- 
 pathies ?
 
 70 A Waking. 
 
 She was a bit of a genius and he had sometimes 
 comforted himself by the thought of the immea- 
 surable distance there would be between her and 
 the ordinary young men she met in society. She 
 was unfortunately something oi di/cmme mcomprise; 
 but was it possible that she had also her distinct 
 individuality, and had he been wrong when he prided 
 himself on her freedom from sentimental maladies? 
 
 " Father, " she repeated, in that chilling voice which 
 she had sometimes used when she had wished to 
 keep up her own dignity, "let us understand each 
 other once for all before we part, and then 
 we will not allude to this subject again. I am in 
 no hurry to be married, but, sooner or later, I niea^i 
 to marry— Stephen Dewe. " 
 
 For a minute or two they regarded each other 
 in silence. 
 
 He, too, had the blankest stare for the people 
 whom he meant to cut, but this stare in no wise 
 affected his daughter. He failed to control her
 
 Zina has Ideas of her own. 7 1 
 
 with the power of his eye. His heart began beating 
 as Dewe's had beaten a few minutes before, but he 
 was used to managing women, and smiled ironically. 
 
 "You say that you have made up your mind," 
 he responded with that smile ; " do you not think it 
 possible that I may make up mine also?" The 
 exasperating influence of her words, her looks, and 
 her tones were by degrees breaking down that 
 self-control on which he prided himself. He betrayed 
 himself by the unwonted flushing of his face, and by 
 the unusual touch of asperity in his irony as he added, 
 " I might have known that you had some idealistic 
 prospect, when you refused offer after offer, and 
 declared your intention of remaining with your father — 
 always that with you women, you know — some 
 pet little castle in the air, with no foundation in 
 reality ! " 
 
 " And what i^yoitr prospect for me, ask yourself — 
 if you wish me to argue like a reasonable being. 
 You do not look on to the end. Ask yourself if
 
 72 A Waking. 
 
 the rich or successful man whom you would wish 
 me to marry despite want of love on my part, 
 would not learn to hate me, or if I should not learn 
 to hate him, and if that would be the successful 
 climax, as it is of so many marriages in respectable 
 and fashionable London? " 
 
 The beating of his heart was becoming alarming; 
 it suggested the possibility of physical disease. Years 
 before, a doctor had warned him that mental excite- 
 ment might be disastrous in his case. 
 
 It was important to end the interview. 
 
 " What is the use, " he said, with a deprecating 
 smile, " of putting yourself in a towering passion 
 instead of being thankful — for having escaped a 
 danger — a danger which was becoming a serious 
 one? Theory may do very well for you; action 
 fortunately, rests with me ; and from this day I shall 
 forbid young Dewe my house." 
 
 He had saved his dignity, and she had also saved 
 hers, as she left the room with a grace which few
 
 Zina has Ideas of her 07vu. 73 
 
 women could have equalled. There was an elo- 
 quence in the poise of her head and in every line 
 of her back, which he could not help admiring, as 
 he characteristically compared it to that of Sarah 
 Bernhardt, or of Ristori in her young days, when 
 she had been at her best. There was more re- 
 monstrance in his daughter's movements as she 
 silently left the room than there w^ould have been 
 in rude unmeaning speech. 
 
 He caught himself thinking of the limitations of 
 human language, and of the abysses of solitariness 
 between himself and this his nearest and dearest 
 relation — abysses not to be bridged over by words— 
 Avhilst that musician fellow had probably a means of 
 communicating with her which could find out the more 
 sensitive places in her nature. What madness to 
 have allowed him this means of communication, 
 giving him the pull over himself, for years which 
 could never be recalled! Who could tell how far 
 the mischief might have gone? The furniture of the
 
 74 ^4 Waking. 
 
 room swam before his eyes, and he sank again 
 exhausted into his arm-chair. 
 
 He was of a nature thoroughly to enjoy his 
 existence, and it required some great and startling 
 blow like the present to rouse him into consideration. 
 His tendency was to let his affairs drift on as they 
 might, trusting that nothing would go very wrong 
 or so wrong that an energetic effort could not 
 remedy them at last. He could never have given 
 utterance to Alettemich's reflection that after him 
 the deluge might come, but he always had a vague 
 impression that such might be the case. It seemed, 
 however, now, that the deluge might come at once, 
 and he perceived the necessity for rallying his powers 
 to meet it.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A SUDDEN ILLNESS. 
 
 On the next day Stuart Xewbolt was ailing, and 
 his illness seemed to put his daughter seriously in 
 the wrong. He had realised for the first time that 
 when she had made up her mind on a subject she 
 was not at all likely to give way, and it even 
 occurred to him as possible that she might have 
 also inherited strong temper from him, as well as 
 a will w^hich was unbending as iron. The subject of 
 heredity became perplexing, not to say mortifying, 
 when viewed in this fashion. That a woman, whom
 
 76 A Waking. 
 
 he had moulded and whom he had always hoped 
 to dominate by his own personality, should have 
 this force and fire about her was altogether 
 annoying. He felt he had a right to be angry 
 with her. 
 
 He had been so long accustomed to be the only 
 person to be considered, that he had the appearance 
 of pardoning her even when he made her suffer. 
 
 " Yes, I am altogether out of sorts, " he said, 
 when he returned in the afternoon earlier than usual 
 from his club, and it was impossible for her not to 
 be struck by his extraordinary pallor, or not to be 
 alarmed when she saw that he shivered as though 
 under the influence of fever. 
 
 He refused to summon medical aid, but did not 
 interfere with her w^hen she insisted on putting off 
 the guests who had been invited for the following 
 week. In the tcte-a-tetes which ensued, it struck her 
 more forcibly than it had done before, that he insisted 
 on treating her as if she were a girl — a big child —
 
 A sudden Illness. 77 
 
 and that the intercourse between them was of a 
 very curious kind indeed. 
 
 Her womanly intuition was no longer at fault ; 
 it read the true meaning of the selfish interdict and 
 threw a new light on a position which was one of 
 subjugation, making her revolt from the idea of 
 wearing a yoke. She had spoken out once for all, 
 but she determined to say no more. A sense of 
 filial duty restrained her from making things un- 
 comfortable now that her father was not well. But 
 she no longer smiled or bubbled over with quiet 
 mirth, when her father made his dry and somewhat 
 cynical jokes, and he — in his turn — ceased to com- 
 pliment her on her pertinent ideas, and opportune 
 answers. 
 
 In his secret heart he accused her of not being 
 at all amusing, and resented the fact that her 
 accustomed reticence subsided at last into absolute 
 silence. 
 
 The old habit of bowing to his authority remained,
 
 78 A Waking. 
 
 and this habit was so strong that the utmost resolu- 
 tion she could summon ended in an acknowledgment 
 of the impossibility of acting openly against him. 
 
 She said to herself, " His opposition may keep me 
 unmarried as long as it is my duty to remain with 
 him, but he can never force me to marry anyone 
 else. " 
 
 In accordance with this resolution she had written 
 to wStephen Dewe swearing faithfulness, but no one 
 knew better than she did how oddly her letter must 
 read. " I shall love you always, always — as long 
 as life can last, and afterwards if I can — if there is 
 any future in which we can meet. " Yet what was 
 it she could promise — the faint chance of meeting 
 again in an indefinite future? 
 
 Was there any woman in whom she could con- 
 iide? She thought of Mary Carruthers, but Mary 
 had her own burdens, and she would inflict no more 
 upon her. Her father had bidden her to select 
 £va Capern as her greatest friend. But though Eva
 
 A Slid dc 11 Illness. 79 
 
 prided herself on her conversational aplomb, and 
 was never easily worsted in society, capping the 
 men's remarks with sharp little sayings of her own, 
 no one knew better than Zina how poor and how 
 shallow were her counsels to those of her own sex. 
 Eva, for all her appearance of youth, was a couple 
 of years the elder of the two, and prided herself 
 on her thorough emancipation when, a short time 
 before, she had married a man who seldom inter- 
 fered with her, and who had both riches and repu- 
 tation. It had been a joke betvreen the two women 
 that she would make a capital chaperon for her 
 guardian's daughter when she was married. And 
 Eva, who dearly loved a position of importance, and 
 who had some fancied scores to pay off in the past, 
 had already assumed the patronising airs of a some- 
 what jaunty matronhood. 
 
 Could it be possible to tell her? Did not Zina 
 know already, that weeks ago her anger had nearly 
 suffocated her when she had but a shght suspicion
 
 8o A Waking. 
 
 of the actual fact? No, her heart told her she 
 had no ally, but possibly an enemy, in Eva 
 Capern, whose suspicions were to be eluded, and 
 whose observations were to be drawn away from 
 the dangerous track. The best hope would be that 
 Mrs. Capern had forgotten all about the supposed 
 imprudence, and that her thoughts would be engross- 
 ed with her own affairs. 
 
 Meanwhile, day by day, Zina wrestled not only 
 with her loneliness but with an all-abiding pain. 
 She determined not to be conquered by it. If the 
 world was ruled by two masters, pain and pleasure, 
 she saw no reason why she should be worsted by 
 the first. She fought the battle with her natural 
 despondency. 
 
 "If you are determined not to think of a thing, 
 you do not, " she said to herself, with a desperate 
 resolution to fall back on prose, and not to surrender 
 the citadel of her heart to the false-poetic. 
 
 She was not one of the people who could drift
 
 A sitdde7i Illness. 8i 
 
 with circumstances or allow fate to decide for her. 
 She had learnt from '\ldxy Carruthers to ask always 
 " What is right to do ? " From Mary too, she had 
 learnt to try to conquer the habit of allowing herself 
 to become restless or brooding — a habit to which 
 she was inclined by nature. 
 
 Just now she would not allow herself to look 
 on to the future, or to think that her ideal of a 
 perfect life would be shadowed, if, after all, she 
 should be called upon to relinquish the hope of a 
 great passion, and to look upon her existence as a 
 compromise. Perhaps Avhen the years passed on 
 vStephen Dewe would forget her, or would cease to 
 care, and she utterly refused to let herself think of 
 the blank which life might be to her if he did not care. 
 
 She had tried to be always on the alert, keen to 
 perceive her duty, and to act up to it, and she had 
 much to do now when her father was out of sorts, 
 and when the irritability of illness prevented him 
 from being like his usual self. He had evidently 
 
 6
 
 82 A Waking. 
 
 much to say to her, but the reserve which he had 
 always maintained about his private affairs pre- 
 vented him from giving scope to his feeHngs, or 
 reheving his mind of something which seemed to 
 weigh upon it. There were days when he was 
 wretchedly low, or w^hen he would talk bitterly, 
 as she had never heard him talk before. Sometimes 
 he would get up and leave the room as if he wished 
 to be alone, at others he would take up a book and 
 never turn the pages of it ; or gaze straight in front 
 of him, with a frown which she had never seen 
 before on his forehead. 
 
 At such times she would wait upon him with the 
 most devoted attention, half irritated with him and 
 half vexed with herself when she saw his brow 
 drawn together, and shrank from the resentful an- 
 tagonism of his face ; trying to persuade herself 
 that there was no diminution of her loyalty to him, 
 though that which had happened had made their 
 companionship joyless.
 
 A sudden Illness. 83 
 
 But now and then a strange idea was gaining 
 on her in spite of herself — that there was not 
 an inch of common ground between them. The 
 altruism at which she aimed w^as difficult to live 
 up to; she demanded too high a standard from others 
 as well as herself; and there were times when the 
 faults of others distressed her, and she found it dif- 
 ficult to forgive them. 
 
 The difference of temperament, which is so much 
 worse than any difference of opinion, had always 
 existed as a fatal barrier between herself and her 
 father, making her shy and reticent; but it seemed 
 to be only lately that she was conscious of an 
 aversion, not so much to the man himself, 
 as to his modes of thinking, his moods and 
 habits. 
 
 The doctors were summoned at last, and dis- 
 coursed much of the vibrations of the nerv^es, and of 
 the palpitations of the heart. But their discourses 
 did not seem to throw much light upon the matter.
 
 84 A Waking. 
 
 And Zina, in her nervous mood, shrank from the 
 apartment in which her father sat, immovable, hke 
 a carved idol set up in the middle of the room to 
 be worshipped, a fetish which did not take the 
 trouble to turn its head. She began by degrees to 
 have a horror of the room with its pictures, books, 
 statues, and china, and to feel that there was 
 something magnificent and solemn, but almost 
 uncanny in the spectacle of this figure — with its grey 
 and luminous eyes, which were the only sign of life 
 about it — not rising, but indicating its wants with 
 its finger. 
 
 And by degrees her bravery flagged. Naturally 
 religious and denied the proper outlets for religion, 
 she was afraid of becoming superstitious. Powers 
 inimical seemed to be around her. She was con- 
 scious of them, they weighed upon her. 
 
 She was haunted by the idea, vague but importun- 
 ate, that her father had a sense of property in her, 
 and that it was less on account of any love he
 
 A sudden Illness. 85 
 
 might feel for her than on account of this feeHng 
 of proprietorship, that he was so loath, during the 
 days of his illness, to let her out of his sight. He 
 prided himself on the fact that he had taught her 
 to think, and now she seemed to be haunted by 
 the malady of thought. " It is thought, and thought 
 only, which disting-uishes human beings from brutes, 
 and creates the barriers between right and wrong, " 
 he had often said to her. 
 
 But in the days of her confinement to the sick 
 room she did not find herself able to pick and 
 choose her thoughts. When alone in her own 
 apartment she would walk up and down, up and 
 down, thinking and thinking till her head seemed 
 to go round. 
 
 Stephen Dewe had written again to her, reproaching 
 her for her too ready submission to her father's 
 wi'shes. But she had nothing to answer to Stephen. 
 Her ideas of marriage were not the ideas of 
 an untrained girl ; her acquaintance with literature,
 
 86 A Waking. 
 
 and her honesty in deaUng with herself, forbade her 
 to entertain the thought of batthng with a poverty 
 which her tastes and her training had by no rneans 
 fitted her to bear. She could not answer her lover 
 in his own vein.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 UNEXPECTED GOSSIP. 
 
 The next few weeks were passed in a state of 
 vexed discomfort, against which Zina struggled feebly, 
 with a vague craving and restlessness which had 
 been before unknown to her. 
 
 There were days when Stuart Newbolt seemed to 
 be a little better, but few and fewer confidences 
 passed between him and his daughter. Sometimes 
 for an hour or two he would bury himself in his 
 papers, but the examination of these documents 
 only served to make him more irritable. Doubts
 
 88 A Waking. 
 
 and perplexities generally assailed him in the twi- 
 light hour, and at this time his nervous suspicions 
 would be visited upon Zina. All this exhibition of 
 pessimism was so new in the man that the daughter 
 was startled by it, her own dread of being repulsed 
 making it more and more difficult for her to speak her 
 mind openly to him. Stephen continued to write, his 
 tone being naturally one of complaint, and Zina — quick 
 to reproach herself — accused herself of behaving not 
 quite honourably to him. It would have been per- 
 haps better and fairer, she told herself, in her depres- 
 sion, to have dismissed his suit altogether, leaving 
 no element of uncertainty in his life. 
 
 Her reticence did not please the invalid. "I don't 
 want a woman in extremes — either a dunce or a 
 blue-stocking," he had been wont to say complain- 
 ingly; "and girls are always in extremes. You are 
 no exception to the rule. When I want to be 
 amused, you are cold as marble." 
 
 And she did not answer him according to his
 
 Unexpected Gossip. 89 
 
 humour. She was not Hke most women, finding 
 her ready rehef in letting off a stream of angry 
 words ; she was chary of the reckless speech which 
 some use as a safety valve. 
 
 If only she could have been let alone without 
 interference from meddlesome outsiders ! But Eva 
 Capem, whose earthly ideas formed a powerful 
 counterpoise to her attractions, was constantly flit- 
 ting backwards and forwards to the house, deluging 
 her with questions, or making suggestions which 
 only increased her perplexity. i\Irs. Capern, from 
 whom Zina shrank, had found it amusing enough 
 to act as adviser to her guardian's daughter, whose 
 vStyle of beauty formed a remarkable contrast to her 
 own. But the two had never been friends, and the 
 worldly little chaperon had been ready, from the first, 
 to complain that Zina never seemed to be properly 
 touched by the admiration of others, but treated it 
 as if she had had too much of it, and as if it wor- 
 ried and annoyed her.
 
 go A Waking. 
 
 Her complaints now were that Zina was wasting- 
 her time in securing one of the most brilliant matches 
 of the season, and that she had already refused the 
 most eligible partis. "You know it is nonsense for 
 you to talk, but you cannot go unmarried for every 
 and now you are losing your opportunities as you 
 always do lose them. Only the other day wSir James 
 Maddox. was inquiring anxiously about you. I know 
 that he has left his card half-a-dozen times at the 
 house, but all that makes no difference to you — you 
 strange girl. I believe you never even see your 
 cards." 
 
 Zina did not hear her. Experience had taught 
 her not to discuss these questions with Eva. Mar- 
 riage without love seemed to her a profanation, but 
 more than once when she had tried to say so, sharp 
 altercation had followed. She was occupied with 
 her own thoughts, but the expression of her face 
 was tragic, and contrasted strangely with her usual 
 composure of manner.
 
 Unexpected Gossip. 91 
 
 "You are always in a brown-study, and I don't 
 understand," Mrs. Capern went on excitedly, "how- 
 ever you can immure yourself like this, losing your 
 complexion in a sick-room ; your father is the last 
 man to require such a sacrifice ; he has too much 
 common-sense, and he spoke to me before his illness 
 about this very subject of Sir James Maddox. It is 
 not a question of very serious illness ; you have a 
 trained nurse already, and why should you continue 
 to play the part of a nurse? You are not fitted for 
 it. You bury yourself, shut yourself up in the dark, 
 and then wonder that you are sad. You must rouse 
 yourself, you always did need to rouse yourself." 
 There was a shrillness in her tone which made 
 the other woman look up with a start. " I think it 
 is my father who requires to be roused, like the 
 poor creature in ' Dombey & Son ', " she said, dashing 
 wildly away from the unwelcome subject of her 
 prospects in marriage, thankful that she had 
 been able to keep her secret to herself, and that
 
 g 2 A Waking. 
 
 Mrs. Capern knew nothing of the late episode with 
 the objectionable Stephen Dewe. " My father makes 
 me anxious. I will try to recollect the sine qua non 
 — that he must be roused^ 
 
 " I am sure you have nothing to complain 
 of with such a brilliant future before you, if only 
 you knew how to make the best of it," continued 
 Mrs. Capern, unbuttoning her long gloves as if she 
 intended to make a further stay in a house which 
 she considered to be almost her own. " Your father 
 will soon be well ; everyone is seedy at times — but, 
 thank Heaven, he will soon be well enough to exert 
 his authority, and to look after his own interests, which 
 seem to me to need it terribly. Everyone takes 
 advantage when a man, who is as popular as he is, 
 is lain aside. " Zina raised her head and looked at her. 
 
 The answering look was altogether so light-hearted 
 that one might have supposed there was no such 
 thing as a real sorrow in the world to see the plea- 
 sant self-assurance of this butterfly of fashion. But
 
 Unexpected Gossip. 93 
 
 her pleasantries were felt to be unseasonable just 
 then, and Zina replied coldly, with a haughtiness 
 which was characteristic, " I have made up my mind 
 never to obey any arbitrary injunctions from my 
 father or anyone else, and this is a question which, 
 as I have told you a thousand times, I refuse to 
 discuss with anyone," 
 
 " Don't you be bitter. What do you know" about 
 it?" queried ^Irs. Capem, with a persistence which 
 showed a grim absence of tact as she brought her 
 back to the point ; " it seems to me you are perfectly 
 demented. If you have told me this a thousand 
 times, how often have I told yon that I utterly 
 despise that idiotic class of women which insists on 
 ignoring plain facts which are straight before their 
 eyes. Now you have got to live in the world, and 
 have everything as you have been used to it — every- 
 thing of the best — you know everyone likes the 
 best — and the question is, hoii) you will live in it, if 
 all the things they say are true, by-and-by?"
 
 ^4 A Waking. 
 
 She nodded as if to emphasize her question, and 
 g-azed impatiently at Zina, who still sat motionless, 
 with her arms crossed before her, wondering on the 
 one hand at the sort of daring which made discom- 
 iiture, and all attempts at arresting conversation, 
 utterly impossible in Eva's case; perplexed on the 
 other by what seemed to be the extraordinary irrel- 
 evance of the question. 
 
 She turned her beautiful eyes inquiringly upon 
 Mrs. Capem, who answered comically, and almost 
 childishly, "Now do not make the worst of it. Oh, 
 I give you my solemn assurance that I have nothing 
 to do with it; but since your father has been ill the 
 gossips do not hesitate to circulate the most odious 
 scandals at his expense. Of course they are all 
 pure fabrications, and I don't believe a word of 
 them, but they have rummaged up a lot of cock- 
 and-a-bull tales about his youth, and say that he 
 has eaten up his fortune and is loaded with debt. 
 Some of them do not hesitate to add that he is
 
 Unexpected Gossip. 95 
 
 shamming illness, and that the key of the whole 
 domestic situation is that he wishes to marry his 
 daughter to some old fellow who has millions— a 
 Jew, I think they say — and that the daughter is 
 refractory. Xow you have the whole of it." 
 
 Zina looked at her with her eyes flashing; there 
 Avas a hardness in her face, and she was positively 
 trembling. "Oh, I would rather die, " she said " than 
 live on the low level of lives like these ! Lives which 
 are spent in retailing the most foolish pieces of gos- 
 sip — not only foohsh, but abominable, and to be 
 treated with contempt." 
 
 " If I could see him and w^atch him for myself — 
 look into his eyes with my own — 1 should be able 
 to tell whether it were quite such foolish gossip," 
 the other woman was thinking to herself "Thank 
 Heaven he has nothing more to do with my 
 affairs. " 
 
 But though Eva's visits were of daily occurrence she 
 was never allowed to see the invalid, whose nervous
 
 96 A Waking. 
 
 illness was always aggravated by the presence of 
 any intruder. 
 
 " Mind, I do not vouch for the truth of anything 
 I hear, but I thought you would like to be told," 
 she said, as she tripped away, rather satisfied than 
 otherwise with the results of her own diplomacy in 
 supplying Zina with a reasonable motive for encou- 
 raging the attentions of Sir James ^ladd ox — incase, 
 as she put it, that anything should happen to her 
 father. 
 
 And Zina, who had been used in the old days to these 
 skirmishes between herself and her father's ward, 
 remained in future exasperatingly quiet, in spite of 
 the desperate attempts made to shake her resolution. 
 
 She had always resented the fashion in which iNIrs. 
 Capern — generally clever enough to hit on congenial 
 subjects in her guardian's presence — threw off the 
 mask at once when alone with his daughter. 
 
 " wShe does not really care for him ; it seems to me 
 that no one cares for him, and I mvself have been
 
 Unexpected Gossip. 97 
 
 disloyal, " thought Zina with a new tendency to self- 
 reproach. 
 
 After all, considering that Eva's visits were so 
 constant, it did not do to take to heart the ridiculous 
 things she said. Yet her guardian had been good to 
 her, he had always been partial to her, and in the 
 days before her marriage he had ever been careful 
 of her interests, and Zina, in her just indignation, 
 wondered how she could stoop to listen to those 
 who did not hesitate to vilify and blacken his 
 character. 
 
 The gossip should be nothing to her, she told her- 
 self as she returned to her father's couch, remind- 
 ing herself of the tragedy in so many lives — of 
 happiness wrecked not by great things, but by 
 small suspicions and small collisions of will, 
 and determining that it should never be so in 
 hers. 
 
 And yet as she watched by him when he slept, 
 little things w^hich she had almost forgotten returned 
 
 7
 
 q8 a Waking. 
 
 to her unwilling memory — how someone had told 
 her that at the age of twenty her father had gambled 
 away his small inheritance at Monte Carlo, and how, 
 after a sleepless night during which he had first of 
 all made up his mind to blow out his brains, he had 
 re-appeared in the gaming room and won again more 
 than he had lost. 
 
 And then there was that story of his marriage — 
 Zina's own name corroborated that tale — how he 
 had met her mother abroad, a beautiful orphan 
 child, some said of Russian, and others of Polish 
 extraction ; and how he had placed her in an English 
 school, and educated her himself with a view to 
 marrying her when she should be of suitable age. 
 She was said to have been good and sweet-tempered 
 as well as beautiful; but Zina was not ignorant of 
 the gossip which asserted that her father had first 
 seen her mother begging her bread at the roadside ; 
 and that when he found it impossible for her, 
 after the slight education he had given her, to
 
 Unexpected Gossip. 99 
 
 shine in cultivated society, he afterwards mal 
 treated her. 
 
 Zina could herself remember some stormy scenes 
 in her childhood, and could beUeve that her father's 
 thirst for distinction, and his desire for personal 
 aggrandizement, might have caused him to treat 
 her mother with cruelty. If so, such behaviour 
 would be difficult to forgive. 
 
 Hitherto she had been too filial, with her sense 
 of kinship too strong to allow her to put anything 
 but the best construction on these episodes of the 
 past ; but now, for the just time, she was ready to 
 assume that her mother had been treated with unkind- 
 ness and neglect. She had often before had a doubt 
 of her father's judgment, but till now she had never 
 been pre-disposed to think him in the wrong. Doubt- 
 less, she said to herself, in those scenes which she 
 remembered in her childhood, he had been always 
 in the wrong. 
 
 The thought steeled her heart against him. The
 
 I oo A Waking. 
 
 attempt to gloss over the difficulty which she was 
 conscious of feeling, and to simulate indifference, 
 roughened her voice. She stopped with a little 
 cough to clear her throat, more than once when she 
 was in close attendance on her father.
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 MORBID FEARS. 
 
 Stuart Newbolt's illness increased. The doctors 
 did not as yet pronounce it dangerous, but there 
 were times when nursing him and seeing him 
 suffer affected Zina painfully, and when his spasms 
 of agony were repeated in her face. 
 
 She lived through the next few days in a sort of 
 nightmare, suffering mentally as well as bodily. 
 There were occasions when she seemed no longer to 
 think, only to feel — with variable moods like the 
 shifting sky — when all her good resolutions were
 
 I02 A IVaking. 
 
 put to flight, and when she blamedherself for her fervid 
 temperament, trying not to let herself be borne 
 along by the emotion of the moment. Emotion, 
 as she knew, did not produce action ; experience had 
 taught her the distinction. But she was sorely in 
 need of a helper. After a time even Mrs. Capern 
 had ceased to come, and though Zina hated her 
 worldly insinuations and trivial gossip, wincing at 
 the accusations so easily made by one who was 
 sharp-witted as well as sharp-ton gued, yet the lone- 
 liness was not good. 
 
 One night, when her spirits had begun to rise 
 because the bulletin w^hich the doctors had issued 
 was, " a little better, " she began to think she might 
 take a longer interval of sleep, lying down in a room 
 close to the invalid's. But towards the morning she was 
 roused by the sound of angry speech in the adjoining 
 room. The sick man's voice was raised, loud and 
 angry, but the nurse's tones were lower, pleading, 
 and a little frightened. Zina was on her feet in a
 
 Morbtd Fears. 103^ 
 
 moment, to find her father in a state of half-deli- 
 rium, making violent accusations of the nurse — accus- 
 ations which were now bordering upon rage, and 
 now subsiding into tones of querulous comxplaint. 
 It seemed that the poor woman had taken advan- 
 tage of the lonely hours of the night to discourse 
 wHth him on his spiritual state, and to urge on him 
 the necessity for seeing a priest. His excitement, 
 almost bordering upon frenzy, was out of all pro- 
 portion to the unintentional offence. He declared 
 that he would have no more nurses: they were all 
 in league with the Jesuits, who were death to the 
 progress of any nation; he said he w^ould like to 
 have all the hypocritical priests strung up in a row 
 like the malefactors they were ; and he declared that 
 the poor innocent-minded, sermonising nurse was the 
 colourless, negative tool of these creatures, thinking 
 herself safe for the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The servants, used to these " nervous attacks, " as 
 they called them, in their master's case, crowded round.
 
 1 04 A Waking. 
 
 him, and it was difficult to prevent him, in his pre- 
 sent delirious condition, from warning them to have 
 nothing to do with the dull ascetic religion which 
 retarded the world's progress and led men back 
 into bondage. 
 
 It was necessary, as the doctor said when he was 
 sent for, to " clear the decks, " and then Stuart New- 
 bolt would have no one near him but his daughter 
 — the nurse, angry and hurt, insisting on remaining, 
 but cowering away from him in a corner of the room. 
 
 Zina was vexed and ashamed. It had been such 
 a comfort to have a trained nurse; till one had come 
 she had felt so horribly incompetent. And, al- 
 though the woman had naturally a sense of her 
 own importance and this episode had shaken the 
 girl's confidence in her judgment, there was no need 
 to quarrel with her, or to doubt her efficiency. 
 
 Still she knew how hopeless it would be to cross 
 her father. It was necessary to take the onus of 
 the situation on herself, knowing, as she did so, that
 
 Morbid Fears. 105 
 
 the compromise Avhich she proposed must sound 
 inconsistent and tyrannical to the outraged woman's 
 ears, if it were not altogether contrary to her 
 printed rules. 
 
 " Nurse — I hope you will not misunderstand — but 
 I think I had better seem to take the nursing into 
 my own hands — just for the present — to humour 
 him — especially at nights — " she said in apology. 
 
 There was nothing else to be done, for the nurse 
 was unwilling to be sent back to the Home, and 
 the patient — who was still sitting up in his bed, the 
 beads of sweat standing on his forehead, and his 
 face convulsed with anger — became still more excited 
 whenever the question was debated of whether a 
 second nurse should be summoned from the insti- 
 tution. For the first time it occurred to his daughter 
 that possibly there was a strain of madness in these 
 fits of temper. 
 
 The thought was a terrible one, but it was the 
 only hypothesis which seemed adequately to explain
 
 1 06 A Waking. 
 
 those other scenes which she looked back upon in 
 her childhood. Better, if so, that this illness should 
 end fatally than that he should linger to be a curse 
 to himself and others, with that taint of madness 
 increasing, and an awful future in store for him. 
 
 She tried to reason herself out of the idea, and 
 to comfort herself with the thought that she would 
 rather have to deal with an irritable man of this 
 sort who cared enough for his fellow-creatures to 
 vent his choler on them, than with the cold imper- 
 sonal statue which she had tended lately. But the 
 morbidity engendered by a too close attendance in 
 the sick-room was already gaining on her, when it 
 struck her that she too must have inherited the 
 violent temper, and that the feeling of resentment 
 with which she had waited upon him at the com- 
 mencement of his illness had been unamiable, if 
 not altogether unnatural. 
 
 " "We cannot either of us plead our natural good- 
 ness as an excuse for dispensing with the assistance
 
 Morbid Fears. 107 
 
 of a priest," she thought with a Uttle sigh, as she 
 made another effort of will to put these distracting 
 fancies on one side ; and set to work in a practical 
 matter-of-fact way to collect the tumblers and plates 
 which had accumulated in the room. 
 
 " These had better go down, " she said quietly to 
 one of the maids, and then as the nurse stared on, 
 crestfallen and offended, she tried to explain: 
 
 " To-morrow we shall be able to talk it over — perhaps 
 we shall then be able to send for some one else, but 
 if you prefer to stay you can do so — meanwhile I am 
 here to help, and you can tell me what there is to do. " 
 
 " But, " gasped the discomfited nurse, " if anything 
 should go wrong with my case — if the doctors should 
 blame 7ne — " 
 
 " Oh you need not be afraid — nothing will go 
 wrong — and you must be sorely in need of rest. 
 / have had my sleep — / shall be able to go on," 
 said Zina, the awkwardness of the situation making 
 her voice strained and cold.
 
 io8 A Waking. 
 
 There was no time for her to explain further, and 
 there was nothing to show that her sympathies were 
 all with the aggrieved woman, who resented the 
 manner in which she had been treated and was 
 inclined to impute the worst motives to every mem- 
 ber of the heathenish family. 
 
 Finally the matter was settled, but not for Zina's 
 happiness. It was no comfort to be installed in a 
 difficult post, with the sense that the nurse was 
 inclined to be aggressive, and that her eyes were 
 often fixed on her with a resentful meaning which 
 aggravated her nervousness.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OVER- WROUGHT. 
 
 It was an uncomfortable state of things, but one 
 which could not be avoided. It was but natural that 
 the nurse — who from this time felt as if she had 
 lost the glory of the case which had been entrusted 
 to her — should be angry and jealous; but her feeling 
 of animosity would have been lessened if she 
 could have guessed how the daughter of the house 
 was shrinking from her task. Zina was too highly- 
 strung and too impressionable for the fatigue and 
 responsibility, and yet she had been wont to pride 
 herself on her physical strength.
 
 1 1 o A Waking. 
 
 Whenever she flagged, or whenever the doctor 
 pleaded with her not to over-exert herself, he found 
 her deaf to reason, nerving herself to do her duty. 
 After all she w^as compelled to recognise the truth 
 of Eva's words — that she was not one of those women 
 who have a faculty for nursing, and who have a 
 sort of enjoyment in patient endurance, and self- 
 denying pleasures. 
 
 The long confinement in the sick-room, and the 
 days which she had spent in solitude — unconsciously 
 chafing and irritating her wound — were beginning 
 to tell on a nervous system always sensitive, and 
 upon feelings which were exceptionally acute. The 
 vivacity of her imagination, ever ready to create 
 scenes for her which were not real, was now equally 
 ready to conjure up morbid illusions. At one time 
 she would be flagellant of herself, calling herself 
 unnatural for having brooded over her wrongs, or 
 for having made much of that little drama in which 
 her insurgency had played so important a part. She
 
 Over-wrought. 1 1 1 
 
 would tell herself that it was her revolt against 
 parental authority, and her unnatural defiance which 
 had led to the retribution of this serious illness. At 
 such times she would reproach herself for her habit 
 of resting with pleasure on the one bright spot in 
 the present darkness — the thought of her young 
 lover's devotion. It seemed to her a sort of treachery 
 to allow herself to think, " By and bye, when I 
 am no longer bound by my duty to my father, I 
 shall be able 'to marry Stephen Dewe. " 
 
 She was ashamed of the feeling of hidden joy 
 at the bottom of her heart and the sudden lighten- 
 ing of her trouble whenever she thought of the 
 future. 
 
 Her very horror of the dark thing which seemed 
 to be hovering in the house tormented her with 
 sensational nervousness — a nervousness aggravated 
 by the knowledge that the death of her father would 
 set her free to marry the man, to whom she had 
 plighted her troth.
 
 112 A Waking. 
 
 In some curious metaphysical controversies in which 
 Stuart Newbolt's friends had taken part — con- 
 troversies which had acted unfortunately on a girl 
 of her imaginative nature, she had heard much of 
 irresistible impulses and had once herself joined in 
 a discussion as to whether in the depths of each of 
 us there might not be lurking more selves than one, 
 whose shifting equilibrium might constitute the real self. 
 
 In her present state of mental welfare — a state 
 of tension and excitement resulting from the internal 
 conflict of the last few weeks, she was thinking in 
 a terrified way of thwarted tendencies which might 
 revenge themselves on the better ones. 
 
 Later on, she blamed herself for not having sent 
 for Mary Carruthers, but it was impossible just then 
 to make a confidante of anyone. Probably the 
 "breadwinner of the Carruthers' family" did not 
 know the full extent of T^Ir. Newbolt's illness, and 
 the little woman had always been fearful of intruding 
 on the magnificence of Chester-Square, whilst Zina.
 
 Over-ijor ought. 1 1 3 
 
 humouring her fancy, had made a rale of visiting 
 her in the ugly lodgings which were so inexpress- 
 ibly florid in their decoration. 
 
 It was unfortunate ; for ]\Iary with her plain com- 
 mon-sense, and strong faith in the Unseen would have 
 been able to help the girl, who had a strange 
 yearning after the Christian ideal, and hated herself 
 for the evil thoughts which seemed to hold carnival 
 within her during those silent hours in the lonely 
 nights when she was forced to take her turn at 
 the nursing — crouching in the arm-chair as if she 
 were famished for warmth, and looking at the sleeping 
 man with a spiritless, nerveless, dejected, and almost 
 purposeless gaze. Hateful and distressing thoughts 
 they were, in which, for the first time, it was sug- 
 gested to her that an engagement prolonged in- 
 definitely would probably be never fulfilled, and that 
 such a prolonged engagement would be a drag on 
 any man, rather likely to hinder him than to promote 
 his success in life. Stephen had continued to write 
 
 8
 
 114 ^ Waking. 
 
 to her in a passionate, feverish strain, blaming him- 
 self on the one hand for the want of self-control 
 which had led him to commit himself so suddenly 
 by impulsive speech, and declaring on the other 
 that as her father was so ill, and could not know 
 what was taking place, there was surely nothing to 
 prevent him from coming to her now. Had she 
 been a Httle older, or better able to reason in her 
 present distress, she would have seen that he was 
 inconsequent, illogical, confessing that his passion 
 had betrayed him and that he must take the conse- 
 quences, and yet attempting to force an interview 
 now that her father was unable to interfere. 
 
 " I w^ill write back to him again, and tell him that 
 he must wait — w^e must both w^ait — even if it be 
 for years." 
 
 "You know that is nonsense — if anything w^ere to 
 happen to your father you would not have to 
 wait." 
 
 She was certainly ridiculously nervous, for the
 
 Over-wrought. 1 1 5 
 
 words seemed to be spoken to her by a voice 
 from without. 
 
 She stopped her ears so that she should not 
 Hsten to it. 
 
 Till now it seemed to her she had been in a 
 childish Elysium, not aware of the coverts in her 
 own intelligence in which shy thoughts could hide 
 away even from her own ken, and unconscious of 
 the moral shock, convulsing her very being, which 
 had come upon her in consequence of ^Mrs. Capern's 
 idle chatter, or of the minute filaments in her memory 
 which connected this chatter with her own experience 
 in actual fact. AVho could tell how far her father 
 had been to blame even with regard to her mother's 
 early death — d. foreigner treated with cruelty by a 
 man who was still handsome, young, rich, brilliantly 
 gifted, ambitious, and chafing against the tie which 
 bound him to a wife supposed to destroy his 
 prestige in the society ready to adore him? Who 
 could tell whether his system of neglect might
 
 1 1 6 A Waking. 
 
 not have hastened her mother's death? The subtle 
 emotions which actuate men, and the complex moves 
 which those men may make, are more difficult as 
 we advance in so-called civilisation. Alas for the 
 love which he had crushed out in more cases than 
 one! Alas for the tender affection she might have 
 had from her mother! Alas for the education which 
 he had given to herself, to make her subservient to 
 his will, never reckoning on the counter-influences 
 of circumstances and temperament! 
 
 Just then the sleeper turned in his sleep. He 
 opened his eyes and asked for water. It was the 
 time to give him his medicine, and, as he looked 
 round anxiously and asked for it, there was a wild- 
 ness, not only in the large grey eyes themselves, 
 but in the whole expression of the face, which struck 
 Zina with a sort of conviction that it must be his 
 real expression ; and that the smiling, half-bantering 
 look which he kept up not only in society, but 
 generally in the presence of his daughter and his
 
 Over-wrought. 1 1 7 
 
 own servants, was a mask by which he hid the 
 real harsh, egotistical self. 
 
 He did not ask his daughter if she were tired, 
 but spoke to her in few words with a sort of in- 
 sistence. It was a part, no doubt, of her over- 
 strained condition which made her conscious for the 
 instant of a sort of recoil, for which she loathed 
 herself— a feeling of distrust almost bordering on 
 aversion for the man who, in his intense selfishness, 
 had dismissed her lover, angrily forbidding the match 
 without giving any satisfactory reason. Her admira- 
 tion, almost worship, for her father's intellect had 
 aways been far greater than her love for him, and 
 her affection for Stephen had had something of a 
 mother's love in it. She had discerned the weak- 
 nesses of his artistic nature, hoping with her own 
 stronger character to shield him from the realities 
 of life. But she did not wonder that he chafed 
 bitterly at a lifelong separation which seemed to be 
 enforced by the egotism of another.
 
 1 1 8 A Waking. 
 
 " There can be no possible reason why we should 
 not be allowed to see each other. wSurely we could 
 wait in patience, and I might be of use to you in 
 your present anxiety, " he had said in a letter which 
 but half an hour before she had held in her hand. 
 But Zina knew^ better, knew that her father expected 
 everyone to yield invariable subservience to his will, 
 and that, though he had not given any distinct 
 reason for his refusal, the years w^ould not change 
 him; she had never yet known him change any 
 resolution. 
 
 Once more all her soul was up in arms against 
 him, and then instantly she remembered that he was 
 very ill, just in that state in which something terrible 
 might happen, and that if she were to allow herself 
 to speak to, or think disrespectfully of him, she 
 might never forgive herself
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN THE SICK-ROO^r. 
 
 Another week passed. Zina had ceased to take 
 any count of time. All her thoughts were intent 
 on the father who might be drifting away from her^ 
 and who kept his face turned away from her, so 
 occupied with his own illness that she could not 
 judge if he were better or worse. The doctors in 
 attendance differed in their opinions, and she was 
 alternately in a state of hopefulness and dejection^ 
 exhausted by her own conjectures. 
 
 She had written to Stephen to forbid him to
 
 I20 A Waking. 
 
 attempt to see her, reminding him how her father's 
 illness had begun with an exciting scene, and how 
 since then he had seemed to go down-hill from bad 
 to worse ; how he could only talk of his sufferings 
 or look at her as if he reproached her, so that she 
 shuddered at the thought of anything which might 
 widen the breach which had already taken place 
 between them. 
 
 Sometimes Stuart Newbolt would groan and toss 
 his arms about. Then he would wander a little in his 
 talk, his thoughts dwelling on the past. 
 
 It was hard that he should still refuse to be 
 w^aited upon during the night by the nurse. For he 
 was difficult to please. And when Zina rose to give 
 him his medicine he seemed always to be reminded 
 of the immediate cause of his illness. She fancied 
 that his glance lighted on her with a sort of sus- 
 picion, and when he asked in the thick speech 
 caused by illness, " You have not seen this fellow 
 — or had any communication with him?" the thought
 
 In the Stck-room. 12 j 
 
 crossed her mind in a more direct form than 
 before, " If my father were to die this farce would 
 cease, and I should be free to act out my own life. " 
 
 Tkis time she was in despair. For there was no 
 voice. The wicked idea pure and simple seemed to 
 come from within ; there could no longer be any 
 chance of deceiving herself 
 
 She trembled and sat down, feeling as if her 
 limbs refused to bear her ; no doubt she was weak 
 from her constant attendance on the sick man. She 
 was not even aware that she had left his question 
 unanswered, as she awoke with a shudder to the 
 recognition of the fact that she had anticipated — 
 almost wished, though only for a moment, for her 
 father's death. 
 
 Had any doctor, or any clergyman, practised in 
 reading character, been able to look into her heart, 
 or any psychologist skilled ever so slightly in under- 
 standing the morbid tricks of an excitable imagin- 
 ation unable to shake off a melancholy caused by
 
 12 2 A Wakmg. 
 
 a habit of reserv^e; or had she herself been freer 
 from the strange suggestive thoughts and emotions 
 which had haunted her from her youth upwards, she 
 w^ould have known that what she needed was more 
 sleep, and plenty of fresh air. But she had no one 
 to warn her to resist a mental habit, w^hich if 
 aggravated w^ould become like a disease. 
 
 She had no sense of exaggeration in accusing 
 herself of having wished for her father's death. It 
 was untrue — she wronged herself when she reflected 
 at the same moment that the next step down- 
 ward might have been — murder! To desire, to even 
 contemplate, a fellows-creature's death with the idea 
 of the advantage which might accrue to oneself was, 
 according to that ideal Christianity which she had 
 discussed so often with Alary Carruthers, nothing 
 less than murder itself — the wish was the same as 
 the act. Neither was there anyone to assure her that 
 she had seized upon the sterner side of the Christian 
 creed, or to remind her that she was outraging
 
 Ill the Sick-room. 123 
 
 nature when she still undertook more than her 
 fair share of work during the weary watches of 
 the next few nights, not perceiving the increasing 
 jealousy of the professional nurse, who had become 
 lynx-eyed to Miss Xewbolt's eccentricities^ and not 
 knowing that by her very assiduity she was heigh- 
 tening her morbid condition, without succeeding in 
 quieting the conscience which had so suddenly 
 been aroused. 
 
 The doctors had ordered her father laudanum to 
 lull the pain from which he suffered, and it often be- 
 came a part of Zina's duty to measure out the 
 doses. She would willingly have evaded this duty, 
 but though the invalid v/as still morose and irrit- 
 able in his manner to everyone, he seemed less 
 and less willing to allow her out of his sight. 
 
 Her natural character did not assert itself under 
 the crisis, and more than one of the medical men 
 saw the quick, spasmodic movement with which she 
 tried to bear up as she leant over the sick man,
 
 124 ^ Waking. 
 
 who would have no arms but hers around him in 
 his contortions of agony. She did not let it em- 
 barrass her, though in his delirium he talked against 
 her. Only when it was stormy weather and the 
 night winds were howling round the house, striking 
 weird melodies from the harmonica-wires of the 
 wind-harp, which in happier days she had put up 
 outside the window, did she break into tears and 
 cry, " He is not so bad. He is only like other 
 people when they are ill, with a longing to pick a 
 quarrel with somebody or other, and have it out 
 with somebody supposed to have offended them. 
 I myself have felt just like that — the people who 
 speak against him are calumniators and liars." 
 
 Yet when the morning came, and the doctors 
 went on giving her hope, she was too exhausted 
 to know if she were glad, and the weary self- 
 reproaches would begin over again. And when the 
 time came round for pouring out his dose, the old 
 tormenting voice seemed to whisper into her ear,
 
 In the Stck-roovi. 125 
 
 " If— if— he were never to awaken from this sleep ! " 
 Whence came this hair-spHtting tendency this 
 Avant of balance, this ridiculous subtlety? 
 
 Could she help the picture conjured up by her 
 vivid imagination in the twinkUng of an eye? The 
 involuntary tricks played by this morbid imagin- 
 ation were a part of the temperament which might have 
 made her a heroine or a martyr. It was not her 
 own thought, as she had sense enough to perceive — 
 it was hateful, barbarous, loathsome — it must have 
 been transmitted to her from the savage instincts 
 of some half-civilised ancestors. Her training had 
 taught her to disbelieve in any bad influence from 
 without, in any diabolic flashes of thought flung 
 across her own half-sleeping consciousness ; and yet 
 she would have been glad to think that this haunting 
 terror did not originate from her own will, thankful 
 to fling it away from her as diabolic. 
 
 She hesitated, her fingers trembled, so unwilling 
 was she to pour out the dose. But it had to be
 
 12 6 A Wakmp-. 
 
 given, and after it he sank as usual into a troubled 
 sleep. When he woke again his mind seemed to 
 be quite hazy. There was nothing more to cause 
 excitement, no trouble, no anxious questionings of 
 any kind, and once more she asked herself if there 
 could be really any chance of recovery, and won- 
 dered vaguely if he were to die as he had lived. 
 
 At one moment she had nearly yielded to a press- 
 ing impulse to drop down on her knees by her 
 father's bedside. 
 
 She felt that it would ease her surcharged heart, 
 and that there would be something quieting in the 
 attitude of prayer, but she asked herself to whom she 
 was to kneel, repelling the impulse and hiding her face 
 in the bedclothes with a shuddering cry. Old recol- 
 lections, old thoughts of her childhood, of her father's 
 former tenderness to her, rather than his later irri- 
 tation, crowded upon her and prompted her to pray; 
 for Zina had been born to be an enthusiast, and 
 had been drawn at one time to all that was primeval
 
 In the Sick-roo7n. 127 
 
 and essential in Christianity. And though the formulae 
 had been given up, the mysticism still remained. 
 In the old days there would have been the making 
 of a saint about this woman — now, only a bitter 
 questioning, a vacuity and darkness troubled her. 
 She began to have a nervous terror of that other 
 watcher who often insisted on staying in the 
 room, who again hinted that she should be blamed 
 if an\i:hing went wrong with her case. " Case — " 
 that was what her father was called. It struck 
 Zina once more with that touch of humour which 
 had more of pain in it than amusement that he was 
 simply "a case", even when she caught the nurse's 
 eyes fixed on hers ivith a meaning which she did 
 not fathom or even try to understand. So all her 
 thoughts were fixed on that life which was hanging 
 by a thread, and in the silence which thrilled her 
 during the awful hours of the night she was con- 
 scious again of that agony of compunction for the 
 fact that this illness had begun after a quarrel — the
 
 12 8 A Waking. 
 
 first serious quarrel between herself and her father. 
 
 Every sense seemed to be intensified, every sound, 
 every sight; but the thought that the nurse's un- 
 friendly eyes were fixed upon her would as effectu- 
 ally have restrained her from prayer as that other 
 thought which was just then pressing its icy fingers 
 on her heart, that she was brought face to face with 
 inviolable laws to which it was her duty to try to 
 adjust herself — laws as awful as the awful reality 
 of the Unknowable. 
 
 The patient slept again more heavily than before,, 
 but he stirred and muttered in his sleep, as a gust 
 of memory swept over him. They bent down to 
 hear what he said — he was muttering of his gambling 
 debts.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 TOO LATE. 
 
 The poor girl never afterwards forgot those hours 
 of watching. It w^as several nights since she had 
 gone to bed, and she had almost left off feeling 
 the natural inclination to sleep. But her nerves 
 were overstrained, and her senses still exaggerated 
 every sight and sound. The loud ticking of the 
 clock on the stairs and the feebler pulse of the 
 watch on the table of the room, each grated on 
 her senses and seemed to keep time with the 
 subtle questions which she w^as unable to answer — 
 
 9
 
 I30 A Waking. 
 
 subtle and ridiculous questions which might have 
 been suggested to her by sinister beings bent on 
 hurting her. The lamp, like the great haunting eye 
 of some uncanny Cyclops, stared at her through 
 the darkness. 
 
 It did not supply sufficient light in the room for 
 her to see her father's face, had he not turned it 
 away from observation as he habitually did. 
 
 But she was certain that she saw the sharpened 
 profile on the pillow, and could picture him to 
 herself dead, so that never another word from her 
 could reach him. She felt inclined to cry out, but 
 restrained herself as a matter of duty, so impressed 
 was she with the idea that soon, very soon, her 
 father would be gone and she no longer able to 
 communicate with him, though they had much to say 
 to each other. 
 
 She did utter a cry when towards the morning 
 Stuart Newbolt opened his heavy eyes, but it 
 was quite plain that he no longer saw his daughter,
 
 Too late. 131 
 
 neither did he hear. He looked at her with an in- 
 fantile smile; it was indeed too late for any further 
 intercourse now. 
 
 " Too late I " she repeated to herself, recognising the 
 futility of human effort, crushed and overwhelmed 
 by it, as both women attempted in vain to rouse 
 the sick man from that fatal inclination to sleep. 
 
 " The effect of the draught should have passed off 
 now, if he did not take more than he ought to have 
 taken during the night," muttered the nurse, loud 
 enough for Zina to hear her. 
 
 But Zina heard nothing. The re-action had come; 
 she was too tired to take in any definite idea. 
 Afterwards she remembered that she tottered, and 
 would have fallen had not somebody stretched out a 
 hand to help her. Once indeed she caught herself 
 talking out loud a sort of delirious nonsense ; but 
 she did not know that she was saying strange things 
 about herself. A sort of dull apathy seemed to 
 have taken possession of her as well as of the
 
 132 A Waking. 
 
 man by whose sick-bed they were watching. 
 Neither did she see the expression of the other 
 woman's face. She only saw that dying face, with 
 the blank look of the eyes whenever they succeeded 
 in rousing him for a moment — a look as if the soul 
 had put up its shutters to concentrate all its efforts 
 on the struggle which was being waged within. She 
 suddenly remembered once to have heard her father 
 say in one of his sarcastic moods, that he did not 
 like the idea of death, and he believed that in their 
 secret hearts most men were cowards about it ; but 
 that he hoped by the study of natural science to 
 prolong his own life to that period of senile decay, . 
 when there would be nothing to feel and nothing to 
 encounter. She recalled that speech with a shudder 
 just now. For, if there was mortal conflict going on 
 behind those blank eyes which looked so much like 
 closed shutters, why should she speak to disturb 
 the soul which was settling itself to rest? To 7'est? 
 To the eternal sleep of which he had so often spoken,
 
 Too late. 133 
 
 dying out like a vegetable? She could not reconcile 
 it with her other ideas that there viighthQ such things 
 as eternal principles, of which outward appearances 
 were only the accidental and fleeting forms. 
 
 She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that 
 she did not notice the nurse's indignant astonish- 
 ment, as she said in a low tone, "Do not vex him — 
 do not disturb him — let him rest." 
 
 The doctors came with their low-toned questions, 
 and she could gather that they were surprised, 
 especially the younger and cleverer of them, who 
 had been the most sanguine of the two, and had 
 'throughout given hope of Stuart Newbolt's recovery. 
 She saw them examining the bottle with the lauda- 
 num, but, even then, she did not know that there 
 would be no awakening for her father, that all was 
 over, and that he had actually died since he had 
 taken his last dose. She was so thoroughly worn 
 out that she was only conscious of an awful still- 
 ness, a hushed period of waiting, and then — as they
 
 134 -^ Waking. 
 
 suggested that she should go to her room — of the 
 trees in the square melting by degrees into the pale 
 grey of the evening light, till their outlines became 
 like everything else, shadowy and indistinct. One 
 of the maids came to her and suggested that she 
 should take a cup of tea, being evidently much 
 astonished that Miss Newbolt had not drawn down 
 her window-blinds. 
 
 The apparent zeal of the servants grated on her 
 feelings. What right had they to make such a fuss — 
 they to whom he had never really belonged ? Why 
 should they shed tears when her eyelids were dry? 
 She insisted on redraping the bed on which they 
 had laid out the corpse ; she persuaded herself that 
 she would make it look less ghastly if she arranged 
 some lace round the pillows. 
 
 What, she asked herself, was the use of the out- 
 ward mourning and all the paraphernalia of crape 
 with the anodyne of fashion-books which the dress- 
 makers were already sending, when it was the soul
 
 Too late. 135 
 
 alone which mourned? And why did they want to 
 close the windows, and make the atmosphere hot and 
 stuffy? 
 
 "It's not respectable-hke for her to sit in that 
 way, staring right in front of her, and not sliedding 
 a tear," reported her maid in the servants' hall, 
 which just then was thronged with gossips, as none 
 of the ser\^ants Avere performing their ordinary 
 work, and everyone's usual avocation seemed to 
 be gone. 
 
 She did not take the tea, she did not lie down, 
 and she did not weep, for all her passionate feel- 
 ings were focussed on one subject. 
 
 She had never till now thought seriously about 
 death, nor allowed herself to feel that it would not 
 be worth while to face the present existence if there 
 were not another life. But she was overcome 
 by the presence of the white face on the pillow — 
 the lliing which had once been her father, but which 
 now seemed no longer to have any part in her.
 
 136 A Waking. 
 
 The Why, the Whence, and the Where came upon 
 her with overwhelming force, and she was unable 
 to give them an answer. 
 
 "How feeble he would have called me," she 
 thought as she turned away from the corpse, "how 
 often have I heard him say that we have no more 
 right than the molecule to protest against being 
 merged in the whole." 
 
 Then came the recollection of Stephen Dewe. 
 Was it worth while to love any creature, any human 
 being, and to expend the very essence of one's 
 soul, drop by drop, when after all came death, and 
 love might end in — nothing? 
 
 But was it possible that Life could end — e7id — 
 that one, so palpitating with it and its hopes and 
 fears as she had been till lately, could exist no 
 longer? She sat down, with her head in her fever- 
 ish hands, and found the problem unthinkable, as 
 many a woman has found it before her — then derided 
 herself for her childish egotism. Had she not been
 
 Too late. 137 
 
 equally silly when, as a little girl, she had been puzzled 
 to conceive of the world going on before she 
 was born? 
 
 She laughed at her own absurdity. And yet if 
 there were no future life, nothing to reward one 
 after all — then why all this nerve-suffering, why all 
 this complex civilisation? Let life be natural and 
 simple, let men and women enjoy themselves to 
 their finger-tips ! She hoped that there was an answer 
 to this heathen philosophy, more satisfactory than the 
 blind optimism which was fainting and sinking when 
 it ought to have sustained her; she had always recog- 
 nised the necessity for righteousness and love — the 
 altruism which considers the feelings and well-being 
 of others, and which trained her to the habit of 
 trying to understand things as they were, and express 
 them without exaggeration. If the corpse which dinted 
 the bedclothes with solemn outlines in the same house 
 could arise and speak to her, would it not say, as 
 he often had said, " Zina, do not get into that
 
 138 A Waking. 
 
 foolish feminine habit of exaggerating your feeUngs. " 
 And yet, as the sparrows flew past her window, 
 and as the outhnes of the trees grew dimmer in 
 the square, they seemed to say to her, 
 
 " Oh, foohsh mortal, why do you wear yourself 
 out for nothing? The beautiful sunlight has gone, 
 and the peace of the summer days. You have let 
 them all pass, you have thrown your treasures from 
 you. And now the winter will soon be on you, 
 and you will weep in the days which are dark and 
 sullen, and soon death may come, and nothing will 
 be left to you. " 
 
 The next day was like a passing medley of 
 shadows, with only a break now and then, and 
 surprise following closely on the heels of sur- 
 prise. 
 
 There were the usual influx of cards, and the usual 
 condolences of friends which seemed to her so trite 
 and miserably commonplace. Then there was the 
 necessary investigation of her father's affairs — the
 
 Too late. 139 
 
 tearing up of his letters and the strange papers he 
 had left behind him — strange notes of a strange 
 mind — strange intricacies of a most unusual life. 
 
 And, finding some leaves of a diary left in his 
 desk which seemed to throw rather an odd and 
 unexpected light on some of the gossip retailed to 
 her by Eva Capem, she thought it better to send 
 at once for the family lawyer. He came, a grave and 
 astute man, whom she had known from her childhood, 
 kind withal but not encouraging. How could he 
 encourage her when it appeared, after a little inquiry, 
 that Stuart Newbolt had indeed eaten up his for- 
 tune, leaving nothing for the descendants who might 
 possibly come after him? Scarcely enough to pay 
 the servants would be left out of the wreck. Years 
 before he had invested in a company which ensured 
 him at first 20 per cent interest; then, as the interest 
 decreased, he had sunk more and more of his hun- 
 dreds with the hope of gaining as large a profit 
 for his capital as before. Suddenly most of his
 
 1 40 A Waking. 
 
 profits had ceased, but he had indemnified himself 
 for his losses by sinking the rest of his capital in 
 purchasing a handsome annuity for his lifetime. 
 Everything that he had had died with him, and 
 though he had taken the pains to write a letter in 
 which he blamed the specious swindling companies 
 which play havoc with a man's capital by offering 
 ruinous interest, no one could have known better 
 than himself that the will which he left behind him 
 was as worthless as w^aste paper. 
 
 Zina received the announcement as coldly and 
 unconcernedly as if it had not affected herself This 
 then was what her father had kept in reserve, and 
 what he had often longed to tell her. Probably, 
 as she said to herself, making excuses for the dead, 
 he had some well-planned scheme for her own be- 
 nefit which made him object to her marriage with 
 Stephen. Whatever it was, it would be locked up 
 now in the silence of the grave, and, if other people 
 did not think him excusable they were wrong >
 
 Too late. 141 
 
 they had no right to judge him for a miscalculation, 
 an error in arithmetic, which could scarcely be 
 deemed a crime. When his moral laxity in questions 
 of debit and credit became more evident she still 
 refused to blame him, and though she winced a 
 little to think how the respect inclining to servility 
 which people had hitherto paid to his money would 
 suddenly disappear, and how the full odium of the 
 miserable state of things must fall upon herself, she 
 smiled at the remembrance that Stephen Dewe 
 would be ready to protect her. 
 
 Her vivid imagination was ready to picture the 
 humiliations and vexations which would be sure to 
 follow in a few days; how some of the clever jour- 
 nalists would pen pungent and witty sentences at 
 the expense of the name of Newbolt, and how 
 scornfully they would descant on the pretensions 
 of this new adventurer who had made such a suc- 
 cessful assault on the fortress of London society, 
 seeming for a time as if he would take it by storm.
 
 142 A Waking. 
 
 Well, what did it matter? If Stephen hurried the 
 marriage as he was sure to do, she would soon 
 be changing the name of Nevvbolt — the great thing 
 which mattered was that none of these things could 
 vex her father now!
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CAN HE DISTRUST HER? 
 
 Eva Caperx had been wonderfully sparing of her 
 visits since her gnardian's illness had become more 
 serious, and the world had begun to talk. 
 
 Her admitted objection to everything which was 
 " unpleasant" , an objection w^hich Stuart Newbolt 
 had done his best to inculcate, had made her fight 
 shy of the house during that period of breathless 
 interest, that hush in the drama of Life, which 
 almost always takes place where Death is expected 
 to take possession. In the beginning she had taken
 
 1 44 A Waking. 
 
 the illness lightly, but at the first serious alarm had 
 made up her mind that it would end fatally, and 
 had never shared in the sanguine forecast of either 
 the nurse or the more cheerful doctor. And now 
 she absented herself on the score of delicate health. 
 Zina resented her heartlessness on her father's 
 account; for, whatever other duty he might have 
 failed to discharge, Stuart Newbolt had never been 
 found wanting in his position of faithfulness towards 
 his ward. Again she congratulated herself that she 
 would be free of Eva in the future, with no need 
 for Mrs. Capern's help, or her patronising ways, for 
 Stephen Dewe could only be waiting for the first 
 few hours of her bereavement to pass before he 
 presented himself as her affianced lover. Ah, Avhat 
 a good thing that she had Stephen who would not 
 allow Eva Capern to worry her by transgressing 
 the bounds of politeness in the familiarity of her 
 questioning; what a comforting thing that Stephen 
 was simple-minded, and had none of the aristocratic
 
 Can he distrust her? 145 
 
 tricks of manner which she loathed in some of the 
 men her father had wanted her to marry ! What a 
 shock of disgust those men would have had when 
 they came to know all about her, her father, and 
 her poor mother! What a mercy she had refused 
 to marry them! But Stephen was so different, to 
 whom she would never be slavishly bound by 
 mysterious obligations, founded on financial consider- 
 ations! The thought of him came to her with 
 a sense of rest, emotion, and even gratitude. She 
 had never yet rushed into his arms, never yet wept 
 upon his bosom, but had he come to her then, 
 when her heart was full to bursting, she would 
 probably have given vent to her pent-up emotions. 
 It never occurred to her to think how they were to 
 support themselves. Hitherto she had been so free 
 from the biting vexations and cankering cares of 
 poverty that she scarcely troubled to ask herself if 
 Stephen Dewe had enough for both of them. 
 
 The middle of the day came, the lawyer had gone. 
 
 10
 
 146 A Wakiiig. 
 
 He was well stricken in years, and Zina had not 
 hesitated to tell him that he need not be solicitous 
 about her future, for that she was on the eve of 
 her marriage with a man to whom she had been 
 for some time engaged. He was of opinion that 
 sufficient would be left from the annuity to enable 
 her to wind up her father's affairs, and already she 
 had sent for the servants and given them their 
 dismissal. The interview with the nurse she deferred 
 till the last, for she had never thoroughly liked the 
 woman, who now announced her intention of waiting 
 for the funeral. Zina was equally determined that 
 she should not wait, but in getting rid of her she 
 counted on Stephen Dewe's assistance. 
 
 The afternoon wore on, and Stephen Dewe did 
 not come. She went up into her room and tried to 
 calm herself by lying down, but finding it impos- 
 sible to keep still, she rose and fell into her old 
 habit of walking for the hour together, restlessly, 
 aimlessly, up and down, up and down the floor —
 
 Ca7t he distrust her? 147 
 
 waiting, waiting, though she did not like to say so 
 to herself. Never before in all her life had she to 
 acknowledge to herself that she was waiting — and 
 for a vian — who did not come! 
 
 Many already had been the inquiries at the street- 
 door, but surely Stephen should have been the first. 
 Whatever business he might chance to have should 
 have been put aside at once, when she, whom he 
 loved, was in need of assistance. Perhaps he, too, 
 had heard some of the unkind gossip. She put the 
 thought aside as an outrageous one, which only 
 roused her laughter. For if she was inclined to 
 ponder a little as to what some folk, for whose 
 opinion she might care, might say about the crash 
 which had come into her life and her sudden dis- 
 appearance, as that of a sort of female pretender, 
 from Chester-Square, she had only smiled at her 
 own egotism, reminding herself that she and her 
 belongings were not the only people in the world, 
 and that a "nine days wonder" about them signified
 
 148 A Waking. 
 
 very little. If it mattered little to them, how much 
 less to Stephen, who was ready to take everything on 
 his own broad shoulders, and who cared as little as 
 she did for mere tittle-tattle. 
 
 At last the darkness fell — the darkness of the 
 summer night, preceded by a long period of twilight, 
 and then she started up suddenly. But the rap did 
 not come to announce Mr. Dewe. The nurse, whom 
 she had tried to forget, did not wait to be w^elcomed 
 in. She came in aggressively, with a strange look 
 on her face, which was unusually white. 
 
 It occurred to Zina that she had perhaps failed 
 in her duty in not offering the woman a glass of 
 wine. She spoke her thought aloud, taking up the 
 keys, and determining to order some of the best 
 port which her father's cellar contained. 
 
 But, to her surprise, the nurse shrank back with 
 a shrewd look upon her pallid face. She announced 
 her resolution of taking neither bread nor sup again 
 in that house, and of hastening away from it as soon
 
 Can he dis trust her? 149 
 
 as it were possible to do so ; and Zina turned 
 cold, while the beads of perspiration stood on her 
 forehead, as the woman went on to tell her for the 
 first time that the doctor, who had thought his 
 patient would recover, had not hesitated to hint that 
 the nurse in attendance had probably given him 
 too much laudanum. 
 
 " How co2dd he be so unfair to you ? Of course 
 }'ou set it right. Why, it was / who gave him the 
 two last doses of opium. He would not let you come 
 near him, still less pour out his medicine. We did 
 not even venture to tell him that you were behind 
 the screen in his room," faltered Zina, the old 
 agony returning to her, as the old morbid idea 
 again took possession of her brain, and she once 
 more remembered a sophistical argument, which 
 she had even heard her father himself maintain — 
 that a Avish often leads to an unconscious act. "It 
 was / who gave it, but I dropped it out with the 
 greatest care."
 
 150 A Waking. 
 
 " I told them you would say so ; they always say 
 they have taken the greatest care," retorted the 
 woman in an insolent voice. 
 
 "Whom do you mean by they? or them ?'' asked 
 Zina in a low voice. 
 
 "Dr. Melton and the tall fair gentleman who 
 called in the afternoon, and would not let you be 
 disturbed," answered the nurse, evading the first 
 question. " The lawyer had told the servants that the 
 fair young gentleman was to be admitted, and he 
 came in when I was having high words with the 
 doctor. No doubt it is all a mistake ; these things 
 generally are. But the gentleman stood in the hall 
 — he must have overheard — for he burst right in 
 upon us, and said he could answer for your careful- 
 ness in sick nursing. Carefulness or not, I am sorry 
 to have to say it, but I have been insulted and in- 
 terfered with ever since I entered this house, and 
 leave it I will — the sooner the better ; there's a 
 curse hanging over the place."
 
 Can he distrust her? 151 
 
 The angry woman stopped suddenly in her excited 
 speech. She was a worthy woman, and it was not 
 her fault that being unimaginative she took things 
 too literally, or that a long apprenticeship in the 
 sick-room had lessened rather then intensified her 
 sympathies; not her fault if nature had denied the 
 proper amount of oil necessary for the gracious 
 working of her spiritual machinery. She had intended 
 to do her duty, but the sight of j\Iiss Newbolt staring 
 at her long and fixedly, evidently trydng to collect 
 her thoughts, failing to do so, and yet shrinking 
 visibly as she began to understand, brought her 
 suddenly to the recollection of possible conse- 
 quences. For the nurse had never before come in 
 contact with such speaking eyes, never guessed 
 that there could be such power of expression in 
 any human countenance. It was her turn to shrink 
 as those innocent eyes blazed upon her, and the 
 true character of their owner became transparent 
 as that of a child.
 
 152 A Wakmg. 
 
 " Sometimes when people are a little overdone, 
 they scarcely know what they are doing — perhaps that 
 was the case with you last night," she stammered, 
 trying to take back her imputation. 
 
 Years afterwards it all came back to Zina in a 
 calmer mood. 
 
 How the woman — indignant at the imputation on her 
 own management — might not have intended any 
 special meaning to be attached to her words. 
 
 They had, none of them, any comprehension of 
 Miss Newbolt's shivering sensitiveness, nor how it 
 was that a suspicion born in her own imagination 
 and suddenly taking shape, could smite her like a 
 deadly missile. It was strange how it had never 
 occurred to her to think that the nurse in her blind 
 anger might have been heedless of what she said, 
 not meaning half of it, or animated only by a 
 childish desire to sting and irritate. Had she not 
 been living in an atmosphere of perpetual apprehension, 
 where the merest whisper swelled into reality and
 
 Can he distrust her? 153 
 
 intensity, as if it had travelled through a speaking 
 tube, Zina knew afterwards that the foolish imputation 
 would have been powerless to injure. 
 
 But just then she could not reason. Just then it 
 was more natural for it to flash upon her that the 
 nurse, who had doubtless seen many strange things 
 in different houses, in the various experiences of 
 her difficult cases, might have formed a theory of 
 her own — a theor)^ not actually likely to hurt 
 her, since it had probably been a part of her training 
 to learn to keep a quiet tongue in her head, and 
 if she as well as the family doctor came in sometimes 
 for strange chapters in life, those strange chapters 
 would not be revealed. AVhat else could the woman 
 mean? She was certainly no adept at insinuating 
 rather than speaking, as Eva Capem might have 
 done, with pretty gesture and waves of the hand. 
 And the bewildered girl's brain was still incapable 
 of reasoning. 
 
 " Go — go — I — cannot understand what you mean —
 
 154 ^ Waking. 
 
 and even if I could, I should refuse to discuss it with 
 you, " she stammered in her agitation and perplexity, 
 pointing to the door. " Do you not see that I am 
 ill? I was never like this before. How cold I am!" 
 
 Her teeth were chattering, her whirling thoughts 
 lapsing into chaos, and before the nurse could obey 
 her order, her head fell forward as if she were half 
 asleep, and in another moment she lay unconscious 
 on the floor. 
 
 It was more than an hour afterwards, between 
 eleven and twelve o'clock, when Stephen Dewe 
 stood again at the door of the house in Chester-Square. 
 
 The darkness had grown deeper, but the stars 
 had taken their places like silent sentinels in the 
 sky, the Bear, Orion, Cassiopeia, and the JMilky 
 Way, shining over the great city which lay stretched 
 like a shapeless mass beneath. 
 
 But the innumerable starry points of the dusky 
 sky had at that moment no message for him, any 
 more than for the unhappy girl, who had been
 
 Can he distrust her ? is 
 
 o:) 
 
 trained to look at them as only a " brilliant erup- 
 tion" on the firmament, containing no blissful spot, 
 and no possible home where the weary and ill- 
 treated would find a refuge after death. 
 
 She had recovered from her transitory faintness, 
 and in the craving of her heart for human tender- 
 ness, had determined to put silly pride on one 
 side, and was listening with beating heart for her 
 lover's footstep — he who would protect her from 
 all indignity, watch over her, and decide for her 
 in difficulties which seemed to be too serious for 
 one person to settle ! For she could not reason as 
 yet — her sense of degradation excluding all other 
 and more natural ideas — or perhaps she might have 
 thought twice as to the wisdom of appealing to 
 Stephen Dewe when the world about her seemed 
 to be topsy-turvy. 
 
 The rest of the world was going on as if nothing 
 was turned upside down, or in any way affected 
 by the craziness within her.
 
 156 A Waking, 
 
 A carriage bringing some elegantly dressed 
 women from the theatre was standing at the next 
 door, the jingling of the reins as the coachman 
 drove away, blending with the sound of dance- 
 music from a piano a few doors further off, and 
 reminding Stephen that, in spite of the event which 
 had just happened, the London season — that strange 
 orgie of refined rioting — w^as still in full swing, and 
 that he stiM continued to inhabit the w^ealthiest, the 
 poorest, the cleverest and the stupidest, the gayest 
 and the saddest city on this globe. 
 
 It was with much anxiety and some sinking of 
 the heart that he inquired again for Zina. It was 
 true that he had been to the house once before to 
 comfort her in her loneliness after her father's 
 death, and that he had overheard the nurse's gossip 
 — true also that he found himself unable to sleep 
 or to rest at any distance from Zina without inquir- 
 ing for further news. 
 
 He had no expectation of seeing her, and he told
 
 Can he distrust her? 157 
 
 himself afterwards that nothing in all his life had 
 amazed him so much as that she should have broken 
 through all the usual conventional rules by coming 
 down to him at that hour. 
 
 The light dazzled her ; she had been so long in 
 the sick-room that she seemed at first scarcely to 
 understand whose was the dark figure, which 
 stood awaiting her in the hall. 
 
 She drew him into the study. There was some- 
 thing weird and terrifying in her pallid beauty, 
 with the eyes dark and deep, which gave character 
 to her face. He gazed at her in astonishment. 
 
 Paracelsus was wont to describe an experiment 
 in which a flower perished ; you burnt it ; whatever 
 was left of the original flower was dispersed — you 
 knew not whither and no efforts could re-constitute 
 it. But the power of chemistry — according to Para- 
 celsus — enabled you to raise a spectrum from the 
 burnt dust of the flower, just as it appeared in life. 
 It is not necessary for us to vouch — as the elder
 
 158 A Waking, 
 
 Disraeli did — for the credibility of such an idea. It 
 is sufficient to say that in the human being it 
 sometimes seems as if the soul may have escaped 
 like the essence of such a flower, and the appear- 
 ance which remains has an unreality like the spec- 
 trum. It was as if the real Zina had gone. 
 
 She had been the woman whom he revered, 
 whom he worshipped with pure devotion, who had 
 climbed to the heights of human intelligence and 
 preserved all the purity of a child, in whom the 
 head and heart had seemed to be alike developed 
 —that rare combination in a woman. She had been 
 more than human to him before, but she was less 
 than human now, with the horrible imputation con- 
 tained in that uncanny talk sounding in his ears, and 
 the change in her own appearance seeming to give 
 a sinister importance to that chatter. He was sorry 
 for her, pitiful, when he thought of the way in which 
 she had been brought up ; but he was a young man 
 of critical as well as artistic nature, and at that
 
 Can he distrust her? 159 
 
 moment he felt as if she could never be to him 
 again the idol he had worshipped. 
 
 He tried to speak, but the twitching mouth inad- 
 vertently betrayed him. Yet something passed be- 
 tween them in the effort of those one or two words 
 which did not need speech, the sound, as it were, 
 of the sentiment which conveyed a physical as well 
 as a mental impression to her delicate nerves. It 
 was one of those moments which do not easily re- 
 peat themselves in life, and which, if they did, 
 would make the effort of living impossible. 
 
 His sudden terror was as real to her as if he had 
 vulgarly accused her, forcing his want of trust, 
 brutally, down her throat. And in one instant she had 
 recovered herself "Go! go! I cannot speak to you 
 now. I am too much upset," she said, forgetful 
 that she herself had summoned him but the moment 
 before. Then she tottered towards the door, spar- 
 ing of her regrets or her farewells, determined to 
 exert her will to the uttermost, lest her fainting at-
 
 i6o A Waking. 
 
 tack should repeat itself. For the unexpected atti- 
 tude of the man on whom she had relied had the 
 effect upon her of a cold douche- the possibility 
 that he could feel distrustful about her for a moment 
 brought her to her senses. 
 
 Alone in the room by her father's corpse, she sat 
 up during the silent hours of the night pale and in- 
 dignant, no longer absent-minded and pre-occupied, 
 no longer a prey to morbid thoughts. 
 
 The want of anything like real imagination in 
 Stephen Dewx's case, when the illuminating power 
 of music could not come to his assistance, which had 
 so little prepared him for something unusual in her 
 character — something out of the common beat— even 
 if it were overstrained and morbid, roused her to 
 self-defence and a healthier re-action. Again and 
 again during the hours of the night she occupied 
 herself with going over and over her past. She 
 w^ho had ahvays till now been self-reliant and never 
 needed a mother, and who had been just old enough,
 
 Can he distrust her? i6i 
 
 when her mother died, to reaHse that she and her 
 father had Httle in common, now racked her brain 
 to remember the episodes of her childhood. Memory 
 had filched away much that was precious, but she 
 could recall the proud looks and airs of infallibility 
 with which her father had indignantly reprobated 
 her mother's Catholic teaching, himself an apostle 
 of free thought, content with his official ordnance 
 map of the infinite Universe in which he lived. She 
 had a half-pathetic and half-humorous recollection 
 of her mother's great belief in her daughter's supe- 
 rior brain-power^ and of how little she had inter- 
 fered with her unless her interference was necessar}^ 
 In the old days she had thought a little scornfully 
 of that poor crushed mother, telling herself that she 
 had no admiration for those compliant, no-charac- 
 tered women, who swamped their own habits and 
 opinions in those of their husbands. But now she 
 found herself, to her astonishment, calling upon her 
 for help, when she did not know to whom to call, 
 
 1 1
 
 i62 A Waking. 
 
 with that sense of the eerie which makes us shiver 
 at the consciousness of mere disembodied wills and 
 intelligences in a possibly invisible world of which 
 we have not the key. 
 
 " O mother, whom I slighted till I lost you, never 
 guessing at the intense aching of your heart while 
 you patiently waited! O father, who treated her 
 so coldly and strangely, but whose intellect w^as so 
 keen that it did not seem as if it could die ! Do 
 either of you see me now? AVas it from either of 
 you that I inherited this gift for puzzling and tor- 
 menting myself? Speak to me if you can, speak, 
 and let me know, if you exist, that there is a future 
 life in which the injustices and misunderstandings of 
 this one Avill be set right," she cried as she stretched 
 herself by the side of the corpse. 
 
 AVas it nothing which responded to her aspiration 
 — to her cry for help in her emergency? Would 
 it be of any use for her to have recourse to what 
 other people called prayer?
 
 Can he distrust her? i6 
 
 In the morning she was delirious — the doctors 
 spoke of brain fever, and Stephen Dewe was in con- 
 stant attendance. Her voice could be heard outside 
 the door of her room, and there were moments when 
 his anxiety was suspended by a new and strange 
 curiosity. For the sick girl was accusing herself in 
 her ravings, the women ser^-ants listening open- 
 mouthed and frightened. He sent them downstairs 
 with the assurance by which he attempted to brace 
 his own mind, that sick people in this condition always 
 harped on things which were farthest from the truth. 
 Xot the less was he impatient, fidgetting up and 
 down the passage, stopping his ears that he might 
 not hear, and then standing still and anconsciouslv 
 listening in his stupefaction. 
 
 Again and again there were iterations of the same 
 dreary complaints — her father's coldness, and his 
 attempts to separate her from her lover. And then 
 she harped on the hours of nursing, and the possi- 
 bility of the medicine having been administered too
 
 164 ^ Waking, 
 
 carelessly. There was still nothing tangible for his 
 dread to lay hold of, but the fact that he had fears was 
 betrayed by his ashen — no longer love-glorified — face. 
 
 One day when he had meant to ask if she were 
 asleep, tha.t he might just look in on her, or leave 
 her a message to be given should she wake, that gnaw^- 
 ing fear g-ot the better of him. The quirks of me- 
 mory distracted him for it came back to him in a 
 way he would rather have forgotten that he too 
 had dwelt impatiently on the fact of how the 
 father's life stood in the way of the marriage. 
 
 The whole prospect seemed to have undergone 
 some gruesome change — it was no longer pleasant 
 to him — the associations had spoiled it. He was no 
 longer chafing feverishly at the inaction rendered 
 necessary by her illness, or questioning the nurses 
 hoarsely as to how soon she would be well enough 
 to see him. 
 
 She had ordered him to go, and, as she repeated 
 these entreaties that he should go in agonised tones
 
 Can lie distrust her? 165 
 
 of voice which resounded through the silent house, 
 he determined to take her at her word — and go abroad 
 — at least for a time. 
 
 He left a letter to tell her, that as the doctors 
 had assured him it was necessary for her to be kept 
 very quiet, and an inter\dew with him would be 
 only likely to upset her even in convalescence, he 
 had determined to immolate his own happiness on 
 the altar of self-sacrifice. He felt a brute, and was 
 not contented with his own wretched platitudes when 
 he had written them, being haunted by the draw^n 
 misery of her pinched, unconscious face, still tussling 
 with forces stronger than herself. But it was true 
 enough that they had assured him she was already 
 better, and would be likely to recover more quickly 
 in his absence. 
 
 " It is all different, " he said, " and will be always 
 different for me now. And who am I ; " he added to him- 
 self, " to insist on tormenting her with my presence ? "
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 A FRIEND IN NEED. 
 
 When Zina recovered from her interval of delirium, 
 it was to find that the funeral was over, and that 
 all that was mortal of Stuart Newbolt had been 
 carried, not without parade, to the grave. The world 
 had proved kinder than she had expected, and piles 
 of snowy blossoms had crushed one another on the 
 coffin — presents from the numerous guests who had 
 constantly been entertained at Mr. Newbolt's table — 
 shewing wealth enough to have defrayed the 
 expenses of a poorer man's funeral.
 
 A Friend in Need. 167 
 
 Zina was alone when she first recovered her 
 consciousness. Her first impulse was to go to the 
 window and put her head out in the fi*esh air, and 
 her next to remember that she might be seen, and to 
 retire fi-om the light. Then she recalled everything — 
 the wildly intoxicating visions of that night when 
 she had thought that it might be possible for the spirits 
 of the dead to appear to her, and the cruel and ignoble 
 suspicions of the one man living whom she had trusted. 
 
 The cloud was lifted from her brain; she no 
 longer reproached herself, but she could have laughed 
 bitterly at herself for her misplaced faith, and for 
 supposing that she could ever be the friend of one 
 who could so mistrust her, as if the consciousness 
 of a terrible crime — forsooth — had stepped between 
 them. She shivered at the remembrance of her own 
 insanity. It was all like a miserable nightmare, 
 which made her still wish to hide herself, alike from 
 the cruel sunshine which seemed to mock her, as 
 from the stars with a million eyes which had likewise
 
 i68 A Waking. 
 
 seemed to stare at her burning shame during the 
 intolerable agony of that ever to-be-remembered 
 night. 
 
 But the delirium was over now — a thing of the 
 past — and with its departure her strength of mind 
 came baxk. She arose from her sick-bed an altered 
 woman, more soured and suspicious, with her better 
 nature crushed out of her by the conduct of one 
 whom she had so devotedly loved ; and whom she 
 could not but believe to have been influenced by 
 other motives than those which appeared on the 
 surface. 
 
 She had received Stephen Dewe's letter, and 
 never mentioned his name, but in her secret heart 
 she said, " He left me because he found out that 
 I w^as penniless; it was not possible that he could 
 think what he pretended to think about me." 
 
 Neither did she trouble herself any more about 
 Mary's creed, but felt thankful that she had been 
 able to resist superstition, and that she had been
 
 A Friend in Need. 169 
 
 taught to repress the miserable egotism which might 
 lead her to confide every puny trouble to a First 
 Cause that possibly did not exist. 
 
 " As if my troubles would signify, even if It 
 existed! I have to steel myself to bear, as other 
 people have to bear things," she said with a sneer 
 at her own expense, determining at the same time 
 to cure herself of her susceptibility to the opinions 
 of others. 
 
 There was a new hardness about her which Eva 
 Capern recognised with astonishment when she 
 offered her a home as her companion, and when 
 Zina rejoined that she was " too proud to live on 
 charity." From the sale of her father's furniture, 
 books, and articles of verhi, she realised a little for 
 her immediate needs; but much of this was required 
 for the creditors. 
 
 To do Mrs. Capern justice she had never attached 
 any importance to the self-accusations of an over- 
 worked, highly-strung, conscientious girl, and she
 
 1 7 o A Waking. 
 
 really intended to be generous. Not the less was 
 she evidently relieved when Zina declined her offer, 
 telling her with an odd abrupt laugh that she had 
 determined to try and forget herself and her own 
 worries in Art. "If I can only lose my own 
 identity in what I try to produce ! " said the girl, 
 a little surprised at herself for hating the proffered 
 kindness of the woman, yet telling herself that Eva 
 cared nothing about her, and only wished to make 
 her an instrument for furthering her own ends ; 
 that her heart was in fact branded by fashion and 
 worldliness as with the stamp of a hot iron. 
 
 That longing to be doing something more than 
 could be found in the ordinary routine of an idle 
 woman's life made her turn with greater pleasure 
 to an invitation from Alary Carruthers. Clary's 
 husband had been seriously ill, and for the benefit 
 of his health she had given up her dismal lodgings 
 in London and taken a cottage near Kingston-on- 
 Thames.
 
 A Friend in Need. 171 
 
 " Come and be one of us and earn your own 
 living, " Mary wrote in a glow of enthusiasm. " We 
 have found a house and garden to be let for almost 
 nothing. The children are beside themselves with 
 delight. We shall be better oflF than usual, as they 
 have appointed me one of the editors of the Family 
 Magazine, in which I have to act Mother Confessor 
 to any number of young women of the shop-girl 
 class, telling them about everything from Rowland's 
 ^lacassar Oil to the choice of a suitable husband. 
 James is already better, and we only need you to 
 complete our family circle." 
 
 Zina was, as usual, rather angry with James, of 
 whom ^lary wrote with the tenderest pity. She had 
 always felt certain that if James could be induced 
 to be a little more active, his health would be im- 
 proved. But her sympathy for ^lary only made her 
 the more willing to fall into her scheme of attempt- 
 ing to support herself by her painting. The time 
 seemed to her very far off when she had pitied other
 
 172 A Waking. 
 
 women for being forced to earn their bread ; her 
 opinion had changed since she had known greater 
 hardships. People, on the whole, were very kind. 
 The old Canadian had written that, though he had 
 unfortunately failed in his project of giving the same 
 visual prominence to a single photograph which had 
 hitherto been confined to the stereoscope, he was 
 not without hope for his scheme about balloons, and 
 if Miss Newbolt would accept some employment 
 from him, he was now busied with a new invention 
 which would displace the telescope, and bring the 
 far-away worlds so near to our eyes that a coming 
 generation might be able to hold intercourse with 
 the inhabitants of Mars. 
 
 Zina smiled as she re-read the letter on her short 
 journey to the Carruthers. The flash and roar of 
 the train, the wild flowers still blooming in the 
 cuttings, the fresh green fields, the stately trees, 
 and the coming in contact with ordinary people at 
 the station were already giving a healthier tone to
 
 A Friend in Need. 173 
 
 her thoughts. The season of winter was compara- 
 tively near, for the trees were in their autumnal 
 tints, but it was a blessing and delight to breathe 
 the fresh air of heaven again. The scent of the 
 earth sprinkled with falling rain was cheering as 
 the sight of ]\Iary's face, wholesome and encoura- 
 ging, with no dismal talk about the past. IMary 
 was accompanied by the children, and they all 
 walked together from the station, picking their steps 
 amid little pools of rain reflecting the grey of the 
 clouds and the reds and russets of the decaying 
 foliage, like tiny fluttering lakes in the road. 
 
 "It must be so stupid for you to walk," said 
 ^lary, as she tripped carefully over some of the 
 poor little puddles, which were pretending that 
 they too were of the sky, " so hard when you have 
 always been accustomed to a carriage, and stupid 
 for you to come at this dull season — no folk come 
 to us at this time you know — and soon there will 
 be a prevalence of snow and flood. In summer
 
 174 ^ Waking. 
 
 there are water-parties, chance artists, and families 
 from London; and in summer too the fields near 
 us are rich with poppies, looking as if they were 
 sprinkled with blood. We hope to have sparkles 
 of gold from crocuses in the spring; we have laid 
 in a good stock to plant, in our garden." 
 
 She was prattling to cheer her friend, as she 
 would have prattled to a child, but Zina did not hear 
 her. Her eyes were wandering away to the mould 
 in the fields, on each side of the road, turned up 
 for tillage, of a colour which was refreshing, and 
 she was thinking that some such process of healthy 
 " turning-up " was taking place in her own life. 
 
 Xo greater help could have come to her than 
 Mary's unsuspiciousness, jMary's single-heartedness, 
 and her matter-of-fact acceptance of the law of 
 work for herself, and consequently for everyone 
 else. ]\Iary was too busy to think it odd for Zina 
 to wish to be left alone to think. AVithout some 
 such time for the healing processes of nature to go
 
 A Friend in Need. 
 
 /o 
 
 on unhindered, as Zina told herself in after life, she 
 might have gone mad, or worse still, she might 
 have petrified into the mere semblance of a living 
 woman. But everything seemed to help her in 
 this calm retreat, everything at first seemed to be 
 soothing to her nerves, from the tremor of air 
 occasionally agitating the few dry leaves left on a 
 poplar near her window to the stone-strewn rip- 
 pling stream which purled on towards the river, and 
 the beech twigs against the sky, and also beneath 
 her window, of a delicate hazel colour, shading 
 into a rich brown when the last leaves of all 
 hanging by their feeble petioles fell off and rot- 
 ted on the ground. Nothing was left then but the 
 needles of the firs standing out against the wintry 
 clouds. 
 
 " It was all the same to her, " as she said some- 
 times to herself, "whether the sky were blue or 
 whether it were grey," quoting in her despondency.
 
 176 ^ A Wakmg. 
 
 "The clouds that gather round the setting sun, 
 Do take a sober colouring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality," 
 
 Yet the retirement of that winter did everything 
 for Zina. She could perceive how it was owing 
 to her own excitability, and the mismanagement of 
 her own affairs that she had been nearly falUng on 
 the horns of such a dilemma. 
 
 She could remind herself not to cherish malice. 
 To remember was not to forgive — she would try 
 not to remember. 
 
 It was certainly amongst the middle-class good- 
 wives, whose joyless hard-working faces she 
 had at one time despised, that she was to learn 
 common-sense. Mary prided herself on belonging 
 to that class in society "who hve in mean little 
 plaster houses and have one flower-bed for a 
 garden." The garden in which the crocuses were 
 planted was certainly not much larger. But the 
 little woman was healthy-minded, affectionate, and
 
 A Friend in Need. 177 
 
 energetic as ever. She knew well enough that 
 till Zina came to this place of rest she could not 
 think out the thoughts which tormented her. She 
 was aware that her beautiful friend's mind was 
 filled with odds and ends and tangled speculations, 
 and that she suffered in trying to analyse her suf- 
 ferings, ^lary saw it, and did her best to aid her. 
 As a psychologist, all these processes interested 
 her; as a friend, they made her despair. 
 
 "I believe I might find an agent if you would 
 take to decorative work — it is much the most lucra- 
 tive, " she said, managing to plan an artist's room 
 for Zina, lighted by glasses so arranged as to cast 
 a sufficient light during the darkest days of winter. 
 "Your powers of brain and hand are a great deal 
 better than mine. You are a real artist, who may 
 expect to live by doing capital work; but I — my 
 career is amusing. What do you think of my coming 
 out as Lorna? That is my name in my correspond- 
 ence for the ' Family Sympathiser, ' " she continued, 
 
 12
 
 178 A Waking. 
 
 chattering on in a somewhat long--winded fashion 
 with the hope of turning Zina's thoughts. "Lorna 
 is a wonderful creature, who sharpens her httle 
 arrows of speech for those who deserve them, but 
 who is conscious of blundering when she means to 
 help. I assure you there are some pitiful tales poured 
 out to Lorna, and I had one girl the other day who 
 said she would have committed suicide if Lorna had 
 not helped her. Sometimes they write to me about 
 such funny things. One girl wrote to ask whether 
 I w^ould recommend her to sit for two hours a day 
 in a 'Nose Machine' as she had a dreadful 'turned- 
 up' nose (she spelt it 'turnip'); and another woman 
 wrote to consult me about a skin-stretcher, and some 
 new little irons which had been invented to iron 
 away the wrinkles. To the former I answered that 
 'tiptilted' noses had been glorified by one of our 
 first poets, and that the best connoisseurs of female 
 beauty would be horrified if 'nose machines' could 
 do away with the ncz retrousse ; to the latter that
 
 A Friend in Need. 179 
 
 wrinkles were beautiful; that not only did the 
 cleverest artists like them, but that as a matter of 
 taste, I myself should like to look properly old 
 when the time came. I said that there was some- 
 thing uncanny in always looking unwrinkled like 
 the fruit, which remains green and hard, and never 
 ^ows mellow. — That is all funny. — But some- 
 times, " she added with a sort of shudder, " they 
 write me private letters about terrible things — things 
 which I could not tell you. " 
 
 And Zina understood poor Mary's shudder; she 
 sympathised with her distaste for any knowledge of 
 corrupting things, any meddling with hectic complaints 
 — a distaste which was characteristic of the woman. 
 
 " It is not my fault, " added Mary quickly, " if I 
 could choose for my own girls, I would bring them 
 up in absolute innocence and ignorance. But some 
 folks say that is not wise. Anyhow there are a 
 good many people who grumble at poor Lorna, and 
 she cannot please them all. One correspondent
 
 i8o A Waking. 
 
 writes to say that we ought to use better paper for 
 our 'Sympathiser,' since it would come in so use- 
 fully for wrapping up parcels. Another scolds 
 because I do not have the paper softer, as it would 
 do for cleaning windows. One writes to beg me 
 to have more politics, as it is selfish for women to 
 keep to their own narrow interests ; and then another 
 says that politics are a mistake in the paper, and 
 that I ought to have a column for society gossip. 
 I always keep all this correspondence from worrying 
 my husband. Don't you notice how James abhors 
 the 'Family Sympathiser?'" 
 
 " Very ungrateful of James, " thought Zina, who 
 /z^^ noticed the look of sHght annoyance ontheex-pro- 
 fessors's face whenever that vulgar-looking journal 
 was mentioned in his presence. 
 
 James had the air of a martyr who could not help 
 feeling desolate in the circumscribed space in which 
 he seemed to find it difficult to breathe, and amid 
 the simple surroundings of the unpretending cottage,
 
 A Friend in Need. 
 
 I8l 
 
 with the dull britannia metal forks and spoons, 
 unbreakable plates and tumblers, small allowance of 
 candles, and the piece de resistance in the way of 
 a tough leg of mutton. The ivy-covered, plastered 
 walls were unquestionably in want of ventilation, 
 and the thatched roof was a mass of straw, in a 
 more or less rotten condition. To hear James talk, 
 you might have thought that the little dwelling to 
 which his wife had brought him was a very Pandora's 
 box of all the evils; and yet Mary had prepared a 
 special sanctum for him, with embroidered hangings, 
 in which he might take his siestas in peace, or pursue 
 his scientific and literary studies. Cards were 
 brought in for iMr. Carruthers' edification in the 
 evenings, and his wife seemed never to weary of the 
 eternal game of picquet, which she played to please 
 her husband. And yet there were times when Mary 
 had her depressed moods, though these never 
 betrayed themselves in irritable speech. 
 
 "Pot-boiling is always pot-boiling, " she would
 
 1 8 2 A Wakmg. 
 
 say, with a little laugh at her own expense; "but 
 what would you have? I have no literary connec- 
 tion, no big lions to call on me, and no fine house 
 to receive them in. — Would you think I was the sort 
 of person to produce 'shilling shockers' full of blood- 
 curdling delight? And I mustn't introduce fact — 
 people are scared at fact — you must dress it up 
 and make it look pretty. The real is too tragic 
 Why should I plod on with it, if there were not so 
 many little mouths to feed? As it is, I go on pro- 
 ducing, with confidence in my own mediocrity,, 
 knowing it to be just the mediocrity which pleases 
 the people. ]\Iy dear, I don't deceive myself — no 
 mysterious ways are revealed to nic, no new com- 
 binations. I trot on like a hack over the old beaten 
 paths, worn with the patient footprints of other 
 hacks before me, and such poor renown as I have 
 won, such scraps of knowledge as I have picked up 
 by the way — are worth nothing, nothing at all ! " 
 " If everyone were as useful in the world as you
 
 A Friend in Need. 183 
 
 are! " cried Zina, who had already poured out her 
 trouble to ^lary, exaggerating the gravity of the 
 case, and had received the best sort of sympathy, 
 which was a dose of common-sense. 
 
 " I should not plod on, " said Mrs. Carruthers, " if 
 we were not straitened in circumstances, but I am 
 not one of those who believe that the 'Lord will 
 provide, ' when ordinary human means have not 
 been tried to avert a disaster. That is nonsense. 
 We must do our best, and tlien we may ask for 
 help. It would be hard to have to fight the world 
 alone, " she added, with the unwonted tears coming 
 into her eyes, " even if I were supernaturally gifted ; 
 and you know that I never believe I am particu- 
 larly clever. Sometimes I am sad, and then — 
 
 'My critic Job son recommends more mirth, 
 . Because a cheerful genius suits the time.' 
 
 " They say they are going to form a society of critics 
 — perhaps that will help us. Who knows? If we
 
 184 ^ Wakmg. 
 
 could only look to someone whose criticism would 
 be a real criterion — a brevet-mark of merit — but 
 then you know with jnc that there must be the guinea 
 stamp as well ; and it is humiliating for me to have 
 only to think of what will sell," she added with a 
 very wry face. "But it is not worth being w^oe- 
 begone about — it is my own fault ^ — I have no pig- 
 ments with which to paint, like your absolute reds, 
 yellows, and blues, and I have no time to grind my 
 colours — half the mischief is a want of time." 
 
 Zina too was somewhat unwillingly taking her 
 part in all this pushing and struggling which was 
 so new a thing to women — this beating of restless 
 hands against a closed door — a door which now and 
 then opened to some of the more importunate but 
 could only admit a few. And every time it opened 
 some of those who pressed most closely to it fell 
 in the rush and scuffle beneath the feet of the more 
 successful, and were trodden down till the life was 
 crushed out of them ; whilst newcomers, undeterred
 
 A Friend in Need. 185 
 
 by the misfortune which had happened to their 
 neighbours, were continually swelling- the crowd — 
 the cruel crowd which, undismayed, trod corpses 
 under foot, and pressed on — ever on — in the terrible 
 warfare for fame and bread. And what was it, after 
 all, even if fame did come to them, a year or two, 
 and then the grave and the silence of oblivion. So 
 thought Zina while still haunted by the morbid 
 melancholy of past experiences. But day by day 
 she was growing stronger, and looked at things 
 with different eyes. 
 
 Her youth, and her good constitution had already 
 conquered, bringing her calm and refreshing sleep, 
 and it was now some time since she had lain sleep- 
 less through the hours of the nights in a wide- 
 eyed fatigue which compelled her to read to stifle 
 the thoughts chasing each other through her fevered 
 brain. She prided herself on the philosophy taught 
 by her father, and considered that it was her turn to 
 speak cheerily to the over-worked high priestess whose
 
 1 86 A Waking. 
 
 duty it was to minister to the bourgeoisie of virtue. 
 For it was not often that the brave little woman 
 allowed herself to wander into these helpless per- 
 sonal digressions. And Zina, who had been won- 
 derfully successful with her own decorative work, 
 looked at her for a minute without answering, the 
 catch in her friend's voice making her own throat 
 ache with sympathetic pain. Mary Carruthers sat 
 w^atching the fire burn itself out, and thinking how 
 often in her girlhood she had built fairy-tales as she 
 looked into the dying embers, and dreamt of success. 
 Life w^as not so much of a fairy-tale now, with her 
 big baby downstairs needing his luxuries, the little 
 ones upstairs clamouring for their numerous wants, 
 and the middle-class public which she had undertaken 
 to amuse, the biggest baby of all, and the most 
 imperative, calling, "Dance for me, pipe for me, 
 transport me into fairyland and make me forget 
 my worries." 
 
 " Do you think," she said, with a half-hysterical
 
 A Friend in Need. 187 
 
 laugh, " that I Hke having- to initiate people into 
 the mysteries of bone-boiling and bill-reducing? 
 Oh, how gladly would I be rich! It was not only 
 for my husband's sake that I came here, but because 
 I wanted to be revitahsed in some fresher air, instead 
 of being a mere cockney hack; but sometimes it 
 seems to me as if my scribbling is still a paltry 
 waste of time." 
 
 Zina tried in vain to remind her of her attempts 
 to remedy crying abuses, and to aid the weak in 
 their battle with the strong ; and said it was a good 
 thing to have had no part in the clever and corrupt- 
 ing books written by some af her sex. Mary only 
 shook her head. There was something comical in 
 the poor little woman trying to appraise her own 
 value coolly and critically — her place in the 19th 
 century compared to the ages which had preceded 
 it, her relativity even to the future, in which the race 
 and the appreciation of the true duties of woman- 
 hood would be more perfect — and saying, with a
 
 1 88 A Waking. 
 
 determined shake of her head, " I am outside the 
 ring of the people who are really worth anything, 
 and it is more or less a ring now, both in literature 
 and in art ; I am bound to turn out trash to please 
 my publishers; they say the public like it, and the 
 people at the bookstalls like it ; they must have that 
 sort of stuff — if / did not provide it somebody else 
 would. " 
 
 Meanwhile, Zina herself was no longer sitting in 
 listless indifference. Her want of will and want of 
 ner\^e-power had disappeared. Not content with 
 her decorative painting, she had taken again to the 
 studies which she had pursued in Rome — the only 
 difficulty being that Mary Carruthers had to furnish 
 her model for a saint. 
 
 Now, though it would have been difficult to find 
 a woman whose method of living was more con- 
 formable to the teaching of Christ, Mary Carruthers 
 did not make a good saint. You could not fancy 
 a saint who had once had piquant features and who was
 
 A Friend in Need, 189 
 
 now faded and pinched after a Aveary struggle 
 for bread. 
 
 " Saints must always have long noses and look down 
 on the ground; you couldn't fancy the beatings of their 
 hearts quickened one bit; you are quite sure from 
 the look of their faces that they have sluggish cir- 
 culations" said ]\Iary, dissatisfied when she caught a 
 glimpse of her own face. "Yet you paint in the 
 right way. The secret is to paint for the mere 
 love of one's art; as one would paint if one 
 were the only being in the world who had the 
 gift of sight, and as if a trembling took pos- 
 session of one till the thing which one saw was 
 recorded on canvas. You will make your mark in 
 the world."
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 "THE COMMON ROUND. 
 
 So the two women mutually comforted and encou- 
 raged each other. It was a case, as Zina said, of 
 "caw me and I'll caw thee/' though never was 
 there a truer illustration of George Eliot's words, 
 that "opinion" is a "poor cement" between human 
 souls. 
 
 Mary's exalted ideas had ceased to interest Zina, 
 who only thought of them as human fictions, valid 
 for mental states other than her own. And amongst 
 the bitter recollections, which lowered her when she 
 thought of them, w^as that of her hour of humiliation
 
 " The Covnnon Round. " i g i 
 
 when she had called on the dead to help her. No 
 savage, as she told herself, could have debased him- 
 self more absurdly. 
 
 "Oh! my dear, my dear," Mary had said to her 
 friend on her first arrival — "it is terrible to hear you 
 talk so. Anything rather than to allow yourself to 
 dwell on the mere material side of existence! I do 
 not need anyone to prove a future life to me. I 
 know it, " she cried, looking up with her clear eyes, 
 and a confident smile which from any other woman 
 would have seemed to Zina in her present mood 
 like irony. 
 
 But Mary dropped her voice, so fearful was she 
 of hurting by word of hers that sensitive great-eyed 
 creature of whom in her prosperous days, when she 
 came to her with outstretched hands, smiling face, 
 and beautifully dressed, she had conceived so great 
 an admiration, and of whom even now she stood 
 a little in awe. 
 
 "Dear Lord — help her in thine own good time —
 
 192 A Waking. 
 
 for I can do nothing, " prayed the elder woman. " Let 
 not the hardness of Thy creatures turn her against 
 Thee." 
 
 And when the blossoms re-appeared on the trees, 
 and the voice of the cuckoo was heard again in 
 the fields, a softening of the heart came to Zina. 
 Mary's optimism did not seem so strange to her at 
 that season of the year. 
 
 How could any painting, any music or any poetry 
 render the effect of the sap of the spring, the sense 
 of intoxicating life, the mystery of birth, the ravish- 
 ment of existence? What art could interpret the 
 tones of those exquisite greens, and those blossoms 
 on the trees which stooped to meet the blossoms 
 on the flowery meads? 
 
 The chestnut leaves were just unfolded from their 
 sticky buds, fully out, but limp and hanging verti- 
 cally as if wearied with the effort of birth ; the 
 foliage of the sycamore was emerging from dainty 
 sheaths, the pear and cherry trees were in bridal white,
 
 ** The Common Round.'" 193 
 
 the apple-blossom beginning to flush rosy red, and the 
 lilac deepening in colour before its clustered tassels 
 were shaken out — clusters so difficult to paint when 
 the beauty of a flower is made up of many sweet- 
 scented units. And besides all this the flute-like 
 notes of the blackbird and the merrier trill of the 
 chaffinch were beginning to make fresh revelry 
 round Mary's house. And Zina felt as if she might 
 be happy if she could only forget the past, and be 
 satisfied with the mediocrity of the family life around 
 her. For, after all, Mary's home zvas a little unsat- 
 isfying for one who yearned after the ideal. The 
 small troubles and worries of everyday life absorbed 
 Mrs. Carruthers as they absorb the majority of wives, 
 and there were days when Zina longed after some- 
 thing more cultured than even the Professor's 
 society. 
 
 She was hardly able to keep her temper when 
 she found that Mary's best seal-skin jacket had to 
 be cut up to make a fur-lined coat for the Professor, 
 
 13
 
 194 ^ Waking. 
 
 or that the old pedant was taking advantage of his 
 too-confiding wife, and threatening her with giving 
 up that effort of will which Schopenhauer had declared 
 to be necessary to life. 
 
 " If he were to cease to will ! " said Mary with 
 tears, whilst Zma answered irritably, 
 
 " Don't let us talk nonsense, I should like to 
 make a bonfire of the whole of that dismal philo- 
 sophy! The gospel of despair, and propounded by 
 a wretch who wore out the patience of his own 
 mother, and kicked the only other woman who was 
 good enough to tolerate him down the stairs. A 
 gospel ever so watery would be better than that ! " 
 
 She w^as determined to take no part in the attempt 
 to make out that life is worse than it was supposed 
 to be, and tried to shake herself out of a dull dis- 
 gust for which she told herself she had no excuse, 
 with the noisy and sometimes squabbling children 
 (was it their fault — did not all children squabble?) 
 and the selfish husband of whom Mary invariably
 
 "" The Common Roujid.'" 195 
 
 made the best. It was so good of her friend to 
 continue to offer her any asylum — that she, being 
 in the case of a beggar who had no right to be a 
 chooser — did not hke to acknowledge, even in her 
 most depressed moods, the dulness, induced by the 
 domestic interior, which occasionally came upon 
 her. 
 
 She had seldom joined in the cry of emanci- 
 pated women, but the Professor throned in state with 
 his family worshipping him excited her irony as well 
 as her laughter. Long afterwards she was vexed with 
 herself for attaching so much importance to the 
 small eccentricities caused by the weakness of his 
 health. He coughed when he wanted anything ; he 
 made cabalistic signs pointing to the door or to the 
 various articles of food, and it was understood that 
 his children were to interpret these signs. 
 
 Zina had her own private opinion that the state 
 of his health would have been better if the floors 
 had not been covered with cocoa-nut-matting or the
 
 196 A Wakmg. 
 
 doors supplied with india-rubber fastenings in defer- 
 ence to his acute nervous system. 
 
 Poor Mary was continually waging warfare with 
 her neighbours because a dog barked or a cock 
 crowed in a neighbouring garden. But when Mary's 
 children were relieved from the presence of their 
 father, they all talked together and clamoured for 
 the same things. 
 
 To the wife and mother it always seemed as if 
 her husband and children were perfect, but Zina 
 could not be expected to see them through such 
 rose-coloured glasses. 
 
 Why did James Carruthers always find such fault 
 with small things ? He looked picturesque enough- 
 with his Aaron beard, and long melancholy face, 
 but his constant complainings were like droppings 
 calculated to wear out a^ stone? And why were 
 the children, who had made such a picturesque group 
 w^th their mother — -when Zina had occasionally visited 
 them — so difficult to live with ? Why did they inter-
 
 "■The Com7non Round.'" 197 
 
 fere with one's palette and lose one's best brushes? 
 Why had they such loud unmusical voices, why did 
 the maid-of-all-work go about with a dirty face, 
 and why did Mary herself have sometimes ink on 
 her fingers? 
 
 Zina felt that Mrs. Camithers was braver and 
 stronger than herself, but for that very reason she 
 could scarcely expect her friend to sympathise with 
 her fastidious dislikes. 
 
 Mary's own troubles were rarely acknowledged, 
 or found the ready relief of tears. The drops were 
 easily brushed away, and she was brave again. 
 
 Thus it was that Zina could not help welcoming 
 a letter, kinder in tone than usual, which came from 
 Eva Capem, saying that she was suffering from 
 a nerve-breakdown owing to the fatigue of too 
 much dissipation, and that her London physician 
 had ordered her to travel and to cheer herself up as 
 well as she could with perpetual change of scene. 
 
 Her husband, who seemed to be always busied
 
 igS A Waking. 
 
 about money matters, had gone off to America to 
 see about some investment which caused him 
 anxiety. Eva wrote that she did not expect him back 
 till the autumn, and that perhaps it was all the better,, 
 as she was too knocked up to be a pleasant com- 
 panion to anyone. Yet as Mr. Capern could not 
 accompany her, she counted on Zina, and took it for 
 granted that she would not be so unamiable as to 
 desert her in the emergency. 
 
 " She used to be very difficult to deal with, but 
 she can have nothing more to do with pride now^ 
 situated as she is, " said Mrs. Capern to herself with 
 unconscious vulgarity, as she wrote her note. " She 
 is leading a make-shift sort of a life and must be 
 glad of the chance of a change from it. It is really 
 provoking to think how many good chances she 
 threw on one side, and now people reflect on mCy 
 as if / had thrown her off " 
 
 James Carruthers was just then weaker than 
 usual, and Zina, who had begun to fear that her
 
 " The Coimno7i Rou^id."" 199 
 
 protracted stay might be a drag upon her friends, 
 fell in with Eva's proposal, the more so that Mary 
 urgently recommended it, declaring that a visit to 
 the Riviera, Italy, and afterwards to Switzerland — 
 for that was Mrs. Capern's programme — would be 
 the very thing for Zina. 
 
 Eva received her somewhat coldly, though she had 
 written gushingly, and Zina, who had intended to 
 take up the acquaintance just as she had left it 
 in her father's lifetime, suddenly "dried up," as 
 Mary's boys would have said, at the reception 
 which was unexpected, and evidently intended to 
 put her in a new position. 
 
 " Your appearance is more presentable than could 
 have been expected, considering how you have been 
 hiding yourself," said Eva with a shrug; "but you 
 must not refuse to let me give you some new 
 dresses — and you really want a little feeding up; 
 you'll soon be diaphanous at this rate ; you look as 
 if you could cast no shadow." Eva herself w^as by
 
 2 00 A Wakmg. 
 
 no means diaphanous in spite of her "nerve-break- 
 down," and her hair seemed to have grown yel- 
 lower, and her cheeks a little pinker. 
 
 Zina declined the offer of the dresses, wondering 
 somewhat cynically what the hidden motive could 
 be which made Eva long for her company. Pos- 
 sibly it was to provide herself with an effective 
 foil in beauty of a darker and severer, as well as a 
 thinner type, possibly to furnish her with an oppor- 
 tunity for patronising. It never occurred to Zina 
 to reflect that, whatever her antecedents might be, 
 her appearance was eminently respectable, and that 
 she, at least, would not need rose-coloured blinds 
 for the windows of her sitting-room, in the hotels 
 in which Mrs. Capem would want her for a com- 
 panion, whilst her respectability might give a touch 
 of decorum to Eva's follies. 
 
 Mrs. Capem's laugh was strange and false, as she 
 said, " You cannot possibly go on supporting your- 
 self by this miserable painting. We must find you
 
 ""The Co??i7?ion Roimd/' 201 
 
 a husband — an eligible parson, you know — to make 
 the best of both worlds. Oh, I forgot, your father 
 did not believe in that sort of thing, and neither 
 did you ; but of course you will keep that to your- 
 self when we travel. It would not sound well, and 
 I have always thought there must be a sense of 
 security in having a clergyman-husband to get one 
 out of any difficulties, and pave one's way to heaven." 
 Zina's eyes flashed, but she had learnt from Mary 
 to be tolerant. Xor did she need to subject herself 
 to much of this sort of talk. If she were to accept 
 Eva's offer, and find her panacea in travelling — 
 tr}dng to patch up the strength which had certainly 
 been impaired — she knew well enough that it would 
 not do for her to be thin-skinned. But she was 
 obstinately determined to accept no presents from 
 Eva, and even insisted on taking her old valise with 
 its ragged, worn-out leather, gaping at the sides, the 
 only box she had left for herself after the sale of 
 her father's furniture. She preferred to travel as
 
 202 A Waking. 
 
 the poor dependant, if she were to travel at all. 
 Eva had to comfort herself with the fact that the 
 hand baggage was more presentable — the cloaks, 
 and umbrellas being covered with a wrapper which 
 Zina had embroidered herself. The latter had to 
 cure herself of the habit of being easily jarred. And 
 though there was that in Mrs. Capem's manner 
 which reminded her of the fact that she was one of 
 the disinherited, driven out as an exile from a 
 luxurious home — a recollection which she had lost 
 at the Carruthers' house, where there had been 
 nothing to remind her of it — she was conscious of 
 being glad to avail herself of the change. It gave 
 her almost a feeling of ingratitude to Mary to 
 acknowledge that she was glad, even when she had 
 to wait upon the soi-disa7it invalid with her wraps 
 and cushions on the Calais boat, where the sea — not 
 monotonous in tint as some of our seascapes 
 represent it, but changeful as the wind and flying 
 cloud above it — brought light to her eye and colour
 
 " The Common Round.'' 203 
 
 to her cheek. She began already to feel a different 
 woman when, as Mrs. Capem's companion, she drove 
 through the thronged Boulevards. 
 
 In the old days she had not been partial to Paris, 
 which had seemed to her like the great bustling 
 mart of the world, but now she saw it with different 
 eyes. The crowd of well-dressed people was amus- 
 ing, and even the shop fronts were exciting.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE ANDREA DEL SARTO. 
 
 Long years had passed since Zina had travelled, 
 as quite a young girl, and had taken her lessons 
 in painting at a studio in Rome, and she was 
 astonished to find how little the years had changed 
 her. There were the same quick pulsations of her 
 heart, the same excitement of her lively brain, the 
 same sense of exhilaration in the presence of some- 
 thing new, though she had told herself that she 
 could never feel in the same way again. The thrill 
 of wonder was still as great as when she had looked 
 forward to her coming life. For she was still young
 
 The Andrea del Sarto. 205 
 
 enough to be the victim of moods ; too young to 
 be world-weary ; and too energetic to be tired of the 
 Ufe which she beheved to be her only one, looking 
 into the future with many a pang of doubt. There 
 is nothing so mercurial as this sense of youth, which 
 is not, after all, so much a matter of age as it is 
 dependent on keeping the links between man and 
 nature unsevered. 
 
 Zina was acutely alive to all those manifestations 
 of nature which affect our senses and stir our 
 blood. And as she passed w^ith Mrs. Capem along 
 that wonderful fringe of coast, which lies basking 
 like a flower-bed between the mountains and the 
 tideless sea, with the air clear, and the sun bright 
 — the land of pine-forests, of aloes, and of palms, 
 with the deciduous vegetation beginning to stir into 
 green — she seemed to hear Goethe's words, " Children, 
 turn back to Life ; let the fresh air dry your tears ! " 
 She no longer looked back with morbid self-reproach 
 upon the scenes connected with her father's death-
 
 2o6 A Waking. 
 
 bed ; her common-sense laughing to scorn the nervous 
 fancies caused by over-fatigue and her conscience 
 reminding her that her motives had been blameless. 
 And she no longer allowed herself to regret the 
 defection of Stephen Dewe; that he suspected her 
 was proof enough that he had not been worthy of her. 
 She congratulated herself on the fact that Eva 
 Capem's illness did not interfere with the rapidity 
 of her travelling. Cannes, Nice, Mentone, Monte 
 Carlo, San Remo — all were visited in turns ; then 
 Eva was still restless, hurr^dng on past the INIari- 
 time Alps to Florence and Venice. All was delight- 
 ful to Zina ; nothing came amiss, not even the less 
 comfortable bedroom which sometimes fell to her 
 share, after Mrs. Capem and her maid had been 
 housed — with red-bricked floor, cold to the feet, and 
 representations of pert little Cupids on the roughly- 
 painted ceilings, or a brazier of coal for a fire. The 
 wooded mountains, the tall campaniles, the olives 
 with their silvery underleaves, the oleanders, the
 
 The Andrea del Sarto. 207 
 
 orange-trees with their golden fruit, and even the 
 melancholy cypresses, all sang the same song, 
 *' Children, turn back to Life ! " The enthusiasm 
 handed down since Sappho sang the divine wood- 
 song that " Hesiodand Homer heard, " seemed to inspire 
 her heart and carry her back to the old simple times. 
 Everything was fresh and new; the little houses 
 which looked like cardboard decorations, the oxen 
 such as the ancients bred, the women with their 
 distaffs — too utterly foolish and behind the times, 
 but idyUic with rural life ; the bees murmuring from 
 the thymey hills ; the boys and girls singing anti- 
 phonal songs, as they drove their mules into the 
 vineyards, munching figs and bread ; the old-fashion- 
 ed agricultural instruments instead of modern 
 steam improvements; the scythes, which needed 
 sharpening and yet glittered like children's toys ; 
 and all these simple-hearted people, sleek and merry 
 enough to upset the theories of modern political 
 economists.
 
 2o8 A Wakmg. 
 
 "The great thing is to be healthy both in mind 
 and body, " she wrote to iMary. " No doubt you 
 will be vexed with me, but more than ever I aih 
 inclined to envy the ancient Greeks, whose very 
 reHgion was a joyous one, and well free from the 
 tormenting maladies of cynicism and disillusion/ 
 
 Leaving the villages and reaching the cities seemed 
 almost like returning to the evils of our more com- 
 plicated civilisation; but here again were the old- 
 world associations — the cathedrals with deep blood- 
 stained glass, the sweet marble faces, spared by 
 the iconoclasts, sleeping unmolested through the 
 ages, with a wealth of gilding and fioritura even 
 on the tombs. Zina had been familiar years before 
 with the pictures and statuary of Florence, but 
 whenever she could creep away from Mrs. Capem, 
 who was somewhat exigeante, she would hug herself 
 into delicious forgetfulness of all past vexations, 
 feeling how^ small and how fanciful had been many 
 of her morbid tremors, in the presence of the Raphaels
 
 The Andrea del Sarto. 209 
 
 the Titians, the Murillos, the BotticelHs, and the 
 Ghirlandajos. 
 
 There are periods of spiritual convalescence after 
 some of the fevers of life, which are as delicious in 
 their way as physical convalescence. And Zina was 
 recovering, slowly, tranquilly, dreamily, yet delight- 
 ftilly in these restful hours of liberty. 
 
 It was easy to gain time for such liberty before 
 Eva had left her bedroom, for Eva's toilette mys- 
 teries were becoming more and more elaborate. 
 Thus it happened one morning that, seated amongst 
 the art treasures in the Tribune of the Uffizi, after 
 satiating herself with beauty, she began to look 
 round at her fellow-creatures. For if the infinite 
 variety of nature had attracted her on her travels, 
 the uncertainty and unconventionality of life had 
 also attracted her — the people coming and going 
 one knew not whence or whither and the tahle- 
 d'hotes frequented by types of every nation. 
 
 It was her habit to sit and watch the living pict- 
 
 14
 
 2IO A lVah'770: 
 
 s- 
 
 ures as well as the painted ones for hours, paying 
 them the subtle compliment of appreciative silence. 
 
 These shifting scenes impressed her imagination 
 and amused her. Since she had lived with Mary 
 Carruthers she had become interested in character- 
 isation, that imaginative faculty in the observer 
 which enables him to use the physical as the index 
 of the spiritual. " The question is how a thing or 
 a person strikes you," as she used to say to Mary 
 when she tried to coax her out of her despondent 
 moods. " You may not be able, hke George Meredith, 
 for instance, to crystallise the analysis in an image, 
 but you can at least tell how it struck you, yoti 
 individually ; and first impressions are generally the 
 truest ones." 
 
 Reading and painting after all were not like living 
 human beings, and though her first thought in the 
 mornings for some time past had been, " Oh, to be out 
 and alone with power to draw fresh breaths and look 
 at beautiful things for oneself, " yet there were times
 
 The Andrea del Sarto. 211 
 
 when she was conscious of a strange new longing 
 for a warmth of contact with some real human soul. 
 
 It was not Eva's fault that she could not unbosom 
 herself to /ler — Eva who chiefly lived to be the 
 cynosure of all eyes, and Avho formed for herself 
 an amusing sort of mental and unreal atmosphere 
 like the heavy odour of patchouli which she always 
 left behind her. She took Eva as she was and 
 never thought of blaming her now. 
 
 The Tribune was very full just then. There was 
 the usual gathering of British matrons with their 
 comfortable husbands; of English girls and boys, 
 most of them well-dressed, with good complexions 
 and good teeth, and thinking quite as much about 
 themselves as the pictures; of piqiiantes French- 
 Avomen, good-natured Dutch, stolid Germans, bright- 
 eyed Italians, and there was a group of other men 
 and women whom she found it difficult to label, as 
 they dressed like the French, looked pleased like 
 the Dutch, and had something of the self-sufficiency
 
 2 12 A Waking. 
 
 of the English, while they talked each language 
 equally well; probably they were Russians. But 
 just as Zina was deciding this knotty point, and 
 thinking how she, of all persons, should make 
 friends with the Russians, whose acquaintance she 
 had only made through Tolstoi's books, and won- 
 dering whether she should ever know whether her 
 mother had been a Pole or a Russian, she was 
 startled by finding a pair of dark scrutinising eyes 
 fixed upon hers. The eyes, which belonged to a man 
 of striking appearance, apparently about thirty-five 
 years old, were very dark, corresponding with the 
 hair, which was also dark, but already touched with 
 grey. The figure was distinguished-looking, though 
 it was only of middle height, its erect bearing, as 
 well as the sunburnt complexion, conveying the 
 idea of one who was a practised athlete, and had 
 led an active life. But it was the expression of 
 the penetrating eyes which made Zina feel uncom- 
 fortable. Something seemed to pass from them to
 
 The Andrea del Sarto. 213 
 
 her, and she immediately changed her seat, saying 
 to herself, ner\^ously, " I wish people would not 
 stare; it is one thing to make observations quietly 
 as I do, and quite another to stare." 
 
 By the time she had changed her seat the stranger 
 was no longer gazing at her. His eyes were 
 fixed on the Andrea del Sarto, and then once more, 
 as if unintentionally, he looked back at Zina. 
 
 This time she rose and went quickly out of the 
 room, mentally accusing the man of rudeness. For 
 there was no one to tell her that there was a won- 
 derful resemblance between her own face and that 
 of the Virgin in Andrea's celebrated group. In 
 breadth of brow and the size and shape of the 
 eyes, if the colouring was not exactly the same, 
 and even in the very curves of the lips and set 
 of the head, there was a likeness not to be mis- 
 taken, A likeness, and yet a difference, for instead 
 of the peace in the countenance of the Virgin, there 
 was a peculiar, undefinable expression in Zina's face
 
 2 14 ^ Waking. 
 
 which seemed to separate her from other people as 
 if she had suffered something which does not happen 
 to ordinary women. There was a shade in the eyes, 
 a droop of the Hps, and a proud dignity of the 
 whole bearing which gave her what her friends 
 called her " Sphinx-like look. " A man who saw her 
 for the first time was likely to be startled by this 
 unexpected expression. There was something about 
 Zina which continually roused curiosity. But polite- 
 ness generally kept curiosity within bounds, and 
 Zina resented it angrily when she reached the door 
 of the building, and found thatby the time she had 
 been given her umbrella, and stood in the open air, 
 she was face to face with this stranger. He lifted 
 his hat as if in apology and walked in a contrary 
 direction, but not before his eyes had again sought 
 hers with the same intentness which startled her 
 before, and she had time to notice that in the full 
 light they were not only dark but of a deep blue 
 which was unusual.
 
 The Andrea del Sarto. 215 
 
 She was annoyed by the episode, but did not 
 think of mentioning it to Eva^ whose jokes on such 
 subjects were amongst the drawbacks of her tour. 
 
 " He looked at me intently, I suppose, because he is 
 an artist — artists and doctors have a way of looking 
 at people as if they were lay-figures and one woman 
 was as good as another — we are all possible models ; 
 / ought to know that," she said to herself as she 
 made her way back to her hotel. 
 
 The affair would have been dismissed quietly 
 from her memory, had she not encountered the same 
 gaze a few days afterwards, when at Venice she 
 was floating in a gondola down the Grand Canal 
 past the Church of St, IMaria della Salute, to the 
 steps of St. Mark's. She was in the height of her 
 enjoyment in fairy-like Venice, watching the silvery 
 stars come out over the Moorish towers, when the 
 opaline tints had faded and gleams from lighted 
 windows streamed down on the rippling waves, when 
 suddenly she became aware that another gondola
 
 2 1 6 A Wakmp-. 
 
 S' 
 
 was slipping along ghost-like by the side of their 
 own, and was startled from her dream on the bosom 
 of the shadowy waters by recognising the same eyes 
 once more as earnestly fixed on her own. 
 
 "Who is ^/laff What a handsome man!" ex- 
 claimed Eva, who, in one of her prettiest toilettes, 
 was reclining on the cushions in her wax-like beauty. 
 She was in a position of perfect ease, silent and 
 almost somnolent with the dolce far niejitc which 
 suited her so well, listening to the music on the 
 canal, where contadini were chanting their ditties 
 in gondolas gaily lit with lamps ; but she started up 
 as she asked the question " Did you meet him in 
 London ? " with more interest than she had yet shewn 
 in all the architectural glories of the old-world city. 
 
 Zina responded faintly, shaking her head and 
 shrugging her shoulders. She had never any thought 
 of making a confidante of her chaperon, but some- 
 how she felt uncomfortable at the idea that the 
 stranger might possibly be following them, unable
 
 The Andrea del Sarfo. 217 
 
 to resist the impression which impelled him onwards. 
 
 "I never heard his name, but I believe he was 
 in Florence when we Avere there/' she answered, 
 telling all that she could tell. And even that little 
 was drowned in the echo of a chorus, which float- 
 ing past them with the gleam of coloured lamps 
 from another gondola, jarred on Eva's nerves. 
 
 " They sing too loud, and they are awfully, hor- 
 ribly out of time," she cried putting her hands to 
 her pretty ears, as the barcarole of another set of 
 lazy rowers who were rowing away in the distance 
 clashed with the chorus. Had it not been for her 
 languor she would have preferred the Piazza of vSan 
 Marco with its cafes and colonnades, its brilliant 
 shop-fronts, its ices and its chocolates. 
 
 And she forgot to ply her companion with any 
 more questions as they in their turn floated out on 
 the liquid plain of water in the direction of the Lido, 
 where the light was still clear enough for them to see 
 the distant gray lagunes with trembling mysterious 
 
 14'^
 
 2i8 A Wakmg. 
 
 shadows, the brilliancy of the stars, and the lanterns 
 glittering in the gondolas. 
 
 " Perhaps he found out our names at Florence, 
 and it would be very easy to track us to Venice," 
 Zina could not help thinking, though she tried to 
 dismiss the subject from her thoughts, and to take 
 the same interest as before in the beautiful queen- 
 like city which once had been mistress of the seas. 
 " Perhaps, after all, he is not an artist, but some 
 unhappy creature who has never yet seen his ideal, 
 and is never likely to see it."
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A MEETING AT S.\AS-FEE. 
 
 It was a month afterwards. Eva Capern and 
 Zina Newbolt had found their way to the Swiss 
 mountains. There seemed to be no better place of 
 refuge during the warm months, and though Mrs. 
 Capern spoke scornfully of these days of "circular 
 tickets " when one might have to sit next to vulgar 
 nobodies at tabic dliotes, she made a virtue of 
 necessity. 
 
 Zina had no possible objection. The past had 
 now quite ceased to be a burden on her memory ; 
 she could look back upon it more than ever without
 
 2 20 A Waking. 
 
 self-reproach, eind could even laugh at herself for 
 the morbid hours in her life when the veil had 
 seemed to be lifted from the face of Destiny, revealing 
 the stem spectre of Despair. 
 
 The life in her was so intense that it seemed 
 almost ridiculous for her to recollect how she had 
 once wished to ^xv^it ■aW.^'C^v^ Lchens-Gluckseligkeit, 
 as the Germans call it, had returned to her in such 
 full force. And she had become so accustomed to 
 wandering that she could make herself at home in 
 almost every hotel, adorning her own little box of 
 a bedroom with her photographs in plush frames, 
 her sketches of the scenery^ her pieces of artistic 
 needlework, and her dictionaries and books in 
 different languages. Many of these things had been 
 given to her by Eva, but it was characteristic of 
 her altered mood that she no longer resented Eva's 
 desire to patronise her, or to give her cheap presents. 
 For even ]\Irs. Capern and her ways had become 
 more tolerable to her, as she learned by degrees
 
 A Meeting at Saas-Fee. 221 
 
 to forget her surroundings, and to adapt herself to 
 the more ordinary phases of hfe. 
 
 And once more, at a table-d' hote at Saas-Fee, 
 when she was joining in the ordinary hght chatter 
 of the dinner-table, tackling in German a bearded 
 individual who sat next to her, she became con- 
 scious that the same man whom she had met at 
 Venice and Florence w^as sitting opposite to her 
 and gazing admiringly at her beautifully cut features. 
 The glance was respectful; there w^as nothing to 
 resent in it ; for he, too, was making feeble attempts 
 at conversation with a German ^Marguerite with long 
 straws-coloured tails of hair, w^ho sat on his right hand — 
 one of a row of schoolgirls who had come up for a 
 few days from Lausanne, and whose mistress, in a 
 stiff black dress, was seated at the end of the table. 
 
 She could sympathise with him in these efforts, 
 for she always tried to make friends with the people 
 of different nations, now that she no longer felt like 
 an inhabitant of some distant planet come newly to
 
 22 2 A Waking. 
 
 this Earth, whose time was short, and who was 
 breathlessly studying everything. 
 
 There were some of the usual //(7;<^//?^eV of a Swiss 
 Hotel, though the season was only beginning. 
 
 There were typical Englishmen of the climbing 
 sort at the crowded dinner- table : young men who 
 were clear-skinned, clean-limbed, and bright-eyed, 
 with an air of independence which proclaimed them 
 equally at home in all parts of the world. But the 
 new comer was not a typical Englishman. He never 
 relapsed into the cold and reserved islander, but 
 addressed the people around him apparently with 
 equal indifference, drawing one after another into 
 conversation — Zina amongst the rest, leaving her 
 no excuse for not answering him with that dignity 
 and repose of manner and that perfect self-possession 
 which had been characteristic of her in her best 
 days. 
 
 She could not know that he was like a billiard-player, 
 who by long practice and skilfulness of hand could
 
 A Meeting at Saas-Fe'e. 22^ 
 
 calculate the exact angle at which his ball would 
 rebound, and that all the world was a sort of billiard-ta- 
 ble on which he liked to play ; nor that while it pleased 
 him to pass for a man of culture, he was capricious, 
 fanciful, and even a little disdainful, expecting women 
 to like him the better for his cynicism. 
 
 " What a goose I was to imagine that Mr. Layton 
 stared at me more than other people ! Probably 
 what happened at Florence was purely accidental," 
 she said to herself after a day or two, during which 
 time George Layton had managed to secure the 
 seat which was next to her at the tadle-d7/ote, and 
 she had taken him into confidence about a good 
 many of their fellow creatures who afforded her amuse- 
 ment. Such, for instance, as the Dutchman who 
 made his bow as if pulled by strings like the card- 
 board dolls they sell at fancy bazaars, or the dear 
 good English matrons with stiff erections on their 
 heads which they dignified by the name of caps, 
 but which invariably made the foreign ladies shrug
 
 2 24 ^ Waking. 
 
 their shoulders and whisper " Voila V Anglais e,'' when 
 one of them entered the room. 
 
 " There are various types amongst EngUshwomen, " 
 he said sententiously, not thinking it necessary to 
 explain that just now he was spending a good deal 
 of his time in trying to analyse the harmonious 
 impression which the mere appearance of this uncon- 
 ventional countrywoman of his had left on his imagin- 
 ation. Had he done so it is possible that she 
 would have explained she was not entirely of 
 English blood. For he understood the art of drawing 
 people out, with a perception which was more lively, 
 owing to the habits of travel, than it generally is 
 under the murkiness of English skies, and he knew 
 the stimulating influence of the friction of mind with 
 mind. Thus it happened that in the course of a day 
 or two — during which Eva had not been idle, but 
 had found out that Mr. Lay ton was not only a large 
 landed proprietor in England, but was connected 
 "with some of the best people"— George Lay ton
 
 A Mcfti'jig at Saas-Fec. 22^ 
 
 had also made his inquiries. He had not only discov- 
 ered that ]\Iiss Xewbolt had suffered, and that there 
 were times when her voice had a tremor of pain in 
 it still, but that she stood so very much alone in 
 the world, that the gay little woman who patronised 
 her and gave herself airs about her, would be glad 
 to see her happily married, if it were only to free 
 her conscience from any feeling of responsibilit}'. 
 The little chaperon, who was ready to flirt with 
 anyone, was of a type as nauseous as it was 
 familiar to George Layton. He hated her seductive 
 smiles as he hated her style of dress, which was too 
 showy for the mountains. He despised her artifici- 
 ality as he despised her shallow pretensions to an 
 intellect she did not possess. In the " set " in which 
 he had mixed from early manhood, women more or 
 less like ^Irs. Capern were as common as blackber- 
 ries in September. He invited them, he made much 
 of them, and talked against them, behind their backs, 
 iiut there was an absence of filigree about the other 
 
 15
 
 2 26 A IVakiiig. 
 
 woman, and she held him in conversation, uncon- 
 sciously expectant of what she would say next. Her 
 efforts to elude him piqued his vanity. For she still 
 pursued her study of painting, escaping from other 
 people whenever the cxigeantc Eva would allow 
 her to do so, and making no secret of the fact that 
 she would probably be dependent on this art for 
 getting her bread. 
 
 Zina had been accustomed to climb the easier 
 ascents, hampered a little by her palette and paint- 
 box, in search of picturesque chalets and sunset 
 effects. And it seemed to be one of the curiously 
 fortuitous circumstances connected with her con- 
 stant meetings with Mr. Layton, from the very 
 time she had first come across him in Florence, that 
 he too should be one day climbing up to these 
 picturesque chalets just as she was putting the last 
 touches to her work. She had long ceased to attri- 
 bute these meetings to anything but the purest 
 accident, and only laughed as she stretched out
 
 A Electing at Saas-Fcc. 22-j 
 
 her stiff fingers, cramped from the long use of the 
 brush, to which she had been so Uttle accustomed 
 during the freedom of the last few months. It was 
 a long, low laugh, very pleasant to his ears. F'or, 
 as she told him, she liked painting in the open air. 
 It was so different from the foggy days when her 
 brain had often been weary, and when, in spite of 
 Mar\''s encouraging criticisms, she had so often 
 felt as if the realisation were sadly different from 
 her first idea. 
 
 " I suppose it was hereditary laziness. I had been 
 brought up to do nothing, but I used often to feel in 
 England as if I could throw paints and brushes into 
 the fire. " 
 
 "Women are easily tempted to give up; owing no 
 doubt to the want of education which for centuries 
 retarded their evolution, " he answered. 
 
 No one could have detected the slight inflection, 
 almost amounting to irony, in the voice, or the senti- 
 ment, kept to himself, that women were now being
 
 2 2 8 A Wakt7tg. 
 
 over-educated, but that the social vanity and the 
 pettiness of the sex would make it impossible for 
 them ever to do much. He smiled at Zina, as he 
 gathered up her sketching materials and offered to 
 carry them home for her, with a smile which, if it 
 had been properly interpreted, would have said that 
 if she expected to succeed she would be overrating 
 herself very much, but that to discourage her 
 would be analogous to crushing a butterfly. He need 
 not have been afraid. She was weary of flattery, 
 and rather liked the trenchant way in which he spoke. 
 
 " Hemmed in — circumscribed — with the forces of 
 nature against us — what can most of us do?" he 
 said, looking round at the mountains; "it is to the 
 incapable that things seem easy. The incapable 
 like the sham picturesque, the weakly and washily 
 pretty, and hate the work which is not recognised,, 
 the labour which never shews. " 
 
 After that they had a good deal of talk about 
 Turner, Cox, Stanfield, and De Wint; the amateur
 
 A Meeting at Saas-Fce. zzq 
 
 photographers who soiled their fingers with chemi^ 
 cals and so seldom produced anything like a 
 landscape after all, because photography could not 
 bring mind to bear upon nature, and the weak daubs 
 which were so constantly exhibited in public 
 picture-galleries. And though her new friend's 
 passion for criticism seemed to Zina carried to an 
 extreme, so that he was always able to narcotise 
 himself with this criticism, she did not guess 
 that in his secret heart he thought such talk more 
 or less "drivel." It was not his way to be ex- 
 pansive with women ; he preferred to play with them, 
 and, if possible, to " take the lead " with them. 
 
 Yet Zina was a new experience to him. He scarce- 
 ly knew whether to take her seriously or not, when 
 she said, looking at him with the clear eyes which 
 made many people lower their own, 
 
 " It is worth painting a little if only with the 
 hope of learning to see; the majority lose so much. 
 But the worst of it is I never can express the quarter
 
 230 A Waking. 
 
 of what I see. And wh.it is the use of seeing or 
 heairing things unspeakable when you are dumb Hke 
 the old Jewish priest, directly you want to share 
 your visions with anyone else. My best efforts are 
 always like stammering speech." 
 
 " It depends upon whether the emotion is genuine, 
 as it seems to be with \o:i. — or whether one 
 has to get the thing up. I am not an enthusiast,'* 
 he answered somewhat lamely. He was puzzled 
 and at the same time amused. There was an intel- 
 lectual force about her which, though it might have 
 repelled him under other circumstances, gave 
 piquancy to his pursuit of her. It was real and unaf- 
 fected. Her youth had been passed amid the " snows 
 of science, " she had seen a little of the world, and 
 had been disenchanted like himself with its pettiness. 
 She often despised what other women admired. 
 
 He w^as much inclined to laugh in his secret heart 
 when she stood drawing deep breaths as she looked 
 at the landscape, and when she confided to him
 
 A Meeting at Saas-Fee. 231 
 
 that it hurt her to hear the silly remarks made by 
 the majority of people at the sight of beautiful 
 scenery — and how the " ]Vu7iderscJion f so con- 
 stantly repeated in varying keys by the Germans 
 began to jar on her. It seemed to her only pos- 
 sible to enjoy in silence or in the presence of some 
 sympathetic person, who could stand still and speechless 
 like herself, thrilled by the same emotion. He took 
 care to act the part of that sympathetic person, 
 discussing with her the mystery of that great earth- 
 movement which had called these mountains into 
 existence, the dislocations, and the metamorphism 
 of original structure. He tried to irnpress her by 
 talking very learnedly about these geological 
 mysteries, but he found that she knew more about 
 the earth-crust than he did. 
 
 " She makes no pretensions, but, properly trained, 
 she would be the Xinon of Intelligence," he said, 
 a little satirically, quoting Balzac. And yet his 
 intercourse with her had all the charm of a voyage
 
 232 A Waking. 
 
 of discovery, for he was continually finding out 
 new powers in her which others had not detected. 
 Owing to her father's prejudices, she had never been 
 taught to sing; and yet once, when he ventured 
 out to meet her in the woods, he had been attracted 
 by a song which seemed to him one of touching 
 beauty. The singer was coming nearer to him, the 
 trees still hid her ; but her voice was growing louder, 
 and, though it was untrained, it was true and sweet, 
 soaring like a lark in the upper notes, with the 
 possibility of a rich timbre in the lower ones. 
 
 " You did not tell me you were musical ! " he 
 said, feeling like another Columbus as he saun- 
 tered up to her, and relieved her of the sketching 
 materials which he often carried home for her now. 
 
 And then he was a good deal surprised at the 
 sudden cloud which came over her brow. " Do not 
 accuse me of being musical, " she answered. " I used to 
 think of music as something that could awaken 
 grand and generous impulses, and make one feel
 
 A Meeting at Saas-Fee. 
 
 nobler, stronger, better. But I was mistaken. Xero 
 loved music. ]\[y father was rig-ht. He would never 
 have me taught music; he distrusted musical people." 
 It was these sudden changes of manner, this sense 
 of mystery- about her, making him feel as if he were 
 coming in contact with an unmapped country, which 
 enhanced her fascination. Her very footfall was 
 characteristic — firm as well as light — dignified and 
 yet quick — with an unconscious grace of movement, 
 unlike that of other women. And these changes 
 in her expressive face, from the softness of Andrea 
 del Sarto's Virgin to the grand and severe outlines 
 which it could assume in repose — suggesting the 
 transition period between the sculpture of Egypt 
 and the more delicate outlines of Phidias — equally 
 attracted him. He, who enjoyed his directing power 
 as a man, wished to have the moulding of this 
 enigmatical creature, whose simple dress was the 
 expression of herself, var^'ingfrom day to day, and whose 
 features, when they suddenly softened with a glow
 
 234 ^'^ Waking. 
 
 on her cheeks, had even a greater charm than when 
 she stood, as she did now, with her head thrown a 
 Uttle back, and something powerful but almost cold in 
 its outlines, as she cried, " I distrust musical people." 
 
 " Then thank Heaven I am not musical, " he said 
 in his secret heart. For the longing to win her had 
 become wild and irresistible, and he was a man 
 who had never been used to control his desires. 
 
 Her first intuition had been correct ; he had tracked 
 her from Florence to Venice, and from Venice,, 
 later on, to Saas-Fee, and — though he had not 
 thought it wise to force his society on her at once, 
 and had scarcely liked to acknowledge even to 
 himself how he had run the woman to earth — he 
 had managed to acquaint himself with all her move- 
 ments, and had lived for no other purpose since 
 the day he first saw her. 
 
 He had known so many w^omen that his taste 
 had become jaded; he had thought himself acquainted 
 with every conceivable type ; but now he had found
 
 A Meeting at Saas-Fee. 235 
 
 out for the first time that his ideal woman must be 
 strong as well as agile and graceful; with her heart 
 and intellect in unison ; cheerful as well as melan- 
 choly, as the mood took her — one of Zina's greatest 
 charms consisting in these varying moods. 
 
 Zina had suspected nothing of all this herself; 
 but Mrs. Capern had divined it, and was ready 
 enough to play into George Layton's hands. 
 
 It was too evident that she did not wish to 
 be saddled with the care of Zina long, and her 
 openly avowed desire to get her well married had 
 at former times been far from flattering, yet on 
 this occasion she managed her cards as skilfully as 
 Mr. Layton. 
 
 " Nothing, " as she sometimes said to her intimate 
 friends, " can be so gauche as what your blunderers 
 please to call straight-forward speech — as if language 
 were not given us to conceal our thoughts. " 
 Eva's philosophy was not deep; it could be summed 
 up in a few sentences.
 
 236 A Waking. 
 
 " If you want to g-ain a favour never ask it directly ; 
 go round and round and you will gain your point. 
 If people's talk shocks you, never let it be seen 
 that you are offended by it. If you wish to be 
 treated on an equality by millionaires take care 
 never to let them guess that you are poorer than 
 themselves. Drop your pretty speeches about like 
 pearls from the lips of a poet, but never trouble 
 your conscience about meaning them. And, above 
 all, if you want to humour anyone who is stubborn 
 or prejudiced, pretend to think as he or she does, 
 and never contradict. " 
 
 In accordance with these principles, Eva — assum- 
 ing the airs of invalidism, and professing herself 
 unable to walk any distance with Miss Newbolt — 
 lent her ready assistance to plans for mountain 
 expeditions in which she declared herself unable to 
 take part. 
 
 It is true that she would not have been Eva, had 
 she not compensated herself for her dulness by playing
 
 A A feeling at Saas-Fee. 237 
 
 out her own role to perfection in the pension — a 
 role which was alternately languishing, sentimental, 
 and sensational, and which enabled her to bring her 
 eye-batteries to bear on the youngest as well as the 
 oldest men in the hotel, reducing a few of them to a 
 state of slavery. 
 
 To do her justice — when she took the trouble to 
 exert herself — ^Irs. Capern could be a pleasant 
 talker. Since the day when she had known 
 how to adapt herself to Stuart Newbolt's mental 
 atmosphere by picking up scraps of information and 
 bringing them in at the right moment, she had laid 
 herself out for the art and could explain a few of 
 its mysteries. One of her plans in drawing- the 
 younger men out was to get each of them to talk 
 about himself, his own prospects in life, his special 
 talents, and his disappointments. She knew how to 
 sympathise at the right moment, and to prophesy 
 in her softest tones a brilliant future for the disap- 
 pointed hero. And as the pretty woman with her
 
 238 ^ Waking. 
 
 languid ways roused herself to condole with him, 
 to flatter, and to encourage, as if her interest were 
 reserved specially for him, each lad in turn was 
 w^ild with admiration. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 VRINTKD AT NIMEGUEN (hOI.LAND) BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGL'EN (HOLLAN'n 
 AND 14 BILLITER SQUARE BUILDINGS, LONDON, E.G.