The Kents spent their honeymoon in a fisherman’s cottage at Carbis Water, the very name of which, romantic and muflical, enchanted Basil’s ear; and from their window the cliff, grown over with odorous broom, tumbled lazily to the edge of the coloured sea. There was an amiable simplicity about the old man from whom they hired rooms, and Basil delighted to hear his long stories of the pilchard fishery, of storms that had strewn the beach with wreckage, and of fierce battles fought between the fishers of St. Ives and the foreigners from Lowestoft. He told of the revivals which burned along the countryside, calling sinners to repentance, and how himself on a memorable occasion had found salvation; now he confessed his late-found faith with savage ardour, but notwithstanding made the most he could out of the strangers in his house! And the tall, gaunt figure of that ancient seaman, with furrowed cheeks and eyes bleared with long scanning of the sea, seemed a real expression of that country—wild with its deserted mines, yet tender; barren, yet with the delicate colour of a pastel. To Basil, weary with the conflicting emotions of the last month, it had a restful charm unrivalled by the distincter glories of more southern lands.

One afternoon they walked up a hill to see the local curiosity, a gravestone which crowned its summit, and Basil wandered on while Jenny, indifferent and tired, sat down to test. He sauntered through the furze, saffron and green, and the heather rich with the subdued and decorous richness of an amethyst: some child had gathered a bunch of this and thrown it aside, so that it lay on the grass dying, faded purple, like a symbol of the decay of an imperial power. For a reason that escaped him, it recalled to Basil’s mind that most poetical of prose-writers, the divinely simple weaver of words, Jeremy Taylor, and he repeated to himself that sad, passionate phrase used in the Holy Dying: “Break the beds, drink your wine, crown your head with roses and besmear your curled locks with nard; for God bids you to remember death.”

Standing on the brink, he overlooked the valley of the sea—Hale in the distance, with its placid river, like some old Italian town coloured and gay even under that sombre heaven. The sky was gray and overcast, and the clouds, pregnant with rain, swept over the hill-top like the gauzy drapery of some dying pagan spirit, lingering solitary among the grotesque shapes of Christian legend. There was a line of dead trees on the crest of the hill, and Basil, visiting this place earlier in the year, had found them then incongruous with the summer, a hideous darkness against the joyous colour of the Cornish June. But now all Nature drew into harmony with them, and they stood, gnarled and leafless, with a placid silence, as though in a sense of the eternity of things they felt a singular content. The green leaves and the flowers were vanity, ephemeral as the butterflies and the light breeze of April, but they were changeless and constant. Dead ferns lay all about, brown as the earth, and they were the first of the summer plants to go, chilled to death by the mild wind of September. The silence was so great that Basil seemed to hear the wings of the rooks as they beat the air, flying overhead from field to field, and in his mind, curiously, he listened to the voice of London calling. Basil peculiarly enjoyed his solitude, for he was used to be much alone, and the constant companionship since his marriage at times proved irksome. He began to plan out his future. There was no reason why Jenny should not be induced to a wider view of things than she then possessed; she was by no means a fool, and little by little, with patience on his side, she might gain interest in the things that interested him: it would be wonderful to disclose a human soul to its own beauty. But his enthusiasm was short-lived, for, walking down the hillside, he found Jenny asleep, her head thrown back and her hat slouched over one eye, her mouth open. His heart sank, for he saw her as he had never seen her before: amid the soft grace of that scene her clothes looked tawdry and crude, and with keen eyes he detected, under her beauty, the commonness of nature for which already he loathed the brother.

But, fearing it would rain, he woke her and proposed that they should go home. She smiled at him lovingly.

“Have you been looking at me asleep? Had I got my mouth open?”

“Yes.”

“I must have looked a sight.”

“Where did you buy your hat?” he asked.

“I made it myself. Don’t you like it?”

“I wish it weren’t so very bright.”

“Colours suit me,” she answered. “They always did.”

The Cornish drizzle hovered over the earth, all-penetrating like human sorrow, and at length, with the closing day, the rain fell. In the mist and in the night the country sank into darkness. But in Basil’s heart was a greater darkness, and already, after one short week, he feared that the task he had confidently undertaken was beyond his strength.

On their return to London Basil moved such furniture as he possessed into the little house he had taken in Barnes. He liked the old-fashioned High Street of that place because it had preserved a certain village simplicity, and the common made up for the dreary look of the long row of villas in which was his own: the builder, careful of his invention, had placed on each side fifty small houses so alike that they were distinguishable only by their numbers and the grandiloquent names on the fanlight. For two or three weeks the young couple were engaged in putting things to rights, and then Basil settled to the monotonous life he liked because it gave most opportunity for work. He went away every morning early to chambers, where he devilled for the “silk” in whose room he sat, waiting for briefs that came not, and about five took the train back to Barnes; then followed a stroll along the tow-path with Jenny, and after dinner he wrote till bed-time. Basil felt now a certain quiet satisfaction in his marriage; his affairs settled for good, and he could surrender himself to his literary ambition. Apparently there was a magic in the nuptial tie, since there arose within him by degrees a sober but deep affection for Jenny; he was flattered by her adoration, and touched at the humility wherewith she did his bidding. With all his heart he looked forward to the birth of their child. They talked of him incessantly for both were convinced that it must be a son, and they never tired of discussing what to do with him, how he should wear his hair, when be breeched, and where go to school. When Basil pictured the beautiful woman nursing her child—and she had never been lovelier than then—his pulse throbbed with thankfulness and pride; and he chid himself because he had ever hesitated to marry her or for a moment during the honeymoon bitterly regretted his rashness.

Jenny was radiantly happy. She was of indolent temper, and it delighted her, after the bondage of the Golden Crown, to do nothing from morning till night. It was very amusing to have at her beck and call a servant who called her “ma’am,” and hugely satisfactory to watch her work while she sat idly. She was proud also of the little house and the furniture, and dusted the pictures with greater complacency because she thought them rather ugly; Basil said they were very beautiful, and she knew they cost a lot of money. In the same way Jenny admired her husband all the more because she neither understood his ideas nor sympathized with his ambitions. She worshipped him like a dog his master. It was a daily torment when he went to town, and invariably she accompanied him to the door to see the last of him: when he was due to return, she listened with held breath for his step on the pavement, and sometimes in her impatience walked to meet him.

Basil had not the amiable gift of taking people as they are, asking no more from them than they can give; but rather sought to mould after his own ideas the persons with whom he came in contact. Jenny’s taste was deplorable, and the ignorance which had not been unbecoming to the pretty barmaid in the wife was a little distressing. In accordance with a plan of unconscious education whereby, like powder in jam, Jenny might acquire knowledge without realizing it, Basil gave her books to read; and though she took them obediently, his choice, perhaps, was not altogether happy, for alter a diligent quarter of an hour she would mostly drop the volume, and for the rest of the morning chat familiarly with the maid-of-all-work. If, however, at any time she yearned for literary pabulum, she much preferred to buy a novelette at the station bookstall, but took care to hide it when Basil came in; and once he found by chance a work entitled Rosamund’s Revenge, explained that it belonged to the servant. For one penny Mrs. Kent could get a long and blood-curdling romance, the handsome, aristocratic hero of which bore an unusual similarity to Basil, while the peerless creature for whom doughty deeds were so fearlessly performed was none other than herself; under the mattress in the spare bedroom she kept her favourite story, wherein a maid of high degree nobly sacrificed herself, and Jenny’s heart beat fast when she thought how willingly under similar circumstances she would have risked her life for Basil. Ignorant of all this, Kent talked frequently of the books himself had given her, but in his enthusiasm was apt to be so carried away as not to notice how small her knowledge thereof remained.

“I wish you’d read me your book, Basil,” she said one evening. “You never tell me anything about it.”

“It would only bore you, darling.”

“D’you think I’m not clever enough to understand it?”

“Of course not! If you’d like me to, I shall be only too pleased to read you bits of it.”

“I’m so glad you’re a novelist. It’s so uncommon, isn’t it? And I shall be proud when I see your name in the papers. Read me some now, will you?”

No writer, however violent his protests, really dislikes being asked to read an unpublished book; it is the child of his heart, and has still the glamour which, when it is coldly set up in type and bound in cloth, will be utterly destroyed. Basil especially needed sympathy, for he was distrustful of himself, and could work better when someone expressed admiration for his efforts. It had been his ardent hope that Jenny would take interest in his writing, and it was only from diffidence that hitherto he had said little about it.

The idea of his novel, the scene of which was Italy in the early sixteenth century, came to him one day in the National Gallery soon after his return from South Africa, when his mind, fallow after the long rest from artistic things, was peculiarly sensitive to the impression of beauty. He wandered among the pictures, visiting old favourites, and the sober quiet of that place filled his soul with a greater elation than love or wine; he recalled the moment often for its singular happiness, spiritual and calm, yet very fruitful. At last he came to that portrait of an Italian nobleman by Moretto, which to an imaginative mind seems to express the whole spirit of the later Renaissance. It fitted his mood strangely. He thought that to make lovely patterns was the ultimate end of the painter’s art, and noticed with keen appreciation the decorative effect of the sombre colouring and of the tall man, leaning, melancholy and languid, in that marble embrasure. Nameless through the ages, he stood in an attitude that was half weariness and half affectation; and his restrained despair was reflected by the tawny landscape of the background, blank like the desert places of the spiritual life; the turquoise sky even was cold and sad. The date was given, 1526, and he wore the slit sleeves and hose of the period; (the early passion for the New Birth was passed already; or Michaelangelo was dead, and Cæsar Borgia rotted in far Navarre;) the dark cerise of his parti-coloured dress was no less mournful than the black, but against it gleamed the delicate cambric of his shirt and ruffles. One hand, ungloved, rested idly on the pommel of his long sword, the slender, delicate hand, white and soft, of a gentleman and student. On his head he wore a strange-shaped hat, part buff, part scarlet, with a medallion on the front of St. George and the Dragon.

The face haunted Basil, paler by reason of the dark beard; and out of it looked wistfully the eyes, as though sight were weariness and the world had naught to offer but disillusion. Presently, brooding over the character which seemed there expressed, he invented a story, and to work it out for some months, steeping himself in the poets and historians of the period, spent much time in the British Museum. At last he began actually to write. Basil wished to describe Italian society at that time, its profound disenchantment after the vigorous glow with which it had welcomed the freedom of mind when the fall of Constantinople threw open to the human intellect a new horizon; and devised a man who waged life as though it were a battle, vehemently, seeking to enjoy every moment, and now, finding all things vain, looked back with despair because the world had nothing more to offer. Acquainted with the courts of princes and the tents of condottieri, he had experienced every emotion, fought bloodily, loved and intrigued, written poetry and talked platonism. The incidents of this career were stirring, but Basil referred to them only so much as was necessary to explain the state of mind, for he desired to show his scorn of commonplace by eschewing sensation and giving merely detailed analyses of a spiritual condition.

His theme gave opportunity for the elaborate style Basil affected, and he began to read, emphasizing the rhythm of his sentences and rejoicing in their music. His vocabulary, chosen from the Elizabethans, was rich and sonorous, and the beauty of certain words intoxicated him. But at last he stopped suddenly.

“Jenny?” he said.

No answer came, and he saw that she was fast asleep. Taking care not to disturb her, he put aside the book and rose from his chair. It was not worth while to ask him to read if she could not keep awake, and with some vexation he went to his desk. But his sense of humour came the rescue.

“What a fool I am!” he cried, with a laugh. “Why should I think it would interest her?”

Yet Mrs. Murray had listened to that same chapter with most flattering attention, and afterwards was loud in its praise. Basil remembered that Molière read comedies to his cook, and if she was not amused rewrote them. By that test he should have destroyed his novel; but then impatiently he told himself that he wrote, not for the many, but for a chosen few.

No longer feeling him near her, Jenny presently awoke.

“Well, I never! I haven’t been to sleep, have I?”

“Snoring!”

“’ I am sorry. Did I disturb you?”

“Not at all,”

“I couldn’t help it. I felt so drowsy with you reading. I did enjoy it, Basil.”

“It’s something to write a book which is a soporific,” he answered, smiling grimly.

“Do read me some more, I’m wide awake now, and it was beautiful.”

“I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll do a little work.”


A few days later Jenny’s mother, who had seen neither Basil nor the house, paid them a visit. She was a stout woman with a determined manner, and wore a black satin dress so uneasily as to suggest it was her Sunday best; it gave her a queer feeling that the days had got mixed, and a Sabbath come somehow in the middle of the week. Against Basil’s will, Jenny insisted on keeping for special occasions their nicest things, and when they were alone made tea in an earthenware pot.

“You don’t mind if I don’t get out the silver teapot, ma?” she asked, when they sat down. “We don’t use it every day.”

“No more do I come and see you every day, my dear,” answered Mrs. Bush, gloomily stroking her black satin.

“But I suppose I’m nobody now you’re married. Don’t you sit down at table for tea?”

“Basil likes to have it in the drawing-room,” answered Jenny, pouring milk in the bottom of each cup.

“Well, I think it’s messy. My tea is my best meal; you know that, Jenny.”

“Yes, ma.”

“I always say it looks mean just to have a few pieces of bread-and-butter put on a plate, with the butter just scraped on so as you can’t see it.”

“Basil likes it like that.”

“In my ’ouse I ’ave things my own way. Don’t begin to give way to your ’usband in the ’ouse, my dear, or he’ll presume on it.”

Basil, coming in at this moment, was introduced to the visitor, and Jenny, rather nervously, watched her to see that she behaved nicely! But Mrs. Bush, though somewhat awed by his reserved manner, took care to show that she was a perfect lady, and when she lifted her cup curled her little finger in the most elegant and approved fashion. Basil, after a few polite remarks, lapsed into silence, and the two women for five minutes talked difficultly of trivial subjects. Then a carriage stopped at their door, and in a minute the maid announced—Mrs. Murray.

“I thought you would allow me to call on you,” she said, holding out her hand to Jenny. “I’m an old friend of your husband.”

Jenny blushed, taken aback, but Basil, delighted to see her, shook hands warmly.

“It’s awfully good of you. You’ve just come in time for tea.”

“I’m simply dying for some.”

She sat down, looking very handsome and self-possessed, and Mrs. Bush deliberately examined her gown. But Jenny remembered that they had only the common teapot.

“I’ll just go and get some fresh tea,” she said.

“Fanny will get it, Jenny.”

“Oh no, I must get it myself, and I keep the tea locked up. You know I have to,” she added to Mrs. Murray; “these girls are so dishonest.”

She went out hurriedly, and while she was gone Basil eagerly asked Mrs. Murray how she had found them out.

“It was horrid of you not to write and tell me where you were. Miss Ley gave me your address.”

“Don’t you think it’s an amusing place? You must go into the High Street. Bits of it are so odd and quaint.”

They chattered gaily, almost taming their backs on Mrs. Bush, who watched them with lowering brows. But she often said that she was not a woman to be put upon.

“It’s a fine day, isn’t it?” she interrupted aggressively.

“Beautiful!” said Mrs. Murray, smiling.

And before Mrs. Bush could make another observation Basil asked when she was startling for Italy. Fortunately, at that moment Jenny came in, but her mother noticed with indignation that she brought the silver teapot; she drew herself up very straight and sat in mute anger, a bristling figure of outraged susceptibility. Nor did it escape her that Basil, who till Mrs. Murray ’s arrival had scarcely spoken, now talked volubly; he gave a humorous account of their troubles in moving into the house, but though it appeared to amuse Mrs. Murray hugely, Mrs. Bush could see nothing at all funny in it.

At last the visitor rose.

“I really must fly. Good-bye, Mrs. Kent. You must get your husband to bring you to see me.”

She sailed out, with a rustle of silk, and Basil accompanied her downstairs.

“She’s come in a carriage, ma,” said Jenny, looking from the window.

“I ’ave eyes in my ’ead, my dear,” answered Mrs. Bush.

“Isn’t he aristocratic-looking?” exclaimed the admiring wife.

“Aristocratic is as aristocratic does,” returned her mother severely.

They saw Basil at the door talk with Mrs. Murray and laugh. Then she gave an order to the coachman, who followed them while they walked slowly down the street.

“Well, Jenny!” cried Mrs. Bush, in tones of surprise, horror, and indignation.

“I wonder where they’re going,” said Jenny, looking away.

“You take my advice, my dear, and keep your eyes on that young man. I wouldn’t trust ’im too far if I was you. And you tell him that your ma can see through a brick wall as well as anyone. . . . ’Ad he ever said anything about his lady friend?”

“Oh yes, ma, he’s spoken of her often,” said Jenny uneasily, for as a matter of fact till that day she had never even heard Mrs. Murray’s name.

“Well, you tell ’im you want to hear nothing about her. You must be careful, my dear. I ’ad a rare lot of trouble with your pa when I was first married. But I put my foot down, and let ’im see I wouldn’t stand his nonsense.”

“I wonder why Basil doesn’t come back?”

“And, if you please, he never introduced me to his lady friend. I suppose I’m not good enough.”

“Ma!”

“Oh, don’t talk to me, my dear. I think you’ve treated me very bad, both of you, and it’ll be a long day before I leave my pleasant home in Crouch End to cross this threshold.”

At this Basil returned, and saw at once that Mrs. Bush was much disturbed.

“Hulloa, what’s up?” he asked, smiling.

“It’s no laughing matter, Mr. Kent,” answered the ruffled matron, with dignity. “I’m put out, and I won’t deny it. I do expect to be treated like a lady, and I don’t think Jenny ought to ’ave given me my tea out of a sixpenny ’alfpenny teapot—and you can’t deny that’s what they cost, my dear, because I know as well as you do.”

“We’ll behave ourselves better next time,” said Basil good-humouredly.

“It didn’t take Jenny long to get the silver teapot as soon as your lady friend come in. But I suppose I’m not worth troubling about.”

“I believe tea always tastes much better in earthenware,” remarked Basil mildly.

“Oh yes, I dare say it does,” returned Mrs. Bush ironically. “And to catch sparrows you’ve only got to put a little salt on their tails. Good-afternoon to you.”

“You’re not going yet, ma?”

“I know when I’m not wanted, and you needn’t trouble to show me out, because I know my way and I shan’t steal the umbrellas.”

Basil was in high spirits, and this display of temper vastly amused him.

“Where did you go just now, Basil?” asked Jenny, when her mother had stalked defiantly out of the house.

“I just showed Mrs. Murray the High Street, I thought it would amuse her.”

Jenny did not answer. Basil had discussed with the unexpected visitor the progress of his book, and thinking still of the pleasant things she said to him, paid no attention to his wife’s silence. All the evening she scarcely spoke, but it struck her that Basil had never been more cheerful; during dinner he laughed and joked, without caring that she was irresponsive; and afterwards sat down to work. Inspiration flowed in upon him, and he wrote easily and quickly. Jenny, pretending to read, watched him through her eyelashes.