Mrs. Falchion, Volume 1.

tion which lasted throughout the voyage, and was associated with electric appeals to the steward to fill the flowing bowl. Clovelly came with me, and we joined Miss Tre

ssessed of great physical charm, but of that fine sort which must be seen in suitable surroundings to be properly appreciated. Here on board ship a sweet gravity and a proud decorum-not altogether unnecessary-prevented her from being seen at once to the best advantage. Even at this moment I respected her the more for it, and was not surprised, nor exactly displeased, that she adroitly drew her father and Clovelly into the conversation. With Clovelly she seemed to find immediate ground for naive and pleasant

flush, such as comes to a consumptive person. I said little to him beyond what was necessary for the discussion of his case. I cautioned him about

hall be very glad of you

, I think medicines can

isiting me, you need not

ill send a steward to yo

veness, I could not tell; but I determined to take

with pleasure. And from the sheer force of circumstances, as it seemed to me then, Mrs. Falchion's hand was often on my arm; and her voice was always in my ear at meal-times and when I visited Justine Caron to attend to her wound, or joined in the chattering recreations of the music saloon. It was impossible not to feel her influence; and if I did not yield entirely to it, I was more possessed by it than I was aware. I was inquisitive to kn

ction. Thereafter I was more careful, but the idea haunted me. Yet, I was not the only person who sat with her. Other men paid her attentive court. The difference was, however, that with me she assumed ever so delicate, yet palpable an air of proprietorship, none the less alluring because there was no heart in it. So far as the other passengers were concerned, there was nothing jarring to propriety in our companionship. They did not know of Number 116 Intermediate. She had been announced as a

to send my steward to see how Boyd Madras came on, rather than go myself. I was, however, conscious that the position could not- should not-be maintained lo

o find Mrs. Falchion, who, I knew, was on the other side of the deck, go in to the concert, or join Colonel Ryder and Clovelly, who had asked me to come to the smoking-room when I could. I am afraid I was balancing heavily in favour of Mrs. Falchion, when I heard a voice that was new to me, singing a song I had know

stood rooted to the spot, as the notes floated out past me to the nervelessness of the

re was an abstracted look in her eyes as she raised them, and she seemed unconscious of the applause following the last chords of the accompaniment. She stood up, folding the music as she did so, and unconsciously raised her eyes toward the port-hole where I was. Her glance caught mine, and instantly a change passed over her face. The effect of the song upon her was broken; she flushed slightly, and, as I thought, with faint annoyance. I know of nothing so little complimentary

. I had yet to learn that in times of mental and moral struggle the mixed fighting forces in us resolve themselves into two cohesive powers, and strive for mastery; that no past thought or act goes for nothing at such a time, but creeps out from the darkness where we thought it had gone for ever, and does battle with its kind against the common foe. There moved before my sight three women: one, sweet and unsubstantial, wistful and mute and very young, not of the earth earthy; one, lissom, grave, with gracious body and warm abstracted eyes, all delicacy

manently to that time when we didn't know champagne from 'alter feiner madeira' or dry hock from sweet sauterne; when a pretty face made us feel ready to abjure all the sinful lusts of the flesh and become inheritors of the kingdom of heaven? Egad!

our before, in filling a phial with medicine, I found I was doing it mechanically, and had to begin over again, making an effort to keep

iar and confident insistence-and I yielded. On my way to her I met Clovelly and Colonel Ryder. Hungerford was walking

e of the taking of Mobi

a

f me, and that he might let me hear it any moment. I knew, numbering the order of his duties, that he could have but a very short time to spare for gossip at this juncture, yet I said that I could not join them for half an hour or so. Hungerford had a fashion of looking at me searchingly from under his heavy brows, and

hion. "You seemed to enjoy Miss Treherne's singing?" she

t it beautiful

e good. Still, all of that pleasant race will read their husband's letters and smuggle. They have no civic virtues. Yet they would be shocked to bathe on the beach without a machine, as American women do,-and they look for a new fall of Jerusalem when one of their sex smokes a cigarette after dinner. Now, I do not smoke cigarettes after dinner

y to themselves in their dark hours; ah, really, Dr. Marmion, he is ignorant, I assure you. He has only got two or three kinds of women in his mind, and the representatives of these fooled him, as far as he went with them, to their hearts' content. Believe me, there is no one quite so foolish as the professional student of character. He sees things with a glamour; he is impressionable; he immediately begins to make a woman what he wishes her to be for his book, not what she is; and women laugh at him when they read his

nished my lecture. Please tie my shoe-lace there, and then, as I said, amuse me. Oh, you can, if you choose! You are clever when you like to b

A woman who triumphs over sea-sickness, whom steam from the boilers never affects, nor the propeller-screw disturbs, has little to fear from the words of a man who is neither adroit, eloquent, nor dramatic. However, I determined

ong as it is not conventional and hackneyed. But

was good-looking, amiable, but hopelessly melancholy. He was dying as much from trouble as disease. No counsel or encouragement had any effect upon him; he did, as I have

d mine steadily to hers with an impersonal glance, and saw that

own name, and begged her, by the memory of their dead child, to speak kindly to him. She said he was quite mistaken in her name, that she was Mrs. Glave, not Mrs. Anson, and again insisted that he should go. He left her, and at last, broken-hearted, found his way, in illness and poverty to the hospital, where, toward the last, he was cared for by a noble girl, a companion of his boyhood and his better days, who urged his wife to visit him. She left him alone, said unpl

ally bared before her; but that soon passed, and she languidly tapped the chair-arm as the narrative continued. W

, he would always have added to the blight on his wife's career, and have been an arrow-not a thorn-in her side. Very likely he would have created a scandal for the good young girl who nursed him. He made the false step, and compelled society to reject him. It did not want to do so; it never does. It is long-suffering; it tries not to see and acknowledge things until the culprit himself forces it to take action. Then it says: 'Now you have openly and inconsiderately broken our bond of mutual forbearance. You make me send you away. Go, then, behind stone walls, a

ly than the author of 'A Sweet Apocalypse' would draw you. The social law you sketch when reduced to its bare elements, is remorsel

of him is another. The world says, You shall have latitude enough to swing in freely, but you must keep within the code. As soon as you break the law openly, and set the machinery of public penalty in motion, there is an end of you, so far as this world is concerned. You may live on, but you have

he straitest interpretation of life; convincing even in those other and later incidents, which showed her to be acting not so much by impulse as by the law of her nature. Her emotions were apparently rationalised at birth-to be derationalised and broken up by a power greater than herself before her life had worked itself out. I had counted her clever; I had not reck

she replied. "Why, w

d to be, free from any action that should set the machine of penalty going against herself. S

pleasure that Anson made

e man was vain and selfish to run any risk, to do anything tha

d pleasure?-that he feared her anger or dis

f a woman." The hardness in her voice was matc

hat would such a selfish woman do in such a c

kind of woman," was

stle of strength was crum

ve do

ward me, yet not nervo

did sh

ed to answe

r a minute, I looked at her, and saw, from the absence of any curious anxiety, that I had betrayed nothing. She looked

he has repent

man plays the fool, the coward, and the criminal, he must expect to wear the fool's cap, the white feather, and the leg-chain until

ut this interests me so. I have thought much of Anson l

an air of concession r

dpoint. You see, I am apt to side with the miserable fellow who made a fals

as bea

mpliment, any more than a lioness would, if you prai

n a true wife to

that concer

at she could, as long as she could." She lea

theorist-that Mrs. Anson might at leas

her. She had no part in his life; she cou

hen, of the time when they took each other for be

e passed from a free world into a cage. Besides, we are

a little raw irony, "that I

t a moment quite indolently, and then continued: "You make one moralise like George Eliot. Marriage is a condition, but love must

cted, and now she seemed to have forgotten my presence, and was looking out upon the humming darkness round us, through which

n I did then. Her hand had dropped gently on the chair-arm, near to my own, and though our fingers did not touch, I felt mine thrilled and impelled toward hers. I do not seek to palliat

ove is," I said. "You migh

might learn, Dr. Marmion, be sure that neither your college nor Heaven gave you the knowledge to instruct me. . . . There: pardon me, if I speak harshly; but this is most inconside

seemed adorable to me. Without any apparent relevancy, but certainly because my thoughts in self-rep

she questioned; and she lai

y, and replied, "At men going to the d

an?" she said calmly. "I mean that Anson loved his wife, and she did not

's wife was not responsible for his loving her. Love, as I take it, is a voluntary thing. It pleased him to love her-he wo

t strawed. If she did not make the man love her,-I believe she did, as I believe you would, perhaps unconsciously, do,-she used his love, and was therefore

to win men's love, because-ah, surely, Dr. Marmion, you do not dignify this impulse, this foolish

was right. "I mean," said I, "that I can understand how men have committed suicide because of jus

h of heroism to take one's own life. As I conceive it, suicide would have been the best thing for him when he sinned against the code. Th

werful thing; he has an instant of great courage, and all is over. If it had been a duel in which, of intention, he would fire wide, and his assailant would fire to kill, so much the

eroism in a man living down his shame, righting himself heroically at all points possible, bearin

. After all, your belief is a pitiless one; for, as I have tried to say, the man has not himself alone to consider, but those to whom his living is a perpetual shame and menace and cruelty insupportable-insupportable! Now, please, let

cavalier, who should give all, while she should give nothing. I knew that my punishment had already begun. We paced the deck in silence; and once, as we walked far aft,

not lovers? Or shall you cherish enmity against me? Or, worse still,"-and here she laug

; but, for the rest, you must please let me see what I may think of myself to-morro

. They wished to consult Mrs. Falchion in certain matters of costume and decoration, for which, it had been discovered, she had a peculiar faculty. She turned to me half inquiringly,

rks to me-though he was ignorant of them-that lascars should not be permitted on English passenger ships. He was supported by Sir Hayes Craven, a shipowner, who further said that not one out of ten British sailors could swim, while not five out of ten could row a boat properly. Ryder's anger was great, because Clovelly remarked with mock seriousness that the lasca

tible. He was at the service of any person on board needing championship. His talents were varied. He could suggest harmonies in colour to the ladies at one moment, and at the next, in the seclusion of the bar counter, arrange deadly harmonies in liquor. He was an authority on acting; he knew how to edit a newspaper; he picked out the really nice points in the sermons delivered by the missionaries in the saloon; he had some marvellous theories about navigation; and his trick with a salad was superb. He now convulsed the idlers

the machinery, and that we should be hove-to for a day, or longer, to accompli