ONCE IN A LIFE : OR THE SECRET OF HER HEART

Chapter I

The Spaniards, who have always a proverb on their lips, are particularly partial to this one:

“God makes woman perfect; man spoils her; love redeems her.

If you leave the town of Barnstaple on your right, and walk a matter of a mile or two, you come upon a scene which will, according to your temperament and the state of the tide, either make you shudder and turn back appalled, or rivet your attention and cause you to linger with a kind of fascination as indescribable as it is irresistible. For it is just here that the bed of the river Taw widens, presenting, at high tide, a broad stretch of water pleasant to look upon, but at low tide a reach of sand which is the embodiment of desolation and solitude.

The reach of sand goes down to the sea, which at neap tide sometimes crawls up it like a weary snake, but at spring tide comes tearing up like a wild beast rushing with an ominous and deadly silence upon its prey. . l

Nine persons out of ten who stand and look, at low tide, at this waste of salt sand and listen to the cry of the sea birds which soar across the waste, sometimes swooping down upon the fish in the shallow pools, or upon the sand eels that vainly try to burrow out of sight, would shiver, shudder, and hurry back to the comfortable inn at Barnstaple—which is a pity; for if they would only walk half a mile along the bank, going toward the sea, they would come upon a scene which, for sheer out-and-out loveliness, they would find it hard to match. They would find a little valley verdant as the Emerald Isle itself, with softly covered hills on either side, with a rippling brook, with birds tamer and sweeter of song tlan the guillemots; with everything, in short, which the poet and painter insists upon having.

In this valley, close to the mouth of the brook, stands a mill, say, rather, hides, for you cannot see it from the river bank, and the trees round it shut it from the view of the hills. At one time it was, in a very small way, a flourishing little mill. Farmers brought their wheat there to be ground; the wheel spun round merrily and industriously; the miller and his man, both white with flour, sung cheerily.

But the mill has long been motionless, the machinery is rusty, and though the water still trickles over the broken wheel, it does so in a sleepy, lazy fashion, and with a subdued murmur. The neighboring farmers no longer bring their wheat there to be ground; have, indeed, most of them, forgotten that the mill exists; though within a few miles of the busy town it is so “remote” that it might be a hundred miles distant. The cart road is overgrown with weeds and grass, through which only a narrow footpath is visible. No one has any business to transact there, so no one comes, excepting, perhaps, the ubiquitous tourist; and he only stands and stares about him for a while, and then, perhaps oppressed by the silence and the solitude, tramps off to better-known and duly advertised spots.

In this mill cottage lived Edwin Chester and his daughte~ Lyra.

ae had come to the cottage and its ruin.d mi'l some ten years before this story opens, when Lyra was a slip of a girl an the “all legs and wings” stage. No one knew anything about him, no one cared. Father and daughter settled down alone and unaided, and had continued to live in the little out-of-the-way valley in solitary unfriendliness.

It is a way failures have. For the man was a failure. He had started to make money, and failed; he had married to secure happiness, and failed; for his wife had died in giving birth to Lyra.

How many men, alas! lose their wives; but many, fortunately for them, live down their sorrow; but this man could not do so. He had loved his wife with all his heart and soul. She had been very beautiful, and she had loved him with a love almost as absorbing as his own. When she passed away she took his heart with her; it lay buried in her grave, and there it remained, notwithstanding Heaven had given him a daughter as lovely as her mother, and as lovable.

You see, he could never look upon Lyra’s beautiful face without seeing the reflection of his dead wife’s, without remembering what the child had cost him.

Shut up with his books, he lived the life of a recluse, shunning his fellow men, speaking seldom, smiling never.

In the sole companionship of her father and a hunchbacked old man, an old servant who had followed Mr. Chester in his ruin, Lyra had grown from childhood to that mystic state in which childhood stands palpitating ’twixt girl and woman.

She had no friends outside the cottage save the birds in the little wood behind the house, their wilder cousins sailing above the sands, the babbling brook, the flowers in the valley, the salt waves that, when the wind blew, turned the river into a mimic sea, and her books.

A girl must Jove something. Lyra loved her father and mature. Her father, unfortunately, could not return that love, but nature had responded, and responded generously.

It lavished its gifts upon her—had given her beauty far beyond the ordinary, had given her strength and health, and a natneless charm which, perhaps, the very conditions of her life had created and developed.

She was not above the average height, but exquisitely formed, with the lissom grace which belongs to those whose lives are spent in the open air, untrammeled and unburdened by such fashionable customs as tight lacing, afternoon tea drinking, late hours, and unhealthy excitement.

Her face, oval in shape, was one of those which one sees in the paintings of Murillo, the eyes dark and dreamy, yet with the “maiden fierceness” smoldering, as it were, within their depths. The mouth was not small by any means, but it spoke ere the words left her lips, so facile of expression was it. Her hair was of that dark rich brown which, because it has the gold and the russet of an autumn leaf in it, we call auburn, and there was so much of it that Lyra was often tempted to cut it off; for it got in her way when she was row= ing the boat across the river to the little village of Peterel on the other side, and when the wind blew it about her face as she walled across the hills above the valiey.

But if an artist would have fallen into a rapture at the beauty of her face, a musician would have been as delighted at the music of her voice. Naturally clear in tone, her life in these fogless regions, in which the sea and the moorland air combined, had made her voice full and round and belllike; though she spoke in the low tones which become habitual to those who dwell far from the maddening crowd.

In short, to sum up in the passionate words of an Elizabethan poet:

“Sweetness itself was she; none other in the world so sweet to me.”

And all this sweetness was wasted on the desert air.

And yet Lyra did not complain, nor was she unhappy. How can they be unhappy whom the gods have blessed with youth and health and strength, and a nature which can find something to love in the babbling brook, the singing birds, the flowing tide?

But these—and her books—were all Lyra had. Though her father had not forbidden her to go to the town, which, with its thin crown of filmy smoke, lay in the hollow of the hills, Lyra knew that he did not like her to go; and all her walks were taken over the hills, by the low river banks, and up the leafy valley in which the cottage nestled; and if she

6 ONCE IN A E€IFR.

wanted any other exercise, why, there was the boat, which she could sail, and row as skillfully, if not as strongly, as any fisherman on the estuary.

If sometimes, as she wandered over the hills or lay back in the drifting boat, she wondered what the great world was like, the world of which she read in her books, the wonder was untouched by discontent. She lived in a world of her own, a land of dreams, and it seemed as if the time of awakening, that hour in which the soul springs into passionate life, as that of the Sleeping Beauty was awakened by the kiss of the adventurous prince, would never dawn for her; as if all her life would pass away untroubled, eventless, in the secluded valley by the waste of sand and fast-flowing tide, innocent of all that makes the joy and the misery of her sisters in the great world far away.

God makes woman perfect; man spoils her; love redeems her. The hour was at hand.

One day in June, she stood at the door of the cottage, her slim figure, in its well-worn serge frock, drawn to its full height, as she held above her head a bowl of corn with which she was feeding a flock of pigeons that fluttered excitedly round her, so fearless in their affection and impatience that they stood upon her feet and buffeted with their wings her golden-tinged hair.

She knew them all by name, and chided them laughingly for their greediness, sometimes pushing them gently from her head, or as gently throwing them off the bowl with her hand. A hen and a brood of chickens clucked and chirped about her feet, and a dog, with the dog’s cheerful readiness to take part in any noise, jumped up at her, barking and yelping lovingly.

The bent figure of an old, deformed, and hunchbacked man came down the path beside the water wheel, with a load of wood on his back, and paused to look at her with an expression of devotion on his warped face as doglike in its intensity as the dog’s own.

“Down! Carlo, down!” he said in a thin, strained voice, as if it came from his narrow chest with difficulty. “You let ’em tear you to pieces, Miss Lyra.”

Lyra laughed softly. Her laugh was like her voice, full of music, but soft and subdued, as if she were more accustomed to laughing to herself for her only audience.

“No, no, Griffith,” she said. “It is all right; he is doing no harm. Where are you going?” For he had put down the load of wood, and was going down the path that led from the house.

“The master wants something from Peterel.”

Lyra flung the remains of the corn into the air.

ONCE IN A CFE, yj

“T’ll go, Griffith,” she said. “You are tired.”

“No, no, Miss Lyra.”

“But you are,” she insisted. “I can see that by the way ycu walk; and you have carried that great pile of wood from the woods. Ill go; I should like the row. Now, don’t be obstinate, there’s a good Griffith. Besides, it isn’t any use. 1 always have my way in the end, you know.”

“Yes, Miss Lyra,” he said, in a gentler voice than one would have deemed him capable of, judging by his rugged exterior, “and from the beginning. Well, I’ll get the boat ready.”

Lyra turned and entered the cottage. She moved quickly, though gracefully, with the gait of a girl whose limbs are under perfect command, ard went into the little sitting room, where her father was sitting reading, with the blinds down, as if he were desirous of shutting out the bright, warm June sunlight.

She glided up to him, and bending over him, put her arms round his neck. He suffered the caress of the sweet young arms, but did not return it.

“What is it you want at Peterel, father?”

He raised his eyes from the book and gazed before him, blinking vacantly.

“At Peterel? I want nothing. Yes, I remember; I want the London paper. They take it at Greely’s farm. He offered to lend it to me whenever I wanted to see it.”

Lyra laughed very softly.

“Yes, I recollect. But that was—what?—a year ago?”

“And I have not wanted to see it till now,’ he said, his eyes returning to his book. ;

“Very well, father,’ she said. “I don’t suppose Mr. Greely has forgotten. Is there anything else?”

He looked up with weak impatience.

“What? Where are you going?” he asked, as if the sub- | ject had passed from his memory.

“To Peterel. All right, father.” She touched his head with her lips—a kiss as light as thistle down—and leaving the room, caught up the sun-browned, weather-stained hat, and ran down the path to where the brook emptied itself into the river.

The tide was coming up, creeping up slowly, and Griffith was standing keeping the boat afloat.

“T should think there’s enough water for you to get across, Miss Lyra,” he said, bending his shoulder for her to rest her hand upon as she sprang into the boat; and she did so rest her hand, though she did not need his assistance.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I shan’t be gone long, Griffith; look after father.”

’ He stood and watched her for a moment or two, then turned to the house, his lips moving with a “God bless her!” but in a voice that would have better harmonized with a curse—the harsh, guttural undertone of the hunchback.

Lyra rowed against the incoming tide for a few minutes, then let the boat swing half round till its nose pointed to the opposite shore, and took it straight across.

She knew every inch of the river, knew where the sand raised itself into hillocks, upon which the boat, if not kept clear of them, would strike and stick fast, and in another ten minutes she had reached the opposite bank, pulled up the boat, and walked to the farm.

It was a small farm, lying almost close to the bank, and the farmer’s wife had seen her coming across, and was out to meet her.

“Why, Miss Lyra, you be a stranger!” she exclaimed, wiping her hands on her apron. “You're looking bonny, too. Come in, come in.”

As they entered the farm a batch of children came rushing out and surrounded Lyra, very much as the poultry had done a few minutes before.

She had a kind word for them all, and caresses for the youngest, who, caught up in her arms, threatened by its embraces to pull down the thick coil of leaf-brown hair, till restrained by her anxious mother.

“Put her down, Miss Lyra, put her down,” she said. “Polly, how can you?”

“Never mind,” said Lyra, laughing, as the hair at last came tumbling down. “It doesn’t matter. I can wind it up; besides, there is no one to see me.”

She made the observation artlessly enough, but the woman sighed regretfully as she echoed it. oe there’s no one to see you, miss, more’s the pity,” she said.

Lyra did not notice the response or its tone, and made her request for the paper.

“The newspaper! Yes, Miss Lyra, certainly. Now, wkere did I see it? Joseph was reading it last night in that chair. Oh! here it is. Lor’! it isn’t often Mr. Chester asks to see the paper. Hope it isn’t bad news he’s expecting, Miss Lyra?”

Chapter II

“Bad news?” said Lyra, rather vaguely. Two children were in her lap, and the others were clustering round her.

No; I think not. I don’t think my father expects any news at all. We never hear any.”

*You never go into the town, Miss Lyra?”

Lyra shook her head.

“Never,” she said. “Now, Johnny, I'll tell you the story of your namesake, the giant killer. Well, come on my knee, then. I think we can make room; can’t we, Polly?”

While she told the grand old story, Mrs. Greely hastened to

get a cup of tea. They give you tea in Devonshire at all

hours, just as in the Khine provinces they give you wine. If you rushed into a Devonshire cottage to tell them that the world was coming to an end, they would insist upon you taking tea, cakes, and cream.

Lyra drank her cup of tea, and with the folded paper in her pocket went back to the boat.

The tide had been flowing silently, steadily, and the sand banks in the river bed had disappeared. She got into the boat, pushed off, and began to row for the opposite shore.

For perhaps the first time in her life she—Lyra, the Taw maiden—miscalculated the height of the tide. Thinking that she could row straight across as the crow flies, she pulled a vigorous, careless stroke, and lo! in midstream the keel of the boat struck one of the sand banks, the boat swung round, and there she was, aground!

She jumped up and tried to push it off into deep water; but she had rowed hard, and the keel was imbedded in the soft, tenacious sand. There was nothing for it but to wait until

' the tide flowed higher and floated her off. Accordingly, she -Jeaned back in the stern of the boat to wait patiently.

The sun poured down upon her in a manner which would

have filled a London beauty with despair; for, where the sun

falls upon the human face divine, there grow freckles. But Lyra was indifferent to freckles, and the state of her complexion troubled her not, so the sun god reveled in her beauty unchecked.

As she leaned back, gazing dreamily over the waste of _ waters, the sea gulls hovered over her, wheeling in their flight, and uttering their weird, shrill cries; and one or two of the flock, made daring by her stillness and the brooding silence, swept down almost as low as her face.

The air was full of life and the delight of life; the sun stirred the young blood within her. She rose presently with an oar in her hand—not the light scull which ladies play with on smaller rivers, but a stout, serviceable, heavy oar—and shading her eyes with her hand, looked before her seaward. Then, as the gulls audaciously swooped round her, she dropped her oar, and waving her arms, shouted loudly, though musically, laughing, as the birds, scared by the sudden cry and movement, flew shrieking beyond her reach.

Now, five minutes before, while she had been lying dream-

Io ONCE IN A fIFE, ing in the stern of the boat, a young man had appeared on the bank. He had been walking briskly enough, with his back to Barnstaple, but with rather a careless and unobservant air. He was a remarkably good-looking young fellow, and, even for these days of athleticism, strikingly well made and stalwart.

He dressed in a knickerbocker suit of rough tweed, and he wore the suit as a gentleman does: with that air of unconscious ease which distinguishes the true gentleman from the make-believe. One would describe his appearance—the cleanly cut features, the steady but brilliant eye, the graceful form of the well-knit figure—as patrician; but, unfortunately, so many patricians nowadays possess anything but well-knit frames, brilliant eyes, and cleanly cut features; indeed, a great many of them are too terribly commonplace in face, manner, and appearance.

This young man strode along swinging his stick, and folfowed by a wiry fox terrier, walking fast, but as if he were putting on the pace rather for his own amusement than au object, and with his eyes steadily fixed before him.

It was not until Lyra had rowed some distance from the opposite shore that he chanced to look that way and saw her. He did not stop even then, but walked on, looking at her and admiring her long, steady strokes.

“Jove!” he said to himself, “wouldn’t disgrace a varsity boat. If some of our fellows would come down to a place like this and take lessons of a fisherman—or a fisherman’s daughter, for that matter—they’d get a sight of good.”

As he made this wise reflection Lyra struck upon the sand bank, and the stroke he had so much admired came to a sudden cessation.

He stopped and leaned on his stick.

“Run aground,” he murmured. “Now I wonder whether she’ll be able to get it off? The tide’s rising, so she’s all right, I suppose.”

He stood watching, quite easy in his mind, until Lyra’s sudden uprising and gesticulation.

Certainly, to a man standing at some distance from the boat, it looked as if the occupant had got into trouble, and had suddenly become painfully aware of the fact; in fact, it looked to him as if Lyra was in a terrible state of fright.

“George! something has happened,” he exclaimed to himself; “she’s lost her nerve, or the boat’s keeling over and filling.”

At that moment Lyra, all unconscious. of a spectator and igs uttered a louder cry and swung her arms above hea

ea:

- ONCE IN A LIFE. Meds

_ To him the cry was a cry for help, the gesture of one in despair.

“Yes,” he said, “she’s in a deuce of a fix. She’s as likely as not to upset that cockleshell, and then——” ;

He looked at the tide, now flowing fast and rather angrily, and then at the boat, and he lifted his voice in what he intended to be a shout of encouragement. Unfortunately for him, or for her—how fate mocks us!—the shrilling of the sea gulls was in Lyra’s ears, and she did not hear him, and as if in response to his shout, she uttered another cry.

“Well, there’s nothing else for it,” he said, with an air of resignation. “I don’t mind a swim, though I should prefer it without my clothes. Bother the girl! I can’t stand here and see her drown, and I suppose she will drown.”

He took off his Norfolk jacket and waistcoat with a leisurely kind of quickness, and, after wading into the stream as far as he could, took to swimming, and swam toward the boat.

That is to say, he swam toward the boat for the first few yards; then the stream took hold of him bodily, irresistibly, and bore him upward.

“Confound it! who’d have thought it ran so hard?” he muttered.

But he fought against it with that stolid kind of steadfastness which distinguishes your practiced athlete, and just to let the damsel in distress know that he was hastening to her rescue, shouted to her encouragingly. :

This time Lyra heard the shout, anc, turning her head, saw him—saw him with amazement, for never in her life before had she seen a man swimming in the tideway of the Taw. For, sad to say, persons living by a river are not given to bathing.

She watched him with surprise and much interest; but suddenly the astonishment and interest changed to a deeper feeling.

Tidal rivers are dangerous for strangers. They are full of undercurrents which, though unseen, are deadly strong, and as deadly deceitful. The young fellow was in the grip of one of these currents, and as she looked she saw him being borne along against his will, against his struggles.

Lyra knew that a man caught in such a current might fight in vain to reach the shore, that he might struggle and struggle until his breath and strength were gone, and then the swirling river would suck him under its deceitfully calm surface.

Her face grew pale, and for a moment she stood transfixed by his danger; then the blood rushing to her face with shame for her moment of irresolution, she caught up the oar, easily pushed the boat off the sand bank, and rowed to the swimmer.

eZ ONCE IN A LIFE.

Perhaps because her heart was beating fast she id not row as strongly and steadily as usual, and the current—a different one to that in which the young man was struggling —bore her away from him.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw his head sinking lower, saw his strokes becoming more rapid—a mistake which a swimmer in difficulties always must make—and a low cry of alarm escaped her lips.

Then she set herself to her task, kept the nose of the boat straight, and sent it rushing through the water. She was almost within reach of him; she could see his face, pale but quite fearless, when he suddenly disappeared.

She did not cry out, but she held the boat up against the current, so that it might not pass over him, and leaned over the side.

She came up close to him. He was conscious still; she could see that much as she made a grasp at him; but the boat swerved, and he was swept beyond her reach.

Then she called to him, her clear voice thrilling above the swish of the tide against the sides of the boat:

“Keep still! Float! float!”

He must have heard her, or he followed the natural impulse of an accomplished swimmer, for he turned on his back. In another instant she had sent the boat toward him, and leaning over now, so that the gunwale almost touched the water, seized him by his shirt.

She held him by a grip like that of a vise, but she could not, of course, lift him.

“Cling to the boat!” she said.

He assented with a rather languid movement of his eyelids and what was intended for a smile, and he put up his hand and -eized the side of the boat. She put her hand upon his —it struck very, very cold—as if she would hold him by sheer force; and so they drifted for a hundred yards.

Then he put up the other hand, and, as she careened the boat over to him, and put her strong young arms around him, he slowly and none too easily drew himself into it.

He lay at the bottom of the boat for some moments, panting like a man who had been run out of breath, then he rose into a sitting posture, and pushing the hair from his forehead, said, rather breathlessly :

“Tm afraid I don’t understand the rules of this game.”

Lyra looked at him. She was bending forward, the sculls in both hands keeping the boat straight. The color was coming and going in her face, her eyes were full of a divine pity, a human gratitude.

“What?” she murmured faintly.

He hoisted himself upon the stern thwart.

ONCE IN A TIFE. Ts

“T beg your pardon, but I’m afraid I don’t understand the rules of this game.”

“Game!” she echoed, looking at him, the red dyeing her face one moment and fading the next.

“No,” he said, with a laugh that was rather shaky. “You are all right, I hope?”

Lyra stared at him, her brows straightening. They were darker than her hair, and did marvelous things in the way of expression. ;

“T all right? I? Oh! yes, yes! But you—how could you —could you bathe in the river without knowing the currents?”

Then she stopped, as it struck her that he could not have intended to bathe in his clothes.

It was his turn to stare, and he took his innings to the full.

“Bathe!” he exclaimed. “How could I bathe!” Then he burst into a laugh, a short, almost fierce laugh. “Weil!— oh, I wish you weren’t here!”

“Wish I weren’t here!” Lyra’s lips reformed his words.

“Yes; because I should like to swear—swear hard! But I beg your pardon,” he said abruptly. He had been looking at her, had seen by this time that she was no fisherman’s daughter, no farm wench. “It was your joke, and you are fully entitled to it.”

“My joke!” Lyra stopped rowing, and opened her lovely eyes upon him. “My joke! I don’t know what you mean;” and there was a note of indignation in her amazement.

He wrung the water of the Taw from his shirt sleeves and his knickerbockers, and laughed.

“Weren’t you in difficulties?” he said. “But I see now you weren’t. You pushed the boat off quite easily. I thought it was keeling over, that you were calling for assistance.”

Lyra flushed crimson.

“JI was calling to the birds, frightening the gulls,” she faltered.

He stopped in his wringing process and gazed at her, and as he gazed, her beauty smote him more fully; he forgot her response almost in his intense appreciation of her fresh young loveliness.

“Calling to the gulls? Oh, by Jove!” and he laughed in self-derision. “I thought you were shouting for help.”

“T?” said Lyra, open-eyed. “The boat was aground, and I had only to wait till the tide rose and floated it. And—and it was because you thought I was in danger that—that ca

He nodded as he took off his shoes and poured the water out of them. It is wonderful how much water a shoe will , hold.

“14 ONCE IN A LIFE, ' “Did you ever hear the story of the man in the train?” he asked.

She did not shake her head, but he took her silence as a confession of ignorance, and went on:

“A man in the train moaned or groaned. The passenger opposite him took out a flask of brandy and kindly offered it to him. The other fellow looked rather surprised, but took a drink and returned the flask. When they got to the terminus, the man who had offered his flask leaned forward and said: