This is an excerpt from Don Rodriguez, Chronicles of Shadow Valley, by Lord Dunsany, recorded for Love Stories Volume 1 by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in August 2019. The sixth chronicle, how he sang to his mandolin, and what came of his singing. To set the scene, I will read from the last few paragraphs of the fifth chronicle. Don Rodriguez hit his horse. The tired animal went forward, and he and Moreno rode slowly up the street. Donna Seraphina of the Valley of Dawnlight had left the heat of the room that looked on the fields, and into which the sun had all day been streaming, and had gone at sunset to sit in the balcony that looked along the street. Often she would do this at sunset, but she rather dreamed as she sat there than watched the street for all that it had to show she knew without glancing. Evening after evening, as soon as winter was over, the neighbor would come from next door and stretch himself and yawn, and sit on a chair by his doorway, and the neighbor from opposite would saunter across the way to him, and they would talk with eagerness of the sail of cattle, and sometimes but more coldly of the affairs of kings. She knew but cared not to know, just when the two old men would begin their talk. She knew who owned every dog that stretched itself in the dust, until chilly winds blew in the dusk, and they rose up dissatisfied. She knew the affairs of that street like an old, old lesson taught drearily, and her thoughts went far away to veils of an imagination where they met with many another maiden fancy, and they all danced there together through the long twilight in spring. And then her mother would come and warn her that the evening grew cold, and Seraphina would turn from the mystery of evening into the house in the candlelight. This was so, evening after evening, all through spring and summer, for two long years of her youth. And then this evening, just as the two old neighbors began to discuss whether or not the subjugation of the entire world by Spain would be for its benefit, just as one of the dogs in the road was rising slowly to shake itself, neighbors and dogs all raised their heads to look, and there was Rodriguez riding down the street and Moreno coming behind him. When Seraphina saw this, she brought her eyes back from dreams, for she dreamed not so deeply, but that the cloak and plume of Rodriguez found some place upon the boundaries of her daydream. When she saw the way he sat in his horse and how he carried his head, she let her eyes flash for a little moment along the street from her balcony. And if some critical reader asked how she did it, I answer, my good sir, I can't really tell you, because I don't know. Or my dear lady, what a question to ask. And where she learned to do it, I cannot think, but nothing was easier. And then she smiled to think that she had done the very thing that her mother had warned her there was danger in doing. Seraphina, her mother said in that moment at the large window, the evening grows cold, it might be dangerous to stay there longer. And Seraphina entered the house as she had done at the coming of dusk on many an evening. Rodriguez missed as much as that flesh of her eyes shot from below the darkness of her hair as youth in its first glory and freedom misses. For at the point on the road called life at which Rodriguez was then, one is high on a crag above the promontories of watchmen, lower only than the peaks of the prophets from which to see such things. But it did not need youth to notice Seraphina. Beggars had blessed her for the poise of her head. She turned that head a little as she went between the windows till Rodriguez gazing up to her saw the fair shape of her neck and almost in that moment the last of daylight died. The windows shut and Rodriguez rode on with Moreno to find the forge that was kept by Fernandez the Smith. And presently they came to the village forge, a cottage with huge high roof whose beams were safe from sparks, and its fire was glowing readily in the moonlight through the wide door made for horses, although there seemed no work to be done, and a man with a sweat mustache was piling more logs on. Over the door was burned an oak in ungainly great letters. Fernandez. For whom do you seek, senor? he said to Rodriguez, who had halted before him with his horse's nose inside the doorway, sniffing. A look, he said, for him who is not Fernandez. I am he, said the man by the fire. Rodriguez questioned no further but dismounted and bade Moreno to lead the horses in. Farewell, he said to the Smith that was not Fernandez, and with a pat for his horse he left it, having obtained a promise of votes. And so Rodriguez and Moreno went on foot again. Moreno elated in spite of fatigue and pain, rejoicing to feel the earth once more flat under the soles of his feet. Rodriguez a little humbled. And now we move on to the sixth chronicle, how he sang to his Mendelein and what came of his singing. They walked back slowly in silence, up the street, down which they had ridden. Earth darkened, the moon grew brighter, and Rodriguez, gazing at the pale golden disc, began to wonder who dwelt in the lunar valleys and what message if folks were there they had for our peoples and in what language such message could ever be, and how it could fare across the limpid remoteness that wafted light on the coasts of earth and lapped in silence on the lunar shores. As he wandered he thought of his Mendelein. Moreno, he said, by bacon. Moreno's eyes brightened, for they were forty-five miles from the hills on which they had last tasted bacon. He selected his house with a glance, and then he was gone. And Rodriguez reflected too late that he had forgotten to tell Moreno where he should find him. And this was night coming on in the strange village. Scarcely, Rodriguez reflected, he knew where he was going himself. Yet if old tombs lurking in its hollows, echoing though imperceptibly from long-faded evenings, gave the Mendelein any knowledge of human affairs that other inanimate things cannot possess, the Mendelein knew. Let us in fancy call up the shade of Moreno from that far generation. Let us ask him where Rodriguez is going. Those blue eyes dim with the distance over which our fancy has called them. Look in our eyes with wonder. I do not know, he says, where Don Rodriguez is going. My master did not tell me. Did he notice nothing as they rode by the balcony? Nothing, Moreno answers, except my master writing. We may let Moreno's shade drift hence again, for we shall discover nothing. Or is this an age to which to call back spirits? Rodriguez strolled slowly on the deep dust of that street, as though wondering all the while where he should go, and soon he and his Mendelein were below that very balcony, whereon he had seen the white neck of Seraphina gleam with the last of daylight. And now the spells of the moon charmed earth with their full power. The balcony was empty. How should it have been otherwise? And yet Rodriguez grieved, for between the vision that had drawn his footsteps and that bare balcony below shuttered windows was the difference between a haven sought over leagues of sea and sheer uncharted cliff. It brought a wistfulness into the music he played, and a melancholy that was all new to Rodriguez, yet often and often before had that Mendelein sent up through evening against unheating space, that cry that man cannot utter, for the spirit of man needs a Mendelein as a comrade to face the verdict of the chilly stars, as he needs a bulldog for more mundane things. Soon, out of the depth of that stout old Mendelein, in which so many human sorrows had spun tunes out of themselves, as the spiders spin misty raywebs, till it was haunted with music, soon the old cry went up to the stars again, a thread of supplications spun of the matter which else were distilled in tears, beseeching it knew not what. And but that fate his death, all that man asks in music, had been granted then. What sorrows had Rodriguez known in his life that he made so sad a melody? I know not. It was the Mendelein. When the Mendelein was made it knew at once all the sorrows of man and all the old unnamed longings that none defines. It knew them as a dog knows the alliance that its forefathers made with man, a Mendelein weeps the tears that its master cannot shed, or utters the prayers that are deeper than its master's lips can draw, as a dog will fight for his master with teeth that are longer than man's. And if the moonlight streamed on untroubled, and though fate was death, yet beauty of those fresh strains going starward from under his fingers touched at least the heart of Rodriguez, and gilded his dreams, and gave to his thoughts a mournful autumnal glory, until he sang all newly as he never had sung before, with a limpid voice along the edge of tears, a love song, old as the woods of his father's valleys, at whose edge he had heard it once drift through the evening. And as he played and sang with his young soul in the music he fancied, and why not, if they care odd for our souls in heaven, he fancied the angels putting their hands each one on a star and leaning out of heaven through the constellations to listen. A vile song, senor, and a vile tune with it said a voice quite close. However much the words hurt his pride in his mandolin, Rodriguez recognized in the voice a Hidalgo's accent, and he knew that it was an equal that now approached him in the moonlight round a corner of the house with the balcony, and he knew that the request he courteously made would be as courteously granted. Senor, he said, I pray you to permit me to lean my mandolin against the wall security before we speak of my song. Most surely, senor, the stranger replied, for there is no fault with the mandolin. Senor, Rodriguez said, I thank you profoundly. And he bowed to the gallant whom he now perceived to be young, a youth tall in life like himself, one whom we might have chosen for these chronicles had we not found Rodriguez. Then Rodriguez stepped back a short way and placed his kerchief on the ground, and upon this he put his mandolin and leaned it against the wall. When the mandolin was safe from dust or accident, he approached the stranger and drew his sword. Senor, he said, we will now discuss music. Pray to gladly, senor, said the young man, who now drew his sword also. There were no clouds, the moon was full, the evening promised well. Scarcely had the flash of thin rapiers crossing each other by moonlight begun to gleam in the street, when Moreno appeared beside them and stood there watching. He had bought his bacon and gone straight to the house with the balcony, for though he knew no Latin, he had not missed the silent greeting that had welcomed his master to that village, or failed to interpret the gist of the words that Rodriguez's dumb glance would have said. He stood there watching while each combatant stood his ground. And Rodriguez remembered all those passes and faints that he had had from his father, and which Savastiani, a master of arms in Madrid, had taught in his father's youth, and some were famous and some were little known. And all these passes, as he tried them one by one, his unknown antagonist parried. And for a moment Rodriguez feared that Moreno would see those passes in which he trusted foiled by that unknown sword, and then he reflected that Moreno knew nothing of the craft of the rapier, and with more content at that thought he parried thrusts that were strange to him. But something told Moreno that in this fight the stranger was master, and that along that pale blue moonlit unknown sword lurked a sure death for Rodriguez. He moved from his place of vantage and was soon lost in large shadows. While the rapiers played and blade rippled on blade, with a sound as though death were gently sharpening his scythe in the dark. And now Rodriguez was giving ground. Now his antagonist pressed him, thrusts that he believed invincible had failed. Now he parried wearily and ahead at once to parry again. The unknown pressed on was upon him, was scattering his weakening parries. Two back his rapier for a deadlier pass learned in a secret school in a hut on mountains he knew and practiced surely, and fell in a heap upon Rodriguez's feet, struck full on the back of the head by Moreno's frying pan.  Master, I am your servant, said Moreno. Vile miserable nave, replied Rodriguez. Master, Moreno said plaintively, shall I see to your comforts, your food, and not to your life? Silence, thundered Rodriguez, as he stooped anxiously to his antagonist, who was not unconscious but only very giddy, and who now rose to his feet with the help of Rodriguez. Alas, senor, said Rodriguez, the foul nave is my servant. He shall be flogged, he shall be flayed, his vile flesh shall be cut off him.  And he ran to his kerchief, on which rested his mandolin, and laid it upon the dust for the stranger. No, no, said he. My head clears again. It is nothing. But rest, senor, rest, said Rodriguez. It is always well to rest before an encounter. Rest while I punish the nave. And he led him to wear the kerchief lay on the ground. Let me see the hurt, senor, he continued, and the stranger removed his plumed hat, as Rodriguez compelled him to sit down. He straightened out the hat as he sat, and the hurt was shown to be of no great consequence. The blessed saints be praised, Rodriguez said. It need not stop our encounter. But rest awhile, senor. Indeed, it is nothing, he answered. But the indignity is immeasurable, said Rodriguez. Would you care, senor, when you are well rested, to give the chastisement yourself? As far as that goes, said the stranger, I can chastise him now. If you are fully recovered, senor, Rodriguez said, my own sword is at your disposal to beat him's sword with the flood of it, or how you will. Thus no dishonour shall touch your sword from the skin of so vile a nave. The stranger smiled. The idea appealed to him. You make a noble amend, senor, he said as he bowed over Rodriguez's proffered sword. Moreno had not moved far off, but stood near wondering. What should a servant do if not work for his master? He wondered. And how work for him went dead. And dead, as it seemed to Moreno, through his own fault, if he allowed any man to kill him when he perceived him about to do so. He stood there puzzled, and suddenly he saw the stranger coming angrily toward him in the clear moonlight with a sword. Moreno was frightened. As the Hidalgo came up to him, he stretched out his left hand to seize Moreno by the shoulder. Up went the frying pan. The stranger parried, but against a stroke that no school taught or knew, and for the second time he went down in the dust with a reeling head. Rodriguez turned toward Moreno and said to him, No, realism is all very well, and I know that my duty as author is to tell all that happened, and I could win mighty praise as a bold unconventional writer. At the same time, some young lady will be reading all this next year in some far country, or in twenty years in England, and I would sooner she should not read what Rodriguez said. I do not, I trust, disappoint her. But the gist of it was that he should leave that place now and depart from his service forever. And hearing those words, Moreno turned mournfully away, and was at once lost in the darkness. While Rodriguez ran once more to help his fallen antagonist, Señor, Señor, he said with an emotion that some wearing centuries in cold climate have taught us not to show, and beyond those words he could find no more to say. Giddy, only Giddy, said the stranger, a tear fell on his forehead as Rodriguez helped him to his feet. Señor, Rodriguez said fervently, we will finish our encounter, come what may, the nave is gone, and… But I am somewhat Giddy, said the other. I will take off one of my shoes, said Rodriguez, leaving the other on. It will equalize our unsteadiness, and you shall not be disappointed in our encounter, come, he added kindly. I cannot see clearly as before the young Hidalgo murmured. I will bandage my right eye also, said Rodriguez, and if this cannot equalize it. It is a most fair offer, said the young man. I could not bear that you should be disappointed of our encounter, Rodriguez said, by this spirit of hell that has got itself clothed in fat, and dares to usurp the dignity of man. It is a right fair offer, the young man said again. Rest yourself, Señor, said Rodriguez, while I take off my shoe, and he indicated his kerchief which was still on the ground. The stranger sat down a little wearily, and Rodriguez, sitting upon the dust, took off his left shoe. And now he began to think a little wistfully of the face that had shown from the balcony where all was dark now in black shadows, unlit by the moon, the emptiness of the balcony and its darkness oppressed him, for he could scarcely hope to survive an encounter with that swordsman whose skill he now recognized as being of a different class from his own, a class of which he knew nothing. All his own faint scent passes were known, while those of his antagonist had been strange and new, and he might well have even others. The stranger's giddiness did not alter the situation, for Rodriguez knew that his handicap was fair and even generous. He believed he was near his grave, and could see no spark of light to banish that dark belief, yet more chances than we can see often guard us on such occasions. The absence of Seraphina saddened him like a sorrowful sunset. Rodriguez rose and limped with his one shoe off to the stranger who was sitting upon his kerchief. I will bandage my right eye now, Zignar, he said. The young man rose and shook the dust from the kerchief and gave it to Rodriguez, with a renewed expression of his gratitude at the fairness of the strange handicap. When Rodriguez had bandaged his eye, the stranger returned his sword to him, which he had held in his hand since his effort to beat Moreno, and drawing his own, stepped back a few paces from him. Rodriguez took one hopeless look at the balcony, saw it as empty and as black as ever. Then he faced his antagonist, waiting.  The young Hidalgo dropped silently. Rodriguez uttered one scream of anger and rushed at Moreno with his sword. Moreno had already started to run, and knowing well that he was running for his life, he kept for a while the start that he had of the rapier. Rodriguez knew that no plump man of over 40 could last against his life-speed long. He saw Moreno clearly before him, then lost sight of him for a moment and ran confidently on, pursuing. He ran on and on. And at last he recognized that Moreno had slipped into the darkness, which lies always so near to the moonlight, and was not in front of him at all. So he returned to his fallen antagonist and found him breathing heavily where he fell, scarcely conscious. The third stroke of the frying pan had done its work surely. Rodriguez's fury died down only because it is difficult to feel two emotions at once. It died down as pity took its place, though every now and then it would suddenly flare and fall again. He returned his sword and lifted the young Hidalgo and carried him to the door of the house under which they had fought. With one fist he beat on the door without putting the hurt man down and continued to hit it until steps were hurt and bolts began to grumble as though disturbed too early from their rusty sleep in stone sockets. The door of the house with the balcony was opened by a servant who, when he saw who it was that Rodriguez carried, fled into the house in alarm as one who runs with bad news. He carried one candle and when he had disappeared with the streaming flame, Rodriguez found himself in a long hall, lit by the moonlight only, which was looking in through the small contorted panes of the upper part of a high window. Alone with echoes and shadows, Rodriguez carried the hurt man through the hall, who was muttering now as he came back to consciousness. And as he went there came to Rodriguez thoughts between wonder and hope, for he had had no thought at all when he beat on the door except to get shelter and help for the hurt man. At the end of the hall they came to an open door that led into a chamber partly shining with moonlight. In there said the man that he carried. Rodriguez carried him in and laid him on a long couch at the end of the room. Large pictures of men in the blackness out of the moon's rays frowned at Rodriguez mysteriously. He could not see their faces in the dark, but he somehow knew they frowned. Two portraits that were clear in the moonlight eyed him with absolute apathy. So cold a welcome from that house's past generations boated no good for him from those that dwelt there today. Rodriguez knew that in carrying the hurt man there he helped at a Christian deed, and yet there was no putting the merits of the case against the omens that crowded the chamber. Lurking along the edge of the moonlight and darkness disappearing and reappearing till the gloom was heavy with portent. The omens knew. In a weak voice and few words the hurt man thanked him, but the apathetic faces seemed to say, what happened? And the frowning faces that he could not see still filled the darkness with anger. And then from the end of the chamber dressed in white and all shining with moonlight came Seraphina. Rodriguez in odd silence watched her come. He saw her pass through the moonlight and grow dimmer and glide to the moonlight again that streamed through another window. A great dim golden circle appeared at the far end of the chamber whence she had come as the servant returned with his candle and held it high to give light for Dona Seraphina. But that one flame seemed to make the darkness only blacker and for any cheerfulness it brought to the gloom it had better never have challenged those masses of darkness at all in that high chamber among the brooding portraits it seemed trivial, ephemeral, modern, ill able to cope with the power of ancient things, dead days and forgotten voices which make their home in the darkness because the days that have usurped them have stolen the light of the sun. And there the man stood holding his candle high and the rays of the moon became more magical still beside that little mundane flickering thing. And Seraphina was moving through the moonlight as though its rays were her sisters which she met noiselessly and brightly upon some island as it seemed to Rodriguez beyond the coasts of earth so quietly and so brightly did her slender figure move and so aloof from him appeared her eyes. And there came on Rodriguez that feeling that some deride and that others explain away the feeling of which romance is mainly made and which is the aim and goal of all the earth. And his love for Seraphina seemed to him not only to be an event in his life but to have some part in veiled and shadowy destinies and to have the blessing of most distant days. Gray beards seemed to look out of graves in forgotten places to wag approval. Hands seemed to beckon to him out of far future times where faces were smiling quietly and dreaming on further still this vast approval that gave benediction to his heart's youthful fancy seemed to widen and widen like the gold of a summer's evening or the humming of bees in summer in endless rows of lawns until it became a part of the story of man. Spring gays of his earliest memories seemed to have their part in it as well as wonderful evenings of days that were yet to be. Till his love of Seraphina was one with the fate of the earth and wandering far on their courses he knew that the stars blessed it. But Seraphina went up to the man on the couch with no look for Rodriguez. With no look for Rodriguez she bent over the stricken Hidalgo. He raised himself a little on one elbow. It is nothing, he said, Seraphina. Still she bent over him. He laid his head down again, but now with open and undimmed eyes. She put her hand to his forehead. She spoke in a low voice to him. She lavished upon him sympathy for which Rodriguez would have offered his head to swords and all thought Rodriguez for three blows from a knave's frying pan.  Then there came another thought to him out of the shadows where Seraphina was standing all white, a figure of solace. Who was this man who so mysteriously blended with the other unknown things that haunted the gloom of that chamber? Why had he fought him at night? What was he to Seraphina? Thoughts crowded up to him from the interior of the darkness somber and foreboding as the shadows that nursed them. He stood there, never daring to speak to Seraphina, looking for permission to speak, such as a glance might give, and no glance came. And now as though soothed by her beauty, the hurt man closed his eyes. Seraphina stood beside him, anxious and silent, gleaming in that dim place. The servant at the far end of the chamber still held his one candle high as though some light of earth were needed against the fantastic moon, which, if unopposed, would give everything over to magic. Rodriguez stood there, scarcely breathing. All was silent. And then through the door by which Seraphina had come, past that lonely golden moon-defying candle, all down the long room across moonlight and blackness came the lady of the house, Seraphina's mother. She came, as Seraphina came, straight toward the man on the couch, giving no look to Rodriguez, walking something as Seraphina walked with the same poise, the same dignity, though the years had carried away from her the grace Seraphina had, so that though you saw that they were mother and daughter, the elder lady called to mind the lovely things of earth, large gardens at evening, statues dim in the dusk, summer and whatsoever binds us to earthly things. But Seraphina turned Rodriguez's thoughts to the twilight in which he first saw her, and he pictured her native place as far from here in mellow fields near the moon, wherein she had walked on twilight, outlasting any we know, with all delicate things of our fancy, too fair for the rugged earth. As the lady approached the couch upon which the young man was lying and still no look was turned toward Rodriguez, his young dreams fled as butterflies, sailing high in the heat of June, that are suddenly plunged in night by a total eclipse of the sun. He had never spoken to Seraphina, or seen before her mother, and they did not know his name. He knew that he, Rodriguez, had no claim to a welcome, but his dreams had flocked so much about Seraphina's face, basking so much in her beauty that they now fell back dying, and when a man's dreams die, what remains if he lingers a while behind them? Rodriguez suddenly felt that his left shoe was off and his right eye still bandaged, things that he had not noticed while his only thought was for the man he carried to shelter, but torturing his consciousness now that he thought of himself. He opened his lips to explain, but before words came to him, looking at the face of Seraphina's mother, standing now by the couch, he felt that, not knowing how, he had somehow wronged the penance of this house or whatever was hid in the dimness of that long chamber by carrying this young man there to rest from his hurt. Rodriguez's depression arose from these causes, but having arisen, it grew of its own might. He had had nothing to eat since morning, and in the favoring atmosphere of hunger, his depression grew gigantic. He opened his lips once more to say farewell, was oppressed by all manner of thoughts that held him dumb, and turned away in silence and left the house. Outside, he recovered his mandolin and his shoe. He was tired with the weariness of defeated dreams that slept in his spirit exhausted, rather than with any fatigue his young muscles had from the journey. He needed sleep. He looked at the shuttered houses, then at the soft dust of the road in which dogs lay during the daylight. But the dust was near to his mood, so he lay down where he had fought the unknown Hidalgo. A light wind wandered the street like a visitor come to the village out of a friendly valley, but Rodriguez's four days on the roads had made him familiar with all wandering things, and the breeze on his forehead troubled him not at all. Before it had wearied of wandering in the night, Rodriguez had fallen asleep. Just by the edge of sleep upon which side he knew not, he heard the window of the balcony creak and looked up wide awake all in a moment, but nothing stirred in the darkness of the balcony and the window was fast shut. So whatever sound came from the window came not from its opening, but shutting. For a while he wondered and then his tired thoughts rested, and that was sleep. A light rain woke Rodriguez, drizzling upon his face, the first light rain that had fallen in a romantic tale. Storms there had been, lashing oaks to terrific shapes, seen at night by flashes of lightning, through which villains rode abroad or heroes sought shelter at midnight. Hurricanes there had been, flapping huge cloaks, fierce hail and copious snow, but until now no drizzle. It was morning. Dawn was old and pale and gray and unhappy. The balcony above him, still empty, scarcely even held romance now. Rain dripped from it sadly. Its cheerless bareness seemed worse than the most sinister shadows of night. And then Rodriguez saw a rose lying on the ground beside him. And for all the dreams, fancies and hopes that leaped up in Rodriguez's mind, rising and falling and fading, one thing alone he knew and all the rest was mystery. The rose had lain there before the rain had fallen. Beneath the rose was white dust, while all around it the dust was turning gray with rain. Rodriguez tried to guess how long the rain had fallen. The rose may have lain beside him all night long, but the shadows of mystery receded no farther than this one fact that the rose was there before the rain began. No sign of any kind came from the house. Rodriguez put the rose safe under his coat, wrapped in the kerchief that had guarded the mandolin to carry it far from lowlight through places familiar with roses and places strange to them, but it remained for him a thing of mystery until a day far from then. Sadly, he left the house in the sad rain, marching away alone to look for his wars. End of the sixth chronicle of the Chronicles of Don Rodriguez, how he sang to his mandolin and what came of his singing by Lord Dunsaney. The Horse Dealer's Daughter by D. H. Lawrence. Recorded for Love Stories, volume one by Kevin S. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Horse Dealer's Daughter. Well, Mabel, and what are you going to do with yourself, asked Joe, with foolish flippancy. He felt quite safe himself. Without listening for an answer, he turned aside, worked a grain of tobacco to the tip of his tongue and spit it out. He did not care about anything since he felt safe himself. The three brothers and the sisters sat round the desolate breakfast table, attempting some sort of desultory consultation. The morning's post had given the final tap to the family's fortunes and all was over. The dreary dining room itself with its heavy mahogany furniture looked as if it were waiting to be done away with. But the consultation amounted to nothing. There was a strange air of ineffectuality about the three men as they sprawled at table, smoking, reflecting vaguely on their own condition. The girl was alone, rather short, sullen-looking young woman of 27. She did not share the same life as her brothers. She would have been good-looking, save for the impassive fixity of her face. Bulldog, as her brothers called it. There was a confused tramping of horses' feet outside. The three men all sprawled round in their chairs to watch beyond the dark holly bushes that separated the strip of lawn from the high road. They could see a cavalcade of shire horses swinging out of their own yard, being taken for exercise. This was the last time. These were the last horses that would go through their hands. The young men watched with critical callus look. They were all frightened at the collapse of their lives and the sense of disaster in which they were involved left them no inner freedom. Yet they were three fine, well-set fellows enough. Joe the Eldest was a man of 33 broad and hands him in a hot, flushed way.  His eyes were shallow and restless.  Now he watched the horses with a glazed look of helplessness in his eyes, a certain stupor of downfall. The great draft horses swung past. They were tied head to tail, four of them, and they heaved along to where a lane branched off from the high road, planting their great hoofs floutingly in the fine black mud, swinging their great rounded haunches sumptuously and trotting a few sudden steps as they were led into the lane, round the corner.  They groomed it, they had looked back, jerking the leading rope. And the cavalcade moved out of sight up the lane. The tail of the last horse bobbed up tight and stiff, held out, taught from the swinging great haunches as they rocked behind the hedges in a motion-like sleep. Joe watched with glazed, hopeless eyes. The horses were almost like his own body to him. He felt he was done for now. Luckily he was engaged to a woman as old as himself and therefore her father, who was steward of a neighboring estate, would provide him with a job. He would marry and go into harness. His life was over. He would be a subject animal now. He turned uneasily aside, the retreating steps of the horses echoing in his ears. Then with foolish restlessness, he reached for the scraps of bacon run from the plates and making a faint whistling sound, flung them to the terrier that lay against the fender. He watched the dogs swallow them and wait it till the creature looked into his eyes.  The dog faintly and dismally wagged its tail and lowered his haunches, circled round and lay down again. There was another helpless silence at the table. Joe sprawled uneasily in his seat, not willing to go till the family conclave was dissolved. Fred Henry, the second brother, was erect, clean-limbed, alert. He had watched the passing of the horses with more sane Freud. He was an animal like Joe. He was an animal which controls, not one which is controlled. He was master of any horse and he carried himself with a well-tempered air of mastery. But he was not master of the situations of life. He pushed his coarse-brown moustache upwards off his lip and glanced irritably at his sister, who sat impassive and inscrutable. You'll go and stop with Lucy for a bit, shall you, he asked. The girl did not answer. I don't see what else you can do, persisted Fred Henry. Go as a skivvy, Joe, interpolate it, mechanically. The girl did not move a muscle. If I was her, I should go and training for a nurse, said Malcolm, the youngest of them all. He was the baby of the family, a young man of 22 with a fresh, jaunty mousseau. But Mabel did not take any notice of him. They had talked at her and round her for so many years that she hardly heard them at all. The marble clock on the mantelpiece softly chimed the half hour and the dog rose uneasily from the hearth rug and looked at the party at the breakfast table. But still they sat on an ineffectual conclave. Oh, all right, said Joe suddenly, at propel of nothing, I'll get a move on.  Still he did not go out of the room. He was curious to know what the others would do or say. He began to charge his pipe, looking down at the dog and saying, in a high-affected voice, going with me, going with me, Arthur, going further than the Count's on just now, tossed here. The dog faintly wagged its tail. The man stuck out his jaw and covered his pipe with his hands and puffed intently, losing himself in the tobacco, looking down all the while at the dog with an absent brown eye. The dog looked up at him in mournful distrust, Joe stood with his knees stuck out in real horsey fashion. Have you had a letter from Lucy, Fred Henry, asked of his sister? Last week came the neutral reply. And what does she say? There was no answer. Does she ask you to go and stop there, persisted, Fred Henry? She says, I can if I like. Well, then you'd better tell her you'll come on Monday. This was received in silence. That's what you'll do then, is it? Said Fred Henry, in some exasperation. But she made no answer. There was a silence of futility and irritation in the room. Malcolm grinned fatuously. You'll have to make up your mind between now and next Wednesday, said Joe Lavelier, or else find yourself lodgings on the curb stone. The face of the young woman darkened, but she sat on, immutable. Here's Jack Ferguson, exclaimed Malcolm, who was looking aimlessly out of the window. Where exclaimed Joe loudly? Just gone past. Come in. Malcolm craned his neck to see the gate. Yes, he said. There was a silence. Mabel sat on like one condemned at the head of the table. Then a whistle was heard from the kitchen. The dog got up and barked sharply. Joe opened the door and shouted, come on. After a moment a young man entered. He was muffled up in overcoat and a purple woolen scarf and his tweed cap, which he did not remove, was pulled down on his head. He was of medium height. His face was rather long and pale as eyes looked tired. Hello, Jack. Well, Jack, exclaimed Malcolm and Joe. Fred Henry merely said, Jack. What's doing us, the newcomer, evidently addressing Fred Henry? Same, we've got to be out by Wednesday. Got a cold? I have, got it bad too. Why don't you stop in? Me, stop in. When I can't stand on my legs, perhaps I shall have a chance. The young man spoke huskily. He had a slight scotch accent. It's a knockout, isn't it? Said Joe, boisterously. If a doctor goes round croaking with a cold, looks bad for the patients, doesn't it? The young doctor looked at him slowly. Anything the matter with you then, he asked sarcastically. Not as I know of. Damn your eyes, I hope not. Why? I thought you were very concerned about the patients. Wondered if you might be one yourself. Damn it, no, I've never been patient to no flaming doctor and hope I never shall be, returned Joe. At this point, Mabel rose from the table and they all seemed to become aware of her existence. She began putting the dishes together. The young doctor looked at her, but did not address her. He had not greeted her. She went out of the room with a tray, her face impassive and unchanged. When are you off then? All of you asked the doctor. I'm catching the 1140, replied Malcolm. Are you going down with the trap, Joe? Yes, I've told you I'm going down with the trap, haven't I? You'd better be getting her in then. So long, Jack, if I don't see you before I go, said Malcolm, shaking hands. He went out, followed by Joe, who seemed to have his tail between his legs. Well, this is the devil's own, exclaimed the doctor, when he was left alone with Fred Henry. Going before Wednesday, are you? That's the orders, replied the other. Where? To Northampton. That's it. The devil exclaimed Ferguson with quiet chagrin and there was silence between the two. All settled up, are you, asked Ferguson? About, there was another pause. Well, I shall miss you, Freddie Boyce, the young doctor, and I shall miss thee, Jack, returned the other. Miss you, like Helm used the doctor. Fred Henry turned aside, there was nothing to say. Mabel came in again to finish clearing the table. What are you going to do then, Miss Pervin, asked Ferguson, going to your sisters, are you? Mabel looked at him with her steady, dangerous eyes that always made him uncomfortable, unsettling his superficial ease. No, she said. Well, what in the name of fortune are you going to do? Say what you mean to do, cried Fred Henry, with a futile intensity. But she only averted her head and continued her work.  But she finished her task with perfect and passive face. The young doctor, watching her interestingly all the while, then she went out. Fred Henry stared at her, clenching his lips, his blue eyes fixed in sharp antagonism, as he made a grimace of sour exasperation.  The doctor smiled faintly. What's she going to do, then he asked. Striked me if I know, returned the other. There was a pause, then the doctor stirred. I'll be seeing you tonight, shall I, he said to his friend. I, where's it to be? Are we going over to Jezzdale? I don't know, I've got such a cold on me. I'll come round to the moon and stars, anyway. Let Lizzie and May miss their night for once, eh? That's it, if I feel as I do now. Ball's won. The two young men went through the passage and down to the back door together. The house was large, but it was servantless now and desolate. At the back was a small, bricked houseyard, and beyond that a big square, graveled, fine, and red, and having stables on two sides. Sloping, dank, winter-dark fields stretched away on the open sides. But the stables were empty. Joseph Pervin, the father of the family, had been a man of no education, who had become a fairly large horse-dealer.  There was great turmoil and come-and-go of horses and of dealers and grooms. Then the kitchen was full of servants, but of late things had declined. The old man had married a second time to retrieve his fortunes. Now he was dead and everything was gone to the dogs. There was nothing but debt and threatening. For months Mabel had been servantless in the big house, keeping the home together in pinnery for her ineffectual brothers. She'd kept house for 10 years, but previously it was with unstinted means. Then, however brutal and coarse everything was, the sense of money had kept her proud, confident. The men might be foul-mouthed, though women in the kitchen might have bad reputations. Her brothers might have illegitimate children, but so long as there was money, the girl felt herself established and brutally proud, reserved. No company came to the house, save dealers and coursemen. Mabel had no associates of her own sex after her sister went away. But she did not mind. She went regularly to church. She attended to her father. And she lived in the memory of her mother, who had died when she was 14 and whom she had loved. She had loved her father too in a different way, depending upon him and feeling secure in him, until at the age of 54 he married again. And then she had set heart against him. Now he had died and left them all hopelessly in debt. She had suffered badly during the period of poverty. Nothing, however, could shake the curious, sullen animal pride that dominated each member of the family. Now, if we're Mabel, the end had come. Still, she would not cast about her. She would follow her own way just the same. She would always hold the keys of her own situation. Mindless and persistent she endured from day to day. Why should she think? Why should she answer anybody? It was enough that this was the end and there was no way out. She did not pass any more darkly along the main street of the small town, avoiding every eye. She need not demean herself any more, going to the shops and buying the cheapest food. This was at an end. She thought of nobody, not even of herself. Mindless and persistent, she seemed in a sort of ecstasy to becoming nearer to her fulfillment, her own glorification, approaching her dead mother, who was glorified. In the afternoon she took a little bag with shears and sponge in a small scrubbing brush and went out. It was a gray wintery day with satin, dark green fields and an atmosphere blackened by the smoke of foundries not far off. She went quickly, darkly along the causeway, heeding nobody through the town to the church yard. There she always felt secure as if no one could see her, although as a matter of fact, she was exposed to the stare of everyone who passed along under the church yard wall. Nevertheless, once under the shadow of the great looming church among the graves, she felt immune from the world, reserved within the thick church yard wall as in another country. Carefully she clipped the grass from the grave and arranged the pinky white small chrysanthemums in the tin cross. When this was done, she took an empty jar from a neighboring grave, brought water and carefully, most scrupulous we sponged the marble headstone and the coping stone. It gave her sincere satisfaction to do this.  She took minute pains, went through the park in a state bordering on pure happiness. As if in performing this task, she came into a subtle, intimate connection with her mother. For the life she followed here in the world was far less real than the world of death she inherited from her mother. The doctor's house was just by the church. Ferguson, being a mere hired assistant, was slaved to the countryside as he hurried now to attend to the outpatients in the surgery, glancing across the graveyard with his quick eyes. He saw the girl at her task at the grave. She seemed so intent and remote. It's like looking into another world. Some mystical element was touched in him. He slowed down as you walked, watching her as if spellbound. She lifted her eyes, feeling him looking. Their eyes met and each looked again at once, each feeling in some way found out by the other. He lifted his cap and passed on down the road. They remained distinct in his consciousness like a vision, the memory of her face. Lifted from the tombstone in the short yard and looking at him with slow, large, portentious eyes. It was portentious, her face. It seemed to mesmerize him.  He had been feeling weak and done before. Now the life came back into him. He felt delivered from his own fretted daily self. He finished his duties at the surgery as quickly as might be, hastily filling up the bottles of the waiting people with cheap drugs. Then in perpetual haste, he set off again to visit several cases in another part of his round before tea time. At all times he preferred to walk if he could, but particularly when he was not well. He fancied the motion, restored him. The afternoon was falling. It was gray, deadened, and wintery with a slow, moist, heavy coldness sinking in and deadening all the faculties. But why should he think or notice? He hastily climbed the hill and turned across the dark green fields following the black cinder track in the distance across the shallow dip and the country, the small town was clustered like smoldering ash. The tower aspire a heap of low, raw, extinct houses. And on the nearest fringe of the town, slopey into the dip was Old Meadow, the Pervin's house. You could see the stables in the outbuildings distinctly as they lay toward him on the slope. Well, he would not go there many more times. Another resource would be lost to him, another place gone. The only company he cared for was in this alien, ugly little town he was losing. Nothing but work, drudgery, constant hastening from dwelling to dwelling among the colliers and the iron workers. It wore him out, but at the same time he had a craving for it. It was a stimulant to him to be in the homes of the working people, moving as it were through the innermost body of their life. His nerves were excited and gratified. He could come so near into the very lives of the rough, inarticulate, powerfully emotional men and women. He grumbled and said he hated the hellish whole. But as a matter of fact, it excited him. The contact with the rough, strongly feeling people was a stimulant applied direct to his nerves. Below Old Meadow and the green shallow, sodden hollow of fields lay a square, deep pond. Roving across the landscape, the doctor's quick eye detected a figure in black passing through the gate of the field, down towards the pond. He looked again, it would be Mabel Pervin. His mind suddenly became alive and attentive. Why was she going down there? He pulled up on the path on the slope above and stood staring. He could just make sure of the small black figure moving in the hollow of the failing day. He seemed to see her in the midst of such obscurity that he was like a clairvoyant, seeing rather with the mind's eye than with ordinary sight. Yet he could see her positively enough whilst he kept his eye attentive. He felt if he looked away from her in the thick, ugly, failing dusk he would lose her altogether. He followed her minutely as she moved, direct and intent, like something transmitted rather than stirring in voluntary activity, straight down the field towards the pond. There she stood on the bank for a moment. She never raised her head. Then she weighed it slowly into the water. He stood motionless as the small black figure walked slowly and deliberately toward the center of the pond. Very slowly, gradually, moving deeper into the motionless water and still moving forward as the water got up to her breast. Then he could see her no more in the dusk of the dead afternoon. There he exclaimed, would you believe it? And he hastened straight down, running over the wet sodden fields, pushing through the hedges down into the depression of callus wintery obscurity. He took him several minutes to come to the pond. He stood on the bank, breathing heavily. He could see nothing.  Yes, perhaps that was the dark shadow of her black clothing beneath the surface of the water. He slowly ventured into the pond. The bottom was deep, soft clay. He sank in and the water clashed dead cold around his legs. As he stirred, he could smell the cold rotten clay that fouled up into the water. It was objectionable in his lungs. Still repelled and yet not heating, he moved deeper into the pond. The cold water rose above his thighs, over his loins, upon his abdomen. The lower part of his body was all sunk in the hideous cold element. And the bottom was so deeply soft and uncertain, he was afraid of pitching with his mouth underneath. He could not swim and was afraid. He crouched a little, spreading his hands under the waters and moving them around, trying to feel for her. The dead cold pond swayed upon his chest. He moved again, a little deeper and again with his hands underneath. He felt all around under the water and he touched her clothing, but it evaded his fingers. He made a desperate effort to grasp it. In so doing, he lost his balance and went under, horribly suffocating in the foul, earthy water, struggling madly for a few moments. At last, after what seemed an eternity, he got his footing, rose again into the air and looked around. He gasped and knew he was in the world. Then he looked at the water. She had risen near him, he grasped her clothing and drawing her nearer, turned to take his way to land again. He went very slowly, carefully, absorbed in the slow progress. He rose higher, climbing out of the pond. The water was now only about his legs. He was thankful, full of relief to be out of the clutches of the pond. He lifted her and staggered onto the bank out of the horror of wet gray clay. He laid her down on the bank. She was quite unconscious and running with water. He made the water come from her mouth. He worked to restore her. He did not have to work very long before he could feel the breathing begin again in her. She was breathing naturally. He worked a little longer. He could feel her live beneath his hands. She was coming back. He wiped her face, wrapped her in his overcoat, looked round in the dim dark gray world and lifted her and staggered down the bank and across the fields. It seemed an unthinkable long way and his burden so heavy he felt he would never get to the house. But at last he was in the stable yard and then in the house yard. He opened the door and went into the house. In the kitchen he laid her down on the hearth rug and called. The house was empty, but the fire was burning in the grate. Then again he kneeled to attend to her. She was breathing. Her eyes were wide open and as if conscious. But there seemed something missing in her look. She was conscious in herself but unconscious of her surroundings. He ran upstairs, took blankets from her bed and put them before the fire to warm. Then he removed her saturated earth smelling clothing, rubbed her dry with a towel and wrapped her naked in the blankets. Then he went into the dining room to look for spirits. There was a little whiskey. He drank a gulp himself and put some into her mouth. The effect was instantaneous. She looked full into his face as if she had seen him for some time and yet had only just become conscious of him. Dr. Ferguson, she said, what he answered. He was divesting himself of his coat intending to find some dry clothing upstairs. He could not bear the smell of the dead clay water and he was mortally afraid for his own health. What did I do, she asked. Walked into the pond, he replied. He had begun to shudder like one sick and could hardly attend to her. Her eyes remained full on him. He seemed to be going dark in his mind, looking back at her helplessly. The shuddering began quieter in him. His life came back to him, dark and unknowing but strong again. Was that out of my mind, she asked while her eyes were fixed on him all the time. Maybe, for the moment, he replied, he felt quiet because his strength had come back. The strange fretful strain had left him. Am I out of my mind now, she asked. Are you, he reflect in a moment. No, he answered truthfully, I don't see that you are. He turned his face aside. He was afraid now because he felt dazed and felt dimly that her power was stronger than his in this issue. And she continued to look at him fixately all the time. Can you tell me where I shall find some dry things to put on, he asked. Did you dive into the pond for me, she asked. No, he answered, I walked in but I went in overhead as well. There was silence for a moment. He hesitated. He very much wanted to go upstairs to get into dry clothing but there was another desire in him. And she seemed to hold him. His will seemed to have gone to sleep and left him standing there slack before her. But he felt warm inside himself. He did not shudder at all though his clothes were sodden on him. Why did you, she asked. Because I didn't want you to do a foolish thing, he said. It wasn't foolish, she said, still gazing at him as she lay on the floor with a sofa cushion under her head. It was the right thing to do. I knew best then. I'll go and shift these wet things, he said. But still he had not the power to move out of her presence until she sent him. It was if she had the life of his body in her hands and he could not extricate himself but perhaps he did not want to. Suddenly she sat up and then she became aware of her own immediate condition. She felt the blankets about her. She knew her own limbs. For a moment it seemed as if her reason were going. She looked round with wild eye as if seeking something. He stood still with fear. She saw her clothing lying scattered. Who undressed me, she asked. Her eyes resting full and inevitable on his face. I did, he replied, to bring you round. For some moment she sat and gazed at him, offaling, her lips parted. Do you love me then, she asked. He only stood and stared at her, fascinated. His soul seemed to melt.  You love me, she murmured, in strange transport, yearning and triumphant and confident. You love me, I know you love me, I know. And she was passionately kissing his knees through the wet clothing, passionately and indiscriminately kissing his knees, his legs as if unaware of everything. He looked down at the tangled wet hair, the wild bare animal shoulders. He was amazed, bewildered and afraid. He had never thought of loving her. He had never wanted to love her. When he rescued her and restored her, he was a doctor and she was a patient. He had no single personal thought of her. Nay, this introduction of the personal element was very tasteful to him, a violation of his professional honor. It was horrible to have her there embracing his knees. It was horrible. He revolted from it violently and yet, and yet he had not the power to break away. She looked at him again with the same supplication of powerful love and that same transcendent, frightening light of triumph and view of the delicate flame that seemed to come from her face like a light. He was powerless and yet he had never intended to love her. He had never intended and something stubborn in him could not give away. You love me, she repeated in a murmur of deep, rhapsodic assurance. You love me. Her hands were drawing him, drawing him down to her. He was afraid, even a little horrified for he had really no intention of loving her. Yet her hands were drawing him toward her. He put out his hand quickly to steady himself and grasped her bare shoulder. The flame seemed to burn the hand that grasped her soft shoulder. He had no intention of loving her. His whole will was against his yielding. It was horrible and yet wonderful was the touch of her shoulders. Beautiful, the shining of her face. Was she perhaps mad? He had a horror of yielding to her, yet something in him ached also. He had been staring away at the door, away from her, but his hand remained on her shoulder. She had gone suddenly very still. He looked down at her. Her eyes were now wide with fear, with doubt. The light was dying from her face. A shadow of terrible grayness was returning. He could not bear the touch of her eyes question upon him and the look of death behind the question. With an inward groan he gave way and let his heart yield towards her.  He watched the strange water rise in her eyes like some slow fountain coming up and his heart seemed to burn and melt away in his breast. He could not bear to look at her anymore.  She was very still. His heart which seemed to have broken was burning with a kind of agony in his breast and he felt her slow hot tears wetting his throat but he could not move. He felt the hot tears wet his neck and the hollows of his neck and he remained motionless, suspended through one of man's eternities. Only now it had become indispensable to him to have her face pressed close to him. He could never let her go again. He could never let her head go away from the close clutch of his arm. He wanted to remain like that forever with his heart hurting him in a pain that was also life to him without knowing he was looking down on her damp, soft brown hair. Then as if it were suddenly he smelt the horrid stagnant smell of that water and at the same moment she drew away from him and looked at him. Her eyes were wistful and unfathomable. He was afraid of them and he fell to kissing her not knowing what he was doing. He wanted her eyes not to have that terrible, wistful, unfathomable look. When she turned her face to him again the faint delicate flush was glowing and there was again dawning that terrible shining of joy in her eyes which really terrified him and yet which he now wanted to see because he feared the look of doubt still more. You love me, she said, rather faltering. Yes. The word cost him a painful effort not because it wasn't true but because it was too newly true. The saying seemed to tear open again his newly torn heart and he hardly wanted it to be true even now.  He never intended to love her but now it was over. He crossed over the gulf to her and all that he had left behind it shriveled and become void.   The tears fell very slowly. There was complete silence. He too sat there motionless and silent on the hearth frog. The strange pain of his heart that was broken seemed to consume him that he should love her that this was love that he should be ripped open in this way. Him, a doctor. How they would all jeer if they knew. It was agony to him to think they might know. In the curious naked pain of the thought he looked again to her. She was sitting there drooped into a muse. He saw a tear fall and his heart flared hot. He saw for the first time that one of his shoulders was quite uncovered. One arm bare. He could see one of her small breasts dimly because it had become almost dark in the room. Why are you crying? He asked in an altered voice. She looked up at him and behind her tears the consciousness of her situation for the first time brought a dark look of shame to her eyes. I'm not crying really. She said watching him half frightened. He reached his hand and softly closed it on her bare arm. I love you. I love you. He said in the soft, low, vibrating voice, unlike himself.  She looked up at him. I want to go, she said.  Why, he said, I'm all right. But I want to go, she said, and I want you to change your things. He released her arm and she wrapped herself in the blanket, looking at him rather frightened, and still she did not rise. Kiss me, she said, wistfully. He kissed her, but briefly, half in anger. Then after a second she rose nervously, all mixed up in the blanket. He watched her in her confusion as she tried to extricate herself and wrap herself up so that she could walk. He watched her relentlessly as she knew, and as she went the blanket trailing, and as he saw a glimpse of her feet and her white leg, he tried to remember her as she was when he had wrapped her in the blanket. But then he didn't want to remember because she had been nothing to him then, and his nature revolted from remembering her as she was when she was nothing to him. A tumbling muffled noise from within the dark house startled him. Then he heard her voice. There were clothes. He rose and went to the foot of the stairs and gathered up the garment she had thrown down. Then he came back to the fire to rub himself down and dress. He grinned at his own appearance when he had finished. The fire was sinking, so he put on coal. The house was now quite dark, save for the light of a street lamp that shone in faintly from beyond the holly trees. He lit the gas with matches he found on the mantle piece. Then he emptied the pockets of his own clothes and threw all his wet things and a heap into the scullery, after which he gathered up her sodden clothes gently and put them in a separate heap on the copper top in the scullery. It was six o'clock on the clock. His own watch had stopped. He ought to go back to the surgery. He weighed it and still she did not come down. So he went to the foot of the stairs and called. I shall have to go. Almost immediately he heard her coming down. She had on her best dress of black foil. And her hair was tidy, but still damp. She looked at him and, in spite of herself, smiled. I don't like you in those clothes, she said. Do I look aside, he answered. They were shy of one another. I'll make you some tea, she said. No, I must go. I must you. And she looked at him with the wide strained, doubtful eyes. And again, from the pain of his breast, he knew how he loved her.  And my hair smells so horrible, she murmured in distraction.   Oh no, I'm too awful. And she broke into bitter, heartbroken sobbing. You can't want to love me. I'm horrible.   We're going to be married, quickly, quickly, tomorrow if I can. But she only sobbed terribly and cried. I feel awful. I feel awful, I feel I'm horrible to you. No, I want you.  Blindly, with that terrible intonation which frightened her almost more than her horror, lest he should not want her. End of The Horse Dealer's Daughter by D. H. Lawrence. The Legend of the River by Maude H. Chapin, read for love's story is volume one by Anita Sloma Martinez. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Legend of the River. Life is an action, not a thought, said the river as he glided on between the banks. Life is motion, life is energy and must find its outlet to the great sea without a tidal recurrence in which I feel the pulse of the ocean to my very source should I be the great historic river that I am, not great in size perhaps. Indeed, it is my charm that I am both great and small. Here where I rest in the sun, hardly moving in my narrow bed, I can feel the warmth and fertility of the earth flow into my veins and for a moment I am content till I dreaming in a backwater. But come with me and I will show you round the next bend where the grove hides my widening pathway, how I race. I sweep past gaily decorated house boats, past parks and meadows, past villages and ancient manners whose history I have made. Age cannot weaken me and only strong skulls can pull against my will. Mighty am I, the river god. My forts have determined to the sites of famous towns and my locks say to all who would pass by, halt. Obey my laws if you would navigate my ways. Enter through the sliding gates where the waters roar and darkness falls across the sunshine. And thus the river, old in experience, restless and vacillating, communed with himself. Power had made him intolerant and none dared coerce him, least of all the swaying rushes who dwelt beside his banks and were dependent on his changing moods and currents. They had lost all power of resistance, trodden upon for ages. They had become the world's symbol of weakness and the winds and tides swayed them as they would. But they were beautiful and birds nested in their frail palisades and sang to the river as he passed. What wonder that he was proud of his dominion and that he felt his power. But he was truly happy. Alas, he knew that his depths were turbid and that he was polluted by the ceaseless traffic of ships that came and went. The waters of the Great Seaport swept far inland to his source and then turning restlessly, demanded the treasure of the river and levied on all his peaceful waters a toll to the sea. Life was too much for him and buried in the depths below his smiling surface, he was very tired. So tired that at times he loved to stretch out his arms over the low green meadows and rest. There for a while he would no calm, but he could never stay. No act was enduring. His waters were like quicksilver and morning found him always in a different place. His restless nature communicated itself to all whom he touched. Boats could not be trusted for a moment alone on his waters and even the baby swans were so wild that at night their parents tied them to the rushes lest in the morning they too should be gone. Ah, sighed the river, if my spirit could find rest, but my waters must go on eternally, for old and powerful as I am, I can never change the tides that rule me. Would that I might somewhere find a landlocked harbor there to lie so still that every cloud and every star might be reflected on my surface. Once upon a summer evening two lovers came floating down the stream, sometimes sculling, sometimes letting the current carry their boat wither it would, as though their thoughts were not concerned with the surrounding scene. Love is an indifferent pilot and they had abandoned the rudder to his guidance. Who knows what unheroic accident might have overtaken them had not the river seen them and loved them for their trustfulness. So many lovers came to him confiding in his guardianship and secrecy that the old river had grown to believe that half the marriages in England were made by him. There must be something about me that suggests the thing he reasoned. Maybe it is the sense of playing with danger that they feel, the charm of being carried on by unexpected tides, the excitement of threading the gloomy locks where I close them in and roar at them until they have decided. But in spite of his aloofness from human weakness, the river lapped gently against the sides of their boats and rejoiced when he reflected youth and beauty. On this summer evening, of which I write, a face as lovely as he had ever seen looked down upon him and a slim brown hand reached over the boat and touched him caressingly, holding him a moment in its shell-like palm. The river dimpled and broke in sparkling bubbles where the hand had been and wondered what this curious madness love could be and whether a river might come to feel it too. At such thoughts he glided so gently that the boat scarce moved upon the tide where all the flowery sedges lay mirrored. Somewhere a nightingale was singing in the distant wood. It ceased and in the silence the young girl spoke. Do you know that sometimes your life suggests to me this river? It is so diversified, so active, so rarely calm as now when the current scarcely moves and we glide through a reflected universe. Even your love for me is restless in questioning. Why is it, dear? Would not life gain in beauty and in depth if we stopped more often to reflect as the river does tonight? The end of man as an action, not a thought, replied her lover softly, stopping the idle play of the oars that he might look more intently in her eyes, filled with the gray light of evening. While the river, with his lips to the boat's side, heard with amazement his very words repeated. Action, action, he murmured, I knew that I was right and yet how strangely appealing her words are. Poets can always express our longings. It is wonderful, she went amusingly, to be in the vortex of life, to embark on great enterprises, to carry great responsibilities as you do. My life has passed within sound of this stream. Dreams have been my realities and artistry reflects and absorbs. No one has ever wanted me for vital things. Ah, what I do, exclaimed her lover. I want you for everything. And the listening river felt that here was an elemental power great as his own. I am glad, she said, but nevertheless I am not really essential to destiny any more than the backwater running beneath its hazel bushes is essential to the Thames. If I could reach you, replied her lover, smiling, I would simply stifle this talk. Ah, but you cannot, she exclaimed playfully. It would be most undignified in a public man whose name and career are in the world's eye. Wait until I have you out of the boat, he threatened, and then more tenderly as those still absorbed in her fancy. If I am like the river, what are you like? Look over the side of the boat and let the Thames tell you, but who shall measure the power of beauty? It subjugates the world. I sense you in every fiber of my being, but only a poet could express all you make me feel. I will yield him the right of superior eloquence so long as he leaves me the vision I see now. If, as you say, I am like the river in my nature, too turbulent to be controlled, too absorbed in making life to see the profound, simple truths that lie hidden from my sight, you shall lead me to the pure sources of knowledge, for you are like the lake that lies so near your home, pointing to an old mansion that stood somewhat back from the river. The lake is deep and calm, its waters are clear for no impurity engels with its source. Who could drink of this tidal river? It is polluted while the lake offers a pure draft. Who sees the stars reflected in this eddying stream? Yet in the lake the whole heaven lies revealed. Is it strange that I should love the lake for being like you, while I, daring and impassioned, seek to wed my lower destiny with yours? Give me the lake, dear love, that I might mingle with it forever. The keel of the boat grated gently on the sand, and under a willow tree the lovers landed. They took the path through the meadow to the old house where, from the trees, the rooks were calling in the gathering twilight. How lonely the river felt when they had gone. He lapped the sides of their empty boat and he followed them through a narrow backwater until it ended in a marsh. He longed to see the lake they had spoken of, that serene, transparent water untroubled by man. The river was in love with the very idea, and he felt that to mingle his waters with its depths would be to no rapture. There at last his traveled, tide-worn spirit could rest. For almost a year the river dreamed of the lake, nor ever forgot the hazel backwater where he had followed the departing lovers and where he knew the lake must lie. Spring came and with it the flood-tides. The river grew swollen and mighty. He overflowed the meadows far and wide, and at the landing of the willow tree he shot a long, watery arm inland. Sweeping all before him, he drew nearer and nearer the ancient mansion. Each day his ardor grew until he was close upon the lake, that like a lovely vision lay shadowed in its grove of cypress. Thirstily his lips touched the margin, kissed the still waters, and then in a moment of supreme rapture he poured himself into its bosom. End of The Legend of the River by Maud H. Chapin. The Last Leaf by O. Henry, recorded for Love Stories, Volume 1 by William Jones, Benita Springs, Florida. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Last Leaf In a little district west of Washington Square, the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called places. These places make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper, and canvas should, in traverse in this route, suddenly meet himself coming back without a cent having been paid on account. So, to quaint old Greenwich Village, the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and 18th century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue and became a colony. At the top of a squatty, three-story brick, Sue and Johnsey had their studio. Johnsey was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine, the other from California. They had met at the table-dote of an eighth street Delmonico's and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop's leaves. So congenial that the joint studio resulted. This was in May. In November, a cold unseen stranger whom the doctors called Pneumonia stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side, this ravager strode boldly smiting his victims by scores and his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown places. Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A might of a little old woman with blood thinned by California's sephirs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsey, he smoked and she lay scarcely moving on her painted iron bedstead looking through the small Dutch window panes at the blank side of the next brick house. One morning, the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy gray eyebrow. She has one chance in, let's say, 10. He said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer, and that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining up on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopia look silly.  Has she anything on her mind? She wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day, said Sue. Paint? Bosch? Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice? A man, for instance? A man, said Sue, with a Jews harp twang in her voice, is a man worth, but no, doctor, there is nothing of the kind. Well, it is the weakness then, said the doctor. I will do all that science so far as it may filter through my efforts can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession, I subtract 50% from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles and cloak sleeves, I will promise you a one in five chance for her instead of one in 10. After the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsey's room with her drawing board whistling a ragtime. Johnsey lay scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. She arranged her board and began a pen and ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to literature. As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshoe riding trousers and a monocle on the figure of the hero and Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. Johnsey's eyes were wide open. She was looking out the window and counting, counting backward. 12, she said, and a little later, 11. And then 10 and nine and then eight and seven almost together. Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare dreary yard to be seen and the blank side of the brick house 20 feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed halfway up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung almost bare to the crumbling bricks. What is it, dear? Asked Sue. Six, said Johnsey, in almost a whisper, they're falling faster now. Three days ago, there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now. Five what, dear? Tell your Susie. Leaves on the ivy vine. When the last one falls, I must go too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you? Oh, I never heard of such nonsense. Complain Sue with magnificent scorn. What have old ivy leaves to do with you getting well? And you used to love that vine, so you naughty girl.  Or the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were. Let's see exactly what he said. He said the chances were 10 to one. Why, that's almost as good as a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Susie go back to her drawing so she can sell the editor man with it and buy a port wine for her sick child and pork chops for her greedy self. You needn't get any more wine, said John Z, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go too. John Z, dear, said Sue, bending over her. Will you promise me to keep your eyes closed and not look out the window until I'm done working? I must hand those drawings in by tomorrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down. Couldn't you draw in another room? asked John Z coldly.  Besides, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly Ivy Leaves.  I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves. Try to sleep, said Sue. I must call Bearman up to be my model for the old hermit minor. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move till I get back. Old Bearman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath him. He was past 60 and had a Michelangelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. Bearman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a dog in the line of commerce or advertising. He had earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess and talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man who scoffed terribly at softness in anyone and who regarded himself as a special mastiff in waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above. Sue found Bearman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for 25 years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsey's fancy and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away when her slight hold on the world grew weaker.   I have not heard of such a thing. No, I will not boast as a model for your fool hermit dunderhead. Why do you allow that silly pissiness to come into the plane of her? Ah, that poor little Miss Johnsey.  Very well, Mr. Bearman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old, old flippity jibbit.  Who said I will not pose?  For half an hour I have peen, trying to say that I am ready to pose. Got, this is not any place in which one so good as Miss Johnsey shall lie seek. Someday I will paint a masterpiece and we shall all go away. Got, yes. Well, Johnsey was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window cell and motion Bearman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Bearman in his old blue shirt took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock. When Sue woke from an hour's sleep the next morning, she found Johnsey with dull, wide open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. Pull it up. I want to see, she ordered in a whisper. Whirly, Sue obeyed. But lo, after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the live long night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last leaf on the vine, still dark green near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay. It hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the ground. It is the last one, said Johnsey. I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to day and I shall die at the same time. Dear, dear, said Sue, leaning her worn face to the pillow, think of me if you won't think of yourself. What would I do? But Johnsey did not answer. The lonesome much thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and earth were loosed. The day wore away and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves. When it was light enough, Johnsey the merciless commanded that the shade be raised. The ivy leaf was still there. But Johnsey lay for a long time looking at it. Then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. I've been a bad girl, Susie, said Johnsey. Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little broth now and some milk with a little port in it. And no, bring me a hand mirror first and then pack some pillows about me and I will sit up and watch you cook. An hour later she said, Susie, someday I hope to paint the Bay of Naples. The doctor came in the afternoon and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left. Even chances, said the doctor, taking Sue's thin shaking hand in his, with good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Bearman, his name is. Some kind of artist I believe. Pneumonia too. He is an old weak man and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him. But he goes to the hospital today to be made more comfortable. The next day the doctor said to Sue, she's out of danger now. You've won. Nutrition and care now, that's all. And that afternoon, Sue came to the bed where John-Z-Lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woolen shoulder scarf and put one arm around her pillow and all. I have something to tell you, white mouse, she said. Mr. Bearman died of Pneumonia today in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room downstairs, hopeless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern still lighted and a ladder that had been dragged from its place and some scattered brushes and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it. And look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Bearman's masterpiece. He painted it there the night the last leaf fell. End of The Last Leaf by O'Henry.