A Passionate Pilgrim

ook up our abode, our journey ended, at a wayside inn where, in the days of leisure, the coach must have stopped for lunche

w whether we were looking at it for the first or the last time, made it arrest us at every step. The countryside, in the full warm rains of the last of April, had burst into sudden perfect spring. The dark walls of the hedgerows had turned into blooming screens, the sodden verdure of lawn and meadow been washed over with a lighter brush. We went forth without loss of time for a long walk on the great grassy hills, smooth arrested central billows of s

stands there in stubborn picturesqueness, doggedly submitting to be pointed out and sketched. It is a wonderful image of the domiciliary conditions of the past-cruelly complete; with bended beams and joists, beneath the burden of gables, that seem to ache and groan with memories and regrets. The short low windows, where lead and glass combine equally to create an inward gloom, retain their opacity as a part of the primitive idea of defence. Such an old house provokes on the part of an American a luxury of respect. So propped and patched, so tinkered with clumsy tenderness, clustered so richly about its central English sturdiness, its oaken vertebrations, so humanised with ages of use and touches of beneficent affection, it seemed to offer to our grateful eyes a small rude symbol of the great English social order. Passing out upon the highroad, we came to the common browsing-patch, the "village-green" of the tales of our youth. Nothing was absent: the shaggy mouse-coloured donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and huge proboscis, the geese, the old woman-THE old woman, in person, with her red cloak and her black bonnet, f

arm. "It's the first place of worship I've seen

urther yet we entered the russet town-where surely Miss Austen's heroines, in chariots and curricles, must often have come a-shopping for their sandals and mittens; we lounged in the grassed and gravelled precinct and gazed insatiably at that most soul-soothing sight, the waning wasting afternoon light, the visible ether that feels the voices of the chimes cling far aloft to the quiet sides of the cathedral-tower; saw it linger and nestle and abide, as it loves to do on all perpendicular spaces, converting them irresistibly into registers and dials; tasted too, as deeply, of the peculiar stillness of

t of English landlordism muffle itself in so many concessions. The weather had just become perfect; it was one of the dozen exquisite days of the English year-days stamped with a purity unknown in climates where fine weather is cheap. It was as if the mellow brightness, as tender as that of the primroses which starred the dark waysides like petals wind-scattered over beds of moss, had been meted out to us by the cubic foot-distilled from an alchemis

"like an exiled prince who has come back on tip

years!" he answered. "I know what I am, but what mi

d. "But I dare say too, even then, that when you

ng Oak! What summer days one could spend here! How I could lounge the rest of my life away on this turf of the middle ages! Haven't I some maiden-cousin in that old hall, or grange, or court-what in the n

bitter-sweet though it be. We must go in." We hastened slowly and approached the fine front. The house was one of the happiest fruits of its freshly-feeling era, a multitudinous cluster of fair gables and intricate chimneys, brave projections and quiet recesses, brown old surfaces weathered to silver and mottled roofs that testified not to seasons but to centuries. Two broad terraces commanded the woode

omatic cough. "Miss Se

ORK. As I stood with the pencil poised a temptation entered into it. Without in the least considering propriet

The two Vandykes, the trio of rosy Rubenses, the sole and sombre Rembrandt, glowed with conscious authenticity. A Claude, a Murillo, a Greuze, a couple of Gainsboroughs, hung there with high complacency. Searle strolled about, scarcely speaking, pale and grave, with bloodshot eyes and lips compressed. He uttered no comment on what we saw-he asked but a question or two. Missing him at last from my side I retraced my steps and found him in a room we had just left, on a faded old ottoman and with his e

past! There comes back to me a china vase that used to stand on the parlour mantel-shelf when I was a boy, with a portrait of Gen

old Italy, by some contemporary dandy with a taste for foreign gimcracks. Here it has stood for a h

know it I shall do something scandalous. I shall steal some of their infernal crockery. I shall proclaim my

overtook the housekeeper in the last room of the series, a small unused boudoir over whose chimney-piece hung a portrait of a young man in a powdered wig and a brocaded waistcoat. I was struck with his re

brought the majolica out

he did," said the hous

ou, my dear Searle,"

gentleman, saving his pres

to America-?" he broke out. Then with some sharpness t

k. I believe he had kinsfolk ther

come to him! Well, well," he said, fixing his e

ose-leaf. "Indeed, sir, I ver

a. He perished at sea. His spirit came ashore and wandered about in misery till it got another incarnation-in this poor trunk!" And he tapped his hollow chest. "Here it has rattled abou

presence. A lady had appeared in the doorway and the housekeeper dropped just audibly: "Miss Searle!" My first impression of Miss Searle was that she was neither young nor beautiful. She stood

you gentlemen is Mr. Clement

yself to reply. "Allow me to add that I alone a

" said Miss Searle, beginning to blush. "Your be

our part. And with just that excu

eath Sir Joshua's portrait. The housekeeper, agitated and mystified, fairly let he

thirty-five years of age, taller than was then common and perhaps stouter than is now enjoined. She had small kind grey eyes, a considerable quantity of very light-brown hair and a smiling well-formed mouth. She was dressed in a lustreless black satin gown with a short train. Disposed about her neck was a blue handkerchief, and over this handkerchief, in many convoluti

m a relationship which you're so good as to remember

m-without ever learning much. To-day, when this card was brought me and I understood a Clement Searle to be under our roof as a stranger, I felt I ought to do something. But, you kn

it half so graciously!" Again Searle, taki

e. It was of course easy to descant on the beauties of park and mansion, and as I did so I observed our hostess. She had no arts, no impulses nor graces-scarce even any manners; she was queerly, almost frowsily dressed; yet she pleased me well. She had an antique sweetness, a homely fragrance of old traditions. To be so simple, among those complicated treasures, so

suddenly, as if she meant us to take the spee

er been?" one

o. He lost his wife and his only son, a dear little boy, who of course would have had everything. Do you know that that makes me the heir, as they've done something-I don't quite know what-to the entail? Poor old me! Since his loss my brother has preferred to be quite alone. I'm sorry he's away. But you must wait till he comes back. I expect him in a day or two." She talked more and more, as if our very strangeness led her on, about her circumstances, her solitude, her bad eyes, so that she couldn't read, her flowers, her ferns, her dogs, and the vicar, recently presented to the living by her brother and warranted quite safe, who had lately begun to light his altar candles; pausing every now and then to gasp in self-surpr

ad determined not to trouble you. You've s

place being ours, and

wn here-because of them almost that I came to England.

ok then? We don't preten

oo strange. "You don't know

the old pl

in silence. "If I could onl

u must come and

e, take care-I should surprise you! I'm afrai

homesick-for y

him, while he went, as if she vaguely yearned over him; it began to be plain that she was interested in her exotic cousin. I suddenly recalled the last words I had heard spoken by my friend's adviser in London and which, in a very crude form, had reference to his making a match with this lady. If only Miss Searle could be

England," I said. "He ough

he least an Englishman," she

his looks,

ever talked with a foreigner before; bu

s foreign

e mar

and he's all al

much p

to spe

as means

to travel far," I said at last. "Y

leman! So

han he thinks. He came here because he w

quiet eyes the hint of a possible tear. "A

y modest,

much the

but smile.

nded tail. The other dog had apparently indulged in a momentary attempt to abash the gorgeous biped, but at Searle's summons had bounded back to the terrace and leaped upon the ledge, where he now stood licking his new friend's face. The scene had a beautiful old-time air: the peacock flaunting in the foreground like the genius of stately places; the broad terrace, which flattere

people. A year ago there came here a great person-a grand old lady-to see my brother. I don't

green lizard, the first I ever saw, the lizard of literature! And if you've a ghost, broad dayl

st ask my brother fo

ns. You ought to have loves and murders and mysteries b

haved family," she quite seriously pleaded. "Not

on of legend. I've been famished all my days for these things. Don't you understand? Ah you can't understand! Tell me," he rambled on, "something tremendous. When I think of what must have happened here; of the lovers who must have strolled on this terrace and wandered under the beeches, of all the figures and passions and purposes that must have haunted these walls! When I think of the births and deaths, the joys and sufferings, the young hopes and the old re

he almost wailed whil

him point to a small protruding oriel, above us, relieved against t

ittle room

r and took her large white hand. She surrendered it, blushing to her eyes and pressing her other hand to her breast. "You're a woman of the past. You're nobly simple. It has been a romance to see you. It doesn't matter what I say to you. You didn't know me yesterday, you'll not know me to-morrow. Let me to-day do a mad sweet thing. Let me imagine

suddenly presented by the appearance of the butler

Miss Searle. "I can't open a

it and read aloud: "I shall be h