The Dreams of Dania, etc

Chapter I In Church And At The Rectory

On a certain evening of August, not very long ago, the small congregation of Kildargle left the church with unusual quietness. The old people stepped down the aisle as nurses step beside a sick bed. Even the children forbore to hurry and to raise their voices in the porch. More than one woman remained on her knees long after the voluntary had begun ; and the organist, whose ordinary touch was somewhat mechanical, played very sweetly and tenderly. It was not without significance that he put aside " The March of the Israelites," which had been his original choice, and played instead that strain of hushing peace upon whose every note floats a white dove, " O rest in the Lord." In the vestry a singular thing occurred. The sexton was a deaf and dumb man ; found suitable B for that employment, no doubt, because he was found unsuitable for any other.

The organ-blower, selected on the same principle, was a blind boy, of feeble mind. When the Rector rose from his chair, after making the usual entries in the preachers' book, those two officials came forward together. The deaf man, withdrawing his protecting arm from under the arm of his colleague, began to speak rapidly in the manual language of the deaf and dumb. In and out scurried his fingers, and the Rector, nodding as each word was completed, received at length this sentence : " I wishes to thank you for the beautiful discoorse we're just afther heering. The brightness of the Lord fell on the faces of them that listened." He always spoke of himself as seeing, though his perception was really that of ears and nerves quickened to abnormal sensitiveness. His fellow official — whose scouts of intelligence were his watchful eyes — as continually spoke of what he had heard.

" Yes," said the Rector, " I knew they were moved." " 'Deed, then," said the blind boy, adding his testimony, "myself seen 'em weeping and lamenting. I wouldn't exactly understand it," the lad continued IN CHURCH AND AT THE RECTORY 3 " for my intellects, glory be to God, is wake ; but I felt it craping down the back of me, and it done me good — your Reverence, it done me good. For when a man does be dark with the eyes, and cloudy in the brain, the Lord shines into him through chinks and alleys and bohereens ; and whether it would be the pores or the spine I wouldn't know at all, but it penetrated, the sermon did, and it done me good." He held out to the Rector his bunched and claw-like fingers, and at the same moment the deaf and dumb man extended his red fist. The clergyman grasped both, and for a little while the three stood looking into one another's face with hands moving up and down, and with shining eyes.

" The Lord speed your Reverence up," the blind boy said at length : " faith, to a man like yourself, getting to heaven is just divarsion." The dumb man's fingers began to move again. "Who was the party," the clergyman read snap by snap, " the praiers of the congregation was axed for ? " " Oh, Peter " the Rector began to say aloud ; then he broke off and answered in the manual language : " The person might not like to have his name known. No harm, though," he added in an aside to the blind boy, " no harm, in saying this, anyhow. It was a poor soul that was troubled b in mind Give him your best prayers to-night, Peter." The deaf mute nodded vigorously. " And you too, Johnny," the clergyman said to the blind^boy. " It may be only a fancy of mine, but I can't help feeling that a blind man's prayers go very straight to God."

"And you wouldn't think, your Reverence," Johnny inquired, " my prayers being a bit rambling would make any differ ? " " No, Johnny. I think God leads them." " Then I'll do my best endeavours," Johnny said. " I'm thankful for the chance of helping a small trifle, for, as your Reverence might remark, I hadn't no halfpenny to give to-day. Whoever it is, he shall have my poor attempts." " He needs them, Johnny," the Rector answered. " He needs them badly enough." " I'll wrestle," said Johnny, " and indeed, your Reverence, when I gets a clutch, 'tis wonderful the way I holds on." " The Lord bless you, Johnny," said the Rector, laying his hand upon the boy's head, " the Lord make His face to shine upon you." " And give you peace," responded Johnny, who knew his prayer-book well ; and the two separated.

The great shepherd of the sky had gathered in " ' The Lord bless you, Johnny,' said the Rector, ' the Lord make His face to shine upon you.' " The Dreams of DaniaZ\ \P<*Z' 4the west his white lustrous flock, and the rooks were going homeward on and on through the hearkening day — on and on it seemed to the haven where lost hopes ride safe at anchor, and sea-worn efforts may drop their tattered sails ; to the quiet land where heartsease grows in every cottage garden, and no one weeps who gathers rosemary The Rector followed their flight with his gentle blue eyes, and sighed. Laying his hand upon the head of a little boy, who stood pulling at his cap, he asked him why he was not at church. " 'Deed then, your Reverence," said the child's mother, who was standing in one of the recesses of the stone bridge, " not to tell your Reverence a lie,' the little boots was broke on him.

I was waiting on your Reverence, regarding that same." "Ah," said the Rector, smiling, "what is good for a bootless bairn ? He shall have a pair against next Sunday, Mrs. Switzer. I ought to have thought about it before, but I was like that poor woman at Bethany, careful and troubled about many things. I was worried, God forgive me — and I forgot." He nodded kindly to the curtseying, voluble woman, and passed on. At the end of the bridge, however, he stood for a moment gazing on the reedy river, whose willows were whitening and its shallow waters ruffling and darkening with a fresh wind. He hearkened to the homely talk of the wood-quests. He heard a little black water-hen cry " freet, freet," and saw it dive and disappear. "Ah," he said to himself, "a man might wash his heart in the very waters of peace here.

One would think that. But I cannot find peace to-night." And as the Rector moved away he repeated to himself that hymn of Bonar's, " Calm me, my God, and keep me calm." At the gate of the pretty modern rectory, sweet with briar and lime, and draped with clematis, he was met by two young people — a girl of twenty two or twenty-three and a man who might be thirty. " Hurry up, you dear old slowcoach," said the girl. " Tea has been waiting ever so long. There are mushrooms and a cake — a most delicate cake." " I hope you are not tired, sir," said the young man, looking into the Rector's face rather anxiously. " No, no," said the girl, "pappy is never tired except when he has one of his chests. Don't put fancies into his head, Gerard, or he'll be wanting breakfast in bed to-morrow. Pappy is in very good case, and gave us a lovely sermon."

The Rector laid his hand on his daughter's arm, tenderly, a little wistfully, even, it seemed to Gerard ; and then walked up to the house, followed by the two young folk. " Dania," said Gerard, drawing the girl back for a moment, " are you sure he is all right ? " " Am I sure ? yes, of course. What should be the matter with him ?" " Well, I don't know. Perhaps it is only fancy, but " " But me no buts. It is only fancy. Do you suppose I can't read every line of his dear old face like print ? " " But the sermon ? Did nothing in it strike __ " you r " Yes, a great deal struck me. It was one of the finest sermons I ever listened to. Pappy is thrown away here. The barbarous folk show us no little kindness, but they cannot appreciate work like pappy's." Gerard winced a little at that word " work."

It seemed to him terribly self-conscious and artificial, in reference to the simple pulpit speech of his gentle old friend. However, he let the word pass. " They appreciated him to-night, anyhow," he said. " Why, half the folk were crying. Their emotion made me shiver. Dania, in that sermon more was meant than meets the ear. It struck me as a kind of personal cry. I felt the pain of it — the dread of it — the faith trying to cling and not be afraid — the — well, you know what I mean. Did you feel nothing of this ? " " No," said Dania, " I certainly did not. And if you get such notions into your head, I wish you would keep them to yourself. It's nerves," she added, with a little frown and a decisive nod ; " you have been smoking too much." " With all my soul I hope I have. Don't be cross, Dania."

" I'm not cross. Only I wish you hadn't such a genius for making people uncomfortable. There's the bell." Gerard said nothing. Indeed, he had no chance of a reply, for Dania dashed forward, and left him to come up at his leisure. It was a pretty table, with its Sevres bowl of red and white roses, its trails of clematis, its two silver dish-covers, its glow of jam and marmalade ; its honey in the comb ; and its beautiful presiding figure. At Dania's right hand, close enough to the tea cosy to absorb a little of the geniality of the brown-ware pot —batting her eyes luxuriously, and filling the air for a yard or two around with a sound of neighbouring bees, and distant bagpipes, and a sense of a conversazione where mild electricity is dispensed — at the top right-hand angle of the table, I say, with folded tail, blessed and blessing, sat Madam, Dania's motherly black-and-white puss.

At the opposite diagonal, close to the Rector's arm, with a charming terra-cotta nose, and a chin like a throstle's breast, fawn, tenderly speckled, with eyes coloured like the world one sees from under twenty feet of sea-water, till they shut up in mere luxury and bien-etre ; and with head lifted now and again to gather in delicate sniffs light anticipatory refections, with a purr that rose and fell rhythmically like a hurdy-gurdy and a knife grinder playing together, and a tail whose ambula tions just avoided the honey — at the opposite diagonal, sat Chutney, the Rector's own tabby. These two cats were a necessary part of the tea-service, and if either of them had sat one inch off the exact angle, Mary, who had a very correct eye, would have straightened her at once. She objected to their presence as unchristian, but if folks were foolish enough to have them on the table, she would see that they were set right.

During tea Dania made a great deal of her father, cutting off all the crusts of his toast, and remember ing exactly the number of his lumps — which had recently been changed — and the proportion of his cream. Gerard she treated with some severity ; gradually relaxing, however, as she met his suppli cating gaze. " You haven't given Madam a bit of anything ! " she said at length, " and she never asked, the self sacrificing pet." Gerard, glad at heart to be so chidden, held on his palm a tiny crust of toast, while Madam minced and tickled his hand furrily, and made multitudinous crumbs, wavered between conflicting fragments, and lost the selected piece, and gave up hope altogether, and turned her head upside down, and backed into various dishes, and fell off the table, and clung, swaying, to the cloth, and, generally, made as much fuss as though she had been carrying out some great engineering chef d'æuvre.

" Oh, Mad," said Dania, " I must get you a serviette." "And I'll get her a new collar," said Gerard : " may I ? and so we'll start her in housekeeping between us." " Yes, if you'll choose discreetly ; blue is her colour, Oxford blue — pink makes a mere white mouse of her." So, while those two buried the hatchet over Madam's bit of toast, and the Rector surveyed them benevolently, Chutney — blinking abstractedly straight before her, and seemingly on the point to fall a-nodding — with one adroit hook of her paw drew off the Rector's wing of chicken, and retired. " Where's my — surely — really 1 thought," said u he a moment later, looking short-sightedly round — " has anybody seen ? " " It was a wing," said Dania, " and it has flown." From underneath the table arose soft sibilations and delicate crunchings.

" Oh, Chut," said the Rector, " that was very bad. 1 trusted you — and it was a liver-wing. Honesty, my cat, honesty is the best policy." " Clearly," said Gerard, as a moment later Chutney appeared upon the Rector's shoulder, prosperity shining upon her sleek stripes, and self respect singing to itself in her redoubled purr, " that cat has a useful career before her as an awful warning." Dania smiled and restored Gerard to all his privileges and emoluments. Probably there was an accidental meeting of hands somewhere below the horizon, for there was a sort of knock against the table, and the Rector cried, " Come in." The excellent meal being concluded, Dania — though she had so recently refused him permission to be in the least fatigued — insisted on putting her father on the sofa, and on covering him up with almost arctic wrappings.

He felt a little oppressed, I fear — and indeed would have liked to sit up and read one of Bacon's essays — but Dania's imperious ness was so pretty and kind that he was really glad to accept coddling for comfort. " There," said Dania, having adjusted the last pinioning swathe, " there you are, you dear old Sybarite, and if that isn't cumfy I don't know what cumfy is." " Perhaps," said the Rector, " it's a shade too luxurious. I feel like a royal mummy. Don't forget me in case of a fire." " Why, pappy," she said, " you are coruscating with epigram." She smiled at him — a smile as melting as a ripe Bon Chretien pear — and then stooped down, touching him here and there with light, caressing lips. The Rector would have pulled her face upon his own, but his bonds prevented that. He looked at her with eyes in which the affection turned to wistfulness.

" Dear girl," he said with a little sigh ; " kind girl ! Lead out the young man that he may smoke the Latakia that his soul loveth ; and if you snub him, snub him tenderly. 'Tis a good youth and a kind, and in the fatness of his folly there are slender streaks of sense. Take him away that he may poison the air and himself, and show him the new " " Hush ! " cried Dania, cutting the suggestion short. " Come along, Gerard ; " and giving her father a parting pat, she tripped out of the house and down the rustic steps that led to the river. Meanwhile the Rector lay quite still, with his eyes fixed upon the wall above him. His face looked worn and thin when the momentary sparkle had left it, and now and again a look came over it very piteous to see — a sidelong, furtive look as of one lonely and afraid, and dogged by something dim and inevitable.

But after a while he closed his eyes, and laid his crossed hands over his breast. Gradually, as he lay thus motionless, with the shadows creeping over him, the sharpness ofthe outlines of the face seemed smoothed away ; one might almost say that snow had fallen upon it, soft and hushing and full of peace. Two tears had rolled down his cheeks and now stood still. Per haps he had been praying. Gerard followed Dania down the rose-tree avenue to the river. A cot, as the flat-bottomed boat of the district is called, lay with her nose nuzzled into reeds and rank grass, chained to a post driven into the mud. This was a favourite haunt of Dania's — a place to dream, or think, or work in. She took her seat on one of the thwarts, and Gerard sat down facing her. " You see," she said, with a small decisive nod.

" See what ? " he asked between puffs, and with anxious hands hollowed over his last match but one. She waited till the trembling conflagration had had a happy issue, and his eyes were at her com mand. Then she replied : " How utterly mistaken you were. I never saw my father in better fettle." " Well," he said, with rather a doubtful assent, " of course you know best." Then he quickly turned the subject. "What was it, Dania, he wanted you to show me ? " " Never mind," she answered. " I'm not going to show it to you." " My dear," he said, " I throw the suggestion out in all diffidence, but aren't you a little bit — shall we say — firm with me to-night ? " " Not a bit more than you deserve. When you like — praise where praise is due — you can be very nasty." " But " Oh, please don't begin with a ' but,' and pray don't put on that condescending, blandly reasonable smile.

If you knew how — shall we say priggish ? — it makes you look, I'm sure you wouldn't." " Well," he said, with a half-shrug, " there are at least times when speech is silver — or silver plate — and silence golden. Perhaps silence is golden just now. I think I'll think." "Yes," she said, " I abhor wrangling — pray let us think." For a few moments she sat silent, letting her hand hang into the water. Then she burst out with shining eyes and a trembling mouth, " Oh, it is provoking of you to choose this night of all others to be disgusting — with a sunset like that " — she waved her hand to the left, where all the west was plumed with windy flame. " I like my view best," he said, looking lovingly into her beautiful, petulant face. " And everything so exquisite," she went on, not noticing his remark, but mollified by it a little ; " and — and — oh, Gerard, I've been looking for ward to this hour all the week " " My darling," he said, and his eyes rested on the thwart where she sat.

" No," she said, divining his purpose, " keep where you are, please. You don't deserve it, and, besides, I want to read it to you." " Oh," he said, " then it is literature. Another sonnet ? " " No," she answered. " I've done with sonnets — till the next, anyhow. It's a story, Gerard — a sort of allegory— and I wonder . . . oh, I do wonder. . . Gerard, I think it's the best — no, I won't say a word about it. You must give me your candid opinion." " Candid ? " he said. " With or without an e ? " " Without, of course. You know how I hate and despise a glozing tongue. I have at least earned the right to serious and honest criticism." She put her hand into her pocket, and brought forth some sheets of manuscript, pinned together with an elegant brass clip. " Now mind," she said, smoothing out the folds, " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

" Well," he said, a little doubtfully. " If you have a mind to hear my mind, I don't mind. Only I remember Gil Bias and the Archbishop of Granada." " But," she said, smiling delightfully, " I'm not an archbishop nor ever likely to be. Now listen, I call it ' Rounded with a Sleep.' " Gerard settled himself back, with a muttered "Ah ! that sounds good," and Dania began to read. Her voice was charming — fresh as the plash of water — and she read well. Once or twice at the outset she glanced up into the face of her auditor, and threw him, in an aside, a word of explanation. But before long she was unable to bear his eyes. Her voice grew tremulous, and once at least a tear had to be winked away. As the finale was neared, Gerard could feel the effort that it cost her to keep the sobs back. With all that she could do, a gulping vacuum came before the last words were uttered, and they were dropped low and broken in a little rainy quiver.

For two or three seconds Dania sat quite still, waiting for her brimming eyes to clear. Then she looked up a little shyly, yet with an appeal — almost a demand — for admiring sympathy. Gerard did not meet her glance foursquare, and Dania thought that his manhood hardly liked to reveal how much he had been moved. She let her gaze slide off for a second while he mastered him self, then she looked at him again, with all her sensitive triumph melting and flashing unchecked. He had to meet her challenge. Slowly his eyes came up and looked into hers. If there was an appeal for praise in Dania's, there was in his something very like an appeal for pity. She, however, could not or would not interpret his look. " Well ? " she inquired after a brief silence, a little impatiently but without mistrust.

Still Gerard held his peace. He was a brave man and a truthful, yet at that moment he was sunken deep in cowardice, and on the quaking verge of a lie. " Well ? " she said again, pettishly. " Don't sit and stare. Is it good ? " In the last words there was the faintest indica tion of surprise and of dawning fear. It went to Gerard's heart. Perhaps he would have given his c quarter's income to be able to answer the question with a hearty " Good ! I should think it was ! " The eyes were still questioning — the eyes that he loved best in the world. He knew too well her own appraisement of her work. Did he not understand every intonation of her voice, every movement of her sensitive lips and nostrils, every little dimple and gleam and break in all her April face ? She had been melted by her own pathos, torn by her own tragedy.

The fortunate turns that she loved had been kept lingering on her lips, hardly suffered to go without a kiss. There were epithets that seemed to her as happy as the first primrose : sentences that were as sure as a star, and as fine as a cameo. There were wayward felicities that were as quaint and as curious as some old Moorish blade. The whole allegory was to her something inevitable ; that which had to be done, and was done, and never might be done again — a thing finished and fixed as yester day. Perhaps no bit of work ever left the hands of Keats whereof he could say with as unquestioning a joy of artistry, " That is good." The old sculptors inscribed upon the pedestal of their statues " Faciebam " — the imperfect tense : " I was doing this ; I was about this work : " never " Feci," the perfect tense : " This I have wrought."

Dania's heart had written across her little story an unhesitating feci. And Gerard — well, Gerard knew the flavour of a phrase and loved the touch of the sure hand. He knew, moreover, what was sincere and what was sham. He knew the difference between literature and twaddle — and this was twaddle ; weak at once and strained ; formless, hysterical, false. What was he to do ? He tried to gain a little time. " I should not like to form an opinion," he said, " without a second hearing. You see, an allegory is not quite like a plain story. May I take it home with me ? " He said this, but his manner was embarrassed and glum. Dania's cheeks flushed. " You promised me," she said, " to tell me the truth. I am sure you have formed an opinion. As for its being an allegory, the under-meaning could not possibly escape a child."

" Well, yes," he admitted, " I think that is obvious enough." " Then, you see, you are not dealing truthfully with me. I do think, Gerard, I have brains enough to be taken seriously." " Well, then," Gerard said, " I think there are some faults in the thing." c " Yes," she said, " I suppose there are though . . . well, I daresay there are. But as a whole . . . ? There is stuff in it, isn't there ? The conception — that is good ? " Gerard really could not meet her eyes. He fumbled at his pipe as he said — " I don't know ... I think it's rather . . . well, Dania, you've asked me to speak up, and I will." Unconsciously he straightened his figure, and leaned towards her. " My dear child, you're on the wrong tack. You have not got anything of yourself into that. It's second-hand, and — oh, my sweet, it hurts to say it — it's cheap and false."

There was silence, Dania looking at him with a drawn face. " Yes," she said in a hard voice, " second-hand and cheap, and, what was it ? — false ? Yes. Anything else ? " " No," he said, " I think that's enough for one night." " So do I," she said, rising flushed and imperial, but with tears only just out of sight ; " let me pass, please." He caught at her hand as she stepped by, but she pulled it away ; at her dress, but she snatched it out of his clutch. " Oh, I'm so sorry," he said, jumping out after her. " I've torn the frock." " Yes," she said, " but that can be mended ; don't follow me, please," and she swept up to the house. Gerard lit his pipe. " Poor child," he said, " I know I hurt her. I'm a clumsy wretch. But, oh ! how easy it is to do wrong to those who do write ! "

Chapter II The Fate Of

A MANUSCRIPT About half-past eleven one morning, towards the end of August, Standish Verschoyle lounged into the printing office of The Tourney. Passing through the outer entrenchments, he nodded here and there to a clerk behind the counter, and waved his hand to the kindly face of the managing partner looming through an inner glass partition. Finally he reached a table that stood, lonely as a cloud, within a narrow strip boarded off from a room of great extent. Its walls were whitewashed — or had been once. Its floor was undulating. There was a cane chair, not very hazardous, except in the middle. Verschoyle sat down. All around plunged and panted the presses. Doors were ever on the swing, and there were momentary glimpses of huge rollers and straining girders, bare arms and flying sheets, and iron corkscrew stairs that burrowed up and up, interminably up.

Strong was the reek of the modern midnight oil. There was vibration that never ceased to hum and sting, and hurry growing on the ear that listened like the sound of a river. Now and again a smutty face looked into the office and vanished. Now and again a man went staggering through under a load of sheets still wet and loud of smell. Once or twice there was a fizz of laughter, and a squeak quickly muffled, as a boy returning with a corrected proof met and saluted his outgoing brother. Standish Verschoyle, having sat down, tilted his hat and yawned. That hat was a happy com bination of the æsthetic and the brigandish, gray and of a ferocious curve, decked withal with a tiny dark-green feather. There had been two portraits of Verschoyle in local papers, and one of the ac companying literary sketches had spoken of " the celebrated hat," as being as necessary to the editor of The Tourney as his ankle wings to Mercury or the umbrella to Mrs. Gamp or the once famous Dr. Kenealy.

Besides, though he was only twenty eight, there was an arid spot on his crown, neighbouring the waving uplands of his hair. Standish never, or at least hardly ever, save under compul sion, removed his hat. The Tourney had been established a year before by a small cluster of young Trinity, Dublin, men. It was meant to be the organ of the culture of Ireland, and in an especial degree the organ of the new Celtic renascence. It was open, as its title implied, to every opinion. If it had politics of its own their bias had never been clearly ap parent. In its lists many a good knight had set his lance in rest against an opponent just a month ahead, and, on the whole, the tourneying had been gallant and knightly, and never had the combat been a outrance. In those pages, men who would elsewhere have broken over one another's heads the cudgels of Donnybrook and shed the vials of Billingsgate, began the play with a bow and closed it with a pretty compliment.