It was the Dutchman's room.

Help arrived. The door was forced open, and Vandervelt was found dead.
The case from which he had taken the pistol was lying on the sofa. When
Marie saw that, she knew that she had been an unconscious accomplice.
Her tender heart overflowed with grief.

Whilst others were lifting him up, she leaned her head against the wall,
and sobbed.

"It was my fault, it was my fault!" she cried. "I gave him the case.
But how was I to know?"

They took her away, and tried to comfort her, but it was all in vain.

"And he gave me five francs," she sobbed. "I shudder to think of them."

It was all in vain that Wärli gave her a letter for which she had been
longing for many days.

"It is from your _Mutterli_," he said, as he put it into her hands. "I
give it willingly. I don't like the look of one or two of the letters
I have to give you, Mariechen. That Hans writes to you. Confound him!"

But nothing could cheer her.  Wärli went away shaking his curly head
sadly, shocked at the death of the Dutchman, and shocked at Marie's
sorrow. And the cheery little postman did not do much whistling that
evening.

Bernardine heard of Marie's trouble, and rang for her to come. Marie
answered the bell, looking the picture of misery. Her kind face was
tear-stained, and her only voice was a sob.

Bernardine drew the girl to her.

"Poor old Marie," she whispered. "Come and cry your kind heart out, and
then you will feel better. Sit by me here, and don't try to speak. And
I will make you some tea in true English fashion, and you must take it
hot, and it will do you good."

The simple sisterly kindness and silent sympathy soothed Marie after a
time. The sobs ceased, and the tears also. And Marie put her hand in her
pocket and gave Bernardine the five francs.

"Fräulein Holme, I hate them." she said. "I could never keep them. How
could I send them now to my old mother? They would bring her ill luck--
indeed they would."

The matter was solved by Bernardine in a masterly fashion. She suggested
that Marie should buy flowers with the money, and put them on the
Dutchman's coffin. This idea comforted Marie beyond Bernardine's most
sanguine expectations.

"A beautiful tin wreath," she said several times. "I know the exact kind.
When my father died, we put one on his grave."

That same evening, during _table-d'hôte_, Bernardine told the Disagreeable
Man the history of the afternoon. He had been developing photographs,
and had heard nothing. He seemed very little interested in her relation
of the suicide, and merely remarked:

"Well, there's one person less in the world."

"I think you make these remarks from habit," Bernardine said quietly,
and she went on with her dinner, attempting no further conversation with
him. She herself had been much moved by the sad occurrence; every one
in the Kurhaus was more or less upset; and there was a thoughtful,
anxious expression on more than one ordinarily thoughtless face. The
little French danseuse was quiet: the Portuguese ladies were decidedly
tearful, the vulgar German Baroness was quite depressed: the comedian at
the Belgian table ate his dinner in silence. In fact, there was a weight
pressing down on all. Was it really possible, thought Bernardine, that
Robert Allitsen was the only one there unconcerned and unmoved? She had
seen him in a different light amongst his friends, the country folk,
but it was just a glimpse which had not lasted long. The young-
heartedness, the geniality, the sympathy which had so astonished her
during their day's outing, astonished her still more by their total
disappearance. The gruffness had returned: or had it never been absent?
The lovelessness and leadenness of his temperament had once more
asserted themselves: or was it that they had never for one single day
been in the background?

These thoughts passed through her mind as he sat next to her reading his
paper--that paper which he never passed on to any one. She hardened her
heart against him; there was no need for ill-health and disappointment
to have brought any one to a miserable state of indifference like that.
Then she looked at his wan face and frail form, and her heart softened
at once. At the moment when her heart softened to him, he astonished her
by handing her his paper.

"Here is something to interest you," he said, "an article on Realism in
Fiction, or some nonsense like that. You needn't read it now. I don't
want the paper again.''

"I thought you never lent anything," she said, as she glanced at the
article, "much less gave it."

"Giving and lending are not usually in my line," he replied. "I think I
told you once that I thought selfishness perfectly desirable and
legitimate, if one had made the one great sacrifice."

"Yes," she said eagerly, "I have often wondered what you considered the
one great sacrifice."

"Come out into the air," he answered, "and I will tell you."

She went to put on her cloak and, hat, and found him waiting for her at
the top of the staircase. They passed out into the beautiful night: the
sky was radiantly bejewelled, the air crisp and cold, and harmless to do
ill. In the distance, the jodelling of some peasants. In the hotels, the
fun and merriment, side by side with the suffering and hopelessness. In
the deaconess's house, the body of the Dutchman. In God's heavens, God's
stars.

Robert Allitsen and Bernardine walked silently for some time.

"Well," she said, "now tell me."

"The one great sacrifice," he said half to himself, "is the going on
living one's life for the sake of another, when everything that would
seem to make life acceptable has been wrenched away, not the pleasures,
but the duties, and the possibilities of expressing one's energies,
either in one direction or another: when, in fact, living is only a
long tedious dying. If one has made this sacrifice, everything else
may be forgiven."

He paused a moment, and then continued:

"I have made this sacrifice, therefore I consider I have done my part
without flinching. The greatest thing I had to give up, I gave up: my
death. More could not be required of any one!"

He paused again, and Bernardine was silent from mere awe.

"But freedom comes at last," he said, "and some day I shall be free.
When my mother dies, I shall be free. She is old. If I were to die, I
should break her heart, or, rather she would fancy that her heart was
broken. (And it comes to the same thing). And I should not like to give
her more grief than she has had. So I am just waiting, it may be months,
or weeks, or years. But I know how to wait: if I have not learnt
anything else, I have learnt how to wait. And then" . . .

Bernardine had unconsciously put her hand on his arm; her face was full
of suffering.

"And then?" she asked, with almost painful eagerness.

"And then I shall follow your Dutchman's example," he said deliberately.

Bernardine's hand fell from the Disagreeable Man's arm.

She shivered.

"You are cold, you little thing," he said, almost tenderly for him.
"You are shivering."

"Was I?" she said, with a short laugh. "I was wondering when you would
get your freedom, and whether you would use it in the fashion you now
intend!"

"Why should there be any doubt?" he asked.

"One always hopes there would be a doubt," she said, half in a whisper.

Then he looked up, and saw all the pain on the little face.


CHAPTER XII.

THE DISAGREEABLE MAN MAKES A LOAN.


THE Dutchman was buried in the little cemetery which faced the hospital.
Marie's tin wreath was placed on the grave. And there the matter ended.
The Kurhaus guests recovered from their depression: the German Baroness
returned to her buoyant vulgarity, the little danseuse to her busy
flirtations. The French Marchioness, celebrated in Parisian circles for
her domestic virtues, from which she was now taking a holiday, and a
very considerable holiday too, gathered her nerves together again and
took renewed pleasure in the society of the Russian gentleman. The
French Marchioness had already been requested to leave three other
hotels in Petershof; but it was not at all probable that the proprietors
of the Kurhaus would have presumed to measure Madame's morality or
immorality. The Kurhaus committee had a benign indulgence for humanity--
provided of course that humanity had a purse--an indulgence which some
of the English hotels would not have done badly to imitate. There was a
story afloat concerning the English quarter, that a tired little English
lady, of no importance to look at, probably not rich, and probably not
handsome, came to the most respectable hotel in Petershof, thinking to
find there the peace and quiet which her weariness required.

But no one knew who the little lady was, whence she had come, and why.
She kept entirely to herself, and was thankful for the luxury of
loneliness after some overwhelming sorrow.

One day she was requested to go. The proprietor of the hotel was
distressed, but he could not do otherwise than comply with the demands
of his guests.

"It is not known who you are, Mademoiselle," he said. "And you are not
approved of. You English are curious people. But what can I do? You
have a cheap room, and are a stranger to me. The others have expensive
apartments, and come year after year. You see my position, Mademoiselle?
I am sorry."

So the little tired lady had to go. That was how the story went. It was
not known what became of her, but it was known that the English people
in the Kurhaus tried to persuade her to come to them. But she had lost
heart, and left in distress.

This could not have happened in the Kurhaus, where all were received on
equal terms, those about whom nothing was known, and those about whom
too much was known. The strange mixture and the contrasts of character
afforded endless scope for observation and amusement, and Bernardine,
who was daily becoming more interested in her surroundings, felt that
she would have been sorry to have exchanged her present abode for the
English quarter. The amusing part of it was that the English people in
the Kurhaus were regarded by their compatriots in the English quarter
as sheep of the blackest dye! This was all the more ridiculous because
with two exceptions--firstly of Mrs. Reffold, who took nearly all her
pleasures with the American colony in the Grand Hotel; and secondly,
of a Scotch widow who had returned to Petershof to weep over her
husband's grave, but put away her grief together with her widow's
weeds, and consoled herself with a Spanish gentleman--with these two
exceptions, the little English community in the Kurhaus was most humdrum
and harmless, being occupied, as in the case of the Disagreeable Man,
with cameras and cheese-mites, or in other cases with the still more
engrossing pastime of taking care of one's ill-health, whether real or
fancied: but yet, an innocent hobby in itself and giving one absolutely
no leisure to do anything worse: a great recommendation for any pastime.

This was not Bernardine's occupation: it was difficult to say what she
did with herself, for she had not yet followed Robert Allitsen's advice
and taken up some definite work: and the very fact that she had no such
wish, pointed probably to a state of health which forbade it. She,
naturally so keen and hard-working, was content to take what the hour
brought, and the hour brought various things: chess with the Swedish
professor, or Russian dominoes with the shrivelled-up little Polish
governess who always tried to cheat, and who clutched her tiny winnings
with precisely the same greediness shown by the Monte Carlo female
gamblers. Or the hour brought a stroll with the French danseuse and her
poodle, and a conversation about the mere trivialities of life, which a
year or two, or even a few months ago, Bernardine would have condemned
as beneath contempt, but, which were now taking their rightful place in
her new standard of importances. For some natures learn with greater
difficulty and after greater delay than others, that the real
importances of our existence are the nothingnesses of every-day life,
the nothingnesses which the philosopher in his study, reasoning about
and analysing human character, is apt to overlook; but which,
nevertheless, make him and every one else more of a human reality and
less of an abstraction. And Bernardine, hitherto occupied with so-called
intellectual pursuits, with problems of the study, of no value to the
great world outside the study, or with social problems of the great
world, great movements, and great questions, was now just beginning to
appreciate the value of the little incidents of that same great world.
Or the hour brought its own thoughts, and Bernardine found herself
constantly thinking of the Disagreeable Man: always in sorrow and always
with sympathy, and sometimes with tenderness.

When he told her about the one sacrifice, she could have wished to wrap
him round with love and tenderness. If he could only have known it, he
had never been so near love as then. She had suffered so much herself,
and, with increasing weaknesses, had so wished to put off the burden of
the flesh, that her whole heart went out to him.

Would he get his freedom, she wondered, and would he use it? Sometimes
when she was with him, she would look up to see whether she could read
the answer in his face; but she never saw any variation of expression
there, nothing to give her even a suggestion. But this she noticed: that
there was a marked variation in his manner, and that when he had been
rough in bearing, or bitter in speech, he made silent amends at the
earliest opportunity by being less rough and less bitter. She felt this
was no small concession on the part of the Disagreeable Man.

He was particularly disagreeable on the day when the Dutchman was buried,
and so the following day when Bernardine met him in the little English
library, she was not surprised to find him almost kindly.

He had chosen the book which she wanted, but he gave it up to her at once
without any grumbling, though Bernardine expected him to change his mind
before they left the library.

"Well," he said, as they walked along together, "and have you recovered
from the death of the Dutchman?"

"Have you recovered, rather let me ask?" she said. "You were in a horrid
mood last night."

"I was feeling wretchedly ill," he said quietly.

That was the first time he had ever alluded to his own health.

"Not that there is any need to make an excuse," he continued, "for I do
not recognise that there is any necessity to consult one's surroundings,
and alter the inclination of one's mind accordingly. Still, as a matter
of fact, I felt very ill!"

"And to-day?" she asked.

"To-day I am myself again," he answered quickly: "that usual normal self
of mine, whatever that may mean. I slept well, and I dreamed of you.
I can't say that I had been thinking of you, because I had not. But I
dreamed that we were children together, and playmates. Now that was very
odd: because I was a lonely child, and never had any playmates."

"And I was lonely too," said Bernardine.

"Every one is lonely," he said, "but every one does not know it."

"But now and again the knowledge comes like a revelation," she said,
"and we realise that we stand practically alone, out of any one's reach
for help or comfort. When you come to think of it, too, how little able
we are to explain ourselves. When you have wanted to say something which
was burning within you, have you not noticed on the face of the listener
that unmistakable look of non-comprehension, which throws you back on
yourself? That is one of the moments when the soul knows its own
loneliness!"

Robert Allitsen looked up at her.

"You little thing," he said, "you put things neatly sometimes. You have
felt, haven't you?"

"I suppose so," she said. "But that is true of most people."

"I beg your pardon," he answered, "most people neither think nor feel:
unless they think they have an ache, and then they feel it!"

"I believe," said Bernardine, "that there is more thinking and feeling
than one generally supposes."

"Well, I can't be bothered with that now," he said. "And you interrupted
me about my dream. That is an annoying habit you have."

"Go on," she said. "I apologize!"

"I dreamed we were children together, and playmates," he continued. "We
were not at all happy together, but still we were playmates. There was
nothing we did not quarrel about. You were disagreeable, and I was
spiteful. Our greatest dispute was over a Christmas-tree. And that was
odd, too, for I have never seen a Christmas-tree."

"Well?" she said, for he had paused. "What a long time you take to tell
story."

"You were not called Bernardine," he said. "You were called by some
ordinary sensible name. I don't remember what. But you were very
disagreeable. That I remember well. At last you disappeared, and I went
about looking for you 'If I can find something to cause a quarrel,'
I said to myself, 'she will come back.' So I went and smashed your
doll's head. But you did not come back. Then I set on fire your doll's
house. But even that did not bring you back. Nothing brought you back.
That was my dream. I hope you are not offended. Not that it makes any
difference if you are."

Bernardine laughed.

"I am sorry that I should have been such an unpleasant playmate," she
said. "It was a good thing I did disappear."

"Perhaps it was," he said. "There would have been a terrible scene about
that doll's head. An odd thing for me to dream about Christmas-trees and
dolls and playmates: especially when I went to sleep thinking about my
new camera."

"You have a new camera?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered, "and a beauty, too. Would you like to see it?"

She expressed a wish to see it, and when they reached the Kurhaus, she
went with him up to his beautiful room, where he spent his time in the
company of his microscope and his chemical bottles and his photographic
possessions.

"If you sit down and look at those photographs, I will make you some
tea," he said. "There is the camera, but please not to touch it until I
am ready to show it myself."

She watched him preparing the tea; he did everything so daintily, this
Disagreeable Man. He put a handkerchief on the table, to serve for an
afternoon tea-cloth, and a tiny vase of violets formed the centre-piece.
He had no cups, but he polished up two tumblers, and no housemaid could
have been more particular, about their glossiness. Then he boiled the
water and made the tea. Once she offered to help him; but he shook his
head.

"Kindly not to interfere." he said grimly. "No one can make tea better
than I can."

After tea, they began the inspection of the new camera, and Robert
Allitsen showed her all the newest improvements. He did not seem to
think much of her intelligence, for he explained everything as though
he were talking to a child, until Bernardine rather lost patience.

"You need not enter into such elaborate explanations," she suggested.
"I have a small amount of intelligence, though you do not seem to
detect it."

He looked at her as one might look at an impatient child.

"Kindly not to interrupt me," he replied mildly. "How very impatient you
are! And how restless! What must you have been like before you fell ill?"

But he took the hint all the same, and shortened his explanations, and
as Bernardine was genuinely interested, he was well satisfied. From time
to time he looked at his old camera and at his companion, and from the
expression of unease on his face, it was evident that some contest was
going on in his mind. Twice he stood near his old camera, and turned
round to Bernardine intending to make some remark. Then he chanced his
mind, and walked abruptly to the other end of the room as though to seek
advice from his chemical bottles. Bernardine meanwhile had risen from
her chair, and was looking out of the window.

"You have a lovely view," she said. "It must be nice to look at that
when you are tired of dissecting cheese-mites. All the same, I think
the white scenery gives one a great sense of sadness and loneliness."

"Why do you speak always of loneliness?" he asked.

"I have been thinking a good deal about it," she said. "When I was
strong and vigorous, the idea of loneliness never entered my mind. Now I
see how lonely most people are. If I believed in God as a Personal God,
I should be inclined to think that loneliness were part of his scheme:
so that the soul of man might turn to him and him alone."

The Disagreeable Man was standing by his camera again: his decision was
made.

"Don't think about those questions," he said kindly. "Don't worry and
fret too much about the philosophy of life. Leave philosophy alone, and
take to photography instead. Here, I will lend you my old camera."

"Do you mean that?" she asked, glancing at him in astonishment.

"Of course I mean it," he said.

He looked remarkably pleased with himself, and Bernardine could not
help smiling.

He looked just as a child looks when he has given up a toy to another
child, and is conscious that he has behaved himself rather well.

"I am very much obliged to you," she said frankly. "I have had a great
wish to learn photography."

"I might have lent my camera to you before, mightn't I?" he said
thoughtfully.

"No," she answered. "There was not any reason."

"No," he said, with a kind of relief, "there was not any reason. That
is quite true!"

"When will you give me my first lesson?" she asked. "Perhaps, though,
you would like to wait a few days, in case you change your mind."

"It takes me some time to make up my mind," he replied, "but I do not
change it. So I will give you your first lesson to-morrow. Only you
must not be impatient. You must consent to be taught; you cannot
possibly know everything!"

They fixed a time for the morrow, and Bernardine went off with the
camera; and meeting Marie on the staircase, confided to her the piece
of good fortune which had befallen her.

"See what Herr Allitsen has lent me, Marie!" she said.

Marie raised her hands in astonishment.

"Who would have thought such a thing of Herr Allitsen?" said Marie.
"Why, he does not like lending me a match."

Bernardine laughed and passed on to her room.

And the Disagreeable Man meanwhile was cutting a new scientific book
which had just come from England. He spent a good deal of money on
himself. He was soon absorbed in this book, and much interested in the
diagrams.

Suddenly he looked up to the corner where the old camera had stood,
before Bernardine took it away in triumph.

"I hope she won't hurt that camera," he said a little uneasily.
"I am half sorry that" . . .

Then a kinder mood took possession of him.

"Well, at least it will keep her from fussing and fretting and thinking.
Still, I hope she won't hurt it."


CHAPTER XIII.

A DOMESTIC SCENE.


ONE afternoon when Mrs. Reffold came to say good-bye to her husband
before going out for the usual sledge-drive, he surprised her by his
unwonted manner.

"Take your cloak off," he said sharply. "You cannot go for your drive
this afternoon. You don't often give up your time to me; you must do so
to-day."

She was so astonished, that she at once laid aside her cloak and hat,
and touched the bell.

"Why are you ringing?" Mr. Reffold asked testily.

"To send a message of excuse," she answered, with provoking cheerfulness.

She scribbled something on a card, and gave it to the servant who
answered the bell.

"Now," she said, with great sweetness of manner. And she sat down beside
him, drew out her fancy-work, and worked away contentedly. She would
have made a charming study of a devoted wife soothing a much-loved
husband in his hours of sickness and weariness.

"Do you mind giving up your drive?" he asked.

"Not in the least," she replied. "I am rather tired of sledging."

"You soon get tired of things, Winifred," he said.

"Yes, I do," was the answer. "I am so easily bored. I am quite tired of
this place."

"You will have to stay here a little longer," he said, "and then you
will be free to go where you choose. I wish I could die quicker for you,
Winifred."

Mrs. Reffold looked up from her embroidery.

"You will get better soon," she said. "You are better."

"Yes, you've helped a good deal to make me better," he said bitterly.
"You have been a most unselfish person haven't you? You have given me
every care and attention, haven't you?"

"You seem to me in a very strange mood to-day," she said, looking
puzzled. "I don't understand you."

Mr. Reffold laughed.

"Poor Winifred," he said. "If it is ever your lot to fall ill and be
neglected, perhaps then you will think of me."

"Neglected?" she said, in some surprise. "What do you mean? I thought
you had everything you wanted. The nurse brought excellent testimonials.
I was careful in the choice of her. You have never complained before."

He turned wearily on his side, and made no answer. And for some time
there was silence between them.

Then he watched her as she bent over her embroidery.

"You are very beautiful, Winifred," he said quietly, "but you are a
selfish woman. Has it ever struck you that you are selfish?"

Mrs. Reffold gave no reply, but she made a resolution to write to her
particular friend at Cannes and confide to her how very trying her
husband had become.

"I suppose it is part of his illness," she thought meekly. "But it is
hard to have to bear it."

And Mrs. Reffold pitied herself profoundly. She stitched sincere pity
for herself into that piece of embroidery.

"I remember you telling me," continued Mr. Reffold, "that sick people
repelled you. That was when I was strong and vigorous. But since I have
been ill, I have often recalled your words. Poor Winifred! You did not
think then that you would have an invalid husband on your hands. Well,
you were not intended for sick-room nursing, and you have not tried to
be what you were not intended for. Perhaps you were right, after all."

"I don't know why you should be so unkind to-day," Mrs. Reffold said,
with pathetic patience. "I can't understand you. You have never spoken
like this before."

"No," he said; "but I have thought like this before. All the hours you
have left me lonely, I have been thinking like this, with my heart full
of bitterness against you, until that little girl, that Little Brick
came along."

After that, it was some time before he spoke. He was thinking of his
Little Brick, and of all the pleasant hours he had spent with her, and
of the kind, wise words she had spoken to him, an ignorant fellow. She
was something like a companion.

So he went on thinking, and Mrs. Reffold went on embroidering. She was
now feeling herself to be almost a heroine. It is a very easy matter to
make oneself into a heroine or a martyr. Selfish, neglectful? What did
he mean? Oh, it was just part of his illness. She must go on bearing her
burden as she had borne it these many months. Her rightful position was
in a London ball-room. Instead of which, she had to be shut up in an
Alpine village: a hard lot. It was little enough pleasure she could get,
and apparently her husband grudged her that. His manner to her this
afternoon was not such as to encourage her to stay in from her drive on
another occasion. To-morrow she would go sledging.

That flash of light which reveals ourselves to ourselves had not yet
come to Mrs. Reffold.

She looked at her husband, and thought from his restfulness that he had
gone to sleep, and she was just beginning to write to that particular
friend at Cannes, to tell her what a trial she was undergoing, when
Mr. Reffold called her to his side.

"Winifred," he said gently, and there was tenderness in his voice, and
love written on his face, "Winifred, I am sorry if I have been sharp to
you. Little Brick says we mustn't come down like sledge-hammers on each
other; and that is what I have been doing this afternoon. Perhaps I have
been hard: I am such an illness to myself, that I must be an illness to
others too. And you weren't meant for this sort of thing--were you? You
are a bright beautiful creature, and I am an unfortunate dog not to have
been able to make you happier. I know I am irritable. I can't help
myself, indeed I can't."

This great long fellow was so yearning for love and sympathy.

What would it not have been to him if she had gathered him into her
arms, and soothed all his irritability and suffering with her love?

But she pressed his hand, and kissed him lightly on the cheek, and told
him that he had been a little sharp, but that she quite understood, and
that she was not hurt. Her charm of manner gave him some satisfaction;
and when Bernardine came in a few minutes later, she found Mr. Reffold
looking happier and more contented than she had ever seen him.
Mrs. Reffold, who was relieved at the interruption, received Bernardine
warmly, though there was a certain amount of shyness which she had never
been able to conquer in Bernardine's presence. There was something in
the younger woman which quelled Mrs. Reffold: it may have been some
mental quality, or it may have been her boots!

"Little Brick," said Mr. Reffold, "isn't it nice to have Winifred here?
And I have been so disagreeable and snappish."

"Oh, we won't say anything about that now," said Mrs. Reffold, smiling
sweetly.

"But I've said I am sorry," he continued. "And one can't do more."