Ancient Grief

I

WHEN the motor-bus drove into SeaBurnham, only a solitary stranger emerged from the small group of passengers. The time was past when it carried a jostling load of ‘wisitors,’ gay in sporting attire. It would soon make its last run, and the district would sink into its winter isolation. Already the bus arrived almost in darkness. ‘How the days be a-drawin’ in!' was the greeting exchanged by the local passengers as they climbed down. Many of them were bronzed laborers, returning from their ‘after-harvest frolic.’

The solitary alien hesitated when he alighted — looked ahead at the sanddunes from which the sea roared out, and behind, down the little street of brick old and new, which soon ran into the dim marshes. He attracted some attention, for he was obviously a double alien: he was not only a ‘wisitor,’ but a transatlantic one, such as was rarely seen in this corner of the coast. A few loiterers, when they saw him, in spite of intentions of courtesy, stiffened almost to stopping, but his inquiries were soon answered by the briskly efficient busdriver, his arrangements made, and the curious were able to stare their fill at his back, as he started alone down the street.

‘Two mile down the causewa’, as straight as iver yo’ kin go,’had been his directions.

John Williams, a young American who had dabbled in literature during the year since he had left college, had followed an impulse and come to spend some weeks in the old home of his grandmother, who had brought him up. It was not from her that the impulse had come: when he left America, he asked if she wished him to visit her old home and look up any friends or relations. She sat in her armchair, with her books and papers about her, handsome and serene, perfectly tended and richly dressed. She did not care to linger over the thought of her birthplace.

‘I hardly think it would be worth your while to go there: there’s nothing to see. I’ve no family left that I know of, and, if I did have, you ’d hardly know what to make of them, they’d be so different from you. I left so many years ago — nearly fifty years.’

She spoke — for her — a little shortly, as if fretted at being rudely brought to adjust herself to a harsh contrast of life. She took up her newspaper with some decision.

John sat on quietly at her side. He smiled affectionately to himself. ‘Dear old granny,’ he thought; ‘there’s never an ounce of sentiment in her, and she never can bear to be switched from one thing to another. She’s not a bit of a snob, but she accepts the moment so thoroughly that she’s practically forgotten what she once was. She shrinks from change so much — how did she ever leave England? Grandfather, I suppose. But what a good thing they did pull out! Still, I can’t imagine her ever being really different. She must have been what they call “a pearl” of a servant.'

He made a wry face, with a stealthy look at his grandmother’s absorbed countenance, and withdrew his thoughts to the more exhilarating prospect of his grandparents’ early days in America, when his grandfather’s Welsh eloquence as a Methodist preacher, and his grandmother’s efficiency and dignity at the head of the household, had continually bettered their circumstances. As a widow, she had been the partner in the success of her son; and her tender care of his own childhood had almost made him forget his mother. In only one respect had she failed of being the perfect grandmother: John had never been able to draw from her sentiment or reminiscence. She had apparently lived each period of her life to itself, and dropped it for the next. ‘She’s always been so normal and simple,’ thought her grandson, regarding her face as she sat reading; ‘she’s never been touched by sophistication; life has never given her complicated problems; it’s given her hard ones, but she’s always been strong.'

When he reached England, he found himself, after a time, yielding to what would have been his impulse in her place: he decided to go to see her old home for her, though he might never confess his expedition. That was how, on an autumn night, he found himself on the causeway leading across the marshes to her village.

The sound of the sea came to him from behind, blurred till it might have been the whirr of the looms in his father’s mills. It was a dim night, when the twilight was long; there was no wind, though it was evident that often the wind blew to a gale across these marshes, from the dunes on the horizon, for all the occasional trees slanted significantly away from the coast. Tonight the sea signified its nearness in another fashion: low-lying mist, white as foam, traveled swiftly over the levels as the light faded from the sky, and the dim gray tops of the slanting trees on the marshes and the roundtopped willows along the road stood strangely out of lakes made of the purest white cloud-stuff of noonday.

‘What a distinctive country,’ said John to himself, as he walked quickly forward with eager curiosity. ‘Primitive as can be!’

When he drew up at the inn of his destination, he seemed at first to have reëntered the England that he had already learned. A rich border of flowers gleamed in the darkness, as the light streamed out from the open door, and a neat street stretched ahead, irregularly built and now cheerfully lighted. But the squat little woman of swarthy skin and jetty hair, who brought him into his sitting-room, did not recall the usual English type; her broad speech delighted him with its faint reminder of his grandmother, who had retained just enough of her native speech for a pleasant flavor. Perhaps one of his grandmother’s girlhood friends, he said to himself, with a touch of surprise that it should be so. She could not have shown more kind zeal for his comfort if she had known herself to be such.

‘I’ll now make haste and ease yo’,’ she said, hurrying about her arrangements with the quick short movements of age. As she did so, she began the conversation with the weather, after the habit of country people: ‘It’s a rare lovela night to look at, sah. No fear of it’s jammin’ onto us with a tempest. Do yo’ hev this kind o’ night in America, sah?’

Then John discovered the personal reason for the warmth of his welcome: his landlady had the same reason for interest in him that he had for interest in her. In a few moments she had brought out her pictures of her sons in America, and he found out that every family in the village had its representatives there, who all lived as neighbors.

‘There ben’t much here for boys but the fishin’, and the herrin’s be werra onsartin, so they go where they can get on.’

He was puzzled, but glad, that his family had not shown the clannishness in emigration common to their parish, and he saw with delight an instant understanding springing up between himself and his landlady as a result of the American connections which touched her so nearly.

‘Onything yo’ kin tell me about America I’d gladla hear, sah. My heart be there.’ So she spoke, with a pathetic radiance of expression, as she showed him to his bedroom. ‘The housen be warm here,’ she assured him. ‘You’ll lie lovela under the thatch, though I’ve heerd there be none in America.’

John did not wonder that he was comfortable, when he saw next day the immense gray pelt-like marsh-thatching that had covered him. Altogether, he was pleased with his situation. The inn was set where ‘the street’ began, on the edge of the marsh that ran all the way across to the dunes; and on the horizon the sun sometimes lighted up their pale sand, and steamers made dirty patches on the sky. The dark groups of grazing cattle shifted from hour to hour across the levels. On a day of mild sunlight, a soft bloom seemed to lie over the marshes — green, bronze, rose, and amber; and on the brightest days the whole landscape looked bleached by the white light, and even the landmarks seemed to dissolve — the striped pillar of the lighthouse, the half-dozen windmills with wings like great Maltese crosses, the equal number of gray tall church-towers. A great sweep of country took substance or lost it together, as the light changed, but more often than not, the whole horizon was a dense blue. There was in particular one very symbol of the changes of the atmosphere that John used to watch from his favorite seat in the garden and saw through a. break in the bright cottage gardens opposite the church of the next parish. Its tower was lovelier than all its sisters, tapering with perfect elegance, and its gray flint — glassy enough when seen at close range — seemed at a distance to become saturated with the light: on clear mornings it was angelically white; under rain clouds it became one with them; in the noonday sun it was silvery gray. John wondered if his grandmother, who lived without sentiment but who often loved beauty, ever remembered this exquisite landscape of her youth.

II

He wondered a great deal about that mysterious cavern of her memory as the days went on, and his landlady, hovering about him with the warm attentions of a starved maternity, began to pour forth the history of the parish, since she found that in no other way could she please him so well. A stream of wayfarers went by the door, or came into the taproom, and very often they suggested anecdotes: there were old laborers, bow-legged and leaning on staves, wearing corduroy trousers and, above, cotton ‘slops’ — blue, brown, yellow, or white; farmers, wearing checked knickerbockers and pale leggings, came in dogcarts; darkly dressed women with perambulators, bronzed youths on bicycles, brown sailors on foot, with rings in their ears, wearing blue ‘guernsas.’ He saw many squat brunette types like his landlady — remnants, he was told, of a primitive race cut off by the fens; and he saw also many tall fair ones, descendants of the Norse invaders who had landed on this coast. The rise and fall of the speech of all of them went to the same haunting tune. What strange revulsion would his twice-born grandmother suffer if she should hear it? Did it sometimes come back to her in dreams, or were her dreams and her waking one and indivisible, as her daily life?

Some half-comprehended impulse made him avoid telling his landlady why he was here: he had the uncomfortable sensation of being an eavesdropper; but a half-sentimental though insistent instinct did not let him open the door and disclose himself. After all, it was his grandmother, acting on deepseated impulses of her own, who had let the barriers rise between her new life and her old. ‘The old dear,’ he said to himself of his landlady, ‘may even be my cousin. How it would embarrass her to find it out!'

The possibility made him shy, but it did not make him ashamed. He watched the life about him, and found it almost heroic to know gardens and fires, hens, cats, and cows, as did the old countrywoman. ‘ Forecast be as good as wark,’ she said to him sagely; and he saw that she had it, by aid of the accumulated wisdom of generations living close to the material world. It was a good stock to come from, and such life was rich, provided the personal relations were fortunate.

That year ‘ harvest’ was the latest within living memory, and John was in time to see the last of it on some farms. Several nights he watched the men working aloft, silhouetted against the evening sky; but at last everywhere the corn was garnered into the shapely, pale-thatched stacks, which gleamed golden in the distance. The memorable night when, the last farmer paid off, John sat down to a stew made of a ‘ harvest rabbit,’ he was sluggish after a day spent in the wind watching the final operations, when the poor rabbits were driven to their death in the centre of the last field. His landlady anxiously knelt before the fire.

‘My sweetheart smile at me,’ she said, when it broke into flame. ‘Now it be a-torchin’ up.’ She rose, with a poke at the kitten biting her ankle. ’That kitten do make me sawage. Git yo’ along and cock about your rabbit’s tail. They be gittin’ up for fine cats. Spring kittens be the best. Winter ones’ll hev a rum time t’ year.’

The wind was howling outside, out of all proportion to the season.

‘Oh, it be melancholy,’ she went on, standing looking at the fire,’ it’s a good job the corn be all in at last. The last time there was such a bad harvest was when I was a gel — almost fifta year ago. That time o’ day things was livela at the Hall, and the squire said as how they’d drink and dance for all the weeks they’d lost. I’ve heerd say as how in that one year he lost as much as he’d ben a-losin’ in five. And it was that year what was the failin’ of the Raverend.’

The last words seemed almost to slip from her as she stood looking into the fire. Images came to John of the square Hall of dim old brick, now let, and of the tree-embowered vicarage next the plantation, whence he had seen an old man issue forth. He was still heavy with the keen air of the day, and this was the hour to indulge himself in some of the gossip which he was permitting himself on this expedition out of the world.

‘Come and sit down by the fire when the table’s cleared,’he said to the dark little woman, ‘and tell me a story of the old times.’

How strange, he thought, to listen after all to reminiscences that might have been his grandmother’s. Perhaps he would tell her of these evenings when he went home, and she would smile at him — a little absently, as at something she did n’t understand, though she was none the less glad that he had had his pleasure.

‘Thank yo’, sah. Yes, I’ll be glad to set a little time.’

She expeditiously carried out the old blue dishes half crackled over with long use. Then she came back and sat down. One kitten came and nestled at her feet, on the soft black yarn of the hearthrug; she lifted the other to her lap, and stroked it from time to time as she talked. ’He take all the nussin’ yo’ kin give him,’she remarked before she began her tale. The little black kitten looked well placed in the lap of the dark little woman.

III

‘’T was this way, sah,’ she began, in her sonorous tones. ‘The Squire and his brothers and his sons was all highlivers, and mana’s the shootin parta at the Hall what’s ended with not a man fit to hold a gun. The ladas they all left ’em — not a wife ud stick there; but the poor old lada she had to stop, bein’ as she had no daughter, and was half bedrid. No dacent gel ud go to sarvice there, with sich rum goin’s on, and they got a tottie little gel to wait on the old lada, what had n’t no mother nor father, and the cousin what brought her up was like to pinch both her bella and her back. Ah, sah, that time o’ day there was sumpin’ to pay in this parish, when the gentlemen was a-ridin’ free about, and the Hall was all lighted up mana a night so as yo’ could see it across the mesh like a great, ship at sea. There was a lot o’ nonsense a-goin’ about consarnin’ all the doin’s; but the warst piece of wark there was n’t mana what knew. I tell yo’, sah, because yo’ live in America.'

Here she rubbed a finger for a moment on the back of the kitten sleeping in her lap, and it wakened enough to begin to purr loudly. ‘It don’t take much to tune them up,’she said with a smile, somewhat sadly.

4 What happened to the vicar?’ asked John curiously. 4 Did he try to preach to the Squire?'

‘That he did, sah,’ she answered, to the purring of the cat. ‘The old one give it up, but when the new one come, — him that’s here now, though the Squire and all his are dead and gone, — he begun to try, too. He regenerated from a good way South: they say he come of gentra extra high. Never was there a nicer young man than he was when he come, or a freer with kindness to a poor parson; and he preached free and easa like, like a chapel man, and he got up the choir fine. But the Lord curses them as try to do too much, and he tried too hard to tarn the Squire, who was set to evil from his barth, so it seemed. They made a laugh o’ him over there when he kep’ on tryin’; but it wasna a clean laugh — the whiska was too strong in ’em. The Raverend give up at last, but he kep’ on comin’ to wisit the poor old lada, and then the Squire had a presentiment his chance had come. He soon see the Raverend had a likin’ to the little sarvent — she had grown up a rare fine gel, and alius done well by her missus — and she lived close to her almost like a blood relation.

4 Would yo’ believe it, sah, the Squire begun to oncourage the young parson a-wisitin’ his mother, jes’ so’s he could make his downfall. The parson was little more than a boy, and he was wonderful fond o’ walkin’ out in the evenin’, and the Squire noticed this, and he sent out the gel on errands at nightfall, so’s the parson ud meet her and bring her home. So it went on, and in the end that summer the gel was in a muddle, and the old lada was well-nigh crazed. In gen’ral’ — here she looked up at her listener with a gentle directness — ‘in gen’ral the gels in the parish what get in a muddle they marry directla. The boys be reada enow; they be a bit quick with their wark, but that’s because they’ve no mind to try a pig in a poke, as the gentra do. But when a girl’s got in with a gentleman, what’s the savin’ of her?’

John said nothing, and she went on.

‘They say as this thing well-nigh brought the old lada back to life for a time. She talked to the Raverend, but she’d no need to be sawage: he’d a mind to ’a’ married the gel, onla the old lada was a bit too stiff in her idees for that. She got the gel alone and told her the weddin’ would ruin the Raverend; and the gel was a rare proud un, and she stiffened and said no to him; and next thing, quick as could be, afore anyone could look round, she married a young man what had axed her afore, and the old lada give ’em some mona, and they went out foreign. My mother went in and took care of the old lada, and heerd the hull stora; but the old lada died in a year. As long as she lived, the parson come to see her regular; he seemed to hanker after comin’ — poor young man, he looked peaked them times; but after she died he was warse, for he kep’ on goin’, and he begun to drink with the Squire and the rest; and after a time he was little better or they. He’d come home drunk of a night, and throw his mona about so’s no one dared light the fire in the mornin’ till they’d seen whether the paper was mixed up with notes. Oh, I’ve seen him when he looked greasified and fair disagreeable with whiska, and he had looked so pretty-like. The girl his sweetheart could n’t ha’ looked nicer, though she was alius stronger and straighter lookin’ — a clear-eyed gel she was.’

She paused, dislodged the kitten, and made up the fire. John sat silent, knowing that she would settle again and continue.

‘Things were n’t so strictified as now they be,’ she went on; ‘but still, after a time, sumpin’ come to the ears of the bishop, and he sent someun down, and he give strict orders. They say, too, as how the doctor told the young man as how his frame was never of much account, and he’d soon make away with it thataway. He’s a queer man, the Raverend: some things he will and some things he won’t. ’Pears like he did n’t want to leave the parish, and he give up the bottle; and here he’s been ever sence. He took to readin’ his sarmons, — but then most parsons do that, — and he pays no regard to the choir. The charch be set pleasant agin the mesh and it’s a pretta walk out from the street in your Sunda clothes, and that help him out for his congregation. His health’s not up to much, and his housekeeper tell me he be sometimes that peevish she’s a mind to quit; but he’s a rare soft heart for them as be in trouble, and he’s of a high fam’la. His wisitors be werra few, but now and agin he take up with a stranger for a little time.’

She looked reflectively for a moment at her lodger, who sat looking seriously into the fire. Then she rose. ’The fire be a-gettin’ on, and so be the time. I’ll say good night, and a good rest.’

She made up the fire, took the kittens, and went out, leaving John to watch the flame burn through the new coals, wish for the vital, purring little cats, and muse over the tragic tale he had just heard.

IV

Perhaps it was the interest of the evening’s tale still working that drew him the next morning to the churchyard: ever since he had been here, he had meant some day to read the names on the tombstones as a contribution to his study of the parish. Perhaps — though he was ashamed to admit it — it was subconscious curiosity as to the old parson that led him to make this expedition at an hour when he had often seen the old man come out for a walk.

When he had finished his survey, he sat down where the churchyard wall, once beautifully laid in a pattern of red brick and bluish flint, had broken down, and coarse flints from within had fallen out, and lay like a heap of knucklebones on the ground. He liked to look up at the fresh gloomy hardness of the flint tower, twice as old as the first homes of the Pilgrim Fathers, and at the fur-soft gray marsh-thatching on the roof. The summer was over, the larks had begun to trill again over the marsh, and the autumn wind was setting the windmills in the distance to moving slowly round. He sat marveling at the monotony of surnames found on the gravestones, and at the frequency of his grandmother’s name. He felt a strange kinship to the whole village — even to the marsh. He did not find, however, what he believed to be the names of his great-grandparents, and he was pondering whether he should take steps to discover where they were laid. If they were here, in nameless graves, would it be undutiful to his forgetful grandmother to hunt up her parents?

As he was revolving this question, he turned and saw the old clergyman almost upon him. Suddenly ashamed of his curiosity, he rose, and stumbled into speech. ‘The church, sir, has a fine situation.’

‘Not so fine as that of the farthest you see in the distance,’ answered the old man gently, as he quietly seated himself beside the young one, and pointed to the straight tall dim blue tower, visible miles distant down the coast, at the exact disappearing point of the gleaming water-dyke that began almost at their feet — as if the old dyke-diggers had aimed at that landmark, already ancient in their time.

‘Over there,’ went on the old man, ‘the church is built on the cliff overlooking the sea, and the great height of the tower seems to indicate that it was used as a lighthouse. I’ve often wished that clear glass could be put in the windows on the sea-side of that church, so that the preacher could reënforce his sermons on the power of the Almighty by using the actual ocean as a symbol.

He smiled almost genially, directing his blue eyes straight at the listener. The sun fell on his thin hair, and it was hard to tell where the yellow ended and the silver began. His long thin face had a touch of color, but his clothes hung loosely on his lank frame.

‘But I suppose,’ he went on, sadly, ‘ that it would have been hard on those in the congregation who had lost their relatives at sea.’

He looked for a moment silently over the sun-swept marsh, where the windmills were all majestically on the move. Thereupon, to John’s intense surprise, he turned and invited him to dinner, and went away more quickly than he had come.

John was left on his heap of stones, feeling that his curiosity had been unduly rewarded, and not for anything would he have told his destination to his landlady when he departed to dinner the following night. Yet, since he owed to her the special interest of the occasion, he felt ungrateful not to satisfy the wistful, affectionate curiosity which her face showed, when she saw him step out of the gusty open door into the night.

‘It be hardla fit for your pleasure, sah. It be a rum job to-night to sneck the door.’

But she had before now found her lodger’s motives mysterious.

John had speculated as to the garden behind the high vicarage wall; but it was only a dim foreground of soughing branches that he saw, as he opened the door and passed up the path to the broad steps and square doorway. The neat wry-faced woman who opened to him quickly closed the door under the influence of the surging wind, and the weather, as usual, made the conversation. In that wild night, at least, the hall looked very cheerful, and so did the sitting-room, with massive furniture and bright fire, though John missed the usual cat of the countryside.

He sat down, and his host at once came in, shy and frail-looking, yet with some pleasure working through his features, as if a new young face, unconscious of all his concerns, was pleasant to him. John’s heart smote him that he was not the unconscious stranger that he seemed. They passed into the dining-room, where the mixture of good old furnishings and tawdry new ones was striking. The meal was a wholesome specimen of the inevitable country fare.

It happened over the wine. John had noticed at once, with a guilty, conscious feeling, that his host drank nothing, though he was attentive to the wants of his guest. To pry into his host’s secrets and then eat his dinner, was too much for sensitive John. He felt shabby, and as if he were an impostor, beside this charming gentleman. His grandmother was not likely to be of any personal interest to the vicar; yet he felt vaguely that it would be more honorable to disclose his family’s connection with the parish. By the end of the dinner, he was more at his ease with the frail, serious, sympathetically interested old man, and his general sense of underhanded ness urged him to expiatory action of some sort.

‘ I ought to tell you,’ he began slowly, when the wrinkled old housekeeper had cleared the table and they sat smoking, ‘I ought to tell you that this is a sentimental pilgrimage for me. My grandmother was born here — in a cottage,’ he added firmly.

The disclosure seemed not to ruffle the vicar in the least.

‘How interesting!’ he answered in his clear pleasant voice. ‘ What was her name ?'

‘ Ivy Nudd,’ said John lightly, thinking for the thousandth time how strange was the chance that had given his unromantic grandmother such a romantic name. ‘A pretty name, is n’t it, but not so uncommon as I thought before I came here.’

But the old man did not answer. Instead, he hastily seized the wine-bottle, poured out a full red draught, and gulped it, his wide blue eyes blinking strangely.

John, in his knowledge of the history and habits of his host, sat uneasy in his chair, fearing he scarcely knew what, and finding himself suddenly hurled into a whirl of feeling as strong as the gale outside on the marsh. Silence fell, and he heard the wind howl loudly.

The old man poured himself a second glass, but to John’s relief he merely sipped it, and when it was almost gone he began.

‘I knew your grandmother,’ he said, in a low voice that he tried to make steady. ‘She was a very fine girl. I have never known a braver or a truer.'

Here his voice broke.

‘She never let her friends here,’ he went on after a little, ‘know anything about her after she left. I am glad to see that she must have prospered. Is she living ?' The last words came out as if they were almost too difficult to be spoken.

John, hardly allowing himself to see the drift of the discourse, forced himself to answer. ‘Oh, yes, the finest and handsomest old lady you ever saw — and one of the happiest,’ he added. ‘But she’s entirely unsentimental,’ he went on. ‘She brought me up, but I’ve never heard her mention her life over here.’

The old man’s eyes did not leave his face: never had he seen the gaze of blue eyes so intense. Evidently the voice was as weak as the eyes were bold; but in a moment, by great effort, came another question: ‘Did she have more than one child?’

The vicar seemed in his frail old age to bend over the table as if to pluck the young man’s answer the instant it left his lips.

‘Only one, my father. He was born just after they reached America,’ answered John slowly; and felt himself suddenly floundering in deep subjects, not only affecting others but also poignant concerns of his own.

Foundations so deeply set that he had never been conscious of their existence now seemed to be dissolving. The old man fell back in his chair, and a quiver of life seemed to pass over his face as he gazed with disconcerting directness at the young man before him - searching out every feature. His color and expression became heightened, as if he had again made connection with youth.

So he sat, but only for a moment. It was as if he were afraid that the tide of feeling would rise too high and submerge him. He reached out his hand, but this time for the whiskey bottle. Then John, in fear, began to speak. Without explanation, trusting to the emotion of the moment to make the action seem natural, he forced himself to give his family history complete, from the time his grandparents reached the New World. On and on he recounted it, and the old man listened, fascinated, his interest for the moment controlling his feeling. But his appearance was unearthly; the intensity on his face was out of all proportion to his age and strength.

For the moment John forgot the strange upsetting effects of all this on himself, and remembered only the two principals — now as they had been, now as they were in the present. In a sense he felt himself between two extinct fires; for in the old man emotion seemed to have burned out the body; in the old woman it seemed to have burned out the power of emotion itself. But with this new understanding, how could he read that deep heart? Images came back to him from moments when even he had seen his grandmother’s dark eyes sparkling with feeling, or swimming with tears. Was it only long effort that had kept her strong heart steady? If events shook it now, would it break her strength and destroy her? It would be a sad thing to wreck her sound and happy old age; as sad as to wreck the happiness of a child.

The old man listened till it seemed as if he feared that he might become drunk with the tale. He rose abruptly and held out his hand.

‘Your grandmother lived many years at the Hall here,’ he said, with a special touch of dignity, doubtless attempting to bring back the conversation to the conventions, as he thought. ‘She was an angel of mercy there, and I am glad that she has been rewarded in this life. Those were sad days for her, and you would do best not to remind her of any of us here. Don’t break into her New-World peace with any talk of our parish. Therefore I send her no message, though I should like to. You will pardon me for turning you out, but it’s past my bedtime. Good night.’

He held long the hand of tumultuous-hearted John, who was hardly held back by the thought of his grandmother’s peace of mind from hurling himself on the old man’s neck, and confessing to his full enlightenment.

‘Good night,’ said the old man, giving him a glance in which time itself seemed to have been dissolved. Here was a temperament which the young man could understand, and his intuition told him that here was a heart which cherished memory, and would nourish itself many an hour on the memory of this very moment. Yet the vicar at length turned his bent back, and was quickly gone, leaving the guest stabbed by regret, remorse, indecision, sorrow, shock at the revelations which he had received.

He stood in the shabby dining-room, straightening himself to go out, crystallizing enough spirit for the next step forward. The old housekeeper came in a moment, and he plunged willingly into the wild night, but not without a glance at the light in an upper window before he let himself out of the garden enclosure.

That night he did not sleep at all, and rarely did he hear the wind, so much more insistent was the movement of his own thoughts.

At first, the image of the old man was so affecting that he looked only to the morrow to make some move to declare himself. He did not expect to be summoned to the vicarage, for he felt that the vicar knew himself too weak to endure the emotion of another interview, since he was too strong to wish to allow himself the relief of free speech. But John at first, in the impetuosity of his youth, determined, himself, to storm the door.

Already he knew that he could not force the emotions to the surface all round — as would have been his first instinct: he knew that he could not thrust his grandmother back into the agonizing emotions of her youth, even for the sake of bringing her what she had once so much desired. What was once her meat, would now be her poison, since time had brought her almost a new birth.

But the vicar? Had he no duty to him? Should he not tell him that he already knew the secret? Or might the shock of full disclosure be too great for him, also? Would he after all prefer his memories to actualities too agitating for his strength?

So John pondered, hour after hour; and he felt perceptibly older when the night was past. He had learned the potency of time, and he had for the first time realized that some issues are too deep and delicate for any touching by a third person, however interested. His tenderness over the whole affair overcame him, but evidently he could seek no immediate comfort in action.

The next morning he announced his immediate departure, and wired for return passage home. He had some relief in thinking that perhaps he could unburden himself to his father. As he made his arrangements, the sadness of his landlady depressed him: he felt guilty toward her, as the secret possessor of the dramatic dénouement of a tale which she had begun. As he caught her stealthy solicitous looks when he made a poor breakfast, he decided that she was fancying him caught in a sad love-affair.

‘So I am,’he said to himself, ‘though it’s very old, and not my own — at least, not directly. What sentimentalists we all are!’ He felt a little scornful of himself, as he thought of the tragic situation into which his irresponsible sentiment had brought him. Yet he was immensely glad that he had come, for, whether they were ever again in communication or not, he felt that the old man at the vicarage would live a fuller life for his coming. Before he went, he left his card there, with his permanent address.

When finally he drove off, he was as affected as his landlady, and his aspect was as heavy as hers. It was a moving occasion to her, since his destination was America, the home of her lost children; and the end of the journey was much in his mind also.

The time could not go quickly enough till he saw his grandmother again, and could satisfy himself anew that old grief could be forgotten, even in this life.