Broughton_Goodbye_Sweetheart.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
CHAPTER I.
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
A KINGLY June day. The hay-smell drowning all
other smells in every land of Christendom : battling even
with the ingeniously ill odors of this little drainless Breton
town. People who suffer from hay-fever are sneezing and
blowing their noses ; all the world else is opening its nos-
trils wide. The small salon of a small French boarding-
house a narrow room, with a window at each end ; and,
in this room, the two sisters, the two Misses Herrick.
Five minutes ago, the mistress of the establishment
entered, and closed the persiennes of one of our windows,
to hinder the sun from abimer-iug the cretonne curtains, as
she said. She was about to follow suit with the other, and
only desisted on our eager and impassioned representations
that not even a Breton sun can shine from all points of the
compass at once. Through the one casement thus left us,
Lenore is leaning out Lenore, our youngest-born, the
show one of our family. On her elbows she is leaning,
looking idly into the little grass-grown place, on which
Mdlle. Leroux's pension gives. Jemima I am Jemima
is making a listless reconnoitre of the furniture the little
cheap prints on the walls, " La Religieuse d6fendue," " Le
Guerrier panse," " Napoleon I., Empereur des Frangais ; "
one long fern frond and a single foxglove in a wineglass
on the mantel-shelf ; bare parquet, cold to the feet. Jemi-
ma is twenty-eight years of age, and very good-natured ;
at least, so people say. I have often noticed that the
eldest of many families are, physically speaking, failures.
Jemima is, physically speaking, a failure.
" How one misses one's five-o'clock tea ! " says Lenore,
looking back half over her shoulder to throw this and the
succeeding remarks at me. " From ten-o'clock breakfast
to six-o'clock dinner, what a dreary waste ! How do you
suppose the aborigines stave off the pangs of hunger, Jemi-
ma ? Do they chew a quid of tobacco, or a piece of chalk,
or what ? "
I reply, laconically : " Biscuits."
" Does not your heart yearn for one of those open tarts
with fresh strawberries we saw yesterday at the pdtissier's
in the Rue de St.-Malo ? Mine does. I wish I had asked
Frederick to bring me one."
" And do you imagine," ask I, sardonically, " that you
have reduced that poor man to such a pitch of imbecility
as to induce him to carry about jam-tarts in his coat-pocket
for you?"
Lenore smiles ; she has that very sweet smile which is,
they say, the peculiar attribute of ill-tempered people.
" I think," she answers, " that he is not far from being
on a level with Miss Armstrong's lover, who allowed her
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
to dress him up as a sheep, and lead him by a blue ribbon
into a room full of company."
Lenore's face is more round than oval ; it is fresh as a
bunch of roses gathered at sunrise fresh, but not ruddy ;
her nose, though not in the least retrousse, belongs rather
to the family of upward than that of downward tending
noses ; her eyes are gray, as are the eyes of nine-tenths of
the Anglo-Saxon race, large, though not with the owlified
largeness of a "Book of Beauty," wherein each eye is
double the size of the prim purse-mouth ; in her two cheeks
are two dimples that, when she is grave, one only suspects,
but that, when she laughs or smiles, deepen into two little
delicious pitfalls, to catch men's souls at unawares in.
"If Frederick were anybody but Frederick," say I,
sinking into an arm-chair, and pulling out my knitting
like most failures, I'm fond of work "it would be con-
sidered rather risque of us two innocents, travelling about
the Continent with a young man in our train, even though
he is a clergyman."
"If Frederick," replies Lenore, contemptuously turn-
ing back to her contemplation of the place, and replacing
her gray-gingham elbows on the sill, " were to be caught
in the -most flagitious situation one can imagine, that
Simon-Pure face of his would carry him triumphantly
through. Who can connect the idea of immorality and
spectacles ? Talk of an angel, and you hear the rustle of
wings ; I hear Frederick's wings rustling through the
Porte St.-Louis, and, oh ! Jemima Jemima, quick ! come
here ! Who is it he has with him ? "
I jump up, as bidden I always do what Lenore bids
me, though I have the advantage, or rather disadvantage,
of her by ten years and look out.
"An Englishman, evidently," I say, sagaciously, "by
his beard ; nobody but Englishmen and oysters wear beards
nowadays."
"GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
"Is he going to bring him up here?" asks Lenore,
craning her neck out to look round the balcony of the cafe
next door, where, as usual, two fat men are smoking and
drinking coffee. " No ; I see him nodding ; he is saying
good-bye; how tiresome!" (with an accent of disappoint-
ment).
" You are as bad as the young lady in Nixon's ' Cheshire
Prophecy,' " say I, laughing : " ' Mother, mother, I have
seen a man ! ' '
Frederick enters alone, looking very hot in the rigorous
black of a priestly coat that grazes his heel, and the rigor-
ous black of a priestly waistcoat that almost salutes his
chin.
" Enter a pretty cockatoo ! " cries my sister, with an
insolent laugh, pointing the insult by indicating with her
forefinger the curly flourish of fine fair hair that surmounts
the young man's forehead and blue spectacles. "Pretty
cockatoo ! "
" You should not make personal remarks, Miss Leonora,"
answers Frederick, blushing.
" My name is not ' Leonora,' " retorts she, with a pout ;
"don't lengthen my two charming soft French syllables
into that great long English mouthful, * Leonora.' "
But Frederick is deeply diving into a pocket in the
hinder part of his raiment. Thence he apparently draws a
little bonbonnibre.
" I have brought you some chocolate, Miss Lenore ; that
that is why I called to-day. I I think I once heard you
say that you liked it."
" My dear cockatoo, I hate the sight of it ! " replies she,
gravely, with the utter and unconscious ingratitude of a
spoiled child. "I ate it every day and at every confec-
tioner's in Rouen last week ; now, if it had been a straw-
berry tart open, fresh strawberries ; but it is not give it
to Jemima."
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
" Never mind her, Mr. West," say I, it being my pleas-
ing life-task to mend the breaches made by Lenore in her
adorer's feelings I never having any breaches of my own
to mend "never mind her; but tell us who your new
friend is ; we have been on the qui vive ever since we saw
you parting so tenderly under the arch."
" Do you mean the man that came with me to-day as
far as the Porte ? " asks Frederick, who has sat down upon
the music-stool, and is turning slowly round and round, in
order to be able to follow with his spectacles Lenore into
whatever part of the little room her measured walk may
take her. " But, indeed, he is no friend of mine," he adds,
uneasily " no friend at all ; a mere acquaintance a col-
lege acquaintance."
" What is his name ? " inquire I, nibbling a stick of
Lenore's despised chocolate, and asking the question more
for the sake of something to say than from any particular
interest in the subject.
" Le Mesurier."
" Hem ! a good name, isn't it ? And what is he doing
here?"
" He is making a walking-tour through Brittany with a
friend ; the friend has gone for two or three days to stay
at the Marquis de Roubillon's chdteau near Dol, and Le
Mesurier is to wait for him here."
" Where is he staying at ? "
" The H6tel de la Poste."
" And why did not you bring him up here with you,
pray ? " asks Lenore, joining in the conversation, and
throwing herself indolently on the little hard horse-hair
sofa as she speaks.
"Because he would riot come," answers Frederick,
quickly, and I think I detect a glance of malicious triumph
in his voice.
8 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
Lenore reddens. " I dare say you never gave him the
chance."
" On the contrary, I said to him, ' I am going to make
a call on some ladies at Mdlle. Leroux's pension ; will
you come, too ? I do not doubt that they would be very
happy to make your acquaintance ; ' and he said stay, let
me think, I know he worded it very strongly ' Good God !
No ! one has enough of women in England.' "
" Interesting misogynist ! " says Lenore, ironically.
" What a sweet what a holy task it would be to bring
him to a healthier frame of mind ! "
" I don't really think he would suit you, Miss Lenore,"
says Frederick, nervously, making the music-stool squeak
painfully as he fidgets upon it ; " he has a way of saying
more coolly impertinent things to ladies, in a quiet way,
than any man I ever came across."
Lenore jumps up into a sitting posture, and a mischiev-
ous, tormenting look flashes into her laughing gray eyes.
" My dear Frederick, how you excite me ! After hear-
ing nothing but how charming I am, from you and such as
you, how refreshing to be told impertinent plain truths, in
a quiet way, too I like the quiet way, there's something
shy and contraband about it by a handsome woman-hater
I'm sure he must be handsome in a reddish beard ! "
" He is a man of any thing but a good character," says
Frederick, lowering his voice, as if the subject he was
broaching were one not fit for ladies' ears ; " at least, he
was not at Oxford."
Lenore springs to her feet.
"Frederick!" she says, impressively, "you have de-
cided me j I wish to see him ! "
" I don't quite see how, Lenore," say I, still nibbling.
" Magnificently as you always affect to despise the shackles
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
of conventionality, you can hardly force your acquaintance
upon a poor man who has distinctly declined it."
Lenore's two hands are clasped behind her back, as she
stands before us. Suddenly she stretches out one of them
to Frederick.
" I don't care," she says, with a little emphatic stamp ;
" I bet you half a crown that before nightfall I have seen
him ! "
" You know I never bet, Miss Lenore."
" Oh no ! of course not," drawing herself up very stiffly,
and affecting to button a high, double-breasted waistcoat ;
" sacred calling injurious example to flock, etc., etc."
" Never mind her," say I, recurring to my usual formula
of soothing ; " don't you know that ever since that un-
lucky attack of croup she had when she was a child, when
the doctor said she was not to be contradicted, and was to
do whatever she liked, that Lenore has never been fit to
speak to?"
" If you see Le Mesurier," says Frederick, not heeding
my blandishments, and getting rather pink with exaspera-
tion, " it will be against his will."
" Very likely, but I shall see him ! "
"He is always bored by the society of respectable
women ; he never makes any secret of it."
"What an uncharitable remark for a clergyman to
make ! Every amiable trait you mention heightens my
interest in him. "Well, I shall see him."
" Good-bye, Miss Herrick," cries Frederick, vaulting off
his stool, which at parting gives one last, worst valedic-
tory squeak, and picking up his soft dumpling hat " good-
bye, Miss Lenore ! "
" Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye," replies Lenore,
rhetorically. " If you are going to the H6tel de la Poste
do not, however, put yourself out of the way on my ac-
10 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART! "
count but if you are going there, you may tell our mutual
friend to expect me about four."
Two minutes later the front-door closes on Mr. West,
and I hear my sister running down- stairs, and calling
" Stephanie, Stephanie ! " at the top of her fresh, gay
voice. Stephanie is the Breton femme de chambre.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT THE AUTHOE SAYS.
LENOEE'S bed-room : over the papered walls, a design
of blue pea-flowers and giant asters, straggling quaintly,
yet prettily : a small bed in a little recess curtained off ; a
wash-hand basin as big as a broth-bowl, and a ewer as big
as a cream-jug ; a minute, dim looking-glass hung exactly
where it is impossible to get any thing more than a sugges-
tion of one's own face in it. Before this glass two women
are standing, Lenore and Stephanie ; the first is looking at
herself; the second is looking at the first. Lenore is no
longer an English lady; she is a Breton peasant. Her
waist is girt about with a heavy black woollen petticoat,
gathered into so many great folds at the back and sides as
to make her look as wide-hipped as the weather-beaten
countrywomen beside her ; a gay little purple shawl-hand-
kerchief pinned over her broad chest. Lenore is a fine
woman, not a chicken-breasted pretty slip of a girl ; and
on her head (from which the chignon has disappeared) she
is struggling, with dubious success, to arrange a head-dress
similar to that worn by Jier companion.
" Oh, que mademoiselle est adroite ! " cries the latter,
with the awful mendacity of a Frenchwoman, when any
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 11
contest between truth and civility is concerned ; standing,
with her hands on the broad hips that Nature or her petti-
coat-plaits have given her, looking on.
" Mademoiselle is not adroite at all," cries Lenore, im-
patiently, recklessly mingling together the Gothic and
Anglo-Saxon tongues. " Au contraire, she is very mala-
droite ; coiffezmoi, Stephanie, je vous en prie" sitting
down on a chair, and letting her handsome awkward hands
fall idle into her lap.
A Breton cap off is one thing it is merely a straight
piece of well-stiffened muslin or net ; on, it is quite a dif-
ferent matter. Stephanie having, for a space of about two
minutes, arranged, and pinned, and tied, bursts into a cas-
cade of shrill French laughter.
" Mon Dieu ! but mademoiselle has a droll air ! Made-
moiselle will pardon her ; but, dame, it makes one pdmer
derire!"
Lenore rises, and putting her face close to the dark mir-
ror, with its disfiguring side-lights, surveys her changed
countenance with eager solemnity. A little border of
nut-brown hair, emerging from the crisp white muslin ; the
broad, stiff lappets, turned up and back, and secured with
a pin on the crown, making a huge loop at each side of the
head. Why describe what every one knows that most
piquant of head-gears that the wise Breton peasantry have
not yet abandoned in favor of the mock lace and tawdry
cheap flowers of our own lower orders ?
" Je suis belle, n'est ce pas ? " she asks, a little doubt-
fully, peeping over her own shoulder at the grave round
beauty of her anxious peach-face.
" Oh, mademoiselle est belle a ravir ! Qa va a mer-
veille ; on ne pe.ut mieux, etc., etc."
" But my hands are too white," breaks in Lenore, stem-
ming the torrent of encomium. " What will you sell me
12 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
your nice red fingers for half an hour for ? Except on the
stage, too, I suppose a peasant-woman does not wear
rings " (slipping them off on the wash-hand-stand dress-
ing-table there is none). " Well " (with a parting glance),
" I think I am unrecognizable, am I not, Stephanie ? I
should not know myself if I met myself in a shop- window."
As she passes the salon door, Lenore peeps in. " Do
you know me, Jemima?" Jemima gives a great start, and
her knitting rolls down unheeded on the parquet :
"Why, Lenore, child, what have you been doing to
yourself ? What a fright you look ! Where are you
going?"
" To the Hotel de la Poste," answers Lenore, shutting
the door briskly, and running down-stairs very quickly to
avoid questions and remonstrances.
It is but a five-minutes* walk from Mdlle. Leroux's to the
Hotel de la Poste ; but in five minutes there is plenty of
time for courage to ooze out at fingers' ends. Lenore's
feet, which at first, despite her heavy peasant-boots, bore
her along quickly enough, subside into a very lagging walk.
Her bravery is considerably cooled by the time she reaches
her destination. An old shabby diligence is standing in
the street; on a bench, beside the hotel-door, three men in
blue blouses are sitting drinking cider ; in the door-way, a
disengaged garfon^ with a napkin under his arm.
" Est a que c'est ici 1'Hotel de la Poste ? " asks Lenore,
almost timidly, her question being rendered rather super-
fluous by the fact of the hotel bearing its name in yard-long
letters on its front.
"Oui, madame. Madame est Anglaise?" with a sur-
prised glance at her dress.
" Yes, madame is English. Is there much company
here now ? "
" Qa commence, madame."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 13
"Are there any of my compatriots staying here ?"
" There are several, madame a crowd, in fact."
" Did any of them arrive to-day ? "
"Two English messieurs arrived by the voiture from
Caulnes. If madame wishes, she can see their mattes qtfon
va monter" pointing inward to a heap of portmanteaus
and hat-boxes.
Madame enters and inspects them.
" And where is this monsieur ? " she asks, pointing with
her finger to a small and battered portmanteau, bearing
the name of " Paul le Mesurier, Esq.," in large white let-
ters upon it.
" That monsieur is in the salle / he has commanded some
cognac and a siphon."
As he speaks a second gargon emerges from the unseen,
bearing a small tray with the identical refreshments indi-
cated upon it. By a sudden impulse Lenore runs forward
to meet him.
" Would it be permitted," she asks, coloring furiously,
" for her to take that into the salle ? "
" Mais oui, madame, si c.a vous convient."
They both stare at her ; one laughs. If she had been
by herself now, at this last moment, she would have set
down the tray and fled ; but retreat is cut off by the first
gargon politely throwing open the salle-door. With trem-
bling knees and a galloping heart, Miss Lenore enters.
A long room and a long table laid for any number of
people ; bottles of vin ordinaire, napkins, covered dishes
full of emptiness, tooth-pick stands, pots of mangy hydran-
geas and geraniums down the middle ; a little clergyman
with falling shoulders that would not have disgraced a
woman or a champagne-bottle Frederick, in fact study-
ing an Indicateur in one of the windows. Another gentle-
man at the table, with the back of his head and a suspicion
14 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
of lion-colored beard emerging from the sheets of Gali-
gnani.
As noiselessly as her great clodhopping boots will per-
mit, Miss Herrick approaches the latter and deposits his
cognac at his elbow. But in so doing her hand trembles
so much that she knocks down a fork and spoon, which fall
with a clink on the floor. As she stoops to pick them up,
and as he lifts his eyes, rather irritated at the noise, their
glances meet. In Lenore's there is a mixture of expres-
sions : shame, defiance, and, above all, and before all, disap-
pointment ; for, after all, this interesting, woman-hating roue
is not handsome ; by no one but the mother who bore him
could he ever have been thought even good-looking. In
the stranger's look there is nothing but extreme surprise
nay, astonishment. Glad, despite herself, to have got off
so cheaply, Lenore is beating a hasty retreat, when Le
Mesurier's voice overtakes her.
" I say ! Marie ! Julie ! Marion ! Hi ! What the deuce
is the French for hi? Call her back, West. I have tried
all the names I know ; they are generally all Maries, but
she won't answer to that."
" Do you want any thing ? " asks Frederick, looking up
innocently from his Indicateur with that beamingly-be-
nevolent look that spectacles always give.
But his friend, excited by the pursuit of a pretty face,
has precipitated himself toward the door, which is left ajar,
and, passing quickly through it, finds himself face to face
with the object of his search, who, not having had presence
of mind to take refuge in flight, is standing there with her
empty tray red, guilty, and beautiful.
" West, West ! What's the French for * What is your
name ? ' Do they grow them like this here ? Because, if
so, we had better import a few. Comment vous appellez-
vous, ma ch^re f " trying to take her hand.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 15
"What do you mean?" cries the girl, in very good
English, snatching it away, totally forgetting her assumed
character, and looking daggers at the insolent wretch who
had dared to call her " ma chere"
"Are you English?" asks Le Mesurier, aghast, recoil-
ing a step or two, and his mouth opening in horror as the
thought of the admiring familiarities he has just been giv-
ing utterance to darts across his brain.
At the sound hardly credited of a too well-known
voice, Mr. West has thrown down his Indicateur, and
comes running to the scene of action.
"MissLenore!"
She looks up at him a dare-devil light in her eyes
resolute, now that the denouement has come, to brave it
out.
" Did monsieur call ? "
" Miss Lenore, are you mad? "
She stretches out her hand to him :
" Who was right ? I have won my half crown ; pay it
me."
Le Mesurier turns from one to the other in blank aston-
ishment :
" I say, West, what is it all about ; what is the joke ? "
" You had better ask this lady."
" There is no joke, none," says the girl, looking at him
archly, but growing crimson. " I came here to see you.
I put on this dress to avoid being recognized; I have
failed, that is all."
" To see me ! I am sure I am immensely nattered "
(looking excessively surprised, and biting his lips hard to
repress a broad smile) ; " but are you sure that you are not
mistaking me for some one else ? "
" It was not that I cared in the least to see you," she
says, frowning, and tears of shame rushing to her eyes.
16 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Of course not ; of course not ! " bowing.
" But when I say that I will do a thing, however fool-
ish, I always do it."
"An excellent rule to go through, life with," replies
he, gravely, still fighting with a laugh ; " but there are
difficulties sometimes in the way of putting it into practice,
are there not ? "
" Miss Lenore, Miss Lenore," says Frederick, the veins
in his forehead swelling, and all his little pink features
working with nervous vexation, " will you allow me to see
you home ? If we walk very fast it is not an hour when
there are many people about perhaps you will not be
recognized."
" I don't in the least care if I am recognized," answers
Lenore, stoutly. " I have done nothing to be ashamed of."
As she passes out, Le Mesurier holds open the door
and bows formally and solemnly ; and through the Place
Duguesclin and the Foss6 Miss Herrick carries the recol-
lection of a rather ugly tanned face, in which she conjec-
tures the contempt that does not appear carries away
with her also the pleasant consciousness of having made an
utter and unladylike fool of herself, without the poor conso-
lation of having done it amusingly.
" ' Girl of the Period ! ' " says Paul to himself, thrust-
ing his hands into his coat-pockets as he watches her de-
parture through the lowered Venetian blinds ; " after all,
the Saturday does not overcolor ; from all such, ' Good
Lord deliver us ! ' "
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 17
CHAPTER III.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
AT our pension we dine at six ; it is a small and select
establishment; at present it contains only two fami-
lies : la famille Lange, and la famille Hhreeck. We are
lafamille Erreeck. La famille Lange is French, as may
be imagined from its name. It consists of a mother, son,
and daughter. The mother is a handsome, black-haired
widow, mourning jovially for the four-months'-dead M.
Lange, in uncovered head and huge jet rosary. Mdlle.
Peroline deplores her papa, in white muslin, lilac ribbons,
and a wonderful mop of little frizzled curls and rolls. M.
Ce"sar is a youth with an eye-glass, which is forever drop-
ping out of his right eye a youth tall of stature, and
spotted like the pard. We are all dining together as soci-
ably as their total ignorance of our tongue, and our very
partial acquaintance with theirs, will permit. Through the
open window, in the still yellow evening, we hear plainly
the clump of sabots in the place ; the voices, as often as not
English or Irish for Dinan, as is well known, swarms with
both of the passers-by.
There are but few disadvantageous circumstances in this
world that have not also their advantageous side ; and the
fact of our being the only people in the house that under-
stand the English tongue, enables my sister and me to im-
part our opinions concerning the company and the viands
to each other with a freedom which, to a stranger entering
unacquainted with the posture of affairs, would seem start-
lingly candid.
" I wish they would let us have our potatoes with our
biftecfc, as they call it, instead of afterward and separate,
18 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
as a side-dish," say I, grumblingly, being hopelessly John-
Bullish in my culinary tastes.
" Look at this nasty fellow ! " rejoins Lenore, with a dis-
gusted intonation, directing my attention to her neighbor,
M. Ce"sar, who, with his napkin tucked under his chin, is
holding the bone of his mutton-cutlet in his hand, and
gnawing it. " Do you suppose, Mima, that French gentle-
men worry their food in such a cannibalish fashion, or is it
a manner and custom confined to bourgeois like these ? "
My reply is strangled in its birth by the unconscious
Madame Lange, who, interrupting for a moment her succu-
lent employment of chasing the gravy round her tilted
plate with a crust, inquires, with some volubility, whether
mademoiselle has made a promenade to-day ? Doubtlessly
mademoiselle has already visited Fontaine des Eaux, and
Lehon, and the Saint-Esprit an object, in fact, truly re-
markable?
My French never was my strong point, even in school-
days ; and the waste of many immense years that have
elapsed since my education was completed, has not tended
to make it stronger. I answer, stoutly :
" Non pas aujourdhui tres chaud ; " and look
piteously across to my junior for succor. But Lenore is
still disdainfully eying the innocent M. Ce"sar and his mut-
ton-bone.
" Mademoiselle is right ; there has been a chdleur epoic-
vantdble / in truth, she herself has been tres souffrante all
day ; she has had mal au cceur. My children, however,
C6sar and Pe"roline, have been to play at the croquet, with
the Demoiselles Smeet and the Demoiselles Ammeelton ;
Csar loves the croquet ; is it not so, my friend ? "
" Mais oui, maman ! "
I try to say in French that croquet is the best game
that ever was invented for bringing the two sexes together
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 19
trite and pedantic remark at best and, failing to make
myself understood, relapse into silence, feeling rather
small, and resolving henceforth for evermore to cleave to
the vulgar tongue. Lenore laughs malignantly, but does
not help me. M. Cesar, having eaten a huge strawberry-
mash, and more white-heart cherries than the rest of the
company put together, pushes back his chair, and requests
to be permitted to retire to make his toilet for a prome-
nade d ckeval.
On the occasion of M. Cesar's making a promenade d
cheval, we are all expected to group ourselves at the salon
windows to watch him, as, in lavender gloves and cream-
colored trousers, he caracoles a little, a Very little for M.
Cesar knows that discretion is the better part of valor
under our admiring eyes. His mamma, meanwhile, is wont
to retire into a corner of the room, cover her face with her
handkerchief, and cry.
As he passes by her now, she catches his hand : " Great
Heaven ! Cesar, take care that that wicked animal does
not overturn thee ! "
" Fear not, mamma/' replies Csar, doughtily. " I will
be careful."
" Imagine an Englishman contemplating the possibility
of parting company with his horse, while ambling along
the king's highway ! " says Lenore, scornfully. " Hush ! "
(with heightened color and brightened eyes) " is not that
the hall-door bell?"
She runs to the window and looks out.
c It is Frederick, of course, isn't it ? " I ask, finishing
my last cherry.
"Yes."
"Anybody with him?"
" Anybody with him ! of course not ! Who should
there be ? " replies my sister tartly, from which, being a
20 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
person of very superior intelligence, I concluded that
Lenore expected somebody. We go up to the salon to re-
ceive our guest, and Lenore, contrary to her usual custom,
runs to meet him with outstretched hand, and without any
of her usual insults to his hair, his gait, or his physique
generally.
" Well, Frederick ! " she cries, eagerly, and, as it seems
to me, expectantly.
" Well, Miss Lenore ! " replies Frederick, growing
purple to the ears, as he always does, when his idol flings
him a brace of careless words.
" Don't say * Well, Miss Lenore ! ' " retorts my sister,
angrily ; " it does irritate one so. Have you nothing to
say ? nothing to tell me ? "
" Nothing to tell you ? " echoes Frederick, bewildered,
and again lapsing into his former offence. " Why, it is
such a very short time since we parted, that it is not likely
I can have very much to relate."
Lenore turns away with an ill-tempered movement of
head and shoulder, and, walking to the window, looks
out. M. C6sar is kissing his lavender gloves repeatedly.
Madame Lange is screaming out shrill cautions to her son
not to be too audacious. Mdlle. Leroux an adorable old
creature, in yellow cap and luxuriant gray beard is wav-
ing her pocket-handkerchief, and crying, " Au revoir ! M.
Cesar, au revoir ! " Lenore does not appear to perceive
any of them.
" I suppose," says Mr. West, addressing me, but glan-
cing timidly toward the window. " that you have heard of
Miss Lenore's adventure ? I am really in hopes that we
shall be able to keep it quite quiet quite quiet. Le
Mesurier fortunately knows no one here, and we luckily
met no one but Mr. Stevens on our way home, and I don't
think he saw us."
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 21
" If lie did see us," says my sister, turning round her
face again, ornamented with a rather grim smile, " I would
not give much for your character in Dinan by to-morrow,
Frederick. You will be affiche all over the town as having
been parading about, in broad daylight, arm-in-arm with a
bonne. I asked you to give me your arm on purpose ; do
you know, Mima " (beginning to laugh), " we came tod-
dling along so affectionately, like a pair of cits out on a
Sunday afternoon ? "
" You forget that I saw you coming through the Porte,"
reply I, with severity ; " and indeed, Lenore, when next
you take it into your head to play a practical joke, I sin-
cerely hope that it may be a more amusing and less unlady-
like one."
" Why did you tell us your friend was handsome ? "
asks Lenore, abruptly, without paying the slightest atten-
tion to me.
" I did not say so, Miss Leonora ; you said so yourself ! "
" I said so myself 7 Why, how could I? I had seen
nothing but the back of his neck."
" You said you were sure he must be handsome."
" Well, the wisest of us are liable to error," replies my
sister, leaning her folded arms on the back of my chair, and
gazing calmly over my head at Mr. West. " In that case
I certainly erred egregiously ; he is hideous, ' laid a faire
peur,' as Mdlle. Peroline humorously remarked of you the
other day."
" In that case, Miss Leonora," replies Frederick, worked
up into something like spirit, as I am glad to perceive, by
her rudeness, " there does not seem to be very much love
lost between you ! "
Lenore blushes angrily. " Has he been expressing his
disapprobation of me to you ? " she asks quickly ; " is it
the last new thing in manners to abuse people to their
22 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
most intimate friends ? If so, commend me to the manner-
less sans-culottes"
" I wish you would not get into the habit, Lenore, of
loading your conversation with French phrases ; it reminds
me so much of the Journal des Demoiselles"
This I say in the weak effort to turn the conversation
into a new channel ; meanwhile I endeavor to signal " dan-
ger ! " to Mr. West, cough, and wave the white flag ; but,
as he is not looking at or thinking of me, it is all in vain.
"I don't think he had any idea that I was so much
atta , so intimate, I mean, with you and Miss Jemima, as
I am," replies Frederick, earnestly. " Indeed, Miss Lenore,
I must do him that justice."
" Who cares whether he has justice done him or not ? "
cries Lenore, impatiently ; " what did he say ? what did he
say ? "
" It really would not at all amuse you, Miss Lenore "
(nervously kneading his soft hat) ; " on the contrary, I am
afraid it would make you very angry."
"You may as well tell me at once," says my sister,
composedly sitting down on an arm-chair and folding her
hands in her lap, " because you shall never leave this room
alive, if you don't ! "
" Well, since you insist upon it please, Miss Jemima "
(turning piteously to me), " please, Miss Jemima, bear wit-
ness that it is not my fault that Miss Lenore has brought
it on herself he said I dare say he did not mean it that
that he could not have believed that any English lady
could have lowered herself to such an extent as to do such
a thing ! "
The blush on Lenore's face grows painful spreads even
to her soft, creamy throat.
" Oh, indeed ! Any thing more ? "
" He said," pursues Frederick, deceived by the appar-
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 23
ent quietness with which his hearer takes the unflattering
comments made upon her, " that if he had ever caught his
sister playing such a trick he would never have spoken to
her again as long as he lived."
" Oh, indeed ! what a loss for her ! Any thing more ? "
" He said he did not doubt that you were very good
fun, if one went in for that sort of thing, but that you were
not his style."
" Not his style ! am I not ? " cries Lenore, rising sud-
denly from her chair, quivering from head to foot with pas-
sion ; " and what is his style, pray ? Whatever it is, thank
Heaven that I am not like it ! Frederick, I wonder that
you are not ashamed to insult me by repeating such
speeches. Jemima" (turning eagerly to me), "you can
have no conception how ugly he is ; I only wish you could
see him. Little eyes like a pig's, and a huge nose, and
such a villanous expression ! What a fool I am to care
what he says ! I don't care it amuses me immensely
ha, ha ! Wretch ! I wish he was dead ! "
And to prove how little she cares, she bursts into a
tempest of tears, rushes out of the room, and bangs the
guiltless door behind her.
" There, Mr. West," say I, not without a certain sombre
triumph, " perhaps you will pay some attention to me next
time." And I rise with dignity, and, shaking out my
brown-holland dress, prepare to follow and comfort my
afflicted relative. As I reach the door I canon against
Madame Lange.
" Peroline, Proline ! where art thou, dear friend ?
come and try thy new body. Pardon, mademoiselle, a
thousand pardons ! "
24 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT LESTORE SAYS.
" To the day of my death I shall always hate Stephanie,"
says Lenore, lamentably, sitting leaning her elbows on the
little round table in the middle of her bedroom, having
broken off suddenly in the writing of a letter, to thrust
her hands in among her crisp, untidy hair, and give way to
a fit of angry despondence ; " if I had not seen her going
clacking about the house in that linsey petticoat and that
vile cap " (nodding her head to where the unlucky garments
are lying on her bed), " it never would have entered my
head to make a mountebank of myself."
" If I were you," I replied severely, in answer to this
jeremiad, " I should buy the whole suit from her, lay it up
by me, and look at it whenever I next felt inclined to make
a fool of myself."
" It would not do badly for a fancy ball," says Lenore,
with a sudden change of tone, from the lachrymose to the
lively, rising briskly from her chair, and walking toward
the bed ; " much more piquant than the everlasting Fires
and Waters, Nights and Days, Louis Quartorzes, and Marie
Stuarts, that one is so sick of ; I never yet knew a very
ugly woman go to a fancy ball that she did not go as Mary
Queen of Scots." An austere silence on my part. "I
have a good mind to try " (with considerable cheerfulness
of tone). "I must get Stephanie to give me lessons in
the art of arranging the cap. Let me see ; how did it go ?
It looked quite simple." Still, silence on my part. " One
thing is certain, one would be quite unique ; one would not
run the risk of meeting one's double."
" I should not have thought," say I, stiffly, unwilling
WHAT LENOEE SAYS. 25
that the wholesome lesson my sister has learned should so
soon be forgotten ; " I should not have thought that your
associations with that costume were so pleasant that you
would be in any hurry to put it on again."
She covers her face with her hands : " How brutal
of you to remind me of it, just when I had succeeded in
directing my thoughts from it for a moment ! " I say noth-
ing. " You know, Jemima, I had meant it to be just a
spirited little freak ; and it all fell so flat, so tame. Pah !
it is a thing that one could not think of without blushing,
if one were in a dark room by one's self, with the shutters
shut,"
" I should think not."
" Shall I ever forget," cried Leuore, drawing away her
hands from her crimson face, and clasping them together
" shall I ever forget my feelings, as Frederick and I
sneaked out together, and lie, held open the door so cere-
moniously for us ? If he had had any good feeling he
would have laughed, would not he, Mima ? If he had not
been a monster, he would have tried to look as if he
thought it a good joke, but he did not ; he was as grave
as grave as I am now, which is putting it as strongly as I
possibly can."
"Frederick told you that he hated respectable women,"
say I, gravely ; " so that his want of cordiality was, at
least, an indirect compliment," She stands with her eyes
moodily downcast, but does not answer. " He evidently
thought you respectable," I said, cheerfully " evidently ;
that,' at least, is a comfort, is not it ? I don't see how he
found it out ; it must have been intuition."
Neither does this thrust move her to speech. I begin a
fresh sentence. " Frederick said "
" Frederick ? " interrupts. Lenore, impatiently stamping,
and relieved at having found another object besides herself
2
26 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
to vent her rage on. " Little thought ! If he had never
been born, or if he had not been there, or if he had had
sense enough to hold his tongue, it would have all gone
off well enough, as I meant it : I should have seen Mr.
Le Mesurier not, Heaven knows " (with great contempt),
" that he is the least worth seeing and lie, " She pauses.
" Well, what about him ? "
She draws in her breath, and her eyes flash spitefully :
" If a wish could have killed him at that moment, as he
stood there bowing and sneering, and saying that he was
afraid there must be some mistake he knew as well as I
do that there was no mistake he would have been as
dead as a door-nail now ! " She stops, breathes hard, and
clinches, and again unclinches, her hand. " ' I'm sure I'm
immensely flattered. What is the joke next ? An excel-
lent plan, no doubt.' "
I hear her muttering over to herself these, as I conjec-
ture, fragmentary speeches of her new acquaintance, while
her cheeks grow ever more and more hotly red.
" Console yourself," I say, with vicarious philosophy.
" I imagine that he did not hear your name ; you were so
thoroughly disguised by your dress that he probably would
not recognize you if he met you ; and the world is wide
we shall hardly be so unlucky as to happen upon him
again."
" Do you think not ? " answers Lenore, with hardly so
much exhilaration of tone as might have been expected.
" I don't know about that. Brittany is not so very large,
and everybody goes to see the same places. His route
will be pretty sure to be the same as ours Morlaix, Quim-
per, Avray."
( We must hope to be either a few days before or a
few days behind him at each place. There is no use in
anticipating evils." A rather demurring silence. "Our
WHAT LENOEE 8 ATS. 27
great difficulty," I continue, cheerfully, " will be to avoid
him as long as he remains here; but we must find out
from Frederick every day in which direction he means to
walk or drive, and take care to walk or drive in the oppo-
site one."
" I shall do nothing of the kind ! " cries Lenore, quickly.
" You may please yourself. One's life would not be worth
having if it were spent in dodging a person about a tiny
place like this. As to meeting or not meeting, we must
trust to chance ; and, for my part, I should rather enjoy it
than otherwise."
" In that case," reply I, sarcastically, " I would call
again at the Hotel de la Poste. Next time I would go as
a garc,on ; it would be still more spirited."
" He could not have looked more scandalized than he
did even if I had," replies Lenore, bursting into a short
vexed laugh. " After all " brightening up a little
" when I think of the things I might have done, and did
not, the enormity of the thing I did dwindles surprisingly."
I shake my head dissentingly. " I only wish I could have
the chance of letting him know how direly disappointed I
was in him," says Lenore, viciously. " I wonder shall I
ever ? "
" I sincerely hope not."
" If I do, you may be sure I will not lose it," she says,
with an angry emphasis. "I know nothing that would
give me such pure, such lively pleasure."
This is on the day following Lenore's escapade. In
the evening, old Mdlle. Leroux gives a little party, accord-
ing to her lights. When we enter the salon, about half-
past seven, we find most of the company already assembled.
The piano is open (it is generally locked), and Mdlle. P6ro-
line, with her hair newly frizzed, and her muslin flounces
mightily goffered, is executing a surprising fantasia, where-
28 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
in the air loses itself perpetually in variations that seem to
have nothing to say to it, and reappears anon, when least
expected, like a train out of the Box Tunnel. Mdlle. Le-
roux, in a fresh burst of yellow ribbons, is in the act of
shutting the one open window. A youth with an unearth-
ly-deep voice, in bright purple kid gloves, and a vivid-green
tie, is turning over the leaves for P6roline. Round the
table are sitting five young girls, sisters English, certain-
ly ; insolvent, probably. They are of the usual type of
British dowdy red cheeks, hearty laughs, big flat waists.
Among them Jack among the Maids sits M. Cesar ; his
eye-glass is in his eye, and a piece of tapestry-work in his
hand. An English couple, and a French gentleman in
drab thread gloves, whose name never transpires, complete
the gathering. .Lenore, whom I have had great difficulty
in inducing to appear at all Lenore, who, if she is in a
company not congenial to her, or if she has nothing to say,
maintains that absolute silence which is unluckily tabooed
in society throws herself, after the first salutations and
presentations have been gone through, into a corner of the
sofa, and keeps her head bent directly over her work. I
draw a chair next to M. C6sar and the moderator lamp, and
ask him halting and ungrammatical French questions about
his Berlin wools. The fantasia comes to an end.
"Are you fond of music, M. Csar?" I ask, having
exhausted the subject of the wools.
" Yes, mademoiselle ; I love it passionately."
" Do you play or sing yourself ? "
" No, mademoiselle ; I draw."
" Ce'sar sketches from the Nature," says his mother,
coming up, laying her fat white hands on her son's shoul-
ders, and smiling in her plump debonnaire widowhood over
his head. " My child, show to Mdlle. Erreech that pretty
WHAT LENOEE SAYS. 29
little drawing that thou madest yesterday when thou went-
est on horseback with thy uncle to Corseul."
" But, mamma, it is but a bagatelle," replies Csar, with
proud humility. His modesty being overcome, the sketch-
book is produced.
" Is it not of a surprising resemblance ? " asks his pa-
rent, proudly smiling, and leaning forward in order to feast
her eyes.
" Monsieur has not yet perhaps quite finished it," I say,
hardly able to contain my laughter, as I examine, with ad-
miring gravity, the rolling trees, little wriggling black
shades, and houses utterly out of the perpendicular. M.
Cesar's mode of treating foliage is singularly wormy. Then,
seeing that I have not said what was expected of me, I
added, " A thousand thanks, monsieur ! It is, indeed, a
charming talent ! "
" But it is nothing ! " rejoins C6sar, with a bow and
deprecatory wave of the hand.
At this moment Stephanie enters, bearing a tray, and
thereon weak tea and sponge-cakes, supposed to be d
VAnglaise. As she hands these delicacies to me, she stoops
over me, and says, in a confidential half-whisper :
" There are two messieurs down stairs, come to make a
visit to mademoiselle."
" Two messieurs ! " cry I, surprised ; while the five
Misses Brown prick the attentive ear rarer than green
peas in January are resident men at Dinan " and who are
they, Stephanie?"
" One, mademoiselle, is the little gentleman who comes
nearly every day the little ministre Anglais with the
spectacles and the other, never, mademoiselle, have I seen
him before ; he is a tall, a very tall gentleman, with a great
red beard."
30 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
I look involuntarily across at my sister ; her head is
raised, her work is dropped she is listening.
" Very well," I say, with a sigh of impatience ; " if
Mdlle. Leroux will have the goodness to permit it, ask
them to walk up here."
As I speak I lay down the chip I am plaiting on the
table, and cross over to Lenore.
" Stephanie tells me " I begin.
" I know," she answers, briefly ; " I heard."
" And don't you think," continue I, with doubtful sug-
gestion, " that it would be better for you to be out of the
way while they are here they cannot stay long and it
can hardly be pleasant for you to meet that man ? "
"It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant," she answers,
doggedly. " I shall not stir ; not for the world would I
give him the satisfaction of thinking that I was ashamed to
face him."
In two minutes more they have entered Frederick
first, shyly smiling, small, and priestly ; and behind him, a
large, grave, and unpriestly stranger. When first the
brightness of the lit room smites his eyes, when first the
smell of hot tea and cakes assails his nose, when first the
clack of the many women's tongues French and English
attacks his ears, he shows an involuntary inclination to
turn and flee, but, overcomjpg the temptation, advances,
with the air of a martyr, to where we are sitting. Glad ot
the opportunity of gratifying my curiosity afforded by
Frederick's tremulous and deprecatory presentation, I look
up at him. So this is Le Mesurier ! Surely, surely, I
should never have known him, from my sister's angry de-
scription. His eyes are not large certainly, but I have
very frequently seen smaller. His nose, on the contrary, is
certainly not small, but I have very often seen larger. As
for the villanous expression she mentioned, if it is any-
WHAT LENORE SAYS. 31
where it must be about his mouth, which is lying perchance
under great plenty of tawny hair. He looks at me with
the cursory, superficial glance with which men always re-
gard me ; looks at me because I am standing opposite to
him because he has just been introduced to me not in
the least because he thinks me worth looking at, which in-
deed I am not. Lenore bows also, and, but for her utter
unsmilingness and her extreme rudeness, there would be
nothing differing in this from any ordinary introduction.
" In what country is it the mode to pay morning-calls
by moon-light ? " I hear her brusquely ask in a low voice
of Mr. West, who has seated himself 011 the sofa beside her.
" Indeed, Miss Lenore " (leaning his two hands on the
top of his green umbrella, and beaming wistfully at her
through the blue haze of his spectacles), " we did not mean
to have come in at all. I sent up a message to ask
whether your sister would be good enough to come down
and speak to me for a minute ; but you know I am not a
great adept in French, and I suppose the maid must have
mistaken my meaning."
" You might easily have corrected the blunder without
coming up," retorts my sister, ungraciously.
" Do you think so ? " asks Frederick, humbly. " Per-
haps ; but, indeed, it would have been difficult, you see :
old Mdlle. Leroux overheard something of it, and she came
down herself and I am sure she meant it most hospit-
ably but she, I may say, almost drove us up before her."
" And he ! " (glancing irefully in Mr. Le Mesurier's di-
rection, who, in bitter misery, and looking unspeakably
cross, is trying to make Madame Lange understand that he
does not comprehend one word of what she is saying to
him) " and he ! What brings him here ? It is execrable
taste, and I have a good mind to tell him so."
" Pray, pray don't ! " cries Frederick, eagerly ; " if
"GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
anybody were to blame, it was I. I asked him whether he
would mind walking with me as far as the Porte St. Louis.
and he said, ' Oh, no, not in the least.' He wanted to
have a cigar, and it was the same to him to walk in this
direction as in any other ; all he stipulated for was that he
should not have to go in" Lenore is still working ; she
gives her thread a vicious tug, which snaps it. "Indeed,
Miss Lenore, he had no more thought of seeking your ac-
quaintance than you of seeking his."
This mode of expression is unlucky, as he feels as soon
as it is out of his mouth ; but Lenore, fortunately, does not
seem to perceive it.
" He had no intention, then, of paying us the honor of
a visit?" cries Lenore, looking not much -appeased by the
information, but, on the contrary, rather more exasperated
than before.
"Not the least," replies Frederick, earnestly; "you
may reassure yourself on that head nothing was farther
from his thoughts."
" He has, then, a second time been forced into our com-
pany against his will," retorts the girl, with angry eyes.
"He is not fond of society," replies Frederick, eva-
sively ; " he says himself that he is totally unfit for it."
" There, at least, I have the happiness entirely to agree
with him," cries she, dryly.
Mr. Le Mesurier has at length succeeded in making
Madame Lange understand that hers are to him dark
sayings.
u Monsieur does not comprehend? A thousand par-
dons ; it is unfortunate, but I talk not the English. Pero-
line, my friend, thou hast learned the English when thou
wast at school ; come hither and talk to monsieur."
But Pe"roline shakes all her craped head.
" But no, mamma ; monsieur would but laugh at me ! "
WHAT LENOBE SAYS. 33
"Have you given your message, West?" asks Le
Mesurier, abruptly, joining his friend, and looking nearly
as much goaded to madness by the women's shrill clatter
as a mad bull by red cloth, " because, if so, I should say
we had better not intrude on these ladies any longer."
Thus reminded, Frederick comes over to impart his
errand to me, and Le Mesurier, having parried by dumb
show all old Mdlle. Leroux's offers of chair, sponge-cakes,
eau sucre, remains standing silently by Lenore.
" What is this message ? " she presently asks, abruptly,
not raising her eyes from her work, and seeming to address
her question rather to the air than to her neighbor.
" Something about a boat, I believe," replies he, for-
mally, his careless glance wandering away from her to
West, and his foot beginning to tap an impatient tattoo
on the floor.
" What about it ? " still more brusquely.
" Some fellow here of the name of Panache, or some-
thing like that, has lent him one, and he invites you and
your sister to have a row up the river to Lehon in it, to-
morrow."
" Oh ! I should have thought that errand might have
kept till the morning."
" So should I," he answers, dryly ; " so I told him."
A little silence.
" Does he want you to go, too ? " she asks, moved by
some sudden impulse, lifting her eyes and looking at him
hardily, yet shamefacedly.
" Me ! " (with surprise), " not that I am aware of."
" Oh ! " dropping her eyes again.
" Why do you ask ? "
" I had no particular motive " (nonchalantly). " I never
have a motive for any of my actions."
" Take a tea-kettle. Light our own fire ; there must
34 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
be plenty of sticks in those great chestnut-woods have
tea. What do you say, Lenore ? " cry I, anxious to inter-
rupt a ttte-d-ttte that must be so distressing to my sister.
" Charming ! " answers Lenore, ironically. " A fire
that one lights one's self never lights; the kettle invari-
ably topples over, and water of the river tastes of old iron ;
but what are such trifling drawbacks ? Let us go, by all
means ! "
CHAPTER V.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
A STEEP path, and steps cut on the hill's rough face,
from the blinding white high-road to the water's edge. A
beautiful brown river washing the feet of the granite
height, on which Dinan sits like a queen ; Dinan's walls,
and towers, and spires, looking down upon its lonely
Ranee. The Ranee, that a little lower down will go steal-
ing under the worn stone arches of the old bridge, and a
little higher up came flowing beneath the great viaduct,
that, with its ten giant arches, strides across the valley.
At the landing-place, a little narrow four-oar, with a sharp
nose, is lying, and around it four people talking.
" Of course, if you wish it, Lenore, we must go," I say,
resigned, but gloomy, as I stand beneath a huge buff sun-
shade, which casts a becoming yellow light on my interest-
ing face, clad in a dust-colored gown, and girt about the
waist with a leathern bag the impersonation of travelling
Englishwomen. " But, if we all get in, we shall inevita-
bly swamp it."
" It is only intended for three, really two to row and
one to steer," says Frederick, setting down a very large
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 35
basket, under which he has been staggering along all the
way from Mdlle. Leroux's. " But I thought that, perhaps,
if Miss Jemima did not mind, one of us the one that is
lightest Miss Jemima, for instance, might sit at the bot-
tom of the boat, on shawls, and cloaks, and so forth, in the
bows."
" It reminds one rather of Raphael's cartoon of ' The
Miraculous Draught of Fishes,' does not it ? " says Le Me-
urier (for he is the fourth person), laughing, as he jumps
into the little skiff, and deposits in it an immense stone jug
of claret-cup. " The proportion in size between the Apos-
tles and their boat is something like the present case.
Miss Herrick, if you are to sit in the bows, I'm afraid it will
have to be upon the claret-cup."
" Frederick ! " cries Lenore, from the lowest step, on
which she is sitting, lifting up calmly-commanding eyes,
and a little round cleft chin toward him; "suppose you
solve the difficulty! Suppose you walk; it is charming
along the towing-path ; no wind, no flies, no nothing ! "
" Of course, if you wish, Miss Lenore," looking rather
blank, and still panting from the effects of his wrestle with
the basket ; " but"
"You can add some more butterflies to your collection,"
continues my sister, in a wheedling voice. " I dare say
you have got your green gauze scissors in your pocket.
Do you know " (bringing the whole battery of her dimples
to bear upon Mr. Le Mesurier), "he catches butterflies
with a pair of green gauze scissors, and sticks pins in their
poor fat bodies ; how he reconciles it to his conscience and
his bishop I don't know, but I suppose, like fishing, it is a
form of cruelty purely clerical."
" It is rather hard to turn poor "West out of his own
boat, isn't it ? " replies Le Mesurier, looking down on my
sister more collectedly than men are in the habit of look-
36 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
ing ; nor, indeed, am I able to detect one grain of admira-
tion or approbation in his cold blue eyes. He looks at her
much as he looked at me. "I say, West, you weigh, I
regret to say, at least five stone less than I do ; you take
my place. I really and truly don't care a straw about it."
This last sentence, emphatically spoken, is intended for
an aside ; but I, who have a happy knack of overhearing
things that I am not meant to overhear, catch it. Freder-
ick's piece of information about his friend, "the society
of respectable women always bores him he makes no secret
of it," recurs to my mind. He is doing his best to shirk
two eminently respectable women at the present moment.
" Lenore ! " cry I, reddening, as I feel, under my yellow
umbrella; "let us row ourselves; we have, at all events,
got the mainstay of the entertainment the tea-kettle and
the claret-cup."
But Lenore frowns, and turns away.
" Perhaps, after all, I had better walk," says Frederick,
uncertainly, glancing with uneasiness toward my sister's
averted head. " Perhaps, after all, it is the best arrange-
ment."
"Just as you please, of course," replies Le Mesurier,
looking rather disappointed, while a little smile of con-
tempt plays about his mouth, and the half-inch of tanned
cheek that his beard leaves visible. Lenore rises.
" As soon as this amiable contention as to who should
show most alacrity in trying to avoid us is ended, perhaps
some one will help me in," she says, rather sharply, and
with a certain elevation in air of nose and chin. Le Mesu-
rier gives her his hand ; he does not rush forward to do so,
as most men would in her case ; does not tumble over his
own legs in his precipitancy, like poor Frederick ; only he
is standing nearest her, and therefore he gives it her.
" Put your foot exactly in the middle ; walk steadily ;
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 37
go to the stern ; you had better steer ! " he says shortly,
and rather austerely.
Half an hour afterward, Frederick and his green um-
brella are tramping disconsolately along the towing-path,
and we are being sculled up-stream by an unwilling gentle-
man, upon whom we have forced ourselves, and who is
longing to be rid of us. The sun pours down in broad
golden rain upon the blinding bright river. Through the
viaduct's great arches, towering up against the June sky,
we see heaven's sapphire eyes looking. The air is astir with
the winged families that live onl % f a day, but whose one day
is all joy. The sombre chestnut woods that darkly clothe
the steep slopes, run down to the river's side, as if hasten-
ing to drink ; white-capped women are kneeling by the edge,
washing linen and beating it viciously on stones with wood-
en shovels ; no wonder that there are jagged holes in one's
cotton gowns when they come home from the laundress.
Long blue dragon-flies sail slow and kingly among the flags
and flowering rushes that grow along the river that grow
again, the same, only wrong way up, in the vivid, clear
reflections. We are each of us rather silent, partly because
we are hot, partly because we are none of us in a very good
temper. Lenore leans over the side, and drags her bare
right hand through the water, making our little cockle-shell
lurch unpleasantly.
" You had better sit straight, Miss Herrick ; it takes
very little to destroy the equilibrium of this sort of boat,"
says Mr. Le Mesurier, rather dryly. Lenore does not ap-
pear to hear; she only leans a little farther over, and
admires her own slim fingers, that look unnaturally, lucidly
white, seen through the watery veil.
" For Heaven's sake, sit straight ! " cries he, a second
time, but much more energetically, as the gunwale of the
boat comes almost ~on a level with the water. Lenore draws
herself slowly up.
38 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Were you speaking to me ? " she asks, with provoking
coolness ; " how could I tell ? You said, * Sit straight, Miss
Herrick.' I am not Miss Herrick ! "
" Miss Lenore, then. I will call you what you please,
only for Heaven's sake sit still."
" I wonder you ever go in a boat, if you are so ner-
vous," says my sister, tartly.
" I am not nervous, as you call it, when I am with peo-
ple who behave rationally," replies he, coldly ; " but I
know that a mere touch will upset a boat of this kind, and
I also know that, if it did^upset, one of you two would in-
fallibly drown, for I could not possibly save you both."
" One of us ? Which of us ? " cries my sister, and I
see a mischievous devil come into her eyes as she begins
to laugh, and to rock violently from side to side, " I must
see which."
" Lenore ! Lenore ! " cry I, in an agony, clutching the
sides of the boat, " stop, for Heaven's sake ! I beg, I im-
plore. Lenore ! Lenore ! "
But all in vain. Lenore only laughs and rocks the
more. Mr. Le Mesurier says nothing, nor can I see the ex-
pression of his face, as I am sitting behind him ; he only
turns the boat's head toward shore, and half a dozen vigor-
ous strokes of the oar bring us swish through a great com-
pany of stiff bulrushes to land. Mr. Le Mesurier jumps
out.
" Miss Herrick," he says, gravely, " I shall be delighted
to row you home this evening, but as I cannot answer for
your life for five minutes, as long as your sister is in the
boat, I should be very much obliged if you would get out
now."
" Perhaps I was foolish," reply I, grasping my umbrella,
and scrambling out on the oxeyed bank, " but I have such
a horror of drowning."
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 39
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT THE AUTHOK SATS.
"Now, Miss Lenore, I am quite at your service," says
Le Mesurier, resuming his seat, taking the oar.s again, and
pushing out into mid-stream. Lenore hangs her head, and
dries her fingers with her pocket-handkerchief, but does
not answer. " It was no doubt very spirited of you, trying
to upset the boat, because your sister asked you not," con-
tinues he, sarcastically; " but as she did not seem to see it
in the same light, I thought that the kindest thing I could
do was to land her."
" Jemima is a coward," replies Lenore, pouting ; " the
only kind of boat she likes is a great broad-bottomed tub,
that one might play leap-frog in without upsetting."
" I should think it would be the pleasantest kind of
craft to go out boating with you in," rejoins he, with rather
a grim smile ; " but now, as I said before, I am quite at
your service; upset me as soon as ever the spirit moves
you."
"You give me carte blanche? "
" Carte Uanche!"
" But if I did upset the boat," says Lenore, half laugh-
ing, half vexed " I don't say that I am going but if I
did, your first care ought to be to pull me out."
"Ought it?"
" Oughtn't it ? "
" I don't know what it ought to be," replies Paul, pull-
ing leisurely along through the shining flood; "I know
what it would be."
"What?"
" To pull myself out."
40 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!
" You are like a man I heard of, who said one day to
another man out hunting, l Don't look behind, there are
two women in the ditch ; and if you look you'll have to
stop and pick them out.' "
"./"was the man."
Lenore laughs. " You would let me drown, then ? "
"Undoubtedly."
" Well, you are the only man in the world who could
sit there and tell me so to my face," cries the girl, angry
scintillations flashing from her superb eyes, and the ever-
ready color rushing headlong to her cheeks.
" If you were to upset the boat," replies Paul, calmly,
looking with intense disapprobation at his beautiful com-
panion, " I should know that it was yo'ur deliberate inten-
tion to commit suicide, and I hope I have better man-
ners than to run counter to any lady's plainly-expressed
wishes."
" I have a great mind to try," answers Lenore, looking
down into the clear brown depth, where her own image
lies, tremulous and shimmering, and then into Le Mesuri-
er's impassive face.
" Do. by all means ; only let me pull you a hundred
yards farther on. It is five or six feet deeper under those
poplars."
"After all, I think I won't," saj-s Lenore, naively, her
anger subsiding, as soon as she sees that it neither alarms
nor awes, nor even very much amuses him. " I don't know
how it is with other people, but, with me, the mere fact of
being given leave to do a thing, takes away all desire to
do it."
" From the little I know of your character, I should
imagine that you did not often wait to be given leave."
" Not very often," replies the girl, gravely, looking away
beyond him, to where, on the Ranee's right bank, Lehon
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 41
Abbey lifts its roofless walls and gray arches to the sky.
" Once, long ago, when I was little, I was very, very ill
I'm not over-strong now, though you would not think it to
look at me and the doctor said I was to have whatever
I asked for, for fear of bringing on a fit of coughing if I
screamed ; the consequence was that, if ever I wanted any
thing, I always threatened to break a blood-vessel, and
straightway got it."
"I should think that that threat had lost its efficacy
now," says Paul, looking incredulously at the girl's full,
womanly figure, and at the plump though slender dimpled
hand, that droops over the boat-side at the round cream-
white column of her proud throat.
" No, it has not," she answers, shaking her head ; " the
prestige of my delicacy still remains, though the fact no
longer exists, and I, of course, am careful to keep up a tra-
dition which tends so much to my own interest, as it ena-
bles me to have my own way in every thing."
" What a very bad thing for you ! " says Le Mesurier,
brusquely. " If I were your sister, I should set up a rival
blood-vessel."
" It would be no use," answers Lenore, laughing, and
swinging her broad straw hat to and fro. " Jemima is one
of those hopelessly healthy people who will live on, with-
out an ache or a pain, to a hundred, and then tumble down-
stairs or get run over by an omnibus, natural means having
proved utterly inadequate to kill her."
They are slowly sliding past Lehon, past the ivied
bridge, past the steps down to the waters, wherein the
Lehon monks used to bathe their holy, sleek bodies in the
by-gone summers, in the quick stream. Pious Sybarites,
who reconciled God and Mammon as never any one has
done since then !
" It would have been very different if papa had lived,"
42 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
continues Lenore, beginning to dabble again, unremon-
strated with this time. ; He used to make us get up at
five o'clock on winter mornings to go out walking by star-
light with him ; used to make us stand in a row before
him, with our hands behind our backs, to repeat the Cate-
chism ; and if we stumbled in our ' Duty to our Neighbor,'
or ' I desire ' Jemima always stuck fast in ' I desire '
made us hold our hands to be caned."
" What a thousand pities that he died ! " says Paul,
almost involuntarily, resting on his oars, and staring
straight from under his tilted hat at his vis-d-vis's face, his
keen eyes undazzled by all the pretty tints and harmonious
hues that feast them.
" Do you think so ? " cries Lenore, looking up from the
contemplation of her own face in the water. " Now, on
the contrary, I think it was such a mercy that he did. I
never feel tempted to question the wisdom of Providence's
decrees in that particular instance."
" What a truly filial sentiment ! "
" Don't look so shocked," answers the girl, beginning
to laugh again. " I was but five years old when he died,
and the only very clearly-defined association that I have
with him is the biting his hand one day, and being shut up
in the black-hole because I would not say I was sorry. I
was not sorry ; I never was sorry ; I am not sorry now."
" All the same, I still regret that he died."
"Why?"
" Every woman needs some one to keep her in order,"
replies he, gravely ,as if giving utterance to a sentiment
against which there can be no appeal. " Until she has got
a husband her natural and legitimate master she ought
to have a father."
" Natural and legitimate master ! " repeats Lenore,
scornfully, drawing up her long throat. " Did I hear
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 43
aright ? That would be the subjection of mind to matter,
instead of matter to mind."
" I can't say that I agree with you " (very dryly).
" There is not that man living that could keep me in
order ; I would break his heart, and his spirit, and every
thing breakable about him, first ! "
" I have no doubt that you would try."
"I should succeed. I have got papa's temper; they
all tell me so Jemima my other sister everybody"
(speaking very triumphantly).
" You say it as if it were matter for pride. It is as-
tonishing what things people pride themselves on. I be-
lieve there was once a family which piqued itself on hav-
ing two thumbs on each of its hands."
" I should pity the poor man who undertook to keep
me in order," says Lenore, folding her hands in her lap,
while delicious ripples of laughter play about her lips and
cheeks at the thought of the sufferings that await her fu-
ture owner.
" Of course, you never mean to marry ? "
" Of course, I do, though ! " (getting rather angry, and
coloring faintly). "Do you think I mean to be an old
maid ? "
" I think," replies Paul, bluntly, " that considering the
utter docility which with you would be a sine qud non in
a husband, you run a very good chance of being one."
Silence lor a few moments ; no sound but the " swish "
of the oars the cool wash of the water against the keel ;
then Lenore, resolute, womanlike, to have the last word,
recommences :
" Confess," she says, leaning forward toward him a
little, and emphasizing her remarks with her forefinger ;
"confess that there is not a more laughable, degrading
44 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
sight on the face of the earth than a woman in a state of
abject subjection to her husband ! "
" Confess," replies Paul, leaning forward a little also,
and also speaking with emphasis, " that there is not a
more contemptible, degrading sight on the face of the
earth than a man in a state of abject submission to his
wife!"
" You may laugh ! " cries Lenore, loftily, carrying her
head very high, and looking defiantly at him; "but I
maintain that there is not a more contemptible creature in
creation than a patient Grizzel ! "
" And I maintain," retorts Paul, looking back with
equal defiance, " that there is not a more pitiable reptile in
creation then a hen-pecked husband, if such a being ever
existed, which I have some difficulty in bringing myself to
believe."
They have both raised their voices a little in their eager-
ness. Three Englishwomen riding by on donkeys, their
draperies extending from head to tail over those ill-used
animals, turn their heads. M. Dunois, the barber's son,
taking his afternoon canter, on a big bay horse along the
towing-path, turns his also.
" The aborigines are astonished at our vehemence," says
Paul, recollecting himself; "and really," with a careless
laugh, " as we neither of us have at present a victim to test
our theories and wreak our cruelties upon, we need not
excite ourselves over it, need we ? "
Lenore's sole answer is a vivid blush, of whose birth
she herself could give no account.
" What on earth has come to the girl ? " Le Mesurier
says to himself, staring at her with the open, unconscious
stare of utter surprise; "alternately making very silly
remarks, and getting as red as a turkey-cock over them. I
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 45
wonder does she smoke ? As likely as not. Shall I ask
her ? At all events, I wish she would let me."
" How long are 3^011 going to stay at Dinan ? " inquires
Miss Lenore, presently, with an abrupt change of subject.
Paul shrugs his shoulders.
" God knows ! "
" What an unnecessarily forcible expression ! "
" Do you think so ? It is what the shopkeepers in one
part of Spain answer if you ask them whether they have
such and such wares in their shops ; they are too lazy to
look, so they say, ' God knows ! ' '
"Long, do you think?" pursues the girl, perseveringly,
not heeding his apocryphal little anecdote.
" Until my friend gets tired of his friend, M. de Rou-
billon's chateau, with all its absurd little turrets and
weathercocks, I suppose," replies Paul, being not entirely
free from an old-fashioned insular contempt for every thing
Gallic.
" What is your friend's name ? "
" Scrope."
"What is he like?"
"Oh, I don't know;" looking vaguely round at the
water the chestnut-trees the flags, for inspiration. " I'm
a very bad hand at describing ; he is much like everybody
else, I" suppose."
" Like yow, for instance," rather maliciously.
" Good Heavens ! no ; " breaking into a short laugh ;
" he would be flattered at the suggestion ! "
" You mean that he is good-looking ? "
" Oh ! yes ; he is all very well " (rather impatiently).
" And how soon do you imagine that he will be here ? "
" Oh ! in two or three days, I should hope."
" You should hope ! " with a little accent of pique
" you don't like Dinan, then ? "
46 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" It is all very well for France," replies Paul, magnifi-
cently ; " but it is rather like a penny bun a little of it
goes a long way."
Lenore bends down her small head, heavily laden with
great twists and curious plaits of crisp brown hair, and
ceases from her questionings. It is Le Mesurier's turn to
catechise.
" Are you so very proud of Dinan, then, Miss Herrick ?"
"We are fond of any place that is cheap," replies
Lenore, shortly. "Any place where mutton is sevenpence
a pound seems to us prettier and pleasanter than one where
it is tenpence."
" Oh, really ! " looking and feeling rather awkward,
and not exactly knowing how to take this manifestation of
unnecessary candor.
" We are real Bohemians, Jemima and I," pursues the
girl, resting on her hand her small downy face downy
with the wonderful bloom of life's beautiful red morning;
a bloom as transient and unreplaceable as the faint gray
dust on just-gathered grapes. " We pay our debts, but
otherwise we are quite Bohemians. We go and stay at
places out of the proper season ; we drive all over London
in omnibuses, and go down the Thames in penny steam-
boats, and do a hundred other uncivilized things. One
summer we spent at Boulogne; I liked that, Jemima
hated it."
" I dare say."
" Oh ! that etablissement ! " cries Lenore, clasping her
hands together in childish glee at the recollection, while
her speech trickles off into pretty low laughter. " What
fun it was ! and how happy all the wicked people looked !
Everybody walking about with somebody that did not
belong to them."
" No wonder you enjoyed yourself," replies Paul, sar-
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 47
castically, rather disgusted ; not, as I need hardly say, at
the fact related, but at the narrator.
" Look at Jemima gesticulating from the bank," cries
Lenore, happily ignorant of the emotion she has pro-
duced ; nor, indeed, is the idea that any one can be dis-
gusted with her very much prone to present itself to her
mind. " How eloquent an umbrella can be when wielded
by a cunning hand ! What a great deal Jemima's is say-
ing J"
"It is saying, 'Land!' I imagine, isn't it? Let us
land," replies Paul, with some alacrity, his thoughts turn-
ing more affectionately toward claret-cup than toward a
prolonged tZte-d-tcte with Lenore.
" Let us land," echoes the girl, with the slightest pos-
sible unintentional sigh.
CHAPTER VH.
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
THE flags and the thick green rushes make way for the
little boat; on either side they part, and through them
and over them she slides, smooth and slow, to shore.
" What have you done with my cockatoo ? " cries Le
nore, putting one little high-heeled shoe on the prow and
springing lightly to my side. " Have you mislaid him on
the way, or has a lily-white duck come and gobbled him
up?"
"Neither," reply I, rather morose at having been
defrauded of my water-party, " he is up in the wood pick-
ing sticks ; he has been gathering you a nosegay as big as
a coachman's on a drawing-rocm day, as we came along."
48 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" I wish I could break him of that habit," cries Lenore,
petulantly ; " it is a bore having to carry them, and a still
greater bore having to say ' Thank you ' for a great posy
of dandelions and buttercups."
" Poor West ! " says Le Mesurier, with a half-contemp-
tuous laugh ; " he shall give them to me ; I like dande-
lions."
" Oh, so do I," replies Lenore, quickly. " I'm wild about
flowers ; they are the only things that do not deceive us
as I once overheard a girl saying to her partner at a ball."
" We had better keep in sight of the boat," I say, with
my usual excellent common-sense, " or the Dinan gamins
will be sure to steal it."
" Have you been here long enough," asks Lenore, ad-
dressing Mr. Le Mesurier over the top of my head, " to
discover how cordially these interesting natives hate us
English ? Even abandoned infants of three and four throw
stones and ugly words at us, only luckily one does not
understand Breton Billingsgate."
" We spend a good deal of money in making ourselves
hated in every quarter of the globe ; it is a little way we
have," replies Le Mesurier, with languid interest, as he
stalks along, a martyr to circumstances, with a great stone
jug in one hand and a kettle in the other.
" It is too hard upon us poor out-at-elbows English you
must know we are all out-at-elbows here," continues Le-
nore " wasting our substance in clothing these Bretons
and giving them better food than their wretched galette,
and then getting pelted for our pains."
" One always gets pelted, literally or metaphorically,
when one tries to do one's neighbors good," replies Le
Mesurier, misanthropically ; " better leave it alone."
We have turned off from the towing-path, and into the
chestnut-wood. There is no undergrowth, nor do the trees
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 49
stand so close together but that there is pleasant space for
walking shadily beneath them. A little way ahead of us
we see a small gray smoke and little shoots of fire rising
straight upward through the windless air, and beside it,
Frederick on his knees, with his cheeks puffed out like a
trumpet-player or a wind-god's, blowing the flame.
" Here's devotion for you," cries Le Mesurier, laughing,
and indicating Mr. West with his kettle. " Poor West !
making himself into an improvised pair of bellows ! "
"Dame! as they say here, how ugly he is!" cries
Lenore, bursting out laughing.
" What base ingratitude ! " says Le Mesurier, casting
up his eyes theatrically to the chestnut-boughs ; " a man
ruins his trousers kneeling on damp grass, puts himself
into a ridiculous attitude, and runs the risk of getting con-
gestion of the lungs for you, and all you say is what was
it ? did I hear aright ? ' Damn ! how ugly he is.' "
"I said French Dame, not English," r.etorts Lenore,
still laughing ; " there is a very great difference in force
between the two."
" Dame is about equivalent to our ' Lor,' " I say, sen-
tentiously, " and I should imagine nearly as vulgar."
"One can use it with a pleasant arritre pensee of
swearing, you know," says my sister, " without the wick-
edness."
" I think that will do now," cries Frederick, looking
up at us with bland triumph from his kneeling posture, his
cheeks reddened -with the exertion of inflating them, and
his eyes watering from ihe smoke ; " the sticks were rather
greeiv"
" You looked an impersonation of Zephyr, as we came
along," answers Lenore, banteringly " didn't he ? Didn't
we say so, Mr. Le Mesurier ? "
" We did, all of us ; there was not a dissentient voice,"
3
50 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
replies Le Mesurier, inattentively, fighting with an immense
yawn, and his eyes fixed upon the stone jug.
" Will you run and fill the kettle ? Frederick must
make a nice flat place for it to sit upon," continues my
sister; "you know" (looking up at him with a sort of
sleepy coquetry from under her eyes) " that it was only on
the condition that you were useful that we allowed you to
come at all."
It may be my imagination, but I cannot help fancying
that our new acquaintance elevates his eyebrows almost
imperceptibly at this speech.
" I don't think that Mr. Le Mesurier would have broken
his heart if we had not let him come," I say tartly, in irri-
tated surprise at Lenore's want of perception. So speak-
ing, I kneel down, and with a chafed spirit begin to unpack
the basket and cut bread-and-butter. Lenore flings herself
down on the grass, and lying all along among the wood-
flowers, watches with a malicious smile Frederick, who has
begun again to blow his flagging fire. The three English
ladies on donkeys pass along the towing-path ; they turn
their blue-veiled heads toward our little encampment, and
stare. The youth, whose pleasing task it is to goad their
jackasses into fitful and momentary gallops, stands stock-
still, with wide hungry eyes fastened on the bread and
marmalade.
" Frederick has overblown himself," says Lenore, laugh-
ing ; " he has blown all his fire away. Mima, dear, you
must go and pick up some more sticks for him."
I am preparing to rise and obey with my usual tame
docility, when Mr. Le Mesurier, who has just returned
with his full, dripping kettle from the Ranee, interposes :
" Miss Lenore your name is Lenore, not Leonora, is
not it ? may I ask you one question ? "
" So as it is not how old I am, or whether my chignon
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 51
is all my own hair," replies Lenore, with a sort of uneasy
smartness.
" It is neither ; I don't want to know either," he an-
swers, gravely.
" What is it, then ? Say on," throwing her head back
a little, to be able to get a good look at him.
" Why do not you go and pick up sticks yourself, in-
stead of sending your elder sister ? "
" Elder sister ! " cry I, with a mirthless laugh. " Please
don't challenge respect for me on that head ; I had rather
be treated with contumely for evermore, than reverenced
for such a triste superiority."
" I do not go myself," replies Lenore, not listening to
me, but still looking steadily up at him, " because I make
it a rule never to do any thing for myself that I can get
any one else to do for me."
" Oh, indeed ! Thanks," turning away.
" I set no manner of store by those little every-day
virtues," continues Lenore, disdainfully thrusting out her
red under-lip ; " running on other people's errands, carry-
ing their parcels, ordering dinner, sitting with your back
to the horses any one can do them; they are a great
deal of trouble, and there is no credit to be got out of
them.
" Anybody cannot sit with his back to the horses, for it
makes some people sick," replies Le Mesurier, laughing.
He has thrown himself forward, full length on the
ground, in one of those carelessly-graceful attitudes that
the British gentleman affects ; his hat is on the back of his
head, and his feet are kicking about among the catchflys
and ragged-robins.
" Now if it were some big thing," continues my sister,
flushing, as she, having raised herself from the grass, leans
her back against a chestnut-trunk, " I could do it I know
62 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
I could; that is, if I had the chance, and if there were
plenty of people to look on."
" And cry ' Hooray ! ' like the little boys on Guy-Fawkes
day. Would you ladies mind my smoking one cigar?"
" I could have driven in the cart to the Place de la R6-
volution, like Madame Roland," continues Lenore, begin-
ning to march up and down, with her head up, and her
hands behind her back ; " standing up all the way, in a
white gown, with little red carnations on it, and my long
black hair hanging down my back ; I could have smiled
back at the yelling sans-culottes "
" I'm afraid you could not get guillotined nowadays if
you were to be shot for it," returns he, coolly, holding his
cigar suspended between his fore and middle fingers ; " it is
next door to impossible to get hanged."
" I could have stabbed Marat in his bath," pursues Le-
nore, clinching her hand upon an imaginary knife. " Yes,
stabbed him as he sat there, unshorn, sick, with a dirty cloth
about his head "
" I'm afraid if you stick Beales or Bradlaugh in their
tubs, you will only get ten years for it, commuted to two,
if you make love to the chaplain," replies Le Mesurier,
resolutely prosaic.
" I could have "
" You could have hammered Sisera's temples to the floor
or sawn off poor tipsy Holofernes's head," interrupts Mr.
Le Mesurier, rather impatiently cutting short my sister's
heroics. " I know what you are going to say ; perhaps you
could ; for my part, of all the characters known in history
or fiction, I dislike those two strong-minded females about
the most."
" I know exactly the kind of woman you like," says Le-
nore, stopping suddenly in her tramp, tramp, and looking
down with contemptuous pink face on her prostrate and
sprawling adversary.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 53
" I don't well see how you can," replies he, throwing
away the end of his cigar, and burying one hand in the
tawny beard. " You have never seen my womankind ; you
have never seen me with any woman."
" I did not even know that you had any womankind,"
she answers, a little inquisitively.
He does not gratify her curiosity.
" What is exactly the kind of woman I like ? " he asks,
raising his cold, quick eyes to hers.
"Amelia in 'Vanity Fair,'" she answers, promptly,
with a pretty air of triumph.
" I knew you were going to say that," he says, calmly.
" But it is true, is not it ? " inquires she, eagerly.
" Not in the least ; you never made a worse hit in your
life."
" She was dollishly pretty ; she cried on every possible
occasion ; she allowed everybody who came near to bully
her ; she had not two ideas in her head. With all these
qualifications, how could she fail to be charming ? " inquires
my sister, with -withering sarcasm.
" I like her better than Jael," says Le Mesurier, dog-
gedly.
" So do I," cry I, tired of keeping silence, and clattering
the teacups.
"What is your opinion, West?" asks Le Mesurier, try-
ing to extract the cork from the claret-jug with his fingers.
" I say, is there a corkscrew anywhere about ? Which is
your beau ideal of feminine excellence Heber the Kenite's
amiable wife or Amelia Osborne ? "
" Frederick has no beau ideal of feminine excellence,"
answers Lenore for him, with an ironical smile ; " he hardly
knows a woman when he sees one ; his bride is the Church.
Let us come to tea; the steam is beginning to lift the ket-
tle's hat off at last."
54 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
As I have before remarked, the dinner-hour at Mdlle.
Leroux's pension is six o'clock ; so it is at the Hotel de la
Poste ; indeed, the great event of the day happens through-
out Dinan at the same hour. To avoid, therefore, losing
our daily portion of ragged beef, raw artichokes, and tripe
(as half-past five has already come chiming through the
chestnut-boughs from the town-clock), we are compelled
rather to hurry up the conclusion of our al-fresco feast.
We give the rest of our French roll-and-butter, and the
remainder of our tea (which, thanks to the Ranee and Fred-
erick, has an agreeably mixed medicinal flavor of old iron,
alluvial deposit, and smoke), to the donkey-boy aforemen-
tioned, who, careless of his fair charges, and leaving them
to the wild wilt of their asses, has been haunting us as a
young vulture haunts a battle-field. We stand on the flow-
ered bank, prepared to reembark. The boat lies so still, so
still on the windless tide, like a young child asleep in the
sun ; near the other bank a man, naked to the waist, is
standing up to his middle in water, pulling bundles of rot-
ten, ill-odorous flax out of the river.
" I shall take an oar going home," says Lenore, with
decision. " I can row."
" Please don't," cry I, nervously ; " you know you ai-
ways catch crabs, and the last time that we went out boat-
ing on the Seine, at Rouen, you caught such a big one that
you tumbled backward over the seat and all but upset us."
" The oars were too short," she answers, looking dis-
pleased at this allusion ; " it might have happened to any
one."
" One crab will be fatal to us to-day," says Le Mesurier,
laconically, as he stands holding the boat's head steady for
us to get in.
" If people will make boats no wider than knife-blades
or paper-cutters they cannot blame me if they upset," re-
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 55
turns she, carelessly, giving him her hand and preparing to
step in. To my surprise I might almost say alarm by
the very hand she gives him he detains her.
" Miss Lenore, if you get in will you promise to sit
still?"
" I never promise," she answers, lightly, leaving her
hand peaceably in his. " When I was a child I never
would promise to be a good girl, because I knew I never
should be."
" If you will not promise, you really must not get in."
" Must not ! " cries she, giving her head an angry toss.
" Who says must not f Must not is an ugly word."
" Not so ugly as must in a woman's mouth," getting
rather angry, too.
" May I ask whose boat this is ? " loftily.
" I think you said M Panache was the name of the fel-
low ; but I am not a good hand at French surnames."
"If it is M. Panache's boat, what right or authority
have you over it, may I ask ? "
" None whatever," he answers, quietly, " except pos-
session, and that is nine points of the law."
" Did he lend it to you ? "
" On the other hand, did he lend it to you f "
" Mr. Le Mesurier, I'm not joking."
" Miss Lenore, Pm not joking."
" What business can it be of yours ? "
" I do not wish to see your sister drowned," with an in-
vidiously-perceptible accent on the two words.
" You do not care whether I drown or not?" snatching
away her hand, and flashing annihilating looks at him.
They do not seem to do him much harm.
* We discussed that question fully before," he answers,
rather bored.
"Please promise, like a dear child," cry I, coaxingly,
56 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
from the bows, where I am seated uneasily under my yel-
low umbrella.
" Be rational," says Le Mesurier, looking at her gravely,
yet with a suspicion of laughter about the eyes. " I prom-
ised to row your sister home ; is not it only natural and
Christian that I should wish to spare her the abject terror
she suffered this afternoon ? "
" I will not promise," says Lenore, doggedly, and
breathing hard. " I will not be dictated to by a stranger.
I will walk home."
So saying, she turns sharply away, and begins to walk
quickly down the glaring, sun-baked towing-path.
" Mr. Le Mesurier, Mr. Le Mesurier ! " cry I, jumping
up, and almost bringing on the catastrophe about which we
have been squabbling ; " let her have her own way. She
has never been thwarted in her life ; we have always let
her have her own will from a child ! "
" For fear that she would break a blood-vessel if she
had not," replies he, smiling. " She told me so as we
came along. Miss Lenore," rising his voice a little.
" Miss Lenore ! we throw ourselves on your mercy."
" Come back, come back," cry I, excitedly, shaking my
umbrella ; " you will get a sunstroke ! "
But Lenore is too indignant to answer.
CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
THE blandness born of after-dinnerhood is upon all Di-
nan ; everybody is as suave as fed lions ; a child might
play with them. The moon is holding her great yellow
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 57
candle above the town, and ugly black night skulks away
in corners. On the other side of the Place St. Louis, the
old priest is sitting at the bottom of his garden, reading
his breviary by moonlight. His white house's green shut-
ters, that have been closed all day to keep out the dust and
glare, are just opened to let in the evening cool. The mys-
terious family in the large yellow house a little lower down,
who always go out driving in a ramshackle, old, close car-
riage, with all the windows up, about sundown, are setting
off on. their nightly expedition. The immense shadows of
their horses are running up the face of the Pension Leroux ;
the heads and ears reach to the salon windows. Madame
Lange, Cesar, and Peoline, are out. They have gone faire
de la musique chez M. le Capitaine O^Flannigan^ a broken-
down Irishman, who tells the credulous natives that he has
been in the Guards, and who, with his numerous progeny,
lives in the graceful retirement of an entresol in the Rue
de St.-Malo. The Herricks are therefore in undisputed
possession of the salon. The piano belongs to Madame
Lange, and she mostly locks it when she goes out. She
has forgotten to do so to-day, and Frederick is committing
piracies upon it. Like most little men with small, puny
voices, he is fond of ferociously warlike and rollicking Bac-
chanalian songs, on the same principle, I suppose, which
often induces a Hercules or a Samson to express in music
his wish to be a butterfly
" In his love's bosom for to lie "
or a daisy, or a swallow. Frederick has just been giving
faint utterance to heathenish berserker sentiments, such as
that to fight all day and drink all night are the only occupa-
tions really worthy a Christian gentlemen's attention ; and
now, leaning forward on the music-stool, and peering near-
sightedly through his spectacles at the score, he is piping
68 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Soho ! soho ! said the bold Marco ! "
Mr. Le Mesurier he is here, too ; it is a few days after the
tea-picnic is leaning out of the window, smiling to him-
self, and whistling inaudible accompaniments to the singer.
He is not gigantic enough to wish to be a butterfly, and
too big to insist upon being a buccaneer. So he does not
sing at all. Jemima is smiling, too, and beating time with
head and foot, as she knits. Lenore is not in the room at
all ; she is sitting on the frontdoor step, rather to the dis-
gust of Stephanie, whose favorite seat it is, where she sits
and chatters rough guttural Breton to her neighbors, in a
clean stiff-winged cap, when her hard day's work is done.
Lenore is chatting to nobody ; she is only staring at the
moon.
" Does your sister sing ? " asked Le Mesurier, turning
away from the window.
" Yes ; rather well when she chooses" replies Jemima,
rhythmically, still nodding time.
" Would she sing now, if one asked her ? "
" Probably not ; but I can but try. Lenore ! Lenore ! "
(going to the window and looking down). " Come in out
of the damp, child ; you'll catch your death of cold."
" Never did such a thing in my life, my dear."
" What are you doing ? "
" Only baying at the moon, as Mademoiselle Leroux's
poodle did last night."
" Come up here and sing."
" Could not think of superseding the present able per-
formers."
" He has stopped," puts in Paul, leaning his arms on
the sill, and craning his brown neck out. " He is exhaust-
ed. The bold Marco takes a great deal out of a fellow
does not he, West?"
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 59
As he speaks, he turns away again, laughing, and, so
laughing, forgets the request, about which he had never
been much in earnest. A quarter of an hour passes.
Frederick is still singing ; the billiard-balls' gentle click
from the cafe next door mixes with his voice.
" Lenore ! Lenore ! " cries Jemima, rising, knitting in
hand, and leaning a second time out of the wide case-
ment.
" ' Onora ! Onora ! her mother is calling.
She sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling,
Drop after drop from the sycamores, laden
With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden.
Night cometh, Onora ' "
says Le Mesurier, spouting. " Onora, alias Miss Lenore,
went down the place toward the fosse five minutes ago."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"In that demi-toilette gown?" (with a horrified ac-
cent).
" Was it a demi-toilette gown ? " asks Paul, with the
crass ignorance of mankind.
" I mean without any shawl, or wrap, or cloak of any
kind ? "
" She went just as she was when she was sitting on
the door-step."
" Let me run and bring her back ! " cries West, eagerly,
jumping up and snatching his hat, prepared to rush forth
on his quest with devouter haste than ever Sir Galahad
showed in the pursuit of the Holy Grail.
" Oh, you know she never pays the slightest attention
to you," answers Jemima, a little impatiently, forgetting
her politeness in agitation, " nor to me either, for the mat-
ter of that Mr. Le Mesurier, I think she minds you more
60 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
than most people I don't know why would you mind
trying to persuade her to come in out of the dew ? "
" Delighted ! " says Le Mesurier, with a ready lie, walk-
ing toward the door ; " and, if fair means fail, am I to em-
ploy foul?"
Lenore is not in the fosse. The gray towers of Duch-
esse Anne's castle rise beside it like a faint, dark dream,
black as Erebus, quiet as death ; the tree-boughs spread
above him ; beneath them, on a black-and-silver path, he
walks along walks along slowly, enjoying his cigarette,
and in no particular hurry to overtake his Holy Grail. On
and on to the Place du Guesclin, and there, a long way
from him, he sees the white glimmer of a woman's dress.
He walks up to the glimmer : he has found his Holy Grail.
" Your sister sent me to ask you to come in out of the
dew," he says, rather stiffly, and delivering his message with
the exactitude of an Homeric messenger. He has come
up rather behind her ; she did not perceive his approach.
" Tell my sister to mind her own business ! " she cries,
startled and angry.
" I suppose she thinks that you are her own business,"
he answers, coldly.
" At all events, I am not yours" she says, rudely, yet
laughing.
Without another word, he turns to go.
" Let her catch her death of cold ! No great loss if she
does ! " he says to himself, beginning to light a second
cigarette. He has not gone three yards, when he hears a
step behind him. A charming face, with little waves of
moonlight rippling over it, smiles up at him.
" Why are you going ? " she asks, in a low voice, as if
saying something she was half ashamed of.
" I am not a spaniel, or a Frederick West."
" I was rude, I suppose " (hanging her head).
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 61
No answer.
" I often am, I fancy."
" Very often " (emphatically).
" It is my way."
" It is a very bad way."
" I do not think it is quite all my fault either," she
says, almost humbly ; " it is partly theirs I mean Mima's
and Frederick's, and my other sister's. When I was a
child, if I said any thing rude, they only laughed, and
thought it clever. I wish they had not, now."
" So do I."
" It makes people hate one a good deal," says the girl,
naively. " This year we went to a ball that the Fifth Dra-
goon Guards gave, and several of them did not ask me to
dance once, because I had said things about them. I told
one that he was like a pig set up on his hind-legs. So he
was ; but he never came near me all the evening in conse-
quence."
" Poor fellow ! " says Le Mesurier, laughing. " You
could hardly blame him."
" You are not angry now you are laughing ! " cries
Lenore, joyously. " Tell me " coming confidentially close
to him " is the bold Marco still saying ' Soho ? ' "
" He was when I left."
" Do not let us go home, then ; let us sit on this bench
and talk."
So they sit on a bench with a back to it, in the deep
shade cast by a double row of young lime-trees. The
heavy, sweet lime-flowers sway above their heads sway
so low as almost to touch their lips and cheeks. The lights
from the cafe" arid the Hotel de la Poste opposite make lit-
tle red reflections on their clothes and faces. Three Eng-
lishmen are coming back from fishing, with rod and basket
in their hands two very tall Englishmen, an$ a very little
62 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
one. At something that the little one says, they all laugh
uproariously. It seems a sin to speak above one's breath
in this holy moonshine. Two Frenchmen and three women
saunter by in the deep shade ; it takes a little effort to
count how many there are. Whether they are old or
young, pretty or ugly, who but a bat can tell in this fra-
grant gloom ?
" What are you thinking of, Miss Lenore ? " asks Paul,
presently, peering a little inquisitively into his companion's
face, as she gazes at the stars that are trembling like heav-
enly shining fruits between the dusk tree-boughs.
"I am thinking," she answers, a little dreamily, "of
how the Ranee is looking now, at this minute, down at
Lehon, as it laps against those ivied steps where the monks
used to bathe."
" Shall I row you down there to see ? " he asks, banter-
ingly. She springs to her feet in a moment.
" Will you ? Do you mean really f " she cries, eagerly.
"Ah, no ! " (her voice falling with a disappointed cadence).
" I see by your eyes that you did not mean it that you
were only tantalizing me."
He feels her thin draperies wafted against his knees in
the slow night-wind, as she stands before him ; the breath
of the lime-flowers comes passing sweet to his nostrils. It
is all but dark.
" I did not mean to tantalize you," he answers, simply.
" I will take you, and welcome, if you wish ; only what
will your sister say ? "
" She will say, ' Lenore, are you mad ? ' She always
says that. Perhaps I am mad ; I sometimes think so."
" But what time of night is it, do you suppose ? Is not
it nearly bedtime?" he asks, taking out his watch, and
trying to decipher the hour by the little crimson gleams
from the cafe.
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SATS. 63
" Bedtime ! " she cries, impatiently. " I feel as if I
shall like never to go to bed again as long as I live."
" ' What has night to do with sleep ? ' "
" All right, then come along," says he, recklessly, see-
ing that he is in for it, and that it is not his business to find
his companion in prudish , scruples, which do not seem in-
clined to occur to her. A quarter of an hour more, and no
woman's dress glimmers white from the shaded bench in
the Place du Guesclin ; it is glimmering, instead, in M.
Panache's little cockboat on the broad, bright, Ranee.
Death's lovely brother, Sleep, is ruling over every thing ;
even the river sleeps, and no passing breeze breaks its
slumber. The moon comes up behind the chestnut-woods,
and the water lies smooth as glass ; while the trees, and
the tremulous grasses, and the great squadron of broad ox-
eyes yellow sun-disks with white rays round them live
again in the black depths, where the moon also lies drowned,
like a pale, bright maiden. They are floating along so stilly,
so stilly, on the opaline flood ! The little boat hardly
moves. Lenore is sitting iji the stern. The red cloak
Paul brought her is drooping from her shoulders ; pearly
lights are playing about her hair, and her grave, fair face,
and her wonderful eyes.
" If one were fond of her, one would be in the seventh
heaven, I suppose," says Paul, cynically to himself. But
even though one is not fond of her even though one dis-
approves of her even though she is not one's style yet
flesh is weak, and blood is blood ; and in cool manhood, as
in hot youth, blood still tingles, and pulses throb, with the
seductive enervation of night, proximity, and great fairness.
" Shall I sing ? " asks the girl, almost in a whisper
" ' Sing ! sing ! what will I sing ?
The cat ran away with the pudding-bag string.' "
64 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" By all means, if you like."
"What shall I sing, really? English, French, Ger-
man, Italian "
"Whatever you please. The smallest contribution
thankfully received."
She leans her round white elbow on her lap for a moment
or two, and her head on her hand, in reflection ; then the
pensive look fades out of her face, and a dare-devil smile
flashes over it.
" You are a civilian, are not you ? " she asks abruptly.
"I am now. Why?"
" You cannot take my song personally, that is all. Lis-
ten ; I am beginning."
This is Lenore's song, as it rings gayly out over the
dumb woods and waters. Most of you, my young friends,
know it well enough :
" Oh que j'aime les militaires !
J'aime les militaires ;
J'aime leur uniforme coquet,
Leur moustache et leur plumet.
Je sais ce que Je youdrais.
Je voudrais etre cantiniere.
Avec eux toujours je serais,
Et je les griserais.
Pres d'eux, vaillante et 16g&re
Aux combats je m'elancerais "
She breaks off abruptly.
" Do you like it ? "
" Immensely."
" That means, not at all."
" It is a song that I was always particularly fond of,
and I think the line in which you express your intention
of making your friends drunk peculiarly happy," he an-
swers, ironically.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 65
She looks down, half-ashamed.
" The ideal woman would not have sung such a song, I
suppose ? "
" Probably not."
" Tell me," she cries, impulsively, " is the ideal woman
clothed with flesh ? "
" What do you mean ? "
" Is she some living, breathing woman, that you have
in your mind's eye ? "
He hesitates a little, and also reddens unless the moon
belies him a very little.
" Since you ask me point-blank well, she is."
The girl turns her fair head aside, and droops it over
the stream, through which she draws her hand listlessly.
" Tell me what she is like ; I wish to know," she says
presently, very softly.
Silence for a few minutes ; then Paul begins :
" She is not at all clever of the two, I think, she is
rather dull. She does not say much, but she always thinks
before she speaks."
" What an intolerable prig she must be ! "
" She talks about things, not people. She is very lov-
ing-"
" Pooh ! " interrupts Lenore, contemptuously. " What
woman is not ? It is our besetting sin. What a list of
attractions ! But tell me tell me, is she handsome as
handsome as as as I am ? " she ends, laughing con-
fusedly, and growing scarlet.
The water falls drip, drip, in long, lazy drops, from the
idle oars.
" Are you handsome ? " he asks, gravely not with im-
pertinence, but as though wishing for information and, so
asking, looks at her long and steadily in the moonlight a
familiarity of which she cannot complain, as she has brought
66 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
it on herself. " Well, yes " (drawing his breath rather
hard), " I suppose you are."
She laughs again, but constrainedly.
" But waiving the question of my beauty is she hand-
some pretty ? "
" I do not know," he answered, slowly. " Some one
asked me that question the other day, and I said I did not
know. I do not."
Lenore leans back in the stern, with the rudder-string
in her hand.
"Describe her to me. I will tell you in a moment
whether she is or not."
He stares absently over her head, at the viaduct, strid-
ing gigantic across the valley at the town, with its house-
roofs white as silver sheets in the moonshine.
" She is small," he begins, slowly, " very small ! not
more than five foot one, and thin rather too thin, per-
haps," his eyes resting, as he speaks, for an instant, with
reluctant admiration on the superbly-developed figure of
his vis-d-vis. " Her eyes are " he stops short, in want
of an epithet.
" Bright ! " suggests Lenore.
" Bright ! No ! " cries he, energetically repelling her
suggestion w r ith scorn. " I hate your bright eyes. They
always look metallic ; hers look at you as if they were look-
ing through a mist, and they have a dark, shady hue under
them."
" Belladonna ! " suggests Lenore again, with supercil-
ious brevity.
" Some one said to me the other day that they were
like the eyes of a shot partridge," he continued, not heed-
ing her ; " so they are."
" What a lackadaisical, dying-duck sort of idea ! "
" She is pale as pale as as as a lily ! " he coutin-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 67
ued, unable to find a new white simile. " That clear yet
opaque look "
" Like a hard-boiled egg ! " interrupts Lenore, scorn-
fully.
" Not in the least like a hard-boiled egg ! " retorts he,
nettled, and the river of his eloquence suddenly dried.
" I do not know whether you are aware of it," says the
girl, with a heightened color, " but you have described a
person in every respect the exact opposite of me."
He gives a half smile.
" Have I ? I apologize. I really was not aware of it.
I only did as you bade me."
He pulls a few yards further on ; no sound but the oars
turning in the rowlocks the plash, plash, of the smitten
water. Lehon Abbey lifts roofless gables to the mighty
sky, and Lehon Castle its round dim towers, whence never
a knight will look again. The water-fairies have been sup-
ping on the river to-night : they have left their rare white
water-lily cups and broad green platters behind them.
" Stop rowing," cries Lenore, imperiously, " I want to
gather some of those lilies."
He obeys. Motionless they lie among the great round
leaves and white chalices. She leans back over the stern,
and pulls with her strong, white hands at the tough, long
stalks.
" What will you do with them ? " asks Le Mesurier, in-
dolently, his unwilling eyes taking in the lazy grace of the
half-recumbent form, of the large, white, outstretched arm,
at which a happy moonbean is catching ; " they have not
at all a nice smell in water faint and sickly they will
only die."
No answer.
" What do you want with them ? " he asks, rising, he
does not know why, and stepping over the little seat that
intervenes between them.
68 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" You will see," she answers, briefly.
They are so wet so wet, as they lie in her lap. He
watches her as she dries one dripping bud with her pocket-
handkerchief, and then, with quick, deft fingers, places it
closed and sleepy in her hair.
" Do you like it ? " she asks, in a half whisper, raising
her eyes to his, with a slow, bright smile.
How still it is ! Not a sound ; every thing is asleep ;
only the wakeful moon sees his cold, quick eyes flash. He
would have laughed this morning, if you had told him that
Lenore Herrick could make his heart beat as it is beating
now.
" What would you have me say ? " he answers, in the
same key in which she spoke. " If I did not like it, would
you have me tell you so ? "
" Yes."
" I do like it," he says, half angrily ; " you know I do ;
you knew I did before you asked me."
" Take it then," she says, with a low laugh, holding it
out to him. " Keep it as a memento of the fast girl who
would go out boating with you, against your will, at ten
o'clock at night of the girl who may be very good fun,
if one goes in for that sort of thing, but is not your
style!"
He reddens.
" What do you mean ? "
" You will not have it ? Well, then, here it goes ! "
As she speaks she flings the blossom away, far out into
the river. It fall with a little flop, and a little gleam of
broken silver, into the water, and so floats down to Dinan.
" What do you mean ? " he cries, eagerly. " How im-
patient you are ! I did want it ; I held out my hand for
it. I will have it yet ! "
So saying he snatches up one of the oars, and makes
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 69
frantic lunges with it at the little valueless prize. It is
exactly three inches too far off for him to reach. Paul's
arms are long, and he hates being beaten. Unmindful of
the tiltuppy nature of little cockboats, he leans farther and
farther over the side. It is almost within his reach it is
quite within his reach ; he has got it has he, though ?
" Take care ! take care ! " cries Lenore, wildly ; but it
is too late. In another moment M. Panache's boat is float-
ing away, bottom upward, after the water-lily, and two
people are struggling and splashing in the moonlit Ranee.
CHAPTER IX.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
Paul rises to the surface, sputtering and blow-
ing unintentional bubbles, his first thought naturally is,
" Where is Lenore ? " At about three yards' distance
from him he sees something white. He swims toward it,
and catches at it ; it is Lenore. Feeling his grasp, she
flings out her two arms wildly, and clutches him spasmod-
ically round the neck.
" Loose me ! " he cries, breathlessly, still sputtering.
" Lenore, Lenore ! you will drown us both ! "
But Lenore is too much blinded and deafened by the
water to pay any heed to his remonstrances. She only
clasps him the more convulsively. With a strong effort he
manages to unlock her arms, and, grasping her firmly with
one hand, with the other strikes out for shore.
Swimming in one's clothes is never pleasant, but swim-
ming in one's clothes with only one hand at one's disposal
the other being occupied in supporting a perfectly help-
TO "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
less, inert woman is more unpleasant still. Happily it
does not last long ; the adventure is not of heroic dimen-
sions. Not half a dozen yards from the fatal lilies the bul-
rushes have advanced their thick green standards, and,
where the bulrushes are, water is shallow and footing
easily gained. The flags and the rushes swish against his
face and buffet it rudely as he scrambles through them,
half dragging, half carrying his companion through the
deep river-mud and the chilly midnight waters. Having
deposited her in a living bundle on the bank, he sits down
beside her and pants. As for her, she is a little stunned
by the shock of the plunging water; that is all. She is
not wont to faint, and has not fainted now. Presently she
sits up, and, pushing her dripping hair out of her bewil-
dered eyes, says, gaspingly :
" Don't scold me ; it was you that did it."
" I know it was," he answers, as distinctly as the chat-
tering of his teeth will let him.
" Well, you did not let me drown after all, you see," she
says, with a smile that, though forlorn and drenched, is still
half malicious.
"Well, no; not this time."
They look at one another for a minute, then both burst
into a simultaneous fit of violent laughter.
" What a ridiculous drowned rat you do look ! " cries
she, politely.
" The same to you," he answers, grimly, as he sits drip-
ping dismally on the dry June grass.
" What have you done with your hat ? "
" The same as you have done with yours, I fancy."
" And Mima's Connemara cloak ? "
" Half-way back to Connemara by now."
" I have lost one of my shoes," says the girl, half crying,
" and the other is full of mud."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. VI
She looks up at him piteously, as innocently as a baby
might do. The Ranee has washed all the coquetry out of
her eyes, on whose long lashes the river-drcps are hanging.
" How shall I ever get home ? I shall have to hop all
the way."
" Perhaps I might carry you," he says, not unkindly,
leaning forward to examine the unlucky shoe ; while his
nose, and his beard, and his short hair, water the buttercups
and refresh them.
" Carry me ! " she cries, derisively. " Why, I weigh
nine stone eight ! I might as well talk of carrying you ! "
He is not particularly anxious to carry her, and does not
repeat his offer.
" How cold I am ! " she says, shuddering. " How it
runs down one's back, does not it ? I wish one's clothes
would not stick to one like court-plaster. I am sure it will
be the death of me."
" By-the-by," cries he, a brilliant idea striking him, and
beginning to search frantically in his coat-pockets (we, in
Dinan, never dress for dinner, therefore he is still in his
shooting-jacket), "if it is not gone no, thank God ! here
it is ! " drawing out a little silver flask " take a pull at
it, it will keep the life in you."
"What is it?"
"Brandy."
" Will it make me drunk f n she asks, gravely holding
it in her hand, and trembling all over like a smooth-haired
terrier on a frosty day.
He laughs. "No such luck. It would be the best
thing that could possibly happen to you if it did ; but it
will not, I am afraid. Go on."
She obeys, and drinks. It burns her throat, but her
teeth become a shade less vocal. He follows her example ;
and then, jumping to his feet, gives-himself a prodigious
72 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
shake, like a Newfoundland who has just deposited the re-
covered stick at his master's feet.
" Come on," he says ; " we had better be getting home
as quick as we can. Let us pray that we may meet no
one ! I feel uncommonly small, do not you ? "
" Uncommonly 1 " replies Lenore, with assenting em-
phasis.
" Give me your hand, and let me help you up."
She does as he bids her, and as she rises to her feet a
fresh deluge rustles, drips, pours down from her.
" How heavy water is ! " she says, staggering. " I
have half the Ranee about me. I feel like the woman who
was killed by the weight of her jewels."
" Stay ; let me wring out your clothes a little for you."
He kneels before her on the grass, and with both hands
twists and strains, and wrings her thin flabby gown and
her soaked petticoats, as a laundress might.
" There, is that better ?"
" Yes, thanks. I think so a little," replies she, doubt-
fully.
"Come on, then," employing the invariable phrase
with which a Briton embarks upon any undertaking, from
a walk with his sweetheart upward to a Balaklava charge.
Without more speech, they begin to tramp along the tow-
ing-path, leaving behind them a track as of a thunder-
shower or a leaky water-cart. On to the landing-stage, up
the steep steps to the highway. At the corner of the
silent, shining road, a great rock abutting casts a sharp,
black shadow ; and out of this shadow, and into the light,
come two people, running in disorderly haste.
" Your sister and West to the rescue," says Le Mesu-
rier, speaking for the first time since they set off home-
ward.
" My long-lost Frederick ! " says Lenore, with grim
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 73
merriment ; " flying to the riverside to poke about for my
dead body with drags and a boat-hook. How I wish we
could avoid them ! How small and thin, and drowned I
feel!"
" Lenore, is that you ? where have you been ? how wet
you are ! what has happened ? " cries Jemina, incoherent!}',
scorning punctuation, and precipitating herself upon her
sister.
" Jemima, my sin has found me out," replies Lenore,
solemnly. " I made Mr. Le Mesurier take me out on the
water ; and, in order to pay off all old scores, he upset me."
"And himself into the bargain," says Le Mesurier,
laughing.
" Jemima, your Connemara cloak is just about arriving
at St.-Malo ; so is my hat, so is Mr. Le Mesurier's."
" And you are not hurt, only drenched ? " cried West,
tremulously ; and, forgetting his shyness, lays an audacious
hand upon Qne of the shoulders that are glimmering, so
wet and shining, through her transparent gown.
" Not hurt, only drenched," she echoes, laughing cheer-
ily, and eluding him, while her face smiles out, pale and
pretty and altered, from the thick frame of heavy damp
hair that cleaves so closely and lovingly to cheeks and
throat. " See, Jemima ! " exhibiting a small, muddy foot,
" my right shoe has gone the way of all shoes."
" A very blessed upset ! " says Paul to himself, half an
hour later, oracularly shaking his head, as he scrambles
into dry clothes at the Hotel de la Poste. " She was do-
ing her best to make a fool of me, and she had all but suc-
ceeded.
4
74 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
CHAPTER X.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
A WEEK has gone by. Lenore's teeth no longer chat-
ter. She is quite dry again, and has bought a new hat
seven times more coquettish than the drowned one. She
keeps, however, a tender memento of her adventure with
Paul in the shape of a sore throat and trifling cough, which
not even the unwonted dose of cognac has kept off.
Breakfast at the Hotel de la Poste is over. The twenty
or thirty commercial travellers and clerks, who, according
to the wont of French hotels, share that feast with the
visitors and tourists, have disappeared again into private
life. Paul is sitting in the little dark salon, writing a let-
ter to his sister, with a sputtering pen. Paul's caligraphy
is rather like that of John Ball of the Chancery bar, who
wrote three several hands : one that no one but himself
could read, one that his clerk could read and he could not,
and one that nobody could read. Paul is just staring hard
at his production, and wondering what on earth was the
mystic remark that he had made at the top of the second
page searching his mind for the history of the past week,
in order to be able to give a guess as to what it was likely
to have been, when the door opens, and admits Mr. West.
" Le Mesurier ! "
" Well " (not looking up).
West enters, and walks over to the window.
" Well," says Paul again, abandoning the idea of read-
ing over his letter, and beginning to fold it.
West advances to the table, and lays a small, tremulous
hand on his friend's broad shoulder.
" Le Mesurier, I I have a favor, to ask of you."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. V5
" My dear fellow, do not say that it is to lend you five
pounds," cries Le Mesurier, in affected alarm. " I have
had severe losses myself lately ; I have a heavy engage-
ment to meet to-morrow "
" Oh, pooh ! it is not that, of course ; but but I have
something to say to you."
"Say on."
" Not here " (glancing round uneasily) ; " we might be
overheard."
" By whom ? The noble army of shop-boys dispersed
itself half an hour ago, and the landlord informed me
yesterday that the only English word he knew was, * Snap,
snap, snorum, a cockolorum ! ' "
" Would you mind coming outside for a moment ? "
says Frederick, pertinaciously.
" All right. Give us a light."
He leisurely folds and directs his letter, and then takes
out and lights a cigar, while West stands beside him, shift-
ing feverishly from leg to leg, and rolling up his dumpling
hat into a hundred weird shapes. They emerge from the
hotel door; the voiture is just starting for Caulnes, drawn
by a pony and a huge white horse, both in the worst possi-
ble spirits. A man, all clad in white flannel, is stepping
into the interior ; a fat priest, with his limp cassock cling-
ing about his legs, climbing up into the dusty banquette ;
the blue-bloused driver mending a rift in the rotten rope-
harness ; and, over all, the broad sun laughing down, and
the lime-flowers from the Place du Guesclin shaking out
their lovely scent on the morning air. The two men cross
the street, enter the place, and sit down on a bench the
very one on which Paul and Lenore sat in the dark a week
ago.
" Well," says Le Mesurier, expectantly, after they have
sat three minutes without speaking.
76 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" I am going home tc England," says Frederick, ab-
ruptly.
" Have you brought me out here to tell me that ? " asks
Paul, banteringly.
Silence !
" So you are going now, are you, eh ? " pursues Paul,
carelessly. " So will I, I think. Let us toss who shall pay
heads or tails," throwing up a napoleon into the air and
catching it.
But Frederick's thoughts are far enough away from
heads or tails. The diligence is just moving off.
" Allez ! allez ! " cries the driver, flicking with his long
whip the old white horse's sharp back. The bells give a
cracked jingle ; off they go !
" I am naturally particularly loath to leave this place
just now," says West, his spectacles mournfully fixed on
the lessening vehicle.
" Are you ? " says Le Mesurier, staring at him obtusely.
" Why ? and why naturally ? "
Frederick pulls a supple lime-leaf that is fluttering just
above his nose, and tears it into thin green strips.
" I thought," he says, blushing and stammering, " that
you must have seen that there was was something between
me and and and Miss Lenore."
Paul shakes his head.
" Indeed I cannot say that I ever noticed any thing of
the kind," he answers, bluntly, feeling rather angry, he
cannot imagine why.
" Did not you ? " (pushing his spectacles down on the
bridge of his nose, and gazing over them with meek sur-
prise at his friend). " I fancied that my attachment my
my devotion must have been patent to the most super-
ficial observer."
" My dear fellow, of course they were," says Paul, laugh-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 7T
ing, not ill-naturedly. " But you said something between
you and Miss Lenore. Now, the word beticeen implies that
there are tico to the bargain."
" And you think that there is only one to this bargain ? "
says Frederick, despondently, looking down, while the
blush fades out of his face, and the gay motes run up and
down about his hair.
"Good Lord! West" (a little impatiently), "how can
I tell ? Does the girl confide in me, do you suppose ? "
" No doubt you think," says Frederick, turning toward
his companion again, while his sensitive mouth twitches
painfully, " that I am not the sort of man to take a hand-
some, spirited girl's fancy ? "
" How can I tell ? " repeats Le Mesurier, embarrassed
by the exactitude with which his friend has hit his thought.
" ' Different men are of different opinions ;
Some like apples, some like inions '
and I dare say women are the same."
How drowsily the bees are humming high up among the
faint, thick blooms ! It is enough to send one to sleep.
" After all," says Frederick, brightening a little under
the influence of his companion's homely saw, "I am not
altogether sure that the mere fact of her treating me cava-
lierly chaffing me, calling me names, and so forth, tells en-
tirely against me. It is the way of some girls, I believe.
Even if Lenore did like a fellow, she would die sooner than
show it."
" Would she ? " says Le Mesurier, with a half-absent
smile, throwing his head back, and staring up into the flick-
ering, tremulous leafage above him, while his thoughts
travel back over the past week, to the silver wash of a mid-
night stream to a lady, with pearly lights playing about
her holding out a water-lily to him, and saying, with a
V8 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
^ _^
slow, soft smile, " Take it, then." He is woke out of his
trance by two Breton housewives, chattering past in those
shrill, screechy voices that God has given to Frenchwomen
alone, as they step out stoutly in their short, heavy, and
trim black-stuff stockings.
" Now I have told you the state of things with me,"
says Frederick, with a nervous laugh, " perhaps you can
guess what is the favor I am going to ask of you."
" I ? " says Le Mesurier, giving a great start, and look-
ing thoroughly puzzled.
" Guess."
" Not I. Perhaps " (with a brilliant flash of intuition)
" it is to ask me to be best man : only that is no great fa-
vor, and it is rather premature is not it ? "
Frederick jumps up suddenly.
" If you are going to make a jest " he says, with a
hurt intonation.
" My good fellow," cries Paul, energetically, laying his
hand upon his shoulder, " I give you my word of honor
that I know no more than the dead what you are driving
at. I never was good at guessing. I never found out a
riddle in all my life. I give it up."
West looks at him distrustfully ; but, seeing no mirth,
only boundless bewilderment, in his friend's ugly face, he
continues, speaking with difficulty, looking down, and kick-
ing -about some stray cherry-stones that a former occupant
of the bench has left strewed on the ground :
" I do not know why it is, I am sure cannot make out
but you have certainly more influence with Miss Lenore
than any one else."
" Have I ? " says Paul, shortly, turning away his head.
" She will do for you what she will not do for either her
sister or me."
" Will she ? " still more shortly, while a slight flattered
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 79
flush rises to his forehead. " I really have not discovered
it,"
" And, such being the case," continues "West, with in-
creasing hesitation, stammering, floundering, and redden-
ing ever more and more, " I thought that perhaps you
might"
" I might what f " asks Paul, still staring stupidly at
his friend.
" I thought," says West, plunging desperately in me-
dias res, seeing that he is not likely to get much help from
his companion's intelligence, " that you might perhaps
say something about me to her sound her feelings with
regard to me, to a certain extent."
" I ! ! ! " says Paul, turning sharp round, the mystified
expression of his face giving place to one of enormous
astonishment. "I! my dear West? Are you quite
cracked ? "
" She would, at all events, give you a hearing," says
Frederick, downcast, but pertinacious.
" Would she ? " cries the other, laughing violently.
" I very much doubt it. She would be more likely to bang
the door in my face, and tear out my few remaining hairs,
and quite right, too."
"Perhaps it is because you saved her life," pursues
West, ruefully, keeping on his own track.
" Saved her life ! " breaks in Paul, now really angry.
" My good fellow, for God's sake, do not talk like a fool,
whatever you do ! To upset a woman into a ditch, and
then pull her out, can hardly be termed ' saving her life,'
even in these days, when every little thing is called by
some big name."
Silence. The little yellow lights glancing and flashing
up and down about their hats and coats.
"West," says Paul, abruptly, rising from his seatj
80 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
thrusting his hands down to the very bottom of his pock-
ets, in his favorite attitude, and looking full and keenly
into his companion's downcast face, " suppose you got Miss
Lenore, what on earth would you do with her ? "
"Do with her?" repeats West, staring. "What do
you mean ? "
" Can you fancy that girl a parson's wife ? " says Le
Mesurier, beginning to laugh, while with inner vision he
sees again that dare-devil smile, those lovely half-lowered
eyes, that had kindled such unwilling fire in his own cold
veins. "Do not be angry with me, West; I could not
stop laughing now if you were to kill me. I think I see
her holding forth at a mothers' meeting, or teaching at a
Sunday-school ! Poor little wretches ! would not she cuff
them ! "
" She is so young," says Frederick, deprecatingly. " I
should hope that one might be able to mould her "
" Mould her ? " echoes Paul, derisively. " My dear
boy, it would take you all your time. She would comb
your hair with a three-legged stool."
A pause.
" I am to understand, then," says Frederick, trying to
speak stiffly, but with a suspicion of tears in his voice,
" that you decline to help me ? "
" Decline to propose to Miss Lenore for you ? I do,
distinctly," replies Paul, stoutly.
" Perhaps," says Frederick, with the easy, baseless jeal-
ousy of unlucky love, " you would have no such objection
to speak to her on your own account ? "
A dark, unbecoming flush rushes over Le Mesurier's
face.
" I ? " he says, angrily. " What are you talking about,
West ? Must everybody be in love with her because you
are ? Did not I tell you, the very first day I saw her the
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 81
day that she took it into her head to play that unaccount-
able prank very bad form it was, too that she was not
my style ? No more she is. I must say that she improves
upon acquaintance ; but no, no not my line at all."
Frederick sits down upon the bench again, in a stooped,
shapeless attitude of utter despondency.
" Why cannot you ask her yourself ? " inquires Le Me-
surier, with a mixed feeling of compassion for the sufferer's
misery and raging contempt for his poverty of spirit. " If
a thing is worth having, it is surely worth asking for."
" It would be no use," replies West, dejectedly ; " she
would not listen to me she never does ; she would only
laugh, and turn every thing I said into ridicule."
" Why on earth do not you go in for the old one in-
stead ? " asks Paul, impatiently. " She would suit you
down to the ground. She would listen to you fast enough,
and she would not need any moulding."
" I dare say it would have been happier for me if I could
have fancied her," replies West, with the admirable con-
ceit of man, in whose vocabulary " ask " and " have " are
supposed to be interchangeable terms. " She is a dear,
good girl, and really fond of parish work. But no, no "
(with a heavy sigh), " that is impossible now."
He covers his face with both hands, and relapses into
silence. Paul eyes him doubtfully for a few minutes;
then, laying his hand on his shoulder, says, not un-
kindly :
" Cheer up, old man ! It is a long lane that has no
turning. I would do any thing in reason I could for you,
for old acquaintance' sake ; but what you ask is not in
reason come, now, is it ? "
" Perhaps not " (in a stifled voice).
" She would box my ears, or order me out of the house,
as likely as not ; she is quite capable of either," says Paul,
"GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
trying to steel himself in his resolution in proportion as he
finds it melting under the fire of his compassion.
" No doubt I ought not to have asked you," West
says, lifting his face from his hands, which fall nervelessly
on his knees. " I should not have thought of doing so if
I had not known what an opinion she had of you."
" Has she ? " says Paul, coloring again slightly, while
a warm glow of self-satisfaction steals pleasantly over him.
" But now, my dear fellow, do think what a fool I should
look. How should I begin ? How should I go on ? How
should I finish ? "
" I would leave all that to you, of course."
" No, no," says Le Mesurier, rising hastily ; " upon my
soul, I cannot / it is impossible. I have no opinion of go-
betweens. Ask for yourself, and take your answer, what-
ever it is, like a man."
CHAPTER XL
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
BRAG is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Mr. Le
Mesurier, however, shows himself incapable of being the
latter incapable of keeping to the wise and rational reso-
lution expressed at the close of the last chapter. On the
morning of the day following that on which Frederick pre-
ferred his request, Paul might have been seen, walking
slowly and with a hang-dog air, in the direction of the
Pension Leroux. He is smoking like a chimney ; his eyes
are fixed on the ground, and his hands are buried deeper
than ever in the pockets of his old gray shooting-jacket.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 83
" I would give any one twenty pounds to stand in my
shoes for the next half hour," he says to himself, as he
drags his feet one after another through the calf-market,
between the miserable calves, flung down roughly, with
legs tied together and heads moving wistfully from side to
side, to lie for hours together, baking, helpless, and un-
pitied, in the mid-day sun. Paul need not have gone near
the calf-market at all ; it is quite out of his way ; but then
it takes a little longer. He stands for a quarter of an
hour staring in at the clever little terra-cotta models of men
and beasts, in M. Noel le Quillec's small shop-window, close
to the Porte St.-Louis ; but, however ingenious two clay-
pigs, set up on their hind-legs and walking arm-in-arm, or
a donkey playing the concertina, may be, it is impossible
to stare at them forever.
" Please God she is out ! " he says, piously, turning with
a sigh through the shady porte.
But she is not out. As he comes in sight of the salon-
window he sees two arms resting on the silica woman in
a bright-blue gown, and with bright-brown hair, leaning
out. It is not Jemima, Jemima is not addicted to gay col-
ors, save in the matter of that Connemara cloak that Provi-
dence has sent sailing down the Ranee to St.-Malo. The
cherry-market is held in the Place St.-Louis. Groups of
snowy-headed women, with great-eared caps, are trudging
about the little square, with huge baskets of piled-up cher-
ries, shaded by great cotton umbrellas ; little luscious black
cherries, juicy red ones, pale, fleshy white-hearts. Lenore
is in treaty for some of the latter.
" Tenez ! " she cries, sending her clear English voice,
fresh as the voice of a water-fall or of a blackbird on a
green April evening, down through the singsong French
screams below, and pointing with her fore-finger to a tempt-
ing heap. " Combien ? "
84 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Quat' sous la livre," replies a weather-beaten little
housewife, briskly.
The girl's eyes wander round the baskets to see wheth-
er any other saleswoman has bigger cherries than those
under her notice, and, so wandering, they fall on Paul's up-
turned face. Instantly she forgets that such fruit as cher-
ries exists.
" Anybody at home ? " asks Paul, shading his face with
his hand, and smiling up.
" It depends upon who * anybody ' is," she answers,
gravely. " If anybody means Madame Lange, she is out ;
if anybody means Jemima, she is out ; if anybody means
me, I am not out."
" I may come up, then ? "
" If you are sure that you can find your way," retorts
she, laughing.
He turns, and enters the house. Old Mdlle. Leroux
puts her head out from the door of the dining-room, where
she is sitting, mending table-linen, waggles her gray curls
and yellow ribbons, and cries, " J3o?ijour, monsieur ! "
cheerily.
" Oh, for a brandy-and-soda ! " sighs Paul to himself, as
he reaches the landing.
Screwing up his fast-oozing courage, he marches in.
Lenore has turned away from the window to greet him ;
she looks as if she were a piece of the summer sky, all blue
and smiling.
" You must not stay long," she says, stretching out a
ready hand to him ; " it is Wednesday, and on Wednesday
we are obliged to evacuate this salon, because it is Madame
Lange's day for receiving. Fancy receiving here ! " (look-
ing round contemptuously).
" Well, are not you receiving here yourself now ? "
says Paul, trying to speak with airy nonchalance, and feel-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 85
ing as if he were looking extremely sheepish. " Are not
you receiving me f "
" Oh, yes ; but, then, you are nobody," she says, with a
gay little laugh.
" Thanks."
" I mean, you are only one not a party " (laughing
again, and standing before him, straight, and fresh, and
beautiful).
" She is meat for his masters," is Le Mesurier's invol-
untary thought, and, so thinking, looks at her (unknowing
it) with grave, critical intentness. Under that look, her
great frank eyes pale suddenly, and her color comes and
goes comes and goes in tremulous carnation.
" I am so glad you have come ! " she says, beginning
to talk very fast. " Mina is gone out sketching with Mdlle.
Pe"roline, and I have been so hard up for something to do
that I have been reduced to trying to educate Monsieur
Charles. Look at him ! He is rather wobbly, perhaps, but
not so bad for a beginner is he ? "
So speaking she points to where, on a small stool, Mdlle.
Leroux's unhappy poodle sits dismally upright, on totter-
ing, shorn hind-quarters, with his arm in a sling that is
to say, with one poor little paw unmercifully tied, with a
bit of blue ribbon, round his neck.
" Faites mendiant, Monsieur Charles ! " cries the
young girl, flinging herself on her knees on the floor before
him. " Up ! up ! Unfortunately, he does not understand
English ! "
"Does not he?"
" He has been going through a regular course of exer-
cises," says Lenore, gravely. " Just before you came in, I
put one of M. Cesar's hats on his head, and a pair of old
Mdlle. Leroux's spectacles 011 his nose, and you can have
no conception how like Frederick he looked."
86 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
As she kneels there, with all her blue draperies spread
about the floor, and the dimples appearing and disappear-
ing in her cheeks, a spasm of unwilling admiration con-
tracts his heart.
" Frederick is going," he says, brusquely, turning his
head away, and looking out of window " going home, to
England, to-morrow."
" Is he ? " says the girl, carelessly. " Why does not he
come and say good-bye to us, then ? or are his feelings too
many for him ? "
" He is talking of coming this afternoon."
" I hope he will not cry, or have a great access of emo-
tion; he generally has at this sort of crisis. It always
makes me laugh don't you know ? and that looks so
unfeeling ? " she says, glancing appealingly up at him.
" You are unfeeling ! " he blurts out, unjustifiably, with
a mistaken feeling of loyalty toward his friend.
She looks at him quickly, to see whether he is joking,
but, perceiving that he is serious, says, quietly and without
anger:
" Am I ? What makes you think so ? "
" I gather it from your own w r ords."
"About Frederick?" she asks, composedly. "Poor
dear little gentleman ! We shall miss him very much
getting tickets and claiming luggage; but you would
hardly expect me to go into hysterics over him would
you?"
He is silent, meditating on the utter bootlessness of his
errand.
" Would you ? " she repeats, pertinaciously.
She has sunk down in a sitting attitude on the floor ;
her idle hands lie, white as milk, in her lap. Monsieur
Charles has availed himself of the diversion effected in his
favor to abandon his upright posture, hobble off on three
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 87
legs to a corner under the piano, where he spends himself
in vain efforts to bite off his blue ribbon.
" It would be much better for you if you had some one
to go into hysterics about," says Paul, drawing a small
cane chair near Lenore, and resolving to attack the fortress
indirectly.
She blushes vividly. Some girls blush at a nothing /
other girls blush at nothing.
"Would it?" she says.
" You will not be angry with me for speaking plainly
to you ? We have seen a good deal of each other, consid-
ering how short a time it is since we first met have not
we ? " says he, with a benevolent sense of fatherly enjoy-
ment in lecturing this fair delinquent, this embodied storm,
whom only he can calm ; " but you are one of those women
who would be much better and happier married than sin-
gle."
" Am I ? " (in a very low voice).
" You ought to marry either a tyrant or a slave," con-
tinues he, surprised at his own eloquence ; " either a fellow
who would knock under completely to you, or a fellow who
would make you knock under completely."
" And which would you recommend, may I ask ? " she
says, lifting her eyes archly, yet with difficulty, to his face.
" In your case, I think, the slave."
She looks slightly disappointed, but makes no rejoinder.
" I do you the justice to think," pursues Paul, warmed
by the fire of his own rhetoric, " that a man's looks would
not influence you much that he would not be damned in
your eyes, even if he had the misfortune not to be good-
looking."
She looks at him again, bravely and firmly this time.
" You are right ; I hate your beauty-men ; they tres-
pass on our preserves " (laughing).
88 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" If a fellow had been fond of you, ever since he had
known you, then," continues Paul, drawing his chair three
inches nearer, and half wishing that he were not a proxy,
" if he had never cared two straws for any other woman
if he were a real good fellow at bottom, even though he
might not have much to recommend him in the eyes of the
world, you would not send him away quite without hope,
even though you do turn him into ridicule now and then."
" Into ridicule ? " she says, stammering. " What do
you mean ? "
" Well, we will not say any thing about that but, you
would not send him away quite without hope, would you ? "
Her lips tremble and form some word, but it is inaudi-
ble. '
" You will at least listen to him when he comes this
afternoon ? " says Le Mesurier, with a sigh at his own
magnanimity.
" Listen to him ? To whom ? " she asks, lifting her
head in bewilderment, while the color dies out of her
cheeks.
" Whom ? Why, of whom have we been talking all
along ? Frederick, of course," replies Paul, a little blankly.
There is a painful pause; the girl's face has grown
ghastly, and her eyes are dilated in a horrible surprise.
" I am to understand, then," she says, in a husky,
choked voice, " that you are his messenger that you have
been good enough to take the trouble of making love to
me off his hands ? "
They have both risen, and are confronting one another.
It would be hard to say which of the two, considering their
different complexions, was the paler.
" Tell him," she says, making a strong effort over her-
self, and speaking each slow syllable with painful distinct-
ness, " to do his own errand next time."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 89
As she speaks, she points to the door. Half of Paul's
vision is fulfilled. She has not boxed his ears he wishes
to Heaven that she would but she has turned him out of
the house. He is down-stairs and in the little hall before
he perceives that he has left his hat behind him. He runs
up-stairs, three steps at a time, in his hurry to fetch it and
be out of the house. He enters the salon hurriedly, and is
half-way toward the table, when he stops short with an ex-
pression of shocked astonishment ; for, on the little stiff
sofa, Lenore is lying, long and limp, her face hidden in her
hands, her body, and all her smart blue gown, shaken with
great, violent sobs.
" Good God ? what is the matter ? " he cries, hastily ;
" what has happened ? are you ill ? "
Hearing his voice, she starts, and buries her face
deeper than ever in the little hard bolster, as if trying to
hide it forever from the light.
" Lenore ! Lenore ! " cries the young man, in high ex-
citement, flinging himself on his knees beside her, entirely
forgetting his proxy character, and speaking now alto-
gether on his own account. " What have I done ? Tell
me ! Have I said any thing to vex you ? If I thought I
had, I would cut out my own tongue."
She does not stir ; but through her fingers he sees the
hot tears trickling, and, stooping over her, hears her mur-
mur, almost unintelligibly, in a voice of choked rage and
shame :
" Leave me alone ! Why have you come back ? Go
away ! "
" I will never go, until you tell me what I have done ! "
cries Paul, quite forgetting himself, and, so saying, with
his two hands, by main force draws hers away from her
face. " Tell me Lenore ! Tell me darling ! "
Her lovely eyes are drowned in tears ; her cheeks are
90 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
crimsoned with shameful weeping weeping for him as,
with a throb of irrepressible, passionate exultation, he feels.
Whether divining the exultation or not, she wrenches her-
self away from him.
" What do you mean ? " she cries, flashing at him
through her tears. " I told you to go ! I hate you 1
Got"
So he goes.
Evening again, and bedtime. The market-women have
sold all their wares, and gone home again. The old priesj;
in the white house has just opened his door, and let out
two dogs, in a whirlwind of excitement ; but for them, the
place is empty and silent. The two Misses Herrick are in
the elder one's bedroom. Lenore is sitting on the edge of
the low bed ; her cheeks are as white as privet-flowers, and
there are red rims round her eyes. Jemima is devoured
with curiosity as to the cause of these phenomena ; but she
does riot ask.
" Jemima," says her sister, brusquely, " let us leave this
place ! Let us move on somewhere else ! "
" Leave Dinan ! leave Mr. Le Mesurier ! " cries Jemi-
ma, archly, raising her eyebrows, as she stands before the
glass, screwing up her pale, thin hair into a little lump at
the top of her head, and drawing a white crochet-net over
it, in preparation for her virgin slumbers.
" I am sick of Dinan and Mr. Le Mesurier," rejoins Le-
nore, petulantly.
" Sick of Dinan ! sick of Mr. Le Mesurier ! " exclaims
the other, now thoroughly astonished, turning round with
her mouth open. " Since when ? "
" Since five-and-twenty minutes past eleven this morn-
ing, if you wish to be exact," replies Lenore, with candid
bitterness. " There, do not tease, but let us go ! "
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 91
" Go where ? "
"'Anywhere, anywhere out of the world!'" answers
the young girl, falling back wearily on the bed, and di-
shevelling the cool trim pillow on which her sister's chaste
head is to repose. " To Guingamp, to see the pardon"
" And what is a pardon, pray ? for I have not the re-
motest idea," answers the elder, coming toward the bed,
having finished her night-toilet, in the severe simplicity of
which she looks at least twenty years older than in her day
one.
" If you had read novels less, and your Murray more,
you would not have needed to ask that question," replies
Lenore, rolling her head about. " A pardon is a sort of
religious ftte / very dull, I do not doubt, but" with a
tired sigh " it all comes in the day's work ; let us go ! "
CHAPTER XII.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
WE are at Guingamp. "We have been here two hours.
Two hours ago we arrived hot and hungry; hustled by
thronging groups of peasants, that are pressing into the
little town to receive the annual pardon of their sins,
and open a fresh account with God. The Hotel de
France brims over with guests; insomuch that we have
been relegated to a stuffy little chamber au quatritme into
which the afternoon sun beats full ; hotter than ten thou-
sand Christmas fires. Just now we asked for hot water, to
wash our dirty faces ; and a woman in a huge starched
white collar, and clear cap, brought in some in a tiny tea-
pot. This has put the culminating point to our despair.
92 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
It is one of those days when one's very soul is hot, and
longs to throw off the heavy cloak of the body; a day
when one would fain take off one's flesh, and sit in one's
bones, according to Sydney Smith's time-honored waggery.
It is not windless ; on the contrary, there is a very percep-
tible air ; but it is such air as meets you at the mouth of
a furnace. Lenore has abandoned the struggle with cir-
cumstances. She has acknowledged herself beaten, and
lies all along, in extremest dishabille, on the narrow bit of
parquet between the two beds, where the hard oak commu-
nicates a little coolness to the back. Her head rests on a
pillow that she has pulled down ; a white dressing-gown is
loosely wrapped about her, and her small bare feet wander
about impatiently in the vain search for a cool spot on the
hot boards. Now and again, odd, sluggish, beetleish ani-
mals, with slate-colored bodies, crawl over her outflung
arms. She has just energy enough to shake them off, and
call piteously to me to come and kill them with my shoe-
heel. Our two windows and our door are open ; we are
trying to believe that we are in a draught. A regiment is
passing through Guingamp ; the officers are billetted on our
hotel. Every now and then one hears the clink of a sabre,
and the sound of heavy feet coming down our corridor.
" Heavens, Jemima ! shut the door ! " cries my sister,
unwilling to be exposed in her present sketchy toilet to the
gaze of the French army. I spring forward and close it ;
and as soon as the large-busted, small-waisted hero, in his
hot red trousers and tight epauletted frock-coat, has passed,
fling it wide again. I have been unpacking, my head buried
in my small canvas-covered box ; it is more than woman
born of woman can bear. I rise and lean out of the win-
dow. Outside a lugubrious horn is playing " Partant pour
la Syrie," very slowly ; the omnibus is just driving into the
court-yard.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 93
" Poor omnibus ! poor horses ! " cry I, compassionately,
"how many times have they been down to the station
to-day ? What a heap of luggage ! "
" Jemima, my head is not high enough 3~et ; give me
your pillow too ! " calls out Lenore, lamentably, from the
floor. I comply, and then return to the window, and look
again at the omnibus, which is just beginning to empty its
load.
" Good Heavens ! " ejaculate I, with animation. " Why,
Lenore, there is Mr. Le Mesurier getting out ! He has a
puggry round his hat ; how odd he looks ! "
Lenore is disposing two pillows and a bolster to her
mind ; she gives a great start, but her head is turned from
me.
" I wish he would get a new portmanteau," pursue I,
soliloquizing, " the P. Le M. on his is getting nearly effaced
with age."
The omnibus still disgorges : an old priest in a broad
felt hat, and limp sash round his huge waist, with a yellow
face and black teeth, yawning prodigiously. A peasant-
woman with a queer baby in a tight calico skull-cap ; then
another gentleman in a puggry.
" The plot thickens," cry I, with a sprightly air. " Le-
nore, I think the friend has turned up at last. I began to
fancy that he was a sort of Mrs. Harris ; but seeing is be-
lieving, and here he is ! "
Silence.
" How good-looking ! " say I, under my breath, as the
second gentleman joins the first, and indicates his worldly
goods to the garc.cn. I hear a scrambling noise behind me.
Lenore is at my side ; her face is white, and she peeps ob-
liquely behind the curtain, as the hot breeze blows back her
loose bright hair.
" How ugly your friend Paul looks beside him ! " say I,
spitefully.
94 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" When does not lie look ugly ? " rejoins my junior,
with bitterness.
" They are parleying with the landlady," say I, leaning
out. " No doubt she is civiller to them than she was to
us ; I suppose two maidless, courierless, husbandless women
must resign themselves to being snubbed ? Ah, poor dear
Frederick ! How one does miss him ! "
" Under which head did he come ? " asks Lenore, dryly ;
" maid, courier, or husband ? "
The luggage is carried into the house ; the pageant
fades. I return to my packing, and ten minutes pass.
" Lenore, dear, you had better be beginning to dress,"
I say, hortatively ; " the clock struck the quarter five min-
utes ago."
" I am not thinking of dressing," replies Lenore, look-
ing enormously long, as she lies stretched straight out.
" You are going down to dinner as you are, in fact
bare legs and a dressing-gown ? " say I, humorously.
" I am not going down to dinner at all," replies she,
clasping her hands underneath her head.
" Not going down to dinner ! What do you mean ? "
exclaim I, in high astonishment.
" Jemima, do French people ever open their windows ?
Do not they hate fresh air ? Would it be possible to eat
steaming ragouts in a close room with fifty commercial
travellers to-day of all days ? "
" Before the omnibus came from the station, you
thought it quite possible," reply I, dryly.
Silence.
" Come, now, did not you ? "
" Well, yes " (looking rather sheepish).
" It is on account of Mr. Le Mesurier that you are going
to forego your dinner ? "
" Well, yes " (much more sheepishly).
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 95
" Lenore ! Lenore ! what has he done ? " cry I, kneel-
ing down beside her, in a frenzy of curiosity; "tell
me."
" He has done nothing," turning her face away, and
plucking at the pillow with her fingers.
" What has he said ? "
" He has said nothing."
" Did he tell you that you were not good form, accord-
ing to his pet expression ? " (laughing).
" No."
" Did he make love to you ? " suggest I, growing wild
in my conjectures.
" No, no."
" Did he propose to you ? "
"Not NO! NO!"
I can only see her ear, which has grown suddenly
scarlet.
" What did he do ? " ask I, at my wit's end.
" Jemima," says Lenore, sitting up on the floor facing
me, and looking very serious, " if I live to be a hundred
and fifty, I will never tell you."
" I shall have to ask him, then ; he will tell me quickly
enough," answer I, nettled, and rising to my feet again.
" Perhaps ; very likely," rejoins she, curtly.
" But you will come down to dinner, like a good child,"
say T, coaxingly, as I wrestle with a white muslin Gari-
baldi, which has shrunk in the washing, and is too small
to contain my charms.
" I will not."
" But you have had no luncheon ? "
" No."
"Nor afternoon tea?"
"No."
" You would probably be at a distance of half a mile
96 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!
from him," say I, encouragingly; "the table is as long as
from here to England ; I saw it."
" Jemima," replies Lenore, gravely, looking at me with
ner large, solemn eyes, " I might sit exactly opposite to
him, and that would kill me on the spot."
I shrug my shoulders.
" He is ugly enough, certainly," I say, severely ; " but
he is hardly such a Medusa's head that it is death to look
at him.
But Lenore is obdurate.
"I had rather die than go down," she says, with the
tragic exaggeration of youth, shaking her head, and all
the shining tangles of hair that ripple about her throat.
The bell rings, tingling and jangling through the open
doors and narrow passages. I am obliged to go down
alone, in my shrunk muslin Garibaldi and shabby old
black-silk skirt, into a crowd of bearded English and shorn
French, who are gathered to raven like wolves in the salle
d manger. I leave Lenore lying prone on the parquet,
hungry and frowning, and slaying an occasional beetle
with her slipper. At dinner I sit between the landlord
and a close-shaved little Breton, with a vast and greasy
appetite. In silence and loneliness I raven like my neigh-
bors. Mr. Le Mesurier fulfils my prophecy ; he is half a
mile off. Now and again I have a vision of his leonine
beard between the thirteen or fourteen intervening guests,
and of a handsome blond head beyond him. On remount-
ing to our garret I find that Lenore has resumed her clothes,
and is sitting on the window-sill, pelting a stray dog in the
court-yard with cherry-stones. Her eyes turn with a sort
of anxiety to me as I enter.
" Well, well," say I, spitefully, " there was an excellent
dinner ; I have brought you a * menu? to show you what
you have lost :
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 97
* POTAGE. Vermicelli.
' POISSONS. Soles, fines herbes.
' ENTREES. Jambon Made re. Poulets sautes. Champignons ' "
" Pooh ! " interrupts my sister, impatiently. " What
do I care ? Well, did you did you see him ? "
"I caught a glimpse now and then of his chestnut
curls," reply I, banteringly ; " only a glimpse, though, as
he was at least a kilometre off."
"Did he see you?"
" Probably not ; the dear fellow did not seem to have
eyes for any thing but his dinner."
" He did not miss me, then ? " with an accent of
chagrin.
" If he did, he disguised it admirably."
" I might have gone down, after all."
" Perfectly."
She picks up the menu. " ; Jambon Madere ' how
good it sounds ! Why did you not ask it to walk up-stairs ?
Jemima, are there any biscuits left in your bag ? "
I investigate, and find half a one, and a great many
dusty crumbs, upon which my sister pounces, as a kitten
upon a ball of worsted.
" I could not, conscientiously, say the children's grace,
4 Thank God for my good dinner,' " she says, shaking her
head. " Jemima, let us go out."
" It is only eight o'clock, and the pardon does not begin
till nine."
" Never mind ; there is, at all events, more to see in
the town than there is here, and I shall be more likely to
forget that fifteen hours must elapse before I see food
again."
So we go and pass through the court-yard, and out into
the cheerful, swarming streets. The prospect of having a
year's sins wiped off seems pleasant, for all faces look gay.
5
98 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
The town is thronged with exquisitely-starched, clean
lace caps, sticking out half a mile behind their owners'
heads thronged with broad felt hats, and loose embroid-
ered waistcoats, trimmed with chains of silver buttons.
They are like peasants in a melodrama real benighted
peasants who have not yet begun to tell themselves that
they are quite as good as their betters, and that there is no
reason why they should not wear hats and bonnets of ex-
actly the same shape and fabric. But even here Innovation
is laying her ugly hand. Even Brittany is setting forth on
the road that leads to chimneypot-hats and shooting-coats ;
even here the ancient Breton costume, in all its purity, is
the exception ; the old world trunk-hose of yesterday is
ceding to the new-world trousers of to-day.
We stroll slowly up through the chattering crowd,
among long-haired, lank men, and laughing, weather-beaten
women. On most Breton faces is written, " Life to us is
arduous." No one is drunk, and no one was swearing.
" How can they be happy, then ? " would be the thought
of an English working-man ; but they are, or, at least, they
look so.
The church is already lit, though it is yet day little
points of yellow light, flickering feebly in the broad, white
light of the summer evening. "We mount the steps
mount them gingerly, lest we should tread on the outspread
legs of the crowded worshippers, crowded as swarmed bees,
upon the steps, and in the porch, before an image there.
We enter the church ; censers are swinging slowly ; the
fragrant hush of a holy gloom is spread between the dim,
high arches gloom that the thousand little yellow lights
are fighting against. Grown men, with swart heads bent,
and doffed hats in their rough hands ; women ; little, prim
children in caps like their mothers', and petticoats down to
their little heels, all all are prostrate before each gaudy
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 99
shrine, sending up their simple souls in prayer to God's
great mother.
Not to her alone, however. As thickly as about the
crowned and sceptred virgin the people press around a
brass head, with a glass window in its chest, and its nose
blackened by the salutations of many past years and gen-
erations. Standing a few paces off, I am watching a tall
youth who, with long, thick hair hanging straight and
black about his harsh, melancholy face, is stooping to kiss
the uncouth, brazen feature, when an English voice sounds
low and laughing in my ear :
" Worse than the pope's toe, is not it ? " I give an
angry start. Devotion is as catching as mumps. Without
any feeling of the ridiculous, I could have followed the
Breton boy's example, and kissed the blackened nose.
Paul Le Mesurier is beside me, and, beyond him, heedless
of the praying Bretons, staring with all his blue eyes at
Lenore, stands a fair, handsome youth, leaning against a
pillar.
" Is it wicked to introduce people in church ? " asks
Paul, sotto voce. " I cannot help it if it is ; I have had
no peace since. Scrope, let me introduce you to Miss Her-
rick."
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
" I HOPE you are better, Miss Lenore," says Paul, leav-
ing his friend and his acquaintance together, and treading
his way between the kneeling country-people to where the
young girl stands with her back resolutely turned to him,
v&
100 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
and her eyes as resolutely fixed upon the high altar, aflame
with lights and laden with flowers.
" Better of what ? " she asks, brusquely, not turning
toward him.
"I always think there must be something radically
wrong with a person who foregoes her dinner in a land
where luncheon is unknown," he answers, trying to get a
peep round the corner into her averted face.
" How do you know that I forewent my dinner ? " she
inquires, sharply, glancing at him for an instant, and then
looking away again as quickly."
" I saw your sister, and I did not see you."
" I dined up-stairs," she answers, shortly. He looks
at her doubtfully.
" Did you, really ?. Why ? "
" I hate talking in church," she says, flashing round
impatiently at him ; " it is irreverent."
" So do I ; the incense gets into my head. Let us go
outside."
" You may go, if you choose," she says, setting her
back against a pillar, and resolutely ignoring his presence.
" I prefer to stay here."
A little child kneeling at her feet in a close calico cap,
with a rosary between its little fingers, stares up wonder-
ingly, with wide eyes, at the monsieur and the madame,
standing so erect and chattering so irreverently in the
great solemn church.
" Your sister and Scrope are going down the steps
now," he says, stooping a little to whisper to her in defer-
ence to the sacred place, while an amused gleam flashes in
his eyes. " The procession will begin in a quarter of an
hour. Come ! "
She makes a half movement of compliance.
" Mind," she says, looking at him, defiantly, " I am com-
WE A T TEE A UTtfOR $AYS 101
ing, not in the least because you ask me, but because I do
not want to miss this fine sight."
The street is fuller than ever. The dusk is drawing on.
Gendarmes in cocked hats and tail-coats ; tight-belted, red-
legged soldiers, leavening the mass of the peasants. A
woman at a stall selling candles candles as thick as your
waist ; candles as thick as your wrist ; candles no thicker
than your finger. Every one is buying, each person laying
down his francs or centimes, and walking proudly off with
a hollow taper as tall as himself.
" You have not forgiven me yet, then ? " says Le Me-
surier, as he elbows a way for his companion between the
woollen-shawled women and embroidered-jacketed men.
" Forgiven you for what ? " she asks, resolutely obtuse,
while her cheeks show a sudden rivalship with the poppy-
bunch in her hat.
" For my my unlucky embassy," he answers, with a
rather awkward laugh.
She looks away from him to the illuminated church, at
once bright and dark against the warm gloom of the June
twilight.
" I thought it was very officious of you," she answers,
coldly.
" Officious ! " echoes' he, quickly, while his own tanned
cheeks catch the pretty angry poppy hue. " Do you sup-
pose I did it for my own pleasure ? Do you suppose that
I ever, in all my life, had a job that I hated more ? "
" Why did you undertake it, then ? " asks the girl,
dryly.
" Because I was living in the same house with him ;
because I had no peace day or night ; because I was sick
of the sound of your name ; because poor little beggar !
he cried yes, actually cried! If I said ' No ' once, I said
it a hundred times."
102 "(iOOD'-BfE, SWEETHEART!"
" It was a pity that you did not say it a hundred and
one times."
"I not only," continues Paul, becoming exasperated,
and consequently spiteful, while his usually quiet eyes give
a cold flash, " I not only declined the office for myself, but
I did all I could to dissuade him from asking you himself."
" Thank you."
" I told him that, if he did induce you to marry him,
you would make him rue the day."
" Thank you."
" I told him how utterly unsuited you were for a par-
son's wife."
" Thank you."
" How much more suited to him your sister was."
"Thank you; two 'thank yous,' indeed one for my-
self, and one for Jemima."
" He had some fatuous idea in his head of being able
to mould you into the proper clerical shape ; but I flatter
myself I, at all 'events, succeeded in weeding that gro-
tesque notion out of his mind."
" In short," says Lenore, turning sharply upon him a
lovely crimson face, like a blown rose, and proud eyes try-
ing to wink away the mortified tears, " in short, not satis-
fied* with hating me yourself, you have been doing your
best to make one of my few friends hate me too."
" Well, at all events," retorts he, smiling, and recover-
ing his good-humor at the same moment as she loses hers,
"at all events, I did not succeed; for, despite all my dis-
suasions, you see, he still wished to gain you."
The crowd grows thicker and thicker. In five minutes
the procession will begin. Leaning over a little balcony
above them, some English ladies and gentlemen are laugh-
ing real English laughs, unlike the high cascades of shrill
French laughter.
WE A T THE A UTEOR SA YS. 103
" We shall be hustled to death down here," says Paul,
lifting his high head to look over the press. " We ought
to have secured a window, like those Britishers up there.
It is not too late now. Let us ask the candle-woman."
The candle-woman turns from the diminished heap of
her tapers to listen politely to Paul's slow, laborious Eng-
lish-French.
" Monsieur and madame desire a croisee, in order to see
the procession ? Mais oui, certainement. If monsieur and
madame will have the goodness to follow her, she will con-
duct them."
So saying, she leads them under an archway, through
an empty workshop, and up a perfectly dark and filthy
flight of stone stairs. The room to which they at length
attain belongs to a Uanchisseme. It is low and poor, but
very clean. Neatly-starched caps are hanging on a line
across the room ; two tidy little beds are in the small recess-
es ; a crucifix hangs over the chimney-piece ; and an ex-
cruciating smell from the gutter below rises up to their of-
fended nostrils. The owner of the apartment, having ex-
pressed an obliging hope that madame will not be " trap
genee par Vodeur" and, having placed a hassock on the
low sill for Lenore to lean her arms upon, leaves her visi-
tors in peace. Paul stands upright and silent, with an ex-
pression of face as if he were trying entirely to repress the
faculty of smell. Lenore lets her eyes wander round, and
gives the reins to her imagination.
Supposing that this garret were her home hers and
Paul's ; supposing that she spent her life in ironing caps,
and hanging them on lines. Supposing that Paul spent
his in digging in the fields, and came back at night to ga-
lette and cider, in a broad Breton hat and trunk hose.
Good Heavens ! how ugly he would look ! She breaks off
her suppositions to smile involuntarily at the idea.
104 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART! "
" What are you smiling at ? " asks Paul, stooping over
her, and swallowing a large mouthful of bouquet de gutter
as he speaks.
" Must I tell you, really f " she asks, lifting her face
every dimple full of mischievous laughter to his.
"Yes."
" I was thinking, then mind, you made me tell you
how ugly you would look in a flapping felt hat and trunk
hose."
" Is that all ? " he answers, carelessly. " I can assure
you that I am nothing to what I was when I was a boy.
In my old regiment we used to pique ourselves upon being
the ugliest corps in the service ; we had not a decent-look-
ing fellow among us."
There is a little pause. Everybody is lighting his or
her candle ; one or two unlucky mortals have broken theirs
off in the middle.
" Did you really think I should marry Frederick ? "
asks Lenore presently, with abruptness.
"How could I tell?"
" But did you think it probable f "
" If I were a woman, I do not think I should care about
undertaking him," he answers, laughing. " But you might
have done worse."
She looks away, vexed ; she could hardjy have said why.
" He is exactly five feet two inches high," she says,
scornfully, drawing up her long, white throat, and looking
insultingly tall.
" Do you mete out your love to a man according to his
inches ? " he asks, leaning his arms on the back of his
chair, and laughing again.
" He has a nose like a piece of putty."
" He has."
" He wears barnacles."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 105
"He does."
" And goloshes."
"Yes."
" He plays the concertina at tea-parties."
"Does he?"
" And sings, ' I'm a nervous man.' "
" So he is."
" He turns up his trousers at the bottom when it rains."
" Well, why should he not ? "
" It would be impossible," says the young girl, with
trenchant emphasis, " to marry a man who did any one of
those things ; it is a thousand times more impossible to
marry a man who does them all"
" He would let you have your own way in every, thing,
big or little ; he would let you ride rough-shod over him.
It would be very bad for you, but I suppose it would please
you," answers Paul, half cynically, taking in, with an un-
comfortable, unwilling glance, the poppy-crowned hat ; the
eyes, dew-soft yet spirited ; the fine nostrils, and blood-red
lips, half parted, as if for some sweet speech of his young
companion.
" Perhaps it would, perhaps it would not," she answers,
gently. " I have never loved anybody yet never ; at least,
not for long not for more than two days ; but, of course,
I shall some day ; and then, I suppose I fancy I im-
agine " (stammering) " that what he likes, I shall like."
Is ifc some reflection from the lights outside, or are
her cheeks a shade more deeply colored than usual, as she
lifts her eyes, with a sort of tender trouble in their shady
depths, to his ?
He shakes his head.
" May I be there to see ! " he says, with a light laugh ;
but there is no laugh in his eyes instead, an eager gravity,
touched with the stirrings of a restless passion. When an
106 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
uncivil woman is to you alone civil, when a cold woman is
for you alone warm, when a high-spirited woman is for you
alone meek, the flattery is trebled in value. It is difficult
to feel sentimental in a very bad smell ; but I think, if you
asked him, Paul Le Mesurier would tell you that he accom-
plished that feat in the little Guingamp garret. The pro-
cession is really beginning, at last ; out of the lit church-
doors it streams, and the surging sea of heads parts and
cleaves asunder to make way for it. Gilt and colored lamps
lead the way, carried by Breton peasants; then the relics
of a saint in a gilt case ; then a troop of young girls in
white, clear and clean as St. Agnes ; then a troop of sail-
ors, also in white, with red sashes two carrying a little
model pf a ship, two carrying a gilt anchor between them ;
then a wax figure in a red-silk petticoat, carried on a bier.
" It is le petit Saint- Vincent ! " cries the good woman
of the house, in high excitement, clasping her hands, " car-
ried by Basse-Bretagne peasants, clad in soutanes for the
occasion, an honor for which they will have to pay high.
Has madame observed him ? How pretty he is ! how
fresh ! how white ! as white as a little chicken."
"And who is le petit Saint-Vincent when he is at
home ? " asks Paul, in crass ignorance of the Roman Catho-
lic calendar.
" He was martyrized at fourteen years," explains the
woman ; and so falls into fresh raptures.
" O ! qu'il est gentil, le petit Saint-Vincent ! H est si
frais ! si rose ! "
" If she is so much struck with le petit Saint-Vincent,
what would not she be with Madame Tussaud's establish-
ment ? " says Paul, laughing and leaning on the sill.
He is past now he and his red petticoat. La bonne
Dame des hommes follows close on his heels, borne on de-
vout shoulders ; then the brass head with the blackened
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 107
nose waggles along ; then gray-haired priests, in glorious,
flowered damask robes, holding high the effigy, in ivory and
gold, of the slaughtered Christ ; then two bishops in
mitres ; then a great flood of snowy caps and broad-
brimmed beavers ; everybody with a candle some big,
some little, but everybody with one. It is the greatest
wonder how they managed to avoid setting fire to each
other. All together, singing loudly yet sweetly, they float
away slowly into the distance.
Half caught by the infection of their devotion, Lenore
throws herself forward half through the rusty casement to
look down the street one sea of waving light, an undula-
ting river of light, rather, flowing between the two dark
banks of the houses on either side. The soft glamour of the
summer moonrise makes glorious each little detail of the
queer pretty show. The colored lamps sparkle like real
great jewels rubies, sapphires, amethysts through the
cool night. The young girls' dresses shine dazzlingly, can-
descently white ; even the brass head with the black nose
is transmuted to gold.
" What a pleasant, easy way of getting to heaven ! "
ba}*s Lenore, withdrawing her head. " I wish I could be-
lieve that a big candle and a kiss to little Saint- Vincent
would take me there ! "
" Do not you think we have had almost enough of this ?"
asks Le Mesurier, rather indistinctly, from between the
folds of his pocket-handkerchief, in which he has now com-
pletely enveloped his nose and mouth. " O libelled Co-
logne ! If Coleridge had but smelt Guingamp ! "
So they descend into the street. The procession is to
circle round the town, chanting always, and ree'nter the
church by another door. It will be some time before this
is accomplished. Meanwhile, people still swarm in the
space before the church women in close, stiff, black bon-
108 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
nets or hats, and big black collars to match, taking one
back to the reign of Edward VI. ; dark, sad-faced, lean
men. These are from the very, very Basse Bretagne.
They are so poor, so poor ! They have come on foot many
a weary mile, to have their sins forgiven ; they will sleep
in the street to-night, and at cock-crow to-morrow set forth
on the trudge back to their far, lone homes. Others, with
almost low-necked dresses, and wide, loose muslin collars.
They are all tramping hither and thither, talking very mer-
rily, hustling Paul and Lenore with their stout Breton
elbows, threatening them with their heavy sabots, which at
any moment may come pounding down on their feet.
" You had better take my arm," says Paul, with a pro-
tecting air, as they move slowly along. " I might easily
mislay you in this crush, and, if I did, it would be like
looking for a needle in a bottle of hay to try and find you
again."
" It would be no great harm if you did mislay me," she
answers, with a pretty air of independence. " Ij who have
travelled all over England, Scotland, and Ireland, quite by
myself, am hardly afraid of coming to harm in the half-
dozen safe yards that intervene between here and the H6-
tel de France."
" What business had you to travel all over England,
Scotland, and Ireland, by yourself?" he asks, brusquely.
" It was very wrong of your people to let you."
" Of course," she answers, with irony, " of course, I
ought to have had a maid to carry my dressing-case, and a
footman to take my ticket and look after my luggage. So
I will, some day, when I marry the Marquis of Carrabas, or
or Frederick ! "
" You will never marry Frederick ! " he says vehement-
ly, involuntarily pressing the small hand that lies on his
arm close to his side. " Never ! NEVEK ! ! " (looking down
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 109
at her face, on which the flaring candles are throwing ca-
pricious little crimson flushes).
"Shall not I?" she says, lifting her limpid innocent
gaze to his. " I do not know." He is silent, at least as
far as speech goes. He has forgotten the pardon, the
white caps, the thronging peasants. His reason is drown-
ing fast -fast in the unfathomed wells of a woman's slate-
blue eyes. " You told me just now that I might do worse,"
she says, under her breath.
" So you might," he sa3 r s, with some excitement. " So
you might. I said true : you might " (with a rather reck-
less laugh) " you might marry me ! who am the younger
son of a younger son have not a sixpence to bless myself
with, and have the devil's own temper to boot."
At his words her head droops forward, like a snow-
drop's, weighed down with a heavy shame; her hand falls
.from his arm. It is past eleven o'clock; the people are
hurrying into church again for the midnight mass. At the
door every one gives up his or her candle to men stationed
to receive them. There is a great heap, as high as your
shoulder, already in the porch. A throng of peasants
lean, long men ; stout, square women ; big lads come
pushing by, nearly hoisting Lenore off her legs. As they
pass she utters a little sharp cry of pain.
" What is it ? Are you hurt ? " asks Paul, vigorously
shouldering aside the peasants, who are beginning to crowd
again as thickly as ever, and digging his elbows viciously
into the plump ribs of a matron behind him.
" It is nothing," she says, a little faintly ; " one of them
trod on me, I think, and a sabot is not the lightest there ! "
(beginning to laugh a little), " do not look as if you were
bent on knocking somebody down ; it would be sure to be
the wrong somebody."
" You are hurt," he says, with vague indignation, gaz-
110 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
ing down solicitously at the cheeks that the little sudden
pain has drained of their sweet, red blood ; " I know you
are, only you are too spirited to own it."
"You are wrong," she says, smiling; " from a child I
have always cried out before I was hurt."
" Lean on me ; lean all your weight on me," says Paul,
obligingly, drawing her away out of the press, and into a
little side street.
4 Ah ! here is a door step let us sit down and rest."
The little street is quite dark, at least on the side where
Paul and Lenore are; as dark as the Place du Guesclin
under the limes. Only on the faces of the houses opposite
the moonbeams are sliding pearl-white.
" I never could bear paid|" says the girl, languidly,
leaning her back against the closed door of the unseen
house. "I never could understand that line of Long-
fellow's
* To suffer and be strong.'
4 To suffer and scream? is my version."
There is a momentary pause between them. They are
beginning to feel as if they need not be talking all the
while. In the deep shade where they are sitting they can
hardly see each other's face : they only feel one another's
pleasant proximity. The tramp, tramp of wooden shoes,
the distant chant, bandied about, tossed this way and that
by the frolic airs, come, now loud, now low, to their ears.
" I wonder what time it is ? " says Lenore, presently,
reluctantly breaking the happy silence ; " ten ? eleven ?
twelve ? "
" \Vhat does it matter ? " replies Paul, indolently, clasp-
ing his hands behind his head. She is the exact opposite
of everything he has hitherto thought good and fair in
woman. Her very beauty large and noble is the reverse
of the small, meek prettiness that has hitherto been his
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. Ill
ideal, and yet and yet it is pleasant to him to sit in the
dry, warm gloom beside her, while the night winds, fresh
from the tanned haycocks, fondle his hair with lightest,
gentlest hands. The church-clock strikes midnight : each
slow stroke falling on the air like a rebuke.
" I must go," replies the girl, half-frightened, springing
to her fe'et.
" Go ! " repeats Paul, impatiently, rising too. " Why
must you ? Shall we be better off in two stuffy garrets in
the Hotel de France, apart, than here together f "
They are standing in the middle of the street : a tall,
ugly man, a tall, beautiful woman (men always have the
best of the bargains in this world). She has taken off her
hat : it hangs with its coquettish poppies and black ribbons
in her drooped right hand ; the moon is throwing little jets
of silver on the waveless sweep of her hair.
" We shall at least be less likely to take cold," she an-
swers, demurely.
But Paul is losing his head. Lenore and the moon-
shine are too much for him.
" Cold ? " he repeats, crossly. " You never thought
about cold that happy night when we went on the Ranee
together."
" That happy night, when you tried so hard to get out
of going, and said it was time to go to bed," she answers,
mockingly, while her eyes for the moment lose their love-
light, and glitter maliciously. He laughs rather consciously.
" That happy night when you soaked all the color out of
my blue ribbons, and drowned my best hat for me," con-
tinues she, gayly. " No, no ! we will have no more happy
nights. My wardrobe would not stand it! Come, let
us go ! "
112 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
CHAPTER XIV.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
" IT is too late now," says Lenore, with a sulky pout,
leaning her arms on the top of the wrought-iron rails of the
balcony ; " I'Am&icaine is at the door."
We are no longer at Guingamp. We have moved on
to Morlaix, and are lodged in a certain hostelry, that is
scented through and through with the ill odor arising from
the very unclean stable over which it is built :
" I do not wish to tell its name,
Because it is so much to blame."
No one dislikes the smell of a clean stable. The warm,
pungent odor that greets you, when you go to see your
friend's hunters, need offend no well-educated nostrils ; but
the terrific reek that ascends from the lodgings of the
Breton beasts of hire, that you swallow, nolens volens, in
bed, in your bath, with your tea, with your cider which
enters not only your nose and mouth, but even your very
eyes and ears is trying to the least sensitive organs.
We two are seated by-the-by, Lenore is standing in
a little salon whose balcony overlooks the street, and
whence we may spy the passers below, keep a lookout on
Lozach, D'ebitant de boissons, opposite, and refresh our-
selves with a slightly-varied version of essence of manure.
A great bow-pot, full of immense roses, stands at my elbow :
each several rose smells mightily of tobacco : a phenome-
non accounted for by the fact that the salon is daily resorted
to for smoking and coffee-drinking purposes by the noble
army of commercial travellers who breakfast and dine at
the table d'hote. When " ces messieurs" as the landlord.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 113
with innocent irony, calls them, have retired, we are per-
mitted to enter, and work our own wild will among
the tobaccoed roses and the jingling old spinet in the
corner.
" It is too late," says Lenore, from the balcony; " 1'Ame'-
ricaine is at the door."
" It would be very easy to send it away again, I sup-
pose."
" I suppose it would."
" I do not believe that there is any thing to see at
Huelgoat," say I, skeptically, turning over the leaves of
my familiar spirit, " Murray," and hunting among the H's
in the index.
" I dare say not."
" Nothing but lead-mines and a reading-desk," say I,
having found the place.
" Oh, indeed ! "
" It is, then, merely for the pleasure of a tete-d-tvte with
Mr. Le Mesurier that you are going ? " cry I, raising my
voice a little, for fear that the lazy wind, that is ruffling the
smoky roses and swaying the muslin curtains, may disperse
my gibe.
" Merely for the pleasure of the ttte-d~t$te with Mr. Le
Mesurier, as you felicitously observe," replies my sister,
with baffling candor, leaving the balcony, and coming to
stand defiantly before me, with her chin a little raised, and
her hands folded behind her back, in her favorite attitude,
like a child saying its lesson. Some people's clothes look
as if they were thrown on ; some as if they were put on ;
some as if they grew on. Lenore's is the latter case.
" I should have thought that you must have had a sur-
feit of those delights by now," say I, disdainfully, with all
an outsider's intolerance for the insipid repetitions of love-
making.
114 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" I have had exactly nine," answers Lenore, growing
grave, while a happy absorption fills her eyes ; " I think "
(smiling) " I must make it a dozen ; and then, perhaps, if
Mr. Scrope is very good, I may give him a turn."
I feel vexed, and, unable and unwilling to explain
why, rise, and, walking over to a little etagtre in the corner,
begin to fiddle with some deplorable spar-boxes with " A
Present from Brighton " on them ; traces, even here, of
the indefatigable Briton, who has inscribed his name and
that of his blacking on the pyramid top. Lenore sits down
at the old piano, and opens it.
" You might be man and wife, from the way in which
you travel about together," say I, fuming.
" Perhaps we are," answers Lenore, with a laugh, her
low, rippling laughter mixing pleasantly with the crash
she is making among the bass notes ; " to the prophetic
eye, present and future are one."
" Heaven forbid ! " say I, devoutly. " I cannot fancy
calling that man ' Paul,' and kissing him, as I suppose one
would have to if he were one's brother-in-law ; one would
lose one's self in the intricacies of that scarlet beard."
" It is not scarlet ! " cries Lenore, in a fury, wheeling
round on the music-stool ; " it is not even red."
" It is like Graham's hair in ' Villette,' " reply I, grave-
ly ; " whose color his friends did not dare to specify, ex-
cept when the sun shone on it, and then they called it
golden."
A little pause.
" I do not think that two young women in our position
can be too careful," say I, primly ; " and really, Lenore, it
is hardly advisable."
"Advisable!" interrupts my sister, jumping off her
stool and giving a little stamp, while her pretty pink nos-
trils dilate with angry wilfulness. " I hate the word ; it is
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 115
a mean, sneaking, time-serving word. Either a thing is
right, or it is wrong ; if it is not right, it is wrong : and, if
it is not wrong, it is right. If it is not wrong to take a
drive on a summer day with a man whose society "
She stops as if she had been shot. The door has open-
ed, and the man whose society is looking in and saying
" Miss Lenore, are you ready ? "
There is a flushed confusion on his honest, ugly face, as
if he had overheard Lenore's last speech ; and, indeed, as
she has always a singularly pure, clear enunciation, and
declaimed this last sentence in a high key, and with a dis-
tinct and trenchant emphasis, I do not see how the poor
man could well help it.
"Am I ready? " says Lenore, with an awkward laugh,
turning away to hide her discomfiture. " That is amusing !
A man keeps one waiting an hour and a half, and then
comes and asks innocently, ' Are you ready ? ' '
At the door stands the " Ame"ricaine," so called because
more unlike an Am6ricaine than any other conceivable
vehicle ; a little, heavy, jingling rattletrap, with a hood in
the last stage of shabbiness. A little old mare in her
dotage, and a tall colt, hardly come to years of discretion,
compose the team. One has bells, the other has none ; both
are smothered under immense sheepskin collars, like levia-
than door-mats ; the flies are teasing them sadly. A noble
army of beggars
" Men and boys,
The matron and the maid,"
press round with obliging empressement ; old, blear-eyed
men beggars, capped and long-frocked little girl beggars
lame boy beggars beggars with ingeniously-horrible mal-
formations of Nature, well brought forward into notice.
" So this is a walking-tour through Brittany, is it Paul ? "
116 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
asks Mr. Scrope, pensively, as we emerge from the door.
He is leaning against the door-post, looking very handsome,
very lazy, and half asleep, as he mostly does. " So this is
the pedestrian exercise that was to make you two stone
lighter by next season ! O Miss Herrick ! " shaking his
head at Lenore, and smiling reproachfully with his indolent
blue eyes, " how much you have to answer for ! "
They get in. I think they feel rather foolish, sitting
perched up on high, side by side. There is something ab-
surdly nuptial about this departure.
" Go on ! what are you stopping for ? " cries Paul, in
the worst possible French. The driver says " Sapr r r,"
the poor beasts stretch to their work ; the old rope traces
strain ; the grin of expectation vanishes from the beggars'
faces.
" Do not you feel as if we ought to throw old shoes af-
ter them ? " asks Mr. Scrope, turning languidly to me, as
the bells go tinkle tinkle down the street. I smile.
" Would a sabot do as well ? I might borrow one." The
jingling has ceased. They are fairly gone.
" What shall we do, Miss Herrick, now that our natural
protectors have left us ? " says my companion, appealing
piteously to me, as I stand on the broiled and broiling
steps under the umbrella with which I have judiciously
furnished myself; while the sun catches his yellow hair
and the young, soft mustache that rather directs attention
to than hides his handsome mouth the feature that is sel-
domer than any other in the human face good. " What
shall we do ? Shall we hire a couple of jackasses, and go
out riding ? "
" Rather too hot, I think."
" It is hot, now you speak of it. Phew ! "
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 117
CHAPTER XV.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
CERTAINLY it is sleepy work, driving to Huelgoat. The
day is one of those that remind one of a bad painting or of
the landscape on a papier-mache tea-tray : garish, staring,
inartistic. The sky is all dead blue, and the trees are all
dead green. Jingle, jingle, jingle, tingle, sound the bells ;
jig, jog, with their noses down to their knees, go the horses
along the road that is white as flour, and quite as powdery.
Up long-backed hills, down long-backed hills ; up, down, up,
down ; there is no end to it. The driver forgets to flick his
whip, and cry " Allez ! allez ! " He sits swaying to and fro
in the sunshine, fast asleep. He looks old and starveling, as
if he never had enough to eat in all his life. Great sweeps
of fern and gorse spread around, only broken by little mis-
erable patches of oats and Ue noir ; endless reaches of
desolate moorland gray, barren, silent. It makes one
shiver, even in this broiling noon, to think how the north
wind must rush and rage over these eerie wolds, these aw-
ful landes, on a January night. Jig jog, jig jog. The
road still twists, twists always, like a white snake writhing
its endless folds about the hills.
" I wonder how they are getting on ? " says Lenore,
after a twenty minutes' silence, blinking in the sun, and
trying to believe that she is enjoying herself.
" They ! Who ? " asks Paul, with an absent start.
" Jemima and Mr. Scrope, to be sure."
" I do not know about your sister, I'm sure," replies
Paul, leaning back, and resting his head against the stained
and discolored leather of the old hood ; " I have not known
118 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
her long enough to say ; but, as I knew Scrope when he
was in round jackets, and have seen a good deal of him,
off and on, ever since, I can tell you to a nicety what he is
doing, if you wish."
"What?"
" He is lying on his back, in the coolest place he can
find, and drinking claret-cup, if he can ask for it in French,
which I doubt ; but if not, brandy and seltzer, cider and
siphon, any thing certainly drinking / and as certainly
making love to some one the landlady, the femme de
chambre, your sister, perhaps, if she does not snub him as
resolutely as she does me."
" Poor dear Mima ! " says Lenore, laughing. " She
will be sorely puzzled to know how to take it if he does."
"If it is not your sister, it is somebody else," says Paul,
tilting his hat over his nose, and closing his eyes ; " he is
the sort of fellow that one could not trust alone in the room
with his own grandmother for five minutes."
"Indeed!"
" Generally," pursues Paul, in a sleepy voice, " after a
two days' acquaintance, he proposes to every woman he
sees ; if she refuses him, he asks her to be a sister, or
mother, or aunt, or something of the sort, to him : if she
accepts him, he is off by the next train, and never heard of
(by her, at least) again."
" He must remind one of the saying that the best way
to be rid of a troublesome friend is to lend him a five-pound
note."
Their talk flags ; the dust seems to have got into it ;
there is no juice in it. A little public-house stands by the
roadside, a bunch of box over the door, to show that they
sell cider there. Inside, a woman with a distaff, an old,
old woman, all grin and wrinkles, every wrinkle filled up
with dirt. Immensely tall pigs, with finely-arched backs,
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 119
noses like greyhounds, and legs like antelopes, throng
about the door. Now and again a primitive cart passes ;
the shaggy, unkempt horses prick their ears and rear and
plunge, as if they had never seen a civilized being Ipefore.
With hardly less astonishment do their wild-eyed drivers
stare. It is three o'clock and past by the time that Paul
and Lenore reach Huelgoat Huelgoat, sitting in the sun-
shine, at the very end of the world, beside her still gray
tarn.
"I am ravenous," says Lenore, gayly, as they jingle up
the dead gray street. " I ate no breakfast, did you ? One
cannot eat in that smell. What shall we have ? Cutlets,
trout ? There ought to be trout in that lake."
" Do not be too sanguine," answers Paul, shaking his
head ; " it is uncharitable to judge by appearances, but, from
a bird's-eye view of Huelgoat, I should say that whitebait
was hardly less unlikely than trout or cutlets."
No one, it seems, at first sight, lives at the Hotel de
Bretagne, at least no one appears. They descend from the
Ame'ricaine, and enter a flagged passage, with two doors
exactly opposite each other, one on each side. That on
the left is open, and gives admittance into a bright and
fireless kitchen innocent of the very faintest odor of cook-
ing. A woman,..in a cap that is a cross between a night-
cap and a chimney-pot of the hooded kind, comes to meet
them, with an immense white collar and a clean sour face.
" What did monsieur and madame wish ? "
" Monsieur and madame wish for something to eat, now,
immediately, d T 1 instant"
"Monsieur and madame can have some bread and but-
ter some cheese ; there is unhappily nothing else in the
house au moment"
" Nothing else in the house ! " repeats Lenore, with an-
gry volubility. " Why, there is a chicken ! I saw it. I
120 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!
see it now, there ! " pointing with her finger to where a
long, lean cock lies, lank and plucked, in a meat-safe in the
passage.
" There is, as madame has observed, a chicken, a superb
chicken, but he is for the table tfhote"
" But we are dying, perishing, affames ! " cries Lenore,
eking out her uncertain talk with plentiful gesticulation.
" Monsieur and madame can have some bread and but-
ter some excellent cheese an omelette."
It takes ten minutes of entreaties, expostulations,
prayers, before she can be over-persuaded to the sacrifice
of the "superb" chicken. On being asked how soon it
will be dressed, she answers, " Half an hour ; " and, being
earnestly besought to abridge that time, repeats, inexora-
bly, " line demi-heure, d peu pres."
" Let us go into the satte d manger and shut the door,"
says Lenore, despondently. " It will drive me mad to see
her pottering and dawdling about ; and, if we watched her,
she would only potter and dawdle the more, to spite us."
A quarter of an hour passes. They devour huge slices
of the loaf, and make a clearance of three miserable little
dry sardines, brought in on a plate. They look out of win-
dow at the silent street, call it Welsh, Irish every ugly
name they can think of. Lenore could not coquet with
Paul now, were she to be shot for it ; neither could Paul
say any thing affectionate, even if under the same penalty.
They are both far too hungry.
" Look if it has gone out of the meat-safe yet," says
Lenore, presently.
" If it has not," replies Paul, gravely, " I am aware that
it will be unmanly but I shall cry."
He opens the door, and peeps out into the passage.
"It is there still!"
Despair for a few moments then rage ; then a rush
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 121
into the bright kitchen opposite, bright with pewters and
coarsely-painted pottery plates ; bitter reproaches, quickly
sunk in hopeless silence.
" Madame is unreasonable ; madame must have pa-
tience ; the fire is not yet lit ! "
They return to the salle d manger, and Lenore sits
down 6n the flagged floor, while her pretty blue gown
makes what children call " a cheese " all around her. Paul
stands over her in gloomy silence.
" How well I can understand now how shipwrecked
mariners eat one another," she says, looking up at him,
pathetically.
After a while a few coals of charcoal make a feeble
glimmer in the open hearth. The enemy with the chim-
ney-pot cap takes the fowl his sex plainly declared by the
comb which still adheres to his head and runs him once
or twice through the flame to singe him ; then, taking a
few warm (not hot) coals, places them in a sort of tin box,
and lays the carcass in the box at some distance from
them.
" As if those wretched, half-dead embers could ever
cook any thing ! " cries Lenore, indignantly. They sit
stupidly gazing through the two open doors.
"How does he look?"
"There is not a sign of cooking upon him," answers Le
Mesurier, morosely. " He is as white as when he went in."
" He will be done only on one side," says Lenore, half
crying ; " is not she going to turn him at all ? "
She comes in presently, and turns him over deliberate-
ly ; then goes, with unfeeling calmness, about her other
occupations.
" Well ! JVow ? " (eyes sparkling, and her long neck
stretched to look into the kitchen).
" There is a slight shade of brown coming over him,"
6
122 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"'
says Paul, with a smile. Ten minutes more and he ap-
pears ; his legs and arms are all straggling wildly about,
his skin is burnt blacker than any coal, and his flesh is as
pink as a bit of catchfly ; but he is oh, how delicious !
By-and-by, after he is eaten, and nothing but memory
is left of his charms, they stroll out together down the
dumb stone street, where tiny old-world children, in tight,
white skull-caps, not showing a curl of their baby hair, are
playing gravely in the gutter, with their long petticoats
flapping about their heels and entirely hiding their little fat
legs where, just inside the doors, women in the home-cfo's-
habille of filthy-white chimney-pots sit at their spinning-
wheels.
Coming to Huelgoat is synonymous with putting back
the clock two hundred years. Down by a mill, along a
narrow path, across a ferny slope, to see the pierre trem-
blante. Great rounded bowlders lie about like couchant
elephants ; dusky fir- woods clothe the hills, that rise so close
and stern, and on their barren breasts great gray granite
masses heave huge shoulders out of the heathy ground.
Below, a little brawling stream slides coyly under the
great rocks, then bubbles coldly out again, talking to itself
all the way and to the small marsh-flowers that grow about
its low brim; a little mountain-beck, like a flashing smile
on the valley's lips, like a silver chain about the hill's cool
feet.
Paul and Lenore have been climbing the hills, have
been straying among the piny odors, have been pushing
and fighting their way through the thick bilberry-bushes,
and now they are hot and tired. Lenore is kneeling on a
flat gray stone, and, stooping low down, lays her mouth to
the clear water and drinks.
" I am too old and stiff to be so supple," says Paul,
with a smile of admiring envy. " Make me a cup of your
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 123
hands ; I have no letter in my pocket to make a leaky
cornucopia of."
She complies, gravely. Joining her white hands to-
gether, she dips them into the water, and then holds them
up for him to drink. He has to drink very fast, as the
water runs out nearly as quick as it came in. Then she
stoops again, and bathes her head in the stream. The
water rolls in diamond beads from her hair, and on to her
turquoise-blue gown, as she kneels on the broad gray
stone ; long-legged flies are walking about on the stream ;
little blue butterflies hover round, like flying flowers that
have grown tired of their stalks, and are gone visiting their
Jiinsfolk. Paul is stretched on the short, fine grass on the
other side of the brook, but yet not a span off. His elbows
rest on the ground, and his hands are buried in his bronze
beard. It is all so pretty, so lorn, so silent, as if, long
ago, God had made this fair spot, and then forgotten it.
" Mr. Le Mesurier," says Lenore, suddenly, " do you
think it was wrong of me to come with you here to-day ?
I would not ask any other man, because I know I should
only get some silly, civil speech ; but I know that you will
tell me the truth, however disagreeable perhaps " (laugh-
ing) " with all the more alacrity, the more unflattering it
may be."
Paul lifts his head, and stares at her in some surprise
at the demand made upon his veracity.
" Since when has your conscience grown so tender ! "
he asks, evasively. " Who has been putting such an idea
into your head? for I am sure it never grew there of it-
self."
" Jemima," she answers, dabbling her hand and her
pocket-handkerchief in the bright water, with more than a
child's delight. "When you came in this morning, she
was in the middle of telling me how improper it was. I
124 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
do not mind her she is an old maid or, at least, in her,
coming events cast their shadows before. But I want you
to tell me. Is it wrong, incorrect hazard 6, as the French
say ? "
" Not one of the three, in the very least," he answers,
warmly. " The worst that any one can say of it is, that it
is a little, a very little, unconventional."
" The woman with the eyes like a shot partridge would
not have done it, I suppose ? "
" Probably not." Then, seeing her look mortified :
" If the woman with the eyes like a shot partridge has a
fault, it is being in the slightest degree in too great bond-
age to Mrs. Grundy. She would hardly dare to go along
the road to heaven, unless she knew that many very re-
spectable people had gone there before her."
Silence, save for the low, small noise that the glossy
bees make in visiting from heather-bloom to heather-bloom.
The high sun is already sloping westward ; in two or three
hours one will be able to look him in the face.
" If I had but Joshua's gift ! " says Paul, sighing, as he
lies gazing up at the flawless sapphire above him. " If I
could but say, with any hope of being obeyed, c Sun, stand
thou still ! ' "
" Why should you say so ? " asks Lenore, opening her
eyes, as she busily wrings out her pocket-handkerchief, and
lays it on the grass to dry. " Why should you wish to
stop him ? He will last quite long enough to light us
home, and that is all we want him for to-day."
" To-day ! Yes," answers Le Mesurier, sighing again ;
" but, when one thinks that, in all human probability, he
will shine upon us two together at Huelgoat never
again ! "
" He will shine upon us two together at Morlaix," says
Lenore, playfully, " which will be much the same, will not
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 125
it ? Probably he will not only shine upon us, but will
freckle us a good deal."
" He will not shine upon us together anywhere long,"
says Paul, rather crossly, as if vexed by her gayety.
"What do you mean?"
" I mean that I am going back to England the day
after to-morrow ; that is all."
" Going ! " she repeats, while a cowardly, treacherous
white spreads over cheeks and lips ; and her wet hands
drop forgotten into her lap.
" Yes ; I am going," answers Paul, his vain man's
heart all astir at sight of her change of countenance, and
his face gaining all the color hers has lost. " My people,
who have never hitherto shown much propensity for my
society, have suddenly found that I am indispensable to
them."
She turns her head aside, and looks away toward the
piny hills.
" So you are going away ? " she says, almost under her
breath. " Well " (forcing a smile), " considering how in-
auspiciously our acquaintance began, we have got on very
well together, have not we ? "
" Very well," answers Paul, emphatically.
" We have managed to agree pretty well, although I
am not your style " (with a perceptible accent on the last
three words).
" JVbt my style ? What do you mean ? " he asks, red-
dening consciously.
" Although you did think it such a hardship coming on
that tea-picnic with us down the Ranee, although you did
look at your watch so often and sigh so heavily ! I thought
once or twice " (laughing a little) " that you would have
blown out Frederick's new-lit fire."
"Is it possible?" cries Paul, tragically; not in the
126 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
least struck by the ridiculousness of the offence imputed to
Mm, but rather by the state of mind in himself that such
an offence evidenced.
Lenore bends her eyes on the ground ; her fingers, ig-
norant of what they are doing, pluck at the fine blade's of
grass, and dwarf yellow flowers about her ; her figure has
a drooped air of languor.
" There was a pretty redness in her lip
A little riper and more lusty red
Than that mixed in her cheek ; 'twas just the difference
Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask."
" Yes, we have got on very well," she says, in a tone
that is half a whisper and half a sigh.
Paul has risen to his feet, and now steps across the nar-
row barrier of the brook that parts them, and stands over
her, with his hands in his pockets, and a strong emotion
agitating his plain, burnt face.
"Lenore," he says, impetuously, "do not you think
that we should get on very well together always ? "
If only premeditated proposals came to pass, every par-
ish-register would be the poorer by two-thirds of its mar-
riages. When he set off this morning from Morlaix, Paul
had as much idea of offering himself to Jemima as to Le-
nore ; only he would not believe it now if you were to tell
him so. At his words, she springs to her feet, and a slight
quiver passes over her features.
" I think," she says, trying to laugh, " that we should
quarrel a good deal."
" Lenore," says Paul, earnestly, " I do not know why I
am asking you. You are not in the least the sort of wo-
man that I ever pictured to myself as my wife, and I have
no earthly business to ask any woman. My face " (with a
rather grim laugh) " is my fortune, and you see what a
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 127
handsome one that is ; and yet and yet tell me, Lenore,
am I worth living 1 in a garret on cold mutton with ? "
She gives him no speech in answer ; only she stretches
out her arms, and her eyes flash softly through her happy
tears. He must read his answer there.
The beck tinkles at their feet; the butterflies hover
about their heads ; the sun gives them his broad, warm
smile ; and three little Breton girls, going a-bilberrying,
with tin mugs in their hands, stand on a neighboring slope,
aghast at the manners and customs of the British. She is
lying in his arms, and he is kissing the beautiful lips that
have kissed none but him, that (as he confidently thinks)
will kiss none but him ever again.
" Are you sure," asks Lenore, presently, lifting her ruf-
fled head from his breast, and smiling through her tears,
" are you sure that you are asking me for yourself this
time?"
" Quite sure."
" That it is not for Frederick ? "
"No."
"Nor for Mr. Scrope?"
" No."
" Are you quite, quite sure that you like me ? " she asks,
drawing a little away from him, and reading earnestly his
gray eyes, as if with more confidence in their truth than in
that of his mouth.
"I am not at all sure of it," he answers, laughing.
" You are not the sort of person that any one could Wee,
but I am very sure that I love you, if that will do as
well."
"Better than the shot-partridge woman?" she asks,
smiling, half ashamed of her question, and yet with solici-
tude.
" Immeasurably better ! " answers he, devoutly.
128 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
At that she seems satisfied, but in a very little while
her restless doubts return.
" Paul," she says, withdrawing herself from his arms,
"you have not yet asked me whether I like you."
" I suppose," he answers, gayly ; " that I thought ac-
tions spoke louder than words."
"You did not think-,, it $worth while asking me," she
says, reddening painfully, " because you were so sure of
what the answer would be ; you knew I was fond of you ;
you have known it all along ! Oh, why did not I hide it
better ? " clasping her hands together, and flinging herself
down, disconsolately, on the grass.
" I knew nothing of the kind," answers Paul, pulling
his mustache, and looking very much embarrassed ; " if, in-
deed, you had been any other woman, I might have been
conceited enough to fancy from your manner that you did
not dislike me, but, as you are not in the least like any wo-
man I ever saw in my life, I could not possibly argue from
their manners and customs to yours."
" You are very kind," she answers, shaking her head,
" trying to put me in good-humor with myself, but you
cannot : I have been a lame hare a lame hare ! "
" Do not call my wife ugly names ! " cries Paul, play-
fully, yet distressed, sitting down beside her ; " it is very
bad manners."
" If you had been less sure of me, you would have
valued me a hundred times more," says the girl, with
bitter mortification, fixing her solemn tragic eyes on his
face.
" Do not get into the habit of talking such nonsense ! "
retorts he, brusquely ; all the more brusquely perhaps from
a latent consciousness that there is a grain of truth in her
self-accusation. " How many times must I tell you that I
was not sure of you ; that I did not know but that you
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 129
might give me my coup de grdce with as little remorse as
you did Mr. West ? "
How Mr. Le Mesurier reconciles this astounding fib to
his conscience, I must leave the reader to determine.
Another little silence ; the bilberry children have dis-
appeared in the wood; the long-legged flies are still
promenading on the stream; the sleepy mellowness of
afternoon is upon every thing.
" Paul," says Lenore, again presently, not in the least
convinced by her lover's perjuries, and lifting a charming,
quivering face to his " can you swear to me that you did
not ask me because I looked grieved at the news of your
going ? Can you swear to me that you like me always ?
Not only now, here, but always, all day and all night
even when you are away from me."
" Even when I am away from you, strange to say," he
replies, heartily, drawing her fondly toward him.
" I know," she continues, not yielding to his caresses,
but rather resisting them, " that while I am with you, I
please you, as any man is pleased with the company of a
young, good-looking woman, who has evident delight in his
society ; but when you are away from me alone in your
own room at night, quietly thinking over things do you
like me then ? do you approve of me then f "
He looks a little pained at first by this puzzling cate-
chism ; then putting an arm of fond and resolute ownership
round her, answers gravely, but without hesitation :
" Lenore, since you are bent on tormenting yourself
and me with these ridiculous doubts and questionings, I
will tell you the very truth : I would not have loved you
if I could have helped it ; for the last three weeks I have
been trying honestly to dislike you. I have told myself
over and over again yes, I have even told West too, that
I did not admire you ; I have pretended to hold you cheap ;
130 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
I have said that you were fast that I could see you had a
temper that you were bad form that you were not even
pretty God forgive me for such a lie ! " breaking off sud-
denly, to smooth her ruffled hair.
" Well ; go on," she says, curtly, impatient of the inter-
ruption, while her cheeks wear as deep a dye as the strewn
petals of a red rose.
" I felt well, to tell the truth, I feel now " (laughing),
" that you were not a woman that a man would have an
easy time with. Lenore, I shall be frantically jealous of
you ; I shall very often fly into a rage with you "
" There," cries Lenore with spirit, " we shall be
quits ; for I never stayed in the house with any one for a
fortnight in my life, without quarrelling d entrance with
them."
" You are," continues Paul, still smiling, " as unlike as
it is possible to be to the patient Grizzel, the amiable fond
drudge, that I have always imagined trudging humbly
through life beside me ; I cannot fancy you trudging
humbly beside any one ; you would be more likely to stalk
on in front of them, with your head up but yet but yet
Lenore look me in the face for as long as you please the
longer the better I defy even you to find any falsehood
there I would not change you now for all the Grizzels in
Christendom."
" Would not you ? " she says, softly laying her head
caressingly down on his shoulder, " I am glad ! "
" Poor darling ! " he says, with a passionate pang of
self-reproach, " I wish I was better worth being glad of."
Neither speaks for a few moments, and both are happy.
Lenore, womanlike, is the first to break silence.
" Paul," she says, lifting her head from its new resting-
place, laying a hand with innocent familiarity upon each
of his shoulders, and scanning closely his face, which looks
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 131
even less handsome under this minute inspection than when
viewed from the respectful distance at which his acquaint-
ance are wont to regard it, " do you know that I am not
at all nice ? Not at all ; quite the contrary. I would not
have told you, only that I am sure that you would very
soon have found it out for yourself : hitherto, I have not
cared whether I was or no; but I am not a nice per-
son, certainly. As yet you have seen only the best of
me."
"The best of you!" cries Le Mesurier, raising his
brows in feigned dismay, " if what I have seen be the best
of you, what must the worst be ? "
She smiles. " You remind me of the man, who, when
his lady-love refused him, saying that she wondered how
he could have the presumption to propose to her, as she
had never shown him any thing but her coldest manner,
answered that if such were her coldest manners, he shud-
dered to think what her warmest must be." The laugh
becomes a duet. " Do not you remember," continues Le-
nore, gravely, "what Miss Richland says in Goldsmith's
4 Good-natured Man ? ' 'Our sex are like poor tradesmen
that put all their best goods to be seen in the windows.'
All my best goods are -in my windows."
" Why do not you leave me to make these discoveries
for myself ? " asks Paul, half-vexed, half-play fully. " Why
do you tell me ? it is like telling me the end of a novel."
" Do not you see," she says, eagerly, " that I want you
to know the worst of me at once ? "
" And about how bad is the worst ? " asks Paul, jest-
ingly, as he takes her two hands, and puts them about his
own neck, while he gazes at his leisure into the shady
depths of her deep-fringed eyes, "is it that you have a
will of your own? I know that already I knew it from
the day when you first burst upon my dazzled sight in
132 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
Stephanie's cap and petticoat is it that you snub your
sister ? I know that too is it "
" Oh, do not joke," she says, earnestly, "it is no joking
matter, but I will try to be nicer for the future; I will,
indeed, for your sake ! I will begin directly to-morrow."
" Why not to-day ? " (smiling).
" I shall have no temptation to resist to-day," she an-
swers, simply. " To-day I am too happy to be wicked."
Again he presses her to his heart, with a feeling of
remorse, as one that has been given a good gift, and prizes
it not according to its worth.
" O poor child ! " he cries, with emotion, " why are,you
happy ? Is it because you have made the worst and most
losing bargain ever woman made since first this cheating
world began ? "
" I have been so lucky all my life," she says, with a
pensive smile. " From a little child, I have always suc-
ceeded in getting what I wanted ! You are the first per-
son whose love I ever wished for, and is it forward of me
to tell you so ? I wished for it from almost the first day I
saw you, rude and surly as you were to me and now, so
you tell me, do not you ? Against your will I have got
even that."
" There is not much doubt of it," answers -Paul, with
more emphasis than eloquence. " Oh, perverse, pretty
darling! What blessed contrariety ever induced you to
take a fancy to such an u^ly, ill-conditioned devil as I ?
Most women hate the sight of me."
"And you return the compliment with interest," re-
joins Lenore, smiling, " so Frederick told us. That was
what first made me think of you. O Paul ! " (her gravity
returning, and the unbidden tears rising to her eyes), "was
there ever an instance of any one being always happy ? or
shall I have to pay for my good luck by-and-by ? "
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 133
" Do not talk like that," says the young man, hastily,
with a pained look ; " it makes me feel as if I had been
misleading you, and yet God knows I have not done so
consciously. O love ! " (with an accent of bitterness) " you
will find soon enough that there is nothing alarmingly for-
tunate in the lot you have drawn."
"If you think," she answers, with a spirited smile,
" that I am deceiving myself in my estimate of you, you
are mistaken ; I am not elevating your excellences at the
expense of my own; if I am not remarkably amiable,
neither I am sure are you ; we shall probably lead a cat-
and-dog life, to the edification of all our neighbors but
yet, try as you may to persuade me to the contrary, it still
seems it will always seem to me good luck to belong to
you. Come, let us go ! "
As she speaks, she rises, and stands beside the little
quarrelsome stream, tall, and straight, and beautiful, with
a grave, fond smile on her shut lips, and a bulrush wand in
her small white hand ; his own, his very own, and not an-
other man's.
CHAPTER XVI.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
IT is half-past eight, but still broad daylight. Paul and
Lenore have not yet returned. I wish they would. " Good-
night," say I, closing the old spinet at which I have been
warbling in the little salon that overhangs the street.
" Are you going to bed ? " asks Mr. Scrope, dissuasive-
ly ; " do not." He is lying on three chairs, meditating,
like Mr. Pickwick, with his eyes closed.
134: "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" I have a headache," I answer, rather crossly ; " can no
one keep awake in my society ? " is my reflection.
" Please sing ' Good-night, good-night, Beloved,' before
you go," says he, lifting his blue eyes with lazy entreaty to
my face, " efo."
I laugh.
" You are like the man in ' Sam Slick,' who said to the
girl, c Thing me that little thong J when she had already
sung it twice. I sang * Good-night, good-night, Beloved/
ten minutes ago."
He first looks confused, and then laughs with boyish
heartiness.
" Did you ? You see it was a better lullaby than you
had any idea of."
" Good-night," say I tendering my hand for the second
time.
" Do not go," he says again, drawing himself languidly
up ; " it is only half-past eight."
" Is it not as well to sleep comfortably and peacefully
in bed as uncomfortably and spasmodically on three hard-
bottomed chairs ? "
" I think not " (rising and yawning). " In order to get
to bed we have the trouble of going up-stairs. Now, if
one had some one to carry one up it would be differ-
ent."
" I wish they would come back," say I, uneasily step-
ping out into the little balcony. "It is a great shame of
Mr. Le Mesurier keeping Lenore out so late."
" How do you know that it is not she that is keeping
him out ? "
I drew myself up with dignity.
" What do you mean ? "
"I meant no offence," he answers, good-humoredly ;
" only, from the very little I know of your sister, I should
WE AT JEMIMA SAYS. 135
say that she was not the sort of person to let any one make
her come in or go out against her own will."
" You do not like Lenore," say I, leaning my arms on
the rails and gazing down the street.
"To tell you the truth," he answers, confidentially,
" she frightens me out of my wits ! You do not in the
least ; but, when I see her come into the room, my first im-
pulse is to take to my heels and hide in dens and caves."
" Is it ? " say I, surprised. Why ? "
" Her eyes go through one like gimlets" he says, his
handsome young cheeks flushing ; " and she has a way of
looking over, and under, and through, and on each side of
one, without affecting to perceive one."
" Has she," I say, wonderingly ; " I never observed it."
" Perhaps it is only I who am invisible to the naked
eye," rejoins he, with an indolent smile. " She perceives
Paul, no doubt ; we can all see that, of course."
" There is no accounting for taste," I answer, tritely ;
" Bottom and Titania are of very frequent occurrence now-
adays."
" I did not mean that exactly," says Mr. Scrope, too
loyal to his friend to relish the ingenious comparison that
I have instituted between him and the ass-headed weaver
of Athens. " I am not in the least surprised at Miss Le-
nore's preferring Paul to me, for he is the very best fellow
in the world, and consequently I can only be the second
best."
" Very best ! " cry I, carping at such unlimited praise
bestowed upon a person whose merits I have as yet been
unable to discover. " How very best f Most religious, do
you mean?"
He looks down.
" No, not that, I suppose."
" Steadiest ? "
136 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
He smiles significantly.
" Hardly. Poor old Paul ! they used to call him Lin-
coln and Bennett in his old regiment, because he was as
mad as two hatters."
"Most amiable?"
" Well, no, I think not. Paul is a queer-tempered fel-
low ; he can be very nasty when he likes."
" In what, then," inquire I, astonished, " may I ask,
does his supereminent merits consist ? "
" It knocks one up so much this hot weather explaining
things," answers he, stretching. " All the same, he is the
very best fellow in the world."
" That is the Italian mode of argument," say I, smiling ;
" which consists in repeating the disputed assertion over,
a certain number of times, in exactly the same words as at
first."
With this parting thrust, I take my leave.
Early as is the hour, many of the commercial travellers
have already retired to bed ; at least many boots stand out-
side many doors. As I walk slowly up the stairs, the prob-
lem that engages my mind is : " Wherein can Mr. Le Mesu-
rier's charm lie? Ugly, irreligious, dissipated, ill-tem-
pered!" I fall asleep without having solved it. I am
awoke, or half-awoke, by a sensation of being violently
called upon and shaken by some one. I sit up and blink :
" I have sung it twice already," I say, irrelevantly, imagin-
ing that Mr. Scrope is still pressing me to sing " Good-
night, good-night, Beloved," and is shaking me to enforce
compliance.
" Sing what ? Who wants you to sing ? Wake up, you
foolish old person ! " cries my sister's laughing voice. I
obey. Broad awake, I look round. The moonlight is ly-
ing in silver bars on the floor, having shone through the
Venetian blind. A candle glares uncomfortably into my
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 137
eyes, and on my bed Lenore is sitting, still dressed in her
hat and jacket, her clothes wet with the night-dews, and
the steady shining of a great new happiness in her eyes.
" Jemima," she says, with an excited smile, snatching my
hand, " are you awake ? Wide ? Can you understand
things ? "
u It is not your fault if I cannot," I answer, drowsily,
rubbing my eyes.
" Stop blinking ! " she cries, impatiently, " and look at
me. Do you know that you are looking at the very hap-
piest woman in all France ? "
" And you at the sleepiest," reply I, lying down again.
" Do not go to sleep," she says, laying her sweet, fresh
face, cool with the kisses of the night-wind, beside mine
on the pillow. " You do not know what interesting things
I have to tell you. Do you know " (in a confidential, em-
phatic whisper), " I dare say you will hardly believe it at
first I can hardly believe it myself yet but Paul likes
me very much ! "
" Much ? " say I, crossly, half at my interrupted slum-
bers, half at the unwelcome though expected news ; " there
is nothing very wonderful in that ; for the last three weeks
you have been doing your very best to make him like you,
and your efforts in that line are not generally unblessed
with success."
Her countenance falls ; her tone of gay triumph changes.
" Doing my very best ! " she repeats, slowly. " Ah,
that was what I was afraid of ! So I have so I have."
" Your friend Paul had no need to see farther through a
stone-wall than other people, in order to perceive that it
was a case of ' Oh, whistle and I'll come to you, my lad ! ' r
pursue I, with clumsy badinage.
She covers her face with her hands ; then, lifting it,
looks with wistful anxiety at me.
138 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Did I do any thing to make a person despise me, do
you think ? " she asks, in a low voice. " Was I unlady-
like ? Did I run after him ? "
" Run after him ! Pooh, nonsense ! " reply I, carelessly^
then, after a pause, meditatively : " Paul, Paul ! it is an
ugly, abrupt little name. Paul Pry ! Paul Ferroll, who
killed his wife ! Are there any more Pauls ? You really
must have him rechristened, Lenore."
" Paul and Virginia," says Lenore, assisting my mem-
ory, having recovered her smiles ; " I do not think I am
much like Virginia."
" And do you mean seriously to tell me," continue I, be-
coming grave, " that it was with the deliberate intention
of asking you to share his exceedingly indifferent fortunes,
that he took you out on this expedition to-day, in that
little, dusty, tumbled-down pony-gig, in the roasting
sun?"
" I do not know whether it was deliberate intention or
accident," replies my sister, looking down, and plucking at
the clothes. " I rather think it was accident ; but which-
ever it was, he did ask me."
" And you said ' Yes,' and ' Thank you kindly,' I sup-
pose ? " cry I, reddening with indignation.
She nods assent : " If I did not say it, I felt it."
A little silence : " You will at least have an excellent
foil, on all occasions, ready to your hand," I say, spite-
fully, in bitter vexation that Damocles's sword has fallen
that the catastrophe which I have been vaguely dreading
for the last three weeks has happened.
" What do you mean ? " (with an absent look). " Oh ! "
(with a smile), " I see ; you think him so ugly."
" Extremely ! " reply I, dryly.
" So do I," rejoins she, calmly ; " I like ugliness."
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 139
" ' Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek, smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy,' "
say I, maliciously, quoting Titania's apostrophe to Bottom.
Lenore reddens. " You are rude, Jemima, and not at
all witty."
" He is poor, too," say I, with rising exasperation
" unjustifiably poor : I suppose he goes upon the principle
that what is not enough for one is enough for two ? "
"I suppose he does," she answers, quietly. "I like
poverty."
" He is ill-tempered, too," pursue I, eagerly. " Ah ! you
remember what a fury he flew into at Guingamp, with that
poor garpon who could not understand his bad French when
he asked for the time-table ? "
" I remember I like ill-temper."
" And he is also a gourmand," continue I, relentlessly.
" Did you notice how thoroughly put out he looked, yester-
day, at dinner, because the gelatine was finished before it
reached him ? "
" Did he ? I dare say I like greediness."
I shake my head, silenced and baffled by this hopeless
agreement with all my objections."
" You see," cries Lenore, with a triumphant smile,
"that, try as you may, you cannot put me out of conceit
with him."
" The point I am trying to arrive at," say I, with a
sigh, " is, what could have ever put you into conceit with
him first ? Do not look so angry, my dear child ! I am
not so wedded to my own opinion, but that I am quite
ready to change it, if you show me good reason why I
should. But I really do not mean it offensively but
what good qualities of mind or body has Mr. Le Mesu-
rier?"
140 "QOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
Lenore springs off the bed, and begins to walk rapidly
up and down the room : her little high heels tap-tapping
against the carpetless boards. "How you talk!" she
cries, angrily. " Do you think that when a person loves
they pick out this quality and that, and say, ' This is lov-
able,' and ' That is lovable,' and, therefore, I will be fond
of the person who owns them all ? One loves because one
loves because one cannot help it, and because one would
not, if they could."
" Talk High Dutch or Coptic, you will be quite as in-
telligible to me," I say, indignantly.
She returns to the bed, and fixes her large, bright eyes
on my face. " Is it possible, Jemima," she asks, " that in
all the many years you have been about the world " (I
wince), "you have never had a lover that you cared about
with all your heart and soul for no particularly good reason
that you could give either yourself or anybody else ? "
" Never," reply I, with a rather grim laugh. " Humil-
iating as the confession is, I should have thought, Lenore,
that you might have known by this time that I never have
had a lover, either that I cared about, or that I did not
care about, and I do not think that there are many women
of eight-and-twenty that can make that proud boast."
" Poor Jemima ! " cries my sister, in a tone of the sin-
cerest compassion, taking my hand; at this moment she
feels ten years older in experience and emotion than I.
" Do not pity me ! " say I, with asperity ; " Vapp'etit
vient en mangeant : if I had one lover, I might wish for
more ; but, as things stand, the more I look around me, the
more inclined I am to think that ' ignorance is bliss.' "
" Good-night, Jemima ! " says Lenore, stalking to the
door, with as much dignity as a water-proof down to the
heels and a brass candlestick in her hand will permit; "I
am sorry I woke you ; next time that I come to you for
sympathy "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 141
" Stay stay ! " cry I, vexed at the effect of my words,
and yet puzzled how to mend them. Sitting up in bed,
and stretching out my arms to her : " Remember, I was only
half awake ; I did not quite take it in ; I I dare say he
is very nice when you come to know him." (Lenore pauses
with the open door in her hand.) " He looks quite like a
gentleman, and and has the usual younger son's portion.
Very good teeth," continue I, laughing awkwardly, and
floundering about in search of a possible excellence in mind
or body, on which to be able conscientiously to compliment
my sister's lover. " I am sure at least I think that he
will improve on acquaintance."
" It is not of the least consequence what you think ! "
says Lenore, in a fury, banging the door.
CHAPTER XVH.
WIIAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
" The Lord of Nairn and his lady fair
In early youth united were,
In early youth divided were."
" Do not you think that we are rather like the Lord and
Lady of Naun, engaged yesterday, to be separated the day
after to-morrow ? "
It is Lenore who says all this : she is strolling along be-
side her lover down one of the lovely old streets of Morlaix,
that the malignant mania for smart new quays, oroad, bright
new thoroughfares, has not yet swept away. They have
been prying into the dim interiors ; climbing unforbidden
the dusty, beautiful wrecks of carven stairs, up and down
142 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
which the stately nobles used to pace, in the gone centu-
ries ; and where now only dirty gamins roll and tumble,
and the clump of sabots comes. Life seems easier here than
in England. In the ancient, timber-fronted houses people
are leaning on the heavy window-sills miles up in air ; be-
low, in the street, they seem to have naught to do but to
jaser with their neighbors, sitting in old carved door-ways ;
while bright blankets and rugs hung out in the front make
a brilliant bit of color. At almost every house, birds, hung
in wicker cages parrots, canaries. A little child is trot-
ting about in the gutter with a bunch of cherries in its lit-
tle hand. The sun is beating, blinding hot, on the fine,
bare, new streets, but here the tall friendly houses lean
over, story above story, so close to gossip together that
{hey intercept his rays.
Lenore has furled her umbrella.
" I do not think that my worst enemy could accuse me
of being in early youth," Paul says, with a smile.
" About how old are you ? " asked Lenore, peering up
inquisitively at him. " You are one of those baffling sort of
people who might be any age, from twenty-five to forty-five
inclusive."
" I am half-way between the two ; I am thirty-five."
" You look more, I think," says Lenore, with charming
candor ; " I suppose it is that horrid beard."
Le Mesurier does not answer, but he does not look par-
ticularly pleased.
" You know I have never yet seen your real face," con-
tinues she, slipping her hand through his arm. " I have
the vaguest idea of what sort of features I am undertaking ;
I shall be like the lady W 7 ho was so short-sighted that she
said she never knew her husband by sight until they
married: this appendage must come off before we meet
again."
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 143
She speaks playfully, but in the imperative mood which
has been habitual to her through life.
Paul thinks the imperative mood very good in a mem,
but utterly inadmissible in a woman.
" Must it ? " he answers, very shortly ; then, with a
rather awkward attempt to recover his good-humor : " Do
not you know what the early Christians said ? that shav-
ing was a lie against one's own face, and an impious at-
tempt to improve the works of the Creator ? "
Lenore thrusts out her fresh lips in a mutinous pout.
" I can quote, too ; did you ever hear this distich ? "
she says, saucily :
" ' John P. Robinson, he
Said they did not know every thing down in Judee.' "
Paul looks grave. He has not read the " Biglow Pa-
pers," and he particularly dislikes flippancy in a woman.
Men may be allowed to be a little wicked ; but all women
should be religious. They have emerged from the old
street ; have left behind them the tall slate-fronted houses,
nodding to each other over the way ; have left also the
gables, the dormer-windows, the strange saint-faces, deftly
wrought in wood. They are sauntering slowly back to
their hotel through the more modern part of the town.
Morlaix lies so prettily viaduct, river, churches, peaked
houses, all hobnobbing in the hollow between green hills.
" What will you be doing this time three days hence? "
asks Lenore presently, with a half-pensive smile, abandon-
ing the obnoxious subject of beards.
" Undergoing, probably, a catechism at the hands of
my people, as to your merits and demerits," answers Paul,
laughing.
" What will they ask you first about me ? " inquires
she, with anxious curiosity.
144 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
"How can I tell?"
"What points are they likely to lay most stress
upon ? "
" They will, probably," begins Paul, with some reluc-
tance, " wish to know first whether you are of a good fami-
ly. By-the-by, do not be angry with me for not knowing ;
but, you see, I should like to be ready with my answer.
Are you ? "
" Of course," replies the girl, dryly, tossing her head
away with a jerk. " Came over with the Conqueror."
" Really ? " cries Paul, with an eagerness which shows
that, whatever other weaknesses he may be superior to, he
is not above that of a sincere penchant toward pedigree.
" How do I know ? " cries Lenore, impatiently. " Who
cares ? What does it matter ? Grandfathers do not make
a man, or a woman either."
" They are rather apt, however, to make a gentleman,"
answers Paul, somewhat stiffly.
" I always tell everybody," continues she, with an
arch-smile, " that we are lineally descended from the poet.
I shall not mind being great-great-great-granddaughter to
4 Fair Daffodils.'"
" And are you ? " asks her lover, resigning himself to
come down six centuries in his expectations.
" I have not the slightest reason for supposing so," an-
swers she, with a careless laugh.
Paul heaves an involuntary sigh.
" What will the next article be, as shop-keepers say ? "
asks Lenore presently, giving her head an uneasy toss, and
with a sort of swagger in her voice, which is quite as much
the result of nervousness as of pride. " Whether I have
any money, I suppose V "
" Possibly," answers he, uncomfortably.
" And you will reply, ' Not a sou ! ' " (Raising her two
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 145
hands, and letting them fall again with a gesture express-
ive of utter destitution.)
"Exactly."
She laughs maliciously.
" How I should like to see their faces ! Grandfather
doubtful, and pennilessness certain ! You would, however,
not be quite correct; I have several sous an immense
number, in fact. How many sous are there in four thou-
sand pounds in the three per cents ? "
" As many as in four thousand pounds out of the three
per cents," he answers, laughing.
" A base evasion of a difficult arithmetical problem !
Well, sous or no sous, I really have four thousand pounds."
" I am delighted to hear it."
" Could not you put it into francs when you mention it
to your family ? It sounds so immense, then."
" I am afraid they would detect the imposture."
" Jemima has more a good deal more," says Lenore,
communicatively ; " still, we only make up five hundred
pounds a year between us a fact, however, which we care-
fully conceal from our acquaintance, having learned by ex-
perience the entire truth of Solomon's epigram, that ' the
poor, even his neighbor hateth him ! ' "
They reach the hotel, the empty salon.
" It is a contemptible dot ! " cries Lenore, indignantly,
flinging down her hat on the floor, and herself on the sofa.
" One ought to be superhumanly handsome to induce peo-
ple to overlook it."
" It is better than nothing," replies Paul, with a philo-
sophical if lugubrious attempt to look at his beloved's mi-
nute portion from a cheerful point of view.
" Four thousand pounds ! " repeats Lenore, scornfully.
" Not four thousand pounds a year ! That would be all
very well ; but four thousand pounds for the whole main-
7
146 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
tenance and support of a reasonable educated being, with
a fine feeling for lace, and a just abhorrence of country
boots and thread gloves ! "
" And gingham umbrellas ! " supplements Le Mesurier,
laughing.
"You must know that we are not all church-mice.
However," says Lenore, presently, " for the credit of the
family I must tell you that we have some rich people among
us my sister Sylvia, for instance."
" Your sister Sylvia ! " cries Paul, rather aghast. " I
had no idea that you had a sister Sylvia, or a sister any
thing else, except Jemima. I suppose Thezia, and Therese,
and a few more, will transpire by-and-by."
" Some years ago, she married," continues the girl,
biographically. " She is a pretty little cat, with eyes as
big as teacups ; and he well, he was old enough to be
everybody's grandfather " (stretching out both arms com-
prehensively). " He was as bald as my hand " (opening
one pretty pink palm), " as fat as Falstaff, as ignorant as a
carp, and he had made his money by that yellow grease
that they put on railway-wheels."
" Good Heavens ! how awful ! Is he alive still ? " asks
Paul, nervously.
" That is what I am coming to," continues she, gravely.
" In poetic justice he ought to have had creeping paralysis,
softening of the brain any thing that would have kept
her tied to the leg of his bath-chair for the next twenty or
thirty years, as a judgment on her for marrying him in-
stead of which, what happens ? " (Standing before him,
and gesticulating.) " Within four years he is carried off
by an attack of apoplexy ! Bah ! Y/hat luck some peo-
ple have ! "
" So that is your idea of luck f " rejoins Paul, leaning
his chin on the back of the chair on which he is sitting
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 147
astride, and staring curiously up at her " to marry a com-
mercial porpoise, and survive it ! "
" It is to be hoped," resumes Lenore, after a thoughtful
pause, marching up and down the little room, " that your
people will ask whether I am good-looking. That is the
one question to which you could give a really satisfactory
answer." She speaks, not with the blushing naivete of a
jeune ingenue, but with the matter-of-fact calmness of a
woman whose early contact with the world has taught the
value of the one great gift she has been given.
" If they do not ask, I must volunteer the information."
" You might also," pursues Lenore, beginning coolly to
check off her accomplishments on her fingers, " hint to them
that I dance extremely well, that "
" My father does not approve of dancing," interrupts
Paul, tilting the hind-legs of his chair till he nearly topples
over.
Her hands drop to her sides, and her great eyes open
wide like large blue flowers in the sun. " Not approve of
dancing ! What a dreadful old man ! What can he be
made of?"
"If you asked my eldest brother, he would answer,
1 Cast-iron,' judging from his duration," replies he, with a
lazy chuckle of amusement.
" And does he not allow your sister to dance ? " asks
Lenore, looking thoroughly dashed by the insight just af-
forded her into her future father-in-law's character.
*' They may walk through a quadrille, or romp through
the c Lancers,' if they choose," replies Le Mesurier, still
laughing at the expression of his betrothed's face. " I
would not be they if they were to be caught indulging in
any wilder mode of progression."
" Poor dears ! " ejaculates Lenore, with a sigh of heart-
felt compassion ; " no doubt, however, they dance like der-
vishes as soon as lu's back is turned."
148 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Is that the course you mean to pursue when I forbid
you to do any thing ? " asks Paul, in jest, but almost most
heartily in earnest.
" Undoubtedly," replies she, coolly, looking back at
him with defiant gravity. " From the time I could walk
alone I can safely say that I have never yet been forbidden
to do any thing that I did not instantly strain every nerve
to do it."
If Miss Herrick expects her lover to show either pleas-
ure or amusement at this proof of her spirit, she is disap-
pointed. He only says " Oh ! " and coughs rather dryly.
"Parents and guardians, tutors and governors, forbid"
continues Lenore, incisively ; " one does not hear such an
ugly, hectoring word mentioned between man and wife."
" I have an idea, however," retorts Paul, quietly, " that
one can find such ugly, hectoring words as 4 honor ' and
4 obey ' in the Prayer-book. I will show you the place, if
you like."
" One cannot always take the Prayer-book au pied de
la lettre" says Lenore, lightly. " After all, I dare say I
shall be quite as likely to c honor and obey ' you as you to
' worship ' me ! "
" I do not know that " (rising), " when you have that
blue gown on, and a blue ribbon in your hair, and look
?nee7^ I am not far off it now." As he speaks he takes her
two hands in his, and the look that for the moment makes
the wise man half-brother to the idiot that no doubt made
even Solomon himself seem but a foolish fellow among his
seven hundred charmers invades his usually shrewd eyes.
" I had that identical blue gown on, the day that you
so good-naturedly acted as Frederick's proxy," replies Le-
nore, demurely.
" Lenore ! " says Paul, neither heeding nor hearing her
allusion, loosing her hands, and clasping his own round her
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 149
waist, " I have told you what I shall be doing when I am
gone ; tell me now what you will ! I do not want you to
promise to look at the moon, or say your prayers, or drink
your cup of tea at the very moment I do, or any such
folly, but (with an impatient sigh) I I suppose in these
sort of cases we are all pretty much alike, and do not
laugh at me, I hate being laughed at I should like to be
able to say to myself at such-and-such an hour, Lenore is
doing such-and-such a harmless thing ; if not, I shall be
sure to imagine that you are up to some mischief."
"Thank you."
" Come, Lenore, what will you be doing the first
day?"
" The first day," says the girl, feeling a vile inclination
to be sentimental and tearful, and resolving not to be con-
quered by it ; " the first day I shall be in bed all day with
the window-curtains drawn ; I shall refuse all food, how-
ever hungry I may be ; hitherto I have not found that love
takes away the appetite, and I shall cry noisily, obtrusive-
ly, and without intermission."
" And the second day ?"
"Half of the second day I shall spend in gazing at your
photograph, that one of Disderi's, in which you are sitting
with your back to Mont Blanc, looking like a murderer;
and the other half in wrangling with Jemima about your
attractions ; we have already had one or two passages-of-
arms as to the shape of your nose, and the color of your
eyes."
"And the third day?"
" The third day ! " flinging down her head on his
shoulder; "the third ugly, empty, immense day! How
shall I get through it ? Well " (recovering herself, and
feeling rather ashamed of her ebullition), " the third day I
may, perhaps, pluck up my spirits enough to enable me to
150 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
try and while that handsome, sulky, sleepy Scrope boy into
the mazes of a gentle flirtation."
Paul unclasps his hands from about her suddenly, and
walks toward the balcony.
" What is the matter now ? " cries the girl, half bewil-
dered, half offended ; then, breaking into a laugh, as she
catches a glimpse of his face ; " Good Heavens, Paul, how
ill-tempered you can look when you try ; I thought I was
a pretty good hand at it, but I'm nothing to you."
" I detest that sort of jokes," replies Paul, tersely,
turning upon her a thoroughly cross, jealous face ; " they
are not ladylike ! "
" But I am not ladylike, either," retorts Lenore, flinging
up her head and growing scarlet ; " did I ever say I was ?
we did not come over with the Conqueror ; we have no
more to say to the poet than you have ; it is my belief that
we are roturier to the back-bone ! "
She was standing beside him, very upright, with her
hands behind her ; her voice is not shrill, it is not its way
to be so ; but it is undoubtedly raised two or three tones
above its usual low key ; little sparks of fire are darting
from her eyes, and her cheeks are redder than the red rose
in her belt.
Delightfully handsome as a picture, certainly ; but as a
future wife ? " Is it possible that she can have told me the
truth when she said that hitherto I had seen only the best
of her ? " thinks Paul, with a cold qualm.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 151
CHAPTER XVHI.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
"GOOD-BYE" is an ugly word: written or spoken, it
has an ill look a down-looking, sighing, weeping word.
There is something faintly disagreeable even in the limp
hand-shake with which one parts from a disrelished, tedious
guest, as one thinks, with slight remorse, that perhaps he
was not so bad after all. But of all delusions and all
snares, seeing people off is the worst. It is bad enough to
take indifferent acquaintance to the train to stand with
your hand on the carriage-door the last civil regret ut-
tered, the last friendly hope for a speedy meeting again
expressed ; the smile of farewell stereotyped on your lips,
while your ears thirst for the engine's parting whistle,
which will not come for five minutes yet. But how far
worse to see one that is really dear to you off on a long
voyage ! To stand on a cold, dirty quay on some dull No-
vember morning, while the huge, drab-gray sea heaves and
booms before you, suggestive of shipwreck, while the har-
bor is robed in mist, and through it the tall ship's masts
and rigging show indistinctly great ; while all about you
unfeeling men roll barrels and carry bales, and under your
veil your tears drip miserably, to the great annoyance of the
dear one, who, if he be equally grieved, yet, manlike, feels
angry with you for adding to his sufferings ; and if (as is
most probable) he is not equally grieved, yet is constrained,
out of sympathy, to pull a long face, while his manly soul
yearns for the consolation of a pipe and cognac ! Even if
you are absolutely certain never to see a beloved one again,
yet abstain from "seeing him off."
But Lenore thinks differently ; she is bent on seeing
152 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
the last of Paul. The voyage from St.-Malo to Southamp-
ton is certainly not a long one, but in this case it is not
the actual breadth of the seas which lie between the lovers
that constitutes the bitterness of the parting. Paul is go-
ing on a doubtful errand to break to two doting sisters
and a gouty Calvin istic father the news that he has at
length found a woman to his mind ; a woman (as he him-
self uncomfortably feels) of the very kind most antipathetic
to his people.
Lenore, meanwhile, has resolved to pass the time of
suspense that must ensue at Dinan. She has wisely made
up her mind to go over each sacred spot where they first
met and squabbled, and to weep plentifully at each. She
will be in no whit behind Marianne Dashwood in " Sense
and Sensibility," who " would have thought herself very in-
excusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night
after parting from Willoughby."
Meanwhile, they have made up their little differences.
Paul has eaten his words has assured his betrothed that
he habitually values people for their own merits, not for
those of their forbears ; that, in fact, he looks upon ances-
tors as rather a disadvantage than otherwise. And she,
on the other hand, not to be behindhand in magnanimity,
has been racking her brains to recollect an authentic great-
grandfather.
Le Mesurier has done his best to dissuade his beloved
from coming to wave her pocket-handkerchief after him as
he sails away from St.-Malo, but in vain.
" It will be too much for you ; it will upset you ! " he
has said, tenderly, but she has answered with a wilful smile
and shake of the head.
" Nothing ever upsets me, except not getting my own
way ; that has always injured my health from my youth
up."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 153
So he is silenced, and has perforce to submit, with what
grace he can, to the prospect of what he most dreads on
the earth's face a scene, and being publicly cried over.
Still he makes one struggle more against his fate.
" I hate saying ' good-bye ' do not you, Scrope ? " he
says, that night, to his friend, as they sit on the hotel-steps
smoking, under the yellow moon, which in her third quarter
looks odd and three-cornered.
" I hate saying any thing this weather," replies Scrope,
languidly. " I should like to keep a little boy to make re-
marks for me, and they would chiefly be requests for iced
drinks."
" Suppose," continues Paul, " that we give them " (in-
dicating, with a motion of his head, the direction where
he supposes Jemima and Lenore to be) " the slip, and start
by the early train to-morrow morning ; I have been look-
ing, and there is one at 6.40."
" Start ! " echoes Scrope, with more energy than he had
any idea that the hot weather had left him, holding his
cigar between two fingers, and looking reproachfully at his
friend. " Your sole ideas of the pleasures of travelling
are * starting ' and ' arriving ; ' the sole enjoyment you have
in a landscape is tracing where the railway runs. My dear
fellow, I have already an indigestion of trains, boats, dili-
gences ; I have as much idea of starting by the early train
as the late train, and the late train as the early train. I
mean, D. V., never to start again."
" No more would T, if I could help it," replies Paul,
gloomily. " I have naturally more cause to wish to stay
than you, but when one has a father, and that father has
the gout"
" Gout is apt to make parents insubordinate," says
Scrope, coolly; "but, you see" (in a tone rather self-
gratulatory than regretful), " I have no father, and there
154 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
is no reason why I should get up in the middle of the night
because you have one."
" You do not mean to come home yet, then ? " exclaims
Paul, in a tone in which surprise and suspicion contend for
mastery.
Scrope turns his head half away.
" Why, no I think not ; I expect to be a sadder and
a wiser man by the time I next see the chalk-cliffs of
Albion."
A few moments of silence.
Scope picks up a pebble, and aims it at the landlord's
poodle, which, at once dirty and ridiculous, and happily
unconscious of being either, is trotting bravely along, with
his shorn tail borne gallantly aloft.
" Which route do you mean to follow ? " asks Le Mesu-
rier, presently, with hardly so much of confidential friend-
ship in his voice as there was when the conversation first
began. " Strike across country from here to Napoleon-
ville, or go round by Auray and Carnac ? "
Scrope does not seem in any hurry to answer.
" I do not think I shall follow any route at all," he says,
at length, slowly, and looking rather guilty. " Walking-
tours " (beginning to laugh) " wear out boots in a way
that I cannot justify to myself."
" What are you thinking of doing with yourself, then ? "
rather austerely.
" How do I know ? " says Scrope, wearily, and yawn-
ing ; " do I ever know ? I shall probably go wherever the
wind blows me, like a dead leaf."
" A most apt simile," says Paul, with a dry look at the
healthy solidity of his companion's tall figure, and of the
legs, at which he is at the present moment pensively gaz-
ing. " Cannot you give a guess as to the direction in
which your attenuated person is likely to be wafted ? "
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 155
" Not the slightest," replies Scrope, nonchalantly ; then,
with a boyish blush : " To Dinan, perhaps."
" To Dinan ! " cries Paul, sharply, looking thoroughly
and unaffectedly and most angrily jealous. " What on
earth should take you back there ? "
" Did I not tell you just now the wind ? " replies the
other.
Paul rises, unable to conceal his ill-temper, and, not
willing to indulge it, begins to walk hastily up and down
before the hotel-door. Scrope draws himself lazily up
from the sitting posture, and languidly walks to join his
friend.
" My dear Paul," he says, coldly, and yet smiling, " if
you had not been so completely taken up with your own
little game so brutally selfish and self-absorbed as lovers
always are, you might have perceived that I too have a lit-
tle game.
" What are you talking about ? "
" My good fellow, do not look as if you were going to
run your nose through my body," says Scrope, with a
rather unkind allusion to the saliency of one feature of his
friend's face. " What I mean is this : while you have been
amusing yourself making love to the young Miss Herrick,
I have been laying siege to the old one. It has been
rather up-hill work, as she did not seem to understand the
situation ; but I hope, by God's grace, to make her see my
drift in time."
" My dear boy," taking his arm, but still looking half
unbelieving, " she is old enough to be your grandmother ! "
" I know she is ; that is why I like her. You know
you have often accused me of a depraved taste for old
women. I own it ; I like them mellow."
Paul laughed, but not merrily.
" So you see," continues Scrope, " so far from my help-
156 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
ing you to evade your ' good-byes,' you have a harrowing
parting with me too to look forward to."
" I wish to Heaven it was over ! " says Paul, devoutly.
" I would give any one ten pounds to get me clear off, with-
out saying c good-bye' to any one. But," with a sigh,
" you see, Lenore," the name does not come very glibly
yet, " seems to have set her heart on seeing me off."
" You ungrateful dog ! " cries Scrope, with an indigna-
tion none the less real because affected to be feigned.
" Why will the gods always cast their pearls before swine ?
W^ould to Heaven that any handsome woman would set
her heart upon seeing* me off ! I should be the last to
oppose her."
" It would show how little you cared about her, then,"
replies the other, briefly ; and then, ashamed and afraid of
having been demonstrative, walks away into the hotel.
CHAPTER XIX.
WHAT THE AUTHOK SAYS.
So Lenore has her wish ; and together they all retrace
their steps, and journey back to St.-Malo. And now the
heavy parting day has come the day that is to interpose
the cold, gray sea between him and her. There are but
three hours now till the moment when Paul will set forth
on his return to old associations, to the strong influences
of use and wont, leaving Brittany and new love behind
him. All the morning they have been strolling about the
old town and the ramparts, two-and-two the lovers and
the playing-at-lovers. Judging by appearances, the latter
seem to be enjoying themselves the most.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 157
By-and-by Lenore and her betrothed stray away from
the others, across the sands, that twice a day the tide's
long wash covers, and twice a day again uncovers ; across
the sands to the little bare island, where Chateaubriand
in no graveyard, hustled by no dead kin has wished to
sleep out his last sleep. They have climbed through the
sands and the sand-colored bents to the little eminence,
where, with no name graved upon them, no date, no vale-
dictory text, stand the simple white cross and slab that
mark the spot were the restless Rene lies. On the very
edge of the precipice he is sleeping, and beneath him the
rocks slant sheer down, and at their base come the steal-
ing summer waves with a slow, soft lapping. Lenore leans
on the railing that Chateaubriand begged his fellow-
townsmen to place round his tomb, "pour empecher les
animaux d me deterrer" and stands looking seaward,
parted-lipped, tasting the salt wind.
"Jemima will be very clever if she gets Scrope up
here," says Paul, with a determination to say something
very commonplace, in the hope of ridding himself of the
sense of sad solemnity that the place, the sighing wind, and
his own approaching parting, combined to produce.
" She will not try," answers Lenore, not changing her
attitude. " Jemima hates c Atala,' and she loves limpets,
and little crabs, and all sorts of noisome monsters of the
deep. If Mr. Scrope were not with her, she would take off
her shoes and stockings, and paddle"
" Scrope would paddle, too, on the smallest encourage-
ment," says Paul, laughing ; " just the sort of thing that
would suit him cool, and no trouble ; and besides, he tells
me that he is very much smitten with Jemima."
Lenore turns away her large eyes from her abstracted
contemplation of the purple waves and the glancing sea-
gulls ; turns them on Paul, full of a sort of careless sur-
158 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
prise. " Unhappy young man," she says, calmly ; " what
could have induced him to tell such a shocking story?"
" Why might not it be true ? "
" It mighf," says Lenore, indifferently ; " but it is not.
Mr. Scrope Charlie Scrope, is not he ? he looks like Char-
lie is no more smitten with Jemima than he is with
Who shall I say?"
"Than with yW
" Well, than with me, if you like."
" You do not seem to think that that is putting it very
strongly," says Paul, suspiciously.
" What does it matter whom he is smitten with, or
whom he is not ? " cries Lenore, with evasive vehemence.
" What does it matter whether he is alive or dead ? We
have only two hours left, and we are wasting our time talk-
ing about him"
" I am, naturally, rather interested in my successor in
walks, and talks, and moonlight strolls," says Paul, with a
bitter jest.
" Is not he going to set off to-morrow on that ever-
talked-about, and never-walked, walking-tour ? " asks Le-
nore, surprised. " I thought he was, but I suppose ' the
wish was father to the thought.' "
"Walking-tour, indeed!" says Paul, scornfully.. ."I
know what that means : lying at your feet under the chest-
nuts at Mont Parnasse, and reading Byron and Shelley to
you ! "
"Being read aloud to always sends me to sleep."
" Promise me " (looking very eager), " asleep or awake,
not to flirt with him."
" I will promise nothing so ridiculous," answers she,
contemptuously. " Flirt with an infant that gets red all
over when I speak to it! that trembles and stammers
when I remark to it that ' it is a hot day ! ' Bah ! "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 159
" It is a singular fact," says Paul, dryly, " that it is only
in your society that it blushes, and trembles, and stam-
mers ; most people find it a brazen-faced and fluent infant
enough."
"Do they?"
" You will, at all events, promise not to let it " (laugh-
ing) " read poetry to you ? for it is a handsome fellow,
and a sentimental."
" Can it read?" (with an air of surprise). "I should
have thought it had not got beyond B a, ba, B e, be
B i, bi, B o, bo, B u, bu "
" Lenore," says Paul, very gravely, " however you may
choose to ignore the fact, you know, as well as I do, that
Scrope is a grown man, and a disgustingly good-looking
one. Swear to me to be as little alone with him as possi-
ble swear to me not to flirt with him ! "
" Make me swear not to give him a pop-gun, or play
c tip-cat ' with him ! It would be much more rational,"
answers Lenore, derisively. (Paul turns away.) " Do not
be vexed," she cries, very gravely, laying her hand on his
arm. " If it will give you the least grain of pleasure, I
will promise to cut him out-and-out, henceforth and forever.
I will not even say ' Good-morning ' and ; Good-evening ' to
him. Do you think it would be any privation to me ? Set
me some harder task something difficult and disagreeable
to do against you come back, for your sake ! Perhaps it
will make the enormous days go a little quicker." Her
eyes' fill with tears as she speaks ; the sea-gulls scream,
and Paul sighs heavily. " I hope it is not a bad omen,"
she says, winking away the drops from her curled lashes ;
" but you are the first person or thing that ever succeeded
in making me cry. I never could cry over books, or at
plays, or when "people died ; I did not know that I had any
tears about me, till I met you."
160 "GOOb-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Lenore ! " (half indignantly, half hurt), " what a more
than doubtful compliment ! ''
" I will never pay it you again," she says, with confi-
dent hopefulness. " Henceforth, my life will be all plain-
sailing : I see it as clearly as that shining wake of yellow
light behind the steamer out there. You must tell your
father" (speaking between joke and earnest) "that no one
has ever thwarted or contradicted me all my life, and that
he must please to follow suit."
Paul smiles rather sadly, and shakes his head : " I am
afraid he would answer that neither has any one ever
thwarted or contradicted him all his life, and that you
must please to follow suit."
A pause.
" What is there so obnoxious about me ? " cries Lenore,
suddenly turning away from the grave, and facing her lover
with a flushed, proud face. " Why should he object to me
so strongly, as I see you think he will ? "
" God knows ! Perhaps he will not ! Who can answer
for the freaks of a man possessed by the twin devils of gout
and Calvin ? "
" I have no money, certainly ; but neither have nine-
tenths of the women that men marry, and no one thinks of
getting up to forbid the banns."
" Quite true."
" I come of a good and a healthy stock ; we never run
away with our neighbors' wives, or have D. T., or go
mad ! "
" That is more than I can say for us ! At least, we do
not go cracked; but we occasionally indulge in the other
two pastimes you mentioned."
" I am not a flirt."
" No ? " (more interrogatively than assentingly).
" Nor fast."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 161
"No o" (rather slowly and doubtfully).
" I am not fast," she repeats, stoutly ; " how can I be ?
I do not hunt ; I do not drink hock and seltzer for break-
fast ; I do not smoke"
" Good Heavens, I should hope not ! "
" Make me out as nice as you can to your people, even
at the expense of strict veracity," says Lenore, coaxingly.
" Indeed" (with a little air of complacency), "by softening
a shadow here and striking out a light there, I really de-
scribe very well."
" Even without that process," says Paul, with a proud
smile.
" For instance," continues she, with a deepened color,
and a shamed, though defiant laugh, " you need not enter
into detail with regard to the peculiar circumstances that
attended our first meeting."
" I should think not!" (very much accentuated).
" I do not see what necessity there is for so much em-
phasis," rejoins Lenore, rather offended ; " it was a bad
joke, because, thanks to Frederick's imbecility and your
straightlacedness, it failed. If you had been a different
kind of man, and it had succeeded, it would have been a
good one."
" Good or bad," says Paul, with a promising forestalling
of marital authority in his voice, " I shall be very much
obliged if you will not repeat it while I am away, Lenore."
For a moment she looks mutinous ; then, at the sight
of the green sea, the steamers, and the thoughts that both
suggest, melts utterly. " I will not I will not ! " she cries,
eagerly. " Do you think I shall have time for jokes ? I
shall spend all my days and all my nights in trying to be a
really nice girl by the time you come back. A really nice
girl," she repeats, dreamily. " I have been called a tall
girl, and an odious girl, and a sharp girl, and now and then
162 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
a deuced handsome girl ; but never to my recollection, in
all my life, have I been called a nice girl."
"Poor Lenore ! " (stroking her bright hair), " strange to
say, you have at last found some one to think you nice."
" Have I ? " (looking quite at sea). " Who ? "
" Who ? " Why I, to be sure."
" You ! " (shaking her head). " Oh no, you do not."
It is a flat contradiction ; but it does not sound rude.
He does not asseverate. Bewitching, charming, madden-
ing she is all these ; but " nice f " The epithet has a do-
mestic, home-keeping, quiet sound, that does not seem to
fit her.
" I must practise being lady-like, and gentle, and sweet,
against I see your people, or these virtues will sit as un-
easily on me as an ill-made cloak," she says, with a rather
anxious laugh.
" Do not be in any hurry to see my people," cries Paul,
hastily. " I am not. I had far rather keep you to myself."
" Would you ? Do you know " (taking his hand, and
smiling softly), " I have been vexing myself with the thought
that, try as I may, I never can give you all my life ? There
must always remain eighteen years in which you have had
neither part nor lot, and in which other men have. I can-
not, indeed " (laughing a little), " accuse myself of having
ever been over-civil to your sex ; but once I gave a man a
bunch of violets, and once I got up at five o'clock in the
morning to see another man off to India, I dare say you
have done many worse things, but I do not believe they
can weigh on your mind half so much ? "
" For Heaven's sake, do not let us compare notes ! "
says Paul, with a hasty flush, while his mental eye flashes
back over the occupations of his grown-up years. " I do
not want to make you believe that I have been worse than
other men, and I have not Lawrence's idea, that, by being
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 163
superlatively immoral, one is more likely to win a good
woman's love ; but still (sighing), beside your sweet white
life, mine looks black enough. Let us cry quits, Lenore,
and make a fresh start. If you stick to me, I swear to you
that, for the future, mine shall be as white as yours."
" We shall be like two lilies on one stalk," says Lenore,
with levity ; but her eyes are wet.
After all, it is Paul that sees Lenore off, and not Lenore
Paul. The Dinan boat starts several hours before the
Southampton one. The bitter " good-bye " has really come.
The passengers are stepping on board, and seating them-
selves in the bows and on the rickety camp-stools on the
hatchways. Three old Frenchwomen are chattering togeth-
er, asking each other whether they are not " fatigue par le
vent f " Black smoke is pouring out of the little black fun-
nel ; the paddle-boxes, black and white like magpies bird
hateful to the French soul contrast the green water that
they rest on. A devoted Breton pbre defamille is return-
ing to his home with three red-and-yellow paper twirligigs
in his hand ; evidently his offspring number three.
" For God's sake, do not forget me, Paul 1 " Lenore is
saying, in a low, broken voice. She has one of her lover's
hands tight held in both hers ; her face is as white as death,
and the tears are pouring down it. She has never much
regard for appearances, and she is entirely reckless of them
now ; in a water-proof, quite down to her heels, she looks
like a young grenadier only, surely, never had grenadier
so wet and woe-begone a face. " Think of me every
minute, even if you think something disagreeable. Oh, if
I had but some one to talk of me to you ! But I have not
no one; you will never hear my name, or, if any one
does mention it, he will say no good of me : nobody ever
does ! "
" IVfy dearest child, do not talk such nonsense ! " says
164 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
Paul, hastily, casting a furtive glance round to see whether
any one is laughing. He is very miserable himself, but" he
is not quite so much swallowed up by his grief as not to
retain an uneasy curiosity as to whether their pretty pose
does not afford mirth-matter to their fellow-voyagers. He
catches the stoker, who has just come up, streaming with
perspiration, and black as night, from the lower regions,
flagrante delicto. He is smiling, and nudging a neighbor.
Mr. Le Mesurier relieves his mind by scowling at him.
" I cannot stand this much longer," says Scrope, in a
suppressed voice, to Jemima. Mr. Scrope is unable to keep
quiet ; he is turning red and pale, and biting his lips. " It
really is too sickening. These ceremonies ought to be
strictly private, or altogether omitted. Do not you think
so, Miss Herrick ? "
" Do not look that way," said Jemima, drily.
" I cannot help it ; there is a sort of horrible fascination.
Thank God, there's the bell ! Miss Jemima, why the why,
I mean, does no one ever cry over me f "
" You are not going away ? "
" But if I were, who would ? I never caused any one's
tears to flow in my life, except my small brother's, when I
licked him at school."
" Be a good girl, Lenore, and do not flirt with Scrope !
These are my last words to you. God bless you, my dar-
ling!"
Paul has at last forgotten the rest of the company ; the
stoker may laugh his fill; he sees nothing but Lenore's
drowned blue eyes, and his own are not far from matching
them.
And in this fashion they part.
WHA T THE A UTHOR SA YS. 1 65
NO ON.
' And in the eye of noon, my love
Shall lead me from my mother's door,
Sweet boys and girls, all clothed in white,
Strewing flowers before.
But first the nodding minstrels go,
With music meet for lordly bowers ;
The children next, in snow-white vests,
Strewing buds and flowers.
' And then my love and I shall pace,
My jet-black hair in pearly braids,
Between our comely bachelors
And blushing bridal-maids."
CHAPTER I.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
ARE you of those who hate Winter, or of those who
love him ? Do you shrink from his strong ice-clasp ; or do
you hold out your right hand to him heartily, saying, " You
are welcome ? " Do you love the enjoyments that are to
be fought for (so to speak) by effort and exertion, with
quick blood and high pulses ; or those that come lazily and
warmly, without your seeking? To whichever class you
belong, you must come with me into Winter's innermost
stronghold. I bid you ; and, shiver and shake as you may,
you must not say, "No." Forget June forget its hot,
faint airs and thronged red roses ; remember only Decem-
ber, with all his cold, white train. It is Christmas: a
season which, if one took one's idea of it from Dickens's
books, would seem to be a season of universal jollity, of
widely-diffused sausages and mince-pies, of great crackling
106 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
fires and hard, bright frost; when every one is gladder
than his wont ; when each man greets his neighbor lov-
ingly, and godly charity and pious mirth shine out of each
happy eye ; a season which, if one judge it by one's own ex-
perience, is for the most part mildly drizzling a season of
bills and influenza triumphant ; when one reckons up the
empty chairs by the fireside, and, counting over one's losses
in love and joy, finds smiling much more, broad laughter
but difficult. Into an English country-house you must
come : till to-morrow you must w r ait to see whether it is
Gothic, Tudor, Ionic, Inigo Jones-ish, or a happy medley
of these styles ; for now the black night-winds are feeling
blindly round it, and the harsh rains are lashing its front.
It is dressing-time ; but who can bear to tear themselves
away from this hall-fire hall that is the liveablest room in
the house, with its floor spread with warm beasts'-skins,
its low, wide hearth, its thick-draped windows, its round
table groaning under new novels novels proper and novels
improper novels ritualistic and novels evangelical ; novels
that are milk for babes, and novels that are almost too
strong meat for men. There are no gone faces to sadden
this hearth ; the only face that is gone would cause con-
siderable consternation were it to come back again. On
the deep, woolly hearth-rug Jemima is sitting, with a book
in her hand ; she is reading a pretty love-story by the fire-
light. Opposite to her, in a low chair, sits (or rather lies)
her sister Sylvia, the widowed house-mistress. Her little
chin is buried in her chest ; the large jet-beetles in her ears
bob gently to and fro as she nods, nods ; on her lap rests
a pug-dog. His face is blacker than the raven's wing ; his
nose turns mightily upward; his tail curls tightly twice
to the left; his toes turn out, and his tongue protrudes,
like a pink rose-leaf; if he squinted, he would be perfect;
but, alas ! life is made up of " ifs." A little farther off,
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 167
two young people are playing at bezique Lenore and
Scrope. Yes, though it is neither Brittany nor June,
Scrope is here. Twining round his legs, scaling Jemima's
back, playfully trying to poke their fingers into their
mother's shut eyes, running heavily on their heels, plung-
ing, wrangling, with all the innocent vivacity of childhood,
are two enfants terribles terrible as only the healthy
male young of the human species can be little red-faced
scourges to society. If parents, when they give their
children smart names, would but reflect on the number of
ugly-named men whom they may possibly, nay probably,
espouse! Why did not Sylvia's parents? Sylvia Prod-
gers!
" Is these children's bedtime never coming ? " cries Le-
nore, impatiently, as she begins a fresh deal. " It seems
to me that that blessed epoch moves farther and farther on
every night. Tommy, dear, are not you sleepy ? I will
give you sixpence if you will say you are."
" Mother said w^e might stay up to see Uncle Paul did
not she, Bobby?" replies Tommy, triumphantly.
He has just succeeded in tying himself in a true-love
knot round Mr. Scrope's neck ; his feet are beating a playful
yet painful tattoo on that young gentleman's ribs.
" Uncle Paul, indeed ! " cries Scrope, indignantly. " "Who
taught you to give people brevet rank ? I say, young man,
fair play is a jewel. Let me get on your back, and ham-
mer your ribs a bit now."
" Stay up to see Uncle Paul ! " echoes Bobby, who, not
being very rich in ideas himself, draws chiefly on his elder
brother's stock.
" How pleased he'll be ! " says Scrope, laughing. " I
think I see the benignant smile with which he will greet
you when you run at his legs and kick his shins, as you are
in the pleasant habit of doing mine."
168 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" He will not mind," says Lenore, feeling impelled to
stand up for her lover's amiability. " I hate children, my-
self, as you know loathe them, in fact. They seem to me
to combine all the worst qualities of both sexes, with no
redeeming points of their own egotism more than man's,
garrulity more than woman's. But I always like a man to
be fond of them ; there is always some good about a man
that is."
" I wish they were not quite so fond of me," says Scrope,
groaning, as he takes Tommy by the scruff of the neck, and
deposits him in a vociferous heap on the floor.
" Uncle Paul is going to be Aunty Lenore's 'usband
Morris says so " (Morris is the butler), remarks Bobby, from
the background, with that utter contempt for the letter h
that one often notices in little children.
" Quite right, Bobby," answers Lenore, gayly ; " Morris
never said a truer word in all his life."
Scrope makes no comment ; he only throws your kings
viciously on the table, and announces, in a sulky voice, the
unanswerable proposition that eighty and seventy make one
hundred and fifty.
" I wish Aunty Lenore's 'usband would come," says Le-
nore, laughing, but rather anxiously. " I feel as if it were
getting very late. Jemima, you can see the clock ; what
time is it ? "
Jemima starts, drops her book, and stretches her neck.
" Five minutes past seven."
" He ought to be here, ought not he ? " says the girl,
wistfully, playing a queen of trumps that she has been care-
fully hoarding for the last ten minutes, and looking inquir-
ingly across at her antagonist.
" Perhaps he has thought better of it," suggests Scrope,
in his slow, lazy way. " Perhaps his pretty cousin has per-
suaded him to stay and eat his plum-pudding with her."
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SATS. 169
" He has not a pretty cousin," answers Lenore, quickly,
and quite unaware that she has double bezique in her hand.
" He has, though," replied Scrope, carelessly, looking
doubtfully over his cards, to see which he can best spare.
" He may have kept it dark ; but he has. I saw her last
month, when I went down there for covert-shooting. She
had on a gray cloak down to her heels, and a long poke-
bonnet, like a tunnel ; but I looked down the tunnel, and
saw a pretty little prim face at the end of it."
" She was a Sister of Mercy, no doubt."
" Only a lay one."
" I wish he would come," repeats poor Lenore, feverish-
ly. " Children, run to the window, and listen if you can
hear a carriage."
" You must remember it is Christmas-Eve," says Je-
mima, reassuringly ; " the trains are often three hours
late."
" Everybody drunk, and collisions imminently prob-
able," remarks Scrope, pleasantly.
Lenore flings down her cards on the table, and, running
to the window, disappears behind the heavy red curtains
with the children.
" My word, Bobby, is not it raining ? "
"He is not to get up upon the window-seat, is he,
Aunty Lenore ? "
" Yes, I may ; mayn't I ? "
" Aunty Lenore, is not he a naughty boy ? "
" You shall not get up here ; I won't have you ! "
A sound of hustling a yah a howl. Scrope to the
rescue.
Unmindful of her nephews, Lenore is standing with her
nose flattened against the pane, staring out into the rough
night. The clouds are breaking, and, from underneath one
heavy black one, the moon is pushing and pouring wet sil-
8
170 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
ver ; it streams on Lenore's eager face, making it look ex-
tra pale. The children tumble back, over one another,
again into the warm room : in the dark recess behind the
curtain the young man and the young woman stand alone.
" Do you think there has been an accident f " asks the
girl, in a low voice, turning to him her pretty tragic face.
" Do you think any thing has happened to him ? "
" I am certain nothing has," answers the young fellow,
bitterly, turning on his heel.
In ten minutes more, doubt as to Mr. Le'Mesurier's fate
is at an end, and Lenore's nose may recover from the
pressure it has suffered against the window-pane as soon
as it can. Through the bellowing wind and the fighting
rain carriage-wheels are plainly heard, and a bell's sharp
" Ting, ting " vibrates through the house.
" How about the pretty cousin and the poke-bonnet ? "
cries the girl, her face all alight, flying triumphantly past
Scrope into the outer hall.
" Wait a bit ; perhaps he has brought her with him."
But Lenore is out of hearing.
" Why could not she stay here ? " says the young man,
advancing, grumbling and shivering, to the fire. " It would
not have robbed her of two seconds of his precious society.
Why do not they come in ? " (walking impatiently to and
fro). " I suppose they are falling into each other's arms
under the chaperonage of Morris. Bah ! I hate lovers ! Do
not you, Miss Herrick ? "
" I never had one, so I cannot say."
The bell has awaked both Sylvia and her dog. The
latter tumbles down, in a fat, fawn-colored ball, from his
mistress's lap. The former stands sleepily up, and mechan-
ically puts her hand to her head, to feel for her plaits.
" Is he come ? " she says, in & little plaintive voice.
" I wish people would not come so suddenly they make
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 171
one's heart beat so. Jemima" (standing on tiptoe, and
trying to get a glimpse of her little head, and of the moun-
tainous hair-erection that makes it look top-heavy, in the
looking-glass over the high old chimney-piece) " Jemima,
does iQjfrisette show ? Do I look a great object ? What
will he think of me ? "
" It does show a good deal," answers Jemima, candidly.
"But do not be uneasy; he will not see you he never,
sees anybody when Lenore is by ; ten to one he will forget
to say ' How do you do ? ' to you ! "
" What to the mistress of the house ! " cries Scrope,
with his eyes eagerly fixed on the door.
" I hope he will not expect one to be very affectionate,"
continues Sylvia, simpering ; too entirely taken up with
herself to hear or heed Jemima's remark, and carefully
putting 'down the little Gainsborough fringe of hair on
her forehead. "I suppose I am peculiar, but I always
feel so reserved with strangers ; if he is hurt by my cold-
ness, you must explain to him that it is my way"
" I do not think there will be any need," replies Je-
mima, dryly.
As she speaks, the door opens, and the betrothed pair
make their triumphal entry. To Lenore, at least, it is
such : her two hands are clasped on her lover's arm, and
her glad, proud eyes are fixed on his face. It is not much
of a face to be proud of, after all ; but, such as it is, sisters,
nephews, friend, butler, footmen, are quite welcome to see
her radiant happiness in again looking upon it. Paul is
happy, too inly, heartfeltly happy ; but, coming in straight
from a long December railway journey, only just delivered
from the wind's cuffs and the rain's stings, shivering and
shy, it is difficult to look radiant. Paul's shyness, like that
of many other men's, takes the form of a peculiar ferocity
of aspect. Sylvia hns arranged herself in a pretty pose ;
172 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
she has disposed all her neat little features symmetrically
into a smile of welcome : Bobby and Tommy, awed into
momentary silence and stillness by the stranger's advent,
are filially grouped around her.
" So happy to make your acquaintance ! " she murmurs,
extending her hand, and then dropping her eyes bashfully.
" Darlings, give Mr. Le Mesurier a nice kiss ! "
But the darlings whose mauvaise lionte, on first in-
troduction, is only to be exceeded by their painful intimacy
at a later stage of acquaintance burrow their coy heads in
their mother's skirts and decline. As kissing is with them
a damp and open-mouthed process, perhaps their future
uncle has the less reason to deplore their refusal. He
shakes hands with them all unknown sister-in-law, known
sister-in-law, nephews-m-law, friend (with the last, perhaps,
with less warmth than the rest) ; and then they stand
round the fire, and say clever things about the rain and
the wind, and the train and the dog-cart. These do not
last long, however, and when they are finished a rather
constrained silence falls.
" So some one has been playing bezique, I see ? " re-
marks Paul, with an effort to break through the silence and
his own shyness at the same time.
" Yes," answers Lenore, laconically, not thinking it ne-
cessary to explain who the players were.
" It is Mr. Scrope and Aunty Lenore," cries Tommy,
officiously ; " they play every night, and one night Bobby
spilt the cards all over the floor. My word ! did not Aunty
Lenore smack him ! "
"Play every night!" echoes Paul, glancing quickly
from his love to Mr. Scrope, and back again ; " I had no
idea that you had been here any time, Scrope ? "
"About the inside of a week, I suppose," answers
Scrope, nonchalantly.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 173
" Why, you knew he had ! " cries Leiiore, reproachfully.
" I told you so, ages ago. It shows " (turning to the com-
pany, with a rather nervous laugh) " how attentively he
reads my letters, does not it ? "
" Her hand is difficult, is not it ? " says Sylvia, sweetly.
" We all write illegible hands ; I am shockingly scolded
about mine."
Mr. Le Mesurier does not seem very much interested as
to whether his hostess's hand is decipherable or not ; he
walks to the card-table, and begins to fiddle with the
bezique markers.
" I do not know what any one else thinks," says Jemi-
ma, depositing her novel on the table ; " but I think that
it is quite time to prepare for the great event of the day.
Mr. Scrope, will you light my candle ? "
They all troop off up the lit stairs women, children,
man ; Lenore and Paul are left for the first time alone. In
a moment they are together, standing on the hearth-rug :
her face is between his two cold hands, and he is looking
down on it, with an expression a little troubled, perhaps,
but as truly, heartily loving, as even she could desire.
" Lenore, have you been a good girl ? "
" Paul, have you been a good man ? "
" Middling, for that " (sighing), " but I think I have
tried."
" And I think I have tried to be a good girl, but I am
not at all sure that I have succeeded."
"And Scrope?"
" Has lie been a good man, do you mean ? I really can-
not say."
"You know I do not mean that, Lenore; but what
about him ? "
" Nothing about him."
" Do you think him as much of a child as you did that
day at St.-Malo?"
174 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART! "
" No, I do not ; I think he is rather precocious."
Soup is apt to make the nose red, but after a long win-
ter journey it is certainly solacing. It does not matter
whether Paul has a red nose or no, as he has no beauty to
spoil ; nor (owing, I suppose, to the deeper-coloredness of
their whole faces) is a red nose as absolutely fatal to men's
loveliness as to women's. Sylvia's sherry is good ; it is
her champagne. Paul does not feel half so shy, or half so
cold, as he did an hour ago. Why should he be, either,
sitting near this kingly Christmas fire, that one sees, with-
out feeling it oppressively, through the glass screen, and
among all these kindly, smiling faces ? Sylvia smiles on
principle, because her teeth are white and even. Jemima
smiles from habit : in this world it is politer to smile than
to look grave. Scrope smiles, because dinner is involun-
tarily cheering, even when one's heart is sick, and angry to
the pitch of longing to knock anybody down. And Le-
nore neither soup nor sherry has power to add to her per-
fect well-being. Indeed, she cannot eat. She has had
plenty of time to eat and sleep, and go through all the
dull necessities of life, during the last void six months.
Lenore is absolutely happy ! It is something to have been
able once to say that ; but why do not peole know when
to die ? Why does life insist on staying on :
" Like some poor, nigh-related guest,
That may not rudely be dismissed ;
But hath outstayed his welcome while,
And tells the jest without the smile ? "
" So your father has been having the gout ? " says the
girl, considerately waiting till her lover has swallowed his
last mouthful of soup, and not " starving her man," as the
Saturday, in the long-gone days when it used to write
pleasant articles, once happily worded it.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 175
Yes."
" Quite safely and long-livedty, I suppose ? "
Paul looks rather shocked; he has not yet had time to
get acclimatized to Lenore's startling candors of expression.
" I hope so."
"Is he very cross?"
"Very."
" Gout is apt to sour the sweetest temper, as no one
has better reason to know than I," said Sylvia, with a sigh,
and a downward glance at her dress.
Sylvia's grief has passed out of the capped and craped
stage ; it has declined into the more supportable phase of
colored silks and white tuckers.
" Would he like me to go and nurse him ? " asks Le-
nore, laughing, yet eagerly awaiting the answer.
" I do not know about that," says Paul, laughing too ;
" he has already three lone spirits for his ministers. I do
not think even he could find work for a fourth."
" Three ! " cries the girl, growing pink, with a faint
suspicion. " Why, Paul, I thought you had only two sisters !"
" Suppose I have a cousin, ? "
Lenore involuntarily glances across at Scrope ; he is
smiling malevolently, and reciting half under his breath :
" I have brothers and sisters by the dozen, Torn ;
But a cousin is a different thing."
Nothing has happened ; the fire still radiates warmth
from its deep, red heart. The footmen are carrying round
sweetbreads, and fricandeaus, and timbales, and all man-
ner of nice things. Sylvia and Jemima are still smiling ;
but yet but yet Lenore has made one step, a very little
step indeed ; but still a step, down from her pinnacle of
heaven-like bliss.
176 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" I quite like him, Lenore I do, really. I am not jok-
ing," says Sylvia, that evening, patronizingly, as the three
ladies stand round the drawing-room fire ; " and you know
I am not one to say what I do not mean. If I have a fault
in that way, it is being too sincere. I had my misgivings,
but he really is quite nice ; but but what an odd way
he has of staring at one ! "
"I never remarked it."
" I thought he looked rather queer when I called Char-
ley Scrope ' Charlie,' at dinner," continues Sylvia, sinking
down upon the fender-stool, and carefully disposing her
skirts about her. " You must explain to him that poor,
dear Charlie is one of my oldest friends. I hate people to
get that sort of idea about one into their heads, don't you
know ? "
CHAPTER II.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
*
" Babe Jesus lay on Mary's lap,
The sun shone in His hair ;
And so it was she saw, mayhap,
The crown already there.
" For she sang, ' Sleep on, my little King,
Bad Herod dares not come ;
Before Thee sleeping, holy thing,
Wild winds would soon be dumb.
" ' I kiss Thy hands, I kiss Thy feet,
My King, so long desired ;
Thy hands shall ne'er be soiled, my sweet,
Thy feet shall ne'er be tired.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 177
" ' For Thou art King of Men, my Son !
Thy crown, I see it plain ;
And men shall worship Thee, every one,
And cry Glory ! Amen ! '
" Babe Jesus opened His eyes so wide,
At Mary looked her Lord ;
And Mary stinted her song and sighed,
Babe Jesus said never a word."
NOBODY sings those old carols nowadays; but to me
they have a heartier, truer ring than any of the new-fangled
Christmas psalmodies. Yes it is Christmas-Day, though
there is neither snow, nor frost, nor ice; only stripped
trees, a chilly little sun, and mild west-wind. Everybody
has been to church, has prayed, has crossed his arms, and
yawned ; has stared at the hollied font and the ivied pillars,
at the blue and red and gold texts, that tell us the old,
old news, that " Christ is born ; " has thought of his earthly
accounts, and of his account with High God, as the bent
of his mind inclines him. Tommy has dropped his moth-
er's smart prayer-book into a puddle on his way to church ;
has been hoisted up on the seat, on his arrival there ; has
made faces at a little girl in the next pew ; has broken into
audible laughter, during the Second Lesson, at something
that tickled his fancy in one of the footmen's appearance ;
has been privately admonished that expulsion from church,
and deprivation of pudding, will be the consequence of
continued mirth ; has therefore lapsed into tearful gravity,
and finally into sleep. Now they are all at home again ;
Lenore and Paul have succeeded in the object always a
primary one with lovers of eluding every one else, and
are dawdling about in the conservatory till the luncheon-
gong shall summon them back into the control of the pub-
lic eye. The proud camellias, the Roman matrons Cor-
nelias and Lucretias of the flower nation, hide no ears
ITS "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
under their sleek, dark leaves ; the jonquils, whose gold
throats are so full of sweets, tell no tales.
" I never saw you in a frock-coat and tall hat before,"
says Lenore, playfully surveying her lover from head to
heel ; " turn slowly round, that I may judge of the tout
ensemble"
" Nor I you in a bonnet."
" You have seen me, however, in a cap" returns Le-
nore, with a mischievous smile.
Paul looks a little grave.
" Do not abuse it ! " cries the girl, laughing. " With
all its misdemeanors, it was a blessed cap, and I have a good
mind to be married in it."
" Lenore, I hate that episode ! "
" Do you ? Well, then, we will dig a hole and bury it ;
all the same " (sighing a little), " though I am a great deal
gooder than I was, I am not yet good enough to regret it."
" Are you * gooder ' than you were ? " (with a fond, but
rather incredulous smile).
" Do not you think so ? " she asks, eagerly. " Have
not you remarked it ? Do not you think I am improved ? "
Paul is a little puzzled ; he has not been here four-and-
twenty hours yet ; but, as far as he sees, she is the very
identical Lenore that he left sobbing on the deck of the St.-
Malo steamer. She is not sobbing now, and, instead of a
water-proof, she is clad in a smart winter-gown and a bon-
net with a feather ; but, for the rest, he sees no change.
" Have you heard me say any thing fast ? " asks Lenore,
growing serious.
" No."
"Or slang?"
"No."
" Or seen me get into one of my rages ? "
" No," answers Paul, half laughing at the idea of the
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 179
self-control implied by keeping out of a rage during eight-
teen hours, of which seven were spent in sleep, and the
rest in the company of a favored and adoring lover.
" Have you heard me snub Jemima ? "
"No."
" Or seen me box Tommy's ears ? "
"No."
" Well, then, I must be improved," cries Lenore, tri-
umphantly ; " for I can tell you, you could not have spent
an hour in my society this time last year without seeing
me go through some of those manoeuvres."
" Well, then, you are improved," answers Paul, smiling,
and smoothing her shining hair ; " and we all know there
was room for it, do not we ? "
" Plenty," replies Lenore, briefly.
" All the same, I did not think you needed much mend-
ing that last day at St.-Malo," says Paul, indulging himself
in looking as thoroughly sentimental as even Scrope could
have done, now that he is sure that nobody is by.
" You prefer me with my nose swollen and my eyes
bunged up, do you ? " asks Lenore, gayly. " Good Hea-
vens ! " (growing quite grave), " how I hated everybody
and every thing that day Chateaubriand and his tomb,
and the ramparts, and the old houses, and the steamer, and
the stoker, and Jemima ! Do you know, I cried all the
way back to Dinan; I do not think I stopped for one
minute, and Jemima and Mr. Scrope sat on two camp-
stools opposite to me. They did not look at the view, and
they did not look at the other people ; they kept staring
at me the whole way. What possessed them I cannot
think."
" I wish I had been there," says Mr. Le Mesurier, look-
ing rather vicious ; " I would have turned Jemima's camp-
stool straight round, and kicked Scrope overboard."
180 t "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" And what would he have been doing meanwhile ? "
asks Lenore, archly. " Poor Mr. Scrope ! how bored I was
by him those first few days after you went ! "
" The first days ! " echoes Paul, suspiciously. " You
were not bored by him afterward, then ? "
She does not answer immediately, and he has to re-
peat his question. Then she speaks with perhaps a shade
of unwillingness:
" Well, no ; I do not think I was. One gets used to
things, you know, and he is not a bad boy, after all, and
and and he was almost as useful as Frederick himself in
running errands."
" And expected the same' reward, I suppose ? " says
Paul, with a sneer.
" I have not a notion what he expected," retorts Lenore.
beginning to look rather rebellious, and to hum a tune.
" Lenore ! Lenore ! " (the sneer disappearing as he
snatches her hands, and gazes with anxious, grieved love
into her face), " what were the very last words I said to
you at St.-Malo ? do you remember ? "
" Perfectly ; they were, ' God bless you, darling ! " she
answers, speaking softly, her lips framing -the words lov-
ingly, as if they were dear to them.
" Ay, but the words just before them ? "
" They were ugly, stupid, unnecessary, jealous words !
I do not remember them," says she, impatiently, snatching
away her hands, and not perceiving that the first half of
her sentence contradicted the last.
" Ugly, stupid, and jealous, they may 'have been," says
Paul, with forced calmness, " as many of my words, I dare
say, are ; but were they unnecessary ? "
" What were they ? " (very impatiently). " Let us
hear them, and have done with them ! "
" They were, * Do not flirt with Scrope ! ' "
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 181
" Well ? "
" Whatever else you do, I know you do not tell lies :
did you flirt with him ? "
" Upon my soul, I do not know ! " answers Lenore, in-
genuously.
" I would have given you carte blanche to bully Jemima
and maltreat your nephews," says Paul, magnanimously.
" What do little flaws in the temper matter compared to
O Lenore ! to lower yourself and me by flirting with that
boy, my own friend, whom I myself had introduced to you,
and after all I had said to you ? Why do not you turn
your face this way ? Good God ! is it possible that you are
blushing about him ? "
" I am blushing with rage at being put through such
a degrading catechism ! " answers Lenore, coloring scarlet,
and flashing indignantly at her lover.
'''Did you flirt with him?" repeats Paul, sternly; his
lips look thin and sulky, and his eyes also sparkle coldly.
" Is sitting by the hour in a person's company, wonder-
ing when he means to go, and yawning till the tears come
into your eyes, flirting with him ? " asks the girl excitedly,
her mouth beginning to twitch, and the tears to gather in
her eyes.
" Certainly not."
" Is thinking a man very good-looking, and wishing
that he would fall in love with your elder sister, and being
sure that he will not, flirting with him ? "
" Certainly not."
" Is going endless expeditions to places that you have
not the heart to look at, in a man's company, letting him
spread his overcoat on the grass for you to sit upon, and
carry your prayer-book to church and forgetting to say,
Thank you ' flirting with him ? "
"No o."
182 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Is " (this last query comes much less trippingly and
more reluctantly from her tongue than the former one)
" is seeing that a man is going to make a fool of himself
about you, and being so shamefully fond of admiration as
not to do every thing in your power to stop him is that
flirting with him ? "
" Of course it is," replies Paul, roughly, all his brown
face turning white in his deep anger.
" Then I did flirt with him ! " cries Lenore, bursting
into a passion of penitent tears, and throwing herself into
her lover's arms, which neither expect nor are willing to
receive her.
" You did did you ? " says Paul, cuttingly, not making
any attempt to press her to his heart, or otherwise caress
her, but, on the contrary, endeavoring to restore her to the
perpendicular, which she has abandoned in his favor.
" And you can stand there smiling, and tell me so ? "
" Not much smiling about it, I think," replies the girl,
ruefully, wiping her eyes ; then, more tartly : " Why did
you go on asking me, if you did not want to be answered ?
O Paul ! Paul ! " catching his hand and holding it, " I am
not much of a person ; long ago I told you that, and you
would not believe me. Ah ! you see it now but don't
dorfl be too hard upon me ! I have not been, like your
sisters, pent all my life in a good, steady, stagnant English
home, where never a man dare look over the park-palings.
All my life I have been a Bohemian, as I told you almost
the first time that we met up and down the world, here,
there, and everywhere, and I have always had some man
dangling after me. J did not care for them, Heaven knows,
and I dare say they did not care for me ; but they were
useful, and pleasant, and made the time pass
" As Scrope no doubt did ! I dare say," (looking very
ugly and sardonic, for a sneer deforms the beautifullest
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 183
face, much more an unhandsome one) " that you did not
find the days between June and December so endless as
you expected ; perhaps you did not buy that pop-gun, after
all?"
" No, I did not," says Lenore, her wrath bursting out
into a blaze. " Paul, I warn you that you are going the
very best way to hinder me from being sorry for what I
did. What am I saying ? What did I do ? I cared too
little about his comings and goings to shut the house- door
in the face of a boy, who had got into a stupid habit of
staring at me, and who I own to you would have loved
me if I had let him, without my running after him, and per-
secuting him in the way I did you " throwing herself into
a rustic chair, and sobbing violently at the reopening of the
old wound caused by the reluctant origin of Paul's affec-
tion.
Paul hates a scene with all his strength. He kneels
down beside her, but even then he is too angry to be able
to bring himself to say any thing fond. " Good God !
Lenore, stop crying ; they will hear you in the drawing-
room."
" If I had turned him out of the house," she says, from
the depths of her pocket-handkerchief, " I should have met
him fifty times a day in the street."
" Why could not you leave Dinan ? "
" We had taken the lodgings for six months."
" Lenore /" (very impatiently), "what are you going on
crying about ? What more have I said ? It is five min-
utes to luncheon-time."
" Hundreds and hundreds of times I have told him,
honestly, what a bore I thought him ! " continues she, dry-
ing her eyes, having successfully stained and disfigured her
face almost past recognition.
" It implies a considerable amount of intimacy with a
184 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
man to be able to tell him, to his face, that you think him
a bore," retorts Paul, dryly.
"I was intimate with him," replies Lenore, boldly.
"Who says I was not? not I, certainly. He was kind
and manly and gentlemanlike, which not one of the half-
dozen broken-down Irishmen who form the manhood of
Dinan was : he was a sort of tame cat about the house,
and so near my own age, and altogether "
Paul winces; he himself was verging on eighteen,
full of man's impulses and thoughts, when this his be-
trothed was born.
" When I gave myself to you at Huelgoat," continues
the girl, more calmly, but with profound earnestness in her
swimming eyes, " and you took me more, I think, out of
compassion and gratitude than any thing else, but still you
took me did I keep back one smallest fraction to be able
to give it to another man ? Not a shred ! Myself, with
all my badness and my goodness not much of the latter,
perhaps I gave you, and you have it."
" I have have I ? " says Paul, whose harsh face has
been gradually softening throughout the last sentence, and
at the end looks almost mollified. " Well, then, with your
permission, I will keep you, and not hand you over to Mr.
Scrope, manly and gentlemanlike as he no doubt is, and
also so much more suitable to you in age, as you kindly re-
minded me just now. Lenore, I have been counting : I
was eighteen the day you were born."
" And I am sure you were an ugly, gawky, hobblede-
hoy, all arms and legs ! I am very glad I did not know
you in those days," says Lenore, laughing; then, quite
gravely : " Paul, never pretend to be jealous of me again !
It is patent to everybody that I love you a hundred times
better than you do me ; you know it yourself, and I I am
not blind to it."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 185
" Bosli ! " says Paul, turning away uneasily, not feeling
exactly guilty ; for he does love her heartily, yet with an
uncomfortable lurking sensation that there is a grain of
truth in what she asserts.
" It is the way of the world, I suppose," says the girl,
sighing. " One gives, and the other takes ; it would be
superfluous for both to give, would not it ? Perhaps some
day some far-off day the balance will be changed, and
we shall love each other equally ; till then "
" Till then," says Paul, gayly, mimicking her tone
" till then, Lenore, let us go to luncheon, and eat so many
mince-pies as to incapacitate us for afternoon church."
CHAPTER III.
WHAT THE AUTHOK SAYS.
IT is afternoon tea-time, and that high festival is always
held in the hall. Scrope knows that there is no hope of
bezique to-night, and Paul sees that a tete-d-ttte is unlikely.
They have therefore retired to the smoking-room, and, with
their enmity temporarily smothered, and their friendship as
temporarily reborn, are smoking the pipe of peace together.
Only the three sisters lounge round the fire in easy-chairs ;
the fire, in burning, makes the low, quiet noise that is fire's
talk.
" How I ever shall bring myself to call him c Paul,' I
am sure I do not know," says Sylvia, gently moving to and
fro the hand-screen with which she is shading her face.
" If it were a three or even a two-syllabled name Augus-
tus, or Reginald, or Henry it would not sound half so fa-
miliar; but ''Paul!'* there is something so abrupt and un-
186 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
compromising about it ; however, I managed to bring it
out at luncheon. I said, ' Paul, will you cut me some
partridge ? ' Did you hear ? He looked so pleased."
" I do not think he heard," says Jemima, maliciously.
" I always tell Lenore that he is like Dr. Johnson deaf
while he is eating."
" Oh, but he did, though ! " retorts Sylvia, quickly, get-
ting rather pink. " I knew it by his face ; one can always
tell by a man's face when he is rubbed the right way."
Jemima looks across skeptically at Lenore, who smiles
lazily back.
" Do you remark that he never calls me any thing but
4 Mrs. Prodgers ? ' " continues Sylvia, complacently ; " many
a man would have taken advantage of his situation to ' Syl-
via ' me at once. I think it so particularly gentlemanlike
of him, and I shall tell him so as soon as we get on a little
more easy terms ; you might give him a hint, Lenore, that
he need not be so ceremonious for the future."
" I do not think it has any thing to do with gentleman-
likeness," replies Jemima, who has retained all her old
aversion for hearing Mr. Le Mesurier complimented. " He
does not remember your Christian name."
" Impossible ! " cries Sylvia, now thoroughly nettled.
" How can he help knowing it when he hears Charlie
Scrope calling me by it fifty times in the course of the
day ? By-the-by, I must tell that boy that it will not do
for him to be Christian-naming me before all those people
at the Websters' to-night. Poor fellow! he means no
harm ; but I suppose it is one of the penalties of being
left so early alone in the world, that one sets people's
tongues wagging more easily than others do."
" What a trial the Websters are ! " says Jemima, groan-
ing. " To dine out on Christmas-day ! It would be hardly
greater heathenism to give a ball on Good Friday ! "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 187
" And such a regiment of us going, too ! " says Lenore,
sitting up in her chair, and pushing back the restive hair-
pins that her reclining attitude has displaced. " One, two,
three, four, five like a flock of ducks waddling into the
room one after another."
"I do not see why we need waddfol" says Sylvia,
with dignity.
" I do hate visiting in a patriarchal manner with all my
tribe ! " returns Lenore, energetically.
Her betrothed is quite of her mind ; suavity of manner
is never his/brfe/ but he has difficulty in manifesting even
his usual amount of complaisance, when he discovers what
his fate is to be.
" O Mrs. Prodgers, could not you leave Lenore and me
at home ? We should never be missed out of such a mul-
titude," he says, vainly hoping for a reprieve at the last
moment. " There is something so appalling in being trot-
ted out as two people who are going to commit matri-
mony ; an engaged couple are always everybody's legiti-
mate butt."
" I do not think you need be afraid of that," says Syl-
via, speaking with the happy mixture of sisterliness and
coquetry, with which she always addresses her future con-
nection. " You see you have never been seen with us be-
fore, and Char , I mean Mr. Scrope, has always been en
evidence. I think he is generally looked upon as the
happy man. Lenore, would not Paul have laughed the
other night to see the way in which the Ansons manoeu-
vred to let you have the morning-room to yourselves ? If
they are there to-night, we may have quite a pleasant little
mystification."
At the conclusion of this speech, Scrope smiles oddly,
Jemima reddens, Lenore rushes headlong into a remark
that has neither head, tail, nor middle, and Paul Paul is
188 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
putting on his overcoat ; his face is turned away one can-
not see it.
They look to themselves or rather to some of them-
selves an inordinately long string, as they file into the
Websters' drawing-room : three long-tailed ladies, two
swallow-tailed men. The light is very subdued, even more
so than people usually have it in the five minutes before
dinner. Paul gives up the idea of making out the Webster
family in detail till dinner ; then Lenore will explain them to
him sufficiently to prevent his descanting on the ugliness of
a wife to a husband, or making disparaging remarks about
a child to a parent. As he stands near the fire, furnishing
the room, in company with half a dozen other men whom
he regards with the innate distrust and thinly-veiled suspi-
cion with which every Englishman regards every other Eng-
lishman who has the misfortune to be unknown to him
his spirit soothes itself. The drive was the worst part, and
that is over : not allowed to decline into comfortable
silence and semi-sleep by Sylvia, next whom he sat, and
obliged by the noise the omnibus made to say " What ? "
and " I beg your pardon, I did not catch what you said,"
in answer to all her low-murmured prettinesses.
He will be very kind to Lenore to-night. Hitherto he
has made her Christmas-Day rather tearful, poor child !
Well, she shall have a thoroughly happy evening, if he can
compass it ; after all, perhaps, he will have better chances
of private commune with her, of sweet, grave talk, and
sweeter looks into her lovely, loving eyes, than he would
have had in the small home party, with Jemima and Sylvia
staring at him.
These thoughts are interrupted by the approach of an
old lady in a yellow gown (to whom he has a dim idea of
having been introduced as hostess), who leads him up to a
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 189
plain girl in blue, presents him, and leaves him beside her,
with a whispered request that he will take her into dinner.
In a moment afterward that festival is announced.
Paul sees men and women, all equally unknown to him,
paired together, marching solemnly off. Presently a cou-
ple, of whom neither man nor woman is unknown to him,
sweep by Lenore and Scrope.
" This is part of the pleasant little mystification, I sup-
pose," he thinks, setting his teeth. " Who knows if Le-
nore were not a party to it ? " But the ungenerous thought
is no sooner formed, than he is disabused of it by the ex-
pression of the beautiful face, that, unhappily for itself, can
never keep its own secrets. She looks at him over her
shoulder with a look of unaffected angry disappointment,
shrugs her shoulders almost imperceptibly, while her lips
frame words which he rather feels than hears to be, " Too
bad!"
On the very smallest encouragement, she would outrage
propriety by dropping Scrope's arm and running to him.
Perhaps, after all, he may be able to sit on the other side
of her. He catches up his ugly blue fate in a hurry, and
hastens off with her in pursuit ; but it is too late another
couple have struck in and occupied the coveted place ; he
has to content himself with being nearly opposite.
There is a great deal of holly and mistletoe about the
room. Most of the women have holly in their hair ; it does
not look particularly pretty, and scratches their heads and
necks. Altogether, there is a great affectation of Christ-
mas cheer and jollity. But the entrees are cold, the cham-
pagne is all froth and sweetness, and the sherry is not to
be named in the same breath with Mrs. Prodgers's.
Scrope has no idea of allowing his neighbor to lapse
into sentimental silence, and wistful gazes across the table.
He has got her now to himself for a full hour and a half ;
190 "QOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
except under pretext of a bleeding nose, or improbably
sudden indisposition, she cannot get away from him.
" Miss Lenore, the expression of your face reminds me
of a scene in ' The Taming of the Shrew : ' ' Enter Horatio,
with his head broken.' "
Lenore declines to smile.
" It is not my fault that Mrs. Webster has not entered
with her head broken," she answers, with perfect gravity.
" Why so ? for giving us such a drink as this ? Well,
it is filthy stuff!"
" For making such a stupid mistake as to send me out to
dinner with yow."
He bows his blond, curled head ceremoniously.
"Thanks."
"Engaged people always go in to dinner together,"
says Lenore, trenchantly.
" On what principle, I never could divine. With a
whole lifetime to get sick of each other in, why they should
be crammed down each other's throats before there is any
legal necessity, I never could see."
" That is their affair."
" Mrs. Webster was aware of the barbaric custom,"
says Scrope, growing as red as any girl. " She was good
enough to imagine that it was jTthat was engaged to you."
Lenore reddens, and turns down the corners of her
mouth.
" What could have put so grotesque an idea into her
head?"
" There is nothing grotesque about it," replies the
young man, coolly. " Internally, we may be conscious of
how distasteful to, and dissimilar from, each other we are ;
but outwardly, we are rather suitable."
" I do not see it " (very icily).
" Miss Lenore " (turning round and bending over her,
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 101
to speak low and eagerly), " why do you thrust your hap-
piness so obtrusively under my nose ? Do I deny your
bliss ? Do I pretend to be as happy as you ? " She is si-
lent. " We cannot all be Paul Le Mesuriers, you know,"
says Scrope, with a rather jarring laugh. " Of course, we
would if we could ; but, as we cannot, you must bear with
us."
Lenore glances across apprehensively at her lover, to
see whether he has caught his own name ; but no he is
not looking at her. With grave interest, he and his blue
neighbor are together consulting the mystic French secrets
of the carte. Bah .! how greedy the best of men are !
" Was it good manners," continues Scrope, growing
more excited at each word, " to shrug your shoulders so
perceptibly, and exclaim so audibly, ' Too bad ! ' because
your hand had to rest on my coat-sleeve for the tenth part
of a minute ? "
"I never pretend to good manners," replies Lenore,
shortly.
" He will sit into your pocket all this evening ; he will
sit into your pocket," says the young man (making use of
an audacious figure), " all the rest of your life. Need you
have grudged me my miserable half-hour's innings ? "
Again Lenore glances hurriedly across ; still he is not
thinking of her. She looks at Scrope : his blue eyes are
always bright, but the champagne, bad as it is, has made
them sparkle more brightly than ever. With his straight
nose, and soft, gold mustache, most women would have
thought him distractingly handsome. An innocent, cheru-
bic, yet stalwart beauty, such as some men manage to
preserve through half a dozen seasons, Scrope looks as if
he had said his prayers and gone to bed at eight o'clock
every night of his life.
" For one half-hour forget that there is such a person,"
192 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
says the young man, entreatingly. " At cheese-time I will
give you leave to remember him again."
" You are very good. Till then "
" Till then bah !*" cries he, with a reckless laugh ;
" let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, or marry,
which is worse."
" The one is at least optional, which the other is not,"
says Lenore, with a demure but rather wicked look at him
from under her eyes.
Paul has abandoned the carte / he has discovered what
the word that puzzled him was. " It is l TopinenbourysJ "
he s&ys to his neighbor ; and then he leans wearily back,
and thinks that he will refresh himself with a look at his
beautiful sweetheart. He does so just in time to witness
the glance that she is bestowing on his rival: it is the
only look with the slightest tendency to coquetry in it
that she has given him during dinner, and it is the only
one that Paul intercepts. Pouf! is not that ill-luck for
you?
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
THE men are left to themselves left to work their
wicked will upon the walnuts, and to raven among the
candied fruits, of whose existence, as long as the women
were in the room, they pretended to be unaware. And
the women, meanwhile, stand, gently rustling, softly chat-
tering, about the drawing-room fire ; sipping coffee, hold-
ing gossamer handkerchiefs between their pretty pink faces
and the flame, and mentally pricing and depreciating each
other's gowns. Sylvia is very happy ; she has, indis-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 193
putably, a loager trail and a thicker silk than any one else
present ; her toilet, happily, hits the golden mean between
the mournful and the magnificent, and she is almost sure
that, as she left the dining-room, she heard some man ask
who she was. Presently every one sinks into chairs, and
upon ottomans and sofas; breaking up into groups of
twos and threes, as similarity of tastes in point-lace, dress-
makers, and children, prompts. Lenore forms part of no
group takes part in no chat. The night is cold, and the
room not particularly well warmed ; yet she chooses an
easy-chair apart from the rest of the company, and un-
socially sitting by itself in a little recess. Lenore deposits
herself upon it, and bides her time. When the walnuts,
candied fruits, and ungodly after-dinner stories are done,
that time comes.
Paul is determined not to be checkmated a second
time; he may dislike to be pointed out as an engaged
man, but he dislikes still more to have Mr. Scrope pointed
at as such. Pie walks straight up to Lenore.
" Do you know what I have got hidden here ? " asks
the girl, looking up at him, while her whole face laughs
not only mouth, but eyes, dimples, cheeks as she points
to the wide spread of her gown. " Guess ! "
" I have not an idea."
She sweeps away her skirts, and discloses a tiny, light
cane-chair.
" Sit down ! You are an unfortunately big person ;
but, I think, judiciously sat upon, it may bear you."
He had meant to scold her well, the scolding will
keep ; it may be carried over, and added to the next ac-
count. He sits down, and his jealousy goes to sleep.
" I was determined to have no more malentendus to-
night," says the girl, gravely. " If any one had come this
way, I meant to have looked at him with my own scowl
9
194 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
the one you used to admire so much and say, ' This is Mr.
Le Mesurier's chair.' "
" Lenore " (looking round with a sense of lazy well-
being), " is there any one in the room that is not a Web-
ster?"
"Hardly anybody; they are all directs or collaterals.
That tall old woman whose forehead has good-naturedly
gone round to look for the back of her head, who is ambling
about saying indistinct civilities to everybody, is Mrs. Web-
ster, the head and fount for all the others ; she always re-
minds me of Agag she 'goes so delicately.' "
" I know her, the old cat 1 " says Paul, resentfully.
" Serve her right if she were drowned in a butt of her own
gooseberry, and I cannot wish her a worse fate."
" The old young woman who never stops smiling is Miss
Webster ; we call her c the savory omelette,' because she is
so green and yellow ! Does not she smile ? it makes one's
face ache to look at her." Paul laughs. " Paul, if you
jilt me, and no one else takes compassion on me, do you
think I shall ever get to the pitch of smiling like that ? If
I thought so, I would have the corners of my mouth sewn
up."
" Prevention is better than cure I would."
" The man with the red beard is Major Webster ; do
you see how short and broad he is ? His brother officers
say that he has swallowed a box is not it a delicious idea ?
it quite invigorates me."
Paul laughs again ; after dinner, it is pleasanter to be
amused than to be amusing.
"Apropos of beards," says Lenore, turning from the
company to a subject that interests her more, " yours has
not disappeared yet, Paul ? "
" Why, did you think it would ? Did you suppose I
moulted, like the birds?"
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 195
" I thought, perhaps, you might have moulted volun-
tarily, to please me," replies she, with a slight pout.
" When my beard moults," retorts he, gayly, with an
expressive glance at the sleek but unnaturally luxuriant
twists that bind her head, " I shall expect your (or rather
the unknown dead person's) plaits to moult, too."
Lenore shrugs.
" Que voulez-vous ?' Look at Sylvia. She has at least
five pounds' worth 011 her head ; I have certainly not more
than two pounds ten shillings on mine. Nowadays, with-
out a chignon of some sort, one's head looks mutilated and
indecent."
" Then I like mutilation and indecency."
" Do you know, Paul " (with a pretty air of candor),
" without my plaits, I hardly look handsome at all ? "
" I do not believe it," replies Paul, with warmth ; " I
would stake my existence that you look infinitely hand-
somer, sweeter, modester ! Why cannot you be content to
wear your hair as Nature meant it flat to your head, and
low down on your ears and cheeks ? "
" Merciful Heavens ! " cries Lenore, expressively cast-
ing up hands and eyes to heaven. " Paul " (with a sudden
suspicion), "have you been seeing any one lately with her
hair dressed like that ? "
To her searching eyes, he seemed to redden ever so
slightly.
" No o, nobody particular."
She is not satisfied, but does not pursue the subject.
"Well" (with a sigh), "to return to your beard
Bah ! what does the old woman want with us now ? Apro-
pos of beards, look at hers ! Has not she a ' menton d'une
fertility ddsolante,' as Gustave Droz says ? "
" So sorry to disturb you, but we are going to play
Dumb Scrambo."
196 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
This is Mrs. Webster's errand.
" And what is Dumb Scrambo ? " asks Paul, with a dis-
gusted intonation, when, hunted out of their cold and quiet
alcove, and the hostess having moved on to collect fresh
recruits, he and Lenore advance to join the rest of the com-
pany.
" It is not bad fun," answers the girl " a sort of silent
charade, you know. Did you never see it ? Oh, you must
have done ! "
" But I have not."
" Oh, you know, the audience think of a word. You
will be audience, will not you ? I am sure that you can no
more act than a tom-cat."
"Well?"
" And then, do not you know they give the actors an-
other word that rhymes with it ; and then they the act-
ors, I mean have to act in dumb-show all the other words
that rhyme with it, till they hit upon the right one."
At this lucid explanation, given with surprising rapid-
ity, Paul looks a good deal nrystified. Mrs. Webster has ,
some difficulty in collecting a troupe. Sylvia is among
those who positively decline.
" Oh, no, indeed thanks, Mrs. Webster I really could
not ; I am so childishly nervous that the feeling that every-
body's eyes were fixed upon me, would make every word I
had to say go out of my head."
" But you have no words to say ; it is all dumb-show"
" Oh, thanks ! but that really would not make any dif-
ference; I should have the same dreadful feeling that
everybody was looking at me."
It being useless to try and convince her that some of
the other actors might divert a portion of the dreaded pub-
lic notice from her, Mrs. Webster desists.
Paul declines, too, with that decisive brevity which for-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 197
bids pressing. He is angry with Lenore for not having
done likewise ; but she is firm.
" Impossible, my dear boy," she says, in a smiling aside.
" If they were to ask me to walk on my head to-night, I
should have to try and do it. Have not they given us a
huge family teapot, and is not this part payment ?
He is the more displeased when he sees Mr. Scrope
march off, with the best of the performers, into the dining-
room, which opens out of the hall, and is converted into a
temporary greenroom.
It is a pretty old house, oak-floored ; a step here, a
step there, in and out of the rooms. The audience have
disposed themselves about the hall-fire in chairs set a-row
for them. The leading spirits among them have fixed
upon a word, a very little one indeed, but which they hope
will prove puzzling: it is jet. The word that rlrymes with
it, which they have given to the performers, is net. In the
interval of waiting, until these latter shall be prepared to
be dumbly funny, they beguile the time with talk.
" I always envy people who have aplomb enough to
act, and do all that sort of thing that makes one conspic-
uous," says Sylvia, leaning back in her chair, biting the
top of her black fan, and looking pensively over it at Paul,
who happens to be her neighbor. " I am afraid I am not
quite like other people, but I should feel ready to sink in-
to the, earth, don't you know ! Now, Lenore has none of
that feeling."
" Evidently not," replies Paul, dryly.
His eyes are fixed on the dining-room door ; it is a
little ajar, and, through the chink left, he sees a dim vision
of green. Lenore has a green dress ; he is straining his
eyes to see whose are the legs that are in juxtaposition
with that green gown.
"Last time we were here," continued Sylvia, "they
198 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
acted the word ' tail ; ' and all the ladies fastened long boas
to their dresses behind, and walked about the stage wag-
ging them. You can have no conception how droll it
looked."
Further talked is stopped by the opening of the dining-
room door, and appearance of the performers. Mr.
Scrope makes his entry on his hands and knees, crawling
awkwardly along. It is plain that he is meant to repre-
sent a horse ; his gait much more nearly resembles a cross
between that of a bear and a monkey, but the equine in-
tention is evident ; it is rendered the more so by the fact
of Major Webster being seated astride on his back, with
a tall hat on his head and a dog- whip in his hand ; with
this latter he pleasantly flogs him round the stage. Then
another Webster enters a heavy fellow, who has been dis-
tinguishing himself by making stupid and impossible sug-
gestions comes up, and feels his legs. Mr. Scrope lashes
mostly out at him, and then continues his victorious
course, kicking and plunging round the room. It entails
fearful exertion, and feelings verging on apoplexy ; but he
is rewarded by the plaudits of his fellows. Having un-
horsed Major Webster, and sent that gallant officer rolling
on the oak-floor, to the great benefit of his dress-clothes,
the cortege retires, amid laughter and well-deserved
hisses.
" How good for the knees of his trousers ! " says Paul,
who, with a mind relieved from the apprehension of see-
ing Lenore in some grotesquely affectionate or affection-
ately grotesque attitude with Scrope, is able to laugh as
heartily as the others.
" Poor man ! did not he look as if all the blood in his
body had rushed to his head ? " says a young lady, com-
passionatel} 7 .
" That was a good bona-fide kick he gave Webster,"
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 199
says a man " no mistake about it. I wonder how his
shins feel ? "
Meanwhile the actors are talking over their late per-
formance, and planning the next.
" It was not obvious enough," says Major Webster,
who, being manager, is responsible for the eclat of the pro-
ceedings.
" It had no more to say to bet than I have," said Le-
nore, bluntly. " I cannot imagine how they ever guessed
it; I do not believe they have."
" Well no, perhaps not (looking rather mortified).
" You see " (gnawing his mustache reflectively), " we were
supposed to be betting about him " (nodding at Scrope).
" It is rather difficult to be explicit when one does not say
any thing."
" Phew ! " cries Scrope, wiping his face, and stroking
down his tossed curly locks. " I had no idea that being a
horse was such apoplectic work. Miss Lenore " (turning
eagerly to her), " did you see me ? Was not I a very free
goer?"
" I did not look at you," replies Lenore, indifferently.
" I was thinking what we could have next. What on earth
rhymes with net ? Set ? pet ? fret ? "
" Fret ! " cries Paul's blue dinner-neighbor, determined
not to be behind the rest, though in her the dramatic gift
is, to say the least, latent. " Might not we all go in, and
sit in a row with our handkerchiefs up to our eyes, crying,
' Don't you know ? ' "
" I do not think it would be very amusing," replies Le-
nore, dryly. " Let ? set ? pet ? "
" Pet /" suggests the heavy youth, brilliantly. " What
do you say to one of us going in by himself, and pretend-
ing to be in an ill-humor pet eh ? "
This idea meets with the silent contempt it so justly
merits.
200 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
A pause.
" Stay I have it," says Scrope, eagerly.
" Eureka ! One of us must be a baby a dear little
pet, you know ; and some one else must carry us in, squall-
ing and hallooing. I say, who will be the baby ? Do not
all speak at once ! "
The warning is unnecessary.
" Well, I suppose, if nobody else will, I must," says
Major Webster, rather ruefully. " Scrope, you are the big-
gest ; will you carry me in ? Are you sure you can ? "
eying him rather doubtfully.
" Of course I can, my dear fellow, as soon as look at
you. Up with you ! " answers Scrope, stoutly, and so
stoops promptly down to embrace his nursling's legs.
" Stop a bit ! " cries the other, gravely, stroking his red
beard. " I must have something on must not I ? or they
will not know I am a baby."
Scrope looks round on the properties scattered about
umbrellas, hats, door-mats, sheets, carving-knives.
" Here you are," he says, snatching up a white table-
cloth. " This is the very thing for you. Who has got a
big pin ? "
Having pinned the table-cloth round his waist, and tied
an antimacassar over his head, Major Webster stands com-
plete, ready to represent smiling infancy. There is some
difficulty in getting him hoisted up ; the table-cloth will
get under Mr. Scrope's feet, and trip him up.
" For God's sake, don't drop me ! " cries Webster, ner-
vously. " Perhaps we had better give up the idea."
" Not a bit of it ! Get up on the chair ; I shall have
better purchase of you."
" And what am I to do ? " asks Lenore, beginning to
laugh by anticipation. " Have I no role ? "
" Oh, you must be nursery-maid, don't you know ? "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 201
says Scrope, panting, and clasping the major's legs^as he
stands on the chair, " and give him the bottle when he hal-
loos. There, take that hearth-brush, and shoot it out at
him ; that will do as well as any thing else."
" But a bottle does not shoot out" objects Lenore,
whose acquaintance with the ways and appurtenances of
infancy, though meagre, is apparently more exact than the
young man's.
" What does that signify? " says Scrope, breathlessly,
having with one final effort heaved up his bearded baby.
" One must leave something to the imagination."
" For God's sake, mind the step ! " cries Webster,
gloomily, looking down with apprehensive eye from his
unnatural elevation.
It is nervous work, but they get through it trium-
phantly. Mr. Scrope staggers along, with laboring breath,
and arms firmly clasped round his baby's table-clothed legs,
who, for his part, clutching Scrope convulsively round the
neck, while his bronzed face and beard emerge absurdly
from his antimacassar, gives utterance to a series of the
dismallest deep yells, supposed to represent the faint cries
of infancy. Lenore walks gravely alongside, occasionally
shooting out her hearth-brush at him ; whether or not the
audience discover that it is the mystic symbol of an " Alex-
andra" bottle will never be known till the Last Day.
Having completed the circuit of the room, and made a
playful feint of depositing his "pet" in Jemima's lap, Mr.
Scrope and his coadjutors retire.
" I thought it was Dumb Scrambo," says Paul, dryly,
as Major Webster's last bellow dies on the ear.
" I suppose that only applies to articulate sounds," re-
plies Jemima, who is on his other side. " Bah ! " (wiping
her eyes) ; " it is an insult to one's understanding to laugh,
but one cannot help it. After all, it is not half so good as
charades."
202 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART! "
" Paul should have been at the Ansons' the other night,"
says Sylvia, with a little coy hesitation and stumbling (both
quite thrown away) over his name ; then, turning to him :
" You should have seen Lenore, as bar-maid, running
about and saying all sorts of impertinent things to the
gentlemen, in a Breton cap. Do you know, she has got an
immensely becoming Breton cap ! I tell her that it is too
matronly for her, and that she ought to give it to me. Do
you give your consent ? " (opening and shutting her fan
bashfully).
" A bar-maid f " repeats Paul, with a slightly-clouded
face. " Very entertaining, I dare say ; and who were the
gentlemen that she said impertinent things to ? "
" You need not be jealous," interposes Jemima, with a
rather dry laugh. " Only old Mr. Anson ; he came in as
Boots in a pea-jacket. Now, if there is an absurd sight in
the world, it is an old fat man in a pea-coat."
" Ah ! true, so it was ! " says Sylvia, languidly. " In-
constant, you know, was the word ; that was inn, and con-
stant "
" How long they are in coming this time ! " cries Jemi-
ma, hastily interrupting. " What can they be doing ? "
" And constant f " says Paul, leaning forward, while
his eyes shine with a rather doubtful expression. " How
was that acted ? "
" I don't think I will tell you," says Sylvia, with charm-
ing archness. " You know, ' when the cat's away, the mice
will play.' Well, Lenore was supposed to be engaged to
Charlie Scrope. Poor Charlie ! he torments me out of my
life to act, too ; but I said, ' No ! no ! no ! not my line at
all!'"
'"Well but about Lenore?" interrupts Paul, impa-
tiently.
" Oh, yes, to be sure. Charlie was supposed to have
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 203
been away for five or six years, and to come back suddenly,
and then they rushed into each other's arms ; of course "
(tapping him playfully with her fan), " it was only a
stac/e-embrace cela va sans dire but it made us all
laugh ! "
The cloud deepens on the young man's forehead.
" It must have been almost better than the bar-maid,"
he says, grimly, turning away.
Meanwhile, the ingenious troupe, still at fault for the
right word, have hit upon another wrong one " Wet"
" You carry in a candle," says Major Webster to Le-
nore, thrusting the weapon indicated into her hand, " and
pretend to catch fire ; blow out the candle and drop it, and
begin to scream like mad ; and then don't you know ?
we will all rush in with buckets, and put you out."
" But must I scream much, or little ? "
" Oh, the louder the better ; and you must go on
screaming till we come."
Lenore does exactly as she is bid. Shrieking at the
pitch of her high, clear voice, imaginarily burning, and as
imaginarily being extinguished with one of Mrs. Web-
ster's best silver candlesticks lying dinted and doubled up
at her feet her joyous eyes seek her lover's face for ap-
plause ; but, as soon as they light on it, both her laughter
and her screams together die. Unmindful of her assist-
ants, she hurries back into the dining-room.
" You stopped much too soon," says Major Webster,
reproachfully ; " you ought to have gone on for a quarter
of an hour longer."
" Is your dress damaged ? Did any of the wax fall on
it ? " asks Scrope, eagerly, falling on his knees before her,
and catching hold of the silk. His back is turned to the
others, who have already fallen into fres-h wranglings and
janglings ; nobody sees him ; he stoops his head hurriedly,
204 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
and brushes one of her smart lace-flounces with the silky
gold of his mustache.
" What are you doing ? " she cries, angrily, twitching
it away from his clasp.
" I am playing a Dumb Scrambo of my own," he says,
lifting his eyes with a defiant flash to hers. " Why do you
stop me ? It amuses me, and it does you no harm."
" I hate Dumb Scrambo ! " she cries, passionately. " It
is a vile game. Why did you play at it ? who wanted
you ? There were plenty without you."
" I played," says the young man, raising himself from
his kneeling posture, and growing rather white under these
amenities, " because I have a benighted idea that, when
you go to other people's houses, you should conform to
their amusements, and not consult only your own, as some
people do."
" Is that meant for a sneer at Paul ? " asks Lenore, in a
fury.
" Do you think," continues the young man, incisively,
" that I enjoyed crawling along a beeswaxed floor in my
dress-clothes ? "
No answer.
" Do you think that I enjoyed hauling about that Jack
Pudding " (with a glance at Major Webster's broad back)
" for the amusement of half a dozen old women ? "
" Of course you did, or you would not have done it,"
answers Lenore, brusquely.
" It, at least, had the good effect of rooting you out of
your corner," says Scrope, with a bitter laugh. "Per-
haps it was worth while breaking one's back, and spoil-
ing the knees of one's trousers, to accomplish such a
result."
" Why on earth could not you leave us there in
peace ? " cries the girl, angrily. " You might have sat in a
WHAT JZMIMA SAYS. 205
corner till the crack of doom, and I would not have put out
a finger to move you ! "
" You are in disgrace" says the young man, speaking
in a low voice, but with an eager flush ; " I know it so do
you ! we saw it in his face in disgrace, because I poured
an imaginary bucket of imaginary water over you ! Such
being the case, I wish you joy of your future life ! "
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
We are in the omnibus, going home. There is not an
earthly vehicle that makes a more deaving din than an
omnibus a sort of steam threshing-machine in one's head ;
yet we are all talking at least not all four of us d qui
mieux mieux.
" Very stingy with their champagne ; did not half fill
one's glass."
" Very bad oyster-sauce ! something oily about it ! "
" The fricandeau was good ; I am always fond of a fri-
candeau."
" I think that, considering they have a three-hundred-
guinea chef, and three in the kitchen besides, they might
give one better bread-sauce."
" I am sure Major Webster has got a temper ! I saw
him scowling at one of the footmen at dinner."
These are some of the severe and spirited strictures
that we are passing on the entertainment we have just
quitted.
" I almost wish that we had asked Mrs. Webster to
wait for us in the cloak-room, at the ball on Friday night,
so that we might all go into the room together," says Syl-
via, with what I feel, though I cannot see, to be a simper.
" Of course I am really quite an efficient chaperone, but
206 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
people make such stupid mistakes ! The man who took
me into dinner asked Miss Webster whether I was out!
Just fancy ! "
" How differently people see things ! " I say, with my
usual malevolence. " The man w T ho took me into dinner
asked me which was the older, you or I ? "
Meanwhile Lenore says little, and Paul nothing, though
they are sitting side by side. As we clatter and rumble
with redoubled noise through a village, a light from a win-
dow darts a ray into our darkness. I see that Lenore's
face is turned toward him, and that the hand nearest him
lies ungloved on her knee, as if wishing to be clasped by
his. Under cover of the others' chatter, I listen treacher-
ously to their whispered talk :
"Paul, are y oudeatf?"
"No."
" Are you asleep ? I cannot see your eyes."
"No."
" Are you angry ? "
"Yes."
"What about?"
No answer.
" Would you be less angry if I told you (stoop down
your head) that I have been in Gehenna all the evening,
and that I think Mm a greater bore than ever ? "
The next lamp-post that we pass reveals the white hand
nestling in its owner's.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 207
CHAPTER V.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
" IF there is a thing in all this wide world that gives
me the horrors," says Sylvia, with a little shudder, " it is
mutton dressed lamb-fashion. I know my temptation lies
in quite the other direction, to make a grandmother of my-
self!"
This is at luncheon, on the day succeeding the Dumb
Scrambo ; the friendly criticisms on the entertainment and
the entertainers are being renewed and carried on with a
spirit hardly less piquant than the sorrel-sauce that is fla-
voring the interlocutors' cutlets.
" Poor Harriet Webster ! a white book-muslin frock
one can call it nothing else and a pink sash, low, too,
nowadays, when no one thinks of being decollete except at
a ball ! "
" She only wanted a rattle, and to have her sleeves tied
up with coral, to be the complete infant," says Lenore,
laughing maliciously. "If she had thought of it, Mr.
Scrope, you might have carried her in last night, instead of
her brother ; she would have been several stone lighter."
"And the way she kept hoisting up those wretched
little shoulders, too, to her ears ! " says Jemima, putting in
her oar. " I really trembled for the string of her tucker.
I wonder her brother does not remonstrate ! "
" Pooh ! " cries Lenore, carelessly. " I do not suppose
that he knows whether she has any shoulders, or any tuck-
er either brothers never do ! "
A little pause while the first sharpness of hunger is ap-
peased ; then Lenore recommences :
" What bushy black brows your lady had, Paul ! Poor
208 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
fellow ! I did pity you ; and they met so amicably in a
tuft on the top of her Roman nose ! "
" I did not think much of Miss Jemima's friend," says
Scrope, laughing ; " he looked as if he had been run up by
contract hands like feet, and feet like fire-shovels."
" And his wife ? " says Jemima ; " did you see her ?
No ? a little bunchy thing, who never says any thing but
4 Fancy ! ' and, if you are very intimate with her, ' Just
fancy ! ' "
" Then, like her, I cannot imagine why," says Sylvia,
languidly, " she has a way of looking down her nose."
" Paul, why don't you speak ? " cries Lenore, with a
pout. " We have all said something clever ; it is quite
your turn."
" Is it? " says Paul, lazily. " Mine is a long time hatch-
ing ; it will come presently ; but, you see, you do not know
any of my best friends ; so it will lose all its point, I am
afraid."
" I am sure we have not said any thing that was not
perfectly good-natured," says Sylvia, with an air of injured
innocence ; " and, as to that, I have no doubt we are quite
quits. I dare say they have made quite as many comments
on us not that they can say we are decollete as we have
on them."
A diversion is here effected by the depravity of Tommy,
who, being dissatisfied with his dinner, insists on saying,
" Thank God for my hasty pudding ! " instead of the au-
thorized form of thanksgiving. He is instantly degraded
from his high chair, and borne off wriggling like an eel, and
kicking the footman's shins.
" Let us go out," says Lenore, laying her hand on her
lover's coatsleeves, as she passes out of the dining-room.
" Let us go into the wood. I love a wood in winter. I
love kicking the dead leaves. If you are good, you shall
kick them too."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 209
Five minutes later she has joined him as he stands in
the wintry garden puffing at his pipe.
" Wait a minute ! " she cries, her eyes flashing gleefully.
" Look at the children going out walking. Did you ever
see any thing so be-comfortered and be-gartered ? I must
run and knock their hats over their eyes ! " She springs
away from his side, and in two seconds is back again. " It
is such fun ! " she says, breathlessly ; " it makes them hate
one so ! "
And now they are in the wood ; above them the high
brown boughs meet in wintry wedlock ; each little pine-
twig, no longer hid by leafage, asserts itself, standing deli-
cately out against the softly-travelling, sad-colored clouds
beyond. Underneath all the trees dead children lie heaped ;
there is no wind to stir them. ' There they lie ! One can
hardly tell one from another now the horse-chestnut's
broad fan, the beech's pointed oval, massed together in one
bronze-colored death. They are over Lenore's ankles, as,
with all the delight of a child, she ploughs through them,
kicking them up, laughing, and insisting that her lover
shall kick them too.
" What a good smell they have when one stirs them up ! "
she cries ; " something half-pungent ! Smell, Paul, smell ! "
Paul obeys, and stands docilely inhaling the autumnal odor.
" And now," she says, clasping her two hands round his
arm, leaning a very considerable weight upon him as they
again pace slowly onward, " talk a great deal. I seem
hardly to have heard your real voice yet ; yesterday was
all church and plum-pudding and scolding, and to-day we
have done nothing but dissect the Websters. Talk ! talk J
talk ! "
" How can I talk ? " he says, laughing. " You will not
let me get a word in edgeways."
" Tell me all about every thing," she says, comprehen-
210 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
sively. " Begin at the beginning, like a story at the very
moment you stepped off the Dinan boat letters go for
nothing. Were you very sea-sick ? I believe you were,
though you would not own it."
"Frightfully, since you insist upon it," replied Le
Mesurier, with a mendacious smile. " I lay on deck on
the small of my back, with a livid face, praying for ship-
wreck that is the right feeling, is not it ? while, to add
to my sufferings, everybody kept stumbling over my legs."
" And when you got home," continues the girl, eagerly,
taking this statement for what it is worth, " were they all
very glad to see you ? Did they all rush out to the door
to meet you ? "
" The butler came out, I believe ; I do not think that
even he ran / certainly no one else did."
"And when they saw you" (speaking very rapidly),
"how did they look? Did they look odd? What did
they say to you ? "
" Oh, I don't know ; much the same as they always say
nothing different why should they ? they did not know
any thing then / they said, ' Oh, here you are ! ' or some-
thing equally brilliant ; and my father said : ' For God's
sake, do not touch me ! I have got it in both hands.' He
meant the gout."
" And then you kissed them all," says Lenore, a little
envious at this part of the programme. " Do you kiss
your father ? Some grown-up men do."
"Do they?" replies Paul, grimly. "How very un-
pleasant for both parties ! No ; I do not, certainly."
" And and was there no one there besides just your
own people just your father and sisters ? " asks Lenore,
with wily suavity.
" My cousin, of course " (with a tone of airy noncha-
lance}.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 211
" And " (laughing not quite so easily as before) " and
what was she doing ? "
" My dear soul " (with slight symptoms of impatience),
" it is six months ago; how the mischief can I remember?"
then, seeing her countenance fall a little " stitching, I
fancy ; making a flannel petticoat for some old woman."
" Which she ostentatiously thrust into a cupboard the
moment you appeared," says Lenore, sarcastically, turning
down the little red corners of her mouth
" ' Did good by stealth, and blushed to find it fame.' "
Paul lets this thrust pass in silence.
" And did you bring me on the tapis that night, or did
you keep me till next morning ? " (looking anxiously up in
his face).
" I kept you for several days," he answers, smiling
" very much against my will, I can tell you ; but I knew
that, as long as IT remained in his hands, there was no use
broaching the subject."
" But the girls had not the gout ! you told them, did
not you ? " (with great animation).
vPaul looks down, and his expression is embarrassed.
Yes," he says, slowly, " I did."
" And showed them my photograph ? "
"Ye es."
" I hope you told them that my hair was not so dark as
it looks there " (very anxiously). " Did not they think it
pretty ? Did not they say what a good figure I must
have?"
" I dare say they would not have thought it polite to
make personal remarks about you to me," Paul answers,
looking thoroughly confused ; " and they never are girls to
say civil things, don't you know ? "
Lenore puts up one dog-skin-gloved hand and hides her
212 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
mouth ; it is the mouth that, in its altered and quivering
lines, betrays mortification most.
" Did not they did not they say any thing f " she
asks, in a blank voice.
" They looked at the name of the photographer on the
back," he answers, with a smile of recollected annoyance,
"and said, 'Oh, yes; he was a good man, they knew. 7 I
remember that, because it made me so savage."
" And and your cousin what did she say ? "
" She was not there."
" But but when you told her you were going to be
married what did she say then f "
" Pshaw ! " cries he, impatiently, reddening slightly.
" What extraordinary questions you do ask ! What can it
matter to you or me either what she said ? She said the
the usual thing, I suppose " (turning his head half-way,
and viciously knocking a big fungus-head off with his stick).
" I do not believe a word of. it ! " cries Lenore, in a fury.
" Why do you hate talking about her ? Why do you
always slide away from the subject when I lead to it?
You do not look as if you were telling truth ! I believe
she she she wanted to marry you herself."
Sometimes the innocent wear the pale livery of guilt,
by some ingenious freak of nature. At this audacious
statement Paul certainly looks whiter than his wont.
'You are talking nonsense," he says, brusquely;
" childish, unladylike nonsense," and, so speaking, he drops
her arm, and stalks on by himself.
She rustles after him through the dead leaves, half peni-
tent, half suspicious, till they reach a stile that gives egress
from the wood into a meadow a December meadow a
very different matter from one of June's buttercup gardens
a meadow flowerless, gray-colored, and drenched. There,
having overtaken him, she lays a hand on each of his arms.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 213
" Why will you insist on rousing my devil ? " she says,
impulsively. " Do you do it on purpose ? I do not know
whether other women have a devil, but I have, I know."
" It is so remarkably easily roused," he answers, drily.
" There is not a gooder woman in the world than I am
sometimes," she continues, naively. " Why will not you
let me always be ? "
" Let you," he repeats, laughing, a little ironically, but
looking down with a mollified expression at her repentant,
fond face, freshened by the cool, moist wind. " I am sure I
do not know what I do to hinder you ; I wish to Heaven
you would be ! "
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
THAT evening, Fate, in the shape of a sleek little widow,
wills that we shall have a small dinner-party. We should
all have much preferred to have kept to our family circle,
and, lounging in our chairs, have wooed little contraband
sleeps, in recollection of our last night's fatigues, and prep-
arations for those of the next. But Sylvia is obdurate.
" Say what you please," she says, pronouncing each word
very distinctly. " Call me a prude if you like it will not
be the first time I cannot help it, but it does feel so odd,
we three quite young women sitting down and hobnobbing
with those two young men ; nobody belonging to anybody
else, don't you know."
" I beg to say I do belong to somebody," interrupts Le-
nore, holding up her head.
" I am sure nobody can feel more kind and sisterly than
214 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
I do to Paul," continues Sylvia, with an air of conscious
modest merit ; " but still there is no use denying that he is
a comparative stranger, and I confess I should like him to
see that we have some idea of civilization."
So, to prove our civilization, we enlarge our little circle
by the addition of* the three Websters, of a couple of stray
marauding girls, and of three diffident foot-soldiers from
the Barracks.
" We used to have really nice regiments always,"
Sylvia says, in apology for these poor young gentlemen,
before their arrival, as she stands with one round white
elbow leaning on the mantle-piece, looking up with her
large appealing eyes to Paul Sylvia's eyes have appealed
and besought and implored all their life, but what for, no-
body ever could make out "really nice regiments the
Enniskillens, and the 9th Lancers, don't you know ; but
now we have only those nasty walking things."
Paul laughs : " I like nasty walking things ; I was one
myself."
There are no mistakes as to pairing to-day. I, who
have no claim upon anybody I, to whom it is absolutely
indifferent who leads me, so that I ultimately reach the
savory haven of dinner, and Mr. Scrope, who also has no
right to anybody present, march in together. During soup
he tries to make feverish and unnatural love to me, which
I rightly attribute to the fact of Lenore's blue ribbons and
sweet peas being fluttering and flowering opposite ; but, as
I indignantly decline to be the victim of any such impos-
ture, he relapses into a sulky silence, and I into my usual
trite vein of moralizing.
If people could but hear the comments made on them 1
For instance, if Miss Webster had but lurked behind the
window-curtains at luncheon to-day, how clothed and low-
ered and quiet would her shoulders be ! I look : they are
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 215
still playfully shrugged and lifted in all their lean and vir-
gin nakedness.
It is evening. Tea has reunited those whom claret
parted. The footmen have wheeled in the card-table, and
are now clearing another table for a round game that
noisy refuge of those who cannot talk whereat loud and
inarticulate sounds, like to the bray of the ass, the shrill
clucking and calling of a distracted hen-roost, take the
place of low-voiced and rational conversation. "We are all
making our selection between the two games : there are
far more candidates for the boisterous mirth of the one,
than for the silent dignity of the other. The infantry, and
their attendant houris, the Websters, in short, all the
cxternes, distinctly decline a rubber.
Major Webster has arrived at the age when a man in-
sists on being classed among " the young people." Being
ten years his sister's senior, he is almost as old for a man
as she for a woman. He likes to get near the youngest
girl in the company he loves bread-and-butter, that surest
sign of advancing age to bank with her, look over her
cards, and tell her all about himself. Paul chooses whist :
I am amused to hear Lenore (the amount of whose knowl-
edge of the game I am acquainted with) follows suit. Mr.
Scrope does the same ; so does Sylvia. As for me, I am
nobody. I have been a spectator all my life. I am a spec-
tator still. Lenore has walked over to a cabinet, close to
where I am sitting, to look for some whist-markers. Scrope
has followed her on the same pretence.
" Why do not you join the round game ? " I hear her
ask him hurriedly, in a low voice. " I wish you would
three-lived commerce and a pony just the game for a nice
little school-boy."
" Just " (flushing a little and looking rather mulish).
" Do I there's a good boy ! " she says almost implor-
ingly ; " I'm really in earnest."
216 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" I will play bezique, if you like," he says, eagerly ; " let
me get the little round table ; you shall deal every time."
She does not speak in answer, but only turns down the
corners of her mouth, with an expression of the completest
scorn.
" What are you two whispering about over there ? "
cries Sylvia, playfully, from the table ; " no whispering al-
lowed ! "
" Let us cut for partners," says Scrope, eagerly ad-
vancing.
" It is not much use," replies Lenore, bluntly ; " for,
whoever I cut with, I mean to play with Paul."
They begin. It is Sylvia's deal Lenore to lead. It is
some time before she realizes this fact.
" Oh ! is it me? What a bore ! What on earth shall
I play ? I have no more idea Paul, I wish you would
suggest something ? "
Paul looks resolutely, gravely impenetrable.
" When in doubt, play trumps ! " suggests Scrope,
laughing.
" Trumps?" (with a expression of profound contempt).
" Very likely ! as if I did not know that one ought al-
ways to keep them to the very end ! "
Having half-played several cards, and withdrawn them
having gazed imploringly at Paul, who ill-naturedly will
not lift his eyes having tried to look over Scrope's hand,
she at length embarks on the ace of diamonds. The others
play little ones to it, and the trick is hers.
" Oh ! it is mine again, is it ? " (with a tone of annoy-
ance). " If I had thought of that, I would not have played
it. Now it is all to come over again. I suppose " (look-
ing vaguely round for counsel) " that it is not a bad plan
to play all one's big ones out first, is it ? "
Paul conscientiously tries to veil the expression of ex-
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 217
treme dissent that this proposition calls into his counte-
nance, and so successfully, that the ace of hearts instantly
and confidently follows his brother. He is succeeded by
the ace of spades.
" You have every ace in the pack," Sylvia says, pet-
tishly.
" That I have not ! " answers Lenore, glancing up with
a mischievious gayety at Scrope. " You know better than
that, do not you, Charlie ? "
At the unnecessary and illegal candor displayed by the
first half of the sentence, Paul shudders slightly ; but, at
the familiar abbreviation of his friend's name, he forgets all
about his cards. He would not look at his betrothed be-
fore, when she sought mute counsel from him. He looks
at her quickly enough now, with an expression of the most
unfeigned, displeased surprise. But, unluckily, she does
not see it. Her gaze has strayed to the other table, and
she is whispering to Scrope.
" Look at the major we always call him ' The major,'
as if there was only one in the world. He is telling that
little miss beside him how a cricket-ball once hit him in
the left eye, and asking her to look in and see the mark."
" How on earth can you tell at this distance ? " asks
Scrope, eagerly, answering in the same tone, and playing
at hap-hazard the first card that comes.
" I know his little ways," she says, laughing. " Once
I used to be invited to look into his eye. "Ah! c Nous
avons change tout celaS I am too old now."
" Would you mind going on when you are quite
ready ? " Paul asks, with an extreme politeness of tone a
little contradicted by the unamiable expression of his coun-
tenance. Let those who blame him recollect that he loved
strict whist, and the rules of the game, with a love hardly
inferior to that of the renowned Mrs, Battle,
10
218 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" My turn ! " cries Lenore, returning to the considera-
tion of her cards. " You do not say so ! It is always my
turn. Now what next ? Have spades ever been out be-
fore ? Surely not."
She herself, as I have before observed, led the ace three
minutes ago, and Sylvia threw away her queen on it. She
now boldly advances her king, which is naturally trumped.
At this catastrophe she expresses the extremest surprise,
which she calls upon Paul to share. In another quarter
of an hour, not only the game, but the rubber is ended.
" Absolutely thrown away ! " cries Paul, tossing down
his last card, with a gesture of unrestrained irritation.
" Two by honors, and excellent playing-cards ! It is
enough to make a saint swear ! "
" I do not know what you mean ? " cried Lenore red-
dening. " I am sure I did nothing wrong, did I ? " (ap-
pealing to her adversaries). " I did not revoke, and I
returned his lead whenever I remembered what it was, and
I led out all my big things. One cannot expect too much
with those little nasty twos and threes ! "
" Let us change partners," cries Scrope, his broad blue
eyes flashing eagerly. " I am the worst player in Eu-
rope."
" By all means," says Lenore, with empressement, glar-
ing angrily across at Paul, though there are tears in her
treacherous eyes. " I should like nothing better."
"lVbt for worlds ! " says Sylvia, with a little emphasis
on the words, rising, and gathering together her gloves,
fan, and scent-bottle. " I would not expose my poor little
manoeuvres to Paul's criticism for any earthly considera-
tion ; I do not mind you / you are a child ; you are no-
body/"
The guests are gone " Good-night time " has come
we discreetly issue forth into the hall, and drink claret and
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 219
sherry-and-water, while Paul and Lenore are saying it in
the drawing-room. They do not, however, speak very low,
as I overhear them.
" One thing is certain, Paul," says Lenore, playfully,
but with a sort of uneasy dignity in her tone, " and that is,
that, when we are married, we will not play cards ; I wish
you would not be cross to me before people. I do not
mind when we are by ourselves."
" I wish you would not call men by their Christian
names under my very nose," Paul answers, in a tone that
sounds half jealous, half ashamed.
" Do you ? " (rather coquettishly).
" Lenore, how many men do you call by their Christian
names ? "
She laughs mischievously. " Ever so many ; but I only
do as I am done by ; almost every man I know calls me
Lenore. No ! no ! ! no ! ! ! " (her tone suddenly changing
to one of repentant alarm) ; " do not look so furious I am
only joking; nobody does that I am aware of hardly any-
body!"
CHAPTER VII.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
"A CHILD might play with me to-night, I feel so bland,"
says Lenore. "Tommy, Bobby, now is your time; never,
probably, will you find Aunty Lenore in such a frame of
mind again; drive her hair-pins into her skull, throttle
her with your fat arms, ride rough-shod over her prostrate
body ; she will not utter a groan ! "
It is the day following Sylvia's dinner-party. Lenore
is sitting on the white hearth-rug of our sister's boudoir,
220 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
an immoral-looking little up-stairs room. Looped rose
curtains ; lazily low chairs ; mirrors gleaming through fes-
tooned white muslin; flowers that give out their scent
delicately yet heavily to the warmed air ; and outside the
storm-rain scouring the pane, and the wind shaking the
shutters with its strong, rude hands. " Had ever any one
better cause to be happy than I ? " says the girl, while her
eyes dance in the firelight. " I am nineteen, I am hand-
some, I am going to a ball, and shall dance all night, and
eat ices, and sit in corners with the dearest fellow in all
the world, who is extremely pleased with me."
" Instinct tells me that he dances like a pair of tongs,"
reply I, amiably.
Lenore reddens.
" Poor Jemima ! " she says, with a sort of resentful
pity. " No wonder you say spiteful things ! You are
twenty-nine ; you are first with nobody ! liow can you bear
to go on living ? what can you have to think about all day
and all night?"
" Think about ! " repeat I, cynically. " Oh ! I do not
know. Sometimes my latter end, and sometimes my din-
ner."
" Poor old Jemima ! "
" It is a mercy," continue I, reflectively, " that one's
palate outlives one's heart one can still relish red mullet
when one has lost all appetite for moonshine."
" Bravo, Miss Herrick," cries a voice, as Scrope emerges
from behind the portiere, which hides a little inner room,
and lounges with something of his old sleepy manner to
the fire. We both start.
" Who gave you leave to come here ? " asks Lenore,
sharply. " Why did not you cough, or sneeze, or sigh, to
let us know you were there, instead of meanly listening to
all we had to say ? "
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 221
"Neither of you said any thing either confidential, or
that demanded contradiction," replies the young man,
leaning his back against the chimney-piece, and looking
down with insouciant defiance on the girl at his feet.
" You, Miss Lenore, modestly observed that you were
nineteen and very handsome, while Miss Jemima remarked
that red mullet were better than moonshine, and that Le
Mesurier danced like a pair of tongs ; in both cases I have
the good fortune to agree with her."
" You have, have you ? "
" You are wasting all the life out of that bit of deutzia
in your dress," says the young man, indicating with a
slight motion of the hand the white flower that, resting on
Lenore's breast, contrasts the dark folds of her serge gown ;
" suppose you give it to me ? "
" Suppose I do not ! "
" You will really, won't you ? " (stooping forward a
little, and stretching out his hand to receive the demanded
gift).
" Most certainty not ! "
" All right ! " (resuming his former position, and speak-
ing with languid indifference) ; " it is a half-withered little
vegetable, and I am not sure that I would take it now if
you offered it me ; but all the same, I have a conviction
that before the evening is over it will be mine."
"You have, have you?" cries Lenore, with flashing
eyes ; " sooner than that you should ever have it look
here ! "
She runs to the window, unbolts the shutters, and
opening the casement throws the flower out into the wild
sleet. Thrice the winter's cold gust drives it back against
her, but the third time it disappears. Then she shuts the
window, and returns to the fire.
" What a fine thing it is to have a spirit ! " says Scrope,
222 "GOOD-BYB) SWEETHEART!"
walking to the door. He does not look particularly vexed,
but his cheek is flushed.
When he is gone, I retire behind the portiere to write
letters; Lenore maintains her former position, thinking,
smiling to herself, and curling the pug's tight fawn tail
round her fingers. In about ten minutes the door reopens,
and Mr. Scrope again enters. His boots are miry, his
shooting-coat is drenched, large rain-drops shine and glisten
on his bare gold curls, but in his hand he holds the bit of
deutzia, muddied, stained, dispetalled almost past recogni-
tion, but still the identical spray that floated out on the
storm-blast through the open window.
" My presentiments seldom deceive me," says the young
man, advancing to the fire, speaking with his old drawl,
and wiping the luckless flower with his pocket-handker-
chief; " feel how wet I am" (extending his coat-sleeve).
Silence.
" I am sorry I was so long," continues he, spreading his
hands to the blaze ; " but it was ill work grubbing among
the dark, wet garden-borders ; the rain put out my eyes,
and hissed in my ears ; but, don't you know, one hates to
be beaten."
I peep at them through the portiere. Lenore has sprung
to her feet, and stands facing him. " Give it me back ! "
she cries, imperiously.
" Most certainly not, as you tersely observed just now."
" Give it me this instant ! " with a stamp, advancing a
step nearer, and trying to snatch it out of his hand.
" Au contraire " (holding it high above her head). " I
mean to dry it in silver paper, and inscribe upon it, ' Sou-
venir from Miss Lenore ! ' "
" I will give you any other instead of it," says Lenore,
dropping her Xantippe tone, and growing conciliatory. " I
will even fix it in your coat to-night. There ! "
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 223
" Thanks. I have contracted a particular penchant for
this one."
She does not repeat her entreaties, but I see her face
working.
"Why are you so anxious to have it back?" asks
Scrope, tormentingly, standing close to her on the hearth-
rug ; " don't snatch it is unladylike it is wet, it is limp,
it is deader than a door-nail."
" Paul gave it me ! " cries the girl, bursting into a
storm of tears, " you know he did ; and he will be so
angry when he sees you with it."
He tosses it contemptuously to her : " Take it ! I
would not have it as a gift. You told me once that you
never cried, and this is the second time in two days that I
have seen you in tears."
They have forgotten all about me. He is leaning his
elbow on the mantel-shelf, and staring morosely at her, as
she wipes her eyes.
" The second time ! " (looking up at him with the tears
still sparkling on her lashes). " What do you mean ? "
" Do you think I did not see your red eyes at luncheon,
yesterday ? " asks Scrope, scornfully. " You sat with your
back to the light, and laughed more than usual, but you
did not deceive me."
She turns half away, looking put out at the accusation,
which she is unable to rebut.
" What had you been quarrelling about ? " asks the
young man, eagerly ; " as usual, about me f "
" You are right," she answers, turning her great angry
gray eyes upon him ; " it was about you ; it is always about
you ; if it were not for you, we should never have a word !
Why do you insist on thrusting yourself between him and
me ? Why do you not go away ? There are a dozen other
places where, I dare say, you would be welcome. Why
224 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
cannot you leave this one, where you must see that you
are in the way ? "
" May I ask how ? " His voice is cold, but it is the
cold of strangled emotion.
" Did not I tell you a hundred times, at Dinan, what a
bore and a nuisance I thought you ? " asks the girl, half in
bitter jest, half in earnest. " Why do you make me say
these rude things to you over again ? "
He looks at her steadfastly. " You mean them now ;
you did not mean them then."
" Did not I ? " (indignantly) ; " ask Jemima."
" Lenore " (his lips growing white), " you said ' go,' but,
as I stand here, I swear your eyes said * stay.' "
" They did not ! " she cries, passionately ; " they newer
did ; if they had if they ever had been so unfaithful to
him, I would have torn them out ? "
" Did you think me a bore and a nuisance when I lay
at your feet those summer mornings under the chestnuts
on Mont Parnasse, and read ' Manfred' to you?"
" That I did," she answers, with vicious emphasis.
" Why, I slept half the time, and dislocated my jaw with
yawning the other half ! Not one man in a hundred can
read poetry, and you " (bursting out into angry laughter)
" you rolled your IV s, and ranted with the best of them."
Mr. Scrope turns sharply away, to hide his bitter mor-
tification.
" Why do not you go ? " continues Lenore, with her
startling candor ; " it cannot be very amusing to you being
here now ; the partridges are so wild that you cannot get
near them, and Sylvia never has any pheasants go !
got*
Again he turns and faces her. " Are you serious ? "
he says, while all his boyish face twitches. " I know you
never stick at saying any thing that will hurt your fellow-
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 225
creatures' feelings, but do you really mean that you wish
me to leave this house ? "
" I do, distinctly."
" That the sight of me takes away your appetite, or his,
which is it ? "
" Both."
" Miss Lenore " (dropping his sneering tone, and try-
ing to take her hand), " I have been impertinent to you.
I own it. I had no right to sneer at him behind his back
it was mean and womanish of me ; but but you were
a little friendly to me at Dinan, and it is hard to be shelved
all in a minute."
" At Dinan you were never any thing more than a pis
atter."
"If I promise never to address you unless you first
speak to me," says the young fellow, entreatingly ; " not
to look at you more than I can help ; to be no more to you
than the footman who hands you soup, will you let me stay
then ? "
" Fiddlesticks ! " replies she, with plain common-sense ;
" nobody can efface himself in the way you describe ; stay-
ing in the house with a person, one must be brought into
constant contact with him. I say again I say it three
times go ! GO ! GO ! "
"I will go, then," answers Scrope, steadying his voice
with a great effort, and speaking with cold quiet ; " but I
will not go unpaid. Yes ; I will go, but on one only con-
dition."
"What is it?"
" That you dance with me to-night not a beggarly once,
as you might with Webster, or any other bowing acquaint-
ance, but three -four times."
" I will do nothing of the kind ; I will have no bargain-
ing with you," replies Lenore, with dignity.
226 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Then I will stay ! " cries Scrope, with angry excite-
ment. " Miss Lenore, it is not your house ; you cannot
have me turned out-of-doors, much as you would wish it.
Eyesore as I am to you, I will stay ! "
" Do ! " she says, with a contemptuous sneer ; " it will
be a gentlemanlike act, of a piece with the rest of your
conduct."
(" That was a nasty one," think I, from behind the por-
tidre.)
There is a moment's silence.
" Say no more bitter things," says Scrope, in a changed,
rough voice ; " if you tried from now till the Judgment-
day, you never could beat that last ; and the worst of it is
that it was true it was ungentlemanlike ; but, when one
has gone mad, one is not particular about one's manners, as
perhaps you will discover some fine day."
Lenore is silent.
" Make your mind easy, I will go to-night, if you
wish."
" There is no such wonderful hurry ; to-morrow will do
perfectly."
" To-morrow, then."
"Thanks."
" Lenore " (speaking with cutting emphasis), " you are
the handsomest woman in the warld, and the one who has
the knack of saying the nastiest things. If your face drives
men mad, your tongue brings them back to sanity pretty
quickly. Other women's sharp speeches pour off one like
water ; yours bite and sting."
" Perhaps " (indifferently).
A little stillness.
Again I peep. Scrope has sat down by the table ; his
elbows rest on the Utrecht-velvet cover, among all Sylvia's
silly little knick-knacks ; his hands shade his face.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 227
" Don't look so tragic," says my sister, in a mollified
voice, sidling up to him. "I own that I thought of myself
first I always do ; it is my way ; but, if you could have
sense to perceive it, you would see that it is quite as much
for your interest as mine that you should go. My dear
boy " (laying her hand on his coat-sleeve), " I have a horri-
ble suspicion that you are crying ! Please disabuse me of
it."
"Nothing is further from my thoughts," says Scrope,
lifting his head and showing his beautiful face, undisfigured,
indeed, by tears, but paled and altered by anger and pain.
" Good God ! " (looking at her fiercely) " a man would be a
fool to cry about you. Would you ever cease laughing and
jeering at him ? "
" Stop raving at me ! " cries Lenore, whose patience is
fast oozing out. " I have done nothing ; you have been a
fool, and you must pay for it. Perhaps " (speaking very
slowly, as if the words were not sweet to her lips), " I wish
to be quite fair perhaps at Dinan I helped you to be so
a little."
He does not speak.
" Charlie ! look here " (speaking with a soothing, sister-
ly tone), "you know, and I know, and Jemima knows, and
I am afraid Paul knows, that sixty times a day you are on
the verge of making a fool of yourself. Is not it bet-
ter that you should go, before you tumble over the
verge ? "
" All right," answers he, impatiently, shaking off her
hand ; " I am going. Having gained that point, I think
the least you might do is to leave me alone."
" But but you will come to the ball to-night ? "
"No" (very curtly).
" You must j it will look so odd! "
"Odd it may look, then. At the present moment"
228 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
(laughing disagreeably), " my whole life looks oddly
enough, I can tell you."
" But supposing I give you one dance, a quadrille ? "
(unable, womanlike, to let well alone, and kneeling down
on the floor beside him).
"I would not walk through a quadrille with you"
(speaking very loftily), "if you were to go down on your
knees to me."
" As I am doing at the present moment," replies Lenore,
laughing. " A waltz, then ? "
" Are you serious ? Do you mean it ? " (catching hold
of her two hands, while his eyes light up) " or are you only
making a fool of me, as you have been doing without inter-
mission for the last six months ? "
" One never knows what may happen," replies the girl,
oracularly, already rather repenting her concession ; " per-
haps the fag-end the very fag-end of a galop, if you will
not expect to take me into tea afterward."
" Do not ! " cry I, dropping my pen, and hurrying from
my lurking-place. " Lenore, for the first time in your life,
take advice ! Let this poor boy go to-night ! "
As I had surmised, they had forgotten my existence.
Both look at me with the partial fondness with which it is
usually an interloper's fate to be regarded.
" Meddlesome Matty ! " cries my sister, with her usual
amenity, " who asked your opinion ? "
" Miss Jemima," says Scrope, reproachfully, " I thought
you were my friend."
" So I am," I say, smiling and turning to him. " If she
dances with you once, twice, a dozen times, to-night, how
much the better will you be to-morrow ? You will have set
us all by the ears, while you " I pause.
Neither speaks.
" It is useless disguising from ourselves," continue I,
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 229
with my usual excellent common-sense, " that Paul will be
displeased."
"Let him be displeased, then, if he can be so irration-
al ? " cries Lenore, cheeks on fire, and eyes burning. " But
no ! what am I talking about ? Paul has perfect confidence
in me ; if I were to dance all night with Charlie Scrope, or
Charlie anybody else, he would not mind he would under-
stand."
" Time will show," reply I, mystically, walking to the
door.
" I will give you four dances, four round ones there ! "
says Lenore, with a brilliant smile, and a triumphant glance
at me as I leave the room. " Vogue la galore ! "
CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT THE ATJTHOK SATS.
IT is time to go to the ball ; all are ready ; all are in
the hall, save Lenore. The men have each two pairs of
white-kid gloves in their pocket ; one has plain gold studs,
the other diamond and black enamel ; but, oh, how poor,
how small, are man's highest adornments, compared to
woman's ! At his best, in his dress of greatest ceremony,
he is but a scrimping, black-forked biped, compared to the
indefinite volume, the many-colored majesty, of beflounced,
belaced, beflowered woman.
" Did you tell her we were all waiting ? " asks Sylvia,
in a tone of impatience.
" I did," replies Jemima, stepping leisurely down-stairs
'with a large mat, which her train has carried down from
the upper regions, attached to her tail.
230 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" And what did she say ? "
61 She said, Hurry no man's cattle ! ' "
" Was she nearly ready ? "
" I don't know."
" What was she doing ? "
"She was advancing and retreating before her long
glass, ascertaining whether her petticoats were all of a
length."
" There is plenty of time," says Scrope ; " not ten yet.
I remember once going to a ball in the country, and finding
myself the first person there. It was an awful sensa-
tion!"
" Are you sure that I should not look better with a
fichu f " says Sylvia, in an anxious aside, to her sister, get-
ting out of ear-shot of the men, and craning her throat to
get a view, over her shoulder-blades, at the back of her own
neck. " Am I too decottetee behind ? You know that
there is nothing in life I have such a horror of as being
called a c frisky matron ! ' "
"It does look rather juvenile, perhaps," replies Jemima,
unkindly saying the exact reverse of what she knows is
expected of her.
Sylvia's countenance falls a little.
" ' Juvenile / ' Oh, that was not what I meant in the
least ! I asked Charlie Scrope what he thought " (smiling
a little), " and he said, * You look awfully jolly ! ' He said
it quite loud. I am sure I don't know what Paul could
have thought. I suppose one ought no't to have asked
him his opinion, poor boy, because he always thinks one
looks nice, whatever one has on."
" Does he? Jemima " (lowering her voice, and speaking
with eager sincerity), " promise to tell me every thing that
you hear anybody say of me to-night, and I will promise to
tell you every thing I hear anybody say of you.
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 231
Jemima does not answer; her eyes are fixed on the
stairs, on which a vision has appeared, above whose head
two lady's-maids are triumphantly holding flat candlesticks,
to aid the bright gas-light which is already illumining her
a vision, like a summer-night, dark, yet softly splendid
Lenore, all in black, with great silver lilies starring her
hair, shining on her breast, garlanding her skirts. As she
comes stepping daintily down, she does not look conscious
very handsome people seldom do ; it is a prerogative re-
served for faintly and doubtfully pretty ones. In her hand
she carries a huge bouquet of white and purple flowers.
All stare at her ; but she seems to see only Paul. She
goes straight up to him, her eyes shining like soft lamps,
and her cheeks all rosy with happiness.
" Thank you so much ! " she says, in a low voice. " I
was surprised and yet not surprised when Nicholls came
to my room and said, ' Here's a bouquet for you, ma'am.'
I knew in a minute, of course. I did not even take the
trouble to ask whom it was from ; I knew, naturally."
As she talks, Paul's complexion varies, and his counte-
nance changes ; but she goes on, without giving him time
to speak :
" How did you come to know all my favorite flowers ?
Was it intuition, or did I ever tell you ? I forget. Vio-
lets, Roman narcissi, white hyacinths all the scents that I
am most wild about. There " (holding up the bouquet to
his face), "you may have one sniff, one little sniff, at it
only a little one, mind ! "
" Lenore," says Paul, in a mortified voice, looking red
and miserable, " it was not I. I know nothing about it.
To tell you the truth, I never thought of such a thing ! "
Had they been alone, he would have added fond apolo-
gies ; would have told her what was the truth that, had
he thought they would have given her pleasure, he would
232 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
have bought her a thousand bouquets, each much bigger
than a haystack; would have sent to Kamtchatka for
them, did bigger, fairer flowers grow there than here ; but,
as three people are by, his pride restrains him.
" JVbt you f " repeats Lenore, in a blank voice, as her
arm and the now valueless posy drop to her side. " Who
was it, then ? Oh, of course " (following Scrope, who has
turned to the fire to hide the scarlet tinge that has spread
from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck) " it
was you ! I am right this time ! Thanks so much for think-
ing of me."
She stretches out her hand to him, but her voice quivers.
These little disappointments are sometimes acute, as a
needle, though but a small weapon, can give a sharp prick.
There is nothing further to delay the cloaking and
shawling, which forthwith takes place. Paul and Lenore
stand together alone for a minute.
" They have no longer the same smell," says the girl,
eying her nosegay with a disenchanted look ; " the nar-
cissi's petals are already beginning to yellow and the
maiden-hair to shrivel. Oh, you bad, bad Paul ! just as I
began to think that you must really be getting a little fond
of me ! "
" Don't talk such nonsense," replies Paul, brusquely ;
" cannot you see with half an eye, that I am in a greater
rage with myself than you can possibly be with me ? But
Lenore " (hesitating a little), " now that you know that I
fool that I was did not get it for you, are you still going
to take it ? "
" Of course I am," replies Lenore, decisively ; " though
it is the bouquet of disappointment, it gives a nice finish
to one's toilet; if" (with a coquettish pout) " one is not
provided with legitimate bouquets, one must console one's
self with illegitimate ones."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 233
It is an Infirmary Ball ; one of those balls, therefore,
at which, in theory^ gentle and simple meet and frolic with
happy equality and unity ; at which, in practice, the gen-
tle glide gracefully about at the top of the room, and the
simple plunge and caper at the bottom. There is more
air, more space, more every thing that is desirable, at the
lower end near the doors, but to remain at that end is to
confess an affinity with the butchers, the bakers, the haber-
dashers, of the good city of Norley. At the expense of
any amount of elbowing, pushing, bruising, one must work
one's way up to where one's peers sit enthroned on red-
cloth benches. They are rather late. Slowly they work
up. Paul escorts Lenore ; Scrope, Sylvia ; Jemima, her-
self. A galop is playing, and a hundred, two hundred peo-
ple, are floundering, flying, and bounding round, as Nature
and their dancing-master have taught them. Little women
burying their noses in big men's coat-sleeves ; big women
trying not to rest their chins on the top of little men's
heads; men who hold their partner's hand out, like a
pump-handle, sawing the air with it up and down ; men
who hold their partner's hand on their own hip, describing
an acute angle with the elbow ; men who hug their part-
ners like polar bears ; men who hold their partners uncom-
fortably tumbling out of their arms, as if they were afraid
of coming near them ; men who run round their partners,
men who kick, men who scratch, men who knock knees
every variety, in fact, of the human animal, rushing vio-
lently round, doing their best to make themselves giddy
and tear their clothes.
"Are you going to dance this with me, or are you
not ? " asks Lenore, impatiently ; " because, if not, I will
ask some one else I mean, I will make some one else ask
me."
" Of course I am."
234 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" What are you waiting for, then ? why don't you start ?
I am mad to begin ! Turn te turn ! if they play this air
when I am in my coffin, I shall jump up and galop in my
shroud ! "
In a second more, the black and silver gown has joined
the merry mad rout of reds, and blues, and greens, and
whites. After half a dozen turns, Lenore pants a little, and
says :
" Stop."
" That means that I dance badly," says Paul, releasing
her from his arms.
" It means that I am never long-winded ; doctors often
say that I ought not to dance."
" Not really ? " incredulously looking at her cheeks,
carnationed by the movement of the dance at her great
clear eyes. " I say, Lenore, do I dance very atrociously ?
It is a thing that I do not do once in a month of Sun-
days."
" Not very" replies Lenore, rather slowly ; " you have
not quite got into my step yet, but that will come." (Then,
seeing him look a little mortified :) " You are not like Ma-
jor Webster, who leaps his own height in the air every
step he takes, and gets round the room in three bounds,
like a kangaroo."
Paul laughs.
" That is modest praise."
Meanwhile Sylvia has been safely piloted to the top of
the room, and enthroned between Mrs. Webster and another
diamonded dowager. Jemima and Miss Webster remain
standing. To take a seat is virtually to confess yourself
shelved ; to remain standing, is an advertisement that you
are still to be had.
" You won't take a turn, I suppose ? " Scrope says to
Mrs. Prodgers, as he prepares to saunter away.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 35
She has so often announced her intention of not dan-
cing that he thinks the invitation in itself dissuasively
worded may be safely hazarded. But human prescience
is often at fault.
" Would you mind holding my bouquet for me, dear Mrs.
Webster ? " says Mrs. Prodgers, getting down with some
alacrity from her bench. " Thanks so much ! You see "
(with a little affected shrug), " I am fated not to be left in
peace. It seems a little hard upon the girls, doesn't it ? but
one cannot 2 :)ass on one's partners, can one ? they would
not like it. I assure you I had no more idea of dancing
but one gets so tired of saying ' No,' ' No,' ' No ' such an
old friend, too you need not smile he is really ! "
" Quite right, my dear, quite ! " replies Mrs. Webster,
nodding good-humoredly. She is very comfortably perched
herself, and she has long given up her daughter as a bad
job. " I only wish that Miss Jemima could find a partner
too where is James ? " (standing up on the raised foot-
board, whence she can get a commanding view over the
company's head) ; " he was here a minute ago, and he had
no partner then his had thrown him over I am sure he
would be most happy ! "
" Oh, no, no, no, thanks ! " replies Jemima, in a frenzy at
the thought of being crammed down James's unwilling
throat. " I am quite happy, I assure you ! I like looking
on ; it amuses me, and some one will be sure to turn up
just now."
Miss Webster smiles ; she always does ; she has smiled
through eight-and-thirty years of hope deferred. Callow
boys and fat old married men are her sheet-anchor, and she
is on the lookout for such now.
The dance ends ; the sound of scampering and shuffling
ceases suddenly ; people's voices drop from bawling pitch
to their natural key ; everybody streams to the doors. The
GOOD-EYE, SWEETHEART!"
house seems to have been built for the express purpose of
furthering love-making 1 . From the ballroom long corridors
diverge in every direction, dimly lit ; and out of these cor-
ridors open many quiet rooms, also dimly lit.
" Let us go into the passages ! " cries Lenore, " and I
will show you all the holes and corners, where I perpe-
trated my worst atrocities in flirtation last year."
" On the same principle, I suppose," replies Paul, laugh-
ing, " which makes a man always take his second wife to
visit the tomb of his first ? "
They find a bench, retired, yet not lonely, where, in
shade themselves, they can see men and girls, men and
girls, men and girls, go trooping by: couples flirting,
couples not flirting, couples trying to flirt, couples trying
not to flirt. It is a bench that only holds two people ; well
armed, well cushioned, where, half hidden behind Lenore's
spread fan, they lean together and whisper gayty.
" Paul ! Paul ! do you see that girl ? how dirty the
body of her dress is ? "
" Cannot say that I remarked it."
" It is, though ; as dirty as the ground ! She and her
sisters always make a point of coming to these balls in
filthy dresses, to mark the distinction between themselves
and the clean, crisp, townspeople."
" It is patrician dirt, is it ? I respect it."
" Do you see that big person in pink ? Last year she
went to the Assembly in a wreath of mistletoe / you may
imagine the consequences."
Paul laughs.
" Her partner always gets very druhk ! Last time I
saw him was in the Ansons' supper-room ; he was sitting
on a lump of ice, crying bitterly."
" Lenore, why are you hiding your face ? "
"Hush! hush! young Anson is coming this way; he
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 237
would be sure to ask me to dance, and dancing with him is
like going into a battle, without the glory."
Young Anson passes safely by, looking neither to the
right hand nor the left.
" I breathe again, Paul ! " (edging a little nearer to
him, and dropping her voice, more for the pleasure of
whispering than from any dread of being overheard).
" Paul, do you mean to let me dance when we are mar-
ried?"
"H'm! I shall see."
" We shall not be able to go to many balls," says Le-
nore, sighing, " for we shall have no clothes."
" Speak for yourself."
" We must stay at home, and have tea and shrimps ; of
course, we shall not be able to afford dinner."
" Shall not we ? " (looking rather aghast). " Does din-
ner cost more than tea and shrimps ? "
"Of course it does: shrimps are only fourpence a
pint ! "
Paul shudders.
" Could not you make it prawns f "
" Certainly not ; tea and shrimps it must be perhaps
water-cresses in the height of the season and, after tea,
you will read the paper in carpet slippers not the Times
we shall not be able to afford the Times but some
penny paper and I shall sit opposite you, with my hair
flat to my head, and low down over my ears is not that
it ? hemming a duster ! "
"I do not believe you can hem."
The music has struck up again: Lancers, this time.
Fewer couples trail and saunter by : most have returned
to the ballroom. The fiddles' sharp, loud squeak comes
more softly to their ears ; the merry cadence and marked
time of the Lancers ; then the little pause in the music.
238 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
that tells one, without one's seeing, that the girls are all
courtesying, and the men, with arms linked together, are
galloping madly round, like savages before a wooden god.
Lenore's eyes dance softly, too, in this dusk place.
" Lenore, I have a favor to ask you."
" Not a very big one, I hope."
" You will think it immense."
"What is it?"
" That you will dance with no one but me, to-night."
He had expected her to accede with eager alacrity, but,
on the contrary, she says nothing.
"I know that I dance badly, vilely" continues Paul,
coloring a little. " I have long suspected it, and to-night "
(laughing a little) " I learned it for a certainty r , from your
face, and from the eagerness with which you engaged me
in conversation in the pauses of the dance, to hinder me
from starting afresh. But why should we dance ? Could
we be better off than we are now ? "
" Not easily," she says, and says it truly ; but she still
evades replying to his request.
" I want to have a feast of your society to-night," says
Paul, earnestly. " Think what a fast I have had ! six
months ! We seem to know each other so little yet, and
even there" (giving a vague nod to express Sylvia's abode),
"jolly as it is, we never seem to get five minutes' talk
without Jemima bouncing in at one door, or Sylvia ambling
in at another, or those imps of Satan rushing in and play-
ing the devil's tattoo on one's shins."
" Children of Belial ! " says Lenore, tersely. " Good
Heavens, Paul ! how I hate the young of the human
species ! Don't you ? "
Paul looks rather shocked.
" Don't say that it is unwomanly ! "
" Of course," retorts she, sarcastically, " v to a man they
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 239
may be imps of Satan, but to the ideal woman they must
always be cherubs biting, kicking, scratching cherubs,
but cherubs always. By-the-by, Paul" (with a sudden
change of tone), "how is the ideal woman? Have you
seen her lately ? "
Paul turns his head away, and says :
"Fiddlesticks!"
" Paul, Paul ! I have an idea ! How red you are !
Look me in the face don't turn the back of your head
to me. Is it she that wears her hair flat, and eschews
frisettes f "
Paul turns round as bidden. His face is undeniably
red ; he is not laughing, and his eyes are rather defiant.
"What if it is?"
" Does she wear a poke bonnet ? "
"Perhaps!"
" And a gray cloak down to her heels ? "
"Well?"
" I know all about her," says Lenore, resentfully, her
eyes flashing and cheeks ablaze. "A puritanical little
prig!"
" I do not see what good it does you abusing a person
you have never seen," says Paul, in a rather surly voice ;
" nor what it has to say to whether you are willing to sac-
rifice this one evening to me or not."
"Certainly not!" replies the girl, angrily. "Why
should I ? What have you done to deserve it ? Yester-
day you scolded me till I cried ; everybody saw my red
eyes. To-day you forgot the common civility of getting
me a bouquet ; and you are always trotting out another
woman's virtues and beauties at my expense. Certainly
not ! I will dance like a Maenad with all my old friends."
PauPs forehead wrinkles into a frown, and his mouth
turns down, as is his way when extremely vexed.
24-0 . "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" All right ! Do ! " he says, in a constrained voice.
She had spoken with petulant half-meaning, had ex-
pected to be coaxed, entreated, scolded even, out of her
perverse determination ; but he employs neither coaxings,
entreaties, nor scoldings he acquiesces with dumb pride.
They sit side by side in sullen silence, till disturbed by the
sound of approaching voices, feet, and the long rustle and
swish of a woman's infinite gown.
" You must take me back to the ball-room," Sylvia is
saying, as she flutters her fan and smiles ; " you must, in-
deed. If people come out and find us sauntering about
here, they will be sure to say that I am flirting with you,
and there is nothing in life that T should dislike so much
as that oh ! here you are ! "
Both are too sulky to answer.
" Not been dancing ? Very wise of you ! Look how
much better you have come off than I ! in ribbons abso-
lutely in tatters ! And Charlie has got a yard and a half
of me in his pocket have not you ? "
She looks up at him playfully, with round, complacent
eyes, and then stops suddenly.
To even Sylvia's comprehension, it is evident that he
has not heard a word she has been saying. His eyes are
fixed with steady intentness on Lenore. Paul is gazing
vacantly down the long vista of the fast-refilling corridors.
" Are you engaged for the next dance, Miss Lenore ? "
" What is it ? " (nonchalantly) " a quadrille ? "
" It is a waltz."
She peeps at Paul out of the corner of one eye ; not a
sign of relenting on the ill-tempered gravity of his face.
Well ! she can be as cross and sulky as he, at a pinch.
" No I am not."
" Will you let me have it ? "
" Certainly."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 241
" Shall I be likely to find you here still after I have
taken Mrs. Prodgers back to the ballroom ? "
" I will not trouble you," replies Sylvia, rather offended
at the slight hint of anxiety to be rid of her unintentionally
implied in these last words. " I am going " (with a co-
quettish smile) " to put myself under Paul's protection.
Do you hear, Paul ? I am going to put myself under your
protection. You are not going to dance ? No ? Neither
will I ! We will sit here and criticise everybody yes, we
will talk you both well over " (shaking her bouquet at
Scrope) ; " if your ears burn, you will know what to attrib-
% ute it to."
Lenore has risen, and, while Sylvia is speaking, she
bends and whispers maliciously to Paul, " Pleasant medi-
tations on poke-bonnets and flat heads to you ! "
He does not take the slightest notice.
She puts her hand on Scrope's arm, and walks off.
Twice, thrice, she looks back, but not once has she the sat-
isfaction of detecting her lover's eyes wistfully seeking
hers. Silently they enter the ballroom and join the just-
beginning whirl. Lenore is thoroughly out of tune angry
with herself, enraged with Paul, furious with Scrope. If
any hole can be picked in his performance, he may be
quite sure that she will not spare him. She is, however,
deprived of that satisfaction. Scrope's performance is as
much above praise as Paul's was below blame. He dances
superbly. It is a small accomplishment, and does not add
much to a man's social value, but in a ballroom it is the
giver of great joy. Once in his arms, a delightful sense of
security and strength comes over Scrope's partner; a
blessed certainty of immunity from jostling ; of being borne
along steadity, rapidly, buoyantly, with the swift smooth-
ness of a swallow's flight ; all trouble taken off her hands,
and only pleasure left. Lenore loves dancing intensely ;
11
242 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
with an intensity, indeed, seldom met with among sad and
sober Englishwomen. On her the mere music, motion, and
measure of the dance, have an effect verging on intoxica-
tion. Down the long room they fly together ; the floor
seems nothing to them ; they are floating on air. while the
music swells loud and sighs faint, bursts into mad merri-
ment, and dies in voluptuous complaints. Lenore has for-
gotten her anger has forgotten even Paul ; all feelings are
merged in one of acute, sensuous enjoyment a feeling
languid, yet exciting ; luxurious, yet exhilarating. Many
couples, who set off at the same time as they did, are
standing still to rest, panting and breathless ; but they still
fly on with untired, joyous grace.
" Shall we stop ? Am I tiring you ? " Scrope asks.
" No, no ! Go on, go on ! "
" I wish to Heavens it could go on forever ! " says the
young man, losing his head, and foolishly whispering into
the white ear that is so temptingly close to his face.
The spell is broken.
" Stop ! " says Lenore, imperatively.
He obeys, and stands gravely beside her, his broad
chest heaving a little with his late exertions ; some strong
suppressed excitement giving an expression painful yet
eminently becoming to his straight-cut Greek face.
" I thought you said you were not tired ? "
" No more I am."
" Why did you say Stop,' then ? "
" Because you were beginning to be a fool."
" I began that long ago ; six months ago, in church ; in
Guingamp Cathedral if you wish to be exact."
" You insist on being a fool, then ? "
" I said that I wished this waltz could last forever, and
I stick to it," says the young man, doggedly. " I do wish
it."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
" Tastes differ," says Lenore, scornfully. " I know
nothing that I should dislike more than an eternity of
capering with you."
He bites his lip hard, but attempts no retort.
" Shall we take another turn ? " says Lenore, presently;
mollified by his silence, after an interval spent by her in
tapping with her feet and beating time to the music.
" That is to say, if you will promise not to be a fool."
" I promise nothing."
" Well, then, we must risk it, I suppose," replies she,
with a careless laugh. " Mind, it is no compliment to you.
It is solely for my own satisfaction ; for, though you may
be a fool, you dance like a seraph, and I cannot bear to
lose a bar of this."
Away, again, light as a feather ; as if blown by the
breath of the music. Once off her anger unroused again
by any rash remarks from her partner the same sense of
delicious enervation as before, steals over Lenore. It is
like floating on a summer sea, as the music whispers,
whispers, then laughs out and triumphs, in a loud, glad
clash.
And Scrope " Every dog has his day," they say, and
this is his. It is a wretched little day ; but still it is his !
She may be Paul's for all after-life nay, she will be, of
course ; who can hinder her ? But for these divine, mad
minutes she is his ! It is not Paul's arm that is round her
waist ; it is not PauVs heart against which hers is panting;
it is not Paul's shoulder on which the milk-white beauty
of her arm is lying. All earthly pleasures must end, and a
waltz is, in its very essence, one of the shortest ; the music
ceases. As they turn toward the door they come face to
face with Paul. He makes as though he would pass them
without speaking ; but Lenore addresses him :
" What have you done with Sylvia ? "
244 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" She is dancing."
" And you ? Why are not you ? "
"Because I hate it ! " (emphatically).
" You might have given Jemima a turn ; she very sel-
dom gets a partner, and she likes dancing."
"Even with me?" (with a sneer).
" I wish you a better temper," says Lenore, hastily,
moving on.
They pass out into the passage.
" Why have you come here ? " cries the girl, fretfully ;
" it is draughty. I shiver ; let us go back to Sylvia to
Mr. Webster anywhere ! "
"You do not shiver when you are with other men,"
says Scrope, resentfully.
" Other men do not stare at one, as if they were going
to eat one ! " cries the girl, indignantly. " Good Heavens !
Charlie, how much better I liked you when you were only
a stupid, silent, sulky boy, before you adopted these un-
pleasant man's airs."
In defiance of appearances, Scrope stands stock-still ; he
is young enough to be galled by allusions to his age.
" Lenore," he says, almost imperatively, " stop gibing
at me ; after to-night, I give you a carte blanche to abuse
me as much as you please behind my back to mimic me
for your friends' amusement to show me up in as humili-
ating a light as it pleases you you are quite capable of it
but, for to-night, be civil."
" Mend your own manners, then," cries the girl, tartly.
" Who gave you leave to call me ' Lenore ? ' For the last
few days I have remarked that you have been slurring over
the ' miss ; ' please to replace my style and title immedi-
ately."
" Is it worth while," asks the young fellow, more calm-
ly, but with great bitterness ; " is it worth while accustom-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 245
ing one's self to call you * Miss,' when you will so soon be
' Mrs. ? ' For all my future life I swear to you, I will try
to think of you only as ' Mrs. Le Mesurier ; ' but, for to-
night, be Lenore, plain Lenore ! "
For all answer, she bursts out laughing. c Excuse me,
it is rude, I know ; but you reminded me so forcibly of the
tale of the man at a ball, who, when the music stopped
suddenly, was heard saying to his partner, at the top of
his voice : ' Do not call me Mr. Smith ; call me plain Wil-
liam!' and, as he was remarkably ugly, he was called
'plain William* ever after."
CHAPTER IX.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
IN the mean time, Mrs. Prodgers has been restored to
her eminent position on the bench : she has been danced
and talked and walked about, into a state of even more
than her usual complaisance.
Jemima still stands where she left her.
" Have you been dancing, dear ? Yes ? Oh, I am so
glad I thought you would I don't know what has come
to the people to-night ; they would tear one in pieces, if
one would let them ! one thing I do set my face against,
and that is, those passages. I said to young Anson, ' There
is no one fonder of laughing, and talking, and fun, than I
am, but if you talk from now till Doomsday, you will not
persuade me to sit out with you.' I dare* say there is no
harm in it really, but people do let their tongues run on
so, when a person is young and tolerable looking."
Jemima makes no answer.
246 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
Sylvia's conversation is like a Gregorian chant ; there
is a certain sameness about it.
Miss Webster has been waltzing with an Eton boy, in
a round jacket : her shins are black with bruises, her elbow
is scratched, but at least she has not been a wall-flower.
Another galop strikes up. Sylvia's talk drops into si-
lence ; she fiddles with her bouquet, and tries to look as if
she would not dance if she were asked. Men hurry hither
and thither, seeking for their promised partners ; raising
and dashing in the same instant false hopes in unengaged
girls, by making apparently straight for them, staring hard
at them, and then flying off at a tangent on discovering
that they are not the right ones. Jemima scans the crowd
to see whether she can discover any one likely to ask her
(in many women the love of dancing survives the probabil-
ity of being invited), but, finding no one, resigns herself
with philosophy to her fate. Other people's enjoyment is
not so good as one's own, but it is perhaps better than
none. It is some people's lot to be spectators through life.
She looks on. The pink calico, the laurels, the mirrors,
the pretty rose-red ladies, the plunging grocers and floun-
dering groceresses ; a tremendous thud! two people fallen
like one log ; now sprawling in a confused heap of broad-
cloth and illusion on the floor ; the lady has ingeniously
wound herself, like swaddling-clothes, round her squire's
legs ; she is unwound, feels for her head, settles her wreath,
and off again ! There are so many people, and they go so
quickly, that it is difficult to follow any one : a blue couple,
a pink couple, a white couple ; they dazzle the eyeballs
with the celerity with which they shoot across them ! A
black couple faller than most of the others; the soft
sparkle of silver flowers flashing like meteors down the
room.
Why, it is Lenore ! Lenore and Scrope again !
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 247
" I thought I had understood that your sister's fiance
was a plain man," says an old woman, who, unable to find
room on a bench, is standing behind Jemima, and tapping
her on her bare shoulder to attract her attention.
" Quite the contrary " (with a complimentary smile).
" Have you ever seen him ? " asks Jemima.
" Is not it he with whom she is dancing ? "
" Oh, dear no ! "
" Really ! what a stupid mistake ! I thought it must
be, because I have always seen them together. A cousin,
no doubt?"
Jemima does not relieve her curiosity. She affects not
to hear.
Turning her head aside a little, she finds Paul at
her elbow. Judging by his face, he has heard, appa-
rently.
" Oh, there you are ! " cries Sylvia, catching sight of
him at the same moment, and resuming her animation.
" You are in disgrace, do you know, deep disgrace ? You
have not asked me to dance once to-night " (looking at
him with large, round eyes, and smiling archly).
Paul smiles, too, but not very cheerfully.
" My dancing is such that it is only on very old acquaint-
ance that I dare inflict it."
" I saw you dancing with Lenore."
He shrugs his shoulders.
" I believe I did shamble round the room once or twice,
but it was not a very successful experiment."
After the dance, which is surely ten minutes longer
than any galop that ever was played before, after a pro-
longed stroll in the corridors, after tea, Lenore returns to
her chaperone ; returns, laughing and flushed, but with a
look of uneasy excitement underlying the surface-merri-
ment of her face.
248 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
Paul has been waiting, with no outward sign of impa-
tience on his grave, sad face. He goes up to her.
" May I have five minutes' talk with you ? " he asks,
formally.
She takes his arm, and they walk off.
Neither speaks till they reach the bench on which, in
the earlier and happier part of the evening, they had sat
together, gayly chattering. Then Paul addresses her with
cutting, cold politeness.
" May I ask, Lenore, what is inducing you to make your-
self so remarkable with Scrope to-night ? Is it solely for
your ow r n satisfaction, or for the double pleasure of amus-
ing yourself and annoying me ? "
The opening is not conciliatory. The color rushes red
and headlong to Lenore's cheeks ; she flings up her proud
head.
" I killed two birds with one stone," she says, in angry
jest : " he dances like an archangel, and it makes you jeal-
ous."
" I do not doubt your first assertion," says Paul, more
col dy than ever, "and I fully agree with your last; per-
haps I am more prone to jealousy than other men. I have
not been so used to women and their ways. But I confess
I do not enjoy seeing my future wife hauled about by a
man, who is (as is evident to the most casual observer)
making passionate and unrestrained love to her."
She is about to interrupt him, but he stops her.
" I confess I do not relish seeing him pointed out as oc-
cupying the position which, till to-night, I supposed was
mine."
" What do you mean ? "
" I mean " (in n tone where the persuasive is quite
swamped in the imperative) " that I distinctly object to
your dancing with Scrope."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 249
" That is unfortunate ! " retorts Lenore, to whose ears
the imperative has been, from her youth up, an unknown
mood, and whose gorge has always risen at the faintest at-
tempt at coercion ; " for I have every intention of dancing
with him again once twice if not more."
" After the opinion I have just expressed ? " cries Paul,
his anger effectually breaking through the armor of his
coldness, voice raised, and gray eyes lightening.
" Most decidedly," she answers, with distinct emphasis.
" I am not in the habit of breaking my word, and last night
I promised him that, on condition that he leaves Sylvia's
house to-morrow, I would waltz four times with him to-
night and waltz four times with him I will ! "
" You promised him ! " repeats Paul, hardly any longer
master of his indignation. " Am I to understand that you
have been making terms bargaining with him? How
ought his comings or goings to affect you ? "
" In this way," she answers, her lips quivering with an-
ger, but articulating with slow clearness. " I have, or fan-
cy I have, a considerable regard for you and a slight regard
for him, and I have no wish to see you kick each other
down-stairs a denottme?it which is only a question of time
as long as you are in the same house."
u Lenore ! " (snatching her hand, and holding it with al-
most painful tightness, while his eyes glow bright and
deeply angry in this dim place,) " are you mad, or are you
bent on driving me mad? After what has often passed be-'
tweqn us about that fellow, can you dare to tell me to my
face that you have a regard for him ? "
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first deprive of
understanding.
" Dare ! " she says, while her eyes meet his unflinch-
ingly, though, within, her spirit quails her heart yearns
to him in his honest anger. " What an ugly word ! Yes,
250 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
I do dare ! why should not I ? He is handsome, and I love
to look at beautiful things and people; he admires me
blindly, and admiration is food and drink to me ; he can
see no fault in me, and I hate to be eternally carped at and
picked holes in ! "
" I see," says Paul, dropping her hand, and speaking in
a tone of smothered resentment, which (if she could but
have understood it) was more alarming than his outspoken
anger, " I understand ; you cannot see our unsuitability
more clearly than I do ; from the first, I felt it profoundly,
and every day I live I feel it more. But, Lenore, why,"
(grasping her arm with unconscious fierceness) " why
if, from the first, you only meant to torment me why did
you maJce me love you? There were hundreds of other
victims that would have done you more credit ! Why
could not you leave me alone ? "
" Leave you alone ! " (turning as white as a sheet) ;
" what do you mean ? "
" I mean," he answers, firmly, " what you know as well
as I do, that you could have hindered me from loving you,
if you had wished ; I was not given to falling in love ; till
I met you I hated ladies' society ; I avoided women ; I did
not understand them, and they thought me a bore. I left
them alone, and they left me alone ; until you solely for
the gratification of your own vanity, as I now see made.
me love you, against my wish, against my better judgment,
'as, for the same reason, no doubt, you have now made
Scrope."
She sits, with her head bent, silent ; she cannot com-
mand her voice to answer.
" He is a more creditable conquest than I, I own," con-
tinues Paul, bitterly ; " but for all that you will be the ruin
of him ! When he joined me at Dinan he was as nice a
boy and as good a fellow as ever lived ; I looked upon him
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 251
as a brother, and he he swore by me ! You have made
him hate me ! You have made me detest the sight of him !
I congratulate you on your handiwork ! "
She lifts her eyes to hirn, all the softness gone out of
them, scintillating with anger. " Have you done ? " she
asks, in a choked voice ; " have you insulted me enough for
one day ? "
" I have not insulted you," he answers, resolutely, " un-
less God's truth be an insult ; I never was a good hand at
telling smooth lies ; my love for you has never been blind
enough to hinder my seeing that you are, in some respects,
different from what I could wish you to be ; if it is an in-
sult to tell you so, I can only say it would have been a
thousand times better if we had never met ! "
A pain like a knife goes through her HEAKT, but she
makes no sign.
"I quite agree with you," she answers, commanding
her voice into calmness by an immense effort ; " will you
be so kind as to take me back to Sylvia ? "
He gives her his arm, and they begin to retrace their
steps ; but before they have gone six paces he turns aside
into one of the rooms that open out of the passage. It is
empty ; he shuts the door. His soul is in a tumult ; full,
not indeed of the unnamed pain of Lenore's, but of confu-
sion and doubt. If he marries this woman, he will be a
miserable man ; he has long suspected it, and choked back
the suspicion ; to-night he has realized it but yet but yet
she is as beautiful as a summer moonrise he cannot give
her up without an effort. They are as much alone as if
they were on a desert island ; he stands facing her.
" Lenore," he says, earnestly, " let us understand one
another. If this is only a silly quarrel, for Heaven's sake
let us make it up ; if it is only a capricious way of trying
how much I can stand, I tell you candidly that I am at the
252 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
end of my tether ; I will not bear a feather's weight more !
Lenore, am I unreasonable ? I like a quiet life, and I want
to trust my wife absolutely, and to believe in her as I be-
lieve in God. Tell me, did you mean the things you said
just now, or were you only angry ? If you were, I am the
last person that has any right to blame you. Oh, my dear,
think before you answer me ! Our whole two lives hang
upon it."
She looks at him. His face is stern, and resolute, and
deeply angered ; but is it not also tender ? She is all but
melted ; in a second more she would have been sobbing on
his heart, but in the instant of hesitation his former words,
" You made me love you," recur to her, bringing profound
resentment with them.
" I did mean them," she answers, passionately. " I do
mean them ; it is so pleasant to me to find any one to like
me spontaneously that I naturally prize their society."
His face pales and changes, it is no longer tender ; it is
only stern.
" All right," he says, coldly ; " you are at least explicit.
It has come to this, then, Lenore you must choose be-
tween Scrope and me. I am far from saying that he is not
a fitter mate for you than I. He is young, he is good-look-
ing, he is rich, he has every thing to catch a woman's eye
and gain a woman's heart; and I " (looking down and
sighing), ** well, I suppose I have not much. It has been
as great a wonder to me as to the rest of the world what
you could have seen in me you know, I told you before
I'm not up to woman's ways but one thing is certain "
(lifting his head again, and speaking with firm emphasis),
" I will go shares with no man; I will have all or none!
As long as you are my betrothed wife, I forbid you to
dance with Scrope."
" And I decline to be forbidden," she cries, maddened
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 253
by rage by the internal knowledge of being in the wrong,
and oh, far worst, cruellest of all by the conviction that
he does not love her well enough to take her, faults and
all that he will have her on his own terms or not at all,
that he is going if she persists in her pride to give her
up, and that the giving her up will not cost him his life
will not break his heart, or even cause it any very mortal
pain. " I deny your right to employ such a word to me ;
if I were a hundred times your wife, I should refuse to be
ordered about like a dog ! If you expect the tame docility
of a slave, you had better go to your cousin for it, for you
certainly will not get it from me."
He bows gravely.
" It is fortunate, at least, that we have discovered the
discrepancy of our ideas of marriage before it is too late.
Thank you, at least, for telling me now, instead of later."
" Yes," she answers, breathing hard and short ; her
face altered and contorted by the fatal excitement that is
hurrying her to her destruction ; " if I made you love me,
as you generously say, I will, at least, not make you marry
me."
He stands mute, all his face white and quivering, unable
to master himself enough to reply to her gibes with calm-
ness, and not willing to descend to the unmanliness of re-
crimination. Then, at length, he speaks, with a slow and
bitter smile :
" You have given me a lesson that I shall not forget in
a hurry. I confess that I had not thought myself a vain
man, but to-night has proved me to have been egregiously
misled by my own conceit. Do you know you will hard-
ly believe me laugh at me, I give you leave but for the
last six months I have been reproaching myself with the
thought that, well and heartily as I loved you, you loved
me even better that you were giving more than you re-
254 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
ceived ? I am disabused, Lenore " (speaking very slowly,
and planting each word like a sword-thrust in her heart) ;
" you are incapable of loving any one but yourself any
thing but your own will. I have done with you!"
As he speaks, unmindful of the usages of society, for-
getting that she has asked him to take her back to her
chaperone, he turns to leave her. At the door he pauses
to take one good-bye look at the fair, proud woman he has
resigned. Her eyes are gazing vacantly at him, and her
lips seem moving. In a moment more he is gone. She
remains in the same position in which he left her : she does
not move a finger. Her great, wide eyes keep staring at
the door by which he went out, and her lips repeating his
last words, " I have done with you done with you done
with you ! " They do not convey the slightest meaning to
her mind. By dint of saying them over and over again,
they grow to sound unfamiliar, grotesque. She half laughs.
How long she remains in this semi-stunned state, she does
not know. The fiddles squeak distantly, and the people
pass and repass ; but she heeds neither. She is recalled to
herself, at last, by the entrance of a man, who first looks
in uncertainly, and then comes in joyfully Scrope.
" Why, here you are ! " he cries, cheerfully. " I have
been hunting high and low for you. I thought you were
with Le Mesurier. This is our dance Good God ! " (with
an abrupt change of tone) " what has happened ? "
His voice brings her back to her right mind brings
the bitter, bitter truth rolling over her soul like a black
flood. Paul gone gone for good ! gone with a look of
inexorable displeasure on his face, and she herself has thrown
him away !
" What has happened ? " she says, in a sharp, harsh
voice. "Do you ask that? Why, just this" (laughing
rather wildly) " I have been amusing myself cutting my
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 255
own throat. That is what has happened, and I have to
thank you for it."
He looks at her in unbounded astonishment. Has she
gone mad, as her words seem to imply ?
" What do you mean ? "
"I mean," she answers, speaking more collectedly,
" that Paul is gone he does not like me any longer he
has done with me /" (falling unconsciously into his own
form of expression).
" WHAT ! "
" Don't look glad ! " she cries, excitedly. " How dare
you f If you look glad, I shall kill you ! "
" I am not looking glad. What should I look glad for ?
I don't know what you are talking about."
" You have got your wish," she says, rising and speak-
ing with slow vindictiveness. " You have parted us ! It
is what you have been aiming at all along. I hope you
are pleased."
" Do you mean to say that you have been quarrelling
about me again ? "
" Yes, I do ! " she answers, panting, and looking at him
always with dilated eyes. " You knew we should. That
was why you remained here when I begged you to go, when
any gentleman would have died sooner than stay."
The young man bites his lip till it bleeds ; he clinches
his hands convulsively ; he writhes under her insults ; but
he makes no retort.
" Was it because you danced with me ? " he asks, quiet-
ly, after an interval.
" You know it was," she answers, petulantly. " Why
do you keep worrying me with these questions ? He told
me not to dance with you, and I said I would ; I thought
it was fine to have a spirit you have always told me, all
of you, what a fine spirit I had. Well, God knows "
256 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
(laughing harshly), " I have been spirited enough to-
night ! "
A little silence.
" If he had but known," she says, looking scornfully at
her companion, "how small the sacrifice was that he asked
of me, he would not have insisted so much upon it."
Scrope's endurance fails a little.
" You are making mountains of mole-hills," he says,
impatiently. " As far as I can understand, you have had
a little misunderstanding I do not see how any one could
well live with you without having them a misunderstand-
ing which you will make up within the first five minutes of
your next meeting that is all."
" It is not all ! " she answers, persistently. " We have
had a hundred such misunderstandings as you describe
they were always my fault always and made them up
again; but this was different. When he turned at the
door and looked at me, I felt that it was all over with me."
As she speaks, she sinks upon the sofa again ; her arms
fall heavily to her side ; the listlessness of despair is ex-
pressed in her whole attitude.
" Fiddlesticks ! " replies Scrope, brusquely. " A man
throw a girl over to whom he is passionately attached, be-
cause she says a few nasty things to him more especial-
ly " (smiling, a little maliciously), " when she has rather
got into a habit of saying nasty things to everybody ! A
very likely tale. No, no ; though you are engaged to
Paul, and I am not, I think I know him a little better than
you do, still."
She shakes her head ; his words convey neither convic-
tion nor comfort to her mind.
" Listen ! " says the young man, eagerly, sitting down
on the sofa beside her. " Since I came into this room you
have been unciviller to me than ever woman was to man
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 257
before ; once or twice I have felt as if I should like to kill
you, or myself, or both ; but you said one true thing it is I
that have brought this on you ; and so, I suppose " (rather
( ruefully) " the least I can do is to try and put things
straight again for you ; I will go and look for him he can-
not have gone far most likely " (sighing a little derisive-
ly) " I shall find him in the supper-room and I will bring
him back to you, see if I don't."
" Will you ? " she says, with a bitter smile. " There
will be two to that bargain ! "
Before she can say more he is gone.
The minutes pass : five, ten ; she sits with her eyes riv-
eted on the door, saying over to herself, " There is no hope,
there is no hope," but all the while, hope is there. After
a space, which the clock announces to be a quarter of an
hour, but which is marked on the dial-plate of her heart as
ten years, Scrope reenters alone.
" I could not find him anywhere," he says, advancing
with his eyes on the ground ; " he has gone. For Heav-
en's sake, keep up " (seeing her face change and quiver
convulsively). " Don't look so miserable ! It is only the
delay of a few hours it will be all right to-morrow morning."
" It will never be all right ag-ain," she cries, bursting
into violent weeping, and throwing her head down on the
hard horse-hair bolster of the sofa. " O Paul ! Paul ! "
The sight of her misery sets him beside himself. He
flings himself on his knees beside her, catches hold of one
of her hands, that is hanging down limp and nerveless,
and, rashly trusting to her absorption, kisses it over and
over again. After all, it is only white kid that gets the
benefit of his caresses.
His action rouses her she sits upright ; the lightning
flashes at him from her drowned eyes ; the hot carnation
scorches up the tears on her cheeks.
258 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" How dare you ? " she cries wildly, tearing her hand
out of his grasp. " I shall always hate my hand for having
been kissed by you you, who have brought me to this !
If I did not know that it was useless to ask any favor of
you, I would beg you, at least, to relieve me of the sight
of you."
He rises to his feet ; a spasm contracts his angry, beau-
tiful face.
" I'm going, never fear. I begin to agree with you,
that I cannot be a gentleman, or I should have gone long-
ago." After a pause : " I have sent for my things from
your sister's house. I shall go to London by the next
train."
" Thank God, at least for that ! " she says, fiercely.
" The last and only boon I have to ask of you is, that I
may never set eyes on you again."
He bows.
" I promise you that you shall not unless you send for
me!"
She laughs insultingly.
" You will wait some time, if you wait for that."
" Lenore " (taking her hand, whether she will or no,
while his eyes burn, savage and passionate, into hers)
" you will make some one murder you, some day. Good-
bye!"
CHAPTER X.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
" QUITE incomprehensible," says Sylvia, slightly shak-
ing her head, and turning the tap of the urn on to the
recipient teapot.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 259
We are at breakfast ; breakfast after a ball is a languid
feast : one looks green, one is yawning, one drinks two
cups of tea instead of one. From another evil, to which
some people are subject, I am free I never suffer from the
cramps that result from over-dancing. Sylvia and I are
the only ones that have yet made our appearance : after
all, there are only two more to appear Paul and Lenore
for Mr. Scrope has gone overnight, or rather this morning,
and it is d propos of his departure that Sylvia is, for the
fiftieth time, expressing her astonishment, her displeasure,
her remorse.
" So ill-bred," she continues, nibbling a piece of toast ;
" so unlike him. I have always said what a particularly
gentlemanlike boy Charlie .Scrope was ! Do you know,
Jemima, it has struck me once or twice that perhaps he
was hurt at my refusing so point-blank to sit out in the
corridors with him ? Very unreasonable of him if he was
so, for I meant nothing personal to him ; I said the same
to them all."
I shake my head with an air of superior information.
" It was not quite such a sudden thought as all that ;
earlier in the day he had settled to go."
" And never mentioned it to me ? " cries my sister, rais-
ing her voice a little, and coloring. " Most extraordinary !
Now I come to think of it, Jemima, he has been very odd
and distrait for a week past ; several times when I spoke
to him, he answered quite d tort et d travers, and once or
twice he did not answer at all."
I shrug my shoulders.
" They are all alike ; determination of Lenore to the
brain ; when Lenore is in the room, they never answer me.
I am quite used to it; are not you? For the last five
years I have walked through life with a gooseberry-bush
in my hand."
260 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" She is very nice-looking, of course," says Sylvia, in a
rather demurring voice, not seeming particularly to relish
the being put, by implication, in the same boat with me.
" I am sure I am the last person to gainsay that ; no-
body can accuse me of not being willing to admit other
people's good looks ; but there is no denying that she is on
too large a scale to suit some people's tastes : many men
prefer something more petite and mignonne"
" Do they ? " say I, skeptically. " I do not know. It
seems to me that most men like a woman that there is a
good deal of."
" I do not think I quite liked the way she did her hair
last night," says Sylvia, taking some honey, and looking at
it pensively as it slides in a long string from the spoon ;
" too much scratched off her face."
With what clever stroke of caustic wit, or incisive
irony, I might have parried this thrust will never now be
certainly known, for at this moment a footman enters with
a note, which he hands to Sylvia. She opens it and reads ;
apparently it does not take long to peruse.
" Are all the people run mad ? " she cries, in a tone of
peevish astonishment, tossing it over to me. I pick it up.
" DEAR MRS. PRODGERS : I must apologize to you for
leaving your house so suddenly, and at so untimely an
hour; but, the fact is, I am unavoidably called away.
Thank you over and over again for all the kindness and
hospitality you have shown me.
" I remain, yours very truly,
"PAUL LE MESTJRIER."
" Is Mr. Le Mesurier gone ? " cry I to the footman, who
is in the act of leaving the room.
" Yes, 5 m."
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 261
" What time did he go ? "
" About seven, 'm. I heard him telling the driver that
he must catch the 7.25 up-train from Norley."
" I wonder did he and Charley travel together," say I,
sotto voce, tickled, despite myself, by the notion of the
rivals boxed up together, within the narrow precincts of a
smoking-carriage, for all the long transit between Norley
and London.
" Did he leave nothing besides this ? " cries Sylvia, in
indignant excitement, holding up the little billet between
her finger and thumb; " no message nothing?"
" I believe, 'm, there was a letter for Miss Lenore."
" Where is it ? what has become of it ? Bring it here."
" If you please, 'm, I think Nicholls took it up to Miss
Lenore an hour ago."
He retires, inwardly amused, interested, compassionate,
no doubt ; outwardly as absolutely indifferent to the joys,
the sorrows, the deaths, the marriages, the jiltings and
being jilteds, of his family, as is incumbent on any servant
who wishes to keep his situation.
The urn sputters and fizzes ; the pug sits on his haunch-
es, with his blear eyes rolling, and gives a short, suppressed
bark, that means " Muffin." We stare at one another.
" I thought there was something wrong last night, when
Lenore said he had gone home with a headache," say I,
with that sort of back-handed prophecy that "told-you-
so " wisdom for which women are so remarkable.
" So did I," says Sylvia, determined not to be behind-
hand in sapience.
Again we stare at one another, with our toast dropped
from our fingers, and our tea quickly cooling in the frosty
morning air.
" I think I will go and see how she is getting on," I
say, rising.
262 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" So will I," says Sylvia, rising, too.
This is not quite what I wish, but it cannot be helped.
As we pass the nursery, the children, hearing our foot-
steps, shoot out like bomb-shells, and join us.
By the time we reach Lenore's door we form a quite
considerable cortege^ both as to noise and numbers.
I knock no answer. I knock again. " Lenore, may I
come in ? " Still no answer. I try the handle it is locked.
I announce the fact.
" How very odd ! " says Sylvia, rattling the handle in
her turn. " Lenore ! Lenore ! we are all come to see you.
Let us in ! "
I do not myself think this form of request likely to
invite compliance ; but, whether it is or not, it meets with
no better success than its predecessors.
" Do you think she can have got out of the window ? "
suggests my sister, beginning to look rather tragic.
" Absurd ! Why should she ? "
Again we knock and rattle, each one in turn, and then
altogether. No result.
" Suppose you look through the key-hole, Jemima ? "
says Sylvia.
I comply. A key-hole is an unsatisfactory vehicle for
exercising sight. At my first glance, I see nothing ; at my
second, I dimly discern what looks like a rose-colored heap
lying on the hearth-rug Lenore has a rose-colored dress-
ing gown.
" She is lying on the hearth-rug," I announce in a whis-
per. " Poor soul ! I am afraid that she is taking it sadly
to heart."
" Lying on the hearth-rug ! " repeats Sylvia, turning
rather pale, and clutching my arm.
" Good Heavens ! Jemima, I hope she has not has
not put put an end to herself ! "
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 263
" Fiddlesticks ! " cry I, angrily. " Why should she ?
How could she ? Swallowed the poker, I suppose, or cut
her throat with a small-tooth comb."
Sylvia applies her eye, in turn, to the key-hole.
" Lenore ! " (raising her voice), " why are you lying on
the hearth-rug ? What are you doing ? You are fright-
ening us all out of our wits. Open the door this in-
stant."
We hear a noise inside ; in a moment more the door is
flung roughly open, and Lenore confronts us in her dress-
ing-grown her undressed hair falling in a long, bright-
brown shower about her face, which is ash-white. Her
eyes are red, and her eyelids redder the first are half and
the latter double their normal size.
" What do you want ? " she says, hoarsely. " Why are
you making this noise ? What has brought you all here ? "
A daunted silence falls upon us for a moment, then
Sylvia speaks :
" Nothing particular, dear ; we only wanted to know
what has made Paul take himself off so suddenly, and we
thought you might be able to tell us."
" I neither know nor care," she answers, fiercely ; but I
see both lips and eyelids twitching.
" Aunty Lenore, how red your nose is ! " cries Bobby,
with all that delicacy for other's feelings, that charming
reticence, so characteristic of infancy ; staring at her the
while, with eyes as black and round as the plums in a
Christmas pudding. The last straw breaks the camel's
back.
" Had not you better send for the servants and the
stablemen, the dogs and the parrot ? " cries Lenore, turn-
ing savagely to Sylvia. " It is a pity that you should not
have every living thing in the house to gape at me."
"Go down-stairs," say I, pleadingly, "and take the
264 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
children with you. I will be down directly ; perhaps she
will let me speak to her myself."
With many demurrings, both of word and look, Sylvia
complies, and retires with her offspring".
I follow Lenore into her room, and close the door.
"Is it true ? " I say, compassionately, taking her hot,
reluctant hand.
"Is what true?"
" That he is gone."
" I really cannot say ; I have not been to look for him,"
she answers, in a devil-may-care voice, averting her eyes.
" Lenore ! " I cry, reproachfully, " what is the good of
keeping up this affectation with me ? It is all very well
before Sylvia ; but have you forgotten that night at Mor-
laix, when you were so happy, and when you came and
told me all about it ? "
" I remember," she answers, with a hard laugh ; " and
how pleased you were at being waked out of your beauty-
sleep, and how kind and complimentary you were about
him."
" I was not kind," I answer, rather crest-fallen. " I
was sleepy, and very ill-natured, and rather envious ; but I
am not ill-natured now. I would help you y if I knew how ;
and, though you are determined to hide it from me, I know
what you are feeling."
" Then you know more than I do myself," replies my
sister, quite collectedly. " I give you my word of honor,
at the present moment I feel absolutely nothing."
I am not generally short of words, but I can find none
now.
" "When I first got that" she continues, nodding her
head toward a note which lies open on the dressing-table ;
" you know I had been buoying myself up with hope all
night, because he came back here, instead of going straight
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 265
away I thought it a good sign but when I got that I
think I must have gone mad for five minutes do people
ever go mad for such a short time ? I found myself down
on the hearth-rug, beating my head against the floor. That
was wise, was not it ? So likely to bring him back. Je-
mima ! " (grasping my arm with her burning hand), " I am
going to tell you a secret ; if I could have found any thing
to do it with, I should have tried to put an end to myself.
I should have done it in a bungling, journeyman way, and
very likely, when I got into the other world, I should have
been sorry that I had not stayed here ; still, I should have
tried ; but you see " (laughing) " it is difficult for the best-
intentioned person to commit suicide with a cake of Wind-
sor soap or a back-hair glass ! "
" Lenore ! " I cry, angrily, " you frighten me ! Why
do not you cry ? Why do you laugh ? I wish you would
not look so odd ! "
" Do I look odd ? " she says, rising and going over to
the long cheval glass. " Well, yes " (making a derisive
bow to her own swollen, disfigured image), "a charming-
looking person the belle of the ball! I always told
Paul " (a sharp contraction of the muscles of her face as
she speaks his name) " that I looked nothing without my
plaits."
I stand stupidly staring at her, with my hands
clasped.
" If you want to ask any questions, now is your time,"
she continues, calmly ; " it will be back on me just now
rushing, tearing back ; but for the moment I feel as little
as you do, or, if possible, less ; I say over, ' Paul is gone ! '
and then * Charlie is gone ! ' and the one fact seems as little
afflicting as the other."
"Lenore, are you speaking truth ? " I cry, incredulously.
" You look as if you were 1 Tell me, if you are sure you
266 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
can bear to do it, how was it ? You know I am quite in
the dark. How did it come about ? "
" Incompatibility of opinion about Mr. Scrope," she
answers, with a forced laugh ; then, sinking down on the
floor, hiding her face in the folds of my gown like a child :
" I do not think I will tell you, after all," she says, moan-
ing ; " when one's ship has gone down, what is the good
of going into the details of the wreck ? "
At the last word she breaks into tumultuous weep-
ing.
"Perhaps it has not gone down," say I, eagerly.
" Who knows ? Let me see the note. May I ? " stretch-
ing out my hand to take it.
" If you like." Then, laughing again painfully between
her sobs : " It is not so affectionate that one need be
ashamed of showing it."
I pick it up eagerly. It is not very tidily written,
scratchily rather, and shakily ; several of the little words
are left out :
"December 28th, $% A. M.
" I would not have come back here last night, if I
could have helped it ; but it was unavoidable. I shall, at
least, not intrude upon your sight again, as I shall be gone
hours before you are up. I will send back your letters in
a day or two ; also, if you insist upon it, your photographs.
Do not send back any thing of mine it is the last favor I
ask of you. P. LE M."
I touched Lenore's heaving shoulder.
" Look up ! " I say, cheerfully. " I am in better spirits.
There is hope ! "
She lifts her heavy head.
"Hope of what?"
Poor soul ! The tears are running flat races down her
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 267
cheeks, coursing down her nose, and making hot wet spots
on the breast of her smart rose dressing-gown.
" He is angry," I say, smiling ; " there is always hope
when a man is angry."
She does not answer in words, but she draws herself
up into a kneeling posture, and clutches my arm with pain-
ful tightness, while a little red creeps into her cheeks.
There is already plenty in her nose and eyes. With her
loose streaming hair, and upward wet eyes, she looks a
Magdalen all over. The old painters, if you remark, have
a knack of making their Magdalens' noses a little red.
" If you wish it, and are willing to take him on his own
terms, I believe you may get him back."
Still she says nothing ; only the clasp on my arm tight-
ens, till I wriggle uncomfortably under it.
" You must, of course, write at once," I say, in a mat-
ter-of-fact voice, " and tell him that you are sorry, and that
you will not do it whatever it was again."
" Say I am sorry ! " cries Lenore, starting to her feet.
" Eat dirt, and go, like a whipped child, with its finger in
its mouth, and say, * I'll be good ! ' Not if I know it ! "
She no longer looks like a Magdalen, or, if she does, it
is a very restive one.
" Very well," say I, coolly, " if you prefer your pride to
your lover, of course it is a matter of taste which is best
worth keeping. I have no more to say."
No answer.
" I see," continue I, with affected enthusiasm, " you are
conscious that you were in the right, and that he was so
completely in the wrong that the first advance must come
from him. I understand, of course ! I respect you."
" Do not ! " cries Lenore, gruffly. " I was not in the
right am I ever ? But the knowing that one is in the
wrong does not make it any the easier to say it."
268 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" There are so many ways of implying a thing without
exactly saying it ! "
Silence.
" My dear child," say I, stretching out my hand to take
one of hers, which is twisting and turning its fellow about,
" the question is, how can you live best : with your dig-
nity and without Paul, or with Paul and without your
dignity ? "
She falls on her knees beside me again ; she buries her
face in my lap.
"Jemima, never tell anybody, and, if you are asked,
say that it is not so ; and never remind me, when you get
angry, that I have said it ; but but " (very indistinctly)
" I would eat all the dirt that ever was in all the world to
get him back again there ! " (Looking up and coloring
violently.) " Was there ever a case on record of anybody
having said any thing so mean ? "
I shrug my shoulders.
" What does it matter about being mean, so as one is
happy ? " say I, with a philosophy of doubtful morality, if
carried out to its final consequences. " Write ! write !
WRITE ! and, if possible " (picking up the note again, and
laughing), " write with a better pen than he did, Lenore "
(examining it more narrowly). "I do believe he cried over
it. Look ! what a suspicious blot over the ' P.' ! "
" Only a sputtering pen or bad blotting-paper," replies
Lenore. But she is laughing, too, and there is an alertness
in her gait as she walks across the room in strong contrast
to the heavy droop of her attitude five minutes ago. " Je-
mima " (her poor red eyes sparkling again, and a tender
tremor about the quivering corners of her mouth), " I will
write. God knows what will come of it, or how I shall
bear the waiting for the answer ; but I will write."
" Do," say I ; and then I draw an arm-chair to the fire,
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 269
and Lenore sits down to the writing-table. The opening
sentences seem to be hatched with difficulty, but after them
her pen runs glibly enough ; it is going to be a longer let-
ter than his. " Lenore," say I, presently, turning my head
round, and speaking diffidently, " I think that, on the sup-
position that this may not bring him back a most improb-
able one, but still possible I (do not be angry) I would
not make it too affectionate." She flushes scarlet, reads it
hastily over, then tears it into a thousand bits, and, running
over to the fire, tosses the fragments in. " Nor too cold,"
I subjoin, rather startled at the effect of my caution. " Do
not you understand?" I continue, eagerly. "The kind
of letter you should write is one that, if he is so disposed,
will bring him back again and that, if he is not so dis-
posed, will not make you hot to think of having sent it."
To compose such a letter as I have thus described
seems a hard task. The hearth is strewn with little shreds
of paper, before one that hits the golden mean between the
fond and the frigid, is written fairly out without blots or
erasures.
" Will you read it ? " asks my sister, holding it out rather
reluctantly to me, when it is at length finished. " I think
I had rather you did not, but you may, if you wish."
I shake my head, and swallow down my curiosity :
" Why should I ? It is between you and him ; what
has a third person to do with it ? "
She turns away relieved, folds it up, directs it, and fast-
ens the envelope.
" Jemima," she says, clasping my arms with her two
hot slender hands, while her great solemn eyes fix them-
selves, feverish and miserably excited, on mine, "the re-
sponsibility of this lies with you. I do hot know whether
it is affectionate or not ; I cannot judge I hardly know
what is in it ; but if it fail, the shame of it will kill me."
2TO "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
AT the lowest calculation there must be forty-eight
hours between the sending of any letter by post and the
receiving of the answer. In most cases sixteen or eight-
een of these hours are slidden over in sleep ; but in a great
anxiety, who can sleep ? In heavy grief one may sleep
probably one will ; when Hope has stolen out of sight, and
Despair sits by us with veiled head, then one sleeps most
deeply. Sometimes, in slumber, God gives us back our
dead : him that but yesterday we coldly kissed in his strait
shroud, we see coming toward us with life-colored lips, and
open eyes : the dead never come back to us dead : always
they are alive talking, smiling, occupied in some common-
place employment, making some foolish, tender jest. But
Sleep refuses to come to the troubled, who have yet an un-
easy hope : she will not be made use of merely as a bridge
over obnoxious hours : she will be loved and wooed for
herself, or else she will stand relentlessly apart. I think
that there are very few of the thousands of minutes that
constitute those forty-eight hours that do not find Lenore
consciously, broadly wakeful. She refuses all proposals
that tend to divert her thoughts by exercise or employ-
ment : she will not walk she will not drive ; she will not
even come down-stairs. All day long she sits in the win-
dow-seat in her room sits there, with drooped figure and
carelessly dressed hair ; her eyes fixed alternately on the
brown winter outside, or the avenue by which all carriages
and all foot-passengers must approach the house, and on
the watch which lies on the table before her ; as if by look-
ing, looking, she could make the slow hands pass more
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 271
swiftly over the dial-plate. O unwise Lenore ! to wish to
hurry the feet of the swift minutes ! They may seem un-
sweet, nay, most bitter, according to our present gauge of
sweet and sour ; but oh ! are they worse than the deep,
timeless grave, and the leaden-colored shores of Eternity,
toward which, in their flitting, they carry us ? Once, com-
ing in suddenly, I find her with all Paul's letters strewed
round her : she is reading them all through in order from
the first sea-sick note he wrote her from Jersey on his
homeward journey, to the three scrawling, galloping lines
which, less than a week ago, announced the train and the
hour which were to bring him back to her. I think, poor
soul ! she is trying to extract more love than is in them,
from the loving phrases that fill them. The short winter
day treads heavily past to his rest, and the night comes
the winter night in its dull endlessness then the dim, late
morning light. Lenore makes no complaint, and cuts me
short when I begin inquiries ; but I know she has not slept.
The postman comes and goes without any special interest
attaching to him ; it is impossible that he can bring any
thing yet.
Another day walks past with lagging feet. Lenore will
not move, will not eat : all her life seems to have passed
into the eyes which grow to the face of the watch that ticks
ever before her. She has turned Paul's picture, which
hangs opposite her bed, to the wall ; when I ask her why
she has done it, she answers that, unless he is hers, she has
no business to look at him.
The second slow day dies : its life is so faint and dark
that there is but little difference between it and its death.
Sylvia and I dine tete-d-ttte, and get over our dinner with a
surprising and feminine celerity. It is astonishing how the
prescribe of even one man prolongs the duration of dinner ;
is it from the comparative immensity of man's appetite, or
272 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
from the stimulus and gentle fillip that his company gives
to conversation ? We yawn through the evening, and at
ten retire to such warm depths of silky sleep as one ex-
periences only in frosty weather.
It is rarely indeed that others' griefs keep one awake.
Our letters arrive mostly at half-past seven : it is some time
before that hour, and in my curtained and sheltered room
absolute darkness still reigns, when I drowsily hear a foot-
step passing along the corridor outside my door. From
some half-conscious, half-dreamful impulse, I jump up and
run to the door, open it, and look out into the black chill-
ness outside.
" Lenore, is that you ? "
"Yes."
" Where are you going ? " (my teeth chattering so as
to make me almost entirely unintelligible).
"What is that to you?" Tired of her incivilities,
sleepy and shivering, I prepare to shut the door in a huff.
" I am going to see whether the postman is dead, that he
is so long in coming," she sa}^s, in a quick, excited voice.
" It is not nearly time for him ! it is the middle of the
night ! "
" It must be time for him," she says, petulantly ; " it
must be three years since he was here last ! "
"You will be frozen," I say, laying my hand, in the
dark, on the thin shawl that covers her shoulders ; " have
my seal-skin ! " She does not heed me.
" Jemima " (I cannot see her face, but I hear the quick
sobbing breaths with which she speaks) " if it does not
come to-day, my reason will tell me that it is because he is
not at home, and that it has had to be forwarded to him ;
but all the same reason, or no reason if it does not came,
I shall go mad!"
Before I can reply, she is gone. I shiver back into bed ;
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 273
I find it as deeply, downily warm as I left it ; but the de-
licious languor, the semi-unconsciousness, fast melting into
total unconsciousness, that such warmth and softness woo,
declines to come again. I find myself, with my head raised
every minute from the pillow, listening for that back-com-
ing footfall. It seems a long time coming ; perhaps it is only
half an hour really : at last I hear it I spring to the door.
"Well?"
A gray figure runs past me, with its head bent, but
answers nothing. I snatch up a dressing-gown, and run,
venire d terre, after it, half afraid of finding the door locked,
when I reach my sister's room. It is not it is ajar ; I
enter. The sick dwarf light creeps in by the latticed win-
dow-panes ; the dead fire's ashes lie whitely gray upon the
hearth ; the table is gray, the chairs are gray, and on one
of them a gray figure lies still and stiff, with gray hands
covering its face.
" What is it ? what is it ? " I cry, horribly excited, run-
ning up to her. She drops her hands into her lap ; in the
dim light I see her great shining eyes, brimming over with
anger and despair, flame into mine.
" It is all your fault ! " she says, hoarsely ; " you did it !
I have lain down in the gutter, and he has walked over me,
and it is your doing ! "
" If you had left me alone, if you had not meddled
you were always a meddler, always I might have gone
through my life, hating myself, knowing that I had been my
own death, finding no taste in any thing ; but at least I should
not have had to get red whenever I thought of myself at
least I should not have made overtures that have been de-
clined. I should not have asked a man to marry me, and
been politely, but firmly, rejected Good God !" (breaking off
suddenly, and clinching her hands above her head) " it can-
274 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
not be me that this has happened to it must be somebody
else. I that always held my head so high ! "
" What are you talking about ? " I stammer ; " he can-
not he has not "
" Has not he ? " she answers, bitterly, " There ! read !
Can you see ? " (walking over to the curtain and pulling it
back) " ' My dear Miss Herrick / ' "When I got as far
as that I knew it was all over with me ! His * dear Miss
Herrick!' 'My dear Miss Herrick!' l my dear Mr. Le
Mesurier ! ' Oh, my God ! "
She throws herself on the floor, and buries her face in
the carpet, w T hile her hands dig themselves into it, like
those of a man in the death-agony. After all, why should
the soul's death be accompanied with throes less bitter
than the body's ?
" How can I read it ? " I cry, impatiently, " }^ou are
holding it ! " and, indeed, as she lies prostrate on the floor,
it is crumpled up in one of her clinched hands. She raises
herself, and straightens out the creased paper.
" Look ! " she says, striking it with her forefinger.
" See how straight the lines run how firmly the letters
are formed it might be a thesis instead of a death-war-
rant ! Do you see any blots here f do you think he cried
over this f "
" Give it me ! " I say, eagerly stretching out my hand ;
" let me see it ! "
" Never ! " she answers, tearing it sharply across, and
then again across, and then again ; " it is between him and
me the last thing that ever will be ! "
I kneel down beside her in silence in the cold gray
dawn, and put my arm round her.
"Be satisfied with knowing the upshot!" she says,
with a dreary smile. " He says it very kindly, very pret-
tily, in a very good, bold hand, and he takes six pages to
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 275
say it in ; but, all the same, the drift is, * I have had
enough of you ! ' '
" Is it possible ? " I exclaim, with a gasp, and a bitter
sense of regret at my share in the- business.
" It was not his real reason for leaving me," says Le-
nore, sitting on the floor, and rambling on to herself, half
under her breath. " It was only a blind how dull of me
to be taken in ! a pretext for getting back to her. Yes, I
understand I understand. I suppose I do get wearisome
after a time, but " (with a long, low moan) " it was such a
little, little time."
A pause.
" She made good use of those six months, did not she ?
did not cry at him, and throw herself at his head, as I
did ; but stole up to him, modestly, with her eyes down, so
that he did not find it out she always was his beau ideal
of feminine excellence yes, yes " (running dreamily over
in her mind his long-past phrases), " ' Eyes like a shot par-
tridge ; ' ' Not at all clever ; ' ' Does not say much ; ' * Very
loving.' Yes, his beau ideal meek, dowdy, mealy-mouthed !
He would have kept to her always, if I had let him
alone. I am glad I did not. I had my day I had my
day ! "
Her hands embrace her knees; she begins to rock
gently backward and forward.
" Stole him away, bit by bit, bit by bit ! " she continues,
sighing softly. " Jemima ! " (her tone altering, and her
eyes glittering with a passion of despairing jealousy),
" that cousin is a sweet woman I know she is charitable
as Dorcas, patient as Griselda, she will help him in every-
thing good, and hinder him in every thing ill. If I thought
she were a bad woman, and that he would repent it, I
could bear it better. Oh, my God, he will never be pun-
ished ! men never are. Every day of his life he will be
2T6 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
gladder and gladder that he is rid of me he will tell her
so while I while I "
She raises her voice wildly at the last words.
" Stop ! " I cry, angry and frightened. " Don't look so
odd ! For God's sake, see him as he is look at him as
other people do a man your inferior in every respect, and
who never really loved you."
No sooner are the words out of my mouth than I see
that I have been guilty of one of my many breaches of tact.
" How dare you say that ? " she cries, griping my arm.
" If you wish to say such things, say them to some one
else ! do not venture to say them to me ! If you are go-
ing to tell such cruel lies, leave my room this instant!
Never really loved me ! Much you know about it you,
whom nobody ever loved. Do you think I could have
been mistaken I, who was with him all day who
watched his face ever minute ? He did love me ! he did!
he DID ! Not blindly, not foolishly : he saw he could not
help seeing that every second thing I did, every second
word I said, was wrong and unladylike ; but he was
making me better every day he was making me better !
If he had married me, I should have been a good wcman,
and he would have taken me to heaven with him ! "
" I am not so sure that he is going there himself ! " I
say, spitefully.
" Say that you did not mean it say that you do not
think it really ! " continues my sister, with an anguish of
entreaty in her tone, and in the haggard loveliness of her
face. "You mean" (with a wild smile) "he has taken
away the present and the future ! If you take away the
past, too if you take away that day at Huelgoat that
day that day " (wandering off into memory again) " when
I knelt on the cushion of little marsh-flowers by the brook,
and the children went by to pick bilberries : if you take
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 277
away that day, and the days at Morlaix, and the day when
we stood by Chateaubriand's tomb, and saw the waves and
the sea-mews below us, and planned how we should walk
on through life, and to heaven together if you take them
away from me, what is there left me but to curse God and
die?"
I shudder, and cry, " Hush, hush ! " but she pays no
attention to me.
" She might as well have left him to me," she con-
tinues, presently, pushing Paul's betrothal-ring absently up
and down her finger ; " she could have done so well with-
out him ! She is a good, religious woman, and has another
happy world to look forward to, while I I have only this.
You see, Jemima, it is only we wicked people that can lose
all at one blow."
" My child, my child ! " I cry, snatching her two hands ;
" what are you talking about ? I do not want to preach
to you, and you would not listen to me if I did, but you
frighten me ; it is like daring God to do worse to you.
How can you have lost all as long as you are still within
the bounds of His great clemency as long as you are still
outside hell's gates ? "
"Am I?" she says, with a flickering, haggard smile ;
" are you so sure of that ? As I came along the meadows
this morning, I have an idea that I had a good notion
how they feel down below. Bah ! " (jumping up and walk-
ing to the window), " do not look so scared ; not sleeping
and not eating make one light-headed. I am getting
quite rantipole. Get me something to drink cognac
sal-volatile it does not matter what, so that it is
strong ! "
I hurry back to my own room, pour some sal-volatile
and water into a glass, and return with it to her. I find
her lying languidly back in an arm-chair, pale and worn
278 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
out, but with open eyes and a set, stony face. She drinks
eagerly, and then gives a long, low sigh.
" Poor soul, poor soul ! " I say, pitifully, stroking her
loose, tossed hair. " I dare say you think it is easy enough
to bear other people's troubles, and, as you said just now,
since I never was loved myself, I cannot enter into your
feelings ; but still, do you know, Lenore, I think no one can
well be sorrier for you than I am ? "
" Really ! " (with an air of most weary indifference).
" Lenore, you are not a weak woman, I know that ;
don't let him have the satisfaction of thinking that you
take it to heart ! Show him what stuff you are made of,
by bearing it bravely ! "
" Malie an effort, in fact, like Mrs. Dombey," says my
sister, smiling sarcastically ; " or rather tmlike Mrs. Dom-
bey. Never fear ! Have you lived with me nineteen years,
and have you yet to learn that I am not the sort of woman
to go about with my pocket-handkerchief to my eyes,
whimpering because I have been jilted yes, let us call
things by their right names -jilted!" As she speaks, a
deep carnation flush of shame spreads over her white
cheeks. " Go now," she says, imperatively ; " leave me !
There, you need not look toward the windows as if you
thought I were going to throw myself out of one of them
see, they are all bolted and I would not make such a
clumsy ending for the world."
I move, unwilling and slow, toward the door. She
calls after me :
" Jemima, if ever you tell any one how you have seen
me, and what things you have heard from me, during the
last forty-eight hours, I will kill you. Let them think I
have had influenza mumps any disease you choose ; but
let no one ever guess that I have been pining three whole
days for love. Bah ! it makes me laugh to think of it ! "
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 2Y9
"Are you .sure I can do nothing for you?" I ask,
staring uncomfortably at her forlorn, wild face.
" Certain ! " she answers, emphatically. " I must fight
it out by myself; it is a case where neither man, woman,
nor child, can help me ! "
" If neither man, w T oman, nor child, can help you," I
say, hesitatingly, yet eagerly, " why not go to God? "
She shrugs her shoulders : " It is a sort of trouble that
God would not care about ! "
" What are you saying ? " I cry. " Is God, like a man,
capricious in His pity ? "
" I think so," she answers, listlessly ; " at least I know
He does not pity me."
I am too shocked to make any rejoinder.
" I have set up an idol in the place of God," she says,
gravely. " Can I expect God to be sorry because it is
knocked down ? There go ! You are a good woman in
your way, and I rather like you ; but you'll never make
your fortune as a preacher ! "
Sadly I obey her. During the long, weary day I go
about heart-sore and anxious. I do not go near her room
myself, nor do I allow any one else to do so ; but my heart
is gnawed by a painful curiosity to know what terrible
death-fight of the soul is raging within those quiet walls.
As Sylvia and I sit moping and flat by the drawing-
room fire before dinner, what is my surprise to see the
door open and admit Lenore, who enters with a brisk step
and a matter-of-fact air !
" Good-morning, Sylvia ; rather late in the day to say
4 good-morning ' is not it ? I have registered a vow never
to go to a ball again ; it has taken me three whole days to
recover from that last one ! "
She says it rather as if it were a lesson learned by rote ;
but she looks alert and upright; her cheeks are colored
280 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
with pink, and her eyes are neither lack-lustre nor
wet.
" Aunty Lenore ! " cries Bobby, who has been raging
round the room with a luckless kitten (mewing with pain
and exasperation, and with all its claws out) clutched
round the neck with strangling tightness in his cruel little
arms. He drops the kitten, which instantly makes off with
its tail straight up. " Aunty Lenore ! " rushing at her,
and boisterously embracing her knees, to the injury of her
crisp muslin dress: then, with a sudden and ingenious
connection of ideas, " Where is Uncle Paul ? "
With a sudden impulse she pushes the child violently
away. I see her face writhe, and the pupils of her eyes
darken and flash; but, in an instant, controlling herself,
she speaks, calmly :
" He is gone ! He is not ' Uncle Paul ' any longer
and and don't bother about him ! "
As we pass through the hall to dinner, I see a letter,
in Lenore's handwriting, lying on the hall-table. I glance
inquisitively at it ; it is addressed to
" CHARLES SCKOPE, ESQ.,
" Limmer's Hotel."
CHAPTER XH.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
IF I imagine that Lenore's composed cheerfulness and
equable serenity are the result of a strain so strong as to
be unable to be kept up beyond one evening, I am mis-
taken. I find her the same the next morning, and the
morning after that, and the morning after that. She talks
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 281
more than usual ; ordinarily, indeed, she is too lazy to take
the trouble of talking merely for the sake of contributing
her share to the general stock that forms family conversa-
tion; but now she talks resolutely to any one who will
talk to her. She lounges away less time than usual in her
own rooms ; always she is to be seen in the general sitting-
rooms, by all comers and goers, working and reading tran-
quilly. She drives out with Sylvia to pay morning-calls ;
she walks out with me into the village, carrying broth and
jelly. Sometimes I try to surprise her face off guard, to
see her features fall into the haggard lines of hopeless
angry grief in which I saw them so lately ; but I fail ; her
face seems to be never in dishabille. She actually plays
with the children ! gambols which, I confess, remind me
of the millennium, when, we are told, the weaned child
shall play on the cockatrice's den. On the third day, I am
sitting pondering these things in the drawing-room, which
Lenore has just left with a light and buoyant tread. Syl-
via, with one of her spasmodic fits of maternity upon her,
is trying, with alternate peevish coaxings and caressing
abuse, to lead, or rather push, pull, and mildly flagellate,
her offspring along the rosy path of learning. In this case,
it is theological learning, as represented by the " Peep of
Day." Bobby is leaning against her knee, while in the
corner why such peculiar ignominy should attach to the
corners of a room tradition saith not stands Tommy, com-
mitting to memory these soothing lines :
"Now if I fight,
And scratch, and bite,
In passions fall,
And bad names call,
Full well I know
Where I shall go."
Now and again, as the thought of the gloomy regions
"GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
whither his iniquities are hurrying 1 him comes home to his
mind, he blubbers suppressedly. What amplest enlarge-
ment on the horrors of hell could equal that portentous
hint ?
" Full well I know
Where I shall go ! "
Sylvia to Bobby : " Has God been kind to dogs ? "
Bobby to Sylvia* doubtfully : " Ye es."
His round eyes are fixed on Toby the pug, basking in
the fire-warmth, and chasing the lively flea through the
preserves of his soft fawn hind-quarters, and his mind is
wandering from the typical dog of the fable to the actual
dog of real life.
" Is the dog's body like yours ? "
Bobby (thinking it safe to stick to the affirmative) :
" Yes."
" The dog's body like yours? What are you thinking
of, child ? Are you covered all over with black hair, and
have you got a big, bushy tail ? "
Bobby glances down uncertainly at his small person ;
but, seeing no caudal appendage, shakes his head.
" Are the chicken's legs like yours ? "
Silence.
Mrs. Prodgers is reduced to answering herself from the
enlightened page before her : " No ; the chicken has very
thin, dark legs."
Bobby does not appear sufficiently impressed with grat-
itude for the essential difference between his own fat,
chubby supporters, and those of the benighted chicken.
He is still watching Toby, who has abandoned the flea-
chase, and runs barking toward the door.
" Mother, dear, there is a ring at the door-bell."
Prospect of emancipation, and consequent elation of
tone.
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 283
" Nonsense, darling ; attend to your lesson. Has the
pig a"
Whether the next word was soul or tail, gizzard or
imagination, transpires not.
" But there was, really ', mother. I hear Morris going to
open the hall-door."
Mrs. Prodgers listens. " So there is ! "
She jumps up hastily, while the " Peep of Day," with
all its mingled treasures of piety and natural history, rolls
unregarded on the floor, as she stands before the pier-glass,
tweaking the black-ribbon bow that ornaments her head,
and smoothing away the hair behind her ears. By the
time the butler's solid footstep is heard nearing the room,
she is d quatre epingles. The door opens : " Mr. Scrope."
My mouth opens, too ; my jaw falls. The stocking I am
knitting tumbles into my lap.
" Charlie ! "cries Sylvia, with a little scream, half real,
half affected, of surprise, running forward, with her hands
clasped.
Mr. Scrope enters, looking rather sheepish and some-
what dishevelled. There are black marks under his eyes ;
his yellow curls are tossed and dim ; he looks unslept and
night-travelled.
"You did not expect to see me, did you? "he says,
with a rather embarrassed laugh. " Thought you had got
me clear off that you were rid of me at last ? But you
see I have turned up again, like a bad sixpence."
" It is a surprise, of course," answers Sylvia, looking
modestly down, and fondling Bobby; "but but quite a
pleasant one. We were getting to hate each other, as only
two sisters tete-d-ttte can ; were not we, Jemima ? "
His face falls.
"Two sisters?"
Nobody explains : I, from malice, Sylvia from preoccu-
pation.
284 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" The fact is," continues Scrope, seeing that some ex-
planation is looked for from him, " that I that I thought
in fact, I found that I could get away for a day or two, so
I thought I would run down and look you all up."
"Why did not you telegraph? Why not write? I
would have sent to meet you ? " asks Sylvia, raising her
bashful eyes. " What scatter-brained things men are ! "
He does not heed her ; his eyes are wandering round
the room.
" Are you looking for Lenore ? " I ask, in a matter-of-
fact voice. " She is in the library, writing letters. I will
tell her you are here."
" Do not," he cries, eagerly, almost pushing me back
into my chair. " I will not give you the trouble ; I will go
and find her myself."
" How very extraordinary ! " says Sylvia, as the door
closes upon him, smiling consciously, and leaning her elbow
on the mantel-piece. " What can have brought him
back? I have not the least idea; have you, Jemima?
Poor, dear old boy, how pale he looked ! I was so glad you
were in the room. By-the-by, did I get very red ? I felt
as if I were turning all the colors of the rainbow."
" I do not know ; I dare say."
" J3e sure you do not leave me alone in the room with
him" she continues, volubly. " I shall always keep the
children with me ; there are no better chaperones in the
world than children."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 285
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT THE ATJTHOK SAYS.
As the young man opens the library-door a rush of cold
air meets him ; it is a bitter frost, black and pinching, yet
one of the wide sash windows is thrown high up, and she
whom he seeks is leaning out into the hard dull air. Her
elbows rest on the sill ; her dark, winter dress hangs in
heavy, close folds about her, and her bright blond head
leans languidly against the window-frame. The blotting-
book is unopened, nor is any pen dipped in the ink. Le-
nore's correspondence will keep, apparently. Hearing the
noise he makes in entering, she raises herself quickly, as
one ashamed of her listless attitude, and they stand face to
face.
" You sent for me," says Scrope abruptly, without any
preliminary hand-shakings, or " How do you do ? " " and
I am come."
She nods familiarly to him, and smiles a little. " I knew
you would."
" I was not in London ; your letter followed me to the
south of Ireland the instant I got it I set off I have
been travelling night and day ever since. More fool I, you
will say probably."
Again she smiles, coldly and sweetly.
" Since you have said it, I need not."
" And now that I am here," he says, brusquely, " what
do you want with me ? Tell me quickly."
Instead of complying, she turns her head round again,
and looks out at the frosty black trees, while her fingers
play still tunes on the sill.
" Tell me," he says, coming nearer to her, and breathing
286 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
quick and hard. " What ? You will not speak ? I know
you you would keep me on the rack a year, if you could.
Why did you write and say, c Come back.' It was for no
good, I'll be sworn, or it would not be you who did it,
whatever it was. Speak out, and put me out of my
misery."
Then she speaks, but her words, at first sight, seem to
have but small connection with his questions.
" Have you been in the drawing-room ? " she asks, while
the cold wind blows in on her cheek, and puts no addition-
al color into it. " Have you heard Bobby say his hymn ?
such a pretty one ! Yes " (putting her finger on her fore-
head) " this is it :
'Now if I fight,
And scratch, and bite,
In passions fall,
And bad names call,
Full well I know
Where I shall go.'
Does not it describe me exactly ? I laughed so immoder-
ately, that Sylvia said I was irreverent, and I had to leave
the room." She throws herself into an arm-chair, and be-
gins to laugh violently.
" What are you talking about ? " he says, looking at
her in half-scared amazement ; " are you mad ? "
She stops laughing.
" Last time we .met," she says, gravely, " at the ball,
don't you know ? how I hate balls ! I have an idea that
I fought, and scratched, and bit; at least I know I
' In passions fell,
And bad names called '
I called you a great many ugly names, and you did not like
it ; you were very angry. Well, I have sent for you all
this way, just to say that that I am sorry."
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 287
" Whatf" cries the young man, breaking into un-
governable fury, " is this the fool's errand you have sent
for me on? to laugh in my face, and quote an idiotic
nursery-rhyme to me? By God, Lenore, it is too bad!
For the last seven eight months I have been your butt, a
football for you to kick about ; but I tell you I am sick of
the part. I throw it up ! Find some one else to take it,
if you can."
He turns toward the door ; his broad chest is heaving ;
his strong hands are clinched ; his deep-blue eyes flash and
darken with uncontrolled anger a passion much more be-
coming to men's hard faces than soft and sawny love.
" Stay ! " she cries, rising hastily, and putting her back
against the door to prevent his egress ; " sit down, and,
whatever you say, speak lower, for I have no special desire
to be overheard. I had another reason for sending for you ;
but but I am ashamed to tell it you."
"What is it?"
Big, upstanding, and exasperated, he does not look a
man to be trifled with ; but, after all, a man may not knock
a woman down, so she may shoot all her little arrows at
him with a smile and a quiet mind, and fear nothing. Her
eyes drop to the carpet at her feet, and a color burns like
fire on her cheeks.
" I sent for you to to to ask you to marry me."
At the last words she raises her eyes, and looks him in
the face. A deep and utter silence. He has staggered
back against the wall, and is staring at her with wide, dis-
believing eyes of utter astonishment.
" I have no reason for supposing that you wish to marry
me," she says, collectedly, though her face is scarlet. " You
never told me so ; it is only an instinct an instinct that
perhaps has led me astray." Still complete silence. " It
is not leap-year, is it?" she says, with a forced laugh.
288 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" No ! "Well, then, I have no excuse none, except that I
wished it ; and you know, from a child, I have always asked
for what I wished ; and always no, not always not al-
ways " (stifling a sigh), " but generally I have got it."
" And and Le Mesurier ? " says Scrope, at last, in a
rough and altered voice, trying to stand steadily on his
feet, while his knees shake under him, and the room whirls
round him.
" What about him ? " she cries, sharply. " Why do
you drag him in? If it was anybody 's part to mention
him, it was mine. You will hear no more of him ; he is
gone it is all off, you know that ; it was all off before you
left only, I suppose, it gives you pleasure to hear it
again."
" And you f " says the young man, staring into her
calm face, while he stammers and stutters ; " you you do
not care ; you you are not cut up about it ? "
She turns her face suddenly aside, but only for an in-
stant: in a moment she is looking at him again looking
at him, and smiling.
" Cut up ! " she says, laughing. " What an expression !
It is only men that are cut up! Do I look very down-
hearted ? Do you see any willow in my hand ? No, no !
I am not the sort of person that am ever cut up much
about any thing."
Still he looks at her with a bewildered face, paled and
quivering, as one but freshly waked from a heavenly dream,
that knows not whether he yet sleeps or wakes ; afraid to
grasp within his hand the immense and utter bliss that her
words seem to set within his reach, lest it should melt away
like fairy gold. His emotion does not communicate itself
to her ; rather, it makes her more composed.
" Well," she says, with a pretty, chilly,- mocking smile,
" you have not yet answered me. How cruel to keep me
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 289
in suspense ! Does it require so much time to decide ?
The matter lies in a nutshell. Do you wish to marry me,
or do you not ? "
" Do I wish to go to heaven ? Did Dives in hell wish
for that cup of cold water ? " cries the young man, passion-
ately, waking with a leap out of his trance, and flinging
his happy arms around her.
She shudders, and pulls herself away.
" Bah ! " she says, coldly, retreating several paces from
him ; " do not let us have any flowers of rhetoric ; and it is
too early yet to be affectionate. If Dives had got his cup
of cold water he would have taken it quietly, like a gentle-
man, and not snatched it."
" You were not in earnest then?" cries the young man,
fiercely, with a revulsion of feeling as bitter as his former
triumph had been heavenly sweet. " I was a fool to be
taken in ! It was only an unfeeling, unwomanly joke.
Will you be kind enough" (coming close to her, and
breathing heavily) " to tell me where the wit is where
the point ? for, upon my soul, I do not see it."
" There is no wit there is no point," she answers, with
perfect gravity and unflinching seriousness. " What wit
or point need there be in naked truth ? As I stand here "
(clasping her hands, and looking full into the fierce beauty
of his face), "I am in earnest. I wish you to marry me.
I asJc you ! It is unmaidenly immodest of me I know
that, and so do you, but I ask you ! "
" God above ! " he says, in a whisper of intense excite-
ment, " is it possible, Lenore ? " (catching her roughly by
the hand). " Turn your face to the light ; let me see your
eyes I do not believe your words ; it seems so unnatural
to hear any kind ones from your lips. God! when I
think that it is less than a week ago that I saw you stand-
ing here together, and you giving him such soft, kind looks,
13
290 "GOOD-BYE^ SWEETHEART!"
to get one of which I would have sacrificed twenty years
of my life, and thought it a cheap bargain you, who
never threw me any thing but mocks, and jeers, and ugly
names I cannot believe it. Say what you will to me
swear it, asseverate it I cannot, I cannot ! "
She does not answer : for the moment, I think, she finds
speech difficult; she stands rigidly still, her face turned
toward the bitter winter landscape, with lips tightly com-
pressed, as one resolved not to weep.
" When I think," continues the young man, vehemently,
" of how you smiled of how happy you looked if he only
touched in passing the border of your gown, less than a
week ago less than a week ago can I believe that such
love has all gone ? Gone f Where can it have gone to ?
Tell me that ! Does love disappear like a morning mist ? "
" Hush ! " she says, hoarsely, putting her fingers in her
ears. " How many times must I tell you not to drag him
in ? If I ever cared for him " (she stops for a second, un-
able to manage her voice), "if I ever cared for him, that
was between him and me ; you had no concern in it ; but
now it is all over, dead / and, when things are dead, what
is there to do but to bury and forget them ? Take me or
leave me, as you choose, that is your business I know
which you would do if you were wise but, for God's sake,
leave that old story alone ! It is my old story, not yours,
and I I have a short memory " (smiling faintly) ; " I am
fast forgetting it."
"But are 3 r ou," he cries, with a painful skepticism,
hardly to be wondered at, " are you sure of that ? Are
you sure that, if you saw him coming in now, this minute,
at that door, you would not run to him, as you ran out into
the cold to meet him that first night he came, and leave
me to cut the brilliant figure I have always done, ever since
the unlucky day at Guingamp, where I first saw you ? "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 291
At his words she shivers again, and shrinks, as if touched
by a hot iron.
" What are you talking about ? " she cries, passion-
ately. " Why do you persist in indulging in these idiotic
suppositions ? He will not come back, I tell you. Do
dead people ever push up their coffin-lid, and come walk-
ing back again ? If they do, I never saw them. Well,
they are more likely to come back than he is much more
likely. He is done with " (spreading out her hands) ;
" so, for God's sake, try and help me to forget that there
ever was such a person, instead of always throwing him
in my teeth."
At the last words she catches her breath sobbingly, but
resolutely forces back the tears that come crowding thickly
under her hot lids. He stares at her stupidly still.
" He only liked me when I was on my good behavior,"
she continues, with a hard, wan smile, " and you know how
seldom that is. I had an idea that you would take me
whether I behaved well or ill, or not at all ; and so and
so I sent for you."
She stretches out her hand to him, smiling friendlily ;
and he, catching it between both his own broad ones, cov-
ers it with silent kisses, then, after a while, speaks slowly
and diffidently, blushing like a school-girl :
"And you you can tolerate the idea of being my
wife ? You like me a little ? "
" Like you ? " she says, carelessly, with a forced laugh.
" Of course I do. What a question ! Have not I asked
you to marry me ? What better proof could I give ?
Why should I not like you ? You are young, good-looking,
and a 'parti. Of course, I like you."
He does not look very much satisfied with this expres-
sion of faith.
" You do not believe me ? " she says, interrogatively.
292 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Well, I have already given you one proof ; I will give you
another. I have asked you to marry me. I now ask you to
marry me soon. I'm aware " (laughing) " that it is not usual
for such a proposition to come from the lady ; but, as I have
begun by taking the initiative, I suppose I must go on."
The look of wild, incredulous astonishment intensifies
on his face and in his bold, bright eyes. Are his ears
faithful carriers of the words intrusted to them, or does his
brain interpret them untruly ?
" Lenore," he says, impetuously, throwing himself on
his knees beside her, as she sits leaning back in an arm-
chair, " forgive me for being such a fool, such an unman-
nerly brute, as to disbelieve what you say to me ; but are
you sure I will not be angry if it is so upon my soul, I
will try not to be but are you sure that it is not a joJce ?
that you have not made me the subject of a bet, that
this is not some trap that you are drawing me into ? Con-
fess confess that it looks like it. Five days ago, you told
me that the only boon you had to ask of me was that you
might never see my face again and, by Heaven, if ever
any woman looked as if she meant what she said, you did
then and now now did I hear aright ? I am afraid to
think so you ask me to marry you soon f "
She hangs her head a little, as if ashamed, but says
nothing.
"Is it any wonder," he continues, excitedly, "that,
when I have been crying for the moon for the last six
months, and hating my life and myself, and even all my
own people, because I could not get it, that, when it falls
down on a sudden at my feet, I should wish to know what
brought it there ? Is it any wonder that I should wish to
see the dessous des cartes ? "
" There is no dessous" she says, naively. " What can
I say ? I am sick of asseverating ! As I believe in God,
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 293
and am unutterably afraid of Him " (looking solemnly up,
and shuddering), "I am speaking truth ! What reason can
I give ? I have none. I am tired of being Lenore Her-
rick, that is all. It is a name that has brought me no
luck ; perhaps Lenore Scrope will bring me better."
" God grant that it may ! " he says, earnestly, drawing
her toward him, into his arms and to his broad breast.
" Sweet, give me one kiss, and I shall believe you."
So she gives him one kiss. Only five days ago ! Only
five days ago !
CHAPTER XIV.
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
ME. SCEOPE returns to the drawing-room, as he left it,
alone. As he enters, we both look up and smile, as one
does smile with vague complacency at the sight of any
thing young and specially comely.
" Did you find her ? " I ask, as I kneel before the fire,
giving it a vigorous and searching poke, for his benefit.
"Yes."
He says merely this almost the shortest of all mono-
syllables ; but there is something in the tone in which he
says it that makes me pause, poker in hand, from my noisy
toil, to examine him more narrowly.
" You have been quarrelling as usual, I suppose ? " I
say, with a wily attempt to come at the matter of their
conversation without seeming too indecently curious.
" Lenore always quarrels with everybody," says Sylvia,
patting the pug's fat stomach, as he lies on his back, with
his eyes rolling awfully and a bit of rosy tongue showing
between his black lips, in a state of Sybaritic enjoyment on
294 "GOOIT-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
her lap. " I tell her it is her way of flirting. She always
maintains that she cannot flirt does not know how ; but
of course that is nonsense. I suppose we can all do a little
in that way, if we try ? " holding her smooth head rather
on one side, and looking arch.
" Has she been saying any thing unusually exasper-
ating ? " I ask, as, under my successful labors, the frosty
fire spires and races upward. " Never mind if she has ;
she is not in very good tune just now, poor soul, and one
can hardly wonder at it."
While he speaks, Mr. Scrope has been stalking up and
down in a fidgety way, making the boards creak. At my
words he stops, and says abruptly :
"Why?"
" Have not you heard ? Oh, of course not ! Stupid of
me ! She would not be likely to mention it herself it is
not a very pleasant subject to talk about but her engage-
ment is all off, and she is naturally rather low about it."
" She is not in the least low ; I never saw her in better
spirits in my life," says Scrope, with a brusqueness that
amounts to incivility ; and, having delivered himself of this
speech, he marches off to the window and turns his back to us.
" It must be your coming, then, that has cheered her,"
says Sylvia, laughing lackadaisically, " and indeed to tell
you the truth, at the risk of making you atrociously con-
ceited, I must say 1 ' dortt wonder at it. It is a shockingly
fast sentiment, I suppose, but there is something in the
timbre of a man's voice that quite invigorates me ; I sup-
pose it is always having been so much used to men's soci-
ety. I get on with them so much better than with women ;
/understand them, and they understand we."
" Have you had any talk with her ? " I ask, rising pre-
cipitately, and following him to the embrasure of the win-
dow, perfectly heedless of the fact that my sister is com-
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 295
fortably mounted on her. pet hobby self, and is cantering
complacently away on him. " Did she say any thing to
you?"
" Listen ! " he says, putting a hand on each of my shoul-
ders, quite unconscious of the familiarity of the action
and indeed they might be posts for all he knows about
them and looking me rudely and triumphantly in the face.
" She has been saying this to me , ' I will marry you as
soon as you like ! ' '
" WHAT !!!!!!" Six marks of admiration but poorly
render the expression I throw into this innocent monosyl-
lable. I feel my face becoming a series of round Os as-
tonishment stretching and opening every feature beyond
its natural destiny.
" Why do you keep staring at me ? " says the young
man, petulantly, giving me a little shake ; " why do you
stand with your mouth wide open ? Why should not I
marry ? What is there to prevent me ? Does not every-
body do it ? What is there so very surprising in it ? "
Still I maintain an absolute silence ; his hands have
dropped from my shoulders, but I still stand before him,
like a block of stupid stone. Neither does Sylvia speak ;
she is affecting to blow her nose, and has covered the nose
part of her face with her pocket-handkerchief; what yet
remains is excessively red. For once her hobby-horse has
given her a nasty fall.
" Why do you stare at me like a wild beast ? " cries
Scrope, angrily. " Is this the way you always take a piece
of news ? Pleasant for the person who tells you, if it is.
If I had told you that she had just fallen down dead in the
next room, you could not look at me with greater dismay."
I cannot contradict it. Sputtering and breathless, I
still face him, trying hard to speak ; but, in all the wide
range of good, noble, and useful words that the English
296 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
tongue affords, I can find not one that suits the present
crisis.
" Why don't you say something f " says the young
man, with cheeks on fire and lightning eye. " The most
disagreeable sentence you could invent would be better
than this. Oh, come ! I cannot stand it any longer to be
stared at by two perfectly silent women with their mouths
open ; it would make " laughing fiercely " it w r ould
make the bravest man in Europe run like a hare ! "
lie turns quickly to the door as he speaks. Then I find
my tongue ; its hinges are not well oiled, and it does not
run smoothly, but it goes somehow. I catch hold of his
arm or his coat-tail I am not quite sure which in my ex-
citement.
" Stop, stop ! " I cry, incoherently ; " don't be cross ! I
mean to say something I am going to say something
but but you take my breath away ! It is so sudden
eo unnaturally sudden ! "
" Unnaturally f " repeats he, tartly, the painful con-
sciousness that I have hit upon the joints of his harness
making him defend the weak part with all the greater acri-
mony. " Why unnaturally, pray ? If it does not seem
too sudden to her or to me, I do not see why it need ap-
pear so to any one else."
" But but are you sure you are not mistaken ? " I
say, disbelievingly, mindful of the tear-swollen, desperate
face I had seen lying among its tossed hair on my sister's
bedroom-floor. " Are you quite sure she said those words ?
She is an odd girl Lenore very odd, and sometimes she
has a random way of talking ; I do not think she quite
knows always what she is saying."
" Thank you," replies he, bowing formally, though his
face flames. " You are, if not polite, at least candid. I
understand. A w r oman must be slightly deranged to con-
sent to be my wife."
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 297
My wits are still too far out wool-gathering for me to
be able to summon them back to compose some civil ex-
planation and apology.
" You disbelieve me still ? " cries my future brother-in-
law, greatly exasperated by my silence. " All right ! do
it does me no harm ; but, if it should happen to strike
you at any time that I may, by accident, be speaking truth,
you have only to send for Lenore, and ask her."
" Poor dear Lenore ! " says Sylvia, speaking for the first
time, and smiling sweetly. " She has not been long in
consoling herself, has she ? I am quite glad."
Mrs. Prodgers has finished blowing her nose, and her
face has laid aside its transient redness ; but she now holds
her head quite straight, nor does she looks at all arch.
" You know, Jemima, if you remember, you laughed at
me but I always maintained that Paul Le Mesurier did
not care two straws about her. I am sure I am the last
person to pretend to unusual clearsightedness, but one has
one's instincts ! "
" It is sudden, of course ! " bursts out Scrope, boyishly,
not paying any attention to my sister, but looking straight
and defiantly at me. " What is the good of telling me
that ? Etbw can I help it ? Tell me that January is colder
than July I know it is ; but it is not my fait. If I had
had my way, it would not have been sudden it would have
happened full six months ago. No one ought to know that
better than you."
" Ought I ? " say I, vaguely. " I dare say but to tell
you the truth so many incoherences about Lenore her
eyes, her ankles, and her inhumanities have been poured
into my ears that I get them muddled together. I cannot,
at a moment's notice, assign to each lover his own several
Jeremiad."
" You are spiteful," replies the young fellow, laughing
298 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
a little, but looking offended. " If I had known how little
you were listening to me, I would not have talked to you
about her."
" Poorest, dearest Lenore ! " repeats Sylvia, smiling a
little patronizingly. " Quite the dearest thing in the world,
and, mercifully for her, incapable of fretting much about
any thing or anybody. What a gift! if she could but
give one the receipt ! " (sighing and pensively passing
through her fingers the beads of a great jet rope that she
wears round her neck.)
" Jemima," says Scrope, impulsively, putting his hand
again fraternally on my shoulder, " I do not suppose that
they will do me any good not a barley-corn but still I
have a morbid desire for your good wishes ; they will be
tardy and lugubrious, I am aware, but, such as they are,
give them me. If JT" (reproachfully) " had heard that you
were going to be married, I should not have been so slow
or so dismal in offering mine."
" That is a very safe position," reply I, dryly. " If you
had seen me flying toward the moon, you would have com-
plimented me on the ease and grace with which I flapped
my wings. I do wish you good luck there ! but whether
you will get it or not is another matter."
" But but you think that it will be ? " says Scrope,
with his whole eager heart in his voice. " Now that you
have shut your mouth, and that your eyes no longer look
as if they were falling out of your head, and that you can
talk rationally you believe it ? "
" Upon my honor, I cannot say," reply I, laughing un-
comfortably. " Lenore, as Sylvia truly observed just now,
is quite the dearest thing in the world ; but sometimes she
goes round and round, like the sails of a wind-mill. I have
a good mind to go and ask her myself."
So I go.
WHAT JZMIMA SAYS. 299
CHAPTER XV.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
UP and down, up and down, up and down, with her
hands behind her back, I find her marching in the ordered
solitude of ner own room, as I had expected.
" Good Heavens ! " say I, entering, with my shoulders
raised nearly to my ears, and my hands spread out.
She stops in her persevering trudge, looks me coolly
over, and says
"Apres?"
I throw my eyes up to the ceiling, and shake my head
several times, but words utter I none.
" You have heard, I suppose," she says, quietly. " I
see he is running all over the house button-holing every-
body, as the Ancient Mariner did the Wedding Guest. I
hope he has told Norris, and William, and Frederick it
would be a sad oversight if he has not."
" It is true, then ? " I say, gasping. " When he told
me, I would not believe it I said so I said I would ask
you myself."
" You might have saved yourself the trouble of the
journey up-stairs," replies she, calmly, " but, as you are
not c fat and scant of breath,' like Hamlet, Prince of Den-
mark, I suppose it does not matter much."
" Good Heavens ! " say I, for the second time.
" Try a new ejaculation," suggests my sister, smiling ;
" I am tired of that one."
" And and and your reason ? "
"Reason?" repeats she, laughing rather harshly.
" What extraordinary questions you do ask ! Is not it
on the surface ? I am in love, to be sure deeply in love."
300 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
I am on the verge of being delivered of a third " Good
Heavens ! " but, recollecting myself, suppress it.
"If you remember, you did not approve of my first
choice," says Lenore, with a bitter smile ; " are you any
better pleased with my second ? "
" Much better," I answer, emphatically ; " far better
only it is horribly and indecently sudden that is all ! "
Silence.
" As for the other," I continue, " you are right. I
never could understand what you saw in him : a long nose,
a yard of scarlet beard, and a sulky temper, seemed to me
the whole stock-in-trade."
For one second her eyes flash with a furious pain, then
grow quiet.
" Exactly," she says, composedly. " Now, in the case
of the present nose, there is nothing to be desired, is there ?
nice and short, and runs straight down the middle of his
face, without deviating a hair's-breadth to right or left ;
such nice, curls, too, all over his head, as if they were
put in curl-papers every night and such dear little
teeth ! "
" For shame ! " cry I, indignantly ; " you are describ-
ing a doll. Lenore, Lenore ! what are you made of ?
Beauty and love are thrown away upon you, and you have
a perverted taste for ugliness and indifference."
She shrugs her shoulders.
" One may abuse one's own property, I suppose ? If
you remember, he is my doll now curls, and dear little
teeth, and all ! "
I turn away, pained and disgusted.
" Stay," she says, laying her hand on mine ; " do not
be cross. I am serious look at me ! I am sure I do not
feel as if there were a joke to be got out of the whole of
me."
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.' 801
I look at her, as she tells me look with uncomfortable
misgivings at the bright beauty that has prospered her so
little : her cheeks are crimson, and the hand which holds
mine burns, burns.
" Attend to me," she says, imploringly. " I am very
much in earnest. I have done better this time, have not
I ? I have been more wise at last."
I shake my head.
" How can I say ? "
" This one is much more suitable to me, is not he ? I
I " (laughing feverishly) " I begin to think that I did
not care realty for the other so much after all ; it was only
fancy it was only my perversity. I wanted to get him
because I thought nobody else could. I I was not really
fond of him, was I ? "
She looks with a sort of wild wistfulness into my face
for confirmation of her words, but I do not think she finds
any.
"He is much more suitable to me," she repeats,
vaguely, as if trying to convince herself by iteration ;
" much more in every respect. So much better-looking."
" Immeasurably," say I, emphatically ; not that I see
what that has got to say to it."
" And better off," she continues, still holding and un-
consciously pressing my hand with her hot, dry fingers.
" We should have been miserably poor, Paul and I miser-
ably ; and I hate poverty; I hate trying to make both
ends meet. They will meet now and lap over, without
any difficulty, will not they ? "
" I imagine so."
" And in age, too," she goes on, eagerly, " we are far
better fitted ; is it not so ? Paul was old older than his
age even old in himself."
" He might well have been your father," I say, laugh
302 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
ing vindictively, " except that no one would have accused
you of emanating from so hard-featured a stock."
" No," she says, not in the least attending to my sar-
casm, " of course not ; altogether, you see," smiling me-
chanically " altogether, you see, Jemima, it is all for the
best. I am nearly quite convinced of it now, and, of
course, I shall grow more and more convinced every day,
shall not I ? " looking at me with imploring inquiry.
I make no response, and we both lapse into silence a
silence spent by Lenore in wandering aimlessly about, pull-
ing the blinds up and down, disarranging the few wintry
flowers in the vase on the toilet-table, altering the furni-
ture. At last she speaks with sudden abruptness :
" It is to be soon very soon ! "
" He is wise there, I think," I answer, following her
doubtfully about with my eyes. " Poor boy, he has not
studied you for the last six months to no purpose; he
knows what a weathercock you are, and is bent on making
sure of you while you are in the vein. Who can tell when
the wind may change ? "
" You are mistaken," she says, quickly, " it was not his
idea at all ; it was my suggestion. I suppose " (laughing
with the same forced and hollow sound that had before
pained me) " I suppose it is the first instance on record of
such a proposition emanating from the lady, but it was.
Yes, you may look as if you were going to eat me I can-
not help that it was ! "
" Good Heavens ! " repeat I, devoutly, lapsing uninten-
tionally, for the third time, into my favorite ejaculation.
" Yes, soon very soon ! " she says, half to herself,
pulling her rings on and off, lacing her fingers together and
then again unlacing them ; " and we will have a very
smart wedding very ! I hate sneaking to church with
only the clerk and the beadle, as if one were ashamed of
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 303
one's self. We will have all the neighbors, and men down
from Gunter's, and a ball."
I stare distrustfully at her : her eyes are sparkling like
diamonds at night, the splendid carnation that fever gives
paints her cheeks.
" And you will have it put in all the papers," she says,
laughing restlessly ; " all of them you must not forget
a fine, long, flourishing paragraph do you mind ? in all
of them."
" What an extraordinary thing to give a thought to ! "
I say, suspiciously. " If you had two columns of the
Times devoted to you, how much good would it do you ? "
" Good? Oh, none at all ; but it is amusing. Flowers
of newspaper eloquence are always entertaining, don't you
know? And one likes one's friends one's friends at a
distance to know what is happening to one."
A light begins to break upon me, but it is such an un-
pleasant one that for the moment I ask no more questions.
A pause. There are so many things true, yet eminently
disagreeable to be said, that I hesitate which to begin
upon. Lenore presently saves me the trouble.
" If if if he were to see me now," she says, sitting
down at my feet, and smiling excitedly up at me, " he
could not think I was pining much for him, could he ? "
The unpleasant light grows clearer.
" When he sees the account of my wedding in the pa-
pers so soon so immediately such a brilliant marriage,
too ; I am so glad it is a good one he will realize "
(laughing ironically) " how irreparable an injury his deser-
tion has inflicted on me, will not he ? "
" Is it possible f " says I, with shocked emphasis. " I
suspected it when you began to talk to me ; I am sure of
it now. Lenore ! Lenore ! you are going to be madder
than all Bedlam and Hanwell together ! "
804 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" I am am I ? " speaking with listless inattention to
my words, and still pursuing her own thoughts.
" Marrying one man to pique another always seemed to
me the most thorough 'pulling your nose to vex your
face,' " I continue, in great heat.
No remark, no comment on my homely illustration.
" Suppose he does hear of your marriage ; suppose he
does read every paragraph in all the papers about it ; sup-
pose he reads that you had twelve bridesmaids, and that
you went off in a coach-and-six, how much the worse will
he be or how much the better you ? "
Still no answer ; but she listens.
" He will feel a little stab of pain, perhaps of morti-
fied vanity, more likely ; but it will be a very little one, not
big enough to spoil his dinner (he likes his dinner) ; while
you, my poor soul, where will you be ? "
She has been lying with her head in my lap ; at these
last words she snatches it hurriedly up.
" What do you mean ? " she cries, in a fury. " How
dare you pity me ? I am not a c poor soul.' I am a very
fortunate person very much to be envied. Hundreds of
people would change places with me ; EO would you, if you
could."
"Hm! I don't know."
A pause.
" Lenore," say I, earnestly, putting my hand under her
chin, and lifting her unwilling face toward mine, " listen to
me, for I am talking sense. I never had a husband, which
is more my misfortune than my fault, but all the same, I
know what I am about. If you marry Charlie now, you
will like him at last / I am sure of that. I do not believe
in the most perversely faithful woman always hating, al-
ways having a distaste for a handsome, manly, loving hus-
band. Yes, you will end by liking him even better than he
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 305
does you. It is always the way. But you will have to go
through purgatory first ; and, what is more unfair, you will
have to drag him through too, poor boy ! "
" Bah ! " she says, with a scornful laugh ; " it is nothing
when you are used to it. If I have not been there, I am
sure I do not know where I have been, ever since that ac-
cursed ball. Shall I ever again hear those detestable fiddles
squeaking, and those vile wind instruments blowing and
blaring, without going mad ? I doubt it I doubt it ! "
putting her hands wildly to her ears, as if to shut out
sounds of utter pain and horror.
" You rather dislike him than otherwise now," pursue I,
pushing my advantage ; " you are always better pleased to
see him leave a room than enter it. Well, before your
wedding-tour is over, you will abhor him. It requires an
immense stock of love at starting to support the dead
sweet monotony of a honeymoon."
She shudders.
" My dear child," I cry, with affectionate emphasis,
" think better of it ; if you must marry him poor dear
Charlie, I am sorry for him at least put it off for six
months ; let us have a little time to breathe. If you will
reflect a moment, I think you will see that to be handed on
from one man to another within a week is hardly lady-like,
hardly modest ! "
At the last word .the deep red on her cheeks grows yet
deeper ; but by the hard, defiant smile that curls her lips I
know that I might as well have spoken to the winter wind
that is howling and gnashing its angry teeth outside.
" Jemima," she says, calmly, " as I once before observed
to you, you will never make your fortune in the pulpit ;
your sentiments are first rate, but they make one drowsy.
See, I am yawning myself. As to modest, that is neither
here nor there ; you dragged in the word by the head and
306 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
shoulders to prop your argument. As to lady-lilce, it is a
matter of the most perfect indifference to me whether I am
or not."
To this I say nothing. I only walk away to the win-
dow.
" Do not dissuade me ! " she cries, falling from defiance
to a tone of almost nervous entreaty, as she stands before
me, twisting her hands. " Let me marry him in peace.
Your little cut-and-dried saws are very neatly cut, very ac-
curately dried, but they do not fit / you mean well, but one
knows one's self best."
Hm!"
" Do you think," she continues, with irritable impa-
tience, " that I can go on now in the old groove the old
groove that I kept so contentedly to before before the
earth opened and swallowed all I had ? "
No answer.
" Can I go on," she pursues, with deepening agitation,
" watching you drop the stitches in your knitting, listening
to Sylvia's weak cackle, hearing those awful children plung-
ing and bellowing about ? Do you know, Jemima, for the
last few days, every time they have come blundering and
shrieking into the room, I have felt inclined to scream out
loud ? I have not done it, because you would have put me
into a mad-house if I had ; but, all the same, I have felt the
inclination."
I shake my head despondently.
" If he marries me," she says, her eyes wandering rest-
lessly about, and speaking quickly and excitedly, " he will
take me away to beautiful places, away from all the dread-
ful old things and people. It will be delightful delight-
ful ! I shall begin all over again my life over again ! He
will take me where there are no children no Sylvias no
Jemimas no self! Yes" (laughing uneasily), "I mean
WE A T THE A UTHOR SA Ytf. 307
to leave myself beliind. I mean to be a new, fresh person
a happy, prosperous person. I wish to be happy I am
determined to be happy. Jemima" (entreatingly), "for
God's sake, do not hinder me ! "
CHAPTER XVI.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
PEOPLE cannot keep their mouths open forever not
even Jemima Herrick they must shut them at last. Mostly
they shut them very soon. No passion is so short-lived as
astonishment. " A nine-days' wonder " is a hyperbolical
expression. Who ever wondered at the awfullest murder,
the most startling esclandre, the most unlooked-for turn of
Fortune's quick wheel, during nine whole days ? If walk-
ing on your head were to come into fashion, within three
days it would excite no surprise to see people pounding
along the pavement on their hats and bonnets, with their
boots in the air. The neighborhood has been informed of
Lenore's transfer from one lover to the other, and its " ohs "
and " ahs," and head-shakings thereon, are over and done
with. After all, they have been fewer than have been ex-
pected; people had so long made up their minds that
Scrope was the right man that few of them had arrived at
the knowledge that he was the wrong one before they were
officially informed that he was the right one again. He
has always been seen about with her ; he is evidently her
fittest mate in youth and comeliness ; in this case all the
sympathy goes with the successful lover. Does not he ride
as straight as a die ? Is not he as handsome as paint ? Do
not we know all his antecedents ? Does not his property
808 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
lie, docs not his ugly old red abbey stand, in this our
county ? Paul, unknown, plain, and saturnine, commands
neither good wishes nor regrets. It has been announced
that the engagement was dissolved by mutual consent a
course always adopted by the friends of the lady when the
gentleman cries off. Lenore, however, is no party to this
deception. Everybody's presents have been returned to
him, and again sent back. On the principle of " To him
that hath shall be given," the rich Mrs. Scrope's wedding-
gifts are threefold greater and more numerous than those
of the poor Mrs. Le Mesurier. On hearing of the change in
her fortunes if not for the better, at least for the more
consequential the Websters supplement their portly tea-
pot with a cream-jug and sugar-basin to match. And Le-
nore, when she sees the teapot come back the teapot out
of which she was to have poured Paul's tea, in the little
narrow house they had planned she laughs violently.
" Do not let them send me any new congratulations
any of them," she says, dryly ; " tell them the old ones will
do ; they need only alter the initials, as I am doing with
my pocket-handkerchiefs."
Scrope has no father, and Lenore has no money, which
two facts greatly facilitate the law arrangements. Wheth-
er indecently soon or not, the wedding-day is drawing on.
Lenore has thrown herself into the business of trousseau-
buying with an ardor more than feminine with an artistic
frenzy of a Frenchwoman, of a petite maitresse enragee.
" Finery always was my snare," she says, laughing.
" I loved even my cotton gowns and gingham umbrellas
tenderly ; but now if being married entails such a satur-
nalia of fine clothes, I should like to have a wedding every
year."
Lenore is very lively ; she runs about the house all day
inging; she walks, she rides, she plays billiards; she
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 309
studies " Murray " and " Bradshaw " with avidity, making
out routs to the ends of the earth ; but she never sits still.
Her cheeks are rosy red, and her eyes sparkle and glitter
like beautifullest great sapphires.
" You are quite the most eager bride I ever saw," Syl-
via says one day, with a doubtful compliment. " Poor
Charlie toils after you in vain. I always imagined that
impatience was the monopoly of the gentleman ; I am
sure " (sighing and looking down) " it was so in my case.
I thought the days raced by positively raced / if you re-
member, Jemima, I said so to you at the time."
"Did you? I dare say."
"Now, Lenore, on the contrary, seems anxious to
hurry them. Fancy ! " casting up her eyes and hands to
heaven.
" I am anxious," says the girl, smiling rather wistfully.
" I mean to be so happy I want to begin. I am sorry it
is not en regie / but I cannot help that. How many more
days are there ? One, two, three, four, five bah ! " (tak-
ing up two parcels that lie on the hall-table), " a couple
more ivory prayer-books ! Jemima, if there come any more
prayer-books, you must send them back, and say that there
is a glut of books of devotion."
The wedding-feast is to be gay and large ; the house to
be crowded and crammed from attic to cellar, chiefly wiiji
Scrope's people; mother, unmarried sister, married sister
and husband, uncles, unmarried men, cousins.
" A perfect horde of barbarians ! " says Sylvia, com-
placently swimming into the drawing-room, on the after-
noon of the day on which they are expected, her little fig-
ure very upright, head slightly thrown back, and bust pro-
truded, as is her way when the war-paint is on. " I have
quite a good mind to run away and hide myself in a corner,
and leave Tommy, as my deputy, to receive them. Will
310 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
you, Tommy ? How amusing it would be, and how aston-
ished they would look ! "
" One could hardly wonder at them," answers Jemima,
dryly. Jemima's head and bust are much as usual.
" As long as I have Charlie beside me I don't mind,"
continues Mrs. Prodgers, looking at herself over her left
shoulder in the glass, in one of Sylvia's strained and dis-
torted attitudes ; " he is my sheet-anchor. Poor, dear, old
Charlie ! " (laughing a little) " to think of his going to be
one's brother ! It is too ridiculous ! "
It is the evening before the wedding ; the lit rooms are
gayly alive with many guests ; not only those staying in
the house, but also dinner-guests. Many more are expect-
ed; some of them already uncloaking outside, for Sylvia
has decreed a dance.
" We must have a band" she has said, meditatively,
when making the arrangements. " There is no use doing
a thing unless you do it well. Yes, a band ; they can go
so nicely in the recess under the stairs."
" It is dreary work pounding over a carpet, to the tune
of a piano, supported only by lemonade and negus," Je-
mima says.
" When people come on a first visit," says Sylvia, sa-
piently, " they always come to criticise. Did you notice
how they all looked me over, from top to toe, when they
came in to-day pricing me, as it were ? Well, I wish to
be beyond criticism."
" Don't have a band ! " cries Lenore, hastily ; " if you
do, I shall go to bed that is all. I warn you. Those
dreadful fiddles, squeaking and shrieking, go right through
my head. Have a piano, and I will promise to play for
you from now till the Judgment-Day."
So a piano it is. The dancing has not yet begun, but
we all stand about in an unsettled way, that shows that
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 811
something is imminent. Detachments of people are being
taken to be shown the wedding presents. The hot-red
roses have to-night left Lenore's cheeks ; she is very white
deadly white, one would say ; only that it is a dishonor
to the warm, milk whiteness of living loveliness, to liken
it to the hue that is our foe's ensign. She is pale, but her
eyes outblaze the star that quivers and lightens in Mrs.
Scrope's gray head.
" I am so glad you are not a Mourning JBride" says
Scrope's eldest sister, Mrs. Lascelles, a frisky young ma-
tron, pretty as hair like floss silk, Paris clothes falling off
her soft, fat shoulders, and English jewels, can make her,
looking with a sort of inquisitive admiration at the restless
pale beauty of her future sister-in-law's face. " Not that I
can say any thing " (laughing lightly) ; " I cried for three
whole days before my wedding. Mamma said that my eyes
looked as if they had been sewn in with red worsted. Did
not you, mamma ? "
Mrs. Scrope smiles the placid smile of prosperous, stall-
fed maturity.
" I did more than that," continues the other, still laugh-
ing ; " I cried for a fortnight afterward ! We went to
Brittany" (making a disgusted face), "andRegy was ill
all the way from Southampton to St.-Malo. I tried to look
as if he did not belong to me. I am sure even the waiters
at the hotels were sorry for me I looked so dejected! "
At the mention of Brittany Lenore winces, and then be-
gins to talk quickly and laughingly :
" Must one cry ? I hope not. If it is indispensable, I
will try / but I am afraid I shall not succeed. I am not a
good hand at crying. I never cry."
They are to dance in the hall ; the oak floor has been
polished and doctored to the last pitch of slipperiness ; the
stags' heads have mistletoe wreaths. Plenty of light,
312 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
plenty of warmth, plenty of space, plenty of men what
more can any rabidest dance-lover desire ? To the general
surprise, Lenore sits down to the piano ; everybody remon-
strates.
" Usurping my place 1 " says Jemima, cheerfully, put-
ting her hands on her sister's shoulders. " Off with you ! "
"On the contrary," returns Lenore, with a perverse
smile, " I mean to adorn this stool till two o'clock to-mor-
row morning. Go away dance caper about, it amuses
you. As for me, I hate it. Va-tfen ! "
" Come on ! " cries Scrope, half in and half out of his
gray gloves, and looking radiantly happy and handsome.
" What do you mean by settling yourself there ? Jemima
is going to play ; she always does ; she likes it. Don't
you, Jemima ? "
Jemima smiles grimly. All very well to be conscious
that your life-mission is to pipe for other people to dance,
but a little hard to be expected to express enjoyment of
the rile!
" I am not going to ' Come on ! ' " answers Lenore, pet-
tishly. " I mean to stay here. Go away ! "
" ' Go away ! ' " cries the young fellow, leaning his arms
on the piano, and looking desperately sentimental. " A
very likely story ! "
. " For Heaven's sake, put your head straight ! " she says,
crossly. " When you cock it on one side like that, you look
like a bullfinch about to pipe. I hate dancing there ! "
" Since when ? " he asks, incredulously. " Not long
ago you told me that you loved it better than any thing
else in life."
" Not so very long ago, when I was cutting my teeth, I
loved sucking an India-rubber ring better than any thing
else in life. Do you insist on my sucking it still ? " she
says, dryly, turning over a heap of music. " Don't be a
nuisance. Go away ! "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 313
He goes. In five minutes, all, not incapacitated by age
and fat, and some even that lie under these disabilities, are
scampering round. As there are plenty of men, several of
the chaperones condescend to tread a measure. Lenore
plays on dreamily ; it is an air that the band played at
Dinan one night last summer ; as the brisk, gay melody
fills her ears, the room, the people, the wax-lights vanish ;
she is in the Place du Guesclin again. How dark it is !
The lights from the hotel show small and red ; the sabots
clump past. How close to our faces the green-lime flowers
swing !
She is roused by an eager voice at her ear.
" One turn only one ! I have danced with every-
thing that has any pretensions to age, weight, or ugliness.
Pay me for it only one turn ! "
Scrope stands by her, panting a little. His broad chest
heaves, and his wide blue eyes glitter with a passionate
excitement. She shrugs her shoulders, but, as though it
were too much trouble to argue the point, complies. Je-
mima takes her place, and they set off. After flying
silently round for a few minutes, they stop. Scrope, even
in stopping, unwilling to release her from his arms, gazes
into her face with a passionate rapture, to see whether the
delight he feels is at all shared.
" I hate it ! " she says, irritably. " It tears my dress ;
it loosens my hair ; it takes away my breath. Let us go
to some cool place."
They saunter away to the conservatory. The Chinese
lanterns swing aloft, their flames spiring up in dangerous
proximity to the pink-and-green walls of their frail prisons.
The daphnes and narcissi and lilies of the valley are
uniting their various odors in one divinest harmony of
scent, like a concert of noblest voices. Lenore throws her-
14
314 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
self wearily into a garder -chair, and begins to fan her-
self.
" Let me fan you," says her lover, tenderly, taking the
fan out of her hand and leaning over her ; " it will save
you trouble. My darling, you look pale to-night."
" My darling, you look red to-night ! " retorts she, with
a mockery more bitter than playful, glancing up at the
flushed beauty of his face. " For Heaven's sake, don't let
us register the variations in each other's complexion ! "
An arrow shoots through the young man's bounding
heart. Is she going to change her mind ? Now that the
prize is almost within his hand, must he lose it at this last
moment ?
" Have I done any thing to vex you ? " he asks, anx-
iously, kneeling down on the stone pavement at her feet.
" You know how idiotically fond I am of you ; for Heaven's
sake, do not take advantage of it to play tricks with me !
What is the matter with you to-night ? You are out of
spirits."
" What do you mean ? " she cries, angrily. " I never
was in better spirits in my life. Everybody remarks it ;
everybody says how lively I am. I talk all day, and I
laugh more than I ever did in my life before. Would you
have one always grinning like a Cheshire cat ? "
" You talk and laugh, it is true," he answers, with a
grave air of anxiety ; " but you are much thinner than you
were. Look at this arm " (touching the round white limb,
as it lies listlessly across her lap) ; " it is not half the size
it was three weeks ago."
" So much the better," she answers, with a laugh ; " rrr^
arms were much too big before. Sylvia was always
abusing them ; it is much more refined to have smaller
arms."
" You will be all right when we get to Italy," he says,
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 315
fondly ; " you will like that, will not you ? Oh ! sweet ! "
(leaning over her, with a passion of irrepressible exulta-
tion) ; " can I believe that I am waking when I think that
long before this time to-morrow you will be my wife?
that at last at last we shall belong to one another, for
always?"' 1
She shivers a little.
"To-day is to-day, and to-morrow is to-morrow," she
says, sententiously ; " to-day, let us talk of to-day ; we may
both be dead by to-morrow."
"Both!" (smiling a little) ; "that is hardly likely."
" One of us, then ; only the other day I read in the
Times of a bride who was found dead in her bed on her
wedding-morning. O my God ! " (flinging out her arms,
and then throwing her head down on her knees,) " if I had
but the very slightest chance of going to heaven, how I
wish I could be found dead in my bed ! "
" What are you talking about ? " cries Scrope, shocked
and astonished at this unlooked-for outburst. "Lenore!
look me in the face and say you did not mean it. I know
you have a random way of talking, sometimes Jemima
says so ; but, do you know, when you say such things you
break my heart ? "
" Do I ? " she says, lifting her wild white face, unsoft-
ened by any tears. " I am glad. Why should not I break
it ? I have broken my own you know that well enough
why should not you suffer too ? As for me, I suffer I
suffer always all day and all night. I am glad to hear of
any one else being miserable too. What have I done,
that I should have a monopoly of it ? " He stares at her,
in a stony silence. " There," she sa} T s, after a pause, with
a sickly smile, pushing her hair off her forehead, " I am all
right now ! I was only only -joking ! Pay no atten-
tion to any thing I said ; I was only ranting. I think I
316 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
have been overdoing myself a little the last few days. Sup-
pose you go ? I shall get well quicker if I am by myself."
So he goes, slowly and heavily. She has taken all the
lightness out of his feet and out of his heart ; it feels like
a pound of lead. He makes his way up to the piano.
" Jemima," he says, in a low voice, " my sister will play
for you ; I want you to go to Lenore ; she is not very well,
I think rather hysterical ; she is in the conservatory, she
would not let me stay with her."
So Jemima goes.
CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
"WHAT next?" think I, hurrying off, as bidden.
" What new freak ? Well, if I had been born with a sil-
ver spoon in my mouth I would not have spent my life in
bewailing and lamenting that it was not a pewter one."
In the conservatory no Lenore ! Only two time-worn flirts
of either sex, shooting their blunt little old arrows at each
other's tough hearts, under a red camellia. I do not know
why I do it, but I pass along, through the flowers, to a door
at the other end that gives upon the outer air, and, opening
it, look forth. It is snowing rather fast ; great, shapeless
flakes floating down with disorderly slowness, but it is not
very dark. My knowledge of my sister has not been at
fault, for, through the snow, I see her, at a little distance
from me, walking quickly up and down a terrace-walk, with
her head bent and her hands clasped before her. " How
good for a person with a weak chest ! " I cry, indignantly,
skipping gingerly out on the toes of my white satin boots,
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 31 T
and flinging 1 the tail of my gown adroitly over my head.
" Any one more unfit for death or more resolute to die than
you, I have seldom had the pleasure of meeting."
I put my arm within hers and drag her along, back into the
lighted warmth of the conservatory. A great tier of orange-
trees and chrysanthemums hides us from the veteran lovers.
I look at her : the snow-flakes rest thickly on her hair, on
her flimsy dress ; run in melted drops off her chilled white
shoulders.
"It does not wet one much," she says, with a rather
deprecating smile. " See, one can blow them away. How
white they are ! They will make the snowdrops that the
school-children are to strew before me to-morrow look quite
dirty, will not they ? "
"Lunatic!" cry I, highly exasperated, shaking her;
" fool ! If I may be permitted to ask, what is the reason
of this?"
" I was hot," she says, a little wildly, " stifled ! Those
flowers stifle me. Odious jonquils ! Did ever any flowers
smell so heavily ? They are like the ones in that dreadful
bouquet Charlie brought me for the ball."
I am shaking and flicking, with my best lace pocket-
handkerchief, the snow from off her dress, so make no
answer.
" You know, from a child, I was fond of running out,
bareheaded, into a shower ; I liked to feel the great cool
drops patter, patter on my hair. I wish to God I could feel
them now ! Put yonr hand on my head" (lifting my cold,
red hand, and placing it on the top of her own sleek head).
"My good child," say I, startled, " you are in a fever ! "
" Jemima," she says, taking down my hand again, and
holding it hard pressed between her two hot white ones,
while her glittering eyes burn on my face, " I am quite
happy, as you know, perfectly. No one has more cause to
318 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
be so. I am quite young ; I am better looking than most
people ; to-morrow I shall be rich, very rich ; which, after
all, includes all the others ; but, do you know, sometimes,
within the last few days, I have thought it is a ridiculous
idea, of course, but sometimes I have thought I was going
mad! How do people begin to go mad? Tell me."
Her voice has sunk to an awed whisper.
" Fiddlestick ! " cry I, contemptuously. " Do not be
alarmed, only clever people go mad ; no fear for you."
" If any one comes suddenly into a room, if any one
bangs a door or speaks in a key at all louder than usual, I
feel as if I must shriek out loud. I told you so the other
day, if you remember, talking of the children. Sometimes
I am afraid of lifting my eyes to your or any one else's
face, for fear you should think they looked mad."
" Nonsense ! " interrupt I again, now thoroughly angry.
" It is all nerves. Nerves are troublesome things, if you
are not moderately careful of them, and you never give
yours a chance ; you never sit still, you never rest, and it
is my belief that you never sleep."
" Not if I can help it," she says, feverishly ; " not if I can
help it. Sometimes,when I feel myself falling asleep,! get out
of bed and walk about in the cold to wake myself thoroughly.
I hate sleep ; it is my enemy ! As sure as ever I fall asleep, I
am back in Brittany with him ; we are as as we used to be."
" If I were you," say I, with that sober eye to the main
chance with which one regards life after five-and-twenty, "I
should be glad to wake from such a dream to find how
much more prosperous the reality is."
" So I am, so I am ! " she answers, hastily, contradict-
ing herself. " Of course, it is prosperous, is it not ?
Everybody says so. You you are not joking ^ are you,
Jemima, when you say I am so prosperous ? " (her eyes
resting distrustfully on my face). " I am really, am I not ?
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 319
*
But sometimes I think, when I look at you, that you are
pitying me. Heaven knows why, for nobody needs it
less. If you are, do not that is all ! I hate being pitied ;
pity yourself instead."
" Dreams or no dreams," say I, trying to lead her from
a theme which is making her painfully excited, " you must
sleep to-night, if we give you laudanum enough to make
seven new sleepers. If you do not, mark my words, to-
morrow you will look as yellow as the little orange in your
wreath." No answer, only a vacant plucking at her dress.
"Dead-white in the morning," say I, with a judicious ad-
hesion to the subject of millinery, " is almost always fatally
trying to the best complexions, particularly w^hen in juxta-
position with snow." No answer. " Only this morning
you told me that you were determined to look your very
handsomest."
" So I am," she says, rousing herself, and speaking
with quick interest ; " so I am ? You say right I must
look my best I shall ; one always does when one wishes ;
my veil will be down, too they will not see me very
clearly, you know ; but, however I look, you must be sure
to have it put in the papers that I looked beautiful, and
and radiantly happy. They say that sort of thing now
and then, do not they ? "
" As to the being happy, never that I saw," reply I,
snappishly. " A bride's happiness is taken for granted."
" I do not know whether I ever mentioned it to you be-
fore," she says, with a hesitating, strained smile, " but I
should like the announcement put into a good many papers
besides the Times the Morning Post, Standard ; but it
must be in the Times, too, of course. People always read
the births, deaths, and marriages in the Times, don't they ? "
She asks this last question with a keen anxiety, that
would have puzzled any looker-on to account for.
320 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Women do," reply I, brusquely. " I do not think that
men ever look at them."
" What nonsense you talk ! " she cries, rudely. " Of
course, they do. They always glance over them, at the
least, to see whether there is any name they know. I have
seen them, a hundred times. I have seen Charlie "
" What about Charlie ? " cries the young man, appear-
ing round the screen of flowers simultaneously with his
name. " He has not done any thing fresh, has he ? " (try-
r ing to laugh, but yet speaking with a most anxious smile).
" Jemima, how is she ? how are you now, my darling ? "
(taking her in his arms with as little heed to my presence
as if I also were a prim dumb camellia).
" How am If " retorts she, pushing him away with a
gesture of distaste, and then, as if bethinking herself, ac-
cepting his embrace. " Why, how should I be ? Much as
I have been any time these nineteen years, with the excep-
tion of the solitary week when I had the croup. Reassure
yourself I have not the croup now, and I never have any
other diseases."
He looks at her silently, with a pale, passionate wist-
fulness.
" You mean to be kind," she says, in a constrained
voice, with a sort of remorse, " and you really are a very
good fellow. I do think so always, though I show it rather
oddly now and then, perhaps ; but you must know that I
have an inveterate aversion to being asked how I am. It
is not confined to me. Many people have the same feel-
ing. I really " (with a forced smile) " must draw up a list
of prohibitions for you c You must not do this,' and * You
must not do that ' before we set off on our travels, or we
shall inevitably come to blows before a week is over."
" Do ! " cries the young man, eagerly, as one catching
at a straw. " I do seem to be always blundering, don't I ?
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 321
and saying the wrong thing ? One would think I did it on
purpose ; but, as I live, I do not. I shall get better, how-
ever," he continues, hastily, as if afraid of her taking ad-
vantage of his confession ; " every day I shall get better.
Being with you always, I shall grow to understand your
character better. Dunce as I am, 1 cannot help doing that,
can I, Jemima ? "
" I really do not know," reply I, turning away with a
dry smile ; " there are some very sharp corners and unex-
pected turns in it, I can assure you."
"Jemima is right," says Lenore, gravely, gently un-
winding his arms from about her. " You have got a very
indifferent bargain, pleased as you are with it. To let you
into a secret, you have overreached yourself. You will get
a bad character of me from all the people I have spent my
life with ; I have the distinction of having everybody's ill
word."
" I dare say " (defiantly, while his eyes recklessly,
boundlessly fond, grow to her calm, chill face).
" It is not too late yet," she says, in a low voice that
has yet nothing of the whisper in it ; " it is one o'clock ; I
hear it striking. You have yet ten hours' grace."
" Ten hours ! " cries the young fellow, mildly, throwing
his arms again about her, and straining her, whether she
will or no, to his riotous heart. " Lenore ! Lenore ! the
nearer the time grows the farther you seem to get away
from me. Are you going to slip away from me altogether
at the last moment, as you did out of my arms just now ?
But no ! why do I put such ideas into your head ? It is
too late. You could not throw me over now, if you wished.
Reckless as you are of all conventionality, even you dare
not do that."
" What are you talking about ? " she asks, petulantly,
with a nervous laugh. " Why should I wish to throw you
322 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
over ? If I did, what could I do with all my fine clothes,
and my otter-skin jacket ? Do you think I could have
strength of mind to send the Websters' teapot travelling
back a second time ? "
He continues looking at her, and holding her, but says
nothing.
" I lilce you," she says, looking round at me with a sort
of nervous defiance. " I do not care who says I do not.
I am proud of you I I I love you. Do not I, Jemima ?
Have not I often told you that I do ? "
" You have told me a great many things in your time,"
I say, oracularly, " some that were true and some that were
not. I will tell you one thing in return, and that is, that
if you do not go to bed now, this minute, to-morrow you
will be yellower than any orange."
CHAPTER XVDI.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
IT is a circumstance never to be enough deplored by
the female world that marriages and drawing-rooms are
broad daylight ceremonies. Mature necks and faces, that
the great, bold sun makes look as yellow as old law-deeds,
or as the love-letters of twenty years ago, would gleam
creamily, waxily white, if illumined only by benevolent
candles, that seem to see and make seen only beauties, and
slur over defects. Even the lilies and roses of youth un-
like the smooth perfection of their garden types are con-
scious of little pits, and specks, and flaws, when Day holds
his great searching lamp right into their faces. Day repu-
diates tulle and tarletane ; they are none of his ; and, as
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 323
he cannot rid himself of them, he retaliates by behaving
as glaringly and unhandsomely as he can to them. Nature
is holding a wedding outside too, apparently ; at least, it is
all white, ichite ! Heaven has sent down a storm of dia-
monds in the night, as a marriage-present to Lenore;
wherever you look there is the glitter of myriad brilliants.
Last night, at each iron gate there was a high, wide arch
of evergreens, but during the dark hours the fairies carried
the dingy things away, and replaced them by others of
glistening white jewels. They are so bright, so bright,
one cannot look at them ; one turns away with winking
eyes. I fancy that with some such lustre shine the arch-
ways through which the Faithful People go and come in
the deathless white City of God.
There is a mystical stir and bustle in the house ; every-
body but the bride has been down to an early breakfast
and has gone up again to put their best clothes on. The
maid-servants are hurrying about the house in uniform
gray gowns and white caps, all except the ladies' maids,
who have the right of exercising individual will in the
choice of their magnificence. The footmen have new liver-
ies. The wedding-breakfast is laid out in the dining-room ;
I have been reconnoitring it. 0ne has to look out of win-
dow to assure one's self that the season is winter. On the
long glittering table summer and autumn hold their scented
sway. Regiments of tall flowers both white and vivid-
colored ; shady fern-forests ; bunches of grapes, big as
those fabulous ones swinging in gilt over an ale-house door,
or as that mighty cluster represented in the illustrations to
" Line upon Line," as borne between two stout Hebrews,
slung upon a pole; odorous rough-skinned pines. I in-
dulge in a pleased sigh, and glance at the carte, I draw a
slight mental sketch of what my own share in the banquet
will be. Truely, one waxes gluttonous in one's old age.
324 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
Since then I have been pervading such of the ladies'
rooms as intimacy gives me the entree to. I have seen
twelve passably fair maids, in twelve gauzy bonnets, each
with a murdered robin sitting on the top, as a delicate
tribute to the season. Pretty, and clean, and white, the
dozen look ; but, alas ! they will present but a drabby-gray
appearance by-and-by out-of-doors, when contrasted with
the wonderful blinding snow-sheet. I am not a brides-
maid ; I have not been invited, nor, if I had, would I have
consented to intrude the washed-out pallor of my face
among this plump pink rose-garden.
Now I have returned to the bride-chamber, where Syl-
via, fully dressed, and apparently laboring under some hal-
lucination as to being herself the bride, has usurped the
cheval-glass ; at least, on my entry, I find a pretty little
figure in violet velvet and swansdown, with bust protruded
and semi-dislocated neck, gyrating slowly before it.
" How extraordinary one does feel in colors ! " she is
ejaculating, with a sort of uneasy complacency; "but for
Lenore's sake, nothing should have induced me. I feel
quite like a fish out of water ; I really can hardly believe
it is my own face it seems like some one else's. What a
fright one does look, Jemima ! "
No contradiction from me.
"Does not one?"
" No, I don't think so," reply I, consolingly ; " nothing
out of the way. I don't see much difference."
" Violet always used to be considered my color," re-
turns Sylvia, apparently finding my form of comfort not
very palatable ; " always, par excellence. How well I re-
member, the very last ball I ever went to with poor John
I was in violet lisse, with cowslips overhearing some
man ask, ' Who that lovely little woman in mauve was ? '
What a rage I was in ! "
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 325
" And who was she ? " ask I, with interest.
" Who was she f " (reddening.) "What stupid ques-
tions you do ask, Jemima ! Who was she f Why JT, of
course."
" Mauve suits everybody, even me," say I, peeping over
Sylvia's shoulder at my own unusual lilac splendor ; " it
was well-named the ' refuge of the destitute.' "
Having discharged this Parthian shaft, I turn away.
The room is blocked with great imperials, packed and half-
packed. A whole haberdasher's shop of finery is surging
out of them, and a big white L. S. on each of their shiny
black lids. L. S. herself sits before the dressing-table, but
difficult as it is to help it she is not looking at herself
in the glass. Her eyes are on the ground, and her brows
gathered. She is fully dressed, with the exception of the
wreath and veil all dead white dead white, like the doll
on the top of a twelfth-night cake ; only that the doll invari-
ably compensates for the colorlessness of her attire by
cheeks that outshine the peony, and Lenortfs cheeks are
dead white too. To my mortification, I perceive that, in
spite of Worth's gown, and old Mrs. Scrope's Flemish point,
my sister is looking as little handsome as a thoroughly
good-looking woman ever can look. Hardly a touch of
pretty red even on her lips, and a pinched blue look of cold
and utter apathy about her face and whole attitude.
"If I am to arrange your wreath," say I, speaking
sharply, " we had better begin ; there is no use hurrying,
and it takes some time to dispose it properly."
She does not move or change her position.
" Will you be good enough," continue I, ironically, " to
look round and convince yourself that this is not a fune-
ral?"
Still no answer.
" Lenore " (raising my voice), " are you dead ? are you
326 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
dumb ? are you cataleptic ? For Heaven's sake, why do
you not say something ? "
" What should I say ? " she answers at length, raising
her heavy eyes, and speaking with harsh irritability, " why
should I speak ? I have only one hour more of my own
now" (glancing with a sort of tremulous shudder toward
the clock) ; " surely I may spend it as I like."
" That is better," rejoin I, not heeding the matter of
her speech, but regarding her, with my head on one side,
with an artist's eye. " When you speak you look ten per
cent, better. I must tell you in confidence that as you
sat just now, with your shoulders up to your ears and
your nose resting on your knees, you had a near escape of
being that anomaly in Nature, a plain bride."
No reply.
" For mercy's sake, say something," I cry, crossly ; " do
not lapse again into that utter silence ! Dear me ! " (taking
the wreath gingerly out of its box) " how beautifully they
do make these things nowadays ! But for the scent, I
really think they out-do Nature."
The wheels of the first carriage become audible ; very
faintly, by reason of the snow, but still audible, and Syl-
via, after one final glance, shuffle, and whisk, swims out of
the room. I become absorbed in an artistic agony, as I
throw the lace, in a shower of costly flimsiness, over my
sister's impassive head, and delicately insinuate the chilly
nuptial flowers into their resting-place on the top of it.
Carriage after carriage rolls up : doors are opened ; steps
let down. My curiosity gets the better of me. I leave
my nearly-finished task, and, running to the window, press
my face against the frosted pane.
" The Websters," say I, narratively. " Ha ! ha ! ha !
Old Mrs. Webster in a twin-gown to Sylvia; even to
the swansdown on the body and tunic ! Poor, dear Syl-
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 327
via ! she will never get over it ; it will be the death of
her."
As I stand there, laughing maliciously, I feel a hand on
my shoulder. " What ! are you come to look at them, too ?
Take care, they will see you. It shows a little want of
imagination in Mrs. James making two dresses pin for pin
alike, does not it ? "
I turn toward her ; but, as soon as I catch a glimpse of
her face, my mirth dies, and I utter a horrified ejaculation.
It is lividly white, and she is gasping.
" Open it wide ! " she says, almost inaudibly. " I I
I am stifling ! "
" Good Heavens ! " cry I, apprehensively and dissuasive-
ly, with my usual practical grasp of a subject. " You are
not going to faint ? Do not ! not till I get you a chair.
You are so heavy I never could hold you up."
As I speak I am struggling with the hasp of the win-
dow, which is old, rusty, and evidently constructed with a
view to never opening except after ten minutes' of angry
wrestling.
" Quick ! quick ! " she says, faintly panting, " wider !
wider!"
But it is too late. As the frozen casement grates slow-
ly on its hinges, her head, with all its smart paraphernalia
of lace and flowers, falls back lifeless, and the whole weight
of her body, in all the leaden inertness of Death's counter-
feit, rests in my strained arms. No one knows, until they
have tried it, how heavy dead and swooned persons are. I
stagger under my sister's weight, and with much difficulty,
and many bumps both to her and myself, get her down on
the floor, where the little icy airs come and ruffle her use-
less laces and her soft tossed locks. Then I fly to the bell,
open the door, and call mightily down the passage.
" Louise ! " I cry, " Louise ! " as Sylvia's French maid
328 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
comes floating airily along not in the least hurrying her-
self, but rather throwing gallantries over her shoulder, as
it were, to a strange valet in the middle distance. " Louise !
Louise ! Make haste ! Mademoiselle Lenore is so ill ! I
do not know what has happened to her ! all of a sudden,
too ! she has fainted, I think ; I suppose it is a faint, is not
it " (looking nervously in her face), " not any thing worse f "
Louise gives a little yell, and says " My God ! " in her
mother-tongue, in which flippant language that adjuration
does not sound half so solemn. Then we kneel down, one
on each side of her, sprinkle water in her face, considerably
to the injury of her tucker pour brandy down her uncon-
scious throat hold strong smelling-salts to her nostrils
roughly chafe her dead hands use all the unpleasant as-
perities, in fact, that are supposed necessary to induce peo-
ple to come back to that life which, as a rule, they are so
loath to quit. But it is all to no purpose : she shows no
sign of returning consciousness.
" I do not half like it," I say, looking apprehensively
across at my coadjutor, and speaking in an unintentional
whisper. " I have not a notion what to do next ! Run,
Louise, and tell John to go as quickly as he can for Dr.
Riley and and I do not like being left here by myself
with her send Mrs. Prodgers."
" What do you want with me ? " cries Sylvia, pettishly,
coming fussing in a minute or two later ; evidently in com-
plete ignorance of the errand on which I have sent for her.
" I wish you would not send such mysterious messages.
I am so nervous already that I do not know what to do
with myself ! I declare, just now, when Lord Sligo was
talking to me, I had no more idea what he was saying
Good God!" (catching sight of Lenore's stiff prostrate
white figure), " what has happened ? What has she done
to herself now ? "
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
" She has fainted," repeat I, briefly, " all of a sudden,
before I could look round ; and we cannot bring her to."
" Good gracious, how dreadful ! " cries Sylvia, kneeling
daintily down on the floor, too ; not, however, before she
had plucked up her violet-velvet skirts. " What does one
do when people faint ? put cold keys down their backs
cut their stay-laces hold looking-glasses before their
mouths oh, no, of course, that is to see whether they are
Heavens, Jemima ! " (her face blanching) " you do not
think she is "
Mrs. Prodgers has an inveterate aversion for pronoun-
cing the little four-lettered word, that, in its plain short-
ness, expresses the destiny of the nations.
" Nonsense ! " cry I, angrily, again seizing the salts, and
futilely holding them to her nose.
" Feel whether her heart beats." says Sylvia, looking
very white, breathing rather short, and speaking in an awed
whisper. " I am afraid to do it myself I dare not ! you
are feeling the wrong side, are not you ? they say it is
nearly in the middle."
Complying with these anatomical instructions, I feel.
Yes, it beats. Life's little hammer is still knocking feebly
against its neighbor ribs.
" She will be all right, just now, of course ; it is only
that we are not used to this sort of thing. I never was
the least frightened myself, " say I, doughtily, but not alto-
gether truly.
" I wish her eyes were quite shut," says Sylvia, peering
into Lenore's swooned face with the horrified curiosity of a
child ; " they look so dreadful, showing a bit of the pupil."
" The wedding will have to be put off, of course," say
I, rising, and walking toward the clock ; " half-past eleven
now ; it is very certain that she will not be well enough to
be married before twelve."
830 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" But the people ! " cries my sister, squatting in a dis-
mayed purple heap on the floor, for the moment utterly
oblivious of nervousness, swansdown, or even of the apt-
ness of velvet to crease unless sat upon straight. " They
are all come ; everybody is dressed ; most of them are al-
ready at the church ; the bishop has been there half an
hour."
I shake my head. " It cannot be helped."
" And the breakfast ! " cries Mrs. Prodgers, as a fresh
and worse aspect of the calamity presents itself to her
mind. " Of course, the cold things do not matter ; they
will be as good to-morrow or the day after as to-day ; but
the soups, the entrees!"
I stifle a sigh. " There is no good in talking of it," I
say, with forced philosophy. " You had better go at once
and send them all away ; there is no use in keeping them
waiting in the cold. Charlie, too " (with an accent of com-
passion) ; " poor boy ! what a bitter disappointment it will
be to him ! "
"As to that," says Sophia, with a slight relapse into
the preening and Pouter-pigeon mood, " I do not suppose
that a day's delay will kill him ; men are often not sorry
for a little reprieve in these cases. I am sure no one can
feel more thoroughly upset than I do ; if I were to fol-
low my own inclinations, I should sit down and have a
good cry."
" Do not follow them, then," I say, brusquely ; " or, at
least, send the guests away first, and cry as much as you
please afterward."
By the aid of Louise, and with many appeals on her
part to the French God, sides, and Virgin, I, heavily and
with difficulty, lift Lenore on to the bed. Hours have
passed, the doctor has come, Sylvia has resumed her black
gown and giant rosary, the last carriage has rolled away
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 331
with snowy wheels, before Lenore lifts the quivering white
of her lids, and looks round upon us languidly, one after
another. There are only three of us the elderly doctor,
to whom, from our earliest infancy, we have been in the
habit of exhibiting our tongues and pulses ; I, who am no-
body ; and, thirdly, a poor young man in a smart blue coat,
with a kind, miserable, beautiful face, who has spent the
last three hours and a half in clasping and kissing a limp,
white hand, which, had its owner been possessed of con-
sciousness, would hardly have lain with such passive weak-
ness in his fond grasp. As her eyes open, he springs up
joyfully to his feet, and bends over her. I do the same.
With a faint gesture of distaste she turns away from him
to me, and speaks in a weak whisper :
" I I I am at home, am I not ? "
" At home ? Yes, to be sure."
" I I I am not married f "
" No ; not yet."
" I am so glad ! "
Soon afterward she relapses into unconsciousness. All
that day, and most of the following night, she lies like a
plucked snow-drop in January's sleety lap, reviving from
one swoon only to fall into another. Toward midnight she
grows better, and sinks into a natural and healthy sleep.
" I wish you would change your clothes," I say to
Charlie, in a whisper, as we stand staring at her with
shaded light; "they look such a mockery" (touching the
fine blue broadcloth). " Your poor bouquet, too."
" Not a very good omen, is it ? " he says, with a melan-
choly smile, lifting with his finger the drooped and yellowed
head of his gardenia. " Bah ! who cares for omens ? Only
old women ? "
" Only old women," repeat I, mechanically.
" She was not well last night" he continues, eagerly,
332 "QOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" was she ? I told you she was not ; it accounts for her
talking so oddly, does not it ? It shows " (peering anx-
iously into my face) " that she did not mean any of the
things she said, does not it ? "
I say " Of course," in a constrained voice, and try to
turn away.
" Stay," he says, laying his broad hand on my shoulder,
" do not go ; I want to talk to you. I say, she was not
quite herself when she woke up first, was she ? did not
know what she was saying meant nothing ? "
I know that I am lying, but I answer : " Oh, dear, no !
of course not ! "
" Was it my fancy ? " continues he, with a painful red
spreading even to his forehead ; " one gets odd notions
and these damned candles " (striking one viciously with
his fore-finger) " cast such deceptive shadows but it
seemed to me, Jemima, that she turned away from me as
if she had rather not look at me. Did not she like my
being here, do you think? She is so so maidenly ;
she thought I ought to have stayed outside ? "
" Nonsense," say I, shortly. " It is evident that you
have never fainted ; you do not understand how slow peo-
ple's wits are in coming back. I do not suppose that she
knew you from me, or me from the doctor."
He does not answer. I can hardly expect my logic to
be very convincing, seeing that it has not convinced my-
self.
" Riley is not in the least surprised at this," I say, nod-
ding slightly toward our patient. "When I told him
about her not eating and not sleeping it is my belief that
she has not closed an eye for the last fortnight he said
that the only wonder was, that it had not happened be-
fore."
" Jemima," says the young fellow, turning me uncere-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 333
moniously round so as to face him, while his eyes, in their
searching truth, go through mine like swords ; " tell me
I wish to know what is it that has taken away her sleep
and her appetite ? Is it If "
It is not, as I am well aware, but I maintain a stupid
silence.
" Do not answer me," he says, with a sudden change of
mood, pushing me away from him. " I do not want an
answer ; it was an idiotic question ; this fuss and bustle
have been too much for her, have not they ? and the harcl
weather has tried her. She will be all right again when
once we get quietly off, will not she ? Jemima I say,
Jemima do you think there is a chance of our being able
to have it to-morrow ? "
I shake my head. " I doubt it."
" The day after, then ? " (very wistfully).
I have not the assurance to say " Yes," and I have not
the heart to say " No ; " so I say, " We will see."
CHAPTER XIX.
"WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
ALL the next day Lenore lies in bed, weak and white
it does not take much to pull her down and, for the most
part, silent. She asks for no one ; expresses neither re-
grets nor self-congratulations on the subject of her defer-
red wedding lies with her face, gentle and innocent as
any saintly martyr's what falsehoods faces do tell ! on
the pillow, crowned by a bright, brown glory of hair an
aureole given her by Nature, not martyrdom. She is not
ill, neither well ; very still, and only turning restive under
334 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
doses of brandied beef-tea, repeated ad nauseam. There are
few of the minor diseases that are worse than beef-tea and
brandy. The following day passes in much the same way;
but, on the third morning, Jemima enters cheerfully :
" Biley says you may get up."
The communication does not seem to afford much satis-
faction to the person to whom it is addressed. She turns
her face away with a pettish jerk, and hides it in the pil-
low.
" He says you may dress and come down as soon as
you like."
" As soon as I like ? " repeats Lenore, ironically ;
" that would be a long time off. Why may not I stay
here?" (stretching out her arms lazily). " I am happy.
I like to lie here all day long ; the noises of the house
seem so far off, and your footsteps outside sound so gently.
I like to listen to the clocks, one after another, and count
them as they strike. I feel nothing I think of nothing.
I have not been so happy for years."
" He says that staying in bed is very weakening."
" Then I like being weakened."
" Nonsense ! Please talk like a rational being."
Never was toilet more slowly made than Lenore's
partly from weakness for her illness, though brief, has
told upon her; partly from a deep and innate unwilling-
ness to return to the well and work-a-day world. At
length there is no evading the fact that she is fully dressed ;
not only fully dressed, but established in an arm-chair be-
fore Sylvia's boudoir-fire: a banner-screen between her
face and the flame ; novels, work-boxes, point-lace, a pug
every thing that is necessary to make a rational woman's
happiness within easy reach of her hands. There is one
other addition, without which, many rational women think
happiness incomplete a lover ; and even he is not far off.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 335
As a man's heavy step sounds muffled along the carpeted
passage, as a man's fingers close on the door-handle, Lenore
turns her head resolutely to the other side like a child
averting its face from the inevitable rhubarb and magnesia
and rests her cheek on the back of her chair.
He enters softly, and, afraid even of breathing over
noisily, imagining she is asleep, stoops his waved gold
head over her. He is soon undeceived.
" I wish," she says, in a most wide-awake voice, open-
ing her beautiful, petulant eyes full upon him, " that you
would not come creeping in, in that creaky, tiptoe way;
nothing in the world fidgets me so much."
He starts upright again in a hurry.
"It was a stupid trick," he says, humbly, and then
stops suddenly, afraid of rousing livelier wrath by further
speech. As for her, she rolls her pretty, pettish head from
side to side, and affects not to see him. He grows tired,
at last, of standing with his back to the mantel-shelf, silent,
and says, with eager tenderness, but in a rather frightened
voice :
"You are better?"
" Yes, I am better," she answers, quickly ; " at least, so
they say; but I am still far from well very far; it will be
long enough before I am strong again, and and and up
to any thing."
" Riley says that there is nothing like like change of
air " (reddening guiltily).
" Riley is an old woman ! " (reddening too).
" Lenore ! " throwing himself down on his knees, on the
rug beside her, and, in so doing, giving an unconscious
buffet to the pug's black face, who forthwith departs howl-
ing, unheeded, and with his tail uncurled. " Lenore ! why
need we have half the county to see us married ? Why
need we put on smart clothes ? Why cannot you come
336 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART! "
quietly to church with me to-morrow, in your common bon-
net and shawl " (Scrope is unaware that shawls are, for the
moment, extinct), "with only the clerk to say ' Amen ? ' '
"Where is the hurry?" she asks, tapping her foot
impatiently on the fender. " You talk as if we were two
old people, each with a leg in the grave. Supposing that
we put it off for a year, we should still probably have fifty
to gape opposite each other in."
" Even if we were sure of the fifty," he says, gently,
" I should still grudge the one ; can one be too long hap-
py ? I never heard any one complain of being so."
" Do you like sickly women ? " she says, abruptly, ap-
parently half softened by his tone, and looking amicably at
him. " I think I am radically sickly see how half a day
has pulled me down my elbows stick out like promon-
tories " (pulling up her sleeve to show him) " if you
married me you would have to be always cosseting me
trundling me about in a bath-chair, and measuring out
physic in a spoon for me."
He is about to burst into a storm of protestations, but
she interrupts him.
" Do you know what Jemima said, that day, when I told
her I was going to marry you ? "
"No."
" Well, she said it was indecently soon."
" I do not see what business it was of Jemima's," says
the young man, looking rather surly.
" Neither do I ; but all the same it is true indecently
soon that is the very word that expresses it." As she
speaks, her face becomes spread with a hot blush, and his
own is not slow to repeat it in the deeper colors of man-
hood.
" What does this mean ? " he asks, rising to his feet,
while a look of utter fear makes the red in his cheeks give
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 337
way. " What is this the preface to ? Is it indecently
sooner than it was yesterday, or the day before, or the day
before that ? "
" Do not be angry," she says, deprecatingly, stretching
out her hand on which his own diamonds are flashing.
" You know you are always reasonable you always mind
what I say, even when it is not reasonable ; that is why I
like you."
There is something of the turkey-cock about every wom-
an ; gobbling and swelling if a man is frightened and runs ;
small and silent if he stands still and cries " Shoo ! " It is
his turn now ; there is no use in gobbling at him ; he af-
fects not to see her hand, and only says briefly, " Go on."
" You know," she says, sitting upright in her chair and
straining her neck backward, so that her eyes may attain
his face and watch it, " that I proposed to you it is not
a sort of thing that a man would be likely to forget. I try
to think of it as little as possible, but it is true ; and you
accepted me ; I suppose " (laughing awkwardly) " that
you could not well have been so uncivil as to do other-
wise."
"Goon."
"Well" (fidgeting uneasily), "I mean to marry you still
-fully but but it must be not just yet not now ; a
year six months hence, perhaps instead."
Unwilling to witness the effect of her words, she has
dropped her eyes at the last clause ; but, as the moments
pass, and no sound comes, save that of a cinder falling
from the grate, she looks up again.
" Have you no tongue ? " she says, irritably ; " are you
never going to speak ? "
" A. year hence ! " he says, in a low voice, turning a
face, white as the face of the uncolored dead, toward her.
" That means never. Thank you for leading me so gently
15
838 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
up to it. Do you think I do not see what you are aiming
at ? Do you think I have not watched it coming during
the last fortnight ? I have prayed not to see " (striking
his hands together). " I have entreated God to let me be
blind always. Good God ! " (flinging his arms down on
the chimney-piece, and hiding his face on them) " how do
men bear these things ? Who can teach me ? "
" Bear what ? " she cries, rising hastily to her feet and
putting herjiand on his coat-sleeve. "What are you talk-
ing about ? What is there to bear ? "
" So you have been tricking me all this time, have
you ? " he says, raising his ruffled head and looking delib-
erately at her, with a resentful calm in face and voice.
" At least, it can hardly be called trickery : it was so
lamely done, a child might have seen through the decep-
tion.
Silence.
" Of course you know best " (in the same polite, cold
tone) ; " but would it not have been simpler, and come to
much the same thing in the end, to have left me alone in
the first instance ? "
Left him alone! The very question, in almost the
same words, that Paul had once asked.
" I had gone clean away," he continues, in the same re-
pressed and sedulously quiet voice. " Your polite speeches
had effectually rid you of me. A man would not willingly
listen twice to some of the compliments you paid me at
that ball. I had no intention of coming back ; why did
you send for me ? "
Still no answer, no attempted defence.
" I can at least " (with a bitter smile, that sits ill on
his fair, smooth face) " pay you the compliment of saying
that you are not a good liar. You are not apt at the trade ;
you bungle. Every day, and fifty times a day, your mouth
WE AT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 339
has said to me, I like you you are a good fellow we
shall be happy together ; ' and every da} 7 , and fifty times a
day, your eyes and every movement of your body have
said, ' I loathe you. I can hardly bring myself to speak
civilly to you.' "
Still silence.
" Did it ever occur to you " (taking her by both slender
wrists) " to make a rough calculation of how many false-
hoods you have told me during this last month ? "
" Stop ! " she cries, wrenching away her hands from his
grasp, which has more of the jailer than the lover in it.
" Stop ! you are very bitter to me very. I can hardly
believe that it is you ; but you speak truth. I have told
you many, many lies, but at least I have told them to my-
self too. I have said them over and over again, in the
hope that they would come true at last."
He smiles a dry smile of utter incredulity.
"That was very probable."
" You do not believe me ? " she says, passionately.
" Well, I take God to witness you will hardly disbelieve
me now that ever since that day in the library, when I
thrust myself so immodestly on you" (she is crimsoner
than any closed daisy's petals at the words), "I have
longed and striven with all my heart and soul and strength
to to care for you as as you wish to be cared for."
"Well?"
"I have said over and over to myself all your good
qualities, like a lesson. I have tried " (her face contracts
with an agony of shame) " to wrench away all the love I
ever had to give from the the person who once had it,
and to give it to you instead."
"Well?"
" Sometimes, when I was away from you, I thought I
had succeeded ; but when you came near me, when you
340 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
touched me, good and kind and handsome as you are "
She stops abruptly.
" Go on," he says, in a hoarse whisper. " Do not let
any consideration for my feeling stop you ; it would not
be you if you did good and kind and handsome as I
am (ironically repeating her words).
" It was too soon too soon ! " she cries, clasping her
hands in deep excitement, while the large scalding tears
drop hotly over her cheeks. " Jemima was right it was
indecently soon. In the grief and shame of being so treat-
ed, I wonder, Charlie" (smiling painfully) "that you are
so anxious to marry a jilted woman. I thought I could for-
get all in a minute, but I cannot ; nobody could. If I were
to go away to-day, and throw you over forever, could you
forget me all in a minute ? "
"I would try my best," he says, with a fierce white
smile. "Perhaps it would be more correct to say, 'I will
try my best.' "
" Do you think I do not wish to forget ? " she says,
taking his hand of her own accord, while her wet eyes
gaze wistfully upward, into the deep, angry blue of his.
" Do you think I remember on purpose f Does one enjoy
not sleeping and not eating, and being in miserable, un-
easy pain all day and all night ? "
He keeps silence.
" I am no great prize at the best of times," she says,
half sobbing. " My sisters all my people will tell you
that; but what sort of woman should I have been if I
could have jumped straight out of one man's arms into an-
other's, quite easily and comfortably, without feeling any
shame ? It was bad enough to be able to do it at all. O
Charlie ! Charlie ! knowing what you did about me, how
could you think me worth taking ? How could you take
me?"
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 341
" How could I taJce you ? " he says, with a harsh, low
laugh, as unlike the jocund sound of his usual boyish mirth
as possible. " Do not you know that, when a man is starv-
ing, he is not particular as to having a whole loaf ? He
says * thank you' even for crumbs. I tell you, Lenore,
that morning in Ireland, when I got your note, I had as
little hope of ever holding you in my arms as my wife, as I
had of holding one of God's angels. Wnen I found that
there was a chance of my so holding you, judge whether I
was likely to throw it away."
He has put one of his hands on each of her shoulders,
and stands gazing steadfastly at her, with a bitter yearn-
ing in his eyes.
" I knew that your soul was out of my reach," he con-
tinues, sadly ; " that I should get only your body, and
even that shrank away from me. Shall I ever forget those
first two kisses that you gave me that I made you give
me ? They were colder than ice."
A little pause. The fire-flame quivers and talks to
itself ; the pug plucks up heart again, and, returning, lies
down, with his nose resting on his bowed forelegs.
" I suppose it is all for the best," says Scrope, pres-
ently, with a forced smile ; " at least, it is as well to say so,
is not it ? I was so idiotically fond of you that, if you had
been decently civil to me, I suppose I should have been
happier than any man can be and live."
No answer.
"Do you know," he resumes, in a tone of deep and
sombre excitement, " what has kept me up all this month,
what has hindered me from cutting my own throat or yours
it was a toss-up which what has made me smile and
seem pleased at words that bit and looks that stung f
Well, I will tell you listen, and laugh if it amuses you ;
it is true, all the same. I Jcnew " (lifting his hands from
342 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
her shoulders, and framing her drooped face with them)
" I knew that, if once I could get you all to myself, I could
make you love me ; you would do your best to thwart and
hinder me, but I could maJte you. Lenore, I know it
still."
" Do you ? " she says, sadly. " I wish you could ; but I
doubt it."
" Tell me," cries the young fellow, emboldened by her
gentleness to take her once more in his arms, as if she were
his own " it will do me no good to hear be tantalizing,
rather but still I think it would ease my pain a little
tell me, if you had met me first met me before you came
across him do you think you could have liked me a little
then ? Say c yes,' if you can, Lenore " (with a suffering
accent of entreaty).
"How do I know?" she says, sharply, for once not
shrinking from his contact not struggling in his embrace,
but rather coldly taking it for granted. " What is the good
of looking back ? It seems to me now that, if I had not
met Mm, I should have gone on always, as I had gone on
before, laughing and amusing myself, and being happy in
my way, and not loving anybody much. I never was one
to fall in love easily never ! " (drawing herself up with a
little movement of pride).
" You fell in love with him easily enough," says Scrope,
roughly.
" Yes," she answers, almost humbly, though her face
flames, " you are right, so I did ; it was a boast I had no
right to make."
" What on earth made you do it ? "
" How can I tell ? Perversity, I think ; I always was
perverse from a child ; they said I should pay for it, sooner
or later. I think I have now, have not I ? " (smiling drear-
ily). A moment's pause. " Other people cared for me of
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 343
their own accord," she continues, sighing ; " as for him, al-
most every word I said grated upon him ; I had to fight
and battle even for his toleration."
" And that pleased you ? "
" Does one ever care for the things that one can stretch
out one's hand and take ? " she asks, bitterly. " I do not,
neither do you that is evident, or you would not be here."
After a little pause : " He thought very meanly of me from
the first very. He almost told me so in so many words,
and I I well I only meant to make him alter his mind ;
that was how it began. Bah ! " (breaking off suddenly,
with a tempest of angry pain in her voice), "what does it
matter how it began ? Is not it enough that it did begin,
that it went on, and that now it is ended? "
At the last word her raised voice sinks down, and dies
in a sob. His hold upon her grows lax, he gives a long
sigh of astonished, indignant grief.
" If that was the way to your heart," he says, with a
sort of scorn, " no wonder I missed it." Silence. " Merci-
ful Heavens ! " cries the young man, smiting his hands to-
gether in a sort of wondering frenzy, " did one ever hear
the like ? Must one hold you cheap, and have the ill man-
ners to tell you so ; must one cut you to the heart with
frosty looks and words that stab like your own ; must one
love you tardily and leave you readily, before you will give
one your affection ? If so, Lenore, I tell you candidly that
stark, staring mad about you as I have been for the last
six months I tell you candidly that I had rather be with-
out it."
" You are right," she says, coldly ; " it is not worth
having. After all, you agree with him ; he thought it was
not worth having, and so threw it away."
The moments flash past ; the little moments, that tarry
not to listen to brisk wedding chimes, or the slow passing-
344 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
bell. The two young people still stand opposite one an-
other, each buried in thoughts, whereof it would be hard
to say whose share was the bitterer. Scrope is the first to
break the silence that has fallen on them.
" Tell me, Lenore," he says, breaking out into impetu-
ous speech, " you have said so many disagreeable things to
me in your time, that one more will not matter ; yes, tell
me I will promise not to burst out into violence ; I will
even try to look pleased" (smiling sardonically) ; is there
is there any talk of his coming back ? Have you any
hope of it, that you are getting rid of me so quickly,
all of a sudden ? "
" What do you mean ? " she says, harshly, with a shrink-
ing shiver, as if one had torn open a great gaping wound in
her tender body. " Do you think that if I had had any hope
I should have sent for you f He is not one to speak lightly,
to say one thing to-day and another to-morrow ; I should
wear out my ears with listening before I heard the wheels of
his carriage coming back. No, no ! " (with a low, sobbing
sigh), " I have no hope. It is humiliating to speak of hope
in such a case, is not it ? I suppose I should not, if I had
any spirit."
" If you have really done with him forever, then," says
the young man, in a voice which is still half doubting, " Le-
nore I do not want to be glad at what makes you sorry;
but how can I help it ? then, for God's sake, come to me ;
what is there to stand between us ? I know I can make
you forget him ; even to-day perhaps you will laugh at
me for saying so you seem to hate me a shade less than
you did. O beloved, out of the great harvest of love that
you lavished on him him who did not take it, who hardly
stooped to pick it up, who tossed it carelessly back to you
have not you saved one grain for me, who have been
hungry and famished so long ? "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 345
There are tears in his shaken voice, though none in his
eyes ; and indeed a man who weeps in wooing mostly damns
himself. In a hairy, blubbered face there must always be
less of the moving than the ridiculous.
" Say f yes,' " he cries, with a passionate agony of plead-
ing, twining both his arms once more about her. " I will
hold you here until you say it. I will let no sound but
' yes ' pass those lips that have never yet given me a kind
word or a kiss worth the taking."
" What am I to say ' yes ' to ? " she asks, holding aloof
from him, as much as may be, with the old gesture of
shrinking distaste. " Am I to say that I will marry you ?
Well, I said that a month ago ; that is settled. Why must
we go over all the old story again ? "
" But do we mean the same thing ? " asks Scrope, with
distrustful vehemence. " That is the question. Will you
marry me now at once, without any senseless, causeless
delay?"
She has drawn herself away from him, and now turns,
and, walking to the window, looks blankly out on the
drear, white snow world on the long, sharp icicles hang-
ing from the leaves.
" Speak," he says, his voice sharpened and roughened,
following her to the other side of the room. " I am wait-
ing I will wait on you as long as you please ; but if I
keep you here to the Judgment-Day I will not go unan-
swered ! Will you marry me to-morrow ? great Heav-
ens ! if it had not been for this unhappy contre-temps, by
to-morrow you would have been four days my wife ! or
will you not ? "
She is trembling all over, and her cold, white face is
twitched with pain, and wet with unwiped tears.
" Not to-morrow ! " she says, with an involuntary shud-
der ; " not so soon not quite so soon. Let me have time
346 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
to draw my breath ! I am not well ; as I live, I am not
well. See how thin I have grown " (holding out one hand,
on which the wandering veins and the small bones indicate
their places more clearly than they did last year). " I,
who " (smiling) " used to be so afraid of growing too fat !
I do not think I need be afraid of that now, need I ? Let
me get quite well quite strong first. I shall be better
worth your taking, then."
" Lenore ! " cries the young man, seizing her by the
arm, in an access of sudden and uncontrollable passion,
" did you ever in all your life think of any one but your-
self? What business have you to spoil my life for me?
What business have you to make me a laughing-stock for
everybody ? tell me that ! "
" I have no business none," she answers, drooping her
long neck and sobbing.
" Will you marry me to-morrow, Lenore ? " (speaking
with the stern quiet of self-constraint).
" Not to-morrow not to-morrow," she answers, mildly,
turning her head restlessly from side to side. " I meant
really to have married you on Tuesday you cannot doubt
that ? Had I not my wedding-dress on ? But see how ill
the thought has made me. Give me six months. In six
months I shall get used to the idea ; perhaps I shall get the
better of my temper. Six months is a long time ; things
that happened six months ago seem a long way off" (her
eyes straying dreamily out to the still, white trees, and the
square church-tower).
" I see how it is," he says, fiercely ; " I have been very
patient with you, and you think I shall be patient always.
You are mistaken ; I am sick of patience ; I have done with
it. I will marry you now or never."
At his words, her swimming eyes flash, and the wet
carnation flowers hotly on her cheeks.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 347
" Do you wish," she cries, violently, " for a wife who
hates your touch ? who dreads being left alone with you ?
who never hears your footstep without longing to fly out
of sight out of ear-shot of you ? If you do, you have odd
taste ! "
He clinches his hands, and his teeth close hard on his
under lip, but he does not trust himself to speak.
" Is not it my own interest to be fond of you to marry
you ? " she continues, in strong excitement. " Are not you
rich and prosperous ? and have not I all my life been in
love with ease, and wealth, and pleasure? Is it from
choice that I wake all night ? I am sick of being unhappy,
and fretting, and hating everybody. God knows I would
be happy if I could ! Be patient a little longer only a
little."
But he only answers, " JVbw or never"
" Well, then, it must be never ! " she answers, vehe-
mently " there you have said it yourself ; it is your do-
ing, not mine. It is you who have thrown me over not I
you."
" Very well," he answers, in a husky whisper, hastily
averting his face, to hinder her from seeing the havoc that
despair is working on its beauty ; " you are right it shall
be never I "
Utter silence for a space silence as deep as if they had
been dead.
" Lenore," he says, at length, turning toward her for
the last time his clay-white glance and the indignant
agony of his eyes, " you make one say ugly things to you.
Were you ever any thing but a curse to any one that you
had to do with ? You have cursed full six months of my
life ? but you shall curse no more of it : I will do without
you. There is no lesson so hard that one cannot learn it
in time, and I will."
348 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
She is silent.
" Even for a good woman, who had loved one, and
whom one had lost by death, one would not mourn for-
ever," he continues, in the same rough, unsteady whisper;
" how much less for you, who have never given me any
thing but unladylike insults unwomanly gibes ! Good-
bye, Lenore ! Yes, good-bye ! But, before I go, give me
one kiss one real kiss. Since they were to have been all
mine, spare me one ! "
So speaking he stoops, and, for an instant, lays his lips
upon her unwilling mouth. Then he goes. Thus she is
rid of all her lovers.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 349
NIGHT.
' Good-night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow,
To these that shall not have good morrow ;
Ye gods, be gentle to all these.
Nay, if death be not, how shall they be ?
Nay, is there help in heaven ? it may be
All things and lords of things shall cease."
CHAPTER I.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
AFTEB Life's little hot day, comes Death's long, cool
night ; whether of the two is the pleasanter ? Well, we
shall know anon. Oh ! patient friends, you have come
with me so far, come with me yet a little farther. I will
not keep you long. Already the shadows sketch them-
selves ; the faint-colored even cometh. Summer is here
again early summer, early June, as when first, O reader,
you and I met and panted together through the " endless
days," when even night brought not darkness. Down in
England, the meadows have a lilac tinge over them, from
the ripe, heavy-headed grasses, and the horse-chestnut
flowers' spikes have changed into little prickly green balls.
But we are not in England, O reader, you and I ; we are
in Switzerland, in the high cold valley of the Engadine.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
We are at the end of our day's journey, have stiffly
descended from the huge dusty carriage in which we have
crampedly sat all the long and shining day. To-morrow
350 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
we shall reach our final destination, Pontresina. Mean-
while here we are, up among the mountains, the torrents,
the pines, at this loveliest village of Bergun. An hour
has passed since our arrival, and we have dined, if you can
apply that sacred word to the empty form of tapping with
our knives a black-boned chicken's skeleton, and sipping a
nauseous wine of the country, black as Tartarus, and with
a flavor that is agreeably compounded of pills, slate-pencil,
and ink. There is no denying degrading as it is to the
supremacy of mind over body that a bad dinner has a
depressing effect. Not one of us three but feels cross and
empty. Sylvia tries to sit upon a hard-bottomed, straight-
backed chair, as if it were one of her own padded easy
ones, and fails. Lenore stalks to the window and looks
over the balcony. I think that people grow after they are
thought grown up, oftener than is usually supposed. Le-
nore has certainly grown within the last six months, or
perhaps it is only her loss of flesh that gives her such a
tall look. She used to have a good deal of the shapely
solidity that constitutes a person's claim to be a fine
woman rather a butcher's term of commendation, at best
shapely she must always be, but fine she is no longer ;
only very slender and willowy. I pick up the visitor's
book, read the dreary waggeries, the lame rhymes, the
consequential commendations of bed and board. I come
to the last entry :
" Mr. Tompkins, London.
" Mrs. Tompkins, "
" Miss Tompkins, "
" Miss L. Tompkins, "
"Mr. J.T. Tompkins,"
" Miss Harris, "
" Exceedingly pleased with the accommodation at this
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 351
hotel the attendance excellent, rooms most clean, and
food better than at any other hotel in the Engadine."
I read this aloud.
" There is a prospect for us ! "
" You are not serious ? " cries Sylvia, starting upright
in her chair, and opening eyes as round as marbles in unaf-
fected dismay. " That is not really there ! You are only
joking ! "
" Kead for yourself," I answer, handing the book to her,
while I joined our junior in the window. Well, one must
send all appetite to one's eyes ; there is at least plenty of
food for them. The pearly evening sky, cut by the cold
lilac peaks ; the mountains, that wear always round their
waist and feet a girdle of great pines ; a sombre army
rising, pointed top above pointed top, in their endless,
fadeless green ; the rough torrent-course, that furrows the
hill's face, like the traces of a tearful agony ; an evening
glimmer of meadow-flowers ; a flash of bright water. And
right under us the little village street, the deep-roofed low
houses, the tiny casements, out of which the lavish pinks
and flowered picotees are hanging; the queer sententious
inscription on the chalet nearest us :
"DAS HAUS STET IN GOTTES HAND,
JAN PEDEE GEIGOEI
BlN ICH GENAND."
And is not that Jan Peder himself, sitting outside, on a log
of wood ? He is old and withered, and very much the
worse for wear.
Insensibly I begin to forget the void feeling that ruffled
my temper five minutes ago, as I listen to the soothing
drip, drip, of the two-spouted pump, that is always pour-
ing into a wooden trough. The pump seems to be the
352 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
rendezvous of the village ; the leisurely chatter, in this odd
mongrel Romansch tongue, rises soft and subdued to our
ears. A tinkling of slow bells, as a herd of lovely, smoke-
colored cows come slowly treading down the street, and
stoop their sleek necks to drink. If one could see the in-
side of these folks' lives no doubt one would find that they
were as basely grovelling as those of our own lower orders
lives probably lightened only by garlic and beer ; but
looking now at the outside of them, on this quiet purple
evening, it seems as if one had come upon a little sudden
patch of old-world innocent Arcadia.
"I wish that Jan Peder Grigori would go in-doors,"
says Lenore, gravely; " it must be very bad for him, being
out so late."
" There must be some one here besides us," I say, lean-
ing over the balcony, and pointing to a second and smaller
dusty carriage, drawn up behind our great lumbering ark.
" A man, too," says Lenore, with lazy interest, " if a
portmanteau be a sufficient proof of masculinity."
" It is such a bran-new one, too ; " continue I, laughing,
" that he must be either a just-married man, or a man just
about to be married."
" Who was it said that a new flannel petticoat was an
infallible sign of a bride ? " asks Lenore, languidly. "Does
the same hold good of men and portmanteaus ? I wish we
could see his initials, but the hat-box hides them."
" Now that I think of it," I say, meditatively, " I have
a vision of having seen vestiges of food on that table in
the corner ; let us make Kolb find out who he is, for, by his
luggage, I feel sure that he is an Englishman."
I am right. An Englishman he is, name unknown ; he
has come down from St. Moritz, and is on his homeward
road ; he is to set off at cock-crow to-morrow, and he went
out walking only five minutes before our arrival. This is
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 353
all the information we obtain, all the food we get to keep
alive our faint and flagging interest.
" Do you mean to stay fustily in-doors all evening ? "
asks Lenore, presently, with a yawn, " because I do not.
I am sick of Jan Peder, and the pump, and the goats ; I
shall go and explore, like Mrs. Elton in ' Emma.' "
" Do not ! " cry I, hastily, and dissuasively. " You
know that going out when the dew is falling always brings
on your cough."
"Pooh!" replies she, lightly. "What matter if it
does ? I am going to set up such a stock of strength at
Pontresina that it would be a thousand pities not to be a
little worse before I get there."
" At least put on your " I begin, but she interrupts
me.
"Did you ever know me to take advice in all your
life ? " she asks, with a petulant gesture. " I should not
wonder if I met our unknown friend of the new portman-
teau ; I am not sure that I am not going to look for him.
Au revoir ! "
I gaze after her and sigh, with a line of " Elaine " run-
ning in my head :
" Being so very wilful, you must go."
CHAPTER II.
" There cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
AFTER all, she puts a shawl over her head; it is not a
very thick one, but neither is the mountain air very keen
on this softly-creeping summer night. It is red, and the
354 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
old men and the women sitting in the door-ways of the
dark little houses stare at it admiringly. She passes
among them quickly past the rickety little wooden bal-
conies, the piles of firewood, the numberless odd little
casements, like windows in a doll's house it is not them
that she wants till, at a sudden turn, the village is behind
her, out of sight the laughing, leisurely, chattering vil-
lage and the river that she sought is before her. A great,
bold hill-shoulder rises in front of her against the dark
night sky, and beside her the river boils and maddens along
in riotous white play ; it is so swift that the eye cannot
follow it ; it tosses high its cold spray, and cries exulting-
ly, " O snow ! I am as white as you." Nobody sees her
she is all alone ; even the broad-faced moon has not yet
looked in silver and pearl over the hill. When one is
alone one does many foolish things. Lenore throws her-
self on her knees on a flat stone close to the brink dashed,
indeed, by the stream's stormy white dust and speaks out
loud to it :
" O good, kind little river ! will you drown memory for
me ? will you drown Paul ? "
Lenore is not always thinking of Paul ; sometimes for
almost a day she forgets him ; but, long as it is since he
cast her off, and short as was the time during which she
possessed him, the impulse still holds her, on seeing any
beautiful thing, to say, " I will show it to Paul ; " on hear-
ing any witty thing, " I will tell it to Paul." Paul was a
cross fellow, cruel and cold, as she sometimes tells herself;
but he would have loved this mad river, biting and raven-
ing with fierce foam-teeth against the dark bowlders that
lie in its bed, and crying violently to them, "Let me
pass ! " If he were here now, among the yellow tree-foil,
his arm round her waist and her head on his shoulder !
they two standing, in dumb ecstasy, with only the larches
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 355
waving their green plumes above their heads, and the wa-
ter's endless, restless roar, that ceases not day nor night,
January nor June, making a loud hubbub at their feet
alone with the river, the mountains, and God 1 She can
almost feel his arm ; she turns her eyes to look up into his,
but then the dream flies ; there are no kind eyes to look
into there is no Paul -none !
She starts up hastily, and hurries on. The gorge nar-
rows ; there is only room for her and for the river the
panting fury of the stream. " O river ! you take my breath
away. Tarry a little ; I cannot keep up with you ! " But
the river makes answer : " I cannot tarry ; I have an errand
unto the great gray sea." On and on, on and on she
saunters, not heeding how far nor whither, until at length
she comes to a slight hand-bridge of planks that gives and
vibrates beneath her. There she stands and leans over the
slender railing, gazing, with eyes that try in vain to keep
up with it, at the swirling torrent. The evening is both
darkening and lightening : darkening, for the sun is gone
farther and farther away ; lightening, for the moon is com-
ing yea, come. Already she had washed the hills' faces
with her cool silver flood : now her pearl-white feet have
reached have lightly trodden on the water the wonder-
ful water ! Can it be all the same the same when it lies
in opal sleep, and when it plunges against and angrily
smites its drenched rocks ? If one had but some one
some dear person to show it all to !
After crossing the bridge the path she has hitherto fol-
lowed takes a sharp turning round the spur of a bill, and
is immediately lost to sight. As she stands, still leaning
over the rickety hand-rail, and watching the moon-colored
bubbles, she hears a footstep coming along this unseen
path. It is growing late ; the moon is rising high ; this
place is inconceivably lonely. Her first impulse is to turn
356 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
and run homeward, but her second contradicts it. Why
should she stir ? Bah ! it is probably some innocent rough
peasant, clumping home to bed in his deep-eaved chalet.
He will stare at her cloak, and probably give her a Ro-
mansch " good-night," to which she will be puzzled to re-
spond ; so she stays. Nearer and nearer comes the footstep,
and her heart beats a trifle quicker than its wont. Her
eyes are fixed on the corner which will give to view the
owner of this slow and intermittent tread. Here he comes,
out of the rock-shadow into the light ! He is not a peas-
ant ! He is surely, he is an Englishman ! He is Paul!
O God in heaven ! it cannot be ! Men dress so much alike
there is such a deceptive resemblance between all the
men of a class at a little distance. He comes a step or two
nearer, then stops and looks upward. The moon shines
down full and white on his upturned face the honest,
shrewd fac^, that is neither gentle nor beautiful. She sees
his cool calm eyes glitter in the moonbeams. He is care-
lessly dressed, without any necktie. His strong throat
rises bare and muscular, and his hands are buried deep in
the pockets of the old Dinan shooting-jacket. Do you
think that she faints or topples over into the water, or
screams or laughs hysterically, or calls out loud? Not
she ! She only stands still, with one slight hand hard
grasping the hand-rail, and with a heart whose loud pulsa-
tions drown the voice of the triumphant foamy stream,
waiting for her heaven to come to her. Has Death let her
slip by him, having seen her bitter pain ? Is she already
in the blessed land ? Paul is so busy moon-gazing that he
is close to her his foot is upon the plank before he per-
ceives her. Then he jumps almost out of his clothes out
of his Dinan shooting-jacket out of his skin.
She could not have cried " Paul!" in answer if you
WHAT TEE AUTHOR SAYS. 357
had offered her all the kingdoms of the world as a bribe.
He stoops his tall head till his eager face is close to hers ;
he stares hard into her eyes; he even stretches out his
hand and touches her red cloak to assure himself that she
is real. Yes, it is no ghost-woman ; it is a real Lenore,
with a face much paler, indeed, than the Lenore he remem-
bers a face grave with the gravity of intense emotion,
touched with the trouble of overpowering wonder that is
looking back at him with wide and lovely eyes.
" Great Heaven ! who would have thought of seeing
you here ? "
In the accents of intense surprise it is difficult to ascer-
tain the presence or absence of joy or sorrow. One would
be puzzled to say whether Paul was very glad or very
grieved at this meeting at the \vcrld's end with his old
love.
" Lenore ! is it Lenore f " (again narrowly scanning
her white and quivering face). " How, in the name of won-
der, did you come here ? "
It is stupid to be so tongueless, is not it? standing
dumb, with hanging head, like a child playing at being shy.
But she seems to have lost the art of framing words.
" Will you not speak to me ? " he continues, with an
eager hesitation, mistaking the cause of her speechlessness ;
" will you not shake hands with me ? "
She puts out her hand in a moment : does he feel how
it is shaking as it lies in his cool clasp ?
" You you are not alone here ? " involuntarily glan-
cing at her left hand). " You are with with "
" No, I am not alone," she answers, speaking every
word very slowly and carefully, as if not quite sure
whether the right words would come ; " Jemima and
Sylvia"
"Jemima!" he says, pronouncing the word, with a
358 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
lingering 1 emphasis, as if it carried him back into memory,
and smiling rather pensively.
Both are silent for a few moments only two voices are
heard: the river's loud hoarse one, as it keeps calling
always to the rocks and the dumb green pines, and the
grasshopper's sharp and shrill and infinitely content. If
it could but last forever ! They two standing on that nar-
row bridge, on a sheet of silver, the river all silver, too
tearing and roaring below them ; the larches softly tossing
their small green feathers ; the unsleeping grasshopper
singing his pleasant song ; and they two looking kindly
into each other's eyes. But when could one ever say to
any happy moment, as Joshua said to the docile sun, " Stand
thou still ? " He will not stand still ; he could not if he
would ; he is jostled away by his pushing younger broth-
ers.
" How often I have wondered whether I should ever
meet you again ! " says Paul, presently, with a long sigh ;
"after all, the world is small and if I did, where and
how? Certainly, this is the last place that ever would
have entered my head ; and yet, only five minutes ago I
was thinking of you."
" Were you ? " she says, softly, while her eyes shine
gently back at him, like beautifulest dew-wet flowers
through happy tears !
" You have forgiven me ? " he says, anxiously catching
hold of her other hand, and holding both in the same loose
friendly clasp in which he had before held the one. " We
are friends, are not we? At peace ? "
She has no hands to hide her face ; she cannot hinder
him from seeing how her drooped eyes brim over how the
heavy great tears are rolling down over her smart scarlet
cloak. In the tender gentleness of her small wet face there
is not much war.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 359
" Do not cry," he says, looking surprised and miserable,
as a man always does, when a woman unexpectedly weeps.
" What is there to cry about ? I am not " (smiling rather
awkwardly) " going to scold you this time. You know I
always was a good hand at lecturing, was not I ? Often
and often since I have wished that I had not been quite
such a good one. ... I can hardly believe that it is you,"
he says, after a pause, again interrupting the river's and
the grasshoppers' duet. " What have you been doing to
yourself ? Somehow you are different. You are too old
to grow, 1 suppose ; people do not grow at nineteen ; but
but surely you are thinner than you used to be ! Have
you been ill ? Are you ill now ? "
" Not very," she answers, lightly ; " anybody else would
have made a trifle of it, but you know I always make the
most of things, and I have not much of a constitution so
they tell me."
He does not ask any other question for the moment.
" For my part, I am glad," she continues, with a rest-
less laugh. " I never could see what use a good constitu-
tion was to any one, except to make them suffer more, and
die harder when their time came."
" I suppose you have been threatening to break a
blood-vessel again," he says, with a smiling allusion to
what she had told him on one of the earliest days of their
acquaintance. " Good God ! can that be only a year
ago?"
" Only a year ! " she echoes, dreamily. " But a year is
a long time."
" You are pale, too," he says, proceeding with his scru-
tiny ; " are you always pale now ? The only time that I
remember you as pale as you are now was that night when
I upset you into the Ranee ! How wet you were ! How
the water dripped from your long hair 1 I did not believe
360 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
till then that women really had such long hair. I can see
you now ! " His gray eyes look kind and almost wistful
as he thus travels back into the pretty dead past.
" Can you ? " she says, almost inaudibly.
" It was all a mistake, I suppose," he continues, sigh-
ing, " a blunder a bungle but it was pleasant while it
lasted, was not it ? "
She cannot speak for tears.
" Lenore," he says, after another silence, in a tone of
stronger excitement than any that he has yet used, " I am
going to tell you something. Often and often I have won-
dered whether I should ever have the chance of telling you.
Sometimes I have wished that I should, and sometimes I
have hoped that I should not. It does not much matter
what you think of me now, one way or another, but I do
not think that it will improve your opinion of either my
wisdom or my humility. Do you remember that last letter
you sent me ? "
She is not pale now ; he cannot accuse her of it. No
rose in any midsummer garden was ever so red ; and her
streaming eyes flash in the mild moonlight with the old
angry spirit. Is he going to twit her with that poor little
overture that miscarried so piteously ?
" I did not believe in it," he goes on, still in hot excite-
ment. " I was sore and mad from your galling bitter
words. Lenore" (almost entreatingly), " why do you let
your tongue cut like a knife ? I thought it was only a
flirting manoeuvre to get me back and make a fool of me a
second time. I hate being made a fool of ! Nobody had
ever taken the trouble to do it before. I hate being trod-
den upon. I like to walk upright and go my own way."
"Well?"
" You remember the answer I sent I hope you burnt
it I am not proud of it," reddening through all his sun-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 301
tan. " Well, when it was gone, I read your letter over
again, and, by dint of poring over it line by line, I grew to
think that there was a true ring in it. Lenore, it was very
clever of you ! I do not know how you managed to get
that true ring. I began to think of of the dear old
time " (his voice, though he is a man, shakes a little). " I
began you will laugh at me for thinking of such a trifle
at such a moment to remember the old blue gown and
Huelgoat."
She turns away and leans over the bridge ; and, unseen
by him, unseen by any one, her tears hotly drop into the
cold river, and are swallowed by it.
" I recollected things you used to say," he continues,
with a pensive smile, given rather to the past then the
present. "You had such a pretty, fond way of saying
things well " (dashing his hand across his forehead, and
abruptly changing his r tone), " the upshot of it was, that I
resolved to ask you to to to kiss and make friends, in
short I suppose one may as well word it in that childish
way as any other. I had even" (beginning to laugh
harshly, for one's laughs at one's own expense are rarely
melodious) "got a new pen, squared my elbows, and sat
down to write to you." She is trembling all over, and
panting, as one breathless from a long race.
" Why did not you ? why did not you ? " she cries,
with almost a wail.
" Why did not If " he repeats, looking at her with
unfeigned astonishment. "I wonder at your asking that.
Why? Because at that very moment, not a week after
you had composed that triumph of pathos " (with a bitter
sneer), " I heard of your engagement to Scrope. I saw
how much the true ring was worth then ; I believe I
laughed. There is always something to be thankful for,
and I was heartily thankful that I had not written. There
16
362 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
is no use in eating more dirt than one can help in this
world, is there ? "
" But I am not engaged now ! " she cries, passionately.
" I can hardly believe that I ever was really ; people exag-
gerate things so in the telling. I think it was always more
play than earnest."
" More play than earnest f " he repeats, in utter and
blank astonishment. " Why, I understood that the wed-
ding-day had come that you were all dressed-^and that it
was only put off on account of your having been taken
suddenly ill ! "
" Yes," she answers, incoherently ; " thank God, I was
ill, very ill; that was what saved me! Thank God!
Thank God!"
" Saved you ? " he repeats, looking at her with un-
limited wonder ; " how do you mean ? Surely it was your
own doing ? It was only put off, was not it ? it is still
to be?"
" Never ! never ! " she cries, wildly. " Who can have
told you such things ? It was all a farce from beginning
to end ; it never was any thing serious. I I think I
must have been a little off my head."
"And you are not engaged to Scrope?" (with an
accent of extreme surprise).
"Not I," she answers, vehemently; "do not suggest
any thing so dreadful."
" Nor to any one else ? "
" Any one else ! " she echoes, scornfully. " To whom
else should I be ? Must I always be engaged to some
one?"
Now that it is all clear between them, now that all clouds
of misconception have been swept away, now that they
are all alone here in the moonlight, surely he will take her
in his arms. Her head will rest on the shoulder of the old
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 363
jacket, where it lias so often confidently lain before. But
he only turns away with something like a curse, and says,
half under his breath, " God ! what lies people tell ! " A
silence. When next Paul speaks, it is in a constrained
and sedulously-governed voice.
" I did not bless either you or him that day, I can tell
you not that that did you much harm ; but this was quite
at the first, quite. When a thing has sense and justice in
it, one soon gives up pricking against it. I have long
given up pricking against this ; I have grown so wise "
(laughing nervously) " that I acquiesce in it contentedly."
" Do you ? " she says, and her throat seems to have
grown suddenly dry, and to send forth only harsh and ugly
sounds.
" Perhaps perhaps you will come round to him yet,"
says Paul, speaking with a very white face, and a tremor
in his deep voice ; " in time, you know ; time does surpris-
ing things things that one would not believe ! You
you might do worse."
A fiery, 'searing pain goes through her heart.
" You are very good," she says, while the flame of her
hot eyes dries her tears ; " but I really do not see what
business it is of yours."
" None," he answers, almost humbly ; " none ! I beg
your pardon for having said it ; but you know you con-
sented just now that we should be friends, and friends may
take an interest in each other's future, may not they? "
She does not answer ; she is listening to the grasshop-
per his sharp treble song seems to have grown very dis-
mal all of a sudden.
" Lenore," cries the other, impulsively, again catching
her small hands, " before we say any thing more, let me
tell you I must tell you about about my future."
" Well ? "
364 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
Her eyes, dry now, achingly dry, are staring back at
him, with an unnamed fear.
" My people have been up at St. Moritz," he says, going
on rapidly with his story, " so have I, for the last two
months ; I am hurrying home now as fast as I can, to get
things straight. I am going perhaps you have heard it
already I am going to be married."
When one receives a mortal blow, sometimes one does
not feel much pain at the first so they tell me ; one is
only stunned. I do not think that Lenore feels much pain,
only her wits go a wool-gathering. Not for long, however.
Even though one is light-headed from extremest agony,
one has still the womanly instinct to draw a decent cloak
over one's ugly yawning wounds. Not much more than
the usual interval between question and answer has elapsed,
before some one some kind spirit, I think, who has crept
inside her cold and quivering body speaks in almost Le-
nore's voice speaks with a stiff little smile :
" To your cousin ? "
" Yes, to my cousin."
A little trifling pause, that would not be noticed, so
short is it, in any ordinary conversation ; a pause, during
which Lenore is fighting more fiercely than ever the typical
lioness fought for her whelps fighting for a voice, for a
laugh, for civil careless words ; and he or she who in one
of these mortal battles fights strongly, with heart and soul,
with decency and self-respect on his or her side, mostly
overcomes. Only it takes a great deal of lint to heal the
wounds afterward. Lenore overcomes. But the victory
is hardly complete ; she cannot let him see her face. She
leans over the bridge-side, as she leaned five minutes ago
to hide her happy tears ; but there are no tears to hide
now.
" The ideal girl ! " she says, with a sort of laugh. " The
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 365
woman with eyes like a shot partridge's rather dull, but
very loving ! You see I remember all about her."
Paul does not speak ; he also leans over the bridge,
and there is not much of the triumphant bridegroom in the
eyes that are idly fixed on a pointed rock, gray, and shin-
ing with wet moonbeams, which every minute the stream
deluges.
" If you remember, I always prophesied it," says the
girl, feeling her words come more readily ; " only, like
Cassandra, nobody believed my prophecies."
" Why did you prophesy it ? " he asks, almost angrily.
" There was no sense in such a prophecy no ground for
it. There was not such a thought in any one's head no,
nor ever would have "
He stops suddenly. She does not speak, only she
shakes her head gently. Her wits have come quite back ;
she has buried the pain in a shallow hole, out of sight, for
the moment. When this is over when he is gone it
will shake off the light covering of its temporary grave,
and rise up like a giant. Then again she will have to
fight ; but now for the moment she has won a most numb
quiet.
" Why do you shake your head ? " he asks, abruptly.
" Does it mean that you do not believe me ? At least in
the old time you used to give me credit for speaking truth
sometimes too much truth to please you ; why should I
deceive you now ? now that no word that either you
or I could speak could bring us one jot nearer each
other?"
Still, she only leans her arms on the rail of the bridge
leans heavily on it and her drooped head sinks low
down.
" When was it that you prophesied it ? " he asks, al-
most in a whisper, coming nearer her. " Was it at Huel-
366 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
goat, or at Chateaubriand's tomb, as we stood and watched
the waves and the sea-gulls ? If you did, I compliment
you ; you were indeed far-seeing." (No answer.) " I
never was one to care violently for anybody never. The
game never seemed to me worth the candle. It does not
sound well, but I had always liked myself best ; but
somehow I like to say it now, though there is not much
sense in it (shake your head as much as you please) but,
before God, I did care for you beyond measure in my way
it was not a very pleasant way only I tried my best to
hide it. I knew your amiable peculiarity of never valuing
what you could get ; but I did love you I did I did! "
(rising into an emphasis and excitement most unlike him
as he ends).
" Did you," she says, faintly, a little spark of animation
coming into her face and into her dull eyes. " I thought
you liked me ; afterward they all said you did not."
" Well, I love no one beyond measure now, I suppose,"
he says hastily, pushing the hair off his forehead with
cross and jerky movement. " My affections are quite with-
in bounds well in hand " (smiling ironically). " The other
was the pleasantest while it lasted, but no doubt this is
the healthier state." (Still, silence.) " It is much better
as it is," he says presently, speaking vehemently, and as if
more with a view to convincing himself than her. " If we
had married then, how we should have hated each other by
now ! Did we ever look at any thing from the same point
of view ? and you are not a woman to be shaped to a hus-
band's liking. Good God ! how I laughed at that idiot
West's notion of moulding you! You would not have
given in, neither should I. Yes, we should have been
miserable."
" Miserable yes, miserable most miserable," she
echoes very slowly and mechanically ; but whether she ap-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 367
plies the word to the hypothetical case he puts, or to her
own actual one, is not clear even to herself.
"You agree with me?" he says, sharply, as if not
much gratified by the discovery of her acquiescence. " Of
course ! I knew you did. Yes, it is better for both of us ;
specially better for you"
" Much better," she says, speaking with an immense
effort, and even accomplishing a laugh. " As you say, when
did we ever look at any thing from the same point of view,
even during the short time we were together ? how short !
how short ! " (uttering the words in a dragging, dreary
way). "Hardly a day passed that we did not quarrel.
Yes, it was pleasant at the time quite pleasant. I sup-
pose that your your cousin" (with a tight, strained
smile) " will not mind my allowing that, will she ? But,
no doubt we shall both do better I, as you say, especially."
A little pause.
" Do you remember," he says, suddenly, " that day at
St.-Malo; howl"
She interrupts. " I remember nothing," she says, firmly,
though her pale lips tremble. " I have the worst memory
in the world." He looks mortified, and relapses into si-
lence. " Tell me," she says, presently, with a nervous ex-
citement in her manner, " tell me all about yourself; that
is much more interesting. When is it to be what day
exactly ? I should like to think of you, you know to
drink your health, and " (laughing hysterically) " I suppose
I ought to send you a present, ought not I ? "
" For God's sake, do not ! " he cries, hastily, " unless
you can send me your bad memory ; I should thank you
for that."
" You never quarrel with her, I suppose ? " continues
the girl, drawing strength even from the very intensity of
her own misery to speak collectedly, and even smilingly.
368 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" It is all smooth sailing, like a boat on a duck-pond ! No
doubt you can mould her, like a piece of clay, into what-
ever shape you like."
Paul reddens. " She is a good girl," he says moodily ;
" and when I am away from you I know that I shall be hap-
py with her at least " (sighing heavily) " I ought to be ; at
all events, I shall have peace that is something. All my
life before I met you I thought it was every thing." (After
a pause) " Thank God, she does not know how to sneer ! 5)
" And when is it to be ? " she asks, still smiling ; " you
know you have not told me ; tell me. I wish to know the
day the very day."
" Immediately," he says, feverishly ; " the sooner the
better. What is there to wait for ? "
" Well, I will think of you," she says, commanding her
voice with great difficulty, and stretching out her trembling
hand kindly to him; "yes, I will that is" (breaking into
an unsteady laugh), " if if I do not forget."
" Do nothing of the kind," he cries, roughly pressing
the slender cold fingers; "neither then nor ever ! Let us
make a compact, never to think of each other again. What
pleasant thoughts can we have of one another ? Least of all,
think of me on that day," he continues, after an interval,
speaking with the signs of strong excitement. " I ask it of
as you a favor ; if your face comes between me and the par-
son " (laughing harshly) " I shall not be very ready with my
responses ! Let me have one good look at you ! " (after
another pause, while his breath comes quick and short)
" just one. It would be a pity quite to forget the face of the
handsomest woman one ever knew, would not it ? There !
there ! " There is the pallor of a mad longing on his
cold shrewd face, as he stands staring and stammering in
the moonlight. " Good-bye, lovely eyes ! " he says, in a
hoarse whisper ; " good-bye, lovely lips ! you gave me no
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 369
peace while I had you ; but, yet I wish O God ! how I
wish"
He stops abruptly. His mad fond words have brought
back the solace of all the sorrowful to her smarting eyes ;
they are shining with the soft dimness of tender tears, as
they grow to his harsh and altered face.
"Wish nothing," she says, gently. "I have wished
many things in my time that you were dead ; that I my-
self were ; that one could have things twice over, or not
at all but you see they have none of them come true."
" Let me, at lea*st, wish one thing," he cries, violently.
" Whether you let me, or no, I will wish it ! I will pray,
and urgently entreat God for it that this this hell, that
is just half a step off heaven, may not come over again !
Lenore, pretty Lenore, what ill-luck makes us both live in
England ? What security have we that we shall not come
across each other again, and yet again, and yet again ? "
" There is not much danger," she says, calmly, " at
least, not yet awhile ; we are not going home ; we are
going up to Pontresina for many months for all the sum-
mer."
"To Pontresina?" he exclaims, brusquely. "What
are you going there for ? Health or pleasure ? Not
health surely?" peering at her again with an anxious
suspicion.
" Partly," she answers ; and then trying to speak lightly
and merrily, " I suppose being over-lively and over-amused
wears one out as much as over-work or over-grief ; I was
so gay last winter- so gay that I danced all the flesh off
my bones."
He makes no comment on this announcement.
" I am going to lay up such a store of strength against
next winter," she continues, laughing almost loudly, " for
I mean to be gayer than ever then gayer than ever."
370 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
The contrast between the words she is uttering and the
black devastation that is laying waste her soul strikes her
with such bitter force that she turns away sharply.
" Do you ? " he says, fiercely. " I dare say ! What is
it to me ? Why do you tell me ? "
Higher and higher the fair broad moon has been sail-
ing; she has reached her "zenith; now, nothing escapes
her ; every larch-feather, every yeasty crown of froth, every
daisy and fine grass-blade, she has daintily washed.
" I am going," Paul says, with rough suddenness.
"What am I waiting for? Can you tell me that? If I
stayed here all to-night and to-morrow, and the night after,
what would be changed ? This vile stream would still be
thundering on, and we should still be standing here, eating
our hearts out with longing for things that, if we had them,
would not give us content."
" Yes," she says, and her own pretty, womanly voice is
almost as harsh as his, " go ! Who is keeping you ? "
His face is white so white with the pallor of unwill-
ing passion, that he is trembling all over.
" And must I leave you here, all alone in this desolate
place?" he asks, in a husky whisper; "all alone, as I
found you?"
And she echoes, " All alone ! "
"You are not frightened?"
Again she laughs, though the muscles about her face
seem tight and stiff.
"What should I be frightened at?"
Their hands are interlocked, and their eyes are fixed on
each other's faces.
" This is the third time we have said * Good-bye,' " he
says, indistinctly. " The last was bad enough, but, for my
part, I liked it better than this ; and the first Lenore, do
you remember the first on the steamboat at St.-Malo ? "
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 371
" I remember nothing" she says, breaking out into
impetuous passion, while the blood runs headlong to her
cheeks. " How many times must I tell you that it is an
accursed word ? I have torn it out of my vocabulary !
I always look on on now" (speaking feverishly).
" Surely there must be something pleasant ahead some-
where somewhere ! "
" Perhaps," he says, gloomily ; " but one thing I am
sure of O Lenore ! you are sure of it, too and that is,
that there is nothing so pleasant ahead as what we have
left behind ! "
These are his last words.
CHAPTER III.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
AND now we have done with Bergun ; in all probability
we shall see its little eaves and deep doll's-house windows
never again. How happily might one (one is not equiva-
lent to I here) spend a honey-moon among its rocks, and
pine slopes, and flowered fields, always supposing that one
had brought one's own food with one^ I confess to an
opinion that the chicken's black skeleton, and the untold
nauseousness of the Sasseila, would cool the ardor of the
warmest pair that ever yawned and fondled through the
conventional month. We are still, however, in the foodless
land of the Engadine ; we have reached Pontresina. It
is a long name, is not it ? But the name is longer than the
place ; it is only a cluster of houses, white as the defacer
of all beauty, whitewash, can make them. If I had had
372 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
the world's reins in my haud I would have put him that in-
vented whitewash to even a feller death than that which I
would have inflicted on the twin-demons who brought up
gunpowder and electricity from hell's lowest pit. At the
foot of a long, stern hill the village humbly crouches, while
round it stand a silent, solemn conclave of great mountains
white-snow spires reaching heavenward God's church-
steeples ; while far off a gray-green glacier dimly shines.
O mighty mountains ! you coldly awe me with your
" aloof and loveless permanence."
The trees cluster in the valley, but the great hills stand
bareheaded before God. Here we are at the little Hotel
de la Croix Blanche, having taken root among the white-
wash. We have been here a week, and we have yawned
a good deal. The season has hardly begun at least for
the English and it has rained an infinity. We have even
had the doubtful pleasure of seeing flakes of unseasonable
snow. There are no books to be got, and we have ex
hausted our few Tauchnitz novels. To-day we have grown
tired of our own sitting-room, and have strayed objectless-
ly up to the general salon at the top of the house. It is a
bare, light room, whitewashed, of course. A carpet would
be pleasant to-day, but no rag of carpet is there; only
aggressively-clean squares of deal, intersected with red-
pine. There has been a wedding-party in the house all
day; their all-pervading din and to us incomprehensible
Romansch mirth have had a large share in driving us up-
ward. It is afternoon now, and, thank God, they are gone !
We have been standing out in the balcony, watching their
departure, as they pack themselves into their shabby-hood-
ed carriages, garlanded with dusty green wreaths. Yes,
they are gone ; the arm of each gawky youth, with osten-
tatious candor, clasping the solid waist of his maiden.
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 373
Now that they are gone, Sylvia retires inside, grumbling
and shivering.
" Had not you better go in, too ? " I say to Lenore ;
" it is very damp. You will never get well if you do not
take more care of yourself."
" Why should I get well ? " she says, querulously. " I
do not want to get well ; what object in life should I have
if I were well ? Being ill is something to do. I can be
interested in my symptoms and my tonics ; I would not
be well for worlds."
I look at her compassionately at her sharpened pro-
file ; it is getting a look of pinched and suffering discon-
tent. Where is its lovely debonair roundness ? Alas !
even since we left Bergun it has been slipping oh, how
quickly ! away !
" You may get me a shawl if you like," she says, pres-
ently, " and a chair."
I reenter the salon to fetch them. Sylvia is sitting
with the landlord's book of dried plants before her, lament-
ably turning over the leaves. At the best of times noth-
ing can be more melancholy than a dried flower a color-
less skeleton, without any likeness to itself. One ought
to be in the best of spirits to look at such a collection as is
now engaging Mrs. Prodgers's slack attention. I return
with the shawl a heavy and warm one and wrap it
about my youngest sister, and then remain by her side,
vacantly gazing at the view. The rain has ceased, but the
clouds still hide the top of the glacier-mountain ; one tiny
cloudlet has lost its way, and is wandering about near the
hill-foot, slowly evaporating, and losing its thin life. The
balcony where we are is much higher than the opposite
houses; it can look magnificently down on their roofs.
They are a queer little row ; not in a line at all, but each
seeming to be shoving and elbowing its neighbor, in order
874 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
to get forwardest; in the narrow street below a man is
leaning against a door-post, smoking a long pipe ; another
is sweeping the round stones of the pavement with a
besom. Nor can one possibly get up any interest in either
of them.
" I do not think Kolb behaved quite honestly about
this place," says Sylvia's voice dolorously, from the inte-
rior ; " somehow one never can get foreigners to speak
quite the truth he certainly told me distinctly, when I
asked him, that one might always wear demi-saison dresses
here."
We are both too much depressed to join even in abuse
of Kolb's mendacity. Several more leaves turned over; a
heavy sigh.
" I wish the Websters were here ; they talked of going
abroad this summer. I will write and advise them to come
here."
" Rather a case of the fox that had lost his tail," I say,
laughing dismally.
" Tell them not to bring any demi-saison dresses," sub-
joins Lenore, sarcastically.
Several moments of forlorn silence. Sylvia has finished
her book, and with a vague and mistaken idea that we
have got some little piece of amusement that we are pri-
vately worrying without giving her information of it, she
issues forth a second time and joins us. We are all in a
row, like three storks standing on one leg on a house-top.
The cloudlet has quite melted ; there is not a trace of it.
I wish I could melt too. The man has stopped sweeping.
Suddenly no, not suddenly gradually a sound of distant
wheels and bells salutes our ears. A vehicle of some kind
is approaching at a brisk trot from the direction of Samaden.
" Coming here, do you think ? " I say, with a spark of
animation shooting, as I feel, from my lack-lustre eye.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 875
" No such luck," answers Lenore, gloomily.
" No doubt it is going on to c The Krone, 5 " says Syl-
via, peevishly. " Everybody goes to ' The Krone.' I wish
we had gone there. It was all Kolb's doing."
The bells ring louder, the horses' hoofs stamp the stones
more distinctly; it is in sight. Yes, a carriage, twin-
brother to our own late one, only that it is shut on account
of the weather ; four horses, piles of luggage, dusty tarpau-
lin. A moment of breathless suspense ; we all lean over
the balcony as far as our necks and heads will take us.
Yes ! no ! yes ! Far down in the street, right under our
eager eyes, it is pulling up.
" My heart was in my mouth ! " says Lenore, smiling a
broad smile of relief. " I thought it was going on to ' The
Krone. ' "
" We are too high up here," I say, excitedly ; " we
should see better from our own windows."
^
Hereupon we all rush violently, helter-skelter, down-
stairs to our sitting-room, which is on a lower floor. Only
one window gives upon the street ; it is small, but we all
huddle into it. M. Enderlin, the landlord, letting down
the steps ; Madame Enderlin courtseying ; Marie and Men-
ga hovering near, ready to carry out parcels. '
" JIaid, of course," I say, as the first occupant slowly
emerges. " She looks rather wet ; evidently she was in
the coupe with the courier, and they only took her inside
because it rained."
A man's legs and a wide-awake, then a great deal of
golden hair and a plump, smart woman's figure. Being
above them, we see none of their faces.
" Nothing looks so nice for travelling as those French
lawns, trimmed with unbleached Cluny," says Sylvia, with
pensive envy ; " they never show the dust."
"Bride and bridegroom," say I. " What a bore ! They
3T6 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
will not do us much good ; they will be swallowed up in
one another."
" They look like people, however," says Sylvia, by which
expression she means to intimate a favorable opinion of the
new-comers' gentility. " If they are nice," she continues,
" I mean, really people that one would like to know and
Kolb could easily find out that we might make a party to
go up Piz Languard with them."
" There is some one else with them," cry I, eagerly.
"Surely they cannot have taken their parents to chaperone
them ! "
" Like the people at Dinan," says Lenore, dryly, " who
went a wedding-tour d Vanglaise, and took the bride's
mother and the bridegroom's with them."
A fat but nicely-booted female foot slowly treads the
step, and then the ground ; it and its fellow support a form
of sliapely, mature portliness.^ Having descended, this last
figure lifts its face to look at the little cross swinging out
as the inn-sign in the street.
" Good Heavens ! " cries Lenore, emphatically.
" Why that pious ejaculation ? " say I, gayly, my spirits
having gone up fifty per cent, at the prospect of human
companionship.
"Did not you see?" breaks out Lenore, excitedly.
" Do not you know who they are ? "
"Not I. How should I?"
" Why, old Mrs. Scrope, to be sure Charlie's mother."
"What ! all three of them? " I say, derisively. " My
dear child, you are dreaming."*
" Impossible ! " says Sylvia, straining her little neck out
of the window to catch a last glimpse ; but they are gone.
" You have such a mania for seeing likenesses that no one
else can! How could you tell? one only saw their
backs."
WHAT JfiMIMA SAYS. 377
" And should not I know my own mother-in-law's back
among a hundred ? " says Lenore, with sardonic mirth.
" Oh, if it was only her back," I say, with a sigh of
relief, " I do not mind ; all old women's backs are much
alike."
" Are they ? " says Lenore, with a grim smile. " I do
not agree with you ; there are backs and backs ; but I do
not confine myself to backs I saw her face, and my ex-
mother-in-law's it was, I am sorry to say."
" And the other two were the married daughter and her
husband, I suppose ? " I say, a painful conviction that Le-
nore is speaking truth forcing itself on my mind. " Now
that I think of it, there was something familiar to me in
the broad gold arrow she wore in her hair."
Silence for a few moments, while we stare at one anoth-
er blankly.
" I wish they liad gone on to ' The Krone ' now," says
Lenore, dryly.
" If we wait to go up Piz Languard till we go up with
them," I say, with a vexed laugh, " we shall remain some
time at the foot, I think."
" Sow glad they will be to see us ! " cries Lenore,
breaking out into violent merriment, that does not, how-
ever, express any equally violent enjoyment, " considering
that last time they saw us they left us with the Elizabethan
sentiment that ' God might forgive us, but they never
would,' or words to that effect."
" I declare I do not know what you are laughing at,"
says Sylvia, pettishly, with her eyes full of tears ; " it is a
great thing to be easily amused ; as for me, I see nothing
amusing in it ! This sort of thing never happens to any
one but me ; really good people, that one would have liked
to know en intimes "
" Listen," I say, leaving the window and approaching
378 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
the door, " they are coming up ! I hear Madame Enderlin's
voice."
" We shall be always meeting them on the stairs," says
Sylvia, lachrymosely, " and I declare I shall no more know
how to behave very likely they will take their cue from
me whether to stop and shake hands, or bow and pass
on"
" Stop and shake hands with the man bow and pass
on to the women," says Lenore, promptly ; " men are al-
ways kind."
" As for you" retorts Sylvia, turning upon her with a
tearful spitefulness, " in your case there can be no difficulty ;
they will cut you, of course, out and out dead and real-
ly, considering all things, one cannot blame them."
" Of course they will," replies Lenore, calmly, though
her color deepens ; " I should think very meanly of them
if they did not."
"And you" (speaking very rapidly, while the large
tears still roll helplessly down her cheeks), " what will you
do ? how will you take it ? "
" Do f " says Lenore, with a little dry laugh ; " what is
there to do ? I shall be cut, I suppose, and try to look as
if I liked it."
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
" MADAME est servie ! " says Menga, half an hour later,
opening my door, and putting her head in.
" Do not go without me ! " cries Sylvia, eagerly ; " wait
for me. Did you ever see anybody so silly as I ? I am
trembling all over like a leaf feel ! "
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 379
" Lenore is not quite ready," I say.
" We will go without her," rejoins Sylvia, quickly ;
why should not we ? They will be more likely to speak to
us if she is not by."
I shrug my shoulders. " I suppose one must begin to
be civilized again," continues my sister, holding out one
plump and shapely arm for me to clasp a bracelet on. " It
is astonishing how soon one gets out of the way of it !
Certainly it is cold ; but bundled up in a shawl one looks
as if one had no more shape than the Tun of Heidelberg."
We descend. The few visitors are collecting in the
hard-scrubbed salle d manger round the snow-white table.
" How my heart is beating ! " says Sylvia, as we stand
at the door about to enter ; " look and see whether they
are down yet."
I peep. " Yes, there they are ; and, as ill-luck will have
it, their places are next ours ; you need not have taken off
your shawl; they have both shawls, and the husband
what is his name ? I never can recollect Lascelles, is not
it ? is in his great-coat. There is no help for it ; if we
wish for food, we must go into the lion's jaws to get it."
As we approach, it becomes evident to us that the fact
of our presence has been previously revealed to the new-
comers. As we reach the table they just look up, and
bow gravely and slightly, it is true ; but still they bow.
Old Mrs. Scrope holds her little hooked nose gently, not
Jewishly hooked rather more aloft than usual, gathers her
shawl with a chilly gesture about her, and says across the
table to her daughter :
" I wonder why they do not light the stove ? "
Mr. Lascelles rises and shakes hands heartily, and says :
" How are you ? Deuced cold, is not it ? How long
have you been here ? "
Everybody but Lenore is down; the little bourgeois
380 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
German family father, mother, two daughters, the mild
and havering English old maid in noisome cameo brooch
and hair bracelet, who spends her life in marauding about
the Continent in virgin loveliness ; the Cantab, who has
been climbing every high mountain in the neighborhood,
till all the skin is peeling off his blistered, scarlet face
here they are, all of them, eating soup, if you like to call it
soup, after his several manner. It is weak and nasty stuff
enough, one would think, but apparently too strong for the
German stomachs ; at least, having nearly finished their
share, they call for hot water, pour some into their plates,
and begin to ladle it up into their mouths.
" I had better go and call Lenore," I say aloud to Syl-
via, purposely speaking the obnoxious name to see what
effect it will produce. " I cannot think what has become
of her."
As I speak she enters. As she comes hurriedly across
the room with a sort of nervous defiance in her face, I look
at her curiously, trying to see her as a stranger would.
Surely there can be nothing very provocative of wrath of
conciliation, rather in her altered look. Even to me, who
have watched her daily, hourly, she seems ill, shrunken,
drooped. How much more to them who have not seen her
since six months ago she shone upon them in the healthy
bloom of her delicate ripe beauty ! Poor soul ! Now that
her strength is gone and her fairness waned, can they be
angry with her still ? As they rather feel than see her ap-
proach, I am sensible of a sort of ladylike stiffening and
drawing up on the part of the two women.
Mr. Lascelles is fully occupied in making faces at his
soup. The dead cut Sylvia predicted is imminent. As she
slips into her seat, the only one left one next Mrs. Las-
celles with eyes determinedly downcast, and an uneasy
red look, half challenging, half deprecatory, on her face,
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 381
curiosity gets the better of their dignity, and they both
glance at her. I see them both start perceptibly, Yes,
they have noticed it too. Alas ! the change is too patent
to escape the carelessest, hostilest eye. With a sudden im-
pulse they both bow, as they had bowed to us, slightly,
unsmilingly, without the smallest attempt at cordiality, but
still quite politely.
" Deuced cold, is not it ? " says Mr. Lascelles, turning
with an air of the greatest friendliness to Sylvia ; man-like,
happily and sublimely ignoring the squabbles of his wom-
ankind ; and, rubbing his hands, " when last I saw you, it
was deuced cold too ; we were as nearly as possible snowed
up on our way back to London do you remember,
Blanche?"
At this happy allusion to our last merry meeting we all
wax deeply, darkly, beautifully red.
" Is it always cold here ? " asks Mrs. Lascelles, rushing
hurriedly, and quite contrary to her original intention, as I
feel, into conversation with me.
" It has been cold since we came, but we are hardly
fair judges yet ; we have only been here a week ; I am told
that it is a remarkably healthy climate," I answer, stiffly
and tritely ; my besetting sin always being a tendency to
sink into an echo of Murray.
" It has been arctic ! " says Sylvia, to her neighbor,
with a plaintive upcasting of her eyes to his face, " posi-
tively arctic ! How I envy your great-coat ! nothing so
pretty as beaver " (stroking it delicately) ; " naturally, we
left all our furs behind us."
"One peculiarity of the climate," say I, addressing
everybody, in a monotonous recitative, "is, that meat
killed in the autumn dries of itself in the course of the win-
ter ; it is considered an excellent thing for making blood,
and looks like sausage."
882 "GOOD-BYF, SWEETHEART!"
"Is not it too cold for you?" Mrs. Lascelles asks,
pointedly addressing her question to Lenore, and speaking
with a compassionate inflection in her voice.
Lenore blushes furiously.
" For me ! " she says, stammering, and looking surprised,
" for for all of us ; we all shiver."
No one makes any rejoinder.
" It is a wonderful climate for consumption, I believe,"
continues Lenore, speaking hurriedly and hesitatingly, as
if not at all sure of the reception a speech from her may
meet with. " A clergyman in the last stage came to St.
Moritz last year, and is now quite recovered ; not " (look-
ing round with a nervous laugh) " that that need be any
great recommendation to any of us, I hope."
Again they look at her, with an unwilling startled pity
in their healthy, prosperous faces. The German father is
dexterously whisking his beef-gravy into his mouth on the
blade of his knife, at the imminent risk of slitting his
countenance from ear to ear ; the Cantab is reluctantly turn-
ing his peeled nose and flayed cheeks to the old maid, who,
gently blinking behind her spectacles, is addressing him.
" A happy deliverance ! " cries Sj r lvia, stretching her-
self on the sofa in our sitting-room, when at length we
attained that haven, dinner being ended. " Nothing pros-
trates one so much as these little social ordeals ! Did you
see how I cultivated the husband? I do not think they
quite liked it."
I am looking out of window, and contemplating Mr.
Lascelles's back, as he stands on the door-step talking to
Kolb, and banging his arms together like a cabman, to keep
them warm. I can feel, by the expression of his shoulders,
that he is for the third time remarking that " it is deuced
cold."
WHAT JEMIMA SAY8. 383
" If he had his own way, he would be always with us,
in and out, in and out," continues Sylvia ; " one can foresee
that. But no doubt he will not be let"
" What a thing it is to be thin ! " cries Lenore, with a
rather bitter little laugh. " If I had been fat and well-look-
ing, they would have cut me dead. If I gain in favor in the
same ratio in which I lose in flesh, they will soon be thor-
oughly fond of me." I turn from the window with a sigh
at this speech. u There is something very affecting in hav-
ing a thing like a bird's-claw held out to you, is not
there ? " continues she, looking with a sort of pensive deris-
ion at her own hand, first opening it, and then clinching it,
to see how strongly the knuckles and bones start out.
" Do not ! " I say, crossly. " I wish you would not ! "
" In books," continues she, " whenever people on their
death-beds lift up their thin hands, or hold out their thin
hands, one always begins to cry, don't you know ? " I
laugh, but not very jocundly. "If they could hear the
way in which I cough at night, I am not sure that they
would not kiss me," says the young girl, with a "sarcastic
smile.
" How extraordinarily like Charlie his sister is ! " says
Sylvia, sitting up on the sofa. " What are you looking at,
Jemima ? Any. new arrivals ? Thoroughly don genre they
all look. Say what you will, blood must show."
"As the old maid said when her nose got red," retorts
Lenore.
" A plain likeness, of course," pursues Sylvia, not
deigning to heed this profane illustration. " Blanche Las-
celles is too much of a peace-and-plenty-looking woman
to please me too redundant, don't you know ? I confess
to liking to see people keep within bounds ; but she is
growing so enormously large, she will soon be all over
everywhere."
384 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Perhaps it is bon genre to spread," says Lenore, mock-
ingly ; " who knows ? "
" She put me so much in mind of him that it was on
the tip of my tongue to ask after him," continues Mrs.
Prodgers.
" I am very glad it remained on the tip."
" I wish with all my heart he was here," says Sylvia,
continuing her monologue and yawning. "I wonder is
there any chance of it ? One abuses them when one has
them, but certainly life travelling-life especially is very
triste without a man."
" Do you wish it too, Lenore ? " I ask, walking over to
where my youngest sister is listlessly lying back in the
one arm-chair that the room affords.
" How do I know ? " she answers, in a tone of weary
irritability. " I wish a hundred things one half of the day
which I unwish the other half. No, certainly I do not
not until I get my looks up again. Jemima " (gazing wist-
fully up at me), "how long do you think it will be before
I do?"
" My dear, am I a prophet ? " I say, very sadly, strok-
ing her hair.
" Evidently they thought me very much gone off, did
not they ? " she asks, with her eyes still fixed on my face,
and a faint, a very faint hope of contradiction in her own.
" How do I know ? " I reply, evasively. " If they had
thought so, they would hardly have chosen me to confide
it to."
" But they did," returns she, gently, shaking her head.
" As Sylvia says, one has one's instincts." (A moment's
silence.) " Who was it ? " she continues, with a melan-
choly smile ; " Madame du Barri, was not it, who said that
she would rather be dead than ugly ? Pah ! " (with a
shudder), "it would be very disagreeable to be either."
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 385
CHAPTER Y.
" The gods may release
That they made fast ;
Thy soul shall have ease
In thy limbs at the last.;
But what shall they give thee for life, sweet life, that is overpast ? "
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
AT last it is summer to-day ; the sun says, " Now it is
my turn ! " With his strong right hand, he has swept the
clouds away from the snow-peaks away away any-
where ; he will have none of them. Those snow-peaks !
They dazzle one so that one cannot look at them, save
through blue spectacles. It makes one's eyes drop water
but to glance hastily at their shining magnificence. Oh,
happy consummation ! it is too hot even for demi-saison
dresses.
" I think Kolb is very tyrannical ! " says Sylvia, discon-
tentedly. " What do I care about the water-fall, or the
Mortiratsch glacier ? After all, when you have seen one
glacier, you have seen them all ; and though nobody can
be fonder of scenery than I am, yet of course there are
other things in the world ; I had much rather have stayed
at home to-day and found out what the Scropes' plans
were."
We were all joggling along in a little chaise, drawn by
a fat pony, which, however, is so far from us as to be al-
most out of sight, from the length of the traces jiggling,
joggling along through Pontresina, between the green
sheltered white houses ; here and there a flourish of flowers
geraniums, cinerarias out of their windows ; through
the upper village, and along the hot high-road. On each
17
386 "QOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
side of us is the lovely riot of the meadow-flowers ; they
seem to have rushed out, all at once, and all together, to
answer to their names at the roll-call of the spring sun.
" At all events," say I, laughing, " Mr. Lascelles can-
not say that it is ' deuced cold ' to-day. Pah ! how apo-
plectic it makes one's head ! Oh, for a good honest British
cabbage-leaf to put in one's hat ! "
" There is one comfort," says Sylvia, pursuing her own
thoughts, " and that is, that there is no one they can be-
come lies with, in our absence, as I should think that they
were sociable, sensible sort of people, who cordially hated
their own society."
" Worse even than ours ? " asks Lenore, with a cynical
smile, from beneath the dusty little hood under which she
is leaning back.
We leave the high-road ; we turn into a by-way that
leads to the glacier leads through a company of larches.
They have grown up, here and there, among the great
strewn stones, of every shape and size lichen-grown,
green, forbidding. By-and-by we have to say good-bye to
our carriage ; it can go no farther ; the road breaks off.
" This is quite the most triste festivity I ever assisted
at," Sylvia says plaintively, as we dawdle and loiter hotly
along.
" Bah ! how the midges bite ! As a rule, no one is
more independent of men's society than I am, but in a case
of this kind a man is indispensable to give a sort of im-
petus, a fillip, to the whole thing."
" Let us have luncheon," say I, with my usual material
view of things ; " eating always raises one's spirits, and
we can eat as well as if a regiment were looking on."
So we lunch on the short sward. The smooth, smoke-
colored cattle are ringing their bells vigorously, as they
browse near us, though what they eat the Lord only knows,
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 387
unless they have a taste for yellow potentillas, sweet-
scented daphne, and dry white bents. Kolb has stretched
a mackintosh for us to sit on, and brought spiced-beef that
looks weirdly nasty, in sun-warmed slices, out of a marmot-
skin bag ; rolls, hard-boiled eggs. A bottle of Chateau
Margot stands under a great rock, knee-deep in yellow vio-
lets. The glacier river, the Bernina, runs madly past us,
hoarsely raving to its wide stone bed, in a torrent of dirty
yellow-green-white. There we lie, couched comfortably as
ruminating cattle, while at our elbows and feet the gen-
tians open their blue eyes bluer than any woman's, deeper
than any sapphire.
" How pretty they would be if artificial ! " Sylvia says,
pensively plucking one. " A spray for the side of the head,
you know, and another for the corsage ; I am afraid we are
too far oif for it to carry well, or I would send one to
Foster's in a tin box ; he will always copy any flower you
send him, exactly."
"Perish the thought ! " says Lenore, with a sort of lazy
indignation, laying her head down among a crowded little
family of the yellow violets, under a great split rock.
" Dark blue is not a good night-color, however," says
Sylvia, still pursuing her own train of meditation.
" How drowsy the river's roar makes one ! " I say,
yawning, and burying my hot face in my outstretched
arms ; " if you two will not speak, I shall be asleep in three
minutes."
" How hideous it is ! " says Sylvia, dropping her gen-
tian, and gazing with a sort of disgust at the tearing flood.
" Glacier-rivers always are. Did you ever see any thing so
dirty in your life ? It looks as if hundreds and thousands
of washer-women had been washing in it with myriads of
cakes of soap ! "
After all, we never reach the glacier. If luncheon has
388 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
cheered, it has also enervated us. We content ourselves
with languidly strolling to the water-fall. Now we have
reached it ; now exertion is at an end ; now we lie, lazy as
lotus-eaters, on the dry, warm herbage scant, yet so
sweet! and gaze and listen, gaze and listen, for God
knows how long, to the loud, white beauty of the fall.
Down it comes from the top of the low hill in one long,
snowy plunge ; then a smooth sliding over the polished
backs of the great stones ; a curling of creamy wavelets ;
then another foamy leap in lightning and froth ; then a
green pool, where the sun is holding dazzling mirrors, too
bright to look at, to the pines' dark faces. The long roar
rings loud yet gentle in our ears, bringing to us a drowsy
joy. Even Sylvia's grumblings are stilled at least we no
longer hear them, Lenore and I. We have climbed slowly
and intermittently up the rocks to a little plateau, whence
we can see the water's chiefest plunge. Who can stop it ?
The air is full of its cold white powder ; a great stone
opposite is forever wet with the cool damp dust drifted
against its shining sides. Little lilac primulas confidently
grow and bloom in its clefts. O torrents and hills and
flowers, you make me drunk with beauty ! What can be
nobler than to watch the play- of God's imagination in
these silent places ?
With elbows deep sunk in gentians, and head on hand,
we lie and lie and lie, till the sun is marching, in all his
afternoon heat and mellow glory, through the pale turquoise
sky. The pines above our heads smell divinely. There is
no flower, however sweet, that has a better fragrance than
that which the grave, flowerless firs give out at the bidding
of their master, the high June sun. For half-hours hours
we know not which neither of us has spoken. My eyes
have long been fixed on the little rainbow that the water-
fall has caught and held fast, with its faint green and
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 389
yellow and red, in her shining toils. Presently, and little
by little, I cease to see the tender colors of the prism I
cease to hear the water's plunge and the pines' low sigh ;
I am asleep. Whether my doze is long or short, I do not
know. I imagine, however, that it is not very long ; but
it is broken at last by a sharp exclamation from Lenore.
" What are you making such a noise about ? " I cry,
starting up and rubbing my eyes. " One may as well be
killed as frightened to death Charlie ! ! ! "
Am I dreaming still ? No ; the water-fall's voice has
come back to my ears, and the pines' woody fragrance to
my nostrils. Providence has granted Sylvia's prayer for
a prayer it was ; at least, it fulfilled the hymn's definition
of prayer:
"Prayer is the heart's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed."
There he stands, three paces from me, among the juni-
per-bushes, solid and real, in the loose and untinted clothes
that summer Britons love stands there in all the stalwart,
deep-colored beauty of his manhood. Providence has sent
us a man "to give the whole thing a fillip." Lenore has
risen to her feet and is facing him. Their hands are not
touching, neither are they speaking, only they are looking
at one another long and dumbly. Embarrassment at the
recollected hostility of their last parting is tying Lenore's
tongue, as I feel ; but what is it that is giving that look of
silent, painful wonder to Scrope's face ?
" Why are you looking so hard at me ? " she says, at
last, in a low voice, with a tremulous asperity. " Is there
any thing odd about me? Do not you know that it is not
good manners to look so hard at any one ? "
" I I beg your pardon," he says, stammering. " I
I did not mean you see, it is so long since I have seen "
I have scrambled to my feet and shaken the illicit noon-
390 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
day sleep from my eyes. " Charlie ! " I cry a second time,
coming forward ; and, not being a person with any great
command of language, I add nothing to the pertinent
brevity of this observation.
He turns, and takes my ready hand in the cool, familiar,
brotherly clasp with which, in their day, so many good and
handsome men have honored me, and for which I have
never felt the least grateful to them. "Did not you
know I was coming ? " he asks ; " did not they tell
you?"
" Not they ? " reply I, laughing. " To let you into a
secret, we are not quite on confidential terms rather en
delicatesse, as you may say. I dare say they thought we
were not good enough to be told such a piece of news
that it would exhilarate us too much."
" They were nearly right there, I think," says Sylvia,
to whom, being a little lower down, the answer to her
prayer has been first vouchsafed. " It is never my way, as
a rule, to make people conceited men especially ; I am
sure they are bad enough, without one's helping them ;
but certainly, if one wishes to know how thoroughly to
appreciate a friend, one must come to the Engadine."
" You are glad to see me, then ? " he says, stretching
out his hand to her, too, with a broad, eager smile. The
question seems addressed to Sylvia, but his eyes seek Le-
nore. " Truly, honestly, without figure of speech ? You
know I had my doubts."
"A perfectly unjustifiable question," returns Sylvia,
giving her head a little, playful jerk. " We totally de-
cline to answer it do not we, Jemima ? "
" And you ! " he says, impulsively, stooping over Le-
nore, and lowering his voice a little.
She has sat down again, and, leaning on her elbow, is
listlessly picking a bit of daphne to pieces: the little
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 391
treacherous color that his first sudden coming had sent into
her cheeks ebbing quickly out of them again.
"17" (with a little start). "Oh, of course yes, I
think so I suppose so why should not I be ? "
Her eyes were lifted to his ; they mean to be kindly,
but they have of late got a settled look of weary noncha-
lance, that they could not, if they would, put away.
"What have you been doing to her?" he says, leading
me a little away from the others, on pretence of looking
over the slender plank bridge that crosses the fall, grasping
my arm, and staring with an angry, painful vehemence into
my face. " They told me she was so altered that I should
not know her again not know her again!" (with an
accent of scorn) " she would have to be altered indeed
before that could come to pass. I thought they only said
rit to set me against her ; that was why I followed you. I
could not wait. My God ! she is changed " (loosing my
arm, and clinching his own hands together). " I could not
have believed that any one any young, strong person
could be so changed in five months."
I do not answer, for the excellent reason that I cannot.
My throat is choked, and my silent tears drop on the bridge-
rail and into the emerald pool beneath. One must love
something. I have not had many people to love in my
time ; nobody very good, or that love me much ; and, for
want of them, I love Lenore. I suppose he thinks that
my speechlessness comes from callous indifference.
" You have taken no care of her," he continues, harsh-
ly ; " you have not looked after her. When did she ever
look after herself ? You who are so much older than she,
that one would have thought that you would have been
like a mother to her."
He stops abruptly. She of whom we speak has risen
and followed us.
392 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" You are talking about me," she says, slightly smiling.
" Yes, you both look guilty ! what are you saying ? No, I
do not care to hear; nothing very interesting, I dare say."
So saying, she saunters slowly away again.
" You are no wiser than you were ; I see that," I re-
mark, smiling away my tears, and trying to smile when we
are again alone.
" You are mistaken," he answers, with eager quickness ;
" I am perfectly cured perfectly ; and, when one is once
thoroughly cured of a complaint of this sort, one does not
sicken again. If I had not been sure of that, I would not
have come near you ; I would have put the width of all
Europe between us."
I shake my head in a silent skepticism.
" See," he cries, earnestly, " do you remember how I
used to tremble all over if my hand touched hers ? how I'
grew redder than any lobster if she spoke to me ? Do I
tremble now ? " (stretching out his right hand to me)
" am I red ?
Still I am silent.
" Do you hear ? " he asks, impatiently.
" Yes," I answer, dryly, " I hear."
CHAPTER VI.
" I feel the daisies growing over me."
WHAT THE ATJTHOK SAYS.
THEY are sitting, they two, the lover and the loved
one, in the tiny graveyard of the little church upon the
hill. They have risen up hastily from the noisy supper,
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 893
where the fusty German mother had shut the window,
where the fusty German daughters had made weak and
steaming negus of their vin ordinaire, on this sultry sum-
mer evening. They two, and Jemima. They have passed
through the small, still street, along the silent road, where
even the dust lies quiet and white, and does not harry one
as in the daytime ; up the lane, past cottages and fields, to
the little church that stands below the rocky mountain.
Lenore has ridden ; she could not have walked so far up
the hill-side ; ridden the fat pony, " a beautiful .pony, just
like a tea-pot," as Kolb, with doubtful compliment, re-
marked of him. Now he is tied to the church-porch, and
is eating forget-me-nots in the evening gray. Jemima has
discreetly strolled away, but her discretion has pleased but
one of her companions; the other has hardly noticed it.
It is all one to Lenore whether she goes or stays. It is
eight o'clock. Pontresina Church is telling the hour sono-
rously, and the little hill-church beside her is answering
with its one grave bell ; the church, with its rude stone
tower and little extinguisher top, its windows deep set in
the wall, like deep-sunk eyes.
" Lenore," says Scrope, presently plucking a great
forget-me-not, twice the size of those we see in England,
from one of the low graves, " do you think it wicked to
tell lies?"
" It depends," she answers, laughing slightly. " I
think truth is rather an over-rated virtue."
" I told a gigantic lie yesterday."
" Did you ? " she answers ; but she does not seem to
care to ask what it is.
He waits a moment, but, finding that her curiosity will
not come to his aid, volunteers his information.
" I I told Jemima that I was perfectly cured " (red-
dening a little).
394 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Yes, that was not quite true," she replies, quietly.
" Are you glad or sorry ? " he asks, eagerly.
She has plucked two blades of fine grass, and is carefully
measuring them, to see which is the taller. Perhaps that
is the reason that her response comes slowly.
" I am glad," she says, " quite glad ! Formerly, when
I was strong and well, I did not mind who cared for me or
who did not ; I cared for myself a great deal immensely
and that was enough ; but now that I am so weak and
sickly, and waughing, as they say in Staffordshire is not
it a good word ? does not it give a limp, peevish, unstrung
idea ? why, now I like some good, patient person to be
near me, and look sorry when I am out of breath and in
tiresome pain."
He does not answer, but I do not think she takes his
silence ill.
" Care for me," she says, simply, stretching out her
hand, with a sort of naivete, to him " care for me a little
care for me a good deal, but do not care for me too
much ; it is silly to care too much for any thing one
misses it so if it goes ! "
He takes the hand she so frankly gives, but he is afraid
violently to press or kiss it, lest, with a sudden change of
mood, she may snatch it angrily away.
" Do you remember the day we parted ? " he asks, in a
hesitating voice.
" Yes," she says, with a rather embarrassed laugh, " to
be sure I remember. We both went into heroics, and you,
after abusing me in good, nervous English, fell on your
knees before me, and, in so doing, gave Pug's nose such
a kick that it has never been the same pattern since."
" It is nearly six months since then," he says, in a
low voice ; " five, at least. If I had taken you at your
word "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 395
" I am so glad you did not ! " she interrupts, hastily.
His face falls.
" So glad are you ? Why ? "
" Do not you know that I like to take all and give
nothing ? " she says, with a sort of smile. " That was
always my way always let me have it a little longer. I
know that I cause you pain every time that I am with
you, but somehow I do not mind I have no remorse ; you
are strong, and pain does not kill ; sometimes it braces.
See, I have suffered a good deal, and I am not dead."
He clasps the slight, cool hand he holds tighter.
" Thank God, no ! "
" Have you ever known what it is to be very unhappy ? "
she says, looking with a sort of pensive curiosity into his
face. " If I asked you, you would say ' Yes,' you would
swear it ; but somehow I doubt it. How clear and blue
your eyes are ! They look as if they had always slept all
night and smiled all day. You are not fat, certainty far
from it I hate a fat man ; but how well and strongly your
bones are covered ! "
He does not asseverate ; he makes no apology for his
healthy manhood ; but I think, when he next looks in her
face, she knows that one may wear a sore heart and yet
eat well, and have broad shoulders and a stalwart presence.
There is no sound but the wind speaking pensively to the
pines the wind that makes all the meadows one cool
shiver.
" Why are you so faithful ? " she says, presently, with
a sort of impatience in her voice. " There is no sense in
it ; there is something stupid in such fidelity ; it is like a
dog ; it is not like a man, at least not like the men I have
known."
A hot flush rises to the young man's face.
" It is stupid," he says, humbly. " I have often thought
396 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Why cannot you take a fancy to some one else ? "
she continues, sharply ; " to one of my sisters, for instance ;
not Sylvia no, I do not think I can conscientiously recom-
mend her but Jemima; she would worship the ground
you trod on, and she is not so very old, either. I have
heard some people say that an Englishwoman is at her
prime, mind and body, at twenty-eight ; and she is only
twenty-nine."
Scrope does not seem to jump at the tempting offer
thus made him ; he looks down on the flowery grass at his
feet.
" She is not much to look at, certainly," pursues Le-
nore, coolly, " but neither am I, for that matter, just now ;
but, of course, when I grow strong again, I shall get my
looks back, shall I not ? "
He is busy, apparently, in trying to make out the Ro-
mansch inscription on the small broken pillar beside him ;
at least, he does not reply.
"Why do not you answer me?" she cries, angrily.
" You used to be glib enough with your compliments and
fine speeches ; if you cannot say 4 Yes,' at least have the
honesty to say ' No.' "
" My dear," he says, with a sort of tremor in his voice,
" what should I say either ' Yes ' or * No ' to ? In my eyes,
you have never lost your looks ; how can you get back
what you have not lost ? "
She looks at him with a scared discontent in her pale
face.
" You have got out of it very lamely," she says, with a
brusque laugh. " I never heard any thing clumsier in my
life. There never mind. I suppose you could not help
it."
Her eyes stray thoughtfully away to the hills ; a lumin-
ous mist, a dimness, yet a glory seems spread over the
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS. 897
high mountain amphitheatre that looks down on Pontre-
sina ; great, glorious battlements, lifting high heads against
the higher heaven citadels that a God must be dwelling
in : that dim effulgence is the skirt of his trailed robes.
Below, the meadows flash in yellow, and the river twists
in silver. O heavenly Zion ! O fair City beyond the clouds !
can thy jasper walls and pearly gates be yet fairer ?
" And you find that it is quite as impossible as you did
six months ago ? " Scrope asks, with a tremble in his. low
voice, after they have sat silent some time.
" Quite," she answers, briefly.
" And it is always he that is in the way ? " he says,
with an accent of bitterness.
" Yes," she answers, softly ; " always he always he."
(Then, with a dreamy smile), " You see that there are other
people who can be stupidly, doggishty faithful, as well as
you ; you, at least, cannot blame me."
" If he did but know it ! " the young man cries, smiting
his hands together, and looking passionately upward to the
faint skies above him ; " if some one would but tell him
if he did but see you now he could not keep his senseless
resentment any longer. It is against my own interest to
say so, but he could not he could not ! "
" He has no resentment against me now," she answers,
quickly, " none ; he is no longer angry with me."
" How do you know ? " with a hasty suspicion in his
voice ; " has he written to you ? "
" No."
" How, then ? "
" I have seen him," she says, briefly,
For a moment, astonished disappoinment keeps him si-
lent ; then the two words, " When, where ? " come, low but
hurriedly, from his Tnouth.
" We had a long talk," she says, with the same un-
398 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
mirthful, tender smile, " quite a long talk 011 a bridge
in the moonlight, at Bergun ; the accessories sound roman-
tic, do not they ? Moonlight always makes one feel sen-
timental ; I am not quite sure that we were not a little so."
A pause. Through the larches in the wood above them,
a long long sigh passes ; then falls dies then revives
again ; a sound as of infinite yearning.
"When he is coming here, give me warning before-
hand," says Scrope, in a voice that is next door to a whis-
per. " I suppose he will be coming here soon ? "
" Perhaps," she answers, with a little laugh that is
almost malicious. " Who knows ? Perhaps he may take
it in his wedding-tour."
" His wedding-tour ! ! "
" Yes," she answers, looking away from his bewildered
face again, on the perfect content, the evening placidness,
of the landscape ; " it is contrariant, is it not ? but he is
going to be married."
" Who told you so '( " (very rapidly).
" He told me so himself."
" And you ? how did you take it ? what did you say ? "
" I said, * Oh, are you ? ' I believe I laughed I am
not sure."
"And then?"
" And then no, not quite then " (drawing in her breath
slowly) " a little afterward he went."
" And you ? "
" And I oh, I lay down on the grass nice, crisp, dry
grass, by the river, with my head in a clump of trefoil
what a noisy river it was ! " (speaking with a sort of pen-
sive complaint) " sometimes I hear it now, at night, run-
ning through my head."
" And you stayed there all night you in the damp ? "
(with a tone of reproachful solicitude).
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 399
" No, not all night ; about half the night, I think I
forget about the time ; talking is very tiring work, and I
was tired."
"Yes?"
" And then they grew anxious Jemima and Sylvia
and came to look for me."
"Well?"
" And then they scolded me, and asked me what had
happened to me, and I said I had seen a ghost ; so I had."
The wind has no more to say ; he has dropped ; there
is no noise but the swirl of the far water.
" Sylvia was quite interested," pursues Lenore, rousing
herself, and even looking rather amused ; " she wanted to
know what sort of a ghost it was whether a man's, or a
woman's, or a child's, or a dog's she said she had heard
of dogs' ghosts being sometimes seen and also whether it
carried its head under its arm. I said, ' No, it did not ; '
and and and that is all, I think."
On the glacier-mountain there is a white glory that can-
not be moonlight, for moon is there none ; it must have
stolen some of the sunset, and kept it in its bosom ; the
shadows steal over the lower snow, but the peaks keep
that strange shining, such as Moses' face had when he
came down from his high talk with God.
" Charlie," says Lenore, suddenly, with an abrupt
change of subject, " does not it occur to you that at Pon-
tresina the dead are much better lodged than the living ?
Would not you rather be here than at the Croix
Blanche?"
" At the present moment, certainly," he answers, with
a smile. " I prefer you and the smell of flowers to the
German squaws and the smell of negus."
" Look," she says, rising from her grassy seat, " I am
going to show you something. If I were old, or had any
400 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
complaint that was likely to kill me, I will show you the
exact spot where I should like to lie how can you see ?
you have turned away your face. Pshaw ! how absurdly
sensitive you are ! you are as bad as Jemima. If either of
you were to point out to me the place that you wished to
be your grave, I should listen with the most composed at-
tention, and try to bear it in mind against the time when I
should have the misfortune to lose you."
" I quite believe it," he answers, bitterly ; " I have no
doubt you would."
" See," she says, not heeding the bitterness, hardly hear-
ing it, but pointing, with a smile, to a spot of ground,
richer even than its neighbors in manifold-colored flowers
and fine green grass, " did you ever see any thing so luxu-
rious ? this wall's shadow to shelter me from the sun at
noonday, and all these pink plantains to ripple above one's
head. They say one does not hear when one is dead
well, as to that, I have my own opinion ; but if one could
hear, it would be pleasant to listen to the wind softly buf-
feting their tall heads in the dim summer nights, would not
it?"
No answer.
" I would have no gilt tears, however, on my cross,"
she adds, a few minutes -later.
He stoops and plucks a handful of the pink plantains,
angrily, and then throws it away again.
" What are you doing ? " she asks, turning with a ges-
ture of surprise and remonstrance to him. " Why do you
look so cross ? Why are you frowning and clinching your
hands ? You foolish fellow, do you think, if I meant to
die really, that I should talk about it so lightly that I
should pick and choose my grave ? Good God ! no ! "
(with a strong shudder) " I should keep far enough from
the subject ! "
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 401
CHAPTER VII.
" On pain of death, let no man name death to me ; it is a word in-
finitely terrible."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
" YES, they are certainly coining round," says Sylvia,
with a tone of self-gratulation. " I met Mrs. Scrope just
now on the stairs, and she said : ' You have been to the
Rosegg ? I hear there is quite a practicable road there ?
When once one has the men on one's side, one is all right ;
and, somehow, we always manage to enlist the sympathies
of the fathers and husbands and brothers.' ?;
" I do -not agree with you," says Jemima, taking her
hat off and laying it on the table. " I think it is just the
other way the women to be propitiated, and the men fol-
low naturally. Take care of the women, and the men will
take care of themselves."
" They certainly dress very well," continues Sylvia,
complacently ; " nothing voyant all those pretty mouse-
colors, and sad colors, and smoke-colors, that I am so de-
voted to. Very good taste ; and, say what you will, that
alone is enough to prepossess one in people's favor."
" I have just been falling into the arms of that dreadful
little widow," Mrs. Scrope says, reentering her own apart-
ment at the same time as Sylvia has made her reappearance
in hers. " Ambling up the stairs and coquetting with the
banisters, as usual. She is always on the stairs."
" She reminds me of the women in Isaiah, don't you
know?" says Mrs. Lascelles, laughing; "'walking and
mincing as they go.' I wonder had they high-heeled shoes
402 "QOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
and a pannier ? If it were the fashion to sew pillows to
armholes nowadays, what gigantic bolsters she would
have ! "
" My dear, atrociously as that girl behaved, we never
can be too thankful to her for having delivered us from the
Prodgers connection. Prodgers ! such a name ! "
" Do not halloo before you are out of the wood," says
Mr. Lascelles, looking up from his novel for a moment, and
instantly immersing himself in it again.
" I believe what first set her against him was the awful
description I gave her of our honeymoon," says his wife,
laughing again. " I told her about your being sea-sick all
the way to St.-Malo. I remember she looked awe-struck
at the time."
" It will be all on again before you can look round,"
says Mr. Lascelles, again emerging from his romance.
Both women shake tHeir heads.
" Poor soul ! it would hardly be worth while her being
1 on ' as you say, with any one."
" You mean that she is not long for this world ? " re-
plies he, dropping his book entirely this time. Mr. Las-
celles's voice is never as low as Cordelia's, and the door is
ajar.
" Hush ! " cry both the women together. " Some one
is passing; it may be one of them."
" I wish I could induce you sometimes not to speak at
the very tip-top of your voice," says his wife. " If you re-
member, when you proposed to me, at the Inniskillings'
ball, you expressed your wishes so loudly that you drowned
the band."
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 403
CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
THE hotel is fuller than it was. This last week has
made a difference. Several more little whitewash rooms
are occupied. A member of the Alpine Club, with a
harem of three gaunt women, battered and unsexed by
much scaling of high mountains ; two or three new couples.
The last, an elderly clergyman and his wife, occupy the
room next mine. Only this morning I was remarking on
the thinness of the partition-walls : I can hear him alter-
nately splashing and groaning in his tub.
" They have not been married long," Lenore says.
" They say the Lord's Prayer together very loudly every
night."
And Scrope asks, laughing, whether that is a proof of
being newly wedded.
This was after breakfast. Since then we have been to
the Rosegg glacier. Lenore has not been with us : gradu-
ally she is slipping out of our excursions. " For the pres-
ent," she says; "just for the present, I am better at
home." Now we are back again, Sylvia and I, in our own
little sitting-room a cheerful little place, whence one can
look down on the white houses of the clean, narrow street,
see the outgoers and incomers to the hotel, and catch
bright glimpses of the mountains.
The door opens and Lenore enters, and at the same mo-
ment Sylvia passes out. " Is she gone ? " says Lenore,
advancing toward me ; " really gone, do you think ? I do
not know why I ask ; I have nothing particular to say."
Her face is disturbed, and her eyes wander uneasily round.
404 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" I I I have been eavesdropping" she says, beginning to
laugh. " What do you think of that ? And they say
listeners never hear any good of themselves. That, how-
ever, is not a case in point, for I heard nothing about ray-
self, of course nothing"
" Eavesdropping ! " I repeat, surprised. " That is not
very like you. What do you mean ? What are you talk-
ing about ? "
"I was passing by the Scropes' door just now," she
says, with a sort of hurry and agitation in her manner " it
was ajar, I wish people would keep their doors shut " (with
a tone of irritability) " and they were talking ; the man
the husband you know what a sweet, low voice he has
was saying, in a tone as loud as all the bulls you ever heard
bellowing : ' She is not long for this world.' Whom do
you think they were talking, about ? "
" My dear child," I say, impatiently, " what extraordi-
nary things excite your curiosity ! Am I a diviner of dark
sayings ? Probably some friend of their own that we
never heard of."
"And then the woman said, ' Hush, hush ! ' " pursues she,
with her eyes still watching my face. " Why did they say
4 Hush ? ' if it were some friend of theirs ; why should they
mind being overheard ? They were saying no ill of her."
" Pshaw ! " say I, pettishly ; " how do I know ? "
" He said she, certainly not he" she continues, as if
unable to leave the subject. "Not long for this world f "
(uttering the words very slowly). "Poor soul, whoever
she is, I am sorry for her, are not you, Jemima ? "
"Yes, yes, of course very sorry," I answer, indis-
tinctly, turning to the window.
" And yet it is absurd to be sorry for a person one has
never seen never heard of is not it ? " persists Lenore,
again breaking out into a laugh. " Perhaps we are throw-
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 405
ing away our compassion perhaps it was a dog or a cat
who knows ? "
" Very likely, very likely ! "
" But why did they say ' Hush ? ' " she says, brooding
over the word, and addressing the question rather to her-
self than to me.
I do not answer.
" Jemima," she says, following me to the window, " look
round I hate not being listened to when I am talking I
am going to make you laugh you often laugh at my
ideas ; well, they are sufficiently ridiculous now and then ;
do you know I took it into my head one is so egotistical
that perhaps they were talking of of me."
I lean out of the window, and try to persuade myself
that my voice, as I say " Nonsense" sounds lazily indif-
ferent.
" You are not laughing," she cries, in a tone of alarm.
" I thought }^ou would have laughed. Why do not you
laugh ? Is it possible that you see nothing ridiculous in it
that you think it it is true ! "
" I think nothing of the kind," I answer, irritably : " do
not be so absurdly fanciful."
" If they did mean me," she says, with the same rest-
less, strained laugh, " they are alone in their opinion, are
not they ? quite alone. It does me no harm, and it amuses
them, I suppose ha, ha ! "
" What disease do they mean to kill me by, I wonder ? "
she says, after a pause, spent by her in rapidly traversing
and retraversing the little room. " Consumption, of course "
(shuddering). . . . " They should have 'seen you last
winter," she resumes, by-and-by, standing beside me, and
uneasily trying to see my face, " when you had that attack
of influenza. How you coughed ! Worse, far worse, than
I do, and your head ached torturingly mine seldom aches
406 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
and you were so weak you could scarcely lift a finger,
and yet it was only influenza ! "
" Only influenza," I echo, mechanically ; " influenza is
nothing."
" Tell me," she says, a little reassured, and looking into
my face as if she would wring from me the answer she
longs for, "you must have an opinion one way or the other;
do you tliinlc they meant me ? "
" My dear," I say, driven into a corner, " did I hear
what they said ? I only know what you tell me ; it it is
very conceited of you to imagine that they must be always
talking of you."
"People are so fond of killing their friends, are not
they ? " she says, with the same wistful, searching look in
her great and lovely eyes : " so are doctors, and very often
the killed outlive the killers after all."
" Very often."
" Next time that I pass their door I shall run past
with my fingers in my ears. Feel how my heart is beat-
ing!" '
" You are growing as bad as Sylvia," I say, trying to
speak gayly ; " she is always requesting me to feel how
her heart is beating ; if you both set up nerves, I shall
decamp."
"You think I may make my mind quite easy," she
says, in a lighter tone, taking my hand in her two hot slen-
der ones.
"Of course of course."
" That they were talking of some one else or that, if
it were me, they were utterly and unaccountably mis-
taken ? "
" To be sure ! to be sure ! "
" But florid people often seem to think that those who
are not so red and bulky as themselves must be in articulo
mortis"
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 407
So they do."
"Jemima!" (still strongly clasping my hand in both
hers), " if you believe it so firmly, you will not mind swear-
ing it."
" What is the use of oaths and asseverations ? " I ask,
uncomfortably. " Will not a simple assertion do as well ? "
" You won't swear ! " she cries, in a tone of profound
alarm. " Why not ? Jemima, I do not like your face !
Your eyes will not meet mine your lips are quivering
you are half crying. I know that I am very sick that I
have not much peace, day or night but you do not think
that it means any thing bad ? that I am O my God ! I
cannot say the word ! "
Her sentence breaks off, smothered in a shuddering
sob.
" I think nothing of the kind," I say, hastily, thorough-
ly frightened at her agitation. "Why will you gallop
away with an idea ? O Charlie ! do come here ; she is so
impracticable so unreasonable she is talking such non-
sense."
The door has opened, and Mr. Scrope is looking doubt-
fully in. At my words he enters hastily.
For the first time in her life she runs to him of her own
accord, and throws herself into his arms. "O Charlie!"
she cries, wildly, " you are the only person in the world
that is kind to me. They have been so cruel to me so
cruel. They have been saying such things of me you
would not believe it. That man that Mr. Lascelles says
I am not long for this world, and Jemima quite agrees
with him."
" Jemima is a fool ! " says Mr. Scrope, unjustly, looking
with a momentary expression of raging hatred at me over
her prone head.
" Not long for this world! " she repeats, with a sort of
408 " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART! "
moan, lifting 1 her face, and staring pitifully into his.
" Those were his very words : I hare not altered one."
" Lout ! idiot ! " cries Scrope, angrily ; " he had not an
idea what he was saying ! he never has. My darling "
(closely straining her to his heart, as if neither God, nor
his fleet angel, Death, should avail to tear her thence),
" please God, you are longer for this world than he is
than I or Jemima or any of us."
" Do you mean it, really f " she says, with an awful
anxiety in her tone. " Are you serious ? O God ! how I
wish I could think so ! "
" Are you so anxious to outlive us all ? " he asks, with
a passionate melancholy. " Well, I dare say it is natural,
I suppose. Why should not you ? Very likely you will
have your wish."
" I want to live to be quite old," she says, hurriedly, not
heeding his upbraiding eyes or tone. " I want to live a
great many years : people are often happier when they are
middle-aged than in youth ; but it is pleasant to be young,
too. It is not all pleasure, but there is a great deal. I do
not complain I do not complain. " (She is trembling vio-
lently.) " Hold me ! " she says, hysterically. " Do not let
me go. You are the only person in the world to whom . it
matters much whether I die or live. Promise me that I
shall not oh, that dreadful word ! promise me ! "
"I promise, darling," he sa} 7 s, "I. promise."
" You speak uncertainly ! " she says,- wrenching herself
out of his arms, and staring at him in a distrustful agony ;
" you are like Jemima your face is all quivering. I be-
lieve you are telling me falsehoods on such a subject !
Great God ! can there be any thing wickeder than to de-
ceive one to tell one lies in such a case ? "
" Oh, my dear, I am not telling lies I Before God, I am
not ! I confidently trust I altogether hope, that I shall
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 409
yet see you strong and well as ever again. If I thought
the contrary, do you think I could bear my own life for one
minute ? "
" What does it matter what you think what you
hope ? " she cries, roughly, with one of her old, petulant
movements ; " will your trusting and hoping keep it off ?
Will telling lies about it make it any better ? " (with an
angry flash of her lovely, miserable eyes at us both).
" Whatever you say whatever you do it is coming !
it is coming ! "
She flings herself down on the little sofa, shuddering
from head to foot, and buries her face in the pillow, while
her whole frame is shaken by the violence of her sobs.
" My dearest child ! " I say, half out of my sober wits
with fright and pain, advancing to her, and gently touch-
ing her on the shoulder ; " for Heaven's sake, do not be so
excited! You are not very ill now, really, you know;
you can go about a little, and walk, and talk, like the rest
of us ; but, if you behave in this way "
" Where have my eyes been ? " she interrupts, sitting
up again, and speaking connectedly, but not calmly, while
the great tears pour down her cheeks. " How is it that I
have not seen all your looks and signs ? If they had not
thought me very bad, would the Scropes have spoken to
me the other night ? Not they ! So I excited their com-
passion, did I ?. I had no idea that I was an object of
pity! I never used to be. Oh, I am, indeed! They
were right! , lam, indeed!" (breaking into a fresh tem-
pest of great sobs, and again hiding her face in the cush-
ion).
" You are mistaken ! " cries Scrope, beside himself at
the sight of her agony, and throwing himself on his knees.
" Look up, Lenore ! Look up, beloved ! Look in my face,
and see whether I am telling truth. They talked to you
18
410 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
the other night because they knew that, if they were not
civil to you, I should never speak to them again because
they dared not be impertinent to you. Why should they
pity you, except for being younger and prettier than them-
selves ? "
" You may save your breath," she answers, looking at
him fixedly, with a sort of resentment ; " there is no un-
true thing that you would not say to me now, to keep me
quiet. ... It is very unjust," she cries out loud, clasping
her lifted hands in a frenzy ; " it is hard there is no sense
in it that I, that am the youngest, should go first ! I,
that was so pretty, and enjoyed my life so much ! Some
people only half live. Until we went to Dinan I lived
every moment of my life. Since then I have been misera-
ble, certainly very miserable, now and then but it was
not half so bad as this ! Oh, how gladly I would have it
all over again ! At least, I was alive then," she says,
trembling violently. "Nobody pitied me then! After
all, what does it matter what happens to one, so long as
one is alive ? that is the great thing ! Sometimes I have
said I wished I was dead ; but God knows I did not mean
it. One says so many things that one does not mean. He
cannot be so cruel as to take me at my word ! Oh, He
cannot ! He cannot ! "
Her voice dies in a wail a wail of unspeakable fear.
" Good Heavens ! what is the matter ? " says Sylvia,
opening the door and entering, her commonplace voice
striking on us with a painful incongruity. " Why are you
all pulling such long faces ? "
We none of us answer her.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 411
CHAPTER IX.
" Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes ;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well."
WHAT JEMIMA BAYS.
LENORE lias been very ill. Her very fear has acceler-
ated what she feared. During the night following the
conversation detailed in the last chapter, in a violent fit of
coughing, made more violent than usual by overpowering
emotion, by uncontrolled weeping, she has broken a blood-
vessel. It is in the dead of night ; every soul in the hotel
is asleep. Until they have tried it, no one can realize the
feeling of absolute helpless desperation that assails one
under such a catastrophe, happening in a remote and hard-
ly-accessible corner of Switzerland, utterly without doctors,
and four days' post from England. Since the days of Le-
nore's childhood, I have been entirely unused to the sight
of sickness. I have not the remotest idea what remedies
to apply ; neither is Sylvia any wiser. In my despair I
turn to the one person from whom I know that I shall get
at least passionate sympathy. Apparently he is not
asleep, for before I knock at his door he has opened it,
and stands before me in the dishevelled dress in which a
person usually appears who has sprung out of sleep into
his clothes, his curled locks tossed in the untidiness of
slumber, and the heavy lids still weighing on his blue
eyes.
"I thought it was your step," he says, hurriedly.
" Good Heavens ! what is it ? Is she is she "
412 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETUEAUT!"
" She is much worse ; she has broken a blood-vessel,"
I answer, breathlessly. " What are we to do ? what are
we to do ? " (wringing my hands). " No doctor to send
for ! One is so utterly helpless. What is to become of
us?"
For an instant he has clinched his hands, with a move-
ment of despair more absolute even than mine ; then, un-
der the urgent need for them, his strayed wits come back.
" There must be a doctor at St. Moritz," he says ;
" among two or three hundred visitors there always are
one or two. I will knock up M. Enderlin, and make him
saddle me a horse to go there."
" But what are we to do meanwhile ? " I ask, help-
lessly. " You cannot be back for two hours, at soonest.
We know nothing ! Perhaps we may be throwing away
her life, for want of knowing the right way to keep it."
" I will send my mother," he says.
He is already half-way down the long, chill passage.
In twenty minutes more he is gone, and the whole house
is astir. Doors are being opened ; people of both sexes,
evidently so slightly dressed as to avoid rather than court
notice, protrude their heads, and ask what is the matter.
Mrs. Scrope has come hurrying to us, with the entire self-
forgetfulness of a kind-hearted person ; come hurrying in a
limp and corsetless dishabille, eminently becoming to a
young girl, but cruelly trying to the best-looking woman
of more advanced age. How many secrets of the prison-
house must a fire, an alarm of burglary, or a sudden illness,
have revealed before now ! She has put something of calm
and order into our disordered consternation. We do what
little we can alas ! it is but little and then wait wait
try to imagine, as we sit in absolute silence and weary
stillness in the little bare room, how far up the mountain-
road to St. Moritz our messenger is ; fancy a hundred times
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 413
that we hear the hoofs of his back-coming horse long before
he can possibly have reached his destination. Sylvia has
disappeared. Certainly she was here when first I went to
call Charlie, though she entirely declined to accompany me
on that mission. Has she actually had the heart to go to
bed again ? I am not long left in doubt. As we sit, not
speaking, in the dawn of the summer morning, that seems
to have run half-way to meet the so-lately-gone evening,
the door opens softly, and she enters. She has been mak-
ing a toilet; an embroidered wrapper embraces her form,
and a saffron ribbon is twisted in her black hair. The rul-
ing passion strong in death ! not her own death, but that
of another person.
" Can I be of any use ? " she says, looking in. " O Mrs.
Scrope, how good of you to come to us in our trouble ! I
had not an idea that you were here."
I make signs to her not to speak, and also that the
room is too confined to admit of three nurses. She disap-
pears. It is full morning before the joyful sound that for
hours we have been straining our ears to catch greets them.
The doctor has arrived. He is a dirty-looking little fellow ;
some paltry apothecary, probably, to whom, were one in
England, one would hardly intrust the care of a sick dog ;
but now, with what utter faith, with what intense and be-
lieving anxiety, do we listen to his fiat !
61 He says it is only a small blood-vessel, after all," I
say, trying ta speak cheerfully, as I rejoin Charlie outside
the door, and looking haggardly into his still more haggard
face, in the early splendor of the strong young daylight.
" Perhaps we have been making ourselves too miserable.
She is to be kept absolutely quiet ; only one person at a time
in the room, and that one not to speak. She is to have all
sorts of nourishing things. Good Heavens ! " (breaking off
in a sort of despair), " where are they to come from here,
414 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
where there is nothing but spiced beef as hard as a shoe,
and skeleton fowls ? "
" Why did you bring her here ? " he asks, in a tone of
angry misery. " Were you mad? It was murder ! "
" We did it for the best," I answer, humbly ; " the doc-
tor recommended it, and she fancied it." . . .
As ill-luck will have it, next day there is a great yearly
f&te celebrated in the village ; a stir and festal noise all
the long day in the crowded street and through the house ;
doors banging, loud voices laughing. We have tried so
earnestly to keep them quiet, but all in vain. When one
is merry with beer, and that one has a holiday only twice
or thrice a year, one cannot always, every moment, bear in
mind the sufferings of an unknown, unseen stranger. It is
drawing toward night again; still the clamor shows no
symptom of abating. Now and again I hear Madame En-
derlin's low, kind voice, in earnest remonstrance ; but
even she remonstrates in vain. The weather has grown
very hot. Lenore lies on her side, dozing uneasily, moan-
ing now and then. I sit beside her, bathing her hot hands
with eau de Colonge and water, and give a fresh start of
exasperation and apprehension at every fresh noise that
penetrates through the door, left ajar to admit a little air
into the close room, where open windows are forbidden, at
least in the evening. Presently, a louder noise than any
of the former ones reaches my tortured ears a great and
heavy stamping up the stairs up up up. It reaches
the passage on which all our doors open. I stretch my
neck to see what it is, without moving, and, to my horror,
discover that it is an Italian hurdy-gurdy man, with his
instrument on his back. He is just stooping his hand to
turn the handle, when I see Charlie rush wildly out of his
own door, and with furious gestures stop him. The poor
man is much surprised. " What ! must not he play for the
flora?"
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 415
A month has passed. Lenore is again up ; lies on the
sofa in the sitting-room, dressed ; again talks, sometimes
again laughs.
" She wishes to see you," I say to Mr. Scrope, as we
went in the passage ; " she is quite looking forward to it.
Will you go now ? " My fingers are on the door-handle ;
I half turn it.
" Stay ! " he cries, hastily, but in a low voice, putting
his hand on mine to check it ; "I am not ready. "Wait a
moment tell me, how do I look ? "
" What do you mean ? " I say, half-laughing. " Are
you taking a leaf out of Sylvia's book ? "
" You know what I mean," he answers, impatiently.
"Do I look cheerful in good spirits as if I had nothing
on my mind ? "
I scan his face doubtfully ; I cannot answer in the affir-
mative.
" Her eyes looks me through and through," he says, ex-
citedly. " No matter how much I lie, she is not deceived.
Tell me, Mima, how can I make my face tell lies ? how
can I look content ? "
" She will ask you no questions," I answer, sadly ; " at
least, I think not she has asked me none."
" Shall I be be very much, shocked ? " he asks, in
a whisper, " it is better to know what to expect tell me."
" She is pulled down, of course," I answer, sorrowfully ;
" very much pulled down " (then, after a little pause) :
" my poor fellow, what is the use of buoying ourselves up
with untrue hopes ? It is the beginning of the end ; the
doctor himself said as much to me the other day."
416 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
CHAPTER X.
" The light upon her yellow hair,
But not within her eyes ;
The light still there upon her hair,
The death upon her eyes."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
" How much better you are looking ! "
In his own mind he has been practising this little
speech practising it with the proper intonation of half-
surprised cheerfulness; when he comes to pronounce it
really, it is a failure. There is a strained gayety in his
tone that would hardly deceive a baby.
" More perjuries," she says, with a languid smile, look-
ing up at him half-compassionately from her couch. " I
will dispense you from telling any more stories ; you told
a great many the other day, but I do not think they will
come much against you in the last account but still be
on the safe side tell no more of them."
" I I said nothing but what I thought," he begins,
with a stammering haste, but her great clear eyes looking
steadily, though not unkindly through him, make his voice
decline into silence.
" I have done crying for myself now," she says, with a
sort of smile ; " do not you think I have had plenty of
time to do that in, during these last long, endless nights ?
I could not have believed a summer night could be so long.
I have been sorrier for myself than I ever was for anybody
else but but I am getting used to it I kick and scream
no longer. Where is the use ? "
What had become of the stiff smile into which he had
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 417
so carefully trained his features ? He has taken possession
of one of her pale hands ; he seems to be very welcome to
it ; she does not care whether he has it or has it not ; he
has stooped and laid his bronzed cheek upon it to hide his
face.
" ' As flies to wanton boys, so we to the gods ;
They kill us for their sport ' "
she says, dreamily repeating this couplet out of "King 1
Lear." " I suppose they are killing me for their sport ? "
" You are not to talk. Jemima says so," he says, rais-
ing his head, and speaking with a tone of shocked distress.
"Bah!" she answers, slightingly, "if I am silent for-
ever, will it save me ? Do you think that, if I thought
there was the remotest chance of that, I would once open
my lips ? But what is the use of setting up one's little
bit of life, like an end of candle on a save-all, to make it
burn a few moments longer?" A little dumb pause.
" You are crying," she says, presently, with one of her old
quick and irritable movements, which contrasts oddly and
painfully with her changed and almost extinguished voice.
" I hate to see a man cry ! It is unnatural womanish
it always makes me inclined to laugh."
" For God's sake, laugh, if you feel disposed I " he
says, fiercely, dashing away his tears, as if ashamed and
angry at them. " I have been your butt always, Lenore !
I am willing to be so still."
" Are you going to quarrel with me ? " she asks queru-
Idusly. " I suppose so ; sooner or later everybody does."
" Do they ? " (speaking softly, and again stooping his
head, to kiss her fingers).
" You blame me for talking," she says, presently, with
a sort of weary pettishness, " and then you do not volun-
teer a word yourself. Some one must speak ; we cannot
both sit dumb mumchance."
418 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" You are right," he says, making a great effort to
speak easily and lightly. "I am more than ordinarily
stupid to-day headachy, I think cobwebby."
" At least, do not look so woe-begone," she says, staring
at him with discontented, tired eyes ; " you make it worse
for me harder. I have been trying to persuade myself
that what happens to every one cannot be so very bad
but you your face upsets me ! "
"How can I mend it? "he says, humbly and fondly.
"I will try."
" After all, it is no such great catastrophe," she says,
with a little bitter laugh ; " nobody is much to be pitied
but me nobody cares much except myself, and, perhaps,
you. Jemima thinks she is enormously grieved ; she pulls
a long face, but it is easy to see that it will not be the
death of her that she will survive many long and happy
years to talk about ' poor dear Lenore.' "
He silently caresses her hand, but does not trust him-
self to embark on any speech.
" Ho*w strong you are ! " she says, her eyes wandering
steadily and coldly, with a sort of envy, over his face and
figure.
" Certainly there are hands and hands " (again taking
possession of her own, and laying it beside his to compare
them). " If you do not play tricks with yourself if you
are moderately steady what a long life you will probably
have, full of action and pleasure and pleasant business !
O my God ! " (breaking out into the passionate and so-
absolutely-useless upbraidings that we sometimes address
to the great Power above us) " it is not fair indeed it is
not. How have you been so much better than I, that you
should live so many happy years after I am gone ? "
" O my love ! " he cries, in a tone of the acutest pain,
" why do you throw my strength in my teeth ? Can I
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 419
help it ? Do you think it gives me any pleasure ? Do you
think that if I could be weak and sinking like you now
this minute that I should complain much ? "
" Of course you would," she answers, feebly but brusque-
ly, "as much as I do. Of course you are glad to be
strong ; you would be an idiot if you were not ; as long as
one has good health, one has every thing ! one can get
over every other trouble but that that "
He shakes his head dissentingly. More than once the
effort of talking has brought on an access of coughing,
but Scrope's remonstrances are vain ; she is resolute to
carry on the conversation.
" Fifty years hence you will probably still be here," she
says, in the same faint, envious voice. " You are twenty-
eight now yes a hale, strong man of seventy-eight still
alive still enjoying children and grandchildren all about
you."
" Never ! " he says, violently starting up, and walking
about the room in disordered haste. " I shall never have
a child ! If you leave me, Lenore, I shall never have a
wife."
" Pooh ! " she says, contemptuously, " five years hence
you will be a respectable pere de famille. What do I
say ? Five years ? three two and, when you are talk-
ing about your conquests, you will have to think twice
before you can recollect what color my eyes were, or which
of the dry, dirty hair-locks in your pocket-book was mine."
" At least you are consistent," he cries, fiercely, stop-
ping suddenly beside her, his face white and disfigured
with angry grief; " all your life your object has been to
give pain. Well, I congratulate you ; weak and changed
as you are in other ways, you are still unchanged in that
are still as able as ever to cut to the heart."
"Why should not I?" she says wearily, rolling her
/ "
420 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!
head from side to side on tlie pillow. " I have been cut to
the heart enough in my day ; why should not other people
go shares with me ? . . . . Until we went to Dinan," she
resumes, by-and-by, " I had always had my own way ; I
never remember the time when I had not. I always said
that, if ever I not did get my own will in any thing, it would
be the death of me. I remember telling Paul so almost
the first time I saw him ; I thought it rather a fine thing
to say ; I never dreamed of its coming true, but it has."
" Not yet not yet ! " he remonstrates, passionately.
" Not that I am dying of love," she says, raising her-
self, and speaking with more energy than she has yet
shown. " Never say, or let any one else say, that. What-
ever tales one may have heard to that effect, I do not
believe any one ever did such a thing in this world. If
I had not been sickly to begin with, I could not have
fretted myself into my grave, however hard I had tried.
I should have grown yellow, and pinched, and withered,
before my time, but should have lived. Yes, if I had not
been sickly, radically sickly, to begin with, I should have
lived."
" Live now ! " he cries wildly, throwing himself down
on his knees beside her sofa, and looking up with all the
sorrowful madness of his blue eyes into her face. " Why
should not you ? Perhaps you will never again be very
strong, but there is no reason why you may not live yes,
live for many years. This climate is too harsh for you ;
when you grow a little stronger, let me take you away to a
warmer, suaver one to Italy the south of France; let
me take you, Lenore take my wife the only wife I shall
ever have."
" Your wife ! " she says, with a smile wholly sorrowful
yet touched with a little gratification. " I thought we had
heard the last of that old story."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 421
"Never!" he answers, vehemently. "Never! As
long as I am near you, you will never hear the last of it."
" If you honestly wish to marry me," she says, looking
half-gratefully at him with her large and languid eyes ; " yes,
you look honest, it is a way you have ; but, if you wish it
seriously, it must be only as a penance. Even good men,
who have loved their wives to begin with, if they fall sick,
and remain for a long time ailing invalids, grow tired of
them; against their will they grow tired of them. If
I lasted long enough, you would grow tired, heartily tired,
of me."
" Should I?" (with an expressive accent).
Again she shakes her head.
" There are worthier occupations in life for a young and
handsome man than carrying cushions and shaking physic-
bottles."
" Tastes differ," he says, smiling a little, though not
very merrily. " I think not."
" Who could love me now ? " she asks, with a move-
ment of disbelieving self-contempt. " Aimer cVamour, I
mean ; they might love me in the sense in which good and
tender-hearted people love any thing that is miserable and
suffering ; but that is not the way in which I used to be
loved not the way in which I care to be loved."
" Neither is it the way in which I love you," he an-
swers, firmly.
" Why do you tantalize me ? " she cries, angrily, push-
ing her heavy hair irritably away from her blue-veined tem-
ples; " talking about what we shall do if I live. I shall
not live I shall die ! Often so often in the past nights,
when you have all been comfortably, warmly asleep, I have
said over and over to myself, l Lenore Herrick is dead,
trying how it would sound."
" Hush hush 1 " he says, unutterably pained ; then,
422 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
after a little silence, " Lenore " (speaking with a shaking
voice and quivering features), " even if you are right even
if you are not to live long why do you make me face this
frightful possibility ? But even if it is so, let me at least
be able to look back out of my desolation, and think, that
though God was in a hurry to part us, yet that for a short
time after long and weary waiting you were my very
own belonging to me called by my name."
" If I am to die," she says, harshly, " what does it
matter what name I am called by ? what name is cut on
my gravestone ? Shall I lie any the easier because you
wear crape and weepers for me ? "
Again he says, " Hush ! hush ! "
" You are unwise to wish that I were well," she says
presently, with a sort of pitying smile ; " it is against your
own interest. I am quite fond of you now quite ! I like
to feel your hand coolly clasping mine ; I like to send you
on messages ; you are so zealous and so speedy. I like to
see your handsome, sorrowful face come in at the door."
Again he bends his head over her hand to hide his
dumb agony.
" If you had not been here, I should have sadly felt the
want of some one to cry over me," she continues mourn-
fully smiling ; " nobody else would have done it, certainly.
I do not blame them ; I never cried over anybody else, or
was at all pitiful or sympathetic in my day. I reap my
own sowing, but still it is pleasanter as it is."
He is kissing her hands over and over again, but he
makes no rejoinder.
" But yet," she pursues, gravely, " I have a misgiving
that, if I grew strong and well again, I should have as lit-
tle relish for your society as ever; I should shrink from
your touch, and fly at the distant sound of your voice, as I
did in the old days of our engagement. Do not look mis-
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 423
erable ; my affection for you will never be put to that test
only say nothing more about my being your wife ; I wish
for that as little as ever. I love you as a child loves its
nurse, not as a woman loves her husband."
Poor Scrope ! his last Spanish castle has fallen into
ruin : by her cold and friendly words she has torn into tat-
ters the airy fabric of his last poor dream.
" I was wrong," he says, after a pause, in a strangled
voice, " selfish as I always am. I will be be content."
A long, long silence. 'Outside, the cheery footsteps of
guests in the hotel running down-stairs, in preparation for
some pleasant expedition ; loud and happy voices calling
to one another. Lenore lies back, with closed eyes, ex-
hausted by the previous conversation, and yet it is she that
resumes it.
" How long do they give me ? " she asks, faintly, but
calmly ; " if you are truly my friend, you will tell me.
No ? " Well, then, I must remain in my ignorance."
Another pause ; the gay picnic-party have packed them-
selves into their carriage ; with a noise of wheels and bells
they are off.
" Before you go," says Lenore, again speaking, " I have
one more thing to say to you ; it will pain you sharply,
but that is nothing new, is it ? You will writhe and shudder,
as I have already seen you do two or three times to-day
well I cannot help it you are the only person I can
speak to about it ; if I were to broach the subject to Jemi-
ma, she would put her fingers in her ears, and run out of
the room.
" What is it ? " he asks, indistinctly.
" When it is all over," she says, very slowly, but
with composure, " when I am gone, do not let them take
me back to England ; was not it Chateaubriand who said
that there was something revolting to him in the idea of a
424 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
dead person on a journey? well I agree with him.
Make them bury me here in the little mountain grave-
yard, where you and I sat on that Sunday evening, when
first you came are you listening ? will you promise ? "
" I promise," he answers, unsteadily.
" How grand it was 1 " she says, leaning back, with
closed eyes, and smiling dreamily, " I see them now all
those great peaks cutting the pale-green sky with their
jagged teeth now that I am to leave the world so soon,
I wish it were uglier ; perhaps 'it would be easier to go
O my God 1 " (opening her eyes, and clasping her hands
together in utter bitterness of spirit), " I do love this very
world just as it is other people find fault with it, but I
do not I love it I love it oh, why may not I stay a lit-
tle in it ? "
" Bury me under the west wall," she says, " beneath
the catchfly and the blown dandelions ! "
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.
YET another month has smoothly slidden past, and we
are here still. We know not how much longer we may
have to bide here ; but, alas 1 we do know that when we
go we shall not all go ; but that one of us, whether we
will it or not, must stay behind. One of us God has called,
saying to her, both in the dark night and in the broad blue
noon, " Come ! " and to that strong bidding there can be
said no " Nay." This is an invitation to which we cannot
say, "I will not," or "I will." Bidden, one must go.
WHAT JfiMIMA SAYS. 425
Thus our Lenore is going. We say so now, and so it is.
At first, we did not breathe it even to ourselves ; then,
after a while, each whispered it low to her own sad heart :
now, we say it aloud to one another.
"We have been here ten weeks ; the summer, that we
found in its first cool youth, has now assumed the hot
gravity of its August ripeness. We have outlived many
lovely dynasties of the flowers ; have seen them arise and
prosper, and then sweetly die. O flowers ! give us a les-
son ; teach us your way of dying, your gentle, unregretting
extinction. Our Death is a cruel fellow ; he is not content
to take us with a kindly mildness. Did he but stretch out
a friendly hand to us, some among us would not be over-
loath to put ours in it, and go away with him whither he
list. But he comes with his eyeless, ash-gray skull-face ;
with his racks and his scourges can he blame us that we
shrink and shiver away from him ? Lenore has been look-
ing him steadily in the face now, for a long time past, but
still she shivers, still she pales, at the sound of his nearing
feet. Lenore is among those who go, knowing it. Some
depart smiling ; ignorantly babbling of fond home trifles,
with eyes still fixed on earth's dear, sunshiny hills and
plains. Qverhead in the flood are they plunged, or ever they
know that they are within sight of its bank. But Lenore
knows. I am uncertain whether we should ever have had
the heart to tell her ; whether we should not have let her
slip into the next world, without being aware of it. For
myself, I think it the kinder plan ; I think that, to one
whom God has summoned, Himself will reveal it in meet
time, without the intervention of any harsh human voice
saying roughly, " You will die." But, as you know, an
accident has revealed it to Lenore. Sometimes she for-
gets it for a moment ; sometimes the conquered spirit of
youth reasserts itself; sometimes she talks gayly of what
426 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
she will do next year ; sometimes she rives our hearts by
making plans for the winter, whose snows she will never
feel, for the now-distant spring, whose flowers will open
upon her grave. But it is only for a little while that the
beautiful illusion lives ; always it vanishes, as the cold dew
vanishes from the fine, fresh morning grass.
It is a fearfully hot day, softly overcast; the keen
mountain-air, cool and crisp, which so rarely fails from
these high places, has gone to draw new sharpness from the
snows, and left us gasping. A silent day, but for the
loud rumblings of the thunder in the great, grand hills.
Sylvia sits in her bedroom crying over the last volume
of a Tauchnitz novel, benevolently lent her by Mrs. Scrope,
which makes her hotter still. Lenore lies, with heavy eye-
lids drooped over sunk eyes, on the sofa in our sitting-
room ; it has been transformed, as much as possible, into
the likeness of a couch, and drawn up close to the window,
to catch any stray little travelling breeze. Breathing is
always difficult to Lenore now, but to-day specially so. I
am sitting beside her, fanning her. She expressed a while
ago a sudden longing for lemonade, as a nice, cool drink.
I ask Kolb to make me some, as it is a beverage that does
not grow ready-made in these parts. Kolb's lemonade is
produced by pouring hot water on lemons ; five minutes
ago it entered boiling. I have been pouring the whole
stock of water contained in my bedroom's tiny ewer and
bottle into a wash-hand basin, and causing the lemonade-
jug to stand in it, in the forlorn hope of cooling it through
the agency of this half-pint of tepid water. Now I have
returned to Lenore, and am fanning her again. The lan-
guid flies come and march about upon her outflung arms,
with their little tickling, maddening legs, and when I
strike out wildly and indignantly at them, with a little
self-conscious buzz they fly away and elude me. With my
WHAT JEMIMA SATS. 427
resentful eyes I have followed one to the wall, where he
stands twisting his hind-legs together. Then my sad gaze
returns to the place where it has dwelt all morning Le-
nore's sunken, weary, pained face ; the face that might as
well be any one else's, for all resemblance that it bears to
hers hers, our beauty ! O bad, cruel Death ! Why can-
not you take us all at once, without first stealing beauty
and grace and harmony ? Do you care to hold nothing
but disfigurement and decay in your frosty arms ? I am
sorrowfully pondering on the probability of her passing to-
day half wishing it, and yet half grudging when her
eyes slowly unclose, and she speaks.
" You fan me badly," she says, feebly and complain-
ingly ; " so irregularly, and intermittently not half so
well as Charlie does. Send him."
" But, my dear," I say, gently remonstrating, " you al-
ways will talk to him, you know, and you are not up to
it."
" I mean to talk to him," she says, with a pitiful shadow
of her old resolute wilfulness. " I have something to say
to him something I must say to him a favor to ask of
him."
" A favor ? "
" Yes," she answers, petulantly, " a favor ; but it is
nothing to you ; it is not you that I am going to ask send
him."
So I obey. I find him sitting in his own room, his
hands thrust into his tossed bright hair, and his eyes, red
with watching and weeping, idly fixed on the cruel color
of the unfeeling smiling hills. " She has sent for you," I
say, entering listlessly. " She says you fan her so much
better than I do. She has also something to say to you, a
favor to ask a favor what can it be ? " I end, a little in-
quisitively. He does not pay any heed to my curiosity ;
428 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
he is already in the passage when I call him back. " Stay,"
I say ; " before you go, bathe your eyes and try to smile ;
you know, poor soul, she she likes us to look cheerful."
CHAPTER XII.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SATS.
" How long you have been ! " she says, querulously.
" I thought you were never coming. You might have
made a little haste."
" I will be quicker next time, darling," he answers,
kneeling down gently beside her, and speaking firmly and
cheerfully.
" Fan me," she says, panting ; " fan me strongly and
regularly." r
She lies back exhausted, and he hears her mutter :
" At least wherever I go, I shall have breath."
Utter silence for five minutes, save for the gentle noise
made by the winnowing of the fan.
" Lift me," she says, stretching out her arms to him.
" Lying down I gasp."
He lifts her with delicate care, and her dying head
droops in sisterly abandoment on his kind shoulder.
" Dear old fellow," she says, faintly ; " kind old
brother."
Yet another pause ; no sustained conversation is possi-
ble.
" I am going very fast, Charlie."
" Yes, darling."
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 429
" I was always one to do things quickly, if I did them
at all I was never a dawdle."
No answer.
" You will get away before the season is over, after all."
"O love, hush!"
"You would do something to oblige me, would not
you, Charlie?"
" Any thing possible, beloved."
" But supposing it were impossible ? "
" Still I would do it."
" That is right," she answers, with a sigh of relief.
" I am glad."
Then she is again silent for a long time. The thunder
still grumbles deeply in the hot heart of the hills, and the
flies still walk about torpidly upon her white wrapper.
" You know all the old story about Paul," she says,
presently, with a little excitement in her faint and hollow
voice.
" Yes, I know it."
" You know the reason why I have borrowed the adver-
tisement sheet of your Times every day ? "
" I I have guessed it."
" I have daily looked carefully through the marriages,"
she says, with a sort of feeble eagerness, " but I have never
seen his"
" Neither have I."
A long and painful fit of coughing intervenes.
" Tell me the rest to-morrow," he says, gently bending
over her.
She smiles slightly.
" It is all very well for you to talk you, who are rich in
to-morrows. How do I know that I have one ? "
Again he fans her, trying to coax the cool little waves
of air to her hot and parted lips.
430 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" He said it was to be immediately" she murmurs,
after a pause ; " since it has not been yet perhaps it
will never be."
" Perhaps."
" Very likely it is broken off," she says, a ray of pleas-
ure lighting up her face. " I never told you so before
but between ourselves I do not think he was very
eager about it. No doubt it is broken off."
" No doubt."
She has taken his hand, and is stroking it with a sort
of patronizing caressingness.
" Kind, good, patient Charlie ! " she says, softly.
"Whose errands will you run on when I am gone ?"
No answer.
" I have one more errand to send you on," she con-
tinues, with feeble eagerness ; " longer, disagreeabler, more
difficult, than any of the others. Will you run on it, too ? "
" O beloved, try me ! "
" There is at least one advantage in being in a dying
state," she sgys, by-and-by, gravely and solemnly ; " as
long as I was well I could not send for him could not ask
him to come back to me could not move a finger to bring
him all the advances must have come from him. But
now now I may send for whom I please, and no one will
call me unmaidenly, will they ? "
" No one," he answers steadily, though his face is
drawn with the pain of finding that still, in those last
hours, he is second, always second. She is looking
earnestly at him ; her large gray eyes unnaturally, unbe-
comingly large now are reading his countenance like an
open book.
" It hurts you," she says, calmly ; " well, I have always
hurt -you. I suppose you like it, or you would not have
stayed with me, but would have gone, as Paul did. Well,
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. 431
have I made you understand ? I wish to send for him."
For a second he turns away his head, and gathers his
strength together ; then he says, kindly and gently :
" Do you wish me to write or telegraph ? "
" I wish neither," she answers, with a little impatience ;
" do you think that that is my errand ? That would not
be a very hard one, just to walk down to the post-office ; I
might charge even Sylvia with that. Listen: of course
you need not do it unless you wish ; of course I cannot
make you. I wish to make sure. I wish you to go and
fetch him."
He gives an involuntary start of utter pain and anguish.
" And leave yow, O my darling ? "
" And leave me," she echoes, pettishly ; " what good
do you do me ? What good does any one do me ? Can
you give me breath or sleep ? "
He rises and walks to the window. The evening draws
on, and the thunder is dumb. He looks out on the great
mountains lilac while the sun is setting, gray when he is
gone the mountains whose playfellows the swift snow-
storms are, and about whose necks the clouds wreathe
their wet, white arms ; looks at the deep torrent courses
that furrow their sides, and at the straight, dark pines,
which the winter strips not, and to whom lavish Spring,
with her gentian- wreath, and her lap full of flowered
grasses, brings no embellishment ; looks at them all, with-
out seeing them. Then he comes back to the couch-side,
and says
" I will go."
" You think he will not come ? " she says, looking wist-
fully at him. " I see it in your face, but I know better ; if
you had seen him at Bergun, you would have thought dif-
ferently. Yes" (with a little, shining smile), "he will
come ! "
432 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" There is no doubt of it," he replies, quietly.
" Even if he is married he will come," she says, still
smiling ; " his wife will spare him for those few days, and,
if she hesitates, you may tell her that, whatever I was
once, I am not a person to be jealous of now."
Silence.
" You will set off to-morrow morning, early" she says,
feverishly. " I am afraid it is too late to-day. You know
his address ? Oh, yes, of course ; you have been there ? "
" Yes."
" And you will certainly bring him certainly f "
"Yes."
She closes her eyes with a long sigh of relief. She lies
so still that he is uncertain whether she sleeps ; but, after
a time, she opens them again.
" You wonder why I wish so much to see him again,"
she says, slowly, " when he does not wish to see me ; you
think it is love. No, it is not. When one is as sick as I
am, one is past love ; only all the night through his face
vexes me. I am worried with it ; it never leaves me ;
I torment myself trying to recall every line of it. I must
see whether I have remembered it right ; it has been with
me every moment in this world. I must take it, distinct
and clear, with me into the next."
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 433
CHAPTER XIII.
" Lilies for a bridal-bed;
Roses for a matron's head ;
Violets for a maiden dead."
WHAT JEMIMA SATS.
CHARLIE is gone. Very early to-day he set off. I stood
by him on the steps, in the cool of the young and shining
morning, as he prepared to step into the carriage which
was to take him up and down the long, steep mountain-
passes to Chur.
" Keep her till I come back," he said, wringing my
hand with unknowing violence. " If I come back to find
her gone, I shall never forgive you never. Promise ! "
" How can I promise ? " I said, sorrowfully. " Have
I life and death in my hand ? How can I hinder her
going ? "
So he is gone, and we are waiting waiting with
strained ears and hot eyes to see which will win the race
to Lenore's side, Death or Paul. Lenore herself fights with
all her strength alas, how little ! with a strength not
her own on Paul's side. She refuses to die. For more
than a week past she has turned with loathing from every
species of nourishment ; now she demands it greedily.
She will not speak will not utter a word for fear of wast-
ing the little breath that remains to her. People are very
kind ; every hour of the day solicitous faces meet us on the
landing-place, with pitying gestures and expressions of
sympathy. Guests in the hotel tread softly, and scold their
children when they hear them whooping and noisily tum-
bling, with the utter unfeelingness of childhood, down the
slight stairs, and along the thin-walled passages.
19
434 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
And now all the days between Scrope's going and his
expected back-coming have rolled away. Before he went,
we calculated accurately together distances and times ; this
is the day on which he engaged to return. Lenore is still
here still fighting disputing her life, inch by inch, hand
to hand, with the all-victor.
" He will come to-day," she has said, speaking for the
first time for many hours speaking confidently. " It is
my lucky day ; something tells me so."
I have drawn the scant window-curtain, and thrown
wide the window, and looked out on the unutterable maj-
esty of the morning hills.
" I will not die to-day ! " she says, clinching her feeble
hand. " I have some life left in me yet more than you
think. It would be too cruel to go before he came ; he
would be so disappointed." I turn and gaze mournfully at
her. Her voice is stronger, and the inward excitement of
her soul has sent a last little flame of color to her cheeks.
" Let us be ready for him," she says, with a tender smile.
" Take away all those physic-bottles every thing that looks
like sickness. Make the room pretty ; gather plenty of
flowers."
So I obey her. All about the room, following her di-
rections, I place the gay, sweet flowers. O wonderful,
lovely flowers ! whence do you steal your tender strains?
Is it from the brown earth or the colorless wind ? Later
on, as the day draws toward noon, she expresses a wish to
be dressed. I remonstrate gently, fearing the exhaustion
consequent on so unwonted an exertion ; but she is reso-
lute.
" I shall wish so few things any more," she says, simply
and pleadingly ; " you may as well let me have my way."
Tims I tearfully consent. " The old blue gown," she says,
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 435
with an eager smile ; " Louise will find it among my things.
It is the only one among my clothes that he ever praised.
He never was one to notice clothes, but he liked that.
Only the last time I saw him he was talking of it."
So, with many pauses, slowly and mournfully, with
sorrowful faces, as if we were already dressing her for her
grave, we dress her in the old blue gown. Alas ! it is
pitifully large for her. But she is not yet satisfied. In
spite of pain, in spite of utter prostration, she must also
have her hair dressed her long, bright hair the one
thing that remains to her.
" Plait it round and round my head," she says, looking
with feverish entreaty into my sad face. " Take great
pains. Put no frisettes nothing artificial ; he does not
like it ; but yet let it be becoming."
Becoming ! at such a time ! O God ! Amazed I look
at her, and a half doubt enters my mind that I have been
allotting her too short a space of further life. Her voice
sounds certainly stronger, and there is a ray of living ani-
mation in her great, sunken eyes. Toward evening she
grows very restless, and I hear her murmur to herself,
" He must make haste make haste. The road is long and
steep so many sharp turns and twists. I hope the horses
are sure-footed. But it is only for once / he might make
haste." She is as one running a' hard race that is nearing
the goal, but hears his rival's feet close upon his track, and
strains every tense nerve in the effort and agony of attain-
ment. Will she attain her goal ? It is the question that, as
day droops into night, makes us all ever more and more
breathless. She speaks little with her faint lips, but with
her hunted, piteous eyes she entreats us to keep her. I
cannot bear those eyes.
The light is gone, and the candles are lit. " Let me
read to you a little," I say, softly, in a tear-strangled
voice.
436 "GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"
" Yes," she answers ; " yes ; if you will if you like."
But she is not listening. I sit down with the Bible
upon my knees. I can hardly see the page for tears. I
scarcely know where I turn. I begin at the words of god-
like consolation that fit any grief ; that come never amiss :
" Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden."
They open the fount of my own sorrow, that requires but
a touch to unclose it. " Are you listening ? " I ask, gently,
trying to scan her face across the candle's feeble flame.
" Yes," she answers, with a sort of hurry ; " yes to be
sure I am listening ! but read lower ; one cannot hear
any little noise outside when you read so loud."
Sighing, I lay down the book, and walking to the win-
dow look out look out at the little quarter moon, and the
travelling stars the sky, that speaks of deep and unutter-
able quietness the dark mountain-bulks, with flashes of
silver on their giant flanks the narrow street, with the
lights from the hotel playing on the little houses opposite
the small, white cross gleaming in the moonlight the
solitary pacer down the tongueless street the solemn
glacier-river that saith nothing light, but singeth ever the
plain, hoarse song.
" After all I shall have to go ! " she says, with a low
wail. " I cannot wait I cannot. O Paul ! you might
have hurried ! "
I here thrust my head as far out of the window as it
will go. I am listening. At first, nothing but the river
nothing ! O river ! I hate you ; be silent for once. Then
a little noise mixes with it so small and uncertain that
one cannot positively say at first that it is not a part of the
stream's roar; then it separates itself grows distinct
nears. I turn to the bed, with an unspeakable weight
lifted from my heart. " He is coming ! " I say, with a
smile ; but already she has heard. Could I expect my ears
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS. 437
to be keener than hers ? Even in death she looks very
joyful. As the carriage noisily rolls up toward the hotel,
I turn with the intention of going down to meet the travel-
lers ; but she stops me.
"Stay!" she says, stretching out her hand eagerly.
" Do not go ! I forbid you ! I will have the first look ! "
So we remain in absolute silence for two enormous
minutes; then the sound of a step running quickly and
lightly up the stairs a step surely there is only one !
The door opens, and Charley enters, haggard, travel-
stained, and alone. She does not even look at him ; her
eyes are staring, with an awful, eager intentness, at the
door behind him ; but no one follows, nor does he leave it
open, as if expecting to be followed. On the contrary, he
closes it behind him.
" Great God ! " I say, running up to him, half out of
my wits with excitement, " what is this ? You have come
without him. You have not brought him ! "
He does not answer.
Putting me aside, he goes hastily to the couch, kneels
down beside it, taking her gently in his arms, and says,
in a hoarse voice :
" My darling, I have broken my promise but I could
not help it it was not my fault. He he ;has not come,
because because it was his wedding-day when I got there.
O beloved, speak to me ! Say you forgive me you are
not going without one word speak speak ! "
But Lenore will never speak to him any more : her head
has sunk back, with all its pretty, careful plaits, on his
shoulder Lenore has
" Gone through the straight and dreadful pass of death."