Lessor

“ When morning school was over the doctor took Leslie into his study, and seating himself, laid one hand upon his shoulder, and in a kind but grave voice said, "Ross, I am sorry, more so than I can express, that you should have been guilty of so thoughtless an action as that of last night; what do you think your father will say? If you do not overcome this weakness of yours it will lead you into many more troubles. ”

“ I remember the Scriptures, and I feel that the prophets torment those living on the earth, and I even have a sign of it myself. And he complained to me that a few days before he had bathed in the river, and after that his body came out all piebald, and he laid bare his breast to show me, and I saw that he was all spotted like a pied horse from his breast upward to his neck. Then I nearly told him what was in my mind, ‘God stamps a rogue,’ as the saying is. ”

“ She half rose to her feet and staggered toward them as Lessman dragged his shrieking victim toward the door which led to the other room. He turned toward her, his fiery eyes snapping with uncontrolled anger.
For the moment I was forgotten.... Something snapped. I found myself again within my own body, the lust for battle raging within me.... Lessman, surrounded by his enemies, turned like a stag at bay.... I felt the currents of his powerful [69] mind surge around me again like great waves beating against a rock-bound coast. ”

“ Lessman allowed me the freedom, to a certain extent, of the house. With Avis by my side, I wandered up and down the long, dusty corridors, exploring, searching. I told myself that I was looking for evidence—that sooner or later I would make my escape and bring The Bodymaster to justice. And I found none—nothing but the poor wretches locked in their cells, mad—all of them. And who would believe a maniac? No, there was absolutely nothing that could be used against the monster. It would be my word and that of Avis against that of Lessman and Meta. ”

“ My love for Lessie! I look at that sentence written down on this white paper with my own hand, and something goes radiating through every cranny of me. I am in love—in love with an untamed Dryad of the oak glade, the deep, clear pool, the sun-dappled spaces of the whispering wood. Why do I love her? I ask myself. Why fares the bee to the flower, the bird to his nest, the squirrel to his tree? I love her; let that suffice. Alone here in my lodge on the lap of Old Baldy, beside my table, I write these words in a mood which never before possessed me. ”

“ But have no fear; bear a bold heart. None shall see you while I stalk at your side. I will cover you with the cloak of invisibility,—so that you may come in safety to the house of the great Paul Lessingham.’
He paused again. What he said, wild and wanton though it was, was beginning to fill me with a sense of the most extreme discomfort. His sentences, in some strange, indescribable way, seemed, as they came from his lips, to warp my limbs; to enwrap themselves about me; to confine me, tighter and tighter, within, as it were, swaddling clothes; to make me more and more helpless. ”

“ Strange as it may appear, there is no record of these occasions in my diary. I can explain this only by the supposition that at such times Lessman withdrew his power over me, while on all other occasions I was, as I have said before, in a semi-somnambulic state.
THE DIARY CONTINUES.
"I AWOKE as one awakens from a horrible nightmare. My brain was as clear as a crystal. For an instant I imagined that I was in my own apartment—that she suffering I had gone through were but the conjurings of my own mind. ”

“ Will not that do, my pretty maid? SCENE IV. Paul Werner, Landlord, Franziska WER. There he is! FRAN. A hundred pistoles? I thought it was only eighty. LAND. True, only ninety, only ninety. I will do so, my pretty maid, I will do so. FRAN. All that will come right, Mr. Landlord. WER. (coming from behind, and tapping Franziska on the shoulder) . Little woman—Little woman. FRAN. (frightened) . Oh! dear! WER. Don't be alarmed! I see you are pretty, and a stranger, too. And strangers who are pretty must be warned. Little woman! little woman! I advise you to beware of that fellow! ”

“ Something told me to flee; but I shook off the feeling as unworthy a man of my profession and stood my ground. Had I but obeyed that impulse I would have been a happier man today!
Doctor Lessman, clad in a faded bathrobe, his forefinger between the pages of the volume he had been reading, greeted me. For an instant his gaze traveled over me from head to foot, then went past me as if seeking my means of approach. ”

“ His manner changed,—so that, all at once, he seemed to snarl at me.
‘Is he great?—well!—is he great,—Paul Lessingham? You are small, but he is smaller,—your great Paul Lessingham!—Was there ever a man so less than nothing?’
With the recollection fresh upon me of Mr Lessingham as I had so lately seen him I could not but feel that there might be a modicum of truth in what, with such an intensity of bitterness, the speaker suggested. The picture which, in my mental gallery, I had hung in the place of honour, seemed, to say the least, to have become a trifle smudged. ”

“ Upon the next movements of your lips it depends whether that body you love shall be stretched upon the rack, whether those eyes which you find pleasant shall grow blind with agony in the darkness of a dungeon, and whether that flesh which you think desirable shall scorch and wither in the furnace. ”

“ She was too wretched to cry and sob, or indulge in any outward manifestation of sorrow, but her heart ached with a sense of desolation that well-nigh overwhelmed her.
The voices ceased outside, and her companions snored, and groaned sometimes as the clumsy vehicle lurched on one side as they passed over an extra rough piece of the road; but smooth or rough, it made no difference to Lizzie. The blessed relief of sleep came not to her that night. ”

“ I imagined that this was he "in whose neck remained strength, he whose mortal foot never trod the path which no fowl knoweth, he before whom the horror fleeth," which had reduced me to impotence, and had caught me as in a noose, in my own projects. His speech is poor—therefore he cannot console a sorrowful heart with his lips, but his words are as sparks from the beatings of his heart. ”

“ The expression which stole over the truculent face made me think of the sunlight falling suddenly upon some forbidding cliff, and that moment I knew how deep and wonderful must be the love which beat in that old heart for Lessie.
"La! Now, chil'," said Granny, "have yo' way if yo' mus', but be keerful—always be keerful. 'Specially o' men folks, 'cus they's so full o' Sat'n 'n' mischief." ”

“ Leslie, from the warm home-nest in which she had reposed so happily, to become the mistress of an elegant mansion. Though in age a woman, she was, in many things, but a child in feelings. Tenderly cared for and petted by her father, her spirit had been, in a measure, sustained by love as an aliment. ”

“ His words were incomprehensible enough to stand in copious need of explanation,—as Mr Lessingham plainly thought.
‘What is it that you mean, sir?’
‘What I say,—I believe that that Oriental friend of yours has got her in her clutches,—if it is a “her;” goodness alone knows what the infernal conjurer’s real sex may be.’
‘Atherton!—Explain yourself!’
On a sudden Lessingham’s tones rang out like a trumpet call. ”

“ But if, in that matter, my abnormally strained imagination played me a trick, there could be no doubt whatever as to the effect which the words had on Mr Lessingham. When the mist of the blackness—real or supposititious—had passed from before my eyes, I found that he had retreated to the extremest limits of the room, and was crouching, his back against the bookshelves, clutching at them, in the attitude of a man who has received a staggering blow, from which, as yet, he has had no opportunity of recovering. ”

“ Where did Lessie get her refined features? Where the instinct to care scrupulously for her person? Where that mute, painful longing for something she could not name? From generation after generation of ox-minded hill folk? Impossible! From them came her wonderful simplicity, her extreme naturalness, her kinship with the wild places and the things which dwelt there. But—I felt now as if a force pump was connected with my chest, and that any moment it might burst asunder. Dare I ask Gran'fer? ”

“ Perhaps so, dear, but that room,—two weeks in that room with nothing, no comforts such as we think absolutely essential—oh, it makes me feel terribly. Life is such a puzzle. Ledge seemed such a simple-hearted, secluded little nook,—and first I ran into the big, soul-wringing problem of the dam, and now here are these two lives. Lassie, whatever else they may or may not be, they are human. It can't be joy to live like that. There must be some reason for their doing as they do, and I can see no reason except the one the girl told me. ”

“ They were silent awhile; then Lessingham said suddenly, "Do you mind if we sleep in the east wing to-night?"
"What, in the Lotus Room?"
"Yes."
"I'm too much of a lazy-bones to-night, dear," she answered.
"Do you mind if I go alone, then? I shall be back to breakfast. I like my lady with me; still, we can go again when next moon wanes. My pet is not frightened, is she?" ”

“ As Lester and Ginny sped toward the hospital, their heads filled with the approaching disaster of parenthood, they were totally unaware of a distant moiling and broiling in the night-darkened heavens above them. Humanly earthbound as they were, their thinking was characteristically horizontal. It would never in a million years have occurred to them that their real trouble lay, not ahead of them, but above them. ”

“ I came to the ladder, and had placed my foot upon the bottom-most cross-piece when I halted, and in secret manner, although there was no need of secrecy, drew the jar from my pocket and hid it under the tree's lowest roots. I had promised Lessie I would tell her why I carried it with me the next time I saw her, and this I did not want to do, for she would fail to understand, and I would only appear ridiculous. Queer how a man shuns being made ridiculous, but after all it is only natural, especially if one is inclined to sensitiveness. ”

“ To hear a perfect stranger, a man in his condition, utter that name in such a fashion—to me, of all people in the world!—took me aback. The policeman who was holding his head remarked, “That’s the first time he’s opened his mouth. I thought he was dead.” He opened his mouth a second time. A convulsive movement went all over him, and he exclaimed, with the strangest earnestness, and so loudly that you might have heard him at the other end of the street, “Be warned, Paul Lessingham, be warned!” ”

“ He clasped her close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body lifting into her, and sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new pulse, in her. Gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down on him, like metal sinking on a mould. ”

“ For she wanted to draw his mind away from its continual brooding over Lizzie and the missing knife, for it was the only chance of saving him from sinking into hopeless melancholy, the doctor said—for a doctor had been called in to attend him since he had been so much worse.
The poor man would listen to his wife's cheery, hopeful words, and appear to dwell upon them for a few minutes, but, left to himself, he would soon relapse into his former hopeless despondency, and murmur half aloud, "Our girl is lost—quite lost now." ”

“ This time, the voice was quieter, but its tone was impatient.
"Keep going, keep going! To the right. The right!"
He clung to the tree as if for protection, and then, with a gasp, plunged once more into the darkness. ”

“ For the lassie made me marvel with the aptness of her speech, and ashamed with her plain saying of things that I had hardly named within myself.
'Ah,' she said gently and wisely, 'the thoughts of a lass when a lad comes courting her, are more than she tells with her mouth. For many a kiss is honey-sweet on the lips, but bitter as gall in the heart. ”

“ He, Paul Lessing, a man who had knocked about the world and had mixed with all sorts and conditions of men and women, whose pulses had hitherto never quickened their beating at the touch of a woman's hand or the sound of a voice, found himself, at thirty-one, as helplessly and ridiculously in love as any lad of twenty.
With a smothered exclamation, he pushed back his chair, and began a restless walk up and down the room. Was ever a grown man guilty of such egregious folly before? ”

“ Dust which returns to the dust, for which God in His inscrutable reason finds some use which eludes man’s understanding.
Esmé Lester walked along the quiet road and thought of the man she had left seated alone on the stoep, the man whom she believed to be ill. And the man sat on and waited for her return and wondered about her with an interest which equalled her interest in him. ”

“ How heavy the shadows which then fell upon the household and upon the heart of Edward Leslie! As he stood, alone, in the chamber of death, with his eyes fixed upon the pale, wasted countenance, no more to quicken with life, and felt on his neck the clinging arms that were thrown around it a few moments before the last sigh of mortality was breathed ”

“ The whispers of flattery that had sounded so sweetly in her ears, how she loathed them now! How she loathed herself, that they could have pleased her! She seemed to herself to have been suddenly snatched away from the very brink of a precipice, and to be frantically seizing some sure support which would prevent her from falling back into the dreadful abyss. ”