"Ah-o-o-o-o-o-o-oy, master!" roared the bargee.

"Good arternoon, sir," said a man who, with a short whip in his hand,
trudged beside the white horse that towed the barge. "Come up!" he added
malevolently to the horse.

"I want to get on board, and go up to Lyvern with you," said Trefusis.
"He seems a well fed brute, that."

"Better fed nor me," said the man. "You can't get the work out of a
hunderfed 'orse that you can out of a hunderfed man or woman. I've bin
in parts of England where women pulled the barges. They come cheaper nor
'orses, because it didn't cost nothing to get new ones when the old ones
we wore out."

"Then why not employ them?" said Trefusis, with ironical gravity. "The
principle of buying laborforce in the cheapest market and selling its
product in the dearest has done much to make Englishmen--what they are."

"The railway comp'nies keeps 'orspittles for the like of 'IM," said the
man, with a cunning laugh, indicating the horse by smacking him on the
belly with the butt of the whip. "If ever you try bein' a laborer in
earnest, governor, try it on four legs. You'll find it far preferable to
trying on two."

"This man is one of my converts," said Trefusis apart to Henrietta.
"He told me the other day that since I set him thinking he never sees a
gentleman without feeling inclined to heave a brick at him. I find that
socialism is often misunderstood by its least intelligent supporters
and opponents to mean simply unrestrained indulgence of our natural
propensity to heave bricks at respectable persons. Now I am going to
carry you along this plank. If you keep quiet, we may reach the barge.
If not, we shall reach the bottom of the canal."

He carried her safely over, and exchanged some friendly words with the
bargee. Then he took Henrietta forward, and stood watching the water
as they were borne along noiselessly between the hilly pastures of the
country.

"This would be a fairy journey," he said, "if one could forget the woman
down below, cooking her husband's dinner in a stifling hole about as big
as your wardrobe, and--"

"Oh, don't talk any more of these things," she said crossly; "I cannot
help them. I have my own troubles to think of. HER husband lives with
her."

"She will change places with you, my dear, if you make her the offer."

She had no answer ready. After a pause he began to speak poetically of
the scenery and to offer her loverlike speeches and compliments. But she
felt that he intended to get rid of her, and he knew that it was useless
to try to hide that design from her. She turned away and sat down on a
pile of bricks, only writhing angrily when he pressed her for a word.
As they neared the end of her voyage, and her intense protest against
desertion remained, as she thought, only half expressed, her sense of
injury grew almost unbearable.

They landed on a wharf, and went through an unswept, deeply-rutted lane
up to the main street of Lyvern. Here he became Smilash again, walking
deferentially a little before her, as if she had hired him to point out
the way. She then saw that her last opportunity of appealing to him had
gone by, and she nearly burst into tears at the thought. It occurred to
her that she might prevail upon him by making a scene in public. But
the street was a busy one, and she was a little afraid of him. Neither
consideration would have checked her in one of her ungovernable moods,
but now she was in an abject one. Her moods seemed to come only when
they were harmful to her. She suffered herself to be put into the
railway omnibus, which was on the point of starting from the innyard
when they arrived there, and though he touched his hat, asked whether
she had any message to give him, and in a tender whisper wished her a
safe journey, she would not look at or speak to him. So they parted,
and he returned alone to the chalet, where he was received by the two
policemen who subsequently brought him to the college.



CHAPTER VI

The year wore on, and the long winter evenings set in. The studious
young ladies at Alton College, elbows on desk and hands over ears,
shuddered chillily in fur tippets whilst they loaded their memories with
the statements of writers on moral science, or, like men who swim upon
corks, reasoned out mathematical problems upon postulates. Whence
it sometimes happened that the more reasonable a student was in
mathematics, the more unreasonable she was in the affairs of real life,
concerning which few trustworthy postulates have yet been ascertained.

Agatha, not studious, and apt to shiver in winter, began to break Rule
No. 17 with increasing frequency. Rule No. 17 forbade the students
to enter the kitchen, or in any way to disturb the servants in the
discharge of their duties. Agatha broke it because she was fond of
making toffee, of eating it, of a good fire, of doing any forbidden
thing, and of the admiration with which the servants listened to her
ventriloquial and musical feats. Gertrude accompanied her because she
too liked toffee, and because she plumed herself on her condescension to
her inferiors. Jane went because her two friends went, and the spirit
of adventure, the force of example, and the love of toffee often brought
more volunteers to these expeditions than Agatha thought it safe to
enlist. One evening Miss Wilson, going downstairs alone to her private
wine cellar, was arrested near the kitchen by sounds of revelry, and,
stopping to listen, overheard the castanet dance (which reminded her of
the emphasis with which Agatha had snapped her fingers at Mrs. Miller),
the bee on the window pane, "Robin Adair" (encored by the servants),
and an imitation of herself in the act of appealing to Jane Carpenter's
better nature to induce her to study for the Cambridge Local. She waited
until the cold and her fear of being discovered spying forced her to
creep upstairs, ashamed of having enjoyed a silly entertainment, and of
conniving at a breach of the rules rather than face a fresh quarrel with
Agatha.

There was one particular in which matters between Agatha and the college
discipline did not go on exactly as before. Although she had formerly
supplied a disproportionately large number of the confessions in the
fault book, the entry which had nearly led to her expulsion was the last
she ever made in it. Not that her conduct was better--it was rather the
reverse. Miss Wilson never mentioned the matter, the fault book being
sacred from all allusion on her part. But she saw that though Agatha
would not confess her own sins, she still assisted others to unburden
their consciences. The witticisms with which Jane unsuspectingly
enlivened the pages of the Recording Angel were conclusive on this
point.

Smilash had now adopted a profession. In the last days of autumn he
had whitewashed the chalet, painted the doors, windows, and veranda,
repaired the roof and interior, and improved the place so much that the
landlord had warned him that the rent would be raised at the expiration
of his twelvemonth's tenancy, remarking that a tenant could not
reasonably expect to have a pretty, rain-tight dwelling-house for the
same money as a hardly habitable ruin. Smilash had immediately promised
to dilapidate it to its former state at the end of the year. He had
put up a board at the gate with an inscription copied from some printed
cards which he presented to persons who happened to converse with him.

                    *****

JEFFERSON SMILASH

PAINTER, DECORATOR, GLAZIER, PLUMBER & GARDENER. Pianofortes tuned.
Domestic engineering in all its Branches. Families waited upon at table
or otherwise.

CHAMOUNIX VILLA, LYVERN. (N.B. Advice Gratis. No Reasonable offer
refused.)

                    *****

The business thus announced, comprehensive as it was, did not
flourish. When asked by the curious for testimony to his competence and
respectability, he recklessly referred them to Fairholme, to Josephs,
and in particular to Miss Wilson, who, he said, had known him from his
earliest childhood. Fairholme, glad of an opportunity to show that he
was no mealy mouthed parson, declared, when applied to, that Smilash was
the greatest rogue in the country. Josephs, partly from benevolence, and
partly from a vague fear that Smilash might at any moment take an action
against him for defamation of character, said he had no doubt that he
was a very cheap workman, and that it would be a charity to give him
some little job to encourage him. Miss Wilson confirmed Fairholme's
account; and the church organist, who had tuned all the pianofortes
in the neighborhood once a year for nearly a quarter of a century,
denounced the newcomer as Jack of all trades and master of none.
Hereupon the radicals of Lyvern, a small and disreputable party, began
to assert that there was no harm in the man, and that the parsons and
Miss Wilson, who lived in a fine house and did nothing but take in the
daughters of rich swells as boarders, might employ their leisure better
than in taking the bread out of a poor work man's mouth. But as none of
this faction needed the services of a domestic engineer, he was none
the richer for their support, and the only patron he obtained was
a housemaid who was leaving her situation at a country house in the
vicinity, and wanted her box repaired, the lid having fallen off.
Smilash demanded half-a-crown for the job, but on her demurring,
immediately apologized and came down to a shilling. For this sum he
repainted the box, traced her initials on it, and affixed new hinges,
a Bramah lock, and brass handles, at a cost to himself of ten shillings
and several hours' labor. The housemaid found fault with the color of
the paint, made him take off the handles, which, she said, reminded her
of a coffin, complained that a lock with such a small key couldn't be
strong enough for a large box, but admitted that it was all her own
fault for not employing a proper man. It got about that he had made
a poor job of the box; and as he, when taxed with this, emphatically
confirmed it, he got no other commission; and his signboard served
thenceforth only for the amusement of pedestrian tourists and of
shepherd boys with a taste for stone throwing.

One night a great storm blew over Lyvern, and those young ladies at
Alton College who were afraid of lightning, said their prayers with some
earnestness. At half-past twelve the rain, wind, and thunder made such
a din that Agatha and Gertrude wrapped themselves in shawls, stole
downstairs to the window on the landing outside Miss Wilson's study,
and stood watching the flashes give vivid glimpses of the landscape, and
discussing in whispers whether it was dangerous to stand near a window,
and whether brass stair-rods could attract lightning. Agatha, as
serious and friendly with a single companion as she was mischievous
and satirical before a larger audience, enjoyed the scene quietly. The
lightning did not terrify her, for she knew little of the value of life,
and fancied much concerning the heroism of being indifferent to it. The
tremors which the more startling flashes caused her, only made her more
conscious of her own courage and its contrast with the uneasiness of
Gertrude, who at last, shrinking from a forked zigzag of blue flame,
said:

"Let us go back to bed, Agatha. I feel sure that we are not safe here."

"Quite as safe as in bed, where we cannot see anything. How the house
shakes! I believe the rain will batter in the windows before--"

"Hush," whispered Gertrude, catching her arm in terror. "What was that?"

"What?"

"I am sure I heard the bell--the gate bell. Oh, do let us go back to
bed."

"Nonsense! Who would be out on such a night as this? Perhaps the wind
rang it."

They waited for a few moments; Gertrude trembling, and Agatha feeling,
as she listened in the darkness, a sensation familiar to persons who are
afraid of ghosts. Presently a veiled clangor mingled with the wind. A
few sharp and urgent snatches of it came unmistakably from the bell at
the gate of the college grounds. It was a loud bell, used to summon
a servant from the college to open the gates; for though there was a
porter's lodge, it was uninhabited.

"Who on earth can it be?" said Agatha. "Can't they find the wicket, the
idiots?"

"Oh, I hope not! Do come upstairs, Agatha."

"No, I won't. Go you, if you like." But Gertrude was afraid to go
alone. "I think I had better waken Miss Wilson, and tell her," continued
Agatha. "It seems awful to shut anybody out on such a night as this."

"But we don't know who it is."

"Well, I suppose you are not afraid of them, in any case," said Agatha,
knowing the contrary, but recognizing the convenience of shaming
Gertrude into silence.

They listened again. The storm was now very boisterous, and they could
not hear the bell. Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the house door.
Gertrude screamed, and her cry was echoed from the rooms above, where
several girls had heard the knocking also, and had been driven by it
into the state of mind which accompanies the climax of a nightmare. Then
a candle flickered on the stairs, and Miss Wilson's voice, reassuringly
firm, was heard.

"Who is that?"

"It is I, Miss Wilson, and Gertrude. We have been watching the storm,
and there is some one knocking at the--" A tremendous battery with
the knocker, followed by a sound, confused by the gale, as of a man
shouting, interrupted her.

"They had better not open the door," said Miss Wilson, in some alarm.
"You are very imprudent, Agatha, to stand here. You will catch your
death of--Dear me! What can be the matter? She hurried down, followed
by Agatha, Gertrude, and some of the braver students, to the hall, where
they found a few shivering servants watching the housekeeper, who was at
the keyhole of the house door, querulously asking who was there. She
was evidently not heard by those without, for the knocking recommenced
whilst she was speaking, and she recoiled as if she had received a blow
on the mouth. Miss Wilson then rattled the chain to attract attention,
and demanded again who was there.

"Let us in," was returned in a hollow shout through the keyhole. "There
is a dying woman and three children here. Open the door."

Miss Wilson lost her presence of mind. To gain time, she replied, "I--I
can't hear you. What do you say?"

"Damnation!" said the voice, speaking this time to some one outside.
"They can't hear." And the knocking recommenced with increased urgency.
Agatha, excited, caught Miss Wilson's dressing gown, and repeated to her
what the voice had said. Miss Wilson had heard distinctly enough, and
she felt, without knowing clearly why, that the door must be opened, but
she was almost over-mastered by a vague dread of what was to follow. She
began to undo the chain, and Agatha helped with the bolts. Two of the
servants exclaimed that they were all about to be murdered in their
beds, and ran away. A few of the students seemed inclined to follow
their example. At last the door, loosed, was blown wide open, flinging
Miss Wilson and Agatha back, and admitting a whirlwind that tore round
the hall, snatched at the women's draperies, and blew out the lights.
Agatha, by a hash of lightning, saw for an instant two men straining at
the door like sailors at a capstan. Then she knew by the cessation of
the whirlwind that they had shut it. Matches were struck, the candles
relighted, and the newcomers clearly perceived.

Smilash, bareheaded, without a coat, his corduroy vest and trousers
heavy with rain; a rough-looking, middle-aged man, poorly dressed like
a shepherd, wet as Smilash, with the expression, piteous, patient, and
desperate, of one hard driven by ill-fortune, and at the end of his
resources; two little children, a boy and a girl, almost naked, cowering
under an old sack that had served them as an umbrella; and, lying on
the settee where the two men had laid it, a heap of wretched wearing
apparel, sacking, and rotten matting, with Smilash's coat and
sou'wester, the whole covering a bundle which presently proved to be an
exhausted woman with a tiny infant at her breast. Smilash's expression,
as he looked at her, was ferocious.

"Sorry fur to trouble you, lady," said the man, after glancing anxiously
at Smilash, as if he had expected him to act as spokesman; "but my roof
and the side of my house has gone in the storm, and my missus has been
having another little one, and I am sorry to ill-convenience you, Miss;
but--but--"

"Inconvenience!" exclaimed Smilash. "It is the lady's privilege to
relieve you--her highest privilege!"

The little boy here began to cry from mere misery, and the woman roused
herself to say, "For shame, Tom! before the lady," and then collapsed,
too weak to care for what might happen next in the world. Smilash looked
impatiently at Miss Wilson, who hesitated, and said to him:

"What do you expect me to do?"

"To help us," he replied. Then, with an explosion of nervous energy,
he added: "Do what your heart tells you to do. Give your bed and your
clothes to the woman, and let your girls pitch their books to the devil
for a few days and make something for these poor little creatures to
wear. The poor have worked hard enough to clothe THEM. Let them take
their turn now and clothe the poor."

"No, no. Steady, master," said the man, stepping forward to propitiate
Miss Wilson, and evidently much oppressed by a sense of unwelcomeness.
"It ain't any fault of the lady's. Might I make so bold as to ask you
to put this woman of mine anywhere that may be convenient until morning.
Any sort of a place will do; she's accustomed to rough it. Just to have
a roof over her until I find a room in the village where we can shake
down." Here, led by his own words to contemplate the future, he looked
desolately round the cornice of the hall, as if it were a shelf on which
somebody might have left a suitable lodging for him.

Miss Wilson turned her back decisively and contemptuously on Smilash.
She had recovered herself. "I will keep your wife here," she said to the
man. "Every care shall be taken of her. The children can stay too."

"Three cheers for moral science!" cried Smilash, ecstatically breaking
into the outrageous dialect he had forgotten in his wrath. "Wot was my
words to you, neighbor, when I said we should bring your missus to the
college, and you said, ironical-like, 'Aye, and bloomin' glad they'll be
to see us there.' Did I not say to you that the lady had a noble 'art,
and would show it when put to the test by sech a calamity as this?"

"Why should you bring my hasty words up again' me now, master, when the
lady has been so kind?" said the man with emotion. "I am humbly grateful
to you, Miss; and so is Bess. We are sensible of the ill-convenience
we--"

Miss Wilson, who had been conferring with the housekeeper, cut his
speech short by ordering him to carry his wife to bed, which he did with
the assistance of Smilash, now jubilant. Whilst they were away, one
of the servants, bidden to bring some blankets to the woman's room,
refused, saying that she was not going to wait on that sort of people.
Miss Wilson gave her warning almost fiercely to quit the college next
day. This excepted, no ill-will was shown to the refugees. The young
ladies were then requested to return to bed.

Meanwhile the man, having laid his wife in a chamber palatial in
comparison with that which the storm had blown about her ears, was
congratulating her on her luck, and threatening the children with the
most violent chastisement if they failed to behave themselves with
strict propriety whilst they remained in that house. Before leaving them
he kissed his wife; and she, reviving, asked him to look at the baby.
He did so, and pensively apostrophized it with a shocking epithet in
anticipation of the time when its appetite must be satisfied from the
provision shop instead of from its mother's breast. She laughed and
cried shame on him; and so they parted cheerfully. When he returned to
the hall with Smilash they found two mugs of beer waiting for them. The
girls had retired, and only Miss Wilson and the housekeeper remained.

"Here's your health, mum," said the man, before drinking; "and may you
find such another as yourself to help you when you're in trouble, which
Lord send may never come!"

"Is your house quite destroyed?" said Miss Wilson. "Where will you spend
the night?"

"Don't you think of me, mum. Master Smilash here will kindly put me up
'til morning."

"His health!" said Smilash, touching the mug with his lips.

"The roof and south wall is browed right away," continued the man,
after pausing for a moment to puzzle over Smilash's meaning. "I doubt if
there's a stone of it standing by this."

"But Sir John will build it for you again. You are one of his herds, are
you not?"

"I am, Miss. But not he; he'll be glad it's down. He don't like people
livin' on the land. I have told him time and again that the place was
ready to fall; but he said I couldn't expect him to lay out money on a
house that he got no rent for. You see, Miss, I didn't pay any rent. I
took low wages; and the bit of a hut was a sort of set-off again' what I
was paid short of the other men. I couldn't afford to have it repaired,
though I did what I could to patch and prop it. And now most like I
shall be blamed for letting it be blew down, and shall have to live in
half a room in the town and pay two or three shillin's a week, besides
walkin' three miles to and from my work every day. A gentleman like Sir
John don't hardly know what the value of a penny is to us laborin' folk,
nor how cruel hard his estate rules and the like comes on us."

"Sir John's health!" said Smilash, touching the mug as before. The man
drank a mouthful humbly, and Smilash continued, "Here's to the glorious
landed gentry of old England: bless 'em!"

"Master Smilash is only jokin'," said the man apologetically. "It's his
way."

"You should not bring a family into the world if you are so poor," said
Miss Wilson severely. "Can you not see that you impoverish yourself by
doing so--to put the matter on no higher grounds."

"Reverend Mr. Malthus's health!" remarked Smilash, repeating his
pantomime.

"Some say it's the children, and some say it's the drink, Miss," said
the man submissively. "But from what I see, family or no family, drunk
or sober, the poor gets poorer and the rich richer every day."

"Ain't it disgustin' to hear a man so ignorant of the improvement in the
condition of his class?" said Smilash, appealing to Miss Wilson.

"If you intend to take this man home with you," she said, turning
sharply on him, "you had better do it at once."

"I take it kind on your part that you ask me to do anythink, after your
up and telling Mr. Wickens that I am the last person in Lyvern you would
trust with a job."

"So you are--the very last. Why don't you drink your beer?"

"Not in scorn of your brewing, lady; but because, bein' a common man,
water is good enough for me."

"I wish you good-night, Miss," said the man; "and thank you kindly for
Bess and the children."

"Good-night," she replied, stepping aside to avoid any salutation from
Smilash. But he went up to her and said in a low voice, and with the
Trefusis manner and accent:

"Good-night, Miss Wilson. If you should ever be in want of the services
of a dog, a man, or a domestic engineer, remind Smilash of Bess and the
children, and he will act for you in any of those capacities."

They opened the door cautiously, and found that the wind, conquered by
the rain, had abated. Miss Wilson's candle, though it flickered in the
draught, was not extinguished this time; and she was presently left with
the housekeeper, bolting and chaining the door, and listening to the
crunching of feet on the gravel outside dying away through the steady
pattering of the rain.



CHAPTER VII

Agatha was at this time in her seventeenth year. She had a lively
perception of the foibles of others, and no reverence for her
seniors, whom she thought dull, cautious, and ridiculously amenable by
commonplaces. But she was subject to the illusion which disables youth
in spite of its superiority to age. She thought herself an exception.
Crediting Mr. Jansenius and the general mob of mankind with nothing
but a grovelling consciousness of some few material facts, she felt
in herself an exquisite sense and all-embracing conception of nature,
shared only by her favorite poets and heroes of romance and history.
Hence she was in the common youthful case of being a much better judge
of other people's affairs than of her own. At the fellow-student who
adored some Henry or Augustus, not from the drivelling sentimentality
which the world calls love, but because this particular Henry or
Augustus was a phoenix to whom the laws that govern the relations of
ordinary lads and lasses did not apply, Agatha laughed in her sleeve.
The more she saw of this weakness in her fellows, the more satisfied she
was that, being forewarned, she was also forearmed against an attack of
it on herself, much as if a doctor were to conclude that he could not
catch smallpox because he had seen many cases of it; or as if a master
mariner, knowing that many ships are wrecked in the British channel,
should venture there without a pilot, thinking that he knew its perils
too well to run any risk of them. Yet, as the doctor might hold such
an opinion if he believed himself to be constituted differently from
ordinary men; or the shipmaster adopt such a course under the impression
that his vessel was a star, Agatha found false security in the
subjective difference between her fellows seen from without and herself
known from within. When, for instance, she fell in love with Mr.
Jefferson Smilash (a step upon which she resolved the day after the
storm), her imagination invested the pleasing emotion with a sacredness
which, to her, set it far apart and distinct from the frivolous fancies
of which Henry and Augustus had been the subject, and she the confidant.

"I can look at him quite coolly and dispassionately," she said to
herself. "Though his face has a strange influence that must, I know,
correspond to some unexplained power within me, yet it is not a perfect
face. I have seen many men who are, strictly speaking, far handsomer. If
the light that never was on sea or land is in his eyes, yet they are
not pretty eyes--not half so clear as mine. Though he wears his common
clothes with a nameless grace that betrays his true breeding at every
step, yet he is not tall, dark, and melancholy, as my ideal hero would
be if I were as great a fool as girls of my age usually are. If I am in
love, I have sense enough not to let my love blind my judgment."

She did not tell anyone of her new interest in life. Strongest in that
student community, she had used her power with good-nature enough to
win the popularity of a school leader, and occasionally with
unscrupulousness enough to secure the privileges of a school bully.
Popularity and privilege, however, only satisfied her when she was in
the mood for them. Girls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made
much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love.
These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which
the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a
difference of sex. Agatha knew by experience that though a weak woman
cannot understand why her stronger sister should wish to lean upon her,
she may triumph in the fact without understanding it, and give chaff
instead of consolation. Agatha wanted to be understood and not to be
chaffed. Finding herself unable to satisfy both these conditions, she
resolved to do without sympathy and to hold her tongue. She had often
had to do so before, and she was helped on this occasion by a sense of
the ridiculous appearance her passion might wear in the vulgar eye. Her
secret kept itself, as she was supposed in the college to be insensible
to the softer emotions. Love wrought no external change upon her. It
made her believe that she had left her girlhood behind her and was now
a woman with a newly-developed heart capacity at which she would
childishly have scoffed a little while before. She felt ashamed of the
bee on the window pane, although it somehow buzzed as frequently as
before in spite of her. Her calendar, formerly a monotonous cycle of
class times, meal times, play times, and bed time, was now irregularly
divided by walks past the chalet and accidental glimpses of its tenant.

Early in December came a black frost, and navigation on the canal
was suspended. Wickens's boy was sent to the college with news that
Wickens's pond would bear, and that the young ladies should be welcome
at any time. The pond was only four feet deep, and as Miss Wilson set
much store by the physical education of her pupils, leave was given for
skating. Agatha, who was expert on the ice, immediately proposed that a
select party should go out before breakfast next morning. Actions not in
themselves virtuous often appear so when performed at hours that compel
early rising, and some of the candidates for the Cambridge Local, who
would not have sacrificed the afternoon to amusement, at once fell in
with her suggestion. But for them it might never have been carried out;
for when they summoned Agatha, at half-past six next morning, to leave
her warm bed and brave the biting air, she would have refused without
hesitation had she not been shamed into compliance by these laborious
ones who stood by her bedside, blue-nosed and hungry, but ready for the
ice. When she had dressed herself with much shuddering and chattering,
they allayed their internal discomfort by a slender meal of biscuits,
got their skates, and went out across the rimy meadows, past patient
cows breathing clouds of steam, to Wickens's pond. Here, to their
surprise, was Smilash, on electro-plated acme skates, practicing
complicated figures with intense diligence. It soon appeared that his
skill came short of his ambition; for, after several narrow escapes and
some frantic staggering, his calves, elbows, and occiput smote the ice
almost simultaneously. On rising ruefully to a sitting posture he
became aware that eight young ladies were watching his proceedings with
interest.

"This comes of a common man putting himself above his station by getting
into gentlemen's skates," he said. "Had I been content with a humble
slide, as my fathers was, I should ha' been a happier man at the present
moment." He sighed, rose, touched his hat to Miss Ward, and took off his
skates, adding: "Good-morning, Miss. Miss Wilson sent me word to be here
sharp at six to put on the young ladies' skates, and I took the liberty
of trying a figure or two to keep out the cold."

"Miss Wilson did not tell me that she ordered you to come," said Miss
Ward.

"Just like her to be thoughtful and yet not let on to be! She is a
kind lady, and a learned--like yourself, Miss. Sit yourself down on the
camp-stool and give me your heel, if I may be so bold as to stick a
gimlet into it."

His assistance was welcome, and Miss Ward allowed him to put on her
skates. She was a Canadian, and could skate well. Jane, the first
to follow her, was anxious as to the strength of the ice; but when
reassured, she acquitted herself admirably, for she was proficient in
outdoor exercises, and had the satisfaction of laughing in the field at
those who laughed at her in the study. Agatha, contrary to her custom,
gave way to her companions, and her boots were the last upon which
Smilash operated.

"How d'you do, Miss Wylie?" he said, dropping the Smilash manner now
that the rest were out of earshot.

"I am very well, thank you," said Agatha, shy and constrained. This
phase of her being new to him, he paused with her heel in his hand and
looked up at her curiously. She collected herself, returned his gaze
steadily, and said: "How did Miss Wilson send you word to come? She only
knew of our party at half-past nine last night."

"Miss Wilson did not send for me."

"But you have just told Miss Ward that she did."

"Yes. I find it necessary to tell almost as many lies now that I am a
simple laborer as I did when I was a gentleman. More, in fact."

"I shall know how much to believe of what you say in the future."

"The truth is this. I am perhaps the worst skater in the world, and
therefore, according to a natural law, I covet the faintest distinction
on the ice more than immortal fame for the things in which nature has
given me aptitude to excel. I envy that large friend of yours--Jane
is her name, I think--more than I envy Plato. I came down here this
morning, thinking that the skating world was all a-bed, to practice in
secret."

"I am glad we caught you at it," said Agatha maliciously, for he was
disappointing her. She wanted him to be heroic in his conversation; and
he would not.

"I suppose so," he replied. "I have observed that Woman's dearest
delight is to wound Man's self-conceit, though Man's dearest delight is
to gratify hers. There is at least one creature lower than Man. Now, off
with you. Shall I hold you until your ankles get firm?"

"Thank you," she said, disgusted: "_I_ can skate pretty well, and I
don't think you could give me any useful assistance." And she went off
cautiously, feeling that a mishap would be very disgraceful after such a
speech.

He stood on the shore, listening to the grinding, swaying sound of the
skates, and watching the growing complexity of the curves they were
engraving on the ice. As the girls grew warm and accustomed to the
exercise they laughed, jested, screamed recklessly when they came into
collision, and sailed before the wind down the whole length of the pond
at perilous speed. The more animated they became, the gloomier looked
Smilash. "Not two-penn'orth of choice between them and a parcel of
puppies," he said; "except that some of them are conscious that there
is a man looking at them, although he is only a blackguard laborer. They
remind me of Henrietta in a hundred ways. Would I laugh, now, if the
whole sheet of ice were to burst into little bits under them?"

Just then the ice cracked with a startling report, and the skaters,
except Jane, skimmed away in all directions.

"You are breaking the ice to pieces, Jane," said Agatha, calling from a
safe distance. "How can you expect it to bear your weight?"

"Pack of fools!" retorted Jane indignantly. "The noise only shows how
strong it is."

The shock which the report had given Smilash answered him his question.
"Make a note that wishes for the destruction of the human race, however
rational and sincere, are contrary to nature," he said, recovering his
spirits. "Besides, what a precious fool I should be if I were working at
an international association of creatures only fit for destruction! Hi,
lady! One word, Miss!" This was to Miss Ward, who had skated into his
neighborhood. "It bein' a cold morning, and me havin' a poor and common
circulation, would it be looked on as a liberty if I was to cut a slide
here or take a turn in the corner all to myself?"

"You may skate over there if you wish," she said, after a pause for
consideration, pointing to a deserted spot at the leeward end of the
pond, where the ice was too rough for comfortable skating.

"Nobly spoke!" he cried, with a grin, hurrying to the place indicated,
where, skating being out of the question, he made a pair of slides,
and gravely exercised himself upon them until his face glowed and his
fingers tingled in the frosty air. The time passed quickly; when Miss
Ward sent for him to take off her skates there was a general groan and
declaration that it could not possibly be half-past eight o'clock yet.
Smilash knelt before the camp-stool, and was presently busy unbuckling
and unscrewing. When Jane's turn came, the camp-stool creaked beneath
her weight. Agatha again remonstrated with her, but immediately
reproached herself with flippancy before Smilash, to whom she wished to
convey an impression of deep seriousness of character.

"Smallest foot of the lot," he said critically, holding Jane's foot
between his finger and thumb as if it were an art treasure which he had
been invited to examine. "And belonging to the finest built lady."

Jane snatched away her foot, blushed, and said:

"Indeed! What next, I wonder?"

"T'other 'un next," he said, setting to work on the remaining skate.
When it was off, he looked up at her, and she darted a glance at him as
she rose which showed that his compliment (her feet were, in fact, small
and pretty) was appreciated.

"Allow me, Miss," he said to Gertrude, who was standing on one leg,
leaning on Agatha, and taking off her own skates.

"No, thank you," she said coldly. "I don't need your assistance."

"I am well aware that the offer was overbold," he replied, with a
self-complacency that made his profession of humility exasperating. "If
all the skates is off, I will, by Miss Wilson's order, carry them and
the camp-stool back to the college."

Miss Ward handed him her skates and turned away. Gertrude placed hers
on the stool and went with Miss Ward. The rest followed, leaving him to
stare at the heap of skates and consider how he should carry them. He
could think of no better plan than to interlace the straps and hang them
in a chain over his shoulder. By the time he had done this the young
ladies were out of sight, and his intention of enjoying their society
during the return to the college was defeated. They had entered the
building long before he came in sight of it.

Somewhat out of conceit with his folly, he went to the servants'
entrance and rang the bell there. When the door was opened, he saw Miss
Ward standing behind the maid who admitted him.

"Oh," she said, looking at the string of skates as if she had hardly
expected to see them again, "so you have brought our things back?"

"Such were my instructions," he said, taken aback by her manner. "You
had no instructions. What do you mean by getting our skates into your
charge under false pretences? I was about to send the police to take
them from you. How dare you tell me that you were sent to wait on me,
when you know very well that you were nothing of the sort?"

"I couldn't help it, Miss," he replied submissively. "I am a natural
born liar--always was. I know that it must appear dreadful to you that
never told a lie, and don't hardly know what a lie is, belonging as you
do to a class where none is ever told. But common people like me tells
lies just as a duck swims. I ask your pardon, Miss, most humble, and I
hope the young ladies'll be able to tell one set of skates from t'other;
for I'm blest if I can."

"Put them down. Miss Wilson wishes to speak to you before you go. Susan,
show him the way."

"Hope you ain't been and got a poor cove into trouble, Miss?"

"Miss Wilson knows how you have behaved."

He smiled at her benevolently and followed Susan upstairs. On their way
they met Jane, who stole a glance at him, and was about to pass by, when
he said:

"Won't you say a word to Miss Wilson for a poor common fellow, honored
young lady? I have got into dreadful trouble for having made bold to
assist you this morning."

"You needn't give yourself the pains to talk like that," replied Jane in
an impetuous whisper. "We all know that you're only pretending."

"Well, you can guess my motive," he whispered, looking tenderly at her.

"Such stuff and nonsense! I never heard of such a thing in my life,"
said Jane, and ran away, plainly understanding that he had disguised
himself in order to obtain admission to the college and enjoy the
happiness of looking at her.

"Cursed fool that I am!" he said to himself; "I cannot act like a
rational creature for five consecutive minutes."

The servant led him to the study and announced, "The man, if you please,
ma'am."

"Jeff Smilash," he added in explanation.

"Come in," said Miss Wilson sternly.

He went in, and met the determined frown which she cast on him from her
seat behind the writing table, by saying courteously:

"Good-morning, Miss Wilson."

She bent forward involuntarily, as if to receive a gentleman. Then she
checked herself and looked implacable.

"I have to apologize," he said, "for making use of your name
unwarrantably this morning--telling a lie, in fact. I happened to
be skating when the young ladies came down, and as they needed
some assistance which they would hardly have accepted from a common
man--excuse my borrowing that tiresome expression from our acquaintance
Smilash--I set their minds at ease by saying that you had sent for me.
Otherwise, as you have given me a bad character--though not worse than
I deserve--they would probably have refused to employ me, or at least I
should have been compelled to accept payment, which I, of course, do not
need."

Miss Wilson affected surprise. "I do not understand you," she said.

"Not altogether," he said smiling. "But you understand that I am what is
called a gentleman."

"No. The gentlemen with whom I am conversant do not dress as you dress,
nor speak as you speak, nor act as you act."

He looked at her, and her countenance confirmed the hostility of her
tone. He instantly relapsed into an aggravated phase of Smilash.

"I will no longer attempt to set myself up as a gentleman," he said. "I
am a common man, and your ladyship's hi recognizes me as such and is not
to be deceived. But don't go for to say that I am not candid when I am
as candid as ever you will let me be. What fault, if any, do you
find with my putting the skates on the young ladies, and carryin' the
campstool for them?"

"If you are a gentleman," said Miss Wilson, reddening, "your conduct in
persisting in these antics in my presence is insulting to me. Extremely
so."

"Miss Wilson," he replied, unruffled, "if you insist on Smilash, you
shall have Smilash; I take an insane pleasure in personating him. If you
want Sidney--my real Christian name--you can command him. But allow me
to say that you must have either one or the other. If you become frank
with me, I will understand that you are addressing Sidney. If distant
and severe, Smilash."

"No matter what your name may be," said Miss Wilson, much annoyed, "I
forbid you to come here or to hold any communication whatever with the
young ladies in my charge."

"Why?"

"Because I choose."

"There is much force in that reason, Miss Wilson; but it is not moral
force in the sense conveyed by your college prospectus, which I have
read with great interest."

Miss Wilson, since her quarrel with Agatha, had been sore on the
subject of moral force. "No one is admitted here," she said, "without
a trustworthy introduction or recommendation. A disguise is not a
satisfactory substitute for either."

"Disguises are generally assumed for the purpose of concealing crime,"
he remarked sententiously.

"Precisely so," she said emphatically.

"Therefore, I bear, to say the least, a doubtful character.
Nevertheless, I have formed with some of the students here a slight
acquaintance, of which, it seems, you disapprove. You have given me no
good reason why I should discontinue that acquaintance, and you
cannot control me except by your wish--a sort of influence not usually
effective with doubtful characters. Suppose I disregard your wish, and
that one or two of your pupils come to you and say: 'Miss Wilson, in our
opinion Smilash is an excellent fellow; we find his conversation most
improving. As it is your principle to allow us to exercise our own
judgment, we intend to cultivate the acquaintance of Smilash.' How will
you act in that case?"

"Send them home to their parents at once."

"I see that your principles are those of the Church of England. You
allow the students the right of private judgment on condition that
they arrive at the same conclusions as you. Excuse my saying that the
principles of the Church of England, however excellent, are not those
your prospectus led me to hope for. Your plan is coercion, stark and
simple."

"I do not admit it," said Miss Wilson, ready to argue, even with
Smilash, in defence of her system. "The girls are quite at liberty to
act as they please, but I reserve my equal liberty to exclude them from
my college if I do not approve of their behavior."

"Just so. In most schools children are perfectly at liberty to learn
their lessons or not, just as they please; but the principal reserves an
equal liberty to whip them if they cannot repeat their tasks."

"I do not whip my pupils," said Miss Wilson indignantly. "The comparison
is an outrage."

"But you expel them; and, as they are devoted to you and to the place,
expulsion is a dreaded punishment. Yours is the old system of making
laws and enforcing them by penalties, and the superiority of Alton
College to other colleges is due, not to any difference of system,
but to the comparative reasonableness of its laws and the mildness and
judgment with which they are enforced."

"My system is radically different from the old one. However, I will not
discuss the matter with you. A mind occupied with the prejudices of the
old coercive despotism can naturally only see in the new a modification
of the old, instead of, as my system is, an entire reversal or
abandonment of it."

He shook his head sadly and said: "You seek to impose your ideas on
others, ostracizing those who reject them. Believe me, mankind has been
doing nothing else ever since it began to pay some attention to ideas.
It has been said that a benevolent despotism is the best possible form
of government. I do not believe that saying, because I believe another
one to the effect that hell is paved with benevolence, which most
people, the proverb being too deep for them, misinterpret as unfulfilled
intentions. As if a benevolent despot might not by any error of judgment
destroy his kingdom, and then say, like Romeo when he got his friend
killed, 'I thought all for the best!' Excuse my rambling. I meant to
say, in short, that though you are benevolent and judicious you are none
the less a despot."

Miss Wilson, at a loss for a reply, regretted that she had not, before
letting him gain so far on her, dismissed him summarily instead of
tolerating a discussion which she did not know how to end with dignity.
He relieved her by adding unexpectedly:

"Your system was the cause of my absurd marriage. My wife acquired a
degree of culture and reasonableness from her training here which made
her seem a superior being among the chatterers who form the female
seasoning in ordinary society. I admired her dark eyes, and was only too
glad to seize the excuse her education offered me for believing her a
match for me in mind as well as in body."

Miss Wilson, astonished, determined to tell him coldly that her time was
valuable. But curiosity took possession of her in the act of utterance,
and the words that came were, "Who was she?"

"Henrietta Jansenius. She is Henrietta Trefusis, and I am Sidney
Trefusis, at your mercy. I see I have aroused your compassion at last."

"Nonsense!" said Miss Wilson hastily; for her surprise was indeed tinged
by a feeling that he was thrown away on Henrietta.

"I ran away from her and adopted this retreat and this disguise in order
to avoid her. The usual rebuke to human forethought followed. I ran
straight into her arms--or rather she ran into mine. You remember the
scene, and were probably puzzled by it."

"You seem to think your marriage contract a very light matter, Mr.
Trefusis. May I ask whose fault was the separation? Hers, of course."

"I have nothing to reproach her with. I expected to find her temper
hasty, but it was not so--her behavior was unexceptionable. So was mine.
Our bliss was perfect, but unfortunately, I was not made for domestic
bliss--at all events I could not endure it--so I fled, and when she
caught me again I could give no excuse for my flight, though I made it
clear to her that I would not resume our connubial relations just yet.
We parted on bad terms. I fully intended to write her a sweet letter
to make her forgive me in spite of herself, but somehow the weeks have
slipped away and I am still fully intending. She has never written, and
I have never written. This is a pretty state of things, isn't it, Miss
Wilson, after all her advantages under the influence of moral force and
the movement for the higher education of women?"

"By your own admission, the fault seems to lie upon your moral training
and not upon hers."

"The fault was in the conditions of our association. Why they should
have attracted me so strongly at first, and repelled me so horribly
afterwards, is one of those devil's riddles which will not be answered
until we shall have traced all the yet unsuspected reactions of our
inveterate dishonesty. But I am wasting your time, I fear. You sent
for Smilash, and I have responded by practically annihilating him. In
public, however, you must still bear with his antics. One moment more.
I had forgotten to ask you whether you are interested in the shepherd
whose wife you sheltered on the night of the storm?"

"He assured me, before he took his wife away, that he was comfortably
settled in a lodging in Lyvern."

"Yes. Very comfortably settled indeed. For half-a-crown a week he
obtained permission to share a spacious drawing-room with two other
families in a ten-roomed house in not much better repair than his
blown-down hovel. This house yields to its landlord over two hundred
a year, or rather more than the rent of a commodious mansion in South
Kensington. It is a troublesome rent to collect, but on the other
hand there is no expenditure for repairs or sanitation, which are not
considered necessary in tenement houses. Our friend has to walk three
miles to his work and three miles back. Exercise is a capital thing for
a student or a city clerk, but to a shepherd who has been in the fields
all day, a long walk at the end of his work is somewhat too much of a
good thing. He begged for an increase of wages to compensate him for
the loss of the hut, but Sir John pointed out to him that if he was not
satisfied his place could be easily filled by less exorbitant shepherds.
Sir John even condescended to explain that the laws of political economy
bind employers to buy labor in the cheapest market, and our poor friend,
just as ignorant of economics as Sir John, of course did not know that
this was untrue. However, as labor is actually so purchased everywhere
except in Downing Street and a few other privileged spots, I suggested
that our friend should go to some place where his market price would be
higher than in merry England. He was willing enough to do so, but unable
from want of means. So I lent him a trifle, and now he is on his way to
Australia. Workmen are the geese that lay the golden eggs, but they fly
away sometimes. I hear a gong sounding, to remind me of the fight of
time and the value of your share of it. Good-morning!"