Mary

I

THE Birth Register declares that Mary was born in 1880; but for my part I can hardly believe it. For Mary’s record proves, by internal evidence, that, she lived in a future so remote from the present that she cannot have been born in the past. I have never been able to understand how there can be any basis in history for the lives of people who are in advance of their age; and Mary was greatly in advance of hers. Thus I am wholly at a loss to construct a tense which would convey an idea of the date of Mary’s birth. Even the paulo-post-futurum would be, in my opinion, far too early.

Although Mary was a New Woman, she was certainly the most charming of my friends. This is not a novel; none the less I cannot refrain from recording that Mary had a tall and graceful figure, and, in the judgment of all men and some women, a perilously beautiful face. She was gay, witty, mordant, audacious — and she had other qualities of a like nature which, though theoretically not lovable in women, have the property of causing them to be loved. And with these went an endowment of the softer graces which, even if the others had been absent, would have endowed her personality with a desolating force. Moreover, she was an M.A.

As to the New Womanhood represented by Mary, I must confess myself in a difficulty. It is, I believe, the old trouble about the definition of terms; t hough Mary always herself set it down to my want of intelligence. In one sense every woman you meet is most emphatically a New One; and the last one met is always so surprising as to leave most people incapable for the time being of apprehending anything Newer. But the phrase on Mary’s lips had a technical signification to which she attached great importance; and this meaning, there is reason to think, is very hard to convey to persons who lack a Special Training.

Lacking this training myself, I was never a good subject for enlightenment, though Mary took great pains to enlighten me. I could never grasp the point at which the New ness of the New Woman began. As I listened to her explanations, I invariably fell a victim to the associat ion of ideas and fancied I was hearing a lecture on Archæology: a distinct flavor of antiquity would come into my mouth and I would begin to think about Mother Eve and Jezebel; about Schliemann’s discoveries at Troy; about the Taj Mahal; about the ladies whose residuary forms are to be seen in the mummy cases at the British Museum —and so on.

Mary was not domesticated, and pitied those who were. She earned her own living easily, and maintained a rather elegant little flat in the West End. To her excellent father, who was a Baptist minister, she was a sore perplexity; to her ignorant and bigoted mother she was an object of bitter aversion. Her sisters were afraid of her; and her brother, who was going to be a missionary, could n’t ‘make her out.’

When Mary lived at home, there were daily scenes; and her occasional visits, after she had become independent, seldom failed to raise a breeze. Her father was often heard to lament ‘that he had ever sent her to college,’ — an enterprise which had cost him half his income and deprived him of his daughter. Night and morning he prayed for her return to straight paths — openly in family prayers, privately as he walked his rounds, or after he had retired to his room. He would lie awake for long hours — praying for Mary, and when at last he fell asleep he would pray for her in his dreams. But the heavens were deaf to his entreaties. The more he prayed the more‘dreadful’ became Mary’s views. How the good man managed to retain his faith in the efficacy of prayer, and to uphold that of his flock, I know not.

Looking down upon the actual world from her view-point in the Nietzsche enlightenment, Mary saw nothing but stupidity. She saw society based upon stupid conventions; she saw civilization devoted to stupid aims; she saw religion nurtured on stupid illusions. And of all the stupid things in this stupid world, the British Public was the stupidest. One debt, and one debt only, did Mary acknowledge to society: it provided her with ‘subjects’—subjects for mirth, subjects for brilliant satire, subjects for extremely profitable literary enterprise. Mary had already written two plays, one of which had been accepted by a London manager. It dealt of course with the marriage problem, and the elegant litt le flat was its fruit. One often wondered what occupation would be left for a person of Mary’s gifts if his lot should happen to be cast in a world where there was no marriage problem, or in an age when the British and other Publics had sloughed off t heir stupidity and become as clever as Mary herself.

Indeed, I was often surprised that Mary should keep acquaintance with a person like myself. I now believe that it was my excessive stupidity, and that alone, which drew her to my doors. In me she found gathered up, in a cheap and easily accessible form, the various illusions which it was her mission to defy and shatter, and thus she obtained, in the time required for smoking two cigarettes, a familiarity with current obscurantisms which would otherwise have involved her in weeks of laborious observation. There is no cherished conviction of mine on any subject which has not been exploded by Mary a score of times. So often has she raked me fore and aft in the presence of my family and of my friends; so often has she compelled me to admit, in spite of myself, that my views were those of a perfectly irrational being; so often has she turned the laugh against my idols; so often has she converted my serious arguments into good stories to be told at my expense, that it strikes me as very strange that I still should love her memory. I could not have endured it from another person. But, somehow, I enjoyed being made ridiculous by Mary. Nay, when I was dragged, after much reluctance, to see her play, ‘The Fall of Polly,’ on the night of its two hundred and fiftieth performance, and saw everything that, I loathed held up to honor, and everything that I honored trampled in the mud, I was still not offended, but rather gratified, for I remembered that Mary had done it; and when she appeared before the curtain I cried, ‘God bless her!’—to the infinite amusement of the people in the stalls.

‘Have you seen “The Indiscretions of Gwendoline?" she said to me one day, ‘it’s the greatest drama of modern times.’

‘No,’ I answered, ‘I’ve not seen it. I never go to the theatre, if I can avoid i t

‘Poor thing! Why don’t you come out of your hole?’

‘Because I like my hole. It ’s warm and comfortable.’

‘ You’re an incarnation of the whole British Public — at least you would be, if you were not so thin.’

‘Mary,’ I said, ‘you’re playing with fire.’

‘Quite so. But your hole, that you find so comfortable, is warmed by the fires that people played with in the past. We’re warming the hole for the future, and using the smoke for driving you out of yours.’

‘Mind you don’t get suffocated in your own smoke.’

‘Dearest uncle! I ’ll work you a pair of nice warm slippers for your next birthday. But tell me —have you read “Les Aveugles”?’

‘What?’

‘ “Les Aveugles”—it’s all the rage in Paris. The plot turns on the problem of —’

‘Not another word, Mary. It makes me sick to hear you speak of this.’

‘And so say all of you! And because you say it, the curse hangs heavy on millions of human lives.’

‘Silence!’

‘Well said, old mole! But I’m not so easily shut up. I’ve not taken part in Suffragette demonstrations for nothing. And how, pray, do you propose to deal with the evil?’

‘ Rather than tell you, Mary, I’d tear my tongue out.’

‘Which is only a melodramatic way of expressing your childlike innocence of the whole matter. Well, I’ve something to say about that question, and before six months are out all London will be talking about it.’

‘Under its breath, I trust. But, Mary, does this mean that you are writing another play?’

‘ It does.’

‘Don’t —dear Mary, don’t! What cursed spite has doomed a sweet young girl like you to sully her fingers with such filth! You’re floundering in a bog of lies. Get out of it, for God’s sake! Take a cottage in Surrey, with three acres and a cow — and a pony and cocks and hens. Milk the cow and clean out the pony’s stable and put your play on the fire-back, and you’ll become a sane woman.”

‘Ferocious Puritan,’ said Mary, ‘we’ll crop your ears and put you in the pillory as soon as the New Order begins. But you’re a dear old ignoramus, all the same. Have you never read in those learned books of yours that the grossest subjects lose their grossness under the transmuting touch of Art? What about Keats and the Pot of Basil?’

‘Fudge!’ I said. ‘If Keats had been obsessed by any such theory he would never have written a line worth remembering. Fancy Shakespeare sitting down to write a psychological play! Why, Mary, can’t you see that all your characters are just marionettes? Your ‘Fall of Polly’ is no more a drama than Punch and Judy is. I fancied I saw you pulling the strings; and really, my girl, you pulled them rather clumsily at times.’

‘It’s made my fortune, anyhow,’ said Mary.

‘No doubt. But if your estimate of British stupidity were a trifle more thorough-going, you’d understand why. The play succeeds because it contains just the kind of humbug that pleases people who want to think themselves as clever as you are. And there’s another reason which your denomination is rather slow to see. You flatter yourselves that you are widening the horizon of the British public, while all the time you are only providing them with the low sensations they love. Without that salt to flavor your dish, nobody would ask for it. That’s what makes it go down.’

‘This,’ said Mary, ‘is both stupid and commonplace. The glory of the modern drama, if you could only see it, is that for the first time in history we are putting plays on the stage that are true to human nature, and express the fundamental needs which convention has suppressed.’

‘Fudge again!’ I said. ‘Your notion that life is acted psychology is the fundamental lie which dooms the whole array of your novels and plays to the dung-hills of history. Fortunately for the world, there are some strings in human nature which not even Ibsen and Nietzsche can teach you to pull. And I’ll tell you another thing. People nowadays — thanks to your doings — love to imagine themselves in situations which they have n’t the courage to touch in real life. Provide them with that sort of imagery, and they will pay you well. Meanwhile they are losing interest in the actual world because it fails to yield them the spiced poison diet of your impossible psychology. And there is not a single thing they learn from you which one in ten thousand is bold enough to translate into action.’

‘You’ve said that twice over,’ answered Mary, ‘and I’m doubtful if it’s worth saying at all. Besides I’ve heard it before: it’s quite a commonplace. However, you admit that one person in ten thousand has the courage to do something. Don’t you think the example of that one may hearten up the others in course of time? ’

‘No, I don’t. The one imagines, no doubt, he’s going to be a lighthouse. And he invariably turns out a shipwreck.’

‘Indeed! What about ——’ And Mary mentioned names, beginning with George Sand, and ending with the heroine of the last sensational novel.

‘A most illustrious company,’ I said. ‘But, Mary, don’t you think it a trifle inconsistent that you who preach the duty of being original should yet find your type of originality in women who have defied convention on a solitary point? After all, there is no fixed way of being original; not even that of running off with another woman’s husband. Can’t you invent a new sin ? The monotony of this one is appalling.’

‘The newness consists in the way you do it,’ said Mary, ‘and the ways of doing it are endless. I’ve invented over forty myself. In fact, there’s nothing that gives more scope to the imagination.’

‘I wish you’d stop inventing them, and invent a new mouse-trap instead. This house is overrun with mice, and a really efficient trap would be a boon indeed. Society would be even more grateful for a new mouse-trap than for a new form of breaking the marriage vow. Besides, Mary, I’m old-fashioned enough to be t hinking that your imagination could find as much scope and more wholesome occupation in some other field. And then think how easily people who want those things can invent them for themselves. Whereas a good mouse-trap is a work of genius, and utterly beyond the compass of most of us.’

‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘you’ll be pleased to hear that I’m not going to invent any more. At least I’m first going to try some experiments. Meanwhile I’ll think about the mouse-trap.’

She put a finger to her lips and stared into the fire. Her last words startled me, for they were spoken in a deep voice which Mary always used when she meant more than she said. When, a moment later, she turned her eyes upon me, they were full of tears. She sprang from her seat, grasped my hand and departed.

II

As we have seen, Mary was, in her own way, a philosopher. Under the guidance of Nietzsche and other kindred spirits, she had excogitated or perhaps stolen, a Weltanschauung — a view of life. Up to a certain point in her career, Mary’s view of life resembled that of several other philosophers in being a view, and nothing more. That is to say, it was something wholly apart from the life of which it professed to be a copy. Life existed for the purpose of providing clever people, like herself, with the opportunity of viewing it, criticizing it, and, in the case of very clever people, of making fun and money at its expense. That any one should make the attempt to live according to his views of life had never occurred to Mary as a serious proposition; for according to her philosophy —I mean the unconscious part of it—views were not made for life, but life for views. Nor had she ever reflected on the hideous ruin and combustion that would fall — not on life, which is sublimely tolerant of such things, but on the world of ‘views’ itself — if those who professed them were compelled by Act of Parliament to live up to their professions.

To an impartial outsider it would have been plain that Mary’s emancipated views, which appeared so appalling in the eyes of the excellent Baptist minister, were in point of fact relatively innocuous; inasmuch as the primal necessities of eating, drinking, sleeping, and following the multiplicationtable, placed an impassable barrier between them and their practical application.

When, however, Mary began to write for the stage, the grounds of this security were undermined. She now learned that her views could be acted — on the stage. The best actors of the day acted them; packed houses applauded; they flung bouquets when she appeared before the curtain; the newspapers next morning said variously that her play was ‘a work of Art,’ ‘a candid and scathing exposure of real motives,’ ‘a rebuke to our social hypocrisy,’ ‘the trumpet-call of a new age,’ ‘psychologically true,’ ‘true in the higher Sense of Truth,’ ‘a transcript of life — as life would be if men were honest with themselves.’

Hitherto Mary’s views of life had been things to talk about, to argue for, to wax witty in defending, — but now they took form in breathing men and women; she saw them as trees walking; the‘fierce glare’ of the footlights brought out their solidity; they showed their force in the shifting of the scenery; at their bidding a drawing-room in Mayfair was changed into a deer-forest in the Highlands, and a divorce court into a terrace at Monte Carlo; they ruined an American millionaire, and outwitted the cleverest detective in New York; they unfrocked a priest, horsewhipped a villain, enabled kindred souls to break down stupid barriers of British Law; caused a father to confess his sins to a daughter, a bishop to apologize to a burglar, and an earl to accept a stable-boy for his son-in-law; the very thunders rolled at their command; and they clothed the heroine in the daintiest of frocks. When Mary’s views had worked these miracles two hundred and fifty times, she felt that they were potent to the moving of the world. She was no longer simply the holder of a theory, but the mistress of a going concern.

From that moment dangers began to gather and thicken round Mary’s path. So long as her emancipation had remained at the theoretical stage, I had harbored no fears for her future, and had even predicted that she would marry a curate; for I had seen enough of life lo know that for certain natures the merely speculative interest in wickedness is one of the most innocent forms in which original sin can find a vent, —just as, on the other hand, the merely speculative interest in goodness is often the precursor of all that is mean in the day’s work. I had often discussed this with Mary; but now I see that it was a matter on which I should have been better advised to hold my tongue; for Mary, secretly agreeing with what I said and conscious that her emancipation was nothing but a pose, began to cast about for means to take herself more seriously, and once at least came perilously near to scorching herself in the fire with which she played. But the innate purity of the young girl had saved her, as it saves thousands who have less of it than she. Mary, in her way, was like the Man in Black of Goldsmith’s immortal sketch. She loved to fancy herself the wickedest woman alive; but the core of the creature was of the finest gold. The libertine was afraid of her, and kept aloof; but the wretched of her own sex were drawn to her, as by a spell. Forget not, O Recording Angel, to make mention on the Judgment Day of Mary’s private mission to the miserable night-walkers of the London streets!

‘It’s the most sporting thing I do,’ she said to me. ‘You have to be as wily as a cat, and as quick too. I’ve caught, over twenty already — some of ’em regular Turks, but others - O my God! broken all to little bits.’

‘How do you do it, Mary?’

‘A little hymn of my own composing. Would n’t be any use to you.’

‘ But you know it’s highly dangerous. These women are watched by men — ferocious bullies — who’d kill you,if —’

‘ Would they?’ said Mary. ‘Let ’em try! Look at that.’ She opened a drawer and showed me a bright little revolver and a box of cartridges. She went on, ‘You see, they provide me with subjects — sometimes. The best notions in “The Fall of Polly” came from one of them. Philanthropy —oh dear, no! Not forme. And yet I don’t know how I should get on without old Stephens, the slum-missionary. He pulls me through at the finish. But Stephens can’t catch ’em. That’s my little game! Know Stephens ? Well, he’s the only good man there is left in the world. Never bullies me — as you do. No lectures. No warnings. Oh, Stephens is a brick! If I was n’t myself I ’d like to be Stephens — and no one else.’

I have said that Mary was approaching the zone of danger. The following is a telegraphic summary of what took place. I leave to the reader’s imagination the easy task of filling in the sordid details, if he thinks them of any account; but for my part not all the revilings of outraged Art shall extract from me anything more than what is here set down.

Prominent among Mary’s male friends at this time was a certain doctor — a mental pathologist — whose pseudonym was famous in the world of letters. He was married to a stupid and austere woman with whom he did not exchange a dozen words a day; and he had children. These two gifted simpletons — Mary and the Doctor — now began to play the perilous game of ‘kindred souls.’ Their minds crammed with ‘views,’ and thickly overlaid with secondary impressions, they ignored the real forces which dominated their relationship, and, taking account of everything except what lay immediately under their noses, they presently persuaded themselves that their destinies were linked under a common star. In due time — naturally a short time — the Doctor had confided to Mary the tragedy of his life — to wit, his marriage; had consulted her in the handling of his most intimate difficulties, and, in fine, appointed her the presiding genius of his life. Mary reciprocated these confidences, submitted her ‘views’ to the Doctor’s criticism; and rewrote the third act of her new play under his direction.

Thus without much difficulty they managed to create a situation which bore a remarkable resemblance to the opening scenes of‘The Fall of Polly.’ When they were apart, each of them would dramatically construct, a future in which the sequence of events was determined according to the pattern of Polly’s Fall; and when they met, there would be a period of silence in which the imagination of each was busy in rehearsing the coming scenes, as though the thing were to be produced at the Haymarket next week. The moment Mary heard the Doctor’s step on the stairs an unconscious impulse lifted her from her chair, placed her erect by the fire, with one foot on the fender and one arm on the chimney-piece — the very attitude taken by the fallen Polly, at two hundred and fifty successive performances, as she waited for Count Petrarch in the cottage by the Thames. The Doctor, on his part, marched down the street to the accompaniment of a mixed and broken rhythm, composed partly of visual images, partly of stage eloquence, in which bishops apologized to burglars, millionaires handed over their hoards, earls killed fatted calves for stableboys, hypocritical society confessed itself unmasked, and souls rushed together at the meeting of the lips.

As they sat and talked together, they were, in their own eyes, two spiritual beings of an exalted order, aiding each other’s flight, to a promised Paradise, where they would walk forever, hand in hand, among the flowers: artists in life, magicians, masters of destiny, heralds of a new enlightenment, joint heirs of the Golden Age. Thus were they in their own eyes. But, in the eye of sober fact, they were two frail organisms of human flesh, slowly moving to destruction under the pressure of those elementary instincts which society has been seeking to restrain, at infinite cost of blood and woe, since the first dawn of man’s intelligence. And t he Furies were already mustering among the low clouds on the edge of the horizon, and whispering to one another that there was game afoot.

‘The Fall of Polly,’ as handled by Mary’s decadent ‘Art,’ and motived by her spurious psychology, had been an extremely gorgeous and triumphant affair, in which events came in to the tunes of seductive music and went out in explosions of colored stars. I am sorry to say that the part of Mary’s actual history to which we are now come cannot be presented in this manner.

Were it my business to dramatize what took place I should have to manage the ‘idealization’ on quite another principle. To represent by appropriate stage effects the real inner nature of these events, and their true connection with one another, I should look for my symbolism in a region neither sweetscented nor picturesque. I should lay the scenes, not on the sunlit terraces of Monte Carlo, but in sordid back yards and by the margin of rotten fens. I would clothe my heroine in no dainty gowns; the female parts I would give to harpies, the male to fat-headed school-boys with breaking voices. I would light the theatre with phosphorus, and a troop of braying asses should be my orchestra. I would open the play by making all the characters announce their need of a bath — and their firm determination not to take one; the second act should turn on a desperate search for a piece of lost soap; and I would then draw on the action to a tremendous crisis in which the leading school-boy, who had hidden the soap, should be soundly birched in public.

Now this, I admit, has little external resemblance to what actually took place; none the less I contend that it jumps more evenly with the inner truth of Mary’s experience than any scheme of symbolism in which sweetfaced girls and upstanding men should play a part, or any transaction which could be represented as taking place with a sunset for canopy or soft music for accompaniment.

I must now leave the reader to interpret my symbolism as he will, and to draw his own conclusion as to the details of the crisis.

When the news of Mary’s flight with the Doctor had been finally confirmed, I betook myself for consolation to the presence of Old Stephens, the slummissionary. Old Stephens was not a person of great intelligence, or of exceptional spiritual gifts. I knew that his mouth would be filled with commonplace, and that was the reason I sought him out. For it seemed to me at that moment that a commonplace mind was precisely the best fitted to deal faithfully with the situation; and I had been irritated by certain other persons, of intelligence and culture, who having heard of Mary’s lapse had immediately turned it into a theme for clever, subtle, and penetrating remarks.

One of my friends in particular had greatly annoyed me. He was a person who prided himself on his knowledge of feminine psychology, and had written a book called The Place of Woman in the Society of the Future, a work of extraordinary prophetical skill which already caused several otherwise sensible women to begin anticipating events, thereby making themselves extremely ridiculous and troublesome. This gentleman honored me with a visit for the purpose of explaining how the conduct of Mary confirmed and illustrated one of the subtlest points of his theory. I forget what the theory was; and I refrain from any attempt to recover it, lest in so doing I should confuse it with some other on the same subject, of which I have heard several scores, and should thus do the author a wrong.

Incapable of criticizing his arguments, bored to death by his subtleties, and appalled by his callousness,—for he had a heart of stone,— I became hungry for human commonplace; and to Old Stephens I accordingly went.

‘She was the one bright spot in my life,’ said Old Stephens, — ‘a very depressing life, I assure you, and a very fatiguing one too. We see such terrible evils. Grace alone enables us to endure — and Grace can do all things. I hope you believe that, sir. There’s nothing else to cling to in this wicked world. Grace will find Mary even yet, — never doubt it for a moment. It’s impossible that my prayers, and her father’s — and I hope yours too, sir — will remain unanswered. Mary will yet be dedicated to the Lord. She’s not under reprobation — only under chastisement. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. But it’s a heavy cloud — a very dark, heavy cloud. It’s hard to lose the one bright spot in your life. I took it to the Lord at once and He said, “ My grace shall be sufficient for thee ” — and for Mary too — not a doubt of it.

‘I’ve often tried to speak to her of Sacred Things. But, oh, these clever people! they won’t listen. And so many of them nowadays. I greatly doubt if all this education is doing good. I can assure you that it helps us very little. The poor are none the better for it.

You should see the things they read! I often wish they could n’t read. It’s a very great hindrance to the cause of Christ — especially with the young. And the rich are growing very careless. Of course, there are many that help; but there are more that don’t. But Mary was n’t like that. She helped. Helped in the most practical way — yes, the most courageous way — I can assure you. I wish I could tell you about that — but she made me promise not to. Some of the very worst cases I have ever had to do with have turned out well — all her doing. She only pretended she was wicked. She was good — I know it. And she’s good still — in spite of all; you can take my word.

‘“Mary,” I said to her once, — I’ve known her from a child, — “ Mary, look into your own heart, and see if the works of Grace have not already begun.” “Uncle Steve,” she said, “my religion’s the Future. We’re building the Future, when there’ll be no more slums, and no more people like Fanny Starr” — that was one of the cases I just referred to. “ Mary,” I said, “ leave the Future to Him in whose hands it is, and attend to the present. ‘Now is the day of salvation.’ ”

‘It was not often I could get a little serious talk like that. But you’ll admit, sir, that her remark showed a good heart — a heart ripe for the work of Grace. She saved others; herself she could n’t save. Oh, it’s a terrible danger to be a beautiful woman. If I had a beautiful daughter I’d never have a moment’s peace. But it’s the Lord who makes them beautiful, and the Lord will make allowance; depend upon it He’ll make allowance. A vast number of these cases come under my notice — for my work lies largely among the fallen — and I’ve come to the conclusion that allowance must be made. You see a woman’s face is like a force, —you can’t control it, — you never know what it’s going to do next, — they don’t know themselves, — nobody knows; and is it reasonable to think that they’ll be made accountable for all it does? No, sir. Allowance will be made — there’s not a doubt of it.’

Thus the innocent creature continued to babble. When he had done, I went away comforted, and not without hope for Mary.

III

The experiences through which Mary had now to pass were not true to sample — what human experience ever is? The psychological diagram on which she had based ‘The Fall of Polly,’ and the gorgeous colors with which she had overlaid it, were not reproduced. The Manager of the Theatre seemed to have completely forgotten the whole scheme of stage-setting with which he had been provided. The scene-painters indulged in a reckless originality. Instead of the terrace at Monte Carlo they painted the Brompton Road. The dresses were all wrong. The scenes came on anyhow. The bishop did not apologize to the burglar. No American millionaire took the slightest, notice of the offending couple. The relations of earls with their stable-boys remained unchanged. Hypocritical society did not confess itself unmasked. The detective was not outwitted, — on the contrary, he did his work with conspicuous success. The Uniformity of Nature, and the invariability of the psychological order, which had been so convincingly illustrated by two hundred and fifty successive performances, came completely to grief at the two hundred and fifty-first. The Reign of Law seemed to be suddenly invaded by confusion. In short, the whole thing was a surprise — an extremely unpleasant one to the persons principally concerned.

To begin with, the deserted wife did not accept her position, and her family showed not the slightest respect for the categorical imperatives of the New Morality. They set the law in motion, hypocrites as they were. And the law gave them all they wanted, — and was remarkably quick about it. Five thousand pounds was the sum which the erring Doctor was required to pay down immediately for the support of his family. Also, he was commanded to restore certain securities which he had somehow managed to withdraw from the custody of his wife’s trustees. Both these demands were extremely embarrassing, for the Doctor was unable to fulfill either of them. So he borrowed a first instalment from Mary, and a further sum with which he proceeded to speculate on the Stock Exchange — on inside information. Most of this he lost in a month. Then Mary turned disagreeable; the Doctor reciprocated, and even went so far as to hint that it was she who had got him into this trouble. That made Mary more disagreeable than before. Had you seen Mary and the Doctor at breakfast six weeks after their return, you would never have suspected that they were kindred souls.

The deserted wife had an only brother in Western Canada. As this young gentleman’s time was divided between the rounding-up of cattle, the clearing of forests, and occasional appearances as a heavy-weight boxer, he was naturally unable to keep abreast of the New Morality, and his education fell sadly into arrears. Hearing what had taken place, he resolved to come home and investigate matters, bringing with him no weapons save his fists. He felt sure he would be wanted.

The Doctor returning one night to his lodgings saw standing near the door a good-looking, fresh-faced youth, some six foot two in his stockings, with exceedingly broad shoulders, and with large violet eyes that moved slowly and glittered. The Doctor failed to recognize the giant, so the giant introduced himself. ‘I’m Joe,’ said he. ‘ Guess I’ve grown some since you saw me. Look here, Doc: you’re too little to hit, so I’m just going to slap you.’ And the Doctor stayed in bed for a week.

The duty of poulticing her wounded knight ought to have devolved on Mary. But this unnatural female by no means relished the task, and deputed it to the landlady. The landlady’s poultices were always either much too hot or much too cold; and her manners were equally unsympathetic. The wounded man repeatedly summoned Mary to the sick-chamber: but Mary refused to come.

The position of this unfortunate man was one which even better men than he might be forgiven for sustaining with little credit; and I have often thought that to him also some extension is due of the principle which lay at the root of Old Stephen’s philosophy — the principle that ‘ allowance will be made.’ He was not a bad man, any more than Mary was a bad woman. I am sure of this; for, though I never knew him personally, a friend of mine who is a strong defender of his character told me a thing about him which carries conviction on the face of it. Once my friend had been robbed of all his money while traveling in Italy, and found himself together with his sick wife in a very embarrassing position. The Doctor, who happened to be in the same town, hearing of his misfortune, came over to the hotel where he was staying, and, without making any inquiries, promptly lent him forty pounds.

Had the Eumenides left him alone, I think that he would have managed in the long length to give a good account of himself — as good, at all events, as most of his judges are likely to produce. But disappointment had been his secret portion for many years; and the lot was all the harder to endure because its bitterness was not apparent to the outward eye. That marriage of his had been in very truth a tragedy; but a tragedy of which the full significance was from the nature of the case incommunicable, being entirely unsupported by outward evidence of one kind or another.

I hope the reader will not accuse me of lax morality when I say that the discovery in Mary of a person to whom he might tell the truth was, to this poor man, a temptation which might tax the integrity of an accomplished saint; and who can wonder that the effect of that communication was to force the pace in their relationship to a degree beyond all human foresight or control? It was as though a young horse had bolted. The intervention of the friendly policeman, who appears at the crit ical moment and seizes the dragging reins with the strong hands of moral tradition, might still have saved them; but, unfortunately, Mary and the Doctor had a theory about the police which forbade them to permit rescue from that quarter. Hence when they saw, as they actually did see, the blue-clad figure standing with outstretched arm to stop the race of death, they merely whispered to one another, ‘This is the enemy’; and driving their chariot against him they rode that officer down. And now nothing could stop them.

As a thing in the doing, all this had been exhilarating, gorgeous, and absolutely novel. As a thing done, it was sordid, leaden-eyed, and stale as any piece of carrion-flesh. This view of it, which often lingers in the coming, had been forced on the Doctor by the experience of a few weeks; for the handling of the Furies had been rapid as well as rough. As he lay in his sunless room, an appalling sense of helplessness weighed him down. Physical force, in the person of Joe Sydenham, stood over against him; and the thought of it was humiliation. Fortune, ever against him in the past, had not responded to his last throw by changing the game. He had lost his money. Mary had turned the heel upon him. The rebel forces of society had not come to his support; they had left him to fight his own battles alone; and the stars in their courses were fighting against him. The desperate sortie against his limitations, by which he had attempted to break the leaguer of his life, had come to naught; they had beaten him back, and here he was shattered and shamed, deserted and perennially defeated; his moral resistance broken by bodily suffering; his mental vitality reduced to that woeful state of depression and enfeeblement when the microbes of devilish thought have things their own way.

In the subconscious deeps of the soul of a civilized man lie many things besides the intimations of God and Immortality. Some of the resurrections from that region are not of a kind to increase a man’s respect for himself; at the best of times (and with the best of men) the gates of the prison-house are none too securely barred, and a close watch needs to be kept. And there are other times when, under the pressure of exceptional misfortunes in the upper regions, the gates below give way altogether, and the whole bestial population escapes. Then the work of the ages is undone. Down go the illbuilt walls of self-restraint.; the shops of philosophy are sacked; the house of argument is demolished; and the central citadel of the self, thinly manned and taken unawares, is rushed by crowds of yelling fiends.

So it happened to our poor friend, the Doctor. There was a church-clock in the Brompton Road, whose chimes, as they rang the quarters, had a peculiar mocking sound which suggested the cheerful insolence of an idiot. At every stroke of this detestable clock, there came into the Doctor’s soul a fresh uprush of subliminal infamy. His heart beat with a slow and ugly rhythm; the weight grew heavier on his chest; and sinister irritations began to prick and tingle along the cortex of his brain.

It was inevitable that the amorphous mass of conscious misery which now did duty for the Doctor’s soul should sooner or later reconstitute itself in definite shape. A suggestion was all that was needed; and the suggestion was given by a chance remark of the sour-faced woman who attended to his hurts.

‘Get out!’ said this doughty representative of her sex, in response to some moan of misery from the Doctor’s lips. ‘Get out! You’ll soon be all right. And then you can get your own back again.’ From that hour the Doctor’s thoughts began to turn on vengeance — it seemed the only pleasant thing to think about.

To revenge himself on the big brother was not easy; so he resolved to revenge himself on Mary. As soon therefore as he was able to walk downstairs, he gathered his forces together, flung himself into the sitting-room where Mary was trying to write a novel, and without more ado, dealt her a brutal blow. Then he rushed out of the house, bought a revolver, and, retiring to a neighboring bar, drank whiskey till he was intoxicated. Returning to the house, he found Mary crying by the fire. ‘Take that,’ he said, and fired three shots at the crouching figure. Fortunately, none of them look effect; seeing which the staggering wretch turned the weapon on himself — and died.

IV

Two years after these events I received a sudden visit from Mary.

‘I want to consult you,’ she said. ‘I’ve had an offer of marriage. Read that.’

She handed me a letter written in a bold, firm hand. It ran as follows: —

R. M. D. No. 3,
BIG TREE,
ALT, CANADA.

DEAR MARY,
I have sold my quarter-section as I told you I should. It made 25 dollars an acre, though I asked 30. But 25 is all right when you remember that it was a free homestead to begin with. Since that I’ve bought a whole section on the Fish Creek, and I tell you it ’s good land. It’s a sure thing too, because the C. P. is building a branch on a line of the Creek, so you see I’m going to make good. I’ve got some fine shorthorns and a pedigree bull, but I’m going strongest on horses. There’s a grand range back of the farm, and t he riding is first chop. Poultry pay fine here, only you must have the right sort. 40 acres were broken and we broke 56 more, that’s 102, and we have a fine crop on breaking. The oats will make 80 bushels to the acre. So you see it’s just a bit of real all-right. It’s a firstclass outfit except for one thing, there’s no wife.
Mary, I believe you’re just the one for me. And you need n’t fear that I should ever let you down. I should n’t, and if you write to the Revd. Mr. Poyntz, Presbyterian Minister, Calgary, Alt, Canada, he’ll tell you I’m straight. I’ve been some in rows, but I never done anything crooked, at least not to matter, and we know how to treat a woman out here. We don’t keep them in cotton-wool, but that’s not your way, and you’re sure to like it. The only thing a lady might feel is the mosquitoes, but you soon get used to them; and the water in our well is a bit brackish, but I’ll fix that before you come. It’s a good house, frame built by Spragg of Lethbridge, and there’s a little mare that you can have for your own. Don’t be afraid of the winter, you’ll never catch cold, not even when it’s 40 below, and you’ll feel better than you ever did.
Mary, I hope you’ve forgiven me for slapping that man. But look at the way he served Edith; and you know I was never against you even when all the rest of our bunch was. I want you not to be against me, but come out as I say, and I’ll go East to meet you and we ’ll soon find some one to fix us. It’s a grand country, and I’m up against a sound proposition. I always liked you, Mary, from the very first minute, and you can help considerable if you come. Send a cable if it’s yes, and address Big Tree.
I remain,

Yours faithfully,

JOE SYDENHAM.

‘Well?’ said Mary, as I reread the letter, ‘ I observe a smile on the countenance of the sage.’

‘Mary, you’re up against a sound proposition.’

‘Pooh! that’s mere business. I want to know how it looks from the point of view of Art.’

‘ Joe Sydenham knows nothing about Art,’ I said.

‘No great artist ever did,’ answered Mary.

‘That’s not true, but I’m glad you believe it. You did n’t once: but now I see you’re converted.’

‘I don’t, feel in the least like a returning Prodigal, however,’ said Mary, ‘ and I ’m not bothering about my sins.’

‘You’re wandering from the point, Mary, as every woman does when there’s no one to check her. You asked how this offer of marriage looked from the point of view of Art. And I ’m going to tell you that in that respect also it’s a sound proposition. Accept the offer and you’ll create a surprise, which is what great Art always does.’

‘But all the literary people will laugh — all except three,’ said Mary.

‘What will the three do?’

‘Commit suicide, according to their own account; make up to the next pretty girl, according to mine.’

‘ Oho! ’ I said, ‘ that complicates matters. Well, how do the merits of the three compare with Joe’s.’

‘Joe’s worth the whole bunch.’

‘A suspicious Canadianism!’ I said. ‘Mary, you’ve made up your mind — why consult me?’

‘A great artist is not above criticism. I want to know what the stupid British Public will think. So I come to you.’

‘Thank you, Mary. You’ve done that before. And now is there anything else I can do for you?’

‘Don’t be offended yet,’ said Mary, ‘ for I have n’t nearly reached the point. Yes — there is something else you can do for me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Lend me half a sovereign — I’m desperately hard-up.’

‘What do you want half a sovereign for?’

‘To cable to Joe.’

‘Mary, it’s a gift,’ I said, handing her the coin.

‘ Make it a sov. then,’ said Mary, ‘and I ’ll send him a longer cable. I want to test Joe on his own ground.’

We sat down and composed the cable together. After many rejected alternatives, it finally ran: ‘ Yes: I have no money: send some. Sailing Empress 26 September.’ I have never been engaged in a more difficult effort of composition.

‘Looks sordid, indelicate, and all that,’ said Mary, ‘but it’s a grand test. It ’ll show whether he trusts me.’

‘Better than all the lovers’ vows that have been breathed since the world began,’ I answered.

Next day I received a note from Mary, enclosing a telegram. It was Joe’s answer. ‘Hurrah,’ said the telegram, ‘sending 500 dollars: more, if possible: will meet you Quebec: get fixed Montreal: loving Joe.’

V

To say that Mary and Joe were married and lived happily ever afterwards would be premature. They were married, indeed, four years ago; but the end is not yet. It is therefore quite open to any prophet of the New Morality to predict a disastrous issue to the enterprise. Mary’s genius may rebel against its new environment, and she may run away with another kindred soul flung by chance onto a Canadian prairie. Joe may prove a stupid brute and take to drink. Personally, having made investigations on the spot, I don’t think thatanyone of these things is likely to happen. However, I won’t prophesy, but content myself with reporting that up to date developments have been satisfactory.

On a scorching day in August, 1909, I set out on horseback from Calgary to find Joe’s ‘location.’ A journey of thirty-five miles, most of it through an Indian Reserve, lay before me. On the map the route seemed perfectly easy, and I accordingly rejected the suspicious offer of a ‘real-estate man,’ who had offered to ride with me and show me the way. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that all the real-estate men in Calgary had learned — how I know not — of my intended journey, and had developed an extraordinary concern for my welfare. Three of them, I heard privately, were watching the livery stables at which I had ordered my horse, and had their teams in readiness to follow me whenever I should happen to start. This led to my seeking an interview with the keeper of the stables, who, for consideration paid down, agreed to deliver me from my pursuers. My horse was accordingly brought round to the hotel at five in the morning, and I managed to get out of the city unobserved. I was subsequently informed that the real-estate men, in spite of all precautions, were apprised of my departure by seven o’clock, and actually started in pursuit. However, as I took the wrong way and they took the right one, we never met, and I had the pleasure of learning that they had been rewarded for their professional zeal by a night out. on the plains.

I carried two big saddle-bags filled with presents from English friends — belated wedding-presents, for Mary had got herself ‘fixed’ in Montreal before the most of us knew what she was after. In one of these bags was a large brown-paper parcel which had been consigned to my care by old Mrs. Stephens, the wife of the slum-missionary. It came from a refuge for fallen women, and was a gift from certain of the inmates who had reasons for being grateful to Mary. This piece of baggage had caused me some trouble with the Custom House officials at Quebec, who, in the presence of my fellow passengers, truculently challenged me to explain what I was doing with a dozen baby’s frocks. But there it was in my saddle-bag — and I reflected somewhat proudly on the fact as I loped along through the rolling landbillows of the Indian Reserve, bathed in the vast silence of the wilderness.

From time to time I consulted the map, to ascertain where I was. But presently I reached a point of bewilderment when I might as well have consulted the Thirty-Nine Articles. That I was somewhere behind the Back of Beyond was evident enough, but where precisely, who could say? I had calculated that I should reach my destination in six hours; I had now ridden for seven; the sun was blazing, the vast distances were shimmering in the heat, and the tortures of thirst had commenced. My powerful horse, too, was beginning to flag. It was clear I had lost the trail. Two hours ago I ought to have passed out of the Reserve, but the tepees of Indians were still visible on the bluffs ahead of me. Another hour of weary riding, in which I steered by the sun, brought me to a wire-fence; this was the limit of the Reserve. Taking out a field-glass, I saw in the opal distance a yellow patch on the side of a vast sweep of rolling down.

I jumped the fence, and made for the distant patch of yellow, learning by the way that a straight line is not always the shortest distance between two points. A black dot which had long been visible at the edge of the patch gradually assumed the shape of a man, and the patch declared itself a breadth of ripened oats. As I drew nearer, the man paused to watch my approach, his hand shading his eyes. Presently he hailed me in a mighty voice: —

‘Want to buy my land?’

‘ No.’

‘Are you real estate?’

‘No.’

‘Then who the — are you?’

‘ I’ve lost my way, and I’d give fifty dollars for a drink of water.’

‘Great Snakes! You’re an Englishman ! ’

By this time we were face to face. He was a brawny young man of about twenty-eight. What clothes he wore were rags. His chest was bare and as he jumped from the seat of his ‘ Massey-Harris’ — he was working a binder — I noticed that one leg of his trousers was missing. He jumped, I say, to the ground, cut a caper, whooped and hollo’d, and then flung his old straw hat a prodigious height into the air. Catching the hat, he handed it to me and pointed to the faded ribbon, of which some fragments still remained.

‘Clifton College,’ I said.

‘Sure thing!’ he roared, ‘wouldn’t part with it for a wagon-load of dollarbills. My name’s Stockwell. Come right in to the shack.’

‘Give me some water,’ I gasped.

‘The water ain’t fit to drink. It’s a mixture of Epsom Salts and Backache Pills. I’ll make you some tea before you can say “skat” three times.’

When the tea was made—than which nothing more grateful was ever offered to the weary—I told him that I wanted to find Joe Sydenham.

‘Sure thing!’ he said. ‘Ten miles behind the bluff. I’ll go with you. Joe Sydenham!’ and his roar of laughter shook the roof; ‘Joe Sydenham! And Joe’s wife! Wonder where Joe struck that girl! I’d swap the whole section for another such. Say, do you want to make a deal? Go back to the Old Country and send me one like Mary and I ’ll give you the land with the standing crops, the implements, the stock, and the shack, without a red cent between us.’

‘Ah, but there is n’t another Mary,’ I said.

‘Send me one half as good then!’ he shouted.

‘I’ll think it over. But don’t forget that I’m perishing of starvation.’

‘Great Scott, and I’m out of stores!

There is n’t a thing to eat in the shack but a sack-full of old bread and a bucket of raspberry jam.’

‘I’m longing for old bread and raspberry jam.’

The fellow was boiling over with animal spirits and could not restrain himself. To all my questions he would first reply by a roar of laughter and a caper; after which he would make a feeble effort to be intelligible, breaking off in the middle with a whoop, or sometimes, I must confess, with a mouthful of tremendous oaths.

Presently, after tipping a second cupfull of raspberry jam on my tin plate, he clapped on his old hat and rushed like a mad thing out of the shack. For a few moments I heard him running about; there was a sound of ramming; a big laugh was smothered; a match was struck; and then suddenly, from just beneath the little window, there came a tremendous detonation which sent the few remaining panes of glass flying all over the room and shook both the shack and myself to our respective foundations.

‘Great Heavens!’ I cried, ‘what’s that?’

‘I’ve fired the cannon. Guess it’s startled you some. Well — that’s my signal to the boys that I’ve struck an Englishman! If there’s any of them riding within five miles they’ll be here in half an hour.’

‘Will Joe hear it?’

‘Will if he’s out on the range. Guess he may be to-day.’

With my companion I went outside, and we gazed forth into the surrounding wilderness. Westward, at an immense distance, the Rockies swam high in the liquid air —an immense congregation of peaks bounding the horizon. They were the Delectable Mountains, and the regions between us and them was the Land of Beulah. It rose in vast terraces, sweeping upward and upward as though to make a ladder to the sky. Earth, air, and sky formed, as it were, a continuous mass of opalescence, swimming with a kind of rhythmical movement in an ocean of light. Throughout the whole expanse, North, South, East, and West, not a living thing was stirring; not a human dwelling, not a human being, was visible.

‘Guess I’ll fire the cannon again,’ said my host.

‘Wait,’ I answered, ‘there’s a moving speck on the sky-line yonder.’

Stockwell took the glass from my hand.

‘By thunder,’ he shouted, ‘it’s one of the boys. And there’s another in the creek-bottom away to the left. They’re coming this way. Here, take the glass and keep them in sight. I’ll go and kill a veal. We shall have the whole bunch down on us for supper.’

While I watched the riders, the uproarious Stockwell whetted his knife and began to kill. The riders were converging toward a point in the valley which led upward to the farm. Present ly they met, and raced up the valley side by side. As they drew nearer, I, continuing to watch them through the glass, became dimly aware that they were diversely habited—and a thought flashed into my mind.

‘Stockwell,’ I shouted, ‘come here: there’s a man and a woman.’

Stockwell instantly came out of the stable, his hands red with blood — and I heard something kicking inside.

‘Give me the glass,’ he said in a strangely hollow voice — and a moment after, ‘ By — ! it’s Joe and Mary.’ And something like a groan escaped him.

I was amazed at the sudden change in the man. His spirits had collapsed and his jolly face had become chopfallen as that of any dweller in the twilight.

‘Here you,’ he said, ‘go in and finish that veal’ — and he gave me some directions, — ‘I ’m sick — real sick. They’ll be here in five minutes. Tell ’em I’m sick. They won’t see me! I’m in that loft till they go — real sick, you understand! ’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ I said, as Stockwell began to climb the ladder which led to his hay-loft.

‘It’s Mary,’ he said. ‘Can’t stand it. Never could. Mary makes me feel that mean — mean as a yeller dog. Don’t want to see ’em. She belongs to Joe. She can’t belong to me. And Joe and me are good friends. So what’s the good? See?’ With these words, Stockwell plunged into his hay and drew back the sliding-door of the loft.

The calf was bleeding in the byre, and Stockwell (I could hear him) was blubbering in the hay. But Stockwell and the calf were alike blotted from my thoughts; for the two riders had leaped the fence, swung themselves from their saddles, and Mary, Joe, and I tumbled confusedly into one another’s arms.

What words were first spoken I forget, — there was some incoherence. After a little we disentangled ourselves. Standing apart, I looked at the pair; and I laughed for joy, and shouted like a fool.

‘The Superman,’ I cried, ‘and the Superwoman! You gorgeous beings! You make me sick — real sick.’

‘Where’s old Stock?’ said Joe.

‘Sick,’ I said, ‘real sick. We’re all sick — except you. Civilization’s sick; England’s sick; America’s sick. Joe and Mary! You make me feel that mean — mean as a yeller dog! ’

Here there was an audible groan from the hay-loft.

‘Is Stock up there?’ said Joe, pointing to the loft.

‘Yes,’ I answered; and Joe and Mary laughed.

‘He won’t come down,’ said Joe; ‘we ’ll have to fix things for ourselves.’

‘There’s a calf somewhere,’ I said, ‘which Stockwell had just begun to kill when his seizure came on. You’d better put it out of its misery, Joe.’

Joe departed, and Mary and I ware left alone.

‘Is it a sound proposition, Mary?’ I said.

‘Sound as the heart of the universe,’ said Mary.

‘The calf’s kind o’ dead,’ said Joe, coming out of the stable. He went to the ladder of Stockwell’s hay-loft and climbing a rung or two called out, ‘Say, Stock, what ’ll you take for that veal ? ’

‘Ten dollars,’ said a rueful voice.

Joe thrust a ten-dollar bill under the door. ‘Got it?’ he said.

‘Sure thing,’ replied the voice.

‘ We ’ll take the veal home,’ said Joe; and he descended the ladder.

‘And now,’ I said, ‘tell me the latest news of the son and heir.’

‘The latest news,’ replied Mary, ‘is that he’s left at home with the two dogs to look after him.’

‘We’ve trained ’em to do it,’ said Joe. ‘You shall see ’em. One on each side of him. Careful of him as though he was a pet pig.’

‘That reminds me of something,’ I said. ‘Mary, I’ve two saddle-bags full of wedding-presents for you — and the boy.’

‘I must see them at once,’ said Mary. ‘No, stupid, I can’t wait. Give the horses half an hour’s rest, and I will go into the shack and look at the presents. Oh, never mind Old Stock! Half an hour in the hay will improve his philosophy.’

We went into the shack, and the saddle-bags were emptied. Mary examined the parcels one by one — with shouts of delight. I kept to the last the big package on which the Customs House had frowned so ominously.

‘From whom does this come?’ said

Mary. ‘Oh, here’s a letter inside.’

Mary read the letter, which had seven or eight scrawling signatures at the end of it. She then folded her arms on the greasy table, and, burying her face in the crook of her elbow, burst into tears.