At the close of a sultry day in September, when factory fumes hung low over the town of St. Helen’s, and twilight thickened luridly, and the air tasted of sulphur, and the noises of the streets, muffled in their joint effect, had individually an ominous distinctness, Godwin Peak walked with languid steps to his lodgings and the meal that there awaited him. His vitality was at low ebb. The routine of his life disgusted him; the hope of release was a mockery. What was to be the limit of this effort to redeem his character? How many years before the past could be forgotten, and his claim to the style of honourable be deemed secure? Rubbish! It was an idea out of old-fashioned romances. What he was, he was, and no extent of dogged duration at St. Helen’s or elsewhere, could affect his personality. What, practically, was to be the end? If Sidwell had no money of her own, and no expectations from her father, how could she ever become his wife? Women liked this kind of thing, this indefinite engagement to marry when something should happen, which in all likelihood never would happen—this fantastic mutual fidelity with only the airiest reward. Especially women of a certain age.

A heavy cart seemed to be rumbling in the next street. No, it was thunder. If only a good rattling storm would sweep the bituminous atmosphere, and allow a breath of pure air before midnight.

She could not be far from thirty. Of course there prevails much conventional nonsense about women’s age; there are plenty of women who reckon four decades, and yet retain all the essential charm of their sex. And as a man gets older, as he begins to persuade himself that at forty one has scarce reached the prime of life——

The storm was coming on in earnest. Big drops began to fall. He quickened his pace, reached home, and rang the bell for a light.

His landlady came in with the announcement that a gentleman had called to see him, about an hour ago; he would come again at seven o’clock.

‘What name?’

None had been given. A youngish gentleman, speaking like a Londoner.

It might be Earwaker, but that was not likely. Godwin sat down to his plain meal, and after it lit a pipe. Thunder was still rolling, but now in the distance. He waited impatiently for seven o’clock.

To the minute, sounded a knock at the house-door. A little delay, and there appeared Christian Moxey.

Godwin was surprised and embarrassed. His visitor had a very grave face, and was thinner, paler, than three years ago; he appeared to hesitate, but at length offered his hand.

‘I got your address from Earwaker. I was obliged to see you—on business.’

‘Business?’

‘May I take my coat off? We shall have to talk.’

They sat down, and Godwin, unable to strike the note of friendship lest he should be met with repulse, broke silence by regretting that Moxey should have had to make a second call.

‘Oh, that’s nothing! I went and had dinner.—Peak, my sister is dead.’

Their eyes met; something of the old kindness rose to either face.

‘That must be a heavy blow to you,’ murmured Godwin, possessed with a strange anticipation which he would not allow to take clear form.

‘It is. She was ill for three months.’ Whilst staying in the country last June she met with an accident. She went for a long walk alone one day, and in a steep lane she came up with a carter who was trying to make a wretched horse drag a load beyond its strength. The fellow was perhaps half drunk; he stood there beating the horse unmercifully. Marcella couldn’t endure that kind of thing—impossible for her to pass on and say nothing. She interfered, and tried to persuade the man to lighten his cart. He was insolent, attacked the horse more furiously than ever, and kicked it so violently in the stomach that it fell. Even then he wouldn’t stop his brutality. Marcella tried to get between him and the animal—just as it lashed out with its heels. The poor girl was so badly injured that she lay by the roadside until another carter took her up and brought her back to the village. Three months of accursed suffering, and then happily came the end.’

A far, faint echoing of thunder filled the silence of their voices. Heavy rain splashed upon the pavement.

‘She said to me just before her death,’ resumed Christian, ‘“I have ill luck when I try to do a kindness—but perhaps there is one more chance.” I didn’t know what she meant till afterwards. Peak, she has left nearly all her money to you.’

Godwin knew it before the words were spoken. His heart leaped, and only the dread of being observed enabled him to control his features. When his tongue was released he said harshly:

‘Of course I can’t accept it.’

The words were uttered independently of his will. He had no such thought, and the sound of his voice shook him with alarm.

‘Why can’t you?’ returned Christian.

‘I have no right—it belongs to you, or to some other relative—it would be’——

His stammering broke off. Flushes and chills ran through him; he could not raise his eyes from the ground.

‘It belongs to no one but you,’ said Moxey, with cold persistence. ‘Her last wish was to do you a kindness, and I, at all events, shall never consent to frustrate her intention. The legacy represents something more than eight hundred a year, as the investments now stand. This will make you independent—of everything and everybody.’ He looked meaningly at the listener. ‘Her own life was not a very happy one; she did what she could to save yours from a like doom.’

Godwin at last looked up.

‘Did she speak of me during her illness?’

‘She asked me once, soon after the accident, what had become of you. As I knew from Earwaker, I was able to tell her.’

A long silence followed. Christian’s voice was softer when he resumed.

‘You never knew her. She was the one woman in ten thousand—at once strong and gentle; a fine intellect, and a heart of rare tenderness. But because she had not the kind of face that’——

He checked himself.

‘To the end her mind kept its clearness and courage. One day she reminded me of Heine—how we had talked of that “conversion” on the mattress-grave, and had pitied the noble intellect subdued by disease. “I shan’t live long enough,” she said, “to incur that danger. What I have thought ever since I could study, I think now, and shall to the last moment.” I buried her without forms of any kind, in the cemetery at Kingsmill. That was what she wished. I should have despised myself if I had lacked that courage.’

‘It was right,’ muttered Godwin.

‘And I wear no mourning, you see. All that kind of thing is ignoble. I am robbed of a priceless companionship, but I don’t care to go about inviting people’s pity. If only I could forget those months of suffering! Some day I shall, perhaps, and think of her only as she lived.’

‘Were you alone with her all the time?’

‘No. Our cousin Janet was often with us.’ Christian spoke with averted face. ‘You don’t know, of course, that she has gone in for medical work—practises at Kingsmill. The accident was at a village called Lowton, ten miles or more from Kingsmill. Janet came over very often.’

Godwin mused on this development of the girl whom he remembered so well. He could not direct his thoughts; a languor had crept over him.

‘Do you recollect, Peak,’ said Christian, presently, ‘the talk we had in the fields by Twybridge, when we first met?’

The old friendliness was reappearing in his manner, He was yielding to the impulse to be communicative, confidential, which had always characterised him.

‘I remember,’ Godwin murmured.

‘If only my words then had had any weight with you! And if only I had acted upon my own advice! Just for those few weeks I was sane; I understood something of life; I saw my true way before me. You and I have both gone after ruinous ideals, instead of taking the solid good held out to us. Of course, I know your story in outline. I don’t ask you to talk about it. You are independent now, and I hope you can use your freedom.—Well, and I too am free.’

The last words were in a lower tone. Godwin glanced at the speaker, whose sadness was not banished, but illumined with a ray of calm hope.

‘Have you ever thought of me and my infatuation?’ Christian asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I have outlived that mawkish folly. I used to drink too much; the two things went well together. It would shame me to tell you all about it. But, happily, I have been able to go back about thirteen years—recover my old sane self—and with it what I then threw away.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you? Marcella knew of it, just before her death, and it made her glad. But the waste of years, the best part of a lifetime! It’s incredible to me as I look back. Janet called on us one day in London. Heaven be thanked that she was forgiving enough to do so! What would have become of me now?’

‘How are you going to live, then?’ Godwin asked, absently.

‘How? My income is sufficient’——

‘No, no; I mean, where and how will you live in your married life?’

‘That’s still uncertain. Janet mustn’t go on with professional work. In any case, I don’t think she could for long; her strength isn’t equal to it. But I shouldn’t wonder if we settle in Kingsmill. To you it would seem intolerable? But why should we live in London? At Kingsmill Janet has a large circle of friends; in London we know scarcely half-a-dozen people—of the kind it would give us any pleasure to live with. We shall have no lack of intellectual society; Janet knows some of the Whitelaw professors. The atmosphere of Kingsmill isn’t illiberal, you know; we shan’t be fought shy of because we object to pass Sundays in a state of coma. But the years that I have lost! The irrecoverable years!’

‘There’s nothing so idle as regretting the past,’ said Godwin, with some impatience. ‘Why groan over what couldn’t be otherwise? The probability is, Janet and you are far better suited to each other now than you ever would have been if you had married long ago.’

‘You think that?’ exclaimed the other, eagerly. ‘I have tried to see it in that light. If I didn’t feel so despicable!’

‘She, I take it, doesn’t think you so,’ Godwin muttered.

‘But how can she understand? I have tried to tell her everything, but she refused to listen. Perhaps Marcella told her all she cared to know.’

‘No doubt.’

Each brooded for a while over his own affairs, then Christian reverted to the subject which concerned them both.

‘Let us speak frankly. You will take this gift of Marcella’s as it was meant?’

How was it meant? Critic and analyst as ever, Godwin could not be content to see in it the simple benefaction of a woman who died loving him. Was it not rather the last subtle device of jealousy? Marcella knew that the legacy would be a temptation he could scarcely resist—and knew at the same time that, if he accepted it, he practically renounced his hope of marrying Sidwell Warricombe. Doubtless she had learned as much as she needed to know of Sidwell’s position. Refusing this bequest, he was as far as ever from the possibility of asking Sidwell to marry him. Profiting by it, he stood for ever indebted to Marcella, must needs be grateful to her, and some day, assuredly, would reveal the truth to whatever woman became his wife. Conflict of reasonings and emotions made it difficult to answer Moxey’s question.

‘I must take time to think of it,’ he said, at length.

‘Well, I suppose that is right. But—well, I know so little of your circumstances’——

‘Is that strictly true?’ Peak asked.

‘Yes. I have only the vaguest idea of what you have been doing since you left us. Of course I have tried to find out.’

Godwin smiled, rather gloomily.

‘We won’t talk of it. I suppose you stay in St. Helen’s for the night?’

‘There’s a train at 10.20. I had better go by it.’

‘Then let us forget everything but your own cheerful outlook. At ten, I’ll walk with you to the station.’

Reluctantly at first, but before long with a quiet abandonment to the joy that would not be suppressed, Christian talked of his future wife. In Janet he found every perfection. Her mind was something more than the companion of his own. Already she had begun to inspire him with a hopeful activity, and to foster the elements of true manliness which he was conscious of possessing, though they had never yet had free play. With a sense of luxurious safety, he submitted to her influence, knowing none the less that it was in his power to complete her imperfect life. Studiously he avoided the word ‘ideal’; from such vaporous illusions he had turned to the world’s actualities; his language dealt with concretes, with homely satisfactions, with prospects near enough to be soberly examined.

A hurry to catch the train facilitated parting. Godwin promised to write in a few days.

He took a roundabout way back to his lodgings. The rain was over, the sky had become placid. He was conscious of an effect from Christian’s conversation which half counteracted the mood he would otherwise have indulged,—the joy of liberty and of an outlook wholly new. Sidwell might perchance be to him all that Janet was to Christian. Was it not the luring of ‘ideals’ that prompted him to turn away from his long hope?

There must be no more untruthfulness. Sidwell must have all the facts laid before her, and make her choice.

Without a clear understanding of what he was going to wr............