and the devotion of la mère Chantal. Her friend St. Francis died; her son died in the flower of his age; it was his orphan daughter, the saint's little granddaughter, who was declared by her own generation to be the " Marquise of Marquises." There is a stronglymarked family likeness between the portraits of the two women when one compares them together-the same half-humorous, half-conscious smile, the same welldefined brows and full, almond-shaped eyes; but the saint's features are larger and more marked, with less of delicacy and of grace than Madame de Sévigné's. The likeness is also preserved in the picture of Françoise de Toulonjon, Ste. Chantal's second daughter, no saint, but a brilliant, warm-hearted, and imperious woman, of whom we read in the Sévigné letters. She was married to a brave soldier, the Comte de Toulonjon, and she, too, as a widow came back for comfort to her mother's arms and prayers. Before her death Ste. Chantal had lost all her children save this one; but her adopted children were everywhere, and clamouring for her presence, her help, her advice. Though life's journey was long, and grew more and more weary towards the close, Ste. Chantal did not give in, nor cease her exhortations, her exertions. She feared neither famine, nor pestilence, nor fatigue, nor the infirmities of time; in the depths of the last winter of her life she travelled right through France. She went in a litter, because of her great age. Queen Anne of Austria desired her presence at her Court at St. Germains. There were convents at Paris and at Moulins, eagerly soliciting her presence, and the brave old saint started courageously on this long and exhausting journey. On December 3rd, 1641, on her returning journey, she parted with Madame de Toulonjon, who had been travelling with her. She wished to give herself entirely to her nuns and their concerns, and also to the Duchesse de Montpensier, who had been awaiting her arrival at Moulins, in order to enter into religion. It was on December 13th, ten days after her arrival at Moulins, that Ste. Chantal passed away in the same great serenity in which she had lived. She is buried near St. Francis in the church at Annecy, which was afterwards built to their memory. Each rests above a golden altar, shrined in high-set crystal coffins. A few minutes' drive across the place brought me through the streets to the cool marble and gilded dome where the two saints lie safe from the heat of the sun, from the furious winter's rages. Some schoolgirls with bandboxes, a lady carrying a carpet bag, followed by two little boys in Scotch costume, came after me up the aisle, and, putting down their encumbrances, all knelt and kissed a reliquary fastened to a column, containing a pearl-set scrap of bone. A lay sister in the dress of the Visitantines, who had been washing a marble step, advanced quietly, and, drawing a curtain from before the crystal coffin, showed us a glimpse of a dark robe spread upon a cushion, and a waxen hand among its folds; these were the mortal remains of Jeanne Fremyot, Baronne de Rabutin-Chantal. Something must be allowed for the setting of a saint's life. Perhaps St. Francis de Sales and Ste. Chantal owe something to the scenery all round about. One's imagination is seized by the sweet sights and sounds amid which these two people lived, by the melody of the lovely lake at their feet, the Mendelssohn-like beauty of the mountains surrounding their dwellings. From my steamer presently I could see the lovely banks of Annecy, the white oxen carting the hay, the broad shade of the chestnut-trees reaching to the water, the people resting or labouring along the banks. When we came back to our starting-place, the west was one solemn flood of crimson, against which stood out the old battlements and spires of ancient Annecy; the lights were beginning to shine from the windows overhanging the lake. Two nuns in the black dress of the Visitantines sat motion. less before me, telling their rosaries with downcast ANNIE THACKERAY. eyes. T Hazely Heath. IS "chill October," yet the linnet sings, Still are our brows with balmy breezes fanned- Of my adoption, where each season brings, VIOLET FANE. BEING AN ACCOUNT OF SOME CURIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE LATE SIR CLEMENT KER, BART., OF BRAE HOUSE, PERTHSHIRE. TOLD BY HIS SECOND COUSIN, GEOFFREY KER, OF LONDON. INTRODUCTION. IF I were writing this down as a story instead of a plain narrative of facts, I almost think that I should put it all in the third person. I should keep myself out of it altogether. I was between seventeen and eighteen years old that summer. I was present, but, except for my brother Dick, I counted for simply nothing in that big home. They let me come and go. They were invariably pleasant in their manner to me, when they realised my existence; and, for the greater part of the time, they lived their own lives, acted out their own characters before me--talked, quarrelled, made peace or made love, with as naïf an indifference to my opinion as if I had been some harmless and familiar adjunct to the household furniture. I was harmless, I hope. Sometimes, remembering those old days (I seem to myself to remember so much that they have forgotten) I am bewildered by the unconsciousness, the unaffected ease with which they bear the burden of what they have seen, of what they know. It is when I look at Eleanor that this feeling comes over me more particularly. Yet, perhaps, there I am wrong. Happiness works miracles with plastic natures. My sister-in-law is a very feminine woman; how could she be so unalterably charming if she had not that capacity to forget? They live new lives. No doubt that growth, that eternal change, is the very condition of living. But I, whom circumstances have set aside, once and for all-who must ever remain a mere spectator of the game-I find it more difficult to shake off past impressions. In my own mind, I often go back to that darkened experience. I ask myself what it all meant? What part I was allowed actually to take in it? What share I had in bringing about that end? I contemplate their prosperous, their commonplace existence, and there seems to me something tragic in its very prosperity, as I recall the awful price at which it was bought. As I said before, I am the only one now to remember. It is only of late that I have been fully convinced of this, and I won't deny that this singular unconcern of theirs is partly my reason for writing down the facts as I do remember them, before there can be any question of my own accuracy in the matter. These facts-these impressions of fact, if you like the term better that mystery of strange life, or stranger, more terrible, death-in-life, which seemed at one time to brood over our house, making of it a place condemnedall these things which still have the power to strike my spirit dumb in awe and reverence, in a humble gratitude for what temptation was resisted, for what horror was spared-those two, the chief persons con cerned, have wellnigh forgotten. At all events they have put it outside of their habitual remembrance; holding the past lightly, as the mere stuff of which life is made. And again, I won't deny that there is something gallant about their attitude, a certain "relish of courage," as old Hobbes of the "Leviathan" would say, which attracts me; the more so, perhaps, that I am so utterly incapable of it myself. I go back now to the time of which I began to speak, and it occurs to me that probably my lameness had much to do with the singular fashion in which I was initiated into their more private affairs. They were so accustomed to see me spend whole days in the same room that they ended, I believe, by accepting me and my inevitable presence as a matter of course. But I don't think it would have happened so if any of them had been very clever people; although, for the matter of that, I was far enough from wishing to complain. Their most involuntary confidences only served to interest me. For one who, like myself, is forced to seek the chief emotions of life in sympathy, who watches all positive action with the curiosity of an outsider, it is a great, an immense gratification to have that curiosity satisfied. And now, without further words, I will commence writing down what happened from the very beginning. I shall begin with the morning after our arrival at Brae, and a conversation of poor Clement's, which I remember, and which took place in the little red morning room. As I write the whole place rises up before me; the rain beats hard against the windows; I see the firelight once more shining on their faces, I hear the words they use, and faces and voices alike belong to the old, old days when I was young. GEOFFREY KER. CHAPTER I. I LISTEN TO MY COUSIN'S CONVERSATION. "AND this, my dear Richard, is the sort of thing you may expect six days of the week. We don't go to church, at least I don't, so that I have known it to clear up on a Sunday. I don't apologise. I am growing accustomed to it. The old family instincts are waking up in me. I already begin to feel a kind of water-soaked enthusiasm for the whole affair; for the old family house; the old family customs; the old family weather. I accept the entire programme. And Eleanor-—” The speaker glanced at his wife, whose face was turned away from him, and at the large end window, outside of which the rain fell in torrents, and smiled. Clement was a small, thin, well-made man, of about thirty, with an ugly face. To me it was worse than that; it was an unpleasant countenance. It must have been his expression which repulsed me, for his features in a photograph were correct enough, with the exception of his upper lip, which was too long and out of proportion. He was But I never liked his face from the first. He looked now at his wife. "Eleanor likes it, too; this life suits her. We have not too much to do; but then we have all been taught that labour is the consequence of a curse. We have no neighbours, it is true; but, on the other hand, our neighbours would be Scotch, undoubtedly." amiable fellow. E bontà sua! as they say abroad. But that is no reason why we should take advantage of you: none at all. The British Workman, too, has his hours of relaxation. Think of it, Nelly-consider. Even in this neighbourhood could you not find some pretty girl who would do to invite to the house? Don't be too hard to please; it is only to amuse Richard !” Lady Ker did not answer immediately. "I wish you would not call me by that name," she said. "My dear Nelly! Why, it is the name of our youth! of innocence and early love, and—and whatever is young and ingenuous. Nelly! Why, it takes me back seven— eight years, even to say it. I heard of you from Richard there as little Nelly Macalister, before I had ever seen you. All your old friends knew you as Nelly. You always think of her so; don't you, Richard?" She rose abruptly from her seat at the head of the table. 66 I prefer I have asked you this before," she repeated, a trifle incoherently, and without answering him further, crossed the long room to go and stand before the fire. She moved well-stepped lightly and freely, and her slender rounded figure more than carried out the Lady Ker lifted her eyes, and then looked down ambiguous promise of her face. again. "I am Scotch," she murmured under her breath. She kept her eyes fixed upon her plate (for they were still sitting about the table), and the words were all but inaudible, yet her husband caught at their meaning instantly. "Yes, I could not have endured you as a neighbour," he said; "I preferred you as my wife. Oh! I can assure you, I prefer it exceedingly!" A man He laughed softly, tipping back his chair. "You are sure you won't have more lunch, Richard? should learn to make an occupation of his meals in such weather. But we shall have to look for some other way of amusing you, old chap. I say you, because naturally, Eleanor and I, we suffice to one another. But you will want something else-somebody else. It is always more amusing when it is somebody." My brother Richard's face grew red all over. He has never lost that trick of blushing when anything vexes him or pleases him more than usual. At times it gives him the air of an over-grown schoolboy; he knows this, and hates to be reminded of it. "Oh-it is very kind of you, but-I hope you won't think of asking any one here on my account," he said quickly, speaking in a very off-hand way, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was annoyed at something. "I'm the new variety of the British Workman, Clement. I did not come here to amuse myself; I came to do a job, you know. And as far as that goes, I am going to begin on some of those inside walls of yours this very afternoon. I just gave them a glance this morning; there are one or two nasty cracks—-” He stopped short, and turned towards Lady Ker. I don't know why, but it struck me that he was embarrassed. "I think I don't see why we should make changes-I think we are very well as we are," he said rather shyly. Her husband followed her with his eyes, but he did not move from his chair. The same peculiar smile played for a moment over his lips; then he looked at Richard. "The cigars are in that gimcrack silver thing on the sideboard there; exactly behind you.” "Thanks; I won't smoke just now." "Oh, Eleanor does not mind it; do you, Nell? She sits here for hours with me sometimes when I am alone. We sit together and listen to the rain, and cultivate the minor arts of conversation. Have a cigarette, then, Richard?" "No, thank you." A servant had come noiselessly into the room. At the first pause in his master's drawling sentences, the man stepped forward rather deprecatingly. "If you please, Sir Clement-" He stopped short; then began again with a sort of nervous volubility, “It is old Patterson, if you please, Sir Clement-the old man. He has walked here through the rain. And he wishes to know would you please to see him. He is very sorry to trouble you, sir, but it is somethingpartic'lar." Clement was holding his head down, lighting his cigar. He took two or three deliberate puffs at it; passed his white hand thoughtfully over his hair, and then, without looking round, "Who is Patterson?" he asked slowly. "Old Patterson, the old shepherd, if you please, sir. Him as lives on top of that hill where you go for the shooting, sir," the man explained, looking puzzled. He added doubtfully, "He does say, if you please, sir, that he's known you since you was a boy." "Never heard of him before. Fill Mr. Ker's glass. Can't you see that it is empty? What is the man doing here now?" "He is a very old man, sir; a very old man indeed. Eighty or thereabouts, I should say, sir, and very strikinglooking. And he has come here again—— "Come again, has he? And who the devil cares anything about his age or where he has been before?" The footman, who was young and new to the place, and easily flustered, reddened all over his foolish face up to his large, innocent-looking ears. "I-I don't know, sir, please, sir," he said feebly. I put down my book and looked at them all. I was sitting where I always did, in the south window, where is the recess. But partly for the sake of the light, and partly not to have to listen to their chatter (for I was, I remember, in a good deal of pain that day), I had drawn the heavy curtains across the opening until they nearly met. No one noticed me. There was a minute or two of silence. Dick kept his face turned to the window, and Clement was smoking. Presently "Have some claret, Richard. It's not bad in its way. You don't drink and you don't smoke," he said solicitously. He shifted the position of his arm a little across the back of his chair. "You're the new man, aren't you, that Bright brought down last week?" "Yes, Sir Clement." "What's your name? Parker? H-m! Bright used to know how to choose a servant. Tell him to come here. And-look here. Tell him to bring in the old man with him-Peterson-Patterson-whatever he calls himself." He leaned languidly back in his chair, and half shut his eyes. I could see his figure reflected at full length, in grotesque foreshortening, in the old-fashioned convex mirror which hung high up on the wall between the windows. The firelight twinkled and shone on all the silver and glass upon the table before him; his face expressed nothing beyond the intimate satisfaction superinduced by warmth and light and delicate food. I did not know him very well in those early days; but he interested me. I was always watching him whenever he came into the room. I watched him now. round table stood by the window in the deep embrasure of the old wall. It was raining harder than ever, and the slanting sheets of grey water made a sort of silvercoloured background to his dark, indolent figure; the lashing and driving of the storm seemed only to intensify by contrast its expression of complete wellbeing and absolute repose. CHAPTER II. I SEE AN OLD MAN PAY HIS DEBTS. The RICHARD had left his seat by the table and followed his cousin's wife. She was standing before the high, oldfashioned fireplace, resting one hand upon the shelf, which was on a level with her head. Her attitude and the glancing firelight brought out in fullest relief the charming lines of her rounded waist and shoulders; but Richard hardly looked at her. "May I give you a chair? Won't you sit down?" he asked. "No." He looked up then, with a sort of surprise. "But I wish you would let me get you a chair. You look so tired," he repeated very kindly. When my brother Richard speaks to any person 19 man, woman, or child - with that look and that smile, there are not very many people who can resist him. And Eleanor was not one of the few. I saw her turn round slowly, and then a curious thing happened. This time she did not even answer him, but her pale, heavily-modelled face suddenly glowed under his gaze, softened, awakened, was transformed-surprised for the instant into actual beauty. "If I had only thought of it in time-before you came! But it never occurred to me to ask any one to meet you. I simply never thought of it," she said abruptly. "No," the young man answered quite simply— Why should you?" 66 "No; don't think about me. You are too kind to take so much trouble about me, Lady Ker. You forget what a paradise this seems to a man coming straight here from two rooms in the Strand. And the Strand in September! I hadn't been out of town for eleven months when I got Clement's letter. I think I had pretty well forgotten what it was to have a holiday. Just as now," Dick added with a laugh, "now I seem to have forgotten what it is to work." Lady Ker's eyes filled suddenly with tears. She kept her face turned carefully away from him. “Oh, nobody does anything at Brae. Even Janet finds means to shorten her lessons," she said, in a curious hard sort of voice. The door opened noiselessly; I saw it move backwards in the mirror, and Bright, the butler, came into the room, beckoning to some one else to follow. A very tall, white-haired old man, in the decent Sunday garb of a shepherd, answered the summons. He held his bonnet in both hands, and halted just inside the doorway, bowing to each one of the persons present with simple yet formal respect. His collie dog followed at his heels as far as the "But she'll no come door. open farther. She kens her proper station. Your leddyship need na fear for the braw new carpets," the old man said, with a deprecatory wave of his immense knotted old hand. He stepped, himself, upon the edge of the Persian rugs with ludicrous, almost pathetic caution. It was evident that his gestures, his voice, the very choice of his words, were all subdued to some careful, unfamiliar standard. As he spoke to Eleanor a pleasant friendly smile flickered for an instant over his kindly, weather-beaten old face, but without altering its rugged lines like a gleam of sunshine glancing across some rock. Then his eyes turned and rested rather anxiously upon Sir Clement. "Eh, sirs, but it is lang since we hae seen the Laird amang us! But maybe ye'll no hae forgotten my face, Sir Clement, even if ye have nae clear mind about the way they call me?” Clement waved his hand, making some unintelligible sound in his throat, and I saw the smile die off the old man's face altogether. "I made bold to trouble you myself," he went on again presently-"sirs, I came my ain sel', tho' it's but an unwelcome messenger that brings the ill tidings--" He stopped once more, breathing heavily, and shifting his gaze from the master's impassive countenance to Bright's solemn and sympathetic face. Eh, sir-Sir Clement-there can be nae manner o' doubt but ye will remember old Patterson o' bonny Brae Head? Mony and mony's the time I've watched ye gang by there as a boy. It's nae so mony years syne; sir, ye canna hae clean forgotten?" He "Well?" says Clement, in his languid way. had not looked up. He sat, I remember, playing with a curious signet ring which he always wore, twisting it around and around his finger in a fashion that was familiar to him. "Well?" The old man straightened his bent shoulders. Eb, sirs, God forbid that we should forget past kindness. Seven-and-fifty years hae I served in this family, and never aught but gude-will between us. I'm an old man now, Sir Clement. I was shepherd to your father before you, and to the old Sir Clement before that. I've served the family, man and boy, for seven-and-fifty years, sir. There's nae mony can say mair than that. but seven-and-fifty years o' wark come Lammas." "Well?" says Clement again. All He picked up his glass, held it at the level of his eyes, and looked curiously at the colour of the wine against the light. Then he added, "I suppose you have been paid for it, haven't you?" The words were rendered a hundred times more brutal by the absolute lack of purpose, the unaffected indifference of his manner of speaking; yet, oddly enough, of all his auditors, the one directly addressed seemed least aware of the wrong done him. "Nay, sir, I'm no complaining," he said simply. He clasped his great brown hands one over the other upon the head of his staff, and stood there looking down upon his young master, patiently, without a reproach, so that I could hardly endure the sight of his honest and troubled face. "I've had my just wage all these years-and whiles, something over in consideration of the long lifetime o' wark. I'm no complaining. The labourer is worthy o' his hire, Sir Clement; we a' ken that. An' I've had mine." "Well, then?" Sir," returned the old man, his voice beginning to shake and quaver with perplexity, "perhaps it is ye can nae understand me. Ye hae been awa' sae lang ye may weel hae forgot our gude Scot's tongue-together wi' the old faces of those that served ye. It maun be that: ye canna understan'. Eh, sirs, I cam here thro' the rain with a heavy heart the day, but it sore misdoots me but I'll carry awa' a heavier-though they've ever been kind to me i' this house; an' God forgie me if I wrang the master by sic thinking." "Now, look here," said Clement, quite good-naturedly, "we've had about enough of this already; do you see? You are taking up all my time, my good fellow; you can't stay there talking all night. Look here; what you've come after is more money." "Sir "Now, my good man, just hold your tongue and listen. I tell you I know your whole story. You've been drawing extra pay from this estate for years. But you've got into trouble. You've married off your grand-daughter and you've got into debt. You can't pay your rent. The man the girl married has run away from her and left her on your hands. And your son has had devilish bad luck with my sheep. I tell you I know every word of it. And now you have come here after money." "Sir, she was aye respecktit, my Jean. But it's a' true, a' true." "Of course it is," says Clement, still quite complacent. "I don't often trouble myself about details; but when I do want to know a thing-- And now I suppose you've been to the agent for nothing, and so came on to me, thinking I should let you off the rent." "Sir," answers old Patterson, hanging his white head, "it's mair than just the rent of the bit cottage. It's one thing and anither. It's a matter of nigh thirty pund. And we hae sold the verra clothes frae off the women's backs to get it, and a' their bit brooches an' buckles. We hae nae mair." "Thirty pounds, eh? Why, this wine costs me nearly eighty shillings a dozen. Thirty pounds? That's about what I give for seven dozen of this claret. And you won't drink it, Richard!" says Clement, smiling and tapping with his long white fingers upon the bottle. I don't I can't believe that he meant it as it sounded; but Lady Ker-and, after all, his wife must have understood him better than we did-Lady Ker, sitting by the fire, rose sharply to her feet. "Mais c'est assez; c'est assez ! Je vous en prie!" she cried out with a sudden burst of passion. Her voice thrilled and vibrated like some musical chord in that long, quiet room. The collie dog by the door blinked with both eyes; he fixed his sagacious glance upon her, and began beating the floor with slow, heavy thuds of "But-God forgie us all!-there is differences in people! An' it's through nae seeing with their ain een and nae kenning wi' their ain minds that the warld o' men grows cruel; so, sir, I wad fain appeal to yoursel'. They've a' been kind to me, kind an' considerate folk i' this hoose for hard on sixty year. That's a lang lifetime, Sir Clement there's no promise nor yet warranty given for mair than threescore years and ten. And if a mon here and there, by reason o' his strength, it may be- His voice quavered and sunk. I thought he would break down altogether. I saw Bright turn very red and begin to fidget with his hands. But in a minute or so the old man went on speaking— "And sae I came to yoursel', Sir Clement. I came to your house, and ye gave me nae welcome nor greeting. Ye're young enough to be my son's son. An' I'm no beggar at your gates. I hae saved and scraped a few shillings; |