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LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
By the same Author
MALAY SKETCHES
Second Edition
Cr. 8vo, 6s.
UNADDRESSED
LETTERS
EDITED BY
FRANK <^1HELSTANE
SWETTENHAM, K.C.M.G.
JOHN LANE
THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON AND NEW YORK
MDCCCXCVIII
GENERAL
All rig fits reserved
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON <V Co
At the Ballantyne Press
PREFACE
" T HAD a friend who loved me ; " but he has
A gone, and the "great gulf" is between us.
After his death I received a packet of manuscript
with these few words :
"What I have written may appeal to you because
of our friendship, and because, when you come to
read them, you will seek to grasp, in these apparent
confidences, an inner meaning that to the end will
elude you. If you think others, not the many but
the few, might find here any answer to their un-
uttered questionings, any fellowship of sympathy in
those experiences which are the milestones of our
lives, then use the letters as you will, but without
my name. I shall have gone, and the knowledge
of my name would make no one either wiser or
happier."
In the packet I found these letters. I cannot tell
whether there is any special order in which they
should be read there was nothing to guide me
PREFACE
on that point. I do not know whether they are to
real or imaginary people, whether they were ever sent
or only written as an amusement, a relief to feeling,
or with a purpose the one to which they are now
put, for instance. One thing is certain, namely, that,
however taken, they are not all indited to the same
person; of that there seems to be convincing
internal evidence.
The writer was, by trade, a diplomatist; by
inclination, a sportsman with literary and artistic
tastes ; by force of circumstances he was a student
of many characters, and in some sense a cynic.
He was also a traveller not a great traveller, but
he knew a good deal of Europe, a little of America,
much of India and the further East. He spent some
time in this neighbourhood, and was much interested
in the country and its people. There is an Eastern
atmosphere about many of the letters, and he made
no secret of the fact that he was fascinated by the
glamour of the lands of sunshine. He died very
suddenly by misadventure, and, even to me, his
packet of letters came rather as a revelation.
Before determining to publish the letters, I showed
them to a friend on whose opinion I knew the writer
had set store. He said, "The critic will declare
there is too much scenery, too much sentiment.
PREFACE
Very likely he will be right for those whose lives
are passed in the streets of London, and the letters
will not interest so many readers as would stories
of blood and murder. Yet leave them. Love is in
the atmosphere day and night, and the scenery is
in true proportion to our lives here, where, after all,
sunsets are commoner than murders." Therefore
I have left them as they came to me, only using my
discretion to omit some of the letters altogether.
F. A. S.
February 12, 1898.
vii
" Thus fare you well right hertely beloved
frende . . . and love me as you have ever
done, for I love you letter than ever I dyd."
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE HILL OF SOLITUDE I
II. OF WORSHIP 6
III. WEST AND EAST 13
IV. A CLEVER MONGOOSE 21
V. A BLUE DAY 33
VI. OF LOVE, IN FICTION 42
VII. THE JINGLING COIN 48
VIII. A STRANGE SUNSET 6 1
IX. OF LETTER-WRITING ...... 68
X. AT A FUNERAL 72
XI. OF CHANGE AND DECAY ...... 82
XII. DAUGHTERS AND DESPOTISM 96
XIII. HER FIANCE IO7
XIV. BY THE SEA 1 15
XV. AN ILLUMINATION 123
XVI. OF DEATH, IN FICTION I2Q
XVII. A HAND AT ECARTE 138
XVIII. THE GENTLE ART OF VEERING WITH THE WIND . 145
XIX. A REJOINDER 153
ix
CONTENTS
PAGE
XX. OF IMPORTUNITY 159
XXI. OF COINCIDENCES l68
XXII. OF A COUNTRY-HOUSE CUSTOM . . . .175
XXIII. A MERE LIE .182
XXIV. TIGERS AND CROCODILES ..... IQI
XXV. A ROSE AND A MOTH 203
XXVI. A LOVE-PHILTRE 2CK)
XXVII. MOONSTRUCK 22O
xxvin. THE "DEVI" 229
XXIX. THE DEATH-CHAIN ...... 242
XXX. SCANDAL AND BANGLES 252
XXXI. THE REPREHENSIBLE HABIT OF MAKING COM-
PARISONS 259
XXXII. A CHALLENGE ....... 265
XXXIII. IN EXILE 270
XXXIV. OF LOVE NOT IN FICTION 284
XXXV. OF OBSESSION ....... 295
XXXVI. OF PARADISE LOST 303
XXXVII. "TO MARY, IN HEAVEN" ..... 307
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
THE HILL OF SOLITUDE
A^J hour ago I climbed the narrow, winding
path that circles the Hill of Solitude, and as
I gained the summit and sat upon that narrow
bench, facing the west, I may have fallen into a
trance, for there appeared to me an ever-changing
vision of unearthly beauty.
The sun was sinking into the sea, directly in a
line with the wide estuary that marks a distant
river's mouth. It was setting in a blaze of molten
gold, while all above and to the northward, the
background of sky glowed with that extraordinary,
clear pale-blue blent with green, that makes one
of the most striking features of the sunsets seen
from this hill. The clouds were fewer to-night,
the background wider and clearer, the colour more
1 A
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
intense, more transparent, as though the earnest
gazer might even discern some greater glory,
beyond and through the shining crystal of those
heavenly windows.
The calm surface of the sea beneath mirrored
the lights above, till sea and sky vied with each
other in a perfection of delicate translucent sheen.
Northwards a few grey-gold clouds lay against this
wondrous background, but in the south they were
banked in heavy masses, far down the sky to the
limits of vision.
Out of a deep forest-clad valley, immediately
behind the hill, a freshening breeze was driving
volumes of white mist across the northern spur ;
driving it, at racing speed, in whirling, tangled
wisps, across the water-holes that cluster around
the foot of the great range ; driving it over
the wide plain, out towards the glittering coast-
line.
But in a moment, as though by magic, the thick
banks of cloud in the south were barred with broad
shafts of brilliant rose dore'e ; the spaces of clear
sky, which, an instant before, were pale silver-blue,
became pale green, momentarily deepening in in-
tensity of tone. Close around the setting sun
the gold was turning to flame, and, as the glory
THE HILL OF SOLITUDE
of magnificent colouring spread over all the south,
the clouds took every rainbow hue, as though
charged with a galaxy of living, palpitating radiance,
grand yet fateful, a God-painted picture of battle
and blazing cities, of routed hosts and desperate
pursuit.
Overhead, and filling the arc from zenith to the
outer edge of sun-coloured cloud, the sky was a deep
sapphire, half covered by soft, rounded clouds of
deeper sapphire still, only their edges tinged with
gleams of dull gold.
Another sweep of the magic wand, and, as the
patches of pale aquamarine deepened into emerald,
the heavier clouds became heliotrope, and a thick
heliotrope haze floated gently across the wide
plain, seawards. The fires of crimson light blazed
brighter in the gathering gloom of rising mist and
lowering cloud, but the sea shone with ever-
increasing clearness in the rapidly narrowing space
of yet unhidden view.
For a moment the mist disappeared, as suddenly
as it came ; the sapphire clouds took a deeper hue,
heliotrope turned to purple, the crimson lights were
softer but richer in colour, streaked with narrow
bands of gold, and dark arrowlike shafts shot from
the bow of Night.
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
Standing there, it was as though one were
vouchsafed, for a moment, a vision of the Heavenly
City which enshrines the glory of God. One
caught one's breath and shivered, as at the sound
of violins quivering under inspired fingers, or the
voices of boys singing in a cathedral choir.
All this while a solitary, ragged-edged cloud-
kite hung, almost motionless, in middle distance,
over the glittering waters of the river mouth.
This cloud gathered blackness and motion, spread
itself out, like a dark thick veil, and, as the mist,
now grey and cold, closed in, the last sparks
of the dying sunset were extinguished in the dis-
tant sea.
And then I was stumbling down the path in the
darkness, my eyes blinded by the glory of the
vision ; and as I groped through the gloom, and
heard the wail of the night-wind rushing from
those far-away mountains, across this lonely peak,
I began to wonder whether I had not been dreaming
dreams conjured up by the sadly-sweet associations
of the place.
The darkness deepened, and, as I reached the
dividing saddle and began to mount the opposite
hill, I heard the faint jingle of a dangling coin
striking metal, and I said to myself that such
4
THE HILL OF SOLITUDE
associations, acting on the physical weariness re-
sulting from days of intolerable strain, followed by
nights of worse regret, were enough to account for
far stranger journeys in the land which lies beyond
the Gates of Ivory and Horn.
II
OF WORSHIP
" r T n HIS life good as it can be is horribly
A difficult and complicated. I feel as though
I were walking in the dark, just stumbling along
and groping my way there seems to be no light to
guide me you are so far away, and there is ever
that wall between us, no higher than before, but
quite as impenetrable I wonder, I wonder,
I wonder what the future will bring to you,
to me."
" I think of you up there, among the soft white
clouds, watching the sun setting into the sea, while
the great blue hills are melting through twilight
into night. Oh ! there's nothing like that beauty
here, in the West, and I am sick for the East
and all her hot, passionate loveliness ; all her
colour and light ; all her breadth and grandeur ;
for her magnificent storms and life, life on a big
scale. Here everything is so small, so petty, so
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OF WORSHIP
trivial. I want, I want, I want, that's how I
feel ; I am lovesick and heartsick and sick for the
sun. Well, this life is nearly done, and in the
next I shall at least be worshipped."
That is well, and if you are worshipped you
should not say " at least." What more can you
want ? Especially since, having all other things
and lacking worship, you would have nothing.
They were not meant for this application, but these
old Monkish lines are worth remembering :
" Qut Christum nescit^ nil scit, si castera nosrit.
Qui Christum noscit, sat scit, si ccetera nescit"
I hardly like to suggest it, but are you afraid
of the " worship," of its quality, or its lasting
properties ? Or, assured on these points, do you
think worship alone will prove unsatisfying ? I
wonder.
It is an attractive subject, and women disagree
as to how it should be treated. The fact is, that
they are seldom able to generalise ; they do not
take any great interest in generalities, and the
answer to an impersonal question must have a
personal application before it can be given. And
not that alone, for where, as in this case, and,
indeed, all those of greatest human interest, another
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
person, a special person, is concerned, then the
answer depends largely on that other person as
well. You can, perhaps, in your own mind, think
of some one or more from whom you would rather
have a little worship, than become an object of life-
long adoration to many others who have seemed
anxious to offer it. And that is not because their
all was less than the little of those with a larger
capacity for the worship of human beings, nor even
because their appreciation of your personal worth
is in any degree limited, or smaller by comparison
with that of others. Probably it is exactly the
reverse. But I will ask you, of your sweetness
and light, to give me knowledge. Would you
rather have the absolute, unsought worship of a
man, or would you win, perchance even from his
unwillingness, a devotion that, if it was not thrown
at you, was probably, when gained, not likely to
burn itself out in a blaze of ardent protestations ?
You will, of course, say that it depends on the
attitude assumed by the man, and I reply that it
does not, because the same man would never be
found ready to render his service in either of these
well disguises, if you will. It would be in
one or in the other. Therefore my question will
admit of the personal application, and you can go
8
OF WORSHIP
through your acquaintances, admirers, friends (I
dare not say the other word), and tell me whether
you would be most attracted by the man who fell
at your feet and worshipped, giving of his ample
store without effort and without stint, or by the
man who, if he were a woman, would be called
difficile. This problem will give you no trouble
if, as I said before, you can work it out as a per-
sonal equation, and it is therefore only necessary
that you should have amongst your friends two
men of the required types.
In return for your anticipated answer, I will
give you this. There are many men who pay
their court to women, if not all in one breath, or
at one sitting, at least the phase is limited by a
definite period. That period is usually shorter or
longer in the inverse ratio of the violence of the
attack. The operations result in a decisive action,
where the man is either worsted or victorious. If
he gains his end, and persuades the lady to take
him for whatever he is worth, the ordinary type
of Englishman will very often consider that his
obligation towards her as an idolater, a lover,
whatever name you call the part by, is over when
the curtain comes down on the procession to the
altar or to the office of the Registrar, or, at any
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
rate, when the honeymoon has set and the duty-
moon rises to wax and wane for evermore. That
is the man to avoid ; and if the womanly instinct,
which is so useful and so little understanded of
men (until they learn to fear its unerring accuracy),
is only called upon in time, it will not mislead its
owner.
You know all this, you will say ; very likely,
but it is extraordinary how many thousands of
women, especially English women, there are who
are now eating out their hearts, because they
neglected either to ask this question of their in-
stincts or disregarded the answer. Probably it is
very seldom asked ; for a girl is hardly likely to
suppose that, after feeding her on love for a few
weeks, or months, the man will starve her of the
one thing needful, until death does at last part
them. He says he has not time for love-making,
and he acts as though he had not the inclination
either, though probably, somewhere in his system
he keeps the forces that once stirred him to ex-
pressions of affection that now seem as needless as
it would be to ask his servants for permission to
eat the dinner which he has paid for, and which
he can take or neglect, praise or find fault with, at
his own will and pleasure.
10
OF WORSHIP
That is a very long homily, but it has grown
out of the point of the pen, possibly because I am
sitting here alone, "up in the soft white clouds,"
as you say, or rather in the softer moonlight ; and
some of the littlenesses of life loom large, but not
over-large, considering their bearing on the lifelong
happiness, or misery, of men and women.
Yes, I am sitting exactly where you imagined.
It was on that sofa that you used to lie in the
evenings, when you were too feeble to sit up, and I
read to you out of a book of knowledge. But that
was years and years ago, and now you wonder.
Well, I too wonder, and there, it has just struck
I A.M. I will wonder no more, but look out at
the surpassing loveliness of this white night, and
then rest.
It is so strange, I have come back to tell you.
The soft white clouds are actually there motion-
less they cover everything, sea and plain and
valley, everything but the loftiest ridges of this
mountain. The moon rides high, turning to silver
the tops of the great billowy clouds, while it shines
full on this house and garden, casting deep shadows
from the fern-trees across the gravel, and, from
the eaves and pillars of the house, across the
verandah. The air is perfectly still now, though,
ii
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
some hours ago, it was blowing a gale and the
wind wailed as though mourning its own lost
soul.
It seemed then, as it tore round the corner of
the house, to be crying, " I come from the rice
swamps which have no dividing banks, from the
waters which contain no fish, where the apes cry
by night and the baboons drink as they hang from
the boughs ; a place where the chinchili resorts to
bathe, and where man's food is the Kemahang fern."
Some day I will tell you more about that place.
And the spirits of the storm that have passed
and left this death-like stillness, where are they
now ? They went seaward, westward, to you-
ward, but they will never reach you, and you will
not hear their message.
12
Ill
WEST AND EAST
ONE night, in the early months of this year, I
sat at dinner next to a comparatively young
married woman, of the type that is superlatively
blonde in colour and somewhat over-ample in
figure. She was indifferently dressed, not very
well informed, but apparently anxious, by dint of
much questioning, to improve her knowledge where
possible. She was, I believe, a journalist.
Some one must have told her that I had been
in the East, and she, like most stay-at-home people,
evidently thought that those who go beyond the
shores of England can only be interested in, or
have an acquaintance with, the foreign country
wherein they have sojourned. Therefore the lady
fired at me a volley of questions, about the manners
and habits of the Malay people, whom she always
referred to as " savages." I ventured to say that
she must have a mistaken, or at any rate incom-
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
plete, knowledge of the race to speak of Malays as
savages, but she assured me that people who were
black, and not Christians, could only be as she
described them. I declined to accept that defini-
tion, and added that Malays are not black. I fancy
she did not believe me ; but she said it did not
matter, as they were not white and wore no clothes.
I am afraid I began to be almost irritated, for the
long waits between the courses deprived me of all
shelter from the rain of questions and inconsequent
remarks.
At last, I said, " It may surprise you to hear
that these savages would think, if they saw you
now, that you are very insufficiently clad ; " and I
added, to try and take the edge off a speech that
I felt was inexcusably rude, " they consider the
ordinary costume of white men so immodest as to
be almost indecent." lt Indeed," said the lady, who
only seemed to hear the last statement, " I have
often thought so too, but I am surprised that
savages, for I must call them savages, should mind
about such things." It was hopeless, and I asked
how soon the great American people might be ex-
pected to send a force to occupy London.
I have just been reminded of this conversation.
A few days ago, I wrote to a friend of mine, a
14
WEST AND EAST
Malay Sultan, whom I have not seen for some
months, a letter inquiring how he was, and saying
I hoped soon to be able to visit him. Now comes
his answer ; and you, who are in sympathy with the
East, will be able to appreciate the missive of this
truculent savage.
In the cover there were three enclosures : a
formal letter of extreme politeness, written by a
scribe, the Arabic characters formed as precisely
and clearly as though they had been printed.
Secondly, a letter written in my friend's own hand,
also in the Arabic character, but the handwriting
is very difficult to decipher. And thirdly there is
another paper, headed " Hidden Secrets/' written
also in the Sultan's own hand. The following is
a translation of the beginning of the second letter.
At the top of the first page is written, "Our friend-
ship is sealed in the inmost recesses of my heart."
Then this : " I send this letter to my honoured and
renowned friend " (here follow my name, designa-
tion, and some conventional compliments). The
letter then continues : " You, my dear friend, are
never out of my thoughts, and they are always
wishing you well. I hear that you are coming to
see me, and for that reason my heart is exceeding
glad, as though the moon had fallen into my lap,
'5
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
or I had been given a cluster of flowers grown
in the garden called Benjerdna Sri, wide-opening
under the influence of the sun's warm rays. May
God the Most Mighty hasten our meeting, so that
I may assuage the thirst of longing in the happy
realisation of my affectionate and changeless regard.
At the moment of writing, by God's grace, and
thanks to your prayers, I and my family are in
good health, and this district is in the enjoyment
of peace ; but the river is in flood, and has risen
so high that I fear for the safety of the bridge."
There is more, but what I have quoted is
enough to show you the style. When the savage
has turned from his savagery he will write ft Dear
sir," and " Yours truly " ; his correspondence will
be type-written, in English, and the flaxen- haired
lady will remark with approval that the writer is
a business man and a Christian, and hardly black
at all.
Whilst the Malays are still in my mind, it may
interest you to know that they have a somewhat
original form of verse in four-line stanzas, each
stanza usually complete in itself, the second and
fourth lines rhyming. The last two lines convey
the sense, while the first two are only introduced
to get the rhythm, and often mean nothing at all.
16
WEST AND EAST
Here are some specimens which may give you an
idea of these pantun, as they are called, though
in translating them I have made no attempt to
give the necessary "jingle."
" A climbing bean will gain the roof ;
The red hibiscus has no scent.
All eyes can see a house on fire ;
No smoke the burning heart betrays.
Hark ! the flutter of the death's-head moth ;
It flies behind the headman's house.
Before the Almighty created Adam,
Our destinies were already united.
This is the twenty-first night of the moon,
The night when women die in child-birth.
I am but as a captive song-bird,
A captive bird in the hand of the fowler.
If you must travel far up river,
Search for me in every village ;
If you must die, while I yet linger,
Wait for me at the Gate of Heaven."
One of the fascinations of letter-writing is that
one can wander at will from one subject to another,
as the butterflies flutter from flower to flower ; but
I suppose there is nearly always something that
suggests to the writer the sequence of thought,
though it might be difficult to explain exactly what
that something is. I think the reference in the
'7 B
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
above stanzas to Adam and the Gate of Heaven,
or Paradise, have suggested to me the snake,
" And even in Paradise devise the snake,"
which reminds me that, last night, I said to the
ancient and worthy person to whom is entrusted
the care of this house
" Leave the drawing-room doors open while I
am at dinner : the room gets overheated."
Then he, " I not like leave open the doors, be-
cause plenty snakes."
" Snakes: where?"
" Outside, plenty snakes, leave doors open come
inside."
" What sort of snakes ? "
" Long snakes " (stretching out his arm to show
the length), " short snakes " (measuring off about
a foot with the other hand).
" Have you seen them ? "
" Yes, plenty."
This is cheerful news, and I inquire : " Where ? "
" In bedrooms."
" When ? "
"Sometimes daytime, sometimes night-time."
An even pleasanter prospect, but I am still
full of unbelief.
18
WEST AND EAST
" Have you seen them yourself? "
" Yes, I kill."
" But when and how was it ? "
" One time master not here, lady staying here ;
daytime I kill one long snake, here, this room
night-time lady call me, I kill one short snake in
bedroom."
" Which bedroom ? "
" Master's bedroom."
That is not exactly reassuring, especially when
you like to leave your doors and windows open,
and sleep in the dark. I thank him, and he goes
away, having entirely destroyed my peace of mind.
The wicked old man ! I wish I could have seen
his face as he went out. Now I go delicately,
both "daytime" and " night-time," above all at
night-time, and I am haunted by the dread of the
" plenty long snake, plenty short snake." In one's
bedroom too, it is a gruesome idea. If I had gone
on questioning him, I dare say he would have told
me he killed a " plenty long snake " inside the bed,
trying to warm itself under the bed-clothes in this
absurdly cold place. I always thought this a
paradise, but without the snake. Alas ! how easily
one's cherished beliefs are destroyed.
It is past midnight ; the moon is full, and look-
19
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
ing down, resplendent in all her majesty, bathes
everything in a silver -radiance. I love to go and
stand in it ; but the verandahs are full of ferns,
roses and honeysuckle twine round the pillars, the
shadows are as dark as the lights are bright, and
everywhere there is excellent cover for the "long
snake" and the "short snake." Perhaps bed is
the safest place after all, and to-morrow well,
to-morrow I can send for a mongoose.
20
IV
A CLEVER MONGOOSE
IN my last letter I told you how the ancient
who guards this Eden had complained of the
prevalence of snakes, and I, with an experience
which Adam does not appear to have possessed,
determined to send for a mongoose to deal with
the matter. Well, I saw nothing of the serpent,
did not even dream about him, and forgot all about
the mongoose. It is the thought of what I last
wrote to you that reminds me of an excellent story,
and a curious trick which I once witnessed, both
having to do with the mongoose.
First the story. A boy of twenty got into a
train one day, and found, already seated in the
carriage, a man of middle age, who had beside
him, on the floor, a closed basket. The train
started, and by-and-by the boy, feeling dull, looked
at his companion, and, to break the ice, said
" Is that your basket, sir ? "
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
To which the stranger, who did not at all relish
the idea of being dragged into a conversation with
a strange youth, replied, "Yes, it is," slightly
stammering as he said it.
A pause, then the boy, " I beg your pardon,
but is there some beast in it ? "
The man, annoyed, "Ye es, there's a m
mongoose in it."
The boy had no idea what a mongoose was, but
he had the curiosity of youth and was unabashed,
so he said, " May I ask what the mongoose is
for ? "
The man, decidedly irritated, and wishing to
silence his companion, " G got a f friend that
sees snakes, t taking the m mongoose to catch
'em."
The boy concluded the stranger was mad, and
wishing to pacify him, said
"Yes, but the snakes are not really there, are
they ? "
The man, " No, n neither is the m mon-
goose."
Now as to my experience. Some years ago
I was in Calcutta, and, walking in the street one
day, I was accosted by a man carrying a bag and
leading a mongoose by a string. He said, " I
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A CLEVER MONGOOSE
Madras man, master want to see plenty trick, I
very good conjurer," and he produced a sheaf of
more or less grimy credentials, in which it was
stated, by a number of reputable people, that he
was a conjurer of unusual skill. When I had
looked at some of the papers, he said, " I come
master's house, do trick, this very clever mongoose,
I bring him show master."
I was quite willing, so I gave him my address
and told him to come whenever he liked.
Some days later the conjurer was announced,
and there happened to 'be in my rooms at the time
a German dealer in Japanese curios, who had seen
rather more than usual during a sixteen years' resi-
dence in Japan and the Farthest East. He was
an extremely amusing old person, and glad of the
opportunity of seeing the conjurer, who was duly
admitted to our presence with his bag of pro-
perties. The very clever mongoose came in last,
at the end of his string.
The conjurer certainly justified his reputation,
and performed some extremely clever tricks, while
the mongoose sat by with a blase expression, taking
very little interest in the proceedings. When the
conjurer had come to the end of his programme,
or thought he had done enough, he offered to sell
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
the secret of an}' trick I liked to buy, and, taking
him at his word, I was shown several tricks, the
extreme simplicity of the deceit, when once you
knew it, being rather aggravating.
In the interest of watching the performance and
the subsequent explanations, I had forgotten the
mongoose, and the conjurer was already pushing
his paraphernalia into the sack, when I said, " But
the mongoose, the clever mongoose, where is his
trick ? "
The conjurer sat down again, pulled the mon-
goose towards him, and tied the end of his string
to a chair leg, giving the little beast plenty of rope
on which to play. Then the man pushed round in
front of him an earthenware chatty or water-vessel,
which had hitherto stood on the floor, a piece of
dirty cloth being tied over its mouth. Next the
conjurer thrust his hand into the sack, and pulled
out one of the trumpet- mouthed pipes on which
Indians play weird and discordant airs.
Now I want you to remember that this was my
room, that the man's stock-in-trade was contained
in the sack which he had pushed on one side, that
the pieces in the game were the mongoose, the
chatty (or what it contained), and the pipe, while
the lynx-eyed curio-dealer and I sat as close as
24
A CLEVER MONGOOSE
we pleased to see fair play. I am obliged to tell
you that ; of what happened I attempt no explana-
tion, I only relate exactly what I saw.
The stage being arranged as I have described,
the conjurer drew the chatty towards him, and
said, " Got here one very good snake, catch him
in field this morning ; " at the same time he untied
the cloth, and with a jerk threw on the floor an
exceedingly lively snake, about three feet long.
From the look of it, I should say it was not
venomous. The conjurer had thrown the snake
close to the mongoose, who jumped out of its way
with surprising agility, while the conjurer kept
driving it towards the little beast. Neither snake
nor mongoose seemed to relish the situation, and
to force the game the conjurer seized the snake by
the tail, and, swinging it thereby, tried, two or
three times, to hit the mongoose with it. This
seemed to rouse both beast and reptile, and the
mongoose, making a lightning-like movement, seized
the snake by the head, shook it for a second or
two, dragging it over the matting, and then dropped
it on the floor. The instant the snake showed
fight the conjurer had let it go, and the mongoose
did the rest.
Where the snake had been dragged, the floor
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/
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
was smeared with blood, and now the creature lay,
giving a few spasmodic twitches of its body, and
then was still. The conjurer pulled it towards
him, held it up by the tail, and said laconically,
" Snake dead." The mongoose meanwhile sat
quietly licking its paw as though nothing particular
had happened.
As the man held it up I looked very carefully at
the snake ; one eye was bulging out, by reason of
a bite just over it ; the head and neck were covered
with blood, and as far as my judgment went, the
thing was dead as Herod. The conjurer dropped
the snake on the floor, where it fell limply, as any
dead thing would, then he put it on its back and
coiled it up, head inwards, saying again, " You see,
snake dead."
He left the thing lying there, and searched in
his sack till he found what appeared to be a very
small piece of wood, it was, in fact, exactly like a
wooden match. The sack, all this time, was at
his side, but not close to him, while the snake was
straight in front of him, under our noses. Break-
ing off a very small piece of the wood, he gave it
to the mongoose, which began to eat it, apparently
as a matter of duty. At the same time the con-
jurer took an even smaller bit of the same stuff,
26
A CLEVER MONGOOSE
and opening the snake's mouth, pushed the stick,
or whatever it was, inside, and then shut the mouth
again. This transaction would, I think, have con-
vinced any one who saw it that there was no life
in the snake.
The conjurer now took up his pipe, and made it
squeal some high discordant notes. Then taking
it from his lips, he said in Hindustani, as he touched
the snake's tail with the pipe, " Put out your
tail," and the creature's tail moved slowly outwards,
a little way from the rest of the coiled body. The
conjurer skirled another stave on his pipe, and as
he lowered the instrument with his left hand, he
exclaimed, " Snake all right now," and stretched
out his right hand at the same instant, to seize
the reptile by the tail. Either as he touched it,
or just before, the snake with one movement was
up, wriggling and twisting, apparently more alive
than when first taken out of the chatty. While the
conjurer thrust it back into the vessel there was
plenty of time to remark that, miraculous as the
resurrection appeared to be, the creature's eye still
protruded through the blood which oozed from the
hole in its head.
As he tied the rag over the top of the chatty,
the conjurer said, with a smile, " Very clever mon-
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
goose/' gathered up his sack, took the string of his
clever assistant in his left hand, raised his right to
his forehead, and with a low bow, and a respectful
" Salaam, Sahib," had left the room before I had
quite grasped the situation.
I looked at the dealer in curios, and, as with Bill
Nye, " he gazed upon me," but in our few minutes'
conversation, before he left, he could throw no light
on the mystery, and we agreed that our philosophy
was distinctly at fault.
That evening I related what had taken place to
half-a-dozen men, all of whom had lived in India
for some years, and I asked if any of them had
seen and could explain the phenomenon.
No one had seen it, some had heard of it, all
plainly doubted my story. One suggested that a
new snake had been substituted for that killed by
the mongoose, and another thought that there was
no real snake at all, only a wooden make-believe.
That rather exasperated me, and I said I was well
enough acquainted with snakes to be able to distin-
guish them from chair-legs. As the company was
decidedly sceptical, and inclined to be facetious at
my expense, I said I would send for the man again,
and they could tell me how the thing was done
when they had seen it.
28
A CLEVER MONGOOSE
I sent, and it so happened that the conjurer
came on a Sunday, when I was sitting in the hall,
on the ground-floor of the house where I was stay-
ing. The conjurer was already squatted on the
white marble flags, with his sack and his chatty
(the mongoose's string held under his foot), when
my friends, the unbelievers, or some of them, re-
turned from church, and joined me to watch the
proceedings. I will not weary you by going
through it all again. What took place then was
an exact repetition of what occurred in my room,
except that this time the man had a larger chatty^
which contained several snakes, and when he had
taken out one, and the mongoose had consented to
lay hold of it, he worried the creature as a terrier
does a rat, and, pulling his string away from under
his master's foot, he carried the snake into the
corner of the room, whither the conjurer pursued
him and deprived him of his prey. The result of
the encounter was that the marble was smeared
with streaks of blood that effectually disposed of
the wooden-snake theory. That little incident was
certainly not planned by the conjurer ; but when
the victim had been duly coiled on the floor and
the bit of stick placed (like the coin with which to
fee Charon) within its mouth, then, to my surprise,
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
the conjurer re-opened the chatty, took out another
snake, which in its turn was apparently killed by
the mongoose, and this one was coiled up and laid
on the floor beside the first victim. Then, whilst
the first corpse was duly resuscitated, according to
the approved methods I have already described, the
second lay on the floor, without a sign of life, and
it was only when No. I had been " resurrectioned,"
and put back in the vessel, that the conjurer took
up the case of No. 2, and, with him, repeated the
miracle.
This time I was so entertained by the manifest
and expressed astonishment of the whilom scoffers,
that again the conjurer had gone before I had an
opportunity of buying this secret, if indeed he would
have sold it. I never saw the man again.
There is the story, and, even as it stands, I think
you will admit that the explanation is not exactly
apparent on the surface. I can assure you, how-
ever, that wherever the deception (and I diligently,
but unsuccessfully, sought to find it), the perform-
ance was the most remarkable I have ever wit-
nessed in any country. To see a creature, full of
life, and a snake, at close quarters, is apt to
impress you with its vitality, to see it killed, just
under your eyes, to watch its last convulsive
30
A CLEVER MONGOOSE
struggles, to feel it in your hands, and gaze at
it as it lies, limp and dead, for a space of minutes ;
then heigh, presto ! and the thing is wriggling
about as lively as ever. It is a very curious trick
if trick it is.
That, however, is not quite all.
A month or two later I was sitting in the veran-
dah of an hotel in Agra. A number of American
globe-trotters occupied most of the other chairs, or
stood about the porch, where I noticed there was a
little knot of people gathered together. I was
idly staring into the street when the words, " Very
clever little mongoose," suddenly attracted my
attention, and I realised that two Indian conjurers
were amusing the party in the porch. I went at
once to the spot, and found the mongoose-snake
trick was just beginning. I watched it with great
attention, and I noticed that the mongoose only
seemed to give the snake one single nip, and there
was very little blood drawn. The business pro-
ceeded merrily, and in all respects in accordance
with what I had already seen, until, at the con-
clusion of the sort of Salvation-Army resurrection-
march, the juggler declared that the snake was
quite alive and well but he was not, he was
dead, dead as Bahram the Great Hunter. No
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
piping or tickling or pulling of his tail could
awaken the very faintest response from that limp
carcass, and the conjurers shuffled their things
together with downcast faces, and departed in
what the spectators called " a frost." To them, no
doubt, the game was absolutely meaningless ; to
me it seemed that the mongoose had " exceeded
his instructions."
A BLUE DAY
THERE is a green hill," you know it well ; it
is not very "far away," perhaps a little over
a mile, but then that mile is not quite like other
miles. For one thing it takes you up 500 feet,
and as that is the last pull to reach the highest
point of this range (the summit of a mountain
over 5000 feet in height), the climb is steep.
Indeed, one begins by going down some rough
stone steps, between two immense granite boulders ;
then you make a half-circuit of the hill by a path
cut on the level, and thence descend for at least
250 feet, till you are on the narrow saddle which
joins this peak to the rest of the range. Really,
therefore, in a distance of little over half a mile
there is an ascent of 750 feet.
And what a path it is that brings you here !
For I am now on the summit, though several times
on the way I was sorely tempted to sit down and
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
put on paper the picture of that road as it lay
before my eyes. It is a narrow jungle track,
originally made by the rhinoceros, the bison, and
the elephant, and now simply kept clear of falling
trees. It is exceeding steep, as I have said, and
you may remember. It begins by following the
stony bed of a mountain stream, dry in fine
weather, but full of water after half-an-hour's
tropical rain. Where the path is not covered by
roots or stones, it is of a chocolate colour ; but, in
the main, it is overspread by a network of gnarled
and knotted tree-roots, which, in the lapse of ages,
have become so interlaced that they hide the soil.
These roots, the stones round which they are often
twined, and the banks on either side, are covered
by mosses in infinite variety, so that when you
look upwards the path stands like a moss-grown
cleft in the wood.
The forest through which this track leads is
a mass of dwarfed trees, of palms, shrubs, and
creepers. Every tree, without exception, is clothed
with moss, wherever there is room to cling on
branch or stem, while often there are great fat
tufts of it growing in and round the forks, or at
any other place with convenient holding. The
trees are moss-grown, but that is only where the
34
A BLUE DAY
innumerable creepers, ferns, and orchids leave any
space to cover. The way in which these things
climb up, embrace, and hang to every tree or stick
that will give them a footing is simply marvellous.
Even the great granite boulders are hidden by this
wealth of irresistible vegetation. Through the
green foliage blaze vivid patches of scarlet, marking
the dazzling blossoms of a rhododendron that may
be seen in all directions, but usually perched high
on some convenient tree. Then there is the
wonderful magnolia with its creamy petals ; the
jungle apple-blossom, whose white flowers are now
turning to crimson berries ; the forest lilac, graceful
in form, and a warm heliotrope in colour. These
first catch the eye, but, by-and-by, one realises
that there are orchids everywhere, and that, if the
blossoms are not great in size or wonderful in
colour, they are still charming in form, and painted
in delicate soft tones of lilac and brown, orange
and lemon, while one, with strings of large, pale,
apple-green blossoms, is as lovely as it is bizarre.
As for palms, the forest is full of them, in every
size, colour, and shape ; and wherever the sunlight
can break through the foliage will be found the
graceful fronds of the giant tree-fern. Lastly, the
ground is carpeted with an extravagant luxuriance
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
of ferns and flowers and " creeping things innumer-
able, both small and great." The wasteful abund-
ance of it all is what first strikes one, and then
you begin to see the beauty of the details. Masses
of lycopodium, ringing all the changes through
wonderful metallic-blue to dark and light green,
and then to russet brown ; there are Malay prim-
roses, yellow and blue, and a most delightful little
pale-violet trumpet, with crinkled lip, gazing towards
the light from the highest point of its delicate stem.
On either side of this path one sees a dozen jungle
flowers in different shades of blue or lilac ; it seems
to be the prevailing colour for the small flowers,
as scarlet and yellow are for the great masses of
more striking blossom. And then there are birds
oh yes, there are birds, but they are strange, like
their surroundings. At the foot of this hill I came
suddenly on a great black-and-white hornbill, which,
seeing me, slowly got up and flew away with the
noise of a train passing at a distance. High up
the path was a collection of small birds, flitting and
twittering amongst the leaves. There were hardly
two of the same plumage, but most of them carried
their tails spread out like fans, and many had pro-
nounced tufts of feathers on their heads. The
birds at this height are usually silent, and, when
36
A BLUE DAY
they make any sound at all, they do not seem to
sing but to call ; and from the jungle all round, far
and near, loud and faint, will be heard similar
answering calls. I was surprised to hear, suddenly,
some bars of song, close by me, and I waited for
a long time, peering earnestly into the tree from
which the sound came ; but I saw nothing and
heard nothing beyond the perpetual double note
(short and long, with the accent on the latter) of
a bird that must be the bore and outcast of the
forest.
Coming out into the clearing which crowns the
hill, I passed several kinds of graceful grasses, ten
or twelve feet high, and the flight of steps which
leads to the actual summit is cut through a mass
of bracken, over and through which hang the
strange, delicately painted cups of the nepenthes,
the stems of the bracken rising from a bed made
rosy by the countless blossoms of a three-pointed
pale-pink starwort.
In the jungle one could only see the things
within reach, but, once on the peak, one has only
eyes for the grandeur and magnificence of an un-
equalled spectacle.
The view seems limitless, it is complete in every
direction, unbarred by any obstruction, natural or
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
artificial. First I look eastwards to those great
ranges of unexplored mountains, rising tier after
tier, their outlines clear as cut cameos against the
grey-blue sky. Betwixt them and my point of
sight flows a great river, and though it is ten or
twelve miles distant as the crow flies, I can see
that it is brown with flood-water, and, in some
places, overflowing its banks. Nearer lie the
green rice-fields and orchards, and, nearer still,
the spurs of the great range on whose highest
point I stand.
Then northward, that is the view that is usually
shut out from me. It is only hill and dale, river
and plain, but it is grand by reason of its extent,
beautiful in colour and form, intensely attractive
in the vastness of those miles of mysterious jungle,
untrodden, save by the feet of wild beasts ; endless
successions of mountain and valley, peak and spur,
immovable and eternal. You know there are grey
days and golden days ; as there are crimson and
heliotrope evenings, white, and, alas ! also black
nights well, this is a blue day. There is sun-
light, but it is not in your eyes, it only gives light
without shedding its own colour on the landscape.
The atmosphere seems to be blue ; the sky is blue,
except on the horizon, where it pales into a clear
38
A BLUE DAY
grey. Blue forest-clad hills rise, in the middle
distance, from an azure plain, and the distant
mountains are sapphire, deep sapphire. The effect
is strange and uncommon, but supremely beautiful.
Westward, a deep valley runs down from this
range into the flat, forest- covered plains, till, near-
ing the coast, great patches of light mark fields of
sugar-canes and thousands upon thousands of acres
of rice. Then the sea, the sea dotted by distant
islands, the nearest thirty miles away, the farthest
perhaps fifty. The morning heat is drawing a veil
of haze across the distance ; on a clear evening a
great island, eighty miles away to the northward,
is clearly visible.
I turn to the south, and straight before me rises
the grand blue peak of a mountain, 6000 feet high,
and not more than six miles away. It is the
highest point of a gigantic mass of hill that seems
to fill the great space between the flooded river and
the bright calm sea. Looking across the eastern
shoulder of the mountain, the eye wanders over a
wide plain, lost far away to the south in cloud-
wrapt distance. Beyond the western slopes lies
the calm mirror of a summer sea, whereon many
islands seem to float. The coast-line is broken,
picturesque and beautiful, by reason of its many
39
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
indentations and the line of bold hills which, rising
sheer out of the water, seem to guard the shore.
Due west I see across the deep valley into my
friend's house, where it crowns the ridge, and then
beyond to that vast plain which, in its miles and
miles of forest-covered flatness, broken by great
river-mouths, long vistas of deep lagoons, and a
group of shining pools scattered over its surface,
forms one of the strangest features in this match-
less panorama of mountain, river and plain, sea,
sky, and ever-changing cloud-effects.
There is an empty one-roomed hut of brown
palm-leaves on this most lonely peak. One pushes
the mat window upwards and supports it on a
stick, beneath the window is a primitive seat or
couch. That is where I have been sitting, a cool
breeze blowing softly through the wide open
windows. I could not stay there any longer, the
place seemed full of memories of another day,
when there was no need, and no inclination, to look
outside to see the beauty of the world and the
divine perfection of the Creator's genius. And then
I heard something, it must have been fancy, but
there was a faint but distinct jingle of metal.
It is better out here, sitting on a moss-grown
boulder in the pleasant warmth of the sun. The
40
A BLUE DAY
swifts are circling the hill, and they flash past me
with the hiss of a sword cleaving the air. I look
down on the tops of all these stunted trees, heavy
with their burden of creepers and mosses straining
towards the light. A great bunch of pitcher-plants
is hanging in front of me, pitcher-plants a foot
long, scarlet and yellow, green and purple, in all
the stages of their growth, their lids standing
tilted upwards, leaving the pitcher open to be
filled by any passing shower. But my eyes travel
across all the intervening miles to rest upon the
sea, the sea which is now of a quite indescrib-
able blue, basking under a sky of the same colour.
Out there, westward, if I could only pierce the
distance, I should see
Ah ! the great white clouds are rising and warn-
ing me to go. Good-bye ! good-bye ! for you the
missing words are as plain as these.
VI
OF LOVE, IN FICTION
I HAVE been reading "Casa Braccio," and I must
talk to you about it. Of course I do not know
whether you have read it or not, so if I bore you
forgive me. I was much interested in Part I.,
rather disappointed with Part II., and it struck me
that Mr. Crawford showed signs in Part III. of
weariness with the characters of his own creation.
There are nine people who play important parts in
the story, and the author kills six of them. The
first, an abbess, dies naturally but conveniently ;
the second, an innkeeper's daughter, dies suddenly,
by misadventure ; the third, a nun, dies, one is
not told how, when, or where but she dies. This
is disappointing, because she promised to be a very
interesting character. Then the fourth, daughter
of No. 3, commits suicide, because, having run
away from her husband, and got tired of the other
man, the husband declines to have her back. The
42
fu N I
V;
V
;
OF LOVE, IN FICTION
fifth, a most uninteresting and weak-kneed indi-
vidual, is an artist, husband of No. 4, and he dies,
apparently to make himself disagreeable ; while
the sixth, the original cause of all the trouble, is
murdered by the innkeeper, who has been hunting
him, like a good Christian, for twenty years, deter-
mined to kill him when found, under the mistaken
impression that he eloped with, and disposed of,
his daughter, No. 2.
No one can deny that the author has dealt out
destruction with impartiality, and it is rather
strange, for Mr. Crawford often likes to use his
characters for two or even three books ; that is
why, I think, he got a little tired with these par-
ticular people, and determined to bury them. Out
of this lot he has kept only three for future vivi-
section and ultimate extinction.
I trust that, if you have not read the .book
already, you will be induced, by what I have told
you, to get " Casa Braccio," for you will find many
interesting human problems discussed in it, and
many others suggested for the consideration of the
reader. Here, for instance, is a text which may
well give you pause, " The widowhood of the un-
satisfied is hell, compared with the bereavement
of complete possession."
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
Now what do you say to that ? For I am sure
the somewhat bald, if not positively repellent, look
and sound of the words, will not deter you from
considering the truth or falseness of the statement.
I do not altogether like the theory ; and one may
even be permitted to differ from the conclusion con-
tained in the text. But the reason why this sen-
tence arrested my attention is because you quote,
" L 'absence ni le temps ne sont rien quand on aime,"
and later, you appeal to the East as a place of
broader views, of deeper feeling, of longer, wider
experience than the West. You appeal to the
East, and this is what a Persian poet says :
" All that is by nature twain,
Fears and suffers by the pain
Of separation Love is only perfect,
When itself transcends itself,
And one with that it loves
In Undivided Being blends."
Now, how do you reconcile the Western with the
Eastern statement, and will either support the "Casa
Braccio " theory ? You tell me that time and
absence count for nothing as between lovers ; the
Persian says that separation, under these circum-
stances, is the one calamity most to be dreaded,
and that love cannot be perfect without union.
44
OF LOVE, IN FICTION
The French writer evidently believed that "Absence
makes the heart grow fonder," while the Eastern,
without saying, "Out of sight, out of mind," clearly
thought that love in absence is a very poor sub-
stitute for the passion which sees, hears, and touches
the object of its adoration. Undoubtedly the Eastern
expressed the feeling, not only of his own country-
men, but of all other Orientals, and probably of
Western lovers as well ; but if the separation is a
matter of necessity, then the Western character, the
feeling of loyalty towards and faith in the object
of our love, helps us to the belief that " Partings
and tears and absence" none need fear, provided
the regard is mutual. It is a good creed, and the
only one to uphold, but we are not so blind that we
cannot see how often it fails to secure even fidelity ;
while who would deny the Persian's contention
that the bond cannot be perfect in absence ?
"The widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, com-
pared with the bereavement of complete possession."
No, certainly, it does not look well. It is hardly
worth while to inquire into the bereavement of a
complete possession that was not only satisfied
but satiated; therefore the comparison must be be-
tween perfect love realised, and love that is only not
perfected because unrealised. If that is so, then
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
the text appears to be false in theory, for, inas-
much as nothing earthly can be more perfect than
that realisation of mutual affection which the same
Persian describes as
" She and I no more,
But in one Undivided Being blended,"
so the severance of that union by death must be
the greatest of human ills.
tl The widowhood of the unsatisfied " admits of
so many special constructions, each of which would
accentuate the despair of the unsatisfied, that it
makes the consideration rather difficult, but, in any
case, the magnitude of the loss must be imagina-
tive. It is only, therefore, by supposing that no
realisation could be so perfect as to equal the ideal
of imagination, that the theory of the text could be
established. If that be granted, and it were also
admitted that the widowhood of this unsatisfied
imagination were as hell, compared with "the
bereavement of complete possession," that would
merely show that " complete possession " is worth
very little, and no one need grieve because their
longings after a purely imaginary heaven had been
widowed before being wedded to the hell of such a
disappointing possession.
46
OF LOVE, IN FICTION
In any case, I think one is forced to the conclu-
sion that the man (and one must assume it to be
a man, in spite of the word " widowhood ") who
should thus express his feelings would never agree
that " L'absence ni le temps ne sont rien quand on
aime; " that is, of course, supposing he has not got
beyond the protesting and unsatisfied stage. Once
arrived, he would doubtless subscribe to the phrase
with virtuous stolidity. Personally I think, as you
probably do, that these words of De Musset give
a most charming description of the best form of
that true friendship which time cannot weaken nor
absence change. For friends it is admirable, for
lovers, no.
I have not sought out this riddle for the purpose
of airing my own views, but to draw from you an
expression of yours. You say my letters are the
most tantalising in the world, as I never tell you
anything you want to know ; just leading up to
what most interests you, and then breaking off to
something else. If there is nothing in this letter
to interest you, at least I have kept to one subject,
and I have discussed it as though I were express-
ing a real opinion ! One can hardly do more than
that. You see, if I gave you no opportunity of
scolding me, you might never write !
47
VII
THE JINGLING COIN
YOU ask me the meaning of the jingling coin.
It was a tale I heard that impressed me, and
sometimes comes back with a strange fascination.
Did I never tell you ? Well, here it is.
I was in India, staying at a hill station, no
matter where. I met there a man who for years
had spent his holidays in the place, and, walking
with him one day up a narrow mountain-path to
the top of a hill, whence there was a magnifi-
cent view of the Himalayan snows, we passed a
small stone slab on which was cut a date. The
stone was at a spot where, from the path, was a
sheer fall of several hundreds of feet, and as we
passed it my companion said " Look at that. I
will tell you what it means when we get to the
top."
As we lay on the grass and feasted our eyes
upon the incomparable spectacle, before which
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earthly lives and troubles seemed so insignificant,
my companion told his tale. I now repeat it, as
nearly as I can remember, in his own words.
"If I tell you this story," he said, "you must
not ask me how I know the details, or seek for
any particulars beyond what I give you.
" During one of my many visits to this place, I
met a man whom I had seen before and heard a
good deal about, for he was one of those people
who concern themselves with no one's business
but their own, and, therefore, their affairs seem to
have a special attraction for the Philistine. He
knew that rumour was busy with his name, but
beyond the fact that he became more reserved than
nature had already made him, the gossip, which
was always founded on imagination, sometimes on
jealousy, and even malice, seemed to make no
impression whatever. That may have been the
result of a strong character, but partly, no doubt,
it was due to the fact that all his public life had
been lived under the fierce light of a criticism that
was, in a way, the measure of his success. His
friends (and he was fortunate in the possession of
particularly loyal friends of both sexes) realised
that if, even to them, this man showed little of his
real self, he sometimes writhed under calumnies of
49 D
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
which no one knew the authorship, and the exist-
ence of which only reached him rarely, through his
most intimate friends. For his own reasons he
kept his own counsel, and I doubt whether any
one knew as much of the real man as I did. A few
months before the time I speak of he had made
the acquaintance of a girl, or, perhaps I ought to
say, a woman, for she was married, who was, with
her mother, visiting India. When first the man
met this girl he was amazed, and, to some extent,
carried away by her extraordinary beauty. But
his work took him elsewhere, and, beyond that first
impression, which had so powerfully affected him,
there was neither time nor opportunity to ascertain
whether the lovely exterior was the casket to a
priceless jewel, or only the beautiful form harbour-
ing a mindless, soulless, disappointment. She had
heard of the man, and while unwilling to be pre-
judiced by gossip, she was on her guard, and
rather afraid of a cynicism which her quick intelli-
gence had noted at their first meeting. Otherwise
she was, womanlike and generous, curious to
see, and to judge for herself, what manner of man
this was, against whom more than one indiscreet
acquaintance had already warned her.
11 Some time elapsed, and then these two found
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THE JINGLING COIN
themselves staying in the same house. The man
realised the attractions of the woman's glorious
beauty, and he honestly determined that he would
neither think, nor look, nor utter any feeling beyond
that of ordinary friendship. This resolve he as
honestly kept, and, though accident threw in his
way every kind of opportunity, and he was con-
stantly alone with the girl, he made no attempt to
read her character, to seek her confidence, or to
obtain her friendship ; indeed, he charged himself
with having been somewhat neglectful in those
attentions which make the courtesy of man to
woman, and, when they parted, he questioned
whether any man had ever been so much in this
woman's society without saying a word that might
not have been shouted in the market-place. Some-
how the man had an intuitive feeling that gossip
had supplied the girl with a not too friendly sketch
of him, and he, for once, abandoned the cynicism
that, had he cared less, might have prompted him
to convey any impression of himself, so long as
it should not be the true one. To her this visit
said nothing beyond the fact that the man, as
she found him, was quite unlike his picture, as
painted by professed friends, and that the reality
interested her.
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
"The three Fateful Sisters, who weave the
destinies of men and women into such strange
tangles, threw these two across each other's paths,
until the man, at least, sought to aid Fortune,
in providing opportunities for meeting one whose
attractive personality appealed so greatly to his
artistic sense. Chance helped him, and, again
catching together the threads of these lives, Destiny
twisted them into a single strand. One brief day,
or less, is enough to make a bond that only death
can sever, and for this man and woman there were
days and days when, in spite of resistance, their
lives were gradually drawn so close together that
at last the rivets were as strong as they were
invisible.
"The triumphant beauty of the woman, rare and
disturbing though it was, would not alone have
overcome him, but, as the days went by, and they
were brought more and more into each other's
society, she gradually let him see the greater
beauty of her soul ; and small wonder if he found
the combined attractions irresistible. She was so
young that I have called her a girl, and yet she
had seen as much of life as many women twice her
age. Her beauty and charm of manner had brought
her hosts of admirers, but still she was completely
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unspoilt, and devoid of either coquetry or self-con-
sciousness. A lovely face, lighted by the winning
expression of an intelligent mind and a warm,
loving nature ; a graceful, willowy figure, whose
lissom movements showed a quite uncommon
strength and power of endurance ; these outward
attractions, united to quick discernment, absolute
honesty of speech and intention, a bright energy,
perfectly unaffected manners, and a courage of the
highest order, moral as well as physical, fascinated
a man, the business of whose life had been to
study his fellow-creatures. He felt certain that
he saw here
" ' La main qui ne trahit, la bouche qui ne ment.'
" His experience had given him a horror of
weakness in every form, and here, he realised,
was a woman who was only capable of great
thoughts and great deeds, obeying the dictates of
her own heart and mind, not the suggestions of
the weaker brethren. If she fell, it would be as
an angel might fall, through love of one of the
sons of men.
"Her shy reserve slowly gave way to confidence,
and, in the sympathy of closer friendship, she let
him see beauties of soul of which he would have
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
deemed it sacrilege to speak to another. What
drew her to him I cannot tell ; perhaps his pro-
found reverence for, and admiration of, her sex, his
complete understanding of herself, or perhaps some
quality of his own. I had not her confidence, so
cannot say ; but there were men who recognised
his fascination, due in part, no doubt, to his com-
pelling will. Perhaps she was simply carried away
by the man's overpowering love, which at last
declared itself. They realised the hopelessness of
the position, and yet they both took comfort from
their mutual love and trust in each other's unchang-
ing faith. That was all they had to look forward
to, that and Fate.
"With that poor prospect before them he gave
her, on a day, a gold coin, ' for luck,' he said an
ancient Indian coin of some forgotten dynasty, and
she hung it on a bangle and said laughingly, that
if ever she were likely to forget him the jingle of
the coin would be a ceaseless reminder of the giver.
And so the thing lived there day and night, and,
when she moved, it made little musical sounds,
singing its story to her willing ears, as it struck
against the bangle from which it hung.
"Then they came here, he to his work, she to
see the snows and some friends, before leaving
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THE JINGLING COIN
India for Japan, or California, or some other stage
of the voyage which brings no rest to the troubled
soul. One day they had ridden up here, and were
returning down the hill. It was afternoon, and
she was riding in front, he behind, the syces
following. The path is narrow, as you saw,
and very steep. She dropped something, stopped,
and called a syce to pick it up. Her horse was
impatient, got his head round, and, as the syce
approached, backed over the edge of the road.
The thing was done in an instant, the horse was
over the side, down on his belly, terror-struck and
struggling in the loose earth. The man had only
time to shout, ' Get off ! get off ! ' but she could
not get off, the horse had fallen on his off side,
and, as the man threw himself on the road, her
horse rolled slowly right over her, with a horrible
crunching noise, then faster, over her again, and
then horse and rider disappeared, and, crashing
through the undergrowth, banging against great
granite boulders, fell with a horrible thud, far down
the height.
"He had never seen her face ; she had her
back towards him, and she never uttered a
sound.
" The road makes a long detour, and then comes
55
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
back, several hundred feet lower down, to a spot
almost directly underneath the point where the
accident happened. A little way in from there
the man saw the horse lying perfectly still, with
its neck broken. Higher up the bank he found
the woman, moaning a little, but quite unconscious,
crushed and torn, you have seen the place and
you can guess. She only lived a few minutes.
" When at last the man awoke out of his stupor,
to lift her up and carry her down to the path, he
noticed that the bangle and the coin had both
gone, wrenched off in that wild plunge through
trees and stones into eternity or oblivion.
"The man waited there, while one of the syces
went for help and a litter, and it was only after
they had carried her home that I saw him. I
could hardly recognise him. There were times
when I had thought him the saddest-looking man I
had ever seen, but this was different. There was
a grey, drawn setness on his face, and something
in his eyes I did not care to look at. He and I
were living in the same house, and in the evening
he told me briefly what had happened, and several
times, both while he spoke and afterwards, I saw
him throw up his head and listen intently. I
asked him what it was, and he said, ' Nothing, I
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THE JINGLING COIN
thought I heard something.' Later, he started
suddenly, and said
" ' Did you hear that ? '
" < Hear what ? ' I asked.
" ' A faint jingling noise,' he replied. ' You must
have heard it ; did you do it ? '
" But I had heard nothing, and I said so.
" He got up and looked about to see if any one
was moving, and then came back and sat down
again. I tried to make him go to bed, but he
would not, and I left him there at last.
"They buried her the next evening, and all the
English in the station were there. The man and
I stood on the outskirts of the people, and we
lingered till they had gone, and then watched the
grave-diggers finish the filling of the grave, put
on the sods, and finally leave the place. As they
built up the earth, and shaped it into the form of
a roof to cover that narrow dwelling, the man
winced under every blow of the spades, as though
he were receiving them on his own body. There
was nothing to say, and we said nothing, but more
than once I noticed the man in that listening atti-
tude, and I began to be alarmed about him. I got
him home, and except for that look, which had
not left his face, and the intentness with which I
57
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
sometimes caught him listening, there was nothing
strange in his manner ; only he hardly spoke at all.
On subsequent evenings for the next fortnight he
talked more than usual about himself, and as I
knew that he often spent a good deal of time in,
or looking on to, the cemetery, I was not surprised
to hear him say that he thought it a particularly
attractive graveyard, and one where it would be
pleasant to lie, if one had to be put away some-
where. It is on the hill, you know, by the church,
and one can see the eternal snows across that blue
valley which divides us from the highlands of
Sikkim. He was insistent, and made me remark
that, as far as he was concerned, there could be
no better place to lie than in this God's Acre.
tl Once or twice, again, he asked me if I did not
hear a jingle, and constantly, especially in the quiet
of evening, I saw him start and listen, till some-
times I really began to think I heard the noise he
described.
" A few evenings later, but less than a month
after the accident, I went to bed, leaving him
cleaning a revolver which he thought a deal of,
and certainly he could shoot very straight with it.
I was sitting half-undressed, when I heard a loud
report, and you may imagine the feelings with
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THE JINGLING COIN
which I ran to the room where I had left him.
He was sitting at the table, with his left hand
raised, as though to reach his heart, and his right
straight down by his side, the revolver on the floor
beneath it. He was dead, shot through the heart ;
but his head was slightly thrown back, his eyes
wide open, and in them that look of listening
expectancy I had seen so often of late. At the
corners of his mouth there seemed to be the
shadow of the faintest smile.
" At the inquest I explained that I left him
cleaning the pistol, and that, as it had a hair-
trigger, no doubt it had gone off by misadventure.
When each of the jurors had, in turn, raised the
hammer, and found it was hardly necessary to
touch the trigger in order to fire the weapon,
they unanimously returned a verdict of ' accidental
death.' "
" It is curious," concluded my companion, *' but
I sometimes think / hear the jingle of that coin,
especially if I am alone on this hill, or sitting by
myself at night in the house where that sad acci-
dent happened." He put a slight stress on the
word " accident," that was not lost on me.
As we passed the stone, on our way down the
hill, I seemed to see that horse blunder backwards
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
over the edge of the path, to hear the slow,
crunching roll, and then the crash and ghastly
thud, far down below ; and, as an involuntary
shudder crept slowly down my back, I thought /
heard the faint jingle of that ill-omened piece of
gold.
60
VIII
A STRANGE SUNSET
YOU will think I am eternally babbling of
sunsets, but no one, with a spark of feeling,
could be here and not be moved to the depths of
his nature by the matchless, the ever-changing
beauty of the wonderful pictures that are so con-
stantly before his eyes. People who are utterly
commonplace, whose instincts seem, in some re-
spects, to approach those of the beasts, when they
come here are amazed into new sensations, and,
in unaccustomed words, voice the expression of
their admiration. If I weary you, pardon me, and
remember that you are the only victim of my
exaltation.
One looks for a sunset in the west, does one
not ? and that is the direction in which to find it
here as elsewhere ; but to-night the marvellous
effects of the setting sun were, for a time, con-
fined almost entirely to the east, or, to be strictly
61
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
accurate, rather to the south of east. Facing that
direction one looks across a remarkable ridge,
entirely covered by giant forest trees. The ridge
dips in a sort of crescent from about 4500 feet in
height at one extremity to 3000 feet at the other,
and extends for a distance of perhaps two miles
between the horns. Beyond and below the ridge
lies a great, fertile valley, watered by a stately
river, along the opposite bank of which runs a
range of hills, varying in height from 2000 to
3000 feet. Behind these hills there is another
valley, another range, and then a succession of
ever-loftier mountains, forming the main chain.
The sun had disappeared behind a thick bank
of grey clouds, . and the only evidence of his pre-
sence was in the lambent edges of these clouds,
which here and there glittered like molten metal.
The western sky was, except for this bank, extra-
ordinarily clear and cloudless, of a pale translucent
blue, flecked here and there by tiny cloud-boats,
airy and delicate, moving very slowly across the
empyrean. I noticed this because what I saw in
the east was so remarkable that I noted every
detail.
Against a background the colour of a hedge-
sparrow's egg in the south, and blue without the
62
A STRANGE SUNSET
green in the east, stood one white cloud, like a
huge plume, with its base resting on the many
ranges across the river, while it seemed to lean
towards me, the top of the plume being almost
over my head. At first the plume shone, from
base to top, with a golden effulgence ; but this
gradually gave place to that lovely tint which I
can only describe as rose dore'e, the warm colour
momentarily intensifying in tone until it suffused
the entire cloud with such a roseate blush that
all the hills beneath, and all the fast-darkening
plain, blushed in response.
For twenty minutes that glowing plume of
softly rounded, feathery cloud stood framed against
its wondrous blue-green background, the rosy
colour of the cloud deepening as the land beneath
it gathered blackness. Then, almost impercep-
tibly, the glow flickered and died, leaving only
an immense grey-white cloud hanging over the
night-shrouded plain.
The sun, I knew, had long sunk beneath the
horizon. Though I could see nothing behind that
thick curtain of cloud, I waited, for the after-glow,
seen from this height, is often more wonderful
than the actual sunset. Five minutes of dull
greyness, and then the whole western sky, for
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
a space above the horizon, was overspread with
pale gold, while countless shafts of brighter light
radiated, as from the hub of the Sun-God's chariot-
wheel, across the gilded space, into the blue
heights above. In the midst of this pale golden
sheen there appeared, almost due west, and low
down in the sky, a silver crescent, fine as a
thread, curved upwards like the lip of a cup of
which bowl and stem were invisible. It was the
new-born moon.
Gradually all sunlight failed, and close above
the long, narrow bank of dark clouds, clearly
etched against their grey background, hung a now
golden crescent, into which seemed to be falling a
solitary star of surpassing brilliance.
To stand alone here in the presence of Nature,
to witness the marvels of sunrise or sunset, the
strange influence of nights of ravishing moonlight
and days of quickening heat, impresses one with
the conviction that if Oriental language is couched
in terms that sound extravagant to Western ears,
the reason is not far to seek. Nature revels
here ; one can really see things grow, where the
sun shines every day as it never shines in lands
of cold and fog. Natural phenomena are on a
grander scale ; the lightning is more vivid, the
6 4
A STRANGE SUNSET
thunder more deafening, the rain a deluge against
which the feeble artifices of man offer no pro-
tection. The moonlight is brighter, the shadows
deeper, the darkness blacker than in northern
climes. So the vegetation covers the earth, climbs
on to the rocks, and disputes possession even with
the waters of the sea. The blossoms are as
brilliant in colour as they are profuse in quantity,
and two men will stagger under the weight of a
single fruit. As for thorns, they are long as nails,
stiff as steel, and sharp as needles. The beasts
of the forest are mighty, the birds of the air are
of wonderful plumage, the denizens of the deep
are many, and huge, and strange. In the lower
forms of life it is just the same ; the lizards, the
beetles, the ants, the moths and butterflies, the
frogs and the snakes, they are great in size and
legion in number. Even the insects, however
small, are in myriads.
Only man stagnates, propagates feebly, loses
arts, falls a prey to pestilence, to new diseases, to
imported vices, dies, while every creature and
every plant around him is struggling in the cease-
less renewal of life. Man dies, possibly because
exultant nature leaves him so little to do to sup-
port his own existence ; but it is not strange that,
6 > E
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
when he goes beyond the ordinary avocations of
daily life, and takes himself at all seriously, his
language should partake somewhat of the colour
of his surroundings. Nor, perhaps, is it altogether
surprising that, living with the tiger and the croco-
dile, the cobra and the stinging-ray, the scorpion
and the centipede, he should have acquired some
of their bloodthirstiness and venom, rather than
have sought an example in the gentleness of the
dove, a bird much fancied by Eastern peoples for
the sweetness of its note and the excellence of
its fighting qualities.
I suppose it is the appalling difficulties of
making a passage through the jungle that have
given the elephant and rhinoceros their strength
and courage ; but for the people, who are never
really cold, and seldom hungry, there is little
inducement to exertion. They can lie under the
fruit trees, and idly watch the grey, gossamer-
winged butterflies floating dreamily across a sunlit
glade ; they drowse and sleep to the music of the
waters, as the whispering river slips gently towards
a summer sea.
And it is all so comfortable. There is Death,
but that is predestined, the one thing certain in
so much that is too hard for the finite mind.
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A STRANGE SUNSET
There is also Hell, but of all those who speak so
glibly of it, none ever believes that the same
Power which created him, to live for a moment
in trouble on the earth, will condemn him to an
eternity of awful punishment. It is Paradise for
which each man, in his own mind, is destined ; a
Paradise where he will be rewarded for all his
earthly disappointments by some such pleasant
material advantages as he can picture to himself,
while he lies on the river bank and gradually
sinks into a delightful slumber, lulled by the rest-
ful rippling of the passing stream. And he will
dream dream of that Celestial Being of whom
it is related that " his face shone golden, like
that of a god, so that many lizards fell, dazzled,
from the walls, and the cockroaches in the thatch
fought to bask in the light of his countenance."
Oriental imagery, but a quaintly pretty idea,
the creatures struggling to sit in the light shed by
that radiant face.
IX
OF LETTER- WRITING
SO you prefer the unaddressed letters, such
as you have seen, to those which you receive
from me in a cover, whereon are duly inscribed
your name, style, and titles, and you ask me
whether some of the letters are not really written
to you. They are written to " Mary, in heaven,"
or to you, if you please, or to any one to whom
they appeal. The reason why you prefer them to
the epistles I address to you is because they are
unconstrained (too much so, you might think, if
you saw them all), while, in writing to you, I am
under constraint, and, directly I feel it, I have to
be careful what I say, and beat about for some
safe subject ; and, as I abhor gossip and cannot
write about my neighbour's cat, I become unnatural,
stilted, stupid, boring. With Mary it is different,
for she is in heaven, where there are no marriages,
and, therefore, I imagine, no husbands. As for
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OF LETTER-WRITING
lovers, I do not mind them, for they have no
special privileges ; at any rate, they have no right
to interfere with me. The idea that what I write
for your eye may be read by some one for whom
it was not intended, hampers the pen and takes
away more than half the pleasure of writing.
If you answer, " You ought not to want to write
anything to me that may not be read by the
master over my shoulder, or by the maid in the
kitchen," I say that I do not wish to interfere
with the circulation of the Family Herald; and, for
the rest, when you honour me with a letter, is it
to be shown to any one who wishes to know what
a really charming and interesting letter is like ?
I am blessed with some really delightful correspon-
dents, of whom I would say you are the chief,
did I not fear to offend some others ; but I cannot
help noticing, sometimes with amusement and some-
times with painful regret, that the character of their
letters has a way of changing that, between first
and last, may be compared to looking at the land-
scape through one end of a telescope and then
through the other. When I see the field of vision
narrowing to something like vanishing-point, until,
in fact, the features of interest are no longer visible,
I feel that I too must put on a minifying-glass,
69
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
before I attempt to describe to you ray surround-
ings, my thoughts, my hopes and fears. Worst
of all, I can no longer ask you freely how life is
treating you ; for if I do, I get no answer, or you
tell me that the winter has been one of unexampled
severity, or the political party in power seems to
be losing ground and missing its opportunities.
Individuals and parties have been losing oppor-
tunities since the days when Joseph lost his coat ;
always regretting them and always doing it again,
because every party and every individual scorns to
profit by the experience of another. That, you will
tell me, is a platitude beneath a child's notice. I
agree with you, and I only mention it in support of
my contention that it is better to write what you
see, or hear, or imagine, or believe, to no one at
all, than to write " delicately," with the knowledge
that there is a possible Samuel waiting somewhere
about, if not to hew you in pieces, to put incon-
venient questions to your friends, and give them
the trouble of making explanations which are none
the less aggravating because they are needless.
As a man, I may say that the effort to avoid
writing to women everything that can, by a sus-
picious mind, be twisted into something mildly
compromising, is more than I am capable of. The
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OF LETTER-WRITING
thought that one may innocently get a friend into
trouble is not amusing, so pray dismiss from your
mind the idea that any of these letters are written
to you. They are not ; and if they ever recall
scenes, or suggest situations that seem familiar,
that is merely an accident. Pure, undiluted fable
is, I fancy, very rare indeed ; but travellers are
supposed to be responsible for the most of it, and
I am a traveller. On the other hand, almost all
fiction is founded on fact, but you know how small
a divergence from the latter is sufficient to make the
former. If my fiction looks like fact, I am grati-
fied ; if, at the same time, it has awakened your
interest (and you say it has), that is more than I
ever hoped to achieve. A wanderer's life in often
beautiful, sometimes strange, surroundings ; a near
insight into the fortunes of men and women of
widely differing race, colour, and creed ; and the
difficulty of writing freely and fearlessly to those
who, like yourself, would give me their sympathy and
kindly interest these are mainly responsible for
the Letters. As to the other contributing causes,
it will amuse you more to exercise your imagina-
tion in lively speculations than to hear the dull
truth from me. Besides, if I told you the truth it
would only mislead, for you would not believe it.
X
AT A FUNERAL
DO you remember how Matthew Arnold, in his
Essay on ll Pagan and Mediaeval Religious
Sentiment," translates a scene from the fifteenth
Idyll of Theocritus, giving the experiences of two
Syracusan visitors at the feast of Adonis at Alex-
andria, about three hundred years before the Chris-
tian era? The description is wonderfully fresh
and realistic, and it came back to me with strange
insistence last night when my host detailed to me
his experiences at a Malay funeral. I fear the
effect will all be lost when I try to repeat what I
heard but you are indulgent, and you will pardon
my clumsy periods for the sake of my desire to
interest you. My only chance of conveying any
idea of the impression made on me is to assume
the role of narrator at first hand, and to try, as
far as I may, to speak in my host's words.
" I was travelling," he said, " and on the point
72
AT A FUNERAL
of starting for a place where lived a Malay raja
who was a great friend of mine, when I heard
accidentally that his son had just died. That
evening I reached the station where my friend
lived. I saw him, and learned that his son, a
mere lad, would be buried the next day. It is
needless to say why he died, it is not a pretty
tale. He had visited, perhaps eighteen months
earlier, a British possession where the screams of
Exeter Hall had drowned the curses of the people
of the land, and this wretched boy returned to
his country to suffer eighteen months of torture,
agonising, loathsome corruption, in comparison
with which death on the cross would be a joyous
festival. That is nothing, he was dead ; and,
while his and many another life cry to deaf ears,
the momentary concern of his family and his
friends was to bury him decently. My arrival was
regarded as a fortuitous circumstance, and I was
bidden to take part in the function.
11 It was early afternoon when I found myself,
with the father, standing at the window of a long
room, full of women, watching till the body should
be carried to a great catafalque that stood at the
door to receive it. As we waited there, the man
beside me, a man of unusually tender feeling,
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showed no emotion. He simply said, ' I am not
sorry ; it is better to die than to live like that ; he
has peace at last.'
" There was a sound of heavy feet staggering
over the grass under the weight of a great load,
and the coffin was borne past our window towards
the door. As we walked down the room a multi-
tude of women and children pressed after us, and
while a crowd of men lifted the body into its place
on the catafalque, a girl close by us burst into a
perfect passion of weeping, intermingled with de-
spairing cries, and expressions of affection for
the dead, whom she would never see again. The
raja pulled me by the sleeve, saying, ' Come out-
side, I cannot bear this,' and I saw the tears were
slowly coursing down his face as we passed the
heart-broken child, who, in the abandonment of
her grief, had thrown herself into the arms of
another girl, and was weeping hysterically on
her breast. The mourner was the dead boy's only
sister.
" Meanwhile, the coffin had been placed on the
huge wooden bier, and this was now being raised
on the shoulders of a hundred men, with at least
another hundred crowded round to take turns in
carrying it to the place of burial. At this moment
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the procession moved off, and anything more unlike
a funeral, as you and I know it, would be hard to
imagine. A band of musicians, Spanish mestizos,
in military uniforms, headed the cortege, playing a
wild Spanish lament, that seemed to sob and wail
and proclaim, by every trick of sound, the passing
of the dead. Immediately behind them followed
a company of stalwart Indian soldiers with arms
reversed. Then a posse of priests and holy men
chanting prayers. Next we came, and behind us
a row of boys carrying their dead master's clothes,
a very pathetic spectacle. After them the great
bier, vast in size, curious in form, and gay with
colour, but so unwieldy that it seemed to take
its own direction and make straight for the
place of burial, regardless of roads and ditches,
shrubs and flowers, or the shouts and cries of
its bearers and those who were attempting to
direct their steps. Last of all, a crowd of men
and boys, friends, retainers, chiefs, sightseers,
idlers, gossips and beggars, a very heterogeneous
throng.
11 The road to the burial-ground wound down
one hill and up another, and the band, the escort,
the priests, and the mourners followed it. But the
catafalque pursued its own devious course in its
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own blundering fashion, and, by-and-by, was set
down on a high bluff, o'erlooking a great shining
river, with palm-clad banks, backed by a space of
level ground shut in by lofty blue hills. The coffin
was then lifted from out the bier and placed upon
the ground.
" I stood by the ready-dug grave and waited ;
while the father of the dead boy moved away a
few yards, and an aged chief called out, ' Now, all
you praying people, come and pray.'
" The raja, the priests, and the holy men
gathered round the body, and after several had
been invited to take up the word and modestly
declined in favour of some better qualified speaker,
a voice began to intone, while, from time to time,
the rest of the company said ' Amin.'
"Just then it began to rain a little, and those
who had no umbrellas ran for protection to the
catafalque and sheltered themselves under its over-
hanging eaves, while a lively interchange of badi-
nage passed between those who, for the moment,
had nothing to do. This was the sort of conversa-
tion that reached my ears.
" ' Now, then, all you people, come and pray.'
" ' Why don't you pray yourself ? '
lt ' We did all our praying yesterday ; I don't
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believe you have done any. Now is the time,
with all these holy men here.'
" ' I dare say ; but you don't suppose I'm going
out into the rain to pray : I'm not a priest.'
" ' No one thought you were ; but that is no
reason why you should not pray.'
" ' Never mind about me, tell these other people ;
but you need not bother now, for they've got it
over.'
"And all the time the monotonous voice of
the priest muttered the guttural Arabic words, as
though these frivolous talkers were a mile off,
instead of within a few feet of him and those who
stood round the coffin.
" No one could have helped being struck by the
curious incongruity of the scene at that moment.
I stood in a place of graves, with an open sepulchre
at my feet. The stage was one of extraordinary
beauty, the players singularly picturesque. That
high bluff, above the glistening river, circled by
forest-clad hills of varying height, one needle-like
point rising to at least 6000 feet. Many old
graves lay beneath the shadow of graceful, wide-
spreading trees, which carried a perfect blaze of
crimson blossoms, lying in huge masses over dark
green leaves, as though spread there for effect.
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Groups of brown men, clad in garments of bright
but harmoniously toned colours, stood all about
the hill. On the very edge of the bluff, towards
the river, was the gaily caparisoned, quaintly con-
structed catafalque; a number of men and boys
sitting in it and round its edge, smoking, laughing,
and talking. Within a dozen feet of them, the
closely packed crowd of priests and holy men pray-
ing round the coffin. The band and the guard
had been told to march off, and they were wending
their way round a hillside in middle distance ;
while the strains of a quick step, the monotone of
rapidly uttered prayer, the conversation and laughter
of the idlers, crossed and re-crossed each other in
a manner that to me was distinctly bizarre. Seen
against that background and lighted by the fiery
rays of a dying Eastern sun, the scarlet uniforms
of the bandsmen, the dark blue of the escort, the
long white coats of the priests, and the many-
coloured garments of the two or three hundred
spectators scattered about the graves, completed a
picture not easily forgotten.
"Just then a move was made to the sepulchre,
and two ropes were stretched across it, while some
men began to lift the coffin.
" ' What are you doing ? ' said the uncle of the
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dead boy. ' If you put him in like that how will
his head lie ? '
"The bearers immediately let the coffin down,
and another man in authority said, ' Well, after
all, how should his head lie ? '
" ' Towards the west/ said the uncle.
" ' No, it should not/ replied the other ; ' it
should be to the north, and then he looks towards
the west.'
"Several people here joined in the argument,
and it was eventually decided that the head must
be towards the north ; and then, as the body was
lying on its right side, the face would look towards
Mecca.
" ' Well, who knows at which end of the box
his head is ? '
"Various guesses were hazarded, but the uncle
said that would never do, and he would see for
himself. So the wreaths and garlands of ' blue
chempaka/ the flower of death, the gorgeous silks
and cloths of gold, were all thrown off, the heavy
cover was lifted up, and the uncle began to feel
about in the white grave-clothes for the head of
the corpse.
" ' Ha ! here it is/ he said ; ' if we had put him
in without looking, it would have been all wrong,
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and we should have had a nice job to get him out
again.'
" ' Well, you know all about it now/ said a
bystander, ' so we may as well get on.'
"The cover was accordingly replaced, the box
turned with the head to the north, and then, with
a deal of talk and superabundance of advice, from
near and from far, the poor body was at last
lowered into the grave. Once there the corpse
lies on the earth, for the coffin has no bottom.
The reason is obvious.
" You have probably never been to a funeral,
and if so, you do not know the horrible sound of
the first spadesful of earth as they fall, with dull
blows, on that which is past feeling and resistance.
The friends who stand round the grave shudder
as each clod strikes the wood under which lies
their beloved dead. Here it was different, for
two men got into the grave and held up a grass
mat, against which the earth was shovelled while
the coffin was protected. There was hardly any
sound, and, as the earth accumulated, the men
spread it with their hands to right and left, and
finally over the top of the coffin, and then the
rest of the work was done rapidly and quietly.
When filled in, two wooden pegs, each covered
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with a piece of new white cloth, were placed at
the head and foot of the grave. These are even-
tually replaced by stones.
"Then, as the officers of the raja's household
began to distribute funeral gifts amongst the
priests, the holy men, and the poor, my friend
and I slowly retraced our steps, and, with much
quiet dignity, the father thanked me for joining
him in performing the last offices to his dead son.
" ' His sufferings were unbearable/ he said ;
' they are over now, and why should I regret ? '
" Truly death was best, I could not gainsay it ;
but that young life, so horribly and prematurely
ended, seemed to have fallen into the snare of a
civilisation that cannot be wholly appreciated by
primitive people. They do not understand why
the burning moral principles of a section of an
alien race should be applied to communities that
have no sympathy with the principles, or their
application to different conditions of society."
Si
XI
OF CHANGE AND DECAY
THERE is a subject which has an abiding
interest for all men and women who are
not too old to love ; it is Constancy. I suppose
there are few questions on which any half-dozen
intelligent people will express such different
opinions, and it is doubtful whether any of the
six (unless there be amongst them one who is
very young and inexperienced) will divulge his,
or her, true thoughts thereanent. Almost all
women, and most men, seem to think they are
morally bound to declare themselves to be very
mirrors of constancy, and each is prepared to
shower scorn and indignation on the erring mortal
convicted of change of feeling. The only feeling
I here refer to is the declared love of man for
woman, of woman for man.
The other day a friend, writing to me, said,
with admirable candour, " Do not think my heart
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is so small that it can only contain love for one
man," and I know that she means one man at a
time. The maze surrounding this suggestion is
attractive ; let us wander in it for awhile, and if
we become bewildered in its devious turns, if we
lose ourselves in the intricacies of vague phrases,
we may yet win our way back to reason by the
road of hard, practical fact.
In the spring of life, when the fancies of the
young man and the girl " lightly turn to thoughts
of love/' I suppose the average lover honestly
believes in the doctrine of eternal constancy, for
himself and the object of his affections, and words
will almost fail him and her to describe their con-
tempt for the frail creature who has admitted a
change of mind ; worse still, if the change includes
a confession of love for a new object. Coquette,
jilt, faithless deceiver, breaker of hearts, ruthless
destroyer of peace of mind, words of opprobrium
are not sufficient in quantity, or poisonous enough
in quality, to satisfy those from whose lips they
flow with the violence and destructive force of a
river in flood.
Now, suppose this heaven-mated couple pro-
ceeds to extremities that is, to marriage. And
suppose that, after quite a short time, so short
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that no false note has ever been heard to mar
the perfect harmony of their duet of mutual praise
and rapture, one of them dies, or goes mad, or
gets lost, or is put into prison for a long term of
years ; will not the other find a new affinity ? It
happens so often that I think it must be admitted
as a very likely possibility. When convention
permits of an outward and visible application, and
plaster is put over the wound, most of the very
virtuous say, " and an excellent thing, too."
There, then, we arrive at once at the possibility
of change ; the possibility of A, who once swore
deathless love and fealty to B, swearing the same
deathless love and fealty to X. It happens, and
it has high approval.
Now go a little step further, and suppose that
the excellent couple of whom I first spoke per-
petrate matrimony, and neither of them dies, or
goes mad, or gets into prison. Only, after a
longer or shorter time, they become utterly bored
with each other ; or one finds the other out ; or,
what is most common, one, and that one usually
the woman, for divers reasons, comes to loathe
the married state, all it implies and all it exacts.
Just then Satan supplies another and a quite
different man, who falls naturally into his place
8 4
OF CHANGE AND DECAY
in the situation, and the play runs merrily along.
B's deathless love and fealty for A are thrown
out of the window, and what remains is pledged,
up to the very hilt, to that spawn of the Evil One,
the wrecker of happy homes, Z. It can hardly be
denied that this also happens.
I come, then, to the case of the affianced but
unmarried lovers, where one, or both, perceives in
time that the other is not quite all that fancy
painted ; realises that there is a lover, " for
showy," and a disagreeable companion and master
" for blowy " : a helpful daughter, a charming
sweetheart one day, and a very selfish, not to
say grasping, spit-fire on another. Or, across
the distant horizon, there sails into the quiet
waters of this love-locked sea a privateer, with
attractions not possessed by the ordinary merchant
vessel, .and, when the privateer spreads its sails
again, it carries with it a willing prize, leaving
behind a possibly better-found and more sea-
worthy craft to indulge its wooden frame with a
burst of impotent fury and despair. B's death-
less love has been transplanted to a more con-
genial soil, and, after a space, A will find another
and a better helpmate, and both will be satisfied,
for a time.
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If one may love, and marry, and lose, and love
again ; if one may love, and promise to marry,
but, seeing the promise means disaster, withdraw
it, to love elsewhere ; if one may love and the
love be choked to death, or frozen to entire
absence of feeling, and then revive under the
warmth of new sympathy to live and feel again
if all these things may be, and those to whom
the experience comes are held to be no more
criminal than their fellows, surely there may be
love, real love, honestly given with both hands,
as honestly clasped and held, and yet and yet
a time may come when, for one of a thousand
reasons, or for two or three, that love will wane
and wane until, from illumining the whole firma-
ment of those within its radiance, it disappears
and leaves nothing but black, moonless night.
But, by-and-by, a new moon of love may rise,
may wax to equal splendour, making as glorious
as before everything on which it shines ; and the
heart, forgetting none of the past, rejoices again
in the present, and says, " Life is good ; let me
live it as it comes." If that be possible, the
alternate day and night of love and loss may
succeed each other more than twice or thrice, and
yet no charge, even of fickleness, may fairly lie
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at the door of him or her to whom this fate may
come unsought
To love, as some can love, and be loved as well
in return ; to trust in the unswerving faith, the
unassailable loyalty, the unbounded devotion of
another, as one trusts in God, in the simple laws
of nature, in anything that is absolutely certain ;
and then to find that our deity has feet of clay,
that our perfect gem has, after all, a flaw, is a very
bad experience. Worse than all, to lose, absolutely
and for ever, and yet without death, a love that
seemed more firmly rooted and grounded in us
than any sacred principle, more surely ours than
any possession secured by bolt and bar that is a
pain that passeth the understanding of those who
have not felt it. Add to this the knowledge that
this curse has come upon us as the result of our
own work folly, blind, senseless, reckless confi-
dence, or worse that is the very acme of human
suffering. It is not a thing to dwell upon. On the
grave of a love that has surpassed, in the perfection
of its reality, all the dreams of imagination, and
every ideal conjured out of depths of passionate
romance, grow weeds which poison the air and
madden the brain with grisly spectres. It is well
to " let the dead bury their dead " if we only can.
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There, I am at the end ; or is it only the close
of a chapter ? I suppose it must be the latter, for
I have but now come to my friend's proposition,
namely, that of love distributed amongst a number
of objects ; all perhaps different, yet all in their
way, let us hope, equally worthy. I know how
she explains it. She says she loves one man
because he appeals to her in one way, another in
another ; and as there are many means of approach
to her heart, so there are many who, by one road
or another, find their way to it. After all, she is
probably more candid than singular in the distri-
bution of her affection. How many worldlings who
have reached the age of thirty can say that they
have not had a varied experience in the elasticity of
their affections, in the variety of shrines at which
they have worshipped ? Aphrodite and Athene
and Artemis for the men ; Phoebus and Ares and
Hermes for the women ; and a host of minor
deities for either. Minor chords, delicate harmo-
nies, charming pages of melody between the tragic
scenes, the carefully scored numbers, the studied
effects, which introduce the distinguishing motifs
of the leading characters, in that strange con-
ception wherein is written all the music of their
lives.
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OF CHANGE AND DECAY
We are told that the sons of God took unto
themselves wives from the daughters of men. Do
you believe they left no wives, no broken faith, in
heaven, before they came to earth to seek what
they could not find above the spheres ? What
form of marriage ceremony do you suppose they
went through with those daughters of men ? Was
it binding until death, and did that last trifling
incident only open the door to an eternity of
wedded bliss in the heaven from which earthly
love had been able to seduce these sons of God ?
I fear there is proof of inconstancy somewhere.
There is clear evidence of a desire for change, and
that is usually taken to be a synonym for incon-
stancy, as between the sexes. The daughters of
men have something to answer for, much to be
proud of; but I hardly see why either they, or
their menkind, who never drew any loving souls
down from the safe heights of heaven to be wives
to them, should be expected to make a choice of a
partner early in life and never waver in devotion
to that one, until death has put them beyond the
possibility of temptation. It does happen some-
times ; it is beautiful, enviable, and worthy of all
praise. But when the heart of man or woman,
following that most universal law of nature, change,
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goes through the whole gamut of feeling, from
indifference to passionate love, and later retraces its
steps, going back over only a few of them, or to a
place, beyond indifference, where dislike is reached,
there seems no good reason why that disappointed,
disillusioned soul should be made the object of
reproach, or the mark for stones, cast by others
who have already gone through the same experience
or have yet to learn it.
If we claim immortality, I think we must admit
our mutability. Perhaps the fault is not all ours.
It is written :
" Alas for those who, having tasted once
Of that forbidden vintage of the lips
That, press'd and pressing, from each other draw
The draught that so intoxicates them both,
That, while upon the wings of Day and Night
Time rustles on, and Moons do wax and wane,
As from the very Well of Life they drink,
And, drinking, fancy they shall never drain.
But rolling Heaven from His ambush whispers,
So in my licence is it not set down :
Ah for the sweet societies I make
At Morning, and before the Nightfall break ;
Ah for the bliss that coming Night fills up,
And Morn looks in to find an empty Cup ! "
I do not seek to persuade you ; it is a subject
we often discuss, on which we never agree. I
only state the facts as I know them, and I am
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for the truth ! even though I wish it were not
true rather than for a well-sounding pretence,
which usually covers a lie. I have believed ; I
have seen what, with my life, I would have main-
tained was perfect, changeless love ; and I have
seen that love bestowed, in apparently equal
measure, on another ; while, sometimes, the first
affection has died utterly, or, at others, it has
never died at all, and the wavering heart, divided
in allegiance, has suffered agonies of remorse,
and at last begged one object of its devotion to
shun it for ever, and so help it " to be true to
some one."
There you find a result almost the same as that
so candidly confessed by my friend ; but the phases
through which either will pass to arrive at it are
utterly different. Fate and circumstances, the
prolonged absence of the lover, misunderstandings,
silence, and the ceaseless, wearing efforts of another
to take the place of the absent the absent, who
is always wrong ; these things will loosen the
tightest bond, when once the enemy at the gate has
established a feeling of sympathy between him-
self and the beleaguered city. If at last there is
a capitulation, it is only when the besieged is au
bout de ressources; only made in extreme distress,
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
only perhaps under a belief of abandonment by
one on whom the city relied for assistance in its
dire need.
My candid friend has no regrets, passes through
no phases of feeling, sees no harm, means none,
and for herself is probably safe. Only her heart
is large and warm ; she desires sympathy, in-
tellectual companionship, amusement, passionate
adoration. She gets these things, but not all
from the same man, and she is prepared to give
love in return for each, but it is love with a wise
reservation. Sometimes she cannot understand
why the objects of her catholic affections are not
equally satisfied with the arrangement, and she
thinks their discontent is unreasonable. She will
learn. Possibly, as she acquires knowledge, she
may change. Nothing is more certain than that
there is, if not always, very very often, the widest
difference in the world between the girl of twenty
and the woman of thirty. It is a development,
an evolution, often a startling one, and if
men more often realised what is likely to come,
waited for it, and understood it when it arrived,
there would be a deal less unhappiness in the
world.
That, however, is another question, about which
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I should like to talk to you on another day, for it
has interest.
Of love, and change in the object of love, I think
you will not deny the possibility. If you have
never known such change, you are the exception, and
out of your strength you can afford to deal gently
with those weaker vessels whose feelings have gone
through several experiences. But has your faith
never wavered ? Have your affections been set on
one man, and one only ; and are they there to-day,
as strong, as single-hearted, as true and as contented
as ever ? I wonder ; pardon me if I also doubt !
I have spoken only of those cases where the
love that was has ceased to be ; ceased altogether
and gone elsewhere, or so changed from what it
was, that it no longer knits together those it once
held to the exclusion of all others. But I might
remind you that there are many other phases, all
of which imply change, or at least such difference
as must be counted faithlessness. Your quick
intelligence can supply a multitude of instances
from the unfortunate experiences of your friends,
and I will only cite one that is not altogether
unheard of. It is this ; when two people are
bound by the ties of mutual love, and fate divides
them by time and distance, it sometimes happens
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that one will prove faithless in heart, while re-
maining firmly constant in deed. That is usually
the woman. The other may be faithless in deed ;
but he says to himself (and, if he has to confess
his backsliding, he will swear the same to his
lady) that his affections have never wavered. He
often does not realise that this statement, the
truth of which he takes such trouble to impress
upon his outraged goddess, adds to the baseness
of his deed. It is curious, but it is true, that the
woman, if she believes, will pardon that offence,
while she would not forgive the heart-faithlessness
of which she is herself guilty. He is not likely
to learn that her fealty has wandered ; he takes a
good deal for granted, and he does not easily
believe that such things are possible where he is
concerned ; but, should he suspect it, should she
even admit that another has aroused in her feelings
akin to those she had hitherto only felt for him, he
will hold that aberration from the path of faith
rather lightly, though neither tears nor blood could
atone for a faithless deed, such as that of which
he stands convicted.
Woman realises that if man's lower nature takes
him into the gutter, or even less unclean places, he
will not hanker after whatever it was that attracted
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him when once his temptation is out of sight.
She despises, but she estimates the disloyalty at
its right value in a creature for whose want of
refinement she learns to feel a certain contempt.
Man, busy about many other things, treats as
trivial a lapse which implies no smirch on his
honour ; and he, knowing himself and judging
thereby, says, " Out of sight, out of mind." It
seldom occurs to him that, where the woman's
heart has been given away from him, he has
already lost at least as much as his utmost dread ;
and even that is more likely to follow, than he to
return to one who has never aroused in him any
feeling of which he cares to think. Therefore, he is
inclined rather to be amused than distressed ; and,
still mindful of his own experiences, he dismisses
the matter from his thoughts with almost a sense
of satisfaction. But he is wrong : is he not ?
Of course I am not thinking of the jealous men.
They are impossible people whom no one pities.
They never see that, while they make themselves
hateful to every one who is unhappily thrown into
contact with them, they only secure their own
misery. I believe there are men who are jealous
of the door-mat. These are beyond the help of
prayer.
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XII
DAUGHTERS AND DESPOTISM
1 AGREE with you that few things are more
astonishing than the want of sympathy between
parents and their daughters. Many fathers and
mothers seem to be absolutely insensible to the
thoughts, the desires, and the aspirations of those
for whom they usually profess, and probably feel,
a very great affection. There are two principal
causes for this very common state of matters.
One is the difference in age between parents and
children. The fathers and mothers are losing, or
have already lost, their interest in many of those
things which are just beginning to most keenly
interest their children. The children are very
quick to see this, and the confidence they will
give to a comparative stranger they withhold from
parents, to whom they are too shy to confess
themselves, because they dread ridicule, coldness,
displeasure. The other cause of estrangement is
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the fact that parents will insist upon regarding
their daughters as children until they marry, and
sometimes even afterwards ; and they are so
accustomed to ordering and being obeyed, that
they cannot understand independence of thought.
Their children are always children to them ; they
must do exactly what they are told without
question ; they ought not to have any ideas of
their own, and, if they are really good Christian
children, well brought up and a credit to their
parents, they must, before all things, be obedient
and have no likes and dislikes, no opinions that
are not those of their parents. As with crows,
they must be feathered like the old birds and
caw, always and only caw, if they wish to be
heard at all.
It sounds, and it seems, unreasonable, and yet
one sees it every day, and the amused or enraged
spectator, with no fledglings of his own, is lost
in wonderment at the crass stupidity of otherwise
sensible people, who, while they do these things
themselves, and glory in their own shame, will
invite attention to the mote in their neighbour's
eye, which ought to be invisible to them by
reason of the great beam in their own. I sup-
pose it never occurs to them that they are all
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the time committing hateful and unpardonable
crimes ; that their want of intelligent appreciation
is driving their children to resort to all kinds of
concealment, subterfuge, and deceit ; while home
becomes often so hateful to a girl that she seizes
the first opportunity of leaving it, and makes her
life a long misery or something worse.
If the spectator dared, or cared, to speak the
naked truth to a parent, I can imagine that dig-
nified individual choking with respectable rage at
the bare suggestion that he was in any sense
responsible for his daughter's regrettable conduct.
Yet surely the father and the mother are blame-
worthy, if they decline to treat their grown-up
daughters as intelligent creatures, with the in-
stincts, the yearnings, the passions for which
they are less responsible than their parents.
"You must do this, because I was made to do
it ; and you must not do that, because I was
never allowed to do it. You must never question
my directions, because they are for your good ;
because you are younger than I am, and cannot
therefore know as well as I do ; because I am
your mother and you are my daughter ; and, in my
day, daughters never questioned their mothers."
All this, and a great deal more, may be admirable ;
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DAUGHTERS AND DESPOTISM
but it does not seem so. It may even answer
sometimes ; but that is rather cause for surprise
than congratulation. It does fail, often and badly;
but the parents are the last to realise the fact, and
probably nothing would ever persuade them that
the failure is due to their methods. If ever it
comes home to parents that their revolted chil-
dren have grown to hate them, they call them
" unnatural," and almost expect the earth to open
and swallow them up, as happened to Korah and
all his company.
To onlookers the position often seems intoler-
able, and they avoid it, lest they should be tempted
to interfere and so make matters worse. Nowadays,
intelligent opinion is not surprised when tyranny is
followed by rebellion. The world is getting even
beyond that phase. Both men and women de-
mand that their opinions should be heard ; and
where, amongst English-speaking people, they can
be shown to be in accordance with common-sense,
with freedom of thought, and with what are
called the Rights of Man, they usually prevail.
Children do not often complain of tyranny, and
they seldom revolt ; but they bitterly resent being
treated as if they were ten years old when they
are twenty, when their intelligence, their educa-
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tion, and even their knowledge of the world entitle
them to hold and express opinions. Nay, more,
they are conscious of what is due to their own
self-esteem, their family, and their order; and
there are better ways of keeping them true to high
purposes and lofty ideals than by treating them
as children, whose intentions must always be sus-
pected, because prone to naughtiness. The finer
feelings are often strongest in youth ; life and its
experiences blunt them. While they are there,
it is well to encourage them. Sympathy from
an equal can easily do that ; but, unless equality
in speech be granted, the being who is held
in bondage will be shy to express thoughts and
aspirations that may be ridiculed, and will also
resent the position of inferiority to which he or
she is relegated for reasonless reasons.
In the relations between parents and children,
perhaps the most surprising point is the absolute
disregard of the pitiless vengeance of heredity.
Men and women seem to forget that some of their
ancestors' least attractive attributes may appear in
their descendants, after sparing a child or skip-
ping a generation. The guiding traits (whether for
good or evil) in most characters can be traced
with unerring accuracy to an ancestor, where there
DAUGHTERS AND DESPOTISM
is any record of family history. One child is pre-
destined to be a musician, another a soldier, and a
third a commonplace or remarkable sinner. Iden-
tical methods of education and treatment may not
suit all equally well. Because a parent has lived
only one life, the half-dozen children for whom he
is responsible may not, even in the natural course
of events, turn out to be exact replicas of their
father, nor thrive on the food which reared him to
perfection.
I do not pretend that there are not many ex-
ceptions ; but the daughters who are the victims
of parental zeal, or parental repression, are so
numerous that, in England at any rate, they pro-
bably form the majority of their kind. Of those
who marry, the greater number may be entirely
well-mated. Every one must hope that it is so.
Some there are who are not so fortunate ; and
some, again, begin well but end in disaster, due
to their own mistakes and defects, to those of
their husbands, or to unkind circumstances. With
the daughters who are favoured by Fortune we
have no concern. For the others, there is only
one aspect of their case with which I will bore
you, and that because it seems to me to be to
some extent a corollary to my last letter. If a
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girl has ideas and intelligence beyond those of
her parents ; if she has felt constraint and resented
it ; if she has exercised self-repression, while she
longed for sympathy, for expansion, for a measure
of freedom such an experience, especially if it
has lasted for any time, is not the best prepara-
tion for marriage. Married life where man and
woman are in complete sympathy, where mutual
affection and admiration make self-sacrifice a joy,
arid trouble taken for the other a real satisfaction
is not altogether an easy path to tread, with
sure and willing feet, from the altar to the grave.
Many would give much to be able to turn back :
but there is no return. So some faint and others
die ; some never cease from quarrelling ; some
accept the inevitable and lose all interest in life ;
while a few get off the road, over the barriers, break
their necks or their hearts, or simply disappear out
of the ken, beyond the vision, of their kind.
I think much of the unhappiness that comes to
be a millstone round the necks of married people
is due, primarily, to the deep ignorance of woman-
kind so commonly displayed by mankind. It is a
subject that is not taught, probably because no
man would be found conceited enough to profess
more than the most superficial knowledge of it.
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DAUGHTERS AND DESPOTISM
Some Eastern writers have gone into the ques-
tion, but their point of view differs from ours, as
do their climate, their religion, their temperament,
habits, and moral code. Their teachings are diffi-
cult to obtain ; they are written in languages not
commonly understood, and they deal with races
and societies that have little in common with
Europeans. Michelet has, however, produced a
book that may be read with advantage by all
those who wish to acquire a few grains of know-
ledge on a subject that has such an enthralling
interest at some period of most men's lives. It
is not exactly easy to indicate other aids to an
adequate conception of the feminine gender, but
they will not be found in the streets and gutters
of great cities.
The school-boy shuns girls. He is parlously
ignorant of all that concerns them, except that
they cannot compete with him in strength and
endurance. He first despises them for their com-
parative physical weakness ; then, as he grows a
little older, a certain shyness of the other sex
seizes him ; but this usually disappears with the
coming of real manhood, when his instincts prompt
him to seek women's society. What he learns
then, unless he is very fortunate, will not help
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him to understand and fully appreciate the girl
who somewhat later becomes his wife indeed, it
is more likely to mislead him and contribute to her
unhappiness. Unite this inexperienced, or over-
experienced, youth with the girl who is ready to
accept almost any one who will take her from an
uncongenial home, and it says a good deal for the
Western world that the extraordinary difficulties
of the position should, in so large a proportion of
cases, be overcome as well as they are.
In the rage for higher education, why does not
some philanthropic lady, some many-times-mar-
ried man, open a seminary for the instruction of
inexperienced men who wish to take into their
homes, for life and death, companions, of whose
sex generally, their refined instincts, tender feel-
ings, reckless impulses, strange cravings, changeful
moods, overpowering curiosity, attitudes of mind,
methods of attack and defence, signals of deter-
mined resistance or speedy capitulation, they know,
perhaps, as little as of the Grand Llama. What
an opportunity such a school would afford to the
latest development of woman to impress her own
views upon the rising generation of men ! How
easily she might mould them to her fancy, or, at
least, plant in them seeds of repentance, apprecia-
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DAUGHTERS AND DESPOTISM
tion, and constancy, to grow up under the care
of wives for whose society the Benedictentiary
would have somewhat fitted them.
It is really an excellent idea, this combination
of Reformatory of the old man and Education of
the new. Can you not see all the newspapers full
of advertisements like this :
PREPARATION OF GENTLEMEN FOR
MATRIMONY
The great success which has attended all those who
have gone through the course of study at the Benedic-
tentiary of Mesdames - - has led the proprietors to
add another wing to this popular institution. The
buildings are situated in park-like grounds, far from
any disturbing influences. The lecturers are ladies of
personal attraction with wide experience, and the dis-
cipline of the establishment is of the severest kind
compatible with comfort. A special feature of this
institution is the means afforded for healthy recreation
of all kinds, the object being to make the students
attractive in every sense. Gentlemen over fifty years
of age are only admitted on terms which can be learnt
by application to the Principal. These terms will vary
according to the character of the applicant. During
the last season twenty-five of Mesdames pupils
made brilliant marriages, and the most flattering testi-
monials are constantly being received from the wives
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of former students. There are only a few vacancies,
and application should be made at once to the Prin-
cipal.
That is the sort of thing. Do you know
any experienced lady in want of a vocation that
might combine profit with highly interesting em-
ployment ? You can give her this suggestion,
but advise her to be careful in her choice of lec-
turers, and let the ladies combine the wisdom of
the serpent with the gentle cooing of the dove ;
otherwise, some possible husbands might be spoilt
in the making.
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XIII
HER FIANCE
YOU say that my opinions are very unortho-
dox, that my views on human constancy are
cynical, and that it is wicked to sympathise with
children who oppose their inclinations to the be-
hests of their parents.
Do you forget that I said we should not agree,
and will you be angry if I venture to suggest that
you have not read my letters very carefully, or
that your sense of justice is temporarily obscured ?
If I dared, I would ask you to look again at the
letters, and then tell me exactly wherein I have
sinned. I maintained that all are not gifted with
that perfect constancy which distinguished Helen
and Guinevere, and a few other noble ladies whose
names occur to me. I notice that, as regards
yourself, you disdain to answer my question, and
we might safely discuss the subject without refer-
ence to personal considerations.
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My regrets over the strained relations which
sometimes exist between parents and children
could hardly be construed into an incitement to
rebellion. They did not amount to more than
a statement of lamentable facts, and a diagnosis
of the causes of the trouble. When you add that
truth is often disagreeable and better left un-
spoken, I will subscribe to the general principle,
but fail to see its application here. Nor can I
agree with you that problems of this sort are
lacking in interest. To be able to construct a
geometrical figure, and prove that the method
is correct, does not sound very interesting ; but
architects, who have knowledge of this kind, have
achieved results that appeal to those who look at
the finished work, without thought of the means
by which the end was gained.
With your permission, I will move the inquiry
to new ground ; and do not think I am wavering
in my allegiance, or that my loyalty is open to
doubt, if I say one word on behalf of man, whose
unstable affections are so widely recognised that
no sensible person would seek to dispute the
verdict of all the ages. He is represented as
loving a sex rather than an individual ; is likened
to the bee which sucks where sweetness can be
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HER FIANC6
found and only whilst it lasts ; he shares with
the butterfly the habit of never resting long on
any flower, and, like it, he is drawn by brilliant
colouring and less clean attractions. Virtuous
affection and plain solid worth do not appeal to
him.
These are articles of popular belief, and must
not be questioned ; but I may say to you, that
they do the poor man somewhat less than jus-
tice. As a bachelor, he has few opportunities of
examining virtuous affection, on his own account ;
the experiences of his friends are not always
encouraging; and, if he has to work, other things
absorb most of his attention at this stage of his
existence. If he marries, especially if he marries
young, he is often enthusiastic, and usually hope-
lessly ignorant of feminine methods, inclinations,
and fastidious hesitation. He feels an honest,
blundering, but real and passionate affection. He
shows it, and that is not seldom an offence. He
looks for a reciprocation of his passion, and when,
as often happens, he fully realises that his trans-
ports awaken no responsive feeling, but rather a
scarcely veiled disgust, his enthusiasm wanes, he
cultivates self-repression, and assumes a chilly in-
difference that, in time, becomes the true expres-
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sion of his changed feelings. From this keen
disappointment, this sense of his own failure in
his own home, the transition to a state of callous-
ness, and thence, to one of deep interest in another
object where his advances are met in a different
spirit, is not very difficult.
You see, I am taking for granted that the
popular conception of his shortcomings in regard
to the affections is correct, and I only want to
suggest some of the reasons which have earned
for him such a bad reputation. First, it is the
fault of his nature, for which he is not altogether
responsible ; it is different to yours. In this
respect he starts somewhat unfairly handicapped,
if his running is tried by the same standard as
that fixed for the gentler sex. Then his educa-
tion, not so much in the acquirement of book-
knowledge as in the ways of the world, is also
different. His physical robustness is thought to
qualify him, when still a boy, to go anywhere,
to see everything at close quarters, and without
a chaperone. He is thrown into the maelstrom
of life, and there he is practically left to sink or
swim ; and whether he drown or survive, he must
pass through the deep water where only his own
efforts will save him. A few disappear altogether,
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HER FIANCE
and, while all get wet, some come out covered
with mud, and others are maimed, or their con-
stitutions permanently injured by the immersion.
That is the beginning, and I think you will
admit that, except in a few very peculiar cases,
the boy's early life is more calculated to smirch
than to preserve his original innocence.
Then he settles down to work for a living or
for ambition, and, in either case, he is left but
little time to study the very complex complement
of his life, woman. If he does not incontinently
fall in love with what appeals to his eye, he
deliberately looks about for some one who may
make him a good, a useful, and, if possible, an
ornamental wife. In the first case he is really to
be pitied ; but his condition only excites amuse-
ment. The man is treated as temporarily insane,
and every one looks to the consummation of the
marriage as the only means to restore him to his
right mind. That, indeed, is generally the result,
but not for the reason to which the cure is popu-
larly ascribed. The swain is very much in love,
whereas the lady of his choice is entering into
the contract for a multitude of reasons, where
passionate affection, very probably, plays quite an
inferior part. The man's ardour destroys any dis-
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cretion he may have. He digs a pit for himself
and falls into it, and, unless he has great expe-
rience, unusual sympathy, or consummate tact,
he misunderstands the signs, draws false conclu-
sions, and nurses the seeds of discontent which will
sooner or later come up and bear bitter fruit.
If, on the other hand, he deliberately enters the
matrimonial market and makes his choice with calm
calculation, as he would enter the mart to supply
any other need, he may run less risk of disap-
pointment. But the other party to the bargain will,
in due time, come to regret the part she has under-
taken to play, and feel that what the man wanted
was less a wife than a housekeeper, a hostess, a
useful ally, or an assistant in the preservation of
a family name. Very few women would fail to
discover the truth in such a case, and probably
none would neglect to mention it. Neither the
fact, the discovery, nor the mention of it will help
to make a happy home.
With husbands and wives, if neither have any
need to work, it ought to be easy to avoid bore-
dom (the most gruesome of all maladies), and to
accommodate themselves to each other's wishes.
They, however, constitute a very small proportion
of society. A man usually has to work all day,
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HER FIANC6
and, if he is strong and healthy, it is hardly reason-
able to suppose that his only thought, when his
work is over, should be how he can best amuse
his wife. If he sets that single object before him
as his duty or his pleasure, and his wife accepts
the sacrifice, the man's health is almost certain to
suffer, unless there is some form of exercise which
they can enjoy together.
Husbands and wives take a good deal for
granted, and it is more curious that lovers, who
are bound by no such tie, often meet with ship-
wreck on exactly the same sort of dangers. To
be too exacting is probably, of all causes, the
most fertile in parting devoted lovers.
But enough of speculation. Pardon my homily,
and let me answer your question. You ask me
what has become of the man we used to see so
constantly, sitting in the Park with a married lady
who evidently enjoyed his society. I will tell you,
and you will then understand why it is that you
have not seen him since that summer when we
too found great satisfaction in each other's com-
pany. He was generally " about the town," and
when not there seemed rather to haunt the river.
Small blame to him for that ; there is none with
perceptions so dead that the river, on a hot July
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
day, will not appeal to them. I cannot tell how
long afterwards it was, but the man became en-
gaged to a girl who was schooling or travelling
in France. She was the sister of the woman
we used to see in the Park. Un bel giorno the
man and his future sister-in-law started for the
Continent, to see his fiancee. Arrived at Dover,
the weather looked threatening, or the lady wanted
rest, or it was part of the arrangement details of
this kind are immaterial anyhow, they decided to
stay the night in an hotel and cross the following
morning. In the grey light which steals through
darkness and recoils from day, some wanderer
or stolid constable saw a white bundle lying on
the pavement by the wall of the hotel. A closer
examination showed this to be the huddled and
shattered body of a man in his night-dress ; a very
ghastly sight, for he was dead. It was the man
we used to see in the Park, and several storeys
above the spot where he was found were the
windows, not of his room, but of another. I do
not know whether the lady continued her journey ;
but, if she did, her interview with her sister must
have been a bad experience.
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XIV
BY THE SEA
YOU asked me to paint you a picture a
picture of a wonderful strand half-circling
a space of sunlit sea ; an island-studded bay, girt,
landwards, by a chain of low blue hills, whose
vesture of rich foliage is, through all the years,
mirrored in the dazzling waters that bathe those
rocky feet. The bay is enclosed between two
headlands, both lofty, both rising sheer out of
the sea, but that on the north juts out only a
little, while the southern promontory is much
bolder, and terminates a long strip of land running
at right angles to the shore out into very deep
water.
The beach between these headlands forms an
arc of a circle, and the cord joining its extremities
would be about seven miles in length, while fol-
lowing the shore the distance is nearly ten miles.
One might search east or west, the Old World
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
or the New, and find in them few places so attrac-
tive as this little-known and sparsely inhabited
dent in a far Eastern coast.
Here the sky is nearly always bright ; a day
which, in its thirteen hours of light, does not give
at least half of brilliant, perhaps too brilliant
sunshine, is almost unknown. Then it is the
sunshine of endless summer, not for a month or
a season, but for ever.
Except on rare occasions, the winds from the
sea are softest zephyrs, the land breezes are cool
and fragrant, sufficient only to stir the leaves of
trees and gently ruffle the placid surface of the
bay.
The waters of the bay are green green like
a yellow emerald but in some few places, near
the shore, this changes into a warm brown. The
beach is a wide stretch of sand broken by rocks
of dark umber or Indian red. The sand is, in
some places, so startlingly white that the eye can
hardly bear the glare of it, while in others it is
mixed with fine-broken grains of the ironstone
called laterite, and this gives a burnt-sienna colour
to the beach. When the tide is high, the great
stretches of hard, clean sand are covered with
water to a depth of between five and ten feet,
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BY THE SEA
and, owing to the absence of mud, mangroves, and
mankind, the waters of the bay are of an extra-
ordinary limpidity. The beach in many places
dips steeply, so that, at high tide, there are six
feet of water within two or three yards of the
trees, shrubs, ferns, and creepers that clothe the
shore in an abandonment of wild and graceful
luxuriance. The sand shines beneath the waters
of the sea like powdered diamonds, and all the
myriads of pebbles and shells glisten and scintil-
late, with a fire and life and colour which they
lose when the tide falls and leaves the sands dry,
but for the little pools that fill the depressions
of a generally even surface.
Then, however, is the time to see strange shells
moving slowly about, and crabs, of marvellous
colour and unexpected instincts, scampering in
hundreds over the purple rocks, that here and
there make such a striking contrast to the brilliant
orange and red, or the startling whiteness of the
sand in which they lie half-embedded.
And how positively delightful it is to paddle
with bare feet between and over these rounded
stones, while the tireless waters make continents
and oceans in miniature, and the strange denizens
of this life-charged summer sea destroy each other,
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in the ceaseless struggle to preserve an existence
for which they are no more responsible than we
are. Here is an army of scarlet-backed crabs,
hunting in battalions for something smaller and
weaker than its own tiny, fragile units. The
spider-like legion, alarmed by the approach of
your naked feet, scuttles hurriedly towards a new
Red Sea, and, dashing recklessly into the two
inches of water, which are running between banks
of sandy desert, disappears as completely as
Pharaoh and his host. Unlike the Egyptian
king, however, the crabs, which have only bur-
rowed into the sand, will presently reappear on
the other shore and scour the desert for a morn-
ing meal.
And then you are standing amongst the rocks,
on a point of a bay within the bay ; and, as the
rippling wavelets wash over your feet, you peer
down into the deeper eddies and pools in search
of a sea-anemone. Again, you exclaim in childish
admiration of the marvellous colouring of a jelly-
fish and his puzzling fashion of locomotion, or
your grown-up experience allows you an almost
pleasurable little shudder when you think of the
poisonous possibilities of this tenderly-tinted,
gauzily-gowned digestive system.
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BY THE SEA
The land is not less rich in life than the sea.
Nature has fringed the waters with a garden
of graceful trees, flowering shrubs, brilliantly
blossomed creepers, and slender ferns, far more
beautiful in their untrained luxuriance than any
effort of human ingenuity could have made them.
There are magnolias, sweeping the waters with
their magnificent creamy blossoms, made more
conspicuous by their background of great, dark
green leaves. There are gorgeous yellow ala-
manders, each blossom as large as a hand ; soft
pale pink myrtles, star-flowered jasmines, and the
delicate wax-plant with its clusters of red or white
blossoms. These and a multitude of others, only
known by barbarous botanical names, nestle into
each other's arms, interlace their branches, and
form arbours of perfumed shade. Close behind
stand almond and cashew trees, tree-ferns, coco-
nuts, and sago palms, and then the low hills,
clothed with the giants of a virgin forest, that
shut out any distant view.
Groups of sandpipers paddle in the little wave-
lets that lovingly caress the shore ; birds of the
most gorgeous plumage flit through the jungle
with strange cries ; and, night and morning, flocks
of pigeons, plumed in green and yellow, in orange
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and brown, flash meteor-like trails of colour, in
their rapid flight from mainland to island and
back again. The bay is studded with islets, some
near, some far, tiny clusters of trees growing out
of the water, or a mass of stone, clothed from
base to summit with heavy jungle, except for a
narrow band of red rocks above the water's
edge.
Sailing in and out the islands, rounding the
headlands, or standing across the bay, are boats
with white or brown or crimson sails ; boats of
strange build, with mat or canvas sails of curious
design, floating, like tired birds, upon the restful
waters of this " changeless summer sea."
But you remember it all : how we sat under
the great blossoms and shining leaves of the
magnolias, and, within arm's length, found trea-
sures of opal-tinted pebbles, and infinite variety
of tiny shells, coral-pink and green and heliotrope,
and everything seemed very good indeed.
A mass of dark-red boulders, overlying a bed
of umber rock, ran out into the water, closing,
as with a protecting arm, one end of the little
inlet, while the forest-clad hill, rising sheer from
the point, shut out everything beyond. And then
the road ! bright terra cotta, winding round the
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BY THE SEA
bluff through masses of foliage in every shade of
green, giant trees, a maze of undergrowth, and
the dew-laden ferns and mosses, blazing with
emerald fires under the vagrant shafts of sunlight ;
dies cretd notanda.
Do you remember how, when the sun had
gone, and the soft, fragrant, Eastern night brought
an almost tangible darkness, lighted only by the
stars, we returned across the bay in a little boat,
with two quaintly coloured paper lanterns making
a bright spot of colour high above the bow ?
The only sound to break the measured cadence
of the oars was the gentle whisper of the land-
wind through the distant palm leaves, and the
sighing of the tide as it wooed the passive
beach.
And then, as we glided slowly through the
starlit darkness, you, by that strange gift of
sympathetic intuition, answered my unspoken
thought, and sang the Allerseelen, sang it under
your breath, "soft and low," as though it might
not reach any ears but ours yes, that was All
Souls' Day.
There was only the sea and the sky and the
stars, only the perfection of aloneness, " Le reve
de rester ensemble sans dessein"
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And then, all too soon, we came to a space
of lesser darkness, visible through the belt of
trees which lined the shore ; far down that water-
lane twinkled a light, the beacon of our landing-
place. Do you remember ?
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XV
AN ILLUMINATION
A FTER an absence which cannot be measured
** by days not at least days of twenty-four
hours, but rather by spaces of longing and regret,
I am back again in a house where everything
suggests your presence so vividly that I hardly
yet realise that I cannot find you, and already,
several times, hearing, or fancying I heard, some
sound, I have looked up expecting to see you. It
is rather pitiful that, waking or sleeping, our senses
should let us be so cruelly fooled.
It seems years ago, but, sitting in this room to-
night, memory carries me back to another evening
when you were also here. It had rained heavily,
and the sun had almost set when we started to
ride down the hill, across the river, and out into
the fast-darkening road that strikes through the
grass-covered plain, and leads to the distant hills.
The strangely fascinating transformation of day
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into night, as commonly seen from that road,
cannot fail to arrest the attention and awaken
the admiration of the most casual observer ; but
for us, I think, it possessed the special charm
which comes from the contemplation of nature in
harmony with the mood of the spectator, or
seen, as with one sight, by two persons in abso-
lute sympathy of body and soul. Then nothing
is lost no incident, no change of colour, no
momentary effect of light or shade ; the scene is
absorbed through the eyes, and when the sensa-
tion caused finds expression through the voice
of one, the heart of the other responds without
the need of words.
I see the picture now ; a string of waggons,
the patient oxen standing waiting for their drivers,
picturesquely grouped before a wayside booth ; a
quaintly fashioned temple, with its faint altar-light
shining like a star from out the deep gloom within
the portal ; tall, feathery palms, whose stems cast
long, sharp shadows across the dark-red road ; on
either side a grass-covered, undulating plain, dis-
appearing into narrow valleys between the deep
blue bills ; behind all, the grey, mist-enshrouded
mountains, half hidden in the deepening twilight.
The last gleams of colour were dying out of the
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AN ILLUMINATION
sky as we left the main road, and, turning sharp
to the left, urged our horses through the gather-
ing darkness. At last we were obliged to pull
up, uncertain of our bearings, and even doubtful,
in the now absolute blackness of tropical night,
whether we were in the right way. Carefully
avoiding the deep ditches, more by the instinct of
the horses than any guidance of ours, we struck
into another road and set our faces homewards.
It was still intensely dark, but growing clearer as
the stars shone out, and we gradually became more
accustomed to the gloom ; dark yet delightful, and
we agreed that this was the time of all others to
really enjoy the East, with a good horse under you
and a sympathetic companion to share the fascina-
tion of the hour.
Riding through the groves of trees that lined
both sides of the road, we caught occasional
glimpses of illuminated buildings, crowning the
steep hill which forms one side of the valley.
Traversing the outskirts of the town, we crossed
a river and came out on a narrow plain, above
which rose the hill. I shall never forget the
vision which then rose before us. How we ex-
claimed with delight ! and yet there was such an
air of glamour about the scene, such unrealness,
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
such a savour of magic and enchantment as tied
our tongues for a while.
The heights rose in a succession of terraces
till they seemed to almost pierce the clouds, each
terrace a maze of brilliantly illuminated buildings
to which the commanding position, the environ-
ment, the style of architecture, and the soft, hazy
atmosphere lent an imposing grandeur.
The buildings which crowned the summit of the
spur, lined the terraces, and seemed to be con-
nected by a long flight of picturesque stone steps,
were all of a dazzling whiteness. Low-reaching
eaves, supported on white pillars, formed wide
verandahs, whose outer edges were bordered by
heavy balustrades. Every principal feature of
every building, each door and window, each
verandah, balustrade, and step, was outlined by
innumerable yellow lights that shone like great
stars against the soft dark background of sky
and hill. It is impossible to imagine the beauty
of the general effect : this succession of snow-
white walls, rising from foot to summit of a
mist-enveloped hill, suggested the palace-crowned
heights of Futtepur Sikri, illuminated for some
brilliant festival. The effect of splendour and
enchantment was intensified by the graceful but
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AN ILLUMINATION
indistinct outlines of a vast building, standing in
unrelieved darkness by the bank of the river we
had just crossed. In the gloom it was only
possible to note the immense size of this nearer
palace, and to realise its towers and domes, its
pillars and arches, and the consistently Moorish
style of its architecture.
As we approached the lowest of the series of
illuminated buildings that, step by step, rose to
the summit of the heights, we beheld a sheet of
water beneath us on our right, and in this water
were reflected the innumerable lights of a long,
low temple, standing fifty feet above the opposite
bank of the lake. Fronds of the feathery bamboo
rose from the bank, and, bending forwards in grace-
ful curves, cast deep shadows over the waters of
this little lake, from the depths of which blazed
the fires of countless lights.
We stood there and drank in the scene, graving
it on the tablets of our memories as something never
to be forgotten. Then slowly our horses passed
into the darkness of the road, which, winding round
the hillside, led up into the open country, a place
of grass-land and wood, lying grey and silent
under a starlit sky.
And, when we had gained the house, it was
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
here you sat, in this old-world seat, with its
covering of faded brocade. I can see you now,
in the semi-darkness of a room where the only
lamp centres its softened light on you an in-
comparable picture in a charming setting. You
do not speak ; you are holding in your hand a
small white card, and you slowly tear it in two,
and then again and again. There is something
in your face, some strange glory that is not of
any outward light, nor yet inspired by that en-
chanted vision so lately seen. It is a transfigura-
tion, a light from within, like the blush that dyes
the clouds above a waveless sea, at the dawn of
an Eastern morning. Still you speak no word,
but the tiny fragments of that card are now so
small that you can no longer divide them, and
some drop from your hands upon the floor.
I picked them up afterwards did I not ?
128
XVI
OF DEATH, IN FICTION
IT is delightful to have some one to talk to
with whom it is not necessary to think always
before one speaks, to choose every word, to explain
every thought some one, in fact, who has sym-
pathy enough not to be bored with the discussion
of a subject that deals neither with gossip nor
garments, and intelligence enough to understand
what is implied as well as what is said. I have
done a good deal of desultory reading lately,
mostly modern English and French fiction, and I
cannot help being struck by the awkward manner
in which authors bring their stories to a conclu-
sion. It so very often happens that a book begins
well, possibly improves as the plot develops, be-
comes even powerful as it nears the climax, and
then then the poor puppets, having played their
several parts and done all that was required of
them, must be got rid of, in order to round off
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
the tale, to give finality, and satisfy the ordinary
reader's craving for "full particulars." This var-
nishing and framing and hanging of the picture is
usually arrived at by marrying or slaying some
principal character ; the first is a life, and the
last a death, sentence. Thus the reader is satis-
fied, and often the story is ruined ; that is, if
skilful drafting and true perspective are as neces-
sary to a good picture as artistic colouring and the
correct disposition of light and shade. But is the
reader satisfied ? Usually, yes ; occasionally, no.
In the latter case the book is closed with a strong
sense of disappointment, and a conviction that the
writer has realised the necessity of bringing down
the curtain on a scene that finishes the play, and
leaves nothing to the imagination ; so, to secure
that end, he has abandoned truth, and even pro-
bability, and has clumsily introduced the priest or
the hangman, the " cup of cold poison," or the
ever-ready revolver. The effect of the charming
scenery, the pretty frocks, the artistic furniture, and
"the crisp and sparkling dialogue," is thus spoilt
by the unreal and unconvincing denouement.
It seems to me " to my stupid comprehension,"
as the polite Eastern constantly insists that this
failure is due to two causes. First, most fiction is
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OF DEATH, IN FICTION
founded on fact, and the writer has, in history, in
the newspapers, in his own experience or that of
his friends, met with some record or paragraph,
some adventure or incident, that has served for
the foundation of his story ; but, unless purely
historical, he has been obliged to supply the last
scene himself, because in reality there was none,
or, if there was, he could not use it. In our own
experience, in that of every one who has seen a
little of the world, have we not become acquainted
with quite a number of dramatic, or even tragic
incidents, that have scarred our own or others' lives,
and would make stories of deep interest in the
hands of a skilful writer ? But the action does
not cease. The altar is oftener the fateful begin-
ning than the happy ending of the drama ; and,
when the complications fall thick upon each other,
there is no such easy way out of the impasse as
that provided by a little prussic acid or a bullet.
They are ready to hand, I grant you, but they
are not so often used in life as in fiction. I have
known a man walk about, with a revolver in his
pocket, for three days, looking for a suitable oppor-
tunity to use it upon himself, and then he has put
it away against the coming of a burglar. When
it is not yourself, but some one else, you desire to
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get rid of, the prospect is, strange to say, even
less inviting. Thus it happens that, in real life,
we suffer and we endure, the drama is played and
the tragedy is in our hearts, but it does not take
outward and visible form. So the fiction whilst
it is true to life holds our interest, and the
skill of the artist excites our admiration ; but the
impossible climax appeals to us, no more than a
five-legged cow. It is a lusus naturce, that is all.
They happen, these monstrosities, but they never
live long, and it were best to stifle them at birth.
Pardon ! you say there is genius. Yes, but it
is rare, and I have not the courage to even discuss
genius ; it is like Delhi and the planets, a long way
off. We can only see it with the help of a power-
ful glass, if indeed then it is visible. There is
only one writer who openly lays claim to it, and
the claim seems to be based chiefly on her lofty
disdain for adverse criticism. That is, perhaps,
a sign, but not a complete proof, of the existence
of the divine fire.
But to return to the humbler minds. It does
happen that real lives are suddenly and violently
ended by accident, murder, or suicide, and there
seems no special reason why fictitious lives should
be superior to such chances. Indeed, to some
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OF DEATH, IN FICTION
authors, there would be no more pleasure in
writing novels, without the tragic element as the
main feature, than there is for some great billiard
exponents to play the game with the spot-stroke
barred. I would only plead, in this case, that
the accident or the suicide, to be life-like, need
not be very far-fetched. In murder, as one knows,
the utmost licence is not only permissible but
laudable, for the wildest freaks of imagination
will hardly exceed the refinements, the devilish
invention, and the cold-blooded execution of actual
crimes. I remember you once spoke scornfully
of using a common form of accident as a means
of getting rid of a character in fiction ; but surely
that is not altogether inartistic, for the accidents
that occur most commonly are those to which the
people of romance will naturally be as liable as
you or I. It is difficult to imagine that you
should be destroyed by an explosion in a coal-
mine, or that I should disappear in a balloon ;
but we might either of us be drowned, or killed
in a railway accident, under any one of a variety
of probable circumstances. Again, in suicide, the
simplest method is, for purposes of fiction, in all
likelihood the best. Men usually shoot them-
selves, and women, especially when they cannot
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swim, seek the water. Those who prefer poison
are probably the swimmers. It is a common
practice in fiction to make the noble-minded man
who loves the lady, but finds himself in the way
of what he believes to be her happiness (that is,
of course, some other man), determine to destroy
himself; and he does it with admirable resolu-
tion, considering how cordially he dislikes the role
for which he has been cast, and how greatly he
yearns for the affection which no effort of his
can possibly secure. I cannot, however, remember
any hero of fiction who has completed the sacri-
fice of his life in a thoroughly satisfactory manner,
for he invariably leaves his body lying about,
where it is sure to attract attention, and cause
great distress to the lady he designs to oblige.
That is thoughtless ; and those who really mean
to prove their self-denial should arrange, not only
to extinguish their lives, but to get rid of their
bodies, so that there may be as little scandal and
trouble to their friends as possible. I have always
felt the sincerest admiration for the man who,
having made up his mind to destroy himself, and
purchased a revolver with which to do the deed,
settled his affairs, moved into lodgings quite close
to a cemetery, wrote letters to the coroner, the
OF DEATH, IN FICTION
doctor, and the undertaker, giving them in each
case the exact hour at which they should call on
their several errands, paid all his debts, left some-
thing to indemnify his landlady, and more than
enough for funeral expenses, and then shot him-
self. That, however, was not a character in
fiction, but a common mortal, and there was no
lady in the case.
I am sure there are many people who would
be greatly obliged to me for inviting attention to
these matters, if only they could get it in print,
to lie about on the table with the page turned
down at the proper place. Nothing is more
common than the determined suicides who live
to a green old age for want of a book of in-
structions. These people weary their friends and
acquaintances by eternally reiterated threats that
they will destroy themselves, and yet, however
desirable that course may be, they never take it.
This novel and brilliant idea first comes to them
in some fit of pique, and they declare that they
will make an end of themselves, "and then per-
haps you will be sorry." They are so pleased
with the effect caused by this statement, that, on
the next favourable opportunity, they repeat it ;
and then they go on and on, dragging in their
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wretched threat on every possible and impossible
occasion, especially in the presence of strangers
and the aged relatives of themselves or the person
they want to get at, until mere acquaintances wish
they would fulfil their self-imposed task and cease
from troubling. It is almost amusing to hear
how these suicides determines vary, from day to day
or week to week, the methods which they have
selected for their own destruction poison, pistols,
drowning, throwing themselves out of window or
under a train nothing comes amiss ; but, when
they wish to be really effective, and carry terror
into the hearts of their hearers, they usually
declare either, that they will blow their brains
out, or cut their throats. The vision of either of
these processes of self-extinction, even though
remote and unsubstantial, is well calculated to
curdle the blood. That, as a rule, is all that is
meant ; and, when you understand it, the amuse-
ment is harmless if it is not exactly kind. "Vain
repetitions " are distinctly wearying, even when
they come from husbands and wives, parents or
children ; the impassioned lover, too, is not alto-
gether free from the threat of suicide and the
repetition of it. In all these cases it would be
a kindness to those who appear weary of life,
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OF DEATH, IN FICTION
and who weary others by threatening to put an
end to it, if they could be persuaded, either to
follow the example of the man who, without dis-
closing his intentions, took a room by the gate
of the cemetery, or, if they don't really mean it,
to say nothing more about it. Therefore, if ever
you are over-tried in this way, leave this letter
where it will be read. The weak point about
the prescription is that it is more likely to cure
than to kill. However, I must leave that to you,
for a good deal depends on how the remedy is
applied. The size of the dose, the form of ap-
plication, whether external or internal, will make
all the difference in the world. I do not prescribe
for a patient, but for a disease ; the rest may safely
be left to your admirable discretion ; but you will
not forget that a dose which can safely and ad-
visedly be administered to an adult may kill a
child.
137
XVII
A HAND AT ECARTE
1 WROTE to you of death in fiction, and, if I
now write of death in fact, it is partly to see
how far you agree with an opinion that was lately
expressed to me by a man who is himself literary,
and whose business it is to know the public taste
in works of fiction. We were discussing a book of
short stories, and he spoke of the author's success,
and said he hoped we might have a further instal-
ment of similar tales. I ventured to suggest that the
public must be rather nauseated with horrors, with
stories of blood and crime, even though they carried
their readers into new surroundings, and introduced
them to interesting and little-described societies.
My companion said, " No, there need be no such
fear ; we like gore. A craving for horrors pervades
all classes, and is not easily satisfied. Those who
cannot gloat over the contemplation of carcasses and
blood, revel in the sanguinary details which make
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A HAND AT
them almost spectators in the real or imaginary
tragedies of life. The newspapers give one, and
some writers of fiction the other ; there is a large
demand for both, especially now that the circle of
readers is so rapidly widening amongst a class that
cannot appreciate refinements of style, and neither
understands nor desires the discussion of abstract
questions. Therefore give us, not Light, but
Blood."
I wonder what you think. If I felt you had a
craving for horrors I could paint the pages scarlet ;
for I have been in places where human life was
held so cheap that death by violence attracted little
notice, where tragedies were of daily occurrence,
and hundreds of crimes, conceived with fiendish in-
genuity and carried out with every detail calculated
to thrill the nerves and tickle the jaded palate of
the most determined consumer of "atrocities," lie
hidden in the records of Courts of Justice and
Police Offices. Any one who compares the feelings
with which he throws aside the daily paper, as he
leaves the Underground Railway, or even those
with which he closes the shilling shocker in more
favourable surroundings, with the sense of exalta-
tion, of keen, pulse-quickening joy that comes to
him after reading one page in the book of Nature
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after a long look at one of its myriad pictures
would, I think, hesitate to confess to a great han-
kering for a perpetual diet of blood. It is not the
dread of appearing to be dissipated, but the cer-
tainty that there is better health, and a far more
intense pleasure, in the clear atmosphere of woods
and hills, of river and sea, than in the shambles.
Sewers are a product of civilisation in cities, but
they are not pretty to look at, and I cannot appre-
ciate a desire to explore their darksome nastiness
while we may, if we choose, remain in the light
and air of heaven. London slums are daily and
nightly the scenes of nameless horrors, but it may
be doubted whether a faithful and minute descrip-
tion of them, in the form of cheap literature, does
more good than harm.
That is by way of preface. What I am going
to tell you struck me, because I question whether
a tragedy in real life was ever acted with details
that sound so fictional, so imaginary, and yet there
was no straining after effect. It was the way the /
thing had to be worked out ; and like the puzzles
you buy, and waste hours attempting to solve, I
suppose the pieces would only fit when arranged
in the places for which they were designed by their
Maker.
140
A HAND AT ECART6
A long time ago there lived, in one of the prin-
cipal cities of Italy, a certain marchese, married to
a woman of great beauty and distinguished family.
She had a lover, a captain of cavalry, who had
made himself an Italian reputation for his success
in love-affairs, and also in the duels which had been
forced upon him by those who believed themselves
to have been wronged. The soldier was a very
accomplished swordsman and equally skilful with
a pistol, and that is possibly the reason why the
husband of the marchesa was blind to a state of
affairs which at last became the scandal of local
society. The marchesa had a brother, a leading
member of the legal profession ; and when he had
unsuccessfully indicated to his brother-in-law the
line of his manifest duty, he determined to himself
defend his sister's name, for the honour of an
ancient and noble family. The brother was neither
a swordsman nor a pistol-shot, and when he under-
took to vindicate his sister's reputation he realised
exactly what it might cost him. The position was
unbearable ; the cafls were ringing with the tale ;
and, if her husband shirked the encounter, some
man of her own family must bring the offender to
book and satisfy the demands of public opinion.
Having made up his mind as to the modus
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
operancti, the brother sought his foe in a crowded
cafe, and in the most public manner insulted him
by striking him across the face with his glove.
A challenge naturally followed, and the choice of
weapons was left with the assailant. He de-
manded pistols, and, knowing his own absolute
inferiority, stipulated for special conditions, which
were, that the combatants should stand at a dis-
tance of one pace only, that they should toss, or
play a game of ecarte for the first shot, and that
if the loser survived it, he should go as close to
his adversary as he pleased before discharging his
own weapon. Under the circumstances, the sol-
dier thought he could hardly decline any conditions
which gave neither party an advantage, but no one
could be found to undertake the duties of second
in a duel on such terms. Two friends of the
principals agreed, however, to stand by with rifles,
to see that the compact was not violated ; and it
was understood that they would at once fire on
the man who should attempt foul play.
It was, of course, imperative that the proceed-
ings should be conducted with secrecy, and the
meeting was arranged to take place on the out-
skirts of a distant town, to which it was necessary
to make r,. long night journey by rail. In the
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A HAND AT ECARTE
early dawn of a cold morning in March, the four
men met in the cemetery of a famous monastery,
that stands perched on a crag, overlooking the
neighbouring city, and a wide vale stretching away
for miles towards the distant hills. A pack of
cards was produced, and, with a tombstone as a
table, the adversaries played one hand at ecarte.
The game went evenly enough, and rather slowly,
till the brother marked four against his opponent's
three. It was then the latter's deal ; he turned
up the king and made the point, winning the
game. A line was drawn, the distance measured,
the pistols placed in the duellists' hands, and the
two friends retired a few yards, holding their
loaded rifles ready for use. The word was given,
and the brother stood calmly awaiting his fate.
The soldier slowly raised his pistol to a point in
line with the other's head, and, from a distance
of a few inches, put a bullet through his brain, the
unfortunate man falling dead without uttering a
sound or making a movement.
The officer obtained a month's leave and fled
across the border into Switzerland, but, before the
month was up, public excitement over the affair
had waned, and the gossips were busy with a new
scandal. Their outraged sense of propriety had
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
been appeased by the sacrifice of the dead, and
the novel and piquant circumstances which accom-
panied it. As for the intrigue which had led to
the duel, that, of course, went on the same as
ever, only rather more so.
J44
XVIII
THE GENTLE ART OF VEERING
WITH THE WIND
TO-DAY I received a letter from you. I have
read it twice, and, though it contains eight
pages of closely written lines, there is not one
word in it that would show that I am any more
to you than the merest acquaintance. For weeks
I have anxiously awaited this letter ; plans, of
the utmost importance to me, depended upon the
answer you would give to a question I had put ;
and my whole future, at least that future which
deals with a man's ambitions, would, in all proba-
bility, be influenced by your reply. I asked you
well, never mind what and you, being entirely
free to write what you mean and what you wish,
say that it is a point on which you cannot offer
advice ; but you tell me that you have given up
reading and taken to gardening, as you find it is
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better for you ! Have you ever read the story of
Zadig ? If you have, you will perhaps remember
how his wife, Azora, railed against the newly
made widow whom she found gardening. I have
no prejudices of that kind, and, in my case, no one's
nose is in danger of the razor ; but still I think
I may not unreasonably feel somewhat aggrieved.
Do not believe that I could ever wish to re-
mind you of what you have forgotten, or wish to
forget. I only want to know what is real and what
is counterfeit, and you alone can tell me. I may
ask this, may I not ? It is not that I may pre-
sume to judge you, or from any wish to gratify
an impertinent curiosity, but that I may be saved
from imagining what is not, and, while torturing
myself, possibly even distress you. I find it hard
to reconcile this letter of yours with others I have
received, and if that sounds to you but a confession
of my stupidity, I would rather admit my want of
intelligence and crave your indulgence, than stand
convicted of putting two and two together and
making of them twenty-two. If you tell me there
is no question of indulgence, but that quite regular
verbs have different moods, that present and past
tenses are irreconcilable, and, of the future, no man
knoweth I shall have my answer.
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VEERING WITH THE WIND
You do not write under the influence of winter.
I cannot charge myself with any offence against
you. Nay, God knows that all my thoughts and
all my efforts are but to do you honour. If I
have misread your earlier letters, if I have been
unduly elated by such kind words as you have
sent me, it is the simplest thing in the world to
undeceive me and show me the error of my ways.
Are you only souffrante, and may I disregard the
chilling atmosphere of your present missive, re-
membering the tender sympathy of voice, of eye,
of hand, in the rapturous days of a cherished
past?
It seems as natural to some people to love
to-day, and to be almost strangers to-morrow, as
that we should revel in a flood of light when
the moon is full, and grope in darkness when
the goddess of night is no longer visible. The
temperament that makes this possible is ffi^
fiB^Nrare, so much so that it creates an interest
in the observer. I have never seen it in man,
but I have in woman ; and one realises that then
it is JJPto to be a spectator than an actor in
what is never a farce, and may easily develop
into tragedy. Imagine such a woman of very
unusual personal attractions : great beauty of face
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and figure united to a high intelligence and
extreme charm of manner ; witty, ambitious,
courageous, full of high thoughts and endowed
with all the advantages that wealth can add to
personal gifts. Deep in a nature that is strangely
complex, and capable of the most opposite ex-
tremes, suppose there is implanted, amongst many
other feelings, a passionate yearning to be under-
stood, and to be loved with a love that would
shrink from nothing to prove the greatness of its
devotion. Here you have a being capable of what
seem the strangest contradictions, and not the least
startling of these may be a rare, but absolute and
passionate, self-abandonment, under the influence
of certain circumstances which strongly appeal to
the senses. Overcome by intoxication of sound,
colour, and magnetism, every moral and conven-
tional muscle suddenly relaxes, and, the violence
of the forces released, is wild and uncontrolled,
because of the firm determination by which they
are habitually bound. To-morrow, in the cold
grey light of day, the slow-working mind of man
is absolutely bewildered by what he sees and
hears. He comes, dominated by an exalted
passion, enthralled by a vision of ecstasy through
which he sees, imperfectly, the people about him,
148
VEERING WITH THE WIND
only " men as trees walking " ; reserving his
thoughts and perceptions of surrounding objects
till he shall again gaze upon that face which
seems to him to have opened the door of life
with the key of a boundless love. Still dazed
by the memories of last night, he enters the
presence of his beloved, and experiences a shock,
such as a swimmer might feel, if floating, half-
entranced, in some tropic sea, he suddenly hit
against an iceberg.
Sometimes, even, influenced by surroundings,
maddened by the whisperings of a southern night,
passed in a place where she breathes an atmos-
phere impregnated with the romance of centuries,
the lonely soul of the woman, hungering for sym-
pathy and communion, will seize a pen and write,
" Come to me ; I want you, for you understand ;
come, and I will give you happiness." Before
the letter has been gone one day, on a journey
that may take it to the ends of the earth, the
writer's mood has changed, and she has forgotten
her summons as completely as though it had
never been written. When the missive reaches
its destination, the recipient will be wise to curb
his impetuosity, and realise that his opportunity
is long since dead and buried.
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
The bewildering phases of such a nature as I
have here imagined are nothing to us. To you
it may even seem inexcusable that I should allude
to a character with which you have no sympathy,
an abnormal growth which sounds rather fantastic
than real. It is the argumentum ad absurdum,
and has its value. This strange perversity which,
by reason of its startling contradictions, seems
almost inhuman, and if, in rare instances, met
with, can only excite feelings of curiosity or re-
pugnartce this is the extreme case. The appli-
cation of the moral will come nearer home to us,
if we make the changes from passionate love to
cold indifference a little less marked, the intervals
between the moods a little longer. It is well to
know one's own mind, not because wavering and
change hurt the fickle, but because some stupid
person may suffer by the purchase of experience ;
may take it to heart, and may do himself an injury.
It is well to know one's own heart, and what it
can give; lest another put too high a value on
the prize and lose all in trying to win it. It is
well to know our own weakness, and at once
recognise that we shall be guided by it ; lest
another think it is strength, and make, for our
sakes, sacrifices that only frighten and perhaps
150
VEERING WITH THE WIND
even annoy us, especially when they are made in
the absurd belief that they will please us.
If you can give the extreme of happiness, do
not forget that you can also cause an infinity of
pain. No one can blame you for declining to
accord favours ; and if that refusal gives pain,
there is no help for it. There can be little
sympathy for those who seek the battle and then
complain of their wounds. Such hurts do not
rankle, and quickly heal. But it is different when
a woman gives love of her own free will, un-
influenced by any consideration beyond her in-
clination, and then takes it back, also without
other cause than caprice. It is difficult to use
any other word either it was a caprice to say
she gave what never was given, or it is a caprice
to take it back. A confession of thoughtlessness
in estimating the character of her own feelings,
or of weakness and inability to resist any oppos-
ing influence, is a poor pretext for a sudden
withering of the tendrils of affection. Such a
confession is an indifferent consolation to the
heart which realises its loss, but cannot appreciate
the situation. Do not mistake me ; it is so hard
to be absolutely candid and fair in considering
our own cases. We are not less likely to make
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
mistakes in matters of sentiment than in the
purely practical affairs of life. If we think we
love, and then become certain that we have
made a mistake, the only safe and kind course
is to confess the error ; but if we deliberately
seek love and give it, much protesting and much
exacting, how shall we then deny it ? Would
one say, " If you asked me, I would go down
into hell with you, now," and then, ere twelve
months had passed, for no crime but enforced
absence, speak or write, to that other, almost as
a stranger ?
There was Peter, I know ; but even he was
not altogether satisfied with himself, and, besides
denying his Lord, he stands convicted of physical
cowardice.
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XIX
A REJOINDER
THANK you. Before my last letter could
reach you, vous niaviez donne affreusement a
penser, and this is what occurs to me :
" Of all the lover's sorrows, next to that
Of Love by Love forbidden, is the voice
Of Friendship turning harsh in Love's reproof,
And overmuch of counsel whereby Love
Grows stubborn, and recoiling unsupprest
Within, devours the heart within the breast."
I dare say it is as well. I am beginning to
recognise the real attractions of what I may call
a "surprise letter." I have had several lately.
It is perhaps the irony of fate that, just after
I had mildly hinted to you that the phases of
the moods of the feminine mind were some-
times rather bewildering, you should write to
me the sort of letter which, had it been sent
by me to a man I called my friend, I should
richly deserve death at his hands. There are
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
certainly few things more thoroughly enjoyable
than to take up a letter that you see comes from
well, let us say from a very dear friend to
dally a little over the opening, in the mingled de-
sire and hesitation to read the contents ; feverish
desire to know that all is well, to hear some word
of affectionate regard hesitation lest the news
be bad, the letter cold ; and then to find such a
missive as you have sent to me.
To begin with, there is a page and a half on
which you have poured out the vials of your
wrath. I was quite hot before I had read half of
it, and my ears even were burning before I came
to a page in which you told me how greatly you
were enjoying yourself. And then, at the end,
there was another page and a half, every word of
which seemed to strike me in the face like a blow.
I suppose you introduced the middle section
that I might meditate on the difference between
your circumstances and mine, and duly appre-
ciate the full weight of your displeasure. Well,
yes, I have done so ; and, as God only knows
when I shall see you again, I must write one or
two of the many words it is in my heart to say
to you.
I am a very unworthy person ; I have deeply
A REJOINDER
offended you ; and you have felt it necessary to
tell me gently Jiow ill my conduct looks to you.
You leave me to infer that there are offences
which cannot be tolerated, and that it would not
be difficult to dispense with my acquaintance. I
humbly accept this verdict, and as it is absolutely
just and right that the prisoner should first be
condemned without hearing, and then suffered to
state his case, and say anything he pleases in
mitigation of sentence, I will try not to weary you
by any reference to ancient history, but simply
confine myself to the charge.
Now, what is my crime ? You asked me a
question ; I am sure you have long ago forgotten
what it was, and I need not remind you ; but I,
like an idiot, thought you really wanted an answer,
and that it was my bounden duty to find a means
of sending it. The question gave me infinite
pleasure, and, again like an idiot, I thought the
answer I longed to send would be welcome. I
could not send it in the ordinary way, as you will
admit, and, a sudden thought striking me that there
was a safe and easy means of transmission, I acted
on it, and your letter is the result. You tell me
your pride is wounded, your trust in my word gone,
and your conscience scandalised. It is useless for
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
me now to express regret. I have been convicted,
and I am only pleading in mitigation of sentence.
Well, mine was a deliberate sin. I had to decide
whether I would answer you or not, and, though I
disliked the means, I thought the end would justify
them. To me they did not then, and do not now,
seem very objectionable ; and it certainly did not
occur to me that I could thereby wound the most
sensitive feelings. Of course I was an imbecile, and
ought to have realised that a question like that was
only a phrase, with no serious meaning. I gave a
promise, you say, and have broken it. It is a pity.
I had rather have sinned in any other way, for I
have my pride too, and it asserts itself chiefly in
the keeping of promises, rather than the gift of
them. As to the conscience, I deeply sympathise.
An offended conscience must be a very incon-
venient, not to say unpleasant, companion. But
you were greatly enjoying yourself (you impress
that upon me, so you will not be offended if I
mention it), therefore I conclude your conscience
was satisfied by the uncompromising expression of
your sense of my misdeeds. Might I ask which
way your conscience was looking when you wrote
this letter to me, or does it feel no call to speak on
my behalf? I would rather my hand were palsied
156
A REJOINDER
than write such a letter to any one, and you know
that I have forfeited your favour in trying to do
your will. I think your quarrel was rather with
your conscience than with me ; but it is well to
keep friends with those of one's own household.
Truly it is an evil thing to stake one's happiness
upon the value of x in an indeterminate equation.
It is possible to regard the unknown quanity with
philosophy ; it is like the unattainable. The
mischief all comes with what looks like solution,
but proves in the end to be drawn from false
premises. Lines can be straight, and figures may
be square, but sentient beings are less reliable, and
therefore more interesting as studies. The pity
is that we sometimes get too close, in our desire
to examine minutely what looks most beautiful
and most attractive. Then proximity destroys the
powers of critical judgment, and, from appearances,
we draw conclusions which are utterly unreliable,
because our own intelligence is obscured by the
interference of our senses. We have to count
with quantities that not only have no original
fixed value, but vary from day to day, and even
from hour to hour.
You will say that if I can liken you to an algebraic
sign, speak of you as a " quantity " and " an inde-
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
'terminate equation," it cannot matter much whether
you write to me in terms of hate or love. If, how-
ever, you consider where you are and where I am,
and if, when this lies in your hand, you are on
good terms with your pride and your conscience,
you may be able to spare, from the abundance
you lavish on them, a grain of sympathy for me
in my loneliness. Is it a crime for the humble
worshipper to seek to assure the deity of his un-
altered devotion ? It used not to be so ; and
though the temple has infinite attractions for me,
the tavern none, I could say with the Persian
" And this I know : whether the one True Light
Kindle to love, or Wrath-consume me quite,
One Flash of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright."
Life is too short, and too full of storm and stress,
to induce any one to stake it on a proved uncer-
tainty, however attractive. It is better never to
take ship at all than to be constantly meeting
disaster on the shoals and rocks of the loveliest
summer sea. Of the end of such a venture there
is no uncertainty. The bravest craft that ever
left port will be reduced to a few rotting timbers,
while the sea smiles anew on what is but a
picturesque effect.
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XX
OF IMPORTUNITY
1MUST unburden myself to you, because I may
do so without offence, without shocking you
beyond forgiveness ; for I feel that if my letter
were to another, I should either have to use such
self-control that I should gain no relief for my
injured feelings, or else the other would think I
had gone mad, and blot my name out of the book
of 'her correspondents two r's, please. You see
I am in an evil mood, the bad tense of the evil
mood ; so I may as well begin in the green leaf
what is sure to come in the brown. Besides, you
are partly to blame ! Is not that like a man ?
You supplied me with the fruit of this knowledge
which has set my teeth on edge, but it is also
true that you gave it in furtherance of my request
and to oblige me. I fancy that was the case with
Eve. Adam probably sent her up a tree (the
expression has lasted to our own time), looked
iS9
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
the other way, and pretended he had forgotten
all about it when the obliging lady came down and
tendered the result of her painful efforts. It is
bad enough to climb with your clothes on, as
I saw the other day, when I induced a friend to
swarm up a fern- tree by telling him I did not
believe he could do it. But this is all beside the
mark ; what has roused my ire is a parcel of
new books, kindly selected by you to cheer my
solitude. As they came direct from the bookseller,
I do not know whether you have read them, but
they are very new indeed, and, from what you say,
I think you must at least have wrestled with some
of them. Very recent publications, like many of
these, are rather a rarity here, and, as I was
particularly busy, I lent some of them to friends
who are always hungering for new literature. Now
I am rather sorry, though I washed my hands of
the transaction by saying that I would not take
the responsibility of recommending anything, but
they were at liberty to take what they liked. In
due time the volumes were returned, without com-
ment, but with the pages cut. I did not think
anything of that at the time, the realities of the
moment interested me a great deal more than any
book could ; but now I have read some of the
1 60
OF IMPORTUNITY
batch, and I am suffering from an earnest desire
to meet the authors and " have it out with them."
As however, that is not in my power, I am going
to victimise you. There is one story, of a kind
that is now common enough, that is specially
aggravating. If you have read it you will know
which I refer to ; if not, I won't tell you. It is
written by a woman, and discourses in a very
peculiar fashion on the ways of men. That is of
no particular moment, for the writer has either a
very indifferent knowledge of men, or she is not
to be congratulated on her male friends, or she
has had some very unfortunate personal experi-
ences, and judges the species by some repulsive
individuals. It was a man who said that women
do not possess the sentiment of justice, and he
might, if he had wished to be fair, have added
that it is comparatively rare in men. Men have
written many unkind and untrue things about
women as a sex, but they cannot have harmed
them much, since their influence over the beings,
derisively styled " Lords of Creation " is certainly
on the increase, especially in new countries like
America.
What, however, is rather strange is that, in
the book I speak of, there are two women joint-
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
heroines, as it were held up for the reader's
admiration, but described as perfectly odious crea-
tures. The story, however, is practically confined
to the life and character of one of these ladies,
and the exact position of the other, in relation to
her friend, is not altogether clear, nor of any con-
cern as regards my point. Let me then speak of
the one woman as the heroine ; it is to her I wish
to apply the epithet odious. The writer, I take
it, is very pleased and satisfied with the lady of
her creation, and, whilst she never loses an oppor-
tunity of enlarging on the very objectionable char-
acteristics of all men of birth and education, she
evidently means the reader to understand that she
has drawn and coloured the picture of a very per-
fect and altogether captivating woman. A young,
beautiful, intelligent, highly educated, perfectly
dressed woman, surrounded by every luxury that
great wealth and good taste can secure, may easily
be captivating, and it might be counted something
less than a crime that a number of admirers
should be anxious to marry her. When it comes
to character it is different ; and even though the
spectacle of a woman with fewer attractions than
I have named, and a disposition that left some-
thing to be desired, enslaving men of renown, is
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OF IMPORTUNITY
not unknown to history, it seems a little unusual
to design a heroine as the very embodiment of
selfishness, and then exhibit her as the perfect
woman. The life that is shown to us is chiefly
that of a girl, old enough, and independent and
intelligent enough, to know perfectly what she
was doing, constantly allowing, or alluring, men
to make love to her ; and then, when they wished
to marry her, telling them in language which, if
not considerate, was certainly plain, how deeply
insulted she felt. If they wasted years and years,
or lost their useless, sinful lives altogether, over
ner, that was a matter of such absolute indiffer-
ence that it never gave her a second thought or
a moment of regret. She did not avoid men alto-
gether ; on the contrary, she seemed rather fond of
their society, as she had only one woman friend,
and is described as giving them all ample op-
portunities of declaring their passionate admira-
tion for her beauty and intelligence. The lovers
were many and varied ; coming from the peerage,
the squirearchy, the army, the Church, and other
sources ; but they all met with the same fate, and
each in turn received a special lecture on the vice
and amazing effrontery of his proposal.
I suppose it is a book with a purpose, and,
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
unlike a Scotch sermon, it is divided into only
two heads. As to one, I could imagine the reply
might be in the form of another book styled " Her
Lord the Eunuch." Biblical history deals with the
species. It is less common now, but if a demand
again arises, no doubt there will be a supply to
meet it. That is the head I cannot discuss, even
in these days of fin de siecle literature, wherein it
is a favourite subject, and would have fewer diffi-
culties than the case of a nineteenth-century Virgin
Mary, which formed the text of one volume in
the parcel. The other consideration seems to
rest on safe ground, with no treacherous bogs or
dangerous quicksands, and therefore I venture to
ask you what you think of this paragon of all the
virtues. Is she the type of a woman's woman ?
One sometimes, but very, very rarely, meets a
woman like this, in England at any rate ; and
though the lady's girdle is certain to be deco-
rated with a collection of male scalps of all ages
and many colours, very few of her own sex will be
found in the number of her friends or admirers.
Her charity is generally a form of perversity ; for
if she occasionally lavishes it on some animal or
human being, it is a caprice that costs her little,
and to the horse or dog which fails in instant
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OF IMPORTUNITY
obedience, to the beggar or relative who impor-
tunes, she is passionately or coldly cruel. Yet
her fascination is real enough, but it seldom en-
dures. There is no need to sympathise with the
would-be lovers, who are rejected yet still impor-
tunate. When, as sometimes happens in a world
of change, there has been mutual love between
man and woman, and one has ceased to love, it is
natural enough that the other should desire to re-
tain what may still be, to him or her, the only thing
worth living for. But to importune a woman to
give herself, her body and soul, her whole destiny
till death, when she does not wish it, is to ask
for something that it were better not to precisely
define. Persumably if the man thinks he is in
love, it is the woman's love he wants. She says
she does not love him, and he is a fool, or worse,
to take anything less, even when she is willing to
sacrifice or sell herself for any conceivable reason.
Surely, if the man had any real regard for her,
he would think first of her happiness, and refuse
to take advantage of her weakness or necessities.
Besides, her misery could not be his advantage,
and the worn-out sophism of parents or other in-
terested persons, that "she did not know her own
mind, and would get to like him," is too hazardous
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
a chance on which to stake the welfare of two lives.
Of course men plague women to marry them after
they have been refused. The world is full of
people who want what is not for them, and are
not too particular as to the means, if they can
secure the end. But I wonder what a man would
say if some woman he did not care about worried
his life out to marry her. Man is easily flattered,
the sensation is with him comparatively rare, and
he is very susceptible to the agreeable fumes of
that incense ; but only the very weakest would be
lured to the altar, and the after-life of the lady
who took him there would not be an altogether
happy one. Man and his descendants have had
a grudge against the first woman for thousands
of years, for an alleged proposal of hers that is
said to have interfered with his prospects. It is
not chivalrous for a man to press a woman to
" let him love her, if she can't love him ; " it is
not a very nice proposition, if he will take it
home and work it out quietly ; it is something
very like an insult to her, and it is certainly not
likely to be anything but a curse to him. That
is when she is endowed with those charming
qualities common to most women. When, how-
ever, as in the case I have referred to, she has a
1 66
OF IMPORTUNITY
special aversion to men generally, and him in
particular, and prides herself on the possession of
characteristics that he could not admire in his own
mother, to still insist upon forcing the lady into
a union with him is to be vindictively silly. It
is hardly necessary to go as far as this to prove
his determination and his title to a sort of spurious
constancy.
167
XXI
OF COINCIDENCES
IN spite of the testimony of many worthy and
some unworthy people, I have not yet been
able to accept spiritual manifestations and the re-
appearance of the dead as even remotely probable.
I think most of the current ghost stories are
capable of a simple explanation, if one could only
get an unvarnished statement of real facts from
the witnesses. Usually, however, those on whose
authority these stories rest, are constitutionally of
such a nervous organisation that they are physi-
cally incapable of describing with exact accuracy
what they saw or heard. When, as not infre-
quently happens, those who have seen visions
admit to having felt that extremity of fear which
bathes them in a cold perspiration, or makes their
hair rise up straight on their heads (this last is
not, I think, alleged by women), then there is
all the more reason to doubt their testimony.
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OF COINCIDENCES
Undoubtedly curious things happen which do not
admit of easy explanation, but they are not neces-
sarily supernatural, or connected in any way with
the return of the dead to the sight of the living.
Dreams, again, are sometimes very curious, and it
might be difficult to offer a reasonable explanation
of some dream-experiences, especially those which
lead to the backing of winning horses or the pur-
chase of prize-tickets in a lottery. A really re-
liable dreamer of this kind would be a valuable
investment ; but, unfortunately, there is a want of
certainty about even those who have, once in a
lifetime, brought off a successful coup. Still, it
has happened. I myself have heard a dreamer
who was also a dream -talker place accurately
the three first horses in a coming race ; but I
had not sufficient confidence in the " tip " to take
advantage of it. In that case, too, the winner
was a very pronounced favourite. Many people
say they have dreamt of strange places, and after-
wards seen those places in reality, and even been
able to find their way about in them. It may be
so. For myself, I cannot say I have ever had
such an experience, but I believe (I say it doubt-
fully, because one may be deceived about journeys
in dreamland) that I have often seen the same
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
places in different dreams, dreamed after intervals
of years, so that, while dreaming, I have at once
recognised the place as a familiar scene in my
dreamland. But those places I have never beheld
on earth. In my early youth, scared by tales of
the bottomless pit and the lake of brimstone, I
used to dream, almost nightly, of those places of
torment; but it is a long time ago, and I have
quite forgotten what they were like. I have no
ambition to renew my acquaintance, or to be
given the opportunity of comparing the reality
with the nightmare of my childish imagination
and a cramped position. Apart from these more
or less vain considerations, I have known some
very curious coincidences, and I will tell you the
story of one of them.
I was journeying in a strange, a distant, and
an almost unknown land. More than this, I was
the guest of the only white man in a remote
district of that country. It was a particularly
lovely spot, and, being an idler for the moment,
I asked my host, after a few days, what there
was of interest that I could go and see. He
said he would send a servant with me to show
me a cemetery, where were buried a number of
Englishmen who, some few years before, had been
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OF COINCIDENCES
killed or died in the neighbourhood, during the
progress of one of England's successful little mili-
tary expeditions. That afternoon I was led to the
cemetery in question. I have seldom seen a more
glorious succession of pictures than were presented
by the view from that lovely spot ; and never in
any country have I beheld a more ideal resting-
place for the honoured dead. It did not surprise
me that my host told me he had already selected
his own corner, and repeatedly made it the objec-
tive of his afternoon walks. Within a fenced
enclosure, partly surrounded by graceful, ever-green
trees, lay the small plot of carefully kept grass
which formed the burial-ground. It occupied the
summit of a rising ground commanding a magni-
ficent view of the surrounding country. From the
gate the ground sloped steeply down to a road,
and then dropped sheer forty or fifty feet to the
waters of a great, wide, crystal-clear river, flowing
over a bed of golden sand. Under this steep and
lofty bank, the base all rock, the river swirled
deep and green ; but it rapidly shallowed towards
the centre, and the opposite shore, seven hundred
feet distant, was a wide expanse of sand, half-
circled by great groves of palms, and backed by
steep, forest-clad hills. The river made a wide
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
sweep here, so that, looking down on it from
such a height gave it rather the appearance of
a huge lake narrowing into the distant hills.
Picturesque villages lined both banks of the river,
the houses showing splashes of colour between
the trees. Boats of quaint build sailing, poling,
paddling, rowing passed up and down the broad
stream, giving life to the scene ; while at distances
varying from three miles to thirty or more, the
valley was shut in by lofty mountains, green
near by, with their garment of unbroken forest,
but, in the distance, blue as an Italian sky. I
drank this in, felt it all as a feeling, this and
much more with which I will not weary you, and
then I turned to look at the grass-covered mounds
and wooden crosses that marked the graves of the
exiled dead. I was standing in front of a some-
what more pretentious headstone, which marked
the resting-place of an officer killed a few miles
from this spot, when, through the wicket, came a
messenger bearing a letter for me. The cover
bore many post-marks, signs of a long chase, and
here at last it had caught me in my wanderings.
I did not recognise the handwriting, but when I
had opened the letter and looked at the signature,
I realised that it was that of an old lady who was
> 172
OF COINCIDENCES
but an acquaintance, and one of whom I had not
heard for years. I read the letter, and I may
confess to some little astonishment. It told me
that, hearing that I was leaving England for a
long journey, and that I should eventually arrive
at somewhere in the East, the writer wished to
tell me that her daughter (whom I hardly remem-
bered) had married a certain soldier, that he had
been killed some time before, and was buried in
some place (which she tried indifferently to name)
where there were no Europeans. If I should ever
be in the neighbourhood, would I try to find his
grave, and tell them something about it ; for they
were in great grief, and no one could relieve their
anxiety on the subject of their loved one's last home.
It seemed to me a somewhat remarkable coinci-
dence that I should, at that moment, be standing
in front of the stone which told me that, under-
neath that emerald turf, lay all that was left
of the poor lady's son-in-law, the grief-stricken
daughter's husband. The situation appealed to
my artistic instincts. I sat down, there and
then, and, with a pencil and a bit of paper, I
made a rough sketch of the soldier's grave ; care-
fully drawing the headstone, and inscribing on it,
in very plain and very black print, the legend
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
that I saw in front of me. Then I went home,
and, while the situation was hot upon me, I
wrote, not to the mother, but to the widow, a
little account of what had occurred, using the
most appropriate and touching language I could
think of, to describe the scene and my deep
sympathy. Finally I enclosed the little picture,
which I had drawn with such a compelling sense
of my responsibilities, and the unique character
of the opportunity, to show that I was a man
of rather uncommon feeling. Much pleased with
the result of my efforts, I entrusted the letter to
my friend (there was no such thing as a post-
office), and we became almost sentimental over
the chastened tears with which my letter would
be read by the two poor ladies.
The mother's letter to me had wandered about for
two or three months before it came to my hands ;
but I learned, ages afterwards, that my letter
to the daughter was a far longer time in transit ;
not the fault of my friend, but simply of the general
unhingedness of things in those wild places.
The letter did at last arrive, and was handed to
the widow on the day she was married to a new
husband. That is why I believe in the quaint-
ness of coincidences.
XXII
OF A COUNTRY-HOUSE CUSTOM
1WENT one morning to a hotel in London
to call upon a celebrated writer of fiction, a
lady, and she told me that, as a protest against
ideas which she despised, she always locked her
door when she was talking to a man. I stayed
there about two hours, but I don't remember
whether the door was locked or not, probably
not ; no one, however, tried it, and my reputation
survived the ordeal. The practice is unconven-
tional, though innocent enough. It is much more
common to find yourself in a lady's room, at
night, in a country-house in England, and there
you may talk to a friend, perhaps to two, and
even, on occasions, smoke a cigarette, while the
door is seldom locked. Do you see any harm
in it ? The thing itself is so pleasant that I do
not mean to discuss with you the fors and
againsts ; I am satisfied that it is often done, and
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
that I sometimes profit by the arrangement. A
century ago, or rather more, it was common
enough, if not in England, certainly on the
Continent, and the guest was sometimes present
while the lady lay in bed, or made her toilette.
It is conceivable that this custom deserved to
be discouraged, and it seems to have gone out of
fashion, no doubt for sufficiently good reasons.
I was once a guest in a delightful country-house
in the heart of England, a house where nothing
was lacking that could contribute to comfort, and
where the hostess was attraction sufficient to draw
visitors from the uttermost parts of the earth, and
keep them with her as long as she desired their
presence. She was wayward (an added charm),
and the company came and went, and some came
again, but none remained long enough to become
overpoweringly tedious or compromisingly epris. It
was winter, the hard earth was full of "bone," the
waters icebound, and the face of the country white
with a thick covering of frozen snow. There were
but few of us in the house, and we had been skat-
ing on the ornamental water in a neighbour's park,
miles away. That was the only form of exercise
open to us, and we had enjoyed it. The long walk
over the crisp snow and the uneven cart tracks of
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OF A COUNTRY-HOUSE CUSTOM
a country road, the intoxicating ease and rapidity
of motion over the glassy ice, the ring of steel on
that hard, smooth surface, how distinctly they all
come back ! And then the trudge home in the
gathering dusk, between the woods whose snow-
laden trees looked the very picture of winter,
it was all delightful and exhilarating, and, if our
dinner-party was small, it was certainly a merry
one. When we parted on the stairs it was close
on midnight, and I was standing enjoying the blaze
of my fire and the intense cosiness of my room,
when there came a knock, and what I had thought
was a cupboard-door opened to admit the head of
our charming chatelaine, with an inquiry as to my
comfort and contentment, and an invitation to put
on a smoking-jacket and have a cigarette in her
snuggery. I very eagerly and gratefully accepted
that offer, and a few minutes later found myself in
the most delightfully warm, cosy, and withal artisti-
cally beautiful room the heart and mind of woman
could desire or design. This boudoir faced the front
of the house, and looking over the lawn and terraces
were three French windows, through which streamed
bright rays of moonlight, for the shutters were not
closed. Within, a great wood fire blazed on a wide
hearth of olive-green tiles. Two lamps, with shades
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of vieille rose, shed a soft glow over inviting-looking
chairs, thick carpet, tables littered with books and
papers, lovely bits of porcelain and bronze, treasures
in burnished silver and dull red gold. Every chair
looked as if it were made for comfort, and the whole
room said unmistakably, "This is where I live."
I should have noted the general effect at a glance,
but I had time to appreciate the details, for, when
I entered, I found the room unoccupied. In a few
minutes my hostess appeared from her room, which
opened out of this fascinating retreat, and said
" Well, how do you like my snuggery ; is it not
cosy?"
I said it was charming and delightful, and every-
thing that good taste and an appreciation of real
comfort could make it.
" I am so glad," she said ; " will you smoke one
of my cigarettes ? "
" Thank you, yes."
" Shall I light it for you ? "
" That would be most kind."
" There ; now we can make ourselves quite
comfortable and have a real good chat, and no
one will come to disturb us. What have you
been doing with yourself all this time ? What
new friends have you made ? What books have
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OF A COUNTRY-HOUSE CUSTOM
you been reading ? Tell me all about everything.
I think you would be more comfortable over there ;
don't worry about me, this is my favourite seat,
but I change about and never sit very long in
one place. You can imagine I am your Father
Confessor, so don't keep me waiting; tell it all, and
keep back nothing ; you know I shall be sure to
find you out if you try to deceive me."
I found a seat not exactly where I had first
wished to place myself, but where I was put
and our chat was so mutually interesting that I
was surprised to find it was 2 A.M. when my
hostess told me I must go to bed. I must have
smoked a good many cigarettes, and I have a
vague recollection that there were glasses with
spiritual comfort as well ; it is probable, for
nothing that any reasonable human being could
want was ever lacking there. I know that I
lingered, and the white light through the curtains
drew us both to the window. Never shall I
forget the incomparable picture of that snow-
covered landscape ; glittering, scintillating under
the silver radiance of a full winter moon, riding
high in a clear, grey, frosty sky. The absolute
stillness of it ; not a sign of life ; the bare trees
throwing sharp shadows on the dazzling whiteness
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of a prospect broken only by the evergreens of
the garden, the cleared stone steps of the terraces,
and beyond, a small stream winding through the
narrow valley, and forming a little lake of as yet
unfrozen water, its ever rippling surface showing
black and sombre under the shadow of a high
bank which shut out the moonlight. The contrast
between that outside, the coldness, the white-
ness, the sense of far-into-the-nightness, which
somehow struck one instantly ; and the inside,
the warmth, the comfort, the subtle sympathy
of companionship with a most fascinating, most
beautiful, perfectly-garmented woman : it was too
striking to be ever forgotten. The picture has
risen unbidden before my eyes on many a night
since then, under other skies and widely different
circumstances.
Turning away from the window, I could see
through an open door into my companion's room,
and I said, " How did you get into my room ? "
" Very easily," she answered ; " there is a cup-
board in the thickness of the wall between your
room and mine ; it opens into both rooms, but is
at present full of my gowns, as you would have
seen had you had the curiosity to look in, and
the door happened to be unlocked."
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OF A COUNTRY-HOUSE CUSTOM
I said I had abundant curiosity, and would
gratify it when I got back.
My hostess smiled and said, "There is nothing
to find out now ; I have told you all there is to
tell. Good night."
" But/' I said, " why should I go all the way
round, through cold passages, when I can walk
straight through to my room by this way ? " and
I pointed to the open door.
" That is very ingenious of you," she answered ;
"and you are not wanting either in the quick
grasp of a situation, or the assurance to make the
most of it. You do not deserve that I should
pay you such a pretty compliment ! It is too late
for banter ; I am getting sleepy. Good night."
iSi
XXIII
A MERE LIE
A 5 the tale I am going to tell you is only a lie,
you will understand that it is not of my
making ; I cannot even pretend to have heard it
at first hand. The author was a scientist who
lied in the intervals between his researches. It
was a relief, I suppose, after too close contact
with the eternal truths of Nature. His mental
fingers seemed to wander over the keys of an
instrument of romance, striking strange chords
and producing unsuspected effects in an accom-
paniment to which he sang a perpetual solo.
Amongst the most eccentric of his class the
Professor would still have been a remarkable char-
acter. No one seemed to know to what nationality
he belonged, and it was useless to ask him for any
information, because of the doubt which clouded any
statement that he made. Indeed, to put it shortly,
he lied like a tombstone. When I met him his
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A MERE LIE
only companion was a Papuan boy, so black that
a bit of coal would have made a white mark on
him ; and the Professor would affectionately stroke
the child's head, and say that when he had grown
bigger, when his skull was fully developed, he
meant to take it, and was looking forward to the
day when he could examine it carefully, inside
and out, and compare it with the skulls of certain
wild tribes which, he felt certain, he should thus
be able to prove were of true Melanesian origin.
He would then sometimes relate how, during a
visit to Cadiz, he took a great fancy to the head
of a Spaniard whom he met there. He thought
the man was in failing health ; but as he could
not waste time in the Peninsula, he looked about
for some means of hastening the possibly slow pro-
gress of disease. The Professor soon found that
the owner of the head had a reckless and profligate
nephew, with whom he scraped acquaintance. To
him the Professor said that he had observed his
uncle, and thought him looking far from well,
indeed, he did not fancy he could last long, and,
explaining that he was himself an anthropologist,
concerned in scientific studies for the benefit of
humanity, he arranged with the nephew that, when
his uncle died, the Professor should pay a sum of
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
30 and be allowed to take the uncle's head. The
uncle died shortly afterwards, and the money was
paid, but the nephew, a man without principle,
buried his relative in defiance of his bargain with
the Professor.
The means by which the man of science secured
full value for his investment made one of his best
stories ; and some day I may tell it to you, but,
when I began this letter, I had quite a different
adventure in my mind, and I will take the liberty of
asking you to suppose that the collector of skulls
is telling you his own tale in his own way.
" I was in Australia, where I had already met
with some strange experiences, the last of them a
disastrous expedition into the desert, where, when
I was quite alone and a thousand miles from the
nearest habitation, I fell over two precipices, first
breaking my right and then immediately afterwards
my left leg. I got back to civilisation with some
difficulty, as I had to crawl on my hands most of
the way, dragging my broken legs behind me ; but
what really made the journey seem long was the
fact that I had to forage for my own sustenance
as well. I was somewhat exhausted by these
hardships, and was giving myself a short holiday
for rest, when Australia was moved to a pitch of
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A MERE LIE
the greatest excitement and indignation by the
exploits of a daring bushranger, who set the Police
and the Government at defiance, and established
such a panic in the land that a party of Volunteers
was formed, sworn to track the outlaw down and
bring him in alive or dead. I do not say that I
had any ultimate designs on the man's head, but
still the skull of a person of that type could not
fail to be interesting. So, partly as a relaxation,
but mainly in the cause of science, I joined the
expedition.
" It would not interest you to describe our
failures how the man outwitted us ; how, just
when we thought we had him, he would slip
through our fingers, partly by his own skill, his
knowledge of the bush, and the excellence of his
horses, but mainly, I think, by the help of sym-
pathisers, who always gave warning of our move-
ments and most secret plans. I will pass over all
that and take you to the final scene in the drama.
" When we were not actually in the bush we
were following our quarry from one country-place
to another, as the information we received gave
us a clue to his whereabouts. It seldom happened
that we passed a night in a town, and, when not
camping out, we were billeted on the people of
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the district, the wealthiest and most important of
them being too glad to place their houses at our
disposal. One evening, after a hot pursuit, feeling
sure we were close upon the trail of our man, we
reached a great house where a number of guests
were already being entertained. In spite of our
numbers we were welcomed with effusion, and,
after dinner, the ladies of the party took advantage
of the sudden arrival of a number of young fellows
ready for anything to get up an impromptu dance.
I am not a dancing man my time has been spent
in communion with Nature, in reading in the open
book of Truth therefore I left the revellers and
went to bed.
" We had had a long and a hard day in the
saddle, and I was weary, and must have fallen
asleep almost as soon as I lay down.
" Now I must tell you what I afterwards heard
from others of my party. It was a little after
midnight, and the dancing was going on with
great spirit, when I this, of course, is what they
tell me suddenly appeared at a door of the ball-
room in my night-dress, with a rifle in my hand,
and, without hesitation, I walked through the
room and out into a verandah that led towards
the back of the house. My head was thrown
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A MERE LIE
somewhat back, my eyes were wide open and
seemed fixed on some distant object, while I
was evidently unconscious of my immediate sur-
roundings.
" I fear my sudden entry into the dancing-room
in such a very unconventional dress was rather a
shock to some of the ladies. I am told that several
screamed, and one or more of the older ones
fainted ; but for myself I knew none of this till
afterwards. It appears that, what with astonish-
ment at my appearance, and the necessary atten-
tions to the ladies whose nerves were upset, a little
time elapsed before any one thought of following
me. Then some one fancied he heard the sound
of a horse's feet, and the men of my party pulled
themselves together and made for the stables, as
that was the direction I seemed to have taken.
" I was nowhere to be seen ; but a stable door
was open, and my horse, saddle, and bridle had
gone. Then the matter began to look serious, and,
as my friends saddled their horses and started to
look for me, riding they hardly knew where, there
were rather dismal forebodings of the probable fate
of even a fully-clad man luckless enough to be lost
in the Australian bush. It was a lovely starlight
night with a young moon, and, under other circum-
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
stances, the ride might have been pleasant enough ;
but the aimlessness of the whole business was be-
coming painfully evident to the searchers, when the
sound of a rifle-shot was distinctly heard at no
great distance. The horses' heads were turned
towards the direction from which the sound came,
and the troop pushed on at a brisk pace. Almost
immediately, a faint column of smoke was per-
ceived, and as the horsemen approached the spot,
the embers of a dying fire shed a slight ruddy glow
in the darkness. The word was passed to proceed
with caution, but the party was already so close
that they could see my white night-dress, as I
stood with naked feet by the side of my horse,
regarding, with a half-dazed expression, the smok-
ing rifle which I held in my hand. Sixty yards
off was the thin column of smoke rising from the
dying fire.
" I was surrounded by my friends, who all
spoke at once, and fired a perfect volley of ques-
tions at me. I said, ' Softly, gentlemen, softly,
and I will tell you all I know about it, for indeed
the situation seems strange enough. As you
know I went to bed. I slept and I dreamed.
I suppose I was over-wrought, and my mind was
full of the bushranger, for I thought I was again
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A MERE LIE
on his track, out in the bush, on horseback and
alone. It was night, but I seemed to be riding
with a purpose, or my horse knew where he was
going, for by-and-by I was drawn towards a
thin column of white smoke, the smoke of a wood
fire, and then, as I got nearer, I caught the flicker-
ing glow of dying embers. I felt the object of
our search was there, and I moved forward with
extreme caution, till I had got within a hundred
yards, and then I distinctly saw the outlaw lying
perfectly straight on the ground, his feet towards
the fire, and his horse hobbled hard by. I say
I saw the outlaw, but I was dreaming, and in
my dream I knew it was the man, though I could
not see his face. I dismounted, and, leading my
horse, I got to within sixty yards of the sleeper.
Then, fearing that if I went nearer he might wake
and escape me, I took a steady aim, pulled the
trigger, and the next instant I was wide awake
standing here in my night-dress.'
" Almost before I had finished I saw men look-
ing towards the fire, which was no dream, and we
all of us now distinctly made out the form of a
man, lying on his side, almost on his face, with
his feet towards the embers and his head by the
bush. Moreover, we could both see and hear a
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horse, that was evidently hobbled not very far
from the sleeper. It did not take long to sur-
round the spot where the man lay ; but, as we
rapidly closed in on the sleeper, he never stirred.
A moment more and we were beside him. A
dark stream, on which the glow from the fire
seemed to shed some of its own red light, was
oozing slowly from beneath the man's chest ; and,
as several hands turned his face up to the stars
and the pale moonlight, it was too evident that
he was dead, and that his life had gone out with
that crimson stream which flowed from a bullet
wound in his heart.
" I did not know the man myself, but several
of our party recognised him. It was the bush-
ranger, and, as I expected, his skull was not with-
out features of special interest to science."
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XXIV
TIGERS AND CROCODILES
WHEN I first came, a visitor, to the Malay
Peninsula, I was struck by the fact that
wherever I went I heard stories of tigers. If, in
the course of a day's ride, I stopped at a village
to eat my luncheon, the people who pressed round
to watch me and have a chat would always tell
me a tiger story of local and comparatively recent
occurrence. Wherever I encamped for the night,
I should be sure of at least one tale of successful
attack or successful resistance, where a tiger had
filled the principal role. When once I understood
the little peculiarity, I took it as a matter of course,
and at talking time I used to say, " Now tell me
about the tiger : what was it he did ? " It may
have been accident, but it is no exaggeration to
say that my question nearly always drew forth a
more or less ghastly story.
Now that my visit is nearly over, it occurs to
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me that, though I have accumulated an almost
endless series of more or less interesting tales of
the " low, crouching horror with the cruel fangs,"
I have not retailed any of them to you. In a
certain number of cases I was myself near enough
to be able to verify details, and in others I had
means of proving main facts. One is almost
bound to say that, because tiger-stories, which
are worth repeating, are almost always listened
to with incredulity, or, what is worse, with that
banter which often means, in plain words, " What
I have not seen myself I decline to believe." That
is the attitude of England to the Orient in the
presence of a tiger-story with which the auditors
can claim no connection. I said that the pre-
valence of these tales struck me on my first
arrival. I soon became blase, and for a long time
I have had no curiosity on the subject ; but I will
tell you of two tiger incidents that I personally
verified, as far as I was able, and I will make no
attempt to paint in the background with local
colour, in order to supply you with finished
pictures.
There is an island by the western shore of the
Straits of Malacca. You would never guess it to
be an island, for it is simply a block of mangrove-
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TIGERS AND CROCODILES
covered mud, with one side towards the sea, and
the other three sides separated from the mainland
by deep but narrow lagoons of tidal water. The
only inhabitants are a few wood-cutters, Malays
and Chinese, who live in huts of mat or bark with
palm-leaf roofs, while they are employed cutting
mangroves and a hard-wood palm called Ntbong.
The huts of the Chinese are on the ground, but the
Malay dwellings are invariably raised a few feet
above the damp soil, and to them entry is obtained
by means of a ladder. These hovels are very
carelessly built ; they are of flimsy materials, only
intended to last for a few months, when they are
abandoned and rapidly fall to pieces. They serve
their purpose. The occupants are out from dawn
till afternoon, when they return to cook, eat, and
sleep ; and so, from day to day, till the job on
which they are engaged is completed, and they can
return, in the case of the Malays, to their families,
while the Chinese are probably moved to another
scene of similar labour.
I was obliged to tell you this ; you would not
understand the story otherwise.
The island covers an area of several thousand
acres, but except for the few wood-cutters it
was, at the time I write of, uninhabited. At
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one spot there was a hut containing two Chinese,
near it a Malay house with eight or ten men
in it, and at no great distance a large shed
with nearly a score of Chinese. One dark night,
about II P.M., the two Chinese who lived together
were awakened by a noise in that part of the
hut where they kept their food. One of the two
got up, struck a light, and went into the back
room. Immediately there was a dull thud, as of
a man knocked heavily down, and the poor wretch
screamed, " Help me, it is a tiger ! " His comrade
at once got out of his mosquito-curtain, and sprang
to his friend's assistance. Seizing him by the
arm, he tried to free him from the clutches of the
tiger, who already had a firm hold of the doomed
man's leg. The tug of life and death did not last
long, for the tiger pulled the would-be rescuer
down on his face, and, the light having been extin-
guished in the struggle, the man's courage went out
with it, and, in a paroxysm of fear, he climbed on
to the roof. There he remained till daylight, while,
close beneath him, within the narrow limits of the
hut, the tiger dragged his victim hither and thither,
snarling and growling, tearing the flesh and crunch-
ing the bones of the man, whose agonies were
mercifully hidden. In the grey light which heralds
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TIGERS AND CROCODILES
dawn, the watcher, clinging to the roof-ridge, saw
the tiger drag out of the house and into the forest
the shapeless remains of his late companion. When
once the sun was fairly up, the survivor slid down,
and without daring to look inside the hut, made
his way to the nearest Police Station, and reported
what had occurred. An examination of the pre-
mises fully bore out his statement.
A week passed. The Malays, whose hut was
nearest to that visited by the tiger, were careful to
bar their door after hearing what had happened ;
but in this case the precaution proved useless.
Easterns, especially those engaged in severe manual
labour, sleep exceedingly heavily, and the men of
this household were aroused by a smothered cry
from one of their number; the noise of a heavy
body falling through the thatch having passed
practically unnoticed. One of the party got up,
lighted a torch, and was at once knocked down
by a tiger springing upon him. In a moment
every man had seized his heavy chopping-knife,
and the whole party fell upon the man-eater,
and, by the light of the fallen torch, hit so hard
and straight that the beast suddenly sprang
through the roof and disappeared. It was then,
for the first time, discovered that this was the
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
means by which the tiger had effected its en-
trance, and it left by the hole which it had made
on entering the hut. The first man attacked was
dead ; the second was taken to hospital, and there
died of his wounds.
There was a fourth victim. I am not certain of
the facts in that case, but he was severely injured
and was sent to hospital, where, I believe, he re-
covered with the entire loss of his scalp. That
filled up the cup of crime. Almost directly after-
wards the murderer killed a bullock ; the carcass
was poisoned, and the next day the body of a
tigress was found close by that of her victim. She
was not very large, eight feet from nose to the tip
of the tail ; she was in splendid condition teeth
perfect and coat glossy but her legs and feet
were disproportionately large to the size of her
body. On her head there was a deep clean cut,
and one of her fore-legs was gashed, evidently by
a Malay chopper. The most curious feature was
that in certainly two out of the three cases the
tigress, who always attacked by night, the only
time when the huts were occupied, effected her
entrance by springing on the roof and forcing her
way through the thin palm thatching.
There is another tiger story that I can tell you
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TIGERS AND CROCODILES
in two words. It is curious, it sounds highly
improbable ; but, after hearing it on the spot from
the two men concerned, I believe it.
Quite recently it was the fruit season here, and,
as is customar}', two men were watching an
orchard situated on the side of a main cart-road.
The orchard was not enclosed in any way, and
the fruit trees on one side actually overhung the
road. The road was divided from the orchard
by a rather wide but quite shallow ditch, that
was always dry except during rain. Fifteen or
twenty feet on the inside of this ditch was a tiny
lean-to under the trees. The shelter consisted of
a raised floor of split bamboos, covered by a palm-
thatch roof, and a narrow sort of bench, also under
the roof, but level with the floor. The bench was
next to the high road.
On the night of which I write, one man was
sleeping on the bench, the other on the floor of the
shelter. It was fine, with a young, early-setting
moon ; the scattered houses of a considerable village
were all round, and there was nothing to fear.
I said before that natives sleep soundly, and
you must believe it, or you will never credit my
story. About I A.M. the man sleeping on the
floor of the shelter heard his friend shouting for
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help. The voice came from the ditch by the road,
and thither the man ran, shouting "What is the
matter ? " " Thieves ! " promptly replied the other,
but a moment's conversation dispelled the idea born
of his partially-awakened intelligence, and led them
to the true interpretation of the riddle. The man
in the ditch said then, and says now, that he was
asleep, and knew nothing till he suddenly found
himself thrown in the ditch, when he awoke and
shouted, "Help, thieves!" But, all the same,
when he tried to get up, and his friend helped
him to the shelter and got a light, it was seen
that he had a deep gash in the shoulder, which
kept him in hospital for nearly three weeks. The
light also showed the track of a tiger up to the
bench, thence to the spot in the ditch where the
man was lying, and straight across the high road
into another orchard. One other thing it showed,
and that was a patch of earth on the top of the
wounded man's head.
The friend's theory, shared by all the neigh-
bours, is this. He points to the exact position
in which the sleeper was lying, and how a post,
from ground to roof, completely protected the back
of his neck, so that the tiger could not seize him
as he must have wished to do. Owing to the
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TIGERS AND CROCODILES
man's position, and the way the post of the house
and the rails of the bench (for it had a sort of
back) ran, the tiger had to take a very awkward
grip of his prey, catching him by the shoulder,
and therefore carrying him with his head almost
on the ground. Three or four steps, a second or
two in time, would bring him to the shallow, dry
ditch. It was so shallow that he would not jump
it, but the in-and-out of a tiger with a kill would
be the equivalent of a jump. In he would go easily
enough, but the cut slope of the ditch and the
slight rise into the road on the other side just
saved the man's life, for the top of his head hit
against the edge of the ditch, and, awkwardly held
as he was, knocked him out of the tiger's mouth.
Once dropped, the beast would not return to
pick his prey up again, especially with one man
shouting and the noise of the other coming to his
assistance.
The tiger is the scourge of the land, the croco-
dile of the water. They seem to be complement
and supplement each of the other : the " golden
terror with the . ebon bars," the very embodiment
of vitality, sinew, and muscle of life that is savage
and instant to strike and the stony-eyed, spiky-
tailed monster, outwardly a lifeless, motionless
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log ; but, once those pitiless jaws open, it is only
a question of what tooth closes on the victim,
whether it be "The last chance," "Tear the
shroud," or " God save your soul."
I was starting for some hot springs in a remote
spot, far in the interior, where I was certain of
finding both elephant and rhinoceros, and the
second night of my journey I spent at the junction
of two large streams. Strolling back from a swim
in the river, the local chief told me this pathetic
story of fruitless heroism.
The country hereabout is very sparsely peopled,
only a few scattered huts breaking the monotony
of the virgin forest, Malays and wild tribes the
sole inhabitants. Every house is on the bank of
a river, and beyond the produce of their rice-fields
and orchards the people rely mainly on the water
to supply them with food. The Malay is exceed-
ingly cunning in devising various means for catch-
ing fish, but what he likes best is to go out in
the evening, just at sundown, with a casting-net.
Either he wades about by himself, or, with a boy
to steer for him, he creeps along in a tiny dug-out,
throws his net in the deep pools, and usually dives
in after it, to free the meshes from the numerous
snags on which they are sure to become entangled.
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TIGERS AND CROCODILES
One evening, a few days before my arrival, a
Malay peasant was netting in the river accom-
panied by his son, a boy of twelve years old.
They were wading, and, while the father moved
along the edge of the deeper water under the
bank, the boy walked in the shallows out in the
stream. The short twilight passed, and the dark-
ness of night was gathering over the waters of the
wide river, when suddenly the father was startled
by a cry from the boy, and, as he turned, he
shuddered to hear the one word, " crocodile,"
come in an agonised scream from the poor child.
Dropping his net, the man swam and stumbled
through the shallowing stream to the boy's rescue.
The child was down, but making frantic, though
hopelessly ineffectual struggles to free himself
from the grip of a crocodile which had him by
the knee and thigh. The man was naked, except
for a pair of short trousers ; he had no weapon
whatever, yet he threw himself, without hesitation,
on the saurian, and with his hands alone began
a struggle with the hideous reptile for the posses-
sion of the boy. The man was on the deep-water
side of his foe, determined at all costs to prevent
him from drowning the child ; he had seized the
creature from behind, so as to save himself from
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its claws, and he tried to find, through dark-
ness and water, the eye-sockets, by which alone
he , could hope to reach a vulnerable joint in
its impenetrable harness. The father's fury and
despair guided his hands to the reptile's eyes, and
pressing his thumbs with all his might on these
points of less resistance, he inflicted such pain
that the creature gave a convulsive spring which
threw the man backwards into the water. But
the boy was released, and the saurian retired
from the fight to sulk and blink over his defeat
in some dark pool beneath the overhanging grasses
of the river bank.
The man carried the boy on shore, and thence
to his home ; but the poor child was so severely
injured that, with no skilled surgeon to attend him,
he died after three days of suffering.
202
XXV
A ROSE AND A MOTH
WHEN I came again to this enchanted moun-
tain, above the steaming plains, the first
thing I did was to wander in the garden, amid the
sweet-smelling blossoms and the bees and butter-
flies, and feast my eyes upon the ever-new loveli-
ness of the changeless hills, the changeful sky
and sea, that crowd the prospect with a thousand
pictures of infinite beauty and inspiring grandeur.
Then I saw a perfect rose, a rose of divine,
deep colour betwixt rubies and red wine of the
texture of finest velvet, and I gathered it. Once,
long ago, at least so it seems, you gave me the
fellow of this rose, plucked from the same tree.
To me this flower will always suggest you, for,
beyond the association, there are certain charac-
teristics which you share with it, " dark and true
and tender," a rare sweetness of perfume and, in
the heart of the rose, a slumbering passion, the
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like of which will some day wake you to the joy
or the sorrow of life. I have treasured that
sweet-scented blossom as long as it would stay
with me ; and now, when the petals are falling, I
see that they are the counterpart of three rose-
petals that had travelled from far over sea in a
letter from you. They came the bearers of their
own message, and now I seem to read it. Have
I been very dense, or am I only fatuous now ?
Why can't they speak, these things you have
touched, or do they speak and I lack under-
standing ? At least you sent them, and that is
much from you. I am grateful, and if I am a
prey to vain imaginings, you will forgive me, and
understand that I did not, presumptuously and
with indecent haste, set about the construction of
a castle that, even now, has but my wish for its
unsubstantial foundation.
Last night, this morning rather, for it was be-
tween midnight and I A.M., I was reading that
very weird story about a phantom dog. I was
deeply engrossed in the weirdest part of it, when
I heard a buzzing noise, and in a dark corner
behind the piano I saw a pair of very strange
eyes approaching and receding. They were like
small coals of fire, extraordinarily brilliant, with
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A ROSE AND A MOTH
a pinkish flame, shedding light as well as con-
taining it. I realised that they were the eyes of
what looked like a very large moth, whose wings
never ceased to move with marvellous rapidity.
My chair was touching a table on which was a
long vase of perfume-laden lilies, white lilies with
yellow hearts, and by-and-by the moth flew to
the flowers and stood, poised in air, before a lily-
blossom. There were two very bright lights on
the table, and the creature was within two feet
of me, so I saw it plainly enough. The wings
never for an instant stopped their vibration, and
it was so rapid that I could not tell their form
or colour. Once directly opposite the flower, the
moth produced a delicate proboscis, which it in-
serted into the blossom, and then slowly pushed
it right up the stamen, apparently in search of
honey. When extended, this feeler was of quite
abnormal length, at least two or three inches.
What, however, surprised me was that, having
withdrawn the probe (for that was what it looked
like, a very fine steel or wire probe, such as
dentists use), the instrument seemed to go back
into the moth's head, or wherever it came from,
to be again extended to sound the depths of
another blossom. There ! it is past midnight,
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and I hear the buzzing in the next room; here
it comes ; and I can examine the creature again.
Alas ! what a disappointment : this is a horned
beetle. I thought it made over-much noise for my
interesting friend. Now to continue my tale.
I observed the moth had a large, dark, cigar-
shaped body, with two longish antenna, much
stouter than the proboscis, and infinitely shorter.
After pursuing its researches into the internal
economy of several lilies, the thing flew into my
face, and I ought to have caught and examined
it, for then the feeler had disappeared ; but I was
surprised and rather alarmed, and I thought it
would return to the flowers, and I could again
watch, and, if necessary, catch it. It made, how-
ever, for a dark corner, and then buzzed about
the wooden ceiling till it came to an iron hook
from which hung a basket of ferns. I was care-
fully watching it all the time, and at the hook it
disappeared, the buzzing ceased, and I concluded
the creature had gone into a hole where it pro-
bably lived. To-day, in daylight, I examined the
ceiling all round the hook, but there was no hole
anywhere.
Now is this the beginning of the dog business,
and am I to be haunted by those fiery eyes, by
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A ROSE AND A MOTH
the ceaseless clatter of those buzzing wings, and
the long supple feeler that suggests the tortures
of dentistry, and may probe deep into the recesses
of my brain ? It can't, I think, be liver, for I
have not yet learnt on which side of me that
useful organ lies, and it is not drink. If it is
only a moth of a rather uncommon kind, I sup-
pose the fire in its eyes is to light it through the
darkness ; but I never before saw a moth going into
raptures over flowers, and I can't yet understand
where it puts away that instrument of torture,
unless it winds it round a bobbin, inside its head
or its body, when not using it. It reminds me of
a man I saw swallowing swords at the Aquarium.
I was quite willing to admire and believe, until he
took up a sword, the blade of which, by outside
measurement, stretched from his mouth nearly to
his knee, and swallowed it to the hilt at one gulp.
Then I doubted ; and the knotty sticks, umbrellas,
and bayonets, which he afterwards disposed of
with consummate ease, only increased my dislike
for him. Still this proboscis is not an umbrella,
and though it is about twice as long as the moth
itself, and seems to come out of the end of its
nose, I know so little of the internal arrangements
of these creatures that I dare say this one can, by
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winding the instrument up like the spring of a
watch, find room for it in its head. Why the
thing won't keep its wings still, and sit quietly
on the petals of the flower while it thrusts that
probe into the lily's nerve-centres, I can't imagine.
Then one could examine it quietly, and not go to
bed in fear of a deadly nightmare.
Perhaps, after all, it is the result of reading
about that "Thing too much," that starving, mur-
derous cur, at I A.M. ; if it is, I had better go to
bed now, for it has just struck the hour. Am I
wrong about the message of the rose ? You see
how hard I try to do your bidding.
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XXVI
A LOVE-PHILTRE
THERE is, to me, something strangely attrac-
tive about Muhammadan prayers, especially
those fixed for the hour of sunset. Time and
again I have gone in with the Faithful, when the
priest chants the mu'azzin, and I have sat by
and been deeply impressed by the extraordinary
reverence of the worshippers, while eye and ear
have been captivated by the picturesque figures
against their colourful background, the wonder-
fully musical intoning of the priest, and the not
less harmonious responses. I do not pretend that
this oft-repeated laudation of God's name, this
adoration by deep sonorous words and by every
bodily attitude that can convey profound worship,
would appeal to others as it does to me, even
when I have to guess at the exact meaning of
prayers whose general import needs no interpre-
tation.
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
The fifth hour of prayer follows closely on that
fixed for sundown, and the interval is filled up
by singing hymns of praise led by the priest, or
by telling, and listening to, stories of olden times.
Of Eastern places the Malay Peninsula had special
attractions for me, and the few European travellers
I met there, and who, like myself, were not bound
to a programme, seemed equally fascinated. Most
of them either prolonged their stay, or determined
to return for a longer visit.
It is difficult to say exactly wherein lies the
spell, but there are beauties of scenery, the un-
doubted charm of the people (as distinguished
from other Easterns), and the sense of mystery,
of exclusiveness, of unspoilt nature and undescribed
life, that arouse a new interest in the wearied
children of the West. It is pleasant to get at
something which is not to be found in any ency-
clopaedia, and it is, above all, gratifying to obtain
knowledge direct and at the fountain-head. This
is why I often return, in thought, to the narrow
land that lies between two storm-swept seas, itself
more free from violent convulsions than almost any
other. There, is perpetual summer ; no volcanoes,
no earthquakes, no cyclones. Even the violence of
the monsoons, that lash the China Sea and the
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A LOVE-PHILTRE
Indian Ocean into periodical fury, is largely spent
before it reaches the unprotected seaboards of the
richly dowered peninsula.
Forgive this digression. I was sitting with the
Faithful, and the first evening prayer was over.
The brief twilight was fast deepening into night.
The teacher excused himself, and the disciples
pushed themselves across the floor till they could
sit with their backs against the wall, leaving two
rows of prayer-carpets to occupy the middle of
the room. I had asked some question which, in a
roundabout way, led to the telling of this tale.
" I remember all about it," said a man, sitting
in the corner ; "he was a stranger, a man of
Sumatra, called Nakhodah Ma'win, and he gave
the girl a love-potion that drove her mad. He
was a trader from B&tu Bara, and he had been
selling the famous silks of his country in the
villages up our river. Having exhausted his
stock and collected his money, he embarked in
his boat and made his way to the mouth of the
river. Every boat going to sea had to take water
on board, and there were two places where you
could get it ; one was at Teluk Batu on our coast,
and the other was on an island hard by. But, in
those days, the strait between the coast and the
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island was a favourite haunt of pirates, and
Nakhodah Ma'win made for Teluk Batu to get his
supply of fresh water. He was in no hurry, a
week or a month then made no difference ; so he
first called on the chief of the place, a man of
importance, styled Toh Permatang, and then he
began to think about getting the water. Now it
happened that Toh Permatang had four daughters,
and the youngest but one, a girl called Ra'unah,
was very beautiful. When there is a girl of un-
common beauty in a place, people talk about it,
and no doubt the Nakhodah, idling about, heard the
report and managed to get sight of Ra'unah. At
once he fell in love with her, and set about think-
ing how he could win her, though she was already
promised in marriage to another. These Sumatra
people know other things besides making silks and
daggers, and Nakhodah Ma'win had a love-philtre
of the most potent kind. It was made from the
tears of the sea-woman whom we call duyong. I
know the creature. I have seen it. It is bigger
than a man, and something like a porpoise. It
comes out of the sea to eat grass, and, if you lie
in wait for it, you can catch it and take the tears.
Some people eat the flesh, it is red like the flesh
of a buffalo ; and the tears are red, and if you mix
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them with rice they make the rice red ; at least,
people say so. Anyhow, Nakhodah Ma'win had the
philtre, and he got an old woman to needle the way
for him, as one always does, and she managed to
mix the duyong's tears with Ra'unah's rice, and,
when the girl had eaten it, she was mad with love
for the Nakhodah. He stayed at Teluk Batu for a
month, making excuses, but all to be with Ra'unah;
and he saw her every day with the help of the
old woman, of course. You can't go on like that for
long without some one suspecting something, and,
though I never heard for certain that there was any-
thing really wrong, the girl was mad and reckless,
and the Nakhodah took fright. She was a chief's
daughter, while he was a trader and a stranger, and
he knew they would kill him without an instant's
hesitation if Toh Permatang so much as suspected
what was going on. Therefore, having got the water
on board, the Nakhodah put to sea, saying nothing
to any one. In a little place people talk of little
things, and some one said, in the hearing of Ra'unah,
that the Batu Bara trader had sailed away. With
a cry of agony the girl dashed from the house, her
sisters after her ; and seeing the boat sailing away,
but still at no great distance, for there was little
breeze, she rushed into the sea and made frantic
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efforts to tear herself from the restraining arms
of her sisters, who could barely prevent her from
drowning herself. At the noise of all this uproar
a number of men ran down to the shore, and,
when they saw and heard what was the matter,
they shouted to the Nakhodah to put back again.
He knew better than to thrust his neck into the
noose, and, though they pursued his boat, they
failed to catch him.
"When Ra'unah saw that she could not get
to her lover, and that each moment was carrying
him farther away, she cried to him to return, and
bursting into sobs, she bemoaned her abandonment,
and told her tale of love in words of endearment
and despair that passed into a song, which to this
day is known as Ra'unah's Lament.
"Yes, I can remember the verses, and will
repeat them if it does not weary you. The
Nakhodah never returned.
"'Oh, shelter! my dear shelter ! the palm stands in the plain.
The fruit of the nutmeg falls to the ground and lies there.
Thine is thy sister, small but comely,
Thy diamond ! the light of Permatang Guntong.
Oh, my shelter ! I hear the measured splash of the oars ;
I see the drift-weed caught in the rudder.
Thou art above, my protecting shelter ;
I am beneath, in lowly worship.
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Oh, my shelter ! 'twas the hour of evening prayer
when thou settest sail ;
The oars are straining and the boat reels along.
God's mercy is great, His promise sure ;
By His blessing we shall meet in the Garden of
Paradise.
Oh, my shelter ! the breeze is blowing in fitful gusts ;
Be careful not to pull the sail to the left.
In three months and ten days,
Thou wilt return, my brother !
Oh, my shelter ! make for the island, Sri Rama ;
For there are two marabouts and a fish-weir.
Though thou leavest me, be not long absent ;
In two, at most in three, months, return again.
Oh, my shelter ! the waters of the sea are calm,
Yet do not hug the shore.
Have no fear of my betrothed ;
Was not thy sword but lately sharpened ?
Oh, my shelter ! thou earnest to Teluk Batu,
And the peace of my heart has gone.
Satan delights in my undoing,
For my heart cleaves to thine.
Oh, my shelter ! take good thought,
The passions war with the soul.
Do not waste the gold in thy hand,
Lest scoffers have cause to mock thee.
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Oh, my Nakhodah when the mattress is spread, who
will lie on it ?
Who shall be covered by the folded coverlet ?
Who will sit upon the embroidered mat,
Or lean against the great round pillow ?
Oh, my Nakhodah ! the feast is waiting, but who
will eat it ?
The water is cool, but who will drink it ?
The napkin is there, whose mouth can it wipe ?
The sireh is ready, but who will use it ?
Thy Sister is cold, who will fondle her ?
Ah-hu ! ah-hu ! come death, deliver me.'
"And then she fell to weeping and moaning,
struggling with her sisters, and trying to cast
herself into the sea.
"That is the tale of Ra'unah and Nakhodah
Ma' win, and ever}' one knows it. Some tell it one
way and some another, but that is how it came to
me. The girl was mad, mad with love and regret
for six months ; and then her father married her
to another man, and that cured her. I knew the
man : he was a foreigner. She and two of her
sisters died long ago, but the other is alive still.
" How to get the duyong's tears ? Oh, that
is easy enough. You catch the sea-woman when
she comes up the sand to eat the sweet grass on
shore. I told you how to do it. You have to lie in
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A LOVE-PHILTRE
wait and she waddles up on two sort of fins that
she uses like feet, helping with her tail. If she
sees you, she tries to get back into the sea, but
you stand between her and the water and so catch
her. Then, if you want her tears, you make a
palisade of sticks in the deeper water of the bay
through which she came, and there you bind her
in a sort of cage, at the surface of the water, so
that she can't move. It is like the thing they put
elephants in when they are half-tamed. When
she finds she is held fast there, and cannot get
down into the deep water to her young, she weeps,
and as the tears stream down her face you catch
them, sweep them into a vessel, and you have the
philtre."
There was a pause. Then a man said, " I hear
they sell duyong's tears in Penang."
The teller of the story at once replied, " Very
likely, I have heard it too ; but it is probably only
some make-believe stuff. You must try it before
you buy it."
" How do you do that ? "
" Easily. Rub some of the philtre on a
chicken's beak ; if it is really potent, the chicken
will follow you wherever you go ! "
"Have you seen that yourself?"
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
" No. I want no love-philtres. I manage
well enough without them. I don't care to play
with a thing you can't control. I might get into
trouble, like Nakhodah Ma'win. It is easy enough
to give the potion, but I never heard what you
do to stop it. Anyhow, if I wanted to buy the
stuff, I should first try it on a chicken, and if it
had no effect I should not believe in it, for every
one knows that the story of Ra'unah and Ma'win
is true, or they would not sing about it to this
day. Hark ! the teacher is calling to prayer."
A number of boys' high-pitched voices were
chanting
" Bihak-illah, rizal-P Allah /
Aain-nu na, bi-aun illah!"
and, across their chorus, came the sonorous, far-
reaching tones of the priest
Allah-hu akbar !
Allah-hu akbar!
Ashdd-du Allah, illah-ha il-Allah."
When the little group of men had fallen into
their places, and the only sound in the building
was the musical intoning of the half-whispered
prayers, I could not help musing on the extra-
ordinarily happy expression, "he found an old
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A LOVE-PHILTRE
woman to needle the way for him." Nothing
could be more delightful than the symbol of the
small, insinuating, finely tempered, horribly sharp
bit of steel that goes so easily through things,
and leaves no trace of its passage. And then
there is nearly always a thread behind it, and
that remains when the needle has gone !
I have translated Ra'unah's lament for you
absolutely literally, except that the word which
occurs so often, and which I have rendered
" shelter," means " umbrella." The umbrella here,
as in other countries, is an emblem of the highest
distinction : a shelter from sun and rain, a shield
and protection, "the shadow of a great rock in
a dry land." A yellow umbrella is a sign and
token of sovereignty.
219
XXVII
MOONSTRUCK
ONCE I suggested to you that the greatest
facts of life are, in English, expressed by
the smallest words, and, with that dainty, hesi-
tating manner that is so captivating, you almost
consented to agree. Look, for instance, at these
words : God, sin, good, bad, day, night, sun,
moon, light, dark, heat, cold, earth, sky, sea,
world, peace, war, joy, pain, eat, drink, sleep,
love, hate, birth, death. They cover a good deal
of ground, and you can easily add to them. A
philologist would tell you why the most profound
conceptions, the most important abstract facts,
are denoted by simple words, but the explana-
tion might not interest you. The circle of my
acquaintances does not include a philologist ; my
nearest approach to such dissipation is a friend
who pretends to be a lexicographer. Now look
at that word, it is long enough in all conscience,
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MOONSTRUCK
but the idea which it represents only makes one
tired.
Whilst a good reason could be found for ex-
pressing original principles in monosyllables, I
wonder if any one can say why that fantastic
product of this century, the (so-called) educated
Indian, revels in the use and misuse of all the
longest words he can find to convey his, some-
times grotesque, but nearly always commonplace,
thoughts, when he tries to put them in English.
Curiously enough, this transcendental language,
which is the peculiar pride of the Indian babu,
leaves on the mind of the listener no concrete
idea, no definite conception of what the speaker
wants to say ; but it does invariably conjure up a
figure typical of the class which employs this bar-
barous tongue as a high-sounding medium in which
to disguise its shallow thoughts. And then one
feels sorry for the poor overthrown words, the
maimed quotations, and the slaughtered sentences,
so that one realises how happy is that description
which speaks of the English conversation of East
Indians as a melee, wherein the words lie about
"like dead men on a battle-field." There must
be something in the Indian's character to account
for this ; and, as a great stream of words pours
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*
from the narrow channel of his mind, and gives
expression to his turgid thoughts in an avalanche
of sound, so you will see the same extravagance
of outward display in the manner of his life, in
his strange garments, his sham jewellery, and his
pitiful and disastrous attempts to ape what he
thinks is the riotous tl fastness " of the quite white
man. Behind this outward seeming, there is also,
in many cases, nothing, and sometimes even less
than that. Misapplied English education has a
good deal to answer for, and, if the babu has a
soul, it may demand a reckoning from those who
gave it a speech in which to make known the
impossible aspirations of a class that is as rich
in wordy agitation as it is poor in the spirit and
physique of a ruling race. Many babus cannot
quench revolt. Perhaps the babu is the " thing
too much " in India ; they could do without him.
And yet he and education, combined, make a grow-
ing danger that may yet have to be counted with.
But enough of the babu ; I cannot think how he
got into my letter.
My visit to this strange and beautiful country
is over. For the last time a steamer is hurrying
me down one of those great waterways which,
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MOONSTRUCK
until recent times, have been the only means of
getting into this mysterious land. The dying day
supplied a feast of colour, of momentarily changing
pictures that, however familiar, seem always new,
always resplendent with amazing lights, delicate
half-tints, and soft shadows, such as only a
moisture-charged atmosphere and a fiery sun can
produce. Does the thought of such an evening
ever come back to you, or are you trying to
accustom yourself to the greys and neutral tints
of the life of resignation ? Ah ! The moon is
just rising ; the scene is quite enchanting, and I
must try to tell you exactly what I see.
The river is six or seven hundred yards wide.
It is high tide, and, to the eye, the picture has but
three component parts sky, wood, and water.
Sky and water are divided by a belt of wood
which borders the river. The continuous belt of
trees, of varying height, growing from out the
river and up the bank, makes a deeply indented
line of vegetation. This belt is unbroken, but
it rises into plumes and graceful fronds, where
some loftier palm or giant jungle-tree towers above
its neighbours, and all its foliage shows clear as
an etching against the grey-blue background.
Again, the belt dips and leaves broken spaces of
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sky, where the foliage suddenly dwarfs. The sky
is dark grey just above the trees, but the grey
changes to blue as the eye travels upward, and
overhead the zenith is sapphire, cloudless sapphire
spangled with stars. The water is like burnished
gun-metal, and, under the shore, there is a shadow
as dark and wide as the line of trees which throws
it. The moon, a perfect circle of brilliant light,
not silver nor gold, but the colour produced by
silvering over a golden ground, has just risen, and
rides a short space above the trees. In the deepest
shadow, exactly where water and land meet, there
is a narrow streak of amazingly bright light ; then
a space of darkness, covered by the shadow of the
trees, and then a veritable column of gold, the
width of the moon, and the length of the moon's
distance above the trees. The column is not still,
it is moved by the shimmer of the water, and it
dazzles the eyes. The effect is marvellous : this
intense brilliance as of molten gold, this pillar of
light with quivering but clearly-defined edges, play-
ing on a mirror of dark burnished steel. Then
that weird glint of yellow flame, appearing and
disappearing, in the very centre of the blackest
shadow, and, above all, the Queen of Night moves
through the heavens in superb consciousness of
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MOONSTRUCK
her own transcendent beauty, calmly satisfied to
recognise that the sapphire firmament, and all the
world of stars, are but the background and the
foils to her surpassing loveliness.
As the moon rises, the reflection in the river
lengthens, widens, breaks into ripples of amber,
and shoots out arrows of paler light. Soon there
is a broad pathway of glittering wavelets, which
opens out into a great silvery road, and the light
of the risen moon dispels the grey fog that hung
over the belt of jungle, and tinges with silver the
few fleecy clouds that emphasise the blueness of
their background. Then a dark curtain gradually
spreads itself across the sky, dims the moonlight,
veils the stars, and throws a spell over the river,
hiding its luminous highway, and casting upon
the water the reflection of its own spectre-like
form.
The fog clung to the river, but when we reached
the sea the moon reigned alone, paling the stars
and filling the air with a flood of delicious light.
I was leaning over the side of the ship, wondering
where I could ever see such a sight again, when
a man of the country came and stood by me. I
said something to him of the beauty of the night,
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and he answered, " Yes, there are flowers in the
moon."
I asked him what he meant, and this is what
he told me :
" It was a night like this, and I was going with
my mother, my wife, and child to a neighbouring
island to visit some relatives. We were travelling
by a small steamer, and in the early hours of the
morning were coasting along the shore of the
island. The moon was then setting, but it was
extraordinarily brilliant, and I tried to find a spot
in the shadow where I could sleep. As I settled
myself comfortably, I noticed that my mother was
standing, looking over the bulwark. It might have
been an hour later when I awoke, and, as we
were near the port, I went to rouse my people
and collect my luggage. I could not find my
mother anywhere. The rest of my party and all
the other passengers were asleep till I roused them,
and no one had seen or heard anything unusual.
We all of us searched the ship in every direction,
but without success, and the only conclusion was
that the poor old lady had somehow fallen over-
board. By this time the vessel had reached the
anchorage, and there was nothing to be done but
to go ashore. I took my family to the house of
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our friends, some miles from the landing-place, and
then wondered what to do next. The village we
had come to was on the shore, and not very far
from the place where I had last seen my mother
on board the ship. I determined, therefore, to
drive to a spot as nearly opposite that place as I
could get, and then to walk along the beach, and
ask at the huts of the Chinese fishermen whether
they had seen a body in the water. The first two
or three cottages I came to were empty, but I
made my way to a solitary hut which I saw
standing in the centre of a tiny bay. In that
hut, to my surprise and great joy, I found my
mother and two Chinese fishermen. The men
told me that they had gone out before daylight
to set their nets, and in the light of the moon,
then almost on the horizon, they saw a woman,
as they described it, " standing in the water," so
that, though her head only was visible, she seemed
to be upright, and they imagined she must be sup-
ported somehow, or resting her feet on an old
fishing stake, for the water was fifteen or twenty
feet deep there. She did not cry out or seem
frightened, only rather dazed. They rowed to
the spot and pulled her into the boat, and just
then the moon sank out of sight. The old lady
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had lost her skirt, but otherwise seemed little the
worse, and, as far as the fishermen could see, she
was not resting on any support. When I asked
her how she got into the sea, she said she could
not tell, but she was looking at the moon, and
she saw such lovely flowers in it that she felt she
must try to get to them. Then she found herself
in the water, but all the time she kept looking at
the flowers till the fishermen pulled her into their
boat and brought her on shore. I took her to
the house where we were staying, and I have
left her in the island ever since, because I dare
not let her travel by sea again."
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XXV1I1
THE "DEVI"
I AM in Agra. The Japanese say that if you
have not been to Nikko you cannot say kekko.
That is an insular conceit, meant, no doubt,
originally for Japan and the Japanese only ; but
national pride speaking as the frog spoke who
lived under half a coconut-shell, and thought
the limits of his vision comprised the universe
now declares that the Nikko temples are incom-
parable. I cannot claim to have seen all the
great buildings in the world, but I have visited
some of the most famous, and I say with confi-
dence that the Taj at Agra is the most perfect
triumph of the architect's and builder's skill in
existence. I visited this tomb first by daylight,
and it is difficult to give you any idea of the
extraordinary effect the first sight of it produced
on me. I drove in a wretched two-horse gharry,
along a dusty and uninteresting road, until the
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rickety vehicle was pulled up with a jerk in
front of a great red stone portal, and I got out.
Through that lofty Gothic arch, and framed
by it, appeared a vision of white loveliness, an
amazing structure of dazzling marble, shooting
towers and minarets into a clear, blue, cloudless
sky.
The Taj the Crown of Kings stands on a
raised terrace ; it is a considerable distance from
the gate, and the eye is led to it by a wide,
straight path, bisecting a garden, which, at the
first glance, seems a mass of dark green foliage.
The garden is extensive, and shut in by a high
wall. Just outside this wall, to right and left of
the Taj, are a palace and a mosque of deep red
sandstone. More than that you cannot see, but
the river Jumna flows under the rear wall of the
raised terrace on which the Taj stands.
The marble monument, which contains the tombs
of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, is an enormous
building, and represents seventeen years' work of
a force of twenty thousand men. But the design
is so faultless, the proportions so perfect, the whole
effect so exquisitely graceful, that, until you are
close to the wide steps leading up to the terrace,
and realise that men standing by the walls look
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THE "DEVI"
almost like flies, you are not struck by any sense
of extraordinary size.
The building itself is superb. The conception is
absolutely unique, and the harmony of every part
a crowning triumph ; the splendour of material, the
purity of that dazzling, unbroken whiteness these
are a joy and a delight.
But the surroundings, the setting in which this
jewel stands, are so marvellously well calculated
to exactly frame the picture, that the whole scene
seems a vision, unearthly in its beauty. When
once that sensation passes, when one has gazed,
and blinked, and rubbed one's eyes, and compassed
the reality of it all, one is profoundly impressed
by the genius that could raise such a heavenly
edifice, and one is proudly thankful to have lived
that hour of life, to have felt the soul stir, and to
carry away an imperishable memory of one of the
noblest of human achievements.
The main entrance is by a great arched door,
bordered by Arabic characters in black marble
let into the white wall. Pierced marble windows
admit a dim and softened light to a lofty chamber.
In the comparative gloom one slowly discerns a
marble wall surrounding the centre space. The
wall is inlaid with precious stones jasper and
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onyx, sardius and topaz, amethyst, chrysobel,
and sapphire, set in floral designs. Within this
enclosure are the white marble tombs of Shah
Jahan and his wife.
Last night the moon was full, and, an hour
before midnight, I went and sat in that dark stone
palace, and revelled in the beauty of a spectacle
that cannot be equalled on earth. It is said that
the palace was built for Royal ladies, and was
specially designed to give them the most perfect
view of the Taj. There is an open stone verandah,
over which I leaned and gazed in ecstasy at the
scene. The dark trees of the garden spread from
under the walls of the palace over a wide space
of ground, and from them rose the incomparable
Taj ; minarets, walls, and windows, blazing with
silver sheen under the direct rays of the moon,
softened in the half shadows, darkening to deep
tones of grey on the river face. Slightly to the
left of the Taj, and as far beyond it as the Taj
was from me, stood the mosque, a splendid foil
to the glittering radiance of the tomb. In the
shadow, cast by the great mass of marble, rippled
the shallow waters of the wide river. The rear
walls of the building are on the edge of the bank,
and beyond the Taj the river stretches away in
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THE "DEVI"
a silver ribbon towards the city. In a line to the
right of the Taj, and distant about three miles,
rises a dark hill, crowned by the Palace and
Citadel of Agra. The enclosing walls and battle-
ments, built of the same red sandstone, were
scarcely distinguishable from the hill ; but the
moonlight caught the white marble buildings
within, and innumerable lights twinkled from walls
and windows.
I must have been a long time in my solitude,
intoxicated by the wonder of the night and the
splendour of the scene, when I heard the strains
of a violin, played with extraordinary skill. The
music seemed familiar (for I had heard the songs
of many Eastern lands), and, moreover, I became
certain that the instrument was being played some-
where in the great building wherein I chanced
to be. The sounds ceased, but presently the
musician began a Persian dance which I recog-
nised ; and as the wild air leaped from the strings
in quickening waves of sound, the devilry of the
mad nautch seemed to possess me, and it became
impossible not to beat time to the rhythm of the
music. Again there was silence, and I wondered
greatly who could make a violin throb with such
feeling, and where the minstrel could be. Whilst
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still absorbed by these thoughts, and anxiously
listening for the faintest sound, my ear caught
the strains of an Arab love-song that I knew
well enough, but had never heard played like
this before, nor yet under such circumstances.
The air was in the minor key, and was, I knew,
played only on three strings, but it seemed to
wail and shiver from the instrument out into the
night, through the trees, across the bright lights
and deep shadows, to mingle with the crooning of
the river, to fill the atmosphere and soar towards
the empyrean. It was like the song of a lark at
the dawn of a day in spring. The power of the
musician was such that Taj and city, mosque and
river and garden faded away, and I distinctly saw
a narrow street in an Arab town. Flat-roofed
buildings, pierced by a few small iron-barred win-
dows, lined either side of a street, which rose in
a gentle ascent till it twisted out of sight round
a distant corner. A brilliant moon, shining in a
A
cloudless sky, threw into white light the roofs on
one side the street. But the houses on the other
side cast a deep shadow, and in that shadow a
man, with his back to me, was standing playing
the three-stringed Arab gambus, and singing
singing as though for his life, in a low, sweet
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THE "DEVI"
voice up to a barred window whence issued a
ray of yellow light. I thought I could even
understand the words of the passionate serenata,
though I know almost as little of the Arabic as
of the Patagonian tongue. It was the music, the
angelic skill of the violinist, which had bewitched
me, and I stood enthralled by that soul-entrancing
melody.
Before you write me down an emotional ass,
remember where I was, and try to imagine
what I saw, what I heard. I cannot expect to
impress you with any true- idea of either scene
or song.
While those yearning, thrilling, imploring waves
of sound cried to the exquisite beauty of the
night, I was spell-bound. But, in the silence
that followed, I reasoned that the music came
from above me, probably from the roof, and that
I might well seek the author of it. I passed
through a maze of passages, where light and
shadow alternated, and, as I groped about to find
a staircase, I was guided to my object by the
strains of the violin, and a gleam of light which,
striking through a narrow window, disclosed a
winding stair.
As I expected, the stairs led up to the roof, and
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I was not a little surprised by what I saw there.
The head of the staircase was in a corner of the
great flat space forming the roof, and a parapet,
about thirty inches high, completely enclosed it,
except for a flight of outside steps leading down
to another and lower roof. The cement floor and
surrounding parapet were so brilliantly lighted by
the moon, that every inch unshadowed was as
bright as day. Four people occupied the space,
and my eye was first caught by a white-robed,
dark-complexioned boy, who, leaning against the
parapet, played a violin with closed eyes, his face
set in an expression of dreamy rapture. At a
little distance from him, but nearer to me, were
a woman and two girls. The woman sat upon a
quantity of silks spread over the parapet, while
she leaned against a pile of cushions placed against
a round stone column. I should say she was
hardly twenty. Her skin was very fair, her com-
plexion wonderfully clear, her hair black and abun-
dant, her eyes large, dark, and liquid, while long
curling lashes threw a shadow far down her cheeks.
The eyebrows were strongly marked and slightly
arched, like the artificial spur of a game-cock.
Her nose was straight and rather small ; her
scarlet lips made a perfect Cupid's bow, and the
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THE "DEVI"
upper lip was so short that it disclosed teeth of
extreme regularity with a whiteness and sheen
as of pearls. The chin was round, the face oval ;
the ears, hands, and feet very small, but beauti-
fully formed. This woman, or girl, was clothed
in silk skirts of a dull red, heavy with gold thread ;
she wore a jacket of white satin, embroidered with
small red and gold flowers, and fastened by three
diamond brooches. On her head, falling in grace-
ful folds over her shoulders, was a dark gossamer
veil, studded with tiny gold stars, and bordered
by a wide hem of shining gold lace. In one hand
she listlessly held a long spray of stephanotis.
She seemed absorbed by the music, and the wonder
of that soft white light, which so enhanced her
loveliness that I stared in wide-eyed admiration,
forgetful of Eastern customs, of politeness, and all
else, save only that fascinating figure. At her
feet, on the roof, sat two girls, attendants, both
clad in bright-coloured silk garments, and both wear-
ing gold-embroidered gossamer veils.
Not one of the group seemed to notice my
presence, and I heard no words exchanged.
It was long past midnight ; the violinist had
excelled himself in pulse-stirring dances, in pas-
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sionate love-songs and laments that sounded like
the sobbing of despairing hearts. I had gradually
moved forward, and was leaning over the parapet
looking towards Agra, and feeling that no moment
of a night like this could be missed or forgotten,
when suddenly I heard a sharp cry, half of sur-
prise, half of dread. I turned and saw my four
companions all gazing with startled eyes at some-
thing beyond me, out past the parapet, towards the
glistening river. I turned again, and I now saw
a white marble bridge stretching in a single grace-
ful arch an arch like a strung bow springing
from the centre of the back wall of the Taj across
the river, till it rested on the farther bank. There
rose another Taj ! the exact duplicate of the one
standing on the hither side of the stream, as white,
as graceful, as perfect in all respects as its fellow.
The roadway of the bridge was enclosed in a
sort of long gallery, the sides of marble fretwork,
with windows at intervals opening on to the river.
The roof was formed of marble slabs. One could
see the shining water through the perforated walls
of the gallery ; occasionally, where two opposite
windows were open, there were glimpses of the
distant lights, the palace, and the hill. The beauti-
ful flat arch of that bridge, its graceful lines, and
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THE "DEVI"
the airy lightness of the structure are unforgetable.
Think of that bridge, that pure white bow of
glistening stone, spanning the river's width, and
tying Taj to Taj !
As I feasted my eyes, in wonder and admira-
tion, on this alluring vision, a mist rose from the
river, gathered volume and density, shut out the
distance, enveloped bridge and river, bank and
building, and hung in a thick white cloud, the
ends creeping rapidly to right and left across the
level plain. I looked upward ; the moon was
slowly sinking towards the west ; it had a faint
bluish tinge, a common effect at very late hours
of the night, when it seems to shine with even
greater brilliance.
I turned to look for my companions, but found
I was alone. There was not a sign of lady, or
maid, or minstrel. They had disappeared, vanished
without a sound ; and, of their late presence, there
was no sign except the spray of stephanotis. It
was strange, I thought, as I walked to the spot
where the flower lay and picked it up, but one
cannot be astonished at anything in the East.
I felt a chill puff of wind, and I glanced back
towards Agra. The mist was moving, rising
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rapidly in wisps ; it was thin and transparent, and
I could indistinctly see the background through
it. The marble bridge, the other Taj that second
tomb Shah Jahan meant to build were gone.
Clearly my imagination, a mirage, or the mist
had played me a trick. And then the girl, the
violinist : were they also the phantoms of my
brain ? Surely that was impossible. Why, I
can see the girl now ; I could tell you every de-
tail of her face, her figure, pose, and dress. The
violinist could have been no spirit ; though he
played like an angel, his music was earthly, and
perfectly familiar to me.
I gave it up and went away, wondering ; but
I took the stephanotis, and it stands in front of
me now in a tiny vase of water.
To-day, in daylight, when the sun was high, and
I had eaten and bandied commonplaces, and knew
that I was sane, I went to find the old creature
who keeps the gate of the garden of the Taj. I
asked him who was in the Red Palace late last
night, and he said that not having been there him-
self he could not tell ; moreover, that he did not
turn night into day, but slept, like other respectable
people. I felt snubbed but still curious, so I said
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THE "DEVI"
" The boy who plays the violin, who is he ? "
" What boy ? Where ? How should I know ? "
he said, but he began to look rather startled.
"On the roof of the Red Palace, over there,"
I replied, pointing to the corner of the building
visible from where we stood. "And the lady, the
young lady in the beautiful clothes, who is she ? "
But the old man had started, and at mention
of the girl he dropped the stick on which he
leaned ; and as he slowly and painfully recovered
himself from the effort of picking it up, I heard
him say, in an awe-struck whisper, "The Devi!"
My attempts to extract anything further from
this old fossil were futile. He hobbled off to his
den, muttering to himself, and evidently anxious
to be rid of my society.
After this rebuff I hesitate to make further
inquiries from others, because I know no one
here ; because the white people never concern
themselves with native matters, and are mainly
interested in gossip ; and because I am conscious
that my story invites doubt, and must rest on my
word alone. It is not the personal ridicule I am
afraid of, but I don't like the idea of jest at the
expense of the girl whom I saw on that parapet,
the Devi whose stephanotis perfumes my room.
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XXIX
THE DEATH-CHAIN
WHEN last I wrote and told you about the
Devi, I had a vague hope that my stepha-
notis would, indirectly, prove that the lovely girl,
from whose hand it had fallen, gathered it in some
heavenly garden, beyond mortal ken, where Death
and Time are unknown.
I did not like to say so, but I meant to keep the
flower, and, if I had seen it fade and die, I should
have been disappointed, perhaps even rather sur-
prised. You will say such fantastic ideas can only
come to people whose minds have been warped by
contact with Oriental mysticism; and, while you
are probably right, I reply that when you have a
Taj, when you have an atmosphere of sunshine un-
soiled by coal-smoke, when, in fine, any really big
miracle is wrought in your Western world, then you
may see a Devi sitting in the moonlight, you may
hear angelic music played by a boy unknown to the
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THE DEATH-CHAIN
critics, and you may even weave romances round
a spray of stephanotis.
I guarded my flower carefully, and, for five days,
I could not see that it showed any sign of fading.
True I kept it in water, even when I was travel-
ling ; and, if it came from a heavenly garden, I
dare say that care was altogether needless ; but we
are creatures of habit, and my Faith was not very
robust, and leaned somewhat heavily on Hope. I
had to leave Agra and journey through Rajputana.
On the fifth day from that night, which I had
almost said " was worth, of other nights, a hun-
dred thousand million years," I was in Jaipur, and
from there I visited the glorious Palace of Amber.
I restrain myself with difficulty from going into
raptures over that ancient castle, which, for so
many centuries, has stood on that distant hillside
and watched its many masters come and go, while
the ladies loved, and gossiped, and hated, in the
Hall of a Thousand Delights, and the horsemen
and spearmen went down from the gates to the
dusty road, the seething plains, whence many of
them never returned.
I will spare you. You are long-suffering, but
there must be a limit even to your patience. I
know that qui s } excuse s'accuse, and I offer no excuse
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for trying to draw for you the pictures that are
only seen beyond beaten tracks. Ruskin has said,
"The greatest thing the human soul ever does in
this world is to see something, and tell what it saw
in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for
one who can think, but thousands can think for
one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, pro-
phecy, and religion all in one." If thousands can
think for one who can see, surely there must be
still thousands who see and cannot tell " in a plain
way" what they saw. There are millions whose
eyes are to them only what animals' eyes are
aids to the gratification of appetite. There are
thousands more who do see and appreciate, yet
cannot put what they have seen into words ; cannot
communicate their own feelings, cannot help another
to share, even a little, in the joy that has come to
them through greater opportunities. I have often
wondered why people who have seen the most
interesting places on earth, have been present per-
haps on memorable occasions, and have met the
most famous people of their time, showed, in their
conversation, no sign of these advantages, and, if
questioned, could only give the most disappointing,
uninteresting description of any personal experiences.
Then there are the very few who have seen, and can
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THE DEATH-CHAIN
help others to see again, through their eyes; but
they seldom do it, because they have found that,
with rare exceptions, the relation of their experi-
ences is but little appreciated. Ruskin himself is
one of the few who can see and can describe,
but others may hesitate to string the plain words,
knowing how little worthy they will be of what
the eyes have seen.
Some of this I may have been thinking, as I
slowly made my way back to Jaipur ; but, when I
reached the house of my sojourn, almost the first
thing I noticed was that the tiny vase which had
carried my spray of stephanotis was empty of all
but water. Of course I sent for everybody, and
made minute inquiries, and, of course, every one
had seen the flower, and no one had touched it,
and I was left to draw any conclusion I pleased.
I drew none. There are no data on which to
come to a conclusion ; but the facts remind me of
a story I will tell ^ou.
I have an Italian friend. He is a very un-
common type, and worthy of far more attention
than I will give him now, because, for the moment,
I am concerned rather with his story than with
him. He was in Egypt, and whilst there he dis-
covered a buried city. Carefully and wisely he
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kept his knowledge to himself, till, owing to an
absence of some months, he lost all trace of the
place, and never found it again. A sand-storm had
buried it once more.
The original discovery was purely the result of
accident, and his first researches had to be con-
ducted in secrecy, without assistance, otherwise
the trouvaille would have become public property.
His explorations led him to a building that he
believed was a tomb; and having, by laborious
efforts, gained an entrance, he had the satisfaction
of proving that his surmise was correct, and also
the reward of finding in the chamber a single sarco-
phagus, containing a mummified girl, or woman, in
wonderful preservation. He knew the common
superstition that disaster would befall any one who
disturbed a mummy; but he thought little of the
tale, and did not mean to be deterred from removing
the body when he should have the means to do so.
Meanwhile he had to be content with what he could
carry, and that consisted of a few coins, and a
necklace which he unfastened from the lady's poor
shrivelled neck, or rather from the cere-cloths in
which it was swathed.
Perhaps you have never seen one of these mummy
necklaces; they are rather curious, and, from my
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THE DEATH-CHAIN
friend's account of it, the one he found nearly re-
sembled others which I have seen myself. The
material seemed to be some kind of pottery, or
opaque glass made into rough beads, and short
lengths of small glazed piping, strung together in a
quaint pattern. The prevailing colour was a sort
of turquoise with an extra dash of green, and every
bit of piping was so tinted ; but, alternately with
these blue lengths, were strung groups of round
beads, in bunches of two to six or eight, or even
more. By far the majority of the beads were
turquoise-blue, but some were yellow, others brown,
and a few almost black, and the arrangement was
such that it could easily have been made to repre-
sent a string of words. The effect of the chain was
bizarre but attractive, and it somewhat resembled
the rosaries worn by devout Arabs. The intrinsic
worth of the thing was nil, but sometimes one has
a friend who will accept and value un rien like this,
for the sake of the giver, when jewels would be
declined. My Italian had such a friend, and the
bauble found a new home on her neck.
Not long after she had begun to wear the quaint
little chain which had lain for so many centuries
round the throat of the dead Egyptian, its new
owner was distressed and alarmed by a persistent
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form of nightmare, which gradually induced a feel-
ing that she was haunted by the wraith of a dark-
skinned girl, of a type of feature unlike any known
to her, but clad in raiment such as she fancied
had been worn by Egyptians in the days of the
Pharaohs. The apparition was always clothed in
the same manner, and though she wore a number
of strangely fashioned ornaments, her neck was
left completely bare. The girl seemed to be ever
present in her dreams, and her face always wore a
look of extreme distress, as of one who grieved for
the loss of some dearly beloved friend or possession.
The curious part of it was, that the dream-girl
seemed always to come to the sleeper as to one
from whom she could get relief; and while, in her
earlier appearances, she had the expression and
the manner of a supplicant, the dreamer fancied
that latterly there had been a change, and the dark
face looked both agonised and threatening.
These visitations, which could not be ascribed
to any reasonable cause, had so got on the lady's
nerves that she had gone for change to a villa on
the coast of Normandy. The change of scene
brought no relief. The haunting form of the
Egyptian girl, though not a nightly visitor, was
so constantly present, that the dread of seeing her
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deprived sleep of all power of giving rest, and the
poor lady was not only becoming seriously ill, but
she was so affected by her uncanny infliction, that
she even sometimes imagined she caught glimpses
of her tormentor when she herself was wide awake.
One afternoon, the lady was lying in a darkened
room, the persiennes closed to keep out the hot
and penetrating rays of a summer sun. She felt
very weary and despondent, the result of many
broken nights and the prolonged strain on her
nerves, and, though she held a book in her hand
she was all the time wondering how much longer
she could bear this oppression, and what she had
done to deserve such a weirdly horrible fate. In a
dull sort of way she supposed she must be going
mad, and felt with grim cynicism that the border-
land between sanity and insanity was so narrow
that she would hardly realise the moment when she
crossed it. There was absolute silence everywhere,
except for the faint soothing whisper of the sea,
rippling over the sand beneath the wooded bluff on
which the villa stood. The air was warm and heavy
with summer perfumes; the room was darkening
slowly as the sun dipped towards the placid waters
of La Manche ; the woman was deadly weary, and
she slept.
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At first her sleep must have been sound ; but,
after a time, her eyes opened to that other con-
sciousness which is of the world of dreams, and
once again she saw her now dreaded companion,
the dark-eyed, dark-skinned girl from the land of
the Pharaohs. The girl seemed to plead in im-
passioned terms for something, but the dreamer
could not understand the strange words, and racked
her brain, as dreamers will, to try to imagine their
meaning. The girl burst into a storm of tears,
sinking to the ground in her grief and despair, and
burying her face on a pile of cushions. Still the
dreamer, suffering torture herself, was helpless to
relieve the other. Then suddenly the girl sprang up,
and, dashing the tears from her eyes, which now
seemed to blaze with murderous resolve, she sprang
upon the white woman, enlaced her throat with
supple brown fingers, pressed and pressed, tighter
and tighter ah, God ! the horror and the suffocat-
ing pain of it and all the while the sleeper's hands
seemed tied to her side. Then with a scream the
dreamer awoke. She felt her eyes must be starting
from her head, and instinctively raised her hands
to her throat, only to realise that her vivid sensation
of strangulation was merely a nightmare, but that
the chain the string of turquoise beads which she
250
THE DEATH-CHAIN
had never unfastened from the day she first put it
on was gone.
There was now little light in the room, only
enough to see things vaguely, yet the lady declares
that in that first moment of waking she distinctly
saw a figure, exactly like that of the girl of her
dreams, glide swiftly away from her and pass out
through a portiere into the verandah. For some
time she was too frightened and unnerved to move,
but when at last she summoned her people they
had seen no one.
The only thing that was real was that she had
lost the necklace, and never saw it again. As some
compensation she also lost for ever the society of
her dream-visitor, and completely recovered her own
health.
Now who took my stephanotis ?
251
XXX
SCANDAL AND BANGLES
FOR years I have not been so angry as I am
at this minute ; I have very nearly lost my
temper, and the reason is really ridiculous. Why
I should choose this as a favourable opportunity
for writing to you I cannot tell, but my tormentor
had no sooner left the room than I seized the pen,
which is nearly always ready to my hand, and you
are the victim. The cause of this unusual and un-
seemly frame of mind is a girl, quite a pretty girl,
who walked in here, sans ceremonte, and, after a
few minutes' desultory conversation, told me a pre-
posterous piece of gossip about myself, a fantastic
story in which there was not a grain of truth.
"Who says that?" I asked.
" Everybody says so."
" Then everybody is mistaken."
"Of course you deny it; but it is true, all the
252
SCANDAL AND BANGLES
" It is not in the least true, and I am prepared
to swear that in any form of oath."
" I dare say you are, but no one will believe
you."
"Very well. Now what does your story rest
upon?"
"The evidence of people's senses. Every one
has seen you."
" I cannot deal with ' every one/ it is too in-
definite. You say I went to some one's house,
not that it would matter the least if I did, but
who saw me ? "
" I did."
"You did! I never was in the house in my
life."
" Try to remember. I have seen you go in and
also seen you come out of it."
" If it were not so stupid, one might almost get
angry. I repeat that I have never been in the
house, nor spoken to the owner."
" And I, having seen with my own eyes, maintain
that you have."
"You have mistaken some one else for me, or
drawn on your imagination, for what you say is
absolutely untrue. But, as you seem to have con-
structed a fantastic story on that insecure foun-
253
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
dation, I have a good mind to charge you with
defaming me."
" By all means, and I will go into court and say
what I know and you know to be true."
Now, what can you do with a person like that ?
If I were the judge, trying my own cause and
knowing there is not a semblance of a particle of
truth in this absurd tale, I believe that if a witness
appeared and gave evidence against me with this
sublime assurance, -I would decide the case against
myself.
The wasp has still a sting left, she says ; " You
sent your carriage to a lady, that she might drive
in it?"
" I did."
"And she sent it back."
"She did."
"She would not use it because of what I have
told you, and she does not want to see or speak to
you again ! "
I said I should not die of the affront, nor commit
any rash act if the lady adhered to her deter-
mination ; but I admit that, though I laughed, I was
beginning to lose my temper, and I told my tor-
mentor that if I could whip her it would be a satis-
faction ! She also laughed, but as I had seen that
254
SCANDAL AND BANGLES
she was brimful of merriment all along, that was
nothing. By-and-by she disclosed that she wanted
me to do something for her, and, when I had heaped
coals of fire on her head by doing what she wished,
she went away asking me if I had any message for
the lady who had refused my carriage! I heard
her laughing all the way downstairs, and, as she
insisted on walking through the grounds to her
carriage, I fancy I can hear her giggling still.
I think I remarked once before that the train of
another's thoughts are not easy to divine, but ex-
planations are boring, so I leave you to supply the
connection between what I have just written and
what now occurs to me to tell you. It is not only
fowls and curses that come home to roost.
Once upon a time there was a very beautiful and
attractive lady, the wife of a high official in India.
She was of those who have but one admirer at a
time, and that one very devoted. Women of her
type cannot share with any one else the attentions
of their cavaliers; they insist upon a service that
is complete and unquestioning, dog-like in devotion
and obedience ; and they do not seem to care if it is
also dog-like in its inability to do more than gaze in
rapture at the face of its mistress. I have known
cases of the kind myself, and marvelled to see how
255
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
the lady and her slave can stand, and sit, and walk
together, with no one to disturb their confidences,
and yet they never seem to speak. As far as I can
understand, that was the case with the heroine of my
tale and her cavalier e servente. They were on the
hills or in the plains it does not matter where
when a native Prince appeared upon the scene. He
was a delightful and fascinating person, but wicked
beyond the dreams of wickedness. He stayed
several months in the station, and when about to
return to his own native state, ^he called upon an
English friend of his and said, " I am going away ;
I speak English very indifferently ; I wish to say
good-bye to some of my friends : will you come with
me ? " The Englishman at once said he would be
delighted, and they set out on a round of calls, the
Prince saying where he wished to go. Amongst
other houses they visited that of the engaging lady,
and after a few words explaining his early departure
and regret, the Prince produced a number of beau-
tiful gold bangles, and said he trusted the lady
would accept them as a token of his respectful
admiration. This was duly interpreted, and the
lady replied that as her husband held a Government
post she could not accept any present. The Prince
said he trusted that she would not persist in this
256
SCANDAL AND BANGLES
determination, because he was merely a visitor, and
as the lady's husband had no authority or influ-
ence in his territory, he could not believe that the
ordinary rules would apply to a gift of such small
value, which was merely an expression of his
esteem and thanks for the kindness he had received.
Meanwhile the bangles had been tendered to the
lady ; they had lain in her hand, and she appreciated
their curious design and artistic excellence.
" What shall I do ? " said the lady, appealing to
the Englishman.
" What you please," he replied.
It is possible that it was out of consideration for
the feelings of the donor that she then said
"My husband would never let me accept the
bangles, but I should like to keep them if I knew
that you would say nothing."
"Pray do not think of me," said the friend; "I
am an accident in the interview, and, when I leave
the house, I shall have forgotten all about it."
" Then I shall keep them."
One evening, about a fortnight or three weeks
later, the lady was dancing with the man who had
interpreted, and he said, "Will you allow me to
admire your bangles : they are not only beautiful in
themselves but exceedingly becoming."
2 57 R
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
"Yes," she replied, "but the unfortunate part
of it is that my husband thinks they have been
given to me by some one else, and I can't enlighten
him, for I dare not tell the truth ! "
P.S. The lady who refused to use my carriage
has just sent me an invitation to dinner !
258
XXXI
THE REPREHENSIBLE HABIT OF
MAKING COMPARISONS
I AM not given to the use of postscripts, but I
indulged myself with one in the last letter I
wrote to you. It reminds me of the only bon mot
to which I can lay claim. When I was about six
years old, my mother and I were visiting an aunt
of mine, and, one evening, my mother read aloud
to my aunt a letter she had just received. It was
lengthy, and no doubt interesting to the two ladies,
while the contents were probably beyond my com-
prehension. "Little pigs have long ears," and I
noticed that, at the conclusion of the letter, my
mother read " P.S.," and then some final sentences.
Immediately afterwards I was ordered to bed, and,
once there, my mother came to see me. My small
mind was full of this new idea, and I was thirsting
for information as to the meaning of these myste-
rious letters. Therefore, when my mother had
259
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
bid me good night and was going away, I said,
" Mother, what does P.S. mean; is it Parting Sub-
ject?" She smiled and said, "No, the letters
stand for post scrtptum, but the meaning is not very
different." She afterwards helped me to wrestle
with the Latin grammar, and in time I arrived at
the exact translation of post scrip turn, but my
childish rendering of P.S. would do just as well. I
was made to bitterly regret having ever suggested
it ; for, when my proud mother told the story, my
various brothers and sisters, separately and collec-
tively, insisted that some one had told me to say
it, and I am not sure that they did not, each in
turn, give me a thrashing to impress upon me
the vice of " trying to be sharp." When children
have brothers and sisters, their schooling begins
early and lasts a long time fortunately for them-
selves and the world at large.
That, however, has nothing to do with the matter
I was going to write about. I suppose you some-
times look through those galleries of garments
which begin and end ladies' journals, just as I
occasionally glance at the advertisements of new
books, which I find at the end of a modern novel.
The other day I was idly turning over the pages of
such a series of advertisements (each page devoted
260
OF MAKING COMPARISONS
to one book, and quotations from the newspaper
reviews of it), and I could not help noticing how, in
the case of every book, if not in every critique, the
author was compared with some well-known writer
Dickens, Thackeray, George Meredith, Zola, Ibsen,
De Maupassant it does not seem to matter who it
is, so long as it is some one. As for Mr. Rudyard
Kipling, a writer who mentions India, China, Japan,
Siam, the French or Dutch Indies, or any place
within two or three thousand miles of them, is
certain to find himself compared with the astonish-
ingly talented author of "Soldiers Three," "The
Drums of the Fore and Aft," and a dozen other tales
that had made Mr. Kipling famous in India years
before his name had been heard in the West.
I know that whenever we visit a new place, we
have a ridiculous desire to compare it with some
totally different spot that is familiar to us; and I
suppose we make the comparison, either because
we want to show that we have been somewhere and
seen something, or because we are so devoid of
ideas or language to express them, that this com-
parison is our only means of description. Like
London, only bigger ; Petersburg in winter, but not
so cold ; bluer than the Mediterranean, and so on.
It seems to imply poverty of resource ; but if to help
261
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
readers to realise the appearance of a spot in New
Zealand, that place is compared with the Carse of
Stirling, the information is not of much use to those
who do not know their Scotland.
Is it the same with literary critics ? Hardly, I
fancy; because even though they write easily of
Lake Toba, the Thibetan highlands, or more or less
known writers, it can't give them any real satisfac-
tion, for their own names are but seldom disclosed.
Enlightened people who attend places of Christian
worship, often wish that the occupant of the pulpit
would read a sermon by some great divine, rather
than stumble through an original discourse, which
possibly arouses only the scorn, the resentment, or
the pity of his hearers. The preacher who is con-
scious of his own want of eloquence, or realises that
the spring of his ideas trickles in the thinnest and
most uncertain of streams, may seek to improve his
language, or replenish his own exhausted stock of
subjects, by studying the sermons of abler men. I
doubt if he is greatly to be blamed. Some illustrious
writers have won renown after a diligent study of
the works of dead authors, and a suggestion of the
style of a famous master may be observable in the
work of his admirer ; just as a modern painter may,
consciously or unconsciously, follow the methods,
262
OF MAKING COMPARISONS
the composition, or the colour schemes of a genius
who has given his name to a school of imitators.
It would, however, be a little unreasonable to com-
pare all play-writers with Shakespeare, all essayists
with Macaulay. If there is nothing new under the
sun, two or more men or women, contemporaries,
may have the same ideas on a given subject without
either being open to a charge of plagiarism. They
may express the same ideas differently, or put
different ideas in somewhat the same style of lan-
guage : both may have drawn inspiration from a
more or less original source, not generally known
or quoted in all these cases comparisons may be,
and often are, simply inept. Some subjects are not
yet entirely exhausted, and while it is interesting to
compare the different views of recognised authorities,
it is annoying to both writers and readers to find
that the highest flight of criticism of a new work
seems often to consist in mentioning the names of
other writers on the same subject as though it
were, in a sense, their personal property, or they
had some vested interest in it, by reason of discovery
or continual harping on that particular theme. I
suppose reviewers, except in a few instances, have
no time to really read the books they criticise, and
judge them on their merits; but, if they could, it
263
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
would be more satisfactory to possible readers, who,
as things are, can form very little opinion of what
a book contains, its relative value or worthlessness,
from statements like this, which purports to be an
extract from a review in a leading London paper :
" The opening chapters have a savour of Dickens ; the
climax is almost Zolaesque."
Or this :
" The knowledge of character revealed reminds us of
George Eliot's 'Scenes of Clerical Life.'"
You will think that one who wanders from an
infantile legend about the word postscript to a growl
anent newspaper reviews, is indifferently qualified
to criticise any one or anything. As a letter-writer
I acknowledge that I am inconsequent. I do not
even seek to be otherwise.
264
XXXII
A CHALLENGE
OH ! Oh ! Oh ! What a storm ! But are
you not a little unreasonable ?
You are not a circulating library, you say, nor
a railway book-stall ; you don't want to hear tales
of forest and flood which have no personal interest
for you or me; and you cannot carry on a corre-
spondence with a phrase-book, a thing that has no
existence as a human being, and, when not lectur-
ing you, or taking advantage of your good-nature
to air boring platitudes, is doling out little stories
to you, as though you were a child in a Sunday
School.
My dear lady, I hope that you feel better after
that tirade ; but as you have attacked me with
violence, and at all points at once, I claim the right
to defend myself, and again I say you are unreason-
able. We were never strangers to each other, or
so it seems to me, but circumstances and a certain
265
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
mental attraction drew us into friendship. In the
delight of your society I realised what it would be
to me if, through that friendship, I might win your
affection. I even dreamed that I might compel the
impossible, and attain to an earthly paradise of sweet
alliance whence no mortal promises and no inspired
writings could ever win me.
Whilst we dream of life's big possibilities, its
little duties drive us where they will. We were
parted, and, if I do not now remind you of that
time, it is because I know that there are few things
a woman hates more than to be told she once, by
word or deed, showed any tender feeling for a man
who no longer holds the same place in her regard.
You went and I stayed ; you spoke and I believed ;
and what I did not say was only what you told me
not to repeat, lest parting should seem over-hard
to bear. Then I wrote and you wrote, and, at first,
your letters were so fine a gift that they almost
consoled me for your absence, and, in my great
gratitude, I wrote some of the thoughts of my
inmost heart. My fervour seemed to frighten you,
and the chill of your surroundings came through
your letters to me. It may have been the fault of
those about you ; it may have been that you were
tried beyond endurance, possibly even that I, in
266
A CHALLENGE
some indirect way, was a cause of your distress.
But you never said so; you never took me into
your confidence and frankly told me you were in
any trouble ; only your letters went through those
phases which I, once, cynically suggested were the
common fate of those whose friendship could not
survive a real separation. I was too slow to at
once trim my sails to the varying breeze, nor could
I call back letters which were already on their way.
Therefore I fell under your displeasure, and you
ordered me to write only of " the daily round, the
common task." I obeyed you, as nearly as I was
able. When you asked me to tell you of what I
saw, of what I was doing, I attempted to do so, and
to make the telling as little personal as I could.
To weary you with the trivialities of my daily life,
to describe to you the wearisome people I met,
the banalitcs they uttered that was beyond me.
Therefore, to try and interest you, I gave you the
best of what had interested me, and even that was
only done with some sacrifice, for you know my
time is not all my own. Naturally those letters
were empty of personal reference. To have written
of myself would have been to write of you, and
that might have brought down on my head another
storm of invective. I am in the position of the
267
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
burnt child : I dread the fire. Even now I dare not
accept your invitation. I might write, and, before
the letter could reach you, receive from you another
missive, telling me your present letter was written
under an impulse you regret but cannot explain,
and that of course it meant nothing. You would
add that you delight in the discussion of abstract
questions, and queer little stories are, to you, as
rain to dry land. Then I can imagine the sternly
traced characters of that other destroying scroll,
in which you would sum up the tale of my sins,
after reading such a letter as I might send in answer
to your present message of discontent and provo-
cation. So, I warn you. I shall give you time to
think ; in spite of your scoffing, I shall continue to
write to you as I have done in these latter days;
and then and then your blood be on your own
head. If the outward cold of damp and fog, of
weeks of sunless gloom and surroundings of rain-
drenched rows of hideous dwellings, muddy roads,
sullen skies, and leaden seas produce what you no
doubt think is a virtuous frame of mind, when the
state of the crops and the troubles of the farmers
are the only matters with which a conscience-
burdened woman can occupy her mind, I shall
pander to your appetite, and write to you of famine
268
A CHALLENGE
and plague, the prospects of the poppy (the opium
poppy, you understand) and I will even stretch a
point to discuss the silver question and the fate of
the rupee. If, on the other hand, you throw discre-
tion to the winds ; if in that atmosphere where you
say you are always frozen, " outside and in," you
pine for a glimpse of sunlight ; if you like to watch
a conflagration when at a safe distance from the
flames, or even if the contortions of the cockchafer,
when impaled by the pin, excite your amusement;
then also I will help you to realise these very
reasonable wishes. Yes, then I will write you a
love-letter that will be but a poor substitute for
the impassioned words that should stir your heart,
were once my lips within reach of yours.
Even from here I see you smile ; even now I
hear you say, " Well, write after all vivisection
has benefited the race, and the contortions of the
cockchafer will perhaps distract one's attention for
a moment from the eternal monotony of the narrow
life."
269
XXXIII
IN EXILE
IN order that I may keep on perfectly safe ground,
and successfully resist the temptation to depart
from my resolve, I will tell you a story of my visit
to Burmah, where, wandering aimlessly, I found
an old friend in a distinguished Indian civilian, who
invited me to accompany him on a tour of inspec-
tion. I gladly accepted his invitation, and we had
been travelling for some time, driving, riding, walk-
ing, and, finally, after rafting over a magnificent
series of rapids, had been some days paddling down
the river in house-boats, when we reached a remote
inland station called Phatmah. I caught my first
view of the place as our boat swung round a bend in
the great river, disclosing a reach of brown water,
enclosed between high, jungle-covered banks, and
shut in, at the end, by a green hill, crowned by a
plank bungalow with a mat roof.
The boat was soon alongside the rough landing-
270
IN EXILE
stage, where a young civilian, introduced as Basset,
was waiting to receive his chief. We climbed the
steep hill, and Basset conducted us to the house
devoted to our shelter for the couple of days we
were to spend at Phatmah.
In my two days' stay there, I had ample oppor-
tunities of seeing the place, and realising its few
attractions and its many drawbacks. There was
a tiny native village on the bank of one of the
two streams that here united in one great river, and
flowed in stately, ever-widening progress for over
two hundred miles before it reached the sea: two
hundred miles of virgin forest, save for the native
villages and clearings that lined the banks at un-
certain intervals. A few jungle tracks leading to
distant mines were the only apology for roads ; the
river was the real highway, and the sole means of
transport were native boats. Comfortable enough,
these boats, for men used to jungle travel; flat
and wide, with a palm-leaf roof, the fore-part occu-
pied by the crew, the after-part by passengers.
There was a deck of boards or split bamboos, and
you could only move about it by crawling on your
hands and knees. Entrance and exit were accom-
plished by the same means. A door, at the back
of the enclosed after-deck, led on to a bamboo
271
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
frame over the rudder ; the steersman sat on the
palm-leaf awning, and the only privacy was ob-
tained by hanging a screen between crew and
passengers. There was room for two mattresses
on the after-deck, and there the passengers sat or
lay through the blazing heat of the tropical day
and the star-lit stillness of the Burmese night.
At this station there dwelt, besides Basset, an
officer of police, another concerned with public
works, and an apothecary in charge of a hospital.
That was all. Their quarters were dotted about
on the high land behind Basset's bungalow. For
the rest, the eye was met by jungle near and far
endless jungle, and the river-reach. Silent and
placid the waters, moving along in brown eddies,
when, as now, the river was in flood; clear and
shallow, disclosing groups of rocks dotted about the
bed, in what was called the dry season.
At the time of our visit it was spring, and the
jungle, especially in certain parts of the mountainous
country, was a truly marvellous sight. The forest
had put on its wedding garment, and the new leaves
of many, even of most of the trees, were dazzling
in the brilliance of their colouring. The prevailing
hues were red and yellow; but then there were
shades of red and of yellow that one never seemed
272
IN EXILE
to have dreamed of, such quantity, such intensity
that the eyes almost ached with gazing at the glory
of it all.
One is struck, especially in the East, by the wonder
of flowering trees, or the striking creepers that cling
to the tops of forest giants; but imagine these
same trees in all their height, their wealth of foliage,
and beauty of form, one mass of colour ! There
were trees of delicate lemon, of brilliant cadmium,
of deepest orange ; trees of such crimson that every
leaf looked as though it were dripping with fresh
blood ; trees of copper and pale pink, of terra-cotta
and scarlet all these in one pure colour, or inter-
mingled with every shade of green from palest apple,
through varying tones of emerald, to the shining
dark leaves that seemed all but black. Dotted
about, here and there, stood trees of some shade of
brown, or graceful forms clothed in darker or paler
heliotrope. The virgin Eastern forest is a sight to
see, but the glory of the jungle in the first freshness
of spring leafage is a revelation.
That jungle was one of the attractions of Phatmah ;
not monopolised by Phatmah, only shared, and
not to so large an extent as by a thousand other
places nearer the great hills.
Then there was the river reach, where all day
273 S
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
long the shadows crept gradually closer under one
bank as they were projected from the other; while
now and then a native boat passed up or down
the river, and, for a few minutes, broke the melan-
choly of that changeless stretch of water. The
sunsets made the last, and perhaps the greatest
attraction of Phatmah. Then, in the after-glow,
great beams of light would rise, fan-like, from east
and west, almost meeting in the zenith, and leave,
between their rays, sharply-defined, heavenly roads
of deepest blue ; while the soft white clouds, riding
through the sky, took shades of gold and rose and
pearly-grey, until the stars shone out and set all
the cicadas shrilling a chorus to waken every other
denizen of the jungle.
Sunsets cannot be commanded; they are inter-
mittent, and, though they are comforting in a
way they do not always come when they are most
wanted. In Phatmah it would rain in torrents on
the evening that you had set your heart upon see-
ing a gorgeous sunset, and, when it did not rain, it
was hotter than in almost any other spot in Burmah,
and that is saying a great deal. Moreover, it was as
dull probably as any place on earth, except to the
three white men who lived there and had their work
to do, or whose business took them, weekly, or at
274
IN EXILE
least monthly, into some other more or less desolate
part of the district.
I noted these things in that first day I was at
Phatmah, while my friend and Basset were talking
about roads to be made and buildings constructed,
natives to be encouraged or sat upon, dacoits harried,
and all the things that make the life of the exiled
English officer in the outermost parts of the Empire.
I also observed Basset. I knew he had a wife, a girl
whom he had just married, when at home on leave
in England, and who was now in that house, across
the grass, a hundred yards away. I had not seen
Basset's wife, but I had heard of her from some
who had met her, before she left the last confines
of civilisation and started for what must in future
be her home. What I had heard made it seem
unlikely that Mrs. Basset would reconcile herself
to jungle life, and, when I understood Phatmah,
I thought it would be very surprising if such
a miracle could be wrought for the sake of
Basset.
Basset was a most excellent fellow, a good officer,
good to look at, lithe and well-made, a man who
had found favour with his seniors and was likely
to do well. He was young, but that was a fault for
which he was not responsible, and one that every
275
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
day was curing. And yet, when I saw Phatmah,
I thought Basset had been unwise, and when I
saw his wife, as I did the next day, I felt certain
of it.
I had been told she was very young in years and
child-like at that, nervous to the last degree, selfish,
unreasonable, full of fancies, and rather pretty
but the one or two ladies who were my informants
differed as to this last important particular.
What I saw for myself, when I went to call upon
" the only lady in Phatmah," was this : a glory
of fair waving hair framing a young, but not very
youthful face; a pallid complexion, and features
where nothing specially appealed for admiration ; a
voice that was not more than pleasant, and a figure
that, while very petite, seemed well enough shapen,
as far as could be seen under the garment of silk
and lace that must have been the first of its kind
to visit Phatmah. The house did not strike me as
showing more than the evidences of a young man's
anxiety to make it what he would call " fit for a
lady"; but then the resources of Phatmah were
strictly limited, the Bassets had only just, so to
speak, arrived, and things entrusted to the tender
mercies of river transport were often months upon
the way. On the whole there was nothing about
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IN EXILE
Mrs. Basset to excite either sympathy or interest,
if you had met her in any civilised place; but as
the only white woman in Phatmah, come here to
gain her first real experiences of life, scared by
frogs and lizards, and terrified by the many insects
that fly straight at you and stick on your hair, your
face, your clothes, one could not help feeling that
the experiment, if not a cruel one to her, was at
least thoughtless, and, if persisted in, might end
in disaster.
My friend and I exerted ourselves that after-
noon and evening (for the Bassets dined with us) to
put as good a complexion as we could on Burmah
in general and Phatmah in particular; and though,
to the ordinary spectator, we might have appeared
to succeed fairly well, I carried away with me
vague suspicions, born of my own observation and
the conversation I had had with the lady as we
sat and looked over that jungle -shrouded river-
reach, while the path to the stars grew an ever-
deepening blue, and she told me somewhat of herself
and her life. There was no doubt that she not
only looked dissatisfied, but felt it, and said it,
and took credit for her candour. Then she com-
plained that Phatmah offered no opportunities for
" getting into mischief," but that was probably
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
merely another way of saying that she was utterly
bored ; and, in truth, when she asked if I could
conceive a greater dulness, the trite reply that she
had her husband stuck in my throat, and I ad-
mitted that it was immeasurably dull, but talked
cheerfully of what it would be when communication
with the outside world was easier, and then fell
to asking her if she read, or played, or sang, or
sketched, as Phatmah seemed to be the very place
for study, or the practice of accomplishments. She
pleaded that she was too lately from school to
hanker after study, but became almost enthusiastic
on the subject of music.
Then our tete-a-tete was interrupted, and in the
evening the only thing that struck me was that,
for a girl so lately from school, our guest drank
rather more in quantity and variety than was usual,
and whenever in the after-days my thoughts went
back to Phatmah, I remembered this with an un-
comfortable feeling of the awful loneliness of that
reach of brown river, the boundless forest, and the
girl, left for days to her own devices, and the
possibility of " getting into mischief" by drowning
a craving, not for excitement so much as for the
companionship of her kind.
A hundred miles below Phatmah the river wound
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IN EXILE
through the plains in long reaches, six or seven
rrfiles in length; the country was more open, and
the banks were occasionally fringed with palms and
orchards surrounding the huts of a native hamlet.
The moon was waxing to the full, and, sitting at
the stern of my boat, looking back up the long
stretch of water bathed in mellow light, till the wide
band of silver narrowed to a point that vanished
in grey mist, I could not help thinking that, even
here, the sense of loneliness, of monotony, and
banishment, was less acute than in Phatmah's forest-
bound clearing.
Years passed, and I was again in Burmah, this
time with an object. I had forgotten all about the
Bassets: one does not remember people who live
in the East, only the places that are striking, and
the things seen or heard of that may become pro-
fitable in one way or another. I thought of my
friend, because he might be able to help me, but he
was away in another part of the province and I had
to journey alone. Officials are useful on their own
ground, and even when they are not personal friends,
they are, in the East at any rate, ready enough to
be hospitable. The advantage of "entertaining
angels unawares " is, however, all on their side, and
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
guests so soon recognise this fact, that they feel
under no obligation to their hosts, and seldom wish
to remember them if they meet them in Europe.
This is specially the case with English notabilities,
who seem to think that they have a prescriptive
right, not only to waste a man's time, but also to
use his house, stables, and servants, as at an hotel
where the visitor exercises every privilege except
that of making payment. Unfortunately for me, I
had to go beyond the region of even occasional
civilians, those isolated exiles whose houses the
stranger occupies, whether the master is present or
absent, and for some days I had to put up with the
Dak Bungalow and the chicken of happy despatch.
It was the very hottest time of the morning when
I arrived at such a bungalow in a small mining
village. I had been riding since dawn, and was
glad enough to turn into that weedy compound and
get off my pony. Whew ! the heat of it ! The
two or three sinewy hens, which by-and-by would
be slaughtered to make the traveller's holiday,
were sitting half-buried and wallowing in the dust,
with their wings spread out and their mouths open,
gasping for breath. It was a day when solids
liquefy, when inanimate objects develop an extra-
ordinary faculty for sticking to each other, and
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IN EXILE
when water no longer feels wet. There was not
a sign of any human being anywhere, and I went
round to the back premises to try and find the care-
taker. After a diligent search I discovered him,
fast asleep of course, and, while he went to prepare
a room, I unsaddled the pony and put it in the
stable. Then I went into the house and told the
servant to get me some food while I had a bath.
The process of catching the hen and cooking her
was a long one, and I was sleeping in a chair when
the man came to tell me the feast was ready. I
had an idea that I was not alone in the house, and,
when I questioned the caretaker, he said that there
was a lady who had arrived the night before and
had not appeared that morning. Our means of
conversation was limited to a few words, and I
could not make out who the lady was, or even
whether he knew her; but it seemed to me a curious
thing that a white woman should be there, and I
supposed she came from one of the big ruby mines ;
but even then it was strange that she should be
alone. I made further inquiries about the neigh-
bourhood, and learned that I was not more than a
day's journey from Phatmah. I knew it was some-
where about, but had not thought it so near; it
was not on the line of my objective, and I was not
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
interested in its exact position. Then some of my
bearers arrived with luggage, and I deliberately
settled myself for a siesta.
It was late afternoon when I awoke, and I deter-
mined to push on to another small place, which I
could just reach before darkness made further pro-
gress impossible. Even a short stage by night
would be preferable to the frightful heat and the
oppressive atmosphere of this lonely house, in its
neglected and overgrown garden, where one lean
chicken now scratched alone. Just then the care-
taker came to me and asked my advice about the
other guest. He had seen and heard nothing of
her for the whole day, and was afraid there must
be something amiss. That, I felt, was extremely
likely, especially when he told me he had knocked
at the door of her room and received no answer. I
did not at all like the mission, but there was nothing
for it but to go and see what was the matter. A
few steps took us to the door of the lady's room, and
I knocked, first gently, then loudly, but no sound
broke the ominous silence. Then I turned the
handle, only to find that the door was locked. As I
could not force it open without making a great
clatter, I went outside to try the windows. There
were two of these some height from the ground, and
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IN EXILE
it was difficult to get at them. The first was fast,
and from my insecure footing I could not force it ;
but with the second I was more fortunate, and as a
half-shutter sprang open, and a stream of light
poured into the dark room, I saw the form of a girl,
or woman, lying oathe bed, in an attitude that some-
how did not suggest sleep. I shouted at her, but she
never moved, and then I climbed into the room. I
noticed instantly that there was hardly anything
lying about the ill-furnished room, but, on a small
table near the bed, was an almost empty brandy
bottle and a glass. The woman was dressed in a
blouse and skirt, the only things she had taken off
being apparently her hat and shoes. She had her
back towards me, and the sunlight centred on a mass
of fair hair and gave it a deeper tinge. Before I put
my hand on her cold fingers I felt certain she was
dead, and as I gently turned her head and recognised
in the now grey features the face of the only white
woman in Phatmah, I don't think I was very much
surprised, though I was terribly shocked. Held
tightly in her other hand was a small empty bottle
that had once held chloral, and the faint sickly smell
of it hung in the heavy stifling atmosphere of that
bare and comfortless room. Poor lonely child, she
had managed to "get into mischief" after all.
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XXXIV
OF LOVE NOT IN FICTION
YOU have sent me the answer which I expected.
Now tell me how to write a love-letter that
shall speak no word of love a letter as full of
the passion, the boundless adoration, and the
faith of love, as the Chaurapanchasika, those fifty
distichs of Chauras that proclaimed his forbidden
worship of the lovely daughter of King Sundava.
The Brahman's lament won the king's heart and
saved the poet's life ; and I would learn of you
how to win a heart, and perhaps save more than
one life from shipwreck. After all, our civilisation
may, in its comparative refinement, be more cruel
than the unfettered caprice of an Eastern king
nineteen centuries ago. Tell me, tell me, you who
know, how can pen and ink be made to speak
with the force and persuasion of spoken words,
when half the world divides the writer from the
reader of poor halting sentences that must, of
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OF LOVE NOT IN FICTION
necessity, leave unsaid all that the heart yearns
to utter?
When eye can look into eye, when the stretched-
out hand meets a responsive touch, timid and
uncertain, or confident with the knowledge of
passionate love passionately returned, the words
that are spoken may be feeble, but the influence
of a loved presence will carry conviction, and
one voice awaken in one heart the music of the
spheres. Then the dullest day is bright, the
lovers' feet tread on air, day is a joy and night a
gladness, or at least a dream of delight. Then
life is divided between anticipation and reality.
No wonder the hours fly on wings ; no wonder the
thoughts suggested by brief absences are forgotten
in the wonder and delight of briefer meetings, till
the dread moment of separation comes, and aching
hearts too late realise the appalling suddenness of
the actual parting and the ceaseless regret for oppor-
tunities lost. You understand that my thoughts
are not of the devout lover who is going through a
short apprenticeship before signing a bond of per-
petual servitude or partnership, as the case may be.
That is a phase which, if it occasionally deserves
sympathy, seldom receives it; indeed, it hardly
awakens interest, except in those who wish to see
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
the preliminaries concluded, that their interest in the
principals may either cease, and give themselves
more freedom, or begin, and bring them some profit.
I appeal to you to tell me how to keep alive the
divine flame when oceans and continents divide two
loving hearts ; how to tell of longing and bitter
regret, of faith and love and worship, when such
words may not be written ; how to make personal
influence felt across five seas and through many
weary months ; how to kill doubt and keep strong
and faithful a priceless love, against which the stars
in their courses may seem ready to fight ; how, above
all, to help one who needs help, and warm sympathy,
and wise advice, so that, if it be possible, she may
escape some of life's misery and win some of
life's joy.
Journeying through this weary old world, who
has not met the poor struggling mortal, man or
woman, old or young, for whom the weal or woe of
life hangs in the balance, to turn one way or the
other, when the slightest weight is cast into either
scale ? Who has not been asked for sympathy or
advice, or simply to lend an ear to the voice of a
hopeless complaint ? Some feel the iron in their
souls far more keenly than others. While the strong
fight, the weak succumb, and the shallow do not
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OF LOVE NOT IN FICTION
greatly mind, after they have gone through a short
torture of what seems to them profound emotion.
But in their case sympathy is rather wasted, for,
however violent their grief, their tears are soon
dried, and it must have been written for them that
"joy cometh with the morning."
You know what it is when the heart seems to
struggle for more freedom, because it is choking
with a love it may not, or will not, express ; when,
in the absence of one face, all other companionship
is irksome, all conversation stale and unprofitable ;
when daylight wearies and night is cruelly wel-
come, because the struggle to play a part, and
pretend an interest one does not feel, is over,
and one stretches out one's arms to the darkness,
and whispers, "Come to me," to ears that cannot
hear. What strange unnatural creatures we are,
for we stifle the voices of our souls, and seem to
delight in torturing ourselves for the sake of some
idea born of a tradition, the value of which we
dare not even submit to the test of argument. If
in response to your heart's cry there came the one
whose presence you desire, you would instantly
torture yourself rather than confess your message.
Whatever it cost you, you would not only pretend
that the sudden appearance of the greatly beloved
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
was the last thing you wished for, but you might
even send him away with the impression that he
had deeply offended you. And yet Ah well ! this
artificial fortress we take such pains to build, and to
keep in repair, is not proof against every assault.
There are crises of life an imminent danger, the
presence or appearance of death, a sudden and
irresistible wave of passionate feeling, or a separa-
tion that has no promise of reunion before these
the carefully constructed rampart of convention and
outward seeming goes down like a house of cards.
" When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded by the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes within another's eyes see clear ;
When one world-deafened ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed,
A bolt is shot back somewhere in the heart,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again ;
The eye sinks inward and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean we say,
And what we would we know."
There was a day which, to me, will ever be my
day of days halcyon hours of joy and gladness,
coloured by a setting of wondrous beauty, and
burdened by the fateful shadow of an inevitable
parting that would, in all human probability, be the
point where two lives, which had grown strangely
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OF LOVE NOT IN FICTION
and sweetly close, must divide, without any hope
of re-uniting. You remember how in that early
dawn we drove through the dewy grass, covered
with the fairies' dainty white gossamer kerchiefs,
lace cobwebs spread out to dry in the morning sun ;
and, as we left the town and made for the distant
mountains, the dark red road wound up and down
hills, through orchards and grass-land and forest,
till we gained a little village, where the road forked,
and a clear, rain-swollen stream slipped swiftly
past the picturesque brown cottages. Whilst the
horses were being changed, we strolled a little way
down the road, and watched a group of laughing
urchins, playing in that lilied stream like water-
babies. How they screamed with delight as their
small glistening bodies emerged from the shining
water to struggle up a crazy ladder that led from
the back of a hut down into the winding stream ;
and how the sun shone ! lighting the snow-white
plumage of a brood of solemn-looking ducks, sailing
majestically round the sedge-girt edges of a tiny
pool beneath the bridge. In that pool was mirrored
a patch of clear blue sky, and across it fell the
shadows cast by a great forest tree. That was " a
day in spring, a day with thee and pleasure!"
Then, as we drove on, there were heavenly glimpses
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
of sapphire hills, seen down long vistas through the
forest. For the last few miles, the road followed
the bank of a deep and rapid river, whose clear
waters reflected the graceful overhanging trees,
while the banks were buried in a thick maze of
ferns and grasses, and great shining patches of
buttercups and marigolds.
Were you sorry when the drive was over, and
our sweet converse perforce ended ? I wonder
would you have enjoyed it better had that exquisite
spot, in the depths of the forest, been ours alone
for that one day ? One day is so little in a life-
time, and yet what was ours was good ! Do you
remember how, in that far-off place, we met on the
road one whom you recognised, but whose face and
manner gave no clue to the romantic story of his
life, a story that would have brought him great
renown in the days when valour was accounted of
the highest worth ? You have not forgotten that,
nor yet the return drive, when, as we crested the
last hill, and began the steep and tortuous descent
into the plain, the lurid rays of the setting sun
threw crimson stains across dark pools of lotus-
bearing water, half-hidden by overhanging grasses
and the dank leaves of white-blossomed lilies.
Beneath us lay a wide stretch of swamp-land, the
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OF LOVE NOT IN FICTION
very picture of abandonment, desolation, and soli-
tude; heaps of up-turned earth, green with rank
vegetation, and pools of dead water, whose dark
shadows reflected the lambent fires of the western
horizon. A broken line of black trees stood clear
against the rapidly-darkening sky, but, as we reached
the foot of the hill, heaven and earth were wrapped
in the shadows of night. And then my day was
done. Doubt was buried, and the " big word "
bound our hearts in the joy of that priceless sym-
pathy which carries human aspirations beyond
the storm and stress of human life to a knowledge
of the Divine. We said little; when hearts are at
one, few words are needed, for either knows the
other's thoughts. But you were slow to unbend,
making a brave fight against fate, and keeping
true to your creed, though seven days would bring
the end. To me, the light of that one brilliant
day had been intensified by the rapidly approaching
shadow of the inevitable parting. I wonder now
that the bitterness of separation has come, now that
I vaguely ask myself what has happened to Time
since I lost you whether, if we could have that
day again, you would again be so merciless in your
determination to hold love in leash, and give no
sign of either the passion or the pain that was
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
tearing your heart. I think it was a hard fight,
for, though you concealed your thoughts, you could
not hide the physical effects of the struggle. Did
you know how your weariness distressed me, and
what I would have given to have the right to try
to comfort you ?
I have a confused memory of those other days.
Brief meetings and partings; insane desires to
make any excuse to write to you, or hear from
you, though I had but just left your presence; a
hopeless and helpless feeling that I had a thousand
things to say to you, and yet that I never could
say one of them, because the time was so short
that every idea was swallowed up in the ever-
present dread of your departure, and the ceaseless
repetition of your cry, " I cannot bear it, I cannot
bear it." From out that vague background shine
two stars, two brilliant memories to light the dark-
ness of the weary months until I see your face
again a blissful memory and a sign. All the
rest seems swallowed up in the bitterness of
that parting, which comes back like some horrible
nightmare.
Only black water under a heavy overcast sky;
only the knowledge that the end had come; that
what should be said must be said then, with the
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OF LOVE NOT IN FICTION
instant realisation that the pain of the moment,
the feeling of impotent rebellion against fate, de-
stroyed all power of reflection, and the impulse
to recklessness was only choked back by the cold
words of a publicly spoken farewell. Then rapid
motion, and in one minute the envious darkness
had taken everything but the horrible sense of loss
and inconsolable regret. Whatever my suffering,
it was worse for you; I at least was alone, alone
with a voice which ever murmured in my ears
that despairing cry, " I cannot bear it, I cannot
bear it."
When two who have been brought together, so
close together that they have said the " big word "
without faltering, are suddenly swept asunder by
the receding wave of adverse circumstances, there
must ever arise in their hearts that evil question,
" How is it now ? Is it the same ? Or have time,
and distance, and a thousand other enemies, so
filled the space between us that the memory of
either is growing dim, and the influence of the
other waning, waning till the absence of all binding
tie begins to feel like a very bond. Will the vision
simply fade gradually out of sight ? " For us there
is no promise, no tie, no protestations of fealty;
only knowledge, and that forced upon us rather
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
than sought. You give or you don't give, that is
all; if you also take away, you are within your
right. There may be reasons and reasons, I under-
stand them all; and I have only one desire, that
whatever prevails may secure you happiness. What
you can give seems to me so unlike what others
ever have to give, so infinitely beyond price, that,
where I might gain, it is not right that I should
speak. Therefore I cannot urge, I dare not even
plead, a cause that has less to recommend it than
the forlornest hope.
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XXXV
OF OBSESSION
IF that is irrevocable why, then, no more. You
can only decide, and while I would not have
you consider me, I do ask you to think of your-
self. I have no title to be considered, not the
remotest ; if I had, it might be different. Possibly,
even, I had better not write now, and yet I must,
though you say " Don't." It cannot matter for
this once, and after well, there may be no after.
We are curiously inconsistent and very hard to
understand; even when we think we know each
other well, we speak to conceal our thoughts ; and,
when we write (and it is often easier to write what
we mean than to say it) I wonder whether it occurs
to us how marvellously contradictory we can be,
and what difficult riddles we can frame, in two or
three pages of a letter that comes straight from the
heart and cries to be understood. Verily we are
the slaves of circumstance; but whilst we accept
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UNADDRESSED LETTERS
that position, whilst we make sacrifices that can
be absolutely heroic, and dumbly suffer the cruci-
fixion of a lifetime, we want one other heart to
know and understand. There are few things harder
to bear than to stifle every strongest inclination,
every dearest hope, to shut the gate of life, to lock
it and throw away the key, with a determina-
tion to accept existence and make the best of it.
God knows how bitter is that renunciation, but, if
it be for another, and that other misunderstands,
then the cruelty of it all seems almost beyond
endurance.
If I may write no more to you, you may never
understand. If I saw you, later, under other
circumstances, I could not speak; so there can be
no explanation for me. I do not plead, I may not.
Not once, but often you have heard my profession
of faith a gift is good, because it is given freely.
The greatest good, the most priceless gift, is love.
It is valuable because it is free. You cannot buy
it or compel it; even when given, you cannot lock
it up, or chain it down, and say, " It is mine for
ever." It comes, and it is the joy of life ; it goes,
and it is pity, misery, despair. It is as useless
to rave against the loss, as to shake one's fist at
Zeus and his thunderbolts. If I ever had, then
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OF OBSESSION
I was thrice-blessed. If I have no longer, the fault
is probably mine, and I have still the knowledge of
what was. Not God Himself can deprive me of
that. I would have liked that you should know all
I yearn to say, but because you are not here to
tell me, " Say it, say it all," therefore I must keep
silence. Perhaps I do not read aright all you
mean ; but some at least I know, and that is what
you would have me understand without any shadow
of doubt. That I realise, down to the very lowest
depths of the suffering which is dumb for sheer
pain ; and I can say nothing, absolutely nothing,
because I have no right; nay, more, you tell me
to be silent. Surely you know, you know, what
I would say ? You remember how one evening
we rode out by the rocks, and we talked of a
story of faith and high resolve, and you said you
did not think I was capable of a like devotion.
That was a fairy tale ; but what I said then, I
repeat, with greater confidence, now ; with hope,
yes, I could stand and wait with none, per-
haps not.
That is all of me. What your letters have been
you know, or at least you can guess, for I have
answered them, and in those answers you could
read all I might not say. " There must be an end,
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and it is not because of the trouble, but it is because
of the pleasure." You could not tell me that and
think, because you bid me, I would not answer?
Nor does one forget fortunately though if to
forget be fortunate, I suppose to remember must
be unfortunate, only it does not seem so to me.
" Silence is a great barrier " yes, death is silence,
and the greatest barrier of all, and the silence of
the living is, in a way, harder to bear, for it seems
so needlessly unkind. Silence, determined, un-
broken silence, will, I think, kill all feeling. I will
not accept that as your last word, not yet ; but if,
when you receive this, you make that the beginning
of silence, then I shall know, and I will not break
it. Only I beg of you not to do so hard a thing as
this, for I will gladly accept any less cruel sentence
if you will not make yourself as dead to me. I
have not done anything that need drive you to issue
such an edict. Will not some less hopeless judg-
ment, something short of eternal silence, serve until
I bring on myself this ghastly doom ? You are
thinking that it was I who said, "All or nothing,"
I who said friendship was too hard a road to tread.
That was before before I had tried; before I
knew all I know now. You hid your heart far out
of sight, and I never dared to guess I do not now.
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OF OBSESSION
But you went, and I, remembering how you went,
catch at straws; for, as the Eastern says, I am
drowning in the deepest sea. Do not think that is
extravagant; it is because I have learned to count
the unattainable at its true value that I also realise
the immensity of the loss. We stood on either side
of a wall, and because the wall was near to me I
looked over it and almost forgot its existence.
You, standing farther off, saw always the wall,
and it shut me out. Then I, thinking it could
be nothing to you, tried to get across the in-
tervening space, and so fell, hurting myself, as
those who fall must do. It was not a caprice, not
an impulse that took me, it was the victory of the
uncontrollable. So, doubting me, and to do right
for both, you said, " I will build a wall too, stronger
and higher, and then we can sometimes look over
and talk to each other, and everything will be well."
But it is not well. Only you have vowed yourself
to the work, and, if it seems hard, you say that all
things are hard, and this must be good because it
costs so much. To suffer is bad enough ; to give
suffering where you would strain every nerve to
give only joy is so hard that, to help the other,
seems worth any conceivable pain to oneself. What
can it matter how it affects me, if I can do some
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little good for you ; something that may save you
a little pain, win you a little joy ? Believe me, I
have no wish but this. Whatever my selfishness
would suggest is not really me, for "Thy law is
my delight"; nay more, it is my delight to try
to anticipate your wish. I have no fear except
that you should misunderstand me, that I should
misunderstand you. I am my own to offer, yours
to accept equally if, by effacement, I can save
you the smallest regret, help you for a few
yards over the stony path of life by keeping
silence, you will neither see nor hear from me
again. I would you did not doubt, perhaps you
do not now; at least you cannot distrust, and in
this I shall not fail. I shall not say farewell.
I will never say that; but through the silence,
if so it must be, sometimes, on a day in spring,
perhaps, will come the echo of a past that you
can recall with nothing more than regret. And
that is what I do not quite understand. You say,
"In all the years to come I shall not regret." Not
regret what has been, what might have been, or
what will be then ? Therein lies all the difference,
and therein lies the riddle, there and in those words,
" I am sometimes " How am I to supply the
rest? It might be any one of so many things.
300
OF OBSESSION
Could it ever be that you are sometimes driven to
wonder whether everything I could offer is worth
anything you would give ? " Many waters cannot
quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a man
would give all the substance of his house for love, it
would be utterly contemned." If that be true, and
it has high authority, then in that one sentence
is contained the conclusion of the whole matter.
It tells you all that you can wish to know for your-
self and myself and even for others. I have done ;
an accident drew from me an acknowledgment of
my own hurt when it seemed unlikely that the fact
should interest you. Now I am so unfortunate that,
hurt myself, I have made you suffer as well. I have
nothing to offer to help you, for all I had is yours
already. And so the end : if so you deem it best.
" St fttais Dieu" I would use what power I had
to spare you a moment's pain and give you such
happiness that you should forget the meaning of
the word " suffering." How utterly powerless we
are, how impotent to save those we love, when no
offer of the best we have, no devotion, no self-
effacement, will secure the happiness of one other
being, whose every pulse throbs in unison with ours,
yet between whom and us there is fixed the great
gulf of our own conventions. Is the end of all
301
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
human hopes, all human sorrows, described in these
two lines ?
" Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was, and then no more of Thee and Me."
" Let me say it whilst I have the courage."
Suppose you had the greater courage to write, "I
will never say it." Let me rather cry with Saul,
" Farewell to others, but never we part." And
yet I know that we have already parted to meet
no more.
302
XXXVI
OF PARADISE LOST
BY a dispensation of that Providence which, if
seldom kind, is sometimes less than malignant,
I received your two letters together the poison
and the antidote. I looked at the dates on the
postmarks, and I took the poison first. It did not
take long to read, and I am glad now that I can
truly tell you that my impulse was to ignore your
expressed wish, your command, and to at once tell
you that I did not believe a single word of those
lines, which, if meant to hurt, could not have been
better conceived, for truly they were coldly cruel.
Indeed, the note was hateful, and so absolutely
unlike you, that it must have defeated its object,
had that been really as you declared it. If you
know me at all, you must have realised that, if I
know the Kingdom of Heaven may not be taken
by storm, I should never seek for the charity which
is thrown to the importunate. But the other letter
303
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
was there, and in it I found such measure of con-
solation as is vouchsafed to those who find that,
if their path is difficult, they will not tread it alone,
and it tends upward. It may not be all we desire
how should it be in a world which is full of
" Infinite passion
And the pain of finite hearts that yearn " ?
Still, it is much ; and, at the worst, it is death
without its sting.
Do I know ? I think I do. You see, if the future
contains nothing for me, I have still the past and,
in that past, I have learnt to implicitly trust you,
and you have let me see enough of your very self to
make me disregard even what comes from you, when
it has nothing in common with your real character.
But I shall not forget I do not do that easily at
any time and, if all else faded, I could not forget
our friendship. Do you think the first man and
woman ever forgot that once they dwelt in Paradise ?
It was the recollection of all they had lost which was
the beginning of mortal suffering. If that " pleasant
place " is closed to me, I am not likely to forget that
I have seen the gate, that I know where to find it,
and that there is but one. Yes, I understand ; and
the proof is, that in my regret there is no bitterness
34
OF PARADISE LOST
now. I also remember what I said when we leant
over the balustrade of a verandah and looked out
into the silver sheen of a ravishing Eastern night,
wherein the frail chalices of the moonflower shone
like great, milk-white stars in their leafy sky, while
from the trellis-work beneath us rose the faint, sweet
scent of those strange blossoms. You have taught
me how great the exception can be. The cynicism
is only skin-deep, and I shall never swell the ranks
of the Faithful though I still think there is much
to be said for the Faith. The creed, like other
creeds, suffers by the perfunctory service of those
who profess to be true believers. As for the way
you have chosen, I think it is the right way, at
least it is the best to follow now ; and, to help you
tread it well, I also say, " God be with you." They
need not be my last words to you, for, if ever my
loyal service can further any wish of yours, our
friendship is not so poor a thing that you would
hesitate to give me the satisfaction of doing for you
anything that lies in my power. That was in the
bond we made long ago. If we cannot forget what
came into our dream of mutual trust and intellectual
companionship, is it not better to bravely accept the
fiat of Destiny and make the past a link to bind us
more closely to the terms of our bond ? Even so
305 u
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
we may still help each other, still cleave to the
sympathy which we know will never fail us ; and,
if our paths divide, the earth is not wide enough
to keep us asunder, should we ever try to say
" Adieu."
306
XXXVII
"TO MARY, IN HEAVEN"
THIS is my last letter to you, Carina, and
I am writing in the belief that you are in
heaven. But are you really there, and, if you are,
is all well with you ? Have you everything you
desire and no regrets ? It seems such a very long
way off, you have such small control over the
means of transport, and so much depends on hear-
say, that one may, I trust, be pardoned for enter-
taining doubt where all is so indefinite. Then the
accounts of that blessed place that have come to
different parts of the world, though always inspired,
differ so materially. To mortals, immortality is a
difficult conception. To finite minds, conscious of
the grasp of a limited intelligence, but still very
much alive to the evidence of the senses we possess,
the idea of a heaven, somewhere beyond the reach
of earthly imagination, is perhaps more difficult still.
So many millions come into the world, and we
307
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
realise fairly well how and why they come; they
all, without exception, go, and none ever return,
and some, we are told, are in heaven, and some
elsewhere. The time here is so absurdly short,
and the eternity there is so impossibly long, that,
if our chances of spending the latter in joy, or
sorrow, depend on what we do in the former, it
is only natural that this one idea should occupy
our thoughts to the exclusion of all others. Yet
there, again, we are such frail things, that in this
way lies what we call madness.
If you have solved the great problem, can you
not enlighten my darkness, my craving for exact
knowledge? Write to me, Carina, write and tell
me what it is all like. If I have wearied you with
my feeble, little tales, my stupid questions, my
pictures that must seem to you so flat and colour-
less in the glory of that better world, my vain
imaginings and poor human longings, will you not
take pity on me and gladden my weary eyes with
a word-painted vision of the Heavenly City, the
fields of Elysium, or at least the houris who are
to be the portion of the Faithful ? I do not know
which paradise you are in. See, I wait with the
pencil on the paper : will you not make it write ?
You do not heed. Perhaps, after all, you are
308
"TO MARY, IN HEAVEN"
not there ; or is it possible that you have forgotten
this small planet and those you left here, and that
you find more congenial friends in the company of
the angels ? I dare say it is natural, and I do not
upbraid you ; but some day I may reach that desired
haven, and I want you to remember that I have
earned your consideration by my discretion, if you
can spare me no more tender feeling. If, for in-
stance, I had sent you these letters while you were
still on earth, and you had incautiously left them
about (as you would have been certain to do),
quite a number of them would have compromised
you in the opinion of the servant girl, and she is
the origin of a vast deal of earthly gossip. I sup-
pose you have no servant girls and no gossip where
you are: the absence of effect depending on the
want of cause. Happy heaven ! and yet I believe
that there are people on this earth who really enjoy
being the subject of gossip. To them the sugges-
tions of scandal are as the savour of salt, as danger
is to the sportsman ; the wilder the suggestion, the
more amusing the game ; and there are even those
who, when tattle wanes and desire fails, say or
insinuate, to their own detriment, the thing that is
not, rather than disappear into obscurity. It is
the same desire for notoriety and attention which
309
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
prompted Martin to set fire to York Minster, and
led the woman to complain to the vicar that her
husband had ceased to beat her.
Up in the serene atmosphere of those heavenly
heights you have no cathedrals, no husbands, no
wives, no work, no play, no food, no frocks pardon
me, that is a slip of the pen; of course you have
frocks, but what else have you ? Is it not some-
times just a little monotonous ? If life is so short
that it amounts to little more than the constant fear
of coming death, are you not sometimes overawed
by the contemplation of eternity? But, after all,
the dwellers in heaven may never think. Never to
remember, and so never to regret ; never to think,
and so never to desire that is a possible scheme
of existence where a thousand years might be as
one day, and to the weary it would mean rest. But
so would oblivion, and we are not altogether satisfied
with the thought of oblivion.
" Oh, Threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise !
One thing is certain This Life flies ;
One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies ;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies."
That is well enough, but it is not an inspired
writing ; it is a cry rather of despair than conviction,
and oft repeated to make up for want of certainty.
310
"TO MARY, IN HEAVEN"
Of things mundane we have acquired a tolerable
knowledge, however much there is yet to be learnt ;
but that in us which we call the Soul will never
be satisfied till it learns something of the hereafter.
Who will teach it ? Do we know more now than
they did when men fought with bows and arrows,
or flint weapons, instead of hundred-ton guns fired
by electricity ?
Standing alone in some vast solitude where man
and his doings have no part, have made no mark
and left no trace where face to face with Nature,
with mountain and plain, forest and sea and a limit-
less firmament, man's somewhat puny efforts are
forgotten, there comes an intense longing for some-
thing higher and nobler than the life we live. The
soul of man cries out for light, for some goal to-
wards which he may by effort and sacrifice attain ;
for he is not lacking in the qualities that have made
heroes and martyrs throughout all the ages. If he
cannot rend the veil and scale the heights of heaven,
he can grasp the things within his reach ; and, realis-
ing that there are problems beyond his intelligence,
he can yet give his life to make easier the lot of his
fellow-creatures, seeking humbly, but courageously,
to follow, no matter how far behind, in the footsteps
of his Great Exemplar. Nor need his efforts be
3"
UNADDRESSED LETTERS
less strenuous, his object less worthy, because this
passionate cry of a voice, stilled centuries ago, strikes
a sympathetic chord in his heart.
" Yet ah ! that Spring should vanish with the Rose !
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close !
The Nightingale, that in the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows !
Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield
One glimpse if dimly, yet indeed reveaPd,
To which the fainting Traveller might spring,
As springs the trampled herbage of the field !
Would but some winged Angel, ere too late,
Arrest the yet-unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate !
Ah Love, could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire ! "
THE END
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