One Little Red Rose

Told in Between the Dances.
by Jane Hardy.

Originally published in The Novel Magazine (C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd.) vol.3 #17 (Aug 1906).

Antipathies similar to that possessed by the hero of this story are not uncommon. King James I. could not bear the sight of a drawn sword, and on one occasion shook so violently that he nearly ran the point of the sword into the eye of a gentleman upon whom he was conferring the honour of knighthood. Earl Roberts, too, has an antipathy for cats. Such harmless things as roses, music, and apples have possessed a horror for some people.

A few muttered words of introduction, a bow, a smile, the writing down of initials on a programme, and they were off, floating down the room in the perfect unison of two exquisite dancers.
        Allison Moore, the most graceful dancer in Dublin, had always a choice of the best partners, but never before had she floated on clouds as in the arms of this tall Frenchman.
        When they had been round the room once, he drew her out from the circle of dancers.
        "A thousand pardons, mademoiselle," he said, "but my heart is weak and I can no dance for long. Will you sit with me?"
        A faint shade passed over Allison's face. To dance with this man was one thing; to sit out and listen to his queer English quite another.
        She looked up, and instantly saw that he had divined what was passing in her mind. Something in his look interested her and made her determine to be gracious.
        "Why, certainly!" she said, with one of her charming little smiles that had made many a man's heart beat fast. "With pleasure!"
        The grave Frenchman bowed, and led her through the conservatory out upon the terrace. He led her straight to two basket chairs at some distance, overlooking the garden. A few other couples were scattered about, but all were engrossed in their own affairs.
        "You will not have too cold?" he asked gently, looking down at her in the clear moonlight. And then as she, smiling, said:
        "No," he dropped into silence.
        Allison looked at him curiously. To be brought out upon the terrace to sit in silence was not what she had been accustomed to—the noted Irish beauty—and yet this strange man interested her and she was content to wait his time.
        At last he spoke.
        "This so moonlight night," he said, "much remind me of a friend I had. He was an Englishman, mademoiselle, and he had a story. It will not—what do you say?—bore you if I speak his story?"
        "Not at all," she said, with a faint smile in her eyes. Men generally brought her out here to tell their own stories! She looked up, and, meeting his grave eyes, again she had the feeling that he had read her thoughts. A faint flush came into her face, but the Frenchman did not notice it. He was looking out into the moonlight.
        "It was in Africa that I meet him," he began. "I was there making a book when your war was beginning, and I so love a fight that I go with the English and write for les journaux de Paris. His face was pleasing to me when I first saw it. He had a very earnest and so—sensitive face. His hair was fair, just the colour that you often see on your English babies, and he had large blue eyes comme un enfant. Ma foi! he was handsome, although he had a deep-deep—cicatrice—on his brow."
        Allison caught her breath for an instant. She was listening now, and the Frenchman, though he was still looking across the garden, felt the change.
        "And," went on the even voice, "this young Englishman and me, we became big friends. We shared the same tent—when there was one, mademoiselle—and we were always together. At last one night I saw down into the Englishman's heart. Does it interest you, mademoiselle?"
        "Stories from real life always do," she answered lightly. The Frenchman bowed, and then continued:
        "So one evening we were sitting all alone by ourselves over a camp fire. And the Englishman, he talk much to me, and I heard and watched his face in the light of the fire. He tell me of his mother, mademoiselle, with such tenderness and a so great reverence that I think to myself so good a son could make a good husband. And when a man begin to talk of his mother, mademoiselle, other confidences will not remain long behind. He tell me that long since a boy he had been cursed—pardon the word, mademoiselle—by a so great fear of water, and that fear had all spoilt his life. He said to me, mademoiselle, that his poor mother had been nearly drowned just before he was born, and that was how he got this fear which had caused the great grief of his life. I had always known that he had one, because when he did not work or fight, he had so sad a face."
        The Frenchman made a barely perceptible pause, but Allison sat, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her dainty face looking as if cut out in marble. As she did not speak, he went on:
        "And there is a lady in my story, mademoiselle, a so beautiful lady which I think must have been—like you—and he love this dear lady. All went well until one day they were walking near a river when a little child fell in. The lady sees him first, and she calls to her lover—my friend—to go quick help the poor child. Mais, mademoiselle, he stood still. And the lady she call to him again in great pain for the child and, mademoiselle, he could not move one step. And then"—the Frenchman's voice grew husky—"the poor child it was gone.
        "The young lady, she was Irish, mademoiselle—like yourself—and passionate—and she turn and make him bitter reproaches. She was wearing on her breast a crimson rose he had given her. She tore it off and threw it on the ground with the one word, 'Coward!' and went away. It is a hard word, mademoiselle, 'lâche, and she would not hear anything he could say. Oh, mademoiselle, my heart bleed for him when he tell me the story. His grief to have lost the child was so strong—and to have lost his love as well! So he came away to fight and forget her."
        "And did he?" whispered Allison, and two tears fell unheeded on her dainty dress.
        "That is in the other half of my story, mademoiselle," replied the Frenchman, watching the progress of those two little glittering tears. A great cloud rolled across the moon, and out of the darkness he spoke again:
        "One night a handful of men in advance of our—er—columns, were surprised par l'ennemi. As they were too many men for us to kill, we had to fall back, leaving two men wounded behind. The moon was hidden behind the clouds—as it is now, mademoiselle—and my English friend, he crawl on his hands and knees and bring in one man on his back. Then he went out for the second—mais, mademoiselle, the moon pierce through the clouds and they fire the guns on him. He bring his man in, mademoiselle, but he was bleeding from many places." The Frenchman stopped an instant, and then went on: "When he was buried, mademoiselle, they bring to me all that was found on him—just a faded red rose."
        A silence fell between them, and then the Frenchman spoke again.
        "And that is why, mademoiselle, the moonlight makes me think of my friend, and I wish always that perhaps one day I might find out that lady and tell her the rest of the story. She only knows half."
        "I think she would be glad to hear it," said Allison, with a break in her soft voice. She dropped her face into her hands to hide her quivering lips. The Frenchman watched her with infinite pity in his eyes. "Mademoiselle," he whispered, "you must not have too great a grief." He stopped, and then he added in a different tone; "Here is a gentleman who look for you."
        They both rose, and as the second man joined them she turned her brilliant eyes on the Frenchman.
        "It was for his country?" she asked.
        The Frenchman hesitated.
        "I think, mademoiselle," he said, "it was for the sake of one little red rose."

Irish Art at Burlington House

by A.R.

Originally published in The Monitor (Joseph Dollard) vol.1 #6 (Jun 1879).

It may, perhaps, be doubted whether the Celtic genius has much affinity with the combination of workmanlike, dramatic, and observant qualities which constitute the pictorial capacity. Art records impressions, the Irish character is occupied with feelings; art is simple and positive, the Celtic genius is (if we may employ a much abused word) transcendental; and having borrowed one term from metaphysics, let us sum up the whole contrast at once and say that art is objective, while the cast of Irish thought is distinctly subjective. National music, unrivalled for character and beauty, national poetry of an equal spiritual charm—these are the natural expressions of the national genius. All praise of Irish music is trite enough; but what has never been fully acknowledged, is the debt, in this matter, of the sister island. England has had some true musicians; but in hardly a single case can their origin be inquired into without the discovery of Irish or of Jewish blood—the mighty Jewish musical genius, indeed, having influenced even the great schools of Germany to an incalculable extent. The Scotch and the Welsh have the musical faculty, but by some chance they have been more self-contained in regard to it, and have not leavened the English nation as Ireland has done.
        Nevertheless, though not the land of artists, Ireland is the home of art—in this sense, that a picturesque faith, a picturesque climate, a picturesque landscape, a picturesque people which does picturesque things by some happy instinct, offer a whole world of living pictures to the painter. The Irish make many pictures if they paint few. We have not found, and we cannot imagine, in any country more perfect compositions of figures at labour, of glen and hill, of light and cloud and colour, than are met with among the Kerry mountains. As an example of the poetical instinct by which the people make pictures in their own lives—an instinct without parallel even among the Italian peasantry—there occurs to us a scene, acted often and without ostentation or self-consciousness, without witnesses, and without record. A batch of young emigrants is on the eve of quitting some poor village for ever; upon the hill-side is a tract of holy ground; the church has gone to ruin, but the churchyard remains, and a little mournful pilgrimage is made thither; the oldest woman of the village, the mother of many mothers, cuts a sod of the consecrated earth of Ireland, three times sacred as being blessed by the Church, as being the soil of the fatherland, and as lying over Irish dead; and this the young exiles are to bear with them to that new world which has no history, nor poetry, nor faith. Passing from the Ireland of to-day to the Ireland of the past, the annals of no country, whether secular, sacred, or legendary, are so full of noble suggestiveness. It is impossible, for instance, to read the life of St. Patrick without calling up mental pictures of those years of his youth when he kept sheep and prayed alone among the wild hills. The scenery is unchanged; and the very dress of a shepherd of his times is still preserved. But these are not the subjects chosen by such artists as have elected to paint Irish life. They have almost invariably followed each other in treating a serious and pathetic country as the scene of a conventional kind of buffoonery. Humour is admittedly an element, and a fine element, in the national character; but it is tragedy, and not low-comedy, which is acted in this wild and solemn scenery, and by these people who think and speak so constantly and so familiarly of death, who are so poor, so great, and so unfortunate. The artist who treats Ireland as a joke has seen nothing through his own eyes; he has borrowed those of unintelligent predecessors, and adopted a stale tradition. Ireland has thus been given over to the travesties of the stranger, because she has no great and worthy national painters. Besides the transcendental, literary, and musical bent of Irish art-power, this lack of any school of painting of our own may be attributed in part to the prosiest of reasons. The people are poor, and those who might be patrons of national art have few or no national sympathies. In 1771, Benjamin Franklin, writing in young America, said:—"There is no doubt of the arts flourishing here-after on our side of the Atlantic as soon as the number of wealthy inhabitants shall increase." Of course, the prediction has been fulfilled; and there can be little question but that a larger number of Celts would join the Anglo-Saxons in the conquest of that peculiarly Latin art—the art of painting—if Ireland counted among her wealthy men such eager and intelligent collectors of pictures as there are now in Boston, Philadelphia, or New York. For painting and poetry, like commoner things, are governed by questions of supply and demand.
        Painters, Ireland indeed has had, though they have not watched their mother's moods, or lingered lovingly over her aspirations and her acts, as her poets and her musicians do and did. The name of Maclise may be said to be immortal; and Barry, a Cork man, like Maclise, had a great reputation in his day. He was the friend of Burke, he won the praise of Dr. Johnson, and was not only an Academician, but the Academy's Professor of Painting. In Sir Martin Archer Shee, who was born in Dublin in 1770, Ireland supplied the Royal Academy with a president; and she might, for the matter of that, have supplied it with a second, for the post was offered to Maclise, and declined. Not all members, not even all presidents of the Academy are great artists; the fame of far the larger number of them is destined to die, and among the rest, it is to be feared, that of even the ambitious Barry and of Shee Maclise will have more claim on posterity. He was entirely destitute of dramatic power and incapable of expression, but he could draw like a master, and his skill in detail was something more than mere imitative dexterity. When the majority of his works, with their familiar mannerisms, have ceased to be prized, a few will yet remain to make his name, though not his nationality, remembered. Among these will be his elaborate composition of Caxton showing his first printing-press to Edward the Fourth, now exhibited at South Kensington. It is familiarly known by the engraving, and was once popular enough—perhaps less for its real merits than for the cheap Protestant clap-trap embodied in it by the introduction of the shadow of two monks which falls upon the open page of the first Bible, to typify that men of their cloth have obscured the light of the Word! This incident illustrates the un-Irish sentiment of this Irish painter—a peculiarity which is altogether indisputable in spite of the fact that he sometimes chose national subjects, such as his "All-Hallows' Eve," his "Marriage of Strongbow and Eva," and his "Earls of Desmond and Ormond." Yet, as a man, he possessed many traits characteristic of the land of his birth, and was not above the perpetration of a fine, free,and rampant bull—if we may judge from an unpublished letter of his which lies before us, and in which he excuses himself from an evening appointment because he has been "so saturated with dry detail at the Academy all day." He was Irish, too, in the fitfulness of his capacity for work, and in his generous carelessness of money. He kept his coin in the bottom of a cupboard, whither he and his sister went, whenever they needed any, without burdening either their memories or their book-shelves with accounts of expenditure, or of receipts, or of balances in hand. Charles Dickens used to say that Maclise, had he cared to figure in literature, might have done so with signal success.
        That the poverty of the past, as regards Irish art, is shared by the present, needs no further demonstration than that given by a visit to the great annual exhibition of contemporary paintings now open at Burlington House, the magnificent quarters of the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. Out of the fifteen hundred and eighty-six titles in the catalogue, we have noted only four which appertain to Ireland, viz., a view of " Turnberry Point" on the west coast, by Joseph Henderson; "Donegal Bay," by Walter F. Stocks; "Interviewing the Member," by Erskine Nicol, A.R.A.; and "'Listed for the Connaught Rangers," by Mrs. Butler. Clever and humorous as Mr. Nicol's picture is, the large canvas that comes last on our list is the only one that fulfils the conditions of a really earnest national work. An English critic has spoken of it as "the one really memorable picture of the exhibition;" certainly it is the only one, from an Irish standpoint, which is representatively true. For there is much more on this canvas than a mere recruiting incident, as we shall presently show. Even in a finished engraving of "'Listed for the Connaught Rangers," the colour would be lost; the pure green-blue of the sky, the rich aërial purple of the mountains, the glow of the storm-clouds as they roll away, and the strongly accentuated colour of the figures in cloud shadow against the brilliant background—would all be turned to sober black and white. And much more than this—the expression of the faces is missed in our rough little sketch of the picture which the artist herself has made; but which will, nevertheless, show the composition and give a general idea of the work.
        The story of the picture is soon told. A recruiting party has passed through a remote Irish village, and two sons of the soil have accepted the Queen's shilling. The big fellow who marches next to the sergeant is called Foley; he is an excellent specimen of the Kerry men, who are usually smaller than he among those hills. Though he carries himself with seeming dare-devilry, and smokes the pipe, if not of peace, at any rate of warrior-like indifference, he will make a splendid soldier in the course of a year, by dint, we are sorry to add, of an occasional visit to the blackhole. Foley's brother recruit will be moulded by the gentlest military discipline. He attributes his slightly inferior physique to the fact that he has been brought up on potatoes, while the more fortunate Foley, who comes from the little seaport of Cahirciveen, close to Valencia Island, has luxuriated on herrings. None the less he will make a magnificent soldier—the soldier who goes from remote Connemara to India, to China, to Canada, and to the Cape, where these Connaught Rangers are now fighting, and where the bones of many a Kerry boy may, at this moment, be bleaching under the sun by the Afric river and on the Afric sand. Well might the Duke of Cambridge when, in his speech at the Royal Academy banquet, he singled out this picture for especial praise, lament that the ranks were not recruited by more such men as they. But they are everywhere emigrating, and while they make their way to America, the British army is replenished by garret boys—the scum and the off-scouring of iniquitous cities.
        Mrs. Butler has a double claim on our notice here, being not only the painter of an Irish picture, but the wife of an Irish husband. Whether an artist should marry has long been a discussed question, even in the case of men, and much more in the case of women. When Flaxman told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he had taken to himself a wife, the great man remarked, "then you are ruined as an artist"—he himself, it is said, having been jilted by Angelica Kauffmann—a fact which explains the acerbity of his dictum. But the painter of the "Roll Call" is a woman first and an artist afterwards; and she had not long changed the name of Miss Thompson for that of Mrs. Butler before she set to work at the picture under notice. The landscape was faithfully studied in Kerry, at that most beautiful time of the Irish year, September (the September of 1877), when there is a glorious medley of sunshine and of rain. The mountains to the right are the Reeks, and the recruiting party are passing through Glencar—the glen of stones. The whitish-grey boulders and the golden gorse—among which are interspersed the Killarney fern, holly trees, and all kinds of mosses—give a brightness of colour to the middle distance which it would not have in July or June, the time of heather. The ruined cabin to the left stands in nature about five hundred yards distant from the exact spot depicted, and it was a wise thought of the artist to go a little out of her way to include the characteristic spectacle in her canvas. It affords, says Mr. George Augustus Sala—for it is hardly a secret that the art critic of the Daily Telegraph is he—play to "that pathos in the suggestion of which Mrs. Butler excels. Journeying across the Green Isle from Dublin to Cork one used to see, sixteen years ago, hundreds of such ruined homesteads. These battered apparitions meant only one cruel, miserable thing—eviction. They were the wretchedest landmarks in the history of a beautiful and unhappy country." Precisely—it was because the desolated cabin was an historical landmark that Mrs. Butler recorded it on canvas. This is what we meant when we referred to her work as being really national and representatively true. A great picture is not a mere literal transcript of an actual incident or scene; a great artist paints not only what lies before him, but much more—

                "The light that never was on sea or land,
                The consecration and the poet's dream."

        The Archbishop of York, speaking on this subject the other day, made some observations that deserve to be rescued from the oblivion of a local newspaper column. "Art," said his Grace, "is not mere imitation. If that were so, the photograph would be the highest product of art. Realism may happen to be the enemy of art. The bespattered boots of the fallen Emperor in Delaroche's great picture attracted very often the attention due to the head and bent figure, heavy with the weight of a crushed empire, with the ruin of a thousand schemes of a selfish life. Interpretation, not imitation, is an artist's function. Let us take, at a venture, three examples in this year's academy—the 'Waning of the Year,' by Mr. Parton; the portrait of Mr. Gladstone, by Millais; and the 'Remnants of an Army' (Mrs. Butler's second academy work). In one sense they are imitations of an autumn landscape, of a statesman's face, and of an exhausted horseman and a spent horse. It is not the imitation, however, which is the charm of each, and will arrest the admiring eyes of thousands in the coming months. No; in one sense the artist is confronted with an autumn scene, and it speaks to him of the decline of the year, and the withdrawal of exuberant summer life. The sadness of such a scene, or at least its solemnity, comes from within; for it reminds us of the waning of our own year of life. Consequently, all features in the real landscape that are void of this significance would be omitted by the artist. So the portrait of the statesman comes from one who could understand that he was in the presence, not merely of a strong and vigorous head, but of one which is a speaking record of a long, earnest, passionate career, marked with its force, but also with its sorrows and disappointments. The third picture bears out its idea with even more clearness. Alone, exhausted, snatched out of universal death, and sustained by sheer force of will to the end of the desperate flight, amidst an arid, stony landscape, which says, 'expect no help nor shelter of roof or tree from me,' the man has come back to tell of a powerful army blotted out, of the shame and humiliation of a great people." So in Mrs. Butler's other work—the one which we have especially selected for notice, because it concerns our own land—there is the touch, not of the mechanical artist only, but also of the creative genius which has comprehended and expressed the whole history of modern Ireland in this one simple scene. The long, lingering look of that young recruit tells us, as Mr. Sala well says, that somebody is sorrowing for the peasant lad who has 'listed in the Connaught Rangers; that "somebody down there in the purple shadows of the wild mountainous country grieves for Alec, or Phil, or Harry who has gone for a soger." And it tells us more. It typifies thousands of such tearings asunder of beloved ties—it is the epitome of a long chapter of national wrong and sorrow which needs no ruined roadside cabin's corroboration, of the domestic sentiment and the love of country which is so strong in the heart of every son and daughter of Erin. And throughout the composition there are similar touches to be found. Thus it is that we hail Mrs. Butler as a national painter; and we are happy to hear it is not improbable that her claim to this title may rest not merely on "'Listed for the Connaught Rangers," but also on some of her future works. Others, once she sets the example, will follow, not as mere imitators, but as learning from her canvases their own latent talent, and having aroused in them aspirations too long suppressed. Thus, haply, in the day of Ireland's regeneration, when she recovers whatever she has lost and gains new glories, she may have this also—a school of painting of her own, rich in worthy memorials of her history, her scenery, her faith.

                "O Eire, it is not ended! Soon
                        Or late, thy flower renews its bud!
                In sunless quarries still unhewn
                Thy statue waits; thy sunken moon
                        Shall light once more the autumnal flood!"

So sings the greatest of her living bards, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, and her people say, "Amen."

"Barabbas"—and After

by Marie Corelli.

Originally published in The Idler (Chatto & Windus) vol.7 #37 (Jul 1895).

Why did I write Barabbas? This is the one question which in countless different ways, both public and private, has been persistently asked of me ever since the appearance of my book bearing that title. Many individuals unknown to me have volunteered answers to it, according to their capacity; particularly certain journalists, some of whom have gone so far as to assure the world that they know my own mind better than myself, and that I did it "for the sake of notoriety," and "to make a sensation." I would now remind all who are interested in the matter, that though others have thus taken it upon themselves to settle the query propounded, those "others" being entirely ignorant of my character or my aims, I, the author of the book, and, therefore, the principal person concerned, have as yet offered no reply. I have stood apart, listening to all that has been said for or against me, and have myself abstained from joining in the argument. And this, because I observed that many of the controversialists lost their tempers; I preferred to keep mine. My object in writing an imaginative conception of the "World's Tragedy," including the tremendous scenes of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, was of too resolved a nature to be disturbed by the mere wranglings of orthodoxy or heterodoxy, and I was more or less content to wait and see what time would bring; whether the interior purpose of my book was deep and honest enough to silently surmount all opposition, or whether that purpose would prove so weak, egotistical, and insincere, as to merit being conquered by its foes and drowned in ignominous failure and oblivion. Now, however, that Baradbdas has reached its fourteenth edition and more than its thirtieth thousand, and has made its own position, not only among English-speaking peoples, but also on the Continent, through the medium of translation into six different European languages, besides having penetrated to the furthest East in the Parsi dialect and in Hindustani (an honour scarcely ever awarded to any English literary production), I think I have legitimately won the right to say a few words concerning the actual motive underlying my work. Particularly as that motive has been singularly misunderstood and perverted in many quarters of the press, partly through ignorance and partly through the haste and slovenliness which characterise latter-day reviewing. But let no one think I am going to ventilate a "grievance" or urge a "complaint," as some of my press friends (?) put it. I have nothing to "grieve" about, and nothing to "complain" of. Nor have I, as one journal declares, "a feud against the critics." If there is any feud, it is all on one side, and recent events have shown the public pretty plainly that that side is not mine.
        When Barabbas was first issued by Messrs. Methuen in the library form of three volumes it had to contend against the then fashionable "rage" for Mr. Benson's Dodo. During a short period of time it seemed that the world-famous subject of Christ's life and death, which inspired Raffaelle's brush and Milton's pen, had no chance whatever against the cleverly conceived sketch of a heartless society woman, for whom, according to the story, there existed neither truth nor honour. I was not discouraged by this; on the contrary, I watched the "run" of Dodo with interest. Brilliant as it was in many respects, I realised that it was a "firework" novel merely, dealing with purely ephemeral phases of character; and that as such, it would in due course be compelled, by the unwritten but exact laws of Art, to take its place with other similar ephemera. That I was right in this opinion is now proved. The critical faculty wrote strongly both for and against Dodo, thus giving it the benefit of a divided verdict; but they were well nigh unanimous in falling upon Barabbas with what Mr. Coulson Kernahan described to me when speaking of the matter as "brutal bludgeoning." It was a veritable "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!" The Daily Chronicle led off the attack with an article which, it is not too much to say, was the coarsest and worst-written piece of so-called "criticism" it ever fell to my lot to read in any paper, daily or weekly. The "reviewer" appeared literally to spit and splutter venom. He spared no pains to wilfully misrepresent my book, and give the public a deliberately false impression of its tendency and teaching, asserting that I had "vulgarized" and "degraded" the figure of Christ; and after declaring that "wherever an opportunity can be made or found this author's pages are smeared with gore," which as my multitude of readers now know was maliciously untrue, he proceeded to accuse me of "blasphemy." This indictment, though in itself serious, rather diverted me, seeing that it was brought forward in the Daily Chronicle. For that estimable journal had, not so long previously, invited and encouraged a long correspondence, called "Is Christianity a Failure?" the very title of which is suggestive of irreverence, to say nothing of the letters published—letters grossly flippant in many cases, frequently blasphemous and openly atheistical. Moreover the Daily Chronicle had praised Mr. Robert Buchanan's Wandering Jew, in which the Scotch play-wright undertakes to curse the Saviour, dismissing Him thus:

                "Take up thy cross and go! Thy doom ts said!"

        There would be something inexpressibly funny in the idea of a Robert Buchanan pronouncing "doom" on the Christ, if it: were not so revolting, almost as revolting as Mr. Swinburne's line describing the God-in-Man as "crucified carrion." But the press silently "passes" these outrages on decency made by the men of their own "set." Mr. Buchanan was not accused of blasphemy by the Daily Chronicile, nor, I believe, by any other paper. But I, who merely sought in Barabbas to reverently draw a picture of the Christ, as a painter might draw it, in a spirit of absolute faith, love, and worship, was marked out for this arraignment—and of the utter falseness of the accusation the public are now thoroughly aware. With regard to the Daily Chronicle's reviewer, his "style" and language were so far beneath contempt, that his column of clownish abuse merely suggested the idea that he had given way to a fit of male hysterics. It affected me no further than to a feeling of polite regret that supposing this critic to have ever been a gentleman, he should, on this occasion, have so completely forgotten the fact. I tossed his clumsy composition into the fire, and should have thought no more about it, had it not been for the number of letters that poured in upon me with respect to this same attack in the Daily Chronicle. Letters of indignation, protest, sympathy, and encouragement, arrived by every post from strangers in all parts of the country till I began to feel rather overwhelmed. One of the greatest of living scholars and statesmen wrote to me at this juncture, expressing his sense of "shame" at seeing the "vulgar assault" made upon me and my work, and urging me to keep a brave heart, as the accusations were false, and that the public might be safely trusted to find out for themselves how grossly the book had been misrepresented. He generously added, "You may publish this letter if you like." I did not publish it. Why? Because it might have "worked up" Barabbas. And my wish was that Barabbas should work itself up, legitimately and honourably, without any outside recommendation from an influential personage. For when a distinguished man's name is publicly advertised as a warrant for the excellence of a book, the thing smells of private patronage, and those who know me best are aware that I would rather be "slated" a thousand times by the critics than "patronized" once. But though I kept the letter to myself I was cheered and stimulated by its noble appreciation.
        Indeed, I have no space here to tell of the numerous friends and readers of my books who had, up to then, remained "in ambush undeclared," but who now came out in their legions to support me in what they imagined was a time of trial. As a matter of fact, however, I was not at all in such sorry case as they deemed. My spirit is not of that uncertain, dependant, or timorous quality to be shaken by passing gusts of press opinion, particularly when such opinion is, on the very face of it, inspired by unbecoming spite and petty malice. And when certain other critics with a curious lack of originality, suggestive of some pre-concerted scheme, followed like sheep in the lead of the Daily Chronicle, taking their cue from the first obscure Thersites with only a little more "toned-down" vulgarity, I still remained well and cheerful. Several good-natured people thought it necessary to go on sympathizing with me, concerning the paltry blows inflicted by the critical "bludgeons" on my book and myself; but I am able to state, with the utmost sincerity, that the whole business amused me thoroughly from start to finish. I was diverted by the ill-bred violence of my reviewers, compassionately interested in their angry lapses of grammar, vastly entertained by their ignorance of New Testament details, and altogether strengthened and instructed by the spectacle they afforded me of certain phases of the literary character, described by the elder D'Israeli in forcible terms, which I will not offend anyone's susceptibilities by quoting. I may here remark that I have very few personal acquaintances on the press, never having sought their favour or friendship. One of them, however, Mr. T.P. O'Connor, "reviewed" Barabbas in the Sun under the heading of "Books of the Hour" (it not being deemed worthy to be called "A Book of the Week"), and called it "a grievous and perilous mistake, repelling the taste of every wholesome reader," and expressing his hope that it would "be soon forgotten." He wrote his verdict with all the fervour of his genial nature, and I was genuinely amused. Since then, alas! how many of his eloquently eulogised "Books of the Week" have fallen into the lumber-room of oblivion, while Barabbas, judged as "of the hour," is in a better condition of vitality after eighteen months of hard wear and tear than when first published. Such is the provoking "contrariness" of things, dear Mr. T.P.! "Even Homer nods," you sagely observed in your pleasant little damnatory article,—so he does, especially when he is an Irish Homer! Mr. W.L. Courtney, of the Daily Telegraph, bestowed on my book three or four lines of what I call "the press pooh-pooh." Quite recently, however, he filled more than a column of the paper with praise of a certain novel dealing with the lives of London's "fallen women," in which these "unfortunates" are held up as superior examples to the clean-minded and honest of their sex—a novel which, most assuredly, should never have been recommended for perusal to English wives and daughters. This style of literature being, however, according to his own showing, what he considers deserving of encouragement, I can quite understand that Barabbas found no favour with him.
        And here I am reminded that Punch's "Baron de Bookworms" (Mr. F.C. Burnand) had to battle with a manly sob (so he himself hinted) over this same story of the "soiled doves" and their indelicate doings; of Barabbas he could only say that the publisher of it would probably resemble Zaccheus in being "up a tree," and that he could not imagine it "would ever be popular with any section of the ordinary reading public." Proved entirely wrong, I believe he still sticks to his opinion—no man is more seriously obstinate than a professed humourist—and thinks my publisher must be Barabbas or the devil himself to have scored such a triumph with the book in the very face of his pronounced judgment. Because it must be remembered that Mr. Burnand is the author of Happy Thoughts, that immortal work which will naturally take its place in the front rank among the classics selected for the instruction and admiration of a future age! The Speaker declared Barabbas to be "unworthy of criticism," complaining, in an injured tone, that I was "a much-advertised lady." Let me here quietly analyse this statement of the oracular Speaker. If the writer who penned it will take the trouble to glance down the columns of the newspapers and magazines, he will find that I am, perhaps, the least advertised of all the novelists now catering for public favour. Very few allusions are ever made to me in the Press. When, at the Foreign Press Association Dinner last December, my name was coupled with the toast of "the ladies," and a kindly compliment bestowed on me by the toast-giver, every reporter there carefully refrained from mentioning the fact; or, if they did mention it, their editors eliminated it. Asked by almost every journal in London to consent to an "interview," I have refused them all; and when I appeared as a "Celebrity at Home" in the World, it was only at the express wish of the late Edmund Yates, who, in a letter to me dated from the Savoy Hotel a few days before his death (a letter which I keep and value highly), urged it upon me, saying it would give him pleasure to thus in a manner atone for certain attacks made upon me unjustly from time to time in the World when he was away and ill, and before he had made my personal acquaintance. I have not even yielded to the tempting offers of the leading pictorials who desire to give my portrait to the public, simply for the very reason that it suggests self-advertisement. I dislike "puffery" of every description and have never envied the loud "booms" given freely (and without unkind comments) to many of my contemporaries. At a time when the shrewd public fully recognise the existence of the undignified "claw me and I'll claw thee" system among authors of every description, I think the Speaker's reviewer would be more correct, as well as more just, if he commented on my lack of advertisement rather than otherwise. Mr. H.D. Traill, by the way, has lately declared, with a touch of querulousness, that I have won a reputation "far beyond my deserts." This may be true—the public is the best judge of that—but if so, may I venture to remind him that I am not the only author who has received more praise (and blame) than he or she merits? And whatever success I enjoy has not been obtained through Mr. Traill's critical assistance. It has, therefore, not been necessary for me to write an Ode to Mr. Traill and assure him that "at his board 'tis good to sit"—though I do not doubt his ability to give an excellent dinner. Nor need I tell him that—

                "'Tis now a twelvemonths' space or more
                Since feet of mine have sought your door."

        "Feet of mine," so long as I have any control over them, will never seek any critic's door, though such seeking might secure me a paragraph of praise in the Graphic. I owe neither "Odes" nor thanks to any man, and—proud thought! I have escaped the crushing disaster of being "discovered" by Mr. Grant Allen!
        To return to Barabbas, the various "asides" of the critics (which were not criticism) "did coldly furnish forth" a certain amount of entertainment to me during my quiescent condition of waiting for results. I have said that I was "more or less" content to wait, but I am willing to admit that the "less" pre-dominated. For, as time went on, the whole press, with very few generous exceptions, arrayed itself in open hostility against my book, and moulding itself into a new sort cf Goliath, marched boldly on in the valiant determination to utterly destroy a slighter David than he of Holy Writ—a David whose only form of "sling and stone" consisted of the one thing—the steadfast interior purpose—the "why" I wrote Barabbas. That "why" being clear to my own conscience, I waited, as I say, for the final verdict by which all authors must in the end abide, namely, the decision of the public—that "after" which has now come. It was an anxious waiting, because I first of all allowed the book to run its course in three volumes through the slow ruts of the circulating library system, which is beginning to be acknowledged as one of the worst possible systems ever devised for the true advancement of literature. The French and American plan of issuing a book at once in handy one-volume form to the public is infinitely better, and I will add cleaner. In purchasing a book fresh from the counter, you can be satisfied that its pages have not been thumbed by a small-pox or cholera patient, and that you run no risk of catching a dangerous disease while reading it. This is a great comfort, and one which in England we cannot always enjoy. The parcel from Mudie's may contain the influenza! It is, moreover, quite certain that the absolute "trashy" society novel would find no publishers if there were no circulating libraries, for the reason that there would be no purchasers for this class of work. The only readers, or rather "skimmers" of such books are the so-called "cultured," the idle women who have nothing better to do during a listless half-hour than glance casually through the pages of the last "new" novel, for to them it must be "new" though it need not be clever. Now, to send an imaginative "Dream of the World's Tragedy," through such hands in the three-volume novel form, seemed incongruous, and for a little time I hesitated about the way in which the book should be issued. But when I reflected that it is precisely the indolent, fashionable, circulating library patrons who betake themselves piously to church on Sundays, and when there, ask each other in almost audible whispers, "How Mrs. Flighty can wear such a bonnet," and "how Mrs. Whimsy dares to be seen so flagrantly 'done up'" even during the reading of the Gospel, I concluded it would be as well to try and catch the attention of just such indifferent folk as these.
        Upon the careless, the cynical, and the forgetful, I sought to impress through the medium of romance, as I would through any other means that lay in my power, a vivid picture of the reality of Christ's existence upon earth, and to bring close to the imagination of the reader the human and Divine intention of His life and death. Because I see and know that though the sublime New Testament story is read diligently at all our sacred services, there are no people more ignorant of its high meaning, its majestic philosophy and spiritual comfort, than the regular and fashionable church-goers. Paradoxical as this sounds, it is, nevertheless, true. And a reason for it is not far to seek. The monotonous reading of the Gospel by our clergy, who, with a few notable exceptions, are the worst elocutionists in the world, would take all life and meaning out of the grandest prose or poetry extant. The sing-song drawl, the sameness of tone, the want of proper accentuation and emphasis, and what is more regrettable than anything, the lack of love and heart in the reading; these deaden and drown the simple and sonorous rhythm of the Holy Text, and make the wonderful life-lessons of the Divine Master seem merely tiresome repetitions of moral platitudes. So much so, indeed, that even the magnificent gospel selections for Good Friday often fail in their intended effect. The lady "leader" of a society "set" does not part with her air of satisfied self-consciousness, because she is listening to the most awe-inspiring history of the ages, nor is she moved to any particular inward emotion. In fact, if you were to ask her point-blank what she is thinking about, and she were for once to answer truthfully, she would probably reply: "Well, I was hoping there is not going to be a long sermon, as I have friends waiting for me." And this, not because she has a bad or unfeeling heart, but simply because she does not realise the personality of Christ, His actual Living Presence among us all, and His matchless character and example. She has heard the story too often, droned into her ears from childhood. The clerical voice which is always the same monotone, though it pass through all sorts and conditions of clerical throats, has reiterated it in the same colourless, lifeless, dull way till she is pretty well tired of it, so tired, indeed, that she has almost ceased to listen now when it is read, or, if she does listen, it is vaguely and uncomprehendingly. How, under such circumstances, can she honestly be expected to obtain comfort from it?
        It is for such women as she (and there are thousands of them) that I wrote Barabbas, and allowed it to drift slowly like a floating straw through the muddy purlieus of the Circulating Library. Moreover, I wrote it, not only for women, but for men of an equally wearied-out and indifferent type. Men who think it no disgrace to attend a church whose doctrines they do not believe in merely for the sake of "custom" and "observance"; who mechanically repeat the formula of the Christian creed before high altars on Sunday, and do not scruple to scoff at the divinity of Christ in their smoking-rooms on Monday; men who, on entering the church, see no shame and no mockery in pretending to pray to God in the hollow of their hat-crowns. Can anything be more monstrously ridiculous of comparison? God, the maker and upholder of the Universe, and His egotistical, infinitesimal, hideously ungrateful creature Man, breathing a feigned homage to Him in the silk-lined hollow of his Sunday head-gear! To kneel down would lower the human pigmy too much in his own estimation, besides incurring the dreadful possibility of getting dust on.his trousers. Surely God, who is said to be patient, can put up with a stiffly-standing unit, sniffing his hat-crown by way of reverent worship!
        Now, considering this style of "cultured" men and women to whom I first appealed with Barabbas (that special class, who always get all their intellectual food from the Circulating Libraries and seldom think of buying a book, preferring to bet on a horse or gamble at cards rather than purchase even a rare volume), the first result of my experiment was decidedly interesting and peculiar. The attitude of the critics of course added piquancy to the situation. Curious to relate, the Radical, "free-thinking" and atheistical journals were particularly "outraged," so they said. The school of the "New Criticism," which gives vogue in England to morbid, indecent, and prurient literature, declared itself "disgusted." One reviewer was so angry with me for describing the suffering entailed on the human frame by crucifixion that it really seemed as if he considered me answerable for the invention of that torture. Another, seizing his pen in haste, but not in wisdom, declared that my "impudent introduction of two angels at the tomb of Christ on Easter morning was a tawdry attempt to create a vulgar limelight effect!" Yet another remarked with profound satire, "We always knew Barabbas was a robber, but in the gospel according to Corelli, he is made out a murderer as well,"—this without any reference to the Gospel according to St. Luke (chap. xxiii, v. 19), which by the way is quoted on my title-page. Presently (their irritation I suppose gaining "appetite from what it fed on"), these various critics became personally abusive, and rained a shower of choice epithets upon me, the Graphic, with exquisite delicacy, suggesting that I was "impudently" advertising myself "like a new soap or pill at the foot of Calvary." The comic element of reviewing was supplied by a writer on the Literary World, who demanded in the "flushed" fashion of Charles Dickens's immortal Podsnap, what I meant by it? Why, for example, did I attach importance to the casting of lots for the garments of Christ? And as for the "seamless coat," he, the incoherent literary Podsnap, had always "understood it to be a tunic" Of course, all this sort of thing was utterly ridiculous; and to accept such nonsense as the reflex of public opinion would have been to do public opinion a gross injustice. So I still "contained my soul in patience," and it was presently given to me to discover proofs of what the law terms malice prepense in all this spluttering of the press.
        One over-zealous individual actually had the meanness to write to the publisher of my translated works in Sweden, privately recommending him to have nothing to do with Barabbas, as it was a "dead failure." Fortunately we circumvented this malicious person in good time, and the book was at once translated and is now published with the rest of my novels in Swedish. My good friend, the distinguished Canon Wilberforce, who had from the first a high opinion of Barabbas, wished, as a leading light of the church and a man who understood the subject, to write a dispassionate and reasonable review of it in the Nineteenth Century. But on applying for permission to the Editor, he gained information to the effect that never at any time, or under any circumstances, would any work of mine be so much as mentioned in that magazine. I do not allude to this because I resent it—on the contrary, all such forms of petty private "cliquism" move me merely to contempt, particularly when they are displayed in literature, which should be the most liberal and unprejudiced of the arts. I simply state the fact in order that the public may understand that it is not a question of literary justice or sober reasoning with the Nineteenth Century as it should be with every magazine professing to reflect public opinion, It is simply a wilful and disingenuous refusal to acknowledge my work at all, though I have reason to believe I am quite as much "in vogue" as the other writers of the day. It is a case of the foolish ostrich sticking his head in the sand in order to escape the inevitable. Mr. Maccoll, the editor of the Athenæum, pursues the same timorous policy. Rather afraid of Barabbas than otherwise, he omitted all mention of it in the paper he manages for his patron, Sir Charles Dilke. Some authors might think this a slight; I consider it a distinction. The reviews of books in the Athenæum are so ill done, and critical "stock-phrases" are used up over and over again with such a deplorable and unintelligent reiteration, that surely no author holding any position of note in the world of letters could possibly deem it an advantage to be included in the slovenly weekly list of new productions, many of which fall still-born from the press in spite of the Athenæum's recommendation. I may add that I have no personal acquaintance whatever with the editor of the Nineteenth Century or the editor of the Athenæum, and have never even seen either of them. I am in none of the literary "cliques," having thought it more honest, as well as more self-respecting, to stand on my own feet without support from the ubiquitous "log-roller."
        And the oddest part of my experience with regard to Barabbas was that the half-dozen or dozen men and women who write most of the reviews in London and provincial papers, never read the book at all! This was proved to me beyond a doubt in many cases. Without troubling themselves to study the theme or treatment of my work they took it for granted that I had essayed such a tremendous task as the "World's Tragedy" without studying my subject in the least, or knowing anything about it. I certainly did not "read up" for it, as I do not believe in that system of literary production. It too frequently results in one's work being a mere replica of the opinions of other authors. Neither had I ever seen or read the "Ober-Ammergau" play, from which I was accused of "boldly cribbing." While I wrote Barabbas I set aside all books whatsoever except the New Testament (not the "revised" version, which I consider a pedantic spoilt version, and therefore decline to accept), and worked from that and my own thoughts only. No ecclesiastical "views," "opinions," or "dissertations," would I so much as look at, having no wish to confuse or obscure my own imaginative conception with other theories. For my description of the personal beauty of the Christ (for which I have been bitterly reproached by some journals) I am indebted to dead-and-gone Guido Reni, a copy of whose inspired picture, "Ecce Homo," stood on an easel opposite me throughout the whole period of my work. I have never heard that Guido Reni was beaten with rods by his contemporaries because he ventured to imagine what the beauty of the Divine Face might be, and, so imagining, gave his thought to the grateful world in immortal form and colour; I do not think Raffaelle was loaded with insult and opprobrium because, "with brushes dipped in holy water," he performed the wondrous work of depicting the supernatural scene of the "Transfiguration." On the contrary, these artists received the encouragement and honour of all who saw and appreciated the enormous difficulties they had to conquer, and their pictures, the totally imaginative work of their brains, still command universal love and admiration. In fact, the only conception we can form of the human likeness of Christ, comes to us solely through the imagination of painters; and I do most strenuously maintain that what a painter is permitted to represent on his canvas, an author is at equal liberty to represent on his written and printed page. Does not Milton make God Himself speak in Milton's words? And is Milton "blasphemous"? I say that if we admit literature to be the highest of the arts, which it is, inasmuch as it possesses the most power to influence and control the minds of men, it should, in its close connection with Form and Colour, repudiate from itself anything that could not be represented in painting without outraging decency. If this were so, we should have an end put to the "new school" of prurient and repulsive analysis, and certain sordid novels of the "sexual" type, which shall be nameless, would have to be suppressed, for the mere reason that, if the scenes in them were painted, no man or woman with self-respect or modesty would look upon them. And I repeat, that what can or could be painted, can or could be written. The arts are like the colours of a rainbow, all radiating one out of the other, and intended to merge into one lustrous glory. If a painter may imagine and depict the scene of "Christ leaving the Prætorium," so may a romancist imagine and depict in words the scenes of His crucifixion and resurrection.
        But the critics of Barabbas, in their rabid haste to be "at" me somehow, had no reason left wherewith to argue soberly. They had no command of logic, having lost command of temper. Now and then, across the noise of cur-like snapping and snarling, came a few cheery voices distinctly human and kindly, such as the scholarly criticism of the Guardian and other leading Church papers, whose reviewers, by reason of their calling and election to Church matters, knew all about the subject of my book, and did not find the New Testament as strangely unfamiliar as did their "secular" brethren. And the upshot of it all is that I have to thank everybody!—foes even more than friends; for the extraordinary and (as it is now proved) mistaken violence of their attacks upon me only succeeded in rousing the fair-play-loving British public first to surprise, then to indignation, and finally to an all-round emphatic "rush" for Barabbas, directly it was placed within their reach in one volume. This was done rather more quickly than is usual, for we found, I and my publishers, that the book was being what is called "starved" at the Libraries. People asking for it were invariably put off with something else, and had to wait four or five weeks, till they lost patience. So the one-volume edition was issued—and seized upon at once. Never was a more blunt and decided verdict of approval more plainly given; it still rings round me on every side, filling me with deep gratitude, though not with actual surprise, as I was always sure that my intentions would some day be seen clearly, and that my book would not long remain under the shadow of calumny. Had the desire for "cash-payment" or "self-advertisement" been the motive of my writing it, it would have perished under the drag put upon it by the larger circulating libraries and the adverse reviews; moreover it would have deserved that ignominious fate. But the longing I had to try and bring the Divine Ideal of the ages closer, as it were, to the eyes of the imagination, just as a painter strives to depict Him for the joy and solace of outward sight, and to invest the "old old story" with a suggestion of something new to arouse thought and contemplation—this wish of mine would, I felt convinced, be in time understood and appreciated by many. I have never called Barabbas a "novel"; the critics have done that. I have called it what it is—a "dream"—an imaginative idea of what might have happened—no more. And I have never answered my adversaries in the press—the only one of them I took any notice of (though without public wrangling in the newspapers) was Mr. Zangwill, who was foolish enough to libel my work in the Pall Mall Magasine. Dismissing it in a few flippant lines he said he was "not the proper person to review an attack upon Christianity." This being a totally false description of the character of the book (and admitted as false by his editor, Sir Douglas Straight, whose attention was called to the matter), and moreover suggesting that I, who am a believer in the truth of Christianity, had "attacked" the faith it is my privilege to follow, was damaging enough to be actionable. I did not feel disposed to remain inert under such an accusation, particularly as it was brought against me by a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion, a descendant of at least the "scribes" if not of the "Pharisees" of old time, so the gentle attentions of a distinguished Q.C. were called into requisition with the result that Mr. Zangwill had to take back his words and apologise in an ensuing number of the magazine mentioned. I bear no ill-will towards him—I would merely suggest that he should read the books he reviews, lest his column of book-notes be called "Without Knowledge" instead of "Without Prejudice."
        In speaking of the public verdict which has now declared itself so widely in favour of Barabbas, I should like to say how great a part of my reward is found in the fact that everywhere, not only among differing sects, but also among creeds that have nothing in common with Christianity, the ideal Figure of Christ which I have striven to draw (with how much love and reverence none can know) has taken with it unanimous conviction and awakened an equally unanimous response. The general impression among the readers of Barabbas is that they realize Christ more clearly and are drawn in more intimate and devout relations with the scenes of the majestic tragedy enacted on Calvary. This is the result I worked for—that comprehension by an universal (not merely local) public which is one's best reward. It is the fashion of critics to sneer at a wide success; the Speaker suggested recently that Deadwood Dick (whatever literary masterpiece that may be) was "no doubt more popular than Barabbas." But Deadwood Dick is, I presume, not found in Hindustani or Russian or even French. One of the minor poets, Mr. Edmund Gosse, deplores that many writers of to-day have "the taint of popularity" upon them; surely he cannot complain of this terrible blot on his career! Scoff at the "public" taste, as critics will, they only live to appeal to it; and they know very well that it is the public alone that can decide an author's fate. The English-speaking public is a very vast one now, spreading over more than half the habitable globe, and it is a public not always desirous to have its lower and worst appetites catered for. It would rather be thought an Angel than a Beast if the truth were known. And whatever its caprices (if it has any, about which I am not at all sure, as I take it that even its so-called "freaks" are only the fretful surface signs of a deep and honest purpose within) it is a splendid public to write for. No author of old time ever had such a magnificent audience as now—an audience moved by all sorts of embryo heroisms, emotions, progressive ideas and fine perceptions, and ready for anything that will help them to think a little higher, or lift them up out of the merely sordid ways of life wherein they find themselves frequently exhausted, disheartened; or despairing. It is a privilege to work for such a public; and when it is pleased, satisfied, comforted, or moved in any way of nobleness, however slight, by what one has done, the reward is great though it is not discovered in a mere "cash question" or in newspaper notoriety. It is in the sympathy of thousands; the knowledge that everywhere there are friends, even if there must also be enemies; and that in no land need the writer of so much as one well-loved book be a stranger. For it is one thing to be famous, but it is quite another to be loved. And when both come together what higher guerdon can be gained? This is my "After," for which, as I have said, I thank all—yes all, even those whom I know to be still my foes. Bad things are sometimes for the best, and bitter things may end in sweetness. So I and Barabbas have found, with much gladness to ourselves and gratitude to our publishers and our public. With regard to the Goliath of the Press who came thundering out upon me "in horrid armour full bedight," I hope he will permit me to hand him back his broken sword! Keep it Goliath!—and farewell! Accept from me the polite salutation due from the Victor to the vanquished!

The Man on the Iceberg

by Cobbe (?, uncredited).

Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.13 #323 (31 May 1856).

        "It is a man!" said the captain, handing his telescope to the mate, after a long, steady look; "and he seems frozen hard and fast to the side of the iceberg."
        "Keep her away!" cried the skipper. "So—o—o. Steady!" and by thus altering our course we brought the iceberg right a-head.
        The iceberg had been in sight since the weather cleared at midnight, when it looked like some high rocky headland, except that, by watching the bright stars behind it, we could see its gigantic outline swaying solemnly and majestically up and down. There was something sublimely grand in the slow stately movement of such a mass. There it floated, large enough, had it been land, to have been the dwelling-place of hundreds of human beings. The lower part was of so dark a purple as to look almost black; but, higher up, it shaded off to a bright azure, then to a light pale green, while on its lofty summit were long slender spires and pinnacles, and pieces of thin transparent ice, worked into all manner of fantastic forms, and either of a crystal whiteness, or tinted with a beautiful pale pink. There were bays and promontories, caves and grottos, hills and dells, with every variety of light and shade. The island was almost equally divided by a great valley running through its centre. This was half filled with snow; which, thawing slowly in the sun, formed the source of a waterfall, at a height so great that it was blown and scattered into fine rain before it reached the sea. Around its base—on which the sea was breaking with a noise less booming and more musical than when it dashes on the solid shore—was a broad band of frozen spray, which, glittering in the sunshine, looked like the silver setting of an enormous sapphire.
        Not far from the top, and on the side nearest to us, was a vast, smooth, glassy plane, inclining steeply towards the sea, and terminating abruptly in a tremendous overhanging precipice. In the very centre of this plane, those among us who had good eyes could see a small black spot. It was at this, the captain had been peering through his glass, when he said, "It is a man!"
        Every glass in the ship was in requisition, and every eye strained towards one point. The excitement became almost frantic when one of the watchers suddenly exclaimed that he saw the man move his hand.
        We approached; so near at last, that the plateau above, and its dread object, were at last hidden from view by the brink of the precipice itself, which seemed as if about to roll over and crush us. We sailed along its side, frequently lying-to, to explore each nook and corner as we passed. The farther end of the island, when we rounded it, presented quite a new feature; the base was sapped away and undermined for about half a mile by a succession of low cavernous hollows, extending inwards farther than we could see, while the sea rushing in and out tumultuously, made the pent-up air within howl and whistle like a hurricane. Altering our course again, we steered almost due west under the southern side, where its vast shadow spread out far and wide over the ocean. It now looked even grander, darker, more fear-inspiring, than before, with the sun beaming over its rugged crest, or shining through the thinner parts and showing all the prismatic colours of the rainbow. The form of the ice-island was that of an irregular triangle, and in about five hours we had sailed completely round it. But there was no single point at which any boat ever built could have landed, even had it been a dead calm, and the sea as still as a mill-pond; much less in such a heavy surf as was then foaming and creaming all around it. No sign of living thing was seen, excepting one great sleepy seal, that had crept into a hole just above water-mark, and lay there as if he were in comfortable quarters. No sign of boat, or spar, or wreck. It was a picture of utter desolation.
        We hove-to again, at the nearest point from which the man upon the iceberg could be seen. He lay on his back with one arm folded in an unusual manner under his head, the whole attitude being one of easy repose; indeed, had it not been for the marbly look of his face and hands, we could have fancied that he was sleeping soundly. He was clothed as one of the better class of seamen, in rough blue pilot-cloth with large horn buttons; he had no hat, and by his side lay a small boat-hook, to which was tied a strip of red woollen stuff, apparently a piece of the same which he wore round his neck. This, no doubt, the poor fellow had intended planting on the heights as a signal. In such a thin, clear atmosphere, with the aid of a powerful telescope, even his features might be plainly traced, and his iron grey hair seen moving in the wind.
        The second mate stoutly declared that he recognised the man—he was quite sure of it—an old chum and shipmate of his with whom he had sailed many a long voyage, and some part of whose wild, varied history he told us the next evening. What seemed to convince him more than anything, was the peculiar way in which the dead man's arm was stowed away under his head—his old shipmate always slept so, even in his hammock.
        Numerous and strange were the conjectures and remarks made by officers and men. Who, and what was he? How long had he been there? How did he get there? The general conclusion was, that he was one of the crew of some vessel wrecked upon the iceberg itself, of which no vestige remained.
        "Yes, like enough," said one of the sailors; "she run into the ice in the dark, and went down like a stone, same as we may have done any time this last six weeks."
        "Perhaps he was aloft when she struck, and got pitched up where he is now."
        "As like to be pitched into the moon," rejoined another, contemptuously. "Why, that there precipice is three times as high as the tauntest mast ever rigged."
        "Perhaps, now," suggested a third, "it's some awful cruel skipper, who's been a hazing and ill-using of his crew till they couldn't bear with it no longer, and was drove to mutiny, and put him ashore there, all alone, to die by himself, so as they should not have his blood upon their hands: or maybe he was a murderer or a Yankee slave-keeper."
        "Ah, Bill," growled out a previous speaker; "you've always got a good word to say for every one, you have."
        It was a very old man who spoke next; one who was looked up to as a great authority on all such matters, although he was usually remarkably taciturn, and would never enter into an argument. He quietly deposited his quid in his hat; and, as this was always done preparatory to his making a speech, his shipmates waited in silence for him to begin.
        "That there ice-island," he said at last, "wasn't launched yesterday, nor yet last year, nor the year before, perhaps; and, by the looks of him, he's been for a pretty long cruise in warm latitudes—last summer, maybe—and then come back home for the winter. If you look away yonder—there—just this side of that high point like a church steeple, only lower down, there's a place looks darker than the rest. Now, it's just there I expect that a great piece has broken off and drifted away; and I calculate 'twas lower and more shelving off—not so steep and rocky-like as it is now. 'Twas there that poor chap was cast ashore from ship or boat. He was trying to make his way up to the heights to take a look round, and hoist a signal, when he lay down and went asleep, and never woke again; only, where he is now, you see, must have been covered with snow then, or he couldn't have kept his footing."
        Having said thus much, he replaced the quid in his mouth and spoke no more.
        There was no earthly use in waiting longer, and yet the captain seemed loth to give the order to fill and bear away.
        "If the poor fellow had a spark of life in him, he would have moved before this, for it's six or seven hours since we first saw him. But if he did move, it would only be to slide down over the precipice, for no living thing could keep a footing on such a slope as that. And if there are any more of them we should have seen them before this time, although we could never get them off if we did."
        Then pausing suddenly in his walk on the quarter-deck, he gave an order to get a gun ready forward, and presently came the answer:
        "All ready with the gun, sir."
        "Fire!"
        In a few seconds the echo of the loud report resounded from the icy wall; for another instant all was still, and then came a noise like a rattling of loud thunder, proceeding from the centre of the berg.
        The danger of our proximity to this vast object now became more and more apparent, and all sail was made to get a good offing. But we had barely proceeded a quarter of a mile when the same noise was heard again, only louder, more prolonged, and accompanied by a rending, crushing sound, the intensity and nature of which is perfectly indescribable. The vast island was parting in the middle, down the course of the deep valley before mentioned; and slowly and majestically the eastern half rolled over into the sea, upheaving what had been its base, in which were imbedded huge masses of rock covered with long sea-weed. The other part still remained erect, but was swaying to-and-fro, as if it also must capsize. This convulsion caused less foam and turmoil than might have been supposed, but raised a wave of such tremendous magnitude, that when it reached our ship she seemed about to be overwhelmed by a rolling mountain of water higher than our mast-heads. The good ship rose upon its crest, and before again sinking into the hollow, we saw the man upon the iceberg—still in the same posture—glide swiftly down the slippery incline—shoot over the edge of the precipice, and plunge into the raging surf.
        A sensation of inexpressible relief was experienced by all: it had seemed so dreadful to sail away and leave him there, unburied and alone; now, at any rate, we had seen the last of him.

Second Thoughts

by E.S. Grew.

Originally published in The Idler (Chatto & Windus) vol.7 #37 (Jul 1895).

She held out the great bunch of roses towards him.
        "Oh, aren't they lovely?" she said. "Smell."
        He smelt them critically.
        "I'm glad you like them," he replied, after searching in vain for something more brilliant to say.
        She buried her pretty face in the flowers again.
        "But are you quite sure you meant them for me?" she asked. "I believe you brought them for mamma, and gave them to me as an after-thought."
        "You know what they say about second thoughts?"
        "I know what they say about second hand. But did you, Robert?"
        Robert smiled at her impetuosity.
        "Did I what?" he answered.
        "I believe you did," she said. "In fact, I'm sure you did. Very well, I shan't have them. I shall give them to mamma as soon as ever she comes home."
        "Indeed I didn't," he protested, somewhat alarmed. "I only thought of you. I knew you were fond of roses, Nelly."
        "I wonder if you did," said Nelly, suspiciously. "How did you know?"
        "I've always known it," he said. "Don't you remember when you were a little girl how you used to come over to the Vicarage to see my father's roses?"
        She smiled once more. "And how you used to plunder them for me?"
        "Well, I could afford to be generous, you know."
        "And do you remember," she continued, "that last time before you went away?"
        "Which was that?" he said, though he remembered.
        "You haven't forgotten—" said she. "When you had a fight with the butcher-boy?"
        "What—and a lady with me?"
        "It was because he called out something rude after me." She smoothed her pretty hair as she spoke.
        "I know," said Robert. "I believe he called you 'carrots,' Nelly?"
        "Yes—shameful, wasn't it? And you said if he didn't beg my pardon you'd punch his head."
        "Disgraceful. What else?"
        "He said he should like to see you do it."
        "And what did I say?"
        "You said, 'Hold my hat, Nelly,' and then—"
        "No violence, I trust?"
        "You hit him in the eye."
        "I seem to have some recollection that the offensive operations were not entirely confined to me."
        "No; it lasted ever such a long time, and once I was afraid you'd be beaten, and I wanted to cry. But you weren't, and you made him apologise; and your poor cheek was bleeding, and you'd sprained your thumb."
        "His head was uncommonly thick."
        "He was bigger than you," she said. "But you won't tell me you've forgotten how I took your arm, and we walked home together. And—"
        "You bathed my thumb with embrocation," he said, with a rather dangerous approach to tenderness.
        "Yes," she agreed, her eyes sparkling; "and then while I was not paying attention—I mean while I was paying attention to your thumb, you—you—"
        "That was my cheek, Nelly."
        "I think it was mine," said Nelly.
        She began to arrange the roses in a great bowl. "But I expect you've forgotten that, Robin," said she.
        He hadn't forgotten; he had never hoped that she would remember. For the year since he had been back in England, and had found his old playmate again, he had been trying to screw up courage to remind her of the time when they were sweethearts. His heart was beating fast now. His rather solemn face grew paler, and he nervously picked up one of the roses.
        "We were only boy and girl together then," he began, as clumsily as he well could; "and—"
        Miss Nelly turned to her flowers with a look which might have been vexation.
        "And now you've grown up," she interposed, "and have become severe and formal, and—and—uninteresting. You've changed altogether; and I know you think I ought to have done the same."
        "Nell!" he protested.
        "And what are you doing with that poor rose?"
        He had pulled it to pieces. "I'm sorry," he said; and was silent. Her interruption had been slight enough, but it was more than sufficient. The good moment had gone, and his spirit fell back into the hopelessness with which he had been worshipping ever since he had seen his sweetheart again. Why should he be such a fool as to tell her he was in love with her; and so spoil the playful, provoking friendship she gave to him so graciously. For that matter, he didn't suppose he was the only one in love with her; there were half-a-dozen men he had seen at the house who were in her train, and who were a good deal more likely to interest a pretty, light-hearted girl than he was.
        Nelly went on arranging the roses with some feeling that her interruption had been a little too successful. Presently she had finished them, and held the great bowl up at the level of her chin. Her eyes looked audaciously at him over the roses.
        "Aren't they sweet?" she said. "What shall I give you for them, Robin?"
        He looked at the charming, piquant picture, and for a moment his heart within him melted again. But he was not the man to turn his back on a resolution.
        "Well, you might try a little civility, Nell," he said, lightly.
        "Oh, might I," inquired Miss Nell, hotly. "You don't set a very good example, Mr. Robert Hilton."
        Hilton inwardly cursed his heavy-handedness. "I didn't mean to be offensive," he said, humbly.
        "Perhaps it's your idea of being playful," suggested Nelly.
        "I never seem able to say the right thing to you."
        "You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Hilton."
        "I can't get right even now," he replied, sadly.
        Her April mood relented a little. "Well, you're sorry, I hope," she said. "Will you say you're sorry?"
        "I am—very."
        "Then I'll try to forget it; and, besides, I can't be quarrelling with you when anyone else comes."
        "Who is coming this afternoon?"
        "Nobody very early. We have some people coming to dinner. And the Bagotts will perhaps come in (like you) to see mamma. But there's nobody else except Leonard—"
        "Leonard?"
        Miss Nelly blushed with a confusion very rare in her. "I mean Mr. Scotter," she explained, very lamely.
        "I didn't know you enjoyed the privilege of speaking of him by his Christian name."
        She began to arrange the roses with a nervousness which was touched with a slight resemblance to his own of a little time ago. "Well, I call you Robert," she said at last.
        Robert was silent.
        Nelly went on fingering the roses like a child found out in a fault. Then, perhaps seeing that she would be found out sooner or later—"Besides, I'm engaged to him," she added, desperately.
        Hilton got up trembling. The earth had opened under him, "I didn't know that," he said, huskily.
        "Didn't you," she replied. "I thought—" But as she caught sight of his stricken face she broke off. She had been angry enough with her tongue for its slip; for she had not meant him to learn of her engagement—of which she feared he would take much too serious a view. But at the sight of his distress, her own annoyance disappeared.
        "Oh! Robin," she said, incoherently, "I didn't mean to; I am so sorry."
        He pulled himself together. "Why should you be, Nell?" he said, with a poor pretence at a smile.
        "I am, indeed," she protested, eagerly. "But you're not angry with me?"—and she took his arm—just as she had done that June afternoon when they were children.
        "How could I be?" he replied. "I hope you'll be very, very happy, dear."
        She said nothing; and at last he continued with a return of his characteristic brusqueness: "But I think I'd rather not stop and see Scotter this afternoon if you'll forgive me. I've got a lot of work to do."
        She let go his arm and walked to the window, feeling an unaccountable impulse to cry. Robert, not trying to say another word to her, went out of the room; and presently she heard the hall door close after him.
        Hilton walked stupidly down the little gravelled drive in front of the house, his hands clasped behind him, his mind turning over and over again her words and his. Well, it was all over for him. Perhaps if he'd spoken to her before? No, he told himself; that was all nonsense. She was far too sweet and good and pretty for him. And how gentle she had been over it, and how sorry for him. Perhaps if—
        His reflections were cut short by coming into unexpected collision with somebody just outside the gate. He was about to apologise and pass on, when he found himself collared firmly.
        "Oh, come, Bobbie!" said his captor, playfully; "this is a trifle too steep! You run into a chap, and then try to cut him, Just look at my hat; and, I say, where have you left your umbrella?"
        Hilton recognised, with a spasm of annoyance, that he had come out of the house without it.
        "I've been calling on the Marriots," he said, incoherently. "I must have forgotten it."
        Mr. Richard Brand, never known to his acquaintances as anything but "Dickie," did not seem to want any further explanation. His facile mind was already actively engaged.
        "Well, you're coming away rather early," he said. "Slow, is it? Who have they got there? I don't want to throw myself away, you know."
        "You run a considerable risk," Hilton said, dryly. "Miss Marriot was alone when I left."
        "Was she? Oh, that's all right." Dickie straightened his faultless tie. "I suppose it wasn't intellectual enough for you, old chap?" he suggested pleasantly; "but I think it's good enough for me."
        There was something in the tone which grated unpleasantly on Hilton's ear. But he was resolved to save Nelly from the infliction which he felt sure that Brand's company would be this afternoon.
        "I don't think Miss Marriot is very well," he began.
        "Oh, I'll soon cheer her up!" said Dickie, confidently. "But I say," he added, as a new idea appeared to strike him; "do you know if that chap, Scotter, is going to turn up this afternoon?"
        Hilton was surprised. "I don't know; very likely he is."
        "Then it's not good enough. You old humbug!" he continued; "why didn't you say so at first? Look here, where are you going?"
        "I'm going back to my rooms."
        Brand pondered a moment. "Look here; I've got nothing better to do. I don't mind coming with you."
        Hilton's being revolted at the prospect. "I'm going to do some work," he objected, hastily.
        "Oh skittles!" rejoined Dickie, elegantly. "You're always rotting about with your confounded work. Give it up for once in a way, and try to imagine you're alive. You come with me to the club."
        Hilton declined, with the same excuse.
        "Well, I don't care," said Dickie; "I know you want to get rid of me, but I'm hanged if you shall; if you go home I shall come with you to see you don't waste the happy afternoon in industry."
        Hilton saw there was no shaking him off, and accepted the inevitable. Dickie wouldn't find him such a pleasant companion, he reflected grimly, that he would want to stay long.
        But at the Temple the other was unexpectedly contented with his surroundings. He turned over Hilton's books and reviews; examined his collection of fossils with an interest partly facetious; and good-naturedly offered to send round some rubbish of the kind which, he said, was kicking about his governor's house. He had early asked for a drink; and was good enough to comment favourably on the quality of his host's whiskey. Finally, in the course of his perambulations of the room, he came to the mantelpiece. There were one or two portraits on it. One of them was a photograph of a little girl, with long hair over her shoulders and clear, frank eyes.
        "That's a ripping little girl," began Dickie; "who the—"
        Hilton cut him short by saying it was a photograph of Miss Marriot. "It was taken five or six years ago."
        Dickie looked at the photograph for a little time. "She's not a bad sort," he pursued; "it's a pity she's going to get married. Do you think she really will have him?"
        Robert stared. How did Dickie know? Had everybody known, and himself been the only one blind?
        "I wouldn't have minded if it hadn't been that chap Scotter; but he is such an ass."
        "That would annoy you, Brand."
        "Yes, but isn't he? It would have been all right if she'd taken a decent chap. Why, she'd have done better if she'd married you."
        "Don't you think we've discussed Miss Marriot sufficiently?" suggested Hilton, coldly.
        "Oh, I daresay she doesn't interest you, but that's because you don't understand her. You box yourself up here like one of your own fossils, and forget that there are such things as pretty girls, and that there's more in a pretty girl than all the books in the world."
        He had no rival in the conversation.
        "Of course, I feel it a bit." He helped himself to some more whiskey and soda, and lighted another cigar. "Why"—after a pause—"there isn't a better chum anywhere than dear old Nelly. It's a shocking nuisance that she's going to marry—especially that idiot Scotter. There's one thing, he won't understand her any more—any more than you do."
        "We can't all have your powers of sympathy, Dickie."
        "No," admitted Brand, complacently, "it isn't that. But I expect there are not many chaps know Nelly as well as I do. We've always got on well together, and without any nonsense about sentiment."
        Hilton steadily regarded the fire.
        "And she's a clever girl, too; always knows enough to keep you up to the scratch. You never get bored with Nelly."
        Still Hilton found nothing to say.
        Brand even now did not feel the restraint in the atmosphere, so absorbed was he in memories. Sitting back in the chair, he watched the wreaths from his cigar. "I don't know any girl, now, I'd so soon kiss as her," he said, reflectively.
        Hilton got up hastily. "Do you know what you're saying?"
        Brand thought he did; why?
        "Do you know that you're insinuating that Miss Marriot allowed you to flirt with her, and—and—" he stammered, "to—kiss—her?"
        "Why of course," said Dickie. "Do you suppose everybody's such a cold-blooded flint as you?"
        "Then," said Hilton, deliberately, "either you're a liar, or else you're a contemptible hound for repeating it!"
        Dickie sprang up; he was as impermeable to irony as an ironclad, but he was by no.means slow-tempered. "What the devil do you mean?" he burst out. "You drivelling idiot! You began it. You asked for it. If you—" he broke off for a moment, speechless, and then went on with rising indignation. "You're not in your right senses," he said. "You stick up every girl on a pedestal, and think she likes it, and then you insult your friends because they're not such fools as you are. I'll be hanged if I stick in your room any longer. Where's my hat?" He started for the door, reached it, and opened it. Then a new thought seemed to strike him. With the knob in his hand, he turned round again. "I say, old man," he began, but Hilton's back was turned. He looked at him a moment irresolutely, and then closed the door softly and went down the stairs.
        Hilton stood immovable by the table listening to the retreating footsteps. They died away as, with hesitating hand, he began to nervously sort together papers and books. His eyes fell then on the whiskey and cigars. The latter were carefully replaced on a book-case. It seemed supremely important then that the cigar box should occupy a position with mathematical exactitude. When the spirit decanter was locked away, he glanced round the room with more comfort, as though, at the same time, he had cleared Nelly of all aspersions.
        Suddenly his eyes fell on the photograph.
        He strode towards the mantelpiece, and took it in his hands. For one moment it looked as if he would throw it into the fire. But he could not. The eyes looked smilingly at him.
        "No, I'm hanged if I do," he said, and put it back in its place of honour. He walked to the window to see if there were any traces of Brand still. There were not; and, after waiting a while, he found his own hat, and let himself out—a new-born resolution in his mind. It was dusk of the early autumn evening, and almost dark when he arrived again at the Marriots' house. He walked up the drive which he had traversed a few hours ago, and was almost surprised to find that the trees and the trim border of turf looked very much the same. When the servant let him in, he was a little disconcerted, in spite of his purpose, to find Miss Marriot herself in the hall. She was carrying a pair of rose-shaded candles towards the dining-room.
        "Is that you, Robert?" she said, as she saw who it was. "Have you come back for your umbrella?"
        He inwardly cursed the umbrella. For a wavering moment he almost thought of accepting this explanation of his return, and leaving his purpose unaccomplished. But it was only a momentary hesitation.
        "No," he said, "I came back to ask you something."
        "Then come into the dining-room," said she, "and help me to arrange the table."
        It was merely a complimentary offer, for Miss Nelly always designed and executed the arrangements of the dinner table herself. She flitted here and there; here twining a sprig of maiden-hair, and there changing the place of a candle. She was dressed for dinner, and the soft light of the shaded candles gleamed on her pretty shoulders, as she leant over them. She wore one of his roses at her bosom. The great bowl of roses was in the middle of the table. As she caressingly touched them he thought she had never looked so beautiful. Presently she looked up at him inquiringly.
        "What is it, Robert?" she asked.
        "I want to know if you are going to marry that man Scotter?" he said.
        This certainly was unexpected.
        "I suppose so," said Nelly, nervously; she did not quite understand Robert in this character.
        "Do you love him?" he went on.
        Miss Nelly stared at him open-eyed. This was not the attitude in which she had generally found Robert. She made an attempt to re-establish the usual balance of authority.
        "Really, Robert," she said, with dignity, "I don't see what right you have to ask me a question like that."
        "I haven't any right," he said, in a voice which he endeavoured, with rather poor success, to keep steady, "except that I love you."
        He could not see her face, which was turned away from him, and she said nothing. The sound of his own voice seemed to protest his folly; but he went on.
        "And I couldn't stand your marrying a man you don't love. You don't know what wrong you are doing."
        She turned round to face him. Her face was very pale; her mouth set in a curve more disdainful than any he had ever seen there.
        "Don't you think you're assuming a good deal," she inquired, icily.
        "I'd assume a great deal more to save you from yourself," he said.
        "Even to the extent of ruining another man's chances with the girl he's engaged to?"
        Hilton staggered under the thrust. Was that the way his conduct appeared to her—that he was striving to dispossess a rival in this underhand way? It was now his turn to be silent. It was a course which did not disarm his censor.
        "It never occurred to you," she continued, in the same hard voice, "to tell me you lo—, you cared for me" (she stumbled a little) "until you found somebody else had asked me."
        "You know better than that," he broke in; "it was because I was afraid of losing you altogether that I daren't speak. I've loved you ever since I can remember."
        "You say that," she said, a little more gently, "but you don't. If you do, it's with a girl you've imagined. You couldn't be in love with me; you don't know a bit what I'm like. I'm—I'm—" her voice was defiant. "I'm a flirt! You've thought me an angel; and I've let other men k—k—kiss me!"
        The defiance in her tone melted away, and she turned sharply from him. One of her hands was at the rose in her bosom. He could see the blush stealing along her white neck.
        He stepped to her side and tried to see her face.
        "I don't care," he pleaded, "Nell, I don't care for anything in the world but what you are. I've always loved you; I always shall love you. Nelly, Nelly. Don't cry, Nell."
        One of her hands had dropped to her side; he took it, and thrilled to think it clasped his own a little. He could only just see her pink ear and the shining hair curling about it.
        "Always?" he heard her say presently, in a muffled voice.
        "Always, Nell."
        Suddenly she turned swiftly round; and, before he knew what she would do, had raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. Then she slipped away from him to the door. At that point of vantage she turned again. Her eyes were shining.
        "I won't do anything you don't want me to, Robin," she said, meekly, and fled.
        It was a moment before he grasped her meaning. Then he understood.