UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY 
 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 BOOKSTACKS 
 
 a I E) RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 UN 1VE.R5ITY 
 or ILLI NOIS 
 
 8)23 
 M464.A 
 v.\
 
 University of IHi 
 
 IS Li 
 
 brary
 
 
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 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 ISHMAEL," "VIXEN," "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," 
 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
 IN THREE V0LU3IES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 SIMPKIN, MAESHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. 
 
 LIMITED 
 STATIONERS' HALL COURT 
 
 1893 
 
 [All rights 7-eserved]
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 ^ c»v w' 
 
 ^^^H, 
 
 ^. I 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 k 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. "The Kain set Early in To-night" ... 1 
 
 II. "But the Days drop One by One" ... 33 
 
 S III. "Oh Moment One and Infinite!" ... ... 61 
 
 "^ IV. " Dreaming, she knew it was a Dream " 93 
 
 V. "And the Child-cheek blushing Scaelet for 
 
 I the very Shame of Bliss" ... ... 113 
 
 VI. "A Love still Burning upward" ... 136 
 
 < VII. " Look through mine Eyes with thine, True 
 
 1 Wife"... ... ... ... ... 169 
 
 > VIII. My Frolic Falcon, avith Bright Eyes ... 184 
 
 v,> IX. "Lies Nothing buried long Ago?" ... 213 
 
 «) X. "Of the Weak my Heart is Weakest" 232 
 
 XI. "Where the Cold Sea Eaves" ... ... 265 
 
 r-A ^XII. " Far, too far off for Thought or any Prayer " 287 
 
 ^ XIII. " Under the Pine- wood, Blind with Boughs " 298 
 
 4
 
 Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/allalongrivernov01brad
 
 ALL ALONG THE KIVEK. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "THE RAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 
 
 It had been raining all the morning, and it was 
 raining still, in that feeble and desultory manner 
 which presages a change of some kind, when the 
 postman came with the long-expected Indian 
 letter. 
 
 He was later than usual. It was nearly two 
 o'clock, and Isola had been watcLing for him 
 since one, watching with an unread book in 
 her lap, listening for the click of the gate. 
 She had been sitting by the open window, look- 
 ing out at the wet landscape, the glistening 
 hedgerow and dull grey river, with the great, 
 green hill beyond, a steep slope of meadow land, 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 dotted with red cattle, and so divided by hedge- 
 rows, as to look like a Titanic chessboard. 
 
 At last she heard the familiar tread of the 
 postman's heavy boots, and saw his shining oil- 
 skin hat moving above the edge of the hollies, 
 and heard the click of the iron latch as he came 
 into the little garden. 
 
 She called to him from the window, and he 
 came tramping across the sodden grass and put 
 three letters into her outstretched hand. 
 
 One from. her married sister in Hans Place. 
 That would keep. One from an old schoolfellow. 
 That would keep. And one — the long-looked- 
 for Indian letter, which she tore open eagerly, 
 and read hurriedly, devouring the close lines, in 
 the neat, black penmanship, with its decided up 
 and down strokes, and legible characters, so firm, 
 so strong, so straightforward, like the nature of 
 the man who wrote the letter. 
 
 The tears sprang to her eyes as she came to 
 the end, and her hands crushed the thin paper 
 in a paroxysm of vexation or despair. 
 
 " Six months — perhaps a year, before be can 
 come back, and I am to go on living here — 
 alone, unless I like to send for a girl whose face
 
 "THE RAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 3 
 
 I hardly know, to keep me company, and cheer me 
 with her good spirits. I want no strange girls. 
 I want no one's good spirits. I hate people with 
 good spirits. I want him, and nobody but him ! 
 It is hard that we should be parted like this. I 
 ought to ^have gone with him, in spite of all the 
 doctors in Christendom." 
 
 She relented towards the letter which her 
 feverish hand had used so badly. She smoothed 
 out the flimsy paper carefully with that pretty 
 little hand, and then she re-read the husband's 
 letter, so full of grave tenderness and fond, con- 
 soling words. 
 
 He was with his regiment in Burmah, and the 
 present aspect of things gave him no hope of 
 being able to return to England for the next 
 half-year, and there was no certainty that the 
 half-year might not be stretched into a whole 
 year. The separation could not be more irksome 
 to his dearest Isola than it was to him, her 
 husband of little more than a year : but not for 
 worlds would he have exposed her to the risks of 
 that climate. He took comfort in thinkincr of 
 her in the snug little Cornish nest, with his good 
 Tabitha.
 
 4 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 Isola kissed the letter before she put it in her 
 pocket, and then she looked round the room 
 rather dolefully, as if the Cornish nest were not 
 altogether paradise. And yet it was a pretty 
 little room enough, half dining-room, half study, 
 with handsomely bound books on carved oak 
 shelves, and photographs and bright draperies, and 
 cosily-cushioned bamboo chairs, and a bird-cage, 
 and a Persian cat. Nor was the garden outside 
 flowerless, even on the threshold of winter. The 
 purple blossoms of the veronica were untouched 
 by frost ; there were pale tea roses gleaming 
 yonder against the dark gloss of holly and laureL 
 There were star-shaped single dahlias of vividest 
 red, like spots of flame ; and close under the open 
 window, last splendour of departed summer, the 
 waxen chalice of a lilium auratum trembled on 
 its tall stem, and filled the room with perfume. 
 
 The rain was over — the monotonous drip, drip, 
 which had irritated Isola's nerves all that morn- 
 ing, had ceased at last. She left the modest little 
 lunch untouched upon the table, and went out 
 into the hall, where her hat and jacket hung 
 handy for any impromptu ramble. No need to 
 look at one's self in the glass before going out of
 
 "THE RAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 5 
 
 doors, at twenty years of age, and in such a place 
 as Trelasco. Isola took her stick from the stand, 
 a green orange stick, bought in the sunny South, 
 on her way to Venice with her husband last year, 
 a leisurely trip, which had been to them as a 
 second honeymoon after a few happy months of 
 wedlock. Then had come the sadness of parting, 
 and a swift and lonely return journey for the 
 young wife — a lonely return to the Angler's Nest, 
 Trelasco, that cosy cottage between Lostwithiel 
 and Fowey, which Major Disney had bought and 
 furnished before his marriage. He was a son of 
 the soil, and he had chosen to pitch his tent in 
 that remote spot for the sake of old associations, 
 and from a fixed belief that there was no locality 
 of equal merit for health, beauty, and all other 
 virtues which a man should seek in his home. 
 
 Isola rarely touched that stick without remem- 
 bering the day it was bought — a rainy day in 
 Milan — just such a day as this, a low, grey sky, 
 and an oppressive mildness of atmosphere. She 
 remembered, with the sick pain that goes with 
 long partings, how she and her husband had 
 dawdled away an afternoon in the Victor 
 Emmanuel Gallery, buying handkerchiefs and
 
 6 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 neckties, a book or two, a collection of photo- 
 graphs, and finally the orange stick. 
 
 JShe went out to walk down her depression 
 before tea-time, if possible. She went along a 
 narrow path by the river, then turned into a road 
 that skirted those green pastures which rose 
 sheer till the ragged edge of the topmost 
 boundary seemed to touch the dim, grey sky. 
 She passed the village inn, deadly quiet at this 
 season and at this hour. She passed the half- 
 dozen decent cottages, and the three or four 
 genteeler houses, each in its neatly kept garden, 
 and she walked with quick, light step along the 
 wet road, her useful tailor-gown well clear of the 
 mud, her stick striking the hedge-row now and 
 then, as she swung it to and fro in dreamy 
 thought. 
 
 A long, lonely winter to look forward to — a 
 winter like the last — with her books and drawing- 
 board, and her cottage piano, and the cat and 
 the fox-terriers, and Tabitha for her daily 
 companions. There were a few neighbours within 
 a radius of half a dozen miles, who had been very 
 civil to lier ; who called upon her, say once in 
 six weeks ; who sometimes invited her to a stately
 
 **THE KAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 7 
 
 dinner-party, and sometimes at a suspiciously 
 short notice, which made her feel she was wanted 
 to fill a gap ; who made her free of their tennis 
 lawns ; and who talked to her on Sundays after 
 church, and were always very particular in 
 inquiring for any news from India. There was 
 not one among them for whom she cared ; not 
 one to whom she would have liked to pour out 
 her thoughts about Keats or Shelley, or to whom 
 she would have confided her opinion of Byron. 
 She was more interested in Bulwer's " Audley 
 Egerton " than in any of those flesh and blood 
 neighbours. She was happier sitting by her 
 chimney corner with a novel than in the best 
 society available within a drive of Trelasco. 
 
 She struck off the high road into a lane, a lane 
 that led to the base of a wilder hill than that 
 where the red cattle were grazing. The crest of 
 the hill was common land, and dark fir-trees 
 made a waving line against the autumn sky, and 
 the view from the summit was wide and varied, 
 with a glimpse of the great brown cliffs and the 
 dark, grey sea far off to the west, to that dim 
 distance where the Dodman shut off the watery 
 way to the new world. On the landward slope of
 
 8 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 that wild-looking ridge was tlie Mount, Lord 
 Lostwithiel's place, uninhabited for the greater 
 part of the year except by servants, his lordship 
 being the very last kind of man to bury himself 
 alive in a remote Cornish fastness, a long day's 
 journey from the London theatres, and the 
 E. Y. S. Clubhouse at Cowes. 
 
 Who was Lord Lostwithiel ? Well, in the 
 estimation of Trelasco he was the only nobleman 
 in England, or say that he was to all other peers 
 as the sun to the planets. He belonged to 
 Trelasco by reason of his large landed estate and 
 the accident of his birth, which had taken place 
 at the Mount ; and, although his character and 
 way of life were not altogether satisfactory to the 
 village mind, Trelasco made the best of him. 
 
 Isola Disney climbed the hill, an easy matter 
 to light-footed twenty. She stood amidst the 
 tall fir columns, and looked down at the Novem- 
 ber landscape, very distinctly defined in the soft, 
 grey atmosphere. She could see the plough 
 moving slowly across the red earth in the fields 
 beloAV, the clumsy farm horses, white against the 
 deep, rich red. She could see the winding river, 
 bluish grey, between its willowy banks, and far
 
 "THE EAIN" SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 9 
 
 off beyond Fowey wooded hills, where the foliage 
 showed orange, and tawny, and russet, and dun 
 colour between the blue-grey water, and the pale 
 grey sky. 
 
 She loved this wild, lonely hill, and felt her 
 spirits rise in this lighter atmosphere as she 
 stood resting against the scaly trunk of a Scotch 
 fir, with the wind blowing her hair. It was a 
 relief to escape from the silence of those empty 
 rooms, where she had only the sleepy Persian or 
 the hyper-intelligent fox-terrier for company. 
 There was a longer and more picturesque way 
 home than that by which she had come. She 
 could descend the other side of the hill, skirt 
 the gardens of the Mount, by a path that led 
 through the Park to a lodge gate on the 
 Fowey road. It was one of her favourite walks, 
 and she was so accustomed to seeing the shutters 
 closed at the great house that she never expected 
 to meet any one more alarming than a farm ser- 
 vant or a cottager's child upon the footpath. 
 
 There was a thick chestnut copse upon one 
 side, and the wide expanse of undulating turf, 
 with an occasional clump of choice timber, upon 
 the other. The house stood on higlier ground
 
 10 ALL ALONG THE RIVEE. 
 
 than the park, but was hemmed in and hidden 
 by shrubberies that had overgrown the intention 
 of the landscape gardener who planned them. 
 Only the old grey-stone gables, with their heavy 
 slabs of slate, and the tall, clustered chimneys, 
 showed above the copper beeches, and deodaras, 
 the laurels, and junipers, and Irish yews, and the 
 shining masses of arbutus with their crimson 
 berries gleaming amongst the green. Isola had 
 never seen that old Manor House nearer than she 
 saw it to-day, from the path, which was a public 
 right of way through the park. She knew that 
 the greater part of the building dated from the 
 reign of Charles the Second, but that there were 
 older bits ; and that about the whole, and about 
 those ancient rooms and passages most especially, 
 there were legends and traditions and historical 
 associations, not without the suspicion of ghosts. 
 The Mount was not a show place, like the home 
 of the Trefifrys at Fowey, and of late years it had 
 been very seldom inhabited, except by certain 
 human fossils who had served the house of Hul- 
 bert for two generations. She had often looked 
 longingly at those quaint old gables, those clus- 
 tered stone chimneys, likening the house amidst
 
 "THE EAIN SET EAELY IN TO-NIGHT." 11 
 
 its overgrown shrubberies to the Palace of the 
 Sleeping Beauty, and had wished that she were 
 on friendly terms with one of those drowsy old 
 retainers. 
 
 " I dare say if I were daring enough to open 
 one of the doors and go in I should find them all 
 asleep," she thought, " and I might roam all 
 over the house from cellar to garret without 
 awakening anybody." She was too depressed 
 to-day to give more than a careless, unseeing 
 glance at those many gables as she walked along 
 the muddy path beside the dripping copse. The 
 chestnut boughs were nearly bare, but here and 
 there clusters of bright yellow leaves were still 
 hanging, shining like pale gold in the last watery 
 gleams of the sun ; and though the leaves were 
 lying sodden and brown among the rank, wet 
 grass, there were emerald mosses and cool, 
 green ferns, and red and orange fungi to give 
 colour to the foreground, and to the little 
 vistas that opened here and there amidst the 
 underwood. 
 
 Those final yellow gleams were fading low 
 down in the western sky as Isola turned her face 
 towards the river and the Angler's Nest, and
 
 12 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 just above that pale radiance there stretched a 
 dense black cloud, like a monstrous iron bar, 
 which she felt must mean mischief. She looked 
 at that black line apprehensively. She was 
 three miles from home, without cloak or um- 
 brella, and with no available shelter within three- 
 quarters of a mile. 
 
 She quickened her pace, watching the fading 
 light and lowering cloud, expecting thunder, 
 lightning, hail, she knew not what. A sudden 
 deluge settled the question. Torrential rain ! 
 That was the meaning of the inky bar above the 
 -setting sun. She looked round her helplessly. 
 Should she dart into the copse, and try to shelter 
 herself amidst those leafless twigs, those slender 
 withies and saplings ? Better to face the storm 
 and plod valiantly on. Her neat little cloth 
 gown would not be much the worse for a duck- 
 ing ; her neat little feet were accustomed to rapid 
 walking. Should she run ? No ; useless when 
 there were three miles to be got over. A brisk, 
 steady tramp would be better. But, brave as she 
 was, that fierce rain was far from pleasant. It 
 <;ut into her eyes and blinded her. She had to 
 grope her way along the path with her stick.
 
 "THE EAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 13 
 
 " Pray let me take you to the house," said a 
 voice close beside her, a man's voice — low and 
 deep, and with the accents of refinement. 
 
 Could one of Lord Lostwithiel's fossilized 
 servants talk like that? Impossible. She 
 looked up, as well as she could, under that 
 blinding downpour, and saw a tall man stand- 
 ing beside the pathway with his back to the 
 copse. He was over six feet two and of slim, 
 active figure. He was pale, and wore a short? 
 dark beard, and the eyes which looked at Isola 
 out of the pale, thin face were very dark. That 
 was about as much as she could see of the 
 stranger in the November dusk. 
 
 " Pray, let me persuade you to come to the 
 house," he said urgently. "You are being 
 drenched. It is absolutely dreadful to see any- 
 body out in such rain — and there is no other 
 shelter within reach. Let me take you there. 
 My housekeeper will dry your hat and jacket 
 for you. I ought to introduce myself, perhaps. 
 1 am Lord Lostwithiel." 
 
 She had guessed as much. Who else would 
 speak with authority in that place ? She 
 dimly recalled a photograph, pale and faded,
 
 14 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 of a tall man in a yeomanry uniform, seen in 
 somebody's album ; and the face of the photo- 
 graph had been the same elongated oval face 
 — with long thin nose, and dark eyes a shade 
 too near together — which was looking down at 
 her anxiously now. 
 
 She felt it would be churlish to refuse shelter 
 so earnestly offered. 
 
 "You are very kind," she faltered. *'I am 
 sorry to be so troublesome. I ought not to 
 have come so far in such doubtful weather." 
 
 She went with him meekly, walking her 
 fastest under the pelting rain, which was at 
 her back now as they made for the house. 
 
 " Have you really come far ? " he asked. * 
 
 " From Trelasco. I live at the Angler's Nest, 
 a cottage by the river. You know it, perhaps? " 
 
 "Yes. I know every house at Trelasco. 
 Then you are staying with Mrs. Disney, I 
 presume ? " 
 
 '' I am Mrs. Disney." 
 
 " You ? " — with intense surprise. " I beg your 
 pardon. You are so young. I imagined Mrs. 
 Disney an older person." 
 
 He glanced at the girlish figure, the pale
 
 "THE RAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 15 
 
 delicate face, and told himself that his new 
 acquaintance could scarcely be more than nine- 
 teen or twenty. He had met Major Disney, 
 a man who looked about forty — a lucky fellow 
 to have caught such a pretty bird as this. 
 
 They had reached the shrubbery by this time, 
 and were hurrying along a winding walk where 
 the rain reached them with less violence. The 
 narrow walk brought them on to a broad terrace 
 in front of the house. Lostwithiel opened a 
 half-glass door, and led Mrs. Disney into, the 
 library, a long low room, full of curious nooks 
 and corners, formed by two massive chimney- 
 pieces, and by the projecting wings of the heavy 
 oak bookcases. Isola had never seen any room 
 so filled with books, nor had she ever seen a 
 room with two such chimney-pieces, of statuary 
 marble, yellowed with age, elaborately carved 
 with cherubic heads, and Cupids, and torches 
 and festal wreaths, bows and arrows, lyres and 
 urns. 
 
 A wood fire was burning upon one hearth, and 
 it was hither Lostwithiel brought his guest, 
 wheeling a large armchair in front of the 
 blaze.
 
 16 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 " If you will take off your hat and jackefy 
 and sit down there, I'll get my housekeeper to 
 attend to you," he said, with his hand upon 
 the bell. 
 
 "You are more than kind. I must hurry 
 home directly the rain abates a little. I have 
 a careful old servant who is sure to be anxious 
 about me," said Isola, devouring the room with 
 greedy eyes, wanting to take in every detail of 
 this enchanted castle. 
 
 She might never enter it again, perhaps. 
 Lord Lostwithiel was so seldom there. His 
 absenteeism was the lament of the neighbour- 
 hood. The things he ought to have done and 
 did not do would have filled a book. He had 
 been wild in his youth. He had once owned 
 a theatre. He had done, or was supposed to 
 have done, things which were spoken of with 
 bated breath ; but of late years he had developed 
 new ambitions, and had done with theatrical 
 speculations. He had become literary, scientific, 
 political. He was one of the lights of the 
 intellectual world, or of that small section of the 
 intellectual world which is affiliated to the smart 
 world. He knew all the clever people in
 
 "THE RAIN SET EARLY IX TO-NIGHT." 17 
 
 London, and a good many of the intellectualities 
 of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. He had never 
 married ; but it was supposed that he would 
 eventually marry, before he was forty, for in- 
 stance, and that he would make a great match. 
 He was not rich, but he was Lord Lostwithiel. 
 He was by no means handsome, but he was said 
 to be one of the most fascinating men in 
 London. 
 
 Isola pulled off her jacket slowly, looking 
 about her all the time ; and Lostwithiel forbore 
 from offering her any assistance lest he should 
 intensify her evident shyness. 
 
 A man in plain clothes, who looked more like 
 a valet than a butler, answered the bell. 
 
 *' Send Mrs. Mayne, and bring tea," ordered 
 his lordship. 
 
 What a slender, girlish form it was which the 
 removal of the tweed jacket revealed. The slim 
 waist and somewhat narrow shoulders betokened 
 a delicacy of constitution. The throat was 
 beautiful, milk white, the throat of Diana, and 
 the head, now the hat was off, would also have 
 done for Diana ; a small classic head, with soft, 
 brown hair drawn smoothly away from tlie low, 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 white brow and rolled into a knot at the back. 
 The features were as delicate as the complexion, 
 in which there was no brilliancy of colouring, 
 only a paleness as of ivory. The eyes were dark 
 grey, with long brown lashes, and their present 
 expression was between anxiety and wondering 
 interest. Lostwithiel was not such a coxcomb as 
 to appropriate that look of interest. He saw 
 that it was his house and not himself which 
 inspired the feeling. 
 
 " You like old houses, I can see, Mrs. Disney," 
 he said, smiling at her. 
 
 "Intensely. They are histories in brick and 
 stone, are they not ? I dare say there are stories 
 about this room." 
 
 "Innumerable stories. I should have to 
 ransack the Kecord Office for some of them, and 
 to draw upon a very bad memory to a perilous 
 extent for others." 
 
 ''Is it haunted?" 
 
 "I am not one of those privileged persons 
 who see ghosts ; neither seventh son of a seventh 
 son ; nor of the mediumistic temperament ; but I 
 have heard of an apparition pervading the house 
 on occasions, and being seen in this room, which
 
 "THE RAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 19 
 
 is one of the older rooms, a part of that building 
 which was once a grange appertaining to a 
 certain small monastery, put down by Henry 
 VIII., and recorded in the Black Book. As one 
 of the oldest rooms it is naturally uncanny ; but 
 as I have never suffered any inconvenience in 
 that line, I make it my den." 
 
 " It is the most picturesque room I ever saw. 
 And what a multitude of books ! " exclaimed 
 Isola. 
 
 "Yes; I have a good many books. I am 
 always buying ; but I find I never have exactly 
 the book I want. And as I have no librarian I 
 am too apt to forget the books I have. If I 
 could afford to spend more of my life at the 
 Mount, I would engage some learned gentleman, 
 whose life had been a failure, to take care of 
 my books. Are you Cornish, like your husband, 
 Mrs. Disney ? " 
 
 " No. I was born at Dinan." 
 
 " What ! in that mediaeval Breton city ? You 
 are not French, though, I think ? " 
 
 "My mother and father were both English, 
 but my sister and I were born and brought up 
 in Brittany."
 
 20 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 Lostwithiel questioned no further. He had a 
 shrewd idea that when English people live for a 
 good many years in a Breton town they have 
 reasons of their own, generally financial, for their 
 choice of a settlement. He was a man who 
 could not have spent six months of his life away 
 from London or Paris. 
 
 The housekeeper made her appearance and 
 offered her services. She wrung the rain out of 
 Isola's cloth skirt, and wiped the muddy hem. 
 She took charge of the jacket and hat, and at 
 Lostwithiel's suggestion she remained to pour 
 out the tea. She was a very dignified person, 
 in a black silk gown and a lace cap, and she 
 treated her master as if he had been a demi-god. 
 Isola could not be afraid of taking tea in this 
 matronly presence, yet she kept looking 
 nervously towards the window in front of her, 
 where the rain beat with undiminished force, 
 and where the darkening sky told of impending 
 night. 
 
 "I see you are anxious to be on your way 
 home, Mrs. Disney," said Lostwithiel, who had 
 nothing to do but watch her face, such an ex- 
 pressive face at all times, so picturesquely
 
 "THE KAIN SET EAKLY IN TO-NIGHT." 21 
 
 beautiful when touched by tlie flickering light 
 of the wood fire. " If you were to wait for fine 
 weather you might be here all night, and your 
 good people at home would be frantic. I'll 
 order a carriage, and you can be at home in 
 three-quarters of an hour." 
 
 "Oh no. Lord Lostwithiel, I couldn't give 
 you so much trouble. If your housekeeper will 
 be so kind as to lend me a cloak and umbrella, 
 I can get home very well. And I had better 
 start at once." 
 
 " In the rain, alone, and in the darkness ? It 
 will be dark before you are home, in any 
 case. No, Mrs. Disney, if I were to permit such 
 a thing I should expect Major Disney to call 
 me out directly he came home. He is in India, 
 I think?" 
 
 " He is with his regiment in Burmah." 
 
 " Do you expect him home soon ? " 
 
 " Not very soon ; not for six months, or per- 
 haps longer. It was that which made me walk 
 so far." 
 
 Lostwithiel looked puzzled. 
 
 " I mean that I was so disappointed by his 
 letter — a letter I received to-day — that I went
 
 9-? 
 
 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 out for a long ramble to walk down my bad 
 spirits if I could, and hardly knew how far I 
 was going. It has made me inflict trouble on 
 you, and Mrs. " 
 
 "Mayne. Both Mrs. Mayne and I are de- 
 lighted to be of use to you. Order the station 
 brougham, Dalton, immediately," to the man 
 who answered his bell. "The carriage can 
 hardly be ready in less than twenty minutes, 
 so pray try to do justice to Mrs. Mayne's tea." 
 
 " It is delicious tea," said Isola, enjoying the 
 fire-glow, and the dancing lights upon the 
 richly bound books in all their varieties of 
 colouring, from black and crimson and orange- 
 tawny to creamy vellum. 
 
 She was evidently relieved in her mind by 
 the knowledge that she was to be driven home 
 presently. 
 
 " If you are really interested in this old house 
 you must come some sunny morning and let Mrs. 
 Mayne show you over it," said Lostwithiel, 
 establishing himself with his cup and saucer 
 upon the other side of the hearth. " She knows 
 all the old stories, and she has a better memory 
 than I"
 
 ''THE KAIN SET EAELY IN TO-NIGHT." 23 
 
 " I should like so much to do so next summer, 
 when my husband can come with me." 
 
 '•I'm afraid Major Disney won't care much 
 about the old place. He is a native of these 
 parts, and must have been here often in my 
 father's time. I shall hope to receive you both, 
 if I am here next October for the shooting — but 
 there is no need to relegate your inspection of 
 the house to the remote future. Come on the first 
 fine morning that you have nothing better to 
 do. Mrs. Mayne is always at home ; and I am 
 almost always out of doors in the morning. You 
 can have the house to yourselves, and talk about 
 ghosts to your hearts' content." 
 
 *' Oh, my lord, I hope I know better than to 
 say anything disrespectful of the house," pro- 
 tested Mrs. Mayne. 
 
 "My dear Mayne, a family ghost is as re- 
 spectable an institution as a family tree." 
 
 Isola murmured some vague acknowledgment 
 of his civility. She was far too shy to have any 
 idea of taking advantage of his offer. To re- 
 enter that house alone of her own accord would 
 be impossible. By-and-by, with her husband at 
 her side, she would be bold enough to do any-
 
 2.4 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 thing, to accept arty hospitality that Lostwithiel 
 might be moved to offer. He would invite 
 Martin, perhaps, for the shooting, or to a 
 luncheon, or a dinner. She wondered vaguely 
 if she would ever possess a gown good enough to 
 wear at a dinner-party in such a house. 
 
 After this there came a brief silence. Mrs-. 
 Mayne stood straight and prim behind the tea- 
 table. Nothing would have induced her to sit 
 in his lordship's presence, albeit she had dandled 
 him in her arms when there was much less of 
 him than of the cambric and fine flannel which 
 composed his raiment, and albeit his easy 
 familiarity might have invited some forgetful- 
 ness of class distinctions. Mrs. Mayne fully 
 understood that she was wanted there to set the 
 stranger at her ease, and she performed hei 
 mission ; but even her presence could not lessen 
 Isola's shyness. She felt like a bird caught in 
 a net, or fluttering in the grasp of some strong 
 but kindly hand. She sat listening for carriage 
 wheels, and only hearing the dull thumping of 
 her own scared heart. 
 
 And yet he was so kind, and yet he so fully 
 realized her idea of high-bred gentleness, thai
 
 *'THE KAIN SET EAKLY IN TO-NIGHT." 25 
 
 she need hardly have been so troubled by the 
 situation. She stole a glance at him as he 
 stood by the chimney-piece, in a thoughtful 
 attitude, looking down at the burning logs on 
 the massive old andirons. The firelight shining 
 on a face above it will often give a sinister 
 look to the openest countenance ; and to-night 
 Lostwithiel's long, narrow face, dark, deep-set 
 eyes, and pointed beard had some touch of 
 the diabolical in that red and uncertain 
 glow; an effect that was but instantaneous, 
 for as the light changed the look passed, and 
 she saw him as he really was, with his pale 
 and somewhat sunken cheeks, and eyes darkly 
 grave, of exceeding gentleness. 
 
 " Have you lived long at the Angler's Nest, 
 Mrs. Disney ? " he asked, at last. 
 
 " Nearly a year and a half ; ever since my 
 marriage, with just one interval on the Continent 
 before Martin went to India." 
 
 " Then I need not ask if you are heartily sick 
 of the place ? " 
 
 " Indeed, I should not be tired of the cottage 
 or the neighbourhood if my husband were at 
 home. I am only tired of solitude. He wants
 
 26 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 me to S3nd for his sister— a girl who has not 
 long left school — to keep me company; but I 
 I detest school girls, and I would much rather be 
 j alone than put up with a silly companion." 
 
 " You are wise beyond your years, Mrs. 
 Disney. Avoid the sister, by all means. She 
 would bore you to death — a scampering, ex- 
 uberant girl, who would develop hysteria after 
 one month of Cornish dulness. Besides, I am 
 sure you have resources of your own, and that 
 you would rather endure solitude than uncon- 
 genial company." 
 
 Isola sighed, and shook her head rather dole- 
 fully, tracing the pattern of the Persian rug with 
 the point of her stick. 
 
 " I am very fond of books, and of music," she 
 said ; " but one gets tired of being alone after 
 a time. It seems such ages since Martin and I 
 said good-bye in Venice. I was dreadfully 
 unhappy at first. I stand almost alone in the 
 world, when I am parted from him." 
 
 "Your father and mother are dead?" in 
 gentlest inquiry. 
 
 "Oh no; they are not dead; they are at Dinan," 
 she said, almost as if it were the same thing,
 
 ''THE KAIN SET EARLY IN TO-NIGHT." 27 
 
 '* And that is very far from Trelasco." 
 "They never leave Dinan. The kind of life 
 suits them. Mamma knits; papa has his club 
 and his English newspapers. People enjoy the 
 English papers so much more when they live 
 abroad than when they are at home. Mamma 
 is a very bad sailor. It would be a risk for her 
 to cross. If my sister or I were dangerously 
 ill, mamma would come. But it would be at 
 the hazard of her life. Papa has often told me 
 so." 
 
 " And your father, is he a bad sailor ? " 
 ^' He is rather worse than mamma." 
 " Then I conclude you were married at 
 Dinan?" 
 
 ** Oh yes ; I never left Brittany until my 
 wedding-day." 
 
 " What a pretty idea. It is as if Major Disney 
 had found a new kind of wild flower in some 
 nook or cranny of the old grey wall that guards 
 the town." 
 
 "You know Dinan?" 
 
 " There are very few places within easy reach 
 of a yachtsman that I don't know. I have 
 anchored in almost every bay between Cherbourg
 
 28 ALL ALONG THE RIYEK. 
 
 and Brest, and have rambled inland whenever 
 there was anything worth seeing within a day's 
 journey from the coast. Yes, I know Dinan 
 well. Strange to think that I may have passed 
 you in the street there. Do you sketch, by the 
 way?" 
 
 " A little." 
 
 " Ah, then, perhaps you are one of the young 
 ladies I have seen sitting at street corners, or 
 under archways, doing fearful and wonderful 
 things with a box of moist colours and a drawing- 
 board." 
 
 '*The young ladies who sit about the streets 
 are tourists," said Isola, with a look of disgust. 
 
 " I understand. The resident ladies would no 
 more do such things than they would sit upon 
 the pavement and make pictures of salmon or 
 men-of-war in coloured chalks, like our Metro- 
 politan artists." 
 
 " I think I hear a carriage," said Isola, putting 
 down her cup and saucer, and looking at her 
 jacket, which Mrs. Mayne was holding before 
 the fire. 
 
 "Yes, that is the carriage," answered Lost- 
 withiel, opening the glass door. " What a night I
 
 **THE KAIN SET EAKLY IN TO-NIGHT." 29 
 
 The rain is just as bad as it was wlien I brought 
 you indoors." 
 
 " If you will accept the use of a shawl, ma'am, 
 it would be safer than putting on this damp 
 jacket." 
 
 "Yes, Mayne, get your shawl. Mrs. Disney 
 will wear it, I know." 
 
 The housekeeper bustled out, and Lostwithiel 
 and his guest were alone, looking at each other 
 somewhat helplessly, as they stood far apart, she 
 in the glow of the hearth, he in the darkness 
 near the door, and feeling that every available 
 subject of conversation had been exhausted. 
 Their embarrassment was increased when Dalton 
 and a footman came in with two great lamps 
 and flooded the room with light. 
 
 " I hardly know how to thank you for having 
 taken so much trouble about me," Isola faltered 
 presently, under that necessity to say something 
 which is one of the marks of shyness. 
 
 " There has been no trouble. I only hope I 
 got you out of that pelting rain in time to save 
 you from any evil consequences. Strange that 
 our acquaintance should begin in such an acci- 
 dental manner. I shall be c-lad to know more
 
 30 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 of Major Disney when he comes home, and in 
 the meantime I hope I shall have the pleasure 
 of meeting you sometimes. No doubt you know 
 everybody in the , neighbourhood, so we can 
 hardly help running against each other some- 
 where." 
 
 Isola smiled faintly, thinking that the chances 
 of any such meeting were of the slightest ; but 
 she did not gainsay him. He wanted to say 
 something courteous no doubt, and had gone 
 into no nice question of probabilities before he 
 spoke. She had heard him described by a good 
 many people, who had hinted darkly at his 
 shortcomings, but had all agreed as to his 
 politeness and persuasive powers. 
 
 " A man who would talk over Satan himself,'* 
 said the village lawyer. 
 
 Mrs. Mayne re-appeared with a comfortable 
 shepherd's plaid shawl, which she wrapped 
 carefully about Mrs. Disney, in a pleasant, 
 motherly fashion. The rain had all been shaken 
 off the little felt hat, which had no feathers or 
 frippery to spoil. People who live in the 
 West of England make their account with wet 
 weather.
 
 "THE EAIX SET EAELY IN TO-NIGHT." 31 
 
 Lord Lostwithie] handed his guest into the 
 carriage, and stood bareheaded in the rain to 
 wish her good-bye before he shut the door. 
 
 *'I shall be very anxious to know that you 
 haye escaped cold," he said, at the last moment. 
 " I hope you won't think me a nuisance if I call 
 to-morrow to inquire." 
 
 He shut the door quickly, and the brougham 
 drove off before she could answer. She was 
 alone in the darkness in the snug, warm little 
 carriage. There was a clock ticking beside her, 
 a sound that startled her in the stillness. There 
 was a basket hanging in front of her, and an 
 odour of cigars and Eussia leather. There was 
 a black bear rug, lined with white fleeciness, 
 which almost filled the carriage. She had never 
 sat in such a carriage. How different from the 
 mouldy old brougham in which she occasionally 
 went to dinner-parties — a capacious vehicle with 
 a bow window, like a seaside parlour. 
 
 She leant back in a corner of the little 
 carriage, wrapped in the soft, warm rug, wonder- 
 ing at her strange adventure. She had pene- 
 trated that mysterious house on Black-fir Hill, 
 and she had made the acquaintance of Lord
 
 32 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 Lostwithiel. How much she would have to 
 tell Martin in her next letter. She wrote to 
 him every week — a long, loving letter, closely- 
 written on thin paper, pouring out all her fancies 
 and feelings to the husband she loved with all 
 her heart. 
 
 She sighed as her thoughts recurred to the 
 letter received to-day. Six months, or perhaps 
 even a year, before he was to come back to her ! 
 Yet the letter had not been without hopefulness. 
 He had the prospect of getting his next step 
 before that year was over, and then his coming 
 home would be a final return. He would be able 
 to retire, and he would buy some land — a 
 hundred acres or so — and breed horses — one of 
 his youthful dreams — and do a little building, 
 perhaps, to enlarge and beautify the Angler's 
 Nest, and his Isola should have a pair of ponies 
 and a good saddle-horse. He looked forward to 
 a life of unalloyed happiness.
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 
 
 Next morning was bright and clear, a morning 
 so soft and balmy that the month might have 
 been mistaken for September. Isola ran down 
 to the garden in her neat little morning frock 
 and linen collar, and ran about among the shrubs 
 and late autumn flowers in a much gayer mood 
 than that of yesterday. She loved her garden — 
 small and modest as it was in comparison with 
 the grounds and gardens of her county neigh- 
 bours — and on a morning like this it was rapture 
 to her to ran from flower to flower, and from 
 shrub to shrub, with her great garden scissors 
 in her hand, and her garden basket hanging 
 over her arm, clipping a withered leaf or a 
 fading flower every here and there, or plucking 
 up those little groundsel plants which seem the 
 perpetual expression of the earth's fertility. 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 Alas! those pale tea-roses, those saffron and 
 flame-coloured dahlias, meant the last crumbs of 
 summer's plenteous feast. Soon winter and 
 barrenness would spread over the poor little 
 garden; but even in the chill dark heart of 
 mid- winter those graceful conifers and shining 
 laurels, the vermillion on the holly bushes, the 
 crimson of the hawthorn berries would give beauty 
 to the scene; and then would come the return 
 of Persephone with her hands full of gold, the 
 abundant gold of crocus and daffodil, jonquil 
 and pale primrose, the rain of yellow blossoms 
 which heralds the spring. 
 
 Half a year did not seem such an appalling 
 interval — nay, even the thought of a year of 
 waiting did not scare her so much this morning 
 in the sunlight and fresh clear air as yesterday 
 in the grey dim rain. What an improvement 
 Martin would find in the garden, should he 
 return before the end of the summer ! How tall 
 those Irish yews had grown by the gate yonder, 
 a pair of dark green obelisks keeping stately 
 guard over the modest wooden gate; and the 
 escalonia hedge that screened the kitchen garden 
 was two feet higher since the spring ! How the
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 35 
 
 juniper at the corner of the grass plot had shot 
 up and thickened ! Arbutus, laurel, ribes, every- 
 thing had been growing as shrubs only grow in 
 the south and south-west of Eno^land. What a 
 darling garden it was, and how full of pleasure 
 her life would be by-and-by, when Martin was 
 able to settle down and buy land, and give her 
 a little herd of Jersey cows. She had always 
 envied the farmers' wives in that fertile valley 
 of the Eance, where her childhood had been 
 passed. And how^ delightful to have her own 
 cows and her own farmyard, and a pony-carriage 
 to drive up and down the hilly Cornish lanes 
 and into the narrow little street of Fowey, and 
 to ride her own horse by her husband's side for 
 long exploring rambles among those wild hills 
 towards Mevagissey. 
 
 She had only to wait patiently for a year or 
 less, and that bright life might be hers. She 
 had no frivolous vanities, no craving for dissipa- 
 tions and fine clothes, no fatal thirst for " smart- 
 ness." Her ideas were essentially modest. She 
 had never envied her sister, who had married a 
 rich stockbroker, and whose brand new red-brick 
 house in Hans Pla<3e towered abovo purroi^ndincr
 
 36 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 Chelsea as much as her diamonds eclipsed the^ 
 jewels of other middle-class matrons at the- 
 festal gatherings of South Kensington and 
 Bayswater. Gwendolen had married for wealth. 
 Isola had married for love. She had given her 
 girlish affection to a man who was nearly thirty 
 years her senior, her heart going out to him, 
 innocently almost at the beginning of their 
 acquaintance, first because he was a soldier, and 
 in her mind a hero, and secondly because he was 
 kinder to her than anybody else had ever been. 
 
 He was her first admirer. That delicate loveli- 
 ness, as of some woodland flower, which distin- 
 guished Isola from the herd of women, had 
 been still in embryo when Major Disney spent 
 a summer holiday between Dinard and Dinan.. 
 She had scarcely ranked as a pretty girl twa 
 years ago. The slight figure was denounced as 
 scraggy ; the pale face was voted sickly ; and the 
 delicate features were spoken of as insignificant. 
 Gwendolen's big fair face, with its healthy roses 
 and lilies, her bright hair, and well-developed 
 figure had completely overshadowed the younger 
 sister. Martin Disney was the first man upon 
 whom Isola's low-toned beauty had any power..
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 37 
 
 He was drawn to her from the yery beginning. 
 She listened so prettily, with such a bewitching 
 modesty and almost tremulous pleasure, when he 
 talked to her, as they sat side by side on the 
 club ground at Dinard, watching Gwendoline 
 playing tennis, superb in striped flannel of 
 delicate pink and cream colour. He could hardly 
 believe that those two were sisters. Isola so slim 
 and fragile, of such an ethereal prettiness, owing 
 so little to colouring, and nothing to redundancy 
 of form. 
 
 He was told that Miss Manwaring was engaged 
 to one of the richest men in London. That, of 
 course, was a gossip's fable, but it was an 
 established fact that Mr. Hazelrigg had made a 
 considerable fortune in South American railways, 
 water works, and other public improvements, and 
 could afford to make a liberal settlement. 
 
 He showed no indisposition to be generous 
 to his handsome sweetheart. He settled seven 
 hundred a year upon her, and told her that she 
 could spend as much of tliat income as she 
 liked upon toilet and pocket-money, and that he 
 would invest her surplus advantageously for her. 
 
 The two sisters were married on the same day
 
 S8 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 to husbands who were their seniors by seven 
 and twenty years in one instance, by more than 
 thirty years in the other. Daniel Hazlerigg 
 had passed his jubilee birthday when he led 
 Miss Manwaring to the altar ; but he was a fine- 
 looking man, straight and tall, like his bride, 
 with a ruddy complexion and iron-grey mous- 
 tache, and an air and bearing that savoured 
 rather of the mess-room than the city. He had 
 been on the Stock Exchange ever since he cam& 
 of age ; but he had made it the study of his life 
 not to look city or to talk city. Nothing 
 could tempt him to expatiate upon the money 
 market outside his office. He would talk sport, 
 travel, politics — even literature, of which he 
 knew very little — but not stocks and shares, 
 Nicaraguas, or Eeading and Philadelphias, 
 Mexican Street Kailways, or Patagonian Build- 
 ing Society. 
 
 Isola read her sister's glowing descriptions of 
 dinners and routs, gowns by Worth or Cresser^ 
 suppers for two hundred people at a guinea a 
 head, from Gunter, waggon-loads of cut roses 
 from Cheshunt or Cheam, and felt no thrill of 
 longing, no pang of envy. Life in the Angler's
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DKOP ONE BY ONE." 39 
 
 Nest might be dull; but it was only dull 
 because Martin was away. She would have felt 
 more solitary in Hans Place, had she accepted 
 Gwendoline's invitation to spend her Christmas 
 there, than she would feel in the cottage by the 
 river, even with no better company than Tabitha, 
 Shah, and Tim. She was essentially shy and 
 retiring. Her girlhood had been spent in a ver}^ 
 narrow world, among people wliom she seemed to 
 have known all her life; for while Gwendoline, 
 who was six years older, and had been " out " for 
 four years before she married, joined in all the 
 little gaities of the place, and was always making 
 new acquaintance, Isola, who was not " out," 
 spent her days for the most part in a dreamy 
 old, half-neglected garden on the slope of the 
 hill that looks across the Kance towards the 
 unseen sea. The view from that garden was one 
 of the finest in Western France ; and it was 
 Isola's delight to sit in a little berceau at the end 
 of a terrace walk, with her books and work- 
 basket and drawing-board, all through the long 
 tranquil summer day, in a silence broken by the 
 sound of wheels and horses' feet on the viaduct 
 and bridge two or three hundred feet below, or
 
 40 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 by the muffled music of the orgaii in the convent 
 ehapel. 
 
 Tim, the fox-terrier, and Shah, the Persian 
 eat, were both on the lawn with their mistress 
 this morning. They ^vere not friendly towards 
 each other, but preserved an armed neutrality. 
 Tim chased every stray strange cat with a fury 
 that threatened annihilation ; and he always 
 looked as if he would like to give chase to Shah, 
 when that dignified piece of fluff moved slowly 
 across the lawn before him with uplifted tail that 
 seemed to wave defiance ; but he knew that any 
 attack upon that valued personage would entail 
 punishment and disgrace. Isola loved both 
 these animals — the cat a wedding -present from 
 an old Breton lady in Dinan, the terrier her 
 husband's parting legacy. " Take care of Tim," 
 he had said, the day they parted on board the 
 P. & 0. at Venice. 
 
 The dog loved his mistress vehemently and 
 obtrusively, leaping into her lap at the slightest 
 sign of indulgence in her eye. The cat suffered 
 himself to be adored, receiving all attentions 
 with a sleepy complacency.
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 41 
 
 It was only half-past eight, and the world was 
 looking its freshest. There was an opening in 
 the shrubbery that let in a view of the river, and 
 just in front of this opening there was a rustic 
 bench on which Major Disney liked to smoke 
 his after-breakfast pipe or after-dinner cigar. 
 The garden contained very little over two acres, 
 but it was an old garden, and there were some 
 fine old trees, which must have shaded hoops 
 and powder, and pig-tails and knee-breeches. 
 Major Disney had done a good deal in the way 
 of planting wherever there was room for im- 
 provement, and he had secured to himself an 
 elderly gardener of exceptional industry, who 
 worked in the garden as if he loved it. Tabitha, 
 again, was one of those wonderful women who 
 know all about everything except books ; and 
 she, too, loved the garden, and helped at weed- 
 ing and watering, in seasons of pressure. Thus 
 it had come to pass that these two acres of velvet 
 lawn and flower-bed, shrubbery, and trim, old- 
 fashioned garden had acquired a reputation in 
 Trelasco, and people frequently complimented 
 Mrs. Disney about her garden. 
 
 She was proud of their praises, remembering
 
 42 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 the straggling rose-bushes and lavender, and 
 unkempt flower-beds, and overgrown cabbages, 
 and loose shingly paths in that old garden at 
 Dinan, which she had loved despite its neglected 
 condition. Her house at Trelasco was just as 
 superior to the house at Dinan, as garden was 
 to garden. She often thought of her old home, 
 the shabby square house, with walls and shutters 
 of dazzling white, shining brown floors, and worn- 
 out furniture of the Empire period, furniture 
 which had been shabby and out of repair when 
 Colonel Man waring took the house furnished, 
 intending to spend a week or two in retirement 
 at Dinan with his wife and her first-born, a chubby 
 little girl of five. They had lost a promising boy 
 of a year old, and the colonel, having no reason 
 for living anywhere in particular, and very little 
 to live upon, thought that residence in a foreign 
 country would improve his wife's health and 
 spirits. He had been told that Dinan wsls 
 picturesque and cheap ; and he had put himself 
 and his family on board the St, Malo steamer 
 and had gone out like an emigrant to push his 
 fortunes in a strange land. He had even an idea 
 that he might get "something to do " in Dinan —
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 4o 
 
 a secretaryship of a club, an agency, or managerial 
 post of some kind, never having cultivated the 
 art of self-examination so far as to discover that 
 he must have proved utterly incapable, had any 
 such occasion presented itself. 
 
 The occasion never did present itself. The 
 one English club existent at Dinan in those 
 days was amply provided with the secretarial 
 element. There was nothing in Dinan for an 
 Englishman to manage; no English agency 
 required. Colonel Manwaring settled down into 
 a kind of somnolent submission to obscure for- 
 tunes. He liked the old town, and he liked the 
 climate. He liked the cooking, and he liked 
 being out of the way of all the people he knew, 
 and whose vicinity would have obliged him to 
 live up to a certain conventional level. He liked 
 to get his English newspapers upon French soil, 
 and it irked him not that they were thirty-six 
 hours old. He liked to bask in the sunshine on 
 the terrace above the Eance, or in the open places 
 of the town. He liked talking of the possibilities 
 of an impending war, in very dubious French, 
 with the French officers, whose acquaintance ho 
 made at club or cafe. He had sold his commission
 
 44 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 and sunk the proceeds of the sale upon an annuity. 
 He had a little income of his own, and his wife 
 had a little money from a maiden aunt, and these 
 resources just enabled him to live with a certain 
 unpretending comfort. He had a good Breton 
 cook, and an old Scotch valet and butler, who 
 would have gone through fire and water for his 
 master. Mrs. Manwaring was a thoroughly nega- 
 tive character, placid as summer seas, sympathetic 
 and helpless. She let Macgregor and Antoinette 
 manage the house for her, do all the catering, 
 pay all the bills, and work the whole machinery 
 of her domestic life. She rejoiced in having a 
 good-tempered husband and obedient daughters. 
 vShe had no boys to put her in a fever of anxiety 
 lest they should be making surreptitious ascents 
 in balloons or staking their little all upon Zero 
 at the " Etablissement " at Dinard. In summer 
 she sat all day in one particular south window^ 
 knitting stockings for the colonel and reading 
 the English papers. In winter she occupied 
 herself in the same manner by the chimney 
 corner. She devoted one day in the week to 
 writing long letters to distant relatives. Once 
 a day, weather permitting, she took a gentle
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 45^ 
 
 constitutional walk upon the terrac3 above the 
 Kance, with one of her daughters. Needless 
 to say that in this life of harmless apathy she 
 had grown very stout, and that she had for- 
 gotten almost every accomplishment of her 
 girlhood. 
 
 From the placid monotony of life in Brittany 
 to the placid monotony of life in Cornwall, was 
 not a startling transition ; yet when she married 
 Martin Disney, and bade her commonplace father 
 and her apathetic mother good-bye, Isola felt as 
 if she had escaped from stagnation into a fresh 
 and vigorous atmosphere. Disney's character 
 made all the difference. He was every inch a 
 soldier, a keen politician, a man who had seen 
 many countries and read many books, clear- 
 brained, strong-willed, energetic, self-reliant. 
 She felt what it was to belong to somebody 
 who was capable of taking care of her. She 
 trusted him implicitly ; and she loved him with 
 as deep a love as a girl of nineteen is capable 
 of feeling for any lover. It may be that the 
 capacity for deep feeling is but half developed 
 at that age, and in that one fact may be found 
 the key to many domestic mysteries; mysteries
 
 46 ALL ALONG THE RIVEK. 
 
 of unions which begin in the gladness and 
 warmth of responsive affection, and which, a 
 few years later, pass into a frozen region of 
 indifference or are wrecked on sunken rocks of 
 guilty passion. Certain it was that Isola Man- 
 waring gave her hand to this grave, middle-aged 
 soldier, in all the innocence of a first love ; and 
 the love with which he rewarded her confidence, 
 the earnest watchful love of a man of mature 
 years, was enough for her happiness. That 
 honeymoon time, that summer of installation in 
 the Cornish cottage, and then the leisurely 
 journey to Venice in the waning brilliance of 
 a southern October, seemed like one long happy 
 dream, as she looked back upon it now, after a 
 year of solitude. 
 
 The doctor had decided that, in the delicate 
 health in which she found herself at the end of 
 that summer, it would be dangerous for her to 
 accompany her husband to India, more especially 
 as a campaign in Burmah meant roughing it, 
 and she would in all probability have been separ- 
 ated from him in the East; so they bade each 
 other a sad good-bye at Venice, and Isola 
 travelled quickly homeward, all possible comfort
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 47 
 
 having been secured for her on the way, by her 
 husband's forethought. It had been a long, sad, 
 sleepy journey, through a rain-blurred landscape, 
 and she was glad when the evening of the fourth 
 -day brought her to the snug little dining-room 
 in the Angler's Nest, where Tabitha was waiting 
 for her with a cheerful fire and the amber-shaded 
 reading lamp, and the most delightful little 
 composite meal of chicken and tongue, and tart, 
 and cream, and tea. It was pleasant to be 
 amoDg familiar things, after that long journey 
 in stuffy ladies' carriages, with elderly invalids, 
 whose chief talk was of their ailments. Pleasant 
 to see the Shah's solemn sea-green eyes staring 
 at her, and to have to repulse the demonstrative 
 attentions of Tim, who leapt upon her lap and 
 licked her face vehemently every time he caught 
 her off her guard. 
 
 She was ill and broken down after her journey, 
 and that sad parting, and she hid her tears upon 
 Tabitha's comfortable arm. 
 
 "It will be at least a year before he comes 
 back," she sobbed. "How can I live without 
 him all that dreary time ? " 
 
 Tabitha thought it was very hard upon the
 
 48 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 girl- wife, but affected to make light of it. " Lor, 
 bless you, ma'am," she said, "a year looks a 
 long time, but it isn't much when you come 
 to grapple with it. There'll be such a lot for 
 you to do. There'll be the garden. We ought 
 to make ever so many improvements next 
 spring and summer, against the master comes 
 home. And there's your piano. You want 
 to improve yourself — I've heard you say so — 
 and you can get up all sorts of new tunes, and 
 won't the Major be pleased with you — and then 
 — there'll be something else to occupy your 
 mind before next summer comes." 
 
 That " something else " which was to have 
 filled Isola's empty life with a new interest, 
 ended in disappointment. She was very ill 
 at the beginning of the new year, and Tabitha 
 nursed her with motherly tenderness long after 
 the doctor and the professional nurse had re- 
 nounced their care of her. She regained 
 strength very slowly after that serious illness, 
 and it was only in June she was able to take 
 the lonely rambles she loved, or row in her 
 little boat upon the river. 
 
 Tabitha was a servant in a thousand, faithful
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 49 
 
 and devoted, clever, active, and industrious. 
 She had been maid to Martin Disney's mother 
 for nearly fifteen years, had nursed her mistress 
 through a long and weary illness, and had 
 closed her eyes in death. Martin parted with 
 that faithful servant with reluctance after the 
 breaking up of his mother's household, and 
 he told her if he should ever marry and have 
 a house of his own — a very remote contingency 
 — she must be his housekeeper. Love and 
 marriage came upon him before the end of the 
 year, as a delightful surprise. He bought the 
 Angler's Nest, and he engaged Tabitha for the 
 rest of her life, at wages which, beginning at 
 a liberal figure, were to rise a pound every 
 Christmas. 
 
 **As if I cared about wages, Mr. Martin," 
 exclaimed Tabitha. "I'd just as soon come 
 to you for nothing. I've got more clothes than 
 will last my time, I'll be bound. You'd only 
 have to find me in shoe-leather." 
 
 She had never got out of the way of calling 
 her master by the name by which she had first 
 known him, when his father and elder brother 
 were both at home, in the old family house 
 
 VOL. T. E
 
 50 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 at Fowey. In all moments of forgetfulness lie 
 was still "Mr. Martin." 
 
 And now, in this bright November morning, 
 Tabitha came out to say that breakfast was 
 waiting for her young mistress, and mistress 
 and maid went in together to the cosy dining- 
 room, where the small round table near the 
 window was arranged as only Tabitha could 
 arrange a table — with autumn flowers, and 
 spotless damask, and a new-laid egg, and a dish 
 of honey, and some dainty little rolls of Tabitha's 
 own making, nestling in a napkin, a breakfast 
 for a Princess in a fairy tale. 
 
 There was only one other servant in the little 
 household — a bouncing, rosy-cheeked Cornish 
 girl, who was very industrious under Tabitha's 
 eye, and very idle when she was out of that faith- 
 ful housekeeper's ken. Tabitha cooked and took 
 care of everything, and for the most part waited 
 upon her mistress in this time of widowhood, 
 although Susan was supposed to be parlour-maid. 
 
 Tabitha poured out the tea, and buttered a 
 roll, while Isola leaned back in the bamboo 
 chair and played with the Shah.
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 51 
 
 " I never knew liim do sucli a thing before," 
 said Tabitha, in continuation of a theme which 
 had been fully discussed last night. 
 
 " Oh, it was very kind and polite ; but it was 
 not such a tremendous thing, after all," answered 
 Isola, still occupied with the Persian. "He 
 could hardly stand by and see one drowned. 
 You have no idea what the rain was like." 
 
 " But to send you home in his own carriage." 
 
 " There was nothing else for him to do — except 
 send me home in the gardener's cart. He could 
 not have turned out a dog in such weather." 
 
 " It's a thing that never happened before, and 
 it just shows what a respect he must have for the 
 Disneys. You don't know how stand-offish he is 
 with all the people about here — how he keeps 
 himself to himself. Not a bit like his father and 
 mother. They used to entertain all the neigh- 
 bourhood, and they went everywhere, as affable 
 as you like. He has taken care to show people 
 that he doesn't want their company. They say 
 he has led a very queer kind of life at home and 
 abroad ; never settling down anywhere, here to- 
 day and gone to-morrow ; roving about with his 
 yacht. I don't believe any good ever comes of a 

 
 52 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 young gentleman like that having a yacht. It 
 would be ever so much better for him to live at 
 the Mount and keep a pack of harriers.'* 
 
 " Why should a yacht be bad ? " asked Isola, 
 lazily beginning her breakfast, Tabitha standing 
 by the table all the time, ready for conversation. 
 
 •' Oh, I don't know. It gives a young man too 
 much, liberty," answered Tabitha, shaking her 
 head with a meaning air, as if with a knowledge 
 of dark things in connection with yachts. " He 
 can keep just what company he likes on board — 
 gentlemen or ladies. He can gamble — or drink 
 — as much as he likes. There's nobody to check 
 him. Sundays and weekdays, night and day, 
 are all alike to him." 
 
 " Lord Lostwithiel is not particularly young," 
 said Isola, musingly, not paying much attention 
 to this homily on yachts. " He must be thirty, 
 I think." 
 
 " Thirty-two last birthday. He ought to marry 
 and settle down. They say he's very clever, and 
 that he's bound to make a figure in politics some 
 of these odd days." 
 
 Isola looked at the clock on the chimney-piece 
 — a gilt horse-shoe with onyx nails ; one of her
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 53 
 
 wedding presents. It was early yet — only half- 
 past nine. Lord Lostwithiel had talked about 
 calling to inquire after her health. She felt 
 overpowered with shyness at the thought of see- 
 ing him again, alone — with no stately Mrs. Mayne 
 to take the edge off a tete-a-tete. Anything to 
 escape such an ordeal ! There was her boat — 
 that boat of which she was perfect mistress, and 
 in which she went for long, dawdling expeditions 
 towards Fowey or Lostwithiel with only Tim for 
 her companion — Tim, who was the best of com- 
 pany, in almost perpetual circulation between 
 stem and stern, balancing himself in perilous 
 places every now and then, to bark furiously at 
 imaginary foes in slowly passing fishermen's 
 boats. 
 
 " Have you any fancy about lunch, ma'am ? " 
 asked Tabitha, lingering with feather-brush in 
 hand over a side-table, on which work-basket, 
 books, writing - case, and flower - vases were 
 arranged with tasteful neatness by those skilful 
 hands. 
 
 "No, you dear old Tabbie; you know that 
 anything will do for me. Bread and jam, if you 
 like, and some of your clotted cream. Won't it
 
 54 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 be nice when we liave our very own dairy, and 
 our very own cows, who will know us and be fond 
 of us, like Tim and the Shah? " 
 
 She put on her hat and jacket, and went out 
 into the garden again, singing ''La Lettre de 
 Perichole " as she went. It was a capital idea to 
 take refuge in her boat. If his Lordship should 
 call — which was doubtful— since he might be 
 one of that numerous race of people whose days 
 are made up of unfulfilled intentions and promises 
 never realized — if he should call, she would be 
 far away when he came. He would make his 
 inquiry, leave his card, which would look nice in 
 the old Indian bowl on the hall-table. Such 
 cards have a power of flotation unknown to other 
 pasteboard ; they are always at the top. 
 
 Isola went to the little boat-house on the edge 
 of the lawn, Tim following her. She pushed the 
 light skiff down the slope into the water, and in 
 a few minutes more her sculls were ia the row- 
 locks and she was moving slowly up the river, 
 between autumnal woods, in a silence broken 
 only by the dip of the sculls and the little 
 rippling sound as the water dropped away from 
 them. A good deal of her life was spent like
 
 ''BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE;' 55 
 
 this, moving slowly up the river through that 
 deep silence of the woodland shores. The river 
 was as beautiful as the Dart almost, but lonelier 
 and more silent. It was Martin Disney's river — 
 the river whose ripples had soothed his mother's 
 dying ears — the last of all earthly sounds that 
 had been heard in the stillness of the death- 
 chamber. 
 
 In that tranquil atmosphere Isola used to 
 dream of her absent husband and of that mj'-stical 
 world of the East which seemed made up of 
 dreams — the world of Brahma and Buddha, of 
 jewel-bedecked Eajahs and Palace-tombs — world 
 of beauty and of terror ; of tropical forests, tigers, 
 orchids, serpents, elephants. Thugs. 
 
 She dreamt her dream of that strange world 
 in fear and trembling, conjuring up scenes of 
 horror — tiger hunts ; snakes hidden in the corner 
 of a tent ; battle ; fever ; fire ; mutiny. Her 
 morbid imagination pictured all possible and 
 impossible danger for the man she loved. And 
 then she thought of his home-coming — his return 
 — for good, for good — for all the span of their 
 joint lives; and she longed for that return with 
 the sickness of hope deferred.
 
 56 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 She would go back to the Angler's Best some- 
 times after one of these dreamy days upon the 
 river, and would pace about the house or the 
 garden, planning things for her husband's returUy 
 as if he were due next day. She would wheel 
 his own particular chair to the drawing-room 
 fireplace, and look at it, and arrange the fall 
 of the curtains before the old-fashioned bow- 
 window, and change the position of the lamp, 
 and alter the books on the shelves, and do this 
 and that with an eye to effect, anxious to dis- 
 cover how the room might be made prettiest, 
 cosiest, most lovable and home-like — for him, 
 for him, for him ! 
 
 And now she had to resign herself to a year's 
 delay, perhaps. Yes, he had said it might be a 
 year. All that bright picture of union and 
 content, wliich had seemed so vivid and so near, 
 had now grown dim and pale. It had melted 
 into a shadowy distance. To a girl who has but 
 just passed her twentieth birthday a year of 
 waiting and delay seems an eternity. 
 
 " I won't think of him," she said to herself, 
 plunging her sculls fiercely into the rippling 
 water. The tide was running down, and it was
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DEOP ONE BY ONE." 57 
 
 strong enough to have carried her little boat out 
 to sea like an autumn leaf swept along the 
 current. " I must try to lull my mind to sleep, 
 as if I were an enchanted Princess, and so bridge 
 over twelve slow, dull months of loneliness. I 
 won't think of you, Martin, my good, brave,, 
 truest of the true ! I'll occupy my poor, foolish 
 little mind. I'll write a novel, perhaps, like old 
 Miss Carver at Dinan. Anything in the world — 
 just to keep my thoughts from always brooding 
 on one subject." 
 
 She rowed on steadily, hugging the shore 
 under the wooded hillside, where the rich 
 autumn colouring and the clear, cool lights were- 
 so full of beauty — a beauty which she could feel^ 
 with a vague, dim sense which just touched the 
 realm of poetry. Perhaps she felt the same 
 sense of loss which Keats or Alfred de Musset 
 would have felt in the stillness of such a scene — 
 the want of something to people the wood and 
 the river — some race of beings loftier than 
 fishermen and peasants ; some of those mystic 
 forms which the poet sees amidst the shadows 
 of old woods or in the creeks and sheltered 
 inlets of a secluded river.
 
 58 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 She thought, with a half-smile, of yesterday's 
 adventure. What importance that foolish 
 Tabitha gave to so simple an incident; the 
 merest commonplace courtesy, necessitated by 
 circumstances ; and only because the person who 
 had been commonly courteous was Eichard 
 Hulbert, thirteenth Baron Lostwithiel. Thir- 
 teenth Baron ! There lay the distinction. 
 These Cornish folks worship antique lineage. 
 Tabitha would have thought very little of a 
 mushroom peer's civility, although he had sent 
 her mistress home in a chariot and four. She 
 was no worshipper of wealth, and she turned up 
 her blunt old nose at Mr. Crowther, of Glena- 
 veril — the great new red-brick mansion which 
 had sprung up like a fungus amidst the woods 
 only yesterday — because he had made his money 
 in trade, albeit his trade had been upon a large 
 scale, and altogether genteel and worthy to be 
 esteemed — a great cloth factory at Stroud, which 
 was said to have clad half the army at one 
 period of modern history. 
 
 Poor, foolish Tabitha ! What would she have 
 thought of the tea-drinking in that lovely old 
 room, mysteriously beautiful in the light of a
 
 "BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE." 59 
 
 wood fire — the playful, uncertain light which 
 glorifies everything ? What would she have 
 thought of those walls of books — richly bound 
 books, books in sombre brown, big books and 
 little books, from floor to ceiling? A room 
 which made those poor little oak bookcases in 
 the cottage parlour something to blush for. 
 What would Tabitha have tliought of his 
 deferential kindness — that tone of deepest con- 
 sideration with which such men treat all women, 
 even the old and uncomely ? She could hardly 
 have helped admiring his good manners, what- 
 ever dark things she might have been told about 
 his earlier years. 
 
 Why should he not have a yacht? It seemed 
 the fittest life for a man without home ties; a 
 man still young, and with no need to labour at 
 a profession. What better life could there be 
 than that free wandering from port to port over 
 a romantic sea — and to Isola all seas were alike 
 mysterious and romantic. 
 
 She dawdled away the morning ; she sculled 
 against the stream for nearly three hours, and 
 then let her boat drift down the river to the 
 garden above the tow-path. It was long past
 
 60 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 her usual time for luncheon when she moored 
 her boat to the little wooden steps, leaving it for 
 Thomas, the gardener, to pull up into the boat- 
 house. She had made up her mind that if 
 Lostwithiel troubled himself to make any inquiry 
 about her health he would call in the morning. 
 
 She had guessed rightly. Tabitha was full of 
 his visit, and his wondrous condescension. He 
 had called at eleven o'clock, on his way to the 
 railway station at Fowey. He called in the most 
 perfect of T carts, with a bright bay horse. 
 Tabitha had opened the door to him. He had 
 asked quite anxiously about Mrs. Disney's health. 
 He had walked round the garden with Tabitha 
 and admired everything, and had told her that 
 Major Disney had a better gardener than any he 
 had at the Mount, after which he had left her 
 charmed at his amiability. And so this little 
 episode in Isola's life came to a pleasant end, 
 leaving no record but his lordship's card, lying 
 like a jewel on the top of less distinguished names 
 in the old Indian bowl.
 
 ( 61 ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE ! " 
 
 IsoLA fancied that her adventure was all over 
 and done with after that ceremonious call of 
 inquiry; but in so narrow a world as that of 
 Trelasco it was scarcely possible to have seen the 
 last of a man who lived within three miles ; and 
 she and Lord Lostwithiel met now and again in 
 the course of her solitary rambles. The walk 
 into Fowey, following the old disused railway, 
 was almost her favourite, and one which she had 
 occasion to take oftener than any other, since 
 Tabitha was a stay-at-home person, and expected 
 her young mistress to do all the marketing, so 
 that Isola had usually some errand to take her 
 into the narrow street on the hillside above the 
 sea. It was at Fowey that she oftenest met
 
 62 ALL ALONG THE ElVER. 
 
 Lostwitliiel. His yacht, the Vendetta, was in the 
 harbour under repairs, and he went down to 
 look at the work daily, and often dawdled upon 
 the deck till dusk, watching the carpenters, or 
 talking to his captain. They had been half 
 over the world together, master and man, and 
 were almost as familiar as brothers. The crew 
 were half English and half foreign ; and it was 
 a curious mixture of languages in which Lost- 
 withiel talked to them. They were most of 
 them old hands on board the Vendetta, and would 
 have stood by the owner of the craft if he had 
 wanted to sail her up the Phlegethon. 
 
 She was a schooner of eighty tons, built for 
 speed, and with a rakish rig. She had cost, with 
 her fittings, her extra silk sails for racing, more 
 money than Lostwithiel cared to remember ; but 
 he loved her as a man loves his mistress, and if 
 she were costly and exacting, she was no worse 
 than other mistresses, and she was true as steel, 
 which they are not always ; and so he felt that 
 he had money's worth in her. He showed her to 
 Isola one evening from the promontory above 
 the harbour, where she met him in the autumn 
 sundown. Her work at the butcher's and the
 
 " OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE ! " 63 
 
 grocer's being done, she had gone up to that airy 
 height by Point Neptune to refresh herself with 
 a long look seaward before she went back to her 
 home in the valley. Lostwithiel took her away 
 from the Point, and made her look down into 
 the harbour. 
 
 "Isn't she a beauty?" he asked, pointing 
 below. 
 
 Her inexperienced eyes roamed about among 
 the boats, colliers, fishing-boats, half a dozen 
 yachts of different tonnage. 
 
 "' Which is yours ? " she asked. 
 
 " Which ? Why, there is only one decent boat 
 in the harbour. The schooner." 
 
 She saw which boat he meant by the direction 
 in which he flourished his walking-stick, but 
 was not learned in distinctions of rig. The 
 Vendetta, being under repair, did not seem to 
 her especially lovely. 
 
 "Have you pretty cabins," she asked child- 
 ishly. 
 
 " Oh yes, they're pretty enough ; but that's 
 not the question. Look at her lines. She skims 
 over the water like a gull. Ladies seem to think 
 only what a boat looks like inside. I believe my
 
 €4 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 boat is rather exceptional, from a lady's point 
 of view. Will you come on board and have a 
 look at lier?" 
 
 " Thanks, no ; I couldn't possibly. It will be 
 dark before I get home as it is." 
 
 "But it wouldn't take you a quarter of an 
 hour, and w^e could row you up the river in no 
 time — ever so much faster than you could walk.'* 
 
 Isola looked frightened at the very idea. 
 
 "Not for the world!" she said. " Tabitha 
 would think I had gone mad. She would begin 
 to fancy that I could never go out without over- 
 staying the daylight, and troubling you to send 
 me home." 
 
 " Ah, but it is so long since you were last 
 belated," he said, in his low caressing voice, with 
 a tone that was new to her and different from all 
 other voices ; " ages and ages ago — half a life- 
 time. There could be no harm in being just a 
 little late this mild evening, and I would row you 
 home — myself, under the new moon. Look at 
 her swinging up in the grey blue there above 
 Polruan. She looks like a fairy boat, anchored 
 in the sky by that star hanging a fathom below 
 her keel. I look at her, and wish — wish — wish ! "
 
 " OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE I " G5 
 
 He looked up, pale in the twilight, with dark 
 deep-set eyes, of which it was never easy to read 
 the expression. Perhaps that inscrutable look 
 made those sunken and by no means brilliant 
 eyes more interesting than some much handsomer 
 eyes — interesting with the deep interest that 
 belongs to the unknowable. 
 
 " Good night," said Isola. " I'm afraid that I 
 shall be very late." 
 
 " Good night. You would be earlier if you 
 would trust to the boat." 
 
 He held out his hand, and she gave him hers, 
 hesitatingly for the first time in their acquain- 
 tance. It was after this parting in the wintry 
 sundown that she first began to look troubled at 
 meeting him. 
 
 The troubled feeling grew upon her somehow. 
 In a life so lonely and uneventful trifles assume 
 undue importance. She tried to avoid him, and 
 on her journeys to Fowey she finished her 
 business in the village street and turned home- 
 wards without having climbed the promontory by 
 that rugged walk she loved so well. It needed 
 some "self-denial to forego that keen pleasure of 
 standing on the windy height and gazing across 
 
 VOL. r. F
 
 66 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 the western sea towards Ushant and lier native 
 province; but she knew that Lord Lostwithiel 
 spent a good deal of his time lounging on the 
 heiglits above the harbour, and she did not want 
 to meet him again. 
 
 Although she lived her quiet life in the 
 shortening days for nearly a month without 
 meeting him she was not allowed to forget his 
 existence. Wherever she went people talked 
 about him and speculated about him. Every 
 detail of his existence made matter for dis- 
 cussion; his yacht, his political opinions, his 
 talents, his income, his matrimonial prospects,, 
 the likelihood or unlikelihood of his settling 
 down permanently at the Mount, and taking the 
 harriers, which were probably to be without a 
 master within a measurable distance of time. 
 There was so little to talk about in Trelasco and 
 those scattered hamlets between Fowey and 
 Lostwithiel. 
 
 Isola found herself joining in the talk at after- 
 noon tea-parties, those haphazard droppings in 
 of charitable ladies who had been their rounds 
 among the cottagers and came back to the 
 atmosphere of gentility worn out by long stories
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 07 
 
 of woes and ailments, sore legs and rheumatic 
 joints, and were very glad to discuss a local 
 nobleman over a cup of delicately flavoured 
 Indian tea in the glow of a flower-scented draw- 
 ing-room. 
 
 Among other houses Mr.-?. Disney visited 
 Glenaveril, Mr. Crowther's great red-brick man- 
 sion, with its pepper-box turrets, and Jacobean 
 windows, after the manner of Burleigh House by 
 Stamford town. 
 
 Here lived in wealth and state quite the most 
 important family within a mile of Trelasco, the 
 Vansittart Crowthers, erst of Pilbury Mills, near 
 Stroud, now as much county as a family can make 
 itself after its head has passed his fortieth birth- 
 day. Nobody quite knew how Mr. Crowther had 
 come to be a Vansittart — unless by the easy 
 process of baptism and the complaisance of an 
 aristocratic sponsor ; but the Crowthers had been 
 known in Stroud for nearly two hundred years, 
 and had kept their sacks upright, as Mr. Crowther 
 called it, all that time. 
 
 Fortune had favoured this last of the Crowthers, 
 and, at forty years of age, he had found himself 
 rich enough to dispose of his business to two
 
 (38 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 younger brothers and a brother-in-law, and to 
 convert himself into a landed proprietor. He 
 bought up all the land that was to be had about 
 Trelasco. Cornish people cling to their land like 
 limpets to a rock ; and it was not easy to acquire 
 the ownership of the soil. In the prosperous past, 
 when land was paying nearly four per cent, in 
 other parts of England, Cornishmen were content 
 to hold estates that yielded only two per cent. ; 
 but the days of decay had come when Mr. 
 Crowther entered the market, and he was able 
 to buy out more than one gentleman of ancient 
 lineage. 
 
 When he had secured his land, he sent to 
 Plymouth for an architect, and he so harried 
 that architect and so tampered with his drawings 
 that the result of much labour and outlay was 
 that monstrosity in red brick with stone dressings, 
 known in the neighbourhood as Glenaveril. Mr. 
 Crowther's eldest daughter was deep in Lord 
 Lytton's newly published poem when the house 
 was being finished, and had imposed that 
 euphonious name upon her father. Glenaveril. 
 The house really was in a glen, or at least in 
 a wooded valley, and Glenaveril seemed to suit
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE " G9 
 
 it to per'^ection; and so the romantic name ot 
 a romantic poetn was cut in massive Gothic 
 letters on the granite pilkrs of Yansittart 
 Crowther's gate, beneath a shield which ex- 
 hibited the coat of arms made and provided by 
 the Herald's College. 
 
 Mrs. Vansittart Crowther was at home on 
 Thursday afternoons, when the choicest Indian 
 tea and the thickest cream, coffee as in Paris, 
 and the daintiest cakes and muffins which a 
 professed cook could provide, furnished the zest 
 to conversation ; for it could scarcely be said that 
 the conversation gave a zest to those creature 
 comforts. It would be perhaps nearer the mark 
 to say that Mrs. Crowther was supposed to sit 
 in the drawing-room on these occasions while the 
 two Miss Crowthers were at home. The mistress 
 of Glenaveril was not an aspiring woman ; and 
 in her heart of hearts she preferred Gloucester- 
 shire to Cornwall, and the stuccoed villa on the 
 Cheltenham road, with its acre and a half of 
 tennis-lawn and flower-beds, open to the blazing- 
 sun, and powdered with the summer dust, to 
 Glenaveril, with its solemn belt of woodlands, 
 and its too spacious grandeur. She was not
 
 70 ALL ALOXG THE KlVEPw. 
 
 vulgar or illiterate. She never misplaced au 
 aspirate. She had learnt to play the piano and 
 to talk French at the politest of young ladies' 
 schools at Cheltenham. She never dressed out- 
 rageously, or behaved rudely. She had neither 
 red liands nor splay feet. She was in all things 
 blameless; and yet Belinda and Alicia, her 
 daughters, were ashamed of her, and did their 
 utmost to keep her, and her tastes, and her 
 opinions in the background. She had no style. 
 She was not " smart." She seemed incapable of 
 grasping the ideas, or understanding the ways 
 of smart people ; or at least her daughters 
 thought so. 
 
 "Your mother is one of the best women I 
 know," said the curate to Alicia, being on the 
 most confidential terms with both sisters, "and 
 yet you and Miss Crowther are always trying to 
 edit her." 
 
 " Father wants a great deal more editing than 
 mother," said Belinda, " but there's no use in 
 talking to him. He is encased in the armour 
 of self-esteem. It made my blood run cold to 
 see him taking Lord Lostwithiel over the grounds 
 and stables the other day — praising everything,
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 71 
 
 and pointing out this and that, — and even saying 
 how much things had cost ! " 
 
 " I dare say it was vulgar," agreed the curate, 
 ^' but it's human nature. I've seen a duke behave 
 in pretty much the same way. Children are 
 always proud of their new toys, and men are 
 but children of a larger growth, don't you know ; 
 and you'll find there's a family resemblance in 
 humanity, which is stronger than training." 
 
 " Lord Lostwithiel Avould never behave in that 
 kind of way — boring people about his stables." 
 
 "Lord Lostwithiel doesn't care about stables, 
 — he would bore you about his yacht, I dare 
 say." 
 
 "Xo, he never talks of himself or his own 
 affairs. That is just the charm of his manner. 
 He makes ns all believe that he is thinking about 
 us ; and yet I dare say he forgets us directly he 
 is outside the gate." 
 
 "I'm sure he does," replied Mr. Colfox, the 
 curate. " There isn't a more selfish man living 
 than Lostwithiel." 
 
 The fair Belinda looked at him angrily. 
 There are assertions which young ladies make 
 on purpose to have them controverted.
 
 72 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 Mrs. Disney hated the great red -brick porch, 
 with its vaulted roof and monstrous iron lantern, 
 and the bell which made such a clamour, as 
 if it meant fire, or at least dinner, when she 
 touched the hanging brass handle. She hated 
 to find herself face to face with a tall footman, 
 who hardly condescended to say whether his 
 mistress were at home or not, but just preceded 
 her languidly along the broad corridor, where 
 the carpet was so thick that it felt like turf, 
 and flung open the drawing-room door with 
 an air, and pronounced her name into empty 
 space, so remote were the half-dozen ladies at 
 the other end of the room, clustered round 
 Belinda's tea-table, and fed with cake by Alicia, 
 while Mrs. Crowther sat in the window a little 
 way off, with her basket of woolwork at her 
 side, and her fat somnolent pug lying at her 
 feet. To Isola it was an ordeal to have to 
 walk the length of the drawing-room, navigating 
 her course amidst an archipelago of expensive 
 things — Florentine tables, portfolios of engrav- 
 ings, Louis Seize Jardinieres, easels supporting 
 the last expensive etching from Goupil's — to 
 the window where Mrs. Crowther waited to
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 73" 
 
 receive her, rising with her lap full of wools, 
 to shake hands with simple friendliness and 
 without a vestige of style. Belinda shook hands- 
 on a level with the tip of her sharp retrousse 
 nose, and twirled the silken train of her tea- 
 gown with the serpentine grace of Sarah 
 Bernhardt. She prided lierself on those ser- 
 pentine movements and languid graces which 
 belong to the Grseco-Belgravian period; while 
 Alicia held herself like a ramrod, and took 
 her stand upon being nothing if not sporting. 
 Her olive-cloth gown and straight starched 
 collar, her neat double-soled boots and cloth 
 gaiters, were a standing reproach to Belinda's 
 silken slovenliness and embroidered slippers, 
 always dropping off her restless feet, and being 
 chased surreptitiously among her lace and 
 pongee frillings. Poor Mrs. Crowther disliked 
 the Guard's collar, which she felt was writing 
 premature wrinkles upon her younger girl's 
 throat, but she positively loathed the loose 
 elegance of the Indian silk tea-gown, with its 
 wide Oriential sleeves, exhibiting naked arms 
 to the broad daylight. That sloppy raiment 
 made a discord in the subdued harmonv of the
 
 74 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 visitors' tailor-made gowns — well worn some of 
 them — brown, and grey, and indigo, and russet ; 
 and Mrs. Crowther was tortured by the convic- 
 tion that her elder daughter looked disreputable. 
 This honest matron was fond of Isola Disney. 
 In her own simple phraseology, she had " taken 
 to her ; " and pressed the girl-wife to come every 
 Thursday afternoon. 
 
 "It must be so lonely for you," she said 
 gently, " with your husband so far away, and 
 you such a child, too. I wonder your mamma 
 doesn't come and stay with you for a bit. You 
 must always come on our Thursdays. Now 
 mind you do, my dear." 
 
 " I don't think our Thursdays are remarkably 
 "enlivening, mother," said Alicia, objecting to 
 the faintest suggestion of fussiness, the crying 
 sin of both her parents. And then she turned 
 to Isola, and measured her from head to foot. 
 " It's rather a pity you don't hunt," she 
 said. '' We had a splendid morning with the 
 harriers." 
 
 " Perhaps I may get a little hunting by-and- 
 by, when my husband comes home." 
 
 " Ah, but one can't begin all at once ; and
 
 *'0H MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 75 
 
 this is a difficult country ; breakneck hills, and 
 nasty fences. Have you hunted much? " 
 
 ''Hardly at all. I was out in a boar-hunt 
 once, near Angers, but only as a looker-on. It 
 was a frrand siofht. The Duke of Beaufort came 
 over to Brittany on purpose to join in it." 
 
 " How glorious a boar-hunt must be ! I must 
 get my father to take me to Angers next year. 
 Do you know a great many people there ? " 
 
 " No, only two or three professors at the 
 college, and tlie Marquis de Querangal, the 
 gentleman who has the boar-hounds. His 
 daughter used to visit at Dinan, and she and 
 1 were great friends." 
 
 " Lord Lostwithiel talked about boar-hunting 
 the other night," said Alicia. "It must be 
 capital fun." His name recurred in this way, 
 whatever the conversation might be, with more 
 certainty than Zero on the wheel at roulette. 
 '^ He had been there in the evening, thought 
 Isola. There had been a dinner-party, perhaps, 
 at which he had been present. She had not 
 long to wonder. The name once pronounced, 
 the stream of talk flowed on. Yes, there liad 
 been a dinner, and Lord Lostwithiel had been
 
 76 ALL ALONG THE EIVEU. 
 
 delightful ; so brilliant in conversation as com- 
 pared with everybody else ; so witty, so cynical^ 
 so fin, de siecle. 
 
 "1 didn't hear him say anything very much 
 out of the common," said Mrs. Crowther, in her 
 matter-of-fact way. 
 
 She liked having a nobleman or any other 
 local magnate at her table; but she had too 
 much common sense to be hypnotized by his 
 magnificence, and made to taste milk and water 
 as Maronean wine. 
 
 " Do you know Lord Lostwithiel ? " Belinda 
 asked languidly, as Isola sipped her tea, sitting 
 shyly in the broad glare of a colossal fireplace. 
 " Oh yes, by-the-by, you met him here the week 
 before last." 
 
 Mrs. Disney blushed to the roots of those soft 
 tendril-like curls which clustered about her fore- 
 head ; but she said never a word. She had no 
 occasion to tell them the history of that meeting 
 in the rain, or of those many subsequent meet- 
 ings which had drifted her into almost the 
 familiarity of an old friendship. They might 
 take credit to themselves for having made her 
 acquainted with their star if they liked. She
 
 "OH 3I0MENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 77 
 
 had seen plenty of smart people at Dinan in 
 those sunny summer months when visitors came 
 from Dinard to look at the old quiet inland city. 
 Lostwithiel's rank had no disturbing influence 
 upon her mind. It was himself — something in 
 his look and in his voice, in the mere touch of 
 his hand — an indescribable something which of 
 late had moved her in his presence, and made 
 her faintly tremulous at the very sound of his 
 name. 
 
 He was announced while they were talking of 
 him, and he seemed surprised to come suddenly 
 upon that slim unobtrusive figure almost hidden 
 by Belinda's flowing garment and fuller form. 
 Belinda was decidedly handsome — handsomer 
 than an heiress need be ; but she was also just 
 a shade larger than an heiress need be at three 
 and twenty. She was a Eubens' beauty, expan- 
 sive, florid, and fair, with reddish auburn hair 
 piled on the top of her head. Sitting between 
 this massive beauty and the still more massive 
 chimney-piece, Mrs. Disney was completely hid- 
 den from the new arrival. 
 
 He discovered her suddenly while he was 
 shaking hands with Belinda, and his quick
 
 78 ALL ALONG THE rtlVER. 
 
 glance of pleased surprise did not escape that 
 young lady's steely blue eyes. Not a look or a 
 breath ever does escape observation in a village 
 drawing-room. Even the intellectual people, 
 the people who devour all Mudie's most solid 
 books — travels, memoirs, metaphysics, agnostic 
 novels — even these are as keenly interested in 
 their neighbours' thoughts and feelings as the 
 unlettered rustic in the village street. 
 
 Lostwithiel took the proffered cup of tea, and 
 planted himself near Mrs. Disney, with his back 
 against the marble caryatid which bore up one- 
 half of the chimney-piece. Alicia began to talk 
 to him about his yacht. How were the repairs 
 going on ? and so on, and so on, delighted to air 
 her technical knowledge. He answered her 
 somewhat languidly, as if the Vendetta were not 
 first in his thoughts at this particular moment. 
 
 "What about this ball?" he asked presently. 
 " You are all going to be there, of course ? " 
 
 " Do you mean the hunt ball at Lostwithiel ? " 
 
 " Of course ! What other ball could I mean ? 
 It is the great festivity of these parts. The one 
 tremendous event of the winter season. It was a 
 grand idea of yoa new people to revive the old
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 79 
 
 festivity, which had become a tradition. I wore 
 my first dress coat at the Lostwithiel Hunt Ball 
 nearly twenty years ago. I think it was there I 
 first fell in love, with a young lady in pink tulle, 
 who was miserable because she had been mis- 
 taken enough to wear pink at a hunt ball. I 
 condoled with her, assured her that in my eyes 
 she was lovely, although her gown clashed — that 
 was her word, I remember — with the pink coats. 
 My coat was not pink, and I believe she favoured 
 me a little on that account. She gave me a 
 good many waltzes in the course of the evening, 
 and I can answer for her never wearing that pink 
 frock again, for I trampled it to shreds. There 
 were traces of her to be found all over the rooms, 
 as if I had been Greenacre and she my victim's 
 body." 
 
 *' It will be rather a humdrum ball, I'm 
 afraid," said Belinda. " All the best people 
 seem to be away." 
 
 "Never mind that if the worst people can 
 dance. I am on the committee, so I will answer 
 for the supper and the champagne. You like a 
 dry brand, of conrs^, IMiss Crowther? " 
 
 " I never to':.c!i wine of anv kind."
 
 £0 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 "No; then my chief virtue will be thrown away 
 upon you. Are all young ladies blue-ribbonites 
 nowadays, I wonder ? Mrs. Disney, pray tell me 
 you are interested in the champagne question." 
 
 " I am not going to the ball." 
 
 " Not going ! Oh, but it is a duty which you 
 owe to the county ! Do you think because you 
 are an alien and a foreigner you can flout our 
 local gaieties — fleer at our solemnities ? No, it is 
 incumbent upon you to give us your support." 
 
 " Yes, my dear, you must go to the ball," put 
 in Mrs. Crowther, in her motherly tone. " You 
 are much too young and pretty to stay at home, 
 like Cinderella, while we are all enjoying our- 
 selves. Of course you must go. Mr. Crowther 
 has put down his name for five and twenty 
 tickets, and I'm sure there'll be one to spare for 
 you, although we shall have a large house-party." 
 
 "Indeed, you are too kind, but I couldn't 
 think " faltered I sola, with a distressed look. 
 
 She knew that Lostwithiel was watching her 
 from his vantage ground ever so far above her 
 head. A man of six feet two has considerable 
 advantages at a billiard-table, and in a quiet 
 flirtation carried on in public.
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 81 
 
 " If it is a chaperon you are thinking about 
 I'll take care of you," urged good Mrs. Crowther. 
 
 " No, it isn't on that account. Mrs. Baynham 
 offered to take me in her party. But I really 
 would much rather not be tliere. It would seem 
 horrid to me to be dancing in a great, dazzling 
 room, among happy people, while Martin is in 
 Burmah, perhaps in peril of his life on that 
 very night. One can never tell. I often shudder 
 at the thought of what may be happening to him 
 while I am sitting quietly by the fire. And what 
 should I feel at a ball ? " 
 
 '* I should hardly have expected you to have 
 such romantic notions about Major Disney," said 
 Belinda, coolly, "considering the difference in 
 your ages." 
 
 "Do you suppose I care the less for him 
 because he is twenty years older than I 
 am?" 
 
 "Twenty ! Is it really as much as that?" ejacu- 
 lated Mrs. Crowther, unaffectedly shocked. 
 
 " He is just as dear to me," pursued Isola, 
 warmly. " I look up to him, and love him with 
 all my heart. There never was a better, truer 
 man. From the time I began to read history I 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 82 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 always admired great soldiers. I don't mean to 
 say that Martin is a hero — only I know he is a 
 thorough soldier — and he seemed to realize all 
 my childish dreams." 
 
 She had spoken impetuously, fancying that 
 there was some slight towards her absent hus- 
 band in Miss Crowther's speech. Her flash of 
 anger made a break in the conversation, and 
 nothing more was said about her going or not 
 going to the Hunt Ball. They talked of that 
 entertainment in the abstract — discussed the 
 floor — the lighting — the band — and the great 
 people wlio might be induced to appear, if the 
 proper pressure were put upon them. 
 
 "There is plenty of time," said Lostwithiel, 
 " between now and the twenty-second of December 
 — nearly three weeks. Time for you and your 
 sister to get new frocks from London or Paris, 
 Miss Crowther. You mean having new frocks, 
 I suppose ? " 
 
 " One generally does have a new frock for a 
 dance," replied Belinda, "though the fashions 
 this winter are so completely odious that I 
 would much rather appear in a gown of my 
 great-grandmother's."
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 83 
 
 Lostwitliiel smiled his slow secret smile high, 
 up in the fainter firelight. He was reflecting 
 upon his notion of Miss Crowther's great-grand- 
 mother, in linsey-wolsey, with a lavender print 
 a,pron, a costume that would be hardly impressive 
 at a Hunt Ball. He did not give the young 
 lady credit for a great-grandmother from the 
 Society point of view. There was the mother 
 yonder — inoffensive respectability — the grand- 
 mother would be humbler — and the great- 
 grandmother he imagined at the wash-tub, or 
 ■cooking the noontide meal for an artisan hus- 
 band. He had never yet realized the idea of 
 numerous generations of middle-class life upon 
 the same plane, the same dead level of prosperous 
 commerce. 
 
 Isola rose to take leave, after having let her 
 tea get cold, and dropped half her cake on the 
 Persian rug. She felt shyer in that house than 
 in any other. She had a feeling that there she 
 was weighed in the balance and found wanting ; 
 that unfriendly eyes were scrutinizing her gloves 
 and hat, and appraising her features and com- 
 plexion. She felt herself insignificant, colour- 
 less, insipid beside that brilliant Miss Crowthcr,
 
 84 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 with her vivid beauty, and her self-assured airs- 
 and graces. 
 
 Tabitha urged her to be of good heart when, 
 she hinted at these feelings. 
 
 "Why, Lord have mercy upon us, ma'am,, 
 however grand they may all look, it's nothing 
 but wool — only wool ; and I heard there used 
 to be a good deal of devil's dust mixed with it, 
 after this Mr. Crowther came into the business."" 
 
 The dusk was thickeninc: as she went alons^ 
 the short avenue which led to the gates. Mr. 
 Crowther, having built his house in a wood, had 
 been able to cut himself out a carriage drive, 
 which gave him an avenue of more than two- 
 centuries' growth, and thus imparted an air of 
 spurious antiquity to his demesne. He felt, as- 
 he looked at the massive boles of those old 
 Spanish chestnuts, as if lie had belonged to the 
 soil since the Commonwealth. 
 
 Even the lodge was an important buildings 
 Tudor on one side, and monastic on the other ; 
 with that agreeable hodge-podge of styles which 
 the modern architect loveth. It was a better 
 house than the curate lived in, as he often told 
 Miss Crowther,
 
 "OH M03IENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 85 
 
 Isola quickened ber pace outside that solemn 
 gateway, and seemed to breathe more freely. 
 :She hurried even faster at the sound of a footstep 
 behind her, though there was no need for nervous 
 apprehensions at that early hour in the November 
 evening on the high road between Fowey and 
 Trelasco. Did she know that firm, quick foot- 
 fall ; or was it an instinctive avoidance of an 
 unknown danger which made her hurry on till 
 her heart began to beat stormily, and her breath 
 came in short gasps ? 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Disney, do you usually walk as 
 if for a wager ? " asked a voice behind her. " I 
 can generally get over the ground pretty fast, 
 but it was as much as I could do to overtake you 
 without running." 
 
 He was not breathless, however. His tones 
 were firm and tranquil. It was she who could 
 scarcely speak. 
 
 " I'm afraid I am very late," she answered 
 nervously. 
 
 " For what ? For afternoon tea by your own 
 fireside ? Have you anybody waiting for you at 
 the Angler's Nest, that you should be in such a 
 hurry to get home ? "
 
 S6 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 " No, there is no one waiting, except Tabitlia. 
 I expect no one." 
 
 " Then why walk yourself into a fever ? " 
 
 *' Tabitha gets fidgety if I am out after dusk." 
 
 ''Then let Tabitha fidget! It will be 
 good for her liver. Those adipose people require 
 small Avoiries now and again to keep them in 
 health. You mustn't over-pace yourself to oblige 
 Tabitha." 
 
 She had slackened her steps, and ^he was w alk- 
 ing by her side, looking down at her from that 
 superb altitude which gave him an unfair advan- 
 tage. How could she, upon her lower level, 
 escape those searching glances ? 
 
 She knew that her way home Avas his way 
 home, so far as the bend of the road which led 
 away from the river ; and to avoid him for the 
 intervening distance would have been difficult. 
 She must submit to his company on the road, 
 or make a greater effort than it w^as in her 
 nature to make. 
 
 "You mean to go to this ball, don't you?" 
 he asked earnestly. 
 
 « I think not." 
 
 "Oh, but pray do! Why should you shut
 
 *'0H MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 87 
 
 yourself from all the pleasures of this world, 
 and live like a uun, always? You might surely 
 make just one exception for such a grand 
 event as the Hunt Ball. You have no idea 
 how much we all think of it hereabouts. Re- 
 member, it will be the first public dance we have 
 had at Lostwithiel for ever so many years. 
 You will see family diamonds enough to make 
 you fancy you are at St. James's. Do you 
 think Major Disney would dislike your having 
 just one evening's dissipation ? " 
 
 " Oh no, he would not mind ! He is only 
 too kind and indulgent. He would have liked 
 me to spend the winter with my sister in Hans 
 Place, where there would have been gaieties of 
 all kinds; but I don't want to go into society 
 while Martin is away. It would not make me 
 happy." 
 
 " But if it made some one else happy — if it 
 made other people happy to see you there? " 
 
 '•' Oh, but it would not matter to anybody ! I 
 am a stranger in the land. People are only kind 
 to me for my husband's sake." 
 
 "Your modesty becomes you as the dew 
 becomes a rose. I won't gainsay you — only be
 
 88 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 sure you will be missed if you don't go to the 
 ball. And if you do go — well, it will be an 
 opportunity of making nice friends. It will be 
 your dehut in county society." 
 
 " Without my husband ? Please don't say any 
 more about it, Lord Lostwithiel. I had much 
 rather stay at home." 
 
 He changed the conversation instantly, ask- 
 ing her what she thought of Gleuaveril. 
 
 " I think the situation most lovely." 
 
 " Yes, there we are all agreed. Mr. Crowther 
 had the good taste to find a charming site, and 
 the bad taste to erect an architectural monstrosity, 
 a chimera in red brick. There was a grange once 
 in the heart of that wood, and the Crowthers have 
 the advantage of acorns and chestnuts that sowed 
 themselves while the sleepy old monks were 
 telling their beads. How do you like Miss 
 Crowther ? " 
 
 "I hardly know her well enough to like or 
 dislike her. She is very handsome." 
 
 " So was Eubens' wife, Helena Forman ; but 
 what would one do in a world peopled with 
 Helena Formans ? There are galleries in 
 Antwerp which no man should enter without
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 89 
 
 smoke-coloured sjDectacles, if he would avoid 
 feeing blinded by a blaze of red-haired beauty. 
 I am told that the Miss Crowthers will have, at 
 least, a million of money between them in days 
 to come, and that they are destined to make 
 great matches. Perhaps we shall see some of 
 their soupirants at the ball. Since the decay of 
 the landed interest, the chasse aux dots has 
 become fiercer than of old." 
 
 This seemed to come strangely from him who 
 had already been talked of as a possible candi- 
 date for one of the Miss Crowthers. It would be 
 such a particularly suitable match, Mrs. Baynham, 
 the doctor's wife, had told Isola. What could 
 his lordship look for beyond a fine fortune and 
 a handsome wife ? 
 
 "They would make such a splendid pair," 
 eaid Mrs. Baynham, talking of them as if they 
 were carriage-horses. 
 
 Mrs. Disney and her companion crossed a 
 narrow meadow, from the high road to the river- 
 path which was the nearest way to the Angler's 
 Nest. The river went rippling by under the 
 gathering grey of the November evening. On 
 their ri^rht hand there was the p^loom of dark
 
 90 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 woods : and from the meadow on their left rose a 
 thick white mist, like a sea that threatened to 
 swallow tliem np in its phantasmal tide. The 
 sound of distant oars, dipping witli rhythmical 
 measure, was the only sound except their own 
 voice.«. 
 
 Did that three-quarters of a mile seem longer 
 or shorter than usual ? Isola hardly knew ; but 
 when she saw the lights shining in Tabitha's 
 kitchen, and the fire-glow in the drawing-room, 
 she was glad with the gladness of one who 
 escapes from some fancied danger of ghosts or 
 goblins. 
 
 Lostwithiel detained lier at the gate. 
 
 " Good night," he said ; " good night. You 
 will change your mind, won't you, Mrs. Disney ? 
 It is not in one so gentle as you to be inflexible 
 about such a trifle. Say that you Avill honour 
 our ball." 
 
 She drew herself up a little, as if in protest 
 against his pertinacity. 
 
 " I really cannot understand why you should 
 care whether I go or stay away," she said 
 coldly. 
 
 " Oh, but I do care I It is childish, perhaps, on
 
 "OH MOMENT ONE AND INFINITE!" 91 
 
 my part, but I do care ; I care tremendously ;. 
 more than I have cared about anything for a 
 long time. It is so small a thing on your part 
 — it means so much for me ! Say you will he 
 there." 
 
 "Is that you, ma'am?" asked Tabitha's 
 pleasant voice, while Tabitha's substantial soles 
 made themselves audible upon the gravel path. 
 " I was beginning to get fidgety about you." 
 
 " Good night," said Isola, shortly, as she passed 
 through the gate. 
 
 It shut with a sharp little click of the latch y 
 and she vanished among the laurels and arbutus. 
 He heard her voice and Tabitha's as they 
 walked towards the house in friendly conver- 
 sation, mistress and maid. 
 
 There was a great over-blown Dijon rose 
 nodding its heavy head over the fence. Koses 
 linger so late in that soft western air. Lost- 
 withiel plucked the flower, and pulled off its 
 petals one by one as he walked towards the 
 village street. 
 
 "Will she go — Avill she stay — go — stay — go 
 — stay ? " he muttered, as the petals fluttered 
 to the ground.
 
 •92 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 " Go ! Yes, of course she will go," he said to 
 himself as the last leaf fell. " Does it need 
 ghost from the grave or rose from the garden to 
 ^ell me that ? "
 
 ( 93 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 "dreaming, she knew it was a dream." 
 
 IsoLA and Lostwitliiel met a good many times 
 after that walk through the autumn mists. She 
 tried her utmost to avoid him. She went for 
 fewer walks than of old ; nay, she chiefly con- 
 fined her perambulations to those domestic 
 errands which Tabitha imposed upon her, and 
 such afternoon visits as she felt it incumbent 
 upon her to pay, in strict return for visits paid 
 to her. Major Disney had begged her to be 
 exact in such small ceremonies, and to keep 
 upon the best possible terms with his friends. 
 "I love every soul in the place, for old sake's 
 sake," he told her ; and for old sake's sake Isola 
 had to cultivate the people her husband had 
 known all his life. 
 
 She tried to avoid Lostwithiel, but Fate was 
 against her, and they met. He was unvaryingly
 
 94 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 courteous. He said no word which could offend 
 the most sensitive of women. Prudery itself 
 could have had no ground for alarm. He did 
 not again allude to the ball, or his wishes upon 
 that point. He talked of those common topics 
 of interest to which every day and every season 
 give rise, even in a Cornish village ; and yet in 
 this common talk acquaintance ripened until it 
 became friendship unawares. And then — as all 
 sense of shyness and reserve upon Isola's part 
 gave way to a vague, reposeful feeling, like 
 drifting down a sunlit river, with never a breath 
 of chilling wind — they began to exchange con- 
 fidences about their past lives. Unawares Martin 
 Disney's wife found herself entering into the 
 minutest details about the people she had met 
 on that level road of a monotonous girlhood by 
 which she liad come to be what she was. 
 Unawares she betrayed all her feelings and 
 opinions, her likes and dislikes, and even the 
 little weaknesses and eccentricities of her parents 
 — her sister — her wealthy brother-in-law. Never 
 before had she found so good a listener. Her 
 husband had been all affectionate interest in the 
 things that concerned her; yet she had often
 
 *• DKEAMING, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DREAM." 95 
 
 discovered that his mind was wandering in the 
 midst of some girlish reminiscence ; and he had 
 a tiresome trick of forgetting all those particulars 
 about her friends which would have enabled him 
 to distinguish the personages of a story. He 
 had to be told everything afresh at each recur- 
 rence of those names that were so familiar to 
 her. Nor had he Lostwithiel's keen sense of 
 humour, and quick perception of the ridiculous 
 side of life, whereby many a small social sketch 
 fell flat. 
 
 The glimpses she caught of her new friend's 
 past existence enthralled her. It was to see new 
 vistas opening into unknown worlds ; the world 
 of university life ; the world of society, English 
 and continental, with all its varieties of jargon ; 
 the world of politics, and literature, and art. It 
 cliarmed him to see her interest in all those 
 unknown things and people. 
 
 "You would very soon be tired of it, and 
 would come back to Trelasco — like the hare to 
 her form — or like me," he said, smiling at her 
 ardent look. "Believe me, it is all dust and 
 ashes. My happiest hours have been on board 
 a yacht, with only half a dozen good books, and
 
 96 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 ten or a dozen ignoramuses in blue serge for my 
 companions." 
 
 She was to go to the Hunt Ball after all ; not 
 because he wished it, but because other people 
 had taken her affairs in hand, and decided that 
 she should go. Dr. and Mrs. Baynham had 
 decided for her. Mrs. Vansittart Crowther had 
 decided for her, and had sent her a ticket with 
 her love by that very footman whose appearance 
 when he opened the door always crushed her, 
 and who had given her a frightful shock when 
 she danced into the kitchen to speak to Tabitha, 
 and found him meekly sitting on a Windsor 
 chair, with his knees drawn up nearly to his chin. 
 Lastly, Tabitha had decided; and Tabitha's 
 opinion went for more than that of anybody else. 
 
 " You want a little bit of change and gaiety," 
 said the faithful stewardess. "You have been 
 looking pale and worried ever since you had 
 that bad news from Broomer," this was Tabitha's 
 nearest approach to Burmah, " and you'll be all 
 the better for an evening's pleasure. It isn't 
 as if you had to buy a dress, or even a pair of 
 gloves. You've only worn your wedding-dress
 
 " DEE AMINO, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DEE AM." 97 
 
 at three parties since you came home from 
 your honeymoon, and it's as fresh as if you'd 
 been married yesterday. You've got everything, 
 and everything of the best. Why shouldn't 
 you go?" 
 
 Isola could advance no reason, except her 
 vague fear that her husband might not approve 
 of her appearing at a public ball without him ; 
 but at this objection honest Tabitha snapped 
 her fingers. 
 
 " I'll answer for Mr. Martin," she said. " He'll 
 be pleased for you to enjoy yourself. * Don't let 
 her mope while I'm away. Tabby,' he said to me 
 the day before you started for foreign parts. 
 He'd like you to be at the ball. You'll have 
 Mrs. Baynham to take care of you, and what 
 can you want more than that, I should like to 
 know ? " 
 
 Mrs. Baynham, the portly doctor's wife, was, 
 in Tabitha's mind, the representative of all the 
 respectabilities. How could a girl just out of 
 her teens — a girl who loved dancing, and had 
 been told she danced exquisitely — turn a deaf 
 ear to such arguments, put forward by the person 
 to whose care her husband had in some wise 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 confided her. If Tabitba approved, Isola thought 
 she could not do wrong in yielding; so the 
 simply-fashioned white satin gown — made in 
 Paris, and with all Parisian cMc — was taken 
 out of the pot-pourri perfumed drawer. Gloves 
 and fan, and little white slippers were passed 
 in review. There was nothing wanted. The 
 carefullest housewife need not have hesitated 
 on the score of economy. 
 
 So the question was finally settled — she was 
 to go to the Hunt Ball. A fly was engaged 
 for her especial service, so that she might not 
 crowd Mrs. Baynham, who was to take two 
 fresh, fat-cheeked nieces, who looked as if they 
 had been fed from infancy upwards upon apple 
 pasties and clotted cream. She was to drive to 
 Lostwithiel in the fly from the Maypole Inn, 
 and she was to join Mrs. Baynham in the 
 cloak-room, and make her entrance under that 
 
 This final decision was arrived at about ten 
 days before the event, and for nine of those 
 intervening days Isola's life went by as if she 
 were always sitting in that imaginary boat 
 drifting down a sunlit river ; but on the day
 
 " DREAMING, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DREAM." 99 
 
 of the dance, after just half an hour's quiet 
 walk with Lostwithiel on the towpath, she went 
 back to the cottage pale as ashes ; and sat down 
 at her little davenport in the drawing-room, 
 trembling, breathless, and on the verge of 
 hysteria. 
 
 She opened the drawers of the davenport one 
 after another, looking for something — helplessly, 
 confusedly, as one whose brain is half distraught. 
 It was ten minutes before she found what she 
 wanted — a sheaf of telegraph forms. 
 
 " To Major Disney, Cornwall Fusiliers, Ean- 
 goon. — Let me go to you at once. I am 
 miserable. My heart will break if you leave 
 me here." 
 
 This was the gist of a message which she 
 wrote half a dozen times, in different words, 
 upon half a dozen forms. Then she tore up 
 all but the last, left that one in her blotting- 
 book, and began to pace the room feverishly, 
 with her hands clasped before her face. 
 
 What fever-fraught vision was it that those 
 hands tried to shut out from her burning eyes ? 
 So little had happened — so little — only half an 
 hour's quiet walk along the towpath, where the
 
 100 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 leafless willows had a grim, uncanny look, like 
 those trees whose old grey branches seemed 
 the arms of the Erlking's daughters, beckoning 
 the child as he nestled in his father's arms, 
 riding through the night. So little — so little 
 — and yet it meant the lifting of a veil — the 
 passage from happy ignorant innocence to the 
 full consciousness of an unholy love. It meant 
 what one kiss on trembling lips meant for Paolo 
 and Francesca. It meant the plunge into a 
 gulf of dark despair — unless she had strength 
 to draw back, seeing the abyss at her feet, 
 warned of her danger. 
 
 What had he said ? Only a few agitated 
 words — only a revelation. He loved her, loved 
 her with all the passion of his passionate soul ; 
 loved her as he had never loved before. They 
 all tell the same story, these destroyers of in- 
 nocence; and, for that one burning moment, 
 they all mean what they say. Every seducer 
 has his hour of sublime truthfulness ; of generous 
 feeling ; of ardent heroic aspirations ; the hour 
 in which he would perish for the woman he 
 loves ; cut off his right hand ; burn out his 
 eyes ; leap off a monument ; do anything except
 
 " DREAMING, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DREAM." 101 
 
 surrender her, except forego his privilege to 
 destroy her. 
 
 It was not too late. The warning had come 
 in time — just in time to save her. She knew 
 now to what ocean that drifting boat was carry- 
 ing her — through the sunny atmosphere, be- 
 tween the flowery shores of dreamland. It 
 was taking her to the arctic ocean of shame 
 and ruin — the great sea strewn with the corpses 
 of women who had sinned, and suffered, and 
 repented, and died — unforgiven of mankind — 
 to wait the tribunal of God. 
 
 *' Oh, lor ! " cried Tabitha, bursting into 
 the room. '* I thought you were never coming 
 home. You ought to go and lay down for two 
 or three hours after your tea, or we shall have 
 you fainting away before the night's over. 
 You've not been eating enough for a healthy 
 canary bird for the last week." 
 
 "I'm not very well, Tabbie. I don't think 
 I'll go to the ball." 
 
 " Not go ! and when the fly's ordered — and 
 will have to be paid for whether or no ; for 
 Masters told me he could have let it twelve
 
 102 ALL ALONG THE RIYEK. 
 
 deep. Not go ! and disappoint Mrs. Baynham, 
 who has set her heart on taking you ; and Mrs. 
 Crowther, who gave you the ticket ! Why, 
 it would never do! You'll feel well enough 
 when you're there. You won't know whether 
 you're standing on your head or your heels. 
 It's past five o'clock, and your tea has been 
 ready in the study since a quarter to." 
 
 ** How do you send telegrams to India, 
 Tabitha?" 
 
 " Lor, ma'am, how should I know ? From 
 the post-office, I suppose, pretty much like other 
 telegrams. But they cost no end of money, 
 I'll be bound. You're not wanting to send a 
 telegram to the major, are you, ma'am, to ask 
 his leave about the ball ? " 
 
 " No ; I was only wondering," Isola answered 
 feebly. 
 
 She shut and locked the davenport, leaving 
 her message in the blotting-book. She meant 
 to send it — if not to-day, to-morrow; if not 
 before the ball, after the ball. She felt that 
 her only hope of peace and safety and a clear 
 conscience was at her husband's side. She 
 must go out to him yonder in the unknown
 
 " DKEAMING, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DKEAM." 103 
 
 land. She must get to him somehow, with or 
 without his leave — with or without his help. 
 She would brave anything, hazard anything to 
 be with that faithful friend and defender — her 
 first love — her brave, self-denying, God-fearing 
 lover. She felt as if there were no other safety 
 or shelter for her in all the world. 
 
 " God will not help me unless I help myself," 
 she muttered distractedly, as she sat in her 
 low chair by the fire, with her head flung back 
 upon the cushions and the untouched meal at 
 her side. Tabitha had left off providing dinner 
 for her, at her particular request. She had 
 neither heart to sit down alone to a formal 
 dinner nor appetite to eat it; so Tabitha had 
 exercised all her skill as a cook, which was 
 great, in preparing a dainty little supper at 
 nine o'clock ; and it had irked her that her 
 mistress did such scant justice to the tempting 
 meal. 
 
 Isola fell asleep by the fire, comforted by 
 the warmth, worn out by nights that had been 
 made sleepless by vague agitation — by the 
 living over again of accidental meetings, and 
 friendly conversations — not by fear or remorse
 
 104 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 — for it was only this day that the danger of that 
 growing friendship had been revealed to her. 
 It was only to-day that she knew what such 
 friendships mean. She slept a feverish sleep, 
 from sheer exhaustion, and dreamt fever-dreams. 
 Those willows on the bank had recalled 
 Goethe's "Erl Konig" — the ballad she had learnt 
 by rote in her earliest German studies — and the 
 willows and the ballad were interwoven with her 
 dreams. It was Martin Disney who was riding 
 his charger along a dark road, and she was 
 sitting in front of his saddle, clinging to him, 
 hiding her face upon his breast, and the willows 
 were beckoning — she knew those gaunt arms 
 were beckoning to her, although her eyes were 
 hidden — and he was following. He was thun- 
 dering behind them, on a black horse. Yes, and 
 then the dream changed — the dreamer's wander- 
 ing thoughts directed by another reminiscence 
 of those girlish studies in German poetry. She 
 was Lenore, and she was in the arms of her dead 
 lover. She felt that bony arm — Death's arm — 
 clutching her round the waist. Her streaming 
 hair mingled with the streaming mane of that 
 unearthly horse. She was with Lostwithiel — in
 
 " DREAMING, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DREAM." 105 
 
 his arms — and they were both dead and both 
 happy — happy in being together. What did 
 they want more than that ? 
 
 " Vollbracht, vollbracht ist unser Lauf ! 
 Das Hochzeitbette, tlmt sich auf ! 
 ie Todten reiten schnelle ! 
 Wir sind, wir sind, zur Stelle." 
 
 She woke with the chill of the charnel-house 
 freezing her blood. The fire had gone out. 
 Tim had curled himself at her feet in the folds 
 of her gown. The Persian was staring dis- 
 contentedly at the ashes in the grate, and 
 Tabitha's sturdy footsteps might be heard in the 
 room above, bustling to and fro, and anon poking 
 the fire, and putting on coals, making all snug 
 and ready for her mistress's toilet. 
 
 Isola rang, and Susan, the parlourmaid, 
 brought in the lamp. 
 
 "I came twice before, ma'am; but you were 
 fast asleep, so I took the lamp back to the 
 pantry." 
 
 Isola looked at the clock. Ten minutes to 
 nine, and she was to meet Mrs. Baynham in the 
 cloak-room at half-past ten. Ten o'clock was 
 the hour on the card, and the fat-faced nieces
 
 106 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 were feverishly afraid that all the eligible part- 
 ners would be snapped up by those wise virgins 
 who appeared earliest on the scene. 
 
 " You won't keep us waiting in the cloak-room, 
 will you, dear Mrs. Disney ? " they pleaded 
 coaxingly. 
 
 Was she to put on her finery and go ! There 
 would be time yet to send a note to Mrs. Bayn- 
 ham, excusing herself on the score of illness. 
 The doctor's party would not start before half- 
 past nine. What was she to do ? Oh, she 
 wanted to see him once more — just once more — 
 in the brightly-lighted rooms, amidst a crowd — 
 in a place where he would have no chance of 
 repeating those wicked, wicked words — of for- 
 getting all that was due to his own honour and 
 to hers. In the crowded ball-room there would 
 be safety — safety even from evil thoughts. Who 
 could think of anything with dance music 
 sounding in their ears, amidst the dazzle of 
 lamps and the flashing of jewels? 
 
 She wanted to go to the ball, to wear her satin 
 gown, to steep herself in light and music ; and 
 thus to escape from the dim horrors of that awful 
 dream.
 
 " DREAMING, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DREAM." 107 
 
 Tabitha seemed like a good angel, when she 
 came in at this juncture with a fresh cup of tea 
 and a plate of dainty little chicken sandwiches. 
 
 " Come now, ma'am, I shan't let you go to the 
 ball if you don't take these. What, not a bit of 
 fire — and you asleep here in the cold ? What 
 was that addle-pated Susan thinking about, I 
 wonder ? I'll take the tray upstairs. There's a 
 lovely fire in your room, and everything ready 
 for you to dress. I want to be able to tell 
 Mr. Martin that his young wife was the belle of 
 the ball." 
 
 Isola allowed herself to be led upstairs to the 
 bright, cheerful bedroom, with its pretty chintz- 
 pattern paper, and photographs, and artistic 
 muslin curtains, and glowing fire, and toilet- 
 table, with its glitter of crystal and silver in the 
 pleasant candlelight. She suffered herself to be 
 fed and dressed by Tabitha's skilful hands, 
 almost as if she had been a child ; and she 
 came out of her dismal dream into the glad 
 waking world, a radiant figure, with violet eyes 
 and alabaster complexion, lighted up by the 
 loveliest hectic. The simply-made, close-fitting 
 bodice, with folded crape veiliug the delicate
 
 108 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 bust, and the pure pearly tint of the satin, set off 
 her fragile beauty, while the long train and 
 massive folds of the rich fabric gave statuesque 
 grace to her tall, slim figure ; but the crowning 
 glory of her toilette was the garland of white 
 chrysanthemums, for which Tabitha had ran- 
 sacked all the neighbouring greenhouses ; a 
 garland of fluffy, feathery petals, which reached 
 in a diagonal line from her shoulder to the hem 
 of her gown. It was her only ornament, for by 
 some strange caprice she refused to wear the 
 modest pearl necklace and diamond cross which 
 had been her husband's wedding gift. 
 
 " Not to-night, Tabbie," she said ; and Tabitha 
 saw in this refusal only the coquetry of a lovely 
 woman, who wanted to show the great ladies and 
 squire's wives how poor and common diamonds 
 are by the side of youth and beauty. 
 
 " Well, you don't want any jewels, certainly," 
 said Tabitha. "You look as if you were going 
 to be married — all but the veil. Those chrysan- 
 themums are ever so much prettier than orange 
 blossoms. There's the fly. Let me put on your 
 cloak. It's a beautiful night, and almost as mild 
 as May. Everybody will be at the ball. There's
 
 "DKEAMING, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DREAM." 109 
 
 nothing to keep folks away. Well, I do wish 
 the major was here to go with you. Wouldn't 
 he be proud ? " 
 
 The stars were shining when Isola went along 
 the gravel path to the gate where Masters* fly 
 was waiting, with blazing lamps, which seemed 
 to put those luminous worlds yonder to shame. 
 There was no carriage-drive to the hall door ot 
 the Angler's Nest. The house retained all its 
 ancient simplicity, and ignored the necessities of 
 carriage people. Tabitha wrapped her mistress's 
 fur-lined cloak close round her, before she 
 stepped into the fly, which was provided with 
 those elaborate steps that seem peculiar to the 
 hired brougham. 
 
 " Good night, Tabitha, and thank you for all 
 the pains you've taken in dressing me — and for 
 the lovely wreath. I shall come home early. I 
 shan't wait for Mrs. Baynham's party." 
 
 "Don't you hurry," said Tabitha, heartily. 
 "The Hunt Ball only comes once a year, and 
 you'd better make the most of it. I shan't mind 
 sitting up ; and perhaps I shan't be half so dull 
 as you think for." 
 
 The flyman shut the door, which nobody but
 
 110 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 himself could shut — another peculiarity of hired 
 broughams. The fly vanished in the darkness, 
 and Tabitha ran back to the house, where she 
 found Susan waiting at the hall door in her 
 jacket and hat, as near a reproduction of Mrs. 
 Disney's jacket and hat as local circumstances 
 — or the difference between Bond Street and 
 Lostwithiel — would allow. 
 
 " Have you locked and bolted the back doors ? " 
 asked Tabitha ; " but, lor, I'll go and look my- 
 self ; I won't trust to your giddy young brains. 
 Mr. Tinkerly will be here with the cart directly. 
 IVe only got to put on my bonnet and dolman, 
 after I've taken a look round, and put away Mrs. 
 Disney's jewel-box." 
 
 Tabitha was no light-minded housekeeper, but 
 she had her hours of frivolity, and she loved 
 pleasure with the innocent freshness of a most 
 transparent soul. Tinkerly, the butcher, had 
 offered to drive the two ladies — Tabitha and 
 Susan — into Lostwithiel in his tax cart, and, 
 furthermore, to place them where they would 
 see something of the ball, or at least of the 
 company arriving and departing, and beyond 
 all this to give them a snack of supper, " Just
 
 "DREAMING, SHE KNEW IT WAS A DREAM." Ill 
 
 something to bite at and a glass of beer," he told 
 Tabitha deprecatingly, lest lie should raise hopes 
 beyond his power of realization. 
 
 He meant to do the thing as handsomely as 
 circumstances would permit, certainly to the 
 extent of cold boiled beef and pickles, with 
 Guinness or Bass. He was a family man, of irre- 
 proachable respectability, and his meat was 
 supposed to be unmatchable for thirty miles 
 round. He grew it himself, upon those pic- 
 turesque pastures which sloped skyward, dipping 
 towards the blue of the river, rising towards the 
 blue of the sky. 
 
 ISTo precaution of lock, bolt, or bar did Tabitha 
 neglect before she put on her best bonnet, and 
 dignified black cloth dolman, heavy with imita- 
 tion Astrachan. She and Susan were stand inir 
 at the gate when Tinkerly drove up with his 
 skittish mare and spring cart, a cart so springy 
 that it threatened to heel over altogether when 
 Tabitha clambered into the place of 'honour. 
 Mr. Tinkerly's foreman was sitting behind to 
 take care of Susan, and the foreman was un- 
 married, and of a greasy black-haired come- 
 liness, and there was none happier than Susan
 
 112 ALL ALONG THE KIYER. 
 
 under those wintry stars — not even the great 
 ladies in their family diamonds. 
 
 "What are diamonds," said Susan, philo- 
 sophically, with the foreman's arm sustaining 
 her at a sharp turn in the road, "if you don't 
 care for each other ? "
 
 ( 113 ) 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 " AND THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCARLET 
 FOR THE VERY SHAME OF BLISS." 
 
 People who were familiar with the Talbot Hotel, 
 Lostwithiel, in its everyday aspect would hardly 
 have recognized the old-fashioned hostelry to- 
 night, under the transforming hand of the Hunt 
 Club, with Lord Lostwithiel and Vansittart 
 Crowther on the committee. The entrance hall, 
 usually remarkable only for various cases of 
 stuffed birds, and a monster salmon — caught in 
 the Lerrin river in some remote period of history 
 — was now a bower of crimson cloth and white 
 azalias. In the ball-room and ante-room, tea- 
 room and supper-room, were more flowers, and 
 more crimson cloth, while on every side brashes 
 and vizards against the crimson and white 
 panelling testified to the occasion. The dancing- 
 room was very full when Mrs. Baynham's party 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 made their entrance, the matron in her historical 
 black velvet — which had formed part of her 
 trousseau thirteen years before, when she left the 
 family residence in the chief street of Truro, and 
 all those privileges which appertained to her as 
 the only daughter of a provincial banker, to 
 grace Dr. Baynham's lowlier dwelling. The 
 black velvet gown had been " let out " from 
 time to time, as youth expanded into maturity : 
 and there had been a new bodice and a real 
 Maltese lace flounce within the last three years, 
 which constituted a second incarnation; and Mrs. 
 Baynham walked into the Talbot ball-room with 
 the serene demeanour that goes with a contented 
 mind. She was satisfied with herself, and she 
 was proud of her party, the two fresh, rosy- 
 cheeked girls in sky-blue tulle, Isola, looking 
 like a Mary lily in her white satin raiment, and 
 the village surgeon, who always looked his best 
 in his dress clothes, newly-shaven, and, as it were, 
 pulled together in honour of the occasion. 
 
 The room was full, and very full ; but Lost- 
 withiel was not there. Isola had an instinctive 
 consciousness that he was missing in that bril- 
 liant crowd. People came buzzing round her.
 
 "THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SOAKLET." 115 
 
 and she was made room for upon a raised 
 bench opposite the gallery where a military- 
 band was playing a polka in which the brasses 
 predominated to an ear-splitting extent. 
 
 The Glenaveril party made their entrance ten 
 minutes later. The Crowther girls were not 
 afraid of wanting partners. Most young men 
 are glad to dance with half a million of money. 
 There is always an off chance of a good thing, 
 just as there is a chance of breaking the bank 
 at Monte Carlo. Belinda looked superb in a 
 cloud of tulle, like a goddess. Alicia looked too 
 well on horseback to look well off. Her spare 
 straight figure and sharp elbows were not at their 
 best in evening dress. She wore black, and 
 an infinity of bugles, and flashed and glittered 
 more than any one else in the room, though she 
 wore never a jewel. 
 
 "Worth, my dear," said Mrs. Baynham to a 
 blue niece, in a mysterious whisper ; " I know 
 his style." 
 
 There was a buzz of conversation on that 
 raised divan where the matrons were sitting with 
 those newly arrived maidens who were like ships 
 waiting to slide oat of their cradles and float
 
 116 ALL ALONG THE KIYEE. 
 
 away to sea. Isola and the sky-blue nieces had 
 not long to wait; especially Isola. Men were 
 entreating the stewards to introduce them to 
 that lovely fragile-looking creature in white 
 satin — the best men, the most distinctly county, 
 or those wandering stars from distant counties, 
 or the London galaxy, " men with handles to 
 their names," as Mr. Baynham told Mrs. 
 Crowther, resplendent in salmon brocade, and 
 Venetian point. 
 
 "My presentation gown," she informed the 
 doctor's wife ; " the Court mantle is ruby velvet, 
 lined with salmon satin. The weigh of it almost 
 pulled me backwards when I curtsied to the 
 royalties — such a lot of them, and I'm afraid I 
 curtsied rather too low to one of the Princesses, 
 for I caught her taking me off when she returned 
 my curtsey." 
 
 Isola danced through the lancers as one in a 
 dream. When the heart of a man is oppressed 
 with care, "Ta-rarra, ta-rarra, ta-ra, ta-ra ! " 
 What foolishness it all seemed. And her 
 husband in Eurmah, hemmed round by mur- 
 derous dacoits ! 
 
 Slie went back to her seat among the matrons.
 
 "THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCARLET." 117 
 
 after almost curtly refusing either refreshment 
 or a promenade through the rooms. Mrs. 
 Crowther was saying solemnly, "I do believe 
 Lord Lostwithiel is not coming after all, and 
 yet he worked so hard on the committee, my 
 husband said, and took such pains about the 
 flowers, and what not." 
 
 The tall, slim figure cut its way through the 
 crowd two or three minutes later, and Lostwithiel 
 was standing in front of Isola, and the two 
 matrons. 
 
 He wore a pink coat, as became a member of 
 the Lostwithiel Hunt, and the vivid colour 
 accentuated the pallor of his long thin face. He 
 talked to all the ladies on the divan ; to the 
 sky-blue nieces even, hoping that their cards 
 were full. 
 
 " If not, T must bring you some men I know," 
 he said. " You mustn't miss a dance." 
 
 They blushed and trembled with delight, never 
 before having been thus familiarly addressed by 
 a peer of the realm. He asked Isola for her 
 programme, with well-simulated indifference, yet 
 with that air of profound respect with whicli 
 lie talked to all women.
 
 118 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 " I hope you can spare me some waltzes," he 
 said. 
 
 " She is only just come," said Mrs. Baynham. 
 
 " And yet her card is almost full. People have 
 been very officious. Here is a poor little waltz 
 — number seven. May I have that, and number 
 eleven, and number " 
 
 "Please don't put down your name for any- 
 thing later than number eleven. I shall be gone 
 long before those late dances." 
 
 " Oh, surely, you don't mean to desert us 
 early. Kemember this is the one festive occasion 
 of our lives as a sporting community. All our 
 other meetings are given up to carking care, 
 financial difficulties, and squabbling. I shall 
 put down my name in these tempting blanks, 
 and if you disappoint me — well — it will only be 
 like my previous experiences as a fox-hunter." 
 
 He gave her back her programme, with all the 
 blanks filled in, and at the bottom a word written, 
 and triply underscored, 
 
 'ANATKH. 
 
 They had talked of Victor Hugo's romantic 
 story — that romance which the great man so
 
 "THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCARLET." 119 
 
 despised ia after years that he was almost 
 offended if any one presumed to praise it in his 
 hearing, although in the half-century that has 
 gone since Victor Hugo was a young man this 
 story of Notre Dame has been unsurpassed as an 
 example of the romantic novel. Lostwithiel had 
 praised the book, and had talked of the monk 
 Frollo, and his fatal love — and that word Fatality, 
 graven upon the wall of his cell, and burnt into 
 his soul. 
 
 Isola knew what those G-reek letters meant. 
 She dropped the little white and gold programme 
 as if it had been an adder. He went away to a 
 duty dance with a great lady of the district — 
 a lady whose diamonds made a light about her 
 wherever she moved ; and then he waltzed with 
 Belinda Crowther, to the admiration of the young 
 lady's mother, and of two or three other matrons 
 on the divan by the door. We,re they not a 
 splendid couple, she so brilliantly fair, he dark 
 and pale, bronzed slightly with exposure to the 
 sun in warmer climates than this — not positively 
 handsome, but with such an interesting coun- 
 tenance. So, and so, and so prosed the matrons, 
 until various middle-aged cavaliers came to
 
 120 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 invite them to the tea-room, where there was the 
 usual drawback in the shape of a frightful 
 draught from open windows, which the dancers, 
 coming in flushed and heated, voted delicious. 
 
 "This will be a good night's work for me," 
 said Dr. Baynham, cheerfully, although he con- 
 sidered it his duty to warn his patients of their 
 danger. 
 
 Conscience thus satisfied, he could look on 
 complacently as they eat ices, and selected cool 
 corners of the refreshment-room to flirt in. 
 
 "Next to a juvenile party, I don't know any- 
 thing better — from a professional point of view 
 — than a public ball," he said. *' Your canvas 
 corridors, decorated with flowers and bunting, are 
 a fortune to a family practitioner." 
 
 Isola danced every dance. She hardly knew 
 who her partners were. She had only a sense 
 of floating in a vortex of light and colour, to 
 some swinging melody. Everything was dream- 
 like — but not horrible, as in her dream by the 
 fireside at home. This was a happy dream, as 
 of a creature with wings, who knew not of care 
 in the present or a soul to be saved in the future. 
 And then came her waltz with Lostwithiel, and
 
 "THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCARLET." 121 
 
 that strong arm was round her, bearing her up 
 as a flower is borne upon a rushing tide, so that 
 she had no consciousness of movement on her 
 own part, only of floating, floating, floating, to 
 that languid three-time melody. 
 
 It was the last popular waltz they were play- 
 ing — a waltz that had been last summer's delight 
 in the arid gardens of South Kensington — " II n'y 
 a que toi;" a waltz with a chorus which the 
 band trolled out merrily, at intervals, in the 
 Trench of Stratford atte Bow. 
 
 "II n'y a que toi,'* whispered Lostwithiel, with 
 his lips close to the soft brown hair above the 
 white forehead. "Not a bad name for a waltz when 
 one is waltzing with just one person in the world." 
 
 Out in the cool night there was a little knot of 
 people as merry after their homelier fashion as 
 town and county in the ball-room. One of the 
 windows had been opened at the top for ventila- 
 tion, and this opening had been turned to advan- 
 tage. A large, substantial kitchen table had 
 been placed in front of the window, and upon 
 this improvised platform stood Tabitha, Susan, 
 the head chamber-maid, and the ostler's wife —
 
 122 ALL ALONG THE RIVEK. 
 
 this last on suffrance, and evidently not in 
 society — looking on at the ball. The window 
 was under a broad, wooden verandah, that sloped 
 above these spectators' heads. They were thus 
 in dense shadow, and unseen by the occupants of 
 the lamplit room. 
 
 Susan was exuberant in her delight. 
 
 "I was never at a ball before," she said. '* Oh, 
 ain't it lovely ? Don't I wish I could dance like 
 that ? Lor, do look at that fat old party, spinning 
 round like a teetotum ! Well, I never did ! 
 Don't she prespire ! " exclaimed Susan, indulging 
 in a running commentary which left much to be 
 desired in the matter of refinement. 
 
 This unsophisticated damsel heartily admired 
 youth and beauty, and the smart frocks and 
 flashing gems ; but she was cruelly hard upon 
 those dancers whose charms were on the wane, or 
 whose frocks were inferior or ugly. 
 
 " Well, I wouldn't," said Susan, " I wouldn't go 
 to a ball like this if I couldn't have everything 
 nice. Look at that tall girl in yeller. Did you 
 ever see such a scarecrow? I'd ever so much 
 rather stay at home, or stand outside, like this. 
 I should feel it better became me."
 
 "THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCARLET." 123 
 
 Tabitlia made no such remarks. She was 
 singularly silent and thoughtful, as she stood 
 looking down at the crowded room from her 
 point of vantage on the kitchen table. She had 
 only eyes for one figure — the willowy form in the 
 glistening white satin gown, with the feathery 
 Japanese chrysanthemums, a little crushed and 
 faded by this time; or perhaps it may be said 
 for two figures, since one followed the other as 
 the shadow follows the substance. She saw them 
 waltzing together, when supper was in full pro- 
 gress, and the room comparatively clear. She 
 saw the graceful head inclining towards his 
 shoulder, the slender waist held in his firm 
 embrace ; and it seemed to her that the waltz 
 was an invention of the Arch Enemy. She 
 thought of it very much as people thought 
 seventy years ago when Byron wrote his poetical 
 denunciation of the new dance. She saw those 
 two moving slowly towards an adjacent ante-room, 
 where banks of flowers, and a couple of sofas and 
 low easy-chairs made a retreat which was half 
 boudoir, half conservatory. She saw them moving 
 side by side, talking to each other in tones so 
 confidential that his bead bent low over hers each
 
 124 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 time she spoke ; and then she watched them 
 sitting side by side just within the doorway, at 
 an angle where she could see their faces, and 
 attitudes, still in the same confidential converse, 
 she with downcast eyes, and he leaning forward 
 with his elbow on his knee, and looking up at her 
 as he talked. 
 
 "It is too bad of him," muttered Tabitha, 
 writhing at that spectacle. " Does he think what 
 a child she is, and what harm he may be doing ? 
 It is wicked of him, and he knows it ; and other 
 people must notice them — other people must see 
 what I see — and they will be talking of her, 
 blighting her good name. Oh, if I could only 
 get her away at once before people begin to 
 notice her." 
 
 She could see her young mistress's face dis- 
 tinctly in the lamplight. Isola was very pale, 
 and her face was full of trouble ; not the face of 
 a woman amusing herself with an idle flirtation, 
 playing with fire without the least intention of 
 burning her fingers. There were plenty of flirta- 
 tions of that order going on in the Talbot ball- 
 room ; but this was not one of them. This meant 
 peril of some kind. This was all evil. That pale
 
 "THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCAELET." 125 
 
 face, those heavy eyelids, shrouding eyes which 
 dared not look up. That tremulous uncertain 
 movement of the snowy ostrich fan ! All these 
 were dano^er sio:nals. 
 
 " If I get her safe at home presently, I'll open 
 her eyes for her," thought Tabitha. '* I'll talk to 
 her as if I was her mother. God knows I should 
 be almost as sorry as ever her mother could be if 
 she came to any harm." 
 
 If she came to any harm. What harm was 
 there to fear for her, as she sat there, with 
 Lostwithiel lounging across the low chair beside 
 the sofa where she sat, leaning forward to look 
 into her downcast face ? What harm could come 
 to her except that which meant destruction — 
 death to peace, and gladness, and womanly 
 fame ? If there were danger it was a desperate 
 danger, and Tabitha shuddered at the mere 
 thought of that peril. 
 
 " But, lor, she's little more than a child," 
 mused Tabitha. '* She means no wrong, and she 
 knows no wrong. She's too innocent to come to 
 any harm." 
 
 Yet, in the landlady's snuggery, by-and-by, 
 seated at the comfortable round table, with its
 
 126 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 spotless damask and bright glass and silver, 
 Tabitha was quite unable to do justice to that 
 snack which Mr. Tinkerly had ordered in her 
 honour — a chicken and lobster-salad from the 
 supper-room, and three parts of a pine-apple 
 cream. Susan and the foreman fully appre- 
 ciated these dainties ; but Tabitha only munched 
 a crust and sipped a tumbler of beer. 
 
 " I'm a little bit out of sorts to-night," she 
 said. 
 
 " I hope you haven't taken cold, Mrs. Thomas," 
 said the polite Tinkerly. " Perhaps we ought 
 to have brought another rug ? " 
 
 " No, it isn't that. I've been quite warm and 
 comfortable. Eat your supper, Mr, Tinkerly, 
 and don't bother about me. I've been interested 
 in looking on, and I'm too much took up with 
 what I've seen to be able to eat." 
 
 "Well, it was a pretty sight," exclaimed 
 Tinkerly, enthusiastically; "but I don't think 
 I ever saw such a mort of plain women in 
 my life." 
 
 "Lor, Mr. Tinkerly," cried Susan, with a 
 shocked air. " Why, look at our young mistress, 
 and at Miss Crowther, and Miss Spenthrop
 
 •THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCAKLET." 127 
 
 from Truro, and Mrs. Pencarrow, and Lady 
 Chanderville." 
 
 " Well, I don't say they're all ugly. Some of 
 'em are handsome enough, and there's plenty of 
 thorough-breds among 'em, but there's a sight 
 of plain-headed ones. There's quite as much 
 beauty in your spear as there is among the 
 county folks, Miss Susan. I'll answer for that." 
 
 The night was waning. Isola had ordered her 
 carriage for half-past two : but three o'clock had 
 struck from the church tower of Lostwithiel, and 
 the dance was still at its height — at its best, 
 the dancers said, now that the sensual attractions 
 of the supper-room drew off a good many people, 
 and left the floor so much clearer than before 
 supper, when bulky middle-aged gentlemen, 
 talking to the matrons seated upon the divan, 
 had projected their ponderous persons into the 
 orbit of the waltzers. 
 
 Isola and Lostwithiel had danced only, two 
 waltzes, but since two o'clock they had sat out 
 several dances, Mrs. Disney having cancelled all 
 her engagements after that hour by declaring 
 that she would dance no more.
 
 128 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 "I am dreadfully tired," she told her partners 
 piteously, and her pallor gave force to the 
 assertion. "Please get some one else for our 
 dance, Captain Morshead," and so on, and so 
 on, to half a dozen disappointed suitors. 
 
 Perhaps some of those who happened to be 
 experienced in such complications may have 
 divined which way the wind blew, for no one 
 offered to sit out the promised dances, and 
 Isola and Lostwithiel were left pretty much to 
 themselves among the palms and orange-trees 
 in the ante-room. They were not unobserved, 
 however; and among the eyes which marked 
 them with no friendly notice were the fine, 
 steel-blue eyes of Miss Crowther. 
 
 " Is that a flirtation ? " she asked Captain 
 Morshead, glancing in the direction of the ante- 
 room where those two were sitting, as she and 
 Isola's cast-off partner waltzed past the muslin - 
 draped doorway. 
 
 "They seem rather fond of talking to each 
 other, don't they ? Who was she ? She's 
 uncommonly pretty." 
 
 " Oh, her people were army, I believe — as poor 
 as church mice — buried alive in Dinan."
 
 *'THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCARLET." 129 
 
 "At Dinan — and now she lives at Trelasco, 
 slie tells me. It seems scarcely worth while to 
 have exhumed her in order to bury her again. 
 Such a girl as that ought to be in London 
 enjoying life." 
 
 " Oh, but she's a grass widow, don't you know. 
 Her husband is in Burmah. I don't think it's 
 quite nice in her to be here to-night; only as 
 my too good-natured mother sent her a ticket, 
 I suppose I oughtn't to say anything about 
 it. Perhaps if mother sees the way she goes 
 on with Lord Lostwithiel she'll rather regret 
 that ticket." 
 
 "What was he saying all this time in that 
 gentle baritone, which was heard only by one 
 listener? He was asking her forgiveness for 
 his indiscretion of the afternoon, and in that 
 prayer for pardon was repeating his offence. 
 She was less inclined to be angry, perhaps, now. 
 The magic of the dance was still upon her 
 senses, the dance which had brought them 
 nearer than all the days they had met ; than 
 all their long confidential conversations on the 
 heights above the harbour, or on the river patli, 
 or dawdling on the bridge. She had felt the 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 beating of liis heart against her own, breath 
 mingling with breath, the thrilling touch of 
 bis encircling arm; and it was as if he had 
 woven a spell around her which made her his. 
 She had never danced with her husband, who 
 had no love of that heathenish art. In all 
 their brisk, frank courtship there had been no 
 intoxicating hours. She hardly knew what 
 dancing meant till she waltzed with Lostwithiel, 
 who had something of the fiery ardour of a 
 Pagan worshipping his gods in wild gyrations 
 upon moonlit mountain or in secret cave. She 
 let him talk to her to-night — let him pour out 
 the full confession of his unhappy love. He 
 spoke not as one who had hope ; not with that 
 implied belief in her frailty which would have 
 startled her into prompt resistance. His accents 
 were the accents of despair, his love was a dark 
 fatality. 
 
 'ANATKH. 
 
 "Why did you write that word on my 
 programme ? " she asked. 
 
 " Why ? Because I could not give you back 
 that card without some token of my passion — 
 with only commonplace entries which Jones,
 
 *'THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCARLET." 131 
 
 Brown, and Robinson might write there. I 
 want you to feel that you belong to me, some- 
 how, in some way, as the spirits of the dead 
 -and the souls of the living belong to each other 
 sometimes, by links which none can see. When 
 I am at the other end of the earth I want to 
 feel that there is something, if it were only a 
 word, like a masonic sign, between us ; if it 
 were only a promise that in such or such a 
 phase of the waning moon we would each look 
 up and breathe the other's name." 
 
 " You are going away ? " 
 
 " What else can I do ? Can I stay ? You 
 tell me I made you miserable by what I said 
 this afternoon. That means we must meet no 
 more. I can't be sorry for my offence. I 
 €annot answer for myself. My love has passed 
 the point of sanity and self-control. I have no 
 option. I must offend you, or I must leave 
 
 you." 
 
 "You need not leave Trelasco," she said 
 gentl}', " I am going away to-morrow.*' 
 " Going away. Where ? " 
 " To London first, and then to India." 
 " To Burmah ? Impossible ! "
 
 132 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 '* If not to the front, to the nearest convenient 
 station. I am going to my husband ; as nearly 
 as I can reach him; and as quickly as I can 
 make the journey." 
 
 " You are dreaming." 
 
 "No, I have quite made up my mind. I 
 hated to be left behind last year; and now 
 that his return is deferred my only chance of 
 happiness is to go to him. Some one called 
 me a grass widow the other day. What a 
 detestable name ! " 
 
 " Give me this one waltz ? " he asked, with- 
 out any comment upon her intended journey. 
 
 "Impossible. I told them all I shouldn't 
 dance any more." 
 
 " Oh, your partners are all in the supper-room, 
 I dare say. The dancing men go in last. 
 Hark! it's the Myosotis. Just one turn — only 
 one." 
 
 He had risen from his low seat, and she rose 
 involuntarily at the sound of the opening bars. 
 He put his arm round her gently, and drew her 
 into the ball-room, waltzing slowly as tliey went,, 
 and then, with the sudden impetus of an enthu- 
 siastic dancer, he was whirling her round the
 
 **THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCAKLET." 133 
 
 room, and she knew nothing, cared for nothing, 
 in the confusion of light and melody. 
 
 "Think of me sometimes when you are 
 far away ! " he whispered, with his lips almost 
 touching her forehead. 
 
 She did not resent that whisper. Already, 
 within a dozen hours of his first offence, she had 
 grown accustomed to his words of love. It 
 seemed to her as if they had loved each other 
 for years — had loved and had despaired long 
 ago, in some dim half-remembered past. A 
 passion of this kind is like a dream, in which 
 an instant gives the impression of half a life- 
 time, of long memories and old habit. 
 
 The room was much clearer now. 
 
 *' Is it very late ? " asked Isola. 
 
 " About four." 
 
 " So late — and I told the flyman half-past 
 two. It is dreadful. Let us stop, please." 
 
 He obeyed, and went with her towards the 
 cloak-room. The seats were nearly empty now 
 where the matrons had sat in their velvet and 
 brocade, a gorgeous background to the clouds of 
 tulle and sylph-like figures of the dancers. Mrs. 
 Baynham was nowhere to be seen, and the
 
 Idi ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 diminished bundles of tabby-cat cloaks and 
 Shetland shawls in the cloak-room indicated 
 that a good many people had left. Isola put 
 on her soft white shawl hurriedly, and went out 
 into the hall, where Lostwithiel had gone to 
 look for her carriage. 
 
 People were going away very fast, and through 
 the open doorway there was a sound of voices 
 and wheels ; but, in spite of footmen, constables,, 
 and hangers-on, there seemed a prodigiouf^ 
 difficulty in getting any particular carriage to 
 the door. 
 
 It was a mild, misty night, and the moon, 
 which had been counted on for the return home, 
 was hidden behind a mass of black clouds — or 
 in the expressive phraseology of one of the 
 foxhunters, had gone to ground. Mrs. Disney 
 waited near the door while Lostwithiel searched 
 for her fly. There were several departures of 
 other muffled figures, features undistinguishable 
 behind Shetland wraps, or furry hoods, as the 
 men hustled their womenkind into the carriages. 
 It seemed an age to Isola, waiting there alone 
 in the corridor, and seeing no mortal whom she 
 knew among those passers-by, before Lost-
 
 "THE CHILD-CHEEK BLUSHING SCAELET." 135 
 
 withiel came, hurried and breathlesp, to say that 
 her carriage was just coming up to the door. 
 
 " Wrap your shawl round your head," he said 
 quickly, as be gave her his arm. " There's a 
 nasty damp fog — so," muffling her, almost to 
 blindness. " Come along." 
 
 She looked at the carriage, with its lamps 
 shining red against the gray mistiness like great 
 fiery eyes, and then, glancing at the horse, she 
 cried suddenh^, " I'm afraid that's the wrong fly. 
 I think mine had a grey horse." 
 
 '*No, no, it's all right. Pray don't loiter in 
 this chillino; air." 
 
 The carriage door was open, the constable 
 standing by, bull's-eye in hand, a pair of horses 
 snorting close behind, another carriage coming 
 up so near that the pole threatened destruction. 
 There was no time for loitering. Everybody was 
 in a hurry to get home. Isola stepped lightly 
 into the brougham, which drove slowly off. 
 
 " Next carriage, Mrs. Brune Prideaux," roared 
 the constable. " Mrs. Prideaux' carriage stops 
 all the wav."
 
 136 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 It was early summer, summer in her first youth, 
 when she is frivolous and capricious, laughs and 
 weeps she knows not why ; smiling through her 
 tears, and never knowing her own mind for a 
 week together ; to-day gracious-tempered and 
 tropical ; to-morrow east-windy and morose. In 
 a word, it was June, a season of roses and rains, 
 blue skies and thunder-clouds. It was June, and 
 Martin Disney was looking out of the window 
 with a keen eager face, much bronzed, and 
 somewhat haggard, after a fatiguing campaign, 
 looking out across the vales and woods of his 
 native county, as the Penzance train sped along 
 the high-level line betwixt Plymouth and Par. 
 Those keen, grey eyes of his, accustomed to 
 searching out far-oif objects, looked as if they
 
 '*A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 137 
 
 could pierce through the green heart of the 
 Cornish valleys to the sheltered little harbour 
 of Fowey and the blue sea that opened wide to 
 the far-off West. 
 
 His labours were over, and he was going to 
 take his rest, going to hang up his sword, that 
 sword which had done such good work, or to 
 transform it into a reaping-hook. He was 
 Colonel Disney now, had given the State his 
 best service, and now, in the very prime and 
 vigour of his manhood, the State had done with 
 him, and he was free to do what he listed with 
 the maturer half of his life. He would have 
 been very sorry to retire from active service 
 had it not been for that tender tie which gave 
 such sweetness to the thought of retirement and 
 tranquil days. He was going home. The word 
 thrilled him like music; home to his fair young 
 wife, his chosen one, his domestic divinity. He 
 had not left off wondering how it had ever come 
 to pass that so young and fair a creature could 
 care for him. 
 
 " It isn't as if I were one of your accomplished 
 fellows," he said to himself, " able to sing, or play 
 the flute, or paint in water-colours. Except a
 
 188 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 very earnest love of a few good books, I have no 
 culture. How can any girl in the present day 
 care for a man without culture ? I could never 
 appreciate Keats, for instance ; and not to appre- 
 ciate Keats is to be an outsider in literature." 
 
 Yet, in spite of his seven and forty years, in 
 spite of his deficiencies,his homeliness, that young 
 heart had gone out to him. She loved him, and 
 his lot was full. There was nothing more upon 
 God's earth that he could desire, were it not a 
 miracle, and that the mother he had so fondly 
 loved might be given back to him, to share his 
 happiness, to make the third in a trinity of 
 trusting love. Since that could not be, there 
 was nothing left for him to yearn for. 
 
 The beating of his heart quickened almost 
 unbearably, as the train drew near Par. Isola 
 would meet him at the junction, perhaps. He 
 had not announced the actual hour of his arrival, 
 for matters had been a little uncertain when he 
 wrote yesterday, and he had not cared to tele- 
 graph this morning before he left Paddington. 
 Yet she would know that this was the only 
 likely train for him to choose ; and she would 
 be at the Junction, he thought, smiling her glad
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." loQ* 
 
 welcome, a fair young face, rosy in the sunset ; 
 for it was evening as he drew near the end of h's 
 journey. 
 
 No ; there was nobody he knew at the Junction, 
 He walked up and down the platform, and stared 
 about him in rather a forlorn way during the few 
 minutes before the starting of the train for Fowey. 
 She had not come to anticipate their meeting by 
 an hour or so, as he had hoped, as he had felt 
 almost certain, she would come. 
 
 It was more natural that she should wait and 
 receive him at the Angler's Nest, he told him- 
 self, sitting in the corner of the railway carriage 
 presently, in a train of three coaches, steaming 
 through the pretty picturesque country between 
 Par and Fowey. In the colder light of reason it 
 seemed preposterous to have expected to see her 
 at the Junction. She would like to welcome 
 him amidst her own surroundings, in the home 
 to which she had doubtless given those little 
 beautifying touches in honour of his coming, 
 which are such delight to women, and which 
 sometimes pass altogether unobserved by that 
 pachydermatous animal, man. How slowly the 
 engine moved alon^^: that little bit of line.
 
 i40 ALL ALONG THE IIIVEK. 
 
 Martin Disney sat with his face to the wind, and 
 snuffed the sea breeze as if it had been the odour 
 of home. He thought of Ulysses, and his return 
 from distant lands. Would Tim, the fox terrier, 
 know him? and Shah, the Persian cat? Per- 
 haps not. Tim was no Argus ; vastly affection- 
 ate and demonstrative, but not a dog to expire at 
 one's feet, in the rapture of his master's return. 
 Penelope would know him, and welcome him. 
 That was enough for this modern Ulysses, who 
 liad no reason to disguise himself in re-entering 
 his home — who had no fear of rival suitors, or 
 interlopers of any kind. Penelope would 
 welcome him, and trusty Tabitha. He thought 
 of the old servant's honest face with delight. 
 She was something left to him out of boyhood 
 .and youth. He felt like a young man when he 
 talked to her. She was the one strong link 
 -betwixt the present and the past. She was his 
 memory embodied. He could refer to her as to 
 .a dictionary of days long gone. When did w^e 
 do such and such a thing — or go to such a place 
 — what was the name of the bay horse I bought 
 .at Plympton? Where did my mother pick up 
 the Sheraton secretaire? Tabitha could answer
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 141' 
 
 all such trivial questions : and Tabitha could 
 talk to him for hours of his mother's words and 
 ways — of the things that were only history. 
 
 At last ! The train crept into the little- 
 station, nestling on the edge of a wood, and there 
 was Fowey, homely, friendly little Fowey, so- 
 strange and yet so familiar ; strange to eyes that 
 had so lately looked upon the cities of the East ; 
 familiar to the man who had been reared in the 
 neighbourhood, whose first impressions of God's 
 earth had stamped liarbour and hills upon his 
 brain, like an indelible picture. There was 
 Masters's fly, an eminently respectable vehicle 
 that never touted for chance passengers, waiting 
 for him. He was expected, evidently. 
 
 "Did Mrs. Disney send you? "he asked the 
 driver. 
 
 « Yes, sir." 
 
 How thoughtful of the young wife, who might 
 be forgiven if she had left such a small duty un- 
 fulfilled. Yet he would have liked to see her 
 sweet self at the station — only, as he had argued 
 with himself just now, it would have discounted 
 the home-welcome. It would have been an anti* 
 climax.
 
 142 ALL ALONG THE EIVEll. 
 
 Dearly as he loved that home river, and those 
 fertile hills, and beautiful as they were after 
 their kind, they could but seem small and tame 
 to eyes that had looked upon the glories of the 
 East. Disney contemplated the scene with a 
 touch of sad surprise, wondering at this minia- 
 ture loveliness; recalling the day when those 
 steep hillsides, where the red cattle were grazing 
 in the mists of eventide, had seemed grand in his 
 sight. Now they had a kind of pitiful prettiness. 
 His heart yearned towards them with compassion 
 for their insignificance. 
 
 For nearly two years he had been moving 
 about with his company in the land of jungle 
 and mountain, and in that vast table-land 
 through which the Salween river runs down to 
 the Gulf of Martaban; and after those wider 
 horizons, he found himself in a narrow road, shut 
 in by grassy hills, and hugging the margin of a 
 silver thread that called itself a river. 
 
 There is always a tinge of melancholy in that 
 hour after sundown ; and Martin Disney's heart 
 saddened a little as he looked at the quiet river, 
 and the shadows on the hillside— that pale 
 mistiness of summer evening which ^ives a
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 143 
 
 •ghostly touch to all things, as if it were a brief 
 revelation of a spirit world. It is an hour at 
 which even a strong man's heart is apt to sink 
 with a va2:ue sense of fear. 
 
 The fly drew up at the little wooden gate 
 between high hedges of escalonia, with glossy 
 leaves and bright red blossom. A slender figure 
 in a white gown was visible on the threshold, 
 as Disney sprang out of the fly, and while the 
 flyman was lifting down the luggage, that airy 
 form flitted across the lawn, and Colonel Disney's 
 wife was standing shyly within the open gate, 
 almost as if she had come out to receive a 
 stranger. 
 
 He could not clasp her to his breast before a 
 flyman ; but he seized both her hands, gripped 
 them convulsively, and then led her towards the 
 house, leaving Masters's man to deal as he pleased 
 with portmanteaux and hat-box, gun-case and 
 umbrella-case, despatch-box, and other chattels ; 
 to leave them out in the lane to the dews and 
 the night-birds, if he so listed. Martin Disney 
 had no consciousness of anything in this world 
 except the woman by his side. 
 
 " My darling ! my darling ! " he ejaculated, in
 
 144 ALL ALONG THE RIYEE. 
 
 a choked Yoice, " how I have longed for this- 
 hour, with a longing that has been almost 
 madness." 
 
 And then he saw for the first time that her 
 face was as white as her gown. Was it the 
 twilight that made her look so pale. Could he 
 wonder if the emotion of this supreme moment 
 blanched that young cheek, when he, soldier and 
 wayfarer upon the world's roughest roads, felt 
 like a child, striving to hold back his tears ? 
 
 Lamps were burning in dining-room and draw- 
 ing-room. He saw the table laid for dinner 
 through the open door as he and Isola passed 
 by ; but the idea of eating and drinking seemed 
 very far off just now. They went into the draw- 
 ing-room together, where a solitary lamp wa& 
 shining upon a table crowded with flowers, and 
 where the scents of the garden came in through 
 the open window. Here he satisfied the longing- 
 of his liungry heart, and took that fragile form 
 in his arms, and kissed the pale cold lipSr 
 She lay upon his breast unresistingly ; helpless^ 
 unresponsive, like a dead thing. 
 
 "Isola, have you forgotten that you once 
 loved me ? *'
 
 *'A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 145 
 
 " Forgotten ! No, no, no ! There is no one in 
 the world so good and true as you are. I love 
 you with all my heart and soul." 
 
 Her face was hidden on his breast, but she 
 lifted up her arms and clasped them round his 
 neck. He seated himself in his accustomed chair 
 — it was standing where it had always stood 
 before he went away — and took her upon his 
 knee, as if she had been a child. Then a great 
 storm of sobs suddenly burst from throat and 
 bosom, a flood of tears streamed upon his breast, 
 and he felt her arms trembling as they clasped 
 his neck. 
 
 "My own dear love," he murmured gently, 
 " one would almost think you were sorry I have 
 come back." 
 
 She could not answer him at first for hei^ 
 sobs, but she shook her head, and at last the 
 words, " No, no, no," came from her lips; and he 
 kissed and calmed her with almost fatherly gen- 
 tleness. And then they went into the dining- 
 room, where the soup-tureen was waiting for 
 them on the sideboard, with a neat little parlour- 
 maid — not Susan, but another — ready to minister 
 to them. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 The table had been decorated by Isola's own 
 hands. Dark crimson roses were lying on the 
 fair white damask; one tall glass stood in the 
 centre with three slim golden lilies, pale and 
 heavy-headed, which filled the room with per- 
 fume. These came from one of the hothouses- 
 at Glenaveril, whence good-natured Mrs. Crow- 
 ther had sent a basket of exotics in honour of 
 the coloners return. The lamplight, the flowers^ 
 the pretty old Wedgwood service of creamy white 
 and dull brown, made up a feast for Martin Dis- 
 ney's eye, after a life spent mostly under canvas. 
 He looked from the gaily adorned table to the 
 face beside him, pallid and pinched, despite its 
 sweetness. 
 
 *' My dear one, you are looking very ill," he 
 said, with an anxious air. 
 
 "What an ungallant speech," she answered, 
 smiling at him with unexpected gaiety. " I have 
 been fretting at your long, long absence, and you 
 reproach me for my deteriorated appearance. 
 Never mind, Martin, you will see how rosy and 
 bright I shall get now our parting has come to 
 an end." 
 
 "Yes, love, we must coax the roses back to
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURXIXG UPWARD." 147 
 
 your cheeks. I must have a good mount ready 
 for you when the cubbing begins, and a few 
 morning gallops will soon make a change in my 
 fragile wife's appearance. And I'll charter a 
 yacht, and steep you in ozone." 
 
 " Oh, one gets enough of that on shore, there 
 is no need to go further." 
 
 " But I thought you adored yachting ? It was 
 one of our grand schemes for the future, to hire 
 a modest little yawl and go round the coast to 
 Clovelly. Have you forgotten ? " 
 
 " No, no ; only I don't want you to waste your 
 money — and, if we start a bigger stable " 
 
 " Ah, you don't know what a Cr03sus I have 
 become. You needn't be afraid of ruinino; me. 
 My poor lonely little wife. Why didn't you send 
 for AUegra?" 
 
 " She wouldn't have been of any good to me. 
 She is all that is sweet and lovable, and she is 
 your sister; but she wouldn't have filled your 
 vacant place. I should have only felt lonelier 
 for having to talk every day, and pretend a kind 
 of happiness. Being alone, I could bury myself 
 in a book, and forget my troubles." 
 
 "This soup doesn't look up to Tabitha's old
 
 148 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 form. Do you know that among other delights 
 of this earthly paradise I have been looking 
 forward to Tabitha's little dinners. I don't 
 believe there is a clief in Paris who can cook 
 so well as that self-taught genius, who ripened 
 into perfection by a process of gradual evolution, 
 from the early days when my mother discovered 
 that nobody could make arrowroot or cook a 
 mutton cutlet as well as Tabitha. By-the-by, 
 why has not that good soul shown herself? I 
 thought she would have disputed with you for 
 my first kiss." 
 
 While he ran on in this fashion, Isola sat 
 looking down at the table-cloth, pallid no longer, 
 but crimson. 
 
 " Tabitha has gone ! " she said abruptly. 
 
 " Tabitha gone — for a holiday ? " 
 
 " No, she has left me, altogether." 
 
 " Left you — altogether ? " exclaimed Disney, 
 with the tone of a man who could scarcely 
 believe in his own sense of hearing, so astounding 
 was the statement that met his ears. " Tabitha, 
 my mother's faithful old servant, who was like 
 my own flesh and blood ! What in God's name 
 made her leave you? Did you quarrel with her? "
 
 *'A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWArtD." 149 
 
 He asked the question almost sternly. For 
 the first time in his life he was angry with this 
 dear fragile creature, the idol of his heart. He 
 had loved Tabitha as servants are not often 
 loved. He had left his young wife in her 
 charge, desiring no better custodian, full of faith 
 in Tabitha's ability both to protect and counsel 
 her girlish mistress. 
 
 '' No, no ; we did not quarrel. I liked Tabitha 
 very mucl]. I was almost as fond of her as you 
 yourself could be." 
 
 " And yet you dismissed her ! " Disuey retorted 
 bitterly. " She was not smart enough for you, 
 perhaps. Those Crowther people may have put 
 it into your head that she was old-fashioned — 
 that you could never have a modish household 
 with such a humdrum old person at the head of 
 it. Was that your motive ? " 
 
 '' Oh, Martin, how can you think me so 
 frivolous? I hate smartness and pretension as 
 much as you do. No, I should never have 
 dismissed Tabitha. She left me of her own 
 accord." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " She wanted rest. She was too old for service,
 
 150 ALL ALONG THE RIVEK. 
 
 she told me. I tried to keep her. I humiliated 
 myself so far as to beg her to stay with me " — 
 the tears came into lier eyes at the mere memory 
 of that humiliation — " but she had made up her 
 mind. She would not give way." 
 
 " Where did she go ? " 
 
 " To Falmouth — to live with her sister, a shoe- 
 maker's widow. They let lodgings, I believe." 
 
 '' She must have gone mad ! A lodging-house 
 must be harder work than anything she had to 
 do here." 
 
 "Yes, I think it must." 
 
 ''When did she go?" 
 
 "At the beginning of the year — in January." 
 
 " She left you six months ago, and in all that 
 time you never told me she was gone." 
 
 "I did not want you to know, for fear you 
 should be worried or vexed." 
 
 " I should have been both ; but you ought to 
 have told me. I had a right to know. I left 
 you in her charge, Isola. You are much too 
 youDg and too pretty to be living alone without 
 some kind of dragon — and I knew Tabitba would 
 be a very gentle dragon — a good motherly soul, 
 able to wait upon you and look after your health,
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 151 
 
 :and yet grim enough to keep marauders off the 
 premises. Indeed, my pet, you shoukl have let 
 me know of her departure without an hour's 
 delay. She was very wTong to go. It was a 
 breach of faith I could never have expected." 
 
 "Pray don't be angry with her, Martin." 
 
 " But I am angry. I have a right to be angry. 
 I'll go to Falmouth to-morrow, and have it out 
 with her." 
 
 " ISTo, no, pray don't ! We parted good friends. 
 She can say nothing to you more than she said 
 to me. Pray don't let there be any bad blood 
 between you. What could be gained by your 
 going ? To-morrow, too — our very first day 
 together ! " 
 
 " Well, it shall not be till the day after ; but 
 go I must. To-morrow I will revel in the 
 delights of home, and my dear one's society. 
 To-morrow I will be drunken with joy. The 
 day after will do for Tabitha." 
 
 " I think it is making a great deal too much 
 of her to go to Falmouth on purpose to see her," 
 said Isola, with a grain of pettishness; and then, 
 after a pause, during which the colonel had 
 been trying to appease a sharp appetite with
 
 152 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 the muscular leg of an elderly fowl, she said 
 nervously — 
 
 " I'm afraid you are not enjoying your dinner." 
 
 " What do I care for dinner on such a night 
 as this ; but, as a matter of plain truth, I must 
 say that your new cook is a very bad substitute 
 for Tabitha. Her soup was watery, her fish 
 was greasy, her poultry is hardly eatable. If 
 she has talents in any other line she is keeping 
 them in reserve for another day. It may be 
 that she excels in made-dishes — a misfortune 
 for me, as I never eat them." 
 
 " I had a splendid character with her," said 
 Isola, piteously, with the helpless feeling of a 
 housewife who sees before her a dark prospect 
 of bad dinners and marital grumblings, or the 
 agonizing wrench involved in changing her 
 cook. 
 
 *' Yes, my love, people generally give splendid 
 characters to servants they want to get rid of," 
 answered Disney, dryly. 
 
 These wedded lovers went out very early next 
 morning to explore the gardens and meadows ; 
 Isola eager to point out various small improve-
 
 "A LOVE STILL BUENING UPWAED." J53 
 
 ments which she had made with the help of 
 the old gardener, who would have plunged his 
 hand and arm into a fiery furnace to procure 
 plant or flower wliich his young mistress desired. 
 Sweet words and sweet looks go very far in this 
 world. They are a mighty revenue, and will 
 often do their owner as good service as gold and 
 silver. 
 
 Isola had worked in the garden with her 
 own hands ever since the beginning of spring, 
 the first tender opening of Earth's heavy eye- 
 lids, her first pale smile of snowdrops, her broad 
 laughter of daffodils, her joyous peal of bkie- 
 bells, and riotous mirth of May blossom. She 
 had toiled in the sweat of her brow so that 
 the garden might be beautiful at midsummer : 
 for early in March there had come a letter full 
 of rejoicing from that distant hill-kingdom, and 
 she knew that the year of absence to which she 
 had looked so hopelessly last November was 
 commuted to half a year. 
 
 Martin Disney was full of admiration for his 
 wife's improvements. The old-fashioned borders 
 were brimming over with old-world flowers ; the^ 
 shrubberies had grown out of Ivnowledge ; the
 
 154 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 escalonia hedge by the kitchen garden was a 
 thing to wonder at. 
 
 *^ I remember the hedge at Tregenna Castle 
 before that good old place was an inn," said 
 Martin; and then, having admired everything, 
 he walked up and down the grass beside the 
 laurel hedge with his wife — while the Satan-sent 
 cook was spoiling the food that bounteous 
 Nature had provided for man's enjoyment — and 
 questioned her about the life she had been lead- 
 ing in his absence. 
 
 " You used to write me such good letters, 
 dearest, so full of detail, that I knew exactly 
 how your days were spent, and could picture 
 every hour of your life: but of late your de- 
 scriptive powers have flagged. I dare say you 
 got tired of writing long letters to a dull old 
 fellow in India, who could never write you a 
 clever letter in reply. It must have seemed 
 a one-sided business ? " 
 
 *•' Indeed, no, dear. Your letters had only 
 one fault. They were never half long enough; 
 but I knew how busy you were, and I thought 
 it was so good of you never to miss a mail." 
 
 **Good of me! Had there been twice as
 
 "A LOVE STILL BUENING UPWARD." 155 
 
 many mails I would not have willingly missed 
 one. But there is no doubt your letters fell off 
 after last autumn. They were sweet, and ever 
 welcome to me — but they told me very little." 
 
 " There was very little to tell." 
 
 "Ah, but in the old days you used to make it 
 seem so much. You had such a delightful way 
 of describing trifling events. I thought at one 
 time you had the makings of a Jane Austen ; 
 but afterwards I began to fear you must be out 
 of health. Your letters had a low-spirited tone. 
 There were no more of those sharp little 
 touches which used to make me laugh, no more 
 of those tiny word-pictures, which brought the 
 faces and figures of my eld neighbours before 
 me." 
 
 " You can hardly wonder if my spirits sank a 
 little when you had been so long away. And 
 then life seemed so death-like in its monotony. 
 There were days when I felt I might just as well 
 have been dead. There could be very little 
 difference between lying under the earth and 
 crawling listlessly on the top of it." 
 
 " You were too much alone, Isola," ho 
 answered, distressed at this revelation. " You
 
 156 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 ouglit to have sent for Allegra. I begged you 
 to do so, if you felt dull." 
 
 "Do you think she could have cured my 
 dulness?" exclaimed his wife impatiently. "I 
 think life would have seemed still more tire- 
 some if I had been obliged to talk when there 
 was nothing to talk about, and to smile when I 
 felt inclined to cry." 
 
 *•' Ah, )^ou don't know what a companion 
 Allegra is — brimming over with fun ! She 
 knows her Dickens by heart ; and I never met 
 with anybody who appreciated him as intensely 
 as she does." 
 
 " I don't care about Dickens." 
 
 " Don't — care — about Dickens ! " 
 
 He echoed her words as if almost paralyzed 
 by horror. 
 
 " Not as I used to care. One's taste changes- 
 as life goes on. Lately I have read nothing but 
 Shakesj)eare, and Keats, and Shelley." 
 
 " Very well in their way, but not half cheery 
 enough for a lonely little woman beside the' 
 Fowey river. You ought to have had Allegra. 
 It would have been better for you and better for 
 her. She is tired of the art school ; and the
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWAKD." 157 
 
 other pupils are tired of her. They are very- 
 fond of her ; but she has done all the work twice 
 over, and there is nothing more for her to do, 
 unless we meant her to enter the Koyal Academy 
 and go in seriously for art, Mrs. Meynell tells 
 me. According to that lady's account my sister 
 must be an Admirable Crichton in petticoats." 
 
 " I have no doubt she is very clever and very 
 nice ; but, as I could not have you, I preferred 
 being alone," answered Tsola. 
 
 She was walking slowly by his side along the 
 closely shaven grass, and every now and then 
 she stretched out a hand that looked semi-trans- 
 parent, and gathered a flower at random, and 
 then phicked off* its petals nervously as she 
 walked on. Her eyelids were lowered, and her 
 lips were tightly set. Martin could but think 
 there was a vein of obstinacy in this bewitching 
 wife of his — a gentle resistance which would 
 tend to make him her slave rather than her 
 master in the days to come. He saw with pain 
 that her cheeks were hollow and pinched, and 
 that her delicate complexion had a sickly white- 
 ness. She had fretted evidently in those long 
 months of solitude, and it would take time to
 
 158 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 bring back the colour and gaiety to her face. 
 As for dulness, well, no doubt Fowey was ever so 
 much duller than Dinan, where there were 
 officers and tennis-parties and afternoon tea- 
 drinkings, and a going and coming of tourists all 
 the summer through, and saints' days, and 
 processions, and fetes and illuminations in the 
 market square, beneath the statue of Duguesclin. 
 
 " And how did the world use you, Isola ? " he 
 asked presently. " Was everybody kind ? " 
 
 *' Oh yes, people were very kind ; especially 
 Mrs. Baynham and Mrs. Crowther. They sent 
 me ever so many invitations, and wanted me to 
 go on their day every week." 
 
 " x\nd I hope you accepted their invitations." 
 
 " I went to Mrs. Baynham's sometimes on her 
 day ; but I didn't care about going to Glenaveril. 
 It is all too grand and too fine — and I don't like 
 Mr. Crowther." 
 
 " He was always courteous to you, I hope ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, he was particularly courteous. I 
 have no reason for disliking him. He is my 
 Dr. Fell — the reason why I cannot tell, but I 
 would walk a mile to avoid meeting him." 
 
 "Then we will not cultivate social relations
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 159 
 
 with Glenaveril. We will visit at no house 
 where my dearest does not feel happy and at 
 ease. And as for the finery, I agree with you, 
 there is something too much of it. I like powder 
 and plush when the people they serve are to the 
 manner bora, and when powder and plush seem 
 more natural than parlourmaids ; but I don't care 
 for the solemn stateliness of a bi^: establishment 
 when it has been newly set up — at least, not by 
 such folks as the Crowthers. There are some 
 men to whom such surroundings seem natural, 
 even though fortune has come late in life. Is 
 the beautiful Belinda married yet ? " 
 
 "No. I do not think she is as much as 
 engaged ? " 
 
 "I thought Lostwithiel would have married 
 her. She would have been a grand catch for 
 him, and no doubt she would have snapped at a 
 coronet, even without strawberry leaves. But I 
 hear he is in South America orchid-hunting. He 
 was always a capricious individual. There goes 
 the gong for breakfast. I hope your cook can 
 fry a rasher and boil an egg better than she can 
 dress a dinner." 
 
 They went in together to the pretty dining-
 
 160 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 room, so bright with books and flowers, and a life- 
 ^ized girlish head in water-colours, by Dobson, 
 11. A., over the chimney-piece, and Venetian 
 glass here and there, that all characteristics of 
 the ordinary eating-room were effaced, and only 
 a sense of homeliness and artistic surroundings 
 was left. Isola had been down at six, and her 
 own hands had given the finishing touches to the 
 room, and the flowers were of that morning's 
 gathering, and had the dew and the perfume of 
 morning upon them. The room was so pretty, 
 and Isola was so much prettier than the room, 
 that a husband would have been of very dull 
 clay had he troubled himself about the handi- 
 work of the cook. Martin Disney was not made 
 of dull clay, and he ate an overdone rasher and a 
 hard-boiled e^g without a murmur, and then set 
 out for a long ramble with Isola. 
 
 They went up to the hill upon Avhose landward 
 slope stood Lostwithiel's old grey manor-house, 
 with its gardens and park. Isola had not been 
 there since that never-to-be-forgotten November 
 evening when she met Lostwithiel in the rain. 
 She had avoided the spot from that time forward, 
 though she had no especial reason for avoidance,
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 161 
 
 since there was no one tliere but Mrs. Mayne and 
 lier underlings. Lostwithiel and the Vendetta 
 had sailed away into space directly after the 
 Hunt Ball, and little had been heard of him 
 save that dim rumour of orchid-hunting on the 
 shores of the Amazon, which had filtered from 
 the society papers down to Fowey, via the 
 Western Daily Mercury. 
 
 Isola and her husband lingered for a long 
 time upon the hilltop, he revelling in the 
 familiar beauty of that magnificent stretch of 
 cliff and sea, out to the dim slate colour of the 
 Dodman Point, bay beyond bay, curving away 
 towards Falmouth and the Lizard — while between 
 that hill and the sea lay a world of fertile 
 meadows and yellow corn, of hill and hollow, 
 wood and common, copse and garden, a rich and 
 smiling country, a land of summer flowers and 
 plenteous growth. 
 
 " I never stand upon this hill without feeling 
 proud of being a Cornishman," said Disney, 
 " and yet, after all, it is a foolish thing to be 
 proud of an accident. My little Breton girl 
 might as well be proud of being a countrywoman 
 of Duguesclin's." 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 " Perhaps if I had been born anywhere else I 
 should not have been so ready to fall in love 
 with a soldier," answered Isola. " I was brought 
 up to think a knight and a warrior the one 
 ideal : and so I w^as fascinated by the first soldier 
 who took any notice of me." 
 
 " But were you really fascinated, aad were you 
 really in love," exclaimed Disney, infinitely 
 delighted at this little speech of his wife's, " in 
 love with a battered campaigner of ^Ye and 
 forty — or did you just think you liked me a 
 little bit, only because you wanted to get away 
 fromDinan?" 
 
 "I really — really — really loved you," she 
 answered softly, looking up at him with eyes 
 dimmed by tears, as he drew her nearer to him 
 in his gladness. " I was not tired of Dinan — or 
 my life there — and my heart went out to you at 
 once, because you were good and noble, and 
 seemed to care for me." 
 
 "There was no seeming in it, Isola. I was 
 knocked over at once, like a pigeon out of a 
 trap. I had been in love with you three weeks 
 — three centuries it seemed — before I could 
 screw up my courage so far as to think of pro-
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 163 
 
 posing for you. And then if Hazelrig hadn't 
 helped me with your father, I don't suppose I 
 should ever have broken the ice. But when he 
 — ^the colonel — showed himself so frank and 
 willing — and the way was all made smooth for 
 me from a domestic point of view — and when I 
 saw that kind little look in your eyes, and the 
 shy little smile — yes, you are smiling so now — 
 I took heart of grace, and stormed the citadel. 
 Do you remember the evening I asked you to 
 be my wife, Isola ; that starlit night when I had. 
 been dining with your people, and you and 
 Gwendoline, and Hazelrig and I went out upon 
 the terrace to look at the stars, and the river, 
 and the twinkling lights of the boats down by 
 the quay, and the diligence driving over the 
 bridge, deep, deep down in the valley below us ? 
 Do you remember how I lured you away from 
 the other two, and how we stood under the vine- 
 leaves in the berceau, and I found the words 
 somehow — feeblest, stupidest words, I'm afraid — 
 to make you know that all the happiness of my 
 life to come depended upon winning you for 
 my wife ? " 
 
 "I remember as if it were last night," she
 
 164 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 answered gravely. "But oh, how long ago it 
 seems ! " 
 
 " Why do you sigh as you say that ? " 
 
 " Oh, one always sighs for the past ! How 
 can one help feeling sorry that it should be 
 gone — so much of our lives and of ourselves 
 gone for ever ? " 
 
 " Oh, but when the future is so fair, when 
 the present is so happy, there should be no more 
 sighing. It is an offence against the Great 
 Father of all, who has been so good to us." 
 
 She did not answer, and they remained silent 
 for some minutes, she seated on a bank covered 
 with heather and wild flowers; he stretched on 
 the short, sweet turf at her feet. The heather 
 had not begun to show its purple bloom, but 
 there was the gold of the gorse, and the bright- 
 ness of innumerable wild flowers around and 
 about them as they basked in the sunshine. 
 
 " Dearest, do you believe in dreams ? " Disney 
 asked suddenly. 
 
 " Sometimes — not much — dreams are often 
 dreadful," she answered, with a startled air. 
 
 " I don't believe in them a bit," he said, lifting 
 himself into a sitting position, and addressing
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 165 
 
 himself to her with increasing earnestness, " not 
 now that I have you here safe within reach of 
 my hand — so," taking her hand in his, and keep- 
 ing it clasped in both his own ; " but I had a 
 dream about you in Burmah, which kept me in a 
 fever of anxiety for nearly a month. I should 
 have telegraphed to ask if all was right with you, 
 only I told myself that if anything was wTong 
 Tabitha would instantly telegraph to me. I 
 made her promise that before I left England. 
 It was almost my last injunction. And to think 
 that she left you half a year ago, and that any- 
 thing might have happened to you after that, 
 and that there was no one — no one " 
 
 "But, you see, I am quite safe. There was no 
 bad news to send you. Besides, if I had been ill, 
 or anything had gone wrong, there was Mrs. Bayn- 
 ham. She has been like a mother to me. I am so 
 sorry you feel vexed about Tabitha's leaving me." 
 
 " Doubly vexed, dear, because you left me in 
 ignorance of the fact." 
 
 "Pray don't be angry with me, Martin, so 
 soon," she pleaded meekly. 
 
 " Angry, no. I am not angry. I don't know 
 how to be angry with yon, Isohi ; but I can't
 
 166 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 help being distressed. However, let the past be 
 past. I shall never leave yon to the care of 
 strangers again till I die.'* 
 
 Her only answer was to bend her head down 
 to kiss the hands that clasped her own. 
 
 " Tell me about your dream," she said, after a 
 pause, with her forehead still resting on his 
 hands, and her face hidden. " Was it something 
 Tery awful ? " 
 
 " It was all confusion — a wild chaos — a night- 
 mare of strange sounds and sensations — tempest, 
 fire, earthquake — I know not what — but it meant 
 deadly danger for you — death perhaps. I saw 
 you hanging in space — a white figure, with 
 piteous, pain-wrought face. Never have I seen 
 you look like that — your eyes staring wildly as 
 if they were looking at death ; your features 
 drawn and rigid, and through all the confusion, 
 and noise, and ceaseless movement, I was trying 
 to follow you — trying, but impotently — to save 
 you. The white figure was always before me — 
 far off — yet visible every now and then across 
 the darkness of a world where everything was 
 shapeless and confused. But worst of all was 
 that every now and then a black wall rose up
 
 "A LOVE STILL BURNING UPWARD." 167 
 
 between your distant figure and the stony diffi- 
 cult path that I was treading — a wall of gigantic 
 thickness and height. A wall against which I 
 flung myself, mad Avith rage and despair, trying 
 to tear the stones asunder with my hands, till 
 the blood ran in streams from my torn fingers. 
 It was a dream that seemed to last through a 
 long night, holding in it the memory of a painful 
 past ; yet I suppose it was like other dreams — 
 momentary, for I had heard three o'clock strike 
 before I fell asleep, and when I sounded my 
 repeater it was only a quarter past." 
 
 " Bather a meaningless dream," she said, in a 
 sleepy voice, without looking up. " I don't think 
 it ought to have alarmed you." 
 
 " Ah, it sounds meaningless^to you ; but to me 
 it was full of meaning ! The idea of danger to 
 you was so intense — so real. The cold sweat of 
 deadly fear was on my face when I awoke, and 
 it was some minutes before I could get my senses 
 clear of that ghastly horror, before I could realize 
 where I was, and that the thing I had seen was 
 a dream. That hideous wall seemed still in front 
 of me, and I had still the feeling that you were 
 on the other side of it, in ever-increasing peril."
 
 168 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 " It was a horrid dream, certainly ; but, you 
 see, it had no meaning." 
 
 " There were such strange things mixed up in 
 it — thunder and lightning, a roaring wind, a 
 sound of rushing waters ; and then, amidst wind 
 and thunder, there rose the black stony barrier 
 that shut out everything.'* 
 
 " Was it long ago that you dreamt this horrid 
 dream ? " 
 
 " Yes, a long while. It was just before Christ- 
 mas. I made a note of the dream in my journal 
 — wrote it down in fear and trembling, lest there 
 should be some kind of fulfilment. But then 
 came your letter — written at the beginning of 
 January, with your description of the ball — 
 and I laughed at my folly in brooding so long 
 upon that phantasmal picture. I remember, by 
 the way, it was two or three nights after your 
 ball that I dreamt my dream, while you no 
 doubt were sleeping just a little sounder than 
 usual after your gaieties." 
 
 "Dreams are very strange," said Isola, absently. 
 ** I wonder whether there is any good in tbem to 
 counterbalance so much pain ? "
 
 ( 169 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "LOOK THROUGH MINE EYES WITH THINE, 
 TRUE WIFE." 
 
 There were steamers plying between Fowey 
 and Falmouth in this summer weather, and 
 Colonel Disney suggested next morning that 
 Isola should go with him on his journey in 
 search of Tabitha. They would go by water and 
 return in the afternoon by rail. The morning 
 was lovely, and the trip round the coast would 
 be delightful. 
 
 " I don't want to see Tabitha," Isola answered, 
 with a touch of impatience. "If you are so 
 bent upon seeing her I had rather you went 
 alone." 
 
 " But I had rather not spend a whole day 
 away from you. As for Tabitha, a visit of ten 
 minutes will be quite enough for me. I have
 
 170 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 brought her a Khampoor Chuddah — a warm red 
 one. I have only to make her my little gift, 
 and to say a few words — without any anger — 
 about her breach of faith." 
 
 " It was really not a breach of faith. I gave 
 her full permission to go. I was getting just a 
 little tired of her fussiness. She was not my old 
 servant, you know, Martin. I had not been 
 used to her all my life, as you have." 
 
 "Ah, but she is so good — such a thoroughly 
 good woman." 
 
 " Yes, she is good, no doubt." 
 
 "Well, we'll go to Falmouth together, and 
 you can stop at the Green Bank, where we can 
 lunch, while I go and find Tabitha. You know 
 her address, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Yes. She lives at JSTo. 5, Crown Terrace, 
 overlooking the harbour." 
 
 This conversation took place in the garden, 
 where they breakfasted, under a square striped 
 awning, an apology for a tent, set up on the 
 lawn by the river. A badly cooked breakfast 
 seemed less offensive in the garden, where the 
 summer air, and the perfume of the roses eked 
 out the meal. After breakfast Disney called his
 
 *'LOOK THROUGH MINE EYES WITH THINE." 171 
 
 wife to the drawing-room, where he had brought 
 his spoil from the East, and laid his offerings, as 
 it were, at the feet of his idol. 
 
 " See, love, here is a shawl which you can 
 use as a couvre-fied,'' he said, flinging a fine 
 cashmere ov^r a chair, " since Fashion decrees 
 that women shall wear shawls no more. And 
 here are some ivory chessmen to assist you in 
 puzzling your brains over the game of Eastern 
 antiquity ; and here are vases and things for odd 
 corners. And I have brought you a carved 
 Persian screen, and some Peshawur curtains for 
 your doorways, and a lamp from Cairo, to make 
 your drawing-room a little more fantastically 
 pretty. I know you love these things." 
 
 She was enraptured with his gifts. Her face 
 lighted up like the face of a child, and she ran 
 from one object to the other in a confused glad- 
 ness, scarcely able to look at one thing at a time. 
 
 "They will make the room too lovely," she 
 cried ; " and they will tell everybody of your 
 far-away travels. I can never thank you half 
 enough for all these treasures." 
 
 " Love me a little, and that will be more than 
 enough."
 
 172 ALL ALONG THE EWER. 
 
 *' A little. Ah, Martin, I love you so mucb." 
 
 " Then why do you sigh as you say it ? There 
 need be no sighing in our love now. I never 
 shall leave you again." 
 
 He caught her to his breast as he spoke, and 
 kissed the pale sweet face, with a kind of defiant 
 rapture, as if he challenged Fate to do him any 
 further evil. The pain of separation from that 
 fair young wife had been so keen an agony that 
 there was a touch of savage exultancy in the joy 
 of re-union — some such fierce gladness as a 
 knight-crusader might have felt in days of old, 
 coming back to his beloved after years of war 
 and travel. 
 
 God help the crusader's wife of those rough 
 days if she had turned from the path of virtue 
 during his exile. There would be a short shrift 
 and a bloody shroud for such a sinner ! 
 
 They walked into Fowey by that pathway 
 which Isola had trodden so often in the year 
 that was gone — not always alone. The pleasure 
 steamer was waiting in the little haven, where 
 the two rivers part under the cloven hills. Out 
 seaward the air blew fresh and free, and the spray 
 was dashing up against the rocks, and Polruan's
 
 "LOOK THKOUGH MINE EYES WITH THINE." 173 
 
 grey roofs were wrapped in morning shadows 
 while Fowey laughed in the sunshine. 
 
 That water journey to Falmouth was delicious 
 upon such a morning, and it needed not a very 
 doubtful brass band of three and a boy, blaring 
 out the new and popular music-hall song of the 
 year before last, to enliven the voyage. Those 
 arable lands yonder, undulating with every curve 
 of the ever- varying coast-line, the emerald green 
 of young corn shining in the sunlight, copse and 
 spinny here and there in the clefts and hollows^ 
 the Gribbin Head standing up stony and grim 
 on the crest of the topmost hill, and, anon, Par 
 harbour lying low upon the level sands, and then 
 this point and that, till they meet the little fleet 
 of gallant fishing-boats sailing out from Meva- 
 gissey, like a peaceful Armada, and skim past 
 the haven, and the little town and quay crowded 
 at the foot of the hill, and the coastguard's 
 stronghold yonder, high up against the bright 
 blue sky, whiter than any other mortal habitation 
 ever was or will be. And so to Falmouth, with 
 porpoises playing under their bows, like sportive 
 dolphins, as if they carried Dionysius or Arion 
 on their deck — a brief summer sail, in the
 
 174 ALL ALONG THE RIVEE. 
 
 keen sweet air of an English summer. To 
 Martin Disney's British nostrils that atmo- 
 sphere seemed soul-inspiring, the very breath of 
 life and gladness, after the experiences of a hot- 
 weather campaign. 
 
 And here was Falmouth, with proud Pendennis 
 on a sunny height, and bay and harbour, town 
 and hill, terrace above terrace, tower and steeple 
 — the town and streets all crowded and clustered 
 in the foreground, where the river winds inward 
 to the heart of the land. 
 
 The Green Bank gave them cordial welcome, 
 and luncheon was speedily spread in a private 
 sitting-room, at a snug round table by a window 
 overlooking the harbour — luncheon, and of the 
 best, tongue and chicken, and salad, cherry pasty, 
 junket and cream. 
 
 Colonel Disney applied himself to the meal 
 -with a hearty relish. 
 
 " There is just this one advantage in bad cook- 
 ing at home that it makes one so thoroughly 
 enjoy everything one gets abroad," he said, 
 laughing at his own prowess. 
 
 "I'll try and get a better cook, if you like, 
 Martin," Isola said, with rather a helpless air.
 
 "LOOK THEOUGH MINE EYES WITH TPIINE." 175 
 
 To a wife of one and twenty there seems such 
 futility in worrying about a cook. 
 
 '* You couldn't possibly get a worse. How long 
 have you put up with this one ? " 
 
 " Ever since Tabitha left." 
 
 "Good heavens! You have been starving 
 upon ill-cooked food for six months. No wonder 
 you look thin and out of health." 
 
 " I am really very well. There is nothing the 
 matter with me." 
 
 "Yes, yes, there is a great deal the matter. 
 A bad cook, solitude, no one to watch over you 
 and care for you. But that is all over now. You 
 are eating no lunch — not even that superb cherry 
 pasty. I'll be off to find Tabitha. I shan't be 
 more than half an hour, unless Crown terrace is 
 at the extremity of Falmouth. Have you brought 
 a book to read while I am away? No, foolish 
 child. Never mind. There is the county paper, 
 and there is the harbour, with all its life, for you 
 to look at." 
 
 He started on his voyage of discovery, with 
 the warm, comfortable shawl which he had 
 bought for his mother's old servant over his arm. 
 It was a small disappointment amidst the infinite
 
 176 ALL ALONG THE ElVER. 
 
 delight of his home-coming, but when he bought 
 the shawl he had fancied himself putting it 
 round Tabitha's ample shoulders in the little 
 housekeeper's room at the Angler's Nest, a room 
 that was just large enough to hold a linen cup- 
 board, a tiny Pembroke table, a comfortable arm- 
 chair, and Tabitha, who seemed bigger than all 
 the furniture put together. 
 
 He was a man of warm affections, and of that 
 constancy of mind and temper to which forget- 
 fulness of old ties or indifference to past asso- 
 ciations is impossible. Tabitha's image was 
 associated with all tlie tenderest memories of his 
 youth ; with his mother's widowhood, and with 
 her second marriage — a foolish marriage. At 
 seven and thirty years of age she had taken to 
 herself a second husband, some years her junior, 
 in the person of George Leland, a well-meaning 
 and highly intellectual curate with weak lungs, 
 a union entered upon while her only son was a 
 cadet, and which left her four years later again 
 a widow, with an infant daughter, a child born 
 amidst sickness and sorrow, and christened at the 
 father's desire Allegra, as if she had entered a 
 world of joy. Through that Indian summer of
 
 'LOOK THROUGH MINE EYES WITH THINE." 177 
 
 bis mother's second love, in all the cares and 
 griefs of her second marriage, Tabitha had been 
 trusty and devoted, nursing the frail husband 
 through that last year of fading life which was 
 one long illness, comforting the widow, and 
 rearing the sickly baby until it blossomed into 
 a fine healthy child, whose strength and beauty 
 took every one by surprise. 
 
 With all the joys and sorrows of his mother's 
 life Tabitha had been associated for five and 
 thirty years of conscientious service ; and to 
 have lost the good soul now from his fireside was 
 a positive affliction to Martin Disney. Her loss 
 gave an air of instability to his domestic life. 
 Who would ever care for his property as Tabitha 
 had cared — Tabitha who had seen the china and 
 the pictures and drawings collected piece by 
 piece, who had seen the old family silver drop 
 in by way of legacy from this and that aunt or 
 uncle, till the safe was full of treasures, every 
 one of which had its distinct history ? What 
 would a new housekeeper care for General 
 Disney's coffee-pot, for the George the Second 
 urn that had belonged to his uncle the Indian 
 judge, for his grandmother's decanter stands? 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 ALL ALONG THE RIVEE. 
 
 A modern servant would scoff at decanter stands ; 
 would wonder they were not melted down. No^ 
 rejoiced as he was to be at home once more, 
 home without Tabitha would be something less 
 than home to Martin Disney. 
 
 He found Crown Terrace, a row of neat little 
 houses high above the harbour on the Helston 
 road. He had no need to look at the numbers 
 on the doors. He knew Tabitha's house at a 
 glance, four or five doors off. Who else would 
 have devised such pretty little window-boxes, 
 so simple and so artistic; or who else would 
 have hit upon so perfect a harmony of colour in 
 the flowering plants. Who else, of that lowly 
 status, would have chosen such muslin curtains 
 or draped them so gracefully. The little bow- 
 windowed band-box of a house was as pretty as 
 a Parisian toy. 
 
 Tabitha was in the window, working with 
 scissors and sponge at one of the flower-boxes. 
 Never an aphid was allowed to rest on Tabitha's 
 roses or geraniums. She gave a little cry of 
 mixed alarm and delight as she saw that 
 stalwart figure come between her and the sun- 
 shine.
 
 "LOOK THEOUGH MINE EYES WITH THINE." 179 
 
 " Lor' sakes, Captain Martin, is it you ? " she 
 cried. 
 
 "Yes, Tabby, it is I — and I want to know 
 what you've got to say to me. Do you know 
 how a deserter feels when he suddenly finds him- 
 self face to face with his colonel ? I never had 
 such a knock-down blow as when I came home 
 the day before yesterday and found you had 
 deserted your post — you whom I trusted so 
 implicitly." 
 
 Tabitha looked at him dumbly — entreatingly 
 — as if she were mutely supplicating him not to 
 be angry. She took this reproof with an air of 
 having thoroughly deserved it, of not having any 
 plea to offer in her defence. 
 
 " You'll come in and sit down a bit, won't you, 
 Captain Martin?" she said deprecatingly ; and 
 then, without waiting for an answer, she bustled 
 out of the parlour, and anon appeared at the 
 open door. 
 
 "Yes, of course I am coming in. I have a 
 great deal to say to you — much more than can 
 be said in the open street." 
 
 Tabitha ushered him into the little parlour ; 
 so neat, so cool and dainty a bower, albeit the
 
 180 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 whole of its contents would scarcely have realized 
 ten pounds at an auction. She offered him her 
 most luxurious easy-chair — a large Madeira chair, 
 with pale chintz cushions and artistic draping ; 
 and then, when he had seated himself, she stood 
 before him like a prisoner at the bar, and with 
 unmistakable guilt disturbing the^broad placidity 
 of her countenance. 
 
 " Tabby, there is my offering from the Indies. 
 May it keep you warm when you run out upon 
 your mysterious errands on autumn evenings, as 
 you used to do in my mother's time. Sit down, 
 pray ; I have lots to say to you." 
 
 Tabitha received the comfortable gift with rap- 
 turous thanks. That Captain Martin should 
 have thought of her, so far away, with his head 
 full of fighting, and with death looking him in 
 the face ! It was too much, and the tears rolled 
 down her honest checks as she thanked him. 
 
 " And now, Tabitha, I want a candid answer to 
 a straight question. Why did you leave my 
 wife last January ? " 
 
 "That's easily explained, sir. I'm getting old, 
 and I was tired of service. Mrs. Disney was 
 Yery well able to spare me. Perhaps she didn't
 
 "LOOK THROUGH MINE EYES WITH THINE." 181 
 
 set the same value on me as you did. Young 
 people like yoimg faces about them." 
 
 "All that I can understand; but it didn't 
 exonerate you from your duty to me. You 
 promised me to take care of my young wife." 
 
 " I did my best, Captain Martin, as long as I 
 could give satisfaction," faltered Tabitha, grow- 
 ing very pale under this reproof. 
 
 "Had you any misunderstanding with Mrs. 
 Dismay ? Did she find fault with you ? " 
 
 " Oh no, sir. Mrs Disney is not one to find 
 fault. She's too easy, if anything. No one could 
 be sweeter than she was to me. God knows, if 
 she had been my own daughter I could not have 
 loved her better than I did." 
 
 Here Tabitha broke down altogether, and 
 sobbed aloud. 
 
 "Come, come, my good soul, don't distress 
 yourself," cried Disney, touched by this emotion. 
 " You loved her ; you could not help loving her, 
 could you ? And yet you left her." 
 
 " I was getting tired and old, sir ; and I had 
 saved enough money to furnish a small house ; 
 and my sister, Mrs. David, being a widow without 
 chick or child, wanted me to join her in a
 
 182 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 lodging-house at the seaside. She's a beautiful 
 cook, is my sister, much better than ever I was. 
 So perhaps I was over-persuaded : and here I 
 am. What's done cannot be undone, Captain 
 Martin ; but if ever Mrs. Disney should be ill or 
 in grief or trouble, and she should want me, I'll 
 go to her without an hour's loss of time. I can 
 never forget that she is your wife, and that she 
 was a kind mistress to me." 
 
 Martin Disney breathed more freely after this 
 speech. He had been curiously disturbed at the 
 idea of a breach between his wife and the old and 
 faithful servant. 
 
 " Well, Tabby, I'm glad at least you and my 
 wife are not ill friends," he said. " I do not care 
 for the loosening of old ties. And now I must be 
 off. Mrs. Disney is waiting for me at the Green 
 Bank." 
 
 Tabitha seemed a little startled on hearing 
 that her late mistress was in Falmouth, but she 
 made no remark upon the fact. 
 
 " Good-bye, Tabby. Stay, there's one favour 
 you can do me. Get me a good cook. The 
 woman we have at present would be a blight 
 upon the happiest home in Christendom."
 
 '' LOOK THEOUGH MINE EYES WITH THINE." 183 
 
 *' I'll find you a better one, sir. I'll set about 
 bunting for a good one tbis afternoon." 
 
 Martin sbook bands witb ber on tbe doorstep, 
 and sbe stood watcbing bim till be disappeared 
 at tbe turn of tbe road. Sbe watcbed bim witb a 
 countenance full of sorrow.
 
 18i ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 MY FROLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 
 
 Everybody in Trelasco and in the neighbour- 
 hood seemed glad to see Colonel Disney again. 
 All the best people within a six-mile drive came 
 bearing down upon the Angler's Nest within 
 the week that followed his return ; and there 
 were cosy little afternoon tea-drinkiugs in the 
 drawing-room, or on the lawn, and Isola had 
 her hands full in receiving her visitors. Every- 
 body congratulated her upon having her hero 
 back from the wars. 
 
 " You ought to be very proud of your husband, 
 Mrs. Disney," said Vansittart Crowther, with 
 his air of taking all the world under his 
 protection. 
 
 " I have always been proud of him," Isola 
 answered gently. "I was proud of him before 
 the Burmese War."
 
 MY FROLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 185 
 
 "Your poor wife has been looking very un- 
 happy for the last few months," Mrs. Crowther 
 said to the colonel, with a motherly glance at 
 Icola. " I really had a good mind to write to 
 you and beg you to hurry home if you didn't 
 want to find the poor thing far gone in a de- 
 cline when you came back." 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Crowther, what nonsense," 
 cried Isola, growing crimson at this motherly 
 ofiSeiousness. " I have never been out of health, 
 or in the least likely to go into a decline. One 
 cannot always look like a dairy-maid." 
 
 " My dear, there's no use talking, you looked 
 very bad. Had one of my girls looked as ill, 
 I should have taken her off to Buxton to drink 
 the waters, without an hour's delay." 
 
 That visit of the Crovvthers seemed much 
 longer than any other afternoon call. The 
 Crowthers, husband, and wife, and elder 
 daughter, had an inquisitorial air, Isola fancied, 
 an air of scrutinizing her house and herself and 
 her surroundings, which was intolerable to her ; 
 although on Mrs. Crowther's part she knew 
 the scrutiny was made in the utmost benevo- 
 lence, and the olliciousness was the outcome of
 
 186 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 a nature overflowing with the milk of human 
 kindness. 
 
 " I wish you had written to me, Mrs. Crowther," 
 said Disney. '* I couldn't have come home any 
 sooner, but I could have telegraphed to my 
 sister Allegra to look after my wife, and cheer 
 her solitude. I was a fool not to have had her 
 here all along." 
 
 "Hadn't I better go out of the room while 
 you are holding your consultation about me ? " 
 exclaimed Isola, fretfully. '' It's rather hard 
 upon the patient to hear her case discussed in 
 cold blood. I am tired of declaring that I 
 have not been ill, and that it is my misfortune 
 and not my fault to have a pale complexion." 
 
 '^ You were not always so pallid, my dear," 
 said Mrs. Crowther, persistently. "You were 
 one of the beauties of the Hunt Ball, and you 
 had colour enough that night." 
 
 Dr. and Mrs. Baynham came the following 
 afternoon, and these two told the same story, 
 though with less obtrusive concern. 
 
 " I looked after the young lady now and then," 
 said the worthy doctor, "and as I found there
 
 MY FKOLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 187 
 
 was notlnng radically wrong, I didn't w^orry 
 you with any low-spirited reports ; but I expect 
 to see her pick up wonderfully now you have 
 come home. She didn't take enough outdoor 
 exercise, that's where the harm was. She used 
 to be so fond of her boat last year, but this 
 year I fancy she didn't feel herself up to 
 handling the sculls. You didn't now, did you, 
 Mrs. Disney ? " 
 
 "I don't know about that, but I am ready 
 to row to the Land's End, now Martin is back," 
 said Isola, and those few words to Martin Disney 
 seemed the sweetest he had heard since Colonel 
 Manwaring's daughter promised to be his wife. 
 
 Mrs. Baynham sat on the lawn, sipping her 
 tea, and basking in the afternoon sunshine. 
 
 "You should have seen your wife in her 
 wedding-gown at the Lostwithiel dance," she 
 said. "You would have been proud of her. 
 She didn't want to go — refused Mrs. Crowther 
 and me again and again. She thought it wasn't 
 right to be at any merry-making while your 
 life was in danger." 
 
 " Yes, I know — I know. My tender-hearted 
 Isola!"
 
 188 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 *' But at last we got the better of her ob- 
 jections ; and though there were a good many 
 pretty women there, and though Miss Crowther, 
 perhaps, pleased most tastes, being a more showy 
 style of beauty, to my thinking there wasn't one 
 came up to Mrs. Disney." 
 
 "Her partners seemed of the same opinion,'* 
 put in the doctor, cheerily. " Why, how often 
 did Lord Lostwithiel dance with you, Mrs. Dis- 
 ney? Oftener than with anybody else, I'll be 
 bound." 
 
 Mrs. Baynham nodded approvingly. 
 
 " I was very proud of my party that evening, 
 I can tell you, Colonel Disney," she said. " It 
 isn't often that one has to chaperon three at- 
 tractive young women. Do you know that my 
 youngest niece, Maria, has had two offers since 
 that night, Isola, and when I last heard from 
 her she was on the brink of an engagement ? Ah, 
 well, I hope we shall have another ball next 
 December, now that the neighbourhood has 
 begun to wake up a bit. We have been thinking 
 of getting up a water picnic this summer — ^just 
 a little excursion to Mevagissey, and a little 
 fishing for those who might care for it."
 
 MY FKOLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 189 
 
 " Very pleasant, indeed, of you," answered the 
 colonel, cheerily. " We will be there." 
 
 " The Crowthers are rather grand in their 
 ideas/' said the doctor, " but Alicia is very keen 
 upon all kind of sport, so I know she'll w^ant to 
 come, whatever Belinda may say to it." 
 
 Mrs. Baynham made a wry face at the name 
 of the elder sister. It was an involuntary and 
 unconscious contortion ; but Belinda had tried 
 to snub Mrs. Baynham, who never could forget 
 that her father was a banker at Truro, and held 
 the fortunes — the mortgages and encumbrances 
 of the landed gentry— in the hollow of his hand. 
 *' You don't like the elder Miss Crowther ? " 
 speculated the colonel. 
 
 " Well, if I am to be candid, I must confess 
 that I have a positive aversion to tbat young 
 lady. The aii^s she gives herself on the strength 
 of her father's wool are really insupportable, and 
 since Lord Lostwithiel disappointed her she has 
 been more odious than she was before." 
 
 "What do you mean by Lostwithiel disap- 
 appointing her ? Did he jilt lier ? " 
 
 " Well, it could scarcely be called jilting, and 
 I really don't know that there was anything
 
 190 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 between them ; but people had coupled their 
 names — and he dined at Glenaveril at least once 
 a week all the time he was at the Mount — and 
 people had quite made up their minds it was to 
 be a match. Mr. Crowther went about talking 
 of Lord Lostwithiel and his affairs as if he was- 
 his father-in-law — the neglected condition of the 
 land, and what ought to be done at the Mount, 
 and that the estate wanted judicious nursing, and 
 all that sort of thing. And then one December 
 morning his lordship ' sailed off in his yacht 
 before it was light, and there was no more heard 
 of him. It was quite in his way to go off 
 suddenly like that, but the Crowthers were 
 evidently taken by surprise, and we heard no 
 more about Lord Lostwithiel and the Mount." 
 
 " They dropped him like a hot potato," said 
 the doctor. " Well, we shall depend upon you 
 both for our water-party. It will not be till the 
 middle of July, when an old chum of mine, a 
 sailor, will be coming this way." 
 
 This was a sample of many such visits. In 
 the country, and even in London upon occa- 
 sion, people are given to discussing the same 
 subjects. Martin Disney heard a good deal about
 
 MY FROLIC FALCOX, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 191 
 
 the Crowthers and their supposed disappointment. 
 People liked Mrs. Crowther for her simple, un- 
 affected ways, and thorough-going kindliness; 
 but Vansittart and his daughters had made a 
 good many enemies. He was too coarse ; they 
 were too fine ; only the mother's simple nature 
 had caught the golden mean between blunt 
 vulgarity and artificial smartness. 
 
 Colonel Disney heard all this village gossip 
 with an unheeding ear. He was secure in his 
 own position as a son of the soil, a man whose 
 pedigree could pass muster with that of the 
 Eashleighs and the Treffrys, a man of means 
 that were ample for his own unpretend- 
 ing tastes and requirements. He cared not 
 a jot how many guineas a year the Crowthers 
 might give to their cook, or how much Mr. 
 Crowther had paid for the furnishing and decora- 
 tion of his house, a theme upon which the 
 gossips of the neighbourhood loved to enlarge. 
 That Mrs. Crowther had gowns from Worth, and 
 that her daughters employed Mrs. Mason, irked 
 not this simple soldier. The only point in all 
 the stream of talk that had affected him was 
 the unanimous opinion that Trelasco in the
 
 192 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 spring bad been too relaxing for Mrs. Disney, 
 or else tbat ber solitude bad preyed upon ber 
 mind, inasmucb as. sbe had looked so ill as to 
 afford an interesting subject of conversation to a 
 good many friendly people wbo suffered from 
 tbe cbronic malady of not baving enougb to talk 
 about, a form of starvation almost as bad as not 
 baving enougb to eat. 
 
 Tbe colonel listened, and made bis own con- 
 clusions. He did not believe tbat Trelasco was 
 "relaxing." He loved the district too well to 
 believe any evil thing about it. Those fresh 
 breezes tbat blew up from the sea, those balmy 
 airs tbat breathed across tbe heather-clad bills, 
 must bring health with them. What could one 
 have better than that mingling of sea and bill, 
 brine and honey, gorse-bloom and seaweed? 
 No, Trelasco was not to blame. His young wife 
 bad suffered for lack of youthful company. He 
 made up bis mind accordingly. 
 
 "I suppose you won't object to our having 
 Allegra here for a summer visit, will you, love ? " 
 be asked at breakfast tbe day after Mrs. 
 Baynham's call. " London must be hot, and 
 dusty, and dreary in July, and she must want
 
 MY FKOLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 193 
 
 rest and country air, I fancy, after having worked 
 so hard in her art school." 
 
 Isola gave a scarcely perceptible sigh as she 
 bent to caress Tim, a privileged attendant of the 
 breakfast- table. 
 
 "Object! Of course not, Martin. I shall be 
 very pleased for your sister to come here." 
 
 " I feel very sure you will be pleased with her 
 when you and she get upon intimate terms. 
 You could know so little of her from that one 
 evening in the Cavendish road." 
 
 The occasion in question was an evening in 
 which Isola and her husband had been bidden to 
 a friendly dinner, on their way through London, 
 by the clergyman's widow with whom Allegra 
 lived while she pursued her study of art at a 
 famous school in St. John's Wood. The clergy- 
 man's widow, Mrs. Meynell, was a distant cousin 
 of the Disneys, and Allegra's home had been 
 with her from the time she left school. The 
 extent of her wanderings after she was old 
 enough to be sent to a boarding-school had been 
 from Falmouth to Kensington, and from Kensing- 
 ton to St. John's Wood, with occasional holidays 
 in the Isle of Thanet. 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 191 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 "I thought she was very fresh and bright 
 and loving," answered Isola, " and I could see 
 even in that one evening that she was very 
 fond of you." 
 
 " Yes, God bless her, there is no doubt about 
 that. I have been brother and father too for 
 her. She has had no one but me since our 
 mother's death." 
 
 " Shall I write and ask her to come to us, 
 Martin, or will you ? " 
 
 " 1 fancy she would take it more as a compli- 
 ment if the invitation went straight from 
 you. She would know that I would be glad to 
 have her, but she might feel a little doubtful 
 about you." 
 
 ''Then I'll write to her to-day, Martin, and 
 beg her to come at once — as soon as ever she 
 can pack her boxes." 
 
 " That's my darling ! I hope she won't bore 
 you when she is here. I have a shrewd idea 
 she'll make your life happier. She'll awaken 
 you from that languor which has grown upon 
 you in your loneliness." 
 
 " At least I'll try to make her happy, Martin, 
 if it is only for your sake."
 
 MY FKOLIO FALCON, WITH BKIGHT EYES. 195 
 
 "Ah, and you will soon love her for her 
 own sake." 
 
 " ril get the boat looked to at once, and I'll 
 see about making the spare room pretty for her," 
 said Isola. 
 
 A week later Allegra was with them, break- 
 fasting on the lawn in the balmy atmosphere of 
 July. There were two girls, in white gowns, 
 under the tulip tree, instead of one ; and Martin 
 Disney felt as if his domestic happiness were 
 doubled, as he looked at those two graceful 
 figures in the flickering light below that canopy 
 of broad bright leaves. Another element of 
 <3omfort, too, had entered the Angler's Nest ; 
 for the incompetent cook had taken her incom- 
 petency and a month's wages to her native city 
 of Truro ; and a buxom damsel from Falmouth, 
 recommended by Tabitha, had already proved 
 herself a treasure in the culinary art. 
 
 Never was there a fairer picture than that 
 domestic group under the tulip-tree. The two 
 girlish figures in white muslin, with palest 
 salmon and palest azure ribbons fluttering and 
 glancing in the light and deepeniug in the
 
 196 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 shadow; the white fox-terrier, alert, muscular, 
 mercurial; the tortoise-shell cat, long-haired, 
 aristocratic, and demure ; the pretty Moorish 
 plateau on bamboo legs, the purple and crimson 
 breakfast service and rare old silver urn, the fruit 
 and flowers, and amber-hued butter, and rustic 
 luxury of preserved fruit and clotted cream. 
 
 " How lovely it all is after Cavendish Koad ! " 
 cried Allegra, rapturously. "When I see the 
 lights and shadows upon those hills, I despair 
 of ever being able to paint a landscape as long 
 as I live. Nature is maddeningly beautiful." 
 
 " What is your particular line, Allegra ? " asked 
 her brother. " Is it landscape ? " 
 
 "No; I only care for landscape as a back- 
 ground for humanity. I want to paint genre 
 pictures in water-colour — women and children — 
 beautiful women amidst beautiful surroundings- 
 — picturesque poverty —interesting bits of daily 
 life. Mrs. Allingham is the ideal after which I 
 strive, but I am only at the bottom of the ladder. 
 It is a long climb to the top ; but one does not 
 mind that in a profession where labour is delight." 
 
 " You are fond of art, then? " said Isola, watch- 
 ing the earnest face of the speaker.
 
 MY FKOLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 197 
 
 " Fond of it ! Why, I live for it ! The dream 
 of my life from the time I was seven years old 
 has been one long dream of the bliss that was 
 to be mine when I could feel myself able to paint. 
 I have toiled with all my might. Martin disliked 
 the idea of my being an Academy student — poor, 
 foolish, ignorant Martin — so I have been obliged 
 to plod on at St. John's Wood, without hope of 
 prizes or medals ; but on the whole I have been 
 very lucky, for I have made friends among the 
 Academicians. They are very kind to any 
 student who seems in right down earnest; and 
 they have been ever so good to me. I hope, 
 Martin, you will find some day that I am some- 
 thing better than an amateur," she concluded, 
 resting her two hands caressingly upon her 
 brother's shoulder. 
 
 " My dearest, I have not the least doubt you 
 will astonish me. I am very ignorant of every- 
 thing connected with art. I set my face against 
 the Academy because I thought the training 
 and the life would be too public for my sister." 
 
 "As if Burlington House were any more public 
 than that big school at St. John's Wood, my 
 dear illogical brotlier : and yet we women are
 
 198 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 the only people who are said to be wanting in 
 the logical faculty." 
 
 She leant back in her basket-chair, revelling 
 in the rural atmosphere, and in that new sense 
 of being in the bosom of her family. Tim leapt 
 upon her lap and licked her face, in token of his 
 acceptance of her into the home-circle. Nobody 
 had ever called Miss Leland a beauty, nor had 
 she ever received these disquieting attentions 
 which follow the footsteps of exceptional loveli- 
 ness. She was sometimes described as a girl 
 who grew upon one ; and people who knew her 
 well generally ended by thinking her distract- 
 ingly pretty. She had a brilliant complexion, of 
 the true English typCj fair and blooming — a 
 complexion which indicated perfect health and 
 an active, orderly life ; no late hours or novel- 
 reading over the fire — an out-of-door complexion, 
 which would have looked its best under a neat 
 little felt hat in the hunting-field, or under a 
 coquettish straw sailor hat on board a yacht. 
 Her eyes were blue-grey, with long, brown lashes 
 and boldly marked eyebrows ; her nose was 
 firmly modelled, inclining a little to the 
 aquiline order. Her mouth was the prettiest
 
 MY FROLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 199 
 
 feature in her face, and yet it was a sliade larger 
 than accepted perfection in mouths. It was a 
 mouth chiefly remarkable for character and 
 expression ; and, indeed, it was the individuality 
 and variety of expression in the fair young face 
 which constituted Miss Leland's chief claim to 
 distinction. 
 
 She started up from the nest of basket-work 
 and flowered chintz, and stood tall and erect, a 
 Juno-like young woman, with heavy plaits of 
 reddish-brown hair rolled in a great knot at the 
 back of her head. She might have answered 
 one of those harsh advertisements for parlour- 
 maids, in which the words, " JSTo fringe," figure 
 with curt cruelty; for her hair was brushed 
 smoothly back from the fair forehead, and the 
 severity of the style became that wide sagacious 
 brow. It was just the kind of forehead which 
 can endure exposure without conveying an idea 
 of bald ugliness. 
 
 She was tall and strongly made, fashioned 
 after the semblance of Diana or Atalanta rather . 
 than Venus or Psyche. Her every movement 
 had the bold, free grace of vigorous, unspoiled 
 youth. She had always been active — fond of
 
 200 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 walking, riding, rowing, swimming, as well as of 
 art, and with an ardent passion for the country, 
 which had made existence in a London suburb 
 one long sacrifice. 
 
 "I used to take the train for Hampstead 
 Heath or Willesden," she told her brother, " and 
 go off for long, lonely tramps to Finchley or 
 Hendon. I have watched the builder's progress 
 along roads and lanes I loved. I have seen 
 horrid brick boxes creeping along like some new 
 kind of noxious insect, eating up fields and 
 hedgerows, old hawthorns and old hollies. I 
 could have sat down in the muddy road and 
 cried sometimes, at the thought that soon there 
 would be no country walk left within reach of a 
 Londoner. Once I went off to the north-east, to 
 look for the rural lanes Charles Lamb and his 
 sister loved — the lanes and meadows where they 
 carried their little picnic basket, till they took 
 shelter at a homely inn. Oh, Martin, all those 
 fields and lanes, Charles Lamb's country — are 
 going, going, or gone ! It is heart-breaking ! 
 And they are building at Fowey, too, I see. 
 Positively there will be no country anywhere 
 soon. There will be crescents and terraces and
 
 MY FROLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 201 
 
 little Ugly streets at the very Land's End, and 
 the Logan Eock will be the sign of a public- 
 house." 
 
 " Don't be down-hearted, Chatterbox ! I think 
 Cornwall may last our time," said Disney, laugh- 
 ing at her vehemence. 
 
 Allegra was a great talker. It seemed as if 
 she liad a well-spring of joy and life within her 
 which must find an outlet. When people ven- 
 tured to hint at her loquacity she declared that 
 her name was in fault. 
 
 "I have grown up to match my name," she 
 said ; " if I had been christened Penserosa I might 
 have been quite a different person." 
 
 Her vivacity gave a new element of brightness 
 to the Angler's Nest, where Disney had been 
 somewhat oppressed by the sensation of intense 
 repose which had pervaded his tete-a-tete life 
 with Isola. He loved his wife so entirely, so 
 unselfishly, and devotedly that it was happiness 
 to him to be with her ; yet in the three or four 
 weeks that had gone by since his return he had 
 struggled in vain against the feeling that there 
 was something wanting in his home. Isola 
 waited upon him and deferred to him with more
 
 202 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 than wifely submissiveness. He would have 
 liked a spurt of rebellion once in a way, a little 
 burst of girlish temper, just to show that she 
 was human ; but none ever came. His every 
 desire was anticipated. Whatever plan he sug- 
 gested — to walk, to drive, to visit, or not to 
 visit — the river or the sea — was always the plan 
 that pleased her best, or at least she said so. 
 
 " I think I shall call you Griselda instead of 
 Isola," he said one day, taking the fair pale face 
 between his hands and gazing into the mournful 
 depths of the dark violet eyes — inscrutable eyes 
 they seemed to him, when the pupils dilated 
 under his gaze, as if the eyes made a darkness 
 to hide their meaning. 
 
 " Why ? " she asked. 
 
 A flood of crimson passed over her face like a 
 fire, and left her paler than before. 
 
 "Because you are only too dutiful. Would 
 you resist if I were to turn tyrant, I wonder ? " 
 
 " I have no fear of your turning tyrant," she 
 answered, with a sad little smile, " you are only 
 too good to me." 
 
 "Good! There can be no question of good- 
 ness. If a man picked up a diamond as precious
 
 MY FKOLIC FALCON, WITH BEIGHT EYES. 203 
 
 as the Koh-i-noor could he be good to it ? How 
 can I be good to my gem ? I have but one thing 
 left in the world to desire, or to pray for." 
 
 " What is that, Martin ? " 
 
 " To see you happy," 
 
 Again the sudden flame crimsoned her face, 
 that sensitive spiritual face which reflected every 
 change of feeling. 
 
 "I am happy, Martin, quite happy, happier 
 than I ever thought to be, now that you are 
 home again. What have I more to desire ? " 
 
 "Is that really so? Was my long absence 
 your greatest trouble ? " 
 
 "Yes," she answered slowly, looking at him 
 with a curiously steady look, " that was the be- 
 ginning and end of my trouble." 
 
 "Thank God ! " he said, drawing a deep breath. 
 " There have been moments — just of late — when 
 I have puzzled and puzzled my brains about you 
 — until I thought — " very slowly, " there might 
 have been something else." 
 
 He clasped her in his arms, and hid her face 
 upon his breast, as if — fearing that he might 
 have wounded her by those last words — he 
 wanted to make amends before she had time to
 
 204 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 feel his uukindness. His tenderness for her had 
 so much of that pitying love which a strong nian 
 feels for a child. 
 
 This conversation occurred the day before 
 AUegra's arrival ; but with that young lady's 
 appearance on the scene, new life and gladness 
 came into the little household. Allegra sang, 
 Allegra played, Allegra ran out into the garden 
 twenty times a day, and called through the open 
 window to Isola, sitting quietly in the drawing- 
 room, to come out and look at this or that — a 
 rose finer than all other roses — a suggested 
 alteration — an atmospheric effect — anything and 
 everything. She was a keen observer of Nature, 
 full of vivid interest in every creature that lived, 
 and in every flower that grew. Tim followed 
 her everywhere as she danced along the gravel 
 walks, or across the short springy turf. Tim 
 adored her, and grinned at her, and threw him- 
 self into all manner of wriggling attitudes upon 
 the grass to express his delight in her company, 
 and fawned at her feet, and talked to her after 
 his guttural fashion, snorting his friendly feel- 
 ings. Tim had long languished for such a 
 companion, having found his young mistress's
 
 MY FROLIC FALCOX, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 205 
 
 society very heavy of late. No more runs in 
 the meadow, no more rambles in the neighbour- 
 ing spinney, and very little boating. But now 
 that Allegra had come the skiff was seldom idle. 
 Isola had to go on the river whether she liked 
 or not. There were strong young arms ready to 
 pull her — round young arms, of a lovely roseate 
 fairness, which looked their best, stretched to 
 the motion of the sculls, with the white cambric 
 shirt rolled up above the elbow. 
 
 " You can read Shelley while I scull the boat," 
 said Allegra. " I don't want any help. If you 
 knew what rapture it is to me to feel the breath 
 of Seagods and Tritons after St. John's Wood, 
 and the smoke from the Metropolitan Eailway, 
 you wouldn't pity me.' 
 
 Isola submitted, and sat at her ease upon 
 bright'Coloured cushions with an Indian rug 
 spread round her, as idle as if she had been the 
 belle of a Zenana, and read Alastor while the 
 boat sped seaward in the sunshine. 
 
 Sometimes they moored their boat at the 
 landing stage at Polruan, and walked up the 
 hill to the Point, and sat there for an hour or 
 two in the summer wind with their books and
 
 206 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 picnic basket, seeing great ships go out towards 
 the Lizard and the big distant world, or sail 
 merrily homeward towards Plymouth and the 
 Start. Isola looked at those outward-bound 
 ships with a strange longing in her eyes — a 
 longing to flee away upon those broad wings 
 that flashed whitely in the sunlit distance. 
 Were people happy on board those ships, she 
 wondered, happy at escaping from the fetters 
 of an old life and a beaten path, happy going 
 away to strange lands and freedom ? She had 
 been reading many books of travel of late, and 
 a kind of passion for remote uncivilized countries 
 had come upon her; as if that untrammelled 
 life meant release from memory and saddening 
 cares — a new birth almost. It seemed from 
 some of those books as if there could be no 
 greater happiness upon this earth than to 
 tramp across sandy deserts and stalk occasional 
 lions ; while in others the supreme good seemed 
 to be found in the attempt to scale impossible 
 mountains. What was it that made the rapture 
 of these things? Isola wondered. Was it that 
 perils and wild solitudes offered the only possible 
 escape out of a past existence, on this side the
 
 MY FROLIC FALCON, WITH BEIGHT EYES. 207 
 
 grave ? Allegra had never so much as crossed 
 the Channel. She had been brought up in the 
 most humdrum fashion. First a school at Fal- 
 mouth, and then a smarter school at Kensington, 
 and then St. John's Wood and the Art School. 
 Her mother had died when she was fourteen 
 years of age, and since that time her brother had 
 been her only guardian and almost her only 
 friend. Her life had seen but little variety, and 
 very little of the dancing and gaiety which for 
 most girls is the only form of pleasure. She and 
 Isola talked about the ships as they sat upon the 
 grassy hill at Polruan, and speculated about the 
 lands of which they knew only what they had 
 read in books of travel. 
 
 "You, at least, know what France is like," 
 said Allegra, '* and that is something." 
 
 " Only one little corner of France." 
 
 " And to think that you were born in an old 
 French city ! It seems strange. Do you feel at 
 all French?" 
 
 " I don't think so ; only sometimes a longing 
 comes upon me to see the old grey walls, and to 
 hear the old voices, and see the curious old 
 women in their white caps and bright-coloured
 
 208 ALL ALONG THE EIYER. 
 
 handkerchiefs, clattering along to the Cathedral, 
 There must be more old women in Brittany than 
 in Cornwall, I think. Fowey does not swarm 
 with old women as Dinan did. And sometimes 
 I long to see mother, and the good old Brittany 
 servants, and the garden where the hours went by 
 so slowly — almost as slowly as they go here " 
 — with a sigh. 
 
 " Does time go so very slowly here ? " asked 
 AUegra quickly. " That sounds as if you were 
 unhappy." 
 
 " What nonsense you talk ! " cried Isola, with a 
 flash of sudden anger. " Cannot one be dull and 
 bored sometimes — from very idleness — without 
 being unhappy ? " 
 
 " I don't know ; but, for my own part, when I 
 am happy I am never dull." 
 
 " You have more of what people call animal 
 spirits than I have." 
 
 " I'm glad you apologize in a manner for that 
 odious phrase — animal spirits. I would not ap- 
 ply such a phrase to Tim. It suggests nothing 
 but Audrey at a statute fair. Heaven gave me 
 a capacity for happiness, and I thank God every 
 night in my prayers for another happy day.
 
 MY FROLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 209 
 
 Even at scliool I contrived to be happy, some- 
 how; and think what it must, be after seven 
 years of dull routine to feel that I have done 
 with sitting at a stranger's table and that I am 
 here in a home, my own home, with my brother 
 and sister." 
 
 The two women clasped hands, and kissed each 
 other upon this. Only the night before Isola, of 
 her own free will, had asked her sister-in-law to 
 make her home at the Angler's Nest always, 
 always, till she should be led out of it as a bride ; 
 and Martin had shown himself supremely happy 
 in the knowledge that his sister had won his 
 wife's love and confidence. 
 
 When Isola and he were alone together after 
 the sealing of that family bond, he kissed and 
 thanked her for this boon which she had be- 
 stowed upon him. 
 
 " I never could have felt quite at ease while 
 Allegra was living with strangers," he told her. 
 ^'And now my cup is full. But are you sure, 
 dearest, that you will never find her in the way, 
 never fancy yourself any the less mistress of your 
 house, and of my life, because she is here ? " 
 
 " Never, never, never ! I am gladder than I 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 can say to have her. She is a delightful com- 
 panion. She helps me in a hundred ways. But 
 even if she were less charming it would be my 
 duty to have her here since you like her to be 
 with us." 
 
 " But it must not be done as a duty. I will 
 not have you sacrifice your inclination in the 
 slightest degree." 
 
 "What an obtuse person you are! Don't I 
 tell you that I am enchanted to have her ? She 
 is as much my sister as ever Gwendoline was \. 
 indeed, she is much more sympathetic than 
 Gwen ever was." 
 
 " Then I am perfectly content." 
 
 xillegra wrote to Mrs. Meynell next day, an- 
 nouncing the decision that had been arrived at, 
 not without grateful acknowledgments of that 
 lady's kindness. The rest of her belongings were 
 to be sent to her forthwith, easels, and colour- 
 boxes, books and knickknacks ; her brother's gifts, 
 most of them from the romantic East; things 
 which made her few little Kensingtonian keep- 
 sakes look very trivial and Philistine. AUegra's 
 possessions gave a new individuality to the large, 
 airy bedroom, and the tiny boudoir at the corner
 
 MY FEOLIC FALCON, WITH BRIGHT EYES. 211 
 
 of the house, looking seaward, which Isola had 
 arranged for her. 
 
 While these things were doing Martin Disney 
 was buying horses and buying land — a farm of 
 over two hundred acres which would make his 
 property better worth holding — and he had 
 further employed a Plymouth architect to plan 
 an enlargement of the old-fashioned cottage — a 
 long room opening out of the drawing-room, for 
 a library and morning-room, two bedrooms over, 
 a verandah below, and a loggia above. In that 
 mild climate the loggia would afford a pleasant 
 lounge even in winter, and myrtle and roses 
 would speedily cover the massive wooden 
 columns which sustained the tiled roof. It was 
 to be a homely Italian loggia — unpretentious, 
 and not particularly architectural ; but Isola and 
 her sister-in-law were delighted at the idea. 
 
 The stables were to be enlarged as well as 
 the house. 
 
 "You have no idea how I have hoarded and 
 scraped to lay by money ever since I bought 
 the Nest," said Disney. "I believe I was the 
 greatest screw in the service all through my last 
 campaign."
 
 212 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 He laughed aloud in amused remembrance of 
 many small sacrifices, while the three heads 
 clustered over the architect's plan, which had 
 that factitious prettiness of delicate drawing and 
 colour which makes every house so much nearer 
 perfection upon paper than it ever can be in sober 
 brick and stone.
 
 ( 213 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "LIES NOTHING BURIED LONG AGO?" 
 
 Like most small country settlements, little 
 fraternities of well-to-do people who think them- 
 selves the beginning and end of the world, 
 Trelasco was slow to rise to any festivity in the 
 way of party-giving. So it was about two months 
 after Colonel Disney's return before the friendly 
 calls and interchange of small civilities culmi- 
 nated in a dinner-party at Glenaveril. It seemed, 
 indeed, only right and natural that the great 
 house of the district, great by reason of Lord 
 Lostwithiel's non-residence, should be the first to 
 open its doors in a ceremonial manner to the 
 colonel and his womankind. The invitation to 
 his sister might be taken as an especial compli- 
 ment, arms outstretched to receive one who was 
 a stranger in the land. 
 
 " We want to know that nice, young sister of
 
 214 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 yours," Mr. Crowther said to Colonel Disney, in 
 his patronizing way, as they all came out of 
 church the Sunday before the dinner-party. " A 
 remarkably fine girl." 
 
 The colonel did not thank him for this compli- 
 ment, which was pronounced in a loud voice, 
 amidst the little knot of acquaintances taking 
 leave of each other on the dip of the hill, where 
 there was a sign-post on a patch of waste grass, 
 and where road and lanes divided, one up the 
 hill to Tywardreath, another to Fowey, and a 
 narrow-wooded lane leading down to Glenaveril 
 and the Angler's Nest. Short as the distance 
 was, there were carriages waiting for the 
 Crowthers, who never walked to church, however 
 fine the weather. Mrs. Crowther came to the 
 morning service resplendent in a brocade gown 
 and a Parisian bonnet, on pain of being con- 
 demned as dowdy by her husband, who liked to 
 put the stamp of his wealth upon every detail. 
 His wife obeyed him with wifely meekness, but 
 the daughters were not so easily ruled. Both 
 were keen-witted enough to feel the vulgarity 
 of Sunday morning splendour. So Belinda 
 worshipped in the exaggerated simplicity of an
 
 "' LIES NOTHING BURIED LONG AGO ? » 215 
 
 unstarched jaconet muslin, a yellow Liberty sash, 
 a flopping Gainsborough hat, and a necklace of 
 Indian beads, an attire which attracted every eye, 
 and was a source of wonder to the whole congre- 
 gation, while Alicia's neat grey cashmere frock, 
 made by the best tailor in Conduit Street, and 
 smart little toque to match, grey gloves, grey 
 Prayer-book and sunsliade, challenged criticism 
 as a study in monochrome. 
 
 Mr. Crowther would have lingered for further 
 conversation before getting into the family 
 landau, but Colonel Disney bade a rather abrupt 
 good morning to the whole group, and hurried 
 his wife and sister down the hill. 
 
 " I'm rather sorry we accepted the Glenaveril 
 invitation," he said to Isola. '^ The man is such 
 an obvious cad." 
 
 " Mrs. Crowther is very kind and good," replied 
 his wife; "but I have never cared much about 
 going to Glenaveril. I don't feel that I get on 
 particularly well with the girls. They are both 
 too fine for me. But I should be sorry to offend 
 Mrs. Crowther." 
 
 "Yes, she seems a kindly creature. It was 
 thoughtful of her sending you a ticket for the
 
 216 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 ball. A woman with daughters is seldom over- 
 kind to outsiders." 
 
 "Oh, I believe Mrs. Crowther's heart is big 
 enough to be kind to a whole parish." 
 
 " Well, on her account, perhaps it was best to 
 accept the invitation." 
 
 "Don't be so grand about it, Martiu," said 
 Allegra. "You forget that I am pining to see 
 what a dinner-party in a very rich house is like. 
 I have seen nothing in London but literary and 
 artistic dinners, third-rate literary and third-rate 
 artistic, I'm afraid — but they were very nice, all 
 the same. Glenaveril is a place that takes my 
 breath away ; and I am curious to see what a 
 dinner-party can be like there." 
 
 "Then for your sake, Allegra, I'm glad we 
 said yes. Only I couldn't stand that fellow 
 patronizing you. Calling you a fine girl, 
 forsooth ! " 
 
 " Yes, it is an odious phrase, is it not ? I'm 
 afraid I shall have to live through it, because, 
 like Eosalind, * I am more than common tall.' " 
 
 She drew herself up to her full height, straight 
 as a reed, but with fully developed bust and 
 shoulders which showed to advantage in her pale
 
 "LIES NOTHING BURIED LONG AGO?" 217 
 
 tussore gown — silk that her brother had sent her 
 from India. She looked the incarnation of girlish 
 innocence and girlish happiness — a brow without 
 a cloud, a step light as a fawn's — a fearless, 
 happy nature. Her more commonplace features 
 and finer figure were in curious contrast with 
 Isola's pensive beauty and too fragile form. 
 Disney glanced from one to the other as he 
 walked along the rustic lane between them ; 
 and, though he thought his wife the lovelier, he 
 regretted that she was not more like his sister. 
 
 A man who is very fond of home and who has 
 no professional cares and occupations is apt to 
 degenerate into a molly-coddle. Martin Disney- 
 gave an indication of this weakness on the day 
 before the dinner at Glenaveril. 
 
 " What are you two girls going to wear ? " 
 he asked. " At least, I don't think I need ask 
 Isola that question. You'll wear your wedding- 
 gown, of course, love ? " he added, turning to his 
 wife. 
 
 " No, Martin, I am going to wear my grey silk." 
 
 " Grey! A dowager's colour, a soured spinster's 
 colour — a Quaker's no colour. I detest grey."
 
 218 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 "Oil, but this is a very pretty gown — the 
 palest shade of pearl colour — and I wear pink 
 roses with it. It was made in Paris. I feel 
 sure you will like me in it, Martin," Isola said 
 hurriedly, as if even this small matter fluttered 
 her nerves. 
 
 " Not as well as I like you in your wedding- 
 gown. That was made in Paris, and it fitted 
 you like a glove. I never saw such a pretty 
 gown — so simple, yet so elegant." 
 
 " I have been married much too long to dress 
 as a bride." 
 
 " You shall not seem as a bride — except to 
 me. For my eyes only shall you shine in bridal 
 loveliness. Bride or no bride, what can be 
 prettier for a young woman than a white satin 
 gown with a long train. You can wear some 
 touch of colour to show you have not got your- 
 self up as a bride. What do you say, Allegra ? 
 Give us your opinion. Of course you are an 
 authority upon dress." 
 
 "Oh, the white satin, by all means. Isola 
 looks ethereal in white. She ought hardly ever 
 to wear anything else." 
 
 " You hear, Isa. Two to one against you."
 
 " LIES NOTHING BUKIED LONG AGO ? " 219 
 
 " I'm sorry I can't be governed by your 
 opinions in this instance. You forget that I 
 last wore my gown at a ball. I danced a good 
 deal — the floor was dirty — the gown was spoilt. 
 I shall never wear it again. I hope that will 
 satisfy you, Martin." 
 
 She spoke with a touch of temper, her cheeks 
 flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with sudden 
 tears as she looked deprecatingly at her husband. 
 Martin Disney felt himself a brute. 
 
 "My dearest, I didn't mean to tease you," he 
 said; " wear anything you like. You are sure to 
 be the prettiest woman in the room. I am sorry 
 the gown was spoilt ; but it can't be helped. I'll 
 buy you another white satin gown the first time 
 you and I are in Plymouth together. And, pray, 
 Miss AUegra, what bravery will you sport ? " 
 
 " I have only a white lace frock that has 
 seen some service," replied his sister, meekly. 
 "I dare say I shall look like somebody's poor 
 relation at such a place as Glenaveril." 
 
 " Oh, it's not to be a grand party, by any 
 means. Mrs. Crowther told me she had asked 
 the Baynhams and the Vicarage people to meet 
 us, just in a friendly way."
 
 220 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 The party was decidedly small, for on arriving 
 with reasonable punctuality the Disneys found 
 only one guest on the scene, in the person of 
 Mr. Colfox, the curate, who was sitting by one 
 of the little artistic tables, showing a new puzzle 
 of two pieces of interlinked iron to the two 
 Misses Crowther. These young ladies were so 
 intensely interested in the trick of disentangle- 
 ment that they scarcely noticed the entrance of 
 their mother's guests, and only rose and came 
 over to greet the party three minutes later, as 
 an afterthought. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Crowther, however, were both 
 upon the alert to receive their friends, the lady 
 frankly cordial, the gentleman swelling with 
 pompous friendliness, as if his manly breast were 
 trying to emerge from the moderate restriction 
 of a very open heart-shaped waistcoat. He pro- 
 tested that he was charmed to welcome Colonel 
 Disney to Glenaveril, and he glanced round tlie 
 splendid walls as who should say, "It is no 
 light thing to invite people to such a house as 
 this." 
 
 Vansittart Crowther was a man of short, squat 
 figure, who tried to make up for the want of
 
 *' LIES NOTHING BURIED LONG AGO ? " 221 
 
 inches by extreme uprightness, and liad culti- 
 vated this carriage until he seemed incapable of 
 bending. He had a bald head, disguised by 
 one dappled streak of grey and sandy hair, 
 which was plastered into a curl on each side of 
 his brow — curls faintly suggestive of a cat's ears. 
 He had blunt features, a sensual lip, and dull, 
 fishy eyes, large and protuberant, with an 
 expression in perfect harmony with the heavy, 
 sensual mouth. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Baynham were the next arrivals; 
 the lady wearing the family amethysts and the 
 well-known black velvet, under whose weighty 
 splendour she arrived short of breath ; the 
 gentleman expansive of shirt front, and genial 
 of aspect, jovial at the prospect of a good dinner 
 and choice wines, and not hypercritical as to the 
 company in which he ate the feast. He shook 
 hands with his host and hostess, and then went 
 over to the Misses Crowther, who had not 
 thought it necessary to suspend their absorbing 
 occupation in order to welcome the village 
 doctor's wife — a fact which Mrs. Baynham 
 observed and inwardly resented. 
 
 Mr. Colfox deserted the young ladies, still
 
 222 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 puzzling over the two bits of iron, and went 
 across the room to greet the Disneys. He wa& 
 an intelligent young man, steeped to the lips in 
 the opinions and the prejudices of university 
 life — Oxford life, that is to say. He ranked as 
 a literary man in Trelasco, on the strength of 
 having had an article almost published in Black- 
 wood. "The editor had accepted my paper," 
 he told people modestly ; "but on further con- 
 sideration he found it was a little too long, and 
 so, in point of fact, he sent it back to me in the 
 most courteous manner. He couldn't have acted 
 more kindly — but I was disappointed. It would 
 have been such an opening, you see." 
 
 All Mr. Colfox's friends agreed that with such 
 an opening the high road to literary fame and 
 fortune would have been made smooth for his 
 feet. They respected him even for this dis- 
 appointment. To have been accepted by Black- 
 wood made him almost a colleague of George 
 Eliot. 
 
 He was a tall and rather lean young man, who 
 wore an eye-glass, and seemed to live upon 
 books. It was irritating to Yansittart Crowther, 
 who prided himself on his cellar and his cook,
 
 " LIES NOTHING BUEIED LONG AGO ? » 223 
 
 to note how little impressioa food and drink 
 made upon Francis Colfox. 
 
 " He takes my Chateau Yquem as if it were 
 Devonshire cider," said the aggrieved parvenu, 
 *^and he hardly seems to know that this is 
 the only house where he ever sees clear turtle. 
 The man's people must have lived in a very 
 poor way." 
 
 In spite of this contemptuous opinion, Mr. 
 Crowther was always polite to Francis Colfox, 
 and had even thought of him as a pis-aller for 
 one of his daughters. There is hardly anything 
 in this life which a self-made man respects so 
 much as race, and Francis Colfox belonged to an 
 old county family, had a cousin who was an earl, 
 and another cousin who was talked of as a 
 probable bishop. He was, therefore, allowed to 
 make himself very much at home at Glenaveril, 
 and to speak his mind in a somewhat audacious 
 w^ay to the whole family. 
 
 Captain Pentreath, an army man of uncertain 
 age, a bachelor, and one of a territorial family of 
 many brothers, came next ; and then appeared 
 the vicar and his wife and one daughter, who 
 made up the party. The vicar was deaf, but
 
 221 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 amiable, and beamed benevolently upon a world 
 about whose spoken opinions he knew so little 
 that he might naturally have taken it for a much 
 better world than it is. The vicar's wife spent 
 her existence in interpreting and explaining 
 people's speech to the vicar, and had no time to 
 spare for opinions of her own. The daughter 
 was characterized by a gentle nullity, tempered 
 by a somewhat enthusiastic and evangelical piety. 
 The chief desire of her life was to keep the 
 Church as it had been in the days of her child- 
 hood, nearly thirty years before. 
 
 It was the first time the Disneys had dined 
 together at Glenaveril, so it seemed only proper 
 that Mr. Crowther should give his arm to Isola, 
 which he did with an air of conferring an honour. 
 The colonel had been ordered to take the vicar's 
 wife, and the doctor was given to Allegra; Captain 
 Pentreath took Miss Trequite, the vicar's 
 daughter; Mr. Colfox followed with Mrs. Bayn- 
 ham, and the daughters of the liouse went 
 modestly to the dining-room after the vicar and 
 Mrs. Crowther. 
 
 The dinner-table was as pretty as roses and 
 Venetian glass could make it. There was no
 
 *' LIES NOTHING BUEIED LONG AGO ? " 225 
 
 pompous display of ponderous plate, as there 
 might have been thirty years ago on a parvenu's 
 board. Everybody is enlightened nowadays. 
 The great "culture" movement has been as 
 widespread among the middle class as compulsory 
 education among the proletariat, and everybody 
 has " a taste." Scarcely were they seated, when 
 Mr. Crowther informed Mrs. Disney that he hated 
 a display of silver, but at the same time took 
 care to let her know that the Venetian glass she 
 admired was rather more valuable than that 
 precious metal. "And if it's broken, there's 
 nothing left you for your outlay," he said ; 
 " but it's a fancy of my wife and girls. Those 
 decanters are better than anything Salviati ever 
 made for Eoyalty." 
 
 The table was oval, lighted by one large lamp, 
 under an umbrella-shaped amber shade, a lamp 
 which diffused a faint golden glow through the 
 dusky room; and through this dreamy dimness 
 the footmen moved like ghosts, while the table 
 and the faces of the diners shone and sparkled 
 in the brilliant light. It was as picturesque a 
 dining-room and table as one need care to see ; 
 and if the Gainsboroughs and Keynoldses, which 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 here and there relieved the sombre russet of the 
 Cordovan leather hangings, were not the portraits 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Crowther's ancestors, they were 
 not the less lovely or interesting as works of art. 
 
 Isola sat by her host's side, with a silent and 
 somewhat embarrassed air, which her husband 
 noted as he watched her from the other side of 
 the table. 
 
 All the decorations were low, so that no pyramid 
 of fruit or flowers intervened to prevent a man 
 watching the face opposite to him. Disney saw 
 that while Allegra, in her place between Mr. 
 Baynham and Alicia Crovvther, was full of talk 
 and animation, Isola sat with downcast eyes, and 
 replied with a troubled look to her host's remarks. 
 There was something in that gentleman's manner 
 which was particularly obnoxious to the colonel — 
 a protecting air, a fatherly familiarity, which 
 brought the bald, shining forehead almost in 
 contact with Isola's shoulder. 
 
 As the man bent to whisper and to titter in 
 the very ear of his neighbour, the colonel got 
 through a little duty talk with Mrs. Trequite, 
 whose attention was frequently distracted by the 
 necessity of explaining Mrs. Crowther's polite
 
 "LIES NOTHING BUIIIED LONG AGO?" 227 
 
 mar.nurs to the vicar on the other side of the 
 table ; and this duty done he gave himself up 
 to watching Isola and her host. Why did she 
 blush so when the man talked to her ? Was it 
 the bDld admiration of those fishy eyes which 
 .annoyed her, or the man's manner altogether ; 
 -or was it anything that he said ? Disney strained 
 his ears to hear their conversation, if that could 
 he called conversation whicli was for the most 
 part monologue. 
 
 The man was talking of the Hunt Ball of last 
 winter. Disney heard such snatches of speech 
 as "the prettiest woman in the room," " every- 
 body said so," " Lostwithiel was evidently epris.'^ 
 
 Mr. Crowther had a penchant for scraps of 
 Prench, which decorated his speech as truffles 
 adorn a boned turkey. 
 
 " Isn't it odd that he should be such a rover ? " 
 he asked, in a less confidential tone than before. 
 
 Isola looked up at him, as if hardly under- 
 standing the question. 
 
 *' I mean Lostwithiel. Witli such a nice place 
 as he has here, it seems a pity to be broiling 
 himself in Peru. I never could understand the 
 taste fur orchids ; and in his case— well, I hardly
 
 228 ALL ALONG THE RIVEK. 
 
 believe in it. He is the last man to emulate- 
 a Hooker or a Lawrence. Orcliid-liuntiDg must 
 be an excuse for keeping away from England,. 
 I take it. Don't you think so, now, Mrs. 
 Disney?" 
 
 "I really don't know." 
 
 "You don't know why he should want to keep 
 away? No, no more does anybody else. Only 
 we all wonder, don't you know. He talked to 
 me of settling down in the county — looking after 
 the estate a little. He even hinted that he 
 might, in due course, cast about for a nice young 
 wife — wdth a little money. And then all of a 
 sudden off he sails in that rakish yacht of his, 
 and roves from port to port like the Flying 
 Dutchman in the Opera, till at last we hear oi 
 him on the coast of Peru. Curious, ain't it, Mrs. 
 Disney ? " 
 
 '* Why curious ? " asked Isola, coldly. " Was 
 not Lord Lostwithiel always fond of yachting ? " 
 
 "No doubt; but when a man talks of settling 
 down in his native place — and then doesn't do it 
 — there must be a reason, mustn't there ? " 
 
 " I don't know. People act as often front 
 cajprice as from reason."
 
 " LIES NOTHING BURIED LONG AGO ? " 229 
 
 "Ab, that is a lady's idea. No man who is 
 worthy the name ever acts from caprice," said 
 llr. Crowther, with his insinuating air, as if some 
 Jiidden meaning were in the words, and then 
 looking across the table and seeing the colonel's 
 watchful face, he altered both tone and manner 
 .as he added, " Of course you know Lostwithiel, 
 Colonel Disney ? " 
 
 " I saw a good deal of Lord Lostwithiel when 
 he was a small boy," answered the colonel, coldly. 
 *' His father was one of my early friends. But 
 that is a Ions; time aQ:o." 
 
 *•' How old is he, do you say ? " 
 ' Debrett will answer that question better than 
 I can. I have never reckoned the years that 
 have gone by since I saw him in an Eton collar." 
 The men did not sit long over their wine. 
 The doctor and his host talked agriculture, Mr. 
 Crowther discussing all farming operations upon 
 a large scale as became a man of territorial 
 magnitude. The vicar prosed about an approach- 
 ing lecture at the schoolroom, and utterly failed 
 in hearing anything that was said in reply to his 
 observations. Colonel Disney smoked a cigarette 
 in silence, and with a moody brow.
 
 230 ALL ALONG THE EIYER. 
 
 Later, in the drawing-room, while the Crowtber 
 girls were playing a clamorous duet, by the 
 last fashionable Sclavonic composer, Vansittart 
 Crowther directed his conversation almost wholly 
 to Mrs. Disney, as if she were the only person 
 worthy of his attention. He was full of sug- 
 gestions for future gaieties in which the Disneys 
 were to share — picnics, boating parties. 
 
 " You must help us to wake up the neighbour- 
 hood, colonel," he said, addressing Disney, with 
 easy friendliness. 
 
 " We are not very likely to be of much assist- 
 ance to you in that line," Disney answered coldly, 
 "We are quiet stay-at-home people, my wife 
 and I, and take our pleasures on a very small 
 scale." 
 
 Colonel Disney's carriage was announced at 
 this moment. He gave his wife a look which 
 plainly indicated his wish to depart, and she 
 rose quickly from the low, deep chair in which 
 she had been sitting, in some manner a captive, 
 while Mr. Crowther lolled across the broad, 
 plush-cushioned arm to talk to her. Allegra 
 was engrossed in a talk about William Morris's 
 last poem with Mr. Colfox, who was delighted to
 
 . "LIES NOTHING BURIED LONG AGO ?" 231 
 
 converse with any one fresh from the far-away 
 world of art and literature — delighted altogether 
 with Allegra, whose whole being presented a 
 piquant contrast to the Miss Crowthers. But 
 the colonel's sister saw the movement towards 
 departure, and hastened to her brother's side. 
 Briefest adieux followed, and the first of the 
 guests being gone, left behind them a feeling of 
 uneasiness in those whose carriages had been 
 ordered half an hour later. One premature de- 
 parture will cast a blight upon your small dull 
 party ; whereas from a scene of real mirth the 
 nine Muses and three Graces might all slip away 
 unmissed and unobserved.
 
 232 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 <-0F THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 
 
 " You had better send cards to Mrs. Crowtlier, 
 Isola," said Martin Disney, two days afterwards, 
 when his wife was sitting at her Davenport 
 writing her family letters. 
 
 " Cards ! Oh, Martin, she would think that so 
 very formal. I can call upon her. She is always 
 at home on Thursday afternoons, and she likes 
 to go." 
 
 " I am sorry for that, since I had rather you 
 should never enter her house again." 
 
 " Martin ! " 
 
 " 1 have nothing to say against Mrs. Crowther, 
 my dear Isola. But the man is more detestable 
 than I could have believed low birth and un- 
 limited money could make any man. Guileless 
 and inexperienced as you are, I think you must
 
 **0F THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 233 
 
 have felt that his manner to you the other night 
 was familiar to the point of being insulting." 
 
 Isola had felt both embarrassed and distressed 
 by her host's attentions — the insinuating in- 
 flections of his fat, pompous voice ; his air of 
 being upon a confidential footing with her. It 
 had seemed to her on that evening as if for the 
 first time in her life, before the eyes of men and 
 women, she drank the cup of shame. She had 
 said no word to her husband of Mr. Crowther's 
 oppressive familiarity, and she had fondly hoped 
 that the matter had escaped his notice. 
 
 She sat before him now, flushed and agitated, 
 with lowered eyelids, and one hand restlessly 
 moving about the papers on her blotting-pad. 
 
 " My dearest, there is nothing in all this to 
 distress you," said Disney, with infinite gentle- 
 ness. "It is not your fault that the man is a 
 ead ; but it would be my fault if I were to allow 
 you or Allegra to go to his house again." 
 
 " He was not rude to Allegra.'* 
 
 "No ; it would be her turn next, perhaps. He 
 did not mean to be rude to you. He only wanted 
 to be especially polite in his own odious fashion. 
 There are men in that class who cannot behave
 
 234 ALL ALONG THE RIVEE. 
 
 decently to a pretty woman, or civilly to a plain 
 one. He meant no doubt to gratify you by his 
 compliments. What a stress he laid upon Lost- 
 withiel's attention to you at the ball. Were his 
 attentions so very marked ? " 
 
 *'0h no; not more to me than to others," 
 Isola answered quickly. " He danced a good 
 many times — twice or three times — with Belinda 
 Crowther. Everybody noticed them as the 
 handsomest couple in the room ; not that he is 
 handsome, of course — only tall and distinguished- 
 looking." 
 
 AUegra came running in from the lawn, and 
 broke the thread of the conversation. Isola put 
 the three visiting-cards into an envelope and 
 addressed it to Mrs. Vansittart Crowther. She 
 felt that the kindly matron would be puzzled 
 and vexed at this ceremony, from a young person 
 towards whom she had assumed so motherly a 
 tone, urging her to run over to Glenaveril at any 
 hour of the day — asking her to lunch or to 
 tea at least once a week — wanting to take her 
 for drives to Lostwithiel, or railway jaunts to 
 Plymouth. 
 
 Isola was not mistaken, for Mrs. Crowther
 
 "OF THE WEAK MY HEAET IS WEAKEST." 235 
 
 called three or four days afterwards and up- 
 braided ber for sending the cards. 
 
 " You migbt bave all come to tea on Th ursday, 
 if you bad been good-natured," sbe said. ** Mr, 
 Colfox read us a poem by Swinburne, out of one 
 of the new roagazines — there are so many nowa- 
 days that I never remember which is which. 
 Belinda was delighted with it — but Alicia and I 
 can't rise to her height. Mr. Colfox reads 
 poetry beautifully. You can't judge of bis 
 powers by only bearing him read the lessons,"^ 
 added Mrs. Crowther, as if the English Bible 
 were a poor thing. 
 
 She stopped an hour, praised Isola's tea- 
 making and the new cook's tea-cakes, asked 
 a great many questions about Allegra's ideas 
 and occupations, and was as hearty, and simple, 
 and friendly, and natural as if she bad been 
 a duchess. 
 
 It grieved Isola to be obliged to refuse an 
 invitation to luncheon, most cordially pressed 
 upon ber and Allegra. 
 
 " I would drive you both to Lostwithiel after 
 lunch, and we could do our little bit of shox)ping 
 and then have a cup of tea at the Talbot while
 
 236 ALL ALONG THE EIYER. 
 
 the horses had their mouths washed out, and I'd 
 show you the room where your brother's wife was 
 so much admired last year, Miss Leland, and 
 where I hope you'll have many a good dance 
 next winter. Now the ice is broken we mean to 
 go on with our balls, I can tell you. Indeed, my 
 girls are thinking of trying to get up a tennis- 
 •club ball about the end of September." 
 
 This was the last time Mrs. Vansittart Crowther 
 iippeared in a friendly manner at the Angler's 
 Nest, for after two or three further invitations — 
 to a picnic — to tea — to lunch — had been declined, 
 in most gracious little notes from Isola, that 
 good lady perceived that there was some kind of 
 barrier to friendly intercourse between her and 
 Colonel Disney's wife, and she told herself with 
 some touch of honest middle-class dignity that if 
 3Iartin Disney was proud she could be proud 
 too, and that she would make no further offer 
 -of friendship which was undesired. 
 
 "I suppose he thinks because he comes 
 of a good old family, while we have made our 
 money in trade, that we are not quite good 
 enough to associate with his wife and sister," 
 she said to her daughters. '* I thought he was
 
 **0F THE WEAK MY HEAET IS WEAKEST." 23T 
 
 too much of a gentleman to have such a petty 
 feeling." 
 
 "How innocent you are, mother," cried Alicia, 
 contemptuously ; " can't you see that they are all 
 bursting with envy ? That was what made the 
 colonel so gloomy and disagreeable the night of 
 our little dinner. He was vexed to see things 
 done with as good taste as in a nobleman's house. 
 It cuts these poor gentilities to the quick to see 
 that. They don't much mind our being rich, if 
 we will only be vulgar and uneducated. But 
 when we have the impertinence to be as well up 
 in the ways of good society as they are them- 
 selves, they can't forgive us. Good taste in a 
 parvenu is the unforgivable sin." 
 
 " Well, I don't know," mused Mrs. Crowther,. 
 sadly. " I'm sure there's neither pride nor envy 
 in Isola, and Miss Leland looks a frank, straight- 
 forward girl, above all foolish nonsense ; so 
 it must be the colonel's fault that they've 
 cut us." 
 
 *' Cut us!" echoed Belinda ; "the Angler's Nest 
 cutting Glenaveril is rather too absurd an idea." 
 
 '* My dear, you don't know the importance 
 Cornish peoj)le attach to old family — and the
 
 238 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 Disneys are a very old family — and no one can 
 deny that he is a gentleman, though we don't 
 like him." 
 
 " Oh, no doubt he considers that he belongs to 
 the landed gentry. He has bought Kowe's farm, 
 two hundred and sixty acres. He had forty to 
 begin with, so he is now lord of three hundred 
 acres, just half our home farm." 
 
 *•' His cousin. Sir Luke Disney, has a large 
 estate near Marazion," said Mrs. Crowther, 
 meekly. 
 
 "Yes, but we don't reckon a man's importance 
 by his cousin's estate. Colonel Disney is only a 
 squatter in this part of the country." 
 
 Alicia pronounced the word with gusto. It 
 had been whispered to her that the squire of 
 Fowey had spoken of her father — who counted 
 his acres by thousands — as a squatter. That 
 unimpeachable importance, founded upon the 
 established respectability of bygone centuries — 
 centuries in which men wore armour and women 
 breakfasted on beef and ale — was not to be 
 bought with gold and silver, and the want of it 
 often made the Miss Crowthers angry. Diamonds 
 they could have, and land, art, and beauty,
 
 *'0F THE WEAK MY HEAKT IS WEAKEST." 239 
 
 even the ways and manners of good society, 
 but tliey could not buy themselves a history. 
 Everybody knew that their splendours had all 
 come out of a cloth mill, that their ingots had 
 been in some part transmuted from pestiferous 
 woollen rags gathered in the Jewish quarters 
 of far-off cities, ground into shoddy, and anon 
 issued to the world as sleek superfine cloth. 
 The more shoddy the higher interest upon 
 capital ; and Vansittart Crowther's daughters 
 knew too many of the secrets of the mills to 
 be proud of the source of their prosperity. 
 
 Mrs. Crowther was sorry to lose Isola as a 
 friend and j)rotegee. Her daughters were furious 
 at the slight implied in this gradual dropping 
 away. They passed Mrs. Disuey and her sister- 
 in-law with their noses in the air, as they went 
 from the church-porch to their carriage. They 
 cut them ostentatiously if they met on the quiet 
 country roads. Mrs. Crowther would still stop 
 to speak and shake hands, albeit she urged no 
 further invitations. 
 
 And while the gulf widened between the great 
 house and the small one the glorious Cornish 
 summer waned, and slowly, slowly, melted away,
 
 240 ALL ALONG THE RIVER, 
 
 lingering very late in that fair western land, 
 which was full of flowers even when the home- 
 counties were beiug withered and blackened by 
 the first frosts. At last came winter, and the 
 gradual turn of the year; short days slowly 
 lengthening out by leisurely sunsets; pale snow- 
 drops glimmering in the borders ; and then the 
 gold of crocuses and the bright blue of the 
 Siberian bell-flower in patches of vivid colour; 
 and then hyacinths and tulips, primroses on 
 every bank, narcissus and jonquil in every 
 garden ; and by-and-by the full glory of blue- 
 bell and hawthorn blossom. And anon in the 
 middle of May came an event in which all 
 the interests of Colonel Disney's life seemed to 
 culminate. In that balmy Maytime Isola's first- 
 born son came into the world, and Isola's young 
 life hovered at the gate of death, in so terrible 
 an uncertainty that Martin Disney's hair grew 
 grey while he awaited the issue of the contest 
 between youth and weakness. 
 
 For more than a week after the birth of her 
 baby Isola's condition had satisfied the trained 
 nurse and the kindly doctor. She was very 
 white and weak, and she showed less interest
 
 *'0F THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 241 
 
 in her baby than most young mothers — a fact 
 which Mr. Baynham ascribed to over-education. 
 
 " The young women of the present day aren't 
 half such good mothers as those I used to attend 
 when I began practice," he said discontentedly. 
 ^' Their heads are stuffed with poetry, and such 
 like. They're nervous and fanciful — and the 
 upshot of it all is that babies have to be wet- 
 nursed or brought up by hand. If I had the 
 making of a New Kepublic I wouldn't allow any 
 married woman the run of a library until she 
 had reared the last of her babies. What does 
 a young married w^oman want Avith book-learn- 
 ing ? She ought to have enough to do to look 
 -after her husband and her nursery." 
 
 Before the baby son was a fortnight old, fever 
 supervened, and Isola's state gave poor Mr. 
 Baynham the deepest alarm. A hospital nurse 
 was sent for to assist the established custodian ; 
 and a great authority was brought over from 
 Plymouth to approve the village doctor's treat- 
 ment, and to make a trifling alteration in a 
 prescription, substituting bromide of sodium for 
 bromide of potassium. 
 
 Many days and nights of delirium followed the 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 physician's visit, a period in which the patient 
 was watched at every hour of the day and night ; 
 and one of the most constant watchers through 
 all that dreary time was Martin Disney. It was 
 in vain that Allegra and the nurses urged him 
 to consider his own health. He would consent 
 only to leave the sick-room for briefest intervals 
 of rest. Day after day, night after night, he sat 
 in the same chair — an old-fashioned armchair,, 
 with projecting sides, which almost hid him from 
 the patient — beside the bed. He was never in 
 the way of the nurse. He was always helpful 
 when a man's help was needed. He was so quiet 
 that it was impossible to object to his presence. 
 He sat there like a statue of patience. No moan 
 escaped his pallid lips; no tear stole down his 
 haggard cheek. He sat and watched and waited 
 for the issue, which was to make him happy, or 
 desolate for ever. 
 
 All his future was involved in that issue. He 
 looked with a faint smile upon the pink little 
 baby face, when they brought his son to him. 
 No one would have dared to suggest that he 
 should take care of himself and be comforted 
 for that little one's sake. Tliev all knew that
 
 "OF THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 243 
 
 his firstborn was as nothing to him. All his 
 love and care, all his hopes and his fears were 
 centred in the wife who lay upon yonder bed, 
 with glassy eyes and babbling lips, a wanderer 
 in a shadowy world fall of torturing images — 
 fountains of bubblino; water which she lono-ed 
 to drink — great black serpents, which came 
 crawling in at the window, and creeping nearer, 
 nearer to her bed — wriggling, hideous forms that 
 hemmed her in on every side — giant staircases 
 that she was always trying to climb — mammoth 
 caves in which she lost herself, fifty times bigger 
 and more awful than those serpentine caverns 
 near the Lizard, which she and Allegra had 
 explored in the previous autumn — steeper, stonier 
 than the tall cliffs and pinnacled rocks above 
 Bedruthan sands. 
 
 Day after day, night after night, Martin Disney 
 sat in his place and listened to those ravings of 
 a mind distraught. He could not keep himself 
 from trying to follow her in that labyrinth of 
 disconnected fancies — visions of shapeless horror, 
 trouble, confusion — a wild babbling of numbers, 
 prattling of millions, billions, trillions — as if her 
 days of health and sense had been spent in the
 
 244 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 calculations of a Eothschild, she who could 
 scarcely reckon the simplest account in a trades- 
 man's book. 
 
 What had she to do with this torturing recital 
 of thousands and millions, this everlasting heap- 
 ing up of figures ? 
 
 Then at another period of that long struggle 
 between life and death, reason and unreason, she 
 had a ghastly vision of two children, squatting 
 on each side of her bed, one living, the other 
 dead, a grisly child with throat cut from ear to 
 ear. Again and again she conjured them to take 
 away those babies — the dead child whose horrid 
 aspect froze her blood — the living child which 
 grinned and made faces at her. 
 
 Once and once only during that season of 
 delirium the elder of her nurses carried the baby 
 to her bedside, the tiny and delicate form in 
 snowy cambric and lace, a little roseate face, on 
 which the first glimmer of intelligence was 
 already dawning, sweet blue eyes that smiled 
 at the light, rosebud lips that invited kisses. 
 The nurse took the infant to the side of the 
 bed, and asked the young mother to look at 
 him. Those fever-bright eyes stared at the
 
 *'0P THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 245 
 
 sweet small face with a gaze of ever-growing 
 horror, and then with a wild shriek Isola clasped 
 her hands before her eyes, and drew herself 
 cowering to the further side of the bed. 
 
 " The dead child ! " she cried. " Why do you 
 show me that dead child ? Don't you see his 
 throat streaming with blood ? " 
 
 It was a case in which the nurses had no easy 
 duty by day or night; and there were times 
 when Disney insisted that the night-nurse should 
 have extra rest, while he kept guard. 
 
 '* But if she should be very bad, sir, you might 
 not be able to manage." 
 
 *' Oh yes, I should. My sister is a very light 
 sleeper. She would come to me in a moment, 
 and she has a great deal of influence with 
 my wife." 
 
 This was true. From the beginning of evil 
 Allegra's presence had exercised a soothing 
 power. She had been able to lull the patient 
 to sleep sometimes, when opiates had failed to 
 produce even fitful slumber. Isola was calmer 
 and less restless when her sister-in-law was by 
 her side. 
 
 In those long night Avatches, sometimes in
 
 216 ALL ALONG THP] KIVER. 
 
 solitude, Martin Disney had ample leisure in 
 ^VJbich to ponder upon his wedded life, and to 
 consider how far the hopes with w^hich he had 
 entered upon that life had been realized. The 
 retrospect left him melancholy, and with a latent 
 sense of loss and disappointment ; and yet he 
 told himself again and again that he did ill to be 
 dissatisfied, that Providence had dealt kindly 
 with him. 
 
 At five and forty years of age, he, Martin 
 Disney, of modest fortune and social status, and 
 of no especial claim to be admired, intellectual 
 or physical, had won the band of a lovely and 
 interesting girl. He had been so bewildered and 
 overcome by the delight of his conquest, that he 
 had entered upon no laborious process of self- 
 examination before he took to himself this fair 
 and winning partner. It had been enough for 
 him that she came to him willingly, lovingly, in 
 all truth and girlish simplicity, loyal as she was 
 pure. He had never asked himself could such 
 an attachment last — on her side ? It had been 
 enough for him that the love existed. It would 
 be his duty and his delight to strengthen the 
 bond, to draw that fair spirit into closer union
 
 *'0F THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 247 
 
 with Lis own. He had felfc no shadow of fear for 
 the future. Once having won her, it must be 
 easy to keep his treasure — easy for him who 
 would so faithfully guard and cherish this price- 
 less gift of a benign Providence. He was a man 
 of deep religious feeling — a man who recognized 
 in good and evil, in joy and in sorrow, the deal- 
 ings of an Almighty God with His short-sighted 
 creatures. He accepted Isola's love as the crown- 
 ing blessing of his life — accepted it in fear 
 -and trembling, knowing the instability of all 
 moi'tal joys; but he bad never feared the loss 
 of her love. 
 
 Yet now, sitting in the deep of night beside 
 that bed which might be the bed of death, he 
 told himself that his wife's love was lost to him, 
 had been lost from the hour of his return to 
 Trelasco, when he went back to her with all the 
 enthusiasm of a lover, forgetful of his mature 
 years, of his long experience of life — hard 
 iighting, hard knocks of all kinds in the great 
 life-battle. 
 
 He had gone back to her as Leander to Hero, 
 a boy in heart and hopefulness; and what had 
 he found in her? A placid, obedient wife, gentle
 
 248 ALL ALONG THE ElVER. 
 
 almost to apathy, but with a strain of melancholy 
 underlying all their relations which his devoted 
 love could not conquer. 
 
 To all his interrogations her answer had been 
 the same. She was not unhappy. She had every- 
 thing in life that she desired. There was nothing 
 that he could give her, no cliange in their exist- 
 ence which could be brought about that would 
 add to her content. All this should mean domestic 
 peace, a heart at ease ; yet all this was unsatisfy- 
 ing to Martin Disney ; for his instinct told liim 
 that his wife was not happy — that the element 
 of gladness was, for some inscrutable reason,- 
 banished from her life. 
 
 She had seemed happier, or at least the little 
 home had been brighter and gayer after Allegra's 
 coming; but as the time wore on it became 
 clear to him that the life and gaiety were all in 
 Allegra herself, and that Isola was spiritless and 
 depressed. It was as if the spring of her life 
 had snapped suddenly, and left her nerveless and 
 joyless, a submissive, unhopeful creature. That 
 sense of disappointment and loss which he had 
 dimly felt, even when his home-coming had been 
 a new thing, had grown and deepened with the
 
 "OF THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST" 249 
 
 passage of time. He had bought his land ; he 
 had added to the space and comfort of his house ; 
 he had enlarged the stables, and bought a couple 
 of hunters, and a cob for harness ; and while 
 these things had been doing, the activity of his 
 days, the pleasant fuss and labour of arrauge- 
 ment and supervision, had occupied his mind so 
 pleasantly as lo stifle those growing doubts for 
 the time being. But when all was done ; when 
 the vine and the figtree had been planted, and 
 he sat down to take his ease in their shelter, 
 then he began to feel very keenly that his wife's 
 part in all that he had done was the part of 
 submission only. She liked this or that because 
 he liked it. She was content, and that was all. 
 And the line between contentment and resigna- 
 tion is so faint a demarcation that it seemed to 
 him sometimes as if she were only resigned, as if 
 she suffered life rather than lived — suffered life 
 as holy women suffer some slow, wasting disease, 
 in meek subjection to a mysterious decree. 
 
 He sat beside her bed, while she battled with 
 all the demons of delirium ; and he wondered 
 whether, when she had been at her best ; when 
 her mind had been brightest and clearest —
 
 250 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 whether she had been any nearer to him than 
 she was now in her madness ; whether he had 
 known any more of her inner self — the mystery 
 of her heart and conscience — than he knew now, 
 while those wild eyes stared at him without sight 
 or knowledge. 
 
 One summer morning, as he sat alone in his 
 watch in that dull interval between darkness and 
 dawn, the visions of the wandering mind took a 
 more consecutive form than usual She fancied 
 herself in a storm at sea. The waves were rolling 
 mountains high — were bearing down upon her 
 with threatenings of instant death. She feared, 
 -and yet she courted them. In one minute she 
 was recoiling from the wild rush of waters, cling- 
 ing distractedly to the brass rail at the head of 
 her bed, crouching against the wall as if to save 
 herself from an advancing wave ; and in the 
 next minute she sprang out of bed, and rushed 
 to the open window, wanting to throw herself out 
 of it. Disney was only just quick enough to 
 seize her in his arms, and carry her back to bed. 
 He held her there, battling with him in a vehe- 
 ment effort to escape from his restraining arms. 
 
 " Why do you stop me ? " she cried, looking
 
 *'0F THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 251 
 
 at him fiercely with her distracted eyes. " What 
 else is there for me ? What other refuge ? what 
 other hope ? Let me go ! let me go ! Cruel ! 
 cruel! cruel! Let me throw myself into the 
 sea ! Don't you understand ? Oh, cruel ! cruel ! 
 Oold and wicked, shameless and cruel! There 
 is nothing else — only that refuge left ! Let me 
 hide myself in death ! let me hide — hide ! " 
 
 Her voice rose to a shriek ; and both the 
 nurse and AUegra came rushing in. The faint 
 white dawn shone upon her livid face and on the 
 scarlet spot upon each hollow cheek ; her eyes 
 stared wildly, starting from their sockets in that 
 paroxysm of her madness. 
 
 Only a few days after that night of terror 
 Isola was lying calm as a child. The fever had 
 gone down — the enfeebled constitution had at 
 last answered to the influence of medicine ; and 
 gradually, like the slow lifting of the darkness 
 after a long night of cloud and fog, conscious- 
 ness and reason came back. Sleep soothed the 
 strained and weary nerves, and the exhausted 
 frame, which a few days before had seemed 
 endowed with a superhuman strength, lay like 
 a log upon the Ijed of sickness.
 
 252 ALL ALONG THE EIYER. 
 
 Eecovery was slow, but there was no relapse. 
 Slow as the dawning of day to the tired watcher, 
 after the long, blank night, there came the dawn 
 of maternal love. The young mother began to 
 take delight in her child ; and it was rapture 
 to Martin Disney to see her sitting opposite 
 him under the tulip-tree, in the low Madeira 
 chair, with her baby in her lap. Allegra vied 
 with her in her devotion to that over-praised 
 infant ; while the Shah and Tim, of the same 
 opinion for the first time in their lives, were 
 almost rabid with jealousy. 
 
 They all lived in the garden in that happy 
 summer season, as they had done the year before^ 
 when Allegra first came among them. It was in 
 the garden they received their visitors, and it 
 was there that Mr. Colfox came at least thrice 
 a week, upon the flimsiest pretexts of parish 
 business, to drink tea poured out for him by 
 Allegra's helpful hands, while Isola sat quietly 
 by, listening to their talk, with her baby lying 
 in her lap. 
 
 Allegra had taken kindly to parish work, and,, 
 in Mr. Colfox's own phraseology, was a tower of 
 strength to him in his labours among the poor
 
 ** OF THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 253 
 
 of Trelasco. She had started a series of mothers' 
 meetings in the winter afternoons, and had read 
 to the women and girls while they worked, 
 helping them a good deal with their work into 
 the bargain. She had done wonders at penny- 
 readings, singing, reciting, drawing lightning 
 caricatures of local celebrities with a bit of 
 chalk upon a black-board. Her portrait of 
 Yansittart Crowther had been ap[)lauded to the 
 echo, although it was not a flattering portrait. 
 She had visited the sick ; slie had taught in the 
 night school. The curate had been enthusiastic 
 in his appreciation of her, and his praises had 
 been listened to contemptuously by the two Miss 
 Crowthers, each of whom at different periods had 
 taken up these good works, only to drop them 
 again after the briefest effort. 
 
 *' She will get tired as soon as we did," said 
 Alicia, " when she finds out how impossible 
 these creatures are — unless she has an ulterior 
 motive." 
 
 " AVhat ulterior motive should she have ? " 
 asked Colfox, bluntly. 
 
 " Who can tell ? She may want to get herself 
 talked about. As J\Iiss Leland, of the Angler's
 
 254 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 Nest, a sort of useful companion to lier brother's 
 wife, she is a nobody. If she can get a reputa- 
 tion for piety and philanthropy, that will be 
 better than nothing. Or she may be only 
 angling for a husband." 
 
 " If you knew her as well as I do you would 
 know that she is above all such trivial and 
 self-seeking motives, and that she is good to 
 these people because her heart lias gone out 
 to them." 
 
 " Ah, but you see we don't know her. Her 
 brother has chosen to hold himself aloof from 
 Glenaveril ; and I must say I am very glad he 
 has taken that line — for more than one reason." 
 
 " If any of your reasons concern Miss Leland 
 you are very much mistaken in under-rating her. 
 You could not have had a more delightful com- 
 panion," said Mr. Colfox, with some warmth. 
 
 " Oh, we all know that you have exalted her 
 into a heroine — a St. John's Wood St. Helena. 
 But she is a little too unconventional for my 
 taste ; though I certainly would rather be 
 intimate with her than with her sister-in-law." 
 
 " Surely you have no fault to find with that 
 most gentle creature ? "
 
 "OF THE WEAK MY HEAET IS AVEAKEST." 255 
 
 " She is just a little too gentle for my taste," 
 replied Alicia, who usually took upon herself all 
 expression of opinion, while Belinda fanned her- 
 self languidly, in an aesthetic attitude, feeling 
 that her chief mission in this life was to sit 
 still and look like la helle dame sans merci, 
 " She is just as much too quiet as Miss Leland 
 is too boisterous. I have no liking for pensive 
 young women who cast down their eyelids at 
 the slightest provocation, and are only animated 
 when they are flirting." 
 
 " The tongue is a little member," quoted Mr. 
 Colfox, taking up his hat, and holding out his 
 hand in adieu. 
 
 He was very unceremonious to these fair 
 young parishioners of his, and talked to them 
 as freely as if he had been an old French Abbe 
 in a country village. It is needless to say that 
 they valued his opinion so much the more 
 because he was entirely unaffected by their 
 wealth or their good looks. They were naturally 
 aggrieved at his marked admiration for 3[is9 
 Leland. 
 
 Those ripe months of harvest and vintage, 
 July, August, and September, passed like a blijjs-
 
 256 ALL ALONG THE RIVEE. 
 
 ful dream for Martin Disney. He had snatched 
 Ills darling from the jaws of death. He had her 
 once more — fair to look upon, with sweet, smiling 
 mouth and pensive eyes ; and she was so tender 
 ;and so loving to him, in fond gratitude for his 
 devotion during her long malady, so seemingly 
 happy in their mutual love for their child, that 
 he forgot all those aching fears which had 
 gnawed his heart while he sat by her pillow 
 through the long, anxious nights — forgot that he 
 had ever doubted her, or remembered his doubts 
 only to laugh at himself as a morbid, jealous 
 fool. Could he doubt her, who was candour and 
 innocence personified ? Could he think for an 
 instant that all those sweet, loving ways and 
 looks of hers which beautified his commonplace 
 existence, were so much acting — and that her 
 heart was not his ? No ! True love has an un- 
 mistakable language ; and true love spoke to him 
 in every word and tone of his wife's. 
 
 The child made so tender and close a bond 
 between them. Both lives were seemingly 
 bound and entwined about this fragile life of 
 Isola's first-born. Mr. Baynham had no reason 
 now to complain of his patient's want of the
 
 "OF THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 257 
 
 maternal instinct. He had rather to expostulate 
 and to restrain her in her devotion to the child. 
 He had to reprove her for her sleepless nights 
 and morbid anxieties. 
 
 " Do you think your baby will grow any the 
 faster or stronger for your lying awake half the 
 night worrying yourself about him ? " said the 
 doctor, with his cheery bluntness. " He has 
 a capital nurse — one of those excellent cow- 
 women, who are specially created to rear other 
 people's babies; and he has a doctor who is 
 not quite a fool about infant maladies. Kead 
 your novels, Mrs. Disney, and keep up your 
 good looks ; or else twenty years hence you 
 will see, your son blushing when he hears his 
 mother mistaken for his grandmother." 
 
 After giving his patient this advice, Mr. 
 Baynham told his wife, in confidence, that 
 were anything to happen to the little one, Isola 
 Disney would go off her head. 
 
 "I'm afraid she is sadly hysterical," replied 
 Mrs. Baynham. "I am very fond of her, you 
 know, Tom; but I have never been able to 
 understand her. I can't make out a young 
 woman who has a pretty house and an indul- 
 
 VOL. I. a
 
 258 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 gent husband, and who never seems quite 
 happy." 
 
 " Every woman can't have your genial disposi- 
 tion, Belle," answered the doctor, admiringly. 
 "Perpetual sunshine is the rarest thing in 
 Nature." 
 
 The early western harvest had been gathered 
 in. Upland and valley in that undulating land 
 were clothed with the dull, tawny hue of the 
 stubble. Here and there the plough horses 
 were moving slowly along the red ridges on 
 the steep hillside. No touch of frost had 
 dulled the rich hues of the autumnal flowers, 
 and the red carnations still glowed in every 
 cottage garden, while the pale pink trusses of 
 the hydrangea filled all the shrubberies with 
 beauty. A keener breath came up at eventide 
 from the salt sea beyond Point Neptune, and 
 wilder winds crept across the inland valleys 
 with the on-coming of night. Summer and the 
 swallows were gone. October, a balmy season 
 for the most part, was at hand ; and there were 
 no more tea-drinkings and afternoon gossipings 
 at the Angler's Nest. The lamps were lighted
 
 "OF THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 259 
 
 before dinner. The evenings were spent in the 
 old library and the new drawing-room, the new 
 room communicating with the old one by a 
 curtained archway, so that of a night the 
 curtains could be drawn back and Martin 
 Disney could sit among his books by the fire- 
 place in the library, and yet be within con- 
 versational reach of Isola and Allegra in the 
 drawing-room, where they had piano and table - 
 easel, work-baskets, and occupations of all kinds. 
 Mr. Colfox sometimes dropped in of an even- 
 ing, on parish business of course, took a cup 
 of coffee, listened while Allegra played one of 
 Mozart's sonatas or sang a song by G-luck or 
 Haydn or Handel. Mr. Colfox was not one of 
 the advanced people who despise Mozart or 
 Handel. Nor did he look down upon Haydn. 
 Indeed, he sat and stroked his thin legs with 
 a sheepish appreciation, wrinklini^ up his loose 
 trousers, and showing a large amount of wrinkled 
 stocking, while Allegra sang *' My mother bids 
 me bind my hair," in her clear, strong mezzo- 
 soprano, which was of infinite use to him in his 
 choir. 
 
 He told everybody that Martin Disney's \Nas
 
 260 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 an ideal household — a home into which it was 
 a privilege to be admitted. 
 
 " I feel as if I never knew the beauty of 
 domestic life till I knew the Angler's Nest," 
 he said one evening after dinner at Glenaveril, 
 when he and the village doctor had accepted 
 one of Mr. Crowther's pressing invitations to 
 what he called "pot-luck," the pot-luck of the 
 man whose spirit burns within him at the thought 
 of his hundred-guinea cook, and whose pride is 
 most intolerable when it apes humility. 
 
 " Keally, now," said Mr. Crowther, "you 
 surprise me, for I have always fancied there was 
 a screw loose there." 
 
 "What does that expression imply, Mr. 
 Crowther ? " asked the curate, coldly. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ! Nothing specific : only 
 one's notion of an ideal home doesn't generally 
 take the shape of a beautiful girl of twenty 
 married to a man of fifty. The disparity is just 
 twice as much as it ought to be." 
 
 " Upon my soul," ^cried the curate, " I don't 
 believe that wedded love is affected by any 
 difference of years. Desdemona loved Othello, 
 who was a man of mature age "
 
 "OF THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 261 
 
 " And black," interrupted Mr. Crowther, with 
 a coarse laugh. " Well, let us be thankful that 
 Colonel Disney is not a nigger ; and that there 
 is so much the less danger of a burst-up at the 
 Angler's Nest. And now, Baynham, with 
 regard to this footpath across the wood, who 
 the deuce will be injured if I shut it up ? " 
 
 " A good many people, and the people I 
 think you would least like to injure," answered 
 the doctor, sturdily. *' Old people, and feeble, 
 ailing people, who find the walk to church quite 
 far enough even with the help of that short 
 cut." 
 
 " Short cut be hanged ! " cried Mr. Crowther, 
 helping himself to a bumper of port, and passing 
 on the decanter with hospitable emphasis. "It 
 can't make a difference of a hundred yards." 
 
 *' It does make a difference of over a quarter 
 of a mile — and the proof is that everybody uses 
 it, and that it goes by the name of the Church 
 path. I wouldn't try to stop it, if I were you, 
 Mr. Crowther. You are a popular man in the 
 parish, for you — well, you have spent a heap of 
 money in this place, and you subscribe liberally 
 to all our charities and what not ; but, I don't
 
 262 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 mind telling you, if you were to try and shut 
 off that old footpath across your wood, you'd be 
 about the most unpopular man within a radius 
 of ten miles." 
 
 '* Don't talk about trying to sliut it off, man," 
 said Mr. Crowther, arrogantly. " If I choose to 
 lock the gates to-morrow, I shall do it, and ask 
 nobody's leave. The wood is my wood, and 
 there's no clause in my title deeds as to any 
 right of way through it ; and I don't see why I 
 am to have my hazel bushes pulled about, and 
 my chestnut trees damaged by a pack of idle 
 boys, under the pretence of church-going. 
 
 There's, the Queen's highway for 'em, d n 
 
 'em ! " cried Mr. Crowther, growing more insolent, 
 as he gulped his fifth glass of Sandemann. " If 
 that ain't good enough, let 'em go to the 
 Banters' Chapel at the other end of the village." 
 
 "I thought you were a staunch Conservative, 
 Mr. Crowther, and an upholder of Church and 
 State," said Mr. Colfox. "Am I to believe my 
 ears when I hear you advocating the Kanters' 
 Chapel ? " 
 
 " It's good enough for such rabble as that, sir. 
 What does it matter where they go ? "
 
 "OF THE WEAK MY HEART IS WEAKEST." 263 
 
 " Prosecute the boys for trespass, if you like," 
 said the doctor ; " though I doubt if you'll get 
 a roagistrate to impose more than a nominal fine 
 for the offence of taking a handful of nuts in a 
 wood that has been open ever since I began to 
 walk, and heaven knows how many years before ; 
 but let the old gaffers and goodies creep to 
 church by the shortest path that can take them 
 there. They'll have to travel by the Queen's 
 highway later, when they go to the churchyard 
 — but then they'll be carried. Don't interfere 
 with the privileges of the poor, Mr. Crowther. 
 No one ever did that yet and went scot free. 
 There's always somebody to take up the cudgels 
 for them." 
 
 ** I don't care a doit for anybody's cudgels, 
 Baynham. I shall have a look at my title deeds 
 to-morrow; and if there's no stipulation about 
 the right of way, you'll find the gates locked 
 next Sunday morning." 
 
 Sunday morning came, and the gates at each 
 end of the old footpath were still open, and 
 nothing had come of Mr. Crowther's threat. 
 The gates had stood open so long, aud were so 
 old and rotten, their lower timbers so embedded
 
 264 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 in the soft, oozy soil, so entangled and over- 
 grown with foxglove and fern, so encrusted with 
 moss and lichen, that it is doubtful if anybody- 
 could have closed them. They seemed as much 
 rooted in the ground as the great brown fir 
 trunks which rose in rugged majesty beside 
 them.
 
 ( 265 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 " WHERE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 
 
 In the keen, fresh October afternoons, there was 
 no walk Allegra loved better than the w^lk to 
 Neptune Point, and higher np by winding foot- 
 paths to the Kashleigh Mausoleum, fitting 
 sepulchre for a race born and bred within reach 
 of the salt sea-foam ; a stately tomb perched on 
 a rocky pinnacle at the end of a promontory, 
 like a sea-bird's nest overhanging the wave. 
 
 Allegra was in raptures with that strange 
 resting-place. 
 
 " I like it ever so much better than your Cock- 
 neyfied flower-garden cemetery," she exclaimed. 
 "Think how grand it must be to lie for ever 
 within the sound of the sea — the terrible, inscru- 
 table sea, whose anger means death — the calm, 
 summer sea, whose waves come dancing up the
 
 266 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 sands, singing sweet lullabies. I wonder whether 
 the Kashleighs would let me have a little grave 
 of my own somewhere among these crags and 
 hillocks — a modest little grave, hidden under 
 wild foliage, which nobody would ever notice? 
 Only I should hear the sea just as well as they 
 do in their marble tomb." 
 
 " Oh, Allegra, how can yon talk so lightly of 
 death ? " said Isola, shocked at this levity. " To 
 me it is always dreadful to think of — and yet it 
 must come." 
 
 *' Poor child ! " said Allegra, with infinite pity, 
 putting her arm round her sister-in-law's slighter 
 figure, as they stood by the railing of the 
 Mausoleum, in the loveliness of an October 
 sunset. 
 
 The sun had just gone down, veiled in autumnal 
 haze, and behind the long ridge of waters beyond 
 the Dodman there glowed the deep crimson of 
 the western sky. Eastward above the Polruan 
 hills the full moon moved slowly upward, amidst 
 dark masses of cloud which melted and rolled 
 away before her oncoming, till all the sky 
 became of one dark azure. The two girls went 
 down the hill in silence, Allegra holding Isola's
 
 *'WHEKE THE COLD SEA EAVES." 267 
 
 arm, linked with her own, steadying those weaker 
 footsteps with the strength of her own firm 
 movements. The difference between the two in 
 physical force was no less marked than the 
 difference in their mental characteristics, and 
 Allegra's love for her sister-in-law was tempered 
 with a tender compassion for something so much 
 weaker than herself. 
 
 "Poor child!" she repeated, as they moved 
 slowly downward on the steep, narrow path, 
 "and do you really shudder at the thought of 
 death ? I don't. I have only a vast curiosity. 
 Do you remember that definition of Sir Thomas 
 Browne's which Martin read to us once — * Death 
 is the Lucina of life.' Death only opens the 
 door of the hidden worlds which are waiting for 
 all of us to discover. It is only an appalling 
 name for a new birth. I love to dream about 
 the infinite possibilities of the future — ^^just as a 
 boy might dream of the time when he should 
 become a man. Look, look, Isa, there's a yacht 
 coming in ! Isn't it a lovely sight ? " 
 
 It was a long, narrow vessel, with all her 
 canvas spread, gleaming with a silvery whiteness 
 in the moonlight. Slowly and with majestic
 
 268 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 motion she swept round towards Neptune Point 
 and the mouth of the harbour. There was only 
 the lightest wind, and the waves were breaking- 
 gently on the rocks at tlie base of the promontory 
 — a night as calm and fair as June. 
 
 " Look ! " repeated Allegra, " isn't she lovely ? 
 like a fairy boat. Whose yacht can she be, I 
 wonder ? She looks like a racer, doesn't she ? " 
 
 Isola did not answer. She had seen such a 
 yacht three years ago ; had seen such a long, 
 narrow hull lying in the harbour under repairs ; 
 had seen the same craft sailing out to Mevagissey 
 on a trial trip in the wintry sunlight. Doubtless 
 there were many yachts in this world of just the 
 same build and character. 
 
 They stood at an angle of the hill-path look- 
 ing up the river, and saw [the yacht take in her 
 canvas as she came into the haven under the 
 hill ; that sheltered harbour, with its two rivers 
 cleaving the hills asunder, one winding away to 
 the right towards Lerrin, the other to the left 
 towards Trelasco and Lostwithiel. It looked so 
 perfect a place of shelter, so utterly safe from 
 tempest or foul weather; and yet there were 
 seasons when the wild sea winds came sweeping
 
 "WHEKE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 269 
 
 up the deep valleys, and all the storms of the 
 Atlantic seemed at play in that narrow gorge. 
 To-night the atmosphere was unusually calm, 
 and Isola could hear the sailors singing at their 
 work. 
 
 Slowly, slowly the two young women went 
 down the hill, Allegra full of speculation and 
 wonderment about the unknown vessel, Isola 
 curiously silent. As they neared the hotel a 
 man landed from a dinghy, and came briskly up 
 the slippery, hard causeway — a tall, slim figure 
 in the vivid moonlight, loose limbed, loosely 
 clad, moving with easiest motion. 
 
 Isola turned sick at the sight of him. She 
 stopped, helplessly, hopelessly, and stood staring 
 straight before her, watching him as he came 
 nearer and nearer, nearer and nearer — like some 
 awful figure in a nightmare dream, when the 
 feet of the dreamer seem frozen to the ground, 
 and flesh and blood seem chan2:ed to ice and 
 stone. 
 
 He came nearer, looked at them, and passed 
 them by — passed as one who knew them not, 
 and was but faintly curious about them. He 
 passed and walked quickly up towards the
 
 270 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 Point, with the rapid swinging movements of 
 one who was glad to tread the solid earth. 
 
 No, it was not Lostwithiel. She , had thought 
 at first that no one else could look so like him 
 at so short a distance ; no one else could have 
 that tall, slender figure, and easy, buoyant walk. 
 But the face she saw in the moonlight was not 
 his. It was like, but not the same : darker, with 
 larger features, a face of less delicacy and dis- 
 tinction ; but oh, God ! how like the eyes that 
 had looked at her, with that brief glance of 
 casual inspection, were to those other eyes that 
 had poured their passionate story into her own 
 that unforgotten night when she sat out the 
 after-supper waltzes in the ante-room at the 
 Talbot. She could not have believed that any 
 man living could so recall the man whose name 
 she never spoke of her own free will. 
 
 There were some sailors standing about at the 
 top of the steep little bit of road leading down to 
 the granite causeway, and their voices sounded 
 fresh and clear in the still evening, mixed with 
 the rippling rush of the water as it came running 
 up the stones. The moonlight shone full upon 
 one of the men as he stood with his face towards
 
 "WHERE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 271 
 
 the sea, and Isola read the name upon the front 
 of his hat. 
 
 '* Vendetta" 
 
 " Vendetta,'' cried Allegra, quick to observe 
 the name. "Why, is 'not that Lord Lostwithiel's 
 yacht?" 
 
 " Yes — I think so/' faltered Isola. 
 
 " Then that must have been Lord Lostwithiel 
 who passed us just now; and yet you would have 
 known him, wouldn't you ? " 
 
 " That was not Lord Lostwithiel." 
 
 " A friend of his, I suppose ; such a nice-look- 
 ing man, too. There was something so frank 
 and cheery in his look as he just glanced at us 
 both and marched briskly on. He did not pay 
 us the compliment of seeming curious. I wonder 
 who he is ? " 
 
 Isola was wondering about something else. 
 She was looking with a frightened gaze across 
 the harbour, towards that one break in the long 
 golden trail of the moonbeams where the 
 Vendetta cast her shadow on the water. There 
 were lamps gleaming brightly here and there 
 upon the vessel — a look of occupation. 
 
 " Is Lord Lostwithiel on board his yacht ? "
 
 272 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 Allegra asked of one of the sailors, not ashamed 
 to appear inquisitive. 
 
 " No, ma'am ; Mr. Hulbert is skipper." 
 
 " Who is Mr. Hulbert ? " 
 
 " His lordship's brother." 
 
 " Was that he who went up towards the Point 
 just now ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am.'* 
 
 " Is he going to stop here long, do you know ? " 
 
 " I don't think he knows himself, ma'am. It'll 
 depend upon the weather most likely. If we 
 get a fair wind we may be off to the Lizard at 
 an hour's notice, and away up north to the 
 Hebrides." 
 
 " Doesn't that seem inconsistent ? " exclaimed 
 Allegra, as they walked homewards. " What is 
 the good of coming to Cornwall if he wants to go 
 to the Hebrides ? It must be very much out of 
 his way." 
 
 " He may want to see his old home, perhaps. 
 He was born at the Mount, you know." 
 
 " Indeed ! I don't know anything about him, 
 but I want to know ever so much. I call it 
 an interesting face." 
 
 Allegra was full of animation during the home-
 
 "WHERE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 273 
 
 ward walk. A stranger of any kind must needs 
 be a God-send, as affording a subject for con- 
 versation ; but such a stranger as Lostwithiel's 
 brother offered a theme of strongest interest. 
 She had heard so much about Lord Lostwithiel 
 and all his works and ways — the pity of it that 
 he did not marry ; the still greater pity that he 
 did not live at the Mount, and give shooting 
 parties and spend money in the neighbourhood. 
 She had heard in a less exalted key of his lord- 
 ship's younger brother, who had fought under 
 Beresford in Egypt, and who had only lately left 
 the navy. What more natural than that such a 
 man should sail his brother's yacht ? 
 
 Captain Hulbert was still unmarried ; but no 
 one talked about the pity of that. People took 
 a severely sensible view of his case, and were 
 unanimous in the opinion that he could not 
 afford to marry, and that any aspiration in that 
 line would be criminal on his part. There was 
 an idea at Trelasco that the younger sons of 
 peers of moderate fortune have been specially 
 designed by Providence to keep up the race of 
 confirmed bachelors. There must be bachelors ; 
 the world cannot get on without them ; society 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 ALL ALONG THE KIVEK. 
 
 requires them as a distinct element in social 
 existence ; and it would ill become the offshoots 
 of the peerage to shrink from fulfilling their 
 destiny. 
 
 Allegra was not the less curious about Captain 
 Hulbert, although his celebate mission had been 
 frequently expounded to her. She was interested 
 in him because she liked his face, because he 
 was Lostwithiel's brother, because he was sailing 
 a very beautiful yacht, because he had appeared 
 in her life with a romantic suddenness, sailing 
 out of the sea unheralded and unexpected, like 
 a man who had dropped from the moon. 
 
 She fell asleep that night wondering jf she 
 would ever see him again — if the Vendetta would 
 have vanished from the harbour to-morrow at 
 noontide, like a boat that had only lived in her 
 dreams; or whether the yacht would still be 
 anchored there in the haven under the hill. 
 And, if so, whether Captain Hulbert would call 
 at the Angler's Nest, and tell them about Lost- 
 withiel's South American adventures, and how he 
 came to be skipper of his brother's yacht. 
 
 At breakfast next morning, Colonel Disney's
 
 '^WHEEE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 275 
 
 talk was chiefly about Captain Hulbert. The 
 colonel had been for an early walk, and had seen 
 the Vendetta from the little Quay at Fowey, by 
 the Mechanics' Institute, and had heard who was 
 the skipper. 
 
 "I remember him when he and his brother 
 were at Eton together — nice boys — capital boys, 
 both of them — but I liked Jack Hulbert better 
 than Lostwithiel. He was franker, more spon- 
 taneous and impulsive. Yes, Jack was my 
 favourite, and everybody else's favourite, I 
 think, when the two were boys. I saw very 
 little of them after they grew up. I was away 
 with my regiment, and Jack was away with his 
 ship, and Lostwithiel was wandering up and 
 down the earth, like Satan. I left a card for 
 Captain Hulbert at the club, asking him to 
 dinner this evening. You don't mind, do you, 
 Isola?" 
 
 Isola had no objection to offer, and Allegra 
 was delighted at the prospect of seeing more of 
 the man with the nice frank countenance, and 
 that seafaring air which most women like. 
 
 " I am a dreadful person for being influenced 
 by first impressions," she said, " and that one
 
 276 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 glance at Captain Hulbert in the moonliglit 
 assures me that I shall like him." 
 
 " Don't like him too well," said Martin, laugh- 
 ingly, *'for I'm afraid he's a detrimental, and 
 would make even a worse match than Colfox, 
 who may be a bishop one day, while Hulbert 
 has left the navy, and is never likely to be any- 
 thing." 
 
 " Match ! detrimental ! " cried Allegra, indig- 
 nantly. " Can it be my brother who talks in 
 such a vulgar strain ? As if a woman could not 
 look at a man without thinking of marrying 
 him ! " 
 
 " Some women can't," answered Martin. 
 " With them every free man is a possible 
 husband — indeed, I believe there are some who 
 cannot look at a married man without esti- 
 mating the chances of the divorce court — if the 
 man is what they call a catch." 
 
 " That is your Indian experience ! " exclaimed 
 Allegra, scornfully. " I have heard that India is 
 a sink of iniquity." 
 
 She went about her day's varied work as usual 
 — curious to see the new acquaintance — yet in 
 no wise excited. Vivid and animated, euthusi-
 
 "WHERE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 277 
 
 astic and energetic as she was in all her thoughts 
 and ways, gushing sentimentality made no part 
 of Miss Leland's character. Life at Trelasco 
 flowed with such an even monotony, there was 
 such an utter dearth of new interests, that it was 
 only natural that a girl of vivacious temper 
 should be curious about new-comers. At St. 
 John's Wood every day had brought some new 
 element into the lives of the students, and 
 almost every day had brought a new pupil, 
 drawn thither by the growing renown of the 
 master, pupils from the uttermost ends of the 
 earth sometimes, pupils of swart complexion 
 speaking unknown tongues, pupils patrician and 
 pupils plebeian, each and all conforming to the 
 same stringent rules of art, spending weeks and 
 months in the shading of a brace of plums or 
 a bunch of grapes, from a plaster cast, and toil- 
 ing slowly up the gradual ascent which leads to 
 the Eoyal Academy and the gold medal. Many 
 there were who sickened at the slow rate of 
 progress and who fell away. Only the faithful 
 remained. And this going and coming, this 
 strife between faith and unfaith, patience and 
 impatience, had made a perpetual movement in
 
 278 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 the life of the great school — to say nothing of 
 such bodily activities as lawn tennis, for which, 
 the master had provided a court — a court for 
 his girl-pupils, be it noted, where they played 
 among themselves, as if they had been so 
 many collegians in the college of Tennyson's 
 " Princess." 
 
 Allegra had liked her life at the great art 
 school, but she had never regretted its abandon- 
 ment. She loved her brother, and her brother's 
 wife, better even than she loved art. It was only 
 now and then that she felt that her existence at 
 Trelasco was as monotonous as the flow of the 
 river going up and coming down day by day 
 between Lostwithiel and the sea. 
 
 She spent the hours between breakfast and 
 luncheon hard at work in her painting-room — a 
 little room with a large window facing north- 
 ward. She had the coachman's girl and boy for 
 her models, and was engaged upon a little water- 
 colour picture after the school of Mrs. Allingham, 
 a little picture which told its story with touching 
 simplicity. 
 
 It was not the first picture of the kind she 
 had painted. Several of her works had been
 
 "WHERE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 279 
 
 exhibited at the minor "galleries which are hos- 
 pitable to the new-comer in the world of art ; and 
 two small pictures had been bought at prices 
 which seemed to promise her an easy road to 
 fortune. 
 
 The coachman's children profited greatly by 
 this new profession which had been devised for 
 them. Allegra made their frocks in her leisure 
 hours, when the active fingers must have some- 
 thing to do, while the active tongue ran on gaily 
 in happy talk with Martin and Isola. Allegra 
 made up to her little models for their hours of 
 enforced idleness by extra tuition which kept 
 them ahead of most of the other pupils in the 
 village school ; and Allegra supplied them with 
 pocket-money. 
 
 " I don't know however the children got on 
 before Miss Leland came," said the coachman's 
 wife. "They seem to look to her for every- 
 thing." 
 
 Allegra had other models, village children, and 
 village girls — her beauty-girl, a baker's daughter 
 with a splendid semi-Grreek face, like Mrs. Lang- 
 try's, whom she dressed up in certain cast-off 
 finery of her own, and painted in her genre pic-
 
 280 ALL ALONG THE KIVEK. 
 
 tures, now in this attitude, and now in that, 
 imparting an air of distinction which elevated 
 the Cornish peasant into a patrician. She it was, 
 this baker's fair-haired daughter, who stood for 
 Allegra's successful picture — " A daughter of the 
 gods, divinely tall," a little bit of finished paint- 
 ing which had brought the painter five and thirty- 
 guineas — boundless wealth as it seemed to her — 
 and ever so many commissions. 
 
 Art, even in despondency and failure, is a con- 
 solation ; art successful is an intoxicating delight. 
 Allegra was as happy a young woman as could 
 be found in Cornwall that day, when she 
 shut her colour-box, dismissed her little maiden, 
 and ran down to lunch, where she found Isola 
 more silent than usual, and made amends by 
 her own light-hearted chatter for the morning's 
 absorption over the easel. After lunch she ran 
 off to the village to pay her parish visits to the 
 sick and old, and on her way to an outlying 
 cottage she met Mr. Colfox, who immediately 
 turned to accompany her, a way he had, but a 
 way to which she had never attached any sig- 
 nificance. He was a clever, well-read man, of 
 somewhat original temper, who had to pass most
 
 "WHERE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 281 
 
 of his life among unlettered or dull people ; 
 therefore it surprised Allegra in no wise that he 
 should like to talk to her. A bright, attractive 
 girl of three and twenty is very unsuspicious 
 about the feelings of a homely looking man at 
 least a dozen years her senior. 
 
 " Your brother has been good enough to ask 
 me to dinner," he said, after a little talk about 
 the Goodies and their ailments. " I met him at 
 the club this morning." 
 
 "He wants you to meet Captain Hulbert. 
 Perhaps you know him already ? " 
 
 " No, he has not been here within my time. 
 He only left the navy a year ago, and he was 
 generally stationed at the utmost ends of the 
 earth, keeping guard over our remote possessions. 
 Have you seen him ? " 
 
 "Only for an instant. He passed my sister 
 and me yesterday evening in the moonlight. I 
 thought he looked a nice person — but I think 
 women have a natural leaning towards sailors. I 
 could never imagine a seaman telling a falsehood 
 or doing a mean action." 
 
 "There is a kind of open-air manner which 
 suggests truthfulness," admitted Mr. Colfox.
 
 282 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 " Yet there have been dark deeds done by 
 sailors ; there have been black sheep even in the 
 Queen's Navee. However, I believe Captain 
 Hulbert is worthy of your good opinion. I have 
 never heard anybody speak against him, and the 
 old people who knew him as a lad seem to have 
 liked him better than Lord Lostwithiel." 
 
 " Do tell me your opinion of Lord Lostwithiel. 
 I am very curious about him. Mr. Crowther 
 talked of him so much the night we were at 
 Glenaveril." 
 
 " Mr. Crowther loves a lord." 
 
 "Please satisfy my curiosity. Is he really 
 such a fascinating personage ? " 
 
 " He has very pleasant manners. I don't 
 know what constitutes fascination in a man, 
 though I know pretty well what it means in a 
 woman. Lord Lostwithiel's manners are chiefly 
 distinguished by repose without languor or 
 affectation — and by an interest in other people 
 so cleverly simulated that it deceives everybody. 
 One finds him out by the way in which people 
 boast of his friendship. He cannot be so attached 
 to all the world. He has a manner which is 
 generally described as sympathetic."
 
 "WHERE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 283 
 
 " Mr. Crowther enlarged a good deal upon his 
 lordship's admiration for my sister at the Hunt 
 Ball. Was that so very marked ? " 
 
 Mr. Colfox coloured violently at this direct 
 question — assuredly not easy to answer truthfully 
 without hazard of offence. 
 
 "I was not at the ball — I — I heard people 
 talk a little — in the way people talk of every- 
 thing — about Lostwithiel's attention to Mrs. 
 Disney, and about her prettiness — they all agreed 
 that if not the loveliest woman in the room, she 
 was at least the most interestiDg." 
 
 "It was very natural that he should admire 
 her ; but I don't think Martin liked Mr. Crow- 
 ther's talking about it in that way, at the dinner- 
 table. The man is horridly underbred. Has 
 Lord Lostwithiel what you call — " she hesitated 
 a little — " a good character ? " 
 
 " I don't know about the present. I have 
 heard that in the past his reputation was not 
 altogether good." 
 
 " I understand," said Allegra, quickly. " The 
 admiration of such a man is an insult ; and that 
 is why Mr. Crowther harped upon the fact. I 
 am sure he is a malevolent man."
 
 284 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 "Don't be hard upon him, Miss Leland. I 
 believe he has only the misfortune to be a cad — 
 a cad by birth, education, and associations. Don't 
 fling your stone at such a man — consider what 
 an unhappy fate it is." 
 
 *' Oh, but he does not think himself unhappy. 
 He is bursting with self-importance and the 
 pride of riches. He is the typical rich man of 
 the Psalmist. He must be the happiest man in 
 Trelasco, a thick-skinned man whom nothing 
 can hurt." 
 
 " I am sorry you think so badly of poor Mr. 
 Crowther, because I am really attached to his 
 wife. She is one of the best women I know." 
 
 ** So my sister tells me, and I was very much 
 taken with her myself, but one cannot afford to 
 be friendly with Mrs. Crowther at the cost of 
 knowing her husband." 
 
 She spoke with some touch of the insolence of 
 youth, which sets so high a value upon its own 
 opinions and its own independence, and looks 
 upon all the rest of humanity as upon a lower 
 plane. And this arrogant youth, which thinks 
 so meanly of the multitude, will make its own 
 exceptions, and reverence its chosen ideals with
 
 "WHEEE THE COLD SEA RAVES." 285 
 
 a blind hero-worship — for its love is always an 
 upward-looking love, " the desire of the moth 
 for the star." 
 
 Mr. Colfox sighed, and smiled at the same 
 moment, a sad little half-cynical smile. He was 
 thinking how impossible it was to refrain from 
 admiring this bright out-spoken girl, with her 
 quick intellect, and her artistic instincts, so 
 spiritual, so unworldly, and fresh as an April 
 morning — how impossible not to admire, how 
 difficult not to love her, and how hopeless to 
 love. 
 
 He thought of himself with scathing self- 
 contempt — middle-aged, homely of feature and 
 of figure, with nothing to recommend him except 
 good birth, a small independence — just so much 
 as enabled him to live where he pleased and 
 serve whom he would, without reference to the 
 stipend attached to the cure ; and a little rusty, 
 dry-as-dust learning. Nothing more than this ; 
 and he wanted to win and wed a girl whose 
 image never recurred to his mind without the 
 suggestion of a rose garden, or a summer morn- 
 ing. Yes, she reminded him of morning and 
 dewy red roses, those old-fashioned heavy red
 
 286 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 roses, round as a cup, and breathing sweetest, 
 purest perfume. 
 
 He jogged on by her side in silence, and only- 
 awoke from his reverie to bid her good-bye at 
 the gate of a cottage garden, in the lane that 
 led up the hill to Tywardreath.
 
 ( 287 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ''FAR, TOO FAR OFF FOR THOUGHT OR ANY 
 PRAYER." 
 
 Me. Colfox and Allegra met again in the draw- 
 ing-room of the Angler's Nest at a quarter to 
 eight. He was the first to arrive, and Isola had 
 not yet appeared. Martin Disney was at his 
 post in front of the library fireplace, library and 
 drawing-room making one spacious room, lighted 
 with candles here and there, and with one large 
 shaded lamp on a table near the piano. Isola 
 had been suffering from headache, and had been 
 late in dressing. Captain Hulbert had been in 
 the room nearly ten minutes before his hostess 
 appeared, looking pale and ill in her black lace 
 gown, and with an anxious expression in her 
 eyes. He had been introduced to Allegra, and 
 was talking to her as if he had known her for
 
 288 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 years, when his attention was called off by 
 Isola's appearance, and his introduction to her. 
 
 Was this Martin Disney's wife, he thought 
 wonderingly — such a girlish fragile creature — 
 so unlike the woman he had pictured to himself. 
 Strange that Lostwithiel should not have told 
 him of her delicate prettiness, seeing that he 
 was a connoisseur in beauty, and hypercritical. 
 
 "This is just the kind of beauty he would 
 admire," thought Hulbert, " something out of 
 the common — a pale, spiritual beauty — not de- 
 pendent upon colouring, or even upon regularity 
 of feature — the kind of thing one calls soul, 
 not having found a better name for it" 
 
 They went in to dinner presently, Captain 
 Hulbert and Isola, Mr. Colfox and AUegra. The 
 table was a small oval, at which five people 
 made a snug little party. There was a central 
 mass of white chrysanthemums, a cheerful glow 
 of coloured Venetian glass, delicatest pink and 
 jade-green, under the light of a hanging 
 moderator lamp. John Hulbert looked round 
 him with a pleased expression, taking in the 
 flowers, the glass, the delicate cream-white china, 
 the lamplight, everything; and then the two
 
 "FAK, TOO FAR OFF." 289 
 
 fair young faces, one pale and pensive, the other 
 aglow with the delight of life, eagerly expectant 
 of new ideas. 
 
 They talked of the Vendetta and the places 
 at which she had touched lately. Captain 
 Hulbert had spent his summer on the Eastern 
 Liguria, between Genoa and Civita Yecchia. 
 
 " Wasn't it the wrong time of year for Italy ? " 
 asked Mr. Colfox. 
 
 "No, it is the season of seasons in the land 
 of the sun. If you want to enjoy a southern 
 country, go there in the summer. The south 
 is made for summer, her houses are built for 
 hot weather, her streets are planned for shade 
 in midsummer ; her wines, her food, her manners 
 and customs have all been made for summer- 
 time — not for winter. If you want to know Italy 
 at her worst go there in cold weather." 
 
 '* Where did you leave Lord Lostwithiel ? " 
 Disney asked presently. 
 
 "I left him nowhere. He left me to rove 
 about Southern Europe — left me on his way to 
 Carinthia. He is like the wandering Jew. He 
 used to be mad about yachting ; but he got sick 
 of the Vendetta all of a sudden, and handed her 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 ALL ALONG THE KIVEE. 
 
 over to me. Very generous on his part ; but the 
 boat is something of a white elephant for a man 
 of my small means. I wanted him to sell her. 
 Wouldn't hear of it. To let her. Not to be 
 thought of. ' I'll lend her to you/ he said, ' and 
 you shall keep her as long as you like — sink 
 her, if you like — provided you don't go down 
 in her. She is not a lucky boat. 
 
 " Have you sailed her long ? " 
 
 " Nearly a year, and I love her as if she were 
 bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Let 
 us all go for a sail to-morrow, Mrs. Disney — 
 to Mevagissey or thereabouts. We could do a 
 little fishing. It will be capital fun. What do 
 you say, Miss Leland ? " 
 
 " I should adore it," said Allegra, beaming at 
 him. "The sea is my passion — and I think it 
 is my sister's passion too. We are a kind of 
 amphibious creatures, living more on water than 
 on land. We venture as far as we dare in a 
 row-boat — but oh, that is such a little way." 
 
 " I'm afraid sometimes you will venture so far 
 that you won't be able to get back again, and 
 will find yourselves drifting away to America," 
 said her brother.
 
 '*FAK, TOO FAE OFF" 291 
 
 Isola answered never a word, until Captain 
 Hulbert^ addressed her pointedly for the second 
 time. 
 
 "Will you go, Mrs. Disney — may we make 
 up the party ? " 
 
 "I would rather not," she answered, without 
 looking at him. 
 
 " But why not ? Are you such a bad sailor — 
 in spite of all Miss Leland says of you ? " 
 
 "I am a pretty good sailor in a row-boat — 
 but not in a yacht. And I hate fishing — such 
 a slow weary business. I would rather not go." 
 
 " I am so sorry ; but you must not be worried 
 about it," said Hulbert, kindly, seeing the grow- 
 ing distress in her countenance. " We will not 
 go in for fishing — or excursions — but you and 
 Miss Leland will at least come to afternoon tea 
 on the Vendetta — to afternoon tea in the harbour. 
 There used to be a comic song when I was a boy 
 — 'Come and drink tea in the arbour.' You 
 must come to the arbour with an aspirate. It 
 is not so rustic or sentimental — but there will 
 be no earwigs or creeping things to drop into 
 your teacup. Mr. Colfox, you will come, won't 
 you?"
 
 292 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 " I shall be delighted," answered the curate. 
 " I have a sneaking kindness for all yachts." 
 
 The conversation drifted back to Lostwithiel 
 and his works and ways, presently, 
 
 " When he went home three years ago he gave 
 me to understand he was going to settle down 
 at the Mount, and spend the rest of his days 
 in peace and respectability," said Captain Hul- 
 bert. " Yet, very soon afterwards, he and 
 his yacht were off again like the Flying Butch- 
 man, and the next I heard of him was at Leg- 
 horn, and six months later he was coasting off 
 Algiers and Tangier ; and the following spring 
 he was in South America ; and the Vendetta 
 was laid up at Marseilles, where he begged me 
 to go and look after her, and take her to myself 
 until such time as he should want her again. 
 I was with him for a few days at Leghorn, where 
 he seemed ill and out of spirits. I don't think 
 you can have used him over well in this part 
 of the world, Mrs. Disney," he added, half in jest. 
 " I fancy some of you must have snubbed him 
 severely, or his tenants must have worried him 
 by their complaints and exactions. I could not 
 get him to talk about his life at the Mount. He
 
 "FAK, TOO FAR OFF." 293 
 
 seemed to have taken a disgust for the old 
 home." 
 
 " You must put that down to his roving 
 temper/' said Disney, ** for although I was away 
 at the time, I can answer for it there was no 
 such thing as snubbing in the case. Your 
 brother is the only peer in these parts, and 
 from the way people talk about him he might 
 be the only peer in Great Britain — the Alpha 
 and Omega of Debrett. Our parvenu neighbour, 
 Mr. Crowther, talked of him one night with a 
 slavish rapture which made me sick. I am a 
 Tory by association and instinct, but I can't 
 stand the vulgarian's worship of a lord." 
 
 Isola looked at her sister-in-law, and they 
 both rose at this moment, the Church almost 
 tumbling over the Navy in eagerness to open 
 the door ; Navy winning by a neck. 
 
 They were not long alone in the drawing- 
 room, not more than the space of a single 
 cigarette, before the men followed. Then came 
 music, and a good deal of talk, in the long, low, 
 spacious room, which looked so bright and homely 
 by candlelight, with all its tokens of domestic 
 and intellectual lite.
 
 294 ALL ALONG THE KIVEK. 
 
 " What a capital quarter-deck this is," cried 
 John Hulbert, after pacing up and down while 
 he listened, and talked, and laughed at Allegra's 
 little jokes about the narrowness of village life. 
 "It is delightful to stretch one's legs in such 
 a room as this, after six months upon an eighty- 
 ton yacht." 
 
 *^ You will have room enough to stretch your 
 legs at the Mount/' said Disney. 
 
 Captain Hulbert had announced his intention 
 of spending a week or two under the family 
 roof-tree while the Vendetta underwent some 
 slight repairs and renovations. 
 
 " Koom enough and to spare," he said. " I 
 shan't feel half so jovial walking up and down 
 those grim old rooms as I feel here. I shall 
 fancy a ghost pacing behind me, clump, clump, 
 clump — a slow, solemn footstep — only the echo 
 of my own tread perhaps ; but I shall never 
 know, for I shall be afraid to look round." 
 
 " You ought not to make sport of weak 
 people's fancies, for I am sure you don't believe 
 in ghosts," said Allegra, leaning with one elbow 
 on the piano, turning over pieces of music ab- 
 sently, a graceful figure in a dark green velvet
 
 "FAE, TOO FAR OFF." 295 
 
 gown, cut just low enough to show the fine 
 curves of a full, round throat, white and smooth 
 as ivory. 
 
 " Not believe in ghosts ? Did you ever know 
 a sailor who wasn't superstitious ? We are too 
 often alone with the sea and the stars to be 
 quite free from spectral fancies, Miss Leland. I 
 can see in your eyes as you look at me this 
 moment that you believe in ghosts — believe and 
 tremble. Tell me now, candidly — When do you 
 most fear them ? At what hour of the day or 
 night does the unreal seem nearest to you ? " 
 
 " I don't know," she faltered, turning over the 
 loose music with a faintly tremulous gesture, 
 while Isola sat by the piano, touching the notes 
 dumbly now and then. 
 
 " Is it at midnight — in the gloaming — in the 
 chill, mysterious dawn? You won't answer! 
 Shall I guess? If you are like me, it is in 
 broad daylight — between two and three in the 
 afternoon — when the servants are all idling after 
 their dinner, and the house is silent. You are 
 alone in a big, bright room, perhaps, with another 
 room opening out of it, and a door a long way 
 off. You sit writing at your table, and you feel
 
 296 ALL ALOXG THE RIVER. 
 
 all at once that the room is haunted — there must 
 be something or some one stealing in at that 
 remotest door. You daren't look round. You 
 go to the window and look out into garden or 
 street — for a town house may be just as ghastly 
 as a country one — and then with a great effort 
 you turn slowly round and face your terror, in 
 the broad, garish sunlight, in the business hours 
 of the day. There is nothing there, of course ; 
 but the feeling has not been the less vivid. I 
 know I shall be spectre-haunted at the Mount. 
 You must all come and scare away the shadows. 
 Mr. Colfox, are you fond of billiards ? " 
 
 *' I own to a liking for the game. I play with 
 Mr. Crowther and his youngest daughter when- 
 ever I dine at Glenaveril. Alicia is a very fine 
 player, for a girl, and her father plays a good 
 game." 
 
 " Then you will come up to the Mount two or 
 three times a week and play with me, I hope. 
 There's a fine Thurston table. It may be a 
 little out of order, but we must make the best of 
 it — and there's plenty of sound claret in the 
 cellars, to say nothing of a keg or two of 
 Schiedam that I sent home from the Hague."
 
 ''FAR, TOO FAR OFF." 297 
 
 " Mr. Coif ox will not make much impression 
 either on your claret or your schnapps," said 
 Disney, laughing. " He is almost as temperate 
 as one of those terrible anchorites in the novel 
 we were reading the other day — * Homo Sum.' " 
 
 " I am glad you put in the qualifying 
 * almost,' " said the curate, " for I hope to taste 
 Captain Hulbert's Schiedam." 
 
 The captain expatiated upon what his three 
 new friends— and his one old friend, Martin 
 Disney — were to do to cheer him in his solitude 
 at the Mount. 
 
 " There is nothing of the anchorite about me," 
 he said. " I love society, I love life and move- 
 ment, I love bright faces." 
 
 He would not leave until they had all pro- 
 mised to take tea on board the yacht on the 
 following afternoon, an engagement which was 
 kept by Allegra and the colonel; but not by 
 Isola, whose headache was worse after the little 
 dinner-party ; nor by the curate, who had parish 
 business to detain him on shore.
 
 298 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ^* UNDER THE PINE-WOOD, BLIND WITH BOUGHS." 
 
 If Isola bad any disinclination to visit Captain 
 Hulbert's yacht, her headache only served to 
 defer the evil day, for after that first tea-drink- 
 ing came other invitations and other arrange- 
 ments, fishing-parties, luncheons off Mevagissey, 
 entertainments in which Isola must needs share 
 when she saw her husband and his sister bent 
 upon the enjoyment of the hour, delighted with 
 the Vendetta and her warm-hearted skipper. 
 
 They were not John Hulbert's only friends in 
 the neighbourhood. Everybody seemed glad to 
 welcome the rover to his native village. Almost 
 everybody had known him in his boyhood ; and 
 there was a general consensus of opinion that he 
 was a much better fellow than his brother. He 
 was less courted ; but he was better liked.
 
 *' UNDER THE PINE-WOOD." 299 
 
 There had been a touch of cynicism about Lost- 
 withiel which frightened matter-of-fact country 
 people. 
 
 " One could never feel sure he wasn't laughing 
 in his sleeve at our rustic ignorance," said Mrs. 
 Baynham. " I am more at my ease with Captain 
 Hulbert." 
 
 So the brief Indian summer passed in 
 pleasant idlesse on a tranquil sea. The equi- 
 noctial gales had not began to rage yet. There 
 was a lull before the coming of the great winds 
 which were to blow good ships on shore, and 
 startle sleepers in the dead of night. All now 
 was fair and placid — sunlit waters, golden 
 evenings. They spent one bright, balmy day 
 off Mevagissey, a day which was like a long 
 dream to Isola, as she sat on deck in a low 
 folding-chair, wrapped in a great feathery rug 
 from the South Sea Islands, with her languid 
 head reclining against a plush-covered cushion, 
 one of the many effeminate luxuries which 
 abounded in the cabin below. Everybody else 
 was intent upon the nets. Everybody else was 
 full of interest and movement and expectation ; 
 but she sat apart from all, with her ivory
 
 300 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 knitting-needles lying idle in her lap, amidst a 
 soft mass of white wool, which her industry was 
 to convert into a garment for the baby. 
 
 Allegra was enraptured with the yacht. She 
 would lain have taken Isola down to the cabins 
 below, to explore their wonders of luxury and 
 contrivance, so much comfort and elegance in so 
 restricted an area; but Isola refused to leave 
 the deck. 
 
 " I hate all cabins," she said. " They are 
 always suffocatingly hot." 
 
 So Mrs. Bay n ham went below with Allegra, 
 and they two explored the two principal cabins 
 with wondering admiration, and even peeped 
 into the cook's galley, and the odd little places 
 where steward and sailors contrived to bestow 
 themselves. 
 
 The chief cabin, saloon, or whatever one liked 
 to call it, was as daintily decorated as a lady's 
 boudoir. There were nests of richly bound 
 books. Oriental bronzes, and all kinds of con- 
 tinental pottery, Japanese and Indian embroi- 
 deries, Venetian mirrors, quaint little carved 
 cupboards for wine or cigars. Every corner and 
 cranny was utilized.
 
 "UNDER THE PINE-WOOD." 301 
 
 " What a delicious drawing-room ! " cried 
 AUegra. " I could live here all my life. 
 Fancy, how delightful ! A floating life. No 
 such thing as satiety. One might open one's 
 eyes every morning on a fresh coast, glorified, as 
 one sees it across the bright, blue water. To 
 explore the Mediterranean, for instance, floating 
 from city to city— the cities of the past, the 
 cities of the Gospel, the shores that were trodden 
 by the feet of St. Paul and his companions — the 
 cities of the Christian saints and martyrs, the 
 island birthplaces of Greek gods and heroes. 
 Think, Mrs. Baynham ! A yacht like this is 
 a master-key to open all the gateways of the 
 world." 
 
 "I would rather have my own cosy little 
 cottage on terra firma," answered the doctor's 
 wife in a matter-of-fact mood; but this speech 
 of Allegra's set the good lady pondering upon 
 the possibility of John Hulbert falling in love 
 with this nice, clever girl, and making her 
 mistress of his brother's yacht. 
 
 Her friendly fancy depicted the village wed- 
 ding, and those two going forth over the great 
 waters to spend their honeymoon amidst the
 
 302 ALL ALONG THE EIVER. 
 
 wonder-world of the Mediterranean, which the 
 banker's daughter knew only in her Atlas. 
 
 " He can't be rich," she thought, " but he must 
 have a comfortable income. I know his mother 
 had money. And Allegra can earn a good deal 
 by her painting. She wouldn't be an expensive 
 wife. We ought all to do our best to bring it 
 about. A girl has so few chances in such a 
 place as Trelasco. She might almost as well be 
 in a convent." 
 
 Mrs. Baynham was at heart a matchmaker, 
 like most motherly women whom fate has left 
 childless. She was very fond of Allegra, who 
 was so much brighter and more companionable 
 than Isola, so much more responsive to kindness 
 and affection. As she sat on deck in the wester- 
 ing sunlight, somewhat comatose after a copious 
 luncheon, Mrs. Baynham's idea of helping Allegra 
 took the form of a dinner-party which she had 
 long been meditating, her modest return for 
 numerous dinners which she had eaten at Glen- 
 averil and at the Angler's Nest. She considered 
 that three or four times a year it behoved her to 
 make a serious effort in the way of hospitality — 
 a substantial and elaborate dinner, in which no
 
 "UNDER THE PINE-WOOD." 303 
 
 good tilings in season should be spared, and 
 which should be served with all due ceremony. 
 The time was at hand when such a dinner would 
 in a manner fall due; and she determined to 
 hasten the date with a view to Allegra's interests. 
 
 " Captain Hulbert is sure to be off again before 
 long," she told herself, " so every evening they 
 can spend together is of importance. I'm sure 
 he is inclined to fall in love with her already." 
 
 There was not much doabt about his feelings 
 as he stood by Allegra in the stern, directing the 
 movements of her bare active hands while she 
 hauled in the net ; not much doubt that he was 
 as deep in love as a man well can be after a 
 fortnight's acquaintance. He did not make any 
 secret of his bondage, but let his eyes tell all 
 the world that this girl was for him " the world's 
 one woman." 
 
 The invitation from Mrs. Baynham was de- 
 livered by post next morning, as ceremonious a 
 card as if the place were Mayfair, and the invitor 
 and invitees had not met since last season. A 
 copper-plate card, with name and address filled 
 in by the lady's pen, a detail which distinguished 
 her modest invitation from the Glenaveril cards.
 
 304 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 of which there were a variety, for at homes, 
 
 tennis, dinner, luncheon, to accept, and to decline. 
 
 A fortnight's notice marked the dignity of the 
 
 occasion — the hour the orthodox quarter to eight. 
 
 " We can't refuse, Isola," said Disney, when 
 
 his wife handed him the card, "although my 
 
 past experience assures me that the evening will 
 
 be a trifle heavy. Why will people in small 
 
 houses insist upon giving dinner-parties, instead 
 
 of having their friends in instalments? When 
 
 we go to dine with the Baynhams we go for love 
 
 of them, not the people they bring together ; and 
 
 yet they insist upon seating twelve in a room 
 
 that will just comfortably hold eight. It is all 
 
 vanity .and confusion of spirit." 
 
 " But Mrs. Baynham is so happy when she is 
 giving a real dinner-party. I don't think we 
 can refuse, can we, Allegra ? " asked Isola. 
 
 " Mrs. Baynham is a darling, and I wouldn't 
 vex her for worlds," replied her sister-in-law. 
 " And in a place like this one can't pretend a 
 prior engagement, unless it were iu the moon." 
 
 The invitation was accepted forthwith, and * 
 when Captain Hulbert dropped in at tea-time it 
 was discovered that he, too, had been asked, and
 
 "UNDER THE PINE- WOOD." 305 
 
 that he meant to accept, if his friends at the 
 Angler's Nest were to be there. 
 
 A thunderbolt fell upon the little village on 
 the following Sunday. When the old men and 
 women, creeping to church a little in advance of 
 younger legs, came to the church-path, they 
 found the gate locked against them, locked and 
 barricaded with bars which looked as if they 
 were meant to last till the final cataclasm. The 
 poor old creatures looked up wonderingly at a 
 newly-painted board, on which the more in- 
 telligent among them spelt out the following 
 legend — 
 
 " This wood is the private property of J. Van- 
 sittart Crowther, Esq. Trespassers will be pro- 
 secuted." 
 
 Martin Disney and his wife and sister came 
 up when a little crowd of men, women, and 
 children, numbering about thirty, had assembled 
 round the gate, all in their Sunday best. 
 
 " What's the meaning of this ? " asked Disney. 
 
 "Ah, colonel, that's what we all want to 
 know," replied old Manley, the village carpenter, 
 a bent and venerable figure, long past work. 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 
 " rm over eighty, but I never remember that 
 gate being locked as long as I have lived at 
 Trelasco, and that's all my life, colonel. There's 
 always been a right of way through that wood." 
 
 " And there always shall be," answered Martin 
 Disney. " We won't take any violent measures 
 to-day, my friends — first because it is Sunday, 
 and next because one should always try fair 
 means before one tries foul. I shall write to Mr. 
 Crowther to-morrow, asking him civilly to open 
 that gate. If he refuses, I'll have it opened for 
 him, and I'll take the consequences of the act. 
 Now, my good friends, you'd better go to church 
 by the road. You'll get there after the service 
 has begun. Wait till the congregation are 
 standing up, and then go into church all together, 
 so that everybody may understand why and by 
 whose fault it is that you are late." 
 
 The appearance of this large contingent after 
 the first lesson created considerable surprise, and 
 much turning of heads and rustling of bonnet- 
 strings in the echoing old stone church. Mr. 
 Crowther sat in his pew of state on one side of 
 the chancel, and felt that the war had begun. 
 Everybody was against him in the matter, he
 
 "UNDER THE PINE- WOOD." 307 
 
 knew; but he wanted to demonstrate the rich 
 man's right to do what he liked with the things 
 which he had bought. The wood was his, and 
 he did not mean to let the whole parish tramp 
 across it. 
 
 He received a stiffly polite letter from Colonel 
 Disney, requesting him to re-open the church- 
 path without loss of time, and informing him of 
 the great inconvenience caused to the older and 
 weaker members of the congregation by the 
 illegal closing of the path during church hours. 
 
 Mr. Crowther sent his reply by the colonel's 
 messenger. He asserted his right to shut up the 
 wood which formed a part of his estate, and 
 positively refused to re-open the gate at either 
 end of the footpath in question. 
 
 Captain Hulbert dropped in at his usual hour, 
 eager to know the progress of the fight. Fight 
 there must be, he was assured, having seen some- 
 thing of Mr. Crowther's bull-dog temper. Then, 
 in the drawing-room of the Angler's Nest, there 
 was hatched a terrible plot — a Catiline conspiracy 
 in a tea-cup — AUegra listening and applauding 
 while the two men plotted. 
 
 That night, when the village was hushed in
 
 308 ALL ALONG THE EIVEK. 
 
 sleep, a boatful of sailors landed at the little 
 hard near the railway station at Fowey, and half 
 a dozen stalwart blue-jackets might have been 
 seen tramping along the old railway track to 
 Trelasco, one carrying a crowbar, another a car- 
 penter's basket. And under the autumn stars 
 that night in the woods of Glenaveril, while 
 Yansittart Crowther slept the sleep of the just 
 man who payeth his twenty shillings in the 
 pound, there rose the sound of a sea-song and 
 the cheery chorus of the sailors, with a rhythmic 
 accompaniment of hammering ; and lo, when the 
 October morning visited those yellowing woods, 
 and when Mr. Crowther's gamekeeper went on 
 his morning round, the gate at either end of the 
 church path was wrenched off its hinges, and 
 was lying on the ground. Staple and bolt, pad- 
 lock and iron hinges, were lying among the 
 dewy dock-leaves and the yellowing fern ; and 
 there was free passage between the village of 
 Trelasco and the House of God. 
 
 Vansittart Crowther went to Plymouth by the 
 first train that could convey him, and there con- 
 sulted the lawyer most in renown among the 
 citizens ; and that gentleman, after due thought
 
 "UNDER THE PINE-WOOD." 309 
 
 and consideration, informed him that the closing 
 of such an old-established right of way as that of 
 the church-path was more than any landowner 
 durst attempt. Whatever omission there might 
 be in the title-deeds, he had bought the estate 
 subject to that old right of way, which had been 
 enjoyed by the parish from time immemorial. 
 He could no more shut it off than h*e could wall 
 out the sky. 
 
 " But I can punish the person who pulled the 
 locks off my gates, I conclude ? " said Mr. Crow- 
 ther, swelling with indignation. 
 
 " That, of course, is a distinct outrage, for 
 which you may obtain redress, if you can find out 
 who did it." 
 
 "Yery little difiSculty about that, I take it. 
 The act must have been instigated by the writer 
 of that impertinent letter." 
 
 He pointed to Martin Disney's letter, lying 
 open on the solicitor's table. 
 
 "Very probably. But you will have to be 
 sure of proving his share in the act if you mean 
 to take proceedings against him." 
 
 Vansittart Crowther was furious. How was he 
 to bring the responsibility of this outrage home
 
 310 ALL ALONG THE EIVEE. 
 
 to anybody, when the deed had been done in the 
 dead of night, and no mortal eye had seen the 
 depredators at their felonious work ? His locks 
 and bolts and hinges, the best of their kind that 
 Sheffield could supply, had been mocked at and 
 made as naught; and all his dumb dogs of 
 serving men and women had been lying in their 
 too comfortable beds, and had heard never a 
 sound of hammer clinking or crowbar striking on 
 iron. There had not been so much as a kitchen- 
 maid afflicted with the toothache, and lying wake- 
 ful, to overhear a sound of that villainous deed. 
 
 Mr. Crowther sent for the police authorities of 
 Fowey, and set his wrongs before them. 
 
 "I will give fifty pounds reward to the man 
 who will get me credible evidence as to the 
 person who planned that outrage," he said. And 
 next day there were bills pasted against divers 
 doors at Fowey and Trelasco, against the 
 Mechanics' Institute, and against that curious 
 old oaken door of a mediaeval building opposite 
 the club, which may once have been a donjon, 
 and in sundry other conspicuous places, beginning 
 with " Whereas," and ending with Vansittart 
 Crowther's signature.
 
 "UNDEE THE PINE-WOOD." 311 
 
 Nothing came of this splendid offer, though 
 there were plenty of people in the district to 
 whom fifty pounds would have seemed a fortune. 
 Whether no one had seen the crew of the 
 Vendetta landing or re-embarking in the night- 
 time, or whether some wakeful eyes had seen, 
 whose owners would not betray the doers of a 
 deed done in a good cause, still remains un- 
 known. Captain Hulbert was enchanted at the 
 speedy success of the conspiracy, and went to 
 church next Sunday by the now notorious foot- 
 path, along which an unusual procession of 
 villagers came streaming in the crisp, clear air, 
 proud to assert a right that had been so boldly 
 maintained by their unnamed but not unknown 
 champion. Every one felt very sure that the 
 flinging open of the gates had been somehow 
 brought about by Martin Disney — Martin, whose 
 grandfather they could some of them remember^ 
 when he came home after the long war with the 
 French, and took up his abode in an old house 
 among the hills, and married a fair young wife. 
 That had happened sixty-five years ago; but 
 there were those in the village who could re- 
 member handsome Major Disney, with only one
 
 312 ALL ALONG THE RIVEK. 
 
 arm, and a face bronzed by the sun that shines 
 on the banks of the Douro. 
 
 Captain Hulbert went by the church -path 
 that morning, although it took him ever so far 
 out of his way. He wanted to walk to church 
 with the Disney family, in order to talk over 
 their victory ; and the Disneys seemed to-day to 
 resolve themselves into one ; and that one was 
 Allegra Leland ; for she and the captain walked 
 ahead and discoursed gaily, perhaps in too 
 exultant and worldly a vein for pious church 
 people ; but at worst their exultation was in a 
 good cause ; for the horn of the lowly was 
 exalted, and the pride of the rich man was 
 brought low. 
 
 " Do you think he will be at church ? " asked 
 Allegra, the pronoun standing for Mr. Crowther. 
 
 " Of course he will. He must brazen out the 
 position. He will be there, no doubt, gnashing 
 his teeth behind his prayer-book. If angry looks 
 could kill, you and I would be as dead as Ananias 
 and Sapphira before the end of the service." 
 
 "Poor, silly man, why did he want to shut 
 up the footpath ? " speculated Allegra. 
 
 " Only to show his importance — to make him-
 
 "UNDER THE PINE-WOOD." 313 
 
 self felt in the neighbourhood. They wouldn't 
 have him for their representative, in spite of 
 his money, and his grand Church and State 
 principles, and all the Primrose Leaguing of 
 his womankind ; and so he turns savage and 
 wants to make himself disagreeable." 
 
 Yes, it was true that Mr. Crowther had stood 
 for Lostwithiel on three separate occasions, and 
 with equal unsuccess on each. This may have 
 embittered him. If the anger of slighted beauty 
 is a furious thing, no less bitter is the sting of 
 wounded vanity in man. 
 
 And then the parson and the doctor had told 
 Mr. Crowther that he could not close his wood 
 against the public ; an all-sufficient reason why 
 he should make the attempt. 
 
 The Crowther family were in the chancel pew 
 in full force. Allegra thought she detected signs 
 of distress in Mrs. Crowther's countenance; but 
 the daughters went through the service with their 
 noses in the air, and were more than usually 
 vivacious and conversational among their friends 
 between the church-porch and the landau which 
 bore them away to Glenaveril, and the sumptuous 
 boredom of Sunday luncheon.
 
 314 ALL ALONG THE KIVER. 
 
 Merrily went the short autumn days on board 
 the Vendetta, and merrily went the tea-drinkings 
 and talk in the drawing-room at the Angler's 
 Nest. Mrs. Disney did not often join the yacht- 
 ing expeditions east or west. The sea made her 
 head ache, she told them ; but Mrs. Baynham, 
 who loved pleasure of any kind, was always 
 ready to chaperon Allegra, and Isola welcomed 
 the wanderers to the cheery fireside and the 
 friendly five-o'clock tea. She spent her own 
 days mostly in the society of her baby, with 
 whom she seemed to hold a kind of mysterious 
 commune. She had no idea of amusing him as 
 the nurse had, none of those conventional tricks 
 and movements which are offered to generation 
 after generation of infants ; but the child would 
 lie in her lap for hours while she sang to him 
 in her low sweet voice the French songs she 
 had learnt in her early girlhood — songs that 
 the peasants of Brittany sing, some of them — 
 and others of a somewhat loftier strain. She 
 would sing him little bits of Mozart, those 
 immortal melodies, of inexhaustible sweetness 
 and ineffable pathos, music wedded with smiles 
 and tears, melody interwoven with such melting
 
 "UNDER THE PINE- WOOD." 315 
 
 tenderness as thrills the coldest heart. There 
 was a gentle happiness in these solitary hours 
 which the young mother spent with her child; 
 and Martin Disney, coming into the room un- 
 awares, sometimes stood for a minute or so in 
 loving contemplation of that domestic picture 
 — the young fair face with its long oval form 
 and delicate features; the pensive gravity of 
 the large violet eyes, and mournful droop of 
 the thin, flower-like lips. He had seen such 
 a face on canvas, the ideal Madonna of Kaffaelle, 
 with just that subdued blonde colouring and pale 
 auburn hair, and just that thoughtful expression. 
 
 His heart swelled with gladness and gratitude 
 as he contemplated mother and son. Yes, the 
 child had made all things well in his home. 
 
 Those aching doubts which he felt as he 
 watched beside his wife's sick-bed had vanished 
 like clouds before the sun. Who could doubt 
 the happiness of the mother, absorbed in her 
 first-born? Who could doubt the love of the 
 wife, looking up at her husband with such 
 tender welcome as he bent over her shoulder 
 to take the little folded fist in his, unfold the 
 crumpled fingers, and press them to his lips ?
 
 316 ALL ALONG THE KIVEK. 
 
 "You are very fond of him, Martin?" she 
 asked, with an often repeated inquiry, knowing 
 what the answer would be. 
 
 "Fond of him! After you he is all that I 
 have in this world — except Allegra, who will 
 float away into a world of her own by-and-by, 
 and belong to us no more." 
 
 "After me! He ought to be first, Martin — 
 your son, your heir, your second self in the 
 days to come. He ought to have the first place 
 in your heart, Martin, for he is your future." 
 
 "No one is first but you." 
 
 He dropped the little crumpled hand, and 
 took his wife's head between his hands, and 
 lifted the fair young forehead, looking down 
 at it fondly before he stooped to kiss the soft 
 clustering hair and pencilled brows and ivory 
 temples, with more than a lover's passion. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LISnTED, 
 STAMFOKD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.