He had a room at the top of the hotel, and he lived his life, amongst
his chemistry bottles, his scientific books, his microscope, and his
camera. He never sat in any of the hotel drawing-rooms. There was
nothing striking nor eccentric about his appearance. He was neither
ugly nor good-looking, neither tall nor short, neither fair nor dark.
He was thin and frail, and rather bent. But that might be the
description of any one in Petershof. There was nothing pathetic about
him, no suggestion even of poetry, which gives a reverence to suffering,
whether mental or physical. As there was no expression on his face,
so also there was no expression in his eyes: no distant longing, no
far-off fixedness; nothing, indeed, to awaken sad sympathy.

The only positive thing about him was his rudeness. Was it natural or
cultivated? No one in Petershof could say. He had always been as he was;
and there was no reason to suppose that he would ever be different.

He was, in fact, like the glacier of which he had such a fine view from
his room; like the glacier, an unchanging feature of the neighbourhood.

No one loved it better than the Disagreeable Man did; he watched the
sunlight on it, now pale golden, now fiery red. He loved the sky, the
dull grey, or the bright blue. He loved the snow forests, and the
snow-girt streams, and the ice cathedrals, and the great firs patient
beneath their snow-burden. He loved the frozen waterfalls, and the
costly diamonds in the snow. He knew, too, where the flowers nestled
in their white nursery. He was, indeed, an authority on Alpine botany.
The same tender hands which plucked the flowers in the spring-time,
dissected them and laid them bare beneath the microscope. But he did
not love them the less for that.

Were these pursuits a comfort to him? Did they help him to forget that
there was a time when he, too, was burning with ambition to distinguish
himself, and be one of the marked men of the age?

Who could say?


CHAPTER VI.

THE TRAVELLER AND THE TEMPLE OF KNOWLEDGE.


COUNTLESS ages ago a Traveller, much worn with journeying, climbed up
the last bit of rough road which led to the summit of a high mountain.
There was a temple on that mountain. And the Traveller had vowed that
he would reach it before death prevented him. He knew the journey was
long, and the road rough. He knew that the mountain was the most
difficult of ascent of that mountain chain, called "The Ideals."  But
he had a strongly-hoping heart and a sure foot. He lost all sense of
time, but he never lost the feeling of hope.

"Even if I faint by the way-side," he said to himself, "and am not
able to reach the summit, still it is something to be on the road
which leads to the High Ideals."

That was how he comforted himself when he was weary. He never lost
more hope than that; and surely that was little enough.

And now he had reached the temple.

He rang the bell, and an old white-haired man opened the gate. He
smiled sadly when he saw the Traveller.

"_And yet another one_," he murmured. "What does it all mean?"

The Traveller did not hear what he murmured.

"Old white-haired man," he said, "tell me; and so I have come at last
to the wonderful Temple of Knowledge. I have been journeying hither all
my life. Ah, but it is hard work climbing up to the Ideals."

The old man touched the Traveller on the arm. "Listen," he said gently.
"This is not the Temple of Knowledge. And the Ideals are not a chain of
mountains; they are a stretch of plains, and the Temple of Knowledge is
in their centre. You have come the wrong road. Alas, poor Traveller!"

The light in the Traveller's eyes had faded. The hope in his heart died.
And he became old and withered. He leaned heavily on his staff.

"Can one rest here?" he asked wearily.

"No."

"Is there a way down the other side of these mountains?"

"No."

"What are these mountains called?"

"They have no name."

"And the temple--how do you call the temple?"

"It has no name!"

"Then I call it the Temple of Broken Hearts," said the Traveller.

And he turned and went. But the old white-haired man followed him.

"Brother," he said, "you are not the first to come here, but you may be
the last. Go back to the plains, and tell the dwellers in the plains
that the Temple of True Knowledge is in their very midst; any one may
enter it who chooses, the gate is not even closed. The Temple has
always been in the plains, in the very heart of life, and work, and
daily effort. The philosopher may enter, the stone-breaker may enter.
You must have passed it every day of your life; a plain, venerable
building, unlike your glorious cathedrals."

"I have seen the children playing near it," said the Traveller. "When
I was a, child I used to play there. Ah, if I had only known! Well,
the past is the past."

He would have rested against a huge stone, but that the old white-haired
man prevented him.

"Do not rest," he said. "If you once rest there, you will not rise again.
When you once rest, you will know how weary you are."

"I have no wish to go farther," said the Traveller. "My journey is done;
it may have been in the wrong direction, but still it is done."

"Nay, do not linger here," urged the old man. "Retrace your steps.
Though you are broken-hearted yourself, you may save others from
breaking their hearts. Those whom you meet on this road, you can turn
back. Those who are but starting in this direction you can bid pause
and consider how mad it is to suppose that the Temple of True Knowledge
should have been built on an isolated and dangerous mountain. Tell them
that although God seems hard, He is not as hard as all that. Tell them
that the Ideals are not a mountain range, but their own plains, where
their great cities are built, and where the corn grows, and where men
and women are toiling, sometimes in sorrow and sometimes in joy."

"I will go," said the Traveller.

And he started.

But he had grown old and weary. And the journey was long; and the
retracing of one's steps is more toilsome than the tracing of them.
The ascent, with all the vigour and hope of life to help him, had been
difficult enough; the descent, with no vigour and no hope to help him,
was almost impossible.

So that it was not probable that the Traveller lived to reach the plains.
But whether he reached them or not, still he had started And not many
Travellers do that.


CHAPTER VII.

BERNARDINE.


THE crisp mountain air and the warm sunshine began slowly to have their
effect on Bernardine, in spite of the Disagreeable Man's verdict. She
still looked singularly lifeless, and appeared to drag herself about
with painful effort; but the place suited her, and she enjoyed sitting
in the sun listening to the music which was played by a scratchy string
band. Some of the Kurhaus guests, seeing that she was alone and ailing,
made some attempts to be kindly to her. She always seemed astonished
that people should concern themselves about her; whatever her faults
were, it never struck her that she might be of any importance to others,
however important she might be to herself. She was grateful for any
little kindness which was shewn her; but at first she kept very much to
herself, talking chiefly with the Disagreeable Man, who, by the way,
had surprised every one--but no one more than himself--by his unwonted
behaviour in bestowing even a fraction of his companionship on a
Petershof human being.

There was a great deal of curiosity about her, but no one ventured to
question her since Mrs. Reffold's defeat. Mrs. Reffold herself rather
avoided her, having always a vague suspicion that Bernardine tried to
make fun of her.  But whether out of perversity or not, Bernardine never
would be avoided by her, never let her pass by without a: few words of
conversation, and always went to her for information, much to the
amusement of Mrs. Reffold's faithful attendants. There was always a
twinkle in Bernardine's eye when she spoke with Mrs. Reffold. She never
fastened herself on to any one; no one could say she intruded. As time
went, on there was a vague sort of feeling that she did not intrude
enough. She was ready to speak if any one cared to speak with her, but
she never began a conversation except with Mrs. Reffold. When people
did talk to her, they found her genial. Then the sad face would smile
kindly, and the sad eyes speak kind sympathy. Or some bit of fun would
flash forth, and a peal of young laughter ring out. It seemed strange
that such fun could come from her.

Those who noticed her, said she appeared always to be thinking.

She was thinking and learning.

Some few remarks roughly made by the Disagreeable Man had impressed her
deeply.

"You have come to a new world," he said, "the world of suffering. You
are in a fury because your career has been checked, and because you have
been put on the shelf; you, of all people. Now you will learn how many
quite as able as yourself, and abler, have been put on the shelf too,
and have to stay there. You are only a pupil in suffering. What about
the professors? If your wonderful wisdom has left you with any sense at
all, look about you and learn."

So she was looking, and thinking, and learning. And as the days went by,
perhaps a softer light came into her eyes.

All her life long, her standard of judging people had been an
intellectual standard, or an artistic standard: what people had done
with outward and visible signs; how far they had contributed to thought;
how far they had influenced any great movement, or originated it; how
much of a benefit they had been to their century or their country; how
much social or political activity, how much educational energy they had
devoted to the pressing need of the times.

She was undoubtedly a clever, cultured young woman; the great work of
her life had been self-culture. To know and understand, she had spared
neither herself nor any one else. To know, and to use her acquired
knowledge intellectually as teacher and, perhaps, too, as writer, had
been the great aim of her life. Everything that furthered this aim won
her instant attention. It never struck her that she was selfish. One
does not think of that until the great check comes. One goes on, and
would go on. But a barrier rises up. Then, finding one can advance no
further, one turns round; and what does one see?

Bernardine saw that she had come a long journey. She saw what the
Traveller saw. That was all she saw at first. Then she remembered that
she had done the journey entirely for her own sake. Perhaps it might
not have looked so dreary if it had been undertaken for some one else.

She had claimed nothing of any one; she had given nothing to any one.
She had simply taken her life in her own hands and made what she could
of it. What had she made of it?

Many women asked for riches, for position, for influence and authority
and admiration. She had only asked to be able to work. It seemed little
enough to ask. That she asked so little placed her, so she thought,
apart from the common herd of eager askers. To be cut off from active
life and earnest work was a possibility which never occurred to her.

It never crossed her mind that in asking for the one thing for which
she longed, she was really asking for the greatest thing. Now, in the
hour of her enfeeblement, and in the hour of the bitterness of her
heart, she still prided herself upon wanting so little.

"It seems so little to ask," she cried to herself time after time.
"I only want to be able to do a few strokes of work. I would be content
now to do so little, if only I might do some. The laziest day-labourer
on the road would laugh at the small amount of work which would content
me now."

She told the Disagreeable Man that one day.

"So you think you are moderate in your demands," he said to her. "You
are a most amusing young woman. You are so perfectly unconscious how
exacting you really are. For, after all, what is it you want? You want
to have that wonderful brain of yours restored, so that you may begin
to teach, and, perhaps, write a book. Well, to repeat my former words:
you are still at phase one, and you are longing to be strong enough to
fulfil your ambitions and write a book. When you arrive at I phase four,
you will be quite content to dust one of your uncle's books instead:
far more useful work and far more worthy of encouragement. If every one
who wrote books now would be satisfied to dust books already written,
what a regenerated world it would become!"

She laughed good-temperedly. His remarks did not vex her; or, at least,
she showed no vexation. He seemed to have constituted himself as her
critic, and she made no objections. She had given him little bits of
stray confidence about herself, and she received everything he had to
say with that kind of forbearance which chivalry bids us show to the
weak and ailing. She made allowances for him; but she did more than that
for him: she did not let him see that she made allowances. Moreover,
she recognized amidst all his roughness a certain kind of sympathy which
she could not resent, because it was not aggressive. For to some natures
the expression of sympathy is an irritation; to be sympathized with
means to be pitied, and to be pitied means to be looked down upon. She
was sorry for him, but she would not have told him so for worlds; he
would have shrunk from pity as much as she did. And yet the sympathy
which she thought she did not want for herself, she was silently giving
to those around her, like herself, thwarted, each in a different way
perhaps, still thwarted all the same.

She found more than once that she was learning to measure people by a
standard different from her former one; not by what they had _done_ or
_been_, but by what they had _suffered_. But such a change as this does
not come suddenly, though, in a place like Petershof, it comes quickly,
almost unconsciously.

She became immensely interested in some of the guests; and there were
curious types in the Kurhaus. The foreigners attracted her chiefly; a
little Parisian danseuse, none too quiet in her manner, won Bernardine's
fancy.

"I so want to get better, _chérie_," she said to Bernardine. "Life is so
bright. Death: ah, how the very thought makes one shiver! That horrid
doctor says I must not skate; it is not wise. When was I wise? Wise
people don't enjoy themselves. And I have enjoyed myself, and will
still."

"How can you go about with that little danseuse?" the Disagreeable Man
said to Bernardine one day. "Do you know who she is?"

"Yes," said Bernardine; "she is the lady who thinks you must be a very
ill-bred person because you stalk into meals, with your hands in your
pockets. She wondered how I could bring myself to speak to you."

"I dare say many people wonder at that," said Robert Allitsen rather
peevishly.

"Oh no," replied Bernardine; "they wonder that you talk to me. They
think I must either be very clever or else very disagreeable."

"I should not call you clever," said Robert Allitsen grimly.

"No," answered Bernardine pensively. "But I always did think myself
clever until I came here. Now I am beginning to know better. But it
is rather a shock, isn't it?"

"I have never experienced the shock," he said.

"Then you still think you are clever?" she asked.

"There is only one man my intellectual equal in Petershof, and he is
not here any more," he said gravely. "Now I come to remember, he died.
That is the worst of making friendships here; people die."

"Still, it is something to be left king of the intellectual world,"
said Bernardine. "I never thought of you in that light."

There was a sly smile about, her lips as she spoke, and there was the
ghost of a smile on the Disagreeable Man's face.

"Why do you talk with that horrid Swede?" he said suddenly. "He is a
wretched low foreigner. Have you heard some of his views?"

"Some of them," answered Bernardine cheerfully. "One of his views is
really amusing: that it is very rude of you to read the newspaper during
meal-time; and he asks if it is an English custom. I tell him it depends
entirely on the Englishman, and the Englishman's neighbour!"

So she too had her raps at him, but always in the kindest way.

He had a curious effect on her. His very bitterness seemed to check in
its growth her own bitterness. The cup of poison of which he himself had
drunk deep, he passed on to her. She drank of it, and it did not poison
her. She was morbid, and she needed cheerful companionship. His dismal
companionship and his hard way of looking at life ought by rights to
have oppressed her. Instead of which she became less sorrowful.

Was the Disagreeable Man, perhaps, a reader of character? Did he know
how to help her in his own grim gruff way? He himself had suffered so
much; perhaps he did know.


CHAPTER VIII.

THE STORY MOVES ON AT LAST.


BERNARDINE was playing chess one day with the Swedish Professor. On the
Kurhaus terrace the guests were sunning themselves, warmly wrapped up to
protect themselves from the cold, and well-provided with parasols to
protect themselves from the glare. Some were reading, some were playing
cards or Russian dominoes, and others were doing nothing. There was a
good deal of fun, and a great deal of screaming amongst the Portuguese
colony. The little danseuse and three gentlemen acquaintances were
drinking coffee, and not behaving too quietly. Pretty Fraulein Muller was
leaning over her balcony carrying on a conversation with a picturesque
Spanish youth below. Most of the English party had gone sledging and
tobogganing. Mrs. Reffold had asked Bernardine to join them, but she had
refused. Mrs. Reffold's friends were anything but attractive to
Bernardine, although she liked Mrs. Reffold herself immensely. There was
no special reason why she should like her; she certainly had no cause to
admire her every-day behaviour, nor her neglect of her invalid husband,
who was passing away, uncared for in the present, and not likely to be
mourned for in the future. Mrs. Reffold was gay, careless, and beautiful.
She understood nothing about nursing, and cared less. So a trained nurse
looked after Mr. Reffold, and Mrs. Reffold went sledging.

"Dear Wilfrid is so unselfish," she said. "He will not have me stay at
home. But I feel very selfish." That was her stock remark. Most people
answered her by saying: "Oh no, Mrs. Reffold, don't say that." But when
she made the remark to Bernardine, and expected the usual reply,
Bernardine said instead: "Mr. Reffold seems lonely."

"Oh, he has a trained nurse, and she can read to him," said Mrs. Reffold
hurriedly. She seemed ruffled.

"I had a trained nurse once," replied Bernardine; "and she could read;
but she would not. She said it hurt her throat."

"Dear me, how very unfortunate for you," said Mrs. Reffold. "Ah, there
is Captain Graham calling. I must not keep the sledges waiting."

That was a few days ago, but to-day, when Bernardine was playing chess
with the Swedish Professor, Mrs. Reffold came to her. There was a
curious mixture of shyness and abandon in Mrs. Reffold's manner.

"Miss Holme," she said, "I have thought of such a splendid idea. Will
you go and see Mr. Reffold this afternoon? That would be a nice little
change for him."

Bernardine smiled.

"If you wish it," she answered.

Mrs. Reffold nodded and hastened away, and Bernardine continued her
game, and, having finished it, rose to go.

The Reffolds were rich, and lived in a suite of apartments in the more
luxurious part of the Kurhaus.

Bernardine knocked at the door, and the nurse came to open it.

"Mrs. Reffold asks me to visit Mr. Reffold," Bernardine said; and the
nurse showed her into the pleasant sitting-room.

Mr. Reffold was lying on the sofa. He looked up as Bernardine came in,
and a smile of pleasure spread over his wan face.

"I don't know whether I intrude," said Bernardine; "but Mrs. Reffold
said I might come to see you."

Mr. Reffold signed to the nurse to withdraw.

She had never before spoken to him. She had often seen him lying by
himself in the sunshine.

"Are you paid for coming to me he?" asked eagerly.

The words seemed rude enough, but there was no rudeness in the manner.

"No, I am not paid," she said gently; and then she took a chair and sat
near him.

"Ah, that's well!" he said, with a sigh of relief "I'm so tired of paid
service. To know that things are done for me because a certain amount of
francs are given so that those things may be done--well, one gets weary
of it; that's all!"

There was bitterness in every word he spoke. "I lie here," he said,
"and the loneliness of it--the loneliness of it!"

"Shall I read to you?" she asked kindly. She did not know what to say
to him.

"I want to talk first," he replied. "I want to talk first to some one
who is not paid for talking to me. I have often watched you, and
wondered who you were. Why do you look so sad? No one is waiting for
you to die?"

"Don't talk like that!" she said; and she bent over him and arranged
the cushions for him more comfortably. He looked just like a great lank
tired child.

"Are you one of my wife's friends?" he asked.

"I don't suppose I am," she answered gently; "but I like her, all the
same. Indeed, I like her very much. And I think her beautiful!"

"Ah, she is beautiful!" he said eagerly. "Doesn't she look splendid in
her furs? By Jove, you are right! She is a beautiful woman. I am proud
of her!"

Then the smile faded from his face.

"Beautiful," he said half to himself, "but hard."

"Come now," said Bernardine; "you are surrounded with books and
newspapers. What shall I read to you?"

"No one reads what I want," he answered peevishly. "My tastes are not
their tastes. I don't suppose you would care to read what I want to
hear!"

"Well," she said cheerily, "try me. Make your choice."

"Very well, the _Sporting and Dramatic_," he said. "Read every word of
that. And about that theatrical divorce case. And every word of that
too. Don't you skip, and cheat me."

She laughed and settled herself down to amuse him. And he listened
contentedly.

"That is something like literature," he said once or twice. "I can
understand papers of that sort going like wild-fire."

When he was tired of being read to, she talked to him in a manner that
would have astonished the Disagreeable Man: not of books, nor learning,
but of people she had met and of Places she had seen; and there was fun
in everything she said. She knew London well, and she could tell him
about the Jewish and the Chinese quarters, and about her adventures in
company with a man who took her here, there, and everywhere.

She made him some tea, and she cheered the poor fellow as he had not
been cheered for months.

"You're just a little brick," he said, when she was leaving. Then once
more he added eagerly:

"And you're not to be paid, are you?"

"Not a single _sou_!" she laughed. "What a strange idea of yours!"

"You are not offended?" he said anxiously. "But you can't think what a
difference it makes to me. You are not offended?"

"Not in the least!" she answered. "I know quite well how you mean it.
You want a little kindness with nothing at the back of it. Now,
good-bye!"

He called her when she was outside the door.

"I say, will you come again soon?"

"Yes, I will come to-morrow."

"Do you know you've been a little brick. I hope I haven't tired you.
You are only a bit of a thing yourself. But, by Jove, you know how to
put a fellow in a good temper!"

When Mrs. Reffold went down to _table-d'hôte_ that night, she met
Bernardine on the stairs, and stopped to speak with her.

"We've had a splendid afternoon," she said; "and we've arranged to go
again to-morrow at the same time. Such a pity you don't come! Oh, by
the way, thank you for going to see my husband. I hope he did not tire
you. He is a little querulous, I think. He so enjoyed your visit. Poor
fellow! it is sad to see him so ill, isn't it?"


CHAPTER IX.

BERNARDINE PREACHES.


AFTER this, scarcely a day passed but Bernardine went to see Mr. Reffold.
The most inexperienced eye could have known that he was becoming rapidly
worse. Marie, the chambermaid, knew it, and spoke of it frequently to
Bernardine.

"The poor lonely fellow!" she said, time after time.

Every one, except Mrs. Reffold, seemed to recognize that Mr. Reffold's
days were numbered. Either she did not or would not understand. She made
no alteration in the disposal of her time: sledging parties and skating
picnics were the order of the day; she was thoroughly pleased with
herself, and received the attentions of her admirers as a matter of
course. The Petershof climate had got into her head; and it is a
well-known fact that this glorious air has the effect on some people of
banishing from their minds all inconvenient notions of duty and devotion,
and all memory of the special object of their sojourn in Petershof. The
coolness and calmness with which such people ignore their
responsibilities, or allow strangers to assume them, would be an
occasion for humour, if it were not an opportunity for indignation:
though indeed it would take a very exceptionally sober-minded spectator
not to get some fun out of the blissful self-satisfaction and
unconsciousness which characterize the most negligent of 'caretakers.'

Mrs. Reffold was not the only sinner in this respect. It would have been
interesting to get together a tea-party of invalids alone, and set the
ball rolling about the respective behaviours of their respective friends.
Not a pleasing chronicle: no very choice pages to add to the book of real
life; still, valuable items in their way, representative of the actual as
opposed to the ideal. In most instances there would have been ample
testimony to that cruel monster, known as Neglect.

Bernardine spoke once to the Disagreeable Man on this subject. She spoke
with indignation, and he answered with indifference, shrugging his
shoulders.

"These things occur," he said "It is not that they are worse here than
everywhere else; it is simply that they are together in an accumulated
mass, and, as such, strike us with tremendous force. I myself am
accustomed to these exhibitions of selfishness and neglect. I should be
astonished if they did not take place. Don't mix yourself up with
anything. If people are neglected, they _are_ neglected, and there is
the end of it. To imagine that you or I are going to do any good by
filling up the breach, is simply an insanity leading to unnecessarily
disagreeable consequences. I know you go to see Mr. Reffold. Take my
advice, and keep away."

"You speak like a Calvinist," she answered, rather ruffled, "with the
quintessence of self-protectiveness; and I don't believe you mean a
word you say."

"My dear young woman," he said, "we are not living in a poetry book
bound with gilt edges. We are living in a paper-backed volume of prose.
Be sensible. Don't ruffle yourself on account of other people. Don't
even trouble to criticize them; it is only a nuisance to yourself. All
this simply points back to my first suggestion: fill up your time with
some hobby, cheese-mites or the influenza bacillus, and then you will
be quite content to let people be neglected, lonely, and to die. You
will look upon it as an ordinary and natural process."

She waved her hand as though to stop him.

"There are days," she said, "when I can't bear to talk with you. And
this is one of them."

"I am sorry," he answered, quite gently for him. And he moved away from
her, and started for his usual lonely walk.

Bernardine turned home, intending to go to see Mr. Reffold. He had become
quite attached to her, and looked forward eagerly to her visits. He said
her voice was gentle and her manner quiet; there was no bustling vitality
about het to irritate his worn nerves. He was probably an empty-headed,
stupid fellow; but it was none the less sad to see him passing away.

He called her 'Little Brick.' He said that no other epithet suited her
so exactly. He was quite satisfied now that she was not paid for coming
to see him. As for the reading, no one could read the _Sporting and
Dramatic News_ and the _Era_ so well as Little Brick. Sometimes he
spoke with her about his wife, but only in general terms of bitterness,
and not always complainingly. She listened and said nothing.

"I'm a chap that wants very little," he said once. "Those who want
little, get nothing."

That was all he said, but Bernardine knew to whom he referred.

To-day, as Bernardine was on her way back to the Kurhaus, she was
thinking constantly of Mrs. Reffold, and wondering whether she ought to
be made to realize that her husband was becoming rapidly worse. Whilst
engrossed with this thought, a long train of sledges and toboggans
passed her. The sound of the bells and the noisy merriment made her look
up, and she saw beautiful Mrs. Reffold amongst the pleasure-seekers.

"If only I dared tell her now," said Bernardine to herself, "loudly and
before them all!"

Then a more sensible mood came over her. "After all, it is not my
affair," she said.

And the sledges passed away out of hearing.

When Bernardine sat with Mr. Reffold that afternoon she did not mention
that she had seen his wife. He coughed a great deal, and seemed to be
worse than usual, and complained of fever. But he liked to have her,
and would not hear of her going.

"Stay," he said. "It is not much of a pleasure to you, but it is a great
pleasure to me."

There was an anxious look on his face, such a look as people wear when
they wish to ask some question of great moment, but dare not begin.