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Wittgenstein’s
Whewell’s Court Lectures
Wittgenstein’s
Whewell’s Court Lectures
Cambridge, 1938–1941

From the Notes by Yorick Smythies

Edited, introduced and annotated by

Volker A. Munz and Bernhard Ritter
This edition first published 2017
© 2017 Volker A. Munz and Bernhard Ritter
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1 2017
To the memory of Peg
 vii

Contents

Preface ix
Editorial Introduction xiv
List of Editorial Conventions xx
Abbreviations xxii

WHEWELL’S COURT LECTURES, CAMBRIDGE 1938–1941 1

1 Lectures on Knowledge 6
⟨Easter Term 1938⟩

2 Lectures on Necessary Propositions and Other Topics 50

⟨Easter Term 1938⟩
Lectures on Gödel 50
Puzzle of Trinity College 57
Necessary Propositions 62
‘Absolutely Determinate’ 74
Continuous Band of Colours 76
Are There an Infinite Number of Shades of Colour? 77
‘All There’: Logical Necessity 78
Achilles and the Tortoise 82
Infinitesimal Calculus and Free Will 83

3 Lectures on Similarity 88
⟨Michaelmas Term 1939⟩

4 Lectures on Description 137

⟨Lent Term 1940⟩
viii Contents

5 Wittgenstein’s Reply to a Paper by Y. Smythies on ‘Understanding’ 190

⟨Lent Term 1940⟩

6 Lectures on Belief 203

⟨Easter Term 1940⟩

7 Lectures on Volition 254

⟨Michaelmas Term 1940⟩

8 Lectures on Freedom of the Will 282

⟨Lent Term 1941⟩

Appendix 297

9 Y. Smythies’ 1940 Paper on ‘Understanding’ 300

10 Preparatory Notes for Y. Smythies’ 1945 Paper on ‘Meaning’ 308

11 The King of the Dark Chamber, by Rabindranath Tagore, translated

from the English of Rabindranath Tagore into the English used
by L. Wittgenstein and Yorick Smythies, by L. Wittgenstein
and Yorick Smythies 327

12 Comments Prompted by the Notes Taken From Wittgenstein’s Lectures

on Volition and on Freewill, by Y. Smythies 336

Bibliography 348
Index 351
 ix

Preface

I first met Rush Rhees when I came to Swansea as an exchange student in

autumn, 1988. He allowed me join his PhD seminar, and from then on we saw
each other regularly. That winter, Rhees spent some time in hospital, and I
­visited him almost every day to talk about Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The first
day he was allowed out of bed, I saw him sitting in an armchair with Wittgenstein’s
Philosophical Grammar on his lap. This made a great impression on me. After
his discharge from hospital, Rhees and I continued our meetings at his home,
where I first came into contact with his wife, Peg Smythies Rhees. She had been
Yorick Smythies’ wife before marrying Rhees, after Smythies’ death, in 1980.
From then on, I kept in close contact with Peg over the years until her own
death in 2014.
Some time in the mid‐1990s, she gave me around 30 typescripts of lecture
notes Smythies took during lectures held by Wittgenstein mostly between 1938
and 1941, all in all about 700 pages. Additionally, Peg signed over to me the
rights to work on and publish these notes. In 1998, she engaged Bernard
Quaritch, a London antiquarian, to sell Smythies’ original notes of Wittgenstein’s
lectures, in sum about 2000 notebook pages, plus 23 tapes of recordings of the
same material dictated by Smythies, based on those notes. Quaritch then got in
contact with me and asked if I could make an inventory of the material. With
respect to the notes, this was only possible because I already possessed the
corresponding typescripts; the notes just by themselves were hardly legible.
And since I owned the copyright, Quaritch allowed me to make photocopies
of all the relevant notes and copy the tapes. All the other Smythies’ notebooks,
manuscripts, and typescripts not directly related to Wittgenstein’s lectures,
Quaritch sent to my private address in Austria.
In 2001, the original lecture notes were sold to Kagoshima International
University, Japan, where they have been kept under wraps since then.
A microfilm of the whole handwritten material is held by Trinity College
Cambridge and myself. The microfilm had been made for legal reasons before
the material was sold to Japan.
x Preface

Through Peg Smythies Rhees, I also came into possession of a few items that
shed light on Smythies’ personality, some of which are written by Wittgenstein.
Since they have not appeared in print, I would like to include them here. When
Smythies applied for a position as a librarian at Barnett House, in 1950, he
collected various testimonials by Georg Henrik von Wright, G. E. Moore,
Wittgenstein, and others. Wittgenstein wrote:

Mr. Yorick Smythies attended my classes on philosophy for over three

years during the time when I was first lecturer and later Professor of
Philosophy in Cambridge. I came into personal contact with him about
eleven years ago and soon became greatly impressed by his mind and his
personality. He is a man of very great intelligence, scrupulous honesty
and conscientiousness, and of a kindly and obliging nature. He has a
vivacious mind and is widely read. I have, in the last ten years, had innu-
merable discussions with him on a wide range of subjects and have
always found his remarks most stimulating.1

Already 10 years earlier in 1940, Wittgenstein had written his first reference for
Smythies:

Mr. Yorick Smythies has attended my classes for four years; I have also
had a great many discussions and conversations with him outside
these classes. He has always impressed me by his uncommon intelli-
gence as well as by his seriousness and sincerity. He is a kindhearted,
gentle, and even‐tempered man.2

Although Smythies had already joined Wittgenstein’s Lectures on ‘Personal

Experience’ in the academic year 1935/36, he only made his acquaintance in
1938 through James C. Taylor, another student. The most probable reasons for
this delay are, on the one hand, Wittgenstein’s absence from Cambridge after
Easter Term 1936, when his Research Fellowship expired, and Smythies’ young
age, on the other. When Smythies began the Moral Science Tripos in 1935/36,
he was only 18. In a draft of a letter to his mother, from 1938, he writes:

Dear Mama,
I have been having lectures from Wittgenstein nearly every day.
He has been very good. Yesterday he lectured from 2 p.m.–7. Taylor
asked him if he would meet me at lunch; he said he would come to lunch,
but wouldn’t meet me. I don’t think he likes the look of me very much.3

1 Subsidiary Written Source [15], dated 29 May 1950.

2 Subsidiary Written Source [14], dated 7 April 1940.
3 Subsidiary Written Source [6], probably dating from 1938.
 Preface xi

In the last decade of his life, Smythies prepared his own notes for publication
and made various attempts to get them published. He also wrote an introduc-
tion to the notes in which he defends an austere editorial approach:

Wittgenstein said to me, on several occasions, that he would like me to

publish, one day, my notes of his lectures. The lectures from which these
notes were taken were delivered, at Whewell’s Court, Trinity College, at
various times between 1938–1947.
Re‐reading them, now, after thirty years, I find them more natural,
fluent, simple, continuous, expressive, than the remarks contained in
Wittgenstein’s so far published writings. I think that there are other peo-
ple, especially amongst those unlinked with professional philosophy,
who will, like myself, obtain more pleasure from these notes, than from
those more compressed, more deeply worked upon, more tacit, remarks,
written and selected by Wittgenstein himself, for possible publication.
While he was lecturing, he was not able to delete what had been said, or
to give to trains of thought more tightness than they were showing
themselves to have. Also, tones which give personal expressiveness to
his lectures became omitted from his writings. The expletives, interjec-
tory phrases, slangy asides, etc., which were essentially constituent in
what he was saying to his classes, would have shown affectation if they
had been addressed to the general, reading, public.
These notes were taken down at my maximum speed of writing, mak-
ing the words Wittgenstein was uttering and the notes being taken
down, nearly simultaneous with one another. It results from this that the
notes contain numerous grammatical errors, German constructions,
uncompleted beginnings of sentences, etc. In nearly all, but not in all
instances, such errors and inconsistencies have been left uncorrected.
Editorial corrections would have resulted in blotting the impression
that, in these lectures, Wittgenstein was not engaged in developing
trains of thought (previously worked out, less completely, by himself ),
but was engaged in thinking out, spontaneously and impromptu, the
utterances he was producing.4

The two main reasons Smythies failed to get the notes published were this
editorial approach and the way he went about preparing the text for p
­ ublication.
Smythies returned to the notes in the early 1970s. He made tape recordings of
nearly all the notes he had made of Wittgenstein’s lectures during his time in
Cambridge. This was only possible because he had provided a clean handwrit-
ten version of most of the notes he had taken. As already mentioned, those first
notes were themselves barely legible, particularly because Smythies had devel-
oped his own kind of stenographic system.

4 Subsidiary Written Source [8], probably dating from the 1970s.

xii Preface

I assume it was those rewritten notes that he showed to Wittgenstein, and to

which the latter referred, when he said that he would like to have them pub-
lished. The tapes were the basis for a typescript version made by a secretary
from Blackwell Publishers. Jim Feather, Blackwell’s General Manager at the
time, was particularly enthusiastic about the project, and offered to help pro-
duce a printable version. Feather left for the United States in the mid‐1970s,
and it seems that the whole project was pursued with less eagerness.
Furthermore, the secretary clearly had little understanding of the nature of
the material. This led to innumerable gaps, spelling mistakes, nonsensical
expressions, etc. She also misspelled most of the names, including Wittgenstein’s
own. So, without the original notes and rewritten versions, much of the
typed material was quite useless, not unlike the way the original notes might
be ­difficult to decipher and order correctly, without being able to consult the
rewritten and typed lectures.
In his correspondence with Rhees, G. E. M. Anscombe, and the publisher,
it becomes obvious that Smythies rejected almost all editorial intervention.
This attitude was strongly supported by Anscombe. I suspect this had to do
with the fact that not all mistakes or awkward expressions were due to Smythies
and his note taking, or the typing process, but also some were from Wittgenstein
himself, as implied in the last paragraph of Smythies’ introduction. The pub-
lisher, however, explicitly insisted on a range of editorial interventions.
So, the only notes that were eventually published, by Blackwell, although not
with Smythies as editor, were those included in the Lectures and Conversations
on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (1966) and the Lectures on the
Foundations of Mathematics (1976, edited by Cora Diamond). At some point
in the mid‐1970s, C. Grant Luckhardt intended to publish the Lectures on
Freedom of the Will (included here in Chapter 10) as well as two of the Lectures
on Volition in his book Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives. We know this
from Smythies’ correspondence, though neither item was eventually included
in this 1979 publication. After Smythies’ death, Rhees made another attempt
to publish at least part of the notes, strongly supported by D. Z. Phillips. But
the only result was the inclusion of ‘A Lecture on Freedom of the Will’ in
Philosophical Investigations in 1989, the year in which Rhees died.
In the length of time taken to prepare this edition for print, I have incurred
so many debts that there is no simple way of identifying the individual contri-
butions people made to the edition in its present form. I limit myself to simply
naming those who helped in some way or other, knowing only too well that this
list remains incomplete. In the name of both editors, I wish to thank Liam
Cooper, Juliet Floyd, Peter Hacker, Britt Harrison, Lars Hertzberg, Wolfgang
Kienzler, James C. Klagge, Brian McGuinness, Patricia McGuire, Felix
Mühlhölzer, Michael Nedo, Alois Pichler, Josef Rothhaupt, Joachim Schulte,
Paul Sensecall, Jonathan Smith, Ilse Somavilla, David G. Stern, and Susan
 Preface xiii

Sterrett. We used Norman Malcolm’s notes of the Lectures on Similarity and

the first lecture on Description by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge
University Library to update Smythies’ versions. We also wish to thank the
Cambridge Moral Sciences Club for permission to publish Casimir Lewy’s
minutes from a meeting held on 1 March 1940. The preparation of this volume
would not have been possible without the generous support of the Austrian
Science Fund (FWF). The publication was facilitated by a grant from the
Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Sciences of the University of Klagenfurt.

Volker A. Munz, Klagenfurt,

July 2016
xiv

Editorial Introduction

The contents of the present volume consist of notes taken by Yorick Smythies
(1917–1980) when attending Wittgenstein’s lectures at the University of
Cambridge from early 1938 to Lent Term 1941. Exceptions are Lecture 1 and
part of Lecture 10 of the Lectures on Knowledge, which Smythies copied from
notes made by James C. Taylor. Smythies also copied some of the lectures in
Chapter 2 of this volume from Taylor’s notes. Moreover, only part of the mate­
rial in Chapter 10 is likely to derive from lectures Wittgenstein gave in 1945,
while the other part reflects Smythies’ own views. This item falls outside
the period of ‘1938–1941’, mentioned in the title of this volume, but since the
material of Chapter 10 cannot be described without qualification as ‘notes
of lectures’, we did not include the year 1945 in the title. Only a small amount
of this material has already been published, namely the Lectures on Freedom of
the Will, the second half of Lecture 4 on Description, and what has been
known as Lecture III of the Lectures on Religious Belief (cf. Introduction 3).
They are presented here in their original contexts and with a revised dating.
Whewell’s Court Lectures – pronounced ‘Hyou‐el’ – is the title Smythies used
to refer to the lecture notes of this volume. Whewell’s Court is the name of
several buildings of Trinity College, in one of which the lectures took place.1
G. E. Moore gives a good description of the location of Wittgenstein’s rooms in
that building: ‘Of the only two sets which are on the top floor of the gate‐way
from Whewell’s Courts into Sidney Street, they were the set which looks west­
ward over the larger Whewell’s Court, and, being so high up, they had a large
view of sky and also of Cambridge roofs, including the pinnacles of King’s
Chapel’ (MWL: 49). The room where Wittgenstein lectured is the one behind
a tripartite set of neo‐Gothic windows on that side of the building.
Apart from the title of Chapter 2 and the descriptive titles of Chapters 9
and 10, which derive from titles Smythies used elsewhere, all titles were

1 William Whewell (1794–1866) was an English polymath, most influential in the philosophy of
science, the history of science and moral philosophy. He financed the construction of the courts
that were to bear his name.
 Editorial Introduction xv

­ rovided by Smythies himself. These titles – Lectures on Knowledge, Lectures

p
on Similarity, Lectures on Belief, and so on – may suggest a more determinate
topic than Wittgenstein actually intended to follow in each case. Even where
the title more than likely goes back to Wittgenstein himself, as is the case with
the Lectures on Belief, the topic mentioned in the title is only one of several
­discussed, and sometimes not even clearly the most salient one.2 As such, the
lecture titles provide only limited guidance when it comes to determining
Wittgenstein’s central concerns in a course of lectures.
Smythies gives only rough indications as to when the lectures were given.
In his draft of an introduction, he says, ‘at various times between 1938–1947’
(cf. Preface). His aim was not to publish the lectures in the order they were
given, but in a systematic order he had devised himself (cf. Introductions 3 and 6).
His ‘Textual Notes’ are instructive in this respect:

The differing, consecutive series, which these notes contain, are not
arranged in any chronological order of series. Others who attended
these lectures, may be able to specify year, term, etc., at which such and
such a series of lectures was delivered. But: – (a) I do not trust my own
memory sufficiently to do this myself, (b) I think that an arrangement of
the lectures in a logical, rather than a chronological, order, helps to make
evident the continuities and divisions characteristic of Wittgenstein’s
thinking.3

The aim of the present edition is, on the contrary, to reverse the intentions of
this plan and to reconstruct the original chronology of the individual lectures.
The final year, 1947, mentioned by Smythies may refer to a manuscript he
called ‘Miscellaneous Remarks Relating to Volition by Wittgenstein in Various
Other Lectures Which He Gave’. Smythies selected these remarks, which are
not printed in this volume, drawing primarily on Peter Geach’s version of
Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 1946–1947 (GWL: 3–116),
but also on the Lectures on Volition, Description, and Freedom of the Will.
Smythies possessed a typescript version of Geach’s notes, some 30 pages of
which were found among his papers. Why he did not take notes himself is an
open question. By that time, he was certainly the most proficient note‐taker
who could have been there, and the reports have it that he was indeed in
Cambridge at the time (cf. PPO: 358). A comparison of the manuscript to a
shorter typescript with the same title shows that Smythies ommitted the
remarks he had taken from the Lectures on Volition, Description and Freewill.
It is not clear, however, whether he would have stuck to his plan of including

2 Rose Rand refers to the material of the Belief Lectures as ‘Vorlesung über den Glauben’, i.e.,
‘Lecture on Belief ’, which suggests that Wittgenstein actually declared this to be his topic
(cf. Iven 2004: 87).
3 Quoted from Subsidiary Written Source [8].
xvi Editorial Introduction

this selection as an addendum to Whewell’s Court Lectures, since the Miscel­

laneous Remarks appear in only one of his preliminary tables of contents along
with ‘6 lectures’ on Volition, instead of eight.
Also the first year, 1938, mentioned in Smythies’ introduction needs some
comment. Smythies actually began attending Wittgenstein’s lectures in the
academic year 1935/36, when Wittgenstein gave his Lectures on ‘Personal
Experience’ and Other Topics, as Margaret MacDonald called them.4 Smythies’
not very extensive notes of these lectures are not printed here. As O. K.
Bouwsma reports, Smythies made Wittgenstein’s acquaintance only years later:
‘I asked [Wittgenstein] about Miss Elizabeth Anscombe and Smythies. At some
length again he told me about them. Smythies never saying a word – for three
years until some Canadian‐Edinburgh student by the name of Taylor brought
them together’ (Bouwsma 1986: 66). This probably happened in 1938, the only
year James C. Taylor attended Wittgenstein’s university lectures.5 Wittgenstein’s
research fellowship expired at the end of Easter Term 1936, and he spent his
time until January 1938 mostly in Norway and Vienna. He visited Cambridge
in January and from early June to 9 August 1937 (Nedo 1993: 37). Wittgenstein’s
Cambridge Pocket Diary from 1936–37 shows that he met a ‘Taylor’ on 18 June
1937, and Francis Skinner mentions James Taylor in three letters to Wittgenstein
in autumn 1937.6 It is also true that Wittgenstein sometimes gave ‘not open’
lectures: lectures that were not part of any university courses. It is, however,
very unlikely that he gave such lectures in 1937, since he did not then have a
position at Cambridge. The view to be favoured is that the earliest items in this
volume date from the first half of 1938.
It may be useful to give an overview of Smythies’ presumed presence in
Cambridge, at this point. Smythies was a student on the Moral Sciences Tripos
from October 1935 to June 1939 at Kings College, part of the University of
Cambridge. He stayed in Cambridge until June 1940 when he went back to his
family home in Devon (cf. Introduction 4). He returned to Cambridge some
time after 6 November 1940, for the rest of Michaelmas Term of that year
(cf. Introduction 7). He also must have been present at a few lectures around
20 January 1941 (cf. Introduction 8), though this visit is unlikely to have lasted
more than a short time. A long absence followed until early December 1944
when Smythies delivered a talk to the Moral Sciences Club (cf. Introduction 5).
He then returned permanently to Cambridge the next year, in May 1945 or
earlier, and stayed until after Wittgenstein resigned his professorship, in sum­
mer 1947, thereby putting an end to the lectures (cf. Introduction 9).

4 Cf. Subsidiary Written Source [2].

5 James Carson Taylor (1914–1946) was admitted to Trinity on 1 October 1936, as a Dominion
Exhibitioner. He took the Moral Sciences Preliminary examination in 1937 and Moral Sciences
Tripos Part II in the following year, which qualified him for the BA degree (communication with
Jonathan Smith, Trinity College, Cambridge, in January 2015).
6 Cf. Subsidiary Written Source [12]; GB, 14, 22 October, and 8 November 1937.
 Editorial Introduction xvii

For the most part, Smythies uses the same kind of small spiral‐bound note­
books for both immediate lecture notes and rewritten versions of lectures.
By ‘small’, we mean notebooks with 20 to 21 lines to write on. Most of them
are ‘National Natty 300/2 Series’ notebooks of approximately 200 × 160 mm.
He also uses a larger version of the same type of notebook, the 300/6 Series,
which offers 27 writing lines and is approximately 255 × 200 mm. We refer to
notebooks of this size as ‘middle‐sized’ and to notebooks with 30 or more
­writing lines as ‘large’. Other kinds of notebooks will be specified in the intro­
ductions to the relevant chapters.
One can see a rather soft pencil in action from Smythies’ first lecture notes
in the academic year 1935/36 until Lent Term 1939, when he switches to a
fountain pen in Lecture XII of the Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics.
The soft pencil returns for the first notes of Lecture XXV and in Michaelmas
Term 1939 for the Similarity Lectures. It returns one more time early in
Lent Term 1940 for Description Lecture 1. In Lecture 2, Smythies switches to a
pencil with a harder lead and finally to what seems to be a fountain pen with
a fine nib, which he uses until the end of Easter Term 1940. This fountain pen
must have been particularly appropriate for its purpose, since he writes faster
than at any time before or after. This speed is also due to a system of abbrevia­
tions that Smythies has been developing since 1938. The same system is still in
place when he returns in Michaelmas Term 1940, but the fountain pen with a
broad nib that he uses now makes his writing slower. It is the same model that
he employs for all rewritten versions. The broad nib and the absence of abbre­
viations are reliable features by which to distinguish a rewritten version from
immediate lecture notes.
Smythies’ notes never give the year of a lecture, and only in very few cases
do they come with a specific date. The dating of certain lectures printed here
has been revised more than once, as can be gleaned from comparing the
­present dating with a preliminary dating in an earlier ‘Sketch of a Project’
(cf. Munz 2010). In most cases, comparison with the Nachlass was used only
to confirm a dating that had been established independently. The most impor­
tant clues were derived from the names of students that occur in the lectures,
together with lecture summaries by other students, and Smythies’ recon­
structed presence in Cambridge. As for lecture summaries, we wish to single
out Rose Rand’s summaries, published in Mathias Iven’s (2004) Rand und
Wittgenstein, as being particularly useful when it came to dating some of the
most recalcitrant items.
An ‘academic year’ at Cambridge University runs from October of one year
until June of the following year and is divided into Michaelmas Term, Lent
Term, and Easter Term. We speak of the Regular Michaelmas Term, when we
mean the period from 1 October to 19 December, and similarly for the other
terms, which last from 5 January to 25 March, or 24 in a leap year, and 10 or 17
April to 18 or 25 June, respectively. In all other cases, we refer to the corre­
sponding Full Terms. A Full Term corresponds to the lecturing period and is
xviii Editorial Introduction

about two weeks shorter than a Regular Term. As will be seen, Wittgenstein
did not always stick to the dates of a Full Term, even in cases where he was
teaching a regular course, as opposed to his unofficial, ‘not open’, lectures.
We annotate the lectures with page references to Wittgenstein’s Nachlass
as well as published writings. ‘MS’ and ‘TS’ are used for Smythies’ notes and
typescripts of the lectures. We refer to the Nachlass by ‘vW’ plus an item num­
ber and page. Since the item number already encodes whether an item is a
manuscript or a typescript (‘1–’ for manuscripts and ‘2–’ for typescripts), it is
possible to use ‘MS’ or ‘TS’ for another purpose here. We have decided to adopt
the abbreviation ‘vW’ for references to the Nachlass, in honour of Georg
Henrik von Wright (1916–2003), who, among Wittgenstein’s literary execu­
tors, did most service to the Nachlass and also introduced the numbering.
With very few exceptions, no references to Wittgenstein’s own typescripts
are given. We concentrate on original manuscript sources of the ideas expressed
in the lectures and their dates. In cases where a manuscript has been edited
and published, or where a virtually identical print version exists, we usually
give reference to the published version only.7 We also give references for the
books and articles of authors Wittgenstein discusses. In some cases, it is likely
that his knowledge of their views derives from discussions, rather than reading.
In these cases, we nevertheless point out a printed passage in which the
­corresponding view is expressed.
Wherever possible, the text is taken from immediate lecture notes (‘N’).
Additions in square brackets indicate significant additions in the rewritten
­version (‘MS’) or, if there is no rewritten version, in the next‐closest textual
source, usually a typescript (‘TS’). Additions or modifications of our own
appear in diamond brackets, ‘⟨ ⟩’ (see section ‘List of Editorial Conventions’).
Brackets may be dropped if there is a footnote that specifies what has been
changed. Parentheses indicate parentheses in the original lecture notes, or the
most authoritative source of the corresponding lectures, where there are no
immediate lecture notes, regardless of whether square brackets or parentheses
are used in the original. There are only very few textual variants in Smythies’
notes. These are printed in the main text within parentheses. Whenever
­possible, we have used square brackets in a way that allows for independent
quotation of N and of MS.
There is no general answer to the question of how reliable Smythies was
when he wrote up his immediate lecture notes. As for the status of MS, we
believe that it was Smythies’ practice either to rewrite his notes anything up to
several months after a lecture or not to rewrite them at all. Some additions he

7 For example, we refer not to the Manuscripts 114: 1–228, 115: 1–117 and 140: 1–39, but to
Part I of Philosophical Grammar; not to Manuscript 144, but to Philosophy of Psychology – A
Fragment (PPF); not to Manuscripts 172 and 174–177, but to On Certainty; similarly, to Remarks
on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volumes I and II, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology,
Volumes I and II, and Remarks on Colour, but not to the corresponding manuscript sources.
 Editorial Introduction xix

made to his immediate lecture notes may be based on notes of other students,
such as Taylor’s in 1938. Accordingly, we believe that the MS‐based text is fairly
accurate, as long as there is no evidence to the opposite.
We replace Smythies’ abbreviations (e.g. ‘B’ for ‘belief ’, ‘T’ for ‘thing’, ‘des’ for
‘describe’, or ‘description’, etc.) by the corresponding words without further
indication. He mostly uses the first‐person singular, but can move between
first and third person. We replace ‘W.’ by ‘I’, making the necessary changes
wherever this seems desirable, and add a footnote where the changes are non-
trivial. Obvious linguistic mistakes are corrected without further notification.
This extends to most cases of ­missing words or abbreviations, such as, cf., a(n),
the, or that. There is admittedly no clear line between linguistic corrections
and interpolations. In some cases, adding an article, for example, implies a
non‐trivial choice between a definite and an indefinite article, which may affect
the sense of a whole sentence. Whenever we find this to be the case, we mark a
one‐word addition of our own with diamond brackets. Incomplete or crossed
out sentences are sometimes omitted without any notification, sometimes kept
in a footnote, and sometimes restored in the main text. The choice depends on
the estimated usefulness for the reader.
Wittgenstein used to have a blackboard at his lectures, which he also used for
drawings (cf. MWL: 49, LSD: 293). The lectures in this volume feature more
than 70 illustrations, for the most part redrawn from Smythies’ immediate
­lecture notes. In some cases, we decided to include vectorised versions of
Smythies’ original drawings, mostly taken from a rewritten version, where
redrawing them would have involved choosing between different ways of ren­
dering the original. In other cases, illustrations have been newly drawn accord­
ing to instructions given in Smythies’ text. This is never done without an
indication in a footnote.
Our division of the book into ‘chapters’ groups those sets of notes that refer
to one and the same lecture courses, or to groups of individual lectures that
followed each other chronologically in close proximity. The introductions to
the chapters adopt the following pattern: (1) a physical description of the
source material, (2) the dating of the corresponding lectures, and (3) general
remarks about textual parallels in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass.
xx

­List of Editorial Conventions

N ‘N’ refers to Smythies’ immediate lecture notes and is used, in particular,

where the printed text, while otherwise following N, has to depart
from it in the way specified.
MS ‘MS’ refers to Smythies’ rewritten version of a lecture and is used,
in particular, where the printed text, while otherwise following N,
­prefers the ‘MS’ version; or where the printed text is following MS, but
has to depart from it in the way specified.
TS ‘TS’ refers to a typescript of Smythies’ lecture notes. Occasionally,
superscripts are used to distinguish different typescripts.
… Ellipses not enclosed in diamond brackets always appear in the source
text.
( ) Parentheses occurring in the most basic textual source are rendered in
parentheses; regardless of whether parentheses or square brackets are
used in the original. The very few variants that appear written over a
line are incorporated into the main text also within parentheses.
[ ] Square brackets mark the beginning and the end of additions Smythies
himself made to the text of the most basic textual source in the course
of composing a rewritten version, MS, or a typescript, TS.
⟨ ⟩ Diamond brackets mark the beginning and the end of an addition
made by the editors. They are omitted in cases where there is a foot­
note that specifies what has been changed.
? ?
Elevated question marks at the beginning and the end of a word or a
phrase indicate that a transcription is conjectural.
¶ The paragraph mark is used in footnotes to indicate that there is a new
paragraph in the source text.
Italics Italicized text in footnotes to lectures is by the editors; quotations
in footnotes are given in regular type without adding quotation marks.
A punctuation mark at the end of a quotation is always part of the
quotation.
 ­List of Editorial Convention xxi

19‐/‐ We use a slash between years, e.g. ‘1938/39’, when what we mean is an
academic year, lasting from October to the following June, and a dash,
e.g. ‘1938–39’, for a period of two years.
— In the original lecture notes, a dash on a line by itself is used to indi­
cate a gap of no note taking. These dashes are reproduced in the
printed text as they occur in N. Smythies did not indicate all gaps in
this way.
xxii

­Abbreviations

1. Writings by Ludwig Wittgenstein

BB  The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philosophical
Investigations’. Ed. Rush Rhees, Blackwell, Oxford, 19692 (1958).
BT  The Big Typescript: TS 213. Ed. and transl. C. G. Luckhardt, M. A. E.
Aue, Blackwell, Malden (MA), etc., 2005.
CE  ‘Ursache und Wirkung: Intuitives Erfassen – Cause and Effect:
Intuitive Awareness.’ In Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel,
Vol. 6, Nos. 3–4, 1976, 391–445. Quoted from PO: 370–426.
CV  Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. von Wright, Heikki Nyman, transl. Peter
Winch, Blackwell, Oxford, 19842 (1980).
KgE  Philosophische Untersuchungen: Kritisch‐genetische Edition. Ed.
Joachim Schulte, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a/M, 2001.
LW I Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology; Vol. 1: Preliminary
Studies for Part II of Philosophical Investigations. Ed. G. H. von
Wright, Heikki Nyman, transl. C. G. Luckhardt, M. A. E. Aue,
Blackwell, Oxford, 1982.
LW II Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology; Vol. 2: The Inner and
the Outer, 1949–1950. Ed. and transl. C. G. Luckhardt, M. A. E. Aue,
Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1992.
NB  Notebooks, 1914–1916. Ed. and transl. G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. G. H.
von Wright, Blackwell, Oxford, 19792 (1961).
NFL  ‘Notes for Lectures on “Private Experience” and “Sense Data”.’
In Philosophical Review, Vol. 77, No. 3, 1968, 275–320. Quoted after
PO: 200–288.
OC  On Certainty. Ed. and transl. G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. G. H. von Wright,
transl. Dennis Paul, Blackwell, Oxford, 19742 (1969).
PB  Eine philosophische Betrachtung (Das Braune Buch). In Wittgenstein,
Ludwig. Werkausgabe; Bd. 5, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a/M, 1989, 117–237.
PG  Philosophical Grammar. Ed. Rush Rhees, transl. Anthony Kenny,
Blackwell, Malden (MA), etc., 19802 (1974).
PI  Philosophical Investigations. Ed. and transl. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M.
S. Hacker, Joachim Schulte, Wiley‐Blackwell, Chichester (UK), 20094
(1953).
 ­Abbreviation xxiii

PO  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951. Ed. J. C.

Klagge, Alfred Nordmann, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1993.
PPF Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment [= PI II]. In PI: 138–143.
PR  Philosophical Remarks. Ed. Rush Rhees, transl. Raymond Hargreaves,
Roger White, Blackwell, Oxford, 19752 (1964).
RC  Remarks on Colour. Ed. G. E. M. Anscombe, transl. L. L. McAlister,
Margarete Schättle, University of California Press, Berkeley, 20072
(1977).
RFM  Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Ed. and transl. G. E. M.
Anscombe, ed. G. H. von Wright, Rush Rhees, Blackwell, Oxford,
19783 (1956).
RPP I Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology; Vol. 1. Ed. and transl. G. E.
M. Anscombe, ed. G. H. von Wright, Blackwell, Oxford, 1980.
RPP II Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology; Vol. 2. Ed. G. H. von Wright,
Heikki Nyman, transl. C. G. Luckhardt, M. A. E. Aue, Blackwell,
Oxford, 1980.
TLP  Tractatus Logico‐philosophicus. Pears, David; McGuinness, Brian
(transl.). Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1961.
vW  Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition, Oxford University Press,
London, 2001.
Z  Zettel. Ed. and transl. G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. G. H. von Wright,
Blackwell, Oxford, 19812 (1967).

2. Lectures and Conversations

AWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1932–1935. From the Notes of
Alice Ambrose and Margaret MacDonald. Ed. Alice Ambrose,
Blackwell, Oxford, 1979.
GWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology, 1946–1947. Notes
by P. T. Geach, K. J. Shah, and A. C. Jackson. Ed. P. T. Geach, Harvester
Wheatsheaf, New York, 1988.
LC  Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious
Belief. Ed. Cyril Barrett, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 19784 (1966).
LFM Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge,
1939. From the Notes of R. G. Bosanquet, Norman Malcolm, Rush
Rhees, and Yorick Smythies. Ed. Cora Diamond, Cornell University
Press, Ithaca, NY, 1976.
LSD ‘The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience.’ In Philosophical
Investigations, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2–45; Vol. 7, No. 2, 101–140. Quoted after
PO: 290–367.
LWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1932. From the Notes of
John King and Desmond Lee. Ed. Desmond Lee, Blackwell, Oxford,
1980.
xxiv ­Abbreviation

MWL ‘Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33.’ In Mind, Vol. 63, No. 249, 1–15;
Vol. 64, No. 253, 1–27. Quoted after PO 45–114.
WVC Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by
Friedrich Waismann. Ed. B. F. McGuinness, Blackwell, Oxford, 1979.

3. Correspondence and Secondary Literature

CL Cambridge Letters: Correspondence with Russell, Keynes, Moore,
Ramsey and Sraffa. Ed. B. F. McGuinness, G. H. von Wright, Blackwell,
Malden, MA, 1995.
GB Gesamtbriefwechsel – Complete Correspondence. Ed. B. F. McGuinness,
Monika Seekircher, Anton Unterkircher, electronic edition, Brenner‐
Archiv, Innsbruck, 2004.
PPO 
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions. Ed. J. C. Klagge,
Alfred Nordmann, Rowman & Littlefield, Oxford, 2003.
WC Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911–1951. Ed. B.
F. McGuinness, Wiley‐Blackwell, Malden, MA, 20122 (2008).

4. Subsidiary Written Sources

[1] Lewy, Casimir. ‘Y. Smythies: Mental Processes.’ Minutes of the Moral
Sciences Club. Classmark UA Min.IX.44, fol. 105b, Cambridge University
Library, University of Cambridge. Used with the permission of Syndics
of Cambridge University Library.
[2] MacDonald, Margaret. Lectures on ‘Personal Experience’ and Other Topics
by L. Wittgenstein. Session 1935–36. Unpublished typescript with hand­
written corrections by MacDonald. Literary Estate of Yorick Smythies
(L. E. Y. S.), owned by Volker A. Munz, Klagenfurt.
[3] Malcolm, Norman. [Notebook with notes of Wittgenstein Lectures.] Dated
notes of lectures from Michaelmas Term 1939; undated notes of a lecture
from January 1941; and undated notes copied from John Wisdom. In
Ambrose Lazerowitz, Alice. Classmark Add. 9938, Box 2, Cambridge
University Library, University of Cambridge. Used with the permission of
Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
[4] Rhees, Rush. [Knowledge Lecture 10.] Typescript with pencil‐drawn illus­
trations, 4 pages, unpublished, undated. L. E. Y. S., Klagenfurt.
[5] Smythies, Yorick. [Notes of Wittgenstein’s 1935–36 Lectures.] Immediate
lecture notes (‘N’) and rewritten version (‘MS’), unpublished. Microfilm,
Bernard Quaritch Box 3, Wren Library, Cambridge.
[6] Smythies, Yorick. Draft of a letter to his mother. Undated, probably 1938,
in a notebook with notes from lectures by John Wisdom. Microfilm,
Bernard Quaritch Box 3, Wren Library, Cambridge.
 ­Abbreviation xxv

[7] Smythies, Yorick. ‘Understanding.’ Two versions of a typescript (10 pages,

14 pages), both incomplete without title pages, and two small spiral‐
bound notebooks, entitled ‘Understanding (1)’ and ‘Understanding (2)’,
1947 or later. L. E. Y. S., Klagenfurt.
[8] Smythies, Yorick. ‘Contents’, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Textual Notes’.
Typescript, 5 pages, undated, probably 1970s. L. E. Y. S., Klagenfurt.
[9] Smythies, Yorick. Application for the post of Tutor Librarian. Oxford
College of Further Education. Large folded sheet; three pages filled in by
Smythies, signed and dated 16 March 1967. L. E. Y. S., Klagenfurt.
[10] Smythies, Yorick. Draft of a letter to C. G. Luckhardt. Typescript, dated
30 June 1975. L. E. Y. S., Klagenfurt.
[11] Smythies, Yorick. Draft of a letter to C. G. Luckhardt. Manuscript, dated
August 1975. L. E. Y. S., Klagenfurt.
[12] Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Cambridge Pocket Diary, 1936–1937. 27
September 1936–31 December 1937, The Wittgenstein Archive,
Cambridge.
[13] Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Cambridge Pocket Diary, 1937–1938. 26
September 1937–31 December 1938, The Wittgenstein Archive,
Cambridge.
[14] Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Testimonial for Smythies. One‐page autograph,
signed and dated 7 April 1940, ‘Trinity College, Cambridge’, L. E. Y. S.,
Klagenfurt.
[15] Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Testimonial for Smythies. One‐page typescript,
signed and dated 29 May 1950, ‘27, St. John St. Oxford’, L. E. Y. S.,
Klagenfurt.
WHEWELL’S COURT LECTURES, CAMBRIDGE 1938–1941

Thinking is being alive. Living is exchanging thoughts.

Yorick Smythies
 3

The notes Smythies made during the lectures of this chapter, the Lectures on
Knowledge, are contained in two small spiral‐bound notebooks. The first
­notebook begins with Smythies’ version of ‘Are There an Infinite Number of
Shades of Colour?’ (cf. Chapter 2), followed by this chapter’s Lectures 3, 4, 5, 6,
8, 9, and 10. Smythies inserted the lectures from the other notebook as Lectures
2, 7, and 11; Taylor’s notes as Lecture 1 and the first half of Lecture 10. The
latter he went on to cross out, for unknown reasons. We use ‘N’ for these origi-
nal notes and ‘MS’ for Smythies’ rewritten and expanded version of the original
notes. The immediate notes are written with a rather soft pencil, typical of
Smythies’ early lecture notes. The expanded version of Lectures 1 to 11 is
­written with a broad‐nibbed fountain pen into the same kind of middle‐sized
notebook he used during the lectures. This was probably done in 1938, when
Smythies had Taylor’s notes available. We do not know whether his insertion of
Taylor’s notes and the other three lectures in their respective places was led by
chronological considerations, but nor do we know enough to interfere with
this arrangement. Lecture 10, as it appears in MS, may be a compilation. The
section before the words ‘My Notes’ has no parallel in Rhees’s unpublished
version of the lecture, while everything from ‘My Notes’ to the end of Lecture
10 does.1
The Lectures on Knowledge differ from other notes by Smythies in that most
of the meetings – six out of 11 – are dated. Unfortunately, no year is indicated,
and half of the day numbers are difficult to read. Moreover, those that are
­relatively unambiguous do not correspond to the pattern that we were antici-
pating, being: 20 May (Friday), 27 May (Friday), 4 June (Saturday), 15 June
(Wednesday). We expected lectures on Mondays and discussions on Fridays,
as Wittgenstein had announced to Moore in a letter of April 1938: ‘I’ll have the
first meeting on Monday (25th) at 5 p.m. … We shall meet in Taylor’s rooms in

1 Cf. Subsidiary Written Source [4].

Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures: Cambridge, 1938–1941, From the Notes by Yorick Smythies,
First Edition. Edited by Volker A. Munz and Bernhard Ritter.
© 2017 Volker A. Munz and Bernhard Ritter. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
4 Whewell’s Court Lectures: Cambridge, 1938–1941

Trinity.’ On 26 April, Wittgenstein writes: ‘I find that I shall have to be in Paris

on Thursday (day after tomorrow) so my Friday discussion is off … I shall
­lecture on Monday next’ (CL: 296 f.).
Since this is puzzling, it is mandatory to consider the available evidence for
dating in detail. Smythies’ dates, including those with ambiguous day numbers,
refer to Full Easter Term. Actually, the last two lectures appear to have taken
place after the end of the official lecturing period on 10 June (cf. Cam. Univ. Cal.
1937–38: xviii). The immediate lecture notes of Lecture 11 are dated to 15 June.
Lectures 5, 7, and 9 are known in a version by Rush Rhees, two of which are
dated by Smythies to 20 May and 10 (?) June.2 Rhees and Theodore Redpath
think they remember that Wittgenstein taught a course in Lent Term, and Rhees
dates the Lectures on Knowledge partly to Lent Term 1938 (cf. CE: 407, Redpath
1990: 46). This, however, is either false or needs qualification (cf. Introduction
2). According to manuscript volume 120, Wittgenstein was still in Vienna on 6
January. He travelled to Cambridge only after that. On 8 February, he notes his
arrival in Dublin, where he spends five weeks in the middle of the term. His
return to Cambridge on 18 March seems to be prompted exclusively by the
Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany (cf. vW 120: 57v, 128v).
Thus, Wittgenstein could not have taught a regular course in Lent Term 1938,
and since he was not well during the last couple of months of the same year, he
did not lecture in Michaelmas Term 1938 either (cf. Klagge 2003: 349).
Our dating of the Knowledge Lectures to Easter Term 1938 is consistent with
the cast of people who Smythies reports as intervening in discussion – Casimir
Lewy, Theodore Redpath, Rush Rhees, Alister Watson, and John Wisdom – all
of whom are likely to have been at Wittgenstein’s lectures in 1938 (cf. Klagge
2003: 348 f.). Taylor’s presence is evidenced by the fact that Smythies employed
his notes for Lectures 1 and 10. The joint presence of Lewy and Taylor is par-
ticularly significant, since Lewy attended Wittgenstein’s lectures from 1938
until Easter Term 1945, and Taylor probably only in 1938 (cf. Redpath 1990: 46,
Klagge 2003: 348).
Consistent with our dating, most Nachlass parallels are to be found in the
Manuscript Volume 119 (24 September to 19 November 1937) and in Notebook
159 (spring to summer 1938), as Rhees already observed (cf. CE: 406–411,
418–426). Notebook 159 begins by alternating between the topics of the
Lectures on Knowledge and the Lectures on Gödel (cf. Introduction 2). Since
these remarks are partly in English, Wittgenstein may have used this notebook
for his own preparation. Significant parallels are also to be found in Notebook
158, begun on 24 February 1938. It has a passage, partly written in English, that
parallels the beginning of Lecture 2. The passage consists of a distinctive juxta-
position of remarks about philosophical puzzles in general and what he calls

2 Rhees’ version was published, without any exact dating, in Philosophia 6, 1976, 430–433,
438–440, 442–445; reprinted as CE: 407–411, 419–421, 423–426.
 Whewell’s Court Lectures: Cambridge, 1938–1941 5

‘the dream puzzle’: whether a dream occurs while we are asleep or is just
remembered as occurring while we are asleep (cf. vW 158: 37r–41r).3 At one
point in the notebook, he quotes an apparently typical phrase of one of his
pupils: ‘Watson: “The key question is …”’ (vW 158: 39v). A few pages later,
he draws the same figure of a cube that he uses in Knowledge Lecture 3 (cf. vW
158: 43v). The notebook says nothing about the philosophical meaning of the
figure, while this comes out very clearly in the lecture.

3 See also the passage towards the end of Smythies’ Preparatory Notes (Chapter 10), where it is
called ‘a most important fact about dreams’ that they occur while we are asleep.
6

Lectures on Knowledge

⟨Easter Term 1938⟩

­Lecture 1

Taylor’s notes.

If someone says ‘I have pain’ and someone else says of him, ‘he has pain’, does ‘I
have pain’ mean the same as ‘he has pain’? How can they mean the same,
since the ways of verifying them are different? You could say: ‘Our scheme of
­paradigms is too simple.’
Is ‘It’s going to rain’ about the present or the future? You can say both (to a
large extent what you say depends on your mood). Whether a proposition is
‘about’ something or not is generally a complicated matter. You’re putting
(the question) into too straight a jacket.
There is a temptation to say that the two sentences refer to the same fact.
The temptation is due to the use of a certain picture. You think of ‘the same
fact’ as like ‘the same person’.
Is ‘He has pain’ about his behaviour?4 Cf. ‘I seem to have a rush’, ‘He seems to
have a rush.’
For such phrases as ‘I’m in pain’, ‘I see red’, ‘I have such and such a wish’, I’ll
use the word ‘utterance’. Like a moan, etc., as opposed to a description.
There is a complicated relation between ‘He’s in pain’ and the behaviour.
They don’t mean the same. Though ‘He moans’ may mean (under special
­circumstances, e.g. when he is in bed dying, very, very ill) ‘He is in pain.’
(The two may come to exactly the same thing.)
The connection between ‘I’m in pain’ and ‘He’s in pain’ is that his saying the
former is a criterion for ‘He’s in pain.’ Is there a verification in the case of an
utterance? (Cf. Lecture 2.)

4 In MS, followed by: Akin in the third person.

 Lectures on Knowledge 7

How did you learn the use of the word ‘pain’? You were crying and someone
told you you were in pain, etc.5 Cf. ‘I dreamt so and so.’ How do we learn the use
of this? Has anyone ever shown us what a dream is like? What red is like? We
woke up and told a story in the past tense. Then we were told, ‘you dreamt it’.
So we learned.6
Experiment (alarm clock etc.) to show that a long dream only takes two sec-
onds. Does the experiment show this? Someone might say: ‘Perhaps you didn’t
dream it, but only remembered dreaming it.’ Is the child correct in using the
present or the past tense about its dream? Is something now happening, or did
something happen? Correlated phenomena. (Events in the brain, moaning in
sleep, etc.) You can use the present or past tense, as you like. (The choice is a
linguistic one.)7
We’re inclined to say: ‘Something corresponds to the utterance.’ A case of
shifting the responsibility. To say ‘something corresponds’ is just another way
of saying, ‘What he says is true.’ Cf. saying, ‘“A statement is true” means “Reality
is in agreement”.’ What’s done? A grammatical recommendation is made.

­Lecture 2

The fly catcher.8 The fly gets in but can’t get out. The stronger the wish to get
out, the harder it is for it to get out. (It is fascinated by one way of trying to
get out.) If we put the fly in glasses of shapes and shades different to this one,
where it was easier for it to get out, where it was less fascinated by the light,
etc., and we trained it to fly out of these, it might fly out of this one also.
Similarly, when we spoke about the dream puzzle, we shifted to a less
­ uzzling problem. We produce a similar puzzle in another case where the
p
puzzle is less alive.

5 Cf. PI §244.
6 Cf. GWL: 30 f., 180, 252.
7 Cf. Smythies’ Preparatory Notes, near the end, vW 158: 37v–38r (March 1938), vW 128: 22
(1944), vW 130: 251 (1 August 1946), PPF §52 f. = PI II: 184a–c.
8 Cf. Wittgenstein’s Reply, vW 149: 67 = NFL: 258 (1935/36), vW 118: 44r (1 September 1937),
71r–v (8 September 1937), vW 117: 60 f., 92 (1937, later than 11 September), RFM: 56, I, §44,
PI §309.
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was ready to go, however, she stopped on her way to the door, and
gave Mabin one long, curious look. It made the girl spring forward,
with a world of sympathy in her eyes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry for you!” she whispered. “So very, very sorry.
Much more than before I knew anything.”
Then Mrs. Dale gave way, and seeming for the first time to recover
her powers of thought and of speech, she sank down on the nearest
chair, and burst into tears, natural, healing tears, while she poured
into Mabin’s ears a broken, incoherent confession:
“It is quite true that I did it—did what she told you. But you know,
oh, Mabin, you do know how bitterly I have repented it! I would have
given my life to have been able to live those few minutes over again!
What did she tell you? Tell me, tell me! And how did she say it? Of
course she made the very worst of it; but it was bad enough without
that. Oh, Mabin, Mabin! Don’t you think she might forgive me now?”
While she talked in this wandering and excited way Mabin hardly
knew what to do; whether to try to divert her thoughts, or to let her
know in what a vixenish and hard manner the elder woman had
made the announcement of the terrible action which had cut short
one life and ruined another.
“Of course she ought to forgive you!” she said at last. “But you
must not give way to despair if she does not. She is a hard woman;
she will never treat you as tenderly as your own friends do.”
She paused, not liking to tell Mrs. Dale that the visitor was waiting
for her, and wondering whether her friend had forgotten the fact. As
she glanced toward the door, Mrs. Dale caught her eye, and
suddenly threw herself upon her knees, burying her head in the girl’s
lap.
“Oh, I daren’t, I daren’t go in—just yet!” she whispered almost
pleadingly. “I know I sent for her; I know I must see her; but now that
the moment has come, I feel as if I could not bear it. I know how she
will look—what she will say. And it is upon her, all upon her, that my
life, my very life depends!”
Mabin said nothing. She could not help thinking, from the wild
words and wilder manner of the wretched woman before her, that the
great strain of her crime and her repentance had ended by
weakening her mind. Unless——
 The girl drew a long breath, frightened by the awful possibility,
which had just occurred to her, that the grim visitor in the drawing-
room had been threatening Mrs. Dale with the extreme penalty of her
crime. Mrs. Dale’s words—“My life depends upon her!” were explicit
enough. Instinctively Mabin’s arm closed more tightly round the
sobbing woman.
“Hush, hush, dear!” she whispered soothingly. “She will not dare,
she will not dare to be more cruel than she has been already! You
must try and be brave, and to bear her hard words; but she won’t do
anything more than scold you!”
In the midst of her grief Mrs. Dale looked up in the girl’s face with a
sad smile.
“Oh, she has dared so much more than that already!” she said
hopelessly. “I don’t want to excuse myself—nothing can excuse me
—but I want you to know the share she had in it all. For she had a
share. It would never have happened but for her.”
Mrs. Dale sprang to her feet, and walking up and down the room
with her little white hands clinched till the nails marked her flesh, she
began to pour into the young girl’s ears a story which kept her hearer
fascinated, spellbound.
“Listen, listen!” said Mrs. Dale in a low, breathless voice, without
glancing at the girl. “It is not a story for you; I would never have told
you a word of it if it had not been forced upon us both. But now, as
you have heard so much, told in one way, you must hear the rest,
told in another.”
Mabin said nothing.
In fact, it seemed to her that Mrs. Dale hardly cared whether she
listened or not. She went on with her story in the same hurried,
monotonous tone, as if it was merely the relief of putting it into words
that she wanted:
“I had always been spoiled, always had my own way, until I was
married. My father and mother both died when I was a little thing of
six, and I lived with my guardian and his family, and they let me do
just as I liked. I was supposed to be rich, almost an heiress; but
when my guardian died, it was found that the money had all gone; I
had nothing. I was not yet eighteen then. And Sir Geoffrey Mallyan
wanted to marry me. Every one said I must; that there was nothing
else for me to do. I didn’t care for him; but then I didn’t care for any
one else; so nobody thought it mattered. It was taken for granted,
don’t you see, that there was no question of my saying no.”
Mrs. Dale stopped short, and for the first time looked at Mabin:
“That’s what people always think, that it doesn’t matter whom a girl
marries, if she’s very young. But it does, oh, it does! And he had a
brother——”
Mabin started, and thought at once of Mr. Banks.
“A younger brother, who had been ordered home from India on
sick leave. No, I didn’t care for him,” she went on emphatically,
reading the expression of sympathy on the girl’s face. “But he was
livelier than his grave brother, my husband, and we were very good
friends. Nobody would have thought that there was any harm in that
if old Lady Mallyan hadn’t interfered. You can guess now, I suppose,
who Lady Mallyan is!”
Mabin nodded emphatically without speaking.
“She came posting to the place to find out the evil which was only
in her own mind. We had been getting on quite well together, my
husband and I. I was rather afraid of him, but I liked him, and he was
kind to me. I believe he was really fond of me; and that I should have
grown fond of him. I was fond of him in a way; but he was fifteen
years older than I, and very quiet and grave in his manners. But he
let me do what I liked, and took me to all the dances and races I
wanted, and was proud of me, and seemed pleased that I should
enjoy myself. But when his mother came, everything was changed.
She had great influence with him, and she told him that he was
spoiling me, and making me fit for nothing but amusement, and that
these constant gayeties were ruining my character. And so he told
me, very gently, very kindly, that I must settle down, and live a
quieter life.
“I was sorry, disappointed, and not too grateful to Lady Mallyan.
Would you have been? Would anybody have been? But I submitted.
There were some scenes first, of course. I had been spoiled; I am
bad-tempered, I know; and I was indignant with her for her
interference. What harm had I been doing, after all? I was not
unhappy, however, and it was easy to reconcile myself to everything
but to her. For she seemed to have settled down in my husband’s
house, and I did not dare to hint that I resented this. Then things
went on smoothly for a time. I had given up my balls, and nearly all
what my mother-in-law was pleased to call ‘dissipations.’ But now
that I was oftener at home, I naturally saw more of Willie, my
husband’s brother, than before, since he was not strong enough to
go out so much as Sir Geoffrey and I had done.
“We were all very anxious about him, as he seemed to be on the
verge of consumption. He was very bright and amusing, however,
even then, and I was certainly more at ease with him than I was with
my mother-in-law, or even with my own husband, who was a silent
and undemonstrative man. But it was shameful of Lady Mallyan to
suspect that I cared more for him than for my husband; it never
entered into his head or mine to suppose any one would think such a
wicked thing; and certainly Sir Geoffrey would never have thought of
such a thing except at the suggestion of his mother.
“I cannot tell you, child, of the wretchedness this miserable old
woman brought about, in her jealousy at Sir Geoffrey’s love for me,
and her anxiety to get back the influence over him which she thought
I had usurped. Of course if I had been an older woman, as old as I
am now, for example, I should have rebelled; I should have insisted
on her leaving the house where she had brought nothing but misery.
I should have known how to take my proper place as mistress of the
house in which she was only an interloper.
“But I did not know how to do it, although I knew what I ought to
do.
“So it went on, the misery of every one growing greater every day,
Willie and I feeling a restraint which made us afraid to exchange a
word under her eyes; my husband growing shorter in his manner,
more reserved in his speech, having had his mind poisoned against
his brother and against me.
“At last a crisis came. Willie told us that he was going away. I knew
he was in no fit state to travel, but I did not dare to tell him to stay, or
to tell the fears I felt for him. When he was ready to go, I spoke out to
him at last. We were in the drawing-room, standing by the fire, and I
told him it was his mother who had made us all miserable and afraid
to speak to one another, and I begged him to come with me to Sir
Geoffrey, and to back me up in telling him the truth, in insisting that
Lady Mallyan should leave the house.
“ ‘If you go away now, without speaking to Geoffrey,’ I said, ‘I shall
be left in the power of this hateful, wicked woman for the rest of my
life. For she will never leave of her own accord; and I dare not speak
to Geoffrey about her with no one to back me up.’
“And then I saw Lady Mallyan’s shadow outside the window on the
path. She had been listening, she was always listening; hoping to
find out something as we said good-by.
“I ran to the window, but she escaped me. When Willie was gone, I
went to look for my husband. He was in the gun-room, looking
harder than usual. His mother had just left him. I had never seen him
look so stern, and I was frightened. I began to see that I was
powerless against the mischievous woman who was spoiling our
lives.
“ ‘Geoffrey!’ I said. ‘What has your mother been saying to you? She
has been saying something unkind I know; something untrue,
probably. What is it?’
“Then he said something which made me feel as if I had been
turned into stone. Lady Mallyan had been with him, had
misrepresented my words to Willie, had put a hideous meaning into
all we had said. I forget Sir Geoffrey’s exact words; if I remembered
them I would not repeat them. But they were cold, full of suspicion.
They roused in me a mad feeling of hatred. I can remember that I
shook till my dress rustled; that I could not speak. Then—God
forgive me! I took up a little pistol—revolver—I don’t know what they
call it; but it was something so small it looked like a toy—and, hardly
knowing what I did, I pointed it at him, and—and—he cried out, and
fell down.
“I don’t know what happened then, whether I shrieked out, or what
happened. But they came in, a lot of them, and took me away. And—
and I never saw him again. She would not even let me see him when
he lay dead. Though I begged, how I begged!”
Suddenly Mrs. Dale stopped in her speech, and crossed quickly to
the door. Flinging it open suddenly, she revealed Lady Mallyan,
standing within a couple of feet of it, erect, very pale.
Mrs. Dale smiled.
 “Come in, pray come in, your ladyship. You have not lost your old
habits, I see,” she said with cutting emphasis as she bowed to her
visitor.
 CHAPTER XIV.
NO MERCY.

It was with a throbbing brain and a heavy heart that Mabin,

dismissed by Mrs. Dale with a warm pressure of the hand and a little
pathetic smile, went through the hall and out of the house.
What was the meaning of old Lady Mallyan’s coming? Why had
Mrs. Dale sent for her? Surely, the girl felt, there could be but one
answer to this question; and in that answer lay the key to the
mystery about “Mr. Banks.”
Mabin remembered the likeness she had seen in his face, in one
of his sterner moments, to the visitor whom she now knew as Lady
Mallyan. And she could have little doubt, on putting together the
facts of the story she had just heard and the details she knew
concerning her father’s tenant, that it was indeed Sir Geoffrey
Mallyan’s brother Willie, one of the causes, if not the sole cause, of
the tragedy which had wrecked Mrs. Dale’s life, who had settled
down, unknown to the lady herself, as her nearest neighbor.
A hot blush came into Mabin’s face, alone though she was, as this
conclusion forced itself upon her. For even she, young and innocent
as she was, could not help seeing that his behavior, since he had
lived at Stone House, was inconsistent with Mrs. Dale’s account of
the blameless relations which had existed between them.
Mrs. Dale had represented this “Willie” as a light-hearted young
fellow, who had felt only the comradeship of a younger brother
toward his brother’s beautiful wife. But “Mr. Banks” had behaved, not
only like a lover, but like a lover, once favored, whom despair had
driven to the verge of madness.
On the other hand, Mabin, in her loyalty toward her friend, was
ready to believe that, even if the feelings these two unhappy
creatures had had for each other had been less innocent than Mrs.
Dale had represented, they had been themselves less to blame than
either of the two other persons concerned in the terrible history.
 Mrs. Dale, naturally enough constrained by her own remorse to
speak well of her dead husband, had yet been able to give no very
attractive picture of the man who had misunderstood his young wife,
frightened away her confidence, and allowed himself to be alienated
from her by the interference of his mother. And of that mother herself
Mabin had seen enough to be more than ready to give her her fair
share of the blame.
The young girl’s heart went out, more than it had ever done
before, to the little woman, whom nature had made so frivolous, and
circumstances so miserable, and around whom misfortune seemed
to be closing once more.
It was the one gleam of comfort she had to know how sincerely
Mrs. Dale was trying to do what was right in the matter. Instead of
attempting to see “Mr. Banks,” which would have been easy enough
for her to do, she had sent for his mother, repugnant though such a
course must always be to her; so that, whatever indiscretion she
might have shown in the past, it was clear that she meant to keep
herself free from all suspicion now.
And this was the more creditable on her part, so Mabin felt, since
the strange elation she had shown by fits and starts since the day
before, when she heard the voice of “Mr. Banks” for the first time,
proved clearly that she was not so indifferent, not so
unimpressionable, as she had professed to be.
And here Mabin felt her heart grow very tender; she pictured to
herself what she would feel, if circumstances were to put Rudolph
and herself in the same position toward each other, as were “Mr.
Banks” and “Mrs. Dale.”
If she were to have to live within a stone’s throw of him, not only
always loving, always longing, but conscious that the same feelings
which drew her heart toward him were forever drawing him toward
her.
Mabin began to cry softly. And then the application of the story to
her own case caused her thoughts to take another turn; and she
asked herself, with the generous Quixotism of her youth and her
loyal nature, whether she ought not to wish for, to encourage, the
process by which Rudolph’s love was being diverted from herself,
the uninteresting, awkward girl without any history, to the unhappy
lady around whom there clung the romance of a tragedy.
These questions, which had indeed risen in her mind before, but
which had now acquired a new force with her extended knowledge,
were entirely consistent with the bent of Mabin’s mind. Accustomed
from her childhood to consider others rather than herself, and
inclined by her own modesty to underrate her deserts as well as her
attractions, she found it easy, not indeed to stifle her own feelings,
but to control them. She told herself that she would show Rudolph no
more petulance, no more “childish” jealousy or curiosity; and if, as
seemed inevitable, he found that he had made a mistake in thinking
he cared for herself, she would be the first to wish him happiness
with a more attractive bride.
Perhaps it showed rather a touching sense of her own devotion to
her lover, that Mabin never once doubted his power to console Mrs.
Dale for all her troubles, nor that lady’s readiness to be comforted by
him.
And it was while these thoughts were fresh in her mind that Mabin,
turning the angle in the path toward the kitchen-garden, came face to
face with Rudolph.
Meeting him at such a moment, it was not surprising that she
stopped short, turned first red, then white, and presented to his view
a countenance so deeply impressed with a sort of shy alarm, that the
young man was rather puzzled as to the kind of greeting he might
expect.
Recovering herself quickly, Mabin wisely put off explanations by
dashing straight into an exciting subject:
“Oh, do you know,” she asked in a hurried, constrained voice, “that
I have had to leave poor Mrs. Dale to that dragon? Oh yes, I know
who she is now; I know who they both are. Mrs. Dale herself has told
me that, told me everything;” added Mabin, in answer to an
interrogative and puzzled look which she detected on his face.
Rudolph looked dubious.
“Everything?” he repeated doubtfully.
“And,” went on Mabin with calm triumph, “old Lady Mallyan has
told me something too. And as I had a long talk with Mr. Banks
yesterday, I think perhaps the tables are turned, and I know more
than you do now.”
Mabin seated herself, as she spoke, on the garden seat which was
placed, most charmingly as far as picturesque effect was concerned,
but most inconveniently, if one considered earwigs and green flies,
under a tall lime-tree and against a dark hedge of yew. Rudolph was
intensely relieved to find that her jealous and angry mood of the
evening before had passed away; and although he was puzzled by
her new manner, which was easy, friendly, but not affectionate, he
thought it better to fall in with her mood and not to risk the pleasure
of the moment, by asking for explanations just yet. Mabin, on her
side, felt a curiously pleasant sense of present enjoyment and
irresponsibility. It was happiness to be with Rudolph, without any
dispute to trouble their intercourse. And she found that by turning his
attention and her own away from themselves to the subject of Mrs.
Dale and her troubles, she got not only the full delight of Rudolph’s
attention, but the satisfaction that she was stifling, if not conquering,
her own weakness.
Rudolph was charmed by the new and undefinable change to
greater frankness, to less shyness, in her manner.
“Well,” said he, pulling down the bough of a guelder rose-tree and
beginning with great precision to strip off the leaves, “I couldn’t help
myself, could I? I couldn’t tell you somebody else’s secrets without
permission. And you see you haven’t had to wait very long to know
all about it.”
“Oh, I’m not thinking about that,” said Mabin superbly. “It was
annoying at the time not to know what you were all talking about; but
I soon got over that. What I am thinking about now is the best thing
to be done for Mrs. Dale. You know who this Mr. Banks is, I
suppose?”
Her assumption of a lofty standpoint of deep knowledge combined
with great indifference amused Rudolph.
“Do you?” retorted he.
“I suppose,” she answered almost in a whisper, and looking down
on the ground as she spoke, “that he is Lady Mallyan’s son Willie.”
Rudolph looked astonished.
 “You do know something then!” said he at last. “Yes, I suppose he
is.”
“And Mrs. Dale knows it?—knew it yesterday, I suppose?—when
she heard his voice?”
“Yes, I think so, I suppose so. But I must tell you that she was so
much upset that I didn’t attempt to ask her any questions about it. I
only tried to quiet her, and offer, when she said she must see Lady
Mallyan, to send off the telegram.”
Mabin, too much excited to sit still, sprang to her feet on the gravel
path beside him.
“Isn’t it hard? Oh, isn’t it hard for her? She does exactly what is
right, what is best. She ought not to be persecuted by either of them,
by mother or son!”
But instead of answering her fervent outbreak in the same tone, or
at least with sympathy, she saw, to her indignation, that Rudolph had
difficulty in suppressing a smile.
“The persecution won’t last long,” said he. Then noting the
revulsion of feeling expressed in Mabin’s face, he added quickly:
“When Lady Mallyan and Mr. Banks meet, they will have to come to
an understanding; and I can answer for it that after that Mrs. Dale will
be left in peace.”
“That’s what Mr. Banks himself seems to think,” said Mabin
ingenuously. “But Lady Mallyan was shocked when she heard he
lived so near, and she doesn’t want to meet him.”
Rudolph was in an instant on fire with excitement.
“Oh, doesn’t she, though? Then I’ll take jolly good care that she
shall!” He took three or four rapid steps away from her and came
back again. His face was glowing with excitement. “Look here,
Mabin, I want you to mount guard over the house, and see that the
old lady doesn’t get away before I get back with Mr. Banks. Mind, it is
very important. You must do anything rather than let her go. It’s just
possible she may get an idea of something of the kind, and may try
to get away.”
“All right,” said Mabin very quietly, but none the less showing in the
firm set of her lips and the steadiness of her eyes that she would
prove a firm ally. “But don’t be long gone; for I am afraid of what may
be going on between that hard woman and poor little Mrs. Dale!”
 “I’ll be as quick as I can. You may trust me.”
And then, taking her entirely by surprise, he flung his arms round
her, pressed upon her startled lips a long kiss, and ran off before she
had breath to utter a word.
She had just sense enough left to remember her promise, to
stagger round to the front of the house, and to take her place as
sentinel under the dining-room wall. There was no window on this
side, the space where one had originally been having been blocked
up and filled with a painted imitation of one. It was impossible
therefore for Mabin to tell, in this position, whether the interview
between the two ladies was over or not.
So she went into the hall, where it was now so dark that she felt
her way, stumbling, in the direction of the dining-room door. She was
close to it before she was assured, so low was the voice speaking
within the room, that the ladies were still there. But the piteous,
subdued tones of Mrs. Dale, which met her ear as she came near,
told her that the little lady in black was still pleading to her tyrant.
Withdrawing quickly, her heart throbbing in sympathy with the
unfortunate woman, Mabin returned to the garden, and waited near
the garden gate.
She now had leisure to dwell on that intoxicating kiss, which had
for the moment thrown her back into the world of happiness into
which Rudolph’s avowal of love had introduced her, and from which
more recent events had seemed to combine to thrust her out. Could
it be that he was still the same as ever, in spite of her jealous fears,
of her Quixotic imaginings? Mabin’s brain seemed to be set on fire at
the thought. She began to look out at the treeless fields which lay
between “The Towers” and the sea, with eyes which saw nothing.
Though mechanically from time to time she turned to glance at the
front door of the house, she had forgotten for whom she was
watching.
Suddenly she was startled by the sound of light footsteps on the
gravel behind her, and looking round, she saw the parlormaid
running toward the gate.
“The cab, miss, have you seen the cab? The lady wants to go
now, and of course the stupid man is out of sight.”
 “It is at the corner of the road,” answered Mabin, waking up to the
realities of life with a start. “But don’t go for it yet. Mr. Bonnington
wants to speak to Lady Mallyan first.”
The girl was evidently startled and impressed by the discovery that
Mabin knew the visitor’s name. She hesitated.
“But she wants to catch a train, miss!” she protested at last.
As Mabin was about to answer, a figure in the road outside caught
her eye. The maid saw it too.
“Who—who was that?” Mabin asked quickly.
The maid, who looked rather scared, hesitated, stammered.
“Was it—Mrs. Dale?” pursued Mabin almost in a whisper.
And as she spoke, her heart sickened with a vague fear. Quickly
as the form had passed by, and disappeared from sight in the deep
shadows of the trees at the bend of the road below, there had been
something about its rapid and noiseless flight, in the very bend of the
head and flutter of the dress, which alarmed the young girl.
Besides if it was Mrs. Dale, what was she doing, at this late hour
of the evening, on the road which led down to the cliff, to the sea?
She must have gone out by the door at the back of the house, too;—
surely a strange thing to do!
But even as these thoughts crowded into her mind, there came
another and less disquieting one. The road she had taken passed
the front of “Stone House;” perhaps she had gone to seek herself an
interview with “Mr. Banks.”
Even as she made this suggestion to herself, and while the voice
of the maid still murmured that she must go and fetch the cab, Mabin
heard men’s voices in the road below.
Recognizing that of Rudolph, she stepped outside the gates, and
waited with anxiety for his appearance.
But he came slowly; perhaps, thought Mabin, he was talking to
Mrs. Dale. She listened more intently; but as the voices came
gradually nearer, she was able to assure herself that they were only
those of Rudolph and of “Mr. Banks.” Scarcely able to control her
anxiety, she stepped out through the gates into the road, at the very
moment that Lady Mallyan’s harsh voice sounded behind her,
speaking to the parlormaid:
“Where is my cab?”
 Rudolph heard these words, and he hurried forward with his
companion. It was now almost dark. Mabin saw who the man was
beside him, but she could not distinguish his face.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” said Rudolph, raising his hat and
walking quickly after the old lady, who had passed through the gate
and was hurrying down the road: “Your son wishes to speak to you.
He cannot walk so fast as you, but he has sent me with this
message.”
She stopped short, appeared to hesitate, and then turned back
without a word.
It was close to where Mabin stood, stupidly, not knowing exactly
what was going to happen, or what she ought to do on behalf of Mrs.
Dale, that mother and son met.
Dark as it was out there, with only a line of pale yellow light left in
the horizon, shading off through sea-green into the blue above,
Mabin saw enough to know that the meeting was one of deep import.
Old Lady Mallyan seemed uneasy; the harshness which Mabin had
hitherto believed to be her most salient quality had almost
disappeared from her tones as she addressed her son:
“I am sorry,” she said, quite gently, as she put out her arms toward
him, “to find you here. It can do no good. It might have done great
harm. Why did you not let me know where you were? Why did you
deceive me?”
But “Mr. Banks” did not accept the offered caress of the
outstretched arms.
“I will tell you why, mother, presently. But now, where is Dorothy? I
want to see her. I must see her. Surely,” he went on as she did not at
first answer, “surely she will see me now you are here. Surely she
will not refuse!”
There was again a silence of a few seconds, during which Mabin,
who had only withdrawn a little way, and who was striving to attract
the attention of Rudolph, who stood with his back to her, uttered a
little cry of pain and distress.
Mr. Banks went on impatiently:
“Where is she? Is she in the house? I must go to her; I must see
her!”
 Then Lady Mallyan spoke, in a voice which was greatly changed.
She seemed to be trying to control some real alarm.
“You cannot,” she said quickly. “She will not see you. She refuses
—absolutely. As a gentleman you cannot persist. She is as hard and
cold-hearted as ever. She will not see you again. She has gone
away.”
At these words, which Mabin heard, the young girl uttered a sharp
cry. But “Mr. Banks” did not heed her. He spoke again, in such
piteous tones that Mabin and Rudolph, young and susceptible both,
felt their hearts wrung.
“Mother, I must see her, I must. Once, once only, I won’t ask for
more. Go after her; go after her. Tell her I love her, I love her always.
She will not refuse to see me once—before—before I die!”
Mabin waited no longer. Rushing between the mother and son,
she panted out:
“I will go. I will fetch her! I will bring her back. And she will come!
Oh, she will come! She is not hard. Trust me, trust me, she will come
—she shall come.”
She gave him no time for more than a hoarse whisper of thanks,
and a murmured blessing. She was off, down the hill, as if on the
wings of the wind.
And as she drew into the black shadow of the trees on the hill, she
heard footsteps and a voice behind her:
“Mabin! Mabin! Don’t be frightened. Where has she gone, dear?
Where has she gone?”
Panting, breathless, not halting a moment as she ran, Mabin
whispered, in a low voice which thrilled him:
“Down the hill—this way. Oh, Rudolph! You don’t think she’s gone
to the sea, do you?”
“Don’t let us think about it, dear. If anything has happened to her, it
is the fault of that old woman’s bitter tongue.”
“Oh, don’t let us talk. Let us hurry on. We may be in time yet.”
“We may.”
There was little hope in his tone. At the bottom of the road he,
slightly in front, hesitated.
“To the left—to the high part of the cliff, by the sea-mark,” directed
Mabin briefly. “Don’t wait for me. I am getting lame again. Run on
alone.”
So Rudolph ran. And, behind the fir-plantation a little further on, he
disappeared from her sight.
Mabin, her lame foot paining her a little, limped on after him with a
sinking heart.
 CHAPTER XV.
SOME EXPLANATIONS.

Mabin trudged along the chalky, dry road in the fast-gathering

darkness, oppressed by fears. What if Rudolph should not be in
time. Now it seemed clear to the girl that poor Mrs. Dale had started
on that solitary walk in a frenzy of despair, goaded to a mad act by
the taunts of Lady Mallyan.
And if he were in time, what would the end of it be? She could not
marry her husband’s brother, even if she had returned the love he
bore her. Yet, since he had asked so piteously for a few words with
her, it was impossible to refuse him.
Mabin’s warm heart was full of sympathy for them both; for the
woman who had erred so grievously, but who had gone through such
a bitter repentance: for the man who, whatever his weakness, his
indiscretion, had suffered and been constant.
In the mean time, Rudolph had reached the bare stretch of sandy
waste which extended along the cliffs beyond the last of the
straggling houses. The tide was coming in below, each little wave
breaking against the white wall of chalk with a dull roar, followed by a
hissing sound as the water retreated among the loose rocks.
Not a living creature was to be seen, although his seaman’s eyes
saw a long way in the dusk.
The fears which had haunted him as he ran grew stronger. He
looked over with a cold sensation of dread at the water beneath the
cliff. He listened, and at last he called:
“Mrs. Dale! Are you anywhere about, Mrs. Dale?”
He was conscious that his voice had not the ring of careless
heartiness which it was meant to have. And there was no answer.
He had come to a gap, by which carts and horses went down to
the shore to bring away sand and seaweed. A dark object, half
hidden in a cranny of the chalk, met his eye. He ran down, and as he
approached the thing sprang up and started away from him. But he
gave chase, came up with the flying figure as it reached the edge of
the water, and caught at the black draperies as he ran.
The long black veil gave way, and remained a limp rag in his hand.
But the flying figure stopped.
“Why do you come? Why can’t you leave me alone?” she asked
fiercely.
And as she turned upon him, he saw in her large, blue eyes, which
looked dark and unnaturally bright in the dusk, something of the
passionate temper which she had learned by sad experience to
control.
Rudolph hesitated. There was a doubt in his mind which made him
choose his words.
“He wants to see you, he says he must see you,” he said at last, in
a low voice. “He told Lady Mallyan so. You cannot, you will not
refuse to come.”
But a sudden change to terror came over her beautiful face. To
Rudolph’s great perplexity and distress, she burst into a violent fit of
crying.
“I can’t go, I can’t see him. After what she said! I can’t. I would
rather die!” Rudolph did not know what to say. His vague and
awkward attempts to comfort her were quite without effect, and at
last he contented himself by waiting in impatient silence, for the
arrival of Mabin. As he expected, the young girl found them out
quickly, guided by the piteous sobs of Mrs. Dale.
“Don’t cry so, dear, don’t cry. The old woman will never dare to
worry you again,” were the words which Mabin whispered into the
ears of the weeping woman, as she threw her arms round her, and at
once began to try to drag her up the slope toward home. “She’s
ashamed of herself already. And you will not have to meet her alone.
Remember that.”
Under the influence of her gentle words, and still more persuasive
caresses, Mrs. Dale speedily became calmer. And although she at
first resisted all her friend’s efforts to lead her back toward the house
she had left, she presently listened to and began to answer Mabin’s
words.
“I will come with you a little way,” she said in a tremulous voice.
“You are a sweet, dear girl, and I love you for your goodness. But
you must let me go to the station, and get away.”
Mabin paused before trying her final shot.
“You must come, dear,” she whispered, “because there is some
one who wants to see you; some one who is not strong enough to
come after you himself.”
At these words Mrs. Dale, who had begun to walk slowly up the
hill, leaning on Mabin’s arm, stopped short and began to tremble
violently.
“Who—is—that?” she asked hoarsely, with apparent effort,
keeping her eyes fixed on those of her companion with such
searching intentness that the young girl was alarmed.
“Mr. Banks,” whispered the girl. “And listen, dear. He only wants to
see you just once; he said so. And he is ill, you know, so I think you
ought. And since he has loved you all this time——”
Mabin stopped short. For as she uttered these words a cry
escaped from Mrs. Dale’s lips, a cry so full of poignant feeling, so
plaintive, so touching, that it was evident she was moved to the
inmost depths of her nature.
Clinging to Mabin with trembling fingers, gazing into her eyes with
her own full of tears, she said in a low, broken voice:
“He said that? He—really—said—that?”
“Why, yes, he did,” answered the girl, not knowing whether to be
glad or sorry that the admission had escaped her.
Not another word was uttered by either of them; but Mrs. Dale
began to walk so fast that Mabin, whose ankle had not yet recovered
all its own strength, found great difficulty in keeping up with her, and
Rudolph, who had been ahead of them, had now to drop behind.
It was not until they reached the hill on the top of which “The
Towers” stood, that Mrs. Dale’s steps slackened, and her face
become again overclouded with doubt and fear.
“Is—she with him? Was she with him when you came away?” she
asked in a meek and plaintive little voice.
Mabin had to confess that the dreaded “she” had been with him.
And Mrs. Dale faltered again, and had to be further helped and
further encouraged. At last, however, the top of the hill was reached,
and “The Towers” came in sight.
 But the place seemed to be deserted. No one was at the gates;
there was no light at any of the windows. A sense of desolation crept
into the hearts of both the ladies as they made their way, with slower
steps, toward the house. Rudolph hastened forward to open the gate
for them. He went through into the garden, and came out again
quickly.
“Mabin,” he said then, putting his hand lightly on her arm, “let Mrs.
Dale go in. I want to speak to you.”
Mabin hesitated, for Mrs. Dale was clinging to her arm with an
almost convulsive pressure. And then the girl saw that within the
garden gates, looking deadly pale in the light of the newly risen
moon, “Mr. Banks” was standing. As Mabin disengaged herself from
her companion, he came forward, almost staggering, and held out
his arms.
“Dorothy! Dorothy!” he whispered hoarsely.
Mrs. Dale uttered a sound like a deep sigh. Then she made one
step toward him. But as he approached her, with a pathetic look of
love, of yearning in his eyes, she tottered, and would have fallen to
the ground if he had not caught her.
Then, reaching Mabin’s astonished ears quite distinctly, as she
stood, anxious, bewildered, at a little distance, came these words in
Mrs. Dale’s voice:
“Oh, have you forgiven me? Will you ever forgive me, Geoffrey!
Geoffrey!”
Mabin swung round on her feet and all but fell into Rudolph’s
arms.
“Then—Mr. Banks—is her husband!” she gasped, in such a whirl
of joyous excitement that she did not notice how unduly gracious to
Rudolph her excitement was making her.
“Yes. Didn’t you guess?”
“N-n-no. Did you?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t tell you then?”
“No. She didn’t know herself, I am sure. But she began to wonder
and to suspect. And yet she didn’t dare, not knowing, I suppose,
poor little woman, how he felt toward her, to meet him. So she did
the worst thing possible, and sent for his mother. And no doubt the